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I’m really loving Twitter. After sending a link to my blog post about caring for your social network, I immediately got feedback from many folks and @PhillMoran asked me to write up something similar about email.

I was about to get started but then figured, lets ask the twitterverse and sure enough, within minutes, I started getting responses.

I was planning on dissecting the tweets and summarizing them into a post. But then the thought occurred to me, why? folks already thoughtfully limited their responses to 140 characters so they’ve really done the hard work.

So instead of going through the painful (at least, to me) process of wordsmithing every sentence to make it just write, I simply spent my time embedding links to each tweeter, thankfully crediting their work. Wow. A new writing style. Here’s the resulting post.

Twitter is hot. It’s a new platform. It’s the streaming thought source. And the applications have just begun. It’s like we’re in the opening days of email.

Are you a class act with email? Do you use it thoughtfully? Here’s what really peeves folks that consider email second nature:

cai_mommy: Forwarding jokes, chain mail, and those “if you love someone/know a great mother/believe in God” poems/pictures. That’s abuse.

mochichick: When someone sends a message addressed to loads of people without using bcc!

AndyBumatai: I can’t stand the “If you don’t forward this to 50 people you will (fill in guilt trip here)” How does bandwidth usage play in it?

malewa: people who, “Reply to all”!!

hawaii : I lament the underutilization of “Bcc” and the abuse of “Cc.” Don’t expose everyone’s address. And don’t encourage “reply all”!

FranMagbual: email pet peeve: chain messages that have been forwarded so many times you can’t find original message. Call me the chain killer!

macpro: – I hate opt out. Why do they automatically think I want their emails?

Super thanks to the folks that tweeted back. Awesome!

I’m playing around alot with Twitter, Facebook, Ning, LinkedIn and I’m seeing more and more people essentially abusing their connections with others. Examples:

• In Twitter: only tweeting to promote your own stuff/links
• In Facebook: creating continual streams self-serving events
• In LinkedIn: asking to make a connection to someone you don’t know

This indicates a few things:

• Cluelessness of the essence of social networks
• Embracing a failing strategy

Don’t do it. It won’t work and you’ll either be shrinking your network or building a valueless network of that’s inherently unmonetizable.

Do: Build a network on a Rock of Gibraltar: the real you. Don’t re-puke other’s posts unless you can add value. Put out stuff that really reflects what you’re thinking inside. If I connect with you, it’s because I want to connect with YOU, not the latest “1001 Internet Marketing Secrets the pros don’t want you to know!” scheme.

I can’t guarantee you’ll attract millions, but I can guarantee that whatever crowd you do attract will be real and will listen to what you have to say.

And that’s worth something.

Download this PDF and Read page 9 of this changeThis publication “Learning to view your customers as a powerful tribe“.

I just read the TechCrunch post on BrightCove’s launch and it looks like a pretty appealing avenue for those somewhat serious about monetizing their video content. Seems to me they just leapfrogged what YouTube+GoogleVideo is supposed become. They don’t have their content base anywhere near Goog’s but do have a tighter, more defined financial model.

If Google takes too long to get their act together, BrightCove could pull ahead. Watch this one closely for sure.

(Well, I didn’t crack the iPod myself, but the headline was cool).

Imagine this: in 1999 you’re 15 yrs old and you are the one that cracks the DVD copy protection scheme which subsequently enables people to copy their DVDs.

So what do you do for an encore?

Well, today in 2006 at 22 yrs old you crack the copy protection of the iPod, allowing rivals to sell competing products that play music from iTunes and offer songs for download that work on iPods as they seek to take a bite out of Apple’s dominance of digital music.

Congrats Jon Lech Johansen! Wow.

I’ve always felt that “share the love” models that turn every customer into a paid sales rep are the future of distribution. Amway representatives will be quick to point out that they’ve been doing this for years and they are right.

Microsoft’s Zune isn’t exactly MLM, but if you share a song (which it allows you to do so legally) that influences your friend to actually buying that song, you get “paid” in the form of credits to buy more music. Very cool.

Greg Kim, Honolulu attorney and founder of Vantage Counsel, sent out an email to his contacts and with his permission I’m reprinting the email here:

Dear Friends, here’s an interesting article ,”It Pays to Have Pals in Silicon Valley“, from today’s New York Times regarding the YouTube phenomenon and the numerous other PayPal spinoffs. Some reflections on relevance for Hawaii:

1. There’s nothing like having a huge success like PayPal to jumpstart multiple spinoff companies and the acceleration of tech development and creativity. To follow this example, Hawaii should aim for a few huge successes that will ultimately generate spinoffs and accelerate critical mass.
2. Startups are hard work and they need to be. The strong will survive. We shouldn’t make it easy for entrepreneurs to fund their companies if we are to complete globally and find sustainable businesses. If we make it too easy for them, then we are actually hurting them in the long run.
3. Hawaii should thus be careful about taking risk away from entrepreneurs and investors. As Reid Hoffman (PayPal alum and founder of LinkedIn) is quoted at the end of the article, “Nothing focuses your attention quite like losing money and the sense that you are going to die soon.”
4. Entrepreneurs want things to be hard. That’s why they are entrepreneurs. The article makes numerous references to the bonding that occurred through the stress and hard work (nights and weekends) of employees of PayPay in its early stages as a struggling startup. It states: “The long hours, sleepless nights and intense pressure of life inside a start-up often create strong bonds among its employees. In its early years, PayPal was all about pressure and the struggle for survival. The company was losing millions each month.”

We should nurture this type of environment for entrepreneurs.

“CastTV Will Revolutionize Video Search”

Arrington writes some pretty strong words about this one. I’m bummed I couldn’t play with it too. How will a Google-level video search engine change the current paradigm? Talk about the outdated program guide!

I have a personal interest in podcasting and so Podshow’s recent $15M B-round definitely raised my eyebrows. Assuming that purchase was for 20% of the company, that’s pegging their valuation at about $75M. That implies that they think they will be worth $750M in 5 years. (These assumptions are just taking basic VC rules of thumb like a 10x return in 5 years and never sell more than 20% of the company at any given round).

Assuming that DAG Ventures is not stupid, this seems to indicate that Podshow may in fact be on to something. It must also mean that advertisers are happy with their podcast advertising ROI.

I always wondered how well a podcast audience responds to the right kind of advertising. This seems to indicate that people aren’t hitting the fast forward button (as I do).

Scanning through this TechCrunch post Whither Television Programming? drove me to jot some quick thoughts on the future of TV:

I rarely, if ever, sit through an entire broadcast TV program. I do, however, watch about 2 hours of recorded TV a day and probably another 1/2 hr of Internet-downloaded videos.

I can easily see a day when you will simply subscribe to your favorite video entertaiment via vodcasting (video clips delivered to your computer via podcasting technology) and never go near your cable TV again.

In fact, many will argue that day has arrived already, with the ever-growing lists of vodcasts one can subscribe too. Maybe so, but those are still in the amateur category. I want to subscribe to my favorite news program and watch it on my laptop/pc/media center.

I think the big question/challenge for the traditional media is how to not lose ad revenue. How do you stop people from FFing through the ads?

Easy, but hard: Make the ads relevant to the viewer. Develop a 1-1 with me and what I’m looking for. Do that, and I’ll probably hit rewind and play the ad a few times.