My tweet about being denied a press pass to @sxsw has...resulted in this post http://bit.ly/bZU8n1 by @tomforemski.
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The folks at Twitter sure know how to have fun!
Earlier today, they caused a stir by quietly changing the “Update” button to “Tweet”. This caused a huge stir within the blogosphere based on the theory that anything Twitter does is news.
Just when the “Tweet” news started to get heavily reported, Twitter switched it back to “Update”.
Maybe Twitter is just upset because the SXSW conference is happening later this week, and all anyone wants to talk about is Foursquare and location-based services.
Twitter, you had your SXSW moment in 2008; it’s time to let someone else enjoy the spotlight.
Here’s a screen capture via TechCrunch.
While Loren Brichter may be hard at work on Tweetie Two for the Mac, he hasn’t given on his baby: Tweetie 2 for the iPhone. While the app hasn’t been updated since late November, a new build is due shortly with one big addition: native Foursquare support.
What this means is that anytime someone in your tweet stream sends out a tweet from Foursquare (which, to the annoyance of some users, happens automatically at times), that Foursquare link (shown as a 4sq.com URL) will be able to be opened in Tweetie in a way that displays the location information in a nice format. When a tweet is eligible for this feature, you’ll see a purple square logo in the upper right hand corner of the tweet in Tweetie.
When you click on a Foursquare link, you’ll be taken to a page that shows the venue’s address and phone number as well as the Foursquare mayor of the place. If you click on the address you’ll load a Google Map showing you exactly where it is. If you click on the phone number, you’ll be able to call the place right from the iPhone. Below all of that, there is a button to open the venue in Foursquare, which launches the Foursquare iPhone app.
A couple other new features in Tweetie 2 include Vodpod video uploads and the ability to attach messages along with your TwitPics to that service.
Look for this Tweetie 2 update soon in the App Store (it will be version 2.1.1). Meanwhile, Tweetie Two for Mac should be released in a private beta in about a month, according to new info shared on MacHeist today. Tweetie for Mac will soon be added to the nanoBundle 2, and in anticipation, they’ve added this message:
As a MacHeist customer, you’re not only receiving a free upgrade to the upcoming, highly anticipated Tweetie 2 – we’ve also arranged exclusive access to the pre-public beta for you guys!
Have fun using the best Mac Twitter client for now… and stay tuned for an email from us in about a month with your invite to the future of Mac tweeting.
If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s wasting money. It’s happened to me too many times to count. I buy at hot new application for my iPhone in the iTunes App Store, the day it gets released and then a few weeks later see a tweet that the same application I purchased is now available for half what I paid or worse, it’s free.
There are a few applications for the iPhone that allow you to track when apps go on sale or become free, but that means I’ve got to load yet another application onto my … [visit site to read more]
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Facebook plans to add friend location information as soon as next month, reports The New York Times Bits blog today. Honestly, this news is so expected that the fact that it was reported using anonymous sources attributed as “several people briefed on the project” only makes it a little more certain than it was before.
But Bits’ Nick Bilton does offer the following details:
Facebook plans to announce the feature at the Facebook developer conference f8 in April.
It will offer users the ability to share information with friends as well as provide developers with APIs to bring in location info from other services.
Facebook wants to target small business advertisers.
Because of that strategy, Facebook thinks its competition is Google rather than Loopt, Foursquare and Gowalla.
I think a lot of the current fuss and hype over location services can get overblown because location makes the most sense at the platform level. Knowing where a user is can make just about every product useful — it’s not an end to itself. However, encouraging sharing and storing of location information is touchy, especially with Facebook’s history around privacy issues. Ultimately, Facebook — with its 100 million-plus mobile users — won’t be able to avoid competing with location-based startups, but it may be able to help them in the meantime by treating them as applications and/or games on top of its immense platform.
In other news today, Twitter started showing on its web site when users submitted geolocation information about a tweet using an application.
Related research from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):
Location: The Epicenter of Mobile Innovation
Please see the disclosure in my bio about Facebook.
Consider this a simple and personal social media experiment, one nearly anyone can perform--well, anyone with a Twitter account and more than 10 followers, certainly. All it takes is a quick tweet and an accompany hashtag: #whyareyoufollowingme.
At some point, it seems, social networking abandoned the concept of "friends." Early on, the concept of actually, honestly connecting with other human beings in a virtual setting was eclipsed by the compulsion to collect "friends" as though they were pieces of rapidly devaluing currency. Sure sites like Facebook and MySpace still use the term, but, as anyone who has ever attempted to make minor tweaks to a site can tell you, old habits die hard.
Twitter avoided the issue by introducing "followers," forgoing altogether the illusion of friendship. The contract itself is different as well. Aside from those with protected accounts, the follower relationship is inherently different. Just because someone follows you on Twitter, that doesn't mean you're obligated to follow them back. Nor are you required to approve the person's request
It's precisely because of this relationship that an Oprah or a Conan O'Brien is able to amass several hundred thousand followers. The same goes for non-celebrity Twitter users: Take my friend (yes, I use that term in the pre-Facebook sense) Alison, who woke up one morning to find herself on the Recommended Users list for no discernible reason. When she finally asked that Twitter remove her, she had reached somewhere around the 150,000-follower mark.
