Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of a variety of blogs including TwiTip, ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School.
It’s that time of year when many of us take a little time out to reflect upon how we want to move forward into 2009 in different areas of our lives. I know for some TwiTip readers that they’re using the new year as a line in the sand for changing the way that they use Twitter.
I’m interested to know if anyone would like to share their plans, resolutions and goals for their use of Twitter in 2009?
Are you making any changes or are you Tweeting as Normal?
Readers have continued to submit their Top Ten Must Follow lists for their own topics of interest and I continue to be amazed at the diversity of communities that are on Twitter. I think this post highlights that pretty well with 10 Must follow Diabetics Twitter users, 10 Must follow Liberals on Twitter and 10 Must follow Geocachers!
Tony Rose from Blogging Diabetes (@dsainsights) has put together his Top Ten Must Follows for the topic of Diabetes.
1. @askmanny
2. @bishop1073
5. @jaimieH
6. @karend1
7. @ninjabetic
8. @saraknic
9. @sixuntilme
10. @type1diabetic
In this post – Ilaria Papini (follow her at @swimturtle) a blogger at turtle^haus and Tech*Tips 4 dodos tells her story of making friends with international Twitter users and then having them come to visit her!
I first became curious about Twitter while I was studying for a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science. These days it’s a very exciting field, and the focus is more on the information side of the curriculum. I didn’t know anyone who tweeted – this was in the fall of 2007 – so one day I logged on to the public timeline. Of course I did not realize that what I was looking at was a snapshot of a fraction of a second’s worth of activity on Twitter, but perhaps that was all for the best.
I am half American and half Italian, living in New York, and it hadn’t even occurred to me that there would be other languages on Twitter. Imagine my surprise when, on that very first screen, I saw a group of Italians furiously tweeting each other back and forth. It became clear to me right away that these were people who knew each other in “real life” and used Twitter to make dates for pizza and movies, but also to tell each other about their day, to discuss politics, the internet, and so forth. I was fascinated. One guy’s tweets attracted my attention: there was something about his 140-character bursts that spoke to me of kindness. His name is Alfredo (@sirdrake). I asked him if we could be friends, telling him that I was Italian, living in New York, and new to Twitter. He agreed and we started tweeting sporadically – “What is an Italian doing in New York?” “What is a journalist from Rome doing in Basilicata [the deep South?]” “Let’s exchange life stories.” “DM me your email address.” – And so our friendship grew, from Twitter to email, culminating in an email from his girlfriend, our first contact ever: “We’re getting married and coming to the U.S. on our honeymoon. First stop New York, we’ve never been there before. Can you give us some advice?”
Today Dennis Goedegebuure from The Next Corner (follow him at @TheNextCorner) makes some predictions about Twitter in 2009.
2008 showed an unbelievable growth for Twitter as THE place for microblogging. With competitors like Pownce closing their doors, it seems that Twitter has the stronger cards to become the sole survivor in this field.
The Twitter ecosystem is expanding so fast, that the switching costs for users are becoming even higher the more they get connected in the network. Twitter has the network advantages. For Twitter I expect the break into mainstream will come in 2009, if their server park can handle the load!
Hit the ‘Twitter Gym’ and keep your Twitter Muscles in Shape – In this post Snow (follow her @snowvandermore) from el vigilante shares a few tips on how to keep ‘Twitter Fit’.
Like anything in life, if you don’t use it, you lose it. The same holds true for your newly found Twitter muscles.
Now that you’ve got your Jack Johnson and your Tom O’Leary working in sweet, subtle harmony and the follower numbers to prove it — don’t pull a Jake LaMotta and let your fab turn to flab.
If you want your blog, your website, your business, your following to bust out in the days and weeks to come, you are in the driver’s seat, mi amigo — keep moving, learning, developing and growing. Put on your Richard Simmons shorty-shorts and start sweatin ‘ — there’s a million plus twitter users that might need what you have to sell — be it a product, a service, or just good old-fashioned camaraderie. All you have to do is do it — but do it right.
There are no redux’s in a twitterstream — more than a few lifeless bodies float along in the debris of what used to be. The ultimate price for not paying attention to relationships.
Image by Crocidillicus
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This video has been around for a while but I wanted to include it for those new to Twitter who might need an introduction.
Thanks to the team at Common Craft for putting it together.
A recent and much anticipated development at Twitter over the last 24 hours has been the addition of their new ‘name search‘.
Now you can search for people either by their username, first name or last name. Results are displayed in order of follower numbers.
Results seem a little buggy but it is better than nothing – although I’m still using Twellow if I need to find someone.
They are all the rage at the moment – Christmas Avatars with Santa hats, snowflakes or other Christmasy paraphernalia. Many Twitter users do it manually but if you’re Photoshop Challenged check out Twixenate – a Twitter Profile Picture Editor that even I can use!
It’s as simple as adding your Twitter Username, allowing Twixenate to grab your current Avatar and then adding the effect that you want to create.
Lets do one quickly for Mr Arrington (@techcrunch).
1. Type in his username
There has been lots of good Twitter news, reports and ideas around this week:
Hubspot has produced their State of the Twittersphere report. A few stats from it:
Here it is in full:
State of the Twittersphere – Get more Information Technology
ReadWriteWeb takes the stats in the report projects forwards – concluding that Twitter would take 36 years to catch Facebook.
Also on the topic of Facebook and Twitter – Jacob Cass reports that he gets more traffic from Facebook than Twitter despite having fewer Facebook friends than Twitter followers and shows some stats from his metrics package.
I tweeted this link earlier today and had a heap of people tell me that their own results are quite the opposite. I decided to check my own and mine are completely different to Jacob. To my ProBlogger blog I had 11,500 visitors come from Twitter.com over the last 30 days and only 1500 come from Facebook. My links to new posts go up on both as Jacob describes.
Here on TwiTip the stats are even more one sided towards Twitter – although that’s skewed because this blog is about Twitter of course.
I don’t dispute Jacobs results – but would argue that it is always going to vary from site to site and topic to topic.
Pistachio Consulting has a good analytical post this week on the Phenomenon of Retweeting
Laura from Pistachio also has a great presentation on the topic of Twitter for Business. It is well worth the look.
Check out her powerpoint deck here.
Law.com has an article up talking about how tweets could get employers in legal trouble. Sounds like a whole lot of articles we saw a few years back on the dangers of blogging to companies.
And the news of the week – Twitterrati notes that follow buttons went from square to round!
I spent some time today reading a good little ebook resource by the name of The Twitter Survival Guide.
This 94 page ebook is written by Bob Walsh and Kristen Nicole from MultiSocialMedia. It combines some teaching on the basics of Twitter with interview insights from 12 Twitter users including Guy Kawasaki, Steve Rubel, Gary Vaynerchuck, Marshall Kirkpatrick and myself.
Sections in the ebook are:
1. Why should you care about Twitter?
2. Twitter: What, How, Where and Why?
3. Creating your twitter presence: A checklist.
4. Twitter Tools.
5. Where does Twitter start and blogging end?
6. What can you do with Twitter?
7. Twitter Power Profiles.
8. Conclusions.
The ebook is up to date and comprehensive. It’s a great introduction to anyone starting out with twitter – particularly those wanting to use Twitter for branding or some other aspect of a business.
The ebook is $24.95 so not for everyone – but for those wanting a crash course in Twitter it’s a great place to start.
