Archive for the ‘Twitter’ Category

Twitter vs Trademark Violators

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

For the first time, Twitter demanded to stop using the company’s name on applications intended for their company.

As Twitter grows immensely through its users including those in business, more and more applications are being created to easily access Twitter on different platforms and other purposes. A lot of these applications use the name ‘Twitter’ on their brand creating confusions to users that these programs are also part of the Twitter company itself when in fact, they are just third party developers.

The first one to experience being complained was My Twitter Butler. Twitter said MyTwitterButler.com should be deactivated and the domain should be transferred to Twitter. Twitter is tracking down other applications and programs using their company’s name.

Google to build community with iGoogle’s ‘social gadgets’

Thursday, August 13th, 2009

Google creates a community within its iGoogle through the recently launched ‘social gadgets’ in Australia. This service will be available next in the US and then to other markets where social networking is a hit. The release on other countries is still undetermined but will surely follow. The service is said to be built on the Open Social platform.

Google somewhat copied the power of Facebook and Twitter as the new IGoogle ‘social gadgets’ have similar applications with the two hit social networks in the world.

Today, there are 12 social gadgets available. Third party developers made eight of these social gadgets. We all know that casual games became a huge hit in Facebook. This maybe practically the reason why there are more casual gadgets developed for iGoogle. Picasa and Flickr are also part of the gadgets as the photo sharing apps while a to-dos gadget is now included in the first set of the social gadgets available. A Twitter-like app, which is tagged as ‘Timeline’, will provide iGoogle’s users the environment of being in a social site.

According to Google, their personalized homepage has millions of users making it the fastest growing product of Google. The additional feature added to iGoogle, making it socially attractive, will make this product more popular.

Twitter, Facebook encounter ‘Attacks’

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

If you happen to experience a down time from Twitter and Facebook last Thursday, August 6, 2009, then this is the primary cause – DDoS attack!

The distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack targeted Twitter to make it unavailable to certain users or customers. DDoS is a malicious effort commonly used to disrupt services in online banks, credit card payment gateways and other money-oriented online sites.

Twitter has grown a lot in years and is now currently used for marketing purposes. The DDoS attack may have certain purpose that reports say that are still in investigation for the real intention. Its Facebook attack also says that the intention merely wanted to stop the current service for particular users of the site.

Up to now, both Twitter and Facebook were able to normalize the sites after hours of being down but were continuously in search for the intention of the DDoS attack for it not to happen again.

NEWS UPDATE - Twitter DOS

Thursday, August 6th, 2009

Just a quick update for those who are not aware. It is just before 2:00 in the afternoon EST and it appears that Twitter is still unavailable.

Apparently, they were hit with a DOS (denial of service attack) this morning and are still trying to recover.

Twitter 101: Twitter aids businesses

Thursday, July 30th, 2009

twitterbiz
Twitter has grown to be not only the best social micro-blogging tool for personal use but also as platform for businesses. And though the benefits of using Twitter are continuously expanding as more and more applications are being developed for various uses, businesses are also doing some experiments on where could Twitter help their companies grow.

Twitter has been silent on tools that could help the businesses for they want the companies themselves discover the best part where Twitter could help them.

Twitter’s first major outreach for the businesses was with Twitter 101 For Business: A Special Guide. In here, it discusses the step-by-step guide on how to use Twitter in many business applications and where can it lead the company in the future for other future developments it may discover after using Twitter.

It’s true that Twitter is very simple and yet so powerful for many uses. It has a lot of capabilities that business would want to try on their own system. On Twitter 101, not only the possible aids are discussed but also the important terms that can make the businesses more interesting on Twitter.

What Twitter can become in the future is still in the process of experimenting. Surely, Twitter’s application for businesses is powerful.

How to get in to the Twitter Suggested Users List?

Saturday, July 25th, 2009

suggested

We’ve seen how Twitter eventually became part of our daily lives. It quickly became popular to some after they heard that someone is on Twitter.

People influence people. When the world heard the news that Oprah is on Twitter, her followers quickly followed her and hundreds registered to Twitter to follow her twits. This is same to other influential and iconic men, celebrities, politicians and even organizations and companies such as New York Times. They all get followers in an instant after they get to promote their Twitter accounts.

Taking a look at the top users of Twitter or those with the most number of followers, you’ll realize that they are those who are popular on their respective fields. But if you happen to be a newbie and just roaming around the Twitter website, you’ve probably seen the Suggested User List and wonder how they get in to this prestigious list.

