Twitter lists is really starting to take off. Just yesterday we talked about how releasing a widget was going to bring the blogosphere and Twitter ever closer. Now Twitter lists is helping to bring populations closer – thanks to SimplyZesty.
The company have created lists for entire populations of countries to join. The first one was build by hand for Ireland with the UK version following a few hours later. Users must manually join the Irish list. For the UK they simply have to tweet #TwitterLondon (replacing London with wherever they live).
Following the rapid success of these lists they decided to launch a US version that is fully automated. It has been programmed to add users when they tweet about the homeland such as ‘#newyork’.
I think that we’re kind of straying away from what lists were originally intended for but hey, Twitter is what you make of it.
Social networks as they exist depend on the number of friends you start off with and thus you expand your network based on your existing network and grow from there. For many, not having an online presence makes it heard to start a social network when there is no online network to utilize to start. For many this can be frustrating and for many becomes the reason why they do not adopt the social scene. What if there was simply a network that didn’t rely on existing friendships and paired you with new people based on your profile to participate in unique shared experiences?
6Rounds is the answer and the unique network is sure to make a splash in the world of social engagement.
The network itself is designed to be a fully interactive experience incorporating the best of micro-messaging and video networks. There’s now a space for those not interested in hosting entire video shows, or who lack friends to build on a social profile on Facebook or Twitter.
6Rounds functions as a completely unique and diverse network that no user will get the same experience from their engagement. The network allows users to come together in a “live” setting where they will be challenged with “using a combination of webcams, real-time games, social activities and media engagements, we present a wide range of opportunities: from watching videos, playing real-time games, listening to music, Facebooking and Youtubing, to shopping together and beyond,” says the site.This sound a little like speed dating with the entertainment provided, and none of the relationship awkwardness attached. I can see how this would be appealing to both veteran and new entry supporters of social engagement.
The network is free and looks to combine the best of social networking, instant messaging, and video content to create an ever changing user experience.
So Twitter lists launched last week and over the weekend we all the the chance to take a look see, make a few lists and figure out just what it was all for. As it happens it’s a pretty cool feature which connects you with more people of the same interests giving Twitter even more of a social feel without taking away from the whole ‘Get it off your chest aspect’.
Now, the weekend has come and gone and the Twitter developers have plopped a Lists Widget into our laps for us to play with on our sites and blogs. Here’s what it looks like.
Basically, it works in the same way as other Twitter widgets except instead of showing the tweets of just one person is shows the tweets of everyone who is in that list. I can see this being a massive hit in the blogosphere because building community and adding new features to blogs are two of the most important things for a blogger to consider – well the list widget hits the nail on the head.
I tested it out and while it looks good and gets the job done the widget can be a little slow or sluggish but that’s to be expected seeing as it’s only out a single day. I’m sure the developers are on to it – they’ve had enough practice to know what to do when something is down, broken, sluggish or ‘over capacity’.
Get the Twitter lists widget for your blog right here.
Ah the profile pic. Is there really anything else in the world that can cause us to hold the camera at several different angles until it’s just right – making sure to delete all the ‘bad’ ones of course. With our profile pics we weave a web of lies about who we are, what we look like and what our personality is like. Well, people who are a bit obsessive do.
Samsung have released this cool zombie-vampire-monster thingy video that show just how misleading a profile pic can be. Enjoy!
“I see my path, but I don’t know where it leads. Not knowing where I’m going is what inspires me to travel it.” – Roasalia de Castro
This famous quote and many others like it inspire hundreds of thousands of people to buy a big backpack, a pair of Levis jeans and hit the road every single year between college and ‘life’. Yet, sleeping in a bus stations isn’t too appealing. And seeing as this is a technology site I thought I’d offer a solution – CouchSurfing.
Couch Surfing basically means living life to the fullest and recharging your batteries on people’s couches. And now there is a social network by the same name that is dedicated to finding you a place to lay your head down at night. They now have more than one million members who are travelers and hosts willing to let you spend the night on their couch. All you have to do is take out your iPhone while you’re on the coach to Budapest, do a little search and give whoever lives there a call to see if you can do a spot of couch surfing. Easy.
The site covers in excess of 55,000 cities in over 230 countries all over the world so no matter where you’re going you’ll find somewhere.
Twitter has become one of the best ways to stay up to date with the news and current ‘Trends’ as they’re called on the service. However, in order to stay informed on one particular subject you have to search for it manually.
TweetAlert is an app that will follow subjects and trends that you have an interest in and when one is tweeted, it will be re-tweeted by your account so you can see it there when you next log in.
It literally takes less than thirty seconds to sign up to a trend using the service by filling in a quick form which you can see above. After that you’ll see the trends and topics on your twitter homepage.
It has been rumored that EA is just about acquire or has already acquired Playfish. Playfish is a Facebook game developer who produces some of the most popular games on the Facebook platform. The acquisition is rumored to be around $250 million.
This year it is expected that Playfish will have $75 million in revenues from advertising combined with virtual goods sales. Another leading social games company, Zynga, is slated to report revenues upwards of $200 million for 2009.
