Back in May of this year, I had a fantastic experience at the first Media140 London microblogging event. Twittercism.com was a media partner and I’m pleased to announce that we will be working with Media140 for the next conference which takes place on October 26^th, at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA).

Media140 London has partnered with the IAB, Contagious, Revolution and Capital Business Media to host a unique event to explore the impact of Twitter and real-time social media on brands, marketing and advertising. Discovering how brands, marketers and agencies are using and exploring the benefits and opportunities of social media tools such as Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, QIK, 12seconds and AudioBoo, which are disrupting, challenging and changing traditional media and advertising.

Earlybird tickets are currently available at £135 but Twittercism.com subscribers can use the voucher code ad140 to get the discounted rate of just £95! Click here to buy your ticket.

I’ll of course be in attendance and will be once again live-tweeting the event for Media140. If you’re going, drop me a message (or leave a comment on this blog) and we’ll hook up.

(I’d particularly like to connect with a few of the folk I missed last time – you know who you are!)

Lots of people have multiple accounts on Twitter, for various reasons. I can’t tell you the number of times I get a message from somebody out of the blue and I’ll think, “Hey, I know you, don’t I?”

But who is it?

Some detective work later, I figure out that the reason I know this person is because I’m following one of their other accounts. Perhaps their business account. Maybe their personal one. What bugs me about this is I might have a friendly relationship with this person on one of their accounts, but have no idea who they are on another. Or even that they have another.

What I’d like Twitter to offer (and this would be entirely opt-in) is a way for multiple accounts to be linked together. This would be great for businesses that have main accounts and lots of additional ones for their staff. Like Twitter themselves, for example. When you visit the Twitter profile, all their employees should be right there, too. With titles and responsibilities. And if I stumble across an individual employee, it shows that they’re linked to Twitter.

(Think Twitter + LinkedIn.)

Some people do this now in their bios, but it’s kinda awkward, and doesn’t translate well into manageable data.

It could even work a bit like a newsfeed, with one main account pulling the updates from everybody else. So, if I wanted to really follow Google, for example, an @GoogleTeam user could be setup so that everybody who worked for the company could be followed via that one account. The different users would feed in and I could reply to them accordingly.

(Think Twitter + RSS.)

And it wouldn’t have to stop at businesses. Participants in sports teams could link together, as well as social groups and other clubs. You could start your own tribe.

(It might even come with privacy. You could direct message everybody in your tribe with one click. Wouldn’t that be convenient?)

As it is, it’s awkward to find out all the people that work for any corporation on Twitter. I’ve been trying to do this for Twitter themselves, and Dave Winer is doing some great work with his 100twt project. (Check out what the people who work for the New York Times are saying.)

I’d like to see it automated. I think it benefits businesses and customers, which is rare enough to make it very worthwhile.

Just 11 per cent of Twitter users are aged 12 to 17, reports the New York Times (via Comscore).

Silicon Alley Insider writes about a ‘veteran venture capitalist’ being overheard saying that, “Twitter had better sell out before it’s too late.  Young people don’t like Twitter.  My kids think Twitter’s bullshit.”

Earlier this year, Morgan Stanley unveiled the research of a 15-year old who suggested that while teenagers were ‘consuming social media’, they were ignoring Twitter.

Meantime, use of social media by adults in the 35 to 64 demographic grew 60 per cent in the last year.

This is all great news.

The reason why Facebook and Bebo are popular with kids is the same reason why MySpace used to be – the social media on there is rich. It’s rich media. It’s videos, photos, music, games, quizzes and other interactive applications. These worlds are colourful and fun. They’re also less demanding of your attention. You can drift in, and you can drift out, and nobody minds.

Twitter is entirely text-based; those that are good with crafting a sentence or turning a phrase are rewarded. For the most part, kids don’t do well with prose. I’ve been privy to some of the things my 13-year old (and otherwise quite brilliant) son chats about with his friends online, and believe me, we don’t want any of that on Twitter. You think there’s a lot of pointless babble now? Just you wait.

Sure, you can link to all the rich media you want, but the platform itself is all about words. If you want to watch a video, listen to some music or look at a photo, you have to leave Twitter and go somewhere else. I hope this never changes, as I don’t want to see any of these things on Twitter. Ever.

