If it’s possible to be a true filmmaker using only the 6-seconds allowed on Twitter’s Vine app, actor Adam Goldberg would be the director, star, producer, writer, and mastermind behind the project. I have a lot to say about the combination of genius, randomness, and mystery that goes into his videos, but it’s best for you to see if for yourself. Check out his page and click through to all of his Vines or just check out a selection from the ones below. If you don’t watch everything he posts, you won’t understand any of it. Then again, you can watch everything he posts and still not understand any of it, but…

Anyone who has been on Twitter as long as I have (6 years I believe) knows that the site has gone through major transformations in the past. Lately, Vine might be the only major change in a while but there was a time when it seemed like proper Twitter etiquette changed week by week. When I first started, links were magical and very few people posted them. Today, many accounts post nothing but links. This is a big mistake. If you post only links, you’re really not posting anything at all. Why? Because people aren’t really following you if that’s the case. Run some tests. Use bitly or goo.gl or other click…

It was hot, then it was cold, then it was hot, then it was cold. Google+, the search giant’s 54th attempt at a social network, is going on two years old now and it has made a splash in the social media world with half a billion users, over 100 million of whom are considered “active”. These seem to be impressive numbers until you spend enough time on the site and realize that it’s still not in the same league as Facebook when it comes to engagement. People live a good portion of their lives on Facebook, while they struggle to remember to check their Google+. They aren’t far off from having a truly valid social…

When the NYTimes published a story last week claiming that a review drive of the Tesla Model S ended with a flatbed and a stranded journalist, CEO Elon Musk lashed out against the claims on Twitter. It seemed at the time to be the bitter response to a negative review that is often the knee-jerk reaction to bad press. Then, it turned interesting. NYTimes article about Tesla range in cold is fake. Vehicle logs tell true story that he didn’t actually charge to max & took a long detour. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 11, 2013   Juicy stuff coming – that was the promise. While we waited, the reporter…

Those in social media marketing as a profession realize that there are certain unknowns when it comes to the new web. We know that people are on social media. We know that they don’t want direct marketing. We also know they’d rather get direct marketing than pay for the services, so there’s at least a little room for something. The question is, “what is that something?” Whether from B2C or B2B, social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn give marketers the ability to try to reach the target audience and generate leads. The vast majority are trying. Most are failing, or at least not meeting…

When Captain Kirk does a Reddit AMA, geeks rejoice. When he sticks around on the site and starts calling out users, administrators, and managers for allowing too much hate speech, people still listen but not with as much zeal. Actor William Shatner, a man who despite his age is no stranger to the internet or social media, joined the social news powerhouse and followed in the footsteps of President Obama and dozens of other celebrities to do an AMA (Ask Me Anything). He stayed on the site and has explored it over the past several days, coming to a stark conclusion: they’re adhering too heavily to free…

We are vane creatures. LinkedIn has been on a roll, lately. They seem to have come to grips with their status as a resume- and professional-connection-distributing social network (even though they still look too much like Facebook). They are beating The Street’s profits and revenue expectations and they haven’t had any major scandals lately. 2012 was a good year for them and they’re starting off 2013 with a bang by getting many of its most active members to promote the service by promoting themselves. In a perfectly designed email, LinkedIn informed their top members last week that they were…

It should have been one of the easiest Easter eggs in the world to pull off for a progressive social company like Twitter, but their lolcatz language option turned out to be a feeble attempt at being fun and clever. A user can go to their language settings or simple go to https://twitter.com/?lang=lolc. From there, a few mild attempts at using the worst language ever created barely scratches the cleverness threshold. “VIEW MAH PROFILE PUJ”, “VIEW FOTO”, and “EXPAN KTHX” are some of the changes made to the interface. Otherwise, it’s mostly about using all caps and eliminating some vowels. Not much…

One of the most personal online violations that can occur to anyone is getting hacked. It could be a personal attack such as a Facebook account, on which 600k successful hacks are achieved daily. It could be something more general such as a database hack that exposes personal information. It could be much, much worse. With all of the security measures out there and counter-hacking attempts, many systems and accounts can be easily secured by having a strong password. There are plenty of hacks that can hit a system or an account that have nothing to do with front door password access, so there’s no reason…

In 2008, Twitter introduced the ability for advertisers to buy promoted trends, a way of taking over a portion of the homepage to drive traffic to a topic. At launch, it was a “mere” $80,000, a number that many experts thought was too high. In 2013, the number is officially $200,000. So much for the experts. According to AllThingsD: The promoted trend lets an advertiser insert its own message atop the “trends” list on Twitter.com home pages and on Twitter apps; Twitter sells a single message a day, per territory. Except when it doesn’t: Today, for instance, there’s no promoted trend on the…