Who’s job is it to police Twitter? Twitter? The users? Lately there has been a trend calling for the end of automatic direct messages. By using a service, such as Tweet Later, people can setup their account to automatically send a direct message to new followers. While I do not personally use the automatic direct message feature of Tweet Later, I can understand why people would use it. It could be a huge time saver for those that are on Twitter that have huge followings.
The campaign to end automatic direct messages is being lead by SocialToo, who up until February 28th was one of the main services doing automatic direct messages. I will not get into the debate whether automatic direct messages are right or wrong. They exist and are a part of Twitter. I do not mind the direct messages that I receive when I follow a new person. Some contain interesting links, some are friendly hello’s and yes some are blatant sales pitches. The problem with the campaign that is being lead by SocialToo is the way they they are going about it.
They have setup a new Twitter account, endautodms, that people can send a message to @endautodms with the name of the person they think are doing automatic direct messages. Endautodms will then follow that person and they are placed on “the list”. A tweet to endautodms would then look like the following:
This method to police automatic direct messages turns into nothing but a witch hunt. They are welcome to create a blacklist if they want but making is a visible social blacklist can damage people and companies reputations. Automatic direct messages might have problems but shaming people into stopping seems to be more suitable to high school.
So who should be policing Twitter and automatic direct messages? SocialToo seems to think they should, what do you think?
It seems like everyone is talking about Twitter. It appears that Twitter is becoming more mainstream. You can even find CBC News on Twitter. Have you ever wondered how some of those people manage to have 10,000 plus followers and how did they follow that many people in return? Well one of the ways to follow and be followed by so many people is to automate the process by using a website called Tweet Later.
Now some people might consider the use Tweet Later as cheating. After all isn’t the point of Twitter to connect with people and have conversations with them? That might be true, but I can see how Tweet Later does provide a useful service that can help save you time if you use Twitter. Just because you sign up for Tweet Later does not mean that you have to use all of the features that it provides. You can set it to automate only the things that you really want to have happen.
For example, you might like to automatically unfollow any one that stops following you. This can take time to fiquire out who has stopped following you and then unfollow them. With Tweet Later you can set it to automatically unfollow people that unfollow you. No longer do you have to sift through your followers to see who is no longer following you.
Of course there are other features that might appeal more to those that are using Twitter to broadcast themselves to a wider audience. You can set Tweet Later to automatically follow people that follow you, to send automatic direct messages to new followers, and as the website name implies, you can have Tweet Later tweet for you while you are away.
Aside from automating some of the regular Twitter tasks that people do you can do all of your tweeting and replying right from inside of Tweet Later. You can see who has replied to you, reply back to them, send a new tweet, retweet, and manage multiple Twitter accounts, in the event that you tweet for more than one organization. All that and it is free!
For those that do use Twitter more than just for personal reasons Tweet Later also offers a professional version that costs $29.97/month that allows you to do everything above plus things like integrate with Ping.fm, schedule direct message, replies, recurring tweets, and use it to help monitor topics that you are interested in.
I enjoy Twitter as a tool to connect with people, to learn about things that are going on in the world and to help others with their web problems. What I don’t like about Twitter is the time it takes to follow and unfollow people. I like to tweet and connect and I can see how Tweet Later helps people do that. It can also be useful for those that are looking at using Twitter to broadcast their message to a wider audience. Twitter can bring a significant number of visitors to a website and Tweet Later can help people manage that aspect of their website promotion.
If you are on Twitter you might want to give Tweet Later a try. They offer a free version and it does not take long to create an account. By automating some tasks on Twitter you can focus on just tweeting!
Don’t forget you can always follow me on Twitter if you want to know what I am up too.
I have been visiting a few Google Friend Connect websites and have noticed an interesting trend. No one seems to want to edit the canvas.html file to display the correct site name. To be fair it does not say much on the Friend Connect website about the file just “This file can be edited to match the aesthetics of your site.” People do not even seem to make easy edits to the file. Even the largest Friend Connect website I have joined so far, Mashable, has not edited the file.
If you want to make a minor edit to the canvas.html file all you need as a text editor, like Notepad. If you routinely code HTML you can use your favorite editor. Simply open the canvas.html file that you downloaded and to make your website name display when people look at the Friend Connect gadgets in full screen. To change the site name look for the following line, in my editor it is line 87. <div class="site-header"><span class="section-title">Site Name</span></div>
Simply edit the Site Name to be what ever you want, your website name would probably be the best, but you could be creative I suppose. When you are done, upload the file to your web server per Google instructions. Here is a screenshot of my canvas when you enlarge the members gadget.
