Twitter -- Following and Followers.

Twitter Basics -

Twitter is simple. Just 2 things and you're off to go!
Following and Followers

1. Followers listen to your tweets. How do you get anyone to listen?
2. To receive tweets, you need to follow others. Who should you follow?

Step 1:

When you first join twitter, you can let twitter check for your friends through your email lists. Twitter will add all your friends and make you follow them.

Now you can read your friend's updates and check up on them.

Step 2:

Search for the people you want to follow. For a start, follow some popular people on twitter. Most of these tweeps (people on twitter) tweet everyday and about interesting things. (remember, there's a unfollow option if you don't want to ready what they have to say.)

Use find people to search for people or even topics you are interested in. You can search for virtually everything, people tweet about everything from history to current events. Try following some of these folks and see what they have to say.

Use the search function to find thousands of interesting subjects; and millions of people to talk with.  Search a particular topic, check out the tweets and the links. If you happen to like what someone is saying or his link, check his profile and what he said before by clicking on his username. If you like him or what he has to say, just follow.

Continue your search, click-thru, find a topic, and follow to befriend people.

Many interesting people and topics out there.

Note: Think of Twitter as a HUGE gossip network, you can find lots of rumors and some facts on things that you are interested to know. You just need to find the right source, following people is finding more sources for what you like to hear. 

Step 3:

After some tweets of your own, you may start to get some followers. The following is my advice.

1) If you are using twitter as some form of closed network which you just like friends and family to read about your updates, then this may not be a good platform for you as EVERYONE can ready what you say unless you go private.

2) If you are very particular about what you read and you don't want to be distracted by tweets you are not interested in, check out some of your followers. Some of your followers follow you because they like your tweets and may have common interests and tweets. If you like what they have to say, just follow them.

3) If you want to build up your network, don't just follow everyone. Filter out spammers as some of your followers follow you so that you may follow them, and they will SPAM you with ads.

Note: I feel that as a general rule of thumb, you should follow people who follow you if you wnat to build a network (except spammers -- spammers need no love).  

Twitter has the 2,000 and 10%-of-followers limits. If you allow those you follow to NOT return the favor, you're boxed under 2,000 friends.

Celebrities like Oprah, Britney Spears, Tony Robbins and Ashton Kushner unknowingly box their fans. If 200 real or wanna-be celebrities don't return your follows, YOU ARE STUCK under 2,000 friends.

Thus, remember these golden rules:

* Return the follow of fans.
* To jump past 2,000 followers, unfollow those who don't follow you - including iamdiddy. Celebrities like Guy Kawasaki, schwarzenegger, WholeFoods, and zappos do re-follow hundreds of thousands of fans.
* If wanna-be celebrities follow you to entice you to follow, then drops you to make themselves look popular at your expense - block them. It's a stupid pet trick.

If you don't, you're stopped by the 2,000 rule.

Twitter imposed a new, undocumented rule with 1,000 follows per day. This impacts whales (tweeps with 10k followers or more). They can't return every follow. 

We agree with the new rule, but Twitter should not count re-follows as part of the 1,000 limit. Social etiquette says we should return the follow without penalties.

Since whales can no longer follow everyone to see their tweets, you need a new means to reach whales. Type a reply or message like @whalename message. The new Twitter inbox allows whales to see the message.

Don't use DM, which is widely ignored by whales.

Celebrities don't always respond. Social whales frequently do. Note that whales don't provide tech support as a service. Ask favors nicely.

If you have built up a lot of followers, its nice to just post a question and get answers fast!

@reviewsguru

This cat is using Social Media

What is the point of a cat using social media?

This is a question that often come up when you search Facebook and Twitter.

Why the hell are there so many cats on Facebook and Twitter?

A cat in Singapore, Satsugai who lives in the Novena area is one example of a "Socially Connected Cat"

Satsugai has more than 700 friends and 1000 followers on Facebook.

Her profile is @Satsugaicat and http://profile.to/satsugai/ 

There are many curious people asking her questions like "Why are you a cat?" or "Are you freakin serious you're a cat?" 

I believe on its profile, it clearly stated that it is a cat.

I've seen many replies to its quirky tweets and its random status updates. Many people love it and say it brightens up their day. I feel that follow this cat really does have its purpose after all, and even if it brings a smile on your face everytime you read about it, the cat had already done its purpose. Isn't this what a owning or having a pet is all about? Only thing is now, you can ready her status updates on Twitter and Facebook.

