New in version Instagram version 1.7 are the following:
- Grid View for Profile Pages
- Optional Bio Field in Profiles
- Manage which push notifications you receive (on Edit Profile screen)
- Choose Profile Picture from Facebook & Twitter
- Stability Improvements for iOS 4.1
- Bug Fixes & Speed Improvements for Older Phones

Why is Instagram the new Twitter? For a few reasons. Instagram started as only supporting one mobile platform, the iPhone but via their newly announced API have allowed developers to create a desktop app and other mobile mashups such as Pic A Fight, the same way Twitter started. Also Instagram has connected me in a new visual way with new friends and old ones. Now I can not only have a conversation but see what my friends are seeing and have conversations about what they experiencing. If you’re looking for the whole follower numbers race, #hashtag support and with version 1.7 profile pages, Instagram is more like Twitter but all within a mobile app. The saying on instagram is not follow me but “hey, check out my photos!”.

Maybe I’m thinking to closed minded comparing Instagram to twitter but the similarities are there. I read recently that the instagram team didn’t look at the app as a photo sharing app but as a media application or something like that. Looking at the big picture I can understand what they’re aming for. Not Twitter or even Facebook but something better based off of experiences of mobile content from their users. I believe Path has the same goal as well. When you think about it, photos is what help Facebook reach 500 million accounts. Good luck to both Path and Instagram.

More post on Instagram
How brands can use Instagram and other mobile photo sharing applications today for customer engagement
The 7 most popular photos on Instagram, there’s more than lol cats!
Instagram now supports hashtags and launches Brisk Pics SXSW contest
On Thanksgiving Instagram is all about the Turkeys! 9 Thanksgiving Day Turkey photos on Instagram
Will Instagram become the next big mobile social network or just one awesome photo sharing app?

What is your favorite mobile photo or video sharing application and why?

Twitter has been on a winning streak recently showing their multimedia value due to the Royal Wedding and the death of OBL. Although being a geek / earlier adopter and being on Twitter since 2006 I still would have never guessed Twitter would be this big. In the early days of using Twitter it was a great tool to use at conferences, staying up to date with tech news and communicating with new and old friends.

Now Twitter has fully penetrated the living room via TV shows, news broadcast and commercials. To help the non geeks, TV producers and others who still after five years don’t see how to use or the value of Twitter, they created the The Best of Twitter TV youtube video to show TV Shows how to use Twitter…

Via YouTube – The Best of Twitter TV. Tip: Mashable

Just when you thought the world and/or Apple’s iTunes app store didn’t need a new Twitter iPhone app, Tweetbot made by Tapbots launches. “Tweetbot is a full-featured iPhone Twitter client with a lot of personality. ” it reads on the Tapbot website describing Tweetbot and a lot of personality it does have. Tweetbot has more than personality working for it. I would say Tweetbot provides a new 2011 beautiful user interface (UI) design to using Twitter on the iPhone.

The launch of Tweetbot probably couldn’t come at a better time either as over the past month or so Twitter upset a lot of their iPhone users by adding then removing what was called the “dickbar” and other small annoying UI changes to the official Twitter iPhone app. So, what’s all the Tweetbot hype about? Take a look at the screenshots below.

What are Twitter users saying about Tweetbot?

Have you purchased Tweetbot for the iPhone and going to make the switch or are you going to stick with your current Twitter iPhone app?

By now I’m sure you have read and at least heard about some of the tragic news from today. Also in the news at least on Twitter are tweets about music artist coming out about their sexuality and there’s always a debate about religion, race and politics. No matter what your opinion is or how strong you feel about what’s happening in today’s society I always caution clients, friends and family be careful what you say online, especially Twitter as it can and will be held against you. Here are seven post with proof if you don’t believe me.

1. Starting 10/10/2010, Twitter will begin transferring all of your tweets to the Library of Congress for archiving

2. US subpoenas Wikileaks tweets, and why this could affect you

3. Courtney Love Twitter defamation trial starts in Feb; Designer sez crazy tweets ruined her career

4. Man in Twitter bomb threat against airport loses appeal

5. Twitter-Jacking On Trial: Cardinals’ Manager Sues Twitter

6. Woman Sued for $50,000 Over a Tweet

7. DOJ subpoenas Twitter records of several WikiLeaks volunteers

While anonymity remains a goal for some and it still exist for some social networks and web apps the government and other social networks such as Twitter and Facebook are buying to be your online single point of interest as your online identity profile. Of course you can add Google to the mix but this all means it is becoming easier to find you and hold you accountable for your remarks online. This means blog comments, tweets, status updates, videos and more.

No longer can individuals hind behind the computer screen or smarthphone. What you say online is the same as if you said it to someone’s face or in other public media formats such as TV and radio. Therefore be careful what you say especially on Twitter because your tweets can and will be held against you.

If you are a Twitter user and an Apple fanboy, today is like Christmas for you. Apple released the much anticipated Mac App Store with 1000 applications and Twitter for the Mac was included. Twitter for Mac perviously known as Tweetie was acquired by Twitter in 2010 and many speculated if or when Atebits would update the mac version.

The new Twitter for Mac app comes with new black icon and a lot of roundness. Take a look.

Announcement from Twitter:

This app gives Twitter users another fast and convenient way to stay connected to what they care about the most. Tweets appear in real-time (using our streaming API), and the app auto-shortens URLs and has lots of useful keyboard shortcuts.

The app is also three times faster than its original version that was previously called Tweetie for Mac.

If you’re not familiar with Tweetie aka Twitter for Mac 1.0 here’s a side by side comparison.

There are not a lot of settings for Twitter for Mac. You can add multiple accounts, pick an image service and set your desktop notifications.

For more reviews of the Mac App Store and Twitter for Mac read the two post below from TUAW.
Twitter for Mac 2.0: A first look

How the Mac App Store works, and get Twitter for Mac free

What is your favorite Twitter application?

The Twitterverse list Twitter apps designed for marketing, business, and service professionals.

Source: digitalsurgeons

From a brand perspective it’s interesting to see that on Facebook 40% of their users follow a brand vs Twitter where on 25% of their users does the same.

What static from the the Facebook vs twitter 2010 social demographics infographic stands out to you?

Tonight ReadWriteWeb broke the news about the new Twitter for Business platform that allows businesses to buy Ads, Trending Topics & promoted tweets. Depending on how long you have been using Twitter you may be thinking what took them so long. Regardless it looks like Twitter is setting up to make money from anyone who would like to get more followers and/or just to increase their Twitter presence. A lot of questions are soon to follow and it will be interesting to see what type of companies and brands start using the new Twitter for Business dashboard and analytics service.

Only time will tell how this will work out and be received by everyday Twitter users, regardless you can get started with Twitter for Business by going here: http://business.twitter.com/advertise/start. For more on Twitter for Business follow @TwitterBusiness and see the ReadWriteWeb post here and TheNextWeb post here

What are your thoughts on the new Twitter for Business platform? Do you think it will be overused by brands and marketers just to get more followers?

Flowtown – Social Media Marketing Application

This had me thinking, as earlier today Twitter CEO was blogged about saying “Twitter lacks ‘clear long term vision” about the idea of Twitter launching premium features for brands, businesses and media outlets. Not just a mass delete Twitter Direct messages feature but other real-time monitoring, analytics, and spam filtering services. These features and more may be included in Twitter’s soon to be launch analytics product. In the mean time if you want to mass delete your Twitter direct messages, DMcleaner.com is a simple tool that gets the job done.

What tool do you use to mass delete your Twitter direct messages?

I just finished Kanye West day on Twitter and wanted to post the 24 songs and tweets that was scheduled throughout the day, with a few bonus tweets that didn’t make the cut.

1. Touch The Sky
“Now let’s go. Take ‘em back to the plan…Me and my momma hopped in the U-Haul van.” #TouchTheSky #kanyewest

2. Never let me down
“Now ****** can’t make it to ballots to choose leadership, But we can make it to Jacob and to the dealership” #kanyewest

3. Run This Town,
“I bought my whole family whips, no Volvos,Next time I’m in church, please no photos” #kanyewest http://goo.gl

4. Hey Mama
“Forrest Gump mama said, life is like a box of chocolates, My mama told me go to school, get your doctorate” #kanyewest

5. Runaway
“I’m so gifted at findin’ what I don’t like the most, So I think it’s time for us to have a toast” #runaaway #kanyewest

6. through the wire
“But I’m a champion, so I turned tragedy to triumph, Make music that’s fire, spit my soul through the wire” #kanyewest

7. Jesus walks
“I’m just trying to say the way school need teachers,The way Kathie Lee needed Regis that’s the way I need Jesus” #kanyewest

8. Last Call
“Now I could let these dream killers kill my self-esteem, Or use my arrogance as the steam to power my dreams” #kanyewest

“Ain’t nobody expect Kanye to end up on top, They expected that College Dropout to drop and then flop” #kanyewest

9. Bad News
“Didn’t you know, I was waitin on you, Waitin’ on a dream that’ll never come true” http://goo.gl/wEzsA #kanyewest

10. Homecoming
“Every interview I’m representing you making you proud, Reach for the stars so if you fall you land on a cloud” #kanyewest

11. Diamonds
“I thought my Jesus Piece was so harmless, “till I seen a picture of a shorty armless” #SierraLeone #kanyewest

12. Heard ‘Em Say
“They say people in your life are seasons, And anything that happen is for a reason” #HeardEmSay #kanyewest

13. Power
“I just needed time alone, with my own thoughts, Got treasures in my mind but couldnt open up my own vault” #kanyewest

14. Love Lockdown
“I’m not loving you, the way I wanted to, What I had to do, had to run from you” #LoveLockdown #kanyewest

15. Back Like that remix
“Second I walked in, the whole room got still, I don’t know how to put this but, I’m kind of a big deal” #kanyewest

16. Cack Music
“Cuz dreams of being ‘Hova went from bein a brokeman ta bein a dopeman, Ta bein a president look theres hope man” #kanyewest

17. Good life
“Whether you broke or rich you gotta get biz, Having’ money’s not everything, not having it is” #kanyewest

18. Lost in the World
“I’m lost in the World, I’m down on my mind, I’m new in the city, and I’m down for the night” #kanyewest #LostInTheWorld

19. SouthSide
“Dreaming of the day they push a phantom to the operas, Can’t wait till they say, “Yeah, ran up at the Oscars.” #kanyewest

20. Stronger
Bow in the presence of greatness, ’cause right now thou has forsaken us, You should be honored by my lateness” #kanyewest ”

21. swagger like us
“My swagger is Mick Jagger, Every time I breathe on a track, I asthma attack it, Why he so mad for? Why he gotta have it?” #kanyewest

22. Spaceships
“Lock yourself in a room doin’ five beats a day for three summers, That’s a different world like Kree Summers” #kanyewest

23. All of the lights
“Restraining order, Can’t see my daughter, Her mother, brother, grandmother hate me in that order” #allofthelights #kanyewest

24. Champion
“When it feel like living’s harder than dyin’, For me givin’ up’s way harder than trying’” @kanyewest #Champion

Also, here are few websites and tools I used to make the process easy to schedule tweets, count characters and find song lyrics.
1. CoTweet
2. Character Count
3. A-Z lyrics
4. Spotify (I’m early beta USA access) If you’re on spotify you can listen to the plan

What did you think about Kanye West day on Twitter?

