Michael Janzen

I just canceled my Facebook account. I’ve been finding that I Twitter really works better for connecting with people that share similar interests and issues. I’ve also found that I had to spend an awful amount of time on Facebook to make it work, which kept me off it most of the time. Twitter on the other hand is super simple and desktop tools like Seesmic make it super easy to keep track of the Tweeps I follow regularly.

For all my family, friends, readers, co-workers, and contacts staying in touch with me is really easy… just Google my name and you’ll find at least one of my dozen blogs, all of which have contact forms on them. You can also follow me on Twitter of course and get the play by play crazy world of Michael Janzen’s brain… now back to designing my nine square foot tiny house.

I’m not the first person to have this realization; and I’m sure it will be a few years before this becomes a glaring reality. The internet is doing a much better job of keeping us informed, entertained, and connected than the mainstream media. People are shifting their attention from the big media channels and refocusing on other people.

Shifting Behavior

I stopped watching TV a while back. I’ve also found that everything I want to know is quickly found online from an even wider range of sources. I also have a very strong opinion of the TV News. It’s like a terrible microscope for all that’s disturbing in the world. Watching the TV News now feels like subjecting myself to a slow torture.

Entertainment is also shifting to the internet. You’ve probably noticed that many television networks, radio stations, magazines, and newspapers are trying to compete for attention by publishing their content online. The trouble is that these giants have a faster growing new competitor that can’t be beat. We are beginning to entertain each other with videos, writings, photos, audio recordings, live chat, micro blogging, etc.

Every day more people are discovering and connecting with other people through the internet. We’re beginning to entertain and inform each other and our attention is being drawn away from the mainstream media.

The giants are quickly trying to modify their business models to account for this new competitor. They will always retain a market share but their size will inevitably shrink as advertising dollars move with the shifting audience and companies like Google are perfectly positioned to absorb this new audience.

The Near Future

The future trend is that more and more people will begin to migrate from mainstream media and focus their attention on their growing social networks. This will happen for several reasons:

• People will prefer to spend more of their time connecting with other people.
• People will loose their craving for news and commercial interrupted entertainment because they will already be getting the information they want from their social networks.
• People will become increasingly frustrated with the biased and diluted coverage of the television news media and prefer the flexibility of quickly checking multiple sources for facts.
• People will continue to reject paper as a communication medium.
• People will enjoy how they feel when they are disconnected from the one-way communication channels. The interactivity of the internet will be preferred.

I also think current media channels will be abandoned in this order… IMHO

• Print News (Newspapers & Magazines: already on a fast decline.)
• Television News (Beginning to face competition with free online news and social network websites like Twitter.)
• Print Entertainment (Newspapers & Magazines)
• Television Entertainment (More television entertainment will continue to be moved to the internet but advertising revenue will drop over time.)
• Radio (Radio can be easily ported to the internet without much disruption in advertising revenue.)
• Print Books (Books will last the longest because people make a personal connection to paper books.)

The Future Now

I’m personally looking forward to this peer focused future… in fact I actually think some of us are there now. All you have to do is turn off the big guys and start to listening to each other. It’s a bit ironic that making this simple choice and breaking old habits can instantly transport us to the future. I wonder what Einstein would say about that? Who knows… maybe time is just in our heads.

A quick recap of recent events

A few days ago I had an unusual influx of new followers on Twitter, many of them were clearly spammers. I was a bit shocked actually and I didn’t want to accidentally block a real person.

I did a little digging to try and figure out why I was getting the sudden landslide. I think it started with a post on tiny house design entitled, Tiny House Vacation Rental Idea. I suspect the keywords in that post drew a few unsavory folks because many of the new followers were “realty experts” selling MLM schemes.

I had blocked the most obvious ones but had actually left a couple of the questionable tweeps who had high follower counts. I figured it was safe to keep them; I mean how would a spammer get thousands of followers?

After blocking all the obvious ones I took a more careful look at these high ranking questionable tweeps. I noticed that they all had honest sounding bios and some even had no website link. They didn’t seem to be selling anything. Almost everything about the accounts made it seem like they were not spammers or even in business. Then I started clicking the links in their tweets.

The vast majority of their tweets were actually pretty good quality but I did find a few pointing to services like increasing the number of twitter followers and one or two buried MLM schemes. This made me suspicious enough to block them. It didn’t seem like a nice thing to do; but the flow of spammer follows immediately stopped like someone had turned off the tap.

