Twitter. Use it Wisely

Today Twitter is a rapidly growing Social Tool which is also a hit among Marketers. With its 20 million active user base it is loved by Search Engines as well.

That is an impressive no. of people sending millions of tweets. I think this is really a great platform for businesses to keep updated their followers about company’s new products and offerings who wish to follow them.

Even some time before, Google made an agreement with Twitter to show tweets in their search results. It means your tweets can be viewed as an unique listing in Google Search Engine which can help in increasing traffic on your website.

I think indexing of tweets in search engine offers a great way for businesses to show their presence in Google Search Engine. This is the best time to start optimizing your Twitter presence to maximize your results.

Continue Reading

Music has always been a social concept — even if you’re swaying to the beats in solitary ecstasy with your headphones on, chances are you’ll probably tell a friend about this great song at some point. For this reason, music web sites and programs like Spotify have taken the social media plunge. Spotify seems to advertise Facebook as its biggest social media outlet, but Twitter may actually have more potential for this popular listening service.

Spotify already has a bunch of advantages going for it. It’s a free listening service (with the standard model option of paying for more perks) that you can download to your computer, and it lets you search any song or album and play it instantly. You can also create playlists, browse the top charts, and read the Spotify Facebook feed for music news and tips from both your friends and Spotify itself.

However, whereas Spotify prominently says “Share music” on the sidebar of the application, there is no counterpart playing up its Twitter feed. The @Spotify Twitter account is active and thriving, however. The account has a healthy 76,000+ followers and tweets several times a day.

But though the site’s Twitter account has a lot of potential, it isn’t a music match made in heaven yet. Most of the tweets have to do with answering people’s questions or talking about release dates for new albums. The interaction between listeners and the company is good, but Spotify users would definitely benefit from a few more music-based tweets. Since the “search” element is maybe Spotify’s most alluring feature — you can type any song in and will probably be able to listen to it! — it would be great to have a Spotify tweet stream that gave you ideas for songs to listen to.

Of course, users have such diverse music tastes that releasing random song, album, and artist titles might seem like blindly playing darts. But perhaps that’s the hidden beauty of Twitter — you get bombarded by random tweets, and you might be compelled to look up a random song that doesn’t fit your usual genre.

Pandora has already leveraged its social potential to become one of the top 10 downloaded apps on iTunes. Perhaps by bolstering its Twitter stream, Spotify can keep climbing the prestigious ladder of magical listening services.

Related Blogs

According to the Toronto Star, new research from network security firmPalo Alto Networks shows that Canadians prefer Twitter to Facebook, at least in the workplace.  This fact, and other interesting statistics about Canadian Web surfing and social networking at work, was determined following six months of network data collection at thirty-four big Canadian companies.

According to TheStar.com, “The rampant use of Twitter came as a surprise.  “We have not found a single enterprise in Canada where Twitter is not being used,” René Bonvanie, vice president of worldwide marketing at Palo Alto Networks said in an interview.  “If it were just one or two marketing people using Twitter, the traffic would be in megabytes.  The traffic is in gigabytes.  It’s hundreds of people.”

Continue Reading

The New Year is barely three weeks old and already the same problems of the past are being repeated. Twitter is no longer an unknown quantity, and athletes and sports teams now use it to their advantage. Yet still there are athletes and professionals in the industry that continue to misstep.

1. Marvin Morgan took to the pitch at home for English Two team Aldershot and was met with a chorus of boos. Following the club’s 2-1 loss, the foolish young footballer hit Twitter. “Like to thank the fans who booed me off the pitch. Where’s that going to get you! I hope you all die.” The club responded by fining Morgan two weeks’ worth of pay, and then placed him on the transfer list. He is on loan to another team, and won’t be playing with Aldershot for quite some time.

2. Liverpool defender Glen Johnson does not take criticism well. When ex-Arsenal player Paul Merson took a jab at Johnson on Sky Sports, the footballer took to Twitter with the act-without-thinking attitude that the blogosphere loves so much. “Comments from alcoholic drug abusers are not really gonna upset me and who is Paul Merson to judge players, he was average at the best of times.”  He continued with more brilliance, “The only reason he’s on that show is coz he gambled all his money away. The clown!”  While Merson poked at play on the field, Johnson retaliated with reference to Merson’s alcohol and gambling addiction that plagued him during his playing career. The tweet has since been deleted, but Johnson continued to spout ignorant phrases of self importance. “I dunno wot all the hype is about,” he later posted about his previous comments. “People who give their opinion all the time should accept that 1 day someone else will give their own opinion.”