Although the free-to-play with microtransactions business model has been huge in the Asian video gaming industry for some time now, it’s been slow to make it over to Western shores. This year casual and social gaming companies using that business model have attracted massive numbers of players and revenue to match, unsettling the traditional video game industry.
Beyond the current revenue potential, EA could see further gains from using its muscle to more widely advertise Playfish’s game roster — which includes hugely popular Facebook titles Restaurant City, Pet Society, World Challenge, and Who Has the Biggest Brain.
Is It Normal is a website that pokes at the heart of the insecure teenager in all of us. I think it’s fair to say that we all have to small insecurities, burning questions or are simply freaked out by ourselves – well IsItNormal.com is the place to get answers!
Basically, you can vote on peoples questions and stories ranging from school, to sex, to drugs, to … well anything really (and I do warn you there are some weird ones on there that surely aren’t legal in the southern states!).
To vote and post comments on other people’s questions – there is no need to register. However to submit your own story or question for the critique of the buzzing community on there then you will need to. However, it’s worth it because you get answers fast.
So if you want to know if that habit, fantasy, tick or tendency of yours is normal, ask here at www.isitnormal.com
Im sure there are so many people out there who want to start making games and applications for Facebook, but aren’t really too sure where to start. App Bank provides everyone with the very basic tools which can not only help them get started creating a Facebook app, but will also help them to monetize their application.
AppBank is the only provider that pays you for creating and uploading social content to major social networks like Facebook. Obviously if your application is of high quality and the more users you have, then the more you can make from your application.
AppBank provides the user with free technology that they can use to develop their application and then the user will receive a percentage of their advertising revenues, with the other small percentage going to AppBank. Currently AppBank dont disclose the amount they are receiving on the site itself, which is a downside. However, if you are looking to start creating your own Facebook applications, but not too sure how to go about it, then AppBank is the first place you should call.
The Internet moves at a staggering pace. In a single day it gains more news, blogs and twitters than you could read in a lifetime. Fads come and go over night and it’s becoming increasingly hard to keep track of what is relevant. This is where Twittorati comes in.
From the guys who brought us Technorati, one of the top blog search engines on the net, Twittorati aims to sift the gibberish from junk, tracking tweets from the highest authority bloggers and posting them in a way that’s meaningful and easy to follow.
It’s all about ‘authority’ and what determines a blogs authority is the number of unique blogs that link to that blog. The technology for this is the same as Technorati. In fact Twittorati incorporates blogs from the Technorati Top 100 and promises to include “many more of the web’s most influential voices.”
It’s certainly a good idea but after a brief look on the website I couldn’t actually find I was genuinely interested. Sure it’s all convenient, at any time at anytime I”m only a few clicks away from the highest authority blogs and tweets on the net but therein lies the problem.
There are no rare gems, no cult hits and no must know info-bites. Having a high authority does not mean it’s a good blog. Take a quick look at the front page, how much of that do you actually care about? Very little I bet. Well it’s not all bad and it really depends on how much you care about tweets in general.
How much is Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google involved in your common day activities? Did you ever ask yourself that? Where would you be if those didn’t exist?
Well there thousands of those existential questions that you may or may not asked yourself, and there’s no need to get real philosophical about this, but we sure can be certain that those technologies, web apps and more have an important presence in most of our days.
About those presences, here’s a very interesting video about the facts of several of these social tools, technologies and media: “Social Media Revolution”
Here are some of the facts that caught my attention:
Social media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the web
1 of 8 couples married in the US met via social media
If Facebook were a country, it would be the world’s 4th largest
TV took 13 years to reach 50 million users, Facebook took less than 9 months to reach 100 millions
Ashton Kutcher has more Twitter followers than the entire population of Ireland, Norway and Panama
80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices
Wikipedia has over 13 million articles
80% of companies are using LinkedIn as their primary tool to find employees
Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
35% of books sales on Amazon are for Kindle
“Social media isn’t a fad; it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate”
To be honest, I was utterly shocked when I heard the news. For months, Twitter and Facebook have been battling it out. Both have acknowledged the other as their main rival. Apps, schemes, plans and plots have come about but none have broken the stalemate between then. Now, Facebook are taking the stance of “well, if you can’t beat them, join them.” They’re launching a new app that will combine Twitter and Facebook.
Here is what they said on their blog:
“If you manage a Facebook Page, you now will be able to decide whether to share updates with their Twitter followers, and you also will be able to control what type of updates to share: status updates, links, photos, notes, events or all of them.
If you have multiple Pages, you will have the option to link each of those Pages to different Twitter accounts. This new feature will only link Facebook Pages to Twitter, not your individual profile. It will soon be available at http://www.facebook.com/twitter”
By coming out with this app, FaceBook are saying “yeah, we couldn’t beat twitter in a straight fight.” However, in my opinion this is great news. Undoubtedly, the two would have spent millions of dollars on plans to take down the other. Well if this app makes the market big enough for the both of them; even if only for six months then we could see some serious advancement in both of their services very soon.
Twitter lists is really starting to take off. Just yesterday we talked about how releasing a widget was going to bring the blogosphere and Twitter ever closer. Now Twitter lists is helping to bring populations closer – thanks to SimplyZesty.
To be honest, I was utterly shocked when I heard the news. For months, 