Today, November 22 is Kanye West day on Twitter in honor of “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” album being released I’m posting a Tweet every hour of the day (24 tweets) with a quote from one of Kanye’s songs with the hashtag #kanyewest. For example one tweet would look like this:”Whether you broke or rich you gotta get biz, Having’ money’s not everything, not having it is” #kanyewest. If you want to join/participate feel free to do the same or just post a tweet with the hashtag #kanyewest and try to keep it positive.

Summary of Kanye West Day on Twitter:
24 Tweets in 24 hours
Hashtag: #kanyewest
Tweet: Favorite Kanye West song or lyrics.
Theme: positive

Why Kanye West day on Twitter? I know some of you may be tired of hearing about Kanye West and you have your own opinion of him and his personality. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and who to follow or not to follow on Twitter. Everyone has their favorite music artist too. As for me, one of my favorite music artist is Kanye West. I may or may not agree with everything he has said or done but he’s an artist, he’s creative and we both use Twitter. Therefore why not.

What is your Kanye West song?
What do you think about his new album “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy?”

One week from today Kanye West (@KanyeWest) much-anticipated new album entitled “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” will be released. Kanye, has been using Twitter to promote the album sending tweets to tracks on Fridays that he calls “G.O.O.D Fridays” to go with the name of his new label called “G.O.O.D. Music”. But it has been an interesting road for Kanye West and Twitter since 2009 let’s take a look back at how his Twitter journey has evolved.

Kanye West first tweet:

May 2009 – Kanye West blogs: I DON’T HAVE A F****** TWITTER…
September 2009 – 300,000 Kanye West Tweets Interrupt Twitter during MTV awards
July 2010 – Kanye West Joins Twitter
July 2010 – Kanye West Raps At Twitter HQ
September 2010 – Kanye West says I’m sorry Taylor on Twitter after an hour long emotional rant.
August 2010 – Kanye West starts G.O.O.D. Friday’s on Twitter
September 2010 – Kanye West Declares No Good Friday This Week after a leaked track

October 2010 – Kanye West Will Take Fans’ Twitter Questions After ‘Runaway’ Debut

My Tweet on MTV

November 2010 – Kanye West responds to President Bush; angry tweets explained
November 2010 – Tweets about Today Show & Matt Lauer – Kanye West Was Coached for ‘Today’ Interview Gone Awry
November 2010 – Kanye West Cancels Upcoming Today Show Performance

As you can see since joining Twitter Kanye West has been very active but one thing is for sure, Kanye is being himself and loves Twitter for being a channel to allow him to freely tell his side of the story instead of everyone hearing what the media has to say.

Now what is Kanye West day on Twitter? On November 22 in honor of “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” album being released I’m going to post a Tweet for every hour of the day (24 tweets) with either a Kanye West Song title or quote from one of his songs with the hashtag #kanyewest. For example one tweet would look like this: #kanyewest “But I’m a champion, so I turned tragedy to triumph, Make music that’s fire, spit my soul through the wire” If you want to join/participate feel free to do the same or just post a tweet with the hashtag #kanyewest and try to keep it positive.

Summary of Kanye West Day on Twitter:
24 Tweets in 24 hours
Hashtag: #kanyewest
Tweet: Favorite Kanye West song or lyrics.
Theme: positive

Why Kanye West day on Twitter? I know some of you may be tired of hearing about Kanye West and you have your own opinion of him and his personality. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and who to follow or not to follow on Twitter. Everyone has their favorite music artist too. As for me, one of my favorite music artist is Kanye West. I may or may not agree with everything he has said or done but he’s an artist, he’s creative and we both use Twitter. Therefore why not.

Who is your favorite music artist on Twitter?

For the course, “I get an updates on your tweets, seven days a week, can’t wait until we speak, but until then I’ll follow you on twitter!” Twista raps, “myspace and Facebook is cool but reading your tweets just be more exciting” … Ok, don’t believe me? Listen to the track below.

Tip to : HipHopWired for posting

Win or Fail?

It’s Friday and you know what that means! #followfriday on Twitter. The goal of #followfriday is to tweet a suggested person to follow and say why should others follow them. I usually don’t participate in #followfriday but for the past few weeks I’ve been writing a #followfriday blog post. Today there’s no #followfriday blog post but more of a rant of five twitter trends I’ve seen on Twitter this week. Maybe I’m getting old or just tired of the same old jokes or what used to be funny or cool on Twitter to do back in 2007 but some of it is just terrible. Regardless it seems to go to Twitter, to blogs, back to twitter and a big waste of time. Heck I’m even waisting time writing this blog post about the trends. Anyway, here are five silly Twitter trends you should refuse to tweet about. Well, I refuse to tweet about.

#1 – Facebook is Down

Ok, unless you’re doing a presentation about Facebook or your Facebook like buttons are causing your site not to load, just be patient, your farm is not lost.

#2 – #newtwitter

Ok, you see the tweet above? So wait for it. You don’t get a badge for having the #newtwitter, it doesn’t mean you’re an influencer because you have the #newtwitter and it doesn’t affect your ROI if you have the #newtwitter.

#3 #angelgate

Ok, so I did post one tweet about #angelgate but for now it seems like a big traffic spike opportunity for Techcrunch and Arringtion shaking up the VC space in the Valley. There may or may not be a lot more to it but until I read about fist flying or official lawsuits, just sit back and read the blog post. Hold off on the tweets.

#4 The rumored Facebook phone

Do we really need to see thousands of tweets about a phone that may or may not even exist? Better yet, won’t be available for months or years if it does exist? A Facebook phone? Please let me know who’s going to ditch their iPhone or Droid or EVO for a Facebook Phone. Really? Is this even news or a joke?

#5 Bishop Eddie Long

This is not a silly thing but a serious thing. I refuse to tweet about it. It’s not even funny! I know everybody has their own opinion and everyone is quick to judge both sides. Remember this, nobody is perfect and be careful what you tweet. I’ve said this over and over again, one day your tweets may land you in big trouble. Read this: Should one joke tweet ruin a man’s life?

Now let’s get back to work.

From iTunes what’s new in Twitter 3.1

Twitter for iPad launches in this version:
Discover what’s happening right now, anywhere in the world with the official Twitter for iPhone app.
Realtime search, Top Tweets, trending topics and maps show whats happening now everywhere and nearby.

What is Twitter for iPad? And how is it different from our iPhone app?
Twitter for iPad brings your Tweets together with web pages, photos, videos and more. Tap on any tweet, and a related content pane will open, displaying any linked content from the tweet, including web pages, profile information, hashtag searches and similar users. Slide panels from side to side and quickly navigate through related content.

There’s also easy ways to quickly peek into a tweet
- Pinch on a tweet to quickly unfold related information and actions
- Use two fingers to drag on tweet and reveal replies

Here are a few screenshots of Twitter for the iPad.

Here are a few notes on the official announcement from Twitter’s blog about new features for  Twitter for the iPad:

Panes: Tapping on a Tweet opens a pane to the right. Depending on the content in that Tweet, you’ll see a video or photo, or maybe a news story, or perhaps another Tweet. You can continue tapping on Tweets, opening new panes, and getting new content as long as you’d like to. And, it’s really easy to move between panes by swiping to the right or left.

Media: When you tap a video link or open a web page with an embedded video, you can play that video inline. And, let’s be honest, video is great but sometimes it can take some time to load. The panes in Twitter for iPad let you look through your timeline while a video is loading, and then you can just swipe back to the video when it’s ready to play. You can also pinch on a video to watch it fullscreen.

Gestures: You can pinch on a Tweet to quickly view details about the author and to take actions on a Tweet, such as reply or retweet. Put two fingers together and pull down on a Tweet to peek at the replies, showing the entire conversation leading to that Tweet.

No need to login: You don’t even need to sign up to get started with Twitter for iPad. We’ve selected great Twitter accounts that you can see in various categories, such as Art & Design, Sports, and News. You can also search, view trends, and find breaking news. Sign up at any time to create your own timeline and start tweeting

Read what others are saying about Twitter for the iPad via Techmeme
Bits, Macworld, Mashable!, GigaOM, Gizmodo, The Next Web, SlashGear,  Redmond Pie, Gadgetell,, Lifehacker

If you have downloaded Twitter for iPad and other Twitter iPad apps, do you think the official Twitter app is the best Twitter iPad application?

Via: Social Media Graphics

The infographic was created by Gerardo Obieta, G_Obieta

Why do you follow companies on Twitter? Let me know in the comments

Follow Friday the Location Edition:

1. @jodiontheweb
2. @incslinger
3. @maxgladwell
4. @EricLeist
5. @mrahmey
6. @ShannonRenee
7. @rojoroach
8. @HarrisonPainter
9. @GreggVM
10. @LawPower
11. @aaronstrout
12. @bryanperson
13. @schneidermike
14. @holaphil
15. @Jakrose
16. @lawrencecoburn

If you’re looking for Twitter list to keep up with the growing list of location-based apps and other geo related news here are  10 geo location Twitter list to follow.

1. http://twitter.com/ericleebow/geo-location-services by @ericleebow
2. http://twitter.com/Scobleizer/geolocation by @Scobleizer
3. http://twitter.com/lawrencecoburn/geolocation by @lawrencecoburn
4. http://twitter.com/jeffcarroll/location-checkin by @jeffcarroll
5. http://twitter.com/jasonbirch/geo by @jasonbirch
6. http://twitter.com/GeoEntelechy/geo by @GeoEntelechy
7. http://twitter.com/tlists/gis-geolocation by @tlists
8. http://wefollow.com/twitter/location by @wefollow
9. http://wefollow.com/twitter/geo by @wefollow
10. http://mashable.com/twitterlists/tech-science/gis-geolocation by @Mashable

Your thoughts?

