Mostly, people were all over Bud Selig for not instituting instant replay last year. Bud Selig is an easy guy to get mad at because he’s never apologized for anything he or baseball has ever done wrong. When MLB reviewed and denied the use of replay, Bud said he wanted the Human Element as part of baseball. I think you could get this pretty well from the baseball players because I’m pretty sure they’re all human no matter 
how many steroids they are taking. But Bud thought the umpires ought to be human too. The UmpBot stock I bought went right in the toilet when he said that.

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NPR ran a story a few days ago about Senate Secret Holds. I listened to the story because I thought it was about professional wrestling. I imagined John McCain climbing to the top of Joe Biden’s giant desk and leaping across the chamber to drop a double axe-handle on Charles Schumer. I think McCain is the toughest member of the Senate. He’s scrappy and I wouldn’t bet against him, even if it was all fixed.

As it turns out, a secret hold is a lot like a filibuster, except it keeps the motion from ever getting to the Senate floor. And it’s anonymous. A senator can go to his or her party leadership and say ask for a hold without ever being identified on the floor. Listening to the story, it felt a little bit like a man walking into a 7-11 and asking for all the cash in the register because there’s a man outside with his hand in his pocket claiming he has a gun.

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Maybe Senators are smarter than we give them credit for. We Americans are pretty easy to wait out. In the short time since I started writing this post, no one is talking about Armando Galarraga. We’ve moved on to Stephen Strausberg, NBA playoffs, who’s holding out of NFL OTAs and college conference realignment. The first 28 out perfect game seems like last season.

It will be two weeks on Wednesday.

National news isn’t that different. We are always interested in right now. It’s true. Watch any of the cable news channels for a day. There is no “news.” There’s only “breaking news.” And that doesn’t mean it’s the most important. Around 16000 kids die every day from hunger. Fox News wants to tell you about “Stars With Sex Tapes”. MSNBC says “Pickup sales perk up along with economy”.

Twitter is breaking news on steroids.

Nick Carr and others have asked if our technology is making us stupid. It isn’t, but only in the sense that guns don’t kill people. We are choosing to buy in—to believe that the stories on the news or in our twitter feeds are the stories. We are choosing to live contextualess lives that move from one outrage to the next.

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In his last two starts, Galarraga has only given up three runs. Detroit has won both games. He’s pitching lights out.

No word yet on if John McCain will add the Flying Elbow to his arsenal.

Breaking news as it happens.

1. Tweet less. Anything more than ten in a day and we’ll start to tune you out. Less is more.

2. Tweet better. One great link is better than twenty good links. Control the narrative.

3. Don’t put a link on everything. Especially if it’s to your Facebook status that says the same thing.

4. If you call yourself a marketer, we’ll think twice. If you call yourself a marketing guru, we won’t. Listen to you at all that is.

5. Following people is not a growth strategy. It’s a way of telling the people you follow that you’ll never read their tweets. Read the people you follow.

6. It’s social marketing, not bullhorn marketing. Interact. With. People.

In the race between ‘who’ and ‘how many’, who usually wins–if action is your goal. Find the right people, those that are willing to listen to what you have to say, and ignore the masses that are just going to race on, unchanged. —Seth Godin, Driveby culture and the endless search for wow

The irony of this quote is that because I mentioned marketing in my tweet, I’ll get 5-10 twitter followers claiming to be marketing experts who are already following eight to ten thousand people.

“There is absolutely no exclamation point shortage on Facebook,” a spokesperson for the social networking giant said. “The rumors are unfounded and completely false.”

Facebook says that despite the rapid growth in users over the previous year, all users should be able to update their status as excitedly as they wish.

“Exclamation points are a personal choice. Facebook won’t infringe on the rights of our users. Our track record speaks for itself.”

Beverly Hills based MySpace is asking users to conserve exclamation points, offering a number of solutions including limiting the number of exclamations to three per post and twenty-one per day. In a statement released earlier this week, MySpace suggested replacing exclamation points with asterisks or dollar signs. “Who doesn’t like money symbols?” the statement read. The statement also said that users who exceed more than 50 exclamation points per day will have their accounts suspended indefinitely.

The move is seen as largely symbolic as no one actually uses MySpace anymore.

Many wonder if the MySpace policy shift is a sign of things to come for Facebook. Preemptive rallies have sprung up around the country in protest of the yet-to-be-imposed limits. Protesters gathered at local wifi hotspots to update their status in unison. Many users have updated their status to read, “Facebook can take away our exclamation points, but they can never take the exclamation out of me!!!!!!!!!!!!!” Others read, “What the?!?!? FACEBOOK is trying to ruin my life!!!!” One more contemplative user is pondering life with fewer exclamation points. “I find it amazing that Facebook thinks one exclamation point will express my excitement about pizza. I just had pizza for dinner! Are you kidding?!?!?! This sucks!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

While other social networks struggle with a shortage, Twitter is cashing in on a surplus. They are currently in talks with MySpace to supply the company with some of their extra punctuation. Industry experts spokesperson suggested that the 140 character limit for messages helped curb overuse.

“Most tweeple can keep their exclamation point usage to at least seven or eight per message,” said Stanford University social media professor Ed Itor. “Twitter has plenty to go around.”

Officials at the United States Letters and Punctuation Bureau say they have been monitoring the situation closely and will step in if necessary. “After the L shortage in 2007, we put an emergency preparedness plan in place for just this type of thing. Thankfully, the economy has far fewer people laughing out loud. We’re hopeful it will have the same effect on the Christmas exclamation points. The Twitter surplus will help, but we’re concerned that certain users will quickly sap the extra resources.”