There is a lot more that is possible, but that is the bare minimum that you can do to at least have the canvas page display your proper website name instead of “Site Name”. You could go and skin the whole canvas page to have your website look if you are feeling more ambitious, but I don’t have the time to do that today.
Google Friend Connect was opened up to the world in early December and I have finally gotten a chance to take a look at what it offers. According to the Google Friend Connect website Friend Connect has three advantages to offer website owners.
Enrich your site
Choose engaging social features from a catalog of gadgets by Google and the OpenSocial developer community.
Attract more visitors
Your users can easily invite friends from social networks and contact lists to visit and join your site.
No programming whatsoever
Just copy and paste a few snippets of code into your site, and Friend Connect does the rest.
Enrich Your Site
The first statement on the Friend Connect website is that the gadgets will enrich your website. You will be able to add social gadgets from the Friend Connect website as well as choose from many of the OpenSocial gadgets. In a perfect world this could give you hundreds of social gadgets to choose from to add to your website. Unfortunately we do not live in a perfect world. Of the number of gadgets I have tried from the OpenSocial directory I was only able to get the Twitter one to work and that was after I did some editing to the XML code that was on the OpenSocial website. What that means is until the developers create gadgets that work with Friend Connect, the gadgets that work best are the gadgets available from Google.
The gadgets from Google include a members and sign in gadget, and two social gadgets, a wall and a rate and review gadget. This has created a number of comparisons of Friend Connect to services like MyBlogLog and BlogCatalog, because the members gadget is similar to the widgets offered by those services. Overtime the gadgets available from Friend Connect and OpenSocial will be more advanced and offer more interaction. It is possible that at some point in the future the gadgets could allow a website owner to create their own social network similar to Facebook and MySpace, except on your own domain name. At the moment we really only have a couple of choices. Do the gadgets enhance a website already is still up for debate.
I personally have added the Google Friend Connect Members gadget here, but I held off on adding the Wall and Rate and Review gadget. I would prefer to have people comment on the posts themselves. It wold be nice to see a way to tie the Google Friend Connect login in with the comment form, similar to Facebook Connect, so people could login and comment with that. That will probably be on the list of things to do in the near future.
Attract more visitors
I have only been noticing the Friend Connect members box on a few websites and blogs so far. As more websites install it there is a possibility of gaining more visitors. There needs to be more widespread acceptance of the platform and you will need to be active in other websites before you gain a significant amount of new visitors. There is a possibility that your current visitors could find more value in your website with the social gadgets installed making them visit more often and stay longer. As more social gadgets are created this could certainly be the case.
No Programming Whatsoever
This is something Google does well. The success of Adsense is partly based on how easy it is to add to a website, copy and paste the code and you are up and running. Friend Connect is similar. Copy and paste and you can easily have the gadgets provided on the Friend Connect website installed and running on your website. Compare it to Facebook Connect, that I have also looked at, and Friend Connect wins easily. No programming is only true for the default Google gadgets though. If you are thinking of adding any OpenSocial gadgets be prepared for playing with code and things not working properly.
Should You Use It?
This is probably the question most people want to know, should you use it on your website. If you like to live on the edge and try new technologies on your website I would say go for it. The Google gadgets seem to work well, but I would stay away from any of the OpenSocial gadgets unless you like pulling out your hair in frustration. I am surprised that Google launched it with such few gadgets working. Did any of the Google Friend Connect engineers try any of the OpenSocial gadgets with it? If they did they could create a list of ones that work and ones that don’t.
Another reason to look at adding Friend Connect early would be to add some social media components to your website if you don’t have any already. For example if you don’t have a commenting system on your website you could quickly add the Wall gadget and allow people to start commenting on your site with very little work. The Rate and Review gadget could also be a great addition to an ecommerce website to allow people to rate and comment on the different products you have available.
Here is a video from Google about Google Friend Connect if you want some more information.
I will be keeping the members gadget here on LGR Internet Solutions for a little while and seeing how it goes. Feel free to join, I always enjoy getting to know more about the people that visit. If you are interested in having Google Friend Connect installed on your website and don’t want to do it yourself, I would be happy to give you a hand, just drop me a note and I can arrange to have that done for you.
