5 Twitter Services and Applications to Bypass 140 Character Limit (Firefox extensions included) A lot of people I know are twitterholics and I believe the way things are going I might also become one of them. Some of the people have also started to use it as one medium where they can discuss or have a communication around social media because it’s usually the social media guys who you’d see making most noise on Twitter or for that matter friendfeed. In these situations one often feels the need of 140 character limit annoying. I dugg for some twitter based application and services which can bypass the 140 character limit or shorten your messages on twitter. TinyPaste is TinyURL for text. Twitzer is a Firefox extension which shortens your long twitter messages. 140it is another similar web service where you can shrink your tweets but it uses less effective approach by removing the extra spaces and turning well-embodied words into sound-similar but grammatically absurd clones.
Twitter Goes to College. At the University of Texas-Dallas, history professor Monica Rankin's 90-person lecture hall was too big for back-and-forth conversation, and she needed a way to get students more involved. She turned to Twitter, the online micro-blogging service that lets people send 140-character messages, or "tweets," out for anyone to see. With some help from students in the school's emerging media program, she had class members set up accounts and use the technology to post messages and ask questions that could be displayed on a screen during class. Rankin found the experiment encouraged participation by students who otherwise would not have joined in. Twitter might be a couple of rungs below Facebook in terms of popularity among college students. Play-by-play. David Parry, a professor of emerging media at UT-Dallas, uses Twitter to keep students engaged in course content beyond the classroom walls. How Does Twitter's New Social Good Initiative Stack Up?
Geoff Livingston co-founded Zoetica to focus on cause-related work, and released an award-winning book on new media Now is Gone in 2007. Last month saw the latest Twitter foray into social good efforts with the launch of the new Hope140 initiative. Its #EndMalaria campaign over the past week featured the TwitPay platform for donations, creating a new call to action for Hope140.
Twitter users participated in World Malaria Day by retweeting and donating $10. The Case Foundation matched donations with a $25,000 grant. #EndMalaria demonstrated that Twitter can be more than an awareness mechanism for non-profits. "We've started Hope140 as a way to identify important things happening on the Twitter platform and across the company," said Jenna Sampson of Twitter. But how well did Hope140 do in an actual campaign? Real-Time Performance "It was as much an awareness raising campaign as it was a fundraising campaign," added Saratovsky. How Does Hope140 Stack Up Against YouTube and Facebook? HOW TO: Build A Twitter Strategy for Your Business. Megan Berry is Marketing Manager for Klout, the standard for online influence. She also blogs at The Huffington Post and Brazen Careerist. You can follow her on Twitter at @meganberry. You know your business can't just wing it on Twitter, you need a strategy. But how do you get there?
1. Who do you want to reach on Twitter? Here is a quick example: Look up at least 10 of your customers on Twitter (a quick name search on Google can turned up their Twitter profiles). The goal here is not to find everyone you'd like to interact with (that would probably be next to impossible), but to find people who might fit into your audience. 2. It might sound like I'm giving you clichéd advice to "listen," but clichés exist for a reason. Look up what people are saying about your company. 3. This is a bit more theoretical but it's an important step that many companies forget. Depending on your goal, try to figure out how much each person is "worth. " 4. 5. How formal or informal do you want to be? 5 Unique Ways to Use Twitter for Business. **This series is supported by the Social Influence System and WE twendz™ pro, presented by Waggener Edstrom Worldwide. To learn more visit Waggeneredstrom.com/nozombies.
Customer service, recruiting, contests, giveaways and promotions — these are all standbys for businesses using Twitter as a medium to connect with customers and fans. Given that Twitter as a platform supports nearly limitless applications for business use, we thought it time to highlight some of the newer Twitter-for-business opportunities that aren't so obvious. From pitching your followers and rewarding Twitter loyalty, to keeping a trained eye on the Twitterverse, targeting smaller communities, and adding metadata to tweets, here are some unique ways to use Twitter in your social business strategy. 1. As part of Mountain Dew's DEWmocracy campaign, the soda company empowered Flavor Nations — fan communities for new Dew flavors — to own a flavor of soda that the company is now testing on the market. 2. 3. 4. 5.
HOW TO: Build A Twitter Strategy for Your Business. Twitter Launches “Places” Feature with Foursquare Integration. After months of rumors and hinting, Twitter has unveiled its major new foray into the world of geolocation, Twitter Places. This feature will highlight tweets at a given location. Starting now, Twitter.com desktop and mobile users can tag their tweets with existing Twitter Places and add new Twitter Places, too.
Twitter Places can be explored and will reveal a list of recent, public tweets from that location. Twitter will also show you nearby locations and points of interest, including restaurants and shops. Twitter Places will be integrated with Foursquare and Gowalla, as well. "Location is a key component of these tweets, so we worked closely with both companies to associate a Twitter Place with Tweets generated by these services," wrote Twitter geo head Othman Laraki today on the company's blog. Location data will also work with more browsers, including Safari and Internet Explorer. Here's what it looks like from the web interface:
The World Cup's Social Media Evolution. For continuous World Cup coverage, check out Mashable's 2010 World Cup Hub, which will be updated throughout the games. Kaka, one of the world’s premiere football players, is using his Twitter account to connect with fans and do things like share a pair of songs that were written for him. During the last World Cup in 2006 Kaka — or any other player, for that matter — couldn't have connected with fans in that way because, well, Twitter didn’t really exist.
