Followers

"I don't have time ofr Facebook and Twitter" —

by Mike Moran

Social media is free, but what's the catch? Time. We only have so much time to spend putting our message out there, but we don't want to limit how many people can hear what we have to say. This problem comes up in many ways, but the simplest is the dichotomy between Facebook and Twitter. Many folks decide to spend the bulk of their social time on one or the other, with relatively few people using both. If Google Buzz catches fire, this fragmentation might only increase. What's a marketer to do?

Let's face it. There's no real difference between "friends" and "followers," nor between ""status updates" and "tweets." And why would you decide to spend all your precious social media time updating one venue and not the other, if your customers use both of them? But how can you double the amount of time you spend in social media updating both?

You don't have to. I decided that I prefer Twitter to Facebook so I have every tweet I send out mirrored as my Facebook status. And I do the same thing on LinkedIn. I haven't taken the plunge on Google Buzz yet, but I'll probably do the same thing there, also.

If someone wants to see what I am up to, they can use their favorite method to keep up and I only have to update once. I know people using FriendFeed to accomplish the same thing. In each of your social media lives, you can set up these mirrors to make sure that your customers can keep up no matter what network they are in, while you only need to update once.

Now, I find even though I update in only one place, that I still have trouble making time for more than a few tweets a day, but there isn't anything I can do to help with that.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

Twitter Analysis: Influencers Still Signing Up; Lots of Followers Doesn't Equal Lots of Lists —

Twitter launched lists in October 2009 and this feature has quickly become an essential part of the Twitter ecosystem. The power of lists isn't just in their ability to organize your followers, they also provide an an insight into how other users use Twitter. The number of followers an account has might show its popularity, but the number of lists called, for instance, "most influential" or "essential", that it appears on reveals just how important that account is.

Today, we're using lists to unscientifically analyze what we think are some of the some of the most influential Twitter accounts. We used a variety of lists to identify 334 accounts and then ran those names through Tableau's data visualization tools.

Sponsor

Editors Note: This post is the second of a four-part content series ReadWriteWeb is producing in partnership with Tableau Software, where we examine interesting data sets relevant to technology trends today. You can use Tableau Public to create interactive visualizations like this and publish them to your own blog, Web sites, or anywhere online. You also can embed this (or any other Tableau Public) visualization on your own site.

Our List

We generated our list of Twitter influencers based on the lists that the RWW team follows and lists that some of the most influential people on those lists have created. We only used lists that were aggregating accounts that the list creator had called, for instance, "most important", or "most influential". After removing duplicates, we ended up 334 Twitter accounts. This list includes people, companies and breaking news feeds. By using lists instead of just follower counts we added an important filter, as many of these lists were created by Twitter users outside of the RWW team.

The Data

TwitterInfluencers

What it Means

Many of the conclusions are unsurprising: Influential accounts have between 100 to more than 1 million followers. While there are some relatively new accounts in our list, the vast majority has been on Twitter for over a year. When it comes to influence on Twitter, being an early adopter clearly has some advantages.

Most of the users who appear on a lot of lists and have a lot of followers also tweet a lot. Given that some of these accounts are from news organizations, this number makes sense, but there is also a group of users like Anil Dash, the Gates Foundation and Outside.in's Steven Johnson who don't tweet a lot, but still have a large number of followers based on their reputation.

It is interesting to note is that there seems to be a group of users that has a very large number of followers, but doesn't appear on an extraordinary large number of lists. This group includes a surprisingly large number of Twitter employees, including Cheryl Palarca (Twitter HR), Alex McCauley (Twitter business operations) and Kevin Thau (mobile products and partnerships at Twitter).

Lastly, it's obvious that a large number of power users - those with a high number of followers and who appear on a large number of lists - were early adopters; SXSW 2007 and the months leading up to it is when a significant number of influencers signed up. However, while the sign-up rate of those influencers has significantly dropped over time, new influencers continued to appear right through the end of 2009. Twitter early adopters may have moved on the next big thing, but users with prestige haven't stopped signing up.

