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SECTION 23: TWITTER (Ctrl-V)
This page is my Research on Twitter Tool, Toy, or Trick? Still don't know! YOU TELL ME!
3/2/2009 7:44 AM 10 Features That Will Make Twitter Better-- Marlon’s 21-Step Cheat Sheet To Profiting From TwitterMarlon’s 21-Step Cheat Sheet To Profiting From Twitter In this article I’m sharing my cheat sheet for profiting I want to share with you how to obtain joint ventures, And you can do all of this starting 60 minutes from now – You get the idea. By using Twitter, you will: * Meet people who have lists and can promote your product. * Meet people who have the know how to move your business * Connect with people like you, so you don’t have that * Avoid the bickering, arguing junk that goes on in forums. One thing I hate about forums is a few people post all the time Forums also attract a lot of negativity. Twitter is a totally different and refreshing experience. I’ve officially been on Twitter hard core for a few weeks now. ==> You’ll meet and connect with wonderful people I’ve met some really neat people I normally would have never ==> You’ll get to discuss things with people you might not ==> You can interact with a lot of people quickly. ==> Your Twitter list builds virally People will retweet (explained below) things you say. This This is the most powerful aspect of Twitter. Now, here are my best tips on getting the most out of 1. Sign up at Twitter.com That’s step one, of course. It’ll take you about 30 seconds. 2. Download Tweetdeck It’s a freebie download for pc’s and Macs from
Tweetdeck.com. 3. Keep the negative junk off Twitter Don’t use Twitter to try to get that refund or resolve disputes. People have asked me, “Marlon, why can’t I publish info if The reason is because the PURPOSE of being on Twitter is to When you complain about other people, it REPELS positive 4. Follow people who are in your niche. Go to Twitter.com. Click on “find people.” Type in names of Click the “follow” link under their photo. This will let you 5. Make friends Do NOT go onto Twitter pitching people. Make friends. Be a 6. Learn the art of the RT RT stands for “retweet”. There’s a little icon that says RT. This is the ultimate form of sharing. You give before you Even if you only have 10 people on your list, use the RT. 7. Observe for a week Spend a week or so just watching others and learning what 8. Anything and I do mean anything you say can and will be It’s crazy. People RT things you wouldn’t think they would. 9. Share your positive energy I said this before. But I’m going to repeat. Positive energy 10. Give first Do NOT ask people to promote you or your product. GIVE first. How? I don’t know. Be creative. Think of something. Anything. Let me repeat — give first. Offer to promote others first. The #1 mistake people make is to ASK before they give. 11. If someone really annoys you, you can go to twitter.com, 12. Go to
associateprograms.com and search for affiliate People who have products with affiliate programs also have 13. Offer viral ebooks and reports on Twitter. Instead of blatantly promoting your product, it’s better Use Twitter to PULL more than to PUSH. This is PULL 14. When you run across a cool web site or resource tweet 15. Do NOT send a lot of messages without the @ symbol. 16. Go out of your way to promote others to your Twitter 17. When you find a good blog post on someone’s blog, This endears you to the blog owner. Even if they aren’t This IS the age of instant communication. 18. Learn to Twitter on your iPhone or cell. Yes, 19. Understand that in the big picture your goal is to That’s your ultimate objective. But you don’t get there It helps if you pass along cool resources and on 20. Inspire others to go for it and pursue what they Be a cheerleader for people’s highest and best 21. Use Twitter strategically to meet and network Do NOT end up twittering away time you really should Use Twitter. Don’t let it use you. Please pass this cheat sheet along to others with the Let me know if this helped or inspired you: -- http://www.danhollings.com/twitter-howto/ Do not think that just because Twitter asks for your web address in the settings account area with the silly question, "Have a homepage or a blog" means you must put in your blog or homepage URL. In fact, in many cases that is not a good idea. Instead, enter the URL to a dedicated page made specifically to greet, excite, or manifest interest from the people that will be investigating that link. It's literally like a landing page and in many cases should be design to get people to follow you. (See Tip #64 for another Bio link idea).
· Try to keep your Twitter
"Following / Follower" ratio balanced. If a potential follower sees
you are following 1532 people and only 32 are following you;
rightfully or wrong, some people might make assumptions you've not
washed your socks in months. You can prune your Followers and
Followings easily within your Twitter account or if your numbers get
big try services like Friend or Follow
http://friendorfollow.com MyTweeple
http://www.mytweeple.com/ or "Less Friends"
http://lessfriends.com/ ("Less Friends" - ha! You gotta love
that name) Make your personal picture (icon) a good one - in fact, make it great! Twitter is driven by personalities, so use a picture that expresses the "personality message" you want to get across. Logo's, text, and images without humans or animals are often too business-like and negate the driving social force that propels Twitter. What do you post? Ah, that's the magical part. Now granted, what you post depends largely on your goals and purpose with Twitter, but in general this is easy... post interesting stuff, preferably related in some way to what you do, who you are, what you (and your followers) are interested in etc. It pays to be interesting to your followers, but it pays more to be interested in your followers. Twitter is NOT a micro-advertising billboard. --2/23/2009 2:46 AM The clinical psychologist Oliver James has his reservations. “Twittering stems from a lack of identity. It’s a constant update of who you are, what you are, where you are. Nobody would Twitter if they had a strong sense of identity.” “We are the most narcissistic age ever,” agrees Dr David Lewis, a cognitive neuropsychologist and director of research based at the University of Sussex. “Using Twitter suggests a level of insecurity whereby, unless people recognise you, you cease to exist. It may stave off insecurity in the short term, but it won’t cure it.” As someone who has
been on Twitter for more than 2 years, back when my then 400-500
followers placed me in the top Twitter users in Australia (depending
on the service, I’m now anywhere from top 10 through to top 30) I
certainly can say that I don’t tend to use Twitter as some sort of
stalking tool to fulfill my life. Indeed, Twitter, particularly in
the early days was very much a social
networking tool where people with similar
interests, or in a similar geographic location shared. I also don’t
tweet everything, although I do tweet the mundane; I tweet when I
feel like, and don’t try to paint a picture of someone I’m not. It’s
probably to my detriment, but I’d rather 5,500 followers who care to
follow me for me, as opposed to 20 or 30,000 who are following for
some picture of me I’d paint that isn’t real. Life is to short for
that, although I don’t begrudge anyone who does But having said that, there’s a real purity to at least some of what we see with stars on Twitter. Be it Stephen Fry stuck in a lift, or Shaq O’Neil meeting fans in a restaurant. Twitter cuts out the middle man, so that “stars” can communicate honestly, and directly with fans. That, when done properly is a radical change in the norm, and one for the better. I’m the first to admit that telling the difference between controlled message and real is sometimes difficult, but it’s fairly clear to those who watch which stars are being open and honest upfront, and those that are spinning a line. -- 2/18/2009 3:44 AM Third party services that sent out automatic direct messages to new followers were all the rage a few months back. Even still it’s a popular solution for the “lazy twitterer” hoping to snag some extra traffic for their company’s blog or website. There are two main websites responsible for the auto DM epidemic, SocialToo and TweetLater. Both are great sites that have just been abused by their users. Thankfully, both sites recognize the auto DM problem and have provided ways to opt out from receiving further communications via automated direct messages from their sites. To put a complete stop from receiving these messages you should opt out from both sites. SocialToo is currently the harder of the two to opt out from.
You should be all set. Now on to TweetLater. Opting Out From TweetLater
That is all. You will receive a confirmation DM from @OptMeOut at which point you can unfollow them or just be on your way. The best part is that you do not need a TweetLater account to opt out. -- http://www.tweetlater.com/optout How To Opt-Out Of Receiving Automated Welcome DMsAs you know, TweetLater users can automate their Twitter accounts to automatically send welcome DMs to their new followers. As a past or potential recipient of those DMs, TweetLater offers you a super-easy way to opt-out and never again receive an automated welcome DM sent by TweetLater. Please follow the
steps below: TweetLater will, within a few minutes of you sending your DM, stop sending you any further automated welcome DMs. You will receive one last DM to confirm that you've been opted-out. You do not need an account at TweetLater to opt-out. Anybody on Twitter can opt-out. Your decision to opt-out remains private. We will never disclose it to anybody, unless required by law. If you ever change your mind about opting out, please submit a Help Desk ticket and ask us to remove you from the opt-out list. TweetLater users, you will still auto-follow the people who have opted-out. They just won't be sent your welcome DM. -- 2/18/2009 9:46 AM Sell YourselfIt's not all about your employer. All social networks blur the line between work and personal, which means you can use these networks to build your own brand. "There's an opportunity lost by not being on the larger social networks," says Dan Schawbel, a social media specialist at EMC and author of the upcoming book on personal branding titled "Me 2.0". "People are already searching for other people. Recruiters are looking to fill a void. If they don't come across your name, you'll miss out." Schawbel equates one's presence on social networks as a living resume that can show both your professional skills as well as everything else you do in life. "You're painting a picture of who you are," he says. Search engine optimization techniques help put company sites higher up in search results pages. Schawbel says you can use similar techniques to improve your search engine ranking by linking your multiple social profiles together. This is particularly important on Twitter and LinkedIn, where your information is more easily trolled by search engine crawlers. If you have a blog, make sure your various profiles link to it, thereby increasing your search engine worthiness. Facebook is a walled garden and the information within is not as easily indexable, but is nonetheless valuable because it can function as a "mailing list" when you're looking for a job or opportunity. Building such a network does not happen overnight and should be done over time. "If you forge the relationship over time, then you are seen as a contributor to the community so more people are apt to help you out," Schawbel says. On the flip side, the blurring of the personal/business boundary in social networks can have negative ramifications if the wrong things are posted. Common sense advice from Nina Buik, president of HP's Connect user community: "Look ahead 10 years from now, whatever you post on [a social network] now; will you be happy with in 10 years?" Get Answers to QuestionsGot a technical question that needs answering? If you have a big enough following on Twitter or Facebook and/or belong to certain groups on LinkedIn, posing your question to these groups can be a timesaver. "2,200 people are following me in some way and any given time I put something out there, some percentage of those folks are paying attention and may answer," says Dan York, director of emerging communications technology at Voxeo. He adds that he can save hours of time by posting a question to his Twitter network, which helped him solve a vexing Wordpress mirroring issue recently. Social networks can also be used to get a feel for how different industries handle technical and business issues. "I am very interested to get the CIO perspective from outside the legal environment," says Jeffrey Brandt, chief information and knowledge officer at the Washington, DC-based law firm Crowell & Moring. Brandt belongs to a number of knowledge management and CIO-related groups on LinkedIn and finds "a lot of people's thought processes are amazing." -- 2/19/2009 6:37 AM Twitter use grows by tweets and boundsThe Twitter community is growing. A Pew Internet & American Life Project survey released last week shows that about 11 percent of online adults have used Twitter or a similar "micro-blogging" service, which allow users to post quick, brief messages to each other via a computer or mobile phone. In May, only 6 percent said they were using Twitter and in November, that number jumped to 9 percent. As you might expect, young adults are the largest percentage of Twitter users. The median age of a Twitter user is 31. Here's the breakdown by age group: · 19 percent of online adults ages 18 to 24 · 20 percent of 25 to 34 · 10 percent of 35 to 44 · 5 percent of 45 to 54 · 4 percent of 55 to 64 · 2 percent of 65 and older The numbers show that Twitter, while growing, has yet to enter the mainstream. By comparison, a Pew study released in January found that 35 percent of online adults have a profile on a social-networking site such as Facebook, MySpace or LinkedIn. -- 2/20/2009 4:37 AM http://latimesblogs.latimes.com Jack Dorsey on the Twitter ecosystem, journalism and how to reduce reply spam. Part IITwitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. (Credit: Joi Ito via Flickr) On Wednesday we posted the first half of an interview with Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey (@jack), in which he talked about the conceptual roots of the site. This is the second half of that talk. Here Dorsey speaks more about Twitter's contours as a communications medium, its evolution and how its strong suit -- so far, at least -- is in exposing the present moment, rather than the past. In the first part of the interview you talked a lot about how both the inspiration and architecture of Twitter came largely from the mobile world. But it seems like more and more people are using it from static locations -- laptops and desktops -- where all the Web's info and tool sets are much more accessible. The Web provides a very easy way to immediately grasp what's going on. It really offers the transparency, so you can see, especially with the search engine, how people are using Twitter at one glance. The phone doesn't allow for that. A lot of different [geographic] markets are using SMS [text messaging] more than here in the U.S. I think what we're seeing here with SMS is that people are still getting more comfortable with it. It's relatively new in the grand scheme of things. Europe has had it and been comfortable with it for over 10 years, and we just got comfortable in 2006. There's still some maturity in terms of using mobile technology in the American culture and what that means. But the mobile aspect of the service is really engaging, and you see that a lot in these "massively shared experiences" that we've done well at: natural disasters, man-made disasters, events, conferences, presidential elections. A lot of these people are not sitting in front of a laptop screen -- they're typing from their phone. We feel that even though we started with that, and it lessened a bit in relative proportion, it'll continue to increase. Do people use the service differently depending on whether they're mobile or fixed? Yes, that's one of the things about Twitter, is that the experience degrades gracefully. When you're out mobilely and you're probably at a party or you're traveling, etc., you're sharing that experience. When you're in front of a computer, you have a little more time to compose yourself. You may have more thoughtfulness in your message, you may have more reflection. It's a little bit less off-the-cuff. And maybe a little bit slower as well, but at the same time, in terms of consumption of the information, you can just take in huge amounts of information in a very rich way in a short time. So I think it really depends on what you're asking -- if it's production of the content or the consumption. But I absolutely feel that Twitter scales to every end of that spectrum. How do you think of Twitter? Is it a service, a medium, a piece of software, what? I feel that it's something new. I think it's a new way to communicate. It has a new take on the address book. It's a new way to interact with people. And at the same time, it does a very good job of exposing what's happening in the world right now: You can see what's ... ... trending globally, you can limit that locally and figure out what's trending within a five-mile radius of you, or you can use it socially and figure out what's trending within your own social network. That's where the newness is. I just haven't seen anything like that before. When I think of Twitter, I think of -- it's really hard to define because we're still coming up with the vocabulary -- but I think it's defined a new behavior that's very different than what we've seen before. So yeah: new medium. What's been one of the most surprising steps in Twitter's evolution for you? Well, we really haven't changed the application or feature set in over two years. It's pretty much maintained the original vision since Day One. And that really adds a lot of weight to the concept and how much desire there is for communication of this sort. Back in the day we thought, well, if we get to this many users or this level of relevancy in the mainstream, we're going to have to add a bunch of features, and make this or that group of people happy... but that really hasn't come to pass. The only substantial thing we've added to the service is search. Which is huge, but it doesn't change the fundamental aspect of what Twitter is. Search does a great job of exposing what's going on, but it's not changing the interaction dramatically, it's just making it much, much easier. So the ability to have a service that really hasn't changed and is still growing by leaps and bounds is astonishing to me because it's like, wow, a simple concept like that -- the essence of some communication pulled out from other mediums -- really has wings on its own. But even if the service itself isn't evolving, the community and ecosystem around it is growing. And that's the trick. The concept is so simple and so open-ended that people can make of it whatever they wish. They seek value and they add value. I've always said that Twitter is whatever you make of it. Because the first complaint we hear from everyone is: Why would I want to join this stupid useless thing and know what my brother's eating for lunch? But that really misses the point because Twitter is fundamentally recipient-controlled -- you choose to listen and you choose to leave. But you also choose what to put down and what to share. So if you decide to hook your plants up to Twitter and have it report when it needs to be watered, then that's a valid usage, or if you just decide to report what you're eating for lunch, that's a valid usage too. How do you feel about the role Twitter is playing in news gathering and news creating? Suddenly you have all these people on the street roaming about, and they're able to report on everything they see. So a certain mass of them can report on the earthquake they just felt, and another mass reports on what they felt about the Obama inauguration, and another group on the homeless issues in San Francisco. You've got a further richness to add to a typical journalistic process. And when you have a mass of people updating about a particular thing, you're exposing a trend: This is happening right now in this location or on this topic. It gives you an immediacy and relevancy for what people are talking about right now. Some people follow thousands or tens of thousands of people. What's the use of that? Doesn't it undercut half of the point of the service, which is to get a coherent stream of incoming information? I don't know how people do it. I personally can't do it. I don't follow people in the traditional way. There are a few people whose messages I get delivered in real time via SMS. So those people are very close to me, or I'm around them. Like when I'm visiting New York, I turn on my New York friends just because I'm more interested in their particular interruptions. And then I follow like 300 people on the Web. But I don't go back in time. You're kind of as good as your last update. That's what you're currently thinking or doing, or your current approach towards life. If that really interests me, I go to that person's profile page and read back a little bit. But in terms of my timeline, I'm just not obsessive about going all the way back in time and catching every single message that people have updated about. It's only relevant in the now, unless I'm fascinated by it. I imagine that people follow a lot of people just to get a sense of, like, I've got a full room here, and I've got a lot of people that are giving wildly different opinions and updates -- I'll try them out for a time and if I don't like what they say next, I can very easily leave them. But like any other technology, we figure out what our relationship is to it. Some people want to go big right away and filter out, some people want to stay small and add people as they find them. And some people are constantly editing the balance between both. It's just important that the technology allows for all of those approaches. Is there any idea of splitting or filtering the stream so you won't get so much '@reply traffic' -- where you can see the people you're following replying individually to their followers? There's actually a setting. If you go to your settings page and you say, show me @replies ["at replies"] only from those I'm following. So if my co-founder Biz [Stone] replies to his friend Joe, if I set that setting I won't see that reply, I'll just see Biz's reply to anyone I'm following. So it's kind of an unknown feature but we do have it in there, and I definitely keep it on because it's just way too much information. I don't need to see all these diverse conversations happening all over the Internet. I only care about those people that are conversing together that I know. So when Biz is replying to @ev[an Williams], then I'll see Biz's @reply. Got it. Thanks for the tech support. Yep. -- http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/
Twitter's
prehistoric document, circa 2000. An early temporary name was "Stat.us."