The USLPB encourages everyone to do their part by limiting exclamation points to normal, grammatically prescribed standards. But they are ready to step in if necessary.

“If we have to visit Serena Williams and Perry Noble and every overly excited teenager in the country and show them photos of homeless puppies, that’s something we’re prepared to do.”

The truth is, neither the POTUS or the T.O. of hip-hop are the story here. No one, on either side of the isle, should be all that shocked by what the President said. Whether you love him or hate him (and I feel lonely in the vast plain of space inbetween), this sort of off-the-record comment is not out of character. President Obama, like those who came before him, knows when the camera is rolling and behaves accordingly. Less popular behavior, like smoking, comes when the cameras are off.

The story isn’t what he said. It’s that it was reported at all.

Twitter is the real story.

What kept me out of twitter for a long time was the fear of having a stream of conscious medium. My first reaction is rarely my best one. I need to filter and process thoughts before telling the whole world.

The more you use twitter professionally, the more you must approach your tweets with care. And the more professionals use twitter, the more mistakes we’ll see. It takes time to get used to a new media outlet.

Make no mistake, Twitter is a new media outlet.

I’m sure Terry Moran is wishing he could take a mulligan. He broke journalistic ethics standards and (to the best of my knowledge) didn’t mean to. That’s serious and there may be some repercussions. Maybe he gets snubbed by politicians. Maybe he’ll have a beer at the White House to talk it through while the world criticizes his choice in libation. Maybe he’ll raise $1,000,000 for a political campaign because people are so eager to show their displeasure for the President that they will support poor behavior.

Or maybe another celebrity will die and we’ll all move on.

But don’t miss the real story. Twitter is a mighty tool. Use it carefully.

Start with 140.

Take out 7 for the parenthesis, via, @, and the space. That leaves you with 133. Now subtract the length of your username. In my case, pauleberry, I would be left with 123 characters to tweet with if I wanted a retweet.

That said, tweets requesting retweets put me off more often than not. If you want to be retweeted, give me a reason. Be interesting or insightful or hilarious and I’ll do it anyway.

Tweet well, friends!

Other’s just don’t get it. There’s another guy I follow whom I won’t name. I don’t know him and I won’t detail my reasons for following him (they are professional at least). But I get his tweets. And I can’t stand them. It’s not “I enjoyed this” but “go watch or read or eat this”. It’s not, “Here are my thoughts on this”, it’s “Go comment on this.” Add to this name dropping and bits of would-be wisdom, and it’s annoying as all get out. He’s probably a really nice guy. But the tweets are really bad.

(What’s that? You? Of course it’s not you, it’s someone else. I love your tweets!)

Good tweets share. Bad tweets instruct.

Good tweets invite. Bad tweets promote.

Good tweets are there for followers to enjoy — here’s what I’m thinking/doing! here’s my book! here’s my kid! here’s 40% off of my kid and my book!

Bad tweets are there to make readers do or think or believe something that they currently don’t. The follow on twitter may be the permission that marketers are seeking, but it isn’t permission to market badly.

These ideas will be inspiring my tweets for the foreseeable future. We’ll see how I do.

Locations will be distributed via….you guessed it: twitter.

You have to assume that Don had some inspiration for his own wild goose chase.

(For the record, Derek turned 35 here, not 53.)

He’s got 13,293 followers as of the time of the announcement. I’ll be shocked if he doesn’t break 15,000 by the time the book comes out. Surprised if it’s not 18,000.

While I’m at it, here are a couple of my favorite Donald Miller things:

Don talking at Seattle Pacific University (free from iTunes U.)

Don pitches a book, it doesn’t quite work out, and finds out that Tolkien’s feet weren’t as hairy as he thought.

Searching for God Knows What, which I enjoyed at least as much as BLJ if not more.

And finally, this little note. Guess I can’t keep it quiet anymore.

Tags: DonMiller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, co-author

On May 8th, Webb started hinting at label trouble over content on his new record on Twitter. May 12th saw an email confirming it. On May 19th, Webb sent a cryptic message saying that his label was not supporting him in the release of his new album Stockholm Syndrome and that he’d find a way around it. Laced into the email were underscores, which lead to the code paradiseisaparkinglot. What has followed has been something of a wild goose chase…the funnest wild goose chase ever.

Is this all a stunt to get our attention? Probably. But prophets have used stunts to get our attention since the very beginning. Generally, they’re outrageous, not meant to be taken literally, and full of symbolism. As anyone who has witnessed a flag burning can tell you, symbols are very important.

In an age where Joaquin Phoenix “quits acting” to “start a rap career” and gets followed around everywhere he goes by Casey Affleck, it’s easy to understand why some are skeptical. But Webb has earned this. His body of work says that we can follow along and see where this all leads.

First on the agenda is Webb’s premix edition of “The Spirit Vs. The Kick Drum.” The whole song is found through a series of clues that I’ll let you track down yourself. It’s classic Webb, pointing out our hearts’ desires in contrast to the one true God. If the rest of the album is this good, it may be even better than Mockingbird. Here’s an excerpt:

Like sex without love
Like peace without the dove
Like a crime scene without the blood
I don’t want the spirit; you know I want a kick drum

I don’t want the son; I want a jury of peers
I don’t want the son; I want a jury of peers
Stares go low when you see my tears
I don’t want the son; I want a jury of peers

So play the game. Follow the clues. Put the pieces together. Figure out what Webb’s trying to say through all of this.