I wasn’t expecting to do much more than build the LEGO Death Star yesterday, but when I awoke to find 750 people watching the live stream… I knew I was in for a great birthday. Indeed, it was the happiest birthday I’ve had in quite a long time.

I was eating my faux Lucky Charms (the Target-brand variety, which contains a million more marshmallows) and told the chat room that the only thing I wanted for my birthday was to be a trend on Twitter. Didn’t take long before that wish started to come true. After my initial tweet, I pushed a couple more times and then…

We made it all the way to #2! Not bad, even on a Sunday morning – considering we were competing against Harry Potter, the Tour de France, and Comic-Con. Throughout the day, I continued to check my Twitter replies – and despite having to wade through quite a few tag spammers, found hundreds (if not thousands) of friends tweeting their happy birthday wishes.

I am very lucky to have the friends that I do – both online and IRL. Mona planned for and made some amazing Japanese treats, Michelle rocked my socks off with the best ribs I’d ever had, Ellen gave me cupcakes and copy of Coraline, and Traci sang “happy birthday” to me over the phone. My family also called from Iowa and didn’t realize they were saying hello to me in front of 1,300 viewers!

All things considered, it was a pretty happy birthday. Thank you for participating!

• Who Are You on Twitter?
• The Deal with Twitter
• Social Media Updates for 2009-11-22
• How Can Companies Hire Social Media Directors?
• Word of the Year: Unfriend
• Social Media Updates for 2009-11-15
• How to Surf
• What is Twitter Good For?
• Social Media Updates for 2009-11-08
• Phil Plait – Active Skepticism Online

twitter.com/chrispirillo – I was quite surprised to fire up a Web browser and check out my “Twitter Grade” (which I’m sure doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things, but it’s still an interesting statistic to know – considering just how many people are using Twitter these days).

Turns out, I’m in the Twitter Elite – outranking everybody else. I have no idea how the hell that happened, but I’m in some good company there.

Then again, I consider everybody on Twitter a part of the elite – one person’s tweet is equal to another’s (despite what some might claim). Just because you have more or less followers than me doesn’t make you any more or less important than you already are.

Twitter is instant gratification, instant validation, and a chance for you to tell the world what you’re thinking… before you’ve had a chance to think about it. Then again, maybe it’s more like an exclamation of feelings before you’ve felt them?

What is Twitter to you? Is it anything? Are you there? Is it a fad – like this blogging thing? Will Twitter be around in 10 years? Will you?

Oh, too many questions – but I dare not pose them directly ON Twitter, lest I be lashed with the 140 character limit. Beh.

So, you can follow me if you choose to follow – I’ll auto-follow back, because that’s how I wish to use Twitter.

It’s a firehose of information and emotion – a digital microcosm of life itself.

• The #2 Twitter Trend
• You Need a Thick Skin to Participate Online
• Can a Company Take Social Networking too Far?
• What Do You Need to Know About Social Media?
• The Deal with Twitter
• Social Media Updates for 2009-11-22
• How to Optimize Network Management
• How Can Companies Hire Social Media Directors?
• Word of the Year: Unfriend
• Social Media Updates for 2009-11-15

This is William C’s submission for the HP Magic Giveaway. Feel free to leave comments for this article as you see fit – your feedback is certainly welcomed! If you’d like to submit your own how-to, what-is, or top-five list, you can send it to me. Views and opinions of this writer are not necessarily my own:

Hey all! I’m William C. I go by Liam or Wolf, and I’m here to provide you with a few tips to get you out and about, for lack of a better phrase.

First I want to take the time to explain what a extroverted person is. Notice I use the word extroverted instead of outgoing. Being extroverted entitles you get energized by being around people. Sometimes this energy manifests itself in the form of nervousness or fear. Yep, that’s right… some of you could be extroverted people whose energy is just uncontrolled but I’m here to help with that.

On the other hand, you may be introverted. This means you like living in your own little world. You gather energy off of being alone, and when you’re around people your energy depletes. If you’re one of these people, you probably won’t be reading this for the tips. Just know that some of these tricks may work for you.

Extroverted means: “Marked by interest in and behavior directed toward others or the environment as opposed to or to the exclusion of self; gregarious or outgoing”

Introverted means: “Marked by interest in or preoccupation with oneself or one’s own thoughts as opposed to others or the environment; shy or reserved.”

I will now give you the WWWWWH Ammunition. This is your arsenal. WWWWWH stands for: Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How. For the sake of this tutorial, I’m going to assume we are talking to females.

