A Social Network acting like Nazis and the KGB.

We go online and find the world at our fingertips. Friends we haven’t seen in years we’re suddenly chatting with as if we had never parted, new friends we’ve not met in person at all that we suddenly have deep feelings for emerge from the ether of the massive Internet. Social Networks help in this, yet with the various Networks, they also hinder as well.

For the first few years I knew about MySpace all I ever heard about it was how these kids were going on there and how predators looking for kids would take advantage of this so I figured if it was something geared for kids I didn’t want to be there needing a more mature site to find peers. But then I found out all these businesses are doing it and when I was trying to find a way to generate a buzz about what I was working on with Beyond the Charts I was told by a friend I should set up a MySpace account. So I did. And I got sent Friend requests, was suggested Friends and eventually I started making Friend requests myself. It took a little getting used to, but I discovered I liked MySpace and what I could do with it.

Then a person who I met on MySpace and who mentored me for a few months to help me launch the Beyond the Charts website told me I needed to get on other Social Networks like Facebook and Twitter. Because of my time on MySpace I had heard about these, but with Twitter I thought it was something to do with the phone. I found out they had a website to access. So I joined Twitter. After doing that for a while, I joined Facebook. All I wanted to do was set up a page for my Beyond the Charts business. I got the Fan page set up, but whenever I logged in again, I found out that Facebook was FORCING me to create a personal account. So I wound up using my personal account more than my Fan page because more people were responding to that. At first when I got on, Facebook was so different than MySpace and Twitter, it really took some getting used to, but around December of last year I really started getting into it and finding my way around and eventually my log ons to MySpace grew more and more infrequent.

In time, I discovered that Facebook actually has a limit on the amount of Friends you can have. Can you believe it? You can only have 5,000 friends on there. MySpace doesn’t limit you. Indeed, on MySpace I’ve seen some celebrities with over a million Friends. Obviously they can’t be all real “Friends” as I doubt the celebrity really cares about anything but the numbers and a select few strangers that may grab their attention, yet the limit for Facebook isn’t found at MySpace. I suppose Facebook figures you can only be Friends with so many people. Yet on the Fan pages, you can have as many “Fans” as you can get. I like the Fan page concept for businesses and celebrities, but why force people to create a Fan page for themselves just because they are getting too many Friends than the people at Facebook think you should have? Nevertheless, Facebook suggests Friends to you all the time that you have never met and don’t particularly care for. I suppose they want you to fill up that quota mighty fast, eh?

So then one day not too long ago I was chatting with someone, and I had a few chat sessions going, and all of a sudden I was blocked from chat with a warning I didn’t think to copy and paste at the time. It told me that basically I was engaging in behavior that some might consider abusive or annoying. Can you believe that? I’m chatting with a few friends and someone’s going to find that “annoying”? I mean, like who the hell is going to know about it? And if they find it annoying, then who cares? I won’t chat with them then. Total lunacy. After a couple of days I decided to try chatting again (I had been told this block could last for a few minutes up to a few days), and I was able to chat again when I tried. Okay, fine. I’ll watch how many chat sessions I have going on at the same time from now on. Stupid Facebook.

And of course, it doesn’t help that they keep changing things on there all the time forcing you to get used to some new tweak they want to add that causes confusion.

Now, yesterday, I was on Facebook and I discovered a person’s page because a Friend had commented on it. I saw the last name and the location and wondered if they were related to someone I knew. Turns out it was the son of that person I knew. So I sent a Friend request to both. From the dad I found a few more people I knew and sent requests to them as well. Then a couple of them had a plethora of people I knew (as one was the pastor to a church I attended for a couple of years), and so I just took the time to see about adding the people I knew that they knew too. Then all of a sudden, I get this message:

(- I took the time to copy and paste this time! 😉 -)

“Block! You are engaging in behavior that may be considered annoying or abusive by other users.

You have been blocked from adding friends because you repeatedly misused this feature. This block will last anywhere from a few hours to a few days. When you are allowed to reuse this feature, please proceed with caution. Further misuse may result in your account being permanently disabled. For further information, please visit our FAQ page.”

Okay, so like the whole main point of these social networks is so you can stay connected and get reconnected with Friends and Family, right? I know they’ve turned into something else through the use of them, but that’s the point, right? So why is it that one of the most popular ones out there is so brain dead in the corporate department that they first have to limit the number of people you can be connected to, and then on top of that decide that if you come upon some people that just happen to know a lot of people you know that when you start adding Friends, something must be wrong?

Total lunacy! This is first a company started in the United States of America where we are supposed to have Freedom to begin with, and second it’s the Internet where pretty much anything can happen (whether you like it or not), and this company Facebook wants to try to control its users like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union’s KGB?