If you've not found this cat, maybe its time to check it out.

--Reviews Guru

Social Media

Social media is a new way of communication. By experiencing social media, using flickr, twitter, youtube, facebook and digg, I find that you get to meet many different people with similar interests forming great networks which you can be proud of.

With this new communication tool, I feel that now, the individual can make a difference. When you have a good idea for a business or a just cause, you can share this idea on your blog with the people in your network and as they propagate your idea through word of mouth, you may find enough people with similar interest that may help you in your endevours.

More heads are better than one. If you would like to share an idea for a cause like urban farming, join a group, tweet, link up with people on facebook and Linkedin. You'll find that many people are willing to give advice and help out even if they don't know you. Likewise, you may come across someone who needs your expertise in some advice and you could help them too.

It is a great concept, making the world smaller and allowing people from diverse background share their ideas, which may allow sometime simple and good to become GREAT!

I hope to educate more people in using social media as it has enriched my life much.

-- Reviews Guru.

Banks try social networking -- Twittering...

It is quite safe to say that twitter has really caught on BIG!

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/banking/2009-05-11-banks-twitter-economy-recession_N.htm

I guess many companies see the need now to get on to social media platform as it combines a lot of functions, from marketing, information gathering, customer service and relationship building.

It is very important to understand and use these social marketing tools wisely and start early, as many of these social networking platforms are getting bigger and bigger, and simply ignoring them is not going to work.

As you know, in social networking, the word of mouth spreads like wildfire in the hands of a social networking leader. We have seen social networking used in getting a President in United States, and its reaches are great. 

Twitter is a great tool, and people can use it to find jobs, for entainment, for news, and to stay in contact with friends. Furthermore, they can complain about a product, and when this message gets propagated, the effects can be far reaching and if the company ignores these complains, there will certainly be a group of angry people talking about their products all the time.

It is hence essential to listen and control conversation of their brand. It is very important to listen to customers when they have a choice of different companies. Banks now believe that they cannot afford not to be part of it.

In social media, relationships and trust, two most important factors take time to build up. It is thus prudent to start now, as people are still getting on than later...

-- Reviews Guru

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Social networking is becoming an increasingly popular way for banks to reach consumers amid the economic downturn.

Wells Fargo (WFC) and Bank of America (BAC) have begun to "tweet" — post messages of 140 characters or less on Twitter.com — with customers about everything from bank fees to product features. Discover Financial (DFS), American Express (AXP) and Citigroup (C) have launched Facebook or MySpace pages. Some banks even put marketing videos on YouTube.

"Social media is a whole new world, and you cannot afford to not be a part of it," says Pamela Blase, a spokeswoman for UMB Financial of Kansas City, Mo., which tweets about everything from the bank's financial stability to the industry's prospects.

Banks say they're establishing presences on social-networking sites to tap into a growing demographic and to control the conversation about their brands. Yet the economic turmoil, some say, makes it even more important to reach out to customers any way they can.

"There's a lot of worry out there," says Ed Terpening, vice president of social media at Wells Fargo, one of the first banks with a group of employees dedicated to social networking. "That means that we have to stay close to our customers."

The appeal of social networking, according to Steve Furman, Discover's director of e-commerce, is that it provides "pure, instant" communication with customers.

In general, banks and card issuers have been slower to embrace social networking than other industries have. But social networking has become popular enough that, for many institutions, it's not a question of if but when to establish a presence on these sites, says James McGovern of Corporate Insight, a financial-services research firm.

Yet as a growing number of banks become proficient in the social-networking world, the norms of customer service are being upended. Increasingly, today's online interactions between banks and consumers are peppered with shorthand, typos and even slang.

"It sounds like you need 2 talk 2 someone abt your specific situation," read a recent Twitter post from a Wells Fargo rep.

Adding to banks' challenges, social-networking sites are becoming another venue for consumers to complain — and complain is exactly what they're doing as credit card rates and fees rise even as the economy struggles and unemployment rises.

Jesse Hattabaugh, a software engineer from San Francisco, recently posted this message to banks on Twitter: "Stop making your living off my late fees! You fine me more than you loan me!"

Facebook... Now with lens flare!

I tested this and it works!

Amazing fun stuff!

link


Just a short post this morning to let you know about a little trick my pal Shea passed me over my Facebook feed this morning.
Log in to Facebook
Do this on your keyboard: UP UP DOWN DOWN LEFT RIGHT LEFT RIGHT B A *ENTER* (Yeah, that’s the Konami Code)
Now just scroll up and down, or type something in any text field on the page.