Discuss

The Elections, Ctd —

How the Middle Eastern press is reporting Iraq's elections:

Nations that have adversarial relationships with the United States, namely Syria and Iran, viewed the vote largely through the prism of the planned withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. Likewise, the Iranian state-run Press TV covered Moktada al-Sadr’s address in Tehran in which he urged his Shiite followers to use their votes to help end the occupation.

Syria, still overwhelmed with Iraqi refugees, is likely to view internal instability in Iraq as a threat to its own security and to its expectation of finally having the U.S. out of the region. And while Tehran may prefer a strong, centralized Iraqi government as its ally, the possibility could further alienate Saudi Arabia, which fears a powerful Iraq aligned with Iran. Ali Yunis, an analyst who appeared on Al Arabiya television on Saturday, warned that “if the new government is a nationalistic Iraqi government, not allied with Iran, in America’s terms, the Americans will act differently,” meaning an earlier troop withdrawal.

Twilk uses your followers' icons to make a Twitter background for you —

Filed under: Utilities, Freeware, Social Software, Web

Twilk is a simple site that looks at either your Twitter follower list and/or the list of accounts that you follow, and creates a tiled background image that is then applied to your profile page. The people whose accounts you refer to most often via @ replies, re-tweets, or mentions will show up in the first two columns going down the page.

Although Twilk is primarily a free service, they also offer a paid subscription that will automatically update your background daily.

The idea of Twilk is clever, but it doesn't make for the most visually appealing profile page. It would be nice if Twilk offered to add a screen, or to slightly darken the images uniformly, so that the resulting background didn't look so chaotic. However, if you're looking for a way to pay homage to the folks that you follow (or those that follow you), Twilk isn't a bad way to go.

Twilk uses your followers' icons to make a Twitter background for you originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 08 Mar 2010 08:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Twitter - Twilk - replies - Download Squad - Online Communities

Twilk uses your followers' icons to make a Twitter background for you —

Filed under: Utilities, Freeware, Social Software, Web

Twilk is a simple site that looks at either your Twitter follower list and/or the list of accounts that you follow, and creates a tiled background image that is then applied to your profile page. The people whose accounts you refer to most often via @ replies, re-tweets, or mentions will show up in the first two columns going down the page.

Although Twilk is primarily a free service, they also offer a paid subscription that will automatically update your background daily.

The idea of Twilk is clever, but it doesn't make for the most visually appealing profile page. It would be nice if Twilk offered to add a screen, or to slightly darken the images uniformly, so that the resulting background didn't look so chaotic. However, if you're looking for a way to pay homage to the folks that you follow (or those that follow you), Twilk isn't a bad way to go.

Twilk uses your followers' icons to make a Twitter background for you originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 08 Mar 2010 08:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments



Twitter - Twilk - replies - Download Squad - Online Communities

No More Social Media For American Idol Contestants —

What Did Your Parents Teach You About Money? —

February was National Parent Leadership Month, which highlighted the role parents play in shaping the lives of their children. As a sort of tie-in, the most recent poll in the Get Rich Slowly sidebar asked: “Did your parents prepare you well for financial independence?”

Over 1000 GRS readers responded; the results surprised me:

• 17% of you said, “Yes, they did a great job in preparing me.”
• 17% said, “They did well — I learned the basics.”
• 18% said, “It was okay, but they missed some key areas.”
• 48% said, “What preparation for Financial Independence?”

I, too, fall in that last group, but I guess I didn’t expect it to be so large. It’s great that a third of you folks felt well-prepared to tackle your finances, but it’s incredible that half of us feel like we had little or no preparation at all.

What did your parents teach you about money?
I wanted to know a little more detail, so last week I polled my Twitter followers (both at the site’s @grsblog and my personal @jdroth account). I asked: “What did your parents teach you about money? Anything? Did it work?”

A lot of folks responded to say that their parents were poor examples:

• @MoneyMateKate wrote: My parents didn’t teach me — I taught them! I was paying my own dental bills (no insurance) from age 12 onwards with babysitting dollars.
• @RevancheGS wrote: My parents just taught me that you have to work hard to earn money, and how to write checks. I was on my own for the rest of it.
• @liberryteacher wrote: My parents never had any money, and life was hard. So they taught me by example that that was not a good way to live.
• @mike_strock wrote: My parents gave me money whenever I asked. Needless to say, that wasn’t helpful later in life. I’m learning!
• tcita wrote: My parents taught me absolutely nothing: no chores, allowance, budgeting, spending money, savings — nothing. Though I guess that taught me value of work.
• Via Facebook, Tamara wrote: What did I learn about money from my parents? “Don’t do any of things we did.”