And Twitter likes it when you make an effort. It doesn’t matter if you’re a brand, a guru, a single mom, or some guy living out in the woods with a laptop. If you don’t have anything to say, people stop paying attention.

I like the idea of an adult-only network (in the non-porn/swinger sense). In fact, I really like it. And if the only way to get kids to tweet is by providing them with all this rich media, I say ‘oh well’. That’s a shame, because all we have are lots and lots of words.

Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

We all have our own reasons for why we choose to unfollow (or block) certain individuals on Twitter. It might be because we see them as a spammer, find them abusive or rude, or have had problems with them on another network.

We all have the right to unfollow or block whomever we choose. Most of the time, our reasons are valid. To us. They might seem completely inappropriate to somebody else. A spammer to one person is an ‘internet marketer’ to another. What’s rude and aggressive to me is opinionated and challenging to you. Some people actually follow retweet bots. (I know.)

That guy you find hilarious? Your friend thinks he’s an ass.

So why would somebody cut you off? Why would they block you? Because you’re not right for them. Because something you said or did bothered them to the point where they wanted to ensure that you wouldn’t have the opportunity to do it again. Whatever this was might seem entirely innocent – to you – but to them it crossed the same line that makes you click on the block button. These reasons can be entirely different, even total opposites, but the tolerance point, and the outcome, is the same.

So, you’ve been unfollowed – now what? Here’s the thing: in most cases, it doesn’t matter. Move on. Was the relationship important to you? Does the unfollow come a genuine surprise? If so, then simply ask them. I’ve had several instances where I’ve been (allegedly) unfollowed by error. If you’re regularly engaging with somebody and they decide to end that relationship, either there’s been a mistake or something has gone horribly wrong. It’s worth finding out which it is.

Blocks are more severe, but unless everybody is blocking you – and if this is happening then you know exactly why – then being rejected is simply par for the course in social media (as it is in life). No matter how great you are, some people won’t like you. Some people won’t like you because you’re great. And some people will go to extreme measures to remove you from their world. It can seem irrational and mad, but that’s a very relative perspective. You’ll go crazy trying to see it from your point of view, because the only one that’s relevant is theirs. And vice versa.

FileSocial does exactly what it says in the tin – open an account (via Twitter OAuth) and you can upload any file you like to your Twitter network via the service. There is a size limitation of 50mb, but after that, you’re free to go.

Can anyone else see the potential downside?

Estimations vary but Twitter has approximately 25 million users. Theoretically, any one message can reach everybody, moving beyond your immediate network via the ripple effect provided by the retweet system. Most people are good, clean and wholesome, but there’s always a few bad apples in the barrel.

We’ve already had a few exploit scares on Twitter as it is – what’s to stop a few individuals using a service like FileSocial to do a lot of bad things? You know, maybe a bit like this:

This is a real message that I just posted (the things I do for you guys). It links to a file on FileSocial called ‘twitter_malware.txt’, which is harmless, but at no point in the upload process did FileSocial appear to do anything to verify the contents of the upload.

All you’d have to see is one or two celebrity names retweeting such a message – or others making it appear that they have (which is disturbingly easy to do) – and it will spread, and spread, and spread. Before you know it, most of Twitter could be infected with X, which of course means their computer is infected, which means perhaps everybody they email will soon be infected, and so on.

The problem is that while FileSocial is a nice idea on paper, their level of responsibility is zero. I’ve checked their FAQ and it doesn’t mention anything about scanning for viruses or malware. This should be rule number one for any file-sharing company. (And if they are doing it, it needs to be made very clear.)

Of course, most people will see this as an opportunity to exchange MP3s and other copyright material. And if FileSocial (or a competitor) offered a larger file-size option (maybe through a pro account), you can guarantee that Twitter would soon begin to rival the torrent portals as a way to illegally obtain movies. (Seriously, it can’t be long before Twitter and torrents get in bed together.)

First things first: until I get some level of guarantee that anything I download via Twitter has been thoroughly checked out first, I simply will not click on any of these links, no matter who is behind the upload. There’s definitely a future for file-sharing through Twitter, but it needs to come with a much higher level of security than what FileSocial appears to provide.

(Hat tip to @nrgins for the scoop.)