Tag: Twitter

The tale of social media

I have a Twitter account.

Although I’m notified of a lot of different functions such as favorites, replies, retweets, and new followers, it doesn’t mean I fanatically check it on a constant basis. Thus I missed this gem from December 28 until I fired up my Tweetdeck for the first time in a week.

Needless to say, Tweetdeck only featured the original so I was scratching my head trying to figure out how I was on this guy’s radar. It would be one thing to get a reply from a powerful politician or member of the conservative new media, but I had no idea who this guy was. Neither of us follow the other.

It wasn’t until I went to embed the Tweet that I saw the original, and a post was born.

So then I went to his Twitter page and found out he’s an author trying to sell books, both on union organizing and a book of football poems. Guess he’s not your prototypical “union thug,” although I haven’t read the poetry or checked out “football chess.” I wasn’t the only one to get a promotional Tweet like this, but at least you can’t say I ignored it like (presumably) almost everyone else did.

It all started on the front end of this recent holiday season. Remember the Black Friday protests that were supposed to shut Walmart down? Neither do I, but I did write about it. A month later, Joe Mahan noticed. Don’t know if he read the post, but I did tweak the UFCW on the Tweet.

Listen, Joe can do all the union organizing he wants – I would just like to see it done in an environment of right-to-work states from sea to shining sea. And here’s hoping he helps himself to sell a few books – heck, maybe I should glom on to an appropriate Twitter handle to sell a few of mine. (I can even do autographed copies from the small paperback stash I have here at home.)

So I thought this would be a good opportunity to remind people I do have a Twitter handle (@monoblogueUS, naturally) and don’t mind followers. You never know what you may find out.

A social media victory

In case you missed it earlier tonight – and to be quite honest, most people who don’t follow social media missed it – those on the left were out to protest Senator Ted Cruz and his appearance at a New York Republican fundraiser by bombarding his Twitter account with admonitions on his positions and a hashtag (for the Twitter-illiterate, that’s the “pound” symbol, #) of #youcruzyoulose. Catchy, but certainly irrelevant.

Of course, as we often do, our side caught wind of this “protest” and came up with the idea of Tweeting our support with our own hashtag, to wit:

Senator Cruz was pleased:

 

And the point was made, as #youcruzyoulose had nowhere near the staying power of #cruztovictory, which was the top-trending hashtag on Twitter for part of the evening.

But the question has to be asked: why Cruz? After all, he’s only 1 of 100, the junior Senator from a state which is pretty much owned by Republicans right now. How is he a threat?

Well, he is conservative, but so are a handful of others. He’s also relatively outspoken, although not to the extent of fellow Senator Rand Paul. Maybe it’s because he’s *gasp” a Latino who’s not down with the immigration amnesty bill? (Cue the game show bell, “ding ding ding.”) Yes, that and he’s pro-gun as well.

We don’t need 100 Ted Cruz clones in the Senate, but about 50 others will be fine. Let’s have some more fun with the #youcruzyoulose crowd, shall we? Just another #cruztovictory in the realm of social media.