It never occured to me until today how hard it is to contact Twitter support with a unique request. On the Twitter Support page, they’ve got lots of information but no help on how to contact them unless you’re reporting spam (in which case you simply tweet to @spam).

After about 10 minutes of digging, I found a link that will allow you to open a new ticket for contacting Twitter support.

Without further adieu, here is the link to open a new ticket with Twitter Support.

Google Profiles are a new and, in my opinion, underused resource. Perhaps you didn’t like it because of the unfriendly URL, but you can now get your very own vanity URL with your Google username.

Example: http://www.google.com/profiles/lyndseo

And wait! What’s that? Adding links? And these links are crawlable?

Google Profile lets you add links with whatever anchor text you decide – and as of right now there is no rel=nofollow attached to those links. They do give you some guidances – “Examples: Online photo albums, social network profiles, personal websites” – as a fallback, I would assume, for those who may will try to manipulate it.

For now, I’ll going to sit back and wait to see how Google Profiles rank, and what kind of link juice their passing along.

Twitter and brand name squatting

Twitter is finally starting to get some serious recognition as a legitimate social networking tool for companies big and small. And well it should. I’ve been preaching the greatness of Twitter for sometime now, even though I myself have only been an active user for just under a year.

Realizing the positive impact that Twitter can have on a company’s online visibility, I decided that I would start an account for WestJet. When I went to register the account, I wasn’t really surprised to see that @westjet was already taken – WestJet is a major brand here in Canada. Unfortunately, I had yet to hear about any other companies having success reclaiming their brands, and so I contented myself with the account @westjet_sales and went on with my project.

A few weeks ago I decided to see how much it would take to reclaim the @westjet account. I knew I’d have to validate myself somehow, and the obvious strategy was to send Twitter an email from my WestJet corporate email, proving that I’m a real person from the actual company.

Not even 24 hours later, I received a response letting me know that my @westjet_sales account had been transferred to @westjet. Success! And so easy! I am so pleased at Twitter’s stance on this. They want to be taken seriously and they’re making the right moves.

Is your brand name or company name being squatted on Twitter? Just send them an email at support@twitter.com from your company email address and you should have no trouble at all.

If you’d like to read a little bit more about how Twitter squatters are impacting businesses, check out the article “Twitter squatters can hijack your brand” from the Montreal Gazette. I talk a bit about my experience about two thirds into the article.

It shouldn’t come as a big surprise that I’m not much of a writer, given the frequency of updates to this blog. In fact, I’ll be the first to tell you that I’m a numbers girl. Absolutely left-brained.  Writing is not my strongest suit.

Does that mean I’m not as good at search engine optimization?  Not at all.  For all the time I could spend writing blog posts, I instead spend time reading up other people’s content, learning and absorbing as much as I can. I just don’t feel the need to repeat what’s already being said elsewhere.

It often seems to me that to be looked at as a respected player in the industry, one needs to be an active blogger.  There’s certainly more awareness of big name bloggers.  Maybe that’s just what the Internet is about – how can you prove your skills and knowledge if you’re not posting it for the whole world to see?

I’ll think I’ll just sum it up by saying that those of us that are not so blessed with words definitely still have skill and talent.   Just don’t expect some witty comments… and when we try… please laugh with us and not at us.

Less than four weeks ago, my American friends celebrated Thanksgiving.  I sat at work thinking it would be a very quiet day on Twitter, but in reality it may have been one of the busiest.

I couldn’t believe how many people were actively tweeting about their grand Thanksgiving meals, their delicious Thanksgiving spirits, and the amusing tweets that followed.  It was highly entertaining for me, stuck at work drooling over pictures of turkey, mashed potatoes… yummmmm…

And so I expect Christmas to be the same.  And I expect to participate as well.  Whatever food I’m not having, I can be sure that someone else is.  And so the Twitterverse will get to experience many different foods and cultures, all through our computers and phones.

God bless the Internet

I signed up for Twitter a few weeks ago, but I’ve really been getting into it these past few days. Unfortunately, I don’t seem to get updates on my phone, but I’m a big fan of TwitterFox.

If you’d like to follow me, I’m @lyndseo.

See ya around tweets!

I know I don’t post often, but I promise, it hasn’t been since 2006 since I lasted posted.

I’m having some database problems.  Hope to have them resolved soon!

I am currently in Dallas doing some training, and on my lunch break I decided to check out my Facebook profile and see what’s new.

Sitting in my “Requests” area are five group invitations… invitations to things like “if X many people join this group, I’ll do Y”.  It is a very definite reminder of spam emails like “if you don’t send this email to X many people, Y will happen!!”.

The worst part about this is that only friends can invite you, so these are the people that I know, or once knew.  In fact, mostly it’s people who I’m not really close to anymore.  I guess the people who I’m closest with know about my lack of patience with such types of spam.

So, look out Facebook users.  The next generation of spam – the “Social Spam” if you will – is upon us and growing.

So, I’m a football fan. Moreso of the Canadian Football League, but this year I’ve definately been getting into the NFL quite a bit more.

I’m reading about this guy, JP, who is trying to raise money to buy a 30 second ad during the SuperBowl to propose to his girlfriend. Now, let’s be fair here. JP is his alias – obviously, this is creating buzz and he doesn’t want his girlfriend to find out. Certainly JP could be just about anyone right?

Could it be my boyfriend? As I pondered the thought… outloud apparently… my friend Joe was quick to tell me that no, JP was not Canadian and the proposal was not for me. Drat.

But what a fantastic idea!! What girl wouldn’t melt at the thought of being proposed to on television – in front of millions of viewers for the low low cost of $2.5 million? Wow that better be a sweet ring for this kind of attention!

It gets better. The money that JP raises is going to the Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital.

To some it up, you’ve got a sweet, romantic kid with a huge heart. Any girl would be lucky to have such a guy.

Join me in supporting JP by visiting his site at www.mysuperproposal.com