Twitip

Recently I got into an interesting discussion with @nhangen and @rockyourday about the new retweet function. While I’d experimented with it, I wanted to see how I could make it work for me. What I discovered was a plethora of posts pointing out the flaws in the feature.

• Strangers were showing up in your stream
• It was taking away from the community driven aspect of the site.
• You couldn’t add commentary

Now – these concerns are valid. However, what most people missed that this is an improvement on the old system. We now have more choice. Duncan Babbage says it best in a comment on outspoken media:

I suggest that you need to see Twitter as two separate things, an underlying infrastructure and then secondly their own web interface which is just one out of many clients that can be used for the service. At an infrastructure level, they have added a new feature that didn’t exist before. It doesn’t take away at all the capacity to continue to RT as you did before.

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by David Turnbull – Follow him @dturnbull

CoTweet.com is a powerful Twitter-centric web application designed to help brands connect with their audience and join the conversation. Although used by some large companies such as Ford, Pepsi and Whole Foods I’ve seen little mention of the tool in the blogosphere and thought it deserved some attention. (more…)

by Neal Wiser (@nealwiser)

Back in the mid 1990s, I worked at Paramount Pictures and their emergent television network, the now defunct United Paramount Network. It was a great time to be at Paramount if you were a Star Trek fan. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was in the middle of its run and Star Trek: Voyager had just premiered to ratings that rivaled some super bowls. In addition, Star Trek: First Contact was in production and when I wasn’t constantly running into people like Jonathan Frakes, Avery Brooks, and Colm Meaney, I was running into Klingons, Borg and Ferengi. (more…)

By Ethan Stanislawski of Prefix. Follow him @tynansanger.

As a music blogger, it would seem preposterous if I didn’t address Michael Jackson’s death in some way on June 25. As soon as I heard he was in the hospital, I knew it would dominate TwiTrends all day, not to mention the blogosphere, all major news sites, and CNN. Once Michael Jackson’s death was confirmed, I knew that it would go on for weeks. And yet, I stayed off Twitter that day because, well, I really had nothing to say about the matter that could ever be considered original. (more…)

This past week or so has been pretty traumatic for some, what with the losses of Farrah Fawcett, Ed McMahon, Billy Mays, and of course, Michael Jackson.

Up until the #moonfruit promotion had started (Tweeters would use the hashtag for a chance to win a free Macbook Pro), Michael Jackson or some version thereof was the top trending topic on Twitter after his untimely death.

So I give you, dear readers, this poll:

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The reason I ask is because I happened to notice that many people truly did not send out even one single tweet about Michael Jackson. Sure, there were plenty of people being what I consider to be rude or disrespectful with their tasteless jokes and such… but I am honestly curious as to the percentages of people who did and did not tweet about “MJ” (as that was also in the trending topics, aside from his full name) after his passing.

Even if you only tweeted ONCE about it, please check the “Yes” box. I realize some people (like myself) tweeted about it several times. Also, even if your tweet was what I referred to above as rude or disrespectful, again, please choose “Yes” as your answer.

Happy Independence Day, America!

by Jeff Russell- Follow him @iapam

Like many of you, I’m a member of so many social media networks, the last thing I wanted to do is join another one.  But this Twitter thing just kept coming up over and over again. I kept thinking what am I going to do with a microblogging service that is limited to only 140 characters? My time is limited as it is, and if I’m going to invest my time, like any business expense, I want to know my ROI. Yes, it really comes down to how is getting a Twitter account going to make me MONEY!

Well, after creating an account, and identifying and following key people in the my industries, I knew this was like nothing else out there.  Not only did I create one Twitter account for business-related tweets, but I quickly created another account for my Foodie alter-ego. I use twitter to keep up to date on the latest breaking news, industry trends, my competition, as well as getting creative ideas for articles and marketing.

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By Jeff Hurt of Midcourse Corrections: Views From The Trenches. Follow him @JeffHurt.

Finding your community in Twitter can sometimes be a challenge, especially for Twitter beginners. Social media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and NING have flourishing and established communities that are easy to find. Twitter has some growing and thriving communities too but it’s often a best-kept Twitter secret.

Enter #hashtags and Twitter chats.

Twitter chats offer an effective way to meet people with similar interests and share insights into specific topic. Currently there are more than 35 weekly scheduled Twitter chats on certain days and times with like-minded professionals discussing a variety of questions. Here’s how you can find your Twitter community and participate in a Twitter Chat.

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By Darya Pino of Summer Tomato. Follow her @summertomato.

Everyone’s favorite example of how NOT to use Twitter is to tweet what you ate for breakfast. But even mundane tasks like eating can inspire people to follow if you tweet creatively. Ultimately it is not the subject of your tweet that makes you worth following, it is how your message connects with readers. Eat interesting food, eat for interesting reasons, or teach people something fascinating about food and suddenly everyone has a reason to care about your breakfast.

The key is communicating something that transcends the subject of your tweet and creates value for your followers. If you can do this then what you tweet about hardly matters, because you will regularly engage your readers and promote your personal brand.

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We receive literally dozens of emails every week about new Twitter tools, applications, and different ways to use Twitter. Every Sunday (almost) we post a few of them for you all to try out and let us (and the developers who emailed us) what you think! Here’s this week’s list:

Datatoy – Turns tweets into charts. You can tweet about your visits to starbucks, calorie consumption, glasses of water you’ve finished… and Datatoy will automatically produce a graph for you. You can also use widgets to take it to your blog if you want to display your graphs to the world.

Twesents lets you send virtual gifts to your twitter friends. Everything from cutesy to risque, you can send gifts just like you can do on FaceBook.

ShortGPS – A new service that helps you save postal addresses or locations in a unique and short URL to exchange via tweets, email, or SMS. Locations can be changed via the Map and a satellite/hybrid version of the map are also saved into the URL.

by Paul Wilson – follow him @PaulWilson

I have to admit that my very first three tweets ever should have gotten me fired right on the spot.

Luckily for me, I don’t think too many companies in early 2007 were savvy enough to be monitoring twitter. However, recent news has shown us this is no longer the case. With the Cisco job interview fiasco many of us on Twitter learned that our job (or future job) just might be watching our tweets.

With this in mind, I thought I would post the top 10 Tweets I read this week that could possible get someone fired. (more…)