Archive for: twitter
I came across a great little service this morning from one of our readers who commented on one of our other articles. They recommended that we check out the Twitter service called Geochirp. GeoChirp is a great web app that allows you to see who is talking about what in what location, all via Twitter.
With GeoChirp you input your location and then set the radius and the number of tweets you want to be able to see. Once that is all done GeoChirp finds people from that location and shows you their tweets. GeoChirp also hooks in to Google Maps which allows you to exactly see where that person is based.
GeoChirp is a very interesting idea however apart from providing basic entertainment purposes im not too sure why a lot of people who use this in their daily lives.
The mobile market in all of its forms has, indeed, made a big impact around the world within the last few years. The ideas of stay always “connected” whenever and wherever, simplifying your life using a single device were just a few around. Big companies are focusing in these interconnections and technologies because, let’s face it: pays off. And Microsoft it’s no exception, this time presenting an interesting app: OneApp.
What’s the idea? This mobile app will let you access other apps like Facebook, Twitter (TweetLite), Live Messenger, games and more without actually installing them on your phone. Even though the application architecture and functionality are not revealed, seems that the small footprint from OneApp (150kb) will dynamically launch parts of the application and avoid installation or storage requirements; something like application virtualization for web apps, not a bad idea.
OneApp also includes cloud services that help offload processing and storage from the phone to the Internet, improving overall performance. But, as you may think, this mobile app it is only compatible with a few phones (at least in this first stage); here’s the list:
- Nokia 3555, 5320, 6300, 6500, 6600, E50, E51, E63, E65, E66, E71, N70, N72, N73, N78, N80, N81, N82, N85, N95, N96
- Samsung U900 Soul
- Sony Ericsson C510, C902, C905, G705,K610i, K800i, K805i, T650i, W200i, W580i, W595, W660i, W980
Are you planning in using it?
I have been after some great social media icons for a long time and I have finally come across a great set. All icons are circular and of the highest quality. Icons include AIM, Bebo, eBay, Hi5, Last.fm, LinkedIn, Windows Live, Ning, Orkut, Twitter and more.
Download: Social Media Icons Pack 2.0 (.rar), Social Media Icons Pack 2.0 (.zip)
I’m more of a Twitpic man myself. All my Twitpic pictures are of random things I saw such as a cool old train on Sunday or a weird seal chilling in a harbour. The URL which links to my pictures is of course a Twitpic one. But now, what about the millions of other people who upload photos or send links via YouTube to their Twitter. Because twitter allows a maximum of 140 characters per tweet you must make everything count.
Now, Bitly (or bit.ly as you may see it in tweets) is teaming up with Yfrog to provide an image uploading service on twitter. Bitly were given their first big break when their URL was officially built into twitter, replacing the well-known TinyURL. The new image service which will allow users to upload images via the Bitly website and automatically sync it with their twitter is due to be live by the end of the month.
Bitly is certainly getting big now with other companies such as Google (Google Reader) and Typepad now using the shortened URLs as standard. CBS is also using the service on its website.
So, from now on expect to see a lot more Bitly URLs on Twitter.
There has been a lot of talk recently about the new Retweet site that has launched and it has the killer domain Retweet.com. Retweet is a direct competitor to the dominant Tweetmeme, which tracks what the most popular links are on Twitter.
Retweet went live last week and has received a lot of press but for the wrong reasons. Retweet seems to have just completely copied not just the basic site design from Tweetmeme, but also the code with relation to the Retweet buttons. Im a firm believer that innovation is key to a strong technology company, however im not too sure that Retweet has even thought about this.
With a domain name like Retweet. com I would have thought that the first idea would be to start a service similar to Tweetmeme, but to also add a killer domain shortening service to the site. Retweet is a great domain in which im sure Twitter would want to be associated with. Is this such a stupid idea?
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.
I really love Twitter. I tweet at least once or twice an hour from my phone when watching a movie, playing my xBox, out with friends our just about doing anything you can imagine; including writing for Crenk. I’d hate to see Twitter slip down that slope that few seem to be able to get back up. Kind of like MySpace is right now.
FaceBook’s new iPhone app may be just the thing that pushes it too. Over the past few months FaceBook have tried to match Twitter on all fronts. While FaceBook still markets itself as a social network they have become more twitterish and this is reflected in their new app.
You can have status updates similar to those on the new Windows Live Messenger. You can also blog and surf through your pages more easily. Furthermore, the app incorporates the ‘Pages’ idea which is to coax people to join FaceBook because of the celebrities on there – much like Twitter did…Hmmm.
This app is also really integrated with the iPhone’s call and text features. If you want to call or send a message to a friend you can do so right from your friends list on the FaceBook app rather than closing it and dialling from the phone’s interface.
As an app I think it’s really good but it’s obvious that Facebook are now trying to play Twitter’s game when it comes to status updates, celebrities, micro-blogging and the portability that comes with streamlined apps.