I don't have anywhere near that number, but I have managed to arrive at the point where many of my new followers are something of a mystery to me. Often when I get a new one, I'll check out the person's account quickly, in a vain attempt to figure out why the heck the person has settled on my account. I'm certainly no Oprah, and, to the best of my knowledge, I have never landed on any official Twitter lists.
Last night I attempted to get to the bottom of things with a quick Twitter experiment, tweeting, "In 140 characters, what made you start following me? #whyareyoufollowingme"
A bit goofy, I know, but thing is, people actually started responding. Many were sarcastic--particularly those that arrived from people I actually know in real life (my sister, for one, chalked the whole thing up to the wonders of DNA). But although you may question their reasons for continuing to stick with you, you know how those people discovered you in the first place.
Here's a sampling of the responses I recieved:
jagobond : @bheater. You were a recommendation from #mollywood during #buzzoutloud.
Philipberne: @bheater @saschasegan said you were the Gary Larson of Twitter.
Wills42: @bheater You seem like a good candidate for when our alien overloods look to laughter as an alternative fuel source.
Natebishop: @bheater I think @Just_Alison said to on @shoeboxshow, and I have to do what she tells me.
Anthonycloskey: @bheater Someone I like to follow long ago recommended or mentioned you. When I checked, you'd said something I found interesting, too.
The real value here is in the seemingly random masses--it's a good way to gauge what you're doing right and, hopefully, will help put a face on some of those followers you're never likely to actually meet in real life. Whether approached as a small-scale social experiment or an actual attempt to engage your readership, it's worth the tweet.
Oh, and in case you were wondering, you can follow me here. And don't forget to tell me who sent you.
When I wrote that location would be this year’s Twitter at SXSW, I also meant that Twitter’s geolocation would be this year’s Twitter at SXSW. The service has just turned on geolocation on its website today for the first time.
While Twitter’s geolocation feature has been live through its API since last November, there was no sign of integration into the main twitter.com site until now. As you can see in the screenshot above, for tweets tagged with location, right next to the source of the tweet there is a location placemarker. When you hover over it, it turns blue, and clicking on it brings up a little Google map showing the location that tweet was sent from.
You can see these maps as overlays both on individual tweet pages, and on tweets in your main stream. In some cases, depending on how Twitter geolocation API is being used, it looks like place names are even passed through to Twitter. For example, here’s a tweet sent from Foursquare that also says where the tweet is being sent from.
The timing of this move by Twitter is significant. Earlier today, the New York Times reported that Facebook would unveil its answer to location next month at its f8 conference. Twitter’s first-ever Chirp conference takes place just one week before f8. Google, meanwhile, is in the game with Latitude and to some extent Buzz (but could have been in it a lot more). And of course, every app and their mother appears to be launching with some sort of location functionality at the SXSW in Austin, Texas, which begins on Friday. Many of those apps use Twitter’s geolocation API to pass the data back to Twitter, so it makes sense that this would be a good time to turn the functionality on for the website.
Update: It looks like Twitter has just turned off the location functionality after having it on for a bit. Look for it to come back shortly — certainly some time before SXSW.
[thanks Chad]
It's Off again!
- Alex SaucedaJust In Time For The Location Wars, Twitter Turns On Geolocation On Its Website
- (jeff)isageek
In the grand scheme of things, this news seems a bit insignificant in light of other current events However, it is significant in the world of Social Media. As mainstream audiences embrace new media, every subtle nuance introduced from here on out reverberates across the social landscapes that define, shape, and dictate its evolution and its pace of adoption.
Today, Twitter changed it’s “update’ button to a verb that will only gain in prominence, “Tweet.”
Thanks to good friend @Orli for her observation and also for capturing the screenshot.
It should be noted, that Twitter has applied to trademark “Tweet” and that process is still ongoing.
This is the second recent change in the culture and language of Twitter, with the first, rewording the prompt that triggered or shaped your updates, well, now Tweets. Originally Twitter asked, “What are you doing?” Now, you’re prompted by “What’s happening?” Again, subtle…but profound. As I’ve always believed, Twitter has always asked the wrong question and suggested that it change over time to continually inspire creativity, deep thought, profound statements and observations in addition to everyday status and conversations.
What do you think about this change?
Connect with Brian Solis on Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Google Buzz, Facebook
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It was a big morning for Samsung - not only did it announce that its first HD 3D TVs will hit shelves this month, but it will also be rolling out 3D-ready Blu-Ray players, will be launching an app store for your home theater, and is partnering with DreamWorks to bring you some extra movie-watching goodies.
First up are the TVs. Samsung's lineup of HD 3D LED TVs will go on sale this month, starting with a few 46 inch and 55 inch screens, while the remaining LED and plasmas will roll out over the next several months alongside its Blu-Ray players. All of Samsung's new 3D TVs will come stocked with Real240Hz refresh rates for the clearest picture without blur and drag. Additionally, if you purchase a new 3D TV and Blu-Ray player, you'll get a starter kit that includes two pairs of Samsung 3D glasses (sold separately for $150) and a copy of Monsters vs. Aliens in 3D to kick-start your home theater experience.
To see what the Samsung Apps store is all about, just read more.
