I’m pleased to bring you this month’s interview through a totally different medium. This is My Several World’s first-ever Twitterview – an interview between My Several Worlds and Mr. Hip and Multi-Media Magnate, DJ Marcus Aurelius. As one of Taiwan’s most highly recognizable DJ’s (and beloved by all) Marcus has a brand-new bag in the form of a stylin’ new site called Waakao, and this is what we will be discussing today.

Please remember that as a Twitterview, we are limited to 140 characters per tweet.  Thanks again to Marcus for taking the big leap with me. And remember, when you’re done learning all about Waakao, do drop by and give Marcus a holler.

• Follow Marcus on Twitter at @DJMarcusA
• Follow Carrie on Twitter at @globetrotteri.

Let the Twitterview begin!

globetrotteri: Hi Marcus. Thanks for being here on MSW’s first-ever Twitterview.

DJMarcusA: I’m here and ready to roll.

globetrotteri: So, before we get started could you give us a little background information about yourself in a minimum of five tweets?

DJMarcusA: I’ve been in Taiwan for coming on 11 years. In that time, I’ve been a teacher, trainer, director of training, and writer.

DJMarcusA: I’ve loved hip-hop music since I can remember. Taiwan didn’t have any. So i was an MC first in the group Triple Stage.

DJMarcusA: after that ran its course, I decided to DJ. But my goal was to have parties in crazy places. Teahouses, roller rinks.

DJMarcusA: I’ve toured all over taiwan and China, now I’m refocusing my efforts on www.waakao.com though I still play a lot.

DJMarcusA: I decided to take all the information that is thrown at me each day and make it easily digestible for people in TW

globetrotteri: That’s quite a diverse background. Who says you can’t get a lot of information out of 140 letter tweets!

DJMarcusA: yeah. five tweets is pretty easy. it would have been hard to get that all in under 1

globetrotteri: Let’s focus on your writing to begin with. I’ll get to your new website in a minute. Freelance, professional or both?

DJMarcusA: I work 8-5.30 at Ivy League English mag and freelance for Tpe Times and others. early mornings keep me out of trouble

DJMarcusA: mostly haha

globetrotteri: Yes, I read your article in the Taipei Times on Saturday. Here’s the link for our readers. http://tinyurl.com/na7ubh

globetrotteri: You’re one of the lucky ones who has been able to blend your love of music and writing into a career.

DJMarcusA: I feel like I try to incorporate what I like into everything. That’s what makes life so fun and full of surprises

globetrotteri: You’ve recently launched a new web site in Taiwan called www.Waakao.com. How’s that going for you? What is Waakao?

DJMarcusA: Waakao is ‘oh shhhiieeeeeet’ in Taiwanese. Can be used when seeing something you like “Ahhh Waaakao” or smth crazy

DJMarcusA: when trying to come up with a name, we wanted something to stand out along the lines of google or yahoo. waakao won

globetrotteri: It’s a great name. Everyone in Taiwan seems to be buzzing about it.

DJMarcusA: and its going great except there are only 24 hours in a day. i dont sleep much anymore. and ive become ADD with life

globetrotteri: I know what you mean about time constraints. Ever since I started MSW, I never have enough time in a day.

DJMarcusA: but i love it. i’ve found the new thing i want to be. multi-media magnate

globetrotteri: You’re enjoying a lot of success these days. What kind of information do you bring to the masses on Waakao?

DJMarcusA: Because I am in the nightlife scene, I know that pretty well. But I dig politics, I dig photography, I dig art

DJMarcusA: these are all things that are featured. basically when I meet anyone who does anything different/fun/exciting/new

DJMarcusA: I want to learn about it and write about it. the beauty of waako is it can be A.N.Y.T.H.I.N.G…there are no limits
i like that. hard work brings success. simple as that. that’s the Taiwan Dream

globetrotteri: So, Waakao brings it all together. OK. What are some of your favorite features on Waakao?

DJMarcusA: as I said, this is my third job so its learning on the go. i enjoy talking to people after they’ve been featured or

DJMarcusA: having someone talk to me about an article. it feels like its working. i like the layout. we’re working hard

DJMarcusA: on adding new things all the time. commenting was hard to plug-in and the event calendar is going all right

DJMarcusA: but i like it when people tell me they refresh and refresh so their pic is on the front page

DJMarcusA: from doing this I’ve added about 15 followers. wow. the power of twitter is amazing

DJMarcusA: oh wait. they are all spam bots named danielle loves sex. haha

globetrotteri: I love the layout. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like it. Who helped you with it?

