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.

Though it underwent a soft launch a couple of weeks ago, Monday marked the official launch of my new internet marketing specific website and blog Nevermore Search Marketing.  Over the years I have shared my knowledge and tips on search engine marketing and social media mixed in with the potpourri of other musings I share on this blog.  However, as my love for these forms of internet marketing intensified and I knew that internet marketing would fall into my long term career path, I knew I would eventually have to separate Musings For A Darkened Room from the professional side of my writing.

Over the last six months I developed Nevermore Search Marketing as both an income resource and an educational resource.  By providing an array of internet marketing services including SEO consulting, social media marketing,  and blog consulting I hope to set myself apart in the Southern California SEO market by providing individualized services grounded in ethical marketing techniques to provide long term SEO success.

In addition to my services I plan to continue my contributions to the internet marketing community by offering informative blog posts about SEO, Social Media, and blogging the same way I have on this blog over the last few years.  If you are a long time reader of Musings For A Darkened Room who enjoyed these types of posts I strongly recommend you head over to the Nevermore Search Marketing Blog and subscribe to the RSS feed and join the Google Friend Connect and MyBlogLog communities, the way so many of you have done here on Musings For A Darkened Room.

From here on out the posts on Musings will focus primarily on the off the wall posts it was known for years ago; music, Halloween finds, current events, and the like.  Thank you again to all of my readers over the years and I hope you will continue to read Musings For A Darkened Room in addition to the new Nevermore Search Marketing Blog.

The social web is one of my favorite online activities, second only to my love for search engine optimization. When Google launched, err, force fed us Buzz I’ll admit I was excited. The opportunity to interact with fellow Googlers in a Twitter-like format inside of Gmail sounded promising; however my adoption of Buzz hasn’t been as promising as I had hoped.

What Google Buzz offers in the ability to connect with fellow Googlers across many Google properties, it lacks in organization and ability to easily sort through conversation.  When I signed up for Buzz I hit up my usual suspects; friends, fellow internet marketers and of course the infamous Matt Cutts. A short while later I was also forced to mute the first Buzz from Matt because the noise that surrounded his first Buzz post was ridiculous.

Since then I have added a number of other friends, marketers, and the like, but also made the mistake of adding the Social Media giant Mashable.  Don’t get me wrong I love Mashable and it’s staff. They are a great resource, that I look to daily. Unfortunately for me, so do a number of other people. Mashable’s quick adoption of Google Buzz lead them to become one of the noisiest channels in my Buzz feed. Thankfully, Google silenced our inboxes to stop the overwhelming e-mails from popular users, but it still hasn’t been enough.

I use Buzz once every few days. I’ll skim it for something interesting, but for the most part don’t find any value that I couldn’t get from Twitter, and what I would get from twitter would be easier to follow and less cluttered.  You see once you dive into a conversation from a popular user like Mashable you are quickly overwhelmed by the sheer noise from the responses that follow.  Unlike twitter you see everything, even if you aren’t connected with the users commenting.

When Plurk launched a few years back and I did a Twitter versus Plurk comparison, I mentioned the value in this and how Plurk changed the way the SEO community interacted. Unfortunately where it was a strength for Plurk, it seems to be a weakness for Google. Whether it’s the lack of graphical representation of users, or simply because the conversations going on are on a much larger scale I simply can’t seem to get myself to dive into the conversation and engage users the way I have on sites like Twitter and Plurk. This lack of engagement has made it really hard for me to accept Buzz into my social habits creating interaction generated solely by Twitter and updates from services like Friend Feed and Google Reader. Unless Google can somehow make conversations easier to follow where there is graphical representation of users or some sort of way to toggle conversation only from people you are friends with, I am more than certain I will never be able to incorporate Google Buzz into my regular social habits.

What are your thoughts on lengthy conversation strings on Buzz? Do you find it hard to engage people when you are digging through conversations like this? Would it be more helpful if there was graphical representation of users?