Post under Twitter | By LGR | On November 21st, 2008
I have been using Twitter for a while now and have found it to be a lot of fun to use. Not only is it a great way to connect with people, it has also been a great resource to get people’s opinions and suggestions. Using Twitter does not have to be all work though because part of the reason to use it is to show that you are not just some mindless corporate robot. You want to show your human side, and of course as human beings we need to play once in awhile. With that in mind here are some of the Twitter toys that I find amusing.
Since moving to Regina it has been fun to connect with some more local people on Twitter. Finding local people can be a little hard, since the Twitter search really does not give you many options for searching. TwitterLocal to the rescue! Enter a city, state or postal code/zip code and you can get RSS feeds of local Twitterers to follow. You can subscribe to the RSS feed in your feed reader or you can view the latest Tweets and click through to follow the people you are interested in. It has been great to find some local people to connect with. Someday maybe we could even get a Regina Tweetup going, who knows.
Twitter Grader is addictive, you have been warned. Face it you want to know how you stack up against all the other Twitter users out there right? It is fun to see how you stack up against the mob. I think I do pretty good, a 98.6 out of 100. Considering I don’t try very hard. They have badges you can add to your website/blog and they even have a Twitter Elite. Depending on what your location is. I have not quite made the Twitter Elite in Canada yet, but maybe someday.
Here is a sample of the badge you can add to your website/blog.
TwitterCounter does just that counts the number of followers you have and gives you a badge that you can place on website/blog. Similar to a RSS subscriber count it is a great way to show how popular you are on Twitter. Not only does it give you a button to place on you website it also predicts how many followers you will have in the future. You can see my TwitterCounter button over on the sidebar.
This is a new one that I just found today. Enter your Twitter username and it will give you an estimated value of what your Twitter is worth. Not sure if it is per tweet or the overall value of your account, but I suppose it does not really matter. My account came back at $445.00 today. If someone wants to give me $445.00 for a tweet let me know, I might be interested. Of course they offer badges for you to place on your website/blog as well.
Looking for some new friends to follow? twubble will help to find you some. It looks at the people you already follow and finds others that they follow that you might be interested in. You can even follow them right from the twubble page.
If you are looking to make a few extra dollars before Christmas, Twittad might be for you. I have not personally tried this service but Twittad places advertisements on your profile background. It is not as intrusive as the new service called Magpie, that actually tweets ads on your account. At least with Twittad you can set your own price for your background. If you visit the Twittad website you can find some people that have actually sold their profile backgrounds so you can see what they look like. If I had to choose between Twittad and Magpie I would go with Twittad.
I am a little biased on TwitterTag since I own a part of it along with Rhett. If you subscribe to my RSS feed, you might already be familiar with my TwitterTag. TwitterTag makes it easy for you to place your latest tweet using the badge that it creates. It is different than many of the other Twitter badge sites because it actually outputs an image and does not use Javascript. That makes it easy to use in the footers of RSS feeds, on your website/blog, on forums or other places where you can add an image. You can change the colours of the border, background, text, header etc.
Here is a sample of a TwitterTag with the default colours.
We have plans to add other sizes of images, maybe a top Twitter users list and a few other surprises. Just need to get some time to work on the site.
Those are my favourite Twitter toys, what are your favourite Twitter toys? You are also welcome to follow me on Twitter if you want to know what I am up to.
It is hard to keep up with all of the new social media sites that keep popping up. A little while ago Friendfeed started to get a lot of attention. In the last few days a new site called Plurk has been the centre of attention.
Aside from another goofy name, Plurk is another microblogging platform, similar to Twitter. Some of the differences you will notice right away about Plurk is the timeline look to the updates. This presents an nice interface for following your friends because you can see when they actually posted their update. Aside from the timeline presentation, Plurk offers commenting on your friends updates. On Twitter you could reply at a person but the conversations could become scattered and hard to follow. On Plurk comments on any update are easy to see and take part in.