Sitting in the Flickr archives is a nearly 10-year-old document uploaded a couple of years ago by its author, Jack Dorsey (@jack), who started Twitter in 2006 along with co-founders Evan Williams (@ev) and Biz Stone (@biz). The legal-pad sketch of the idea that would become Twitter has been noticed before, but given all the recent hype, we thought we'd track down Dorsey and ask him about it in a little more detail. In the following interview, Dorsey uses the document to touch on aspects of the micromessaging service's history, including the inspirations and constraints that came to define one of the Web's most rapidly growing information channels. Twitter didn't just fly out of thin air and land on a branch. As Dorsey explains, it has conceptual roots in the world of vehicle dispatch -- where cars and bikes zooming around town must constantly squawk to each other about where they are and what they're up to. It was when Dorsey saw these systems through the eyes of the social, mobile Web, where anyone can squawk from anywhere, that Twitter's Big Idea was born. Here's the second part of the interview, posted Thursday. Is this the founding Twitter document? It has very special significance -- it's hanging in the office somewhere with one other page. Whenever I'm thinking about something, I really like to take out the yellow notepad and get it down. Twitter has been my life's work in many senses. It started with a fascination with cities and how they work, and what’s going on in them right now. That led me to the only thing that was tractable in discovering that, which was bicycle messengers and truck couriers roaming about, delivering packages. That allowed me to create this visualization -- to create software that allowed me to see how this was all moving in a city. Then we started adding in the next element, which are taxi cabs. Now we have another entity roaming about the metropolis, reporting where it is and what work it has, going over GPS and CB radio or cellphone. And then you get to the emergency services: ambulances, firetrucks and police -- and suddenly you have have this very rich sense of what’s happening right now in the city. But it’s missing the public. It's missing normal people. And that’s where Twitter came in. What really brought me to that conclusion ... ... was instant messenger. This aspect where you can just locate your buddy list and at a glance locate what your friends are up to, or what they say they’re up to. I found the same parallels in dispatch -- here’s a bunch of ambulances and couriers reporting where they are, and here’s my friends. Now, the problem with IM is that you’re bound to the computer, so it really limited the interestingness of the messages. So that document was around 2000-2001 when I really got into IM and a service called LiveJournal. And it was crystallizing the thought: What if you have LiveJournal, but you just make it more live? You have these people watching your journal, but it all happens in real time, and you can update it from anywhere. That document was an exploration of that concept. When did you first try to build out the idea? I tried it back in 2000 with the first device that RIM made -- the RIM 850, which was the predecessor to the BlackBerry. A very simple squat little e-mail device. It had four lines of text and a typical BlackBerry keyboard. They were like $400, and it would just do e-mail. I wrote a very simple program to listen to an e-mail address and take any updates from me and send them out to a list of my friends. And my friends could reply to that e-mail and tell me what they’re doing. But the problem was that no one else had those devices –- so again, it limited the experience of that. We were limited until 2005-2006 when SMS took off in this country and I could finally send a message from Cingular to Verizon. And that just crystallized -- well, now’s the time for this idea. And we started working on it. It was really SMS that inspired the further direction -- the particular constraint of 140 characters was kind of borrowed. You have a natural constraint with the couriers when you update your location or with IM when you update your status. But SMS allowed this other constraint, where most basic phones are limited to 160 characters before they split the messages. So in order to minimize the hassle and thinking around receiving a message, we wanted to make sure that we were not splitting any messages. So we took 20 characters for the user name, and left 140 for the content. That’s where it all came from. For any potential Twitter historians out there, can you offer a few more details about the drawing -- the little googly eyes, for example? The little eyeballs were "watching." The concept was watching before we kind of switched it and developed it into "following." So you could watch or unwatch someone -- but we found a better word -- follow or unfollow. The important consideration there was that on Twitter, you’re not watching the person, you’re watching what they produce. It’s not a social network, so there’s no real social pressure inherent in having to call them a "friend" or having to call them a relative, because you’re not dealing with them personally, you’re dealing with what they’ve put out there. The document's user interface metaphor is very similar [to how Twitter turned out]. You have a little box to "set" your update, and past updates would go down into the timeline below. Immediately the idea was device-agnostic. You could deliver over e-mail or deliver over Jabber, because IM was a real-time mechanism -- and eventually you could deliver over SMS as well. And the only other aspect on that page was how to find other people. If you know someone, you type in their name or e-mail address, and you can immediately start following their updates. What are the "authentication triples" on the upper left there? I was trying to be a little bit too smart, and was trying to figure out ways to do everything without a password. But that’s very difficult and requires way too much thought. So we punted on that. But someone will figure it out. [laughs] Then when did the service's name morph from “Status/Stat.us” to “twittr” to Twitter? The working name was just "Status" for a while. It actually didn’t have a name. We were trying to name it, and mobile was a big aspect of the product early on ... We liked the SMS aspect, and how you could update from anywhere and receive from anywhere. We wanted to capture that in the name -- we wanted to capture that feeling: the physical sensation that you’re buzzing your friend’s pocket. It’s like buzzing all over the world. So we did a bunch of name-storming, and we came up with the word "twitch," because the phone kind of vibrates when it moves. But "twitch" is not a good product name because it doesn’t bring up the right imagery. So we looked in the dictionary for words around it, and we came across the word "twitter," and it was just perfect. The definition was "a short burst of inconsequential information," and "chirps from birds." And that’s exactly what the product was. The whole bird thing: bird chirps sound meaningless to us, but meaning is applied by other birds. The same is true of Twitter: a lot of messages can be seen as completely useless and meaningless, but it’s entirely dependent on the recipient. So we just fell in love with the word. It was like, "Oh, this is it." We can use it as a verb, as a noun, it fits with so many other words. If you get too many messages you’re "twitterpated" -- the name was just perfect. But you needed that short code -– in order to operate SMS you need the short code to operate with this cellular administration. So we were trying to get "twttr" -- because we could just take out the vowels and get the 5-digit code. But unfortunately Teen People had that code -– it was ‘txttp’ [Text TP]. So we just decided to get an easy-to-remember short code [40404], and put the vowels back in. So Twitter was it, and it’s been a big part of our success. Naming something and getting the branding right is really important. Updated Feb. 19: Here's the second part of the interview, in which Dorsey talks about the growing Twitter ecosystem, the service's effect on news gathering and why he doesn't like to "go back in time." -- 2/21/2009 8:02 AM http://latimesblogs.latimes.com Twitter's 'suggested users' get mammoth boost from new feature [UPDATED]Some high-profile Twitter accounts have been seeing astronomical jumps in the number of users subscribing to their profile updates -- tens of thousands of new followers, in some cases. A feature launched last month, called "suggested users," contributed to the spike, explained Evan Williams, Twitter's co-founder and chief executive. As part of the sign-up process, new users are now shown a sort-of featured personalities list that includes a wide variety of popular people and companies. Included are U.K. newspaper The Guardian's technology page, Web personality Felicia Day, TechCrunch, actor Rainn Wilson, computer maker Dell, grocer Whole Foods, the New York Times and CNN. Since Twitter began endorsing a handful of personalities in mid-January, The Guardian was among several entities to reap a subscriber windfall. Its account jumped from about 4,000 followers to 66,000 in about a month, according to stat-tracking service Twitter Counter. And within the last two weeks, @GuardianTech added new users at a pace about 300% faster than the previous two weeks. Day, an Internet video maven, experienced similar results. She has jumped from 20,000 to 83,000 since mid-January. TechCrunch went ... ... from 41,000 to 111,000 in the same period. The New York Times' Twitter account increased its subscriber base by a factor of six -- to 145,000. Williams said Twitter added the feature because many users fall off from the service quickly after singing up, likely because they're not sure what to do next. "The reason we created this feature is because lots of people sign up to Twitter but aren't following anyone, so we're trying to help get them started," Williams wrote in a comment on a blog post about the follower phenomenon. Some bloggers and Twitter micro-bloggers took issue with the approach. Since the service began, they said, many Twitter users have invested time and energy into building their user bases into a valuable resource. They complained that the changes interfere with that kind of organic growth. "People who see the importance of Twitter start asking these kinds of questions," said Leo Laporte, who runs the TWIT podcasting network and until recently was one of Twitter’s top five users. He is now the 27th-most popular user, according to Twitterholic.com. "Sometimes it’s a little bit concerning. Because Twitter has a lot of power to, with simple changes like that, change the ecology of the system." Twitter co-founder Biz Stone acknowledged that offering "suggested users" wasn't the ideal solution and suggested that the service might evolve to cater to particular users' interests. "Right now it's sort of like staff picks at your local bookstore," he wrote in an e-mail. "Later, we hope to make this smarter." But a more dynamic -- and less subjective -- recommendation system may not be coming any time soon. "It's not super-high on the priority list," Stone said. Fair enough. But your staff picks include two New York Times accounts and not a single one of the LA Times' 80 Twitter feeds? That's a slap in the face, Twitter. Just kidding. We're still cool. Updated 11 p.m.: An earlier version of this post said the LA Times has nearly three dozen Twitter feeds. There are actually 80. --http://twitter.com/search/users Twitter User Search:Who are you looking for?Search for a username, first or last name -- 2/16/2009 9:39 PM http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC/72690 8. TWITTER HAS A FATAL FLAWThe fact that one’s followers are explicit is bonkers. One of my clients had a crazy idea - to simply follow all his competitors followers. He made a heap of additional sales that day. Is being able to see, and contact, someone’s followers a fatal flaw in Twitter? I don’t know but it is definitely exploitable. 11. THE TOOLS OFTEN DON’T WORKNot only does twitter break quite a lot (although it has been remarkably stable lately), the tools built on top of twitter break even more and the tools that you use to interact with twitter (Twitterific, TweetDeck, Thwirl) are also a pile of poo that regularly breaks. I’m amazed at how strong the need to “have an audience” and “feeling like you have something to do” is that people are happy to put up with something so flaky. The strength of those needs worries me. Having said all that, I’m far from being a twitter humbugger, I love the mobile integration (on the iphone) the almost right now immediacy, the austere simplicity of 140 characters, tweetpics and being able to GEO locate your tweets to say “I am here”. I worry about twitter.com’s seeming lack of concern about lack of income because I’m really going to miss twitter once they’ve burned their way through the latest raft of funding. --2/14/2009 4:10 PM A Successful FailureYiying Lu, an artist and a designer in Sydney, Australia, has made a number of appealing illustrations, many featuring animals. But one image in her portfolio is far more likely to be familiar to at least some of you than any of the others: the one depicting a peaceful whale held aloft by a small flock of birds. To certain particularly dedicated users of the online social-networking service Twitter, the “Fail Whale” is as iconic as any corporate logo, and far more beloved. Some have bought the T-shirt, and some have joined the fan club. Most recently, Fail Whale earned Lu a Shorty — an award devised by Sawhorse Media, an Internet company, to praise all manner of Twitter expression — winning her a trip to the New York awards ceremony in mid-February. As with many Web-popularity stories, there’s a lot of flukiness to Fail Whale’s rise. For starters, Lu had never heard of Twitter when she created the image (which she called Lifting Up a Dreamer) as an electronic birthday card for a friend overseas while she was still finishing her visual communications degree at the University of Technology, Sydney. In July 2007, she uploaded a number of her illustrations, including that one, to a service called iStockphoto. That’s where, almost a year later, it came to the attention of Biz Stone, a Twitter founder. If you’ve managed to miss the hype around Twitter, it’s generally described as a “mini-blogging” tool. Its estimated five-million-plus users communicate in bursts of 140 characters or less to those friends or strangers who follow their “tweets.” Last May, during a big popularity spike, Twitter experienced regular service outages; users were greeted with a picture of a cat at a computer during these down stretches. Stone decided that was too jokey and turned to iStockPhoto, where he encountered Lu’s illustration, which nicely suggested a team effort to accomplish something difficult. Plus, it was supercute. He paid a few dollars to use the illustration under iStockPhoto’s standard license, which grants a perpetual worldwide right for such online uses. What happened next was chronicled almost in real time by online observers like ReadWriteWeb and Widgets Lab: a Twitter user dubbed the image Fail Whale; another created a Twitter feed and Web site for the mascot; a third found the image on iStockPhoto. This revealed the name of the whale’s creator and suggested a mission for fans, recalls Tom Limongello, a Twitter enthusiast who works in business development for Crisp Wireless: “Let’s promote her.” The Fail Whale community sent a box of T-shirts to Twitter headquarters. “Mixed feelings,” Evan Williams, another Twitter founder, tweeted upon receipt. But he honored the request for a public shout-out to Lu. Lu was flattered to learn about her illustration’s quasi-icon status, she says, but of course a stock image’s popularity does not translate directly into revenue. (She has since removed it from iStockPhoto.) The T-shirt stunt ended up being a kind of branding event for the artist. Limongello figures the number of tweets, blog posts and other online info-bursts must have numbered in the tens of thousands. This helped Lu to sell a few thousand dollars’ worth of whaled T-shirts, mugs and prints through Zazzle.com and other services. She also got a lot more attention from design and illustration clients. “It fits Twitter’s brand so well,” Lu says. “I don’t know if it’s fate or a coincidence.” Either way, it’s surprising — as if a song heard mostly as hold music hit the Billboard charts. It probably took two specific factors to create the accidental icon. First, it’s a lesson in the power of raw repetition — the “mere exposure effect” identified by psychology studies that suggests we like things more simply by seeing them more often. Second, Twitter enthusiasts are almost alarmingly zealous. Even now the Fail Whale Twitter feed continues to share news of, say, the most recent Fail Whale-related video on YouTube. An e-card visual emerging as an artist’s best-known image might also inspire mixed feelings. “It’s not like I only created this fish,” Lu says with a laugh. On the other hand, she has become more interested in exploring the “animal/technology metaphor” and in extending her illustration into the physical world by way of goods. Someone suggested a plush-toy version of the Fail Whale, for instance, and she says she likes the sound of that. But she would probably need to find a partner other than Twitter to make it happen. Stone says, understandably, that his company would prefer the whale to be a memory, not merchandise. -- 2/13/2009 10:47 PM http://www.socialcomputingmagazine.com Twitter as a Tool for Business: 25 Tips for Going Viral on Twitter One of the great benefits of Twitter is that it allows for content to spread rapidly and virally across the network and allows for many people to easily discover and share your Tweets. Twitter is a conversationally driven social network with very few points of friction and allows for your messages to flow to large numbers of people quickly. Twitter users will share content that they discover and that they find interesting, valuable, insightful or newsworthy that they think will benefit their network of followers. A retweet could best be described as the act of sharing content discovered on Twitter to a network of followers or to ask for your followers to echo and pass forward and share with their Twitter network. Retweet sharing can have huge benefits for your business. Tapping this viral behavioral component and leveraging the psychological carriers is crucial if you want your Twitter messages to reach as large an audience as possible. When you ask someone to retweet your content; you are effectively asking them to "endorse" and share the content with their network of followers.
Understand that the intent is to get your retweeted content to flow as deep and as wide as possible so that the numbers of impressions, consumption points, visibility, reach and interactions are as large as possible. Users will typically share this information with a Retweet of the information that they discovered with attribution to the person that they discovered it from. (eg. "RT @rumford check out this report that I found regarding social analytics trends www.website.com/report please retweet") Think of Twitter as the ultimate Word of Mouth network where great content gets shared at a high velocity. It is not uncommon for 1 tweet to be echoed (retweeted) by several hundred people in just a few hours. 7 Benefits of Having Your Content Retweeted
The number of times your content is retweeted is based upon a combination of the following 10 factors. They affect the likelihood of your content spreading virally on Twitter.
Here is a little known metric behind the behavioral phenomenon of retweeting and how users choose to engage in this behavior within the Twitter eco-system. Less than 1/5th of 1% of retweets get over 100 retweets. Hitting that sweet spot of getting into that 1 percentile is an art and a science. Over 95 % of all retweets get fewer than 5 people retweeting the message. There is an even smaller percentage of tweets that get retweeted more than 20 times and an even smaller percentage that get retweeted over 100 times. If you get 100 people to retweet your original content post, you have hit what can be considered a home run.
