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I was a bit surprised the other day when I learned that I had a new follower of unimaginable renown. I was humbled that someone close to the hearts of two-billion people is now following little ole me.

G-d is everywhere but Jesus is following me. What is it that I may have tweeted that was so profound to have merited such an auspicious follower? But when I checked out JC’s profile I was shocked. I had more followers than Jesus…by a long shot. How could this be? Sure, I can be pretty charming at times. In rare moments of brilliance I can even be charismatic. But I have never cured the sick, helped the blind to see or walked on water. I have certainly never risen from the dead but thankfully I have never needed to try. I did once learn a neat trick where I could pour milk into a newspaper cone and make it disappear. But the milk and newspaper trick is pretty lame compared to turning water into wine. So how could it be that my following was larger and why would Jesus be following me?

Now in all fairness I should point out that Jesus has edged past me in followers in the time since he began following my tweets. But his numbers seem far too low. According to ask.com there are 2.1 billion Christians worldwide and after all, it’s Jesus for tweetssake. It seems to me that Jesus would easily have far more than the roughly seven hundred followers he has today on Twitter.

There must be countless Christian Soldiers that he could call upon to retweet his word. But I have never seen him recommended on FollowFriday. What about the Gideons? I have never stayed in a hotel room that was not previously visited by a bible-leaving Gideon. There must be a zillion of those guys to have achieved such thorough penetration. Jesus would be at the top of the charts if the Gideons just took one day off from their bible distribution duties and helped the boss improve his numbers.

But what if this is some sort of a sign? I became nervous that this was some pre-apocalyptic harbinger of destruction. Maybe this is the Web 2.0 version of a guy in Times Square wearing a sandwich board that reads “The End is Near, Repent!”

OMG (sorry Jesus), Ashton Kutcher has over seven hundred ten thousand followers! Kelso is at the top of the heap and Jesus is barely a footnote. How could it be that the Prince of Punk’d has one thousand times more followers than the Prince of Peace? Surely this is at least a riding crop for one of the Four Horsemen.

But it gets worse. American Idol impresario and men’s hair products connoisseur Ryan Seacrest has more than four hundred thousand followers. Miley Cyrus, who I have long suspected to be the antichrist, has topped one hundred thirty-five thousand followers.

Jesus was probably a weak rebounder and not much of a threat in the paint. But Shaq is dominating the virtual boards with well over a half-million followers. Wonder drummer Travis Barker appears to be at the back of this pack but still has more than fifty-four thousand followers. But then again, Jesus was never known to have had a smoking-hot wife (sorry again Jesus).

From the wide-angle view, the chart does not seem to be trending well for our web-enabled society. It never seems to be particularly pleasant when “The Man Upstairs” is displeased. All of those plagues in Exodus seem to be pretty nasty business. Pillars of salt also come to mind and I shouldn’t forget that brimstone makes me gassy. Perhaps a bit of biblical research was in order to make some sense of all this and see if any of this is foretold in scripture.

King Hezekiah was sent word through Isaiah that if he set his house in order G-d would add 15 years to his life. But while he was sick, before this deliverance came, what sayeth Hezekiah in Isaiah 38:14?

“Like a swallow, [like] a crane, so I twitter; I moan like a dove; my eyes look wistfully to the heights; O Lord, I am oppressed, be my security.”

Twitter, right there in the Bible! But what about some of the other popular Web 2.0 manifestations? Apparently many of our online activities were not only foretold but it would appear that the scripture is something of a users manual.

Jeremiah 20:11 reveals StumbleUpon as something of a competitive advantage and suggests that improper utilization brings spells failure.

“But the Lord is with me like a mighty warrior; so my persecutors will stumble and not prevail. They will fail and be thoroughly disgraced; their dishonor will never be forgotten.”

And the Prophet tells us again in Jeremiah 46:16;

“They will stumble repeatedly; they will fall over each other. They will say, ‘Get up, let us go back to our own people and our native lands, away from the sword of the oppressor’.” 

The future appears to be a bit darker for those who Digg. Amos might have mellowed out a bit once Andy came around but in his Bible contribution days, he sees in Amos 9:2 that Digg as an elevator with only a down button.