Also announced today is the Samsung Apps store, which will be available on Internet-enabled home theaters. Like the app stores you find on your smartphone, the Samsung Apps store will give you access to content from AP, Netflix, Pandora, Twitter, USA Today, and Vudu, with more apps to roll out over this year. Now you can browse your movie queue, listen to Internet radio, read the news, play games, and tweet about what's going on, right from your living room.
Tweetie is unarguably one of the most robust iPhone Twitter clients, so you wouldn’t expect anything less of the desktop version.
Tweetie’s straightforward and minimalist appearance makes it a breeze to use. Yet, it’s a looker and quite capable.
It’s no wonder we’re giving away 10 copies of Tweetie worth $200 as one of the must-have commercial Mac apps!
Think you’re lucky enough to grab one?
After entering your Twitter credentials, you are taken to a window with your Timeline.
Navigating through your replies, messages and searches is made simple with the small vertical menu on the left hand side of the app.
When scrolling through your, or other users’ timelines, replies directed to you are highlighted in blue.
The icon in the menu bar turns blue when there are new tweets in your timeline, otherwise it remains grey.
From the menu bar, you can quickly access your or other user’s profiles, and switch between your profiles if you have multiple Twitter accounts. From any given profile, you can access a user’s timeline, favourites, replies directed at them, and their profile info.
Tweetie has incorporated five URL shortening services: bit.ly, TinyURL, is.gd, tr.im and DiggBar, as well as six services for sharing your images: yFrog, TwitPic, Twitgoo, Posterous, Imag.ly and Pix.im. And it doesn’t end there. With Tweetie, you can record video directly from your Mac, using a webcam, and share it with your Twitter followers through yFrog. Images uploaded to these services, as well as profile pictures, will open in a slick HUD window.
One of the ways in which Tweetie truly excels is the way it handles conversations. Opening a reply, Tweetie will list all the tweets in that conversation, with the most recent at the top of the list.
For those of you who are fans of keyboard shortcuts, Tweetie has a shortcut for just about everything, from creating a new tweet, to quickly switching between your timeline, replies and direct messages.
If you already use the iPhone app, or if you’ve been looking for a simple but powerful Twitter client to use when you’re at your Mac – Tweetie is perfect for you. Download the free, ad-supported version and take it for a spin.
Ready to jump into Twitterverse just for this app?
It’s simple. Just follow the steps.
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| Join our Facebook page by clicking on the Become a Fan button on the left. If you can’t see the fanbox, click on this link.
If you’re already a fan, skip this step. |
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| OR | Follow us on Twitter |
| STEP 2 | |
|---|---|
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Share this post with your friends by clicking on the Share and/or retweet buttons on the left. |
| STEP 3 | |
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Post a link to your Facebook profile and/or Twitter username in the comments section below
Make sure to enter your real email address so that we can contact you if you win! |
This giveaway ends tomorrow, just before the next one starts. You may participate in as many giveaways as you want, even if you’ve previously won!
Let the giveaway begin! Have fun! Want to know what else we’re giving away? Check out this post 15 Must-Have Free Apps For Your Mac & Giveaway.
MakeUseOf would like to thank Loren from atebits for her generosity while participating in this giveaway. Interesting in sponsoring? We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us via email.
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The other day I read the following statement in the Economist:
Sensitivity of the data will decide if an application is suitable for processing in the cloud.
The writer does not mention, and probably is unaware of, the principle of translucent data. In a translucent database, the data is encrypted and thus opaque to the operator of the database. Users of the data share keys to unlock the data, and can do anything with cleartext copies that they keep locally. Can real and useful applications be built in this kind of regime? We don’t really know, because hardly anybody has tried. But if it turns out to be possible, it could become a foundation of cloud computing.
I wanted to advance the story. In particular, I wanted to help make a connection between that statement in the Economist and the idea of data translucency. I’ve written about translucency on my blog, and those entries are tagged on delicious. But nowadays the attention stream flows mainly through Twitter. So I composed this tweet:
Economist: “Sensitivity of the data will decide if an application is suitable for processing in the cloud.” Unless the data is #translucent.
There’s a limit to what you can do in 140 characters. That tweet uses all 140, but still falls short of what I wanted to do:
Inevitably I failed to do all that in 140 characters. Reflecting on the failure, I made this LazyWeb wish:
I wish I could tweet the command “join http://delicious.com/judell/translucency to #translucent and #translucency”
I’ve had some success joining tag namespaces from different domains. I mentioned the idea in this entry, and a commenter (engtech) provided a nifty solution based on Yahoo Pipes. I have since used it to keep track of items tagged icalvalid on blogs, on delicious, and on Twitter.1
My LazyWeb wish came from that experience, plus another which I wrote up in an entry entitled To: elmcity, From: @curator, Message: start. That entry describes how elmcity curators can now use Twitter direct messages to send commands to the elmcity service. The mechanism harkens back to Rael Dornfest’s brilliant Sandy, a service that acted as a personal assistant and responded to a repertoire of command messages.
Sandy lost her job when Rael went to work for Twitter. I’ve wondered if she would be rehired there. If so, a command like the one I proposed might be an example of the kind of thing she could do.
On further reflection, I’m not really sure what such a command would mean, or whether it would make sense to use Twitter to send it, or indeed whether it would make sense for Twitter (rather than some other service) to respond to it. But I’m in an exploratory mood, so let’s explore.