But not all parents fail at training their children about money. Plenty of folks picked up good habits from the Bank of Mom and Dad. Here are some of my favorite anecdotes and tips:

• Pam from The Turtle Path (a running blog) told me: In junior high, my parents gave me $400 at the beginning of the year (instead of a weekly allowance). They told me I could do whatever I wanted with it, but they weren’t giving me any more money the rest of the year, so don’t ask.
• @betsyatoreilly (who is on the PR team for my book!) wrote: My sister and I got $50/month to buy clothes, etc. I had a lockbox for cash and receipts, and a book to enter items. It worked great. I’m a great saver.
• @Elle_CM wrote: My mom (and grandma) emphasized always saving a chunk of any income you receive. We used to make Saturday deposits at the bank.
• Via Facebook, Cynthia wrote: As kids, if we were at the store and saw something we wanted, my dad would say, “Did you bring your money?” I think this is awesome! (And, in fact, I heard my friend Steve ask one of his kids this very thing last night.)
• On a related note, Courtney told me that she and her husband have an interesting approach when their kids beg for things at the store. They simply say, “It’s not in the budget.”
• @mattwakefield wrote: My dad taught me about the stock market by using a 1/100 scale model of the market (MSFT would be $.28 right now). Got hooked early!
• @OregonCPAs_PR wrote: My Dad has always been adamant about avoiding monthly payments. They seem small, but add up quickly.
• @EverydayFinance wrote: My father insisted on no credit-card debt and said, “Everything in moderation.” It worked like a charm.
• @kingkool68 wrote: My parents printed family checks for my allowance. I could write checks to my parents in first grade! They also gave me monthly statements. I love this idea!
• @studentfinances wrote: My parents taught me that hard work is required to be successful. Laziness is not an option. Time will tell if it worked…

That last comment is perceptive: “Time will tell if it worked.” Even if your parents did try to teach you about money, how can they be sure the lessons were right for you, or that they’ll stick?

Training for tomorrow
I’m curious: How did your parents prepare you for financial independence? What specific things did they do that helped you develop money skills you could use as an adult? Do you plan to do these same things with your own children?

And for those of you whose parents didn’t give you enough training: What do you wish they’d done differently? (For my own part, I wish my mother and father had included me in the household finances once I was old enough to understand. I know they struggled to make ends meet, but they never showed me exactly what the challenges were. They never showed me their income compared to their expenses. Also, I wish they’d given me a consistent allowance and required me to budget my fun with that.)

What was your story growing up? How did it affect how you handle money today?

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Related Articles at Get Rich Slowly:

• Financial Education: Are Schools Doing Enough?
• Ads I Hate: Good Parents Buy
• The Money Savvy Pig: A Piggy Bank for the 21st Century
• The Problem with the Bank of Mom and Dad
• How One College Student Handles Credit Cards

It’s Common Sense, Right? —

Over the last few weeks, I’ve read more than a few white papers, listened and watched webinars, and read a book on how to better use social media. I’ve been told on more than a few occasions that you need to have a plan and you should understand what you are getting into when it comes to our friendly neighborhood Twitter or Facebook account.

While I agree that, in business, you should have a plan (you have a strategy for everything else right?), when it comes to our own individual social media accounts, is it necessary to map this out? When I first started using Twitter, I didn’t sit up at night and say, “I want 200 followers by the end of this month.”  I signed on, jumped in, and started talking.  The same went for Facebook.  I found co-workers, friends, and family to follow.  No plan, no scheme, no a-ha moment.

When using social media, I’m a firm believer in common sense.  Case in point, the young gal who tweeted that she was going to start at Kelly Cutrone’s People’s Revolution.  I’m all for getting excited about a new gig, but when you pop off that you will be “part of the cast,” that’s not using your head.   It doesn’t take that much thought to use social media, believe me.

