Crenk » twitter

Facebook and Twitter to Fight SPAM… again

Dean Sherwin — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:51:56 +0000

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.

Web App Buffers Timely Online Communication

Luis Sandoval — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 03:53:50 +0000

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 Lists Goes Nationwide – Then Stateside

Dean Sherwin — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 21:49:00 +0000

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.

Make sure you join the Crenk list here.

Microsoft Soft Launch New MSN.com Home Page

Steven Finch — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:49:54 +0000

It has been reported that MSN.com is rolling uot a new version over time. You can preview the new version at http://preview.msn.com.

I never knew that more than 1/3 of all Internet users worldwide visit MSN every month. 400 million people per month. Thats nearly as good as Yahoo’s 600 million and killing AOL’s 80 million. But still, it’s the most popular Internet portal that no one actually ever goes to.

In the new version everything is a lot cleaner and easier to read. They have integrated Facebook and Twitter nicely and more videos. Additionally, you will notice the simplicity of the Bing search bar which provide no clutter.

Microsoft have also reported that more than half of their monthly visitors use Facebook on a monthly basis, as well as 15% using Twitter. These are the key reasons why these services are added but not much else.

Social Networking with 6rounds Expands Online Community

Luis Sandoval — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 06:02:37 +0000

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.

Twitter Launch New Twitter Lists Widget

Dean Sherwin — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:51:35 +0000

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.

Crenk Twitter Lists: Crenk Team, Top Technology News Sources, Tech Talk and Bittorrent News

Steven Finch — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:58:35 +0000

Well all know about the new lists feature that Twitter has released. Here at Crenk we thought we would add a few Twitter lists of our own and categories them so everyone can keep up to date with what is happening in the following areas:

Crenk Team – http://twitter.com/crenk/team

Top Technology News Sources – http://twitter.com/crenk/toptechnews

Tech Talk (Top Analysis from Leading Minds in Technology) – http://twitter.com/crenk/techtalk

Bittorrent News – http://twitter.com/crenk/bittorrent

Blitter: Free Twitter Icons by Icon Shock

Steven Finch — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:05:10 +0000

The team over at Iconshock and HongKiat have released a new Twitter icon set called Blitter.

Download Blitter (256×256, 512×512), PNG format

Download Blitter source Ilustrator .AI format

Download Blitter full set (Icons + source)

Crenk Twitter Accounts Everyone Should Be Following!

Steven Finch — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:43:40 +0000

Crenk – http://twitter.com/crenk
Steven Finch – http://twitter.com/steven_finch
Dean Sherwin – http://twitter.com/deansherwin
Augusto Alvarez – http://twitter.com/augustoalvarez

OMGICU: Its Like Stalking Celebrities Via Twitter

Steven Finch — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 09:50:47 +0000

OMGICU is a new startup which users Twitter to keep track of what celebrities are in what towns at the moment. OMGICU currently keeps track of celebrities in New York and Los Angeles. Members regularly spot celebrities in their natural habitats. And when they do, they text us, and we tell you, in real-time, at omgicu.com or by sending texts or Twitter direct messages about the people and the places you care about.

Additionally, OMGICU has a pecking order of celebrities in which rates them according to popularity and sightings. Currently im not too sure why Tracy Morgan is at number 1!

Free and Customized Twitter Background with Twitlay

Augusto Alvarez — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 17:09:51 +0000

For those concerned about their Twitter home page layout, you should know that having a free and customizable Twitter background creator it is not the easiest thing to find. And here’s a great choice: Twitlay.

On this site you will be able to upload your images, customize and create your own Twitter background. I know what you are about to say, you don’t have time nor the creativity (that’s me) to design your own backgrounds, well it gets simpler, you can just use some others already designed and uploaded to Twitlay previously.

Oh and in case you haven’t read the title, it’s completely free. So, instead of still using the same background layout when you created your Twitter account, give this one a try!

Street Named with a Twitter Account

Augusto Alvarez — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 12:16:46 +0000

If you were thinking that you’ve seen it all in the Twitter globe, think again: A Palestinian street was named with a Twitter account name “@arjanelfassed tweetstreet”.

And who is this guy and why does he have a street named by his twitter name? Well it is much simpler that you may think, he bought it by u$s140 in this website. The owner of the Twitter account, Arjan El Fassed, also works as a humanitarian in a Holland development agency.

The website was looking for supporters for children in this refugee camp and to give these children some possibilities for cultural after-school activities. One of the co-founders said about the initiative: “We provide the opportunity for anyone to have a street named after them or one of their loved-ones — normally you’re required to have done something incredibly heroic and be dead before you get that sort of privilege”.

If these kinds of advertisements are helping some really needy people, then cheers to that. And common! Don’t tell me that you are not thinking the idea to do the same with your twitter account, blog or website?