It would be straightforward to create a service that would take the Yahoo Pipes trick to the next level. Instead of editing and saving a Yahoo Pipe, you’d just command that service to merge the set of feeds for some tag. That command might best take the form of a URL:
http://tagjoiner.org/join/TAG?delicious=yes&twitter=yes&wordpress=yes
As is true for my combined icalvalid feed, the result formats could be HTML for viewing and RSS for feed splicing. As the creator of the joined feed, I’m aware that it exists, and I can cite it when I want to direct people’s attention to the union of the namespaces.
But suppose I wanted the joined namespace to be more discoverable than that? Here’s where it might make sense for Twitter to be involved. If a hashtag search on Twitter did the join, it could be made evident to the followers of the person making the join request, or even to anyone searching for the hashtag involved in the request.
This is almost surely too indirect and too abstract to ever make sense as a mainstream feature. But it’s fun to imagine. If I’ve made an investment in a tag on delicious, or WordPress, or somewhere else, I’d like to be able to bring those items to the attention of people who encounter the corresponding Twitter hashtag.
The general idea behind all this goes way beyond Twitter, of course. Waiting in the wings is a whole class of services that reconcile different web namespaces.
1 That feed used to include a mix of items marked [DELICIOUS] and [TWITTER]. But the Twitter items are less durable and seem to have aged out of the combined feed.
A topic that has been discussed extensively by some people in the SEO community is the notion that having a W3C compliant web site is either critical to SEO or it’s not. Most recently, Edward Lewis and I debated back and forth on Twitter, with Edward holding firm to his long-standing position that compliance is necessary and me taking the stand that 100% compliance is not necessarily a factor in ranking.
This latest back and forth was prompted by a tweet I posted while listening to Matt Cutts being interviewed by WebProNews during SMX West. In that tweet, I summed up what Matt had said regarding SEO and having a site that passes code validation. My tweet stated :
W3C compliance is NOT an SEO factor to Google #MattCuttsQuote #SMX
Edward then followed up to our Twitter conversation on this by writing a very lengthy and quite detailed article backing up his position on the matter. I’ll leave it up to you to take the time to read that article yourselves. And here, I would like to speak to my own position and the logic behind it.
How Much Compliance Is Important?
If the goal is to ensure that a client site has the best possible chance at it’s highest organic rankings, then we need to acknowledge that even just factoring in Google, there are about 200 indicators to consider. Now, I don’t know about you, but here’s the reality. With 200 factors to consider, I also have just as much of a responsibility to my clients to focus on those factors that I believe will yield the most results for the investment of time and resources.
Because of this, I do not check client web sites for 100% W3C compliance as part of my audits. Even though having a site 100% compliant with W3C standards is a best practice concept, I am not a web developer. And I have not been hired to ensure that W3C compliance is being met in every way possible.
So if a page has an opening paragraph tag without it’s subsequent closing tag, I don’t ultimately care as much to document such findings.
Sure, it might only take me a few minutes to run compliance tests. But as Edward is so capable of doing, documenting a site’s shortcomings at that level could, potentially, just as easily take hours – if you’re going to include details on how to resolve those specific problems. Multiply that by cross-browser testing work. Because we all know perfectly well that not one single web browser truly complies 100% with W3C compliance either.
So just because a site is 100% compliant doesn’t even mean it’s going to be properly displayed across web browsers. And that means compliance isn’t so straight forward either.
Maximized Return On Recommendations
There are so many other fish to fry, that I need to use my time wisely. Telling clients that their site is not properly validating due to some P tag problem might earn me a pat on the back for being thorough. Yet if they fix that issue, I do not believe it’s going to have enough of a positive impact on their SEO as compared to them focusing on any one of the dozens of other action items I usually come up with that are direct SEO issues.
Competitive Reality
Here’s where the two camps differ. In one camp, if a site is not 100% compliant, it’s not a truly optimized site. In the other camp, if a site, when held up to the competitive landscape, is just as fast, and has just enough compliance aspects to get by, then an SEO focus is better spent on quality content depth, site architecture from a content topic relationship perspective, internal and external link depth and relationships.
Limited Budgetary Resources
How many clients do you have where the budget for web initiatives is unlimited? Maybe I don’t work with the right clients, because none of my clients has EVER fit that bill. Instead, they’ve got specific budgetary parameters from within which they can work. And if a 5,000 page site has to have its entire dynamically generated URL structure rebuilt from the ground up in order to address just the Page Title to URL relationship for SEO, I guarantee you that this task is infinitely more critical, being specific to SEO, than ensuring there’s a proper closing to a paragraph tag.
No Disrespect
Now this isn’t about disrespect to people who believe that strict W3C compliance is important. Let’s face it – while most of us in the SEO industry know that we can make use of image alternate attributes, personally, I make sure I’m very careful in clarifying to clients that making use of them is first and foremost an issue of providing content to visually impaired people that helps them understand the purpose of an image they may not see. With that caveat in place, I then go on to communicate how this is an opportunity for SEO because the search engines interpret images on a page to be one indicator as to the purpose of that page.
So if I have to choose between instructing my clients to work on the alternate attributes of their site’s photos or alternately, making sure paragraph tags are closed, given those aforementioned budgetary limits, I’m always going to go with the one that’s going to help the search engines learn more about the page’s focus or purpose. Whether a paragraph tag is closed or not does not help or hurt this either way.