We all (hopefully) think before we act.  The same should be done when it comes to Tweeting and posting on Facebook. Do we really need a handbook for this? I know some of you out there will argue that, yes, a handbook is needed because there are so many that don’t get it when it comes to social media.

Remember when you took that internship in college… they didn’t hand you something to tell you how to answer a phone or deal with clients and the media.  We learned by watching and being a sponge.

It’s becoming my belief more each day that if we stop for a moment and come to our senses, we’ll see through the smoke and have clarity.

So, let me ask you folks…do we need a social media handbook or is it really common sense? Share your thoughts.

Cliff Atkinson is author of The Backchannel: How Audiences are Using Twitter and Social Media and Changing Presentations Forever (New Riders, 2009).

What do you do when you’re giving a presentation, and notice that your audience is looking down, busily typing on their laptops and smartphones? And what about when you get the sense that they are turning against you?

When audiences use Twitter and other tools to communicate with one another during live presentations, they create a new “backchannel” where they share comments, questions and sometimes criticisms about the person speaking.

This new dynamic has led to high-profile blowups between presenters and audiences, which makes it more important than ever for presenters to do the right things to avoid similar disasters.

To short-circuit a possible disaster, keep in mind these five things you can do to prepare and engage the backchannel.

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1. Calibrate Your Content so You Don’t Misfire

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One of the major causes of backchannel disasters is a mismatch between what audiences expect, and what you deliver. Make sure you match your audience expectations when you are planning your material by using Twitter to reach out to the followers who will be in attendance. Ask for their feedback. Query them about challenges they are facing that you can help resolve, case studies of how they tackled situations related to your topic, or suggestions of what you should be sure to cover.

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2. Defuse the Snark Bomb Before it Blows Up on You

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Audience members who use Twitter during a live presentation will often assume the speaker is not paying attention to their comments, so they may be more prone to be snarky or say things they wouldn’t say to you face-to-face. Prevent this dynamic at the outset by publicly welcoming audience members using Twitter and let them know you’ll be monitoring what they write, and possibly reading aloud to the whole audience what they tweet.

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3. Spark the Conversation Early and Often

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The whole point of social media is that people want to get more involved in experiences, rather than be passive recipients of opinions pronounced from on high. To get people more involved, plan your material in a way that allows you to take Twitter breaks.

When you break, switch over to a browser, review the audience tweets and respond to questions both from the backchannel and from the live audience. These breaks give you the chance to take the temperature of the audience, make sure you’re on track, and to make any adjustments to your presentation based on the feedback you get.

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4. Grab the Twecklers Off of the Web and Into the Room

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When you take a Twitter break and review comments, you may find that audience members made negative remarks or even heckled you. What should you do? You’ll need to make a judgment call here –- if you can’t do anything about the issue, or if it reflects the personal view of that one person, you might just ignore it.

But if the comment is disruptive and you see it’s affecting the comments of others, you may need to address it directly. In that case, read the comment out loud to the audience, and take a poll of how many people agree with the comment. If many people agree, ask the individual to explain it further, and then address it. If only a few people concur, let the commenter know you’ll be glad to talk further after the presentation and move on.

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5. Don’t Stick Your Fingers in the Social Media Socket

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The last thing you want to do is lose control of your presentation because you’re overwhelmed. Trying to deliver your presentation while monitoring the information flowing from the Twitterstream can be difficult. If it’s too much to do both, which is the case for most people, focus on your delivery first, then engage the backchannel when you turn your attention to it during Twitter breaks. That way you accomplish what you came to do –- delivering an effective, memorable presentation as you promised in your session description, as well engaging and involving your audience during breaks.

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More social media resources from Mashable:

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- How Companies Are Using Your Social Media Data
- The Science of Building Trust With Social Media
- How Twitter in the Classroom is Boosting Student Engagement
- 3 Ways Educators Are Embracing Social Technology
- How Social Media is Taking the News Local

Images courtesy of iStockphoto, Splitcast, Alina555

Tags: backchannel, business, feedback, presentation, presentations, social media, twitter

While Chip Foose's bread and butter is rodding, building and customizing cars - often models that have distinct and fervent followings, like Camaros and Mustangs - it would appear that he's more than happy to tackle projects outside that comfort zone as well. Foose has just completed a special project for John Deere (a brand whose followers are as dedicated as any Ford or Chevy might have), and the result is going to be given away.