(Ok, put me down with two: “@augustoalvarez” street and “http://blog.augustoalvarez.com.ar/” avenue)

Biz Information: How Much Is My Website Worth? Some Figures Are Even Accurate

Steven Finch — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 08:36:14 +0000

There are so many sites out there that have a stab in the dark to let you know how much your website is worth. Most of these sites dont even get close on the basic metrics let alone of value figure. Today I came across a new website evaluation site that actually gets the basic metrics right, even though the value figure might be a little off.

BizInformation.org is a very simple website idea that valuates any given url. BizInformation presents the value of the site, daily pageviews, daily visitors, website rankings, indexing stats and social media stats. Thus, provide a decent overall look at the key metrics for the sites and then tries to determine the overall value. This seems to be a very simple way of doing it, but also very affective. I was very surprised to see how accurate the service can be in terms of daily pageviews and daily visitors.

My site is worth$1.67 MillionYour website value?

Currently BizInformation thinks that Crenk has an overall value of $1.67 million and based on that amount I would even have to consider selling.

Artwiculate: Your Word a Day Twitter Calander

Dean Sherwin — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 21:19:49 +0000

I’m a writer – perhaps not a good one but it’s what I fill out on my tax returns year after year. As with all writer I read, write and read some more. Learning new words is one for the tricks of the trade but, to be completely honest, I couldn’t be bothered. ‘Word a day’ calendars were a cool novelty but have died – and carrying around an oxford dictionary with you isn’t exactly practical now is it?

However, I have found a solution to my literary conundrum – Artwiculate. To put it simply, it’s a word a day calander for Twitter. You follow the Artwiculate account and use their word (in context) within one or more of your tweets. If your tweet is good enough, it will get picked up by them and earn you points (which are purely for status within the ranks of Artwiculate).

I think this is a cool way to learn new words. For example, did you know Mellifluous means smooth and flowing like honey; normally used to describe a sound or voice?

ReadTwit: Turn Twitter Into an Aggregate RSS Reader or Feed

Steven Finch — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 09:54:18 +0000

Readtwit is a 3-step service that will seamlessly integrates this aggregation power of the people you follow – into your RSS reader.

Readtwit, a new web service by Lionite does one simple thing – it captures weblinks from your Twitter stream and then publishes the content as an RSS feed. You can then use any feed reading application to read it.

Head over to ReadTwit and hit the ‘Get Fed’ button
Choose your RSS reader (and if it’s not there click the ‘Get me the feed‘ button and paste the feed into your reader)

Readtwit automatically prevents content duplication caused by retweets. It does that by grouping together similar links that are sent in the same time-frame. Once you’ve set up your RSS feed, you can further tweak Readtwit to prevent (or at least minimize) information overload.

First, you can filter out specific users. This feature will help you keep focused on useful content, as you can set it to not display links by people who post too much (and also exclude yourself, in order to not get back the links you post, as retweets).

Why Aren’t You Already Following Crenk on Twitter?

Steven Finch — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 13:23:21 +0000

Follow Crenk on Twitter! I havent written an article about our Twitter accounts in a little while, so thought I would just let everyone know about all our accounts.

Crenk – http://twitter.com/crenk

Steven Finch – http://twitter.com/steven_finch

Dean Sherwin – http://twitter.com/deansherwin

Augusto Alvarez – http://twitter.com/augustoalvarez

John Steppens – http://twitter.com/johnofthewest

TunesTweeter: Tweet Your iTunes Songs Straight onto Twitter

Steven Finch — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 15:14:19 +0000

There are just so many Twitter clients in the market at the moment and Im even finding it hard to keep up. The newest Twitter client is TunesTweeter. TunesTweeter is a web app that lets you show what you are currently listening to in iTunes, and updates your Twitter status with the song and artist.

TunesTweeter seems like an interesting application that adds a nice twist, maybe now someone will also come out with a Last.fm Twitter related client.

Tweet Presents with Twesent

Dean Sherwin — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 18:03:05 +0000

Yes indeed Crenk readers, we have another Twitter web app to tell y’all about. It’s called Twesent. Basically, it takes the normal tweet and turns it into a virtual present for your pals!

You got to Twesent.com and follow the instructions. Then, you select what present you want to send to the people you’re following. For example, I decided to buy a few friends a pint of beer each, what with me being Irish and the hilarity of living up to a stereotype.

So after I selected the pint of beer I continue to sign in with my twitter username and password and select who to send it too. I had fifty free credits and I believe three pints of beer cost me 24 credits. You can but more credits if you wish using PayPal for a small price.

This is cool tool to know about for when a friend’s birthday rolls around or indeed as a very half-hearted apology to you significant other. Or, you know, just for the laugh!

Twittorati : Where the Blogosphere and the Twittersphere meet.

John Steppens — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 15:57:21 +0000

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.

FileTwT : File Sharing On Twitter

John Steppens — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 21:00:55 +0000

It seems like these days you can’t go anywhere without tripping over a multitude of Twitter Apps, all of them struggling against each other vying for attention of the masses. Much like the people who use twitter. Well now it’s the turn of Filetwt.