• Who – Your “mark” for lack of a better word.
• What – “What” do you want to do? Likely, you want to introduce yourself or confess your love.
• When – “When” is the best time to do “what” you want to do?
• Where – Plan ahead, even if you’re not good at it. It is always a good thing to be in a comfortable place.
• Why – “Why” do you like her? Is she beautiful, smart, funny, or a combination of all three? This will be needed.
• How – Combine “What” and “Why” to form a plan of action. Sending her roses with a note, or maybe just walk up to her. “How” are you going to do it?

Don’t make yourself into a “player”. This is supposed to be about being extroverted and outgoing. If you use this information only to “score” ladies, then you will inherent a title such as player. Be sociable with every gender, race, and age. Not only will you appear to be friendly, but you may find, as I do, that people are interesting.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. “If I get nervous how am I suppose to talk to people?” This is my favorite part, and it’s something that (I hope) I came up with. I call them stress objects or items.

You know that female that you sat and watched… afraid to talk to her because you did not want to be rejected?

How about that the cool guy on the motorcycle that you wanted to say “Hi” too but you were afraid of looking too geeky?

Stress items are the key. What are stress items? They are something that you have that inspires confidence. Stress items give you that extra push. This allows you to tell yourself that you can, in fact, approach anyone.

A stress item can be anything you have at home that reminds you of how amazing you are. I’ll give you a example of my two stress items.

• Bracelets -I have Rubber Bracelets, with the year 2007 imprinted on them. Why does this bring me confidence? I was homeschooled. I studied & worked extremely hard. I was able to finish school by 2007 instead of 2009. These bracelets remind me that I can do anything. So whenever I’m about to do something that makes me nervous, I put them on just in case I need that boost.
• Gum -My other stress item is gum. I love gum, and can chew through a whole pack in about a day. This has given me strong teeth. Gum is my ultimate calm down item. Whenever I’m feeling nervous, all I have to do is pop a piece in my mouth. Why does this bring me confidence? Well, my mother is a smoker, and my dad is a chewer. I despise drugs, alcohol, and tobacco. I’m extremely proud of myself for going outside the box and chewing gum instead of doing those above.

The biggest piece of advice I can give you, even though I want you to try my tricks, is to just be yourself. Have fun and enjoy things you like with people that like the same.

Anyway, I really really hope you enjoyed this enough to make a comment. Thanks for your time.

• The #2 Twitter Trend
• Who Are You on Twitter?
• The Deal with Twitter
• My Own MySpace Music
• Social Bookmarking Button Madness
• The Most Awesome Social Network Ever

Okay, I got bored – and now you can learn about my boredom any time I care to tell you about my boring life! Seems silly to do, but… I’m a silly guy. Silly people know me, too (as evidenced by today’s twitterpations):

• Kitta Not really amazed that Anna Nicole Smith is dead, she was pretty much a walking talking pharmacy and a bad soap opera all-in-one 6 minutes ago from web
• bbrooks IMAP + RDP + backed UP PST FTW 7 minutes ago from web
• P_Dilly back from lunch, logging into Second Life to check out an idea I had. 8 minutes ago from web
• NickStarr @Shooby Is it fast enough to support ReadyBoost? If so, I say take it. 8 minutes ago from im
• Bwana Forgetting how to embed quicktime movies 9 minutes ago from web
• rael Moving offices… Yay! 14 minutes ago from im
• fraying At dinner with the museum folks. There is much French. 19 minutes ago from mobile
• cvp putting together a temp site for the design firm.. until our backend is done anyway 19 minutes ago from twitterrific
• wisequark Merlin on TWiT? Wow, Dvorak might go wackadoo…er 25 minutes ago from twitterrific
• arstechnica [Infinite Loop] MacTech to publish “VBA to AppleScript” guide for Office developers – tinyurl.com/22m9w5 25 minutes ago from web
• leolaporte TWiT This Week: Dvorak, Wil Harris, Tom Merritt, and Merlin Mann 26 minutes ago from im

Have you been twitterpated? It’s the non-sequitur social center of the universe! I’ll be your random friend, sure.

• The #2 Twitter Trend
• You Need a Thick Skin to Participate Online
• What’s Your Social Networking Advice?
• TweetDeck
• Who Are You on Twitter?
• Do You Have any Social Networking Advice for Students?
• Web Communities and Social Networks Need Transparency
• Follow me on Twitter
• Social Media Questions and Answers
• Links from my Twitter Followers

MySpace just got a little bit weirder for me:

don’t ask me why…but i wrote a song about you…i didn’t even know you were real… it’s just that some blogger was ranting about you and i thought it was funny. I hope you don’t mind, but when I saw you on myspace i had to at least say Hi. so “Hi” – steve aka sisthek

At first, I figured it was another piece of MySpace spam. I asked where the song was sitting, not bothering to check sisthek’s own MySpace profile:

Hey Chris, the song is on my page. it’s been creatively named chris pirillo.