Plurk offers some unique features for microblogging, and considering how much Twitter has been down lately there are a number of Twitterer’s that have moved over, or perhaps are using both. I dislike having a tab open with Plurk on it all day long, I have other things to do, so I don’t know how often I will be using it. Plurk does offer an instant message interface with Google Talk and I have that open often during the day so I might try using that to update my status. I like the ability to use Twitter from my browser using Twitterfox and not needing to have a tab open to the site all day long. If Plurk can become convenient like that then I might be more inclined to use it. Unfortunately Plurk is already starting to suffer from down time. Probably from the rapid growth in the last few days.
Back in the early days of the web it was easy being a webmaster. If you had some design skills, and could learn HTML and maybe some basic coding in PERL you could run a website and be successful. It did not take much. I look back at some of the sites I worked on when I was first starting out and when I was working for a web company in Saskatoon and realize that those static websites served their purpose then. The sites were there to put information out about the company, to release the odd news release, put the financial reports out about the company and generally to make the company look good. The sites worked then, the problem is those same sites, while they have gotten facelifts and maybe an RSS feed, are still doing the same thing. The information is stale and the web has moved on. Being a webmaster is dead.
The web today is no longer about dry stale information. It is about constant communication. It is about connecting with people. There is a place for static information on a website, but people want and expect more than just static information. They want to communicate with the people behind a site. People want real human contact. People want conversations and relationships with those behind a website.
Corporations that are not embracing the new web are being left behind. People are talking about corporations on the web and if those corporations are not there to listen and take part in those conversations you are going to lose.
Some corporations are starting to get it. They are watching what is being said on blogs and on Twitter. When Michael Arrington’s Comcast Internet connection went down, his post on Twitter got noticed by Comcast, and his problem was fixed.
Here in Canada we are a little slower, but companies here had better start to listen. For example, take a look at this search I did for Sasktel on Summize. Of the nine tweets, five are negative. Sasktel are you listening to what your customers are saying?
What about Rogers cable or Shaw cable? Are they listening? The web is changing fast and corporations need to change fast to keep up. Corporations need to start being a part of the conversations that people are having or they will no longer be relevant. Being a webmaster now is about being a part of the conversation. No longer can webmasters be lone guns creating their own little websites. They need to be out there, be social, and be apart of the new web. Long live the new webmaster!
Twitter is everywhere these days, and I was sceptical at first but I have become a fan. It becomes a great tool to use to find out information from various sources. For example, today I have been considering ordering some business cards. I have not had any for awhile and thought I would ask people on Twitter if they
Thought business cards were still important for online workers?
Where do they get them.
I got several responses that were very helpful. Twitter was able to provide me with valuable information from people in a very timely manner. I have not ordered any cards yet, but I have taken note of people’s responses and will be looking into the places they recommended.
Everyone has different preferences for using Twitter, but I thought I would share my Twitter toolkit.
TwitterFox – I use my Firefox browser for everything. More and more Firefox is becoming the only application I load often. I use it to do word processing with Google Docs, email with Gmail, blogging, and so when I went looking for a Twitter client I went looking for a Firefox addon. I tried several and TwitterFox is my favourite.
Twitterfeed – I use Twitterfeed to post to Twitter when I have updated either this blog or Video Rambler.
TwitResponse – To be honest I have not actually used this service yet, but I have signed up. I like the idea, but it takes away some of the interactivity that I like about Twitter.
Twitter – I don’t log into the web interface for Twitter very often, but I have been spending more time using my Nokia 6275i and I have not found a Twitter client that works on it, so if I Tweet from my cell phone it is usually from the Twitter web interface.
Jott – This is another service that I am thinking of using to Tweet. Not only that but I am thinking of using it to blog with as well. I hope to write up a review of this service soon, but I think it offers some great possibilities to stay in touch on Twitter.
What is in your Twitter toolkit?
Of course you can follow me on Twitter and keep up to date with all the little tidbits that go on between blog posts.
I was looking through Google Analytics for this blog the other day and I was amazed at the number of visitors I get to this blog from the search engines versus how many visits I get from social media and from referrals from other sites. It might not come as a surprise that the majority of traffic comes to this blog from search engines. Maybe because I don’t spend a great deal of time sitting and writing the kind of posts that would appeal to the Digg or StumbleUpon crowd. Aside from that fact however I think there is something more important to learn from traffic from either the search engines and social media and direct referrals.