Here I am just coming out of my shell over the last year in regards to Social Networking online, and this company is more for regress and keeping folks from moving forward than it is for progress and helping people connect with others?

I’m going to see just how long this Block lasts and I’m going to keep trying to get in touch with someone at Facebook, meantime, my use of Facebook is about to go down considerably I think. I may just have to go back to MySpace more often where there are no limits on the amount of Friends you can have and where one night when I discovered a Friend that knew some Friends who knew some Friends, I wasn’t limited on adding them there or told I was “blocked” for some sort of suspicious abuse.

Facebook has shown its Face all right. Totalitarianism.

I’ll have to see how long I remain on Facebook at this point.

Whew!

Be encouraged,

David James
Founder – Beyond the Charts
Independent Marketer – The Trump Network
Member – The New Authors Fellowship

Organizing the abundance of tasks to perform.

So let’s see here:

I’ve got an online store at Beyond the Charts, a message board at The Wasteland, this blog, the blog I’m doing with New Authors Fellowship, the social networks of MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter, as well as staying social on three other message boards I frequent, marketing for my other venture, trying to find time to write for my novel, keeping up with media by reading, watching movies and TV, and listening to various music just to keep up with things, and keep my son entertained throughout the day while making sure my baby girl is taken care of and my wife is happy and taking time to spend with God. Somehow I get most of this done, but there’s really so much else I need to do and I need to get tighter on doing these.

I need to add products to my online store. I haven’t added products in quite some time and I don’t have anybody but myself to do it, so I’m going to have to take the time to do that while still somehow keeping up with everything else. I also need to figure out why the checkout process for my online store keeps messing up. I’ve been told by another person now that they weren’t able to get through it and this seems to be a reoccurring problem. I also need to figure out a way to broaden the marketing of Beyond the Charts outside of what I’m already doing. If anybody out there either has ideas or is just willing to help tell others about Beyond the Charts send me an e-mail at suggestions@beyondthecharts.com and I’ll get back to you on this.

Each day I follow the same general outline of a schedule. I’ve kept things fairly basic, but I think I’m going to need to get more specific and keep a tighter schedule as I find myself using up a lot of time in areas that I probably should be briefer with.

And now I have to deal with the time change. Is anyone out there have a tired head like I do today after the time change? Did you go to bed at your “normal” time only to realize you then had one hour less of sleep available to you? And when you woke up, didn’t you feel like you should stay in bed? Why is it that America has to keep changing the time like that? Let’s get over it already! No one else in this world does it, why do we still keep such an archaic practice that is still relatively new in the scheme of history anyway? (yes, I used both the word “archaic” and the word “new” to describe the same thing)

So, keep your eyes peeled on Beyond the Charts for new products, and if you need to order something and are having a hard time making it through the checkout process, send me an e-mail at beyondthecharts@beyondthecharts.com with the info on the items you want to order and I’ll work with you on it to make sure you get your order. I’m considering getting a different shopping cart system if this one persists in being problematic. I’ll keep you informed of that too.

Okay, I hope everyone had a great week last week. I’ll be posting more info soon. In the meantime, you can keep up with Beyond the Charts on any of the above links in the first paragraph or my signature.

Be encouraged,

David James
Founder – Beyond the Charts, LLC
706-839-6571
Beyond the Charts
The Wasteland
The Blog of The Lost Journeyman
MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter

Total update and reintroduction for David James and Beyond the Charts.

Okay, okay, okay!!

So we got a unique situation with this blog entry here. It’s being posted in more than one location. For over a year now I’ve taken the time to get used to MySpace and had been using the blog I have with MySpace to promote Beyond the Charts. The entries have at times been regular, while other times have been sporadic. Lately, there haven’t been any. Now this blog entry appears there, and in two other locations.

I’m doing it this way to introduce myself and my two new blog areas to everyone whether they are seeing this for the first time on MySpace or one of the two WordPress blogs I’m posting this on.

See, there are some changes happening with Beyond the Charts and its founder David James and you need to be aware of them and you need to know where to go for specific information as not just one place will always do anymore.

So for starters, let’s talk about these three different blog pages:

There’s the classic MySpace blog for Beyond the Charts, there’s the new The Lost Journeyman blog, and then there’s the New Authors’ Fellowship blog I have been invited to.

So what do all these blogs mean?

It means that things are going to be a little more organized for me as I move forward with things and that some information I used to share all in one blog will now be separated so you can keep up with just what you want to keep up with, or you can still keep up with it all by looking at all three.

So how is this divided up now?

Okay, here’s what’s going on:

As a person, I’ve got several projects going on, and the ones I keep talking about are the most active. There’s Beyond the Charts, there’s my involvement with The Trump Network, and there’s the novel I’m working on. Each of these blogs will now take over one of those aspects of myself.

Which ones will cover which?