~1.5% of all twitter content is from people retweeting information that they want to share. 93% of Twitter users retweet on some level and 21% retweet frequently. There are many reasons why people choose to, or not to share and retweet content to their followers. Knowing why people choose to retweet content is critical. Knowing why they won't retweet your content is equally important. I am going to share the reasons that the majority of retweets fail to gain traction. The Top 15 Reasons Your Requests for Retweets FAIL
A tool that you can use to monitor the freshest and most retweeted links is Retweetist. It is also relatively useful in exposing the most retweeted users and emerging retweet topics on Twitter in an easy to consume format. It updates very frequently and publishes stats on the most retweeted users of the previous hour and the associated tweet. You can also see the Top 50 most retweeted users in the past 24 hour period. This is a great tool and in fact it tends to drive even more retweets once you gain visibility on the different lists that they publish. -- 2/13/2009 1:21 PM Twitter: Productivity Tool or Time Waster?There are two schools of thought to the Twitter value debate. For the uninitiated - or those who tried Twitter once or twice and just didn’t “get it” - Twitter is a nonsensical waste of time. For the Twitter converts, and dare I say “addicts,” Twitter is an essential part of their daily communications and work process, a can’t-work-without tool. In this post I’m going to look at 10 ways Twitter can really help your productivity, and 10 ways that it can waste your time. Here are ten ways Twitter can be a productivity tool: 1. The Brevity - Twitter only requires you to read 140 characters or less per tweet, which usually translates to under 30 words. A good Twitterer can pack a lot of punch with those few, carefully chosen words so you get easily-digestible chunks of information. 2. The Filtering - Some of the best Twitterers do little more than telling you what they are reading that is of interest. They are like human filters for any number of areas and can be extremely helpful when it comes to sifting through the noise to get the information needed to stay on top of your industry. 3. The Live Answers - For me, nothing is more helpful than the speedy responses Twitter provided to any technical question I have. I’m rarely stymied for long about issues with WordPress or questions about Facebook. One of my followers or friends knows the answer, or at least knows someone who does. 4. The Reminders - A simple Twitter application like Timer on Twitter can send you helpful reminder tweets any time. Send a direct message to @timer, and the program will tweet you back with a reminder after the time you specify. For example, send “d timer 35 go to meeting” and you’ll get a message reminding you in 35 minutes to get to that meeting. 5. The Alerts - Need to keep up with what people are Twittering about your clients, your company or you? Set up alerts on Twilert to notify you of the results of key word searches. I set them up to arrive at the end of each day and often the results lead to additional business contacts as well as new fans, followers and potential customers for my clients. 6. The Network - There is something special about my Twitter network that is hard to define. The feeling of connectedness and immediacy on Twitter is far greater than on Facebook or LinkedIn, for example. Even when it comes to touching base with my virtual team, Twitter seems much more direct than even email at times (for those members of the team who have embraced Twitter, of course). 7. The “Viral-ness” - Have you felt the power of the retweet yet? When it comes to spreading the word about something, you can often do it more quickly and efficiently by simply requesting a retweet and then watch your message go viral. For greatest effectiveness, you need to be willing to return the favor, as appropriate. 8. The Multiple Platforms - There is something to be said for the ability to access Twitter in many different ways. While many of us stick to a single platform for the majority of our Twittering, the fact that it is so portable (on my iPhone), so flexible (like the way you can access multiple accounts at once with an app such as Twhirl), so dashboard-like (with an app like Tweetdeck), so mobile (via plain vanilla SMS), and so easy (via the Web) makes Twitter a pervasive tool that you don’t ever have to be without. 9. The Integration - As more applications use Twitter in clever ways (like the project management tool Joint Contact) or develop Twitter-like tools (like Yammer), just by knowing how to use Twitter effectively you are developing a new skillset that will be useful beyond Twitter.com, and help ease learning curves when adopting new applications. 10. The Love - Feel the Twitter Love. You feel it when you tweet a link to your latest blog post or podcast. You feel it when you ask your followers for support on a project. Twitter is full of love that can ease a web worker’s workload (quickly identifying outsourcing talent), can ease a web worker’s frustration (nothing better than a good sounding board), and ease a web worker’s soul (like ego-stroking tweets from twittering fans). Just to be fair and balanced, here are 10 ways Twitter can be a time waster: 1. The Brevity - Trying to compose a meaningful message in 140 characters or less can turn into a chore. Especially when you end up slicing and dicing your tweets with surgical precision, trying to shave off a character or two and not change the meaning of your tweet. (Don’t worry: eventually, tweeting becomes second nature.) 2. The Mindless Chatter - Yes, some people tweet what they had for breakfast. Yes, some even tweet when they are in the bathroom. No, you don’t have to listen. 3. The Antics - People on Twitter like to have fun. Whether it is Stripper Fridays, or some other avatar-changing wave, or retweeting a link to watch the Shiba Inu puppies, there are those who love playing on Twitter. You can ignore them or unfollow them if their game-playing and fun-loving tweets really become disruptive to your work flow. 4. The Following Emails - I have a love/hate relationship with the emails that tell me who is following me. I get a charge out of seeing the diverse people who chose to pay attention to my tweets and find several interesting new people to follow in the process. But going through those emails is a big time suck. Whatever you do, don’t subscribe to Qwitter to see who unfollowed you and when. Those emails will drive you crazy and inevitably batter your ego to a pulp. 5. The Firehose - If you follow a lot of people,
there is no way you will be able to pay attention to all the tweets
you receive. Don’t even try. Come up with your own way of digesting
the Twitterstream, or pare down to just the handful of Twitterers
who you really care about or who have the information you need to
know. 7. The Compulsion - If you are the type of person who is constantly checking emails just in case you received another one, then you may be the type of person who compulsively keeps check for replies. Has someone @’d you? Has someone DM’d you? 8. The Sea of SMS - Note to everyone just starting out with Twitter: do not turn on SMS to receive tweets. If you do activate SMS, do so with the greatest of care and only if you have an unlimited SMS plan. SMS’d tweets can cripple productivity by interrupting you every other minute. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. 9. The Fail Whale - Even though Twitter does seem a lot more stable of late, there is nothing that puts a damper on the immediacy and speed of Twitter communications than the dreaded - but awfully cute - Fail Whale. While it is hard to fathom so many of us putting up with that kind of failure, somehow we all work around it. 10. The Hate - When there is negativity on Twitter, the speed of retweeting and Google pickup can suddenly thrust you into the non-productive realm of crisis communications and reputation management. Paying attention to what is being said about you on Twitter and throughout the social media-sphere is smart, but letting the bad stuff get to you and drag you down can stop you getting important things done. -- 2/13/2009 5:02 AM Behind the Twitter Mad-nessThe people behind three of the most mysterious Twitter accounts, those themed after the AMC television show "Mad Men," have kept their identities a secret—until now. So who are @PeggyOlson, @BettyDraper and @Roger_Sterling? Together, the characters from the halcyon days have more than 24,000 followers on the microblog and have written nearly 3,000 tweets, as posts on Twitter are called. @PeggyOlson is Carri Bugbee, a marketer from Portland, Ore. The blonde 40-something with signature red glasses has painstakingly written more than 1,000 tweets in character since she started the account last August. It's a relief to have an entire week without Pete Campbell in the office. It can be hard to get work done with him lurking around my desk, tweeted @PeggyOlson. @BettyDraper is Helen Klein Ross, a New York ad woman. The mother of teenagers has spent more than three decades in the advertising industry and is currently a freelance copywriter. Doing the dishes. Taking a drag of my cigarette. Not easy, in rubber gloves, tweeted @BettyDraper. And @Roger_Sterling is Michael Bissell, the owner of an Internet application firm in Portland, Ore. Mr. Bissell joined at the encouragement of Ms. Bugbee. He originally hoped to be the Don Draper character, but that was already taken by another ad industry person, who has since revealed himself. You have to be thankfull for one good thing about the holidays -- hot toddys and egg nog. And little black dressess at the holiday parties, tweeted @Roger_Sterling. Ms. Bugbee, the woman behind @PeggyOlson, revealed her identity this evening at the Shorty Awards, a celebration of all things Twitter. @PeggyOlson won the competition's Advertising category, and Ms. Bugbee decided to use the ceremony as her coming-out event.
Ms. Bugbee, who has 11,098 followers and counting, has kept her real life a secret since she first made the @PeggyOlson account last August. Soon after she signed up, Ms. Bugbee saw that other "Mad Men" fans had done the same. Dozens of other people made similar character accounts, everyone from @Don_Draper, the star of the show, to @ken_cosgrove, a minor character. Ms. Bugbee encouraged her offline friend, Mr. Bissell, to take part. "I channeled Roger Sterling a lot better than I had thought," he said. "I've been in the agency world, I run a company, I'm able to talk about the woes of being at the helm." And, he added, "I'm a bit of a flirt." But just as the "Mad Men" twitterers were taking off, Ms. Bugbee's account froze, mid-tweet. Then she got a vague email from Twitter that accused her of suspicious behavior. "I couldn't believe it," Ms. Bugbee said. "I was like wringing my hands. 'No, no, don't take Peggy away from me. I've grown attached to her.' " Ms. Bugbee, who now runs the firm Big Deal PR, was worried about a possible lawsuit from AMC or some other penalty for copyright infringement. One sleepless night she scoured the Web and learned that AMC and its digital marketing agency Deep Focus had asked Twitter to take down the accounts. But within a few days, the accounts had been restored. AMC reached out to Ms. Bugbee, apologized for the incident and said they never intended for the "Mad Men" Twittering to stop. Ms. Bugbee resumed her Twittering in character immediately and has been active ever since. There's plenty of anecdotal evidence that the "Mad Men" Twitterers have been a boon for the television show. I've gotten into Mad Men since seeing them on Twitter. I'm hooked! tweeted @itsjenjen. Twittering back and forth all day with various "Mad Men" characters is one of the most fun things I've ever done using the Internet, tweeted @proggrr. Am delighted: Mad Men's Peggy Olson is following me & vice-cersa. Am also now following the Drapers, but Peg's tweets R the most compelling, tweeted sketchgrrl. Ms. Ross, @BettyDraper, watched the drama of the AMC actions and was itching to get her own "Mad Men" account. She started messaging the Betty Draper character, @Betty_Draper, through Twitter. After a few messages went without response, Ms. Ross gave up and made her own account, @BettyDraper. "You have two lives going on in your head, one seemingly as real as the other," Ms. Ross said, adding with a laugh: "And that's the bad thing." There was some confusion between the Bettys, known by some as Betty1 and Betty2. @Don_Draper, Betty's husband on the show, stayed true to the first Betty, Ms. Ross said, which was disappointing. But Ms. Ross was too far in to stop now. She paid extra attention to every detail of the show, including the colored phone on Betty Draper's bedside and the maternity girdle she wore. Ms. Bugbee was similarly dedicated. During the television show's season, she would transcribe each bit of dialogue. She often tracked down a summary from an East-Coast blog before the show aired on the West Coast. She would spend hours on Monday updating her Twitter feed. Meanwhile, some of her real work fell by the wayside. "There were many, many times where I thought, 'Am I insane? Am I a moron because I am working for free?' " she said. All three of the "Mad Men" Twitterers revealed here are joining together, under the guidance of Ms. Bugbee, to form a social media consulting agency. Dubbed Supporting Characters, they hope to use what they have learned to make money helping companies use social media more effectively. Ms. Bugbee has documented all of the twists and turns of her experience and hopes to combine that with Ms. Ross's advertising expertise and Mr. Bissell's Internet prowess. "The entire world of social media is finally coming into focus," Mr. Bissell said. "There's something we can actually do now." -- The Twitchhiker: one man on a Twitter travel missionMeet the Twitchhiker. His quest - to see how far he can travel in 30 days relying solely on the hospitality and advice of the Twitter community, and raising money for charity as he goes
Pleased to tweet you ... Paul Smith on his twitchhiking travels Since lunchtime on Monday, I've either been delirious with excitement or in desperate need of the toilet. I've agreed to put my life in the hands of nearly 2,000 complete strangers in the belief that their support, goodwill and generosity will propel me across the globe. Equally, I could spend two days contracting pneumonia on a park bench in Byker. This is the life that awaits me when I adopt my alter-ego of the Twitchhiker on 1 March. As you may have guessed by the less-than-creative name, the challenge owes its origins to Twitter, the social networking service seeping into the mainstream consciousness. Twitchhiker was born among the aisles of Tesco, where the queues of dawdling customers had me yearning for a place far away. Having vented my frustration by tweeting on my mobile, I recalled a fleeting thought I'd had several months earlier: would the Twitter community support me if I tried to flee the North East and travel the world? That was on Saturday. On Monday, I sent my first tweet about Twitchhiker. Stephen Fry took note five hours later, and today I'm being watched by hundreds of people around the world, ready and willing to assist me in my quest - to travel as far from my home as possible in 30 days, relying solely on offers of transport and accommodation from other Twitter users. On my journey, I'm raising money for an amazing cause called charity: water, which wants nothing more than to ensure everyone on the planet has access to clean water. Even if I wasn't fundraising, I sense Twitterers would recognise the churlish plight of an idiot and support me regardless. Beyond my social experiment, is the potential for Twitter to change the way we all travel. If you find yourself in an unknown city, a quick tweet will see followers suggest how you can best spend your time. Offering reviews of hotels and airlines, real-time travel updates, a spare sofa for the night, Twitter is an infrastructure that facilitates a global conversation, a social club, a newswire, a group hug, a support network, a human search engine - all at once. And it's growing exponentially. Spend a while cultivating your Twitter account, and you could develop contacts in every timezone. The support for Twitchhiker has been nothing short of exceptional so far, summed up perfectly by @weirdsis' comments on the Twitchhiker blog: "This is what I like about Twitter. It is what we make it. And by following your dream to help provide clean drinking water to people who have none, you've involved all of us. It'll be a great adventure." The time feels right to test Twitter's mettle with such a foolhardy adventure. -- 2/6/2009 3:01 AM 10 Examples of Creative Twitter UsesWhen you think of Twitter, you probably think of a microblogging tool that helps you connect with friends across the world. But not every Tweeter uses their account just to chat back and forth with their online friends. Some have come up with truly creative ways to use their account. What follows is a list of the 10 most creative uses of Twitter
I’ve seen. 2. Coffeegroundz Fundraiser- The Coffee Groundz is a Houston-based café that uses Twitter to interact with the local community. However, they recently had a very creative use for their Twitter account when they asked their followers to donate non-perishable food items to the Houston Food Bank. Their Twitter-based fundraiser helped them collect over 260 pounds of food to donate to the Houston Food Bank. 3. Askastripper- Yes, even strip clubs are getting on the social media bandwagon. This Twitter account is linked from a blog of the same name. Essentially, users have the opportunity to ask a stripper anything. Whether you have a question about the intricacies of their job or you just want their opinion on a random topic, the stripper will answer all of your questions. 4. JetBlue- This is another great example of businesses getting the most out of their Twitter account. This airline has different employees man their Twitter account throughout the day. If a customer has any question—whether about potential flight delays or how big their carry-on can be—the JetBlue account will Tweet a quick answer. 5. Missingchildren- But you don’t always have to use Twitter for personal gain. This profile sends out Tweets any time a child goes missing. The Tweet usually includes the child’s name, city, and a link to a picture with more information. They also send updates whenever a lost child is recovered. 6. TvGuide- When’s the last time you actually flipped through a TV Guide? It’s been years for me. This Twitter profile sends a Tweet out each day of all the new shows that will be on that night. You’ll never forget to watch your favorite shows again! 7. Liver4carole- It really is amazing to see all the great causes that people use Twitter for. This account is trying to accomplish exactly what its name implies—to get a liver for Carole. They regularly Tweet links to stores whose proceeds go directly to Carole, as well as updates about Carole herself. 8. GoodCaptain- I must confess, the writer in me is torn on whether this is really cool or a disgrace to literature. Whatever it is, it’s certainly creative. The Good Captain is a book written one Tweet at a time. Simply click back to the beginning, and you can read the entire book, Tweet by Tweet, online. 9. ProjectVino- For the most part, the Project Vino account is just like any other. It’s filled with chats to various friends, and there doesn’t appear to be anything unique about it. However, this social wine site holds wine tastings over Twitter occasionally. They send wine out to various popular Twitter users, and the testers microblog their thoughts live as they taste the wine. Where can I sign up? 10. Amazon- When you first land on the Amazon Twitter page, you might think the account is inactive. It’s not. The point of this profile is for followers to DM a book title or ISBN number, and then, they’ll receive a Tweet with the average price range on Amazon at the moment. -- 2/7/2009 3:18 AM The Trouble with Twitter With an open mind and an eager heart, I embraced Twitter and jumped in with vigor. I read the blogs and searched for tips to maximize this new business tool and began building my follow/following list. When I hit about 100 on both sides, I noticed that most of the messages were about twitter and links on how to be a better twit. I watched as one of these professional twits posted a new message every three minutes for almost an hour - each one more glowing in self-congratulatory praise than the one before. Between the twits “twits” there were endless links to endless blogs and endless tips on twitter (by other twits). As I battled for my place amongst the twits (I twitterupted), I received a reply. With what you may ask? A link to a site that will teach me to twit like pro, or a twitmaster, if you will. I learned, from the twitmaster site that you can even automate the process of building your twit list, since volume is clearly the name of the game; however, with volume comes more twit advice and more twit dynamics (which comes with a price). This price, you may wonder, is not simply money, but time. Like all good things, one must be dedicated in order to succeed (a com-twit-ment must be made). Of course, there are diamonds in the rough and I do see how relationships could be forged, but I also see the quest for followers is crowding the space, requiring more management of twit time and twit resources to gain value. Think back to the pre-spam days of yore for a moment. To open an email free of sophisticated blocking software, viagra prescription deals and genital enhancement products. Today I realized that Twitter is like voluntary spam. On occassion, you may happen upon a legitmate message or even make a new business connection, but is the the price of time and effort worth it? I guess that is the real “twitmus” test. -- Why Teens Don’t TwitterWhy no baby tweeps?
What will change their minds…eventually
-- 2/2/2009 11:38 PM Twitter shrinks its logo, Internet goes insane
The micro-messaging service Twitter today decided to tweak the logo on its main site to make it smaller. It’s not entirely clear why it did this, but the logo now seems to be the same height as the main site links in the upper right hand corner. Naturally, when the new logo went live this evening, Twitter users started freaking out. Some liked the change, some hated it, but most people seemed to think they were losing their minds and couldn’t figure out if anything had in fact changed. The fact that so many people were talking about it, proves something that I’ve always known about social media: Most users of various social media sites love nothing more than talking about those social media sites, on those sites — it’s a vicious cycle. The logo change is probably just Twitter streamlining the design a bit. Is this a sign that it is getting ready to monetize the service? Probably not — unless it needs room for a giant banner ads on the top of the page. But one thing is clear: Twitter did not follow the golden rule of logo design as sung by Burn Black, “Make the Logo Bigger.” (Listen below.) --How Twitter Was BornTwitter was born about three years ago, when @Jack, @Biz, @Noah, @Crystal, @Jeremy, @Adam, @TonyStubblebine, @Ev, me (@Dom), @Rabble, @RayReadyRay, @Florian, @TimRoberts, and @Blaine worked at a podcasting company called Odeo, Inc. in South Park, San Francisco. The company had just contributed a major chunk of code to Rails 1.0 and had just shipped Odeo Studio, but we were facing tremendous competition from Apple and other heavyweights. Our board was not feeling optimistic, and we were forced to reinvent ourselves. “Rebooting” or reinventing the company started with a daylong brainstorming session where we broke up into teams to talk about our best ideas. I was lucky enough to be in @Jack’s group, where he first described a service that uses SMS to tell small groups what you are doing. We happened to be on top of the slide on the north end of South Park. It was sunny and brisk. We were eating Mexican food. His idea made us stop eating and start talking. I remember that @Jack’s first use case was city-related: telling people that the club he’s at is happening. “I want to have a dispatch service that connects us on our phones using text.” His idea was to make it so simple that you don’t even think about what you’re doing, you just type something and send it. Typing something on your phone in those days meant you were probably messing with T9 text input, unless you were sporting a relatively rare smartphone. Even so, everyone in our group got the idea instantly and wanted it. Later, each group presented their ideas, and a few of them were selected for prototyping. Demos ensued. @Jack’s idea rose to the top as a combination of status-type ideas. @Jack and @Noah were assigned to build version 0.1 while the rest of the company focused on maintaining Odeo.com, so that if this new thing flopped we’d have something to fall back upon. The first version of @Jack’s idea was entirely web-based. It was created on March 31st, 2006. My first substantive message is #38: oh this is going to be addictive
We struggled with a codename and a product name. “It’s FriendStalker!” joked @Crystal, our most prolific user. The userbase was limited entirely to the company and our immediate family. No one from a major company of any kind was allowed in. For months, we were in Top Secret Alpha because of competing products like the now-defunkt Dodgeball. We operated using a “long code”, or a full 10-digit phone number linked to a small-potatoes gateway. The original product name / codename “twttr” was inspired by Flickr and the fact that American SMS shortcodes are five characters. We prototyped with “89887″ as our shortcode. We later changed to “40404″ for ease of use and memorability. Twttr probably had about 50 users in the long code days. I was following everyone on the system. We had an admin page where you could see every user. As Head of Quality for the company, it seemed like my duty to watch for opinions or issues from our users. This caused confusion, though, when family members of our team were suddenly being followed by a seemingly random person. Thus, Private Accounts were born. @Jack and @Florian created a means for users to mark themselves private, and we admins had the ability to tell who wanted to be private so we’d know not to follow them. Actual, real privacy with secure protection came a bit later. I’d say there were about 100 users when Private was invented. The interaction model and the visual metaphor for the service were constantly in flux. The meaning of being someone’s “Friend” versus “Following” someone changed regularly. At that point, you could either get all SMS messages or get none. There was no Twictionary back then; data in the system were referred to as “posts” or just “messages”. The lack of clear terminology led to some pretty spirited debates leading up to the Spring of 2006. We launched Twttr Beta on @Ev’s birthday. We could now invite a slightly larger circle of friends, but still excluding any large companies (with a few trusted exceptions within places like Google). I’ll never forget the family-friendly feeling of that day. We all knew that we were going to change the world with this thing that no one else understood. That day stands out in memory as the deep breath before a baby’s first cry. Meanwhile, Odeo and the corporate board were at a tension point. Not only was the value of Twttr difficult to describe, the relevance of Odeo was declining monthly. Drastic cuts were recommended. One day in early May 2006, @Ev let four of us go: @Adam, @TonyStubblebine, me, and @Rabble. @Noah and @TimRoberts would later be asked to leave as well. It was a tough decision and huge shock to each of us. We all handled it differently. Looking back on it, I think Twitter allowed us to stay connected when we might not have otherwise been. After all, we weren’t even public with the site yet, so each of us continued to add value just by using it with each other. During this transition, Twttr.com launched to the public. Still, very few people understood its value. At the time most people were paying per SMS message, and so wouldn’t Twttr run up our bills? Also, how were we supposed to use this thing and who cares what I’m doing? Each one of us original users became a kind of personal evangelist for Twttr, trying to get our coworkers and friends to use it. At this point, Obvious Corp was born as an incubator with Twttr as its sole project.
