The time has come to end the automatic direct messages on Twitter.

Yes, you’re welcome for the follow, but I’m not interested in your diet blog. You joined the Mafia, good for you but no thanks. Yes I know about Blip.fm, my friends won’t stop telling me about it. I’m sorry, who are you and why should I take your survey? Wow, you made that much $$$ by spamming Twitter? That is just AWESOME.

You get my point?

Please join Jesse Stay, Chris Brogan and many others by making a stink about it.

Here is what you can do:

• Send out a mighty tweet about the issue including the hashtag #endautodm
• Encourage friends who send you spammy DMs with a note back. Help them understand why this sucks. Or just block them.
• Use Seesmic desktop to report the worst offenders to @spam. Also go ahead and block them too. If any profile gets enough blocks it triggers spam filters at Twitter HQ.
• Be careful where you provide your Twitter login. Many services can tweet on your behalf without you knowing it. When in doubt do a Twitter search for the service’s name, look for any complaints or spammy activity.

Of course those tips can help, but they won’t fix the problem. Marketers will be marketers, users slow to understand their own noise levels.

As @jesse has pointed out before, the openness of Twitter’s API is usually to blame here. We need more granular controls to adjust the volume across social services like Twitter. Starting with a mute button for services that want to annoy us to death.

From Zuno -

Twiistup 6 panel “Leveraging the Social Web”. This session focused on being authentic and connecting with your audience in a natural meaningful way with insights from some of the most powerful leaders in social media.

Panelist include, Chris Brogan President of New Marketing Labs, Micah Baldwin starter of #FollowFriday and Ben Huh Chief Cheese Burger of Icanhascheezeburger.com. The panel was moderated by Sean Percival.

The beginning of the story of how I built a profitable web business for $12 and sold it for $100,000.

Despite always being very technical, some 10 years ago I found myself working as a janitor cleaning office buildings. One of those offices happened to belong to Vegas.com, one of the larger vacation sites of the first bubble. Each night I’d arrive there after midnight, only the find the office packed and full of energy. Employees were playing pinball, drinking Mountain Dew and occasionally doing some code. The boss would put his feet on his desk, smoke cigars and build his various digital empires. The vibe was intoxicating, I knew it was for me.

So after a string of IT and small web jobs, some 10 years later I was finally there. Although Red Bull has replaced Mountain Dew, and bosses do more tweeting than smoking these days, the experience is still equally unique. In 2 short years I edged my way into a few startups here in Los Angeles, starting with Mahalo, then Docstoc and finally Tsavo. I picked these companies for two reasons mostly, to gain experience from some of the best entrepreneurs in the area, but also to be part of quick (and hopefully profitable) exit. I felt those startups were “built to flip” and could sell quickly, but due to the economy and other influences, well, I swung and missed three times.

However all this time I was also pushing my own silly web dreams on the side. I tried about a dozen different ideas, some made money, some never even got off the ground. I affectionately called these $12 startups because I essentially launched them for just the cost of the domain name itself. Once the site started to generate revenue I’d roll some profits back into it, growing the property further.

One of those ideas was an e-commerce site selling what can best be described as a niche automotive part. I had no experience in the space, but figured I’d learn what I needed along the way. I had no idea that would cover everything from programming to SEO, and of course social media marketing. Developing these skills not only helped the business (it became profitable within two days) but the exercise gave me great skill set. And guess what, I finally got my exit. I just sold that silly idea for $100,000.

Sure $100,000 is not much compared to what some startups go for, but when your investment is so low, and you’re the sole shareholder, that represents a great return on my initial investment of $12 and one weekend to build the site.

So as you try to push your own digital dreams, remember sometimes the simplest ideas can be the best. While it may be exciting to build the next real-time-location based-micro blogging-mashup, perhaps it would be better to create something more tangible, both in terms of product and profitability.

In fact I hope to show you how it’s done.

Stay tuned.

Yes Twitter has a new homepage, and it’s beautiful.

Search is BIG now, as it should be. Current tweet trends are dramatically but eloquently exposed. Over all it’s a huge win for Twitter.

Logout to see it for yourself. Oh and be sure to run a few queries or click through on some of the trends. You’ll notice the search pages (or SERPs) have also had some work done. They look even better and offer data on why some topics are currently trending.

From the official blog:

Twitter began as a rudimentary social tool based on the concept of status messages but together with those who use it every day, the service has taught us what it wants to be. From features invented by users to applications built on the platform, we’re still discovering potential. Twitter has moved from simple social networking into a new kind of communication and a valuable source of timely information. Also, it’s fun.