The tractor you see above spent decades as a workhorse like any other John Deere 4020 (a trendsetting model manufactured from 1963 to '72), before it underwent transformation in Foose's shop. Frankly, we think it's beautiful. Now, Lord knows we wouldn't know what to do with it if we were to win it, but we're enamored enough that we actually Googled to see where our local Deere dealer is, so that we might actually enter the sweepstakes. (You can do so through June 30, 2010. The drawing takes place a month later.) Follow the jump for a series of making-of videos.

[Source: MachineFinder.com, John Deere]

Continue reading Video: Chip Foose gets agricultural, hot rods a John Deere 4020

Video: Chip Foose gets agricultural, hot rods a John Deere 4020 originally appeared on Autoblog on Sun, 07 Mar 2010 11:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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sdra0516: 你上推不会只是为了攒followers的吧？RT @xuyihan5150: 蛋定，都是浮云RT @onlineworms: 我的follower越来越少了，虽然gmail上面总是有新follower的提示 — sdra0516 你上推不会只是为了攒followers的吧？RT @xuyihan5150: 蛋定，都是浮云RT @onlineworms: 我的follower越来越少了，虽然gmail上面总是有新follower的提示 10 minutes ago from Twitter - Comment...

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It’s hardly a secret that all of the major location-based players are planning big updates to their services to coincide with the SXSW festival starting next week in Austin, Texas. One of them peeked out a bit early: Foursquare.

Earlier today, the latest version of Foursquare, 1.6, went live in the App Store for a brief period of time. I’ve been using the build for a couple of days, and while the functionality isn’t all that different from the previous versions, the look-and-feel has been completely revamped.

This is notable because the vast majority of Foursquare users are still using the iPhone (67%). So this update will be a welcome change for many, especially as Foursquare and Gowalla continue to compete. Gowalla, while smaller than Foursquare, is generally considered to be the prettier of the two. Certainly, with its new website revamp, Gowalla still holds that title on the web, but the new Foursquare app looks pretty nice compared to the Gowalla iPhone app now.

So what’s different? The entire color palette is now a mixture of silver, blue, white, and bright green. Some may not like the bright green elements, but it’s effective to let people know where to click when you want to check-in. Also new is the fact that the “Shout” button is emphasized on the upper left part of the main screen. “Shouting” is basically the equivalent of tweeting out a message, it allows you to send a message to your followers without having to check-in at a place. It’s a bit odd that this is now a main button on the left side while the “Check-in” button is on the right side (considering most people read left to right).

Another new element is the idea of categories. As we wrote about a couple of days ago, Foursquare is starting to categorize venues into certain categories. While there isn’t much you can do with these yet on the new iPhone app, you are able to see icons that represent how a venue is categorized.

Something else new that is nice is that you can click on individual venues in your friend stream to load that venue’s main screen (which now shows who is there, right away). Previously, you had to click on your friend, then click over to see the venue — so this saves time.

While using the app, I wondered if Apple would approve it given that it uses the text, email, and phone icons used by the iPhone itself within the app (see screenshot below), but apparently if they accidentally put it in the store today, they’re going to be okay with those icons. These icons are shown on the new profile pages, which also show how many mayorships a member as, as well as how many badges they’ve earned. Interestingly, the point-based element of the app has been depreciated a bit, as that’s how a harder-to-get-to area of the app.

As a bonus to this advanced iPhone preview that some users got today, Foursquare also launched a new version of its Android app tonight. I’ve been playing with that for a few minutes, and that seems very solid as well. Look for the new version of Foursquare iPhone app at some point late next week when SXSW starts.

Roger Ebert goes freemium with The Ebert Club —

For those of you paying attention to Oprah (or Twitter) this week, Roger Ebert was on the show to debut his new speaking voice. A series of cancer surgeries have taken his voice, but that hasn't stopped the storied film critic from plowing ahead with his work. He continues to write — film reviews, a lengthy Twitter feed and plenty of opinion writing online.  And now, the critic is using the increased attention he received this week to launch a new payment structure for his website.