@Jack was still just an engineer, and the service was only a few months old when the group acquired Twitter.com and re-branded. Back then, we had no character limit on our system. Messages longer than 160 characters (the common SMS carrier limit) were split into multiple texts and delivered (somewhat) sequentially. There were other bugs, and a mounting SMS bill. The team decided to place a limit on the number of characters that would go out via SMS for each post. They settled on 140, in order to leave room for the username and the colon in front of the message. In February of 2007 @Jack wrote something which inspired me to get started on this project: “One could change the world with one hundred and forty characters.” Just in time for SxSW, @RayReadyRay rigged a very sweet Flash-based visualizer that ended up on display on the halls of the conference. I wasn’t working there, but I used to visit regularly to see how our baby was doing. I happened to be at the office in SF when the visualizer went live on site in Austin. I remember finding a bug just before showtime, as @Biz and @Jeremy talked over the phone. Everything miraculously fell into place by the time people filtered out of the sessions to see their comments floating along the hallway screens. Boom #1: Twitter won an award in the Blog category, and @Jack thanked everyone in 140 characters. MTV Music Awards: Boom #2. Apple WWDC 2007, and then TV, and then print and pretty soon Cable news: Boom #3. @Jack became the CEO of a newly spun-off Twitter, Inc. during the Boom Times. People still didn’t quite “get it” but at least some people had heard about it. The team created permalinks and RSS feeds. @Blaine pushed for IM integration. Each major feature added tremendous gains in users, and in usage per user. Still small by social networking standards, Twitter delivered something immediate and vital that no other service could attain. For a lot of people, the entire API launch was really the time when Twitter first left the nest. But that is another story, for another time. -- http://twictionary.pbwiki.com/ Twitter Definitions (words evolved from Twitter):-- 1/30/2009 4:18 PM
Find ‘Em On Twitter: 15 Twitter Directories ComparedSearching for people or applications on Twitter? Good luck with that. Since Twitter offers little in the way of people search features (though they now have a suggestion tool), your search for interesting and dynamic people to follow and applications to use could be a giant time suck. Thankfully there are more than a few third-party resources that you can turn to for finding new people to follow, and new tools to help you do what Twitter won’t let you. We’ll shed a little light on these 15 directories by separating them into four categories: applications, people, politics, and strictly business. Book Trade People on Twitter Overview: This directory, from High Spot Inc, is another gigantic list of Twittering professionals in the book trade including book publishers, literary agents, bookstores, author services, and book reviewers. What you might like: Quantity. I bet you didn’t realize just how many of these book worms were using Twitter. What you won’t get: Authors. For some reason this category is missing from the list. --1/28/2009 11:47 PM
http://businessontwitter.co.uk/
Backup your Twitter followers with Tweetake!
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Back up Twitter info
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The 100 Most Popular Twitter applicationsOk, so the title is a little sensationalist, but I had to get you here somehow so you could see the most bookmarked web-based Twitter applications of the moment!! Note that these has been put together on the basis of the number of saved bookmarks on delicious and clearly not THE definitive list based on registered users or traffic.
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The TwitterLocal AIR Client allows you to watch as many location-based Twitter feeds as you want. Requires Adobe AIR version 1.5.
If I want to track down local tweeters, this looks like the one.
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might do the above with IE without an installation find local tweeters & keywords
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Connect with people who matter A twitter directory
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try with IE
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1/22/2009 10:55 AM
http://www.fanboy.com/2009/01/social-media-experts-rant.html
Social Media “Experts” are the Cancer of Twitter (and Must Be Stopped)
Nearly a day goes by on Twitter without yet another social media “expert” choosing to stalk me. At first it started innocently — back in the day (about a year ago) various techie friends started to declare themselves social media gurus because they decided to hang out on Twitter and Facebook all day. And now an army of their offspring monitor Summize in search of human flesh. Now the first symptom of this disease was what I call “social media deafness”, a state that occurs when a person’s social graph exceeds 500+ virtual friends. The result is that the person is a mile wide, but an inch deep. Suddenly the friend you use to know develops amnesia like symptoms and starts ignoring your direct messages — what was first simple Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder becomes full blown zombie like state. The zombies then seek each other: You’ll always notice that of the 5,000 followers that a social media expert has that all 5,000 of them are also social media “experts”. Their only form of conversation is to quote each other and live tweet conferences where they gather. Like any good Ponzi scheme the lead zombies can make a good living feeding the hopes and aspirations of the worker level drones who parrot their every blog entry. But that’s where the problem starts with us civilians: The drone level zombies then start to stalk any innocent Twitter user they can find. They don’t care who it is or what that person is interested in because their first prize is the “auto-follow”. By finding enough folks who don’t have auto-follow turned off they artificially inflate their number of followers which inflates their “expertise” in the field. Most start out by doing this to each other, but before long they need to prey on the flesh of the living. If you’re unlucky enough to be followed that’s when the real problems begin: Before long every little quip you put out is met with a useless unsolicited recommendation. At first you might tease the zombie about their hard sell technique, but alas zombies have no sense of humor. Worst yet is that zombies don’t know how to take a hint — and that when my little buddy “the Block button” comes in handy!
Above: Social media and SEO “experts” aren’t human anymore (i.e. they’re undead) so you should feel no guilt at all in shooting them — in fact it can be an act of pleasure once your get use to it. Now I know what you’re all thinking: Can’t these pitiful creatures be saved? The answer is NO! My proof of my concept: Recently on a News Gang podcast I witnessed an attempt at zombie intervention and the result was a huge sad failure. Sweet Robert Scoble (now known by his borg name “teh Scobleizer”) had been sucked into some sort of fringe aspect of this cult called Friend Feed. So industry vet Steve Gillmor and action hero Mike Arrington tried to lead a brave (but futile) effort to lead an intervention to save poor Robert, but alas their rational pleas for sanity were ignored. Within minutes Scobleizer was back on the tweets, and this time he was disseminating Amazon affiliate links into his chirps in order to monetize his affliction. Above: Robert Scoble is the second zombie on the left. Like drugs, social media can be a good thing in the right hands. But there are too many people out there who don’t know what they’re doing and just get carried away. Sadly most people just lack the good old fashioned discipline to keep their worse instincts in check. On a related note there’s also a related clan of zombies which are the SEO “experts” — these creatures are a blue collar variation of the social media experts and usually have the term “web master” in their bio. Sometimes the social media and SEO zombies can mate to produce a marketing strategy monster, but most of these are harmless as they don’t use the auto-follow technique. In closing I’ve given this problem a great deal of thought trying to come up with a solution. At first I had a great idea about trying to have an automated script that would detect the zombies and block them as soon as they spot you. But like Spam I realized that any software solution was useless as the flesh eaters always manage to stay one step ahead of you. But then it hit me! Being a fanboy and having watched too many monster movies I realized that the only solution is to lure the entire population of social media and SEO experts to an island and for President Obama to authorize the dropping of a nuclear weapon.
Above: I know one is tempted to be cheap and just use an atomic bomb, but having watched so many of these movies I know that it won’t be strong enough. The end?
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http://www.fileformat.info/convert/text/upside-down.htm
Unicode Upside-Down ConverterSummaryThis is just a fun hack that uses various Unicode characters to make text look like it was flipped upside down. The mapping is based on one from revfad.com, but I extended it with most of the uppercase characters. This page isn't done with JavaScript, but you can see the upside-down character mapping Originally found via a referrer log entry pointing to reddit.com. --
http://www.sevenwires.com/play/UpsideDownLetters.html
.: How to type upside down letters & backwards text
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FlipText.net - write upside down
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January 20, 2009Twitter catches up to DiggTwitter has become a popular pastime for many who like to update their daily thoughts and activates, as well as for the voyeurs who just enjoy reading the tweets. Last week, the market share of visits to Twitter surpassed Digg for the first time since launch and was ranked #84 (one above Digg at #85) in the Computers and Internet category. A big driver of traffic to Twitter last week was around the US Airways plane crash in to the Hudson River last Thursday, driving many posts and updates about the situation. One photo of the plane taken by Janis Krums, was viewed by many people via Twitter and was subsequently used across a number of traditional media outlets.
One major shift that has occurred is the increased traffic to Twitter from Internet users aged 25-34. During the same time frame last year, 12% of Twitter’s traffic was represented by those aged 25 to 34, which has increased to nearly 45% for the 4 weeks ending Jan 17, 2009.
In comparison, Digg’s share of visitors aged 25 to 34 was 20% during the same time frame.
Also interesting is Twitter’s clickstream, where Digg relies heavily on traffic from Google (38.8% last week) while Twitter receives a higher share of traffic from social networks, which is mostly due to the applications which integrate the services. For example on Facebook, the Twitter application has over 104,000 active users where status updates can be linked to Twitter updates.
One caveat is that a significant amount of twitter activity takes place on mobile devices (especially since there are several twitter apps for the iPhone), which is not measured here, so the impact of Twitter is actually higher than solely web visits. Although this only tells part of the story, judging by the amount of tweets about today’s Presidential election, we’ll continue to see Twitter’s traffic increase. Yes - the market share of visits for Twitter includes the search.twitter.com domain. Visits to the search feature on Twitter are growing as well.
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Twitter use in the UK explodes by ten times says Hitwise by Mike Butcher on January 22, 2009
UK Internet traffic to Twitter has increased 10-fold over past last 12 months, according to Hitwise. For the week ending 17/01/09 Twitter ranked as the 291st most visited website in the UK, up from a ranking of 2,953 for the week ending 19/01/08. UK Internet traffic to the website has increased by a staggering 974% over this period. Hitwise also admits that Twitter is probably even more popular than its numbers imply, as Hitwise is only measuring traffic to the main Twitter website, not access via mobile (it’s big on the iPhone, I can tell you) or third party applications like Twitterrific and Tweetdeck. Plus, the average amount of time that people spend on Twitter has more than trebled from less than 10 minutes a year ago to half an hour now. Make that about 2 hours for me. Twitter’s penetration per head is even deeper in the UK than in the US. It ranked as the 291st most visited website in the UK, while in the USA it ranked 350th. It’s big amongst the young, but the fastest growing age group of users is 35-44 year olds, who now account for 17.3% of UK visitors. Famous Twitterers are boosting the site. Stephen Fry, has over 50,000 followers, John Cleese can claim more than 30,000, and 2,000 people are following Andy Murray’s progress at the Australian Open. Jonathan Ross (13,000+ followers) is spreading the Twitter religion by verifying if his celeb pals are on it. He calls himself the “Number One Twitter Detective”. The amount of traffic it sends to other websites has increased 30-fold over the last 12 months. Almost 10% goes to News and Media websites, 17.6% to entertainment websites, 14.6% to social networks, 6.6% to blogs and 4.5% to online retailers. Facebook remains Britain’s most popular social network and is now the second most visited website in the UK after Google UK. --
50 Simple Ways to Gain RSS SubscribersMost bloggers love their RSS readers. Not only that, but they also love to gain new RSS readers. It is such a joy when you wake up one day and see that your Feedburner count jumped by 200 or 300, right? --
1/22/2009 10:14 PM
http://www.space.gs/news/?p=1261
More Serious Incompetence at Twitter - Why I left.January 23rd, 2009
Space and Astronautics
News is no longer on Twitter.com
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http://blog.mindvalleylabs.com
3 Forbidden Twitter Mind Control Tricks to Explode Your MarketingWARNING: The techniques explored in this piece are purely to be used for ethical purposes, if you’re weak of stomach or of pure malicious character, then I urge you to please leave immediately. Twitter can be evil. Some less-than-scrupulous people can easily take advantage it and wield frightening influence over poor innocent subjects. On the other hand, use it with responsibility and you perhaps have the most powerful relation-building medium online today. Why? That’s because Twitter is currently the closest app on Earth that replicates the actual thought patterns of the human mind. You see, the human mind does not really think in blog and article form. It does not think in huge chunks of information. Instead, it thinks in a stream of consciousness way, random disjointed thought layered upon random disjointed thought. That is why when you use Twitter, your mind is “tricked” into further receptivity than it normally should have, because it’s now in its most natural environment. It’s almost like you are communicating telepathically with other people, because you’re able to uncover a 100 different thoughts that are contained in a 100 different tweets. After all, what’s more intimate than the whispering voices in your head? If you know how to take advantage of that state of mind, your microblogging can make you rich. After a few months of testing and tracking what works, I have discovered 3 ways that Twitter can impact your business unlike any other site on Earth. Once you understand the Twitter user’s borderline hypnotic state of mind, these 3 covert techniques can pre-sell prospects on warp speed. 1) Psychic Market ResearchMarketers often talk about the Robert Collier concept of entering
the conversations in your prospect’s mind. Information marketing
genius Porter Stansberry says that our marketing should start where
they are. In other words, the closer you can align yourself to their top-of-the-mind thoughts, the more receptive to your marketing message they become. However, the problem is that more often than not, you don’t know what they’re really preoccupied with. What’s worse, you sometimes make harmful guesses and assumptions. The end result is a bomb in your promotions and a dent in your sales, because your offer is not in tandem with what the prospect is thinking and feeling in the first place. Good news. The whole interface of Twitter is one big web conversation taking place in a meeting of minds. You see prospects exchanging rapid-fire thoughts, opinions, and random finds. In just one screen, you can read the hopes, dreams, interests, fears and dominant emotions of your niche. To do this, just use http://search.twitter.com and Monitter, put in your niche keywords and boom–you’ll instantly be transported to the heart of the conversation. Start your marketing there and see the difference in your response. 2) Network Like a VikingVikings have a brutally effective way of making friends, and meeting potential mates. They sail to random villagers and within minutes, they kill all the inhabitants, pillage all the houses and capture all the maidens. Why are they so successful? It’s because they catch people by surprise, and there’s little in the way of resistance. And in the nearly spam-free waters of Twitter-ville, prospects are more often than not caught by surprise, and there’s really very little resistance and a whole lot of receptivity. For one, Twitter requires very little investment in expanding the social circle, because you can securely follow and unfollow people at will. As a result, it’s easier to access the market leaders on Twitter because well, other than the investment of clicking a button, they won’t really lose their privacy by accepting you as a friend–unlike email or mobile. Furthermore, since you’re confined to only 140 characters for your Twitter message, the effort for them to reply back to you is only a sentence and a click away. No relatively complex email writing process. And because one-liners are lot less threatening than blocks of
text, so people instinctively resist the messages less. Plus, if they do get annoyed, the BLOCK button is only a push away. Making connections has never been easier, and as long as you’re not blatant with your promotions, you can make friends and influence people literally at the click of a mouse. So do the Vikings and plunder prospect’s wallets away. 3) Establish Your Place on the MountainGary Vaynerchuk said this in his most recent keynote address for Web 2.0 Expo, “If you give good shit, people will follow”. This rings true especially for Twitter, because if you can share good stuff on a regular rate, you’ll be perceived as a guru in record speed. It’s because the Twitter user’s frame of mind is a very conducive one for making yourself larger than life. Prospects get on Twitter to find out the latest gossip, to chat with their friends, and more importantly–to seek out important summarized information and short inspiration and revelation quotes. Once you do that, it’s like you are setting off flares in the middle of the night, and your prospects will notice. As you know, getting prospects through the sales funnel is always a numbers game. The more good content you get out there attached with your name, the more chances you have at converting prospects to customers. Because Twitter’s push-button easy way of delivering messages instantly with a low investment of 140 characters, you can keep sending out quality stuff over and over again. Indeed, there’s unprecedented opportunities for something to snag or hook the consumer and keep them for life. And with that newfound authority, you can use it to sell more stuff and make more money from your now pre-sold audience. So the conclusion? Twitter is subversive territory.When you understand how a prospect uses Twitter, getting your marketing message across has never been this unfairly simple. It is software built on the base of NLP programming. So even if you have not gone for a day of training in your life, Twitter makes the mind easy pickings because it leaves the mind in a vulnerable state. So use these 3 secrets and profit from them. In fact, let me know if you’ve used them and seen results. Because I have. Amazing breakthroughs have been happening since I hopped on to the micro-blogging bandwagon. To see these controversial techniques and other secrets I will
not reveal here in action, feel free to follow me on Twitter:
Email Copywriter Watch me closely, emulate me, and apply them to boost response rates in your marketing. --
1/19/2009 8:22 PM
How many friends are you really following? Twitoria finds your friends that haven't tweeted in a long time so you can give them the boot!
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he Shorty Awards Are Meaningless
Over the past couple of weeks there has been
a bit of buzz on Twitter about the Shorty Awards, a bunch of awards
for the best short content available on Twitter. A really nice
concept and definitely one that should be nurtured and developed.
Unfortunately it's a bit of a joke at the moment because the
system can/will/has be/been gamed so easily.
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1/16/2009 12:30 AM
MyCleenr.com - Clean Up Your Twitter Account
It is not that difficult to cross the line that separates you from being a Twitterer with a more or less ordered contact list
to one who ends up following people who are not worth giving the time of the day. This phenomenon characterizes a number of recent services – the ones with a social bent – and it is something that was to be expected. It is basic human nature. Just in the same way that you become acquainted with people that on first looks might become potential friends, you end up meeting others through the web
that turn out not to be what you
originally expected.
“MyCleenr is a unique way to sort your friends by their last tweets. It allows you to get rid off all the inactive and useless accounts that you are following!”
All the many Twitter users everywhere will find such a solution appealing, if only because it makes for a more ordered tweeting experience.