--Iron Bowl

Microblogging

Twitter is now mainstream. The micro-blogging site, (twitter.com) allows you to share no more than 140 characters-long updates with friends or the Web at large, has became mainstream as Ashton Kutcher and Oprah Winfrey began using it. What can this simple service offer?

This free service is a very handy communication tool. It allows the user frequent updates on their status, sort of like a blog or an email. It is also convenient and portable as it is still very much usable on a mobile device such as a phone. (m.twitter.com)

Some people use it as a form of connection with friends and family, and allows them to stay in touch, while others use it for broadcasting and interesting reads.

I've been collecting followers and I'm following people with my twitter account twitter.com/robin_low and I find it very amusing as I get to read about all sorts of interesting things. People update their twitter with things that make them laugh or annoy them.

In conjunction with tinyurl and bit.ly the creative ways of using twitter is endless as an interesting update about a specific subject with a link can become an interesting story. I've sometimes used twitter search as you can generally find what you want on twitter and the description is less than 140 characters!

I've also used twitter as a communication tool as you can "reply to" people over a subject, without ever changing the subject line.

Twitter is a fun way of communication with social media, and I believe it is here to stay. Twitter also makes the user think creatively before he sends out the message as it is limited to 140 characters, making it a lot more interesting than the long rants you find on blogs you find.

Try it, it will change the way you think of communication on the web.

--Iron Bowl.

6 reasons for using Twitter.

After using twitter for some time, I found that it is very interesting and if used properly, it could definitely be a great social media too.

I am using twitter and my profile is http://twitter.com/reviewsguru. I've started using twitter on April 19, 2009, and I am starting to understand why some people are using twitter.

With twitter gaining populatiry, the number of users greatly increased after celebrities start to use this social media platform. Some people get tired of twitter after a month and stop using while others continue to use it. 

Many people ask, "What are people talking about on Twitter?" or "What's so interesting about micro-blogging?" Well the answers depend on the people you are following.

Enough said, I guess I don't have to explain what micro-blogging is about. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro-blogging)

Micro-blogging is a form of multimedia blogging that allows users to send brief text updates or micromedia such as photos or audio clips and publish them, either to be viewed by anyone or by a restricted group which can be chosen by the user. These messages can be submitted by a variety of means, including text messaging, instant messaging, email, digital audio orthe web.

The content of a micro-blog differs from a traditional blog in that it is typically smaller in actual size and aggregate file size. A single entry could consist of a single sentence or fragment or an image or a brief, ten second video. But, still, its purpose is similar to that of a traditional blog. Users micro-blog about particular topics that can range from the simple, such as "what one is doing at a given moment," to the thematic, such as "sports cars," to business topics, such as particular products. Many micro-blogs provide short commentary on a person-to-person level, share news about a company's products and services, or provide logs of the events of one's life.

Twitter defines micro-blogging and since July 2006, more and more people are on it, Twitter become a very powerful social media tool. Let me give you 6 reasons why you should Tweet!

1)  Networking - You can find all sorts of people on twitter, and following the right group of people, and allowing people to follow you can allow you to build up a strong network of people that share similar interests. You can sometimes rely on the expertise of these people and as they come from varied backgrounds, having these people in your network is definitely great if you need to seek advice on a topic you do not understand.

2) Updated news - I could not believe how fast some of these news show up on twitter. Being on twitter, the news show up real time and unlike certain newspapers of news source, the current events you get from twitter is varied and may give you a very balanced or skewed new on a certain topic. I now get my news on twitter as some of the people I follow watch sports and tweet as the action is going on, and I get a really - real time report!

3) Friendship - Updating your status or what you are doing can allow you to stay connected with your friends and family. Reading about your friend's tweets about their newborn lets you stay in touch with them, even when you cannot be there. You can also make new friends, and people with similar interests.

4) Information - You definitely get a lot of information on twitter. News on google failing to buy twitter, and apple buying twitter, information on how to pick mangoes, and movie reviews. You can find almost everything on twitter. What's even better, you can post a question to your followers and sometimes they will reply you with a link of what you need!

5) Entertainment - There are tons of quotes, jokes and funny picture or video links. Endless entertainment on twitter. You can also follow celebrities and know what they are doing or are planning to do. Its fun!

6) Job Search - In this financial crisis, any new source where you can find a job would be a bonus isn't it? Just do a #Jobs or #Job search with #location for more specific jobs.

--Iron Bowl