Ebert is the most widely read film critic in the world. And he has parlayed that audience into a vibrant community online at RogerEbert.com. But he doesn't make much money from that effort. Now, rather than charge viewers to get access his reviews and other content, he's going with a model that many online businesses are testing out: freemium content.

Viewers that pay a small yearly fee to access The Ebert Club will get additional news and information from the man himself, as well as better curated access to all things Ebert. For the low annual fee of $4.99 (until the end of March, $5.00 after April 1), members of The Ebert Club will get few additional perks. They'll have access to Ebert's free web content — including his archive of reviews — but also special writings and postings from Ebert that are not free, links to interesting things that Ebert and his fans find on the web, and advanced tickets to Ebertfest. Also, club members will receive less information from his Twitter feed @ebertchicago, "winnowed to improve the signal to noise ratio." As Twitter followers of Ebert know, the man tweets. A lot. Getting less content here will actually be a bonus. 

While Ebert's monetization plans may not apply to larger media endeavors, his methodology is interesting. For one, he through out the idea of micropayments. He writes:

"I remember with what glee Gene Siskel and I once pondered [Nicholas Negroponte's 1995 book Being Digital] with its speculation on whether users would pay two cents to read two of our reviews. Negroponte actually used us as an example. Gene and I pounded on the office calculator: 250 reviews, times two cents, times 10,000 users, or 50,000 users, or three million users...wow! If three million people paid two cents for our reviews, there'd be $15 million for us to split! But, hey, even if 5,000 users paid two cents for half our reviews, we'd gross $12,500."

Ebert is not ready to give up access to his worldwide readership that would happen if he puts that content behind a pay wall, however. As he says: "there are lots of other excellent critics on the web, and everybody knows it."

But Ebert says that he will pay for some things online — like the New York Times subscription that will be implemented online next year. And like The Times, Ebert has a coterie of loyal followers who feel they gain information from his content that cannot be found elsewhere. Many Times readers said before the pay wall announcement that they would be willing to essentially pay a donation to help sustain quality writing at The Times.

In a way, that is what Ebert is doing here. As The Ebert Club progresses, he will likely find more premium content to add to The Ebert Club. But for now, he is generally charging for simplified information and more complete access to his content.

Many of his fans will use The Ebert Club as a way to show appreciation for his work over the years. Like this one named Muga, who writes: 

Sarah Killen loves gummy dinosaurs, coke syrup, peanut butter and now Conan O’Brien. The Michigan gal — not a fan of Russell Bigos, her sister-in-law’s treadmill singing or cleaning — happens to be the only person that the jilted late night personality follows on Twitter.

Conan, who up until minutes ago wasn’t following a single person, decided to change Sarah Killin’s life by following her and her alone. Conan announced the news via Twitter — likely with the help of his Twitter army). The tweet in question reads:

As you can imagine, Killen’s Twitter following is now rising fast. She’s gone from meager follower counts in the hundreds to more than 3,750 followers at the time of this post. We’re not sure if Conan plans to gift Killen with more than just Twitter followers, but his tweet certainly leaves the door open.

Congrats Sarah. Our only advice to you is: Now that the eyes of the Twittersphere are upon you, you might consider leaving full names out of your tweets.

Tags: celebrities, conan o'brien, twitter

Following his exit from NBC’s The Tonight Show, Conan O’Brien was bored. So bored, that he decided to join Twitter. Within a couple weeks, he has already amassed a huge following of over a half million people — especially impressive in the post-suggested user list era. Despite a half million people following him, he was not following anyone back. Until today.

As Conan has just tweeted out, he has decided to follow someone finally. A random person. As he notes, “I’ve decided to follow someone at random. She likes peanut butter and gummy dinosaurs. Sarah Killen, your life is about to change.“

Indeed.

Killen, from Michigan, has exactly 1,300 followers as of the writing of this post (just a few minutes after Conan’s tweet). You can expect that to skyrocket very quickly. As Killen notes, “Having a lame ass day, Russell Bigos is an idiot. And Conan O’Brien is THE SHIT.”