Do you have to furnish any other information besides your Twitter credentials? -- The best way to clean your Twitter contact list!MyCleenr is a unique way to sort your friends by their last tweets. It allows you to get rid off all the inactive and useless accounts that you are following! (only works for Twits following fewer than 700 Twits) -- 1/1/2009 10:35 AM HOW TO: Win Friends and Twinfluence PeopleIn the last year or so, microsharing service Twitter has grown by leaps and bounds, in terms of both popularity and usefulness. Regardless of the precise companies or services that become the most popular in the future, forming and utilizing decentralized social networks through microsharing is most likely here to stay, because it is fun and useful. But the lack of structure, bounty of third party applications, and global sources of expert advice can also be daunting to newbies. So, for those who are new to Twitter, here are 10 things I’ve learned about winning friends and twinfluencing people: Win Friends1. Be unique, but be yourself
Just like in everyday life, if you want people to notice you, somehow you’ve got to stand out in the crowd. Twitter is a complicated and growing mess of feeds and it’s difficult for people to find each other. However, always stay true to who you really are - don’t “peacock” just for the sake of attracting people to bizarre behavior. Marina Orlova uses her brains, beauty, and natural charm to teach people about history and linguistics in a really fun way. Broaden your horizons, but don’t fake it. 2. Participate in conversation
Twitter is inherently a conversation. By using search tools, reading blogs, etc., find people who are talking about things you’re interested in, and join the conversation in a respectful and hopefully unique way. Tireless blogger and new media business consultant Chris Brogan is a great example of this. Find something good to add to the conversation - or stay quiet; don’t just be a nag, a yes-man, or a me-too person.
3. Provide value to a community
People get on my radar when they selflessly and repeatedly add value to a community of readers. Some people are funny, some provide free services, some give out advice. Music enthusiast and online guitar instructor Walt Ribeiro provides awesome value to his online community, and has turned his talents into a tiny empire of popularity. People like this slowly turn into rock stars. 4. Attract loyal followers
There are all kinds of ways to ‘game the system’ and attract followers, like you-follow-me-I-follow-you and following bots that auto-follow and then unfollowing them. But what does having 8,000 followers mean when they don’t know you or care about you? By making solid connections over the years, Peter Shankman has built a loyal following of “hacks and flacks” who can be mobilized at anytime through his “Help a Reporter Out” (HARO) network. By participating in conversations and adding value you will accumulate followers that will help you when you need it. 5. Mix microsharing with other outlets
You can’t just Twitter; it’s too one-dimensional. Mix it up with whatever you like doing, whether that’s blogging about tech, short videos of you pimping your hot rod, taking nature photography, or attending black-tie galas and appearing in magazines. Through running a family business, producing online video shows, and headlining social media conferences, wine expert Gary Vaynerchuk “brings thunder” to everything he does. Doing and cross-referencing different activities online creates feedback loops that increase viewers and can get people talking about you and your activities when you’re not there to participate yourself. Twinfluence People6. Find the influencers:
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. It’s easy to find out who the popular and influential people are on Twitter - they’re giving keynotes at events, they’re at the top of the TwitterGrader and Twitterholic and other lists, and mainly, people talk about them. Self-styled geek blogger Robert Scoble is an influencer – the “Scoble Effect” can literally crash new startup websites with a rush of traffic. Learn who influencers are, what they do, and why people revere them. Imitate some of their behaviors when relevant, while still being yourself. 7. Become an authority
It’s nice to be good at something. It’s better to make yourself invaluable. If your tweets disappeared, would anyone notice? If you make yourself an authority on some topic being discussed in the Twitterverse, people will seek you out to be in the conversation - and that is evidence of influence. I can’t name many information technology or social software analysts, but I know Jeremiah Owyang – through his listening, writing, and conversation – he has made himself an invaluable part of the Twitter community. Find your niche and own it. 8. Be creative
Invent a contest. Conduct a poll. Document an exciting trip. Wear funny scarves on a YouTube channel. The innovative Sarah Evans founded both the popular Top 50 Tweeples contest and the frequent #journchat discussions that have bridged the gap between traditional media, bloggers, and public relations professionals. Surprise people with new ideas - anything novel that builds community, increases participation, and allows people to have fun is a winner. Don’t be boring. 9. Reward with shout-outs
When you see someone doing something awesome, give them a high-quality shoutout. But be stingy and make it count. Here’s a shout-out that I gave to Army public affairs guru Lindy Kyzer for the great tweets she was sending from a conference she was attending. Everyone loves hearing that they’re doing something awesome - and they also remember who thought that in the first place. Put a virtual smile on someone’s face. 10. Always have fun
People use social media for many reasons, some more serious than others. But no one is immune from enjoying themselves. If all you do is post links to your latest influential blog, or link to current news stories you’re reading, you may be adding value, but you may also be boring everyone who follows you. Toss in an unexpected joke, complain about your dog, announce your engagement. Colleen Graffy, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, has a serious job – but that doesn’t stop her from showing her funny side. If you are enjoying yourself it will rub off on others. The Bottom LineThere aren’t any secrets. You get out what you put in. Work hard, add value, and don’t rest on your laurels. Note what’s happening in the news, and in life. Always evolve; adapt to your environment. Embrace trial-and-error and a spirit of lethal generosity. Take risks. Be surprising. Be awesome. -- · Forget the “influentials.” You must buy into the theory that products and services reach critical mass because mere mortals spread the word for you. This defies the common wisdom that a handful of “influentials” shape what the rest of us try and what we adopt. In the online world, these influentials include Mike “I can go a week without Twitter” Arrington, Robert Scoble, Seth Godin, and to some extent me. Reliance on influentials is flawed because the Internet has flattened and democratized information. Influentials don’t have as much special access, special knowledge, and distribution as you might think because of the growth of websites, blogs, and, of course, Twitter. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t care about influentials—if nothing else they can help you get to what some consider “nobodies.” But mark my words: (a) Nobodies are the new somebodies, and (b) it’s better to have army of committed nobodies than a few drive-by somebodies. The most somebodies can usually do for you is a one day bump in traffic. One more point: if enough nobodies like what you do, the somebodies will have no choice but to write about you. In this way, the buzz of nobodies begets the attention of somebodies and not vice versa. Defocus your efforts. The goal is to get to masses of people because you don’t know who can and will help you. (If you knew exactly who they were and what they can do for you, then you’d focus on them—then we’d be back to focusing on influentials—albeit less known ones.) The catch is that defocusing isn’t actionable unless there’s an inexpensive, easy, and instant answer to reach massive amounts of people, and per dollar there’s nothing better than Twitter to do this.
· Get as many followers as you can. I recently explained what I do to get more followers. Click here to read about my methods. Ignore people who tell you that it’s the quality of your followers not the quantity. They’re trying to make friends, not use Twitter as a tool. And, truth be told, there are only two kinds of Twitter users: those that want more followers and those that lie. You can follow me here. The reason you want more followers is the law of big numbers: the more followers, the more people talking about what you do, the more you can reach the tipping point. If you think you “know” exactly who can and will help you, you are deluding yourself. You will face the issue of whether your Twitter name should be the company’s name or your name. I have Guykawasaki and Alltop because you should try to get both much like preventing domain name squatting. My theory is people are more likely to follow a person than a company, so 99% of my attention goes to my Guykawasaki account. Also, someday you may sell your company, and the company account will probably go with the acquirer. However, if you go with your name, you need to not tweet only about your company—indeed, you have the moral obligation to tweet informative posts that have nothing to do with your company. You can see what I do here. 4. Monitor what people are saying about you, your company, and your product. You can do this here with the search features of Twitter. Be sure that you bookmark your search so that you won’t have to reenter terms. Or, you use a product like Tweetdeck to create a search. For example, I monitor this search [guykawasaki OR “Guy Kawasaki” OR Alltop] to follow what people are saying about me and Alltop. Searches like [how to Alltop] where you substitute your company or product name for “Alltop” are also useful to find tweets about using your product or service. You can also use Twilert.com to receive email notification of search results much like Google Alerts. When you find such tweets, take these actions: People are pissed: help them out People are confused: help them out People who have questions: help them out People are happy: ask them to spread the word You will find that people are delighted by contact with the company and that no matter how rocky the relationship started out, they usually become fans and evangelists. By simply monitoring what people are saying about you, you’re using Twitter better than 95% of the companies out there. Can I tell you a funny story? I once spoke to a group of large company social media folks. One was from United Parcel Service, and she said that her Twitter searches were inefficient because the string “UPS” is in so many words (“startups,” “meetups,” etc.) Undaunted, I searched for “UPS” in front of the group, and the first tweet that I found was a complaint about a UPS delivery! That brought a howl from the audience. 5. Ask for help. Don’t be shy about asking people on Twitter to spread the word for you. If they like what you do, they will. If they don’t, they won’t. It’s as simple and transparent as that. If you don’t ask, you don’t get. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately for some of us), most people don’t have the chutzpah to ask for help. Alltop would not be anything close to what it is without the Twitter community. Twitter users suggest new topics as well as sites and blogs to include on those topics. Many have gone so far as to suggest a topic and compile a collection of feeds for the topic. And then they help us market the site too. Holy kaw! 6. Make it easy to tweet on your behalf. Twitterfeed is a service where any RSS feed can automatically appear as your own tweets. Bloggers do this, for example, so that their blog posts automatically appear as their tweets. I took it to the next level by asking Mario Menti, the Twitterfeed creator, to make a special webpage where people could sign up to allow us to automatically post Alltop news as their tweets (click here if you’d visit the webpage). Approximately 177 people did so. I want to make sure you understand what this means: 177 people agreed to repost all Alltop news as their own tweets. This took automated tweeting to a historical new high—or low depending on who you asked. Then my new book, Reality Check, came out, and I made an offer of a free copy of it to anyone who signed up for the Alltop Twitterfeed. Another 280 people signed up—bringing the total to approximately 450 people. We counted, and these 450 people had a total of 140,000 followers. This meant that whenever we announced a new topic, the 140,000 followers of 450 people received notification. These 450 people had followers in common, so their tweets didn’t reach 140,000 different people (see next section), but this was the Mother of Retweeting. Right about now you should be asking yourself, “Why would people help Guy like this?” The answer is that these Alltop evangelists see spreading the news about Alltop as a service for their followers. They believe that Alltop’s information is good and useful and will help their followers access information on the web. Thus, the primary motivation is not a $30 book, but the satisfaction of helping others. This is a very important lesson: people must believe that what you’re marketing is great for their followers, and they must trust you. Here’s a guideline for creating something great. Here’s how to build trust. Here’s a complete explanation of evangelism. 7. Create an email list. One issue with 450 people tweeting 140,000 followers: if people followed some of the same 450 people, they got duplicate announcements. I started receiving about five complaints a day—still, the math was good: five complaints from 140,000 exposures? I can deal with complaints but, in a sense, my idea worked too well. What I could not deal with was the unintended consequences of automated tweeting. For example, Republican members of the 450 people probably didn’t appreciate the Obama.alltop announcement. I was afraid that someday a pastor (and her followers) would wonder why she tweeted about Hunting.alltop, Buddhism.alltop, and Pregnancy.alltop. Clearly, some of the people needed to choose which topics they tweeted and how the tweets were worded. Also, some of the 450 started to lose followers because of the frequency of Alltop updates (we often announce three to four new topics per day). I certainly didn’t want these people to lose followers because of me—if there’s anyone in the world who understands the trauma of losing followers, it’s me. Can I tell you another funny story? Yes, some of the 450 people lost followers because of the Alltop tweets, but many told me that their followers found the Alltop tweets more interesting than their own tweets, so that they had more interaction with their followers because of the Alltop tweets! To fix these issues, we created the Alltop news and announcements email list. Through this list, we announce every new topic, and we let the recipients decide if they want to tweet it (or email it) to others. Also, they can obviousy edit and create their own tweet or message. We told the 450 people using Twitterfeed about it, so that they could drop the Twitterfeed mechanism and use the email notification instead. We opened up the email list on the night before Thanksgiving and in six days approximately 600 people signed up for it. That was surprisingly high, but what’s even more interesting is that only fifty of the 450 Twitterfeed folks stopped doing it. I thought the majority of people would drop Twitterfeed and disappear completely or switch to the email list. You’ve heard that synergy is when 2 + 2 = 5. This is Twitter synergy where 450 - 50 = 1,000 because we signed up more people by offering an alternative. With the email list, we must have tapped people who were hesitant to entrust their feeds to us but wanted to help in some other way. Thank you God. 8. Make it easy to “post to Twitter.” One day I met with Rashmi Sinha, the CEO of Slideshare. We got to talking about how she increased her traffic, and she told me that a “Post to Twitter” link was the most effective mechanism. When people are viewing a Slideshare page like this hilarious one about getting old, they can click on the “Post to Twitter” link under the frame and a window opens with a preconfigured tweet to send to followers. According to her, this was much more effective than the various sharing and email forwarding schemes. I thought her idea was absolutely fabulous and copied it. Now there is a “Post to Twitter” button on every Alltop topic page. Approximately twenty people a day do this. On average they have 350 followers, so this provides us with another 7,000 or so impressions per day. More is less when it comes to offering people multiple ways to spread the word by clicking on rating services like Digg, Delicious, and Yahoo Buzz, pick one and be done with it. I pick Twitter because it doesn’t involve a popularity contest to get on any front page—instead, all your followers will get the tweet. 9. Offer advice deals to Twitter users. This is something that I don’t do, but I would if I ran an ecommerce company. You can Twitter to offer special deals to your followers—for example, check out what Amazon does by clicking here and what Whole Foods does by clicking here. Also, check out the stream of Twitter deals here. You’ll see offers from companies using Twitter as well as the deals that Twitter users have found (probably including company employees acting as “regular” Twitter users). How can you not love something like Twitter that is fast, free, and far-reaching for pushing out special offers? (Power tip: if you need to enable several people to tweet and to schedule your tweets, check out a service called Brightkit.) 10. Tell the complainers where to go. Some people will disagree with this use of Twitter. Don’t let this worry you because at some point everyone pisses off someone on Twitter. Therefore, letting a vocal few limit your use of Twitter is a big mistake. If they don’t like what you’re doing, tell them to stop following you: end of discussion. And rest assured that “Twitter spam” is an oxymoron because following you is completely opt-in. This is how to use Twitter as a tool. I hope the Twitter community helps you as much as it has helped Alltop and me. With some effort, you may come to view Twitter as I do: the best new marketing twool of this century. Tweet long and prosper. -- 12/28/2008 11:21 AM http://itmanagement.earthweb.com How to Use Twitter Without Typing, Pointing or ClickingThe microblogging site Twitter is growing like a weed, threatening to become a full-fledged mainstream phenomenon. A new report by HubSpot called "State of the Twittersphere" says that between 5,000 and 10,000 new users join the service every day, that 70% of current users joined within the last year and that 20% have joined within the past two months. If you're not familiar with Twitter, it's a service that combines all the best elements of blogs, IM, message boards and chat rooms. You can post anything you want, but each post, or "tweet," is limited to 140 characters or less. That makes it hard to post, but easy to read. You subscribe to, or "follow," anyone you want. So if someone's posts are boring, inane, offensive or objectionable in any way, you simply "unfollow" and never hear from them again. The basic secret to understanding and enjoying Twitter is following great users who post interesting things. I'm obsessed with adding new people, and cutting those who fail to deliver the goods. So if you want great followers, just steal mine. (It's perfectly ethical.) As recently as just one week ago, there were two major flaws -- or, at least, annoyances -- associated with Twitter. The first was that once you start following a large number of people, it's hard to keep up with their Tweets. Like many devoted Twitterers, I always keep a thin browser window open on my screen to monitor Tweets. Unfortunately, Twitter doesn't auto-refresh. So to get the new posts, I had to keep clicking every time I needed to refresh. To fix this, I created a page that auto-refreshes Twitter every 15 seconds. Now, I can just leave Twitter "running," and I need only to glance over once in a while to see the new Tweets. You can use this page, too. It's called Twitter On Crack, and it's just a very simple, free page that shows you your own Twitter feed, but with self-updating at 15-second intervals. The second Twitter flaw is that there's something about Twitter that makes you want to post interesting experiences you have. These posts run the gamut from a recent tweet from a person who said she was locked in the bathroom at Best Buy to another who was on that Continental flight that slid off the runway in Denver this week. But so many Twitterable things happen when you're not able to type anything, such as in the dark, or while running a marathon or while doing any number of other things. There should be a way to post tweets using voice-to-text technology over a cell phone. And now there is. A service called HelloTxt, which happens to be the service I use to post Tweets on Twitter, has made a deal with another company called Dial2Do, which gives you the ability to post tweets with a phone call. HelloTxt is a front end for posting short stuff. By posting just one message on HelloTxt, you simultaneously post on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Friendfeed and a bunch of others. Dial2Do is a service like Jott or ReQall that gives you a phone number to call. You say a command, leave a message, and that message is transcribed into text and sent where ever you commanded it to be sent. Most people use these services to leave themselves reminders in their e-mail inboxes. By combining HelloTxt and Dial2Do, you can command phone messages to be posted to your HelloTxt account. This is great news, because once both HelloTxt and Dial2Do are set up, you just hit the speed dial on your cell phone, say HelloTxt, then say your post. Whatever you say gets transcribed into text and posted on Twitter, as well as all the other services you specified during setup. Dial2Do also lets you listen to Twitter. It will read tweets from the people you follow over the phone. It also lets you post directly to Twitter without going through HelloTxt. So there you have it. Twitter, without typing, pointing or clicking. Follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/mike_elgan and let me know how you like Twitter On Crack and posting tweets via Dial2Do! -- A recent and much anticipated development at Twitter over the last 24 hours has been the addition of their new ‘name search‘. Now you can search for people either by their username, first name or last name. Results are displayed in order of follower numbers. Results seem a little buggy but it is better than nothing - although I’m still using Twellow if I need to find someone. Twitter tries 'following' limits to curb spamDid you know that you can only follow 2,000 people on Twitter--unless there are at least 2,000 people who have opted to follow you? This was one of the measures that the microblogging service formally announced Thursday as part of a new system to cut down on spam. The company acknowledged it only obliquely, but bloggers like David Risley picked up on the news and spread the word. Twitter spam accounts are known for adding thousands of followers and then hoping that some of the unwitting Twitter users will follow the spam account in return--most don't, meaning that spam accounts tend to have a disproportionately low number of followers in contrast to the number of people they've added. But extremely popular Twitter accounts, from Web celebs like Jason Calacanis to the Twitter feeds for news outlets like CNN and political campaigns like Barack Obama's, Twitter still allows the adding of more than 2,000 followers. The rationale is that if people are willing to add them back, they probably aren't spam. Risley suggested that Twitter could offer paid accounts to raise the limit, which could be a viable first step for a service that still has not put a business model in place. So what are the limits? Here is Twitter’s answer: What are the limits? * 1,000 total updates per day, on any and all devices Follow limits are based on several things, one of which is our belief in a person’s good standing and intention. The behind-the-scenes portion of follow limiting varies by account, relationship, and changes over time. Based on current behavior in the Twitter community, we’ve concluded that this is both fair and reasonable. While we figure out what works best for everyone, the limits may change occasionally, but this is the nucleus and future limits will be based upon the success of these. In an effort to curb "follow spam," microbloging site Twitter has started limiting the number of accounts its users can follow, according to reports. In the past few days, users like "Internet marketing consultant" Brent Csutoras began noticing that they were coming up against hard limits to the number of people they could follow. While Twitter founder Evan Williams recently wrote in a blog that there is "no magic number" that it could find to separate "spammy" users from "non-spammy" users, the company decided on a limit of 2,000. But apparently, that limit only applies to users that don't have their own critical mass of followers. While mere mortals are stuck at 2,000, CNet's Caroline McCarthy reports that Twitter "superusers" like Jason Calcanis and Barack Obama aren't limited to the number of accounts they follow. Of course, while some people see chaos, others see opportunity. Blogger David Risley suggests that maybe Twitter could charge to raise the limit, effectively making user interest in becoming followers into part of its ever-elusive business model. Twitter Spam Follow (+ Following) The Twitter Spam Follow is a no brainer where they become lopsided in trying to follow as many Twitter accounts as possible in trying to gain a follow back. Twitter had recently put a cap on the follow limit you could have in a short time frame without having a the same number of follow backs; 2,000 is the ceiling limit. Now the Spammer have found a way around this by doing a mass follow, relying on Twitter to notify you by e-mail that you have a new follower, the spammer will then mass remove follow to stay under the 2,000 limit. Sneaky tip: You could lift this limit more quickly by unfollowing those that don’t follow you back and adding more that hopefully will. Once you’re beyond 2000 followers and the limit is lifted, re-add those that you unfollowed if desired. As I write this I have 871 followers and rising as people log into their accounts today to follow me. You should also note that I added several leads on the back of this traffic too. Source: Twitter Help
