What's Twitter all about?

Twitter Explained

Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service that allows you answer the question, "What are you doing?" by sending short text messages 140 characters in length, called "tweets", to your friends, or "followers."

The short format of the tweet is a defining characteristic of the service, allowing informal collaboration and quick information sharing that provides relief from rising email and IM fatigue. Twittering is also a less gated method of communication: you can share information with people that you wouldn't normally exchange email or IM messages with, opening up your circle of contacts to an ever-growing community of like-minded people.


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Twitter Tips

Saturday, May 9, 2009

Using Twitter to Bookmark

Ever since Furl was taken over by Diigo, I’ve been using StumbleUpon to bookmark my favorite pages. There are lots of great social bookmarking services out there, and the most popular ones are: Mixx, Reddit, Digg, and Delicious. But have your ever tried bookmarking with Twitter?

Twitter is a micro-blogging service but I recently discovered that it is also good for bookmarking.

Here’s how:

  1. Drag and drop this button: TwitThis to your browser’s shortcuts toolbar.
  2. Just click the ‘TwitThis’ button if you wish to tweet/bookmark a page.
  3. Your Twitter account will pop up and just choose how would you like to tweet the page (Reading:, Check out, Watching:, etc.)
  4. Mark your tweet as favorite and your done.
  5. If you wish to retrieve tweeted/bookmarked pages, just go to your ‘favorites’ tab.

Twitter might not be as good as most bookmarking services, but it can do a good job for quick bookmarking. especially if you installed apps like TweetDeck. I’m in fact using Twitter more often these days to bookmark my pages, and I really love it because it’s so easy and simple.

Posted by FroiB at 2:19 PM 0 comments

Friday, May 8, 2009

Brand Monitoring in Twitter: BackTweets Alerts you to Linking Activity

Most businesses who are trying to stay on top of what’s being said about them (or their competition) are very familiar with Twitter’s standard search engine. Search.twitter.com will provide a reasonably comprehensive set of results for term and hashtag references, but that may not be enough for businesses who need to stay on top of all relevant conversations.

One shortcoming of Twitter’s standard search is that it will fail to catch those tweets that may have linked to your/your competition’s site, yet don’t contain the specific terms or tags that you are probing for.

Imagine that someone has tweeted only the words “my favorite latte” and has provided a link to the coffee house you own. In this instance no key terms were used, and you’d likely never know that the reference ever existed.

backtweets

(Click the image for a larger view.)

Enter Backtweets. With Backtweets, you simply enter a URL (the service will auto-resolve shortened ones) into the single field presented and hit return. It will deliver a reverse-chronological list of tweets containing the requested link.

In addition, it provides an RSS feed so that you can be notified automatically as new relevant tweets appear. If you would prefer to receive the updates via email, one option is to enter the feed URL into a service such as FeedMyEmail, who will send you a daily email.

The creators of Backtweets tell me that service will provide up to 500 results for any single search result at one time, and searches for links going back about 2 months.

Our sentiment is that Backtweets is an invaluable addition to the toolkit of any professional who needs to stay on top what’s being said on Twitter.

Posted by FroiB at 11:47 PM 0 comments

Google Execs: Twitter-like Functionality Could Be Added to Search

While taking questions yesterday about alleged violation of anti-trust laws, Google execs including CEO Eric Schmidt reportedly told press that the company is, in the words of Reuters scribe Alexei Oreskovic, "looking at ... ways of integrating microblogging capabilities, such as those popularized by Twitter, into its search product."

That's news to us. Everything these days is about Twitter, though. Go to a party--talk about Twitter. Have a blog? Talk about Twitter. Use Twitter? Talk about Twitter. Apparently we can add to that: facing legal pressure over allegedly anti-competitive business practices? Talk about Twitter. There's absolutely no more information available about this - but below are three possible scenarios we can imagine for Google integrating microblogging into its search product.

The fact that Schmidt said what he did is just one reason to believe Google is going to do something with microblogging. There are several - most important is the fact that status sharing and activity streams are really useful, compelling and potentially valuable for both users and companies that dabble in them. Here's how it might go down.
Posted by FroiB at 10:16 PM 0 comments
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20+ Great Twitter Tools for Firefox

Friendbar - See your incoming tweets right in the toolbar as well as post updates of your own. Also works with Facebook friends.
Twitter Line - Displays incoming tweets from your friends timeline in a toolbar, and allows you to post updates to your own account.
Twitter StatusBar - A discrete tool that collapses into your status bar when not in use. Just click on the “T” symbol to bring it up and send out your latest update.
Twitter Toolbar - A toolbar that allows you to post updates any time you want as you browse. Also includes pre-written messages for common sayings on the service.
TwitBin - Opens up a Twitter client in your sidebar so you can send and read tweets no matter where you are on the Web without changing tabs or windows.
TwitKit - A sidebar Twitter client that breaks down into tabs for @replies, account stats, public timeline, sending tweets, your friends’ latest tweets and a list of all your followers.
TwitterBar - Type your tweets in the address bar and press the icon at the end to send them. Also allows you to easily tweet about the page you are currently looking at by leaving it in the address bar when you type out your message.
TwitterFox - A Twitter client for Firefox that will allow you to see your friend updates, add your own, retweet, delete read tweets from your stream and more.
Utilities
BlogRovR - While mainly a tool to help you see linked blog posts as you surf the Web, you can also send out tweets about what you are reading and share them with your followers.
Clipmarks - Clip parts of a Web page that you specifically want to share, and then share them with all of your Twitter followers amongst other services.
DashBlog - DashBlog lets you easily tweet about items you find on the web such as videos, text, quotes, images and more. Also works with Tumblr, WordPress and Blogger.
Feedly - A magazine style feed reader that allows you to tweet about any post you read and find interesting.
Mahalo Share - Share sites you find interesting across multiple services including Twitter.
Power Twitter - Power Twitter adds several features such as revealing the URL behind TinyURLs, embedding of YouTube videos, showing Flickr streams and a whole lot more.
StockTwits - A Firefox add-on that works with the StockTwits site. It will turn any StockTwits tagged tweets on the site into a link back to the StockTwits site so you can follow the conversation.
Tw-autocomplete - Allows for autocomplete of Twitter usernames for @ and D messages as you are typing them on the Twitter site.
TweetStalk - Adds a “Stalk” button next to the “Follow” button on Twitter so you can follow someone without them knowing it. Can also create an RSS feed of their tweets so you can read them in your favorite reader.
TwitThat - A bookmarklet that lets you tweet about the current Web page you are reading.
TwitterEyes - An extension to be used specifically on the Twitter site that will keep track of your characters entered and assist you in shortening your message when necessary.
Twitter Search - The name says it all for this handy tool that gives you access to the real-time Twitter search.
TwittyTunes - Works with FoxyTunes to submit the songs you listen to that you wish to share with the Twitter community. If you choose not to use it with FoxyTunes, you can also post about sites and videos you are viewing.
Twitzer - Allows you to tweet messages longer than 140 characters by adding a link to the overflow text, you can also de-Twitzer text and have it displayed directly on the Twitter site
Yoono - Yoono allows you to combine various social networks, instant messengers and other tools into your sidebar, and allows you to send tweets no matter where you are on the World Wide Web at the time.