My kingpin account theory

I think what’s happening is that the master schemester sets up a ‘good’ twitter account and tweets there as honestly as they can. They use their black hat techniques to build up a strong following for this kingpin account and then begin to sell a follower building service to novice schemesters. They essentially begin to sell their list of followers and follows like they would email addresses.

I know this sounds a bit paranoid but if you think like a schemester for a minute, it actually sounds like a nice little business plan. It also explains the sudden start and stop with the arrival and blocking of the suspected kingpin follower.

How to protect yourself

I’ve kept my account set to email me when someone follows me or uses my @michaeljanzen in a post. Here’s a screen shot of my settings page for reference.

Setting it up like this also means I must manage the account closely but it just seems like a better idea to have a list of quality followers and build a quality community than risking possible contamination from spammers.

Why block the spammer follows?

I suspect spammers move through Twitter like a virus through the body, clinging to new followers like cells, and then using the new connections to build larger lists. Spammers make their money through building large lists of people not by the quality of the list. It’s a numbers game.

Twitter has given us the perfect tool to protect ourselves, the ability to block. But I suspect many people simple don’t block follow requests for the same reason I didn’t block those kingpin accounts… none of us want to block real people. On top of this we all have a desire to have more followers.

Spammers and schemesters are using these two natural human tendencies to their benefit. They know we are reluctant to block. They know we want more followers. They sell their black hat tricks and the more connections they make the more services, e-books, and schemes they can sell.

The more of us that catch onto this simple game and use the tools we have available, the harder it will be for spammers to infiltrate our quality communities. I’m not suggesting that anyone spend an excessive amount of time monitoring their twitter accounts. I am suggesting that you be on the lookout for the kingpins.

What does a kingpin look like?

• Large lists, both follows and followers.
• Any mention of a scheme in their tweets.
• Any mention of a scheme or e-business in their bio or website.
• A bio that reads like a nice person.
• A bio that reads like an expert.
• A bio and tweets that build confidence with a mix of things to buy.

For a kingpin account to work it must have big lists and look like an honest person or an expert. Since this account will also be an important sales engine for their schemes the tweets will be a mix of things that show off their expertise to build confidence. There will also be a mention here and there of schemes, e-books, and services they recommend. Often they will not post things they sell themselves, or so it seems. Remember con artists sound like the most honest people, they just always have something to sell or promote.

In the last 24 hours

I’ve noticed that I’ve gotten a few follows from people with these suspicious looking accounts. I’ve blocked them. In none of the cases did they seem to be people that would be interested in me and since they follow thousands of other people they probably wouldn’t me either.

I’ll keep up my surgical blocking campaign and see what happens. So far I think I have them beat. I’m not sure how this extra effort will benefit me; but it does feel good to know that the few people that follow me on Twitter are actually real people that care about the things I do. I’d rather have a 100 real people following me than 100,000 robots.

If you think I’m right… please RT.

Yikes! Just within the last few days I’ve been getting a massive number of folks following me on twitter that all claim to be the world’s best online marketing guru, personal trainer, health adviser, or some other crack-pot get-rich-quick multi-level-marketing schemer. I’ve been blocking them but I wanted to throw the question out there and see what other people do. I know these are just spam, fake accounts, and probably robots.

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An old friend asked me a question privately on Facebook.

“I have seen you post a lot of things lately. What is the deal with the small houses pursuit? Is this a hobby or part time job or are you just trying to promote a different way of living? what’s the story?”

I sent him this answer (slightly edited) and thought it made sense to post it here. I suspect there are a few people wondering if I’ve gone completely insane.

I connected my twitter and facebook accounts so now all my tweets now show up on my facebook page. I guess tiny houses are a hobby but they have provided a real eye-opener to the benefits of living more simply.

Up until six years ago I/we had always lived happily in smaller spaces. But when Julia and I moved to Sacramento we bought an 1,800 square foot 3 bedroom post-modern house.

When the housing market collapsed I got an abrupt wake up call. So in classic artist style I’m exploring by making stuff… a free tiny house… and a nine square foot house (next).

Ironically blogging about all this has already gotten my story written up in the NY Times  and has generated a lot of traffic to my blogs. But more importantly I’ve been having a ball drawing and exploring tiny house design.

Slowly this stuff is becoming more than an artist’s exploration. I have even had a couple publishers ask if I’d be interested in submitting book proposals… so who knows… I might just turn these lemons into lemonade and get out of my debt-trap by writing about it. Maybe that’s a day-dream… maybe not. The most important part is that it’s been good therapy and fun.

The biggest lesson I’ve learned is:

The true value of a home should be measured by the happiness and security it brings instead of its size and cost.