This blog has never been on the front page of Digg, and to be honest, I am glad it has never been. I have read several articles on the Digg effect and I am quite convinced that the energy and effort that is required to have it happen and survive the onslaught of Digg users is simply not worth it. Blogs that do get on the front page of Digg have that huge rush of visitors for a day or two and then everything dies down again.
This blog has been Stumbled several times, and I am a big fan of StumbleUpon. It is a great service to discover new sites and find interesting information. The StumbleUpon effect is also not such an onslaught as a Digg. There is a large rush of initial visitors and if the post is thumbed up enough you can get several thousand new visitors. My Video Rambler blog had a great time on StumbleUpon at one time with over 10000 visitors on on popular video over a one month period. I have also seen increases in StumbleUpon traffic months after the initial rush, but it is rare that the second or third wave is as large as the first.
I also get a regular amount of traffic from Facebook, MySpace and the latest is LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a new social media site that I have not seen in the referral logs before. What I find most interesting about it, they are going to my post about Register.com. Register.com did you hear that? People are finding out about your overpriced services! But I digress.
Overall the social media sites can create a huge rush of visitors to a site, and you might gain a few new comments and some loyal readers. For the most part these people are not going to stick around. I know I rarely subscribe to a blog I discover through StumbleUpon or Digg. The social networking sites don’t send the same amount of large traffic but they also tend to not stick around. The looking at the number of page views of people from these sites the average is low. Usually around one to one and a half page views per visit. They are coming reading and leaving as fast as they came.
The visitors that come here from the search engines are looking for something very specific. They are looking for a solution to a problem they are trying to solve, or information on a product or service that I have written about. This is no surprise, they typed something into the search engine and my blog was the one of the results that the search engine believes will help that person. I often get a great laugh looking at what the search engines think my blog is about looking at the keywords that some people find it. Some of the interesting ones I noticed lately are regular searches for ubuntuxp with this post about my Virtualbox installation of Windows XP installed on my Ubuntu desktop being on the first page of results. I also routinely get visits for people looking for help with PHP and .htaccess problems. That is great and I hope my posts help them but because search engine readers are looking for a solution to a specific problem they don’t stick around long. They might look around a little more but the page views per visit are usually under three.
Percentage wise the referrals from other blogs and websites are not near as large as people coming from the search engines or social media, but they are more interested in the blog as a whole. The number of average pages views is around seven pages views per visit. They also spend more time on the site and are more likely to come back. They are coming from blogs that I have left comments on, participated in or have linked to other posts. Networking with others is a great way to increase visitors and readers to your blog.
The best part of looking at my traffic statistics was seeing how many people come directly to my site. You must be regulars! Thanks for coming and reading and taking part in the conversations here. It really made my day to know that the second highest number of people coming to my site come directly. That also shows in the visitor loyalty graph in Google Analytics.
Overall traffic from search engines, social media and referrals all play a role in bringing traffic to your website. In the long term it is the search engine traffic and referral traffic that will bring in the largest amount of quality traffic and readers. Social media traffic, while great to see and fun to have that spike on your traffic graphs, does not provide a regular and reliable source of visitors and readers. Don’t get me wrong, I think social media traffic plays a part in helping to create some buzz about a site, but in the long term it will not provide your website with a regular source of new readers.
What are your experiences with social media traffic? What do you prefer search engine traffic, social media or referral traffic?
I don’t use my Facebook account very often. I do log into it a few times a week, but I really don’t find it very interesting. Sure I have been able to connect with some friends that I have not seen since elementary or high school, but for the most part I just don’t see why anyone would spend hours on the site. I also find the ads to be generally annoying and usually irrelevant.
There is one thing I do like about Facebook though, it is a great way to republish some of the content I am already creating on the web to let my friends know what I am up to. This way I can keep my Facebook profile active while simply doing the things I am already doing. I allow Twitter to update my Facebook status, I show my Flickr photos, and I have my StumbleUpon favourites shown. I have even been working on a custom application to show the latests posts from my blogs on my profile.
Aggregating the content you already create on the web on Facebook is a great way of letting your friends know what you are doing, without you having to actually waste your time and login to Facebook. It can also drive some traffic to your blog and other sites. When I posted my April fools post about how much money I was making online, I got quite a few visits from Facebook. I guess all my friends wanted to know how I did it.
Here is a video I thought you might enjoy if you are getting tired of Facebook. It gave me a good chuckle.
Of course they offer badges for you to place on your website/blog as well.
Comments