Here’s a list of overused words in Twitter bios that fail by telling rather than showing.

Expert or Maven (33,209)
It’s up to your peers, not you, to declare you an expert. Too often, seeing “expert” in a bio sends us running in the opposite direction. Kinda like being a self-described “winner.”

Guru(14,309)
Nothing shouts “leader of a cult with one member” more than a self-titled “guru.” Unless you’re a yogi or a certified leader of Eastern religion, leave the Guru-ing to, you know, Gurus.

Social Media (44,518)
If you’re a “social media” strategist, chances are that your intended audience is full of other “social media” types. And they don’t call it social media, they just call it “work.”

Enthusiast, (39,237)
Enthusiast sounds sweeter and less pompous than guru or expert. It’s just that, well, lots of other people are enthusiastic about being an enthusiast. How about “fan?” Or, if you’re just trying to say it with more syllables, try “aficionado.”

Nerd (31,052)
Back in the day, “nerd” was an inflammatory word that conjured up images of taped-together glasses and greasy hair. Today, “nerd” can be synonymous with “enthusiast,” both in meaning and frequency of use on the internet.

Geek (68,754)
The debate has raged over the differences between nerds and geeks since Sputnik. This venn diagram indicates a geek is a nerd with social skills. There are a lot of networked nerds out there.

Human or Person (128,109)
It may feel sensitive to finish off your bio with “human” or “person.” But your writing should prove you’re not a robot.  If your bio says “father, skateboarder, guitarist, social media guru, cyborg,” THEN we’re excited.

2.0 (13,711), Interactive (12,179), and Online (103,349)
Do you add “Earth” to your mailing address?

Don’t despair if you’re using some of these words or phrases.  But if you’re using two at once — for example Social Media Enthusiasts (2791) or Expert Gurus (470) — do some pruning.

And if you’re using three — Online Mavens of Geekdom — hire a human.

Bonus: There are 8901 ninjas on twitter. Who’s minding the dojo?

For more fun with buzzword (ab)use, check out LinkedIn’s most overused profile buzzwords.

See also @scottgould‘s post about Twitter bio uniqueness.

Join Clive Thompson, Lenore Skenazy, Steven B. Johnson, and Maud Newton as they discuss how social media is transforming the experience of writing and reading books — and what the changes may mean for authors, readers and publishers.

From Social Media Week 2011.

SOCIAL READING
0:16 – Clive describes the primal “social book”
1:37 – Will Maud respond to comments within the text of her book?
2:35 – Steven reacts to Kindle’s “Popular Highlights”
4:51 – Clive watches the “margins of the unpopular”
6:19 – Steven describes Findings.com, his new social reading project

SOCIAL WRITING
8:38 – Clive discusses blogging and the writing process
9:26 – Lenore uses her blog for source material
10:14 – Steven maintains a private relationship with the reader

INTERACTING
11:08 – Maud creates new connections on Twitter
12:27 – Steven on responding to criticism online
13:15 – Can Lenore turn comments into a book?

THE FUTURE
13:50 – Clive: we can’t imagine books ten years from now

There’s a nice mention of Blogads.com in this video.

If you’re interested in getting started with us, go to this page.

Glenn Reynolds’ Instapundit did more than 100,000 page views yesterday.

I’ve spent the last six years selling sites to traditional publishers and have met print publishers with costly sites who (still) don’t manage that traffic in a year. Seriously. Bloggers do not realize just how vigorously their part-time efforts thrash the bang-for-buck achieved by most traditional publishers online.

Instapundit illustrates a perverse law of web traffic. We all know about Metcalfe’s law, which

Of course quality, focus, information-density and presentation are essential. But all else being equal, a site that links religiously will attract orders-of-magnitude more traffic than a site that ignores the rest of the web.

This law upsets traditional publishers, who are born and bred to grab eyeballs and hold ’em. Glenn made nearly 100 links yesterday — some narcissistic publishers haven’t made that many in five years online.

In pushing readers to visit other sites, Instapundit constructs a new network. Some linked sites link back. Many visitors return to see the freshest postings; some e-mail reax and news. Previously linked bloggers check back to examine their new peers.

Enabling a network, Instapundit’s utility far outstrips that of another site that might simply “publish” an unlinked digest of the same information. Instapundit [url=http://sm6.sitemeter.com/default.asp?action=stats&site=s11instapundit&report=36]traffic has grown from 500,000 page views in June to 1 million in August. September seems to be on track for 1.2 million plus.

(9/13/02 In a parallel post yesterday, Jeff Jarvis rightly takes issue with Clay Shirky’s statement that “most weblogs are much more broadcast than intercast”. Jarvis says “what has fascinated me about this world of weblogs is that as a group, they are a community. There is, to use the jargon, ‘intercast’ communications between and among webloggers: I link to and comment on somebody, publicly; they do likewise; others join in; zap: community.” 9/16/02 Like Sassafrass in the comments to this post, Doc notes that while he is Instapundit’s equal in the myelin ecosystem, he has just 10% of the traffic. All links are not created equal. 9/20/02
Rick Bruner points out that he articulated the linking implications of Metcalfe’s law in his 1998 book Net Results. Rick’s 1998 formula needs one more variable: links work far better when made to sites/content capable of linking back. That’s what turns a jumble of blogs into a network and really makes the traffic dynamo hum.)

Using Blogrolling, I just added a link to Hylton Jolliffe on my personal blog. I then went to Blogrolling’s “latest links” page, where Jolliffe was now The Latest Link. Amazing to see the synapses wire in real time. (Time-stamps would be nice addition.)