Update: In just a few minutes, Killen has doubled her Twitter followers to now exactly 2,600.

Sh*t My Dad Says Engages Google Buzz —

Shit My Dad Says, the Twitter phenomenon with over 1.2 million followers, and more notably, a TV pilot in the works, has taken his act to the new hot (or at least, controversial) social network, Google Buzz.

Now, before you get too excited, you’ll note that all this account is doing is importing the Shit My Dad Says tweets into Buzz. In fact, because the account doesn’t tweet all that regularly (I suppose creator Justin Halpern is busy trying to write dialogue for William Shatner, who will star in the show), there are only five total tweet imported so far since February 10, when the account was started. Still, there’s a lot of activity on those five tweets, with dozens of Buzz users liking and commenting on the blurbs.

There’s no way of knowing if this account is an official one since anyone can import any public Twitter account into their Buzz steam, but even if fake, the creator did a nice job recreating Justin’s father. For example, his profile says that the one thing he can’t find on Google is “my pants.” And his hometown is shown on a Google Map as somewhere just outside Columbus, Ohio. The About Me section reads the same as the Twitter bio, “I’m 29. I live with my 74-year-old dad. He is awesome. I just write down shit that he says.”

The most interesting thing about this account may be its level of engagement. If I were on the Buzz team, I might point out that even though this account is doing nothing beyond importing tweets, there’s clearly a huge demand to have conversations about these tweets — something which is much easier to do on Buzz then on Twitter. Of course, some brands are already understanding this.

Also note that the account name is technically “sh1tmydadsays,” because Google won’t allow swear word in Gmail addresses.

[thanks Louis]

Shazam 2.5 Now Available for BlackBerry —

A quickie here for any BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) users that frequent the Shazam app. Version 2.5 is now available, and it brings some cool new features that users of the iPhone app have enjoyed for some time now. Key additions in Shazam 2.5 for BlackBerry include:

• Watch music videos of tagged songs and more via YouTube
• Tweet tags to your followers
• Buy music direct from the 7Digital music store.

Not a HUGE update, but it does bring some substantial new (and cool) features into play. Shazam for BlackBerry is a free download, but for additional functionality you WILL need to throw down some cash. The good thing is, however, a free 7-day trial of the ‘extra’ features you get in the full version is available. If you don’t like it, keep the free version and plug away with limited usage and features (you’re limited to 5 tags per calendar month).

Shazam 2.5 is available in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish and Portuguese… and is compatible with most current gen BlackBerry devices, including the Storm and Bold series.

Shazam 2.5 (FREE) [App World Link]

Related News from IntoMobile:

• Shazam Encore Music ID Comes to BlackBerry
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This year American Idol made headlines for pushing out individual Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace accounts for each of its 24 finalists. However, the show made a drastic change in strategy last night by consolidating all of them under the AI9Contestants username across sites.

Twitter followers of each of the individual contestants were sent the following message, “Thanks so much for following me! All my updates from now on will be on our Official Ai9 Twitter Page, please follow me there @AI9Contestants.” Similar messages were posted to Facebook and MySpace as well.

The contestants individual social media identities were stripped by the show without rhyme or reason, but The Wall Street Journal and USA Today speculate that the move was likely made because of the propensity of social media site follower counts to reveal early favorites, influence voting, and possibly remove the veil of the mystery that clouds American Idol’s typically stealth results.

The logic is sound — a contestant with more Facebook fans, Twitter followers, and MySpace friends is likely to get more votes and thus would have a higher chance of winning the competition. But in making the decision, American Idol has also made it impossible for contestants to develop that now all-important connection with their fan base, which is becoming crucial to the business side of the industry.

We should also note that while Idol’s consolidation efforts may be designed to maintain the mystery of the show’s outcome, there’s no stopping the rest us from turning to social media analytics providers to try and predict the winners and losers based on overall buzz and sentiment breakdown. In fact, we know that Philip Kaplan of Blippy has plans to do just that, indicating that he may try to ruin American Idol with a custom program that will look at who people say they’re voting for in social media channels.

