The first reaction of any hard-working blogger being plagiarized is to get angry, which I did. But then what? If you do a Google search on “blogging plagiarism,” you’ll more or less get these recommendations:

1. Contact the plagiarist and ask them to remove your content.
2. Contact their advertisers and file a “duplicate content” complaint.
3. Report them to the search engines.
4. Take legal action.
5. Name them and shame them.

These steps are good but not entirely practical. Contacting the plagiarist of a scraper site (step 1) is like trying to ask the guy who runs a chop shop to give you back your stolen car–it’s useless. In fact, the most you’ll find on scraper site is an overly generic about page (if even that) and the name “Admin.” Forget about contact info and a photo!

Steps 2-4 can be serious time-suckers, especially #4. If you’re a solo entrepreneur like me, time is your most precious asset. The time it would take to contact advertisers, search engines and, dare I say—lawyers—could permanently cripple your productivity.

So let’s look at #5– “name them and shame them.” This is the best option if you have just a few aggressive minutes to spare. Unlike the other, more traditional options, naming and shaming a plagiarist takes a true guerrilla-style approach to copyright infringement warfare.

There are a few ways to name and shame a plagiarist, but the quickest and most powerful is Twitter. It’s instantaneous and widespread, which is just the weapon you’ll need.

The first thing I did was tweet a rant about being plagiarized, and within one minute I had a small army of people joining me in passionate disgust of plagiarism.

Then, plagiarism consultant Jonathan Bailey of @plagiarismtoday rushed in out of nowhere with an instant offer to help my dilemma. Jonathan is very active and generous with his time and monitors most plagiarism conversations on Twitter.

The next thing that happened took full advantage of the plagiarist’s fatal mistake. For some reason this guy had his Twitter feed (@affiliatetips4u) on his scraper site! Once I saw that I knew I could finish him off.

This is how the gunfight unfolded:

@Wordful, 6:11am: I just got plagiarized! Right here: http://www.yourmoneysolutio…

@Wordful, 6:16am:@affiliatetips4u Please remove my content from your site: it’s plagiarism!!! http://hex.io/13f3

@plagiarismtoday, 6:20am:@Wordful Anything that I can do to help with the plagiarism issue?

@Wordful, 6:26am: @plagiarismtoday Hi Jonathan–just got my content hijacked by @affiliatetips4u. It’s linked back to my site but I want it removed

@plagiarismtoday, 6:27am: @plagiarismtoday See here: RT @affiliatetips4u Please remove my content from your site: it’s plagiarism!!! http://hex.io/13f3

@affiliatetips4u, 10:28am: @Wordful sorry…. it wasn’t hi jacked it’s a good article and it was sent to us and got posted without giving reference. Sorry!

@affiliatetips4u, 10:29am: @Wordful Done… Sorry again!

@Wordful, 10:46am: @affiliatetips4u Got it. Don’t understand why you would do that in the 1st place: write your own stuff!!! #plagiarism

@affiliatetips4u, 10:40am: Site is down… Working on it… For now enjoy the post.. Sorry for the issues!

The instant bad and widespread exposure @affiliatetips4u got from me, @plagiarismtoday and my use of the hashtag #plagiarism just about wiped out whatever reputation this plagiarist was trying to build.

Within 3 1/2 hours and 9 tweets, not only was my stolen content removed, but the entire scraper site was taken down.

The plagiarist made a strategic error by being active on Twitter. Anyone who steals content for a living can’t expect to be active in social media–the honesty and transparency of the system does not permit these brazen violations.

If you’re dealing with a plagiarist who doesn’t use social media, you can still use Twitter to indirectly hit back at them using the same tactics I describe above.

You should also follow-up with an assertive comment on the offending site. Lorelle on WordPress offers some great copy and paste text that resembles a scary legal cease and desist letter.

For more reading, skim through these Problogger posts about content theft here and here. Copyscape is a tool for finding duplicate content, and John Chow recommends the feed footer Worpress plugin as well as a deep linking strategy.

When it comes to fighting plagiarism, don’t be afraid to take matters into your own hands!

Two weeks ago I heard on Twitter that Lance Armstrong (@lancearmstrong), the legendary cyclist and cancer survivor, was training and tweeting here on the Big Island of Hawaii, where I live. Within minutes, I pulled up this Tweet in which he mentions passing through my home town on his bike.

Several days and a few dozen tweets later, my family and I pass by him on the road on our way to the beach, and I snap the photo you see here (and whip out this tweet). Fast forward a few more days and he’s biking right past my driveway on a morning ride. My wife catches him that same day ending that same (100 mile!) training run with a spirited sprint on the highway.

Pretty exciting, I know, but what does it all mean?

For starters, Twitter made this experience possible. Sure, I could have caught wind that Lance was on-island and loosely crossed my fingers in the hopes of seeing him. But no, Lance was instead tweeting as naturally and casually as you would expect among fellow tweeps. No marketing or media messages, no ethereal lines of wisdom — just Lance Armstrong, a down-to-Earth guy who likes his morning coffee and late afternoon “frosty beverage” like the rest of us.