Today while looking at Techmeme I saw the post titled “How Black People Use Twitter” an article/research from the Slate.com written by Farhad Manjoo @fmanjoo. A few things bothered me when I first saw the headline. One is what in the world is Techmeme’s link policy? I know it’s part algorithm, part human and part buddy system. The other is being “Black/African-American” I care about the overall public perception about what is reportedly being published online about how African-Americans use Twitter and other social networks. The Slate article is not the first post about how “supposedly” black people use Twitter and I doubt it will be the last.

The article discusses trending @Twitter hashtags created by African-Americans but may or may not be the most positive hashtag. I’ve written about this last September in a post titled I’m embarrassed, upset and saddened by those trending topic tweets! Does a Race have a brand?. The @Slate article also uses the hashtag #blacktag, umm ok……. no comment.

Here’s the most important part of the research, which is on page two at the very bottom:

If you’re not a teen or twentysomething and probably working class, you’re likely not following these people, and you’re out of the loop,” he says. Like me, Wasow says he only notices these conversations when they hit Twitter’s trending lists.

Given that these hashtags are occurring in a subgroup of black people online, it is probably a mistake to take them as representative of anything larger about black culture. “For people who aren’t on the inside, it’s sort of an inside look at a slice of the black American modes of thought,” says Jonathan Pitts-Wiley

I wish the quotes above were in the first paragraph vs being at the bottom of the article. Regardless can we move past the how black people use Twitter topic? I don’t see too many post about how other races are using Twitter? Lynne d Johnson @lynneluvah tweeted last night:

Everyone uses Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites differently. Could some African-Americans use better judgement posting certain content to Twitter? Yes, but also can the rest of the world. Regardless, just because you see a few African-Americans creating various trending hashtags on Twitter don’t assume that’s how all “black” people use twitter.

One more thing! I don’t like the brown twitter bird with the hashtag hat… #justsayin

When working with businesses and startups using twitter/social media, I often mention to be careful what you say using these mediums. With just one slip of the keyboard or a bad day it could cost you your job or a client or create a real embarrassing moment. For NBA athlete Chris Bosh @ChrisBosh it could cost him millions. It is being reported by @ESPN and more that the Toronto Raptors @raptors, Chris Bosh current team is upset about his use of twitter while pursuing NBA free agency. Here’s what ESPN reporter @jadande stated in an recent article Bosh-Raptors deal losing luster article:

Bosh’s Twitterization of the courting process, which included several tweets of anticipation leading up to the July 1 commencement of free agency, didn’t sit well with the Raptors either, the source said.

Also watch the ESPN NBA Free agency update on: LeBron James, DeWayne Wade, Chris Bosh and

As a business man I could totally see why the @Raptors would be upset. They are going to lose their star player, they have paid him well over the years and now he’s publicly tweeting about having conversations with other teams to join them. But also as a fan of the @NBA and I’m sure agents and players will tell you, that’s the life of an NBA player and that’s business too. One day Chris Bosh will get old and won’t have the skills that he posses now and have very little say over what he team could play for. But for now Chris is in the driver seat, tweeting about his meetings with other teams and it seems that he’s enjoying every second of it.

The question remains if the @Raptors are indeed upset with Chris Bosh tweeting and will they try to prevent him from a sign and trade deal that could cost him millions. I hope not, as we’re seeing more athletes use @twitter I think it’s good for them to share their life experiences to allow friends /fans to stay connected. It’s something I also discussed with NASCAR driver @David_Ragan in a recent interview that you can watch here. I’m sure @ESPN or news organizations may think otherwise as they would like to be the number one source for sports news. Can you image how upset @ESPN or other news sites would be if LeBron James told the world what team he will sign with vis twitter first vs anywhere else? I for one hope he does it or launches his new website. http://www.lebronjames.com then tweets his news to the announcement back to his website. Let the athletes control their news and vs the media controlling it. Speaking of tweeting, that reminds me, why do we retweet a story from let’s say a tech blog about a google announcement when we can just tweet or share the actual Google announcement it self? …. Sorry sidebar now back to the NBA.

If you look at Chris Bosh’s tweets he really hasn’t said anything to crazy, just tweeting about meetings and sharing a photo with DeWayne Wade. Should that cost him millions of dollars? I hope not and I think it really comes down to control. Chris Bosh is a free agent, he does play in the NBA and just as long as he’s not breaking any of the NBA rules or their social media policy rules the Toronto Raptors should understand the business of free agency and I hope they understand twitter, if not, shoot me an email. Regardless good luck Chris Bosh and to all of the other NBA players in the free agent space. Keep tweeting, we’re following.

My predictions of a few NBA players and free agency;
Chris Bosh = whever DeWayne Wade goes but I wish he would go to the @Lakers in a sign and trade
LeBron James = stays in Cleveland Cavaliers = they will hate him for life if he leaves.
Dewayne Wade – the Bulls
Amare Stoudemire = New York

Best way to keep track of the NBA free agency: Hoopshype Market Center

Favorite NBA Basketball news site: http://hoopshype.com @hoopshype

What are you thoughts? Should Chris Bosh not tweet about his free agency meetings? Do you follow NBA players on twitter?

As you can seen via the poll results above, Twitterrific was the clear winner.

Since the poll, Twitter has released their official iPhone app, Twitter for the iPhone formally known as Tweetie. The app works great and then I decided to install Twitter for the iPhone on my iPad. Note, I have a jailbroken iPad which allows me to install an hack app called Full Force that make some iPhone apps fit the iPad screen space without looking pixelated. I used the Full Force app on Twitter for the iPhone app and it works great. I’m not sure what will change in the app when Twitter releases the official Twitter for the iPad app but I don’t think it should be a lot. Here are a few screenshots.

Since the iPad was released I have been using Twitterrific but I find that my hacked version of Twitter for the iPhone seems to have almost replaced it. It will be interesting to see what happens when Twitter releases the official app as it should work the best being the app is coming from Twitter themselves.

Do you think the official Twitter for the iPad app will replace your current Twitter iPad app?

– Post From My iPad

Location:Eagle Trace Dr,Raleigh,United States

1. Twitterrific

2. TweetDeck

3. Twittelator

4. Tweetings

5. Tweet Flow

6. TweetBrowser

7. Sociable

8. ShinyTweet

Vote for the best Twitter app for the iPad in the poll below.

– Post From My iPad

Location:Glenwood Ave,Raleigh,United States

1. Like it? Tweet it! plugin

“Like it? Tweet it!” is a jQuery-powered JavaScript widget that enables visitors to your website or blog to write a tweet about the site directly in a box displayed in the corner of the website, with a link to the site already embedded in the input field.

2.BackTweets Plugin: Display the best tweets that link to your posts (ok, not that new)

3. Blackbird Pie: Create a generate static HTML of tweets for your posts

4. Add Twitter Anywhere

Embed a Tweet Box on your site and help your users share what matters to them.

Happy blogging and tweeting!

Twitter has been a on a roll since SXSW announcing @Anywhere, then hosting their first conference Chrip. Today’ Twitter/ @twittermedia released a new tool called “Blackbird Pie”. What’s the purpose behind Blackbird Pie? Accouding to the @twittermedia blog,  Tweets are the new quotes. and after listening to the community they wanted an easier way for users to embed Tweets.

Via Twitter’s Fresh-baked tweets for your posts blog post:

The origin of the script is both self- and user-centered. Mostly, we just think it’s a pain to take screen grabs of tweets. But of course we also think it’s a much better user experience to have @-mentions, hashtags and the account itself all linked and clickable.

So how does Blackbird Pie work? To give it a try just go to: http://media.twitter.com/blackbird-pie/ , then enter the url of a tweet, for example, url http://twitter.com/tzmartin/statuses/13373536266 then Blackbird will “bake” some code for you to embed on your website or blog post, in Twitter words.  Here’s the output of the http://twitter.com/tzmartin/statuses/13373536266 tweet using BlackBird Pie.

What are your thoughts on Blackbird Pie? Will you use it? Do you like the name?

Today we’re pleased to announced that we have integrated both Twitter’s Anywhere and Facebook’s “Like” button on the TriOutNC.com website. To use Twitter’s Anywhere services just go a user’s profile page or a location page that has a Twitter account. Then hover your mouse over the Twitter name and a Hovercard will pop-up allowing you to follow the Twitter Name if you’re already logged into Twitter. See the examples below:

To see how the Facebook Like button works just visit any location page such as the 3Cups TriOut Page and you’ll see Facebook Like button in the details box. If your already logged into Facebook and click on the “Like” button it will show your Facebook profile icon saying you liked the location and it will also show on your Facebook wall that you “liked” the location. Examples below:

Also we added our email newsletter subscription sign-up form to the footer of the website. Previously it was only available on the blog sidebar. Now you can sign-up anywhere on the website, something I recommend you do as we have a few major announcements that we’re going to make soon.

Another update was to bring more awareness of our new mobile website m.TriOutNC.com and our presence in Apple’s iTunes app store. Therefore we added banners above the leadeboard section of the website.

Lastly we added another location where you can sign into or create your TriOut account. For example if you do a search for “coffee” in the results you see on right the following box below.

That’s it for now and we hope you like the updates. Between the changes above along with the implementation of TriOut being included into Check.In, founder/developer Lawrence Ingraham has been very busy.

Let us know what you think about the updates and thanks for the support!

*Disclaimer: I’m a partner in TriOut where I serve as the business development/marketing strategist.

Have you added either the Facebook Like button or Twitter’s Anywhere hovercard to your website?

When the iPad first launched two twitter apps that are highly used among iPhone users were available such as Twitterrific and Tweetdeck. Soon to follow was Twittelator and I have never used Tweetings before but now they have released an iPad version of their Twitter app as well. Here’s a list of my top 4 Twitter apps for the iPad.

Twitterrific

Tweetings

If you have an iPad what Twitter app are you using?

– Post From My iPad

Location:Market Plaza,Raleigh,United States

Join us this Saturday from 4:00 – 6:00 p.m. at the Atrium Lounge at the Hilton Los Angeles/Universal City to celebrate the 2010 Oscars. This year, Kodak will be sending some of our nation’s top bloggers to report live from the Red Carpet.

Then we’ll head over to City Walk for a great night out!

You can RSVP below or go here: http://preoscarstweetup.eventbrite.com/

A big thanks to @HiltonUniversal for hosting, and we hope to see you there!

via : http://tweetreach.com/

via http://socialmention.com

via http://wthashtag.com

Also there have been a few blog post blogging about the 28 Days of Diversity project, take a look below.