Follow limits are based on several things, one of which is our belief in a person’s good standing and intention. The behind-the-scenes portion of follow limiting varies by account, relationship, and changes over time. Based on current behavior in the Twitter community, we’ve concluded that this is both fair and reasonable. While we figure out what works best for everyone, the limits may change occasionally, but this is the nucleus and future limits will be based upon the success of these. Notice how follow attempts is blank… and in the second paragraph they state that the follow limit is different for each person. I personally have hit 2 follower limits. I hit the 2,000 follower limit when I only had about 800 people following me. I un-followed a lot of people and got down to about 1,500 and was able to follow more people. The second limit I hit was following 1,720 people and only 1,230 people were following me. I then un-followed to get down to around 1,300. I’m now following 1,367 with 1,242 following and I can only add 1 if I remove 1, so I’m basically right at the limit. I’m at +125 followers/following or a ratio of about 90.1%. The question I have is for the 2,000 follower limit…can you break through this limit if you have more then 2,000 people following you? I assume that all the people with 10,000 followers were grandfathered into to the limits. Twitter adds a 'people search' functionSearch for fellow Twitterers by their real names - about blinkin' timeTwitter has finally added a people search function to the website. It's surprising that a site this successful managed to get by without this type of functionality, but this belated function now means that you can search for fellow tweets by their real names. Crazy. First impressions of the search have not been great. Some users have found it to be a tad buggy, throwing up random names rather than the one you actually searched for. In our tests, it seems that the search is caps sensitive – take off the caps, and as long as the person you are looking for is a Tweet, then you should be able to find them no problem. You can either search for names in the main search bar or go to the new, dedicated 'Who Are You Looking For?' option. Expanding rapidly New research conducted by internet marketing company HubSpot has found that between 5,000 and 10,000 people a day are signing up for Twitter daily, so this function will come in handy in the rapidly expanding Twittersphere. The micro-blogging site hit the news this week when one user Tweeted his account of a plane crash - which he was in. Report Says Twitter Would Take 36 Years to Catch Facebook - If Facebook Stopped Growing TodayMarketing firm HubSpot will publish a report tomorrow on the state of Twitter at the end of 2008, based on user data the company harvested from its controversial app TwitterGrader. Though the report's methodology is not discussed, the numbers it includes are quite interesting. We draw our own conclusions based on those numbers below. Days after Facebook posted some incredible new user numbers, it's hard not to use that as the measuring stick. While the media has mentioned Facebook about 4X as many times as it has mentioned of Twitter in the last month - Facebook is not four times the size of Twitter. It is almost 30 times as big and growing much faster. HubSpot estimates that Twitter has 4 to 5 million users, 30% of which are "brand new or unengaged." They estimate that Twitter sees between five and ten thousand new accounts opened each day. That's a nice number, but it's far below, for example, Facebook's astonishing 600k daily registrations and 140 million active users. Twitter is a fascinating little phenomenon - Facebook is mainstream. Why is this important for users? Because most of the people you might really enjoy connecting with on Twitter are unlikely to ever use it. They are busy using Facebook instead. Projecting Current NumbersIf Facebook stopped growing right now and Twitter's numbers were at the upper end of Hubspot's estimates (10k per day) - it would take 36 years for Twitter to catch up. [(135,000,000 more Facebook users / 10,000 new Twitter users per day) / 365 days per year = just about 37 years] Facebook, on the other hand, grows another Twitter's worth of new users every 8 days. This at a time when everyone from the President Elect to CNN to Shaquille O'Neil to Britney Spears is jumping on board Twitter! Of course these conclusions require us to believe Facebook's numbers and HubSpot's numbers about Twitter. HubSpot has an economic interest in making Twitter look as big as possible, though, as it's selling marketing services related to Twitter. (Disclosure: this author once did an hour of consulting for Hubspot, as well.) The logical conclusion here appears to be that Twitter is numerically insignificant. Other findings from HubSpot's forthcoming report:
Our take away? We love Twitter, we use it all day long. It's a fascinating little technology that's interesting to watch and use. It's image far outweighs its numbers, though, and there's no reason to believe that's going to change soon. You can read the full HubSpot report for yourself below. 12/28/2008 11:21 AM http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/ How to Use Twitter Without Typing, Pointing or ClickingThe microblogging site Twitter is growing like a weed, threatening to become a full-fledged mainstream phenomenon. A new report by HubSpot called "State of the Twittersphere" says that between 5,000 and 10,000 new users join the service every day, that 70% of current users joined within the last year and that 20% have joined within the past two months. If you're not familiar with Twitter, it's a service that combines all the best elements of blogs, IM, message boards and chat rooms. You can post anything you want, but each post, or "tweet," is limited to 140 characters or less. That makes it hard to post, but easy to read. You subscribe to, or "follow," anyone you want. So if someone's posts are boring, inane, offensive or objectionable in any way, you simply "unfollow" and never hear from them again. The basic secret to understanding and enjoying Twitter is following great users who post interesting things. I'm obsessed with adding new people, and cutting those who fail to deliver the goods. So if you want great followers, just steal mine. (It's perfectly ethical.) As recently as just one week ago, there were two major flaws -- or, at least, annoyances -- associated with Twitter. The first was that once you start following a large number of people, it's hard to keep up with their Tweets. Like many devoted Twitterers, I always keep a thin browser window open on my screen to monitor Tweets. Unfortunately, Twitter doesn't auto-refresh. So to get the new posts, I had to keep clicking every time I needed to refresh. To fix this, I created a page that auto-refreshes Twitter every 15 seconds. Now, I can just leave Twitter "running," and I need only to glance over once in a while to see the new Tweets. You can use this page, too. It's called Twitter On Crack, and it's just a very simple, free page that shows you your own Twitter feed, but with self-updating at 15-second intervals. The second Twitter flaw is that there's something about Twitter that makes you want to post interesting experiences you have. These posts run the gamut from a recent tweet from a person who said she was locked in the bathroom at Best Buy to another who was on that Continental flight that slid off the runway in Denver this week. But so many Twitterable things happen when you're not able to type anything, such as in the dark, or while running a marathon or while doing any number of other things. There should be a way to post tweets using voice-to-text technology over a cell phone. And now there is. A service called HelloTxt, which happens to be the service I use to post Tweets on Twitter, has made a deal with another company called Dial2Do, which gives you the ability to post tweets with a phone call. HelloTxt is a front end for posting short stuff. By posting just one message on HelloTxt, you simultaneously post on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Friendfeed and a bunch of others. Dial2Do is a service like Jott or ReQall that gives you a phone number to call. You say a command, leave a message, and that message is transcribed into text and sent where ever you commanded it to be sent. Most people use these services to leave themselves reminders in their e-mail inboxes. By combining HelloTxt and Dial2Do, you can command phone messages to be posted to your HelloTxt account. This is great news, because once both HelloTxt and Dial2Do are set up, you just hit the speed dial on your cell phone, say HelloTxt, then say your post. Whatever you say gets transcribed into text and posted on Twitter, as well as all the other services you specified during setup. Dial2Do also lets you listen to Twitter. It will read tweets from the people you follow over the phone. It also lets you post directly to Twitter without going through HelloTxt. So there you have it. Twitter, without typing, pointing or clicking. Follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/mike_elgan and let me know how you like Twitter On Crack and posting tweets via Dial2Do! -- HubSpot: Most Twitter Users Discovered Twitter in 2008Marketing software firm HubSpot released its first-ever report on the progress of Twitter for 4Q08. Twitter is a social media site that lets users publish short messages to "followers" (subscribers) in real-time. Companies using it to track buzz about their brand, or address customer service issues, include Starbucks, Amazon, Zappos and GoDaddy. HubSpot's "State of the Twittersphere" (pdf) gleans data from an app called Twitter Grader, which availed access to some several hundred Twitter profiles, including user and traffic growth, "tweet" statistics, statistics on followers and the followed, and geographic data. 70% of users were introduced to Twitter this year, HubSpot claims, and adoption doesn't appear to be slowing: 5,000 to 10,000 new accounts open daily. A full 20% of Twitter users supposedly only joined in the past 60 days. What's more, a strong correlation exists between the number of followers a person has and the number of people a person follows. The average number of followers and those people are following is about 70, but the figure is skewed by what Twitter Grader calls Elite Twitterers — some of which have hundreds or thousands of followers. By and large, the findings suggest most Twitter users use the service to keep in touch with a small circle of friends and peers: three-quarters of users have 50 or fewer followers, and for them the average number of followers is about 15.6, with an average number of people followed at 18.4.
Peak days of Twitter use are Wednesday and Thursday. There is 50% more tweet activity on a weekday than on the weekend, suggesting most users tweet from a workplace. But the principal mode of accessing Twitter is via mobile, which precipitates growth: the proportion of US mobile subscribers that accessed social networks from their handheld units tripled to nearly 10% over a year ago, according to The Kelsey Group and ConStat. By 2012, over 800 million users worldwide are expected to visit social networks from a mobile device, up from 82 million in 2007, eMarketer projects. Earlier this month BrightKit launched a tool that enables marketers to better track and manage various Twitter outreach campaigns. Social network giant Facebook attempted to buy Twitter this year for a cool $500 million in stock. The microblogging service gracefully declined. This year, Twitter contemplated charging businesses for use of its service.
A recent and much anticipated development at Twitter over the last 24 hours has been the addition of their new ‘name search‘. Now you can search for people either by their username, first name or last name. Results are displayed in order of follower numbers. Results seem a little buggy but it is better than nothing - although I’m still using Twellow if I need to find someone. Twitter tries 'following' limits to curb spamDid you know that you can only follow 2,000 people on Twitter--unless there are at least 2,000 people who have opted to follow you? This was one of the measures that the microblogging service formally announced Thursday as part of a new system to cut down on spam. The company acknowledged it only obliquely, but bloggers like David Risley picked up on the news and spread the word. Twitter spam accounts are known for adding thousands of followers and then hoping that some of the unwitting Twitter users will follow the spam account in return--most don't, meaning that spam accounts tend to have a disproportionately low number of followers in contrast to the number of people they've added. But extremely popular Twitter accounts, from Web celebs like Jason Calacanis to the Twitter feeds for news outlets like CNN and political campaigns like Barack Obama's, Twitter still allows the adding of more than 2,000 followers. The rationale is that if people are willing to add them back, they probably aren't spam. Risley suggested that Twitter could offer paid accounts to raise the limit, which could be a viable first step for a service that still has not put a business model in place. So what are the limits? Here is Twitter’s answer: What are the limits? * 1,000 total updates per day, on any and all devices Follow limits are based on several things, one of which is our belief in a person’s good standing and intention. The behind-the-scenes portion of follow limiting varies by account, relationship, and changes over time. Based on current behavior in the Twitter community, we’ve concluded that this is both fair and reasonable. While we figure out what works best for everyone, the limits may change occasionally, but this is the nucleus and future limits will be based upon the success of these. In an effort to curb "follow spam," microbloging site Twitter has started limiting the number of accounts its users can follow, according to reports. In the past few days, users like "Internet marketing consultant" Brent Csutoras began noticing that they were coming up against hard limits to the number of people they could follow. While Twitter founder Evan Williams recently wrote in a blog that there is "no magic number" that it could find to separate "spammy" users from "non-spammy" users, the company decided on a limit of 2,000. But apparently, that limit only applies to users that don't have their own critical mass of followers. While mere mortals are stuck at 2,000, CNet's Caroline McCarthy reports that Twitter "superusers" like Jason Calcanis and Barack Obama aren't limited to the number of accounts they follow. Of course, while some people see chaos, others see opportunity. Blogger David Risley suggests that maybe Twitter could charge to raise the limit, effectively making user interest in becoming followers into part of its ever-elusive business model. Twitter Spam Follow (+ Following) The Twitter Spam Follow is a no brainer where they become lopsided in trying to follow as many Twitter accounts as possible in trying to gain a follow back. Twitter had recently put a cap on the follow limit you could have in a short time frame without having a the same number of follow backs; 2,000 is the ceiling limit. Now the Spammer have found a way around this by doing a mass follow, relying on Twitter to notify you by e-mail that you have a new follower, the spammer will then mass remove follow to stay under the 2,000 limit. Sneaky tip: You could lift this limit more quickly by unfollowing those that don’t follow you back and adding more that hopefully will. Once you’re beyond 2000 followers and the limit is lifted, re-add those that you unfollowed if desired. As I write this I have 871 followers and rising as people log into their accounts today to follow me. You should also note that I added several leads on the back of this traffic too. Source: Twitter Help
Follow limits are based on several things, one of which is our belief in a person’s good standing and intention. The behind-the-scenes portion of follow limiting varies by account, relationship, and changes over time. Based on current behavior in the Twitter community, we’ve concluded that this is both fair and reasonable. While we figure out what works best for everyone, the limits may change occasionally, but this is the nucleus and future limits will be based upon the success of these. Notice how follow attempts is blank… and in the second paragraph they state that the follow limit is different for each person. I personally have hit 2 follower limits. I hit the 2,000 follower limit when I only had about 800 people following me. I un-followed a lot of people and got down to about 1,500 and was able to follow more people. The second limit I hit was following 1,720 people and only 1,230 people were following me. I then un-followed to get down to around 1,300. I’m now following 1,367 with 1,242 following and I can only add 1 if I remove 1, so I’m basically right at the limit. I’m at +125 followers/following or a ratio of about 90.1%. The question I have is for the 2,000 follower limit…can you break through this limit if you have more then 2,000 people following you? I assume that all the people with 10,000 followers were grandfathered into to the limits. Twitter adds a 'people search' functionSearch for fellow Twitterers by their real names - about blinkin' timeTwitter has finally added a people search function to the website. It's surprising that a site this successful managed to get by without this type of functionality, but this belated function now means that you can search for fellow tweets by their real names. Crazy. First impressions of the search have not been great. Some users have found it to be a tad buggy, throwing up random names rather than the one you actually searched for. In our tests, it seems that the search is caps sensitive – take off the caps, and as long as the person you are looking for is a Tweet, then you should be able to find them no problem. You can either search for names in the main search bar or go to the new, dedicated 'Who Are You Looking For?' option. Expanding rapidly New research conducted by internet marketing company HubSpot has found that between 5,000 and 10,000 people a day are signing up for Twitter daily, so this function will come in handy in the rapidly expanding Twittersphere. The micro-blogging site hit the news this week when one user Tweeted his account of a plane crash - which he was in. Report Says Twitter Would Take 36 Years to Catch Facebook - If Facebook Stopped Growing TodayMarketing firm HubSpot will publish a report tomorrow on the state of Twitter at the end of 2008, based on user data the company harvested from its controversial app TwitterGrader. Though the report's methodology is not discussed, the numbers it includes are quite interesting. We draw our own conclusions based on those numbers below. Days after Facebook posted some incredible new user numbers, it's hard not to use that as the measuring stick. While the media has mentioned Facebook about 4X as many times as it has mentioned of Twitter in the last month - Facebook is not four times the size of Twitter. It is almost 30 times as big and growing much faster. HubSpot estimates that Twitter has 4 to 5 million users, 30% of which are "brand new or unengaged." They estimate that Twitter sees between five and ten thousand new accounts opened each day. That's a nice number, but it's far below, for example, Facebook's astonishing 600k daily registrations and 140 million active users. Twitter is a fascinating little phenomenon - Facebook is mainstream. Why is this important for users? Because most of the people you might really enjoy connecting with on Twitter are unlikely to ever use it. They are busy using Facebook instead. Projecting Current NumbersIf Facebook stopped growing right now and Twitter's numbers were at the upper end of Hubspot's estimates (10k per day) - it would take 36 years for Twitter to catch up. [(135,000,000 more Facebook users / 10,000 new Twitter users per day) / 365 days per year = just about 37 years] Facebook, on the other hand, grows another Twitter's worth of new users every 8 days. This at a time when everyone from the President Elect to CNN to Shaquille O'Neil to Britney Spears is jumping on board Twitter! Of course these conclusions require us to believe Facebook's numbers and HubSpot's numbers about Twitter. HubSpot has an economic interest in making Twitter look as big as possible, though, as it's selling marketing services related to Twitter. (Disclosure: this author once did an hour of consulting for Hubspot, as well.) The logical conclusion here appears to be that Twitter is numerically insignificant. Other findings from HubSpot's forthcoming report:
Our take away? We love Twitter, we use it all day long. It's a fascinating little technology that's interesting to watch and use. It's image far outweighs its numbers, though, and there's no reason to believe that's going to change soon. You can read the full HubSpot report for yourself below. ab/abt:shourthand for about. adventuritter: an adventurous twitterer. da: shorthand for the. deets: shorthand for details. detweet: the tweet you wrote but erased, for whatever reasons, before it was posted. dweet: tweet sent while intoxicated. drunktwittering: similar to drunk dialing, just drunk posting on Twitter. drive-by-tweet: a quick post inbetween tasks. DM: shorthand for direct message. EM/eml: shorthand for email. EMA: shorthand for email address. neweeter: a new tweeter njoy: shorthand for enjoy. nudge+username: a Twitter command used to remind a Friend to update their Twitter status. http://edtechvision.org/?p=442 Top Twitter ToysTwitter is one of the ways I stay connected to my Personal Learning Network (PLN). Besides the obvious twitter clients like Twirl, these are the lastest twitter toys I have found useful:
-- http://twictionary.pbwiki.com/ Twitter Definitions (words evolved from Twitter)
12/21/2008 2:28 AM
http://www.squidoo.com/twitterapps
Twitter ApplicationsWelcome to Twitterapps! - I have 275 Twitter tools at the momentFind Tweeters like YouDirectories and User Search ToolsFind out people like you A Twitter directory sorted by occupation A twitter directory sorted by interest This tool will automatically find people who are compatible with your interests. However, if you follow too many people, then Twubble may recommend some people that you already follow Search for similar users and advertise your twitter page Search for words in usernames, locations or descriptions Brighten your tweets with little pictures All About Followers and FollowingTrack your followers as well as your own following behaviorFind out which of your friends know each other Find out who is following and unfollowing you. Have a mass follow and unfollow tool. If you have noisy twitter friends, you can snooze them for a certain time so you won't receive their tweets. Evaluate your followers through the number of dings (recommendations) they have from other Twitter users Find out who unfollowed you using this tool Receive the names of the people who unfollowed you via email. Tells you if a certain follower is following a person or not Receive a direct message when someone unfollows you Find out the latest 100 posts of your followers Follow a list of people all at once Invite lots of people in one go See your last 30 tweets along with your friends. Use on Mac. Find out what people are up to Find out who's following too many people at a small span of time. --
http://dossy.org/twitter/karma/
I have been addicted to Twitter lately and foresee me using the social tool for a long time. I have received many tips and many applications over the past few days and have played with a few of them that I liked. I am posting a review on one of them here.