This year’s World Cup has an unprecedented volume of social media outlets and initiatives from Twitter feeds to Facebook fan pages, viral videos to mobile apps and more. With so much access, it’s easy to lose track of where all this social media goodness actually came from. Below is a brief look at how the World Cup and social media have evolved together. 2002 – Korea/Japan World Cup “Social media” as we know it now (complete with Twitter, Foursquare, etc.) did not exist in 2002, but the World Cup still found ways to connect with fans.
A New Record: 3,085 Tweets Created Per Second During NBA Finals. 3 New Ways to Use Twitter at Live Events. If you use Twitter, chances are you’ve tweeted from a live event. But there’s so much more Twitter can offer. In this article, I’ll share three secrets you’ve likely never heard of… But first, why do you attend offline events? Is it the lunch (invariably chicken and rice)? No, no and no. And in that regard, Twitter has a starring role. Beyond live tweeting, Twitter tools can give you a whole other level of live event benefits. . #1: Follow ‘Em All With BlastFollow When I’m at an industry event where the attendees are almost universally interesting or relevant to my business, I want to follow them on Twitter. It’s an incredibly simple and effective concept. The system also shows you a list of everyone using the hashtag, and notes whether you’re already following them.
. #2: Keep a Digest With Twapper Keeper Having to decide between concurrent sessions is incredibly frustrating at good conferences. If any of those scenarios sound familiar, please welcome Twapper Keeper into your life. HOW TO: Help New Users Stay Engaged on Twitter. This Twitter Trends Series is supported by Bing.™ Check out the Bing Local Twitter Trends Map on Mashable. One of Twitter's most disappointing trends is its lack of solid user retention. If you're a Twitter evangelist, the scenario is probably familiar. You explain to friends and family how much value and fun can be had in 140 characters. They sign up, test the waters for a few days, derive no use value, and promptly abandon their accounts. To remedy this, we've outlined the common missteps of new users and some ways you can help prevent them from becoming part of the Twitter quitter trend.
They Only Follow People They Know This is probably the most common reason why new users lose interest, and it stems from a division in social web culture. At this moment, the standard bearer for social networking is Facebook, and it's generally a culture of in-person acquaintances: Classmates, personal friends, family, co-workers, and the like. They Only Follow Brands and Celebrities They're Not Mobile. Consumers say: ‘In tweets we trust’ Brands that use microblogging sites like Twitter to provide real-time responses to the public are winning a higher degree of trust from consumers, according to a study by a leading public relations firm. Some 75 per cent of people surveyed said they view companies that microblog - sending short, frequent messages on sites like Twitter or status updates on social networks like Facebook - as more deserving of their trust than those that do not, according to a survey by Fleishman-Hillard, conducted with market research firm Harris Interactive.
The second annual Digital Influence Index study, released at the Reuters Consumer and Retail Summit in New York, researches the extent to which the Internet affects consumer behavior. "What really matters here I think is that the rules of crisis engagement that we've known for years and years still apply, but they still apply in a much more accelerated way," Dave Senay, Chief Executive of Fleishman-Hillard, told Reuters in a telephone interview. Facts and Figures on Twitters Amazing Growth of over 1300% « Jef. I decided to have a look at the “Twitter Phenomenon” by looking at some interesting facts and figures and it was quite a revelation. I looked at Growth Rates in comparison to other social mediaSubscribers by CountryCountry interest in Twitter as measured by Google searches The USA has the largest Twitter user base due to its population size and early adoption of the the technology the other nations are quickly taking a high level of interest.
Current estimates have Twitter with over 8 Million users after 3 years at the end of March, 2009 . Growth rates compared to other social media Nielsen (Figures as published February, 2009) also looked at Twitter and compared it with other social networking sites in terms of growth over the last 12 months and Twitter easily took top spot with a phenomenonal 1382% growth compared to Zimbio with 240% annual growth and Facebook with 228% Twitter\’s blog shows the subscriber share from different countries Interest measured by search inquiries by country 1. 2. The Rise of Comedy on Twitter. It takes only a quick glance at the most "faved" and retweeted updates to know that tweeters love the funny.
A good 140-character quip is a jewel in any Twitter feed, and the network has impacted humor for pros and amateurs alike. If you tweet with the right crowd, Twitter can be a hilarious non-stop party. And if you follow professional comedians who use Twitter well, you've got a free, live, unfiltered stand-up show right in your feed. Many humor pros have used the medium to reignite their careers and reach new fans. But is Twitter humor different from "traditional" humor? The One-Liner Renaissance You've only got 140 characters to fit the setup, punchline, and some breathing room for retweets. "The people that get a lot of play [on the funniest Twitterers lists] are people who keep it really simple," said comedian and writer Paul F. "Even the longest stories in your act should be succinct," said stand-up comedian and writer Steve Hofstetter.
The flip side is, there's no filter. Twitter Search Volume Up 33% Since April.