It’s surreal – to have a song written about you, posted to MySpace, and knowing that the artist thought you were a completely fictional character. I’m going to see if I can get him to send me an MP3 in exchange a bit of promotional consideration. Are there any other songs about me that I don’t know of yet?!

• What’s Your Social Networking Advice?
• Do You Have any Social Networking Advice for Students?
• Web Communities and Social Networks Need Transparency
• What is a People Aggregator?
• Open Source Social Networking
• Links from my Twitter Followers
• The Deal with Twitter
• Scobleizing
• Social Bookmarking Button Madness
• The Most Awesome Social Network Ever

Okay, I understand the need to make it easier for your visitors to bookmark sites on their favorite Web service(s), but enough is enough. I keep finding Digg and del.icio.us icons on sites and pages where they just… don’t… belong! Seriously, Answers.com has deployed a set on every single page. Yeah, because Answers.com“>Answers.com answers are just so digg’able. Whatever.

These buttons are annoying more than anything else, serving to show the world just how unpopular your content really is – and I believe that there’s no direct correlation between the number of social bookmarking buttons you place on your page(s) has any direct impact on the number of times those page(s) have been stored in the respective services. Moreover, if a user is really passionate about their selected service, they likely already have a toolbar or bookmarklet installed – further rendering the cacophony of buttons moot!

I had ‘em on my site for a little while, then got rid of ‘em. They were wasting space and bandwidth – as they’re probably doing on your site right now, too. The only way I might consider bringing them back is if a smart plugin and matching icon are developed. Even then, their future is questionable.

My shit just isn’t important enough to be bookmarked – and neither is 99.9% of the galaxy’s. It’s not that I don’t want it to be bookmarked, shared, or saved – just that I don’t think the buttons are helping anybody, especially if they’re being deployed as they are by the marketing idiots at Answers.com. One or two buttons are somewhat more tolerable, but where does the madness end? Aren’t you leaving out the people who don’t use Digg or del.icio.us by not putting their icons next to the others?

Prove to me that by placing social bookmarking icons on a site, you will see a noticable increase in the page’s / site’s actual social bookmarkings. I don’t believe it, and I’m getting quite tired of seeing them everywhere. Gah! I swear my next post won’t be so negative.

• My Own MySpace Music
• The #2 Twitter Trend
• Getting Out is a Good Thing
• Who Are You on Twitter?
• Charlene Wroblewski’s Favorite Web Sites
• Are You an Extrovert – or an Introvert?
• Five Ways to Be a Better Friend
• Thankful for Thanksgiving, Thanks!
• What is a People Aggregator?
• Open Source Social Networking

Tired of getting friend requests from MySpace, TagWorld, Friendster, TypePad, Skype, AIM, Yahoo!, Chia Friend, LinkedIn, MSN, TextAmerica, Upcoming, Digg, Google, 30 Boxes, Second Life, Plaxo, Zooomr, ICQ, Flickr, LiveJournal, Dogster, dodgeball, Backwash, BuddyBridge, FriendFan, Classmates, Buzznet, ReferNet… not to mention Friend Surfer, friendsand, Friends of Friends, friendsbay.de, Friends of Friends, Friends Reunited, Friendoo, Friendset, Friendsync, Friendity, Friendzy… and a million others… Tyrone J. Walrustitty put the following text on his Geocities homepage:

Dear “Friend,” I don’t want to join [insert Web site name here]. I hate social networks. Hate ‘em! I’m tired of you sending these damn invitations to me. If you do it again, I’m going to stop being your friend – because inviting me to yet another social network that doesn’t interest me simply isn’t a very friendly thing to do. If I’m already on the social networks that you’re already on, I have no problem in connecting with you there. As it stands, however, my tolerance for social networks is turning me anti-social. If I add one more social network to my social network network, I’m truly going to go social on yo’ ass.

Based on this simple idea, Tyrone launched Hermitster, raised $8.2 billion in funding, and sold the property to Rupert Murderock for well over a trillion dollars.

Source: Flickr
Domain: MySpaceEraser

[Use the Coupon Code "bLaugh" to save 10% on your next GoDaddy purchase]

• Are YOU a Social Media Geek?
• How Do You Get Started in Social Media?
• How to Create and Browse Lifestreams
• How Has Social Media Changed Your Life?
• What Do You Need to Know About Social Media?
• Is Facebook Changing for the Worse?
• Where do You Keep Your Social Profile?
• How do You Update your Friends with what’s Happening Now?
• How do you Keep up with all Your Comments?
• My Own MySpace Music