You can also keep up with the project on BlackWeb 2.0 as Angela Benton and team are cross posting the series on BlackWeb20.com .

If you blog about the project be sure to leave a comment with your link below or send a tweet to @WayneSutton so I can add it to the list. Thanks

TwellWishes is a Twitter app that allows Twitter users to send well wishes to their followers for occasions such as birthdays, anniversaries, promotions, or whatever you like.  And truthfully, people can use TwellWishes to wish somebody well for anything.  We’ve already seen people send virtual bottles of champagne and pints of beer just for fun.

TwellWishes also doubles as a reminder service so that no one’s birthday isever forgotten.  Every user has a link they can give out which allows people to add themselves to that user’s birthday list.  When a birthday rolls around, everybody who has that user’s birthday on their list will be reminded with one simple tweet.  Then, they can send a tweet to that person from the TwellWishes dashboard or they can send a virtual gift to that user such as a cake or a comfy pair of slippers.

Yahya proposed the idea after noticing there was no way to keep track of followers’ birthdays.  Facebook users get that information automatically, but on Twitter you only see birthdays in passing in your stream.  Furthermore, you usually end up with some kind of gift for your birthday, so we thought it’d be neat to open up a virtual gift store.  Users can send gifts with either credits or cash (via PayPal).  Everybody starts off with 100 gift credits to send at least one free gift.  When they run out of credits, they can easily purchase more.  Also, users can earn gift credits when they send gifts via PayPal.

We like to think of TwellWishes as great for anybody on Twitter who wants to have a bit of fun while discovering something simple and universal about their followers!

About the founders of  TwellWishes.

Tiffani Bell (@tiffani) is a twenty-something in pursuit of better living through software.

Tiffani is also the founder of Pencil You In (http://www.pencilyou.in/@pencilyouin) which allows beauticians to accept appointments online and via text message.  Tiffani has also appeared on the radio in Philadelphia (Technically Speaking Radio with JC Lamkin) to talk about Ruby and Ruby on Rails (she’s a huge fan) and the greater social/access implications of free and open source software. Tiffani graduated in May 2008 with a BSc in Computer Science from Howard University.

Yahya:

Navy veteran and entrepreneur, by design, Yahya is an idea guy. He has been in the real estate business for 8 years and serves as founder of sustainable development blog Aribra.com. He also serves as Director of Business Development for The Aribra Group, LLC, a real estate development consultancy. Yahya has built his career around his passion for people, the planet, technology and real estate. Along with partners, Yahya started TwellWishes, LLC, an application developer for the birthday reminder service TwellWishes. He currently resides in Augusta, GA. You can follow him on Twitter @YahyaHenry.

Twitter: the little platform that does it all; from marketing, to customer service and sadly, massive amounts of spam. The Twitter platform itself, doesn’t spam, but with various tools using Twitter’s API can allow people to use it for spamming with public tweets and direct messages (DMs). Spam is nothing new in the digital world, we receive millions of spam every day in our email inboxes and it’s an ongoing problem with Twitter. But with recent UI changes and updates, Twitter spam has seemed to decrease.

My LinkedIn inbox saw an unfortunate occurrence this week. I received a message from someone asking if I could help them with something that I not only consider spamming on Twitter but also to find the best tool to automate the process of creating a Twitter account for business purposes. Here’s a screenshot of the LinkedIn message. Some information has been grayed out to protect the guilty.

The individual basically wanted to launch a Twitter marketing strategy the following ways:

1. auto follow targeted people
2. Send auto DM’s
3. Target followers by region
4. Auto or easily unfollow users who do not follow back

Now I will confess and say that I have used various tools myself and for others to auto follow people on Twitter by location and keyword but I have NEVER pulled an auto-follow and then unfollow just for subscribers. Also I have NEVER sent Auto DMs to my followers or any Twitter account that I have managed. My response to this person was “Hello, thanks for contacting me, yes there is software that will allow you to reach your goals but it’s a practice that I do not recommend or suggest to others using Twitter.”

As more businesses continue to use Twitter for marketing and more social media practitioners are born every day, I hope this is not a sign of the times, as we move into 2010, of businesses who are looking to implement Twitter as a part of their existing marketing efforts. Maybe I’m being a little hard, but as you can see, this person is a consultant for a client and that brings me to another point. Yes, social media is about sharing and you can find a lot of free help online including Twitter itself. But if you’re working for a business or if you’re a business and would like consulting, that’s something I do at Twine Interactive and we can setup a conference call or a strategy session so you can get the best value out of your time and money. But to the person who sent me the LinkedIn message: if you find this blog post, there is a Twitter app store called OneForty.com

Reference link: Twitter 101 Advice for Companies: “Don’t spam people”

*Disclaimer: I have no business investment with OneForty.com

How are you using Twitter for business?

Looking for what was hot on Twitter in 2009? Look no further, Twitter just post the Top Twitter Trends of 2009 From the blog post:

These are Twitter’s top Trending Topics across several categories—an interesting time capsule of what was happening as this decade came to a close.

News Events
1. #iranelection
2. Swine Flu
3. Gaza
4. Iran
5. Tehran
6. #swineflu
7. AIG
8. #uksnow
9. Earth Hour
10. #inaug09

People
1. Michael Jackson
2. Susan Boyle
3. Adam Lambert
4. Kobe (Bryant)
5. Chris Brown
6. Chuck Norris
7. Joe Wilson
8. Tiger Woods
9. Christian Bale
10. A-Rod (Alex Rodriguez)

Movies
1. Harry Potter
2. New Moon
3. District 9
4. Paranormal Activity
5. Star Trek
6. True Blood
7. Transformers 2
8. Watchmen
9. Slumdog Millionaire
10. G.I. Joe

TV Shows
1. American Idol
2. Glee
3. Teen Choice Awards
4. SNL (Saturday Night Live)
5. Dollhouse
6. Grey’s Anatomy
7. VMAS (Video Music Awards)
8. #bsg (Battlestar Galatica)
9. BET Awards
10. Lost

Sports (Teams, Events, Leagues)
1. Super Bowl
2. Lakers
3. Wimbledon
4. Cavs (Cleveland Cavaliers)
5. Superbowl
6. Chelsea
7. NFL
8. UFC 100
9. Yankees
10. Liverpool

Technology
1. Google Wave
2. Snow Leopard
3. Tweetdeck
4. Windows 7
5. CES
6. Palm Pre
7. Google Latitude
8. #E3
9. #amazonfail
10. Macworld

Hash Tags
1. #musicmonday
2. #iranelection
3. #sxsw
4. #swineflu
5. #nevertrust
6. #mm
7. #rememberwhen
8. #3drunkwords
9. #unacceptable
10. #iwish

From the Twitter Blog: What’s Happening
Twitter was originally conceived as a mobile status update service—an easy way to keep in touch with people in your life by sending and receiving short, frequent answers to one question, “What are you doing?” However, when we implemented the service, we chose to leave something out. To stay simple, Twitter did not require individuals to confirm relationships. Instead, we left things open.

The fundamentally open model of Twitter created a new kind of information network and it has long outgrown the concept of personal status updates. Twitter helps you share and discover what’s happening now among all the things, people, and events you care about. “What are you doing?” isn’t the right question anymore—starting today, we’ve shortened it by two characters. Twitter now asks, “What’s happening?”

I don’t think this will change your behavior on Twitter or will it? I really think this will help new users and as Twitter work on their overall marketing/monetization strategy / for 2010. Take the poll below and let me know what you think about the What’s happening now change in the comments.

Personally at the current state of Trending Topics and with the growth of new Twitter users I think Twitter should stop displaying Trending Topics until they can make it more valuable. Also I’ve heard from many individuals say they don’t even look at or use Trending Topics anymore or care about Trending Topics for that matter.

Twitter though is acknowledging the Trending Topics problem on a recent blog post called: Get to the Point: Twitter Trends. Post excerpt:
As Twitter grows and the number of tweets each day continues to astound us, we’ve noticed an increasing amount of clutter in the public timeline, especially with trending topics. Trends began as a useful way to find out what’s going on but has grown less interesting due to the noisiness of the conversation.

So, today we’re starting to experiment with improvements to trends that will help you find more relevant tweets. Specifically, we’re working to show higher quality results for trend queries by returning tweets that are more useful.

Good luck with improving Trending Topics but unlike the list and retweet roll-out, I think Twitter should hide Trending Topics everywhere on the site until it’s fixed.

Your Thoughts or Take the Poll below?

Twitter list have been out for a while and regardless if you’re a fan of the feature or not they have their purpose. A few weeks ago I asked on Twitter if I should write a blog post about Twitter List because it seemed that the entire blogosphere had written post about it. The response was “sure” because a few people wanted to here my two cents about Twitter List. So my two cents is that Twitter list adds value to Twitter the platform and is useful to filter Tweets and content/people by subject matter/conversations. What I don’t like about Twitter List is how people are using the number count to judge your “influenced” or rankings by the amount of list you are in. But that is a part of Twitter’s friends/followers numbers game that works with its brand and we just have to live with it.

Now that the dust have settled a little on Twitter list, a few tools/sites have been created to make Twitter list more valuable to your brand outside of just to see how many list you can be listed in.

Twitter Lists 2 RSS

A Twitter List Powered Fan Page

conversationlist
a conversational approach to Twitter lists

Listiti
Google Alerts meets Twitter Lists

Listorious makes it easy to find the best lists of Twitter users on any given topic, and for list creator to publicize their lists.

1. Twitter Lists for SEO How to
2. TOP 10 B2B TWITTER LISTS TO FOLLOW
3. 10 Ways You Can Use Twitter Lists
4. 10 Twitter Lists Questions and Answers
5. 5 Reasons to Use the New Twitter List Feature

Update:Another Twitter List blog post to read is.
How brands can use Twitter lists

How are you using Twitter List?

Yesterday’s Advertising Age article called GM, Kellogg, Nestle Beat to the Tweet as Squatters Take Over Twitter Names is a troubling sign for Twitter and brands but it should be nothing new to brands, just something they haven’t done in a while. Remember the .com squatting back in 1997 and more recently Facebook username / fanpage squatting a few months ago. Regardless I’ve had a few success stories helping brands getting access to squatted Twitter accounts and getting a few spammed “brandjacking” twitter accounts closed. How you ask? Well I will say their is no exact proven method that will work 100% but I will share what has worked for me.

1. Email terms@twitter.com to let them know that you own the trademark to your brand. A screenshot or pdf attachment with proof is advise to let them know you want your Twitter brand name.