“Though they dig[g] into hell, from there my hand shall take them; Though they climb up to heaven, From there I will bring them down.“

There are a few positive mentions of today’s web that are bright spots in the Bible. RSS is not only lauded but encouraged in Proverbs; “The lips of the righteous feed many, But fools die for lack of wisdom” (Proverbs 10:21). Perhaps it is no surprise that sharing applications have biblical approbation; “And do not neglect doing good and sharing, for with such sacrifices G-d is pleased,” (Hebrews 13:16).

It is unfortunate, however, that the record industry has taken it upon itself the re-write the word and re-define wrongdoing. The message in Luke 6:49 for The Pirate Bay and its contemporaries is to take heart because the torrent will win in the end.

“But the one who has heard and has not acted accordingly, is like a man who built a house on the ground without any foundation; and the torrent burst against it and immediately it collapsed, and the ruin of that house was great.”

How do you like me now RIAA?

But I found the Bible to be filled with sound advice on being a responsible twit. In Exodus 4:13 we are reminded that sending information is more important than the sender; “But he said, ‘Please, Lord, now send [the message] by whomever You will’,” But in Nehemiah 6:8 we are cautioned against tweeting false information; “Then I sent [a message] to him saying, ‘Such things as you are saying have not been done, but you are inventing them in your own mind’,” And most importantly we should exercise caution when vetting followers and those who retweet us; “He cuts off [his own] feet [and] drinks violence who sends a message by the hand of a fool,” Proverbs 26:6.

All of this Bible study was very satisfying to my soul and clearing for my cache but I remained troubled, verily. Then I came across Psalm 23, verse 6; “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; And I will dwell in the house of the Lord Forever.”

Wait, surely, goodness and mercy?

I looked back over Jesus’ followers I found many colorful and interesting profiles including The5thApe, BBQMaven, JackAssLetters and tweetOlicious. But I did not find Surely, Goodness or Mercy. And hold on a second, didn’t Jesus have a posse of a dozen guys? Unless JackAssLetters is Matthew and unless Luke favors tweetOlicious as his screen name perhaps I had been deceived. Oh Jesus, fool me once.

“As a result we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming,” Ephesians 4:14.

I was a bit disappointed but relieved as I came around to the realization that perhaps Jesus was not in fact among my followers. I did start to feel better about the future of mankind and our imminent destruction. This was all an appropriate parable for any member of an online community, social media user or online marketer.

Twitter is an emerging medium. Over time it will refine and find its equilibrium. Back in the mid to late 1990s anyone with a few bucks and the URL for InterNIC could register any domain they wanted. Although I’m still kicking myself for not snapping up a few when I had the chance, companies were able to sue the courts to get their property or trademarked names returned. Twitter is still a place where anyone can be whoever they want to be. There are numerous Twitter fakers online today in addition to Jesus. Well known people with fake profiles include Borat, Bill Clinton, William Shatner, Bernie Madoff, David Hasselhoff and even Abe Vigoda who has been dead for 26 years. But companies and celebrities are dealing with these in much the same way they handled cybersquatters 15 years ago.

Protection of the identities of anonymous bloggers has been upheld in several state supreme courts. Additional laws and regulation are coming for the use of all social media. New Jersey and West Virginia are considering a crack-down on tough or threatening talk used online. New Jersey is also considering requiring sites such as Facebook and MySpace to police their sites for offensive posts or be at risk of consumer fraud lawsuits. Tweets on Twitter and posts on Craigslist have led to defamation suits. These are the inevitable growing pains any nascent community with explosive growth.

Twitter, however, is truly an amazing tool for communication and real-time search. But marketing experience is still necessary to successfully qualify an audience, understand consumer behavior, track targeted behavior and segment a market. I know that Jesus is not a marketing guy because he failed to use the tools at his disposal to find his target demographic. Had he used some of the emerging tools and applied some traditional marketing expertise he may have learned that I’m Jewish.

Maturation will come and the ability for people to share information will only increase with this maturity. Twitter will continue to grow and will soon find a path to revenue. When Twitter is answering to customers as well as users things will change. But these changes will usher in ways to become more effective in audience reach, targeting and communication because it will be profitable. I look forward to representatives of any religion or viewpoint wanting to hear what I have to say as I want to hear from them. Without these experiments we lose the social part of social media and the free marketplace of ideas.

And Jesus, if you still need some help refining your online campaign have your girl give me a call.

And together we say, “Amen.”

Opinion of Coach Cal.