3. Yet another soccer player, and  yet another member of the Liverpool squad has screwed up online. In what will be filed in the ‘dumb-but-funny’ annals, Ryan Babel tweeted a fake picture of referee Howard Webb in a Manchester United jersey after the club lost to United 2-1. He wrote the caption, “”And they call him one of the best referees? That’s a joke”  Babel has apparently apologized to the referee since then, but will face charges from the English Football Association, which could include a ban or a fine. Prior to their match against Everton, Liverpool has lost three straight matches, a stretch highlighted by the firing of their manager.

4. Soccer players aren’t the only ones that should stay offline. Minnesota collegiate basketball player Trevor Mbakwe will not be going anywhere near social media sites for some time. In 2009, his ex-girlfriend filed a harassment restraining order against him, and this past week Mbakwe decided to make contact with her via Facebook. Two days later he criticized her on Twitter. Both accounts have been disabled, and the junior has been charged with violating the restraining order. He has since apologized to his teammates, friends and family for poor judgement, and while he will remain on the squad, he will be a reserve for now.

5. Lastly, and least, comes Lebron James. He recently proved yet again that being a young, superstar athlete and making tons of money doesn’t translate to being Twitter-savvy. While watching his former team, the Cleveland Cavaliers, get crushed by the Los Angeles Lakers, the Miami Heat star tweeted, “Crazy. Karma is a b****. Gets you every time. Its not good to wish bad on anybody. God sees everything!”

James continues his quest to try to figure out who and what he wants to be. He claims to embrace a bad boy image,and thus the slight jab on Twitter fits, however unfunny. Yet when James was asked about it a day later he backtracked, “”It’s just how I was feeling at the time.” He added, “It wasn’t even a comment from me, it was someone who sent it to me and I sent it out. It wasn’t toward that team.” Clearly the star of the Miami Heat was throwing out random excuses and hoping one would stick. The original tweet may have been antagonistic and a plot to get attention, but the backtracking shows that James really doesn’t know what he is doing, who he wants to be, or how to handle the media in 2011.

Related Blogs

Last week, Liverpool fc player Ryan Babel got into all sorts of bother for an inappropriate tweet. He wasn’t too happy about a penalty given against Liverpool for Manchester United in their FA Cup tie and sent a tweet which pictured the referee in a Manchester United jersey. He wrote “And they call him one of the best referees? That’s a joke”

He later apologized but not before the incident was all over the media and before the FA announced they would be charging him for the matter.

He’s not the first footballer to lose the rag on Twitter. Darren Bent had a go at his Chairman because his transfer out of the club was taking too long. Glen Johnson, another Liverpool player, wasn’t happy about pundit Paul Merson questioning his attitude. Johnson lashed back on Twitter, referring to Merson’s addiction to alcohol, cocaine and gambling in the 1990s. ”Comments from alcoholic drug-abusers are not really gonna upset me …” he wrote. ”The only reason he’s on that show is coz he gambled all his money away. The clown!”

The problem is, footballers are celebrities but they are also employees of clubs too.

Employees Tweeting

It raises a general question about how to deal with the issue of employees tweeting. Traditionally, company announcements were strictly controlled and only issued via marketing or pr departments after serious scrutiny and analysis.

We also are used to having the news controlled and delivered at 9pm every night in a formatted way with the news company deciding which stories we will see. This has all changed now with the community based Internet where the crowd is in control.

We now get our news 24 hours a day from multiple channels and increasingly the crowd is deciding what stories will be shared. It is the same with the impact of social media messages from employees. The control companies once had on announcements is being eroded. We’ve seen employees get fired over tweets, get fired by tweet and not get jobs because of tweets they’ve sent.