In a blog posted in Twitter last March, Twitter staffs use a specific program that generates the accounts that are popular and interesting to the users. They then look at it and check for its contents. They actually handpicked the accounts that need to be included in the Suggested Users List after being able to verify the list of interesting users. They have their criteria in doing this. Of course, the accounts should be the real accounts of the people behind it. If it’s of Ellen DeGeneres, then the account should be verified that it’s really from her. Also, the contents of the daily updates are important.

So if you wanted to be placed on this list, you have to be popular, post quality contents and update your profile.

On Twitter’s plans to partner with Google, Microsoft etc.

Friday, July 24th, 2009

Since the growth of Twitter, it has become a threat to major search sites such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. But taking consideration of the capacity of Twitter, it is a social networking site, a micro-blogging site where everyone can send in twits and update the world. People don’t visit Twitter to search. They log in to get and post updates. Facebook, on the other hand, is also thinking of a concept on how to topple Twitter.

Behind these obvious issues, Twitter is said to be talking to these sites for future partnership and other plans on how to gain from each other. In an article posted over TechCrunch, some conversations on these meetings were shared to its readers.

By just merely reading some lines and minutes on Twitter’s meet ups with Google and Microsoft, it seems like they are still in search of good plans. They haven’t finalized yet anything. Well, given it’s a meeting, they are all still brainstorming on what’s best on both parties.

Taking some time trying to analyze the things surrounding the future of Twitter and it’s partnerships, they should be careful in grabbing contract signing with other companies for everything is in experimental stage. Any mistakes will surely make an obvious downfall to Twitter.

Twitter vs Google Analytics: The battle for online traffic

Thursday, July 23rd, 2009

fight
In terms of driving traffic to your site, we all know that Google Analytics provides an incredible number of traffic visitors to our sites. We use this as a parameter in getting more visitors by posting related articles that get indexed easily by various search engines.

Though the popularity of Twitter as a social networking tool has also proved to be a good way of promoting our sites and entries, never did it top Google Analytics in terms of traffic. We always rely to Google Analytics with its data of daily traffic list.

But according to some tests, Twitter is far more reliable when it comes to driving more traffic to a certain site. In these tests conducted by researchers and other search engine experts, they all found out that Google Analytics failed in some aspects when it comes to documenting the traffic. It undercounts searches coming from Twitter. Reasons include, according to the tests and was confirmed by Google, that some searches through mobile devices are not detected and was therefore left uncounted for the traffic. This is so because when somebody uses Twitter to visit your site, sometimes, it causes issues with the tracking on Google. More so, the test resulted that Google Analytics failed to count as much 500% of traffic from Twitter. With this percentage, you’ll surely believe that Twitter is a helpful device for promoting your site and driving traffic!

Bingtweets - Bing + Twitter

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

bingtweets
The newest website, BingTweets, brings together two of the most popular sites in one homepage to give you both the power of Bing, Microsoft’s newest search engine, and Twitter, the leader in social networking tool.

BingTweets provides the user an access to top subjects over Twitter with the ability of Bing to search more broader topics. This is a convenient way of looking for something and being updated with the latest news and talk of the town. Every 30 to 60 minutes, the topics in the ‘trending topics’ change providing you the most updated lists.

Since this is still new, the service will be directly integrated to Bing’s homepage once the service got popular to the internet users.

Should Twitter Posts be Indexed?

Saturday, July 4th, 2009

Recent news sprung up regarding the inclusion of tweets in Bing search. It sparked a lot of conversation among the crowd because it triggered the question of the importance of instant popular sentiment. Is it really that important to be indexed or is Bing just crafting some stuff to generate some buzz on the top social media site?

First, let us take a look at the nature of tweets. It is sent in an instant to explain what an individual is currently doing or feeling. Following that, it is true that it can generate a trend on what the people are thinking about or the things they are into. It can then provide niche researchers some good information.

But what about ordinary tweets as sources of information? For example, if I talk about cake in my tweet like “My mom baked an amazing cake for my birthday”, is this actually beneficial to the person who is actually searching for information on cakes. Just imagine. You will only type the word “cake” if one, you are interested to learn how to make it or if you want to buy it. Well, there may be the third option that you are just searching for the term just for fun but the tweet will not be helpful to any party.

My concern here is how Bing will filter through tweets to trigger the most important ones and those that do not matter at all. After all, the goal of search is to bring the most relevant web pages in the results. If Bing will just turn out to be a Twitter search engine, then it will just suck.