The title of this post asks, "can you judge a book by its cover?" You can when the "cover" is the front page of someone's Twitter account and you're judging whether to follow them. That page contains an avatar image (usually the person's photo), a short biography (no more than 160 characters long), a link to the person's home page (or company, blog, LinkedIn profile, etc.), and -- crucially -- the most recent 20 tweets that the person has sent. You can click through to see more tweets in batches of 20, but if you follow many people on Twitter, doing that often takes more time than it's worth. MORE >>

'It’s funny how things turn out sometimes. As someone that has worked in the digital/mobile/social space for the last 20 years, I’ve always spent my fair share of time exploring what’s new on the Internet. Testing out new technologies. Embracing new mobile apps and even writing a book on the phenomena that is location-based marketing. The same could not be said about my wife, Melanie Strout , up until six years ago. She is in fact a real life community manager. She’s worked with big brands and small brands. But all that has changed. Tell us a little about that. MORE >>

Last night, my friend and former colleague, Rusty Williams , sent me a direct message on Twitter alerting me to the fact that I was on the precipice of a milestone. Sitting at 39,999 tweets, I was one away from my 40,000 update, which if you think about it is a lot. Just think about it. what have you done 40,000 times in your life (if anything)? Over the last four and half years that I've been on Twitter, I've met some amazing people and my family and I have benefited from this experience both personally and professionally. In the past, I've taken different approaches to milestone tweets. MORE >>

If you follow my Twitter stream or listen to my weekly podcast, you'll know that the question of whether I think FourSquare and Gowalla are shiny objects is a loaded one. Of course I am bullish on the value location-based services like MORE >>

Nearly two and a half years ago I announced that I was packing up my belongings and moving down to Austin from a place I had called home for most of my life. When I decided to head south, not only was I leaving a comfortable job as VP of social media at a company called Mzinga , I was also saying goodbye to most of my family and many of my friends that I had grown to know over the years. As you can imagine, getting acquired is not an insignificant thing. tried to convey some of this excitement in the post I wrote on the day we announced the acquisition. that brings us to the topic of Truck Day. MORE >>