W3C Standards For SEO
In addition to the image alternate attribute, there are several other HTML standard tags, that when properly used (in accordance with W3C guidelines for valid coding of web pages), are clearly SEO best practices as well. Whether it’s proper use of header tags, bolding, bullet point implementation, or any one of dozens upon dozens of elements to HTML, it’s clear that a site IS better off from an SEO perspective, when that site meets those standards.
Heck, if a site is so botched up in the validation process, it’s even possible that Google won’t even be able to index it.
The Elephant In The Room We Can’t Ignore
Any discussion about validation and SEO must, by nature of this arena, include addressing the primary causality of 100% validation not being a “have to”. One that Validation evangelists refuse to acknowledge as being a serious consideration.
There are many millions of sites that already exist, and millions more being deployed all the time, that are NOT 100% compliant. I’m not here to debate the cause of that or rail against anyone who might have caused it. Heck. My own sites fail to meet complete validation. Because, as stated earlier, I am NOT a developer. I use OFF THE SHELF solutions. Programmed by other people. Because that is what I felt was justifiable in costs to create my own sites.
And that’s just reality.
If any of the top search engines were to put more emphasis on w3C compliance than on those aspects that help the engine learn the purpose of a site or indicate importance of specific content, or help indicate 3rd party verification of a specific site’s authority, then the SERPs would be spitting out even more garbage than they do now. Honestly.
At The End Of The Day
That’s what it really comes down to at the end of the day. Because even if they DID say compliance is a factor, they could NEVER say it’s more important than those factors that are currently most important. Because at the end of the day, if two sites are both fully compliant, that’s a one-time thing. Either they are compliant, or they’re not. But if two sites have different depth of content, the amount on one site or the other can change at any time. And the relationships between pages can continually change. And the number of other sites that mention or link to either can change. Frequently.
And even if I tell my clients they have to get their sites to validate, in cases other than ones similar to those I describe here that are clearly specific to SEO, that validation is NOT going to move my client’s site up in the SERPs. Because while they were busy revamping their P tags, sixty of their competitors were adding new content. Or building quality inbound links.
Yeah, But…
Okay so I just said that ensuring a site validates for things that are not specific to current SEO isn’t necessary. Well, if that’s the case, then why is half the SEO industry freaking out over page speed?
Clearly, on the surface, page speed has nothing to do with SEO. Except Google has given enough indication now that we are recommending page speed issues be addressed. Because Google has changed their tune. They say that a faster page load is providing a better user experience. Well surely then, if that’s the case, what’s to stop them from saying that 100% validation is also providing a better user experience?
Simple. It’s that pesky P tag.
Let me know when that changes.
Alan Bleiweiss has been an Internet professional since 1995, managing client projects valued at upwards of $2,000,000.00. Just a few of his most notable clients through the years have included PCH.com, WeightWatchers.com, and Starkist.com. Follow him on Twitter @AlanBleiweiss , read his blog at Search Marketing Wisdom, and be sure to read his column here at SearchEngineJournal.com the 2nd and 4th Tuesday each month.
Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.
W3C Validation for SEO – Myth and Reality
We’ve written about Twitter client Sobees, which is working to create the best social media client on the market, competing with both TweetDeck and Seesmic. Today Sobees is releasing a new version of its Windows native desktop app built in .NET, complete with realtime search, a redesign and more.
The new client includes support for Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, FriendFeed and LinkedIn (which was added late last year). The most significant addition is the availability of realtime search on the client, with the ability to search Twitter, Friendfeed, OneRiot and FacteryLabs from within the application. Sobees integrated elements of its newly launched realtime web dashboard to power search in the client.
Sobees has also added drag and drop technology for columns in order to change the place of a column within the client. Other technical updated include the ability to preview Tweets and maps, translate messages, and see pictures posted on TwitPic from within the Tweet. And Sobees will break out threaded conversations you have with friends.
Sobees is competing in a crowded space where each client continues to innovate and offer users more options for managing their social media accounts and the reealtime web. For example, Seesmic has incorporated Ping.fm, to allows users to update more than 50 different social networks at the same time. And TweetDeck now incorporates YouTube and Flickr within its client. For now, Sobees doesn’t have any mobile clients but we are told that iPhone and Android apps are coming soon.
Re: my last Tweet - only if you're a Windoze user #fail: http://bit.ly/asB7wp
[Direct Link]
Twitter has rapidly become the ultimate platform for sharing and exchanging link content. For bloggers and brands, Twitter has surpassed Digg, Stumbleupon, Delicious and Reddit as the greatest and most efficient way to build website traffic.
Better still, by building an engaged and relevant community, marketers can continue to reap the benefits of that traffic on a daily basis. Almost by accident, Twitter has provided us with a new and improved take on permissive marketing, which has allowed the network to leave many other websites in its dust.
It’s not all gravy, though – it’s easy to make mistakes that can be very costly indeed, leaving your tweet (and content) all but ignored. Continue making those errors, and Twitter will be about as beneficial to your brand and website as a badly-drawn flyer at your local community centre.
And while it’s perfectly acceptable to link to your own content, if you over-sell it, self-promote too much, or start to resemble an old-fashioned salesman (even slightly), you’re very quickly going to be overlooked. Worse, likely it won’t be too long before you’re labelled as nothing more than a spammer.
