newmediaMike

Virtual divorcee kills virtual husband

I will readily admit that many years ago I was very active in the online chat world. It was rather boring, yet engaging at the same time. I still remember my ICQ number 2868783. I didn’t get in too deep, but some of my online friends had very deep online relationships, almost virtual marriages.

Today I came across this story about this 43-year-old Japanese piano teacher, whose sudden divorce from her online husband in a virtual game world made her so angry that she logged on and killed his digital persona.

The woman has been jailed on suspicion of illegally accessing a computer and manipulating electronic data. She used his identification and password to log onto the popular interactive game “Maple Story” to carry out the virtual murder.

She has not yet been formally charged, but if convicted could face a prison term of up to five years or a fine up to $5,000.

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I’m the number 9 Twit in Toronto

From the fine folks at HubSpot comes Twitter Grader it’s a fun, online add on for your Twitter use. Simply enter your Twitter name and hit enter.  Moments later your “Twitter Grade” appears.

I scored 97.7!

The Twitter Grade measures the relative power of a Twitter user. It is calculated as a percentile score. A grade of 97.7 means that the user scores higher than 97.7 percent of the other user profiles that have been graded. Here is how they calculate your grade.

• How many followers do you have
• Who is in your network? They look at the power of this network of followers, almost like a Google PageRank
• How often do you update your Tweets?
• How complete is your profile?
• …and knowing HubSpot, some proprietary codes as well

Twitter Grader also shows a snapshot of your profile listing your name, bio and location. It said “Twitter Elite in Toronto” beside my location. When I clicked on it there was a list of Twitterers in Toronto and yous truly was #9!

If you are on Twitter (and if you aren’t why not?) check out your Twitter Grade and be sure to follow me if you aren’t already – http://twitter.com/newmediamike