The new official blog of all things pertaining to the growth of Beyond the Charts can be found here – https://beyondthecharts.wordpress.com/

That means the old one on MySpace will be taken over primarily by another topic – in this case financial and business information – even though it is still a Beyond the Charts location, and will be the main blog I use to promote my part of The Trump Network until I set up a different one and you can find it here – http://www.myspace.com/beyondthecharts

Finally, if you want to keep up on my journey as a writer to see how I’m doing with that and what happens when I eventually finish my novel, then keep up with me and some other authors here – http://newauthors.wordpress.com/

On each of these, the main focus will be what I’ve listed as being discussed, although my own personal viewpoints and what’s going on with me personally with each category will come into play sometimes as well – more on the writer blog than either of the others.

Now that you know all of that concerning the blogs, let’s do a general update that introduces all three businesses to you so that everyone is aware of everything going on with each item I do, and then from this post on, you decide where and how many places you want to follow me at.

First up, Beyond the Charts.

Beyond the Charts – http://www.beyondthecharts.com – is a mainstream online store that focuses on Speculative Fiction in many forms as well as Hardcore Music of varying kinds. As of now the store only sells Movies and Music but will soon have some Novels and eventually Comicbooks and Games.

You can keep up with Beyond the Charts several ways:

You can visit the new official blog The Lost Journeyman – https://beyondthecharts.wordpress.com

You can go to MySpace at – http://www.myspace.com/beyondthecharts

You can go to Facebook at – http://www.facebook.com/pages/Clarkesville-GA/Beyond-the-Charts/94716168345

You can go to Twitter at – http://www.twitter.com/beyondthecharts

You can go to the all new Message Board called The Wasteland at – http://beyondthecharts.proboards.com/index.cgi

So there are several ways to keep up with Beyond the Charts. And that last one, The Wasteland, is really new too, only a couple of weeks in existence. So feel free to go there and register and post about the different topics available.

Beyond the Charts is growing in sites in order to make sure you have a place for all your Speculative and Hardcore needs, not only just getting the product, but staying informed and having a place to socialize with like-minded individuals. I hope to fill an order from you soon and chat with you on the board!

My work with The Trump Network is relatively new.

Basically, it’s something that came about one day while online in December. I had already been with another well-known Network Marketing company for many years and didn’t like my lack of the success I should have had. Then I saw Trump was doing this and I had to switch. I failed to renew at the end of the year and I joined with The Trump Network – that just launched in November – in the middle of January.

One of the things that I’m really impressed with about this opportunity is that I don’t have to go around bothering total strangers and bugging my friends and family about it. The vast majority of the marketing is done online, and I love the leads I’m generating that way. Indeed, my sponsor is helping me tremendously and I’m already signing up people.

To find out more information, just go here and see a clip of Donald Trump and then click over to the next page so you can see some more of what it’s about – http://www.marketingmentorsusa.com/davidjames.html

And finally, but not least, my life as a writer.

I don’t have any novels finished, although I do have some short stories that are finished and I might look into getting some of those published while I’m working on finishing a novel. I recently sent a short story to a fantastic editor named Jeff Gerke – http://www.wherethemapends.com/writerstools/writers_tools_pages/editorial_services.htm – and what he sent back to me was very informative and gave me a lot to think about to improve it. Soon I will be jumping on that short story and implementing some changes. Of course, I’ll send it back to him and see what he thinks and do anything else he suggests from there.

As far as the novel that I feel should be finished first?

I haven’t touched it in a long time, but soon I will be taking a couple of hours out each evening and adding to that story. It already needs the prologue changed to the first chapter and a new prologue that’s much shorter to replace it. It also needs to have some adjusting in how the supporting characters are seeing the main character. The main character might need some adjusting too.

People say “When I have time to write, I will.” I used to be one of those. Now when I’m not writing, I take responsibility and when I say something, I say, “Now where can I take some time from to put toward writing?”

This very blog entry is a perfect example of that. I was both looking forward to it because I wanted to get going with things and letting everyone know the different things I’m doing and where all to keep track of that, but at the same time I was dreading it, because I knew it would take a lot out of me. I finally just buckled down late at night/early one morning and spent an hour or so typing this so that it could be ready to post on all three of my blogs as a way of introducing me and my projects to new people while reintroducing and updating things with others who have kept up with me for some time.

I suppose this is enough to say for now so I’ll draw it to a close. Ultimately, I have a lot on my plate, and I stay rather busy. But I’m never afraid to address concerns, so if you have any questions or comments about any of the things I’ve shared today, please shoot me an e-mail at dj@beyondthecharts.com and I’ll respond as soon as I can.

Be encouraged,

David James
Writer
Founder – Beyond the Charts, LLC
http://www.beyondthecharts.com
Independent Marketer
The Trump Network
http://www.marketingmentorsusa.com/davidjames.html