DJMarcusA: I wish I could take credit for it all, but I’ve got two partners. Dominik aka DJ Hooker aka Chief Technical Officer

DJMarcusA: and Oliver from O-Brothaz as business manager. Dominik takes care of technical stuff like when i knock half the page down

DJMarcusA: We were trying to go for more than a blog thing. Kind of a fashionable cyber mag layout. It’s good but the back end

DJMarcusA: is not user friendly so I’ve been learning coding which I don’t love. my brain needs more music not html tags

globetrotteri: Yes, I remember the difficulties I had when I moved #myseveralworlds to its own domain. It all comes together with time.

globetrotteri: You’ve definitely made a lot of improvements since your soft launch. Waakao is only a few months old, isn’t it?

DJMarcusA: for a little while, i thought bits of my brain were going to explode. but i do have a handle on things now. mostly

globetrotteri: You’ve come a long way in a short time. I like the newsletters you send out via facebook. How can readers add you on FB?

DJMarcusA: I started out sending emails to people way back. facebook is easier. search waakao on fbook and join the group

globetrotteri: You’re doing better than I am. I have a billion ideas floating around in my head and I’m lucky if I get two out a week.

DJMarcusA: you just have to get the ideas out of your head and onto paper or computer. make it a goal to do one article a day

globetrotteri: That’s a great goal, but one that is difficult to keep up for longer than a year. (Speaking from experience here).

globetrotteri: Tell me about your event calendar. How does that work?

DJMarcusA: you’ve got to sign up, then reply to email, then log in and you can add events under waahappening #waakao

DJMarcusA: but there are three ways to get events published 1. event calendar 2. infotainment–write something interesting

DJMarcusA: about upcoming event. bands top 10 90s era hip-hop videos, a chapter in a book you wrote, again, it can be anything

DJMarcusA: or people can advertise with us

globetrotteri: How can advertisers contact you?

DJMarcusA: I decided to only talk to people on twitter from now on. seriously, the best way is facebook or djmarcusa (at) gmail

globetrotteri: Can you tell us about an upcoming event that you’re particularly excited about right now? Or provide a link if you wish.

DJMarcusA: This is an awesome time for Taiwan. I’m excited about a lot of things. Two weeks ago the river bash was amazing

DJMarcusA: Last week, the reggae beachfest was perfect. this week I’m DJing Sun Moon Lake on a water bungalow. so much goodness

globetrotteri: Can you give us a link from Waakao the upcoming Sun Moon Lake event?

DJMarcusA: amazing http://tinyurl.com/sunmoon also excited that Taiwan gets to see NIN in concert. prefer better venue though

globetrotteri: I’ll see you there.I got my tickets to NIN last month.

globetrotteri: While you’re at it, why don’t you give us a link from Waakao from last week’s river bash as well.

DJMarcusA: http://tinyurl.com/rvrbsh1 day 1 photos http://tinyurl.com/rvrbsh2 day 2 great efforts by perpetual motion

globetrotteri: What are two of the most popular music events in Taiwan? Can we expect to see coverage of these events on Waakao?

DJMarcusA: the spring scream weekend is great. but i think a lot of changes need to be made to turn it into a modern festival

globetrotteri: You’ve featured some really intriguing articles in the past few months. Do you have any favorites?

DJMarcusA: the wrestling article. It took a long time to write because we hadn’t launched. since its been get info. write. repeat

DJMarcusA: I try and cover as many things as i can. since we can’t pay people (yet) its hard to get reliable writers

globetrotteri: Have you approached any of the bloggers in Taiwan about submitting content?

DJMarcusA: when I see something interesting, I ask. 50 percent of the times its good. 50 percent i’m ignored

globetrotteri: Most bloggers would be happy to have some of their content featured for links.

DJMarcusA: I do. I love what you do and craig and david. I call it the new media. I have a list of blogs I look at regularly

globetrotteri: What would you like to see more of on Waakao?

DJMarcusA: I would love for creative people who need an outlet to write for us. Weekly columns are still available

DJMarcusA: I would love for more people to add their own events and comment on things. i want to build the community

globetrotteri: What can we expect from Waakao in the future?

DJMarcusA: the future is boundless. we are working on waamaps, waaweekender sms service, waavideo, waaNT ads

globetrotteri: Sounds great. There’s nothing else coming out of Taiwan that’s like Waakao. I can’t wait to see what the future brings.

globetrotteri: Is there anything else you’d like to mention while we’re here today?

DJMarcusA: The thing about waakao is its flexible. It can be anything and everything to anyone. All you have to do is find me

globetrotteri: Thanks for joining me today, Marcus. Good luck with your Sun Moon lake bash. I’m sure it’s going to be banging!