2. Send a tweet from a representative of your company or another company created twitter account to the proper twitter employee that handles Twitter name squatting. I’m not going to give you their names but you can find and follow the entire Twitter team here: http://twitter.com/twitter/team and /or here: http://listorious.com/twitter/team. Please don’t spam them. Note that @biz and @ev are the cofounders and are very busy.

3. Login and fill out the “Submit a request page here to Twitter’s support team: http://help.twitter.com/requests/new

1/2. Use a service like DandyID’s Claim my name that will secure your name on social networks and prevent brandjacking. http://www.dandyid.org/beta/claimmyname

To those of you who are squatting twitter names, shame on you. To those of you who are trying to get access to your Twitter brand name, good luck. Oh, by the way @Krispy_Kreme if you want access to the @HotNow Twitter account, just let me know.

Update: Also read  DON’T FALL VICTIM TO B2B TWITTER SQUATTING by Jeff Cohen aka @dgtlpapercuts

If you need additional help I can be reached at wayne at ourhashtag dot com

Twitter Accounts are limited to what seems like celebrities, athletes, government officials, major brands, A-listers in the blogging / social media space and friends who know people at Twitter. With only a select few of the million of Twitter users having a Verified Twitter account puts me in company to where “some” value the Verified Twitter Account badge as a symbol of status and/or creditability. From http://twitter.com/help/verified

Who has a ‘Verified Account’ badge?
We’re starting with well-known accounts that have had problems with impersonation or identity confusion. (For example, well-known artists, athletes, actors, public officials, and public agencies). We may verify more accounts in the future, but because of the cost and time required, we’re only testing this feature with a small set of folks for the time being. As the test progresses we may be able to expand this test to more accounts over the next several months.

Personally I didn’t seek out to get a Verified Twitter account but I was wondering why @ScottMonty and @comcastcares didn’t have Verified Twitter accounts because they represent major brands and after doing some “research” I was able to reach out to a few contacts and I figured why not me too. Either way, the outcome is @ScottMonty and I are now verified. But Scott works at Ford and for myself I’ll let you decide. Hear are what a few Tweeple are saying:

mattkoz81: Does Wayne have a problem w/ evil imitators? RT @iFroggy:@waynesutton is a famous Verified Account.  #iknowacelebrity

ryanpthompson: Props to Wayne! Your picture is putting a Verified Stare into my soul jk @iFroggy: .@waynesutton is a famous Verified Account.

iFroggy: .@waynesutton is a famous Verified Account.

BillCammack: @waynesutton: Congrats, Dude. Can you tell me the value of getting a twitter account verified? We already have our accounts. \o/

What does a Verified Twitter Account mean to you?

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The article talks about how Jason Austin, with little/zero budget along with other NC State staff members created NC State’s new mobile website along with the NC State on Twitter site and maps page. Here’s an excerpt form the article.

At a meeting last spring, staff members from the Office of Information Technology and Web Communications met with volunteer Web developers from units across campus, such as engineering and the libraries.

They all agreed that the future of the Web was tied to mobile applications and that NC State needed a mobile site. No budget, no time, no formal structure? No problem, they decided.

The price tag for Duke’s recently launched mobile site, created by an outside vendor, was clearly out of reach, says Jason Austin, senior solutions implementation engineer with OIT.

I must say that I’m very impressed with NCSU mobile site and the fact they decided to build the site internally instead of spending the money to have it built like Duke University did is smart. Those Blue Devils…., remember I’m a UNC Fan.

The NC State Twitter page is designed very simimlar to search.twitter.com and provides links to the schools official twitter accounts and hashtags. They also provide the source code so even if you’re a business or another college you can create your own branded Twitter page too.

Update:John Rees shares the link to the UNC mobile site.

A big congrats to the university on embracing technology and understanding that the future of the web is mobile and embracing the use of Twitter. It will be interesting to see if other university will provide the same service. If you know of other university that have created their own mobile or Twitter page let me know in the comments.

If you haven’t heard the news already, Bing is now a real-time Twitter search client. The announcment was made today from both Twitter and Microsoft’s new search saver Bing. An excerpt from Twitter:
Bing Goes The Dynamite!
We have a team focused on delivering value from a search and discovery perspective at Twitter and they’re just getting started. Twitter is earning a reputation for delivering real-time results to queries about things that are happening right now. Moreover, there are already tens of thousands of Twitter apps and more to come because people want the choice to consume and create tweets wherever and whenever they prefer. The folks over at Bing took a keen interest in Twitter and worked fast to establish a working relationship with us in line with our open approach.

An excerpt from Bing’s blog: bing is bringing twitter search to you
Search needs to keep up. Shortly after we launched Bing, we did an experiment with the team at Twitter, where we took a fairly small number of “celebrities” from Twitter and provided access to their tweets as part of the search result. Here is a great example.

We’re glad you asked that. Because today at Web 2.0 we announced that working with those clever birds over at Twitter, we now have access to the entire public Twitter feed and have a beta of Bing Twitter search for you to play with (in the US, for now).

Update Google joins the party
An excerpt Google’s blog: RT @google: Tweets and updates and search, oh my!
Given this new type of information and its value to search, we are very excited to announce that we have reached an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results. We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months. That way, the next time you search for something that can be aided by a real-time observation, say, snow conditions at your favorite ski resort, you’ll find tweets from other users who are there and sharing the latest and greatest information.

What are your thoughts on the new Bing/Twitter search deal? Will you actually go to bing.com/twitter to search for tweets?

A couple weeks ago I signed up with Sponsored Tweets, a new program available through Izea. The concept of Sponsored Tweets is simply… get paid to send out tweets through Twitter. Since joining, I’ve had several opportunities come through, and have already made several hundreds of dollars. Here’s a bit more on the site and how you can make money too. View Sponsored Tweets

How does Sponsored Tweets work?
Everything about Sponsored Tweets is very simple and easy to setup. You create your account, and login with your same Twitter account info (through Twitter). Once your account is created, you just need to set how much you want to be paid per tweet, and then you wait for a new opportunity to come in. When you receive a new opportunity, you just need to approve or deny the tweet. Some advertisers write what they want you to say, but many leave that up to the tweeter. You submit the “tweet” for approved, and once approved, the money is deposit into your account.

Is this allowed by Twitter, and Ethical?
To answer the most important question, YES! This is allowed by Twitter! and Sponsored Tweets mentions this several times on their web site, as they have worked with Twitter through the process of making the site. As for being “ethical”, there is full disclosure. When a tweet is sent through Sponsored Tweets, it is seen on twitter as “sponsored by…“, “Ad“, or “brought to you by..“. It’s this full disclosure that keeps the tweeter, the advertiser and the reader all legit.

What does a “sponsored tweet” look like?
Depending on whether or not your advertisers provides an ad copy, your tweet can look like anything. Whatever you submit will be sent over to Sponsored Tweets for approval. Other than that, it will look like a regular tweet going out through your account. The only difference is that the url is through bit.ly and instead of being posted from “web” or “tweetdeck”, it says “from Sponsored Tweets“… as it should for full disclosure.

Is anyone making Money with Sponsored Tweets?
As mentioned, in just my first couple of weeks, I’ve made an extra few hundred bucks just for a few minutes of my time approving ads, and I have a fairly small twitter following. ShoeMoney also posted about how he has earned thousands from tweeting advertiser links independently and through Sponsored Tweets.

Who else is partnered with Sponsored Tweets?
There are actually a decent amount of big name tweeters already signed on with Sponsored Tweets. I haven’t seen a way to signup online (have to call) as an Advertiser to access a full list of tweeters available, but they do have the following “featured tweeters” listed in the login area. Some of these accounts (like Kim Kardashian) have over 2 million followers.

That’s a quick summary of what Sponsored Tweets is all about, and how it’s making money and driving leads through Twitter. It’s fairly new, and always great to get into a new revenue source on the bottom floor.

Here are  the Details from Jason Keath.

Social Media History Trivia

• October 9th, 1pm EST
• Follow @jakrose for questions
• Random draw from the first 5 correct answers wins a ticket for each question
• 4 Questions

Good luck and thanks Jason for hosting.

This API will open all Twitoaster’s data and services (conversations threading and archiving, statistics, search…) to third party applications.

This could be a great news for many Twitter app developers, as they’ll find here a very easy way to integrate conversations and statistics in their applications.

Twitter: http://twitter.com/twitoaster
Site: http://twitoaster.com

Disclaimer:
I have no investment or relationship with the creators of this site.

When it comes to Twitter you can almost use the line, “there’s an app for that” with new mobile, desktop and web based apps launching everyday. Some apps are for analytics, some are for sharing links and some are for picking contest winners using a hashtag. If you’re looking to do the later, then Kosmix’s new web based Twitter is the tool for you. It’s called Lucky Twit

The Pitch:
It’s real simple. Go to http://www.kosmix.com/labs/luckytwit/. Enter your hashtag in the top right and hit the big red button. Want to force people to use a keyword and a hashtag to win? Put both! Then see the tweets flow in.

Lucky Twit is the first product to be released from Kosmix Labs, and you can find it now at http://www.kosmix.com/labs/luckytwit/.

To see how Lucky Twit works, take a look at my video screencast

My thoughts:
Lucky Twit is simple, fast and all it needs is a “cha-ching” sound to give it a little more flavor, then I’ll call it fun. . I can see value in using Lucky Twit for Twitter hashtag give-a-ways and I think I’m going to give it a real-time spin at our upcoming Triangle Social Media Club meeting to give-a-away a ticket to an upcoming social media conference.

Disclaimer:

I have no investment or relationship with the creators of this site.

.

Over the last few weekends I have attended and participated in two new / social media conferences. Both were educational, fun, included great speakers but also had a few “distraction” moments in some form of social engagements via Twitter or another similar tool. Regardless of the situation it seems that some people have forgotten that we are all human and have feelings too. In this era of using social media to have a “voice”, be heard or social change, sometimes we don’t need to be heard at the expense of individual feelings or in some cases people’s careers.

When Twitter was first launched at SXSW in 2006, the early adopter community primarily used it to share information around events, new desktop / web applications and communicate with other geeks who “got it” at the time. Now fast forward three years, Twitter is still being used the same way but now that it’s the darling of spammers, gossip sites, news media and celebrities it seems people have forgotten that Twitter is still a communication tool that represents you as an person or brand. In other words how you behave or Tweet on Twitter can be seen as online version of you the person offline. To some this means if you’re a controversial person on Twitter we’re assuming you’re a controversial person offline or nice, or mean or crazy or sweet … you get the picture.