Tags: american idol, social media, tv

Watch James Marsters in a Sneak Peek of Friday's 'Caprica' — Former 'Buffy' bloodsucker James Marsters starts his recurring gig on Syfy's 'Caprica' this Friday. Marsters plays cult leader and "one true God" worshipper Barnabus Greeley on the 'Battlestar Galactica' prequel series.

Syfy has sent out a sneak peek of Marsters' 'Caprica' debut, which features a grim-faced Barnabus skulking about, talking to one of his followers and wrapping his left arm in (yikes!) barbed wire:



Marsters is set to appear in five episodes of 'Caprica' this season. During a conference call with news outlets this week, he said the door was left open for his character to come back and possibly cause some more havoc for 'Caprica's V-club addicted, polytheistic ladies and gents.

Continue reading Watch James Marsters in a Sneak Peek of Friday's 'Caprica'

 

Filed under: Other Drama Shows, Other Sci-Fi/Supernatural Shows, Battlestar Galactica, Casting, Reality-Free

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Manage Your Twitter Account from the Sidebar in Firefox —

Are you a Twitter addict and need an easy way to manage your account in Firefox? Now you can access Twitter in your Sidebar or as a separate window with the TwitKit+ extension for Firefox.

Accessing TwitKit+

There are three ways that you can access TwitKit+ after installing the extension. The first is by adding the “Toolbar Button” to your browser’s UI.

The second and third methods are through the “View & Tools Menus”.

 

TwitKit+ in Action

When you open TwitKit+ for the first time you will see Twitter’s “Public Tweet Stream”. To get started login into your account.

Note: If you do not care for the “brown theme” you can select a different one in “Preferences”.

Here is a closer look at the top area and the commands available. Notice the “blue arrow symbol” in the upper left corner…very useful if you want to separate TwitKit+ from your main browser window for a bit.

• Secure Mode, Undock, Preferences, Login/Logout
• Google Search, Twitter Search, Copy Selection To Status Box, Shorten Selected URL
• Public, User, Friends, Followers, @ Messages, Direct Messages, Profile

Note: To use Google or Twitter search enter your term in the “Status Area” and click on the appropriate service icon.

Here is the regular timeline for our account…the “clickable tab buttons” make everything easy to view and work with. You can perform actions such as replying, retweeting, marking as a favorite, etc. using the set of “management buttons” at the bottom of each tweet.

To add a new tweet to your timeline enter your text and press “Enter”.

A look at the “Following List” for our account. Having a more defined and separate “view categories” set makes this better than directly accessing the Twitter website.

Preferences

The preferences can be quickly sorted out…choose how often the timeline is updated, name display, favorite URL shortening service, theme, and font size.

Note: The default connection setting is for “Secure Access”.

Conclusion

TwitKit+ makes a nice addition to Firefox for anyone who loves keeping up with Twitter throughout the day. There when you want it and out of your way the rest of the time.

Links

Download the TwitKit+ extension (Mozilla Add-ons)

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My Twitter Quantity Experiment —

I follow some very successful Twitter users and noticed they tweeted a lot, which inspired me to try the experiment I’ll outline in this post.

For several weeks, I tweeted the same type of content I always have — just more often. On average, I tweet about once an hour, for seven to ten hours each week day. I noticed that the active, high quality Twitter users that I follow tend to tweet at least three times per hour, so I decided to emulate their process and also tweet two or three times per hour.

The result? I saw no noticeable change in the number of mentions, @replies or retweets (RT) of my posts during and after the experiment. I normally receive an average of five to eight mentions per day and that’s how much I saw during the experiment, too, even when I doubled or tripled my tweets.

Since the experiment, I’ve returned to my pre-experiment tweet average. Since upping my tweet quantity didn’t appear to have any value, there’s no reason to bombard my followers with more tweets.

I asked people on Twitter why they thought the experiment hadn’t made an impact. Many people responded that it’s the quality of posts, rather than the quantity, that makes all the  difference, and there were also some responses that suggested I should have also tried changing when I posted, rather than sticking to my usual schedule.

For me, this provides some evidence that quantity doesn’t matter much in social media, although I still don’t believe there are any hard-and-fast rules.

Have you tried a similar experiment? Did you get different results?