But beyond these warm and fuzzy feelings exist a profound message: web technology and social media are very rapidly eroding the once-iron grips of traditional media. If we can so easily and instantly engage with Lance Armstrong on Twitter, do we really need a large and clunky ad agency to tell us how deeply passionate he feels about cancer survivorship and his Livestrong Lance Armstrong Foundation? No thanks — Lance will just tell us himself (all 24,509 and counting), and we’ll be sure to pass it on.

And let’s not even get started on how Lance feels about cycling…

Lance is just one example of this shift in power of authority from corporation to individual. By just being himself and communicating with us one-on-one, his message is true and clear every single time. Not always so with the usual marketing suspects. You can bet this is just the beginning, too, as there are others like Lance popping up every day on Twitter and elsewhere.

As for me — I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Got to see one of the world’s greatest and most respected athletes ever train on my home turf.

Lance: Aloha and Mahalo for waving to us as you passed by, tired but still clearly inspired on your long ride to the finish.

It’s Understandable if You’re Sketched Out at First

In the beginning, I signed up for a Twitter account and did nothing with it for several months. Just couldn’t understand why people needed to tell everyone else what they were doing at any given moment: “Going store to pick up some Blue Bunny ice cream. Gotta luv Bunny Tracks while watching 24!”, or “Heading to gym w/@demmab in 20 minutes, then to vet for Twinkle’s checkup.”

Now I have to peel myself away from Twitter many times a day because it’s so fun and addicting (cliche intended).  (Check this out — it explains a lot.) It’s also useful if you need up-to-the-second information or want to know where certain people are.

Before I get too excited, though, let me back up and explain some basics:

How Twitter Works, Briefly

You sign up for a free account at http://twitter.com, and choose a unique username, so that your Twitter page reads like http://twitter.com/yourusername.

You fill out some info on yourself that you want people to see when they get to your page. Then you start by typing anything you want in a short message called a Tweet. Tweets must be no longer than 140 characters, (including all letters, numbers, spaces, punctuation, etc.). The brevity helps cut the wordy fluff found often in emails and other long-form communications.

Once you sign up on Twitter, you’ll have the freedom to follow people. What that means is you get to see their tweets on your homepage. Likewise, people can choose to follow you. If you’re new to Twitter, getting followers feels good because you feel like more people are lining up to hear what you have to say.

Totally Democratic Communication

Unlike other social media sites like Facebook or Digg, Twitter is not ad-supported. This makes it a pure and clutterless communication platform free from the usual irritating in-your-face marketing messages. It’s kind of like being a huge coffee shop and chatting with a bunch of interesting people but never feeling the pressure to buy a coffee or pastry (not to say the people you’re talking to won’t try to directly sell you something, but it’s not likely). To me, the absence of ads catalyzes a better flowing and stimulating conversation.

Also, if you look at someone’s profile, you’ll note that Twitter does not publish how long that person has been a member. A simple but brilliant omission if you think about it: any hint of seniority is neutralized, which makes joining for new members a much less intmidating and exclusive process (as in, “gee, I’ll never be as established as all the people who joined before this was popular…”) .

What gives people “higher rankings” in Twitter is their number of followers. The more followers you have, the higher level of authority, expertise and ability to captivate the Twittersphere you probably have. Kind of like votes in an election, except there is no one winner and everyone can strive to the top.

Why Twitter is So Powerful

Now that I’ve been active with Twitter for about six weeks, I can see why it’s so powerful. At its most basic level, you are given the freedom to express whatever is on your mind at any given time to a potentially attentive audience (by the way, Gary Vaynerchuk tells us your community starts with an audience of one). That alone, I must say, feels great.

Twitter is also an easy place to find answers almost instantly. Say you need to find a great restaurant in Honolulu as you’re passing through for the day. All you do is tweet the question and wait a few moments — then you’ve got your restaurant picks. Or maybe you’re looking for a programmer to help fix your website — ten qualified leads could show up in a matter of minutes. This kind of stuff only happens on Twitter.

Beyond that, Twitter allows you to direct people to whatever it is you do on the web — namely your website. You can Tweet about your latest product or idea or video and have it disseminated instantly to an eager crowd. And if what you’ve got is hot — those people will “re-tweet” your message to their followers, and so on. See how this can be huge?

Going even further, Twitter is a great place to make friends. The “feel” I get from Twitter is about 99% friendly. Everyone seems to be doing something totally unique and interesting and is willing to share it with the world. With that said, it’s not hard to start or be part of multiple conversations. Some of these friends might be people you end up netowrking with (in person?) in the future.

At perhaps the highest level of Twitter lies the chance to hear from and be heard by someone at the very top of their game. Many well-known people are using Twitter: MC Hammer, Levar Burton, Britney Spears, Barack Obama (no updates since Nov. 4), Lance Armstrong, Gary Vaynerchuk and other major movers and shakers. What nice about having them on Twitter is you really get to see their social persona in play. You may also be more careful on how you choose your words should anyone of interest be listening.

My First Ultra-Cool Twitter Experience

I had a couple of really cool encounters with cyclist Lance Armstrong thanks to Twitter, which you can read in this post.

One Good Twitter Resource

In this post I chose not to get into the features of Twitter, of which there are a few. A quick Google search will pull up thousands of resources, but I’ll give you one very good downloadable resource from blogger David Risley: http://www.davidrisley.com/twittermanual/.

Lastly, Please Follow Me

at http://twitter.com/wordful