But regardless of how you are online or offline there have always been a few general people / courtesy life “rules” that you follow when interacting with others. These rules are priceless, they have not changed with time and they apply for Twitter, Facebook, blogs and anything else you want to throw in the social media space. The rules are for brands and people even if they’re using Twitter for personal reasons.The rules apply even if you have a disagreement with others or even if you don’t like someone or if you don’t agree with how someone is making a living. The rules are not just Twitter rules but life rules. All of us are guilty at some point of breaking these rules, my self included at some point. Also I believe if major corporations / brands tweeted like some of us have, we’ll have a lawyer on phone faster than someone could tweet “you lie” .

Nevertheless, the “new” Golden Rules of Twitter are:

• Tweet to people online like you want to be tweeted.
• Don’t Tweet anything online about a person that you wouldn’t want Tweeted about you or to you.
• Don’t Tweet and drink or Tweet while you’re drunk. (I’m a non-drinker) so I may be bias/
• Don’t Tweet when you’re mad or mad at someone. Take a break and count to 140 before you respond.
• If you can’t Tweet anything good about a person, don’t Tweet it at all.

Sounds familiar? It seems like between, town hall events or Twitter conversations we’re losing our respect for one another. I’m not sure when we as a society started to go down hill but personally I would like to see us it come back up. Does this mean you shouldn’t use your social media “voice” to express how you fill online? No, but there’s a proper way to handle every situation and handling it with a little dignity and respect for others is always better in the long hall.

In closing, are these rules new? Not really but it seems like a lot of people don’t remember them. What would you add to list?

Disclaimer: These rules have not been approved or endorsed by @Ev or @Biz and according to Twitter’s official terms of service, you own your Tweets.

PS: If you go there, I’ll close or delete the comments… it is my blog.

BTW: The best thing about blogs, they just keep going

TweetHook.com, a new service from JazzyChad Network, eliminates the need to poll Twitter for data by pushing results to them automatically.

Press Release
The new service delivers fresh Twitter Search results to
customers using web callback URLs, also known as a “ping” service. The
site went live today after several months of testing and development.
Users can sign up for a free 30 day trial on the site. TweetHook is
the second major Twitter service from JazzyChad Network. The first is
TweetGrid.com, a popular online real-time Twitter Search dashboard.

“Many people have asked if Twitter has a way to send data to a
callback URL. Currently they do not, and after gaining experience
writing TweetGrid, this was something I thought I could provide as a
service using Twitter’s API,” said Chad Etzel, creator of TweetGrid
and now TweetHook. “There seems to be a demand for this type of
delivery mechanism. I have designed TweetHook to be as robust and
scalable as possible. There are plans that are affordable for
consumers, researchers, startups, and enterprise level customers.”

When a user creates an account, they can register different queries
using the advanced Twitter Search syntax and assign them to separate
callback URLs. When new results are available for the user’s queries,
TweetHook’s servers will automatically push the data to the specified
URLs and the user can write a script to further process the data. The
key here is that the user does not need to contantly poll Twitter for
new search results. Instead, TweetHook delivers it to them as the new
results are available. The user does not need to worry about the
Twitter Search API rate-limit as this is handled by TweetHook itself.
TweetHook can save customers time, money, and resources by eliminating
the need to create their own Twitter Search polling infrastructure
which can become a complicated task. As Twitter is still growing in
popularity, there is real value in being able to continuously search
for tweets with keywords, phrases, or hashtags. TweetHook makes this
process simple and automatic.

About JazzyChad Network:
Currently, Chad Etzel is the sole founder and employee of JazzyChad
Network. Chad is addicted to programming and can’t kick the habit. He
has been developing with the Twitter API for over 2 years, especially
in the search space. Previous to starting his own company in mid 2009,
Chad worked in the computer networking industry building the next
generation of internet routers. Chad graduated in 2006 with a B.S. in
Computer Science from Georgia Tech in Atlanta. The official website
for JazzyChad Network can be found at http://jazzychad.net.

I have no investment with the creators of this site. @JazzyChad is fellow NC resident and friend. I wish him much success on his new product.

Triangle Twitter users will not be confined to 140-character conversations as they experience the Fair’s offerings at the first Deep Fried Triangle Tweetup at the N.C. State Fair on Thursday, Oct. 22.

The event, co-hosted by the organizers of Triangle Tweetup, will be held in the Folk Festival Tent from 7 to 9 p.m. on Food Lion Hunger Relief Day.

“We’ve built great relationships over the past year with our social media followers, and we wanted to organize an event that would help them enjoy the Fair in a new social way,” said Wesley Wyatt, fair manager.

During the Deep Fried Triangle Tweetup, attendees will be able to sample deep-fried Fair food, interact with Fair entertainers, participate in a Twitter-themed scavenger hunt and enter to win prizes throughout the night. The event is part of a growing trend of events where participants have face-to-face gatherings with people they follow on social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. It is also one of the first Tweetups hosted by a state fair.

The co-host, OurHashtag, has held 10 Triangle Tweetups during the past two years. The company’s partners Wayne Sutton, Jeff Cohen, Ryan Boyles and Kipp Bodnar are active members in the local social media community, and have planned several social media events including Ignite Raleigh and monthly Triangle Social Media Club meetings. Past Triangle Tweetups have included a charitable component to the main event.

“By holding the Tweetup on Hunger Relief Day, we are able to gather at the Fair without charging a registration fee, and can continue to help our community through charitable contributions,” Sutton said. Anyone who brings four cans of food to the Fair on Thursday, Oct. 22 will get in to the Fair for free.

The N.C. State Fair was the first fair to use Twitter, and currently connects with fairgoers on a variety of social media sites, including:

• Deep Fried @ the N.C. State Fair Blog: www.ncstatefair.org/blog
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/ncstatefair
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/ncstatefair
• MySpace: www.myspace.com/ncstatefair

The Deep Fried Triangle Tweetup is one of several new activities added this year to appeal to the state’s tech-savvy community. Other events include the TXT-O-LYMPIX texting competition and nightly video game contests.

Promotional video

More information about the Fair can be found at www.ncstatefair.org. Space is limited to the first 500 registrants.

The Pitch
Tweetiator.com alerts you in real time when people share links to your content on Twitter and lets you follow and message them

Link sharing analytics are easy to get if you are the sharer of a link (by using link shorteners like bit.ly, and a bunch of others) but until Tweetiator were not available to the site owner. This is a very useful marketing tool because when people share your content, they are much more likely to respond to offers, promotions, and surveys.

To use Tweetiator, you download a little JavaScript and you can watch and interact with the people sharing links to your content from the Tweetiator dashboard, get alerts via email, or download a .csv file.

Cost
After your thirty day free trial it’s just $4.95 a month.

Created by: NimbleSource @nimblesource

For more information see Tweetiator’s FAQ page:  http://www.tweetiator.com/help/faqs

In a nutshell if you have a Twitter landing page you should be using Tweetiator.

Tweetiator.com is now in private beta but I have a few invites for the readers of SocialWayne.  Just leave a comment along with your email address and if you’re one of the first few, you’re in luck.

If you would like for me to review your product or site email: pitches at socialwayne dot com . Disclaimer: I have no investment or relationship with the creators of this site. Thank you.

The Facebook vs Twitter war just kicked into high gear today as Facebook launched a rocket announcing that soon you’ll be able to “Tag Friends in Your Status and Posts” with a simple notion of the @ sign. Ohhhh, Awww. The initial announcement was made here: http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=109765592130

Three of the top social media/tech blogs, Mashable (2), TechCrunch and Read Write Web already have a post talking about the move. Each with a different post title leaning toward how Facebook’s friends tagging feature is related to Twitter.

Mashable Post Title

TechCrunch Post Title

Read Write Web Post Title

Personally I really think it’s to early to start saying the death is near for Twitter or say this move will cause people to leave Twitter or say brands will leave Twitter for Facebook. Slow down folks!  The real question is what I think the Read Write Web post tries to discuss is how the @ tagging will affect Facebook users. Who knows it could back-fire especially if it’s not a feature you could turn on or off in your users settings; you never know.  Facebook users may not like it when spammers and brands mentions their name in a lurking move to get their attention on Facebook.  I did read how it will only work for if you friends with a person but still, only time will tell.

Either way the move by Facebook started an instant debate on Twitter about how Facebook mentions may start the downward growth spiral of Twitter. Here are a few of the discussions.

@kbodnar32 @bmcd67 Bet me! Twitter won’t top 25m users. 30 max, before peeking roughly 8 months from now. F’book will be 10x that.

BREAKING: Facebook to launch @replies in Status Updates. http://bit.ly/4a4KV8 Further proof that F’book is slowly killing Twitter

@jtobin so what if twitter tops out at 30 million users it can most likely be profitable at that level, surely won’t die.

@jtobin no you are wrong. they are two different platforms used in two differently ways. Both can exist happily.

@eyevariety But I also think there’s value in everyone embracing conventions. Just wonder if Twitter has IP protection around the use of @

@eyevariety See it as adding tags to status updates with an easy interface. Using @ is unoriginal, but it’s only in writing UI, not display

Plus if people can only mention you if you have approved them as a friend, it eliminates the random @ spam we get on Twitter.

@jefftippett a great feature but not something that will kill twitter- FB is so closed.

@jtobin I guess think of Twitter as new form of media and that that kind of communication eventually will be owned by everyone- like email

My rant
I can’t take it anymore, I just looked at the trending topics on Twitter and number one is #uknowublackwhen and the tweets that flowing in at an alarming rate are TERRIBLE! Most of the tweets are racist, stereotypical and appalling. To some they may be funny but to me they’re not. It just shows to others that we need to learn some online etiquette ASAP!

Why is this a problem?
In my world, I talk with businesses about protecting their brand, building content and how to use social media to communicate with potential costumers. Businesses are now looking at potential employees on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin profiles before they think about hiring them. Do you see where I’m going with this? I’ve been seeing trending hashtags on twitter such as #3wordsaftersex and more and I know all of the tweets are NOT by African-Americans but majority of them are. So if you’re wondering why I’ve been tweeting “be careful what you tweet” that’s why.

I can’t take it anymore
For me this blog post rant has been building up for some time. As one of the very few African-Americans on Twitter since 2006 – and I used to be in the top 100 Twitter users before all of the rappers and NBA players arrived – I feel as though I have a “little” authority to talk about the situation. Sadly I saw this coming and if you want to go on the “who gives you a right to judge” route, I understand but I’ve seen a lot of things happening in the Twitter space in the last 8 months that I’m not happy about. The #uknowublackwhen hashtag just topped the cake for me.

