Posts Tagged ‘Twitter’

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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Posted in Google, Search Engines, Social Media, Twitter | No Comments »

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.

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Posted in Bing, Search Engines, Social Media, Twitter | 1 Comment »

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.

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Posted in Bing, Search Engines, Social Media, Twitter | No Comments »

Twitter Privacy Issue

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

Privacy has always been a normal topic when we talk about Twitter. It was not so long ago when another social updating website called BrightKite is featured in Oprah because of its location targeting issues. Since anyone can track where a person is currently at, that person is prone to different types of crimes which may include kidnapping and stalking.

But then Twitter seemed to have the same problems. With it, people will know what you are doing and where you are just by simply looking at your updates. This makes your life less private.

But then we should start to question if Twitter really is a threat to a person’s privacy. The difference is it is not like a video camera that tracks people wherever they go. The information is disclosed with the consent of the person.

In fact, some people may portray their lives differently than what they really are. But this is another issue and it concerns fakers. Some may even imitate popular celebrities which is the reason why some celebs have filed cases against social media websites.

The thing is, you can choose the information you will disclose. Given this, privacy is not really an issue. A person is only going to disclose information that he likes the people to know publicly. In my opinion, Twitter is more focused on information than location. So robberies and other things are outside of the realm of concern except for those in the individual’s inner circle of friends.

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Twitter Suspends Maintenance for Important Matters

Sunday, June 28th, 2009

There was a controversial suspension of Twitter maintenance last June 15, 2009 and the Iranian protests were the reason. Twitter has noticed the surge of tweets from young Iranians about what is happening in their country just as their other means of expression are suppressed.

Twitter found this to be a very crucial time to suspend operations so they decided to proceed with it. After all, there are Iranians all over the world who are dying to know what is happening in their country. The no-maintenance campaign was then launched by thousands of Twitter users leading the website to follow and be a part of the important event taking place in Iran.

This only proves that Twitter stands by its goal to be a tool to transfer information in the quickest way possible. Just as a lot of foreign writers are being banned, Twitter will stay alive to tell you about the Iranian protests.

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Twitter Impersonation – Should the matter be brought to court?

Friday, June 12th, 2009

It is not unusual for social networks to face impersonators or “fakers”. These people take the personalities of popular people or entities and then they create an account with the name. The positive side is that this provides free viral marketing for the person or entity. But on the downside, it can damage their reputation without them knowing it.

Lately, Twitter has faced a lot of complaints from popular people. Some of these are Kanye West and actor Ewan McGregor who had impersonators on Twitter. It is a good thing that Twitter always acts quickly once it gets a complaint. However, acting quickly will not be enough for Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa.

Apparently, LaRussa decided to take the matter to court. After all, unlike the past celebrities who only had fake profiles, LaRussa also has a fake personality. It seems that his impersonator is not there to promote his name but to destroy it. With this, LaRussa decided to sue Twitter for trademark infringement.

But is it really Twitter’s fault? According to LaRussa, it is. They are the one who own the site in the first place. If only they had moderated the accounts, a thing like this will not happen. He also made a claim that Twitter has benefited from his fake account with the message “Tony LaRussa is using Twitter”.

The problem here is that trademark infringement can only happen if one party has proven to have benefitted with the sheer use of the name. However, Twitter or the account owner did not seem to have gained anything of monetary value from using his name. It is just created as a joke as the account’s profile shows “bio parodies are fun for everyone”.

But does this mean that we should let Twitter impersonation slide? Of course not! It is still identity theft and should be taken care of. I guess this is also a wake-up call for Twitter to start monitoring the accounts being created on their website.

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Why People Unfollow on Twitter

Monday, June 8th, 2009

With the recent boost in subscribers that Twitter had experienced, it is inevitable to see tons of followers in your account page. But as the number of people increases, the level of personal interaction decreases. At least, this is what my followers have observed.

Given this situation, they took it upon themselves to just unfollow people for the simple reason that they do not want the tweets that matter to them to be drowned in all the unrelated conversations and, of course, the spam. Yes, sadly all forms of media have the tendency to be misused by uneducated users as what @WarrenWhitlock has told me.

So are you wondering why some people unfollow you? Well unless you are a celebrity who has turned bad, here are some reasons.

  1. You tweet too much
    One way to get people to unfollow you is to tweet too much. Yes, it is a sign of activity. But tweeting lots of conversation tweets without focusing on your niche or what you do can get some people to remove you from their follow lists. This does not mean that you limit your activity though. This only means that you have to make each tweet matter. Show personality on each tweet and just do not tweet just to chat.
  1. You don’t tweet regularly
    If you are not on Twitter regularly, then people may think that you will not login anymore. This is why they unfollow you. After all, they have not received a tweet from you for days so that may mean that you have quitted Twitter. To stop this notion from springing on your follower’s minds, be sure to find time to drop in a tweet or two in your free time. It will let people know that “Hey! I am alive and I am still on Twitter.”
  1. Your tweets do not interest your followers
    Alright, so you are tweeting regularly but not to the point of pissing off your followers. Now you got all things covered right? Wrong. If your tweets do not cover the interest of your followers then they may unfollow. Of course, this is the least of your concern. You cannot change your tweets just to fit everybody’s interest. Just think of this as an opt-in form. People who like your tweets follow while those who do not unfollow. Simple right?
  1. You do not interact with your followers
    Now another reason why people unfollow some people is because they seem like a bot. The last person you like to follow is someone who just promotes his own blog or blasts a series of retweets. Tweets have no personal relevance if not coupled with conversation. That is if it is done moderately though. Twitter is a powerful media to stimulate conversation but it not a chatterbox.
  1. You do not follow back
    Another sad reality on why people unfollow is the simple reason that you do not follow them back. Some people on Twitter believe on the idea of reciprocity. “I will follow you if you follow me”. Though this is helpful, it simply beats the purpose of following. Having a condition for following is simply for those people who want to collect followers. This is useful for Twitter beginners though.

In the end, you will decide on how you will use this media. It is up to you who to follow and unfollow. That is why I love Twitter. It just gives you the freedom to choose while keeping in touch with the people or information that matters to you the most.

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