Some companies have responded by not allowing employees to tweet at all. Others have tried to restrict Twitter access to a defined group of people who are effectively ‘official spokespeople’ for the company. Finally, some companies such as Zappos and Best Buy allow and encourage many employees to tweet. Zappos now have over 500 employees who are tweeting away.

What is critical here though is that Zappos put a lot of time, money and effort into staff training and into developing their company culture. The big decision is not ‘should we let our employees tweet’ but instead: how do we create the right employee environment such that involving them in tweeting or blogging will have a positive impact on the business.

What you must do

If you do decide to get employees actively involved in communicating via social media make sure you have a clear policy in place for it’s use, make sure you train them thoroughly in how to use and communicate through the medium, support them with tools and information and make sure you reward them for good work done as well as monitoring them to make sure they aren’t doing a bad job!

Sources: Footie (Image Credit)

Related Blogs

As Twitter expands its reach, one of the largest problems with which it has to deal is localization. Starting today, the more than 2 million Twitter users in Korea will have Twitter in their native language.

According to a blog post (in Korean), Twitter has seen a growth rate of over 10x in 2010, and more is expected. In view of that, Twitter for Mobile and Twitter.com are now available in Korean. Although Koreans have already access to twitter for quite some time now, blogger Ajenneja pointed out that features such as using hashtags and performing search could be quite buggy when using Korean words with more than 3 characters.

Existing users can now change their language settings to under account setups. The iPhone and Android apps have been updated as well as support for mobile sevices through LGU+. We’re looking forward to seeing more tweets from our Korean Twitter friends. Now if only more Twitter clients supported on-the-fly translation.

Related Blogs

From Google to Foursquare and Facebook, no social networking site escaped the wrath of privacy in 2010.  Just as social media exploded, so too did privacy breaches and privacy as a hot topic, as any consumer, congressman or Mark Zuckerberg can attest.  But now the official results are in:  Facebook and Twitter were the social networking sites most affected by security breaches in 2010.  What happened, and what’s next?

The findings come courtesy of Internet security company PandaLabsin its just-released “2010 Annual Security Report.”

The company warned that, overall, social media sites have become a “perfect working environment” for cybercriminals because Internet users, for now, place more trust in these sites than other online tools, like email.

In awarding Twitter and Facebook the dubious distinction of standing out from other networking sites security-wise, the report stated, “There are several techniques for tricking users: hickjacking Facebook’s “Like” button, stealing identities to send out messages from trusted sources, exploiting vulnerabilities in Twitter to run javascript code, distributing fake apps that redirect users to infected sites, etc..”

And, using those cyberattacks launched on Facebook and Twitter in 2010, PandaLabs also warned users of what’s to come.

“In 2011, not only will hackers continue to use these networks, but it is predicted that they will also be used more for distributed attacks,” the report said.

The company also warned of more “blended threats” in 2011 that would occur when a cyberattack strikes first through e-mail but then spreads to social media and the web.

The 2011 warning from PandaLabs is just the latest in what experts predict will be a bumpy year for Internet users and social networking executives alike.

Internet security company Proofpoint Inc. recently forecasted that at least one major social media site will experience a significant security breach in 2011, a likely outcome considering that nearly 23 percent of time spent online by Americans is spent on social networking sites.

Sources confirm that Twitter’s official Mac desktop app will be coming to the Mac App Store by tomorrow — which is also the Mac App Store’s official launch date.

RazorianFly reports it has received a mysterious, vague leak to the effect that the Twitter for Mac app will be launching tomorrow. A few features reported so far are native retweet support, real-time updates and drag-and-drop tweeting capabilities.

Tweetie maker Atebits was acquired by Twitter in the spring of 2010.

In a move that might spell trouble for some third-party Twitterdesktop clients, the app will simply be called “Twitter for Mac,” not “Tweetie 2.0″ or anything like that. Twitter’s name on an official app generally spells an uptick in adoption for the official app, never good news for third-party, single-service app makers.

Stay tuned for a full, hands-on review tomorrow. In the meantime, let us know what you think this will signify for makers of third-party Twitter apps for Mac.

