Archive for the ‘Social Networks’ Category
Twitter have just announced the official release of a French version of the popular micro-blogging service. Over the past couple of months they have been aiming to release the service in Spanish, French, German and Italian. So far, they got Spanish completed and now they got the French version ready just in time for le Web – a massive tech conference in France held annually.
They released a blog post on their official blog but fittingly, it was all in French, so here is a rough translation for you:
The French twitteurs golds can already track people and companies they are familiar. Whether you attended @lepicerie or @lopera for your gastronomic outings, you read @lemondefr way to work or you listen @theteenagers on the way home or you’re a fan of @CanadiensMTL, there is a wealth of information useful to discover at any time.
To see Twitter in French, just check your settings and select “French” from the menu.
One last thing: some of the Twitter team will be in Paris on 9 and 10 November for LeWeb conference, presented by @loic. The specialists of our platform, Ryan Sarver (@rsarver) and Marcel Molina (@noradio) will present, among other things, a session developers. If you are in the region these days, please join us!
So now Twitter is available in English, Japanese, Spanish and French. Next? Those zany Germans!
ReTweeting is the pretty much the equivalent of digging something multiple time – only with Tweets. When most uses see a retweet it must be from somebody that they are connected with. Now however, Twitter are testing a new Beta program which changes how retweeting works.
Basically,when a person who you are indirectly connected to, I.e. a friends of a friend, tweets something and a person you’re following retweets that tweet, it will be displayed in your timeline. As a member of this Beta I think this is a great idea. I’m finding that my community has grown (almost doubled) and the retweets are always valuable and worthwhile. This is definitely of increasing the quality and social worthiness of Twitter which I approve of.
Some of the most popular Twitter accounts (with followers well into the millions) come from well-known faces such as Ashton Kutcher and Stephen Fry. And of course, the president of the United States Barak Obama. He has over 2.6 million followers who will be disappointed to learn it’s not him behind the Twitter account.
I think everyone knew that he didn’t tweet all of the time but he actually said that he has ‘never’ used Twitter before!
It happened during a meeting with Chinese youth when somebody put a question to him about the freedom of the internet and information in China through networks such as Twitter. He then replied:
“I have never used Twitter but I’m an advocate of technology and not restricting internet access.”
To be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised if he got into a bit of trouble with his publicists who would have preferred to have people think he tweets. Oh well, half the celebrity Twitter accounts are fake anyway – at least this one is actually coming from somebody in the White House.
Today, reports have surfaced saying that Twitters visitor numbers are decreasing for the first time ever. Apparently, visitor numbers fell by 8% in October. However, in this writer’s opinion Twitter isn’t floundering. These numbers merely represent the differences between Twitter and the rest of the web.
It’s interesting that these numbers are recorded for October. October is a month where people are settling back into school and college, winter’s coming in and the summer social bubble on the Internet has truly popped as people head back tot their normal routine after holidays, time off school and plenty of sunshine and tweet-worthy activities.
I think people are simple more busy and are tweeting from their portable devices instead which easily make up half of Twitter tweets. Instead of taking out the laptop while relaxing in the sun they’re cramming themselves into the Subway and letting everyone know about it from their phones.
Twitter are also rolling out new features such as Lists and now their GeoLocation feature which we discussed here the other day. Suggestions that Twitter is floundering are just hype. Until Twitter’s influence and micro-culture starts to evaporate – don’t believe any of these kind of statements.
I’ve seen a lot of strange Twitter accounts. Even one supposedly controlled by a blade of grass on a golf course. But this one really takes the biscuit. Someone has started a Twitter account for Big Ben. And I don’t mean Big Ben from down the street. I mean the gigantic tower in London with a big clock on it next to the House of Crooks (I mean parliament!).
Not surprisingly, Ben hasn’t really got a lot to say for himself. After all his sole existence for the past few hundred years has been to alert Londoners to the time of day. And of course his lack of opposable thumbs may be an issue. So his Tweets look a little something like this:
It appears as though Big Ben tweets his “Bong Bong Bong” on the hour every hour so all his fellow Twitter users know what time it is. What a gentlemen our Big Ben is. Be sure to give him a follow to keep his spirits up during the cold London winter!
The PS3 is an all round entertainment machine which in many regards it can act as a fully functioning PC for internet, movie and music usage. When it first came out all you could hear was how “it’s not just a console. It’s and entertainment centre” and all that lark. So now we’ve got our hands on an apparent screenshot of a Facebook client running on a PlayStation 3. interesting.
I mean all it is is a logo and a bit of detail which I guess could have been done by a skilled Photoshop user but here’s the interesting part:
TechCrunch claim that the image can be traced back to the official Sony website.
So was this an image uploaded too soon? A test gone wrong? Well we don’t really know for sure but I do have a gut feeling this is straight up. After all, the PS3 is essentially a computer in its own right so if anything, social networking is overdue.
Here is a screenshot of what it might be similar too. This is a screenshot of the Facebook client currently in testing for the XBOX 360 (we’re also waiting on Twitter for that console). It doesn’t look to bad indeed although a bit of cleaning up wouldn’t go amiss.
So Christmas is coming – or so the advertisers would have us believe. Still, it can’t be a bad time to get the office e-cards out of the way I suppose. For the past few years a popular services has ruled the internet Christmas card market – and this year it’s back again.
ElfYourself lets you embed the head of yourself, a friend, family member or co-worker on the tiny body of and elf in scenes such as Crazy Dancing and Hip-Hop Elfs.
However, it has also linked up with Twitter and Facebook so you can share your creations online with your buddies and even distribute hilarious ones among your network via connecting with friends on Facebook or simply tweeting your card.
So what are you waiting for – get over there and Elf Yourself.