Okay, so I am really trying to be dilligent about this whole blogging thing. I figured I should since I have so many pithy, insightful and downright hilarious things to say. Afterall, it would make the world a better place. It is the least I can do.

I can remember when I was a kid and I thought it would be the coolest thing if I called the DJ at the radio station and made a request. Whoa, he might even say my name on the air or if I was really lucky put me on live.

If you are over let’s say about 35 and can actually remember listening to the radio as your source of music you might know what I’m talking about. So, you try to call and of course the number is busy because there are one thousand other 11 year olds trying to call at the same time. Or maybe it is busy because the DJ has the line tied up because he is calling  in a request himself to the DJ at the station he likes. But you are 11 and you are dying to use up a few precious seconds of your 15 minutes of fame and you keep calling. Eventually the phone might ring. The anticipation mounts and then the magic moment “Yeah hello, Rock 103.”

You had the perfect song picked out. The one song that captured both your gererations mood and your own pre-pubescent angst. The one song that everyone else would hear and think “what a cool kid, awesome song.” But as soon as the DJ picks up you immediately are transformed into a lobotomized moron. You can’t think about anything, let alone that one life-transforming song. The only music you can think about is some over-commercialized, one hit wonder piece of total suck.  I guess today an equivalent opportunity wasting choice would be anything by Miley Cyrus. But, then again no one listens to the radio anymore unless there is a tornado or perhaps if they left their iPod at home.

So, what does all of this have to do with blogging? I think I still have something important to add to the free marketplace of ideas. But why is it that when I actually sit down to write it is like the DJ just picked up the phone?

I was just talking to a good friend (longer story for another time) and was asked about this blog that I said I started. I realized that I had been derelict in my duty to the global consciousness and had not been blogging. I should be ashamed! I sat down to write and…nothing, brain wave flat-line. This bit of pablum is the result.

So, here is another entry. Everyone can feel better now. The cool thing is you dont even have to call the radio station anymore. Now you can just send text messages that the DJ can ignore.

Where's the music

I am old enough to remember the launch of MTV. It was August first, 1981. Okay, to there I go dating myself again.

Quick trivia question (a real Trivial Pursuit question), what was the first video on MTV? It was Video Killed the Radio Star by The Buggles. 

When it first launched it was the coolest thing. It was the white noise as the background for every adolescent activity while awake. In the days long before iPods it was the soundtrack of our lives. Oh MTV, look at what has happened to you.

When did you forget about the “M” of MTV. It started innocently enough, maybe with Bevis and Butthead. B&B were cool and edgy so we really didn’t mind. We really didn’t mind The Real World because we could identify. How else could Puck have ever become a pop icon and relevant? 

We envied the VJs and though they had the coolest job. How awesome would it have been to be Kennedy, Adam Curry or even Kurt Loder?

When I was in college they launched Remote Control, MTVs first game show. Every time I watched it I could not help but think “I could totally dominate on that show.” Ken Ober hosted and we got our first national taste of Colin Quinn. No, Ken did not sink into obscurity, he produces New Adventures of Old Christine for CBS. But the cast member we remembered most were the hostesses, especially Marisol and Kari Wuhrer…grr.

But sometime after that the wheels came off. For far too long it has been about reality, sort of, and not music. It must have been profitable otherwise they would not have done it for so long. But now it seems that the worm has turned.

It seems that the reality genre has a shelf life. It was not good enough to fill the programming day with reality show pablum but they started to repeat episodes and it has hurt the ratings…gee.MTV ratings down

I’m not a TV programming whiz by any means but I have a crazy idea, making music television about music.

I am a conscientious driver. I follow the traffic laws, pay attention to the speed limit and signal before a lane change. I know that my actions can impact the safety of those around me.

To me, this is in many ways a metaphor about life. Go along to get along, treat people the way you want to be treated, don’t pee in the punchbowl, follow the rules and nobody gets hurt…no blood, no foul. But life is not filled with people that are just like you. There is always some jackass that cuts you off or tailgates you close enough to steal your wallet. No matter how you try there is always someone that is on a different plan.

I’m on the way to La Guardia Airport from upstate New York trying to make a mid morning flight. I was stopped at this light waiting for it to change. Then I noticed something funny. There was no intersection, no cross street. In fact, there were about 3oo yards of guard rails on both sides of this very straight road.

This is one of those crossroads one often faces. Continue to follow the rules or run this meaningless traffic light. What would you have done? What do you think I did?