Archive for the ‘Microblogging’ Category

The folks at Twitter are beta testing a new retweet feature which will enable you to retweet a post with one click. There will also be a new retweet icon to quickly identify retweets.

Pete Cashmore at Mashable suggests Google Wave: Better than Twitter for Conference Chatter? This interesting post illustrates the effective use of Google’s new enhanced email app through screenshots of an audience attending a session at the Ecomm conference.

“Rather than a stream of disconnected Tweets, the result was a wiki-like page of annotations which evolved over the course of a presentation.”

Sarah Evans at Mashable writes about 10 Ways You Can Use Twitter Lists. If you’re looking for inspiration for how to make the most of this new Twitter feature, you may want to check out this post. Here are her top five:

1. Industry Peers and Professionals Lists
2. Experts Lists
3. Recognize and Reward Customers Lists
4. Niche Lists
5. Employee Directory Lists

Sarah Perez at ReadWriteWeb discusses several reports which show that Twitter is attracting a younger demographic in As Facebook Ages, Gen Y Turns to Twitter. There are several interesting statistics included in this post such as: “Twitter is now the second-youngest of the top four social networking sites. Its median age is 31. MySpace’s is 26, LinkedIn is 39, and, as noted above, Facebook is 33.”

“Facebook is getting old. No, people aren’t getting tired of it, it’s actually getting old, as in its population is aging. In May of 2008, the median age for Facebook was 26. Today, it’s 33, a good seven years older. That’s an interesting turn of events for a site once built for the exclusive use of college students. So where are today’s college students hanging out now? Well, to some extent, they’re still on Facebook, despite having to share the space with moms, dads, grandparents, and bosses. Surprisingly though, they’re also headed to another network you may have heard of: Twitter.”

Twitter Lists are a new feature which allows you to group people into sets - even people you aren’t following. This is a great way to organize your Twitterers into lists such as: librarians, family, friends, etc. and then click into those lists for a tweet stream of what those people are saying. Josh Catone at Mashable has put together a guide to How To: Use Twitter Lists, and Jennifer Van Grove provides instructions as to how to Embed Your Lists on Your Blog.

Both Google and Microsoft Bing announced yesterday that they have partnered with Twitter to include their updates in all search results. According to All Things Digital, Microsoft has also reached an agreement with Facebook to provide real-time status updates in Bing’s search results as well. These new partnerships are particularly significant as the Pew Internet and American Life Project has recently reported that the number of people who now publish status updates has increased from 11% in December 2008 to 19% as of April 2009.

The folks at MakeUseOf have published a 53-page Complete Guide to Twitter. If you want to get up to speed on how to effectively tweet, you’ll want to check out this guide which includes sections about:

• Hashtags
• ReTweeting
• Searching for Twitter Trends
• Managing Your Reputation on Twitter
• Twitter Apps and Bots You Should Know About
• Scheduling Your Tweets for Later

Debbie Weil, author of The Corporate Blogging Book, tells Mashable readers about 5 Ways to Write Retweetable Tweets. If you want to learn how to create tweets that get passed along to others, check out these five tips:

1. Always Include a Link
2. Don’t Use Up All 140 Characters
3. When Retweeting, Add Something Original
4. Build Credibility With Your Bio and URL
5. Combine the Personal With the Professional

Bill Drew, Librarian at Tompkins Cortland Community College Library, has created a Google Site for his recent presentation titled Why Twitter?: What can Twitter do for my library & my community? This website resource provides a Twitter tutorial aimed at public libraries, along with articles, videos, Twitter tools, abbreviations, and other helpful materials.

The Accelerated Bachelor Degree blog has come up with a mega-list of 100 Ways to Use Twitter In Your Library. If your library is thinking about microblogging, you’ll want to check out these tips which are divided into the following categories:

• Reference
• Discussion
• Announcements & Updates
• Helpful Feeds
• Colleagues, Students, and Friends
• Library Twitter Tools that Could be Useful
• Vendors Using Twitter

via Mobile Libraries

Kelly D. Allen writes about How Your Library May Not Be Using Twitter But Should. This useful post discusses several tweet styles to provide libraries with inspiration for making the most of their Twitter efforts.

• Tweet Style 1, or “The Average Library Tweet”
• Tweet Style 1b, or “Uhm, Ya Know You Can Be a Little Creative Though, Right?”
• Tweet Style 2, or “Promote Some Materials”
• Tweet Style 3, or “Promote Things As They Happen”
• Tweet Style 4, or “It Doesn’t Have to Require a Library Visit”
• Tweet Style 5, or “Interact!”

via LibrarianinBlack

If you’re doing any sort of writing for the Web, from blogging to tweeting, you’ll want to check out Josh Catone’s 5 Rules for Better Web Writing. This succinct post defines five guidelines to improve your copy writing.

1. Know Your Objective
2. Know Your Audience
3. Keep it Short
4. Make it Scannable
5. Embrace Constraints

Jennifer Van Grove at Mashable analyzes 5 Red Hot Twitter Trends to Track. If you want to keep updated on what’s happening with the popular microblogging app, you’ll want to read about these emerging Twitter trends:

1. Location-Aware Tweets
2. Twitter Apps Folding
3. Twitter Content Analysis
4. Twitter Policies
5. A Twitter Star is Born

Josh Catone at Mashable creates a guide to using Twitter Hashtags for Business. If you’re still getting up to speed on what hashtags are and how you can use them to benefit your organization, be sure and check out this article.

“Hashtags are essentially a simple way to catalog and connect tweets about a specific topic. They make it easier for users to find additional tweets on a particular subject, while filtering out the incidental tweets that may just coincidentally contain the same keyword. Hashtags are also often used by conference and event organizers as a method of keeping all tweets about the event in a single stream, and they’ve even been used to coordinate updates during emergencies. In fact, hashtags were first popularized during the 2007 San Diego wildfire, when the tag #sandiegofires was used to identify tweets about the natural disaster.”

Jennifer Farley at SitePoint post about How To Integrate Twitter Into Your Web Site. If you’re interested in displaying your tweets on your website or blog, you’ll want to check out this guide to:

• Twitter Widgets
• Twitter Goodies
• jQuery Plugins
• Designed Tweets