Gdgt.com is a user generated site, which is kind of like Wikipedia in many regards, that caters for gadgets and electronics reviews. Basically, users log in and add reviews for tech items they own. Other users can then update or edit that review with their own opinion and thoughts.
There is also a questions section normally on the homepage called the ‘Big Debate’ where users ask questions related to tech products. The community is also alive and kicking. When you ask a question you needn’t bother logging off to check back later – just wait five minutes.
Most of the comments made there about products are sensible and well thought out. I didn’t find one comment from some idiot complaining that Blackberries are better than iPhones (nut jobs).
Connection with fellow enthusiasts is also a good feature that I liked as you can follow their own reviews and edits.
Signing up is easy and of course free. So if you fancy venting about your new purchase or want some solid advice about what to buy – and when, head on over to gdgt.com.
SPAM is one of my pet hates. In fact I think that everyone reading this hates those annoying e-mails, comments left on our pages, tweets and clearly misleading advertisements that promise you a months salary in a few hours. I really, really hate SPAM. It’s useless and in this day and age it achieves nothing with its instantly recognisable language format, strange links and oh yeah, the promise of a few million bucks for transferring money.
Twitter and Facebook hate SPAM too. At the same time, both of them published posts to their blog that clearly announce plans to go 
on the offensive against spammers on their networks.
Twitter is due to start crating tweets and organising the trending topics section. This could mean one of two things:
- Either they’ll simply remove an entire trending topic if it becomes too spammed.
- Or they’ll painstakingly monitor tweets in trending topics with the first filter being a computer and the last a human.
They told us that the changes may not be apparent immediately – but I can assure you, it’s happening as you read this post.
Meanwhile, Facebook are targeting SPAM and scam ads on their network. This is a really big problem for two reasons. Firstly it lets users make their own ads and publish them – with so many it’s hard to catch all the scams. And secondly, they’ve gotten into bed with some shady advertising networks recently and are having a spot of bother breaking the relationships. Although they have assured us they’re in the process of ending two of them.
Let’s all pray for a SPAM free Internet in the mean time.
Back in the early 90’s there was this song, “Things That Make You Go Hmmm…”. It’s this song that I sadly have to reference when mentioning the Twitter Peek. Unlike the song that had some redeeming qualities this doorstopper is the clunkiest piece of technology I’ve seen yet (a disclaimer, I do not own one).
This product is made by Peek. The same company brought you the horrors that were the Pronto Peek and the Meet Peek. I’m not sure why I would want any of these devices since my smartphone does it all, and when I’m not at my mobile, I’m at my desk.
Perhaps therein lies the truth. It’s not geared towards me, the tech savvy geek, but rather the Twitter uninitiated.Despite the millions of users, there are still many demographics who have not embraced it. What a simple bridge to get them to join.
Clever plan or failure upward? Too early to tell, but one thing is for sure, based on their past successes, the Twitter Peek might make a small splash.
The Twitter Peek can be purchased on their website or via Amazon.
Heard of Twitter? Sure the whole world has by now. Lone tribes on far islands have heard about Twitter. This massively immersive and widely used micro-blogging network has become a staple for both our personal and professional lives. The world seems to still be feeling the “Twitter effect” as industries adapt their existing messages to fit the fast paced world of this social network.
But do you ever feel like you’re being left behind? Perhaps not enough time to get the right message in a timely fashion? Now there’s a solution to that.
Twuffer presents itself as the buffer between you and your timed messages. By using the web application, you are able to preset messages on a timed schedule to be released on your network at the times you think most important. The possibilities of this type of functionality are as endless as your creativity.
The web app is easy to use and can serve you to better time your announcements, set reminders for yourself or others, engage in timed online activities, or, as the site suggests, make it appear as if you never sleep. The practicality of this app seems pretty straightforward.
The application is currently in beta, but your able to explore what it has to offer pretty seamlessly. I suggest you give it a try to announce regular days when your podcast or blog post will go live, or perhaps some other similar campaign to see if Twuffer is right for you!
Twitter’s Trending Topics is a great way to see what’s buzzing, what’s going one and what’s happening in the world. Often, big stoies are made publicaly aware on Twitter trends before they hit mainstream news. Several times I’ve watched BBC World News when the presenter used Twitter trends as a source.
Now Digg are launching a new trends experiment which will follow in the footsteps of Twitter. However it’s not just a carbon copy.
The trends feature will display stories that people are digging fast but only recently. The idea is to catch big stories in their initial phases before they hit mainstream media.
Here is what the official Digg blog reads about the new experiment:
Because there’s so much that happens beneath the surface of Digg, we’ve been working on new ways to expose the most interesting stories to more people. Today we’re launching a new homepage voting experiment called Digg Trends which will surface certain highly active stories as they’re trending to Digg’s homepage so people can vote on whether or not they feel the story actually belongs there.
How does it work? Digg Trends identifies and highlights upcoming stories that have a high volume of activity (think Diggs, comments, favorites, shares, etc.). When we detect a new trending story, it will appear on the homepage for ten minutes. Based on the Digg and bury activity in those ten minutes the story will either become popular or not. To make it easy to follow the action, we’ve setup a Twitter account to tweet out when a new Digg Trend is up for voting on the homepage. Here’s an example of what a Digg Trend might look like:
The goal of Digg Trends is to put high activity stories in front of the community quickly and to present a fun new way for people to express whether they like the story or not. We only show the most basic information for each story so as to ensure that voting is as unbiased as possible.
Twitter have just announced the official release of a French version of the popular micro-blogging service. Over the past couple of months they have been aiming to release the service in Spanish, French, German and Italian. So far, they got Spanish completed and now they got the French version ready just in time for le Web – a massive tech conference in France held annually.