Newspapers are dying. Ironically, it’s all over the news — but that doesn’t mean that you can’t get a healthy dose of journalism anymore. Blogging and other forms of social media have replaced the hard copy newspapers we all used to pay for, but in many cases, these new media sources teach us more about what makes for quality content. Tweets aren’t just replacing newspapers, they’re making us better at reading the news.

Twitter helps people become more picky about what articles they read, teaching readers to be more discerning about their news sources. Especially for top stories, you will likely see tweets from a variety of people covering the issue or event. As a result, you not only get the choice of which article to read (which enticing link to click on), but also learn the lesson that no two news articles are the same. After looking at enough tweets and links about the same event, you will realize that the news is full of bias. Whether that makes you choose one source that you agree with and stick to that forever, or whether it makes you check out multiple sources to get the bigger picture, is up to you.

In any case, you learn that all topics have multiple angles. Even just the combination of two subjects, like Obama and the Economy, will generate tweets with slightly different stories within the same hour. For example, check out these two posts from @washingtonpost and @politico. Just by deciding which short teaser appeals most to you, you’ll learn more about your personal news taste.

You also get used to following certain writers on Twitter and seeing comments they make outside of their articles. That way, the next time you read an opinion piece in the New York Times or the Daily Beast, you have a more comprehensive perspective on where that writer is coming from. This also means you can call them out when they contradict themselves — making you one of the more educated types who participate in newspapers’ online forums and such.

In addition, Twitter shows you just how dynamic media can be. After even a brief stint as an avid Twitter user, you will pay more attention to the photos, captions, infographics, charts, and illustrations that are included in newspapers. Your instinct might be to dismiss these elements as primitive compared to the awesome capabilities of online tools — like the NYTimes Twitter election graphic. But in fact, once you get used to looking at the links and embedded content in tweets, you’ll notice that newspapers are trying to keep up with the times; editors are trying to include interesting visual cues for readers, and as a frequent tweeter, you’ll notice their efforts.

And finally, Twitter will just plain point you to the news. I think Twitter spreads world and domestic news far more effectively than Facebook. As a result, users who already have a baseline interest in current events will find it easy to read more. The more you read, the more effective you will be at reading. Go ahead and tweet a while — see if you don’t start separating trashy articles from serious ones, fluffy pieces from well-researched ones, and prejudiced notions from objective analysis.

Little Fockers and True Grit may have claimed first and second place at the Christmas box office, but TRON: Legacy is still tops on Twitter.

Real-time social media tracker Trendrr evaluated the top three films at the weekend box office from December 23 to 27. Despite coming in third place at the box office, TRON: Legacy continues to generate nearly twice as many tweets as either Little Fockers or True Grit.

Little Fockers grossed $30.8 million over the weekend and has a five-day total of $45.1 million. Critic favorite True Grit took in a truly impressive $24.9 million for the weekend — the best ever opening for a Coen Brothers film — and a five-day total of $36.8 million. The 10-day domestic tally for TRON: Legacy now stands at $88.3 million, with $20.1 million coming from the holiday weekend.

On Twitter, TRON is still king, with an average of 1,000 tweets per hour regarding the film. Trendrr tells us thatTrue Grit and Little Fockers barely managed to amass 500 tweets per hour, even on opening night.

It’s unclear what impact — if any — the weather is having on movie-related tweets, but the cold is havingnegative impact on the box office. The ongoing snowmageddon severely dampened box office receipts, which are down more than 44% from 2009. The Hollywood Reporter notes that theaters in New York City and Philadelphia reported 70% drops in ticket sales, while the expected windfall of Sunday moviegoers was thwarted by the worsening weather.

Sentiment and Gender Breakdown

True Grit

TRON: Legacy

Little Fockers might be box office champion, but True Grit seems to have the true momentum. Number of tweets side, the sentiment analysis provided by Trendrr shows that the film has the lowest number of negative tweets. Predictably for a western, True Grit had more than twice as many tweets from male users as female. This figure aligns with the box office 70/30 split for the film. Expect the gender ratio to balance out a bit more as the film continues to build critical and audience buzz.

The family oriented Little Fockers had more female users tweeting than male, but the ratio split was still fairly close. The film also showed a positive sentiment of 68%, according to Trendrr, which is above the critical assessment for the third film in the Parents franchise.