When you get right down to the nitty-gritty, only two things really count when striving for the perfect tweet:
These are both vital, but neither should be tailored at the expense of the other. For maximum benefit, each needs to be perfect every single time.
This is a bit of a no-brainer, but it’s easily overlooked. For your tweet to be perfect, it needs to appeal most to your readers, to the majority of your network, and not to you.
Unless you’re a world-famous celebrity or brand with millions of devoted followers, adopting an attitude of ‘they’ll know what I mean’ will almost always backfire.
You have to take the time to craft your tweet accurately and pleasingly, thus ensuring that it will be appeal to the highest number of readers.
Take a moment to peruse your Twitter feed. Refresh the page. Who stands out? Why?
Through prolonged Twitter use we all become tuned into paying attention to certain things in our timelines, notably the avatars and usernames of our favourite profiles. But a friend or valued associate sharing new content isn’t always enough to make us click on that link. We trust their judgement, and we have liked some of the things they’ve shared in the past, but this hasn’t turned us into a robot, automatically clicking on everything they tweet.
Conversely, there are many times when we suddenly notice the tweet of somebody we’ve only recently started following, or have previously not paid much attention to, because it was excellent. It ticked all of our boxes, and we read the tweet and clicked on that link.
This has an additional benefit in that because the tweet was so good, subconsciously we’ll make a little note about the user (particularly their name and avatar) and are more likely to notice them the next time they update. This attention will rise exponentially if their tweets maintain a consistent quality.
Likewise, if the quality of updates dips too sharply or wanders too far off-course, we’ll start to pay less attention, and in severe cases this can lead to a total tune-out and unfollowing. Hence, while being occasionally excellent is better than nothing, being consistently excellent is better than everything.
People need a really good reason to click on your link. Remember, at any given time (and in almost any Twitter client) the reader is faced with a number of choices to make – there might be as many as a dozen different tweets on their screen, and a lot more if they’re using columns or groups.
And things move fast – one or two refreshes later, and you could be long gone.
So, even if you’ve been consistently excellent for tweet after tweet and dear reader comes straight to you, your job is not done. They still need a reason to click, which means your copy has to sell that link.
The trick is you have to do this in a way that makes it seem like you’re doing something else. People don’t really like to think they’re being sold to, especially in social media.
Let’s call it unselling.
It goes without saying that ‘click here to buy my stuff’ should only be used if your intention is to be completely ironic or you don’t actually care about people visiting your site.
Learn the difference between selling the link and selling the content – the content is what will sell your product or idea, but nobody is going to care about any of that unless you’ve first sold them the reason to read it. You might have discovered the cure for cancer, but nobody is going to care if you link it next to ‘This is cool.’
The reason can be number of different things. Promises work extremely well, but only if you actually deliver. Lie to people enough and it doesn’t matter how good your headline copy is. Honesty is essentially your best policy, but that doesn’t mean you can’t give it a fresh coat of paint with a little spin and reverse psychology.
It’s worth noting that superbly-written headline copy can often generate immediate retweets, even if it’s obvious the other party didn’t actually read the content, or because they trust and believe in you enough to make the (hopefully safe) assumption that you’re going to deliver the goods.
A word on linking to website content that is not your own – don’t be afraid to rewrite the headlines of others. Most of the time these are formatted to appease a single platform or marketplace, and won’t work as well on Twitter. Other times they just suck, plain and simple. If you can do it better, do it better. Nobody is going to object if you’re sending them solid traffic.
Here’s the thing: I’ve never met anybody who was offended or put off when they read something that paid attention to the correct use of punctuation. The opposite is not true – many people (enormous numbers if you use the internet as a gauge) feel that, rightly or wrongly, missing or an incorrect use of punctuation reflects poorly on the writer.
This is certainly true when it comes to first impressions.
Use full stops and commas. Put your apostrophes in the right place. Use speech marks and parentheses.
Don’t end every sentence with an exclamation mark. A simple hyphen can often be the difference between a real word and one that doesn’t exist.
It can help to read your tweet out loud before you submit it. Are the pauses in the right place? We still need to breathe, even at 140 characters (or less).
Studies have shown that retweets contain more punctuation than normal tweets, even ignoring the colon that is automatically inserted by most Twitter clients (i.e., RT @).
Everything, that is, except semi-colons. I love the semi-colon, which is an underused and misunderstood little fellow at the best of times, but much as it pains me I feel it wise to leave them out of my tweets. It’s all about the little sacrifices.
If you’re a bad speller, or struggle with grammar, consider writing your tweets in your favourite Word processor first. This might seem unnecessary, or even patronising, but let me just echo the sentiments above – people will judge you on how you write, and how you spell, and this will have a direct impact on whether your links are clicked and your updates retweeted.
A quick checklist for every tweet:
Don’t look to celebrities for guidance here. Many of them break most of these rules, most of the time. It doesn’t matter for them, because they’re celebrities. The rules don’t apply. They’re going to get tons of attention and retweets no matter what they do. The same goes for lots of power-users and long-established Twitter veterans.
It’s different for the rest of us. Remember: be consistently excellent. You cannot afford to be anything less.