The top of the screen shows you the total number of people following you as well as how many are “Mutual Friends” where you joint follow each other. It also lists how many “Only Followers” where they are following you but you are not following them. This site is fantastic for people who want to automatically follow people who are following you. You can access this site and log in, you can easily see who you are following and who is following you. “They Follow You” is marked in RED, “You Follow Them” is marked in GREEN. --
A common complaint about Twitter (when it's actually up) is that follower management and tracking can be tricky. While stopping short of being a full-blown client, Twitter100 makes it easier to get an overview of who's watching your tweets and what they're up to, by presenting the 100 most recent tweets from your followers. (Unlike most Twitter apps, you also don't need to supply a password, though that also means no reply options.) The site is supported by advertising, but this is embedded in a pretty unobtrusive way. For serious Twitterers, it's a useful option that's much quicker to read than the standard site. (Thanks Simon!) [Twitter100]
Twitter100 helps track Twitter followers--
12/15/2008 4:36 AM http://www.digitaldesignblog.com
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http://www.digitaldesignblog.com/
12/10/2008 10:34 AM 19 Handy Twitter Mashups and ToolsTwitter mashups and tools put a unique spin on the way we use Twitter. By “mashing” information from Twitter with other applications, you get an unmatchable user experience that can be both fun and useful. Enjoy these top 19 Twitter mashups. 1) Twitter Burner - Tweetburner is a twitter mashup that allows you to create tiny URLs and also allow you to track how many times they where clicked on it. Ideal for someone who lets out a lot of links on twitter.
2) Twalala - Get ready to take control of your twitterstream. twalala is a client for Twitter that allows you to control what you see, and more importantly, what you don’t see in your twitterstream. Using twalala, you can filter tweets out of your stream by keywords and phrases or mute individuals who get a bit too chatty. Finally, Twitter with a mute button.
3) Twitspy lets you see what people are posting on Twitter in realtime by spying on the Twitter public timeline. Twitspy also tracks website links within tweets.
4) Twitter stats - In your Tweets, Graphin’ Your Stats! Weekly Stats. Graph your Twitter Stats including. Tweets per hour; Tweets per month; Tweet timeline;
5) Twittervision is a web mashup combining Twitter with Google Maps to create a real time display of tweets across a map.
6) mail2twitter is a free service that allows you to post tweets through e-mail, and the most important, from any email-enabled mobile device.
7) The TwitterCounter -Add a daily updating TwitterCounter to your blog so everybody can see how popular you are
Twit Pic, Share photos with your friends on twitter with twitpic. No signup required, just login using your twitter account.
9) Twittercal - It’s a free service that connects your Twitter account to your Google Calendar. Add events in a snap from your favorite Twitter client.
10) Geotwitter - This mashup uses the Google Maps API and Twitter API. The most recent updates are fetched from the public timeline and mapped once every minute. If you have any comments suggestions or ideas feel free to leave a note on our blog.
11) TwitterFox is a Firefox extension that notifies you of your friends’ tweets of Twitter. (previously known as TwitterNotifier)
12) TwittyTunes is a FoxyTunes companion Firefox extension - it allows you to post your currently playing songs to Twitter with a click.
13) Twitbin - Send and receive messages to all your fellow twitterholics, right from your firefox browser.
14) TwitterBar - allows you to post to Twitter from Firefox’s address bar. A small unobtrusive grey icon sits to the right of your address bar; clicking on it will post your tweet, and you can hover your mouse over it to see how many characters you have left.
15) StockTwits is an open, community-powered investment idea and information service for financial investors.
16) Twitterholic - Provides a list of the 100 best twitterers based on their followers, the people they follow and the number of their updates
17) TwitterFeed - Feed your blog to twitter, post RSS to twitter.
18) TwitterBuzz shows you what people using Twitter, a microblogging service, are linking to.
19) Twitter Map - Provides users with the ability to update their locations on a Google Map and send a tweet with it
12/9/2008 3:46 PM Jun Loayza is the Co-Founder and CMO of Future Delivery. He authors a blog at Junloayza.com. Twitter is my news stream. I use it to get the best news and information from people that I trust and admire. I barely even use my Google Reader anymore because I carry my Twitter with me everywhere I go. As you find more and more interesting and valuable people to follow, you’re going to find it difficult to keep track of all of the tweets you receive. You’re going to need something to help you manage all of the noise. Just take a look at Gary Vaynerchuk (2,800+ following) and The Busy Brain (5,000+ following). I’m sure that at times, it gets difficult for each to keep track of all of their tweets because of the sheer volume they get in their stream. So what do you do when you want to quiet the Twitter noise but don’t want to de-friend people? You currently have a few options: 1. Instead of listening to all of the noise, you can focus in on
certain signals Focus on the signal rather than the noiseJust Signal Tweetbeep Another great alternative is Twilert. Like Tweetbeep, Twilert lets you create keywords that are tracked on Twitter and sent to you via email. Put simply, it’s Google Alerts for Twitter. Isolate your favorite tweeple from the rest
To be perfectly honest, I’m a twhirl fan, but Tweetdeck has a killer function called Tweetdeck Groups that allows you to isolate your favorite tweeple from the rest of the noise. Just choose who you want to stand out, and Tweetdeck will create a column specifically for this user’s feed. This is especially useful when you’re following over 300 people. So instead of sifting through all of the noise, just go to your favorite group and read the tweets that matter most to you. You can view a comparison of Tweetdeck and twhirl here.Twalala promises to mute certain people on Twitter without actually de-friending them. Why on earth would you want to actually mute someone? • If you don’t want to see someone’s rant about their bad day at the office, you can mute them for the day. • If you missed the season finale of Dancing with the Stars and don’t want to find out who won, you can mute any tweets with the keywords “Dancing with the Stars.” Twalala feels that people would rather mute than de-friend because de-friending can be seen as offensive. Also, many people wouldn’t want others to know that they have just de-friended them, especially with sites like Qwitter out there. Of course, by muting the people you follow, you selectively lose the opportunity to read that great 10% of information or breaking news that you would have received otherwise. 12/8/2008 12:30 PM Get simple group Twitter updates with NerdzNerdz is a really simple way to manage a group of your favorite Twitter users. You simply drop in the names of the people you want to keep track of and it pushes their tweets onto a gray background with each tweet fading away as it gets older. To add more names to your Nerdz list you just add them to the end of the URL, and they'll be re-ordered alphabetically. You can send this link to anyone else as a quick way to give them suggestions of people to subscribe to, or simply use it as a no-software standalone for something like TweetDeck, which is all about making custom lists. Missing, however, is any way to click on their user name or individual tweets to go right to the Twitter.com pages. Nerdz was created by Aaron Boodman, who is currently a programmer at Google, and more notably the co-creator of the popular Greasemonkey extension for Firefox which is on the cusp of hitting 12 million downloads. I've put together a quick Nerdz of CNET News people if you want to give it a spin. See also GroupStatus, another Twitter friend organizer which we blogged about back in April.
All that said, what is this silly obsession with Twitter? I know, technophiles all around the world are in love with it, but it's just not going to ever catch on and become mainstream. It might have some appeal for the zero-attention-span crowd, and among adults trying to be trendy and down there with the youth of today, but I have not yet encountered anyone below the age of thirty who has any interest in Twitter. It's a monumental case of creepy tree house - and shunned by every single young person or student I've met. (The irony being that all the middle aged Twitter users are convinced that Twitter is the perfect medium to engage with the youngsters of today, which is why they dabble with it in the first place.) WHY asking Questions are a Powerful Twitter TechniqueIf I had to list my top 10 ways that I’ve grown my own Twitter network - somewhere towards the top of that list I would share this simple - yet powerful tip. Ask Questions The act of consistently asking quality questions on Twitter can have a massive impact upon your network. Here’s 6 reasons why questions are so powerful: 1. Questions Signal to Followers that you are Interested So many people use Twitter purely to ’shout’ at their followers. They rarely make space for people to interact. Questions send a signal to your followers (and potential followers) that you’re not just on Twitter to have a monologue - but that you’re interested in dialogue and conversation. 2. Questions Prompt Conversation I find Twitter to be most effective when conversations evolve on it. One of the best ways to ‘get people talking’ is to ask them a question - particularly if it’s about themselves and their experience. 3. Questions Stimulate @Replies When you ask a question and someone replies to you publicly not only you see their answer - but so do all of their followers. This can stimulate their followers to check you out. If people who are yet to follow you see others who they respect interacting with you and having good conversation there’s a good chance they’ll want to be a part of that interaction too. 4. Questions Draw ‘Lurkers’ into Active Engagement Have you ever looked at the number of people following you and wondered why you only ever hear from a small percentage of them? Some are likely to be just lurking - watching you but not actively responding. This may be because they’re not sure what to say, they might be intimidated, they may not know how to engage you etc. Asking a simple question is a great way to draw people into their first @reply to you. Once they do - they’re more likely to do a 2nd and a 3rd… 5. Questions (and their Answers) Teach You One of the reasons I love Twitter so much is that it’s teaching me so much. Asking your followers questions not only about themselves but about things you don’t know can be a rewarding experience. Next time you need to know something - don’t Google it - start by Tweeting your question. 6. Questions give you Insight into who is Following you and what their Needs are Effective Twitter users are in touch with the needs of their followers. They know what kind of information their followers want, they know their needs and problems, they know what gets them excited… etc. One of the best ways to find out this information is simply to ask a question. Over a few weeks find out as much as you can about your followers - in doing so you’ll find you can be a lot more useful in your use of Twitter. Now that we’ve covered some of the WHY on the topic of Questions on Twitter - tomorrow on TwiTip I want to explore some of the HOW to ask questions effectively. Make sure you’re tuned into the TwiTip RSS feed to catch the next post in this mini-series. -- I think it also signals to people that you’re really hoping for participation. I found people on Twitter searches, but then felt hesitant to @ reply to them, because they didn’t seem to expect anyone else to be joining their narration of their life. I reminded myself that they probably wouldn’t be on twitter if they didn’t expect random people to be talking to them, but it’s always nice when someone asks questions and you know for sure that they want twitter to meet strangers, not just to talk to their friends. Biggest Point is Number 4 - By Far - Questions Draw Lurkers Into Active Engagement. As you pointed out at ProBlogger Darren, only 1 in 100 readers (or more) are active participants of a blog, asking questions draws in those ‘lurkers’. Loving TwiTip - yet another Raving Rowse Project. Hehehe Nice post. I’ve found also that (and heard) that followers may start talking all around you about things you were actually looking to discuss… that is, if you don’t alert them by posing question format tweets once in a while. I agree with one of the earlier posters though, it can be a little weird when you tweet a question and then hear the twitter crickets. Cheers. The best questions to ask are ones that clearly are on the edge - thought provoking and personal. Last week, I found a Twitter user who posted what to me was a tasteless video about Hitler. I simply asked “Does anyone else find this video offensive?” Lot’s of people had personal opinions about the video, so they chimed right in. -- How to Ask Effective Questions on TwitterThis post follows up a post yesterday that explored Why Asking Questions on Twitter is a Powerful Technique. OK - so asking questions is important - but are any questions OK on Twitter? What kind of questions work best? Here are a few tips for asking questions effectively on Twitter. Keep Questions RelevantThe types of questions you should ask will depend upon the way you normally use Twitter. If you use it in a personal way then almost any question will work but if your use of Twitter is more focused upon exploring a topic or niche, or if you’re using it for business - you’ll want to keep your questions at least somewhat on topic. Acknowledge AnswersSimply asking questions and ignoring the answers is something I’ve seen a number of Twitter users do as a strategy for building up follower numbers. The problem with this is that it can leave those who answer feeling a little ignored. Of course it is difficult to respond to every person who answers (last time I asked a question on Twitter I had 100 responses - it would have taken over my day to personally respond to each). A few ways of acknowledging answers that go beyond replying individually include:
These types of responses and acknowledgments show your followers that you value their replies, will help them to see how their responses fit into the overall conversation and will increase the chances that they’ll respond again to future questions. Be willing to Answer Your own QuestionsWhen I ask a question on Twitter I find that among the answers are usually quite a few ‘what do you think?’ replies. Sharing what you think, have experienced, or what you know is a great way to give your followers insight into who you are. Plus…. being willing to answer your own questions is just polite. Don’t just Ask them and RunI made this mistake a few times - a question came to mind just before I was heading to bed so I tweeted it and then signed off for the night. Doing this says to your followers that perhaps you’re not as interested in their answer as they thought. It also means that if people want to clarify your question or unpack it in some way that you’re not there to have a conversation with them. Next time you consider asking a question on Twitter ask yourself if you have time to interact with your followers for a few minutes (or longer if you have a lot of followers). If you don’t - make a note of the question and ask it later. Leave Space for Answers and ConversationThis relates to not asking questions and running but the strategy of asking questions to follower becomes so much more effective if you extend the questions into an ongoing conversation. One way to kill this conversation is to follow your question tweet up with another one on a completely different topic. Some Twitter users I follow tweet so often and on so many different topics that it can be difficult to know how to respond because they’re onto a different topic before you can reply. Take your time, pause, let your followers submit their answers before you move onto a different topic. 20 tips on asking Questions from My Friends:I asked my followers to my @ProBlogger account what tips they had on asking questions on Twitter. Their responses included a lot of great tips, many of which I’d not considered myself. Here are 20 of their responses:
http://blog.brand-yourself.com/ Top 8 Posts About Using Twitter to Build Your BrandAre you using Twitter to strengthen your brand? If not, check out the awesome posts below by a group of great bloggers (who you should also follow on Twitter!). How to Use Twitter to Build Your Brand:
Using Twitter is a great way to participate in your niche, build relationships with great people and connect yourself to career opportunities and projects that make you happy. What are you waiting for? Get started now, and don’t hesitate to follow me (Pete Kistler) on Twitter! -- Twitter Best Practices So FarI’ve just spent some time subscribing to a bunch of Twitter social media and community manager types (via twitterpacks.pbwiki.com) My goal in doing this is to learn more about digital community management, and how that relates to the library version of digital communities. But while doing that, I started noticing some similarities in twitter account pages, and thought I’d share those with you. Twitter Best Practices: 1. Have a bio. When people see an interesting
tweet, they might click through and want to read a bit about you -
the first place they’ll look is your Twitter bio. Most bios provide
a brief outline of who you are. For example, mine currently says Even better - include an invitation in your bio. Here are two examples:
2. Extra links in your bio. You can add links to pertinent sites and services in your bio. If the URL is long, make sure to shorten it with one of those tinyURL services. Otherwise, the link text will run into the background of the page… and make you look like you look bad. 3. Spell check your bio text. Misspellings look bad. Nuf said. 4. Use a good headshot for your picture/icon: Best practices for the little pic that accompanies your tweets - a headshot of you, smiling. Or maybe you being silly. If possible, show your personality. Don’t frown - if you don’t look friendly (or you look scary), others might think twice about friending you. And on the web, thinking twice means you’ve lost them. 5. Add a background image. Any image. Silly. Professional. Ugly. The point here is that using the default Twitter background on your account makes you look like a newbie. And that’s bad, especially when it’s so easy to add an image. Brownie points for using the image like these two tweeters. See what they’ve done? They smartly positioned an image version of a link list that appears in the far left portion of their twitter page. Nice way to share links and promote themselves! 6. Say “Hi” to new followers. When someone follows you, reply back. That’s nice! Here’s one example: “you might be the first librarian I’ve met. HI!” Even better - one person direct messaged me with this message: “Welcome New Follower!! How goes it? Have you tweeted anything that I should know about that I may have missed?” Wow - he’s asking you to introduce yourself in a very direct and helpful (to him) way. Nice. 7. Silly observations:
8. Finally, don’t do this: I saw one twitter account (that I didn’t follow) with these characteristics:
Notice the irony here? This person’s bio and his actual Twitter activity don’t match up. He doesn’t sound like a key executive in “digital media” He needs to take 5 minutes to add a pic, add a background, follow a few usual suspects in his field, and add a couple more tweets. This will make his account look “normal” - and he’ll look more knowledgeable to boot. Update: after writing a whiz-bang twitter article, I completely fogot to add a link to my own twitter account (twitter.com/davidleeking)! Duh… Tweet Your Message to a Larger Audience with HashtagsEver wondered what Hashtags are on Twitter? They’re words with #’s in front of them. Today Sherice Jacob (follow her at @sherice) from iElectrify explains what hashtags are and how to use them. Twitter is a great place to find and follow people with the same hobbies and interests as you have. Unfortunately, once you have as many followers as Darren does, it starts to get overwhelming to stay in touch with them all, and make sure the right information goes to the right people. Making an appearance at a marketing seminar and love to cook? You’ve got a situation then. How do you make sure you’re tweeting details about marketing events to the seminar group while tweeting your favorite recipes to the cooking group? Enter Hashtags. A hashtag is a symbol - # - followed by a name that can be used to broadcast to a specific group of people. For example, there’s a group for #googlenews, #love and even #kmart. None is probably more popular right now and relevant than the group created for the Mumbai attacks - #mumbai. To see which groups have already been created, visit www.hashtags.org - the official site that creates, organizes and displays these groups. Use the search box in the upper right corner to see if your group name is already available. If it isn’t, you can create it simply by tweeting and including the hashtag (#) within your post. The first step though, is to make sure hashtags can index and display your group tweets. Just follow @hashtags and the service will follow you back automatically. Then it’s time to help spread the word about your new Twitter group. For example - Got a great Twitter tip? Just send it to #TwiTip and you could see it on our blog! The second step is to get familiar with hashtag commands, so that you only broadcast a message out to the people you want to receive it, those being the members of your hashtag group. Here’s a quick rundown of the more useful ones:
You’ll probably want to print out this set of hashtag commands for future reference. If and until Twitter creates its own built-in service for groups, hashtags is the most up-to-date (albeit unattractive) way to stay in touch and create powerful, profitable groups for expanding your Twitter empire and connecting with people who share your interests. -- Twitter Tips in 140 Characters or MoreCheck this out! http://twittermaven.blogspot.com Everything that you ever wanted to know about Twitter. -- 20 Signs You Twitter Too Much
-- 1. Decide what your purpose is.Have a clear purpose in mind to guide your use of Twitter. Do you want to reach key influencers in your field? Or are you trying to engage end users of your products? Your use of Twitter -- whom you follow, what you tweet and how you interact with other Twitterers -- will be different for each. Remember that you're creating an online persona for your brand or company. Trying to be all things to all Twitterers will come off as inauthentic, and it will offer little value to your followers. That's why Scoble recommends creating separate Twitter accounts for separate purposes: "Use one account to get news out, one to respond to customer complaints, and one for taking part in the conversation." 2. Follow the right people.Both Fitton and Scoble agree that the key to using Twitter effectively is to listen more than you talk. "You should be reading tweets," says Scoble, "not writing tweets." Use the search tool at search.twitter.com to find people who are tweeting about you, your competitors or topics germane to your business, and watch how other Twitterers respond to them. Eventually, you'll want to join in the conversation yourself, but first follow the people you've identified as key commenters. Following customers, clients, colleagues and thought leaders in your field not only shows that you want to hear what they have to say, it also encourages them to follow you -- and it lets them contact you privately if they choose. (Twitter allows members to send private "direct messages" only to their followers -- that is, people who are already subscribed to their posts.) 3. Be interesting.The key to gaining business advantage with Twitter is to offer something of value with every tweet, whether that's news about your company, advice for using your products, insight about your niche or even just a laugh. Twitter users, at least today's early adopters, are very sensitive to attempts at manipulation, so don't flood your tweet stream with spin, ad-speak or empty self-promotion. The secret, according to Fitton, is to "be unselfish. The one thing that fails every time on Twitter is being selfish." Keep in mind that the central function of Twitter is to give people a chance to talk about themselves, to tell the world what they are doing. Encourage your followers to talk about themselves by asking them questions related to your mutual interests that they'll want to answer. Or, conversely, talk about your followers -- by name. Show interest in the people who use your products. If you're interested in them, they'll be interested in you, advises Scoble. 4. Engage the conversation, on Twitter and beyond.What makes Twitter work, and what makes it so special to its users, is its potential for human interaction. "I think the question that Twitter's really asking and that all our tweets are asking is 'What do we have in common?'" says Fitton. People show a tremendous loyalty for companies and products that they feel represent people "like us" -- witness the community of Apple users. Being genuine and forthcoming, as well as taking part in the natural back-and-forth of conversation on Twitter, goes a long way toward showing people what you have in common. And it doesn't stop there. Although Twitter itself is a finite community, there's no reason the conversations that start there need to stay there. Twitter should be just one part of your social media presence, says Scoble. "Don't just Twitter. Do blog posts, post pictures on Flickr, put videos on YouTube, list events on Upcoming.org [an event guide that defaults to the San Francisco Bay Area but that you can set to your locality when you join], quote Twitterers in your blog posts," he says. What you want to do is create ties between your Twitter presence and the rest of the Web.