It’s all very simple and convenient. Just put in your Twitter name and password, type in a description then upload a file. A link to that file will be posted on your twitter account.

Filetwt is a tool of convenience as it wouldn’t take too much effort to find one of the many other file uploading websites and then manually post the link to twitter yourself. That way you could have files larger than 20 megs. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the more well known uploading websites added a Tweet option.

According to the website if you sign up you can get Private Tweets, faster file uploads, updates and stuff. Personally I try not to sign up for anything if I don’t have to and the upload speed seems reasonable enough.

Tweet Portal: Biggest and Best Twitter Links all in one place

Steven Finch — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 10:29:55 +0000

There are so many places on the net where you can now see the biggest and best links via Twitter. Today we came across a new site that has high hopes, TweetPortal. TweetPortal does exactly what is says in the tin and show the most popular tweets via channels (business, sport, etc).

TweetPortal is great for quickly seeing what is happening in each area via Twitter, but it still has a lot of work to do to be more efficient than the likes of Tweetmeme.

So what does TweetPortal need to improve? Well here are my thoughts:

Design – the overall site design isnt great, plus it is actually quite hard to get a good overall look at what is happening in the world via the home page. More tweets need to shown on the home page in a different format, cause the basic boxes dont really work.
Advertising – Im really not a huge fan of dirty Google adsense ads that ad nothing at all to the design and at the same time seem to cheapen the site quality.
Channels – there is a great list of channels, however when checking out the channels it still only breaks down into a very limited number of smaller channels.

TweetPortal really has a huge amount to do to become a Tweetmeme competitor let alone a key destination for news via Twitter. It will be interesting to see if they take our advice on board and really try to improve the quality and options within their service.

Yahoo Meme: Twitter Meets Viral

Steven Finch — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 08:09:40 +0000

I was lucky enough to receive an invite to Yahoo’s new product Meme. Meme is a micro-blogging service from Yahoo that works in a very similar way to Twitter. You may now ask, whats the difference?

Yahoo Meme is very fast and stable
Yahoo Meme makes it very easy to post Video, Music and Photos straight into your stream
Yahoo Meme has really focused on making it easy to re-post items you like, with just 1 click (Viral focused)

We have joined just to test out the service and even after testing im pretty sure im going to keep using the account, because it is just so simple and easy to use. If you want to follow Crenk on Yahoo Meme our url is: http://meme.yahoo.com/crenk/

So you may be wondering why doesnt everyone just move over to this service from Twitter, well basically its because of the amount of users using Twitter. Additionally its the community of developers who have helped Twitter grow at the rate they have.

What Yahoo Meme really needs to develop:

Yahoo Meme needs its own URL and identity away from the Yahoo.com domain. It would be good to see this as a standalone service
Ability to resize pictures and videos down so that a lot more streams can be seen in the same window (problem with media in the stream)

Yahoo Meme is currently in private beta, so to mark its launch we can offer a lucky 5 people into the system. All you have to do is comment on this post and let us know why you want to use the service so badly!

Twitter Logos: Free Twitter Badges, Logos and Images for your Site or Blog

Dean Sherwin — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 11:53:48 +0000

Many of us have blogs, websites or at least a profile or two on a few social networking sites, right? And many of us are also on twitter. So instead of just posting a link saying “hey, follow me”, you could have a cool, professional looking twitter logo or cartoon for people to click on to go to your Twitter profile.

TwitterLogos.com is a collection of free twitter logos submitted by hundreds of graphic designers for our disposal. On the homepage you can see all the latest posts. Most of them are really good. You have the well-known chubby bird but I also found some new faces…or beaks such as a kind of pelican bird, a cheerleading bird and randomly enough, a can of twitter beer.

When you have found the series that you like, simply click on it and download the file. There will be instructions on how to use the Twitter badges in the .zip file.

These are easy to insert into blogging platforms such as Wordpress or into text for a profile on Facebook, MySpace etc…

StockTwits.com – Realtime Stock Tweeting

Dean Sherwin — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 07:55:49 +0000

My second Twitter post today – I must have tweet fever or something! This one is however a little more on the serious side – Stocks.

Yes, I suppose we can partially blame them for the recession and be totally jealous of their riches but they need to talk too, right? StockTwits Desktop is a new piece of software that allows people all over the world to talk to one another about stocks. Within the tweets you’ll find the latest gossip, trends and advices about trading.

The programs basically consists of columns of tweets in different categories as well as StockTwit TV which gives you the latest news about the software. For example, they recently teamed up with the trading giant NASDAQ in the Big Apple.

It’s all free and extremely useful to anyone who currently trades or is interested in becoming a stock trader. I used the programs for five minutes and discovered that AIG stocks may be a safe bet for the future and that USD-JPY would not have been a good move.

You can get a feel for the software or download it at their homepage.

Social Media Revolution

Augusto Alvarez — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 19:07:11 +0000

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”