The magic retweet number is the total number of characters you need to leave blank at the end of every tweet to ensure maximum retweetability.
Over time, I have given considerable thought to this figure and continue to refine and perfect it. Currently, the magic retweet number stands at twenty-five. Which means your copy, plus link, should ideally be 115 characters or less.
This is a rule that you will need to break from time to time. Certainly, you should not sacrifice a really quality piece of copy to squeeze your tweet under that ceiling. And Twitter’s internal retweet mechanism has somewhat decreased the need to be so mindful of retweet space.
But if you never any room for others to share your message with their network, chances are that most of the time they either won’t make the effort, or that perfect piece of copy you wrote will be bastardised and lost to the horror of txt spk. Guess what – as it’s a retweet, now everybody thinks you wrote it like that. Welcome to your legacy.
This chart says it all.
If you’re using anything other than bit.ly to shorten your links – certainly if you’re using TinyURL – you’re actually hurting your brand. Bit.ly is Twitter’s URL shortener of choice and that recommendation, plus the stats and convenience that bit.ly provides, make it nothing less than essential for those looking to get their content re-shared.
Tip: the bit.ly sidebar is super-convenient.
Twitter is supposed to be fun, and doing everything by the book, or in a very methodical or rule-driven way, can sometimes make it seem just a little bit too much like hard work.
However, if you really want to succeed on the network, then you’re going to have to put in that little bit of extra effort. If you want to be consistently excellent then I’m afraid you will have to work hard – at least until it becomes second-nature. Few people are naturally wonderful, certainly all of the time.
Trust me: it’s worth the sweat. Once you see the benefits that great headline copy, can’t miss unselling techniques and first-class grammar and punctuation can make to your Twitter presence and impact – as well as your website traffic, and sales – you’ll never again settle for anything less than the perfect tweet.
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It’s a little surprising to see a Twitter application coming out of Fuze Box (formerly CallWave), which creates visual collaboration product. The company has clearly caught the Twitter bug (albeit a little late) and today is launching Tweetshare, an third party Twitter app that allows anyone to immediately publish any type of content to the web, including HD video, presentations, images and more and automatically start Twitter conversation threads around their content. It’s kind of like FriendFeed meets Twitpic or Twitvid. Tweetshare has also rolled out a companion iPhone app that allows mobile users to upload content, tweet and create discussions on the Tweetshare platform.
A social alternative to static landing pages, Tweetshare aims to be a Twitterfied-Facebook Fan Page. Twitter users can post relevant content, such as presentations, images, videos and PDFs, and can also Tweet from the platform. Any comments made on a Tweetshare page or similarly, made on Twitter in response to posted content is also threaded on the page. A free application, Tweetshare also provides measurement and analytics tools, including polling functionality and the ability for users to become a fan of a brand’s Tweetshare Fan Page. And similar to YouTube channels and Facebook pages, Tweetshare Fan Pages can be branded and customized.
The site is missing Facebook connect, but Fuze Box says this will be rolled out soon. Of course, Mixx offers branded Twitter channels through TweetMixx, which offer some of the functionality of Tweetshare. And Tweetmeme also offers a similar product. Its unclear if there is any monetization that can be made from the Tweetshare, but the application seems that it could be useful.
Fuze Box has a pretty unique history as far as startups go. CallWave was founded in 1998 and went public in 2004, trading on NASDAQ under the ticker symbol CALL. After reaching a peak soon thereafter of over $15 per share, the stock dropped steadily, dipping as low as 50 cents early this year. Deciding to cut its losses, the company delisted itself from NASDAQ on Monday after buying back shares from public shareholders at a 44% premium over the current market value and paying out a total of $10 million. Last summer, the company rebranded itself as Fuze Box and launched Fuze Meeting, which it’s pitting as a sleeker, lighter, and cheaper alternative to services like WebEx.
Although the company has experienced some tough times over the past few years, it appears to be in a better place now. And the startup is obviously broadening its product base. However, while a little late to the Twitter frenzy, Fuze Box is moving in the right direction.
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Last October, developer Loren Brichter set the App Store on fire with the sequel to his brilliant iPhone Twitter client, Tweetie. It looks like he’s about to do the same to the Mac.
Brichter sent out a series of teasing tweets today indicating that Tweetie Two is coming soon for the Mac. One, from his atebits account, reads:
Ready… ready?! News about Tweetie Tw… ROOOOOAAAAR!! NOOOO DON’T EAT M *BLAM BLAM*. *CHOMMMPP* Aaaaararrrrrgghhhhhh.
While clearly he’s about to say “News about Tweetie Two,” that in and of itself isn’t very useful. The more useful tweet comes from his personal Twitter account, where he links to a “leaked” screenshot, “Shhh, @atebits doesn’t know I’m leaking screenshots.” To which he replies to himself, “Damn you @lorenb!” Cute.
Better is the screenshot itself (below). While it doesn’t show much of anything beyond what seems to be a frame for Tweetie Two (which he humorously calls “Tweetie Too”), the fact that it’s far enough along to for him to feel comfortable leaking anything is a good sign.
Brichter released Tweetie for Mac last April, following the success of Tweetie (the first one) for the iPhone. It costs you $20 for the ad-free version, but it is well worth it if you’re addicted to Twitter want want a native, non-AIR app (though Echofon has a nice one as well).
