Twitip

Today’s post comes from Jenni Izzo, a Drexel University graduate turned Central Florida PR professional with a social media obsession. Follow her at @jenniizzo.

It appears that MTV’s attempt at reviving itself with a Twitter Jockey (an updated version of a VJ) has fallen short. After a month of Twitter-focused challenges to find the most appropriate individual for the job (measured by MTV’s own TweetLevel), the network announced the top five contestants in their “Follow Me: The Search for MTV’s First TJ” competition – and people are angry. (more…)

Just received this email from the gang at Mister Wong… Bonus? They’re giving away a MacBook! Check it out and let us know what you think in the comments!

Last week we launched a new feature on Mister-Wong.com (social bookmarking service) which integrates users’ Twitter streams to their Mister Wong profiles.

This new feature allows users to easily import, preview and store links to information they find through Twitter. Tweets containing links are displayed directly on users’ profiles, so they can easily click and save the links as bookmarks to their Mister Wong account. We launched this feature earlier this month to our users in Germany – over 2 million unique tweets were imported during the first week. (more…)

By CarolAnn Bailey-Lloyd. Follow her @CarolAnnB.

What’s the buzz about “Web 2.0″?

While some individuals have strong opinions on what it actually encompasses, there’s much to learn about Web 2.0 technologies and tools that are, whether you know it or not, affecting your everyday surfing experience on the World Wide Web.

As the Internet continues to explode with the revolution of second-generation web services, web development, and design applications, we have arrived center stage of the culmination of today’s innovators, entrepreneurs, and visionaries who have transformed the way we travel the Internet highways and byways; and the spatial views that we encounter and in the ways we interact.

How?

Web 2.0 has triumphantly made its strong debut via online social networking communities and book marking sites like YouTube, Twitter, FaceBook, MySpace, Imeem, Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, WordPress, TypePad, Blogger, and Google Reader, among other progressive stars on the Information Highway. The Netopia of creative Weblogs, social networks, multimedia sharing sites, RSS feeders, and keyword tags has dynamically altered the way we retrieve and share information. (more…)

I was just having a discussion the other day on facebook about how people are using automatic posting tools so heavily these days. They post something on their blog, and a tool (er, “bot) automatically publishes that post to Twitter, which then is connected to their facebook and friendfeed accounts and is repeated there.

Personally, I don’t mind if people use bots to make updates on Twitter or other social networking sites IF (and only if) they’re also diving in to real communication in those locations as well.

Twitter’s great for 140 characters of communication. It’s a blink of the eyes, in all reality. But when you’re auto posting and nothing else, you wind up looking like a billboard more than a social networker. Rather than someone who’s looking to connect and communicate, you’re looking like a guy with a megaphone on the street corner… you know?

Anyway, in comes this email about a post titled An In-Depth Look at the 5% of Most Active Users that reports that almost a quarter of Twitter’s updates are done by bots (automatic posting tools).

Of the most active Twitter users updating more than 150 times/day, nearly all of them are bots operated by sources such as hotels offering deals, regional and national news services, regional weather services, the top news within Digg, games, anim services, tags within del.icio.us and financial aggregators. These very active bots account for one-quarter of all tweets.

There are lots of other interesting Twitter facts there on the Sysomos site, and I encourage you to check them out! They’ve asked that if you’re interested in discussing the article on Twitter that you use the hashtag #sysomossurvey or copy them @sysomos.

So yesterday’s post here about Twitter’s DDoS attack got a couple answers, but what was one to do with their spare, stolen, or borrowed time yesterday, when there was no getting on Twitter for any reasonable amount of time?

Lots of people were having hissy fits over on facebook. I’m not sure if was the withdrawals (which I admit, I kind of had myself) or just sheer frustration. Then facebook was being a pain in the you-know-what, so that had people more frustrated.

As of this morning, I still can’t update on Twitter or follow anyone. Clearly others can, and I’m sure I’m not alone. So while I’m trying to keep myself entertained and occupied, I figured I’d find out what you guys did all day yesterday!

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By Nathan Hangen, follow him @nhangen.

I’m still amazed by the people that think Twitter is nothing more than a fad that is soon to disappear. That’s what they said about MySpace, then Facebook too. Obviously, nothing lasts forever, but by the looks of it Twitter isn’t going anywhere in the near future.

Just take a look at who is using Twitter these days:

• Movie Stars
• Musicians
• Radio and TV Personalities
• Authors
• Marketers
• Athletes
• Etc

The list goes on and on. People are getting on Twitter at an amazing rate and although many don’t use it much, those that do spend more time on Twitter than on any other social network. Twitter integrates easily with blogs and website, but it is also easy to use via a variety of clients. I can Tweet from my iPhone, upload pictures on the go with Twitpic, and even send Tweets straight to my MySpace and Facebook accounts in seconds. (more…)

Twitter or Facebook? Or Both? In this post Steve Thornton (follow him at @stevethornton) explores the decision.

The phenomenon of social networking is still in its infancy and it remains to be seen exactly which network might become the 800-pound gorilla in the space. It is reminiscent of the dotcom 90s, when I worked in the search industry; dozens of venture-backed search firms battled for dominance and search appeared to become a commodity, with limited monetization potential, or so we all thought at the time.

There are now so many social networks vying for users that even the most elite “Digerati” have trouble keeping up with the ever-shifting landscape. And most are still struggling to find effective monetization strategies, casting doubt on their long term survival and pointing to massive consolidation at some point.

(more…)

There has been lots of good Twitter news, reports and ideas around this week:

The State of the Twittersphere [REPORT]

Hubspot has produced their State of the Twittersphere report. A few stats from it:

• 35% of Twitter users have 10 or fewer followers
• The average number of followers is 70
• The average number of people that Twitter users follow is 69
• Top locations on Twitter include London, San Francisco, New York and Chicago

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.

Facebook, Twitter and Traffic [STATS]

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.

ReWeeting [ANALYSIS]

Pistachio Consulting has a good analytical post this week on the Phenomenon of Retweeting

Twitter for Business [VIDEO]

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.

Twitter and Legal Ramifications [LAW]

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.

Round Follow Buttons! [DESIGN]

And the news of the week – Twitterrati notes that follow buttons went from square to round!

By Guest Author Scott Scheper of http://scottdig.com (follow him at @venturedig).

When I think of Facebook and Twitter, I think of Preparation-H and toothpaste. Both are quality products. Both have their uses; but Preparation-H, like Twitter, is only needed at a certain point in life.

Do me a favor and take a look at your Twitter followers.

How many are under 24 years of age?

You’re more likely to find a shweaty Michael Arrington-like tech guy, than a cute young chic in her early twenties.

According to recent findings , “Twitter’s largest age demographic is 35-to-44-year-olds who make up 25.9% of its users.” This seems rather large, being that Facebook users between ages 35-54 amount to only 3.5% of users. Notice: the former metric is 10 years more than Twitter’s metric, and it’s still smaller!

Yes, Twitter is gaining popularity, and Twitter hit its “billionth tweet” last month. Yet the Facebook users that actually know about Twitter, don’t seem to care.

(more…)