I don’t hide the fact that I’m a fan of the Twilight Saga.  I have read all the books, saw the first two films at their midnight showing on their opening nights (And have my tickets for the midnight release of Eclipse), partnered to launch a Twilight Fansite, and have done a number of Twilight posts over the years.  So when I saw that one of my favorite Social Media sites, Mashable, started covering random Twilight news I was intrigued.

In the beginning it made sense.  Their first post covered the story of how the New Moon trailer leaked on the web, which I guess to a degree is news relevant enough since it was a huge social media hit and the studios tried to cover it up.  Then they had a live video chat with Twilight stars Peter Facinelli and Billy Burke about social media, again relevant since it was meant to be a social media interview.  Those of us who attended the event might recall the poor audio quality, choppy video and masses of teenage girls that flooded the room with no interest in social media.  And every month or so since then the Twilight stories have continued to roll in.

In each instance there is some sort of social media tie in.  They either cover a twitter reaction, Myspace premier, YouTube video, or other loose tie in, but the fact of the matter is Twilight is the only pop culture phenomenon that really gets this sort of attention on Mashable.  I made a comment to Mashable on Twitter in late in April asking them what their connection was to Twilight, but never got a response.  And my buddy Danny Brown left a comment on a recent post on Mashable about release of the Twilight Saga: Eclipse trailer simply asking, “And this is social media…. how?” Which has left me to believe that I’m not the only one out there thinking it’s a bit odd that Mashable has given the series so much love.

At first I thought maybe it was a specific author writing all of the posts and perhaps they were fans of the Twilight series, but as I dug a little deeper I found that the social media giant has been generating content about the films from a variety of writers; Ben Parr, Jennifer Van Grove, Barb Dybwad, Christina Warren, Adam Ostrow, and a handful of others.  I never pinned Parr or Ostrow as Twilight fans, but then again most people don’t pin me as one either, so what do I know?  The regular Twilight news just doesn’t seem to make sense.  It’s not as though Twilight is doing anything new or innovative with social media, so what makes it so newsworthy to the Mashable staff?

This is my plea to you Mashable…What is your connection to the Twilight Saga movies?  I know I’m just a lone blogger and a search and social addict, but I would love to know what it is about Twilight that dazzles you.  How did the Twilight Saga inject itself into your editorial calendar?  Do you have some sort of marketing tie in with Summit Entertainment?  Are your staffers a huge group of Twi-hards?  Are the posts an easy piece of link bait because they have the word “Twilight” in them? I’d love to know, and based on some comments I am reading on some of your past Twilight posts so do a lot of other Mashable readers.

Over the years Musings For A Darkened Room has taken on many shapes. It’s main focus in 2007 was to act as a personal hub for thoughts, musings and other rants about anything and everything.  But as I began blogging more I found that I was focusing on the SEO industry and Social Media industries more, and randomly peppered the blog with other random posts about a potpourri of topics I enjoyed.

As my SEO and Social Media career has advanced and I have become more involved in the industry as a whole, built up relationships, and developed a network of followers and friends I feel that it is time to serve them best with a dedicated search and social platform that isn’t a hybrid of all of my other interests.  In the coming months I will be revealing a new project that is aimed solely at search and social media, and will feature more frequent updates on all things search and social.

At that time Musings For A Darkened Room will revert back to it’s original incarnation as a personal blog with a variety of subjects to be covered.  I can guarantee you’ll get some music posts, green living posts, possibly a few Twilight related posts and a number of other personal anecdotes and musings that are always floating around in my head.  For my search and social followers, I will update this blog with information on the new project as soon as it launches so that if you wish to update your feeds with the SEO and social media specific blog you can.

I appreciate all of my readers, and I thank all of you for the good times and interactions we have had over the years and I hope that many of you will continue to read Musings For A Darkened Room and become more familiar with the personal side of my life.

Those of you who follow me on Twitter, Facebook, or GTalk probably know by now that Friday afternoon I lost all of my Twitter followers and everyone I was following. For those of you who didn’t know, let me fill you in:

Mid afternoon on Friday I noticed that I had gone tweetless for quite some time. Upon further investigation I discovered that my follower and following number were both set at 0; a scary realization for someone who had nearly 650 followers and was following over 800 tweeple. After navigating through the terrible, terrible, support system used by Twitter I finally figured out how to report my concern via commenting on the “known issue”. After my post and a number of other user posts Twitter admitted there was a problem and at 3:00 pm PST and advised users that they had a fix and it would be resolved today.

It is now 8:32pm PST and my account, and from what I can tell in the Twitter support thread, a number of other accounts are still without any followers and are unable to follow anyone. That’s over 72 hours without a resolve, which has left me crippled in terms of spreading blog posts, information, and interacting with fellow twitter users.

Earlier this morning I had a brief discussion with some of my fellow SEO Dojo members about the issue, and one member in particular, Justin Parks, made an interesting comment; “I don’t think anyone should complain, free is free after all.”. It got me thinking; in one hand he was right. I pay absolutely nothing to help keep Twitter afloat, what right do I have to complain that it has been nearly 72 hours and I’ve been without service. On the other hand, Twitter provides a service to the public. Free or not I feel it is in some way their obligation to try and support their customer base as much as possible; if not for the users alone, at least out of good business sense.

Since my post in the thread Friday afternoon at least 30 other twitter users have complained of the same problem I am experiencing, and no further updates regarding an ETA or status of the issue have been made by Twitter their post on Friday.

What are your thoughts on this topic? Do you think free services like Twitter have an obligation to support their customers better than they are currently, or is Justin correct in the sense that if we aren’t paying for it we should just deal? Let me know what you think in the poll below. I may be doing a follow up post once service is restored and I’ll use the data collected.