5. Use the right tools.Twitter's Web interface can be somewhat confusing and ill-suited to some tasks. Fortunately, a wide variety of alternative tools for Twitter have been developed for just about every platform. Some simply make it easier to perform common tasks such as sending direct messages. Others add new features like automatically updated keyword searches, easy URL shortening or marking tweets as read or unread. Finding the right tools for your particular personality, needs and Twittering style can be a challenge, but here are a few recommendations to get you started -- and they're all free. At your deskBoth Scoble and Fitton agree that Twitter's built-in search function is the single most important tool. Using the advanced search options, you can find tweets with specific keywords or phrases; those written by or for certain users, on particular dates; and so on. You can even subscribe to any search as an RSS feed. The desktop client TweetDeck goes a step further, allowing you to run multiple searches that are updated in real time as your keywords are mentioned on Twitter. (In other words, it integrates search feeds directly into the interface.) TweetDeck also allows at-a-glance access to your direct messages and replies, as does another popular desktop client, Twhirl. Running on Adobe AIR, TweetDeck and Twhirl are both Mac- and Windows-compatible. Both of these clients are powerful alternatives to the Twitter Web site, although some users, including Fitton, prefer to use Twitter's home page. A number of Firefox extensions let you do things with Twitter directly from your browser. For example, if you see a Web site you want to share with your followers, Shareaholic allows you to tweet it with one click. And TwitBin puts Twitter into your browser's sidebar so it's always at your fingertips. Another tool worth mentioning is FriendFeed, a service that lets you consolidate updates from more than 40 different social media and social networking sites -- including Twitter, Digg, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Delicious and Flickr -- and create threaded discussions. "FriendFeed gives people a place to talk about your tweets," says Scoble, and can be an important extension of your online persona. On the goFinally, you can take Twitter with you when you're away from your computer using any number of clients on your smart phone. There are dozens of Twitter apps for the iPhone, but the one getting the most attention at the moment (and Scoble's favorite) is Twinkle, which includes a location feature that allows you to find other Twitterers nearby (it's available from the iTunes App Store). On the BlackBerry, TwitterBerry is your go-to client; Twitter fans also recommend TinyTwitter on Windows Mobile and Java-based cell phones (including the BlackBerry), and MoTwit on the Treo. All of these are solid apps with strong followings. Try one on your mobile device and keep tabs on your Twitter account during those moments of downtime between meetings, standing in line, sitting in the back of a cab or waiting in a plane on the tarmac for two hours, and you'll start to see why Twitter is much more than meets the eye. -- Twitterspeak: 66 Twitter Terms You Don’t Need to KnowNever read a twiller? Having twissues with your twerminology? Welcome, then, to the unforgivable abuse of the English language that some call Twitterspeak. The trick, in most instances, is to take the first two letters of microblogging service Twitter and meld them, often unwillingly, to the front of your chosen word. These ungainly neologisms are so numerous that they now require at least two sites to track them: Twictionary and Twittonary. The ListThe latter, Twittonary, forces you to click through every letter of the alphabet methodically, despite the fact that most letters lack a single entry. Time saver: here’s the full list, with our suggestions below: A-S adventuritter: an adventurous twitterer beetweet: a buzzing tweet; a “hot” tweet co-twitterer: a partner that tweets on your Twitter account. dweet: tweet sent while intoxicated drive-by-tweet: a quick post inbetween tasks friendapalooza: a quick burst of friend-adding mistweet: a tweet in which one later regrets neweeter: a new tweeter occasionitter: an occasional tweeter politweeter: a political tweeter politweet: a political tweet qwitter: a tool used to catch twitter quitters- UseQuitter.com reportwitters: reporter style twitterers sweeple: sweet twitter people Twa- twadd: to add/follow someone to your Twitter account as a friend. twaffic: Twitter traffic. twaiting: twittering while waiting. twalking: walking while twittering via text. twapplications: Twitter applications. Twe- twead: to read a tweet from a fellow twitterer. tweepish: feeling sheepish or regretful about something you tweeted. tweeple: Twitter people, Twitter members, Twitter users. tweeps: Twitter people that follow each other from one social media/network to another. tweetaholism: the continued use of Twitter as an addiction that is difficult to control. tweetaholic: someone addicted to Twitter, so much so that it may be an actual problem. tweet-back: bringing a previous tweet conversation or reference back into the current conversation. tweet-dropping: eavesdropping on someone else’s home page in friends mode. tweeter: a user of Twitter. tweeterboxes: twitterers who tweet too much. tweetheart: that special tweeter who makes your heart skip a beat. tweetin: when a group of twitterers agree to get together at a set time to twitter. tweet(ing): the act of posting to Twitter. tweets: posts on Twitter by twitterers. tweetsulted, tweetsult: what do you think it means, you dumb twitterer? tweetup: when twitterers meet in person - a Twitter meet up. Twi- twideo-cronicity: when you’re watching someone’s videos and they are simultaneously leaving a comment or tweet for/at/about you. twiking: biking while twittering via text. twinkedIn: inviting friends made on Twitter to connect with you on LinkedIn. twis: to dis a fellow twitterer. very bad form. twitosphere: community of twitterers. twittastic: fantastic, wonderful, superb. twittcrastination: avoiding action while twittering, procrastination enabled by Twitter use. twittduit: If you need to tweet a friend that does not follow you, post a twittduit asking your followers to pass a message. twittectomy: an unfollowing of friends. twitter-light zone: where you are when you return to Twitter after any time away and feel disoriented and lost. twitter stream: a collection of tweets often times in alphabetical order twitosphere: the community of twepple. twitterati: The A-list twitterers. twittercal mass: a community that has achieved a critical mass of twitterers. twitterer: a user of Twitter (compare: tweeter). twittering: to send a Twitter message. twitterish: erractic behavior with short outbursts. twitteritas: women who play with their twitters. twitterness: a person’s contribution to the twitosphere. twitterfly: being a social butterfly on Twitter evidenced by extreme usage of @ signs. twitterject: interject your tweet into an existing tweet stream of conversation. twitter-ku: those who either post on both Twitter and Jaiku or load their Twitter feed into Jaiku. twitterlinkr: a service collecting the best links posted through Twitter. twitterlooing: twittering from a bathroom. twitterloop: to be caught up with friend tweets and up on the conversation. twittermob: an unruly and ragtag horde of people who descend on an ill-prepared location after a provocative Twitter message. twittermaps: a mashup technology that lets Twitter users find each other using google maps. twitterpated: to be overwhelmed with Twitter messages. twitterphoria: the elation you feel when the person you’ve added as a friend adds you back. twitterage: rage at a twitter post. twitterrhea: the act of sending too many Twitter messages. Mashable’s Suggested AdditionsTwegosearching: Something we never, ever do. Every 5 minutes. All day. Twitophant / Twitophantic: One who repeatedly tweets the Top 100 in an attempt to gain more followers. Actually pretty smart. Greentweets International: Well-meaning organizers of the Save the Fail Whales campaign. -- Suss out someone’s dating potential Andrea (real name and Twitter ID withheld) went out on a first date with a guy. The date went well, and they talked about going out again. During the evening Andrea’s date mentioned he was on Twitter, as is Andrea. The next day Andrea looked the guy up on Twitter to send him a message that she had fun last night. But before she did, she discovered her date was Twittering nasty things about her every time she went to the bar or the bathroom. Ouch. And yes, Andrea didn’t go out with him again. -- Don’t get caught up in the COUNT; get caught up in the CONTENT!My biggest pet peeve on Twitter is when people ask for more followers. I don’t think anyone has malicious intents, but it doesn’t make any sense to me. You get more followers because you provide great content, are entertaining or someone likes you. It’s much worse to have someone follow you, not like what you tweet and then unfollow you. Chances are, you’ve lost them for good. Practice good Twitter etiquette and don’t solicit followers for yourself or your friends. Don’t publicly thank each of your followersThe quickest way to get people to stop following you is to provide a lack of good content or engaging dialogue. Thanking each of your new followers is a nice concept, but not practical. Keep in mind that tweeting the names of those following you is not valuable content to anyone. If you set the precedence you’re going to thank each and every person, you better be prepared to keep it up. If you really must thank each follower: 1. Use the direct message feature and send it privately. Don’t underestimate the power of tracking a trendBe part of breaking the hottest Twitter topic or find out what’s going on and join the conversation. If you have information or news you’d like to track, use the hashtag. Use Twitter search to get your results. Keep it short and sweet. The more you cut into the 140 characters, the less content you provide AND the less likely people will use it. When to use a hashtag (#)? • Taking notes at a conference (Ask everyone around you to do the
same thing and then you’ll all have access to ALL notes) NOTE: You create a hashtag simply by prefixing a word with a hash symbol: #hashtag. Don’t use up your entire 140 characters with a lengthy URL
Use applications like TinyURL or Snipurl. They automatically shorten your URL and can offer link customization. Once you submit a tweet with a long URL, Twitter automatically converts it for you. It doesn’t help your cause “pre-tweet.” Make the most of your content and space by shortening the URL in advance. Don’t worry about those who “unfollow” youIt’s like Pandora’s Box, if you REALLY want to know when someone unfollows you, applications like Qwitter are available. I warn you, if you decide to use this function—do not hold a grudge. Those who unfollow you on Twitter may want to connect with you on a different network, or search your info at their leisure. And, yes, sometimes it’s just not a “match.” It’s not personal. I do use the application, and I only look for trends of people who unfollow after a certain tweet or trend (i.e. if I’ve sent too many tweets in a short amount of time). Worry more about building the community you envision…it’s energy well spent. Don’t be afraid of being a “polyconversationalist”(You caught me. I made up this word. For the purpose of social networking, it means one who converses with multiple people simultaneously.) You are now part of an asynchronous microblogging world, multiple conversations are a reality. The beauty of it is the expectation that you’ll reply as you have time. When you “find the time” you may find yourself replying to multiple responses at one time. Get used to it…it’s what Twitter is all about. Don’t forget about your safety if you are going to meet upIf you plan on meeting up with someone you’ve never met face-to-face, here are a few tips: • Google them. Take a look at their online presence. Are they well connected across many networks? Have they been around for at least six months to a year? • Shared connections. (There’s nothing wrong with asking about someone prior to a meet up. Check to see if you share any mutual connections.) • Publicly tweet/message the name of the person(s) and location of your meeting across your social networks. • Exchange phone numbers. Call the number to verify it belongs to that person. Then give the phone number and any other contact information you have about that person to your partner or a trusted friend. • Meet in a group setting in a public location. (Don’t meet at your home!) • If you’re meeting up with several people you’ve never met, verify that the others are coming. • Drive yourself or get your own transportation to the meet up. (I know…I broke my own rule in my example.) Most importantly, trust your gut. If a request to meet “doesn’t feel right,” don’t do it. There are several Internet safety resources out there. It can’t hurt to take a peek. -- Thanks For Following, Now Click On My Junk
As my Twitter stream
has grown, I’ve noticed that about 1 in every 5 new followers sends
me a message like this after I follow back: Ok, I’m paraphrasing. But if you’re on Twitter, you’ve undoubtedly had a few of these. (If you’re not, go there! And then follow me here.) This turns me off, almost instantly. Here’s why it bugs me. 1) When I decide to follow someone back, it’s usually because they’ve got interesting conversation going on in their stream or a fun bio, or both. If you hit me with a spammy sounding DM right when we get connected, I instantly think your community participation is a sham. Or at the very least, that you’re looking at this endeavor bass ackwards. 2) You don’t know a thing about me yet, except what you read on my profile. How on earth do you know that what you offer is of value to me in the least? 4) Your website is in your profile. Before I follow you, I’ll be going there to check you out. And I’m pretty smart (most days). If I want to click to your site and see what you’re about, I will. 5) I’m a very social person, and dig meeting new people. Truly. So I’m excited that you’re following me. But I’d much rather learn about who you are on a personal level. I guarantee you that’s more interesting than what you do for a living. You’re not letting me see the best of you. 6) If your business proposition is more important than saying hello and getting acquainted, then it’s clear to me that you don’t feel the same way about people as I do, which means we’ll probably have little in common anyway. 7) Like many, many other people, I do business with people I like and trust. But like and trust are not instant affinities. Hitting me with your junk right off the bat tells me that you’re impatient and not willing to invest in like and trust.
9) I’m going to be a much more loyal reader of your blog or patron of your business if I feel like your reached out to me to do more than build your subscriber base. I’m human too, and I’d really like to think you find something interesting about me besides the click I make on your site. Call me sensitive. 10) Introducing yourself by using my name at least lets me know that I wasn’t part of a mass message. So let’s find the positive in this, shall we? For as many of you as have slipped me a link, hundreds and hundreds of you are doing the right thing. Here are a few intro DM’s I’ve gotten lately that made me glad I’d followed back: “Hey Amber, thanks for the add! Looking forward to having some fun conversation.” “Hi Amber, thanks for the follow! Can’t wait to chat more about beer. Cosmos suck.” “Hi Amber, thanks for the follow. I like your blog and content. I’m getting mine rolling, hope to share cool content soon! ” “thanks for the reciprocated follow, Amber. Looking forward to sharing tweets.” “Hey Amber, hope you had a great weekend! Thanks for the
follow back.” So there are lots like this. I guess what they all have in common is that they feel personal, they feel real, and they make me want to start a conversation with these people. Linky spamlicious crud (yes, that’s a very official term) makes me afraid to start talking to you lest you start pushing your wares on me. And that’s not exactly what you want, is it? No, I’m not that darned important. I’m just one person, and this is just my opinion. But there are so many things that I can pick out from the list above that apply to just about any communications endeavor that I couldn’t resist talking about it. So tell me then. Do you plunk links into your welcome tweets? Why or why not? And if you do, tell me why you think it’s a smart move. If it bugs you too, tell me what I’m missing. -- 12/1/2008 12:34 PM TwitKit 1.1TwitKit is a Twitter sidebar for Firefox. It has many features that other clients are missing - so come on and try it already! Updated August 3, 2008 336 weekly downloads
14,293 total downloads
Long DescriptionTwitKit is a Twitter sidebar for Firefox. TwitKit has a 6-section
interface, using tabs to separate content. You can view the Twitter
public timeline, your user timeline, a list of your friends and
their latest tweets, a list of your followers and their latest
tweets, @replies made to you, and stats about your account. Works with:
See All VersionsHomepageSupportSupport for this add-on is provided by the developer at http://getsatisfaction.com/twitkit or by sending an e-mail to twitkit at engel dot uk dot to Reviews· Can't sign outIt may seem stupid. . .I LOVE this app but I have 2 Twitter accts and need to sign out and in occasionally. I am going to have to get rid of it if I can't figure it out.
· Update this PLEASE!I Love TwitKit...but itis not compatible yet with 3.03! So,PLEASE update asap if possible!
· Please Twitkit can receive a direct message.
Advanced DetailsVersion 1.1 — August 3, 2008 — 115 KBAfter over a month of dedicated work, we've decided to release
TwitKit 1.1. This release (codenamed "Goldfinch") focuses on UI
improvements and an increase in stability. All of the code has been
reorganized and cleaned up, making sure that it's as fast as
possible. -- The Tweeter DirectoryChoose a category and find other Twitter users or list your name to let people find you! --
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