DJMarcusA: thanks for taking the time out of your day carrie. twitterviews rule

Twitter is busting at the seams with news about the earthquake that hit the southwestern province of Sichuan in China today. And once again, the popular micro-blogging platform seems to have beaten everyone to the punch for providing breaking news, links and photos about the event.

Robert Scoble tweeted heavily about the quake and has just posted a timeline of the first Tweets available after the quake.

Earlier this week, I blogged about the lightening fast bits of information that come from Twitter on a daily basis. I’ve also mentioned following big tech guys like Scoble for exactly this reason.

I couldn’t find any information about the quake earlier today. As it turns out, Scoble was on the front-line today, providing information as it came in from Twitter users throughout China. Interestingly enough, @reutersindia and @thenytimes also had breaking news via Twitter feeds before the news was released in the mass media.

I remain convinced that Twitter is one of the fastest ways to obtain information on the web. How accurate the information is remains to be seen as it raises questions of how reliable eye-witness and first-hand reports in place of traditional means of media coverage.

Rory Cellan-Jones at BBC News dot.life reports:

“When I logged on to my desktop Twitter application (sad, I know) it was alive with Tweets about the earthquake in China. Most of them were from the celebrated technology blogger Robert Scoble, who is famous, perhaps notorious, for receiving a Twitter message every second of the day.

He is based in California, but thousands of miles away from the quake he was providing breaking news about it, linking to sites like the BBC and the New York Times, even providing a first picture – though how authentic that is remains to be seen. He now claims that Twitter had the breaking news even before the United States Geological Survey, which provides early warnings of seismic events.”

Read the rest of his article here.

Everyone’s talking about Tweeting these days. Over the past week, I’ve seen quite a few of my blogger friends jump on the bandwagon. In the last two days, I’ve started following TC Lin(Poagao), Ashish Lin of Tumbling in Taiwan and MJ Klein aka The New Hampshire Bushman. I’ve included their Twitter links here in case you’re interested in seeing what they have to offer the world of Twitter.

MJ wrote an interesting article today about Twitter, and I found my reply getting longer and longer with each passing second. I decided to add my comments to this article, which was started a week ago. Here’s my take on how best to use Twitter’s services.

Frankly put, Twitter is what you make it. It can be about your everyday musings. It can be used to promote your blog. You can post interesting URL’s and create discussion over them. You can promote your friends. For all you expats out there, join a Twitter group like the China Twitterati or Expatacular and follow what’s happening with expats and locals throughout China and the rest of the world. If you’re looking for followers, following a group like The China Twitterati List is definitely the fastest way to find them.

Twitter is a constant flow of information. Some of it is completely useless. Some of it is informative. Some of it is funny and some of it is down-right ridiculous.

I like following the big guys like @mashable, @problogger, and @scobleizer because the tech information coming from these guys is instantaneous. They tweet from major tech conferences around the world. It’s all in the moment. You are privy to information before it’s officially released. You won’t get a faster update anywhere else.

I’ve found a really neat group of people who share one or several interests with me, be it travel-related, food-related, photography-related or tech-related. Twitter has opened up my world. I’ve found a whole new slew of friends. I’ve noticed a significant increase in my traffic and best of all, these visitors are social networkers, which means they love to leave comments! Twitter is one of the best website marketing tools around as far as I’m concerned, provided you put in the time to get to know other users.

My first Twitter friend was Mark Forman aka bbluesman. I’ve found out more about him in the last several months then I learned at the party I met him at in October last year. My guilty little secret is that I actually stole a bunch of his friends when I first signed on, because I wasn’t sure how to use the service. Since then, I’ve found out that Mark is a great judge of character. His friends were most welcoming and helped me navigate the world of Twitter with ease.

Understanding how Twitter works can take a little time to get used to, but I hope you come to like it as much as I do.
Are you following me on Twitter?

I haven’t been Tweeting much lately because of my health. Just before I got sick, I was on Twitter everyday. I love the constant flow of information and interaction on Twitter, but I just didn’t feel well enough to keep up with things. So to say that I was surprised when I checked my replies today is an understatement. I am completely blown away by the number of Tweets and messages that people have sent over the past two weeks. Honestly, I had no idea there were so many people rooting for me and I just wanted to say thank you. Your messages mean a lot to me.

For those of you who haven’t jumped on the Twitter bandwagon, I hope to see you there some day soon. There are thousands of amazing people waiting to be discovered.

Follow me on Twitter and find out for yourself.