So what else do we know about Tweetie Two for the Mac? Brichter actually set up a Formspring.me account where he has answered some questions himself. Notably, the pricing for Tweetie Two will be the same as the first one. Brichter basically spends all his time on the project. And he even designs it himself. Also, “The interface is going to be substantially different,” he writes.
Finally, when asked if he plans to develop for the upcoming iPad, Brichter has just two words, “Hell yeah.” Tweetie for iPad, anyone?
Google may be preparing to launch a stripped-down, low-cost version of its Nexus One smartphone in India, and possibly other developing markets, according to speculation on multiple Indian technology sites. The rumors appear to have originated in a tweet from a TV show producer.
But irrespective of how it got started, it sure highlights the importance that Google is placing on the developing markets. Irrespective of the origin of the current rumor, the idea sure is an interesting one and highlights the importance that Google is placing on the developing markets.
Apple has historically focused on building high-margin products and slapping the legendary Apple Tax on them, but this strategy hasn’t found many takers in markets such as India. Indeed, many would say Apple has priced itself out of the market. In India, the iPhone 3G 8GB model is priced at about $680, while the 16GB variant is priced at about $790 (the 3GS has not yet been released, possibly due to the limited uptake that the 3G version has met). However, Google’s entry into the mobile handset space has to do with more than just device margins. The company is trying to increase the avenues by which consumers can interact with its services. Be it in the mobile space through Android or through its attempts at experimental fiber networks. And it is in this context that emerging markets such as India represent a large market that Google can ill-afford to ignore.
India is adding close to 18 million mobile subscribers every month, and the Indian telecom regulator TRAI estimates [PDF] there were around 127 million wireless subscribers accessing data services (essentially GPRS/EDGE based mobile data services) at the end of September 2009. That is a sizeable number, and one that continues to grow. Mobile advertising, too, is beginning to make its presence felt. Admob metrics [PDF] from January 2010 show India accounting for over 5% of all ad requests, behind only the US and ahead of many other developed mobile markets including Japan and the UK.
Moreover, Google already has some strong traction in the market. A Comscore September 2009 report estimates that Internet users in India spent up to a third of their online time on Google sites, a figure that is over three times the global average. Given such strong usage indicators of its services, Google will want to build on its brand strength, while simultaneously tapping into the fast growing mobile space. Google is already experimenting with multiple mobile products for its Indian audience, including Google Phone Search (search using voice calls to a toll-free number, with results being sent as a text message), Google SMS Search (search using text) and Google SMS Channels (SMS-based mobile communities). Putting a feature-rich, yet low-cost phone into the hands of its users appears the right next step.
It is in this context that a stripped-down version makes sense from Google’s perspective. Google has previously signaled that it considers India an unfriendly marketplace for smartphones. One can only speculate on what components might be tossed, but there are a few low-hanging fruit. India does not yet have 3G networks, given that the required spectrum has not been auctioned yet (although that will likely change soon, hopefully). Similarly, GPS and WLAN chipsets could be on the block, if Google is looking at cutting down on the radios. The display, too, could be swapped out for a less expensive and smaller LCD screen as opposed to the OLED display that the Nexus One currently boasts.
The resulting device would definitely not be what Google calls a “Superphone“, and therefore would not qualify for its online webstore. However, that might do a world of good to Google if it were indeed to launch such a phone in India where online commerce is still finding its feet. Apple found out the hard way that in a large country such as India, having a presence at the neighborhood handset retailer store is critical to driving uptake (Apple’s iPhone is primarily available only at select carrier-owned distribution stores, which are very limited). While Google might not have the experience of dealing with large third-party distributors, it has shown that it does not shy away from such challenges. Indeed, the very fact that it chose to launch its own distribution channel for the Nexus One in the US is testimony to that.
India would likely not be the only target country for such a stripped-down version. Brazil comes readily to mind as another good candidate. For Google to translate its successes on the desktop to the mobile web, a strong presence across devices will be inevitable, be it through carrier partnerships or through Android-based phones, or better-still, a Nexus-One style device where Google exerts significant control. And emerging markets such as India with its large mobile base are probably the right entry point.
Companies: Google
US citizens are now free to invite Iranian, Sudanese, and Cuban citizens into the Web2.0rhea revolution.…
After a series of bizarre delays, including dental surgery and a courthouse fire, rapper Lil Wayne was finally sentenced today to a year in Rikers. Lil Wayne was greeted by over a hundred fans outside Manhattan Supreme Court, reports the Times, where Judge Charles Solomon handed down the year-long jail sentence. Wayne pleaded guilty last October to felony gun charges for having a pistol on his tour bus in July 2007, and had faced up to seven years in jail if he had not made a plea deal. With good behavior, Wayne could be out of jail in eight months.
Defense lawyer Stacey Richman told reporters that Wayne would be housed in protective custody at Rikers, and is planning on continuing to work on music, as he is an "unstoppable musician." EW agrees with the assessment, and makes the daring prediction that the rapper's career won't be hurt by jail time. Wayne told MTV that he has filmed seven new videos in anticipation of today's sentencing. MTV also looks back over the month in Lil Wayne tweeting, including what is assumed to be his last tweet for awhile: "Law is mind without reason. I'll return."
by Mike Moran
Image by luc legay via Flickr
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.
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