Where are you?
In the “tech” bubble it’s a hard space to compete in or just to get noticed. There’s very few African-Americans in the technology space and we’re consistently trying to prove our value; that we belong here too. You don’t know how many events I’ve attended where I’m the only African-American person in the room. I’m used to it by now as I’ve been in the technology industry since 1996 but sometimes I look around and I wonder where; are the other minorities? Are they not interested in technology/blogging/social media?

It is good to know others are trying to do something about it. Read: The Future of White Boy clubs from Chris Messina

I looked for you and now this?
There was even a time in 2007 when I went on a search to find more African-Americans on Twitter because there weren’t many. I did find @JaysonFlint @dj_diva @jbrotherlove and a few more. But now with Twitter going main stream, and Hip-Hop artist and black/urban entertainment using Twitter, there is no short list of African-Americans online.

Can a Race have a voice?
Something I talk about when doing consulting is understanding the community and establishing your own voice online and this goes for individuals and not just businesses. But what about a Race? What’s our voice or personal brand? Is it hip-hop, sports, rims or chicken? As a race we’re online creating content but what kind of content? Do we have be the ones online always arguing, creating provocative content, degrading one another? Then we have the audacity to go after others when we’re the ones hurting ourselves the most. It’s like telling cops to stop killing black people when we need to tell black people to stop killing black people.

Who’s influencing who and the problem?
In the past two weeks I’ve been asked about why is there is a lack of diversity in social media or diversity in the leaders of the social media space. We are out here but just hard to find and I think not “attractive” enough to grab your attention. A few are @Abenton @lynneluvah @jsmooth995 @corvida @rahsheen But I try to hold my tongue when I see music artists now doing keynotes at social media conferences when there are so many others out there who are qualified to talk – and no I’m not talking about Hammer, he’s cool. If you look at who’s educating the majority of African-Americans using social media like I said earlier, its the entertainment industry and we all know how most urban/hip-hop music is. 90 percent of it is negative with songs like “blame it on the alcohol”, and “jerk”, you take that and start talking and having conversations on sites like Facebook and Twitter – it’s a hot mess.

Again, I don’t want to be like I’m judging at all but I’m begging for celebrities, music artists, athletes and the like to please think about having some sort of online etiquette when having conversations with the general public.

Is there a solution?
I hope so? I’ve had conversations with a few friends about having a conference directly for minorities on social networking etiquette and we’ll see how that goes. Also there is the BarCamp Diversity idea. Although I think it comes down to people with followings and influence to educate others in a positive way – but in the mean time …. #THINKBEFOREYOUTWEETPEOPLE!

I’m done . . . for now. Your thoughts?

Update:
I’m closing the comments, if you want to talk about it, use the FriendFeed chat below. Thank You.

The first I found via TechCrunch blog post called StopAutoDM: A Movement to Stop Auto DM’s

The second is a new feature launched yesterday from SocialToo. SocialToo now offers a direct message spam filtering service and has officially declared war on Twitter spam. For more on SocialToo’s features you can read the initial blog post release here: SocialToo Extends War on Twitter Spam With One-Click DM Management or Louis Gray’s blog post recap here: SocialToo Extends Battle Against Twitter DM Spam With New Feature You can follow SocialToo on twitter as @Socialtoo

I think the score is now Spam 1, SocialToo 1. Do you use a service to block auto dms and Twitter spam?

A little over a year ago before Twitter “jumped the shark” I was ranked in the top 100 twitter users in the world according to Twitterholic.com. I cracked the top 100 around July 2008 and I think the highest I peeked was #85 soon after. This was back when the top 5 twitter users were, Kevin Rose, Leo Leparte, Barack Obama, Alex Brecht and Jason Calacanis. My buddy Robert Scoble was #6 just in case you’re wondering. During this time I was still getting those “twitter is a fad”, “twitter is stupid” looks while trying to show my former TV coworkers the value of twitter as a news source and a way to connect with the community. This was well before Rick Sanchez knew what Twitter was and any major business even thought about showing their Twitter name on a TV ad. There was no Ashton Kutcher, Shaq, Souljaboytellem, Oprah or MC Hammer. But Hammer would soon join Twitter and joining me as one of the few African-Americans on Twitter top 100 list not that it matters, such saying. Oh and there was no such thing as a suggested user list either.

I’ve always said it’s not about number of twitter followers you have from day one and you’ll often here various A-list tech celebrities say it’s not about the numbers too but at the same time, it’s because of the numbers that most people grade you by. When marketers talk about influence how are they judging you by? The number of people you’re able to reach online via Twitter, blogs, Facebook etc. So is it or is it not about the numbers? Hmm. Needless to say, while I don’t think much about how many followers I have people still say, “you’re the twitter guy” or they ask me how many followers I have as though 26,175 is a lot compared to the average Twitter user in 2009 which has about 100 to 500 followers. Another question I get asked a lot is how did I get so many followers and do I really “listen or engage with all of the 25,000 people I’m following. My answer to the first part usually goes something like this; I was an early adopter, I join Twitter in June of 2006, I created a lot content and shared a lot of information on twitter, I tweeted a lot and started planning Tweetups in 2007, blah, blah, blah. If you need more than that check out the videos below.

Interviewed about managing my twitter account at 12,000 followers 8 months ago from Kipp Bodnar.

Interviewed about managing my twitter account at 25,000 2 months ago from Jeff Cohen.

Now fast forward to mid 2009 and it seems that I have hit a flat-line on my twitter followers. I’m no where near the top 100 like a year ago but according to Twitterholic I’m ranked number 1,828th. I guess that’s not bad out of 10,000,000 or so users. But why the flat-line or the stop in growth in followers? Here’s a couple of reason why, I think.

• I made promise in 2009 to blog more and focus less on twitter
• I don’t post as often as I used to, despite what some may say. (see my tweetstats )
• More twitter users joined and it has become to “noisy”
• I never was on the suggested user list
• I don’t live on the West Coast (ha, ha)
• I’m not a rapper, singer, actor and I stop working the media in 2008
• My content is still in the bubble tech world
• I don’t tweet about controversial topics such as religion, politics, sex, race and gossip
• I do more “listening” on twitter now than anything else with multiple accounts
• As someone who’s been on twitter since 2006, I’m tweet-out

So what am I going to do about it? My answer is, nothing. I’m still going to use Twitter for obvious reasons, plan tweetups and consult with business and individuals who need help understanding the value of the service along with their other “social media” needs. Now I’m going to sit back enjoy the rid and try to stay ahead of the “game” and focus on what could be the next big thing or how I can create the next big thing. Maybe one day I’ll look back a few years from now and call up Scoble and say, hey you remember when Twitter was ….

You fill in the blank. Do you remember when Twitter was….

Tr.im’s closure just validates the fact that a pure-play url-shortener is not where I want idek.net to be. That’s a tight market with too many players and no good monetization plan. idek.net’s success lies in the tools and infrastructure marketers need to measure value in social media and throughout the web.

Q: As Tr.im stated on their shutting down post, that twitter has chosen bit.ly as the winner do you agree, if so why or why not?

It’s been expected for some time now that twitter would simplify the url shortening experience for its users. The selection of bit.ly was an easy decision, both due to bit.ly’s market share and Twitter’s previous decision to acquire summize (now search.twitter.com) which was also backed by betaworks.

This act wasn’t them anointing bit.ly as a winner, merely making an easy decision for a partner – one that I have no argument with.

Q: Why did you launch idek.net in market filled with other tinyurl shortners?

Back when I launched idek.net, tinyurl was still clearly the dominant url shortener, that made no sense to me. Their urls are long and you get no understanding of what people are clicking. Originally I just wanted to try my own at shortening urls and exposing that data to people.

With my background in marketing and analytics, I quickly saw that this was a gold mine for proving ROI in the social media space.

Q: It has been stated never launch a business around Twitter or one site/product. What is idek.net doing to not suffer the same fait as Tr.im?

Building an add-on site is definitely a risky proposition, you are basing all chances not only on that site, but also on them not eclipsing your functionality. However, there is also something to be said about proving your value with one, very important site.

This is especially true if the service, such as idek.net, can be easily leveraged on many other similar and dissimilar sites. Twitter has been the main focus for idek, because that is where shortened urls are currently most valuable. Branching out to seamlessly support the other major social sites, as well as any other areas marketers want to venture is critical to idek.net’s success.

Q: Even though idek.net doesn’t have the same traffic numbers that Tr.Im had, does running a url shortener service cost a lof of money even with todays inexpensive cost for storage and bandwidth?

Url shortening definitely a more friendly on the wallet than the internet services provided by many of today’s startups. Bandwidth is pretty cheap because many of the requests made of a url shortener are actually responded to with a miniscule “301 Redirect” command accompanied by a url.

Keeping servers running fast is a bit more expensive because of the immense number of urls shortened and clicks recorded every day. Fast servers, good infrastructure, and time spent optimizing code are some of the biggest expenses.

Q: With the shutting down of Tr.im, I’m sure it’s going to put a bad wrap on Tinyurl shorteners not to trust them for sharing links to permeant content. What are your thoughts on the future of url shorteners and how will this affect the marketing of idek.net?

This is the proof point that many have been waiting for. There are a number of opponents to url shorteners out there who say that they add more complexity and uncertainty to the internet. Whether or not you buy this argument, it’s hard to argue that they aren’t needed. Urls themselves have become complex and undependable in many formats. This includes email, sms, as well as some social networks, all places where marketers need dependable analytics.

There wouldn’t be so many url shortening services if the market wasn’t demanding such a service. As we move forward we will see more service failures and there will also be collateral damage as links become unusable. But the internet is a very robust ecosystem, content will not be unreachable and sites will rebound.

In terms of marketing idek.net, dependability will be key. This will also be an area for continued investment as idek.net moves forward.

Q: What are you future plans for idek.net?

There is a lot in store for idek.net in the future, the focus isn’t competing with bit.ly for dominance of the consumer url shortening space. You will soon see idek.net making strides in the support of marketer’s needs in the social media front.

It’s a very exciting time right now throughout all of social media, the competitors are very immature. It’s hard to say if today’s leaders, both in terms of social networks and complimentary services, will continue to dominate or if they will fall by the wayside as upstart services offer more compelling value that meets the shifting needs of tomorrow’s users.

