Twitip

By Rebecca Maxwell of My Adventures in History – Follow her @rmaxwell142.

Call me old fashioned, but I am one of those people that value community and relationships with people. As a child of the 90’s, I’ve learned to adapt to our technological age where we can keep up-to-date with people without ever seeing them in person. While this is not my preferred method of contact, the last couple of years I have seen myself rely more and more on online interaction than face-to-face. Recently though, I’ve been frustrated with the alienation of social networking sites to the point of taking some extreme measures, especially regarding Twitter.

I originally signed up for Twitter as a way to keep in touch with those interested in my history blog and network with those who have blogs similar to mine. As more and more of my friends on Twitter found me, I found myself following and being followed by people I knew in real life. While this wasn’t bad at first, I soon found myself “unfollowed” by those I was following. People I knew in real life wouldn’t follow me. Then, of course, people who knew nothing about me or my blog began to follow me out of the blue. (more…)

A while back we posted 181 Free Twitter Buttons, Badges, Widget and Counters to Help You Find Followers and now I just received notice of another great site to help you find even more free icons, badges, and graphic snippets to help you advertise your Twitter account on your website or social networking profile.

TwitterLogos boasts “the largest collection” but also allows graphic designers to submit their work to be featured on the site and get free advertising. There are many that I’ve seen before elsewhere, but many more that I haven’t. Check out this one, which would be great for anyone in the medical field.

Just a note: There are some in there that I noticed, especially those from Flickr, that are marked “All rights reserved.” So be careful… but most of them seem to be alright for use.

By CarolAnn Bailey-Lloyd. Follow her @CarolAnnB.

Don’t let social media networks stop you from face-to-face communications – facilitate this new dimension as a stepping stone to enhance dialogue.

In a growing remote-administration society, more professionals are operational from their home offices opposed to public workspaces. Much of this has to do with the fact that a lot of what can be accomplished in a virtual office setting can be administered from your personal laptop, PC, or Mac. Whether you’re the Website administrator, analyst, the online marketing sales consultant, web copy writer, or the social media wiz, most of your efforts can be conducted from the Internet window on your desk – your computer screen, that is. (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.

According to Mashable, Twitter’s currently under a DDOS attack today:

Twitter’s extended downtime today, now lasting almost 2 hours, has a malicious cause. Twitter has revealed that it’s defending against a Distributed Denial of Service Attack (DDoS), in which the target is typically saturated with so many fake requests that the victim is unable to return legitimate ones.

Knowing that the cause is a malicious attack does take Twitter off the hook to some degree – it may have been assumed that the site was simply failing to scale properly, as had happened in the past. DDoS attempts are difficult to defend against even for some established sites.

Ironic, given today’s post by Chris Johnson about how to prepare for Twitter’s eventual demise, no?

What happened though, is people flocked to facebook, which in turn had its own share of problems as well. I’ve also seen reports that StumbleUpon has been acting wonky today.

Does someone have it out for social networking sites? Hmm…

By CarolAnn Bailey-Lloyd. Follow her @CarolAnnB.

If you’re new to online business and are trying to surf through the sometimes murky waves of the Internet, then the first thing you need to do is take a deep breath and relax. Nothing can get you more worked up than your own nerves doing a hoodoo number on your mind.  I’m going to offer you a few tricks of the trade I’ve learned along the way and hope that you’ll benefit in some small way.

1. Market Research and Analysis: This is where successful marketing plans spring to action. Justifiably, clients (or buyers) must want to achieve specific goals, so usability and receptiveness are crucial components that ultimately become the deciding factor for potential purchases. Analyze your products and/or services. Obviously, you must have a great product or service to offer your potential buyer.

Here are a few questions you should ask yourself:
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By CarolAnn Bailey-Lloyd. Follow her @CarolAnnB.

Now that you’ve joined the twitter bandwagon, you’re trying to figure out the best way to attract quality followers to your twittosphere. I don’t know too many folks who want a wave of spam bots following them, but sometimes that’s what we might end up with if we’re not careful with our twitter approach. What’s a twitter newbie to do when she’s new to the twitter-scene? Use the following twitter tips to create a presence that’s both clear and notable: (more…)

By Emma Merkas of 30 Dollar Date Night. Follow her @30dollardate.

#Networking can be a daunting prospect for Tweeps who are used to networking of the internet variety. If you’re an introverted person who is most comfortable communicating in bite sized chunks of 140-characters at a time, I suggest you throw open the comfort circle and delve into some #Networking.

Yes, I’m talking face-to-face networking. For you, it may conjure up images of all those A- type personalities gaily laughing over canapés and glasses of fine wine, being all witty and interesting with no effort whatsoever made on their part…

Wrong. I’ll let you in on something… the extroverts are secretly just as daunted as you are. And the good news is – networking is a skill that can be learned.

And believe it or not, #Networking is a great way to complement your online efforts. Meeting someone face-to-face makes you a standout from the rest of the online world. People suddenly want to help you, refer people to you and refer you to other people they know that may help you (did you catch all that?) all just because you’re standing face-to-face with them!

Networking engenders a community spirit – and one that is sorely needed if you spend your days at your keyboard in the privacy of your own home.

All it takes is a little practice, dear Tweeps. I started my career in Public Relations at a very young age, and would front up at events where everyone else had a good 5-10 years on me, feeling extremely out of place and nervous. Luckily, I was taught by one of the best in the business – she is still a great mentor of mine and I have never seen someone disarm a stranger the way she can. I learned a lot from her, and have since developed my own techniques that set me in good stead.

So here are some of my very best tips to get you started. Even the most shy people can get by with a few simple tricks:

1.Pick your events wisely
Networking groups are popping up all over the globe that are meant specifically for Bloggers, Tweeters, Diggers and every other social networking and bookmarking site you can think of.
These are an ideal start because not only are they relevant to you and what you do, but EVERY other person there will talk your language. Hell, every other person there probably also had to specifically get dressed just to leave the house and attend the party! The good news is, you have a common ground before you even get there.
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By Brandon Mendelson (@BJMendelson), Event Organizer for A Million High Fives (a quest to high five one million Twitter followers and volunteer with them at their local homeless shelter this August.)

For the moment, I am one of the most followed non-celebrity / musician, non-media, non-brand, people on Twitter. I follow over 300,000 of my 620,000 Twitter friends, and should Twitter lift the 1,000 follower a day cap, I hope to follow everyone back in the future.

Here are ten thoughts and observations about attempting to interact with 600,000 people.

1. The browser remains the best way to manage Twitter.
I need a quick and efficient way to keep track of many tweets. After using all of the alternatives out there, using a web browser is the best way to go. I always see fresh content, and I can hit the back button in case I miss something.

2. It is impossible to see every single tweet from every single user.
I found it difficult to see every tweet at 1,000 followers, and it became a fool’s errand at 10,000.

What I do, is keep track of individual people, not tweets. You CAN keep track of thousands of individual people. I jump into the conversation’s I see on the stream and if I need to catch up or learn more about someone, I visit their profile.

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