That it is.

What’s also fun is completely leapfrogging Google to create the ultimate real time search product. Cheers to that.

What Others Are Saying:

• LA Times
• TechCrunch

Although my blog here saw a good 100,000 visitors over this search trend, my men’s site Manolith saw even more (above).

As usual, people love a good nakid celebrity.

A lot of big blog these days are running what I like the call the carousel. This typically includes 3-4 featured stories, accompanied with images, and little sub-headings. It also appears in the header of the site, above logos and post content.

In addition to looking pretty, the carousel DRAMATICALLY helps increase page views.

For a blog, 3 to 4 page views per session is GREAT. So you want to do everything you can to encourage those additional clicks. The carousel helps to highlight your best content, so regardless of how the visitor enters your site, they can easily discover it.

I thought it might be interesting to take a look at a few carousels, along with my two cents on each of them.

Off we go:

Gawker

Gawker basically pioneered the carousel for blogs. They’ve made little tweeks along the way, and now feature four stories along with a 300×250 ad flushed right. Traditionally publishers have placed a 768px wide banner up top, but this never really looks good. The square ad blends in much better here, likely increasing CTR (click through rate). They also write some of the best headlines for these items.

TechCrunch

The Crunch soon followed Gawker and rolled our their own carousel. It features 3 stories and uses nice beefy images. With MG Siegler writing some of the headings, you may find yourself giving a little chuckle, followed by your click through. Lately TechCrunch has been running big stories here over several days. This helps ensure visitors don’t miss them. Should you (heaven forbid) stay offline for more than 24 hours.

Mixergy

Mixergy founder Andrew Warner recently overhauled his site, greatly improving its design and layout. Part of the upgrades included a carousel that highlights his recent interviews with various tech luminaries. Andrew doesn’t use headings here, but does include a subtle play button in the lower right corner. This helps signal the visitor that beyond that click they are likely to find some form of video or audio.

lalawag

So for my own site I opt for 3 stories with headlines. I include the post title as well, using some text formatting that is annoying enough to be interesting, therefore drawing your eye. I go for high impact images as well and always try to include an illustration when possible. I go overboard on some of the CSS formatting, trying to make each unit pop. Finally I keep the logo at the same level of the featured content, because, well I’m a brand fame-ball like that.

Ok ride is over, please exit safely to your right. Let the ride operator know your favorite carousels in the comments below.

What would the news look if the Apollo XI Moon landing happened today?

Internet users are continuing to heavily search for Erin Andrews peephole pictures, and of course the infamous video. The other day I posted some notes about the typical life cycle of this type of content.

Really though it comes down to one simple idea, people like seeing other naked people. Especially when those people happen to good looking and somewhat well known.

Now a lot of attention is being focused on who shot and distributed the video online. However the likely hood of finding this person is slim. After all not even Erin Andrews can recall which hotel the footage stemmed from. The issue is further complicated when it was revealed the video was actually online for awhile, like months. It just hadn’t received press, and that wonderful butt was not attributed to Andrews until recently.

Beyond all that, the major catalyst of this story DeadSpin (Gawker’s sports blog) posted some interesting perspective today in their post Erin Andrews And Guilt, Imagined And Otherwise.

In the wake of the awful video that hit the Web over the weekend — actually, it had been hanging around for months, apparently, but no one had seen it — everyone is pointing fingers. It’s blogs’ fault for objectifying her. It’s fans’ fault for often caring more about what happens off the field than on. It’s ESPN’s fault for not strangling this story in the crib when they had the chance. (And they did.) It’s her fault. It’s our sports culture’s fault. It’s the fault of the thin walls of a lousy hotel.

None of these things are true, of course, and all of them are. Obviously, the fault lies in the assbag who shot the video in the first place, something this person has made a habit of, ultimately stumbling on someone in the public arena. (Let there be no doubt, though: This could happen to you, your wife, your girlfriend, your daughter. These slugs exist because it’s impossible to find a way to kill them all.)

Of course this is after DeadSpin benefited from millions of visitors this content brought in, but hey, that’s publishing for ya.

Click here to see the rest of DeadSpin’s coverage of Erin Andrews.

Some of the great infographics we’ve put together for Manolith.

Big thanks to Infoshot who create this wonderful artwork.

I’m really getting into infographics and unique ways to visualize data. So I’m going through some personal exercises, creating flow charts and other weird stuff too abstract to ever post. The latest one I worked up is a simple timeline that covers the recent #twittergate story.

Head on over to lalawag to check out Le Twitter Hack.

En depth detail of the hack can be found over on TechCrunch.