My Top Ten Tweeters not on Twitter

(Photo credit: Lost Art of Blogging)

While I think all the people on Twitter that I follow are awesome, here’s the ten people that I think would be the coolest tweeters (with the help of my twitter friend @uncleweed):

1 to 5 are literary giants. Who else is more capable of saying amazing and profound things in 140 characters or less?

1. Haruki Murakami, Japanese writer of multiple international bestsellers, including Kafka on the Beach and the Wind Up Bird Chronicles.

2. Salman Rushdie, needs no introduction.

3. Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipau ( V. S. Naipaul), the 2001 Nobel Laureate for Literature.

4. Douglas Coupland, famous author and chronicler of Canadian culture.

5. Stephen King, think about it, those would some seriously messed up tweets!

The next five don’t really fit any single category.

6. Robert S. Mueller, the head of the FBI, tweeting about undercover spy-ops (yes, I know they wouldn’t be very undercover if he was tweeting them).

7. Robin Williams, just tweeting spontaneous random funny things all day.

8. Neil Patrick Harris, but only if his life is exactly how it was in Harold and Kumar go to White Castle.

9. J.J. Abrams, maybe the Executive Producer of Lost would slip up an tweet the ending!

And last but not least:

10. Martha Stewart, just dropping tips on how to clean the hot sauce stain out of my t-shirt and a new recipe for pistachio crusted white fish.

So those are mine (and @uncleweed’s), who would you suggest? Either leave a comment or tweet at @kgrandia.

Google is updating PageRanks

It looks like another round of Google PageRank updates is underway, as I am starting to get scores on some of the new blogs I have created over the last couple of months.

For those unfamiliar with Google PageRank, here’s a quick rundown.

There are very few measures out there that clearly tell a blogger what the Google gods are thinking about their website. One of the best ones is Google PageRank - a score from one to ten that is assigned by Google to every page that it indexes. In really simple terms a blog’s page rank is determined by the number of quality external links it has referring to it on the internet.

The easiest way to figure a web page’s page rank is to download the google pagerank plug-in if you’re using Firefox or go to a site like PageRank Checker.

Here’s the Wikipedia definition of PageRank that gets into all the nitty gritty.

Like in anything to do with search engine optimization (SEO) though, it’s important that you don’t obsess too much about any single factor. Good SEO and a successful blog overall is a culmination of doing a whole bunch of things well, so don’t read too much into a blog’s PageRank. For example, Perez Hilton only has a PageRank of 7 out of 10 and he gets millions of visitors everyday.

I use PageRank as a relative measure of blog health that gives me a report every few months. Do I obsess about it? No. But if over a year I see the PageRank of a particular blog continue to fall, it’s probably a good indicator that I need to re-think what I’m doing.

Funny online videos I found tonight

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Not so cool video

So this video is cool as long as the poor waitress is okay:

If you liked this one check out this cool video clip compilation.

Social media and SEO reading for the train

I ride the train a lot and its where I have the luxury of at least an hour a day of uniterrupted reading on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and social media.

I thought I would share what I read from time to time. So here goes:

Reddit Updates Widgets, Launches FireFox Plugin, and Updates Their Site

Search Engine Optimization and User Behavior

Customer Service and Reputation Management the Twitter Way: A Case Study

How to Change the World Using Social Media

How Audi Uses Viral Marketing

An SEO is Not a Link Builder

10 Tactics to Rank Higher In Search Results

The 22 Step Social Media Marketing Plan

Blog World Asks Where the Web is Going

Random thought: the best part about blogging about the Blog World Expo in Las Vegas so far has been the mindboggling options for images to add to my posts - Elvis, Barry, those two really weird guys with the tiger, burlesque dancers…

But I digress. It’s a free night tonight and hopefully the free drinks won’t keep from dragging myself out of bed for the 8:45am keynote address by Six Apart founders Chris Alden and Anil Dash. When it comes to blogging and social media, these guys know where its at and where its going.