Bio

Adam Covati (@covati) is the creator of idek.net a url shortening service that provides marketing metrics. He also recently beta-launched pici.me, a twitter photo booth for events. He has been building and managing websites for over ten years and thinks he has this internet thing pretty much figured out. For the last 5 years, he has been working on marketing software for both the online and offline world. Adam lives in Durham and spends his days as a Product Manager at Bronto Software.

Disclaimer: I have no investment with idek.net. Thank you.

That’s right folks for only $25.00 you can unfollow everyone on your Twitter account. You can do this with a tool called SocialToo . Unfollowing everyone on or deleting almost everyone on yourTwitter account seems like the new trend for certain colleges in the social web space. @Loic has done it, and it looks like @Scobleizer has cleared out his Twitter followers too.

But why? I can’t answer for anyone who have chosen to unfollow everyone or cleanup their following list but I have a few ideas such as:
1. With the recent growth of Twitter, it has become to noisy
2. You just want to start fresh with new and some old twitter friends so you can track the conversion better.
3. You want to join the cool unfollow crowd

No matter what the reason is, it’s neither a good or bad thing to do because it’s up to the individual to decide how he or she choses to use their own Twitter account. Also SocialToo seems like the tool to use to make it happen. I use SocialToo for some of the other features it has to offer such as turn off automatic direct message from other services and the catch up on all of my previous Twitter followers.

Personally I doubt if I will ever unfollow everyone on my @WayneSutton twitter account, instead I have created mulitpile Twitter accounts to manage the noise and follow certian groups of individuals on Twitter.

Disclaimer: This is not a sponsored post and I have no investment with the creators of SocialToo.

Do you think you will unfollow everyone on your Twitter account or are you thinking about just deleting your Twitter account all together?

If not SocialToo what tool have you used to unfollow everyone on Twitter?

So I just received an to upgrade email to the new shiny, Multi Column View, Tabbed Layout, Quick Search and more 2.0 version of HootSuite. My first reaction was great, I love new the features and upgrades. But to upgrade I had to send out a tweeet from all of my HootSuite accounts, something I didn’t want to do. Now do a search for hootsuite and you’ll see others upgrading and auto-tweeting away.

Here’s a look at some of the new Hootsuite 2.0 features.

Multi-column view

You can create groups

More features.

So far Hootsuite 2.0 looks like a winner in the space of web based professional Twitter clients. It will compete with CoTweet and the new Seesmic web twitter client. But I’m NOT a fan of having to send out a tweet from all of my Hootsuite accounts announcing that I have upgraded. I know it’s a free service and sending out a tweet is smart for marketing for the platform but it still should be optional. From the time I started this post to know over 1,828 upgrade tweets have been sent out meaning other users are upgrading.

Maybe I should do a song called. D.O.A.T. = Death of the auto tweet!

Questions:

Your thoughts on the auto-tweet to ugprade?

Do you like the new interface?

Will you switch from CoTweet, TweetGrid or Seesmic web and use Hoosuite 2.0?

Update:

beebow: @waynesutton hey @hootsuite_help informs me the tweet is only required for early upgrades… investigating further…

Update 2:
The auto tweet is only if you want to upgrade early. So if you want to wait and not send out an auto tweet, don’t upgrade.

There’s a live video streaming trend where you start your live video show, broadcast and tweet or you login to Facebook, start your live video show and post to your status that you’re live. It’s easy, fast and a great way to let your followers or friends know that you’re live streaming in “real-time”. New twitter live stream web apps such as Twitcam, camtweet and ustream.tv mashup with Facebook have launched recently providing these new instant web broadcasting sites giving non-technical Twitter and Facebook users an easy way to broadcast. But why not broadcast live from your own website/blog to maintain branding and vistor retention? It’s just as easy to send a tweet saying go to “YOURWEBSITE.COM” to watch me live vs saying I’m live now go to this camtweet.com/url or even go to ustream.tv/channel/YOURNAME.

For example take a look at Gregory NG Freezerburn live page at http://live.freezerburns.com . He has the Ustream.tv embeded video player and live chat window below the player. I’m sure that when he starts to broadcast that he’ll send out a tweet and a facebook messages as well on his fanpage and personal status update. But by hosting the live video on his site visitors have an opportunity to see some of his other post, links to resources and his brand stays in front of his visitors eyes. Also I’m somewhat surprised with the recent growth with music artist and athletes using ustream.tv that their marketing agency, agent or managers haven’t setup live video shows on their individual website versus having it go to a ustream.tv/channel/yourname url. They are loosing tons of website traffic opportunities.

There are special cases if you’re reporting breaking news or if you’re mobile and using live video services like Qik.com to send video to Twitter. But when you have an opportunity to send eyes to your website, my recommendation is to do so. I’m not saying never use CamTweet or even services like TinyChat that now offers live video conversations but depending on your website and branding goals host your live shows on your own website.

How are you live video streaming online?

Twitter video apps are apps that allow you to record or upload existing iPhone 3Gs video and send a tweet for your followers to watch the video. Some of the Twitter video apps have their own social network and even allow you to send the video to YouTube, myspace or FaceBook. Take a look at four of the apps below.

1. TwitVid

Are you using one of the apps
above to send video to Twitter? If not what app are you using and do you think it’s a good idea?

– Post From My iPhone

Now that we have the iPhone 3Gs which makes it easy record video, two new apps are available to send video to both Twitter and Facebook from your iPhone. One is called Tweet Reel and the other is called Video Up.

I haven’t tested either one of the video apps yet but they both look interesting. I’m wondering how well video up will do after the new Facebook app is released that will have video uploading features built in as well.

As for me, I’m currently using Posterous to send audio and video to both Twitter, Facebook and my blog at the same time. Another video iPhone app I’m waiting to see upgraded for iPhone 3Gs is the 12seconds app that will allow you to send short videos to both platforms.

How are you sending audio and video to Twitter and Facebook?

PS: Don’t forget about your blog.

– Post From My iPhone

The four Twitter apps I have installed are:
Birdfeed:

Tweetie:

In terms of my favorite Twitter iPhone app today, I have to go with birdfeed because of the interface, speed and layout options. The Twitter app I find most useful is Tweetdeck because of how easy it is to make group searches. The Twitter app I use most often is Tweetie because of the speed and I have most of my Twitter accounts setup with it already. Twitterrific is an old school classic as being the first ever Twitter app for the iPhone and they have NC ties so I keep it installed. Twitterrfic does have some features I like but the new 2.0 app is an overload sometimes when I want to do something quick (sorry guys )

Now it’s your turn, Twitter me this, Twitter me that, what is your favorite Twitter iPhone app and why?

– Post From My iPhone

This was my second time speaking at a WordCamp event, my first was WordCampCTL in Charlotte, NC in November of 2008 where I was on a promotion/marketing panel. My topic at WordCampRDU was Twitter but I really wanted the audience to not focus on Twitter so much but look at how we use to promote our blogs before twitter, the past, present and future of social media and twitter related plugins for WordPress blogs.

Below is my WordPress & Twitter: “It takes two to make a blog go right” presentation but keep in mind that I talked a lot more than what’s covered in the slides.

After taking a look at the slides and I hope the attendees of my session left with the impression that when I say “it takes two” to make a blog go right, that I’m not actually talking about twitter but the content.

Also here are a few reference links that I used for my presentation:
Jump on the social media bandwagon graphic via Matt Hamm
2010 web graphic via Robert Scoble
Twickie
100+ Remarkably Beautiful Twitter Icons And Buttons
Flavours Icon Set And Cute Tweeters Icon Set
12 Tools To Synchronize WordPress And Twitter
10 Twitter Hacks For Your WordPress Blog

More on the founder of WordPress Matt Mullenweg in another post, as I had the chance to interview him and hang out with Matt after WordCampRDU.

PS. If there is no video it didn’t happen…..

A few of my photos from WordCampRDU:

There are plenty of ways to manage the “celebrity” noise on Twitter but I think with all the main stream attention from media, music artist, TV personalitis and more that has kind of put a sour taste in some of the “old school” Twitter community members, thus seeing more geeks flock to Friendfeed. Either way here’s four ways to avoid the celebrity overkill on twitter or to cut down on some of the twitter noise all together.

1. Don’t follow the celebrities (duh)
2. Create a separate twitter account. I’ve create a NC friends only twitter account and I love it. It keeps me connected to my IRL friends and the local community.
3. Ignore trending topics; in the past 24 hours Rihanna, Cassie and Soulja Boy have all been trending. (not interested)
4. Have your twitter notifications emails send to a different email address.

Here’s the first video: Twouble with Twitters

Do you think celebrities have ruined Twitter or are you tired of all the Twitter news already?

Instructions – Installing Your Own WordPress-Based DIY TinyURL In < 1 Hour
The results from following the instructions from the link above:
I have http://s1w.us domain name which stands for Short ones by Wayne. that auto redirects to socialwayne.com
I have a PressThis bookmarklet that creates a custom TinyURL using s1w.us, example: http://s1w.us/twtconf is from http://socialwayne.com/2009/05/05/twitterconferences/
I have a wordpress login to monitor stats using WP-ShortStat and Wassup.

If you’re not familiar with FTP, PHP or customizing wordpress I suggest that you hire someone (hint) if you would like to create your own TinyURL service using the option above. Another option for WordPress users is the RevCanonical plugin. RevCanonical “generates a short url for your pages, as well as adding link shortening discovery.” For example by installing RevCanonical my default post url: http://socialwayne.com/2009/05/05/twitterconferences/ was shorten to http://socialwayne.com/pin . You’ll also need a bookmarklet called Shorten to display the custom RevCanonical URL.

For bit.ly and wordpress users, the creator of RevCanonical has a plugin called TweetMe that will auto create a bit.ly URL or use your own domain’s RevCanonical url and send a tweet for each new post. This seems to work well versus using TweetSuit or TwitterTools to auto send a tweet when you publish a new blog post.

Corvida asked on FriendFeed: “What’s URL shortener do you use?” My response was bit.ly and idek.net now I can add my own TinyURL service to the list, http://s1w.us

Some of you may be asking why create your own TinyURL service? For me it was, I wanted more control over my links, I thought it was good for SEO and sharing on twitter and I thought it was a super geek cool thing to do. But here’s a blog post called: 10 Reasons To “Roll Your Own” TinyURL Using WordPress, if that’s not good enough for you.

The only thing left for me to figure out is how to add my custom s1w.us or RevCanonical url to my post like TechCrunch has (see image below).

More links about creating your own TinyURL service:
Create Your Own Short URL and Keep the Branding to Yourself
URL Shortening Hinting
la petite url

Have you created your own TinyURL service or thought about it? Did you ever think TinyURLs would be this big?