It took me awhile to warm up to this rather unusual way of connecting with like-minded, or not-like minded tweeters and a social networking genius friend of mine keeps pointing me in the direction of staying with it!  When I was at the car show in Detroit earlier this year, it was really exciting tweeting at the launches as news broke. Standing in the media hordes, I can’t tell you how many conversations I had with other media about out Blackberrys, iPhones, etc….but I digress.

This past week, I became a bit enamored of the viral rumor…very fast-breaking trend news on innovative new products, new marketing strategies, on medical findings, on anything and everything Obama and economy.  And in the midst of this, I started noticing real pops of innovation.  The market is so tough right now, that anyone who wants to make it through with their businesses intact must become insanely creative with meaningful innovation. 

So I’m now on the prowl.  Next week, I’ll be hosting our Blogging Boomers Carnival and intend to have an assortment of interesting and unusual websites and blogs for you to explore.  But for the rest of this week, I’m on the Twitter-hunt for innovation.

The easiest comparison is to look at the difference between text messaging and emailing.  In an email, you can go on and on, with as much detail as you like.  Whoever you email, will read your note, at their leisure, and if they have something to say back, will email you.  Simple.

Text messaging is an abbreviated and very immediate form or electronic messaging.  You typically have about 160 characters to send a message.  Which means the more said with fewer characters, the better.  That’s why you’ll see acronyms for just about everything, such as: 

• LOL — Laugh Out Loud. 
• 2moro — tomorrow.
• Ty — thank you.
• BFF — best friends forever
• cu l8r — see you later

and on and on.  You can get very creative. 

So, now, at Twitter, blogging gets 140 characters.  That translates to about 2 sentences to grab someone’s attention.  And the more creative the better.  Instead of saying something like “Gave up the dessert.  Just gotta lose some weight.”, you might say “Decadent chocolate cheesecake almost passed lips.  But I’ve gotta get into size 10 by Friday…so just said NO to heaven.”

That description might cause someone else to take a second look and decide they needed to comment back to your micro-post or even head over to take a look at your blog.   Personally, I’m nosy and I just love peeping into other people’s lives…which Twitter lets me do so well.  There are even awards for best tweeters.  It is a bit odd, when you first head over, but you’ll find it a lot of fun once you figure out how to play!

I didn’t want to use Google checkout, because it was more limited, but I think for the sake of expediency, I’m going to have to look at that next. When I figure it out, I’ll let you know!!! I’m sure I should have something running by…well…2009!

That being said, there is a LOT to learn…even on Blogger!   I’ve stayed on Blogger for 4 years for a really good reason…I didn’t require a “hosted” site; i.e. a site that also needed database capabilities. Because I’ll be adding in a shopping cart, I require a database and that cannot be accomplished on the Blogger platform at this time. 

If I were staying with a daily diary format and not adding anything else, I’d stick with Blogger. Once you learn all those bells and whistles, it is really fun AND easy to move things around on your site. WordPress.COM is equivalent to Blogger, but has a few different features. For a daily blog, I’d probably stick with Blogger.

WordPress.ORG (also known as Hello World) is MUCH more challenging as it forces you to learn more of the back end dynamic. I would NOT recommend .ORG for a novice! It’s taking me HOURS to figure out certain things, but once I do, I’m very satisfied.

One of the best sites I’ve used as a resource for years is www.Doshdosh.com  The young writer, Maki, has over 10,000 subscribers.  Why?  He decided a long time ago to share everything he knows and all that he learns on building a website/blog.  His revenue comes from affiliates and ad revenues, but you’ll rarely see a post on his site without at least 50 – 75 comments from his readers.  The information he shares can be technical, but if you stick with it, you’ll discover things about blogging that you NEVER would have understood without his insights.

You’ll note there is still nothing on the “About” page or on the “Product” pages.  It takes a lot of time to get everything set up, but I’m willing to put in the time in order to have the ability to play with the site.  I’m not taking down my Blogger site for now and posts on this site will now “feed” into the Blogger site.  I’m very curious to see what will happen as I get re-indexed for search! 

When my posts migrated, the one challenge (and I’m not going to do a fix right now) is that all my pics are resident on Blogger, so they don’t move with the site.  You’ll see an “x” placeholder where pics should be.  If I decide to be very anal, I’ll go back and re-upload all the pics…but with 500 plus posts, that seems a bit time-consuming!  I’d rather take my time to move forward and not back!!

However, if you plan on making template customizations or need to add in a database driven application (like e-commerce), then you’ll need WebPress.ORG and a host which can provide you with a database (this comes with many web hosting providers.)

If you click on different pages on this site, you’ll note different banner header pics.  The only one that is mine still needs to be properly cropped to fit the header correctly.  That will be a next step, but not crucial right now as I’m experimenting with the template to see what I can and cannot do.

For the basics, I’ll be having my main blog page (once I figure out how to RSS to my blog on blogger — http://genplus.blogspot.com) then I’ll be able to post here once and automatically feed to blogger.)  Haven’t figured out how to do that yet…but I will. 

It took me 3 hours last night to figure out, not only which template I wanted, but also how to upload my files!  LOL now, but last night I was cursing my decision.  I can always cash in a “phone-a-friend” call, but I get a perverse satisfaction in figuring it all out myself.  As a result, what I learn kind of sticks with me.  If you decide to set up your own site, feel free to email me and I can probably help you out!!

The reason I chose this template was because I wanted a customizable header to upload any photos I wanted, as well as three columns.   As for the store, I may or may not have uploaded the e-commerce plug-in correctly, but I’m not even going to experiment with that until I get the website architecture right.

According to my great friend and programmer, Rex, I can now officially count myself a programmer, although I disagree.  Unless being a programmer means not having a clue what you are doing!!