It appears as though Yahoo! may be the first real competitor to Twitter. Other companies such as Facebook have tried to draw people away from micro-blogging back to social networking. But there has been no real competition on the actual micro-blogging front.
A while back, Yahoo! stealthily rolled out Yahoo! Meme in the Portuguese language only. Nobody was all too sure why they did this because as business goes, you’re supposed to promote, promote, promote! Now their reasoning is clear.
It was a test. To see if it stood a chance without causing the company any embarrassment if it failed. They are now tackling Twitter on the global front by launching the micro-blogging platform in the second biggest language in the world; Spanish.
While people all over the world do use Twitter, studies have shown that services are received better by the public when they are tailored specifically to their needs – in this case their language.
While I can’t see Meme over running Twitter on the English servers I can see the new Yahoo! service picking up steam in South America, Mexico, West Africa and of course Spain.
A new study of Twitter, more specifically the ‘Tweets’ on Twitter, found that 40% of all communication on the popular micro-blogging service is pointless gibberish, spam or people babbling about stuff only they would understand.
The company who conducted the study are called Pear Analytics and say that 40% of the posts on twitter are things such as ‘Only Eight Hours to go’ which would mean nothing to the average user – only a small inside circle would understand.
Another kind of tweet which make up the rest of this babble is SPAM; our beloved old nemesis.
You realise your followers has gone up by fifteen in a few days so your check them out. Then, your bubble is burst when you find that all they only followed you so you’d “check out their vids”. Hmm…perhaps not.
“We thought the news category would have more weight than dead last,” the report read, “since this seems to be contrary to Twitter’s new position of being the new source of news and events.”
Anyway, I wasn’t too surprised by this. Often, when I scan tweets on my Twitter homepage I ask myself “Now what in the world could that mean?”. But then, I’m guilty of it myself with some of my tweets reading like this; “No, I shouldn’t have done that. It was a baaaaad idea”. I suppose it’s good to have a number to put on all those useless tweets though.
4o%, remember that.
For the professional, company owner, blogger or just those who are Twitter crazy there is HootSuite. This is a cool start-up web app that lets you manage multiple Twitter accounts all from the one screen.
There are numerous reasons one may find this useful. For example, Crenk has its own Twitter account run by our CEO
Steven who also has his own personal twitter account. Such is the story for websites, company bosses and bloggers all over the world. Signing in and out of twitter can get annoying so why not streamline the whole thing?
After signing into Hootsuite you’ll be greeted by all of you twitter accounts. Here, you can tweet to each specific one. View each account’s followers and make changes to that account. That saves you a load of time by not having to sign in an out just to make a few tweets!
It all looks good too. Despite that fact that you can have multiple accounts running at the same time it doesn’t look cluttered or messy in the least. Everything is all very well laid out and is incredibly easy to use.
One bad thing I will say is that for the power-user, it can get a tad slow but this shouldn’t apply to most of us who just want to Tweet to different accounts a few times and hour.
Only around 15% of all the Twitter users are less than 25 years old, who would know? An official report from Morgan Stanley says that teenagers just don’t use Twitter.
You won’t be surprised if I tell you that people under 25 years are the main Internet users, only this group of people takes the 25% of all population; but they also just represent 16% of all Twitter.
And which age group takes the majority on Twitter? 25-54 years old, they take up to 64% of the Twitter population (me included of course). 20% for people over 55 years and 16% for those under 25. Yeap, you read it right, 20% of Twitter users are over 55 years.
If you start thinking about it (and when I say “thinking” I mean checking your list of followers and following) you would probably notice that you have a bunch of friends, a selected group of celebrities (yes, I know, we all have @aplusk), and would probably see a large number of marketers, companies, brands, channels, journalists or even PR guys. And that’s not exactly the main focus of teens these days.
It doesn’t feel like the teen wave didn’t appear just yet in Twitter? Can we expect a new teen market for Twitter as it was for Facebook?
The United States Marine Corps (USMC) are currently deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq, fighting day in day out against insurgency and terrorism under the constant threat of IEDs and enemy Kalashnikov or RPG fire. They bravely soldier on throughout.
However, when it comes to Web 2.0 they’re left quivering in their combat boots. The USMC has just announced that it is placing a network wide ban on Web 2.0 sites such as Twitter, MySpace and FaceBook in an effort to make their systems more secure.
They say that these sites are easily hacked and used by hackers and scammers and indeed those against US operations to post links to malicious sites in the hope a marine on R&R or a USMC staff member might click on them.
This would expose the soft underbelly of the USMC’s network and would lead to disaster. Here is what the USMC order read :
- “These internet sites in general are a proven haven for malicious actors and content and are particularly high risk due to information exposure, user generated content and targeting by adversaries…”
- “The very nature of SNS [social network sites] creates a larger attack and exploitation window, exposes unnecessary information to adversaries and provides an easy conduit for information leakage that puts OPSEC [operational security], COMSEC [communications security], [and] personnel… at an elevated risk of compromise.”
