Posts Tagged ‘Twitter’

Twitter Rolls Out New Interface

Thursday, September 30th, 2010

You may have already heard that Twitter will be unleashing a new, multimedia-heavy, interface over the next week. You may think it’s a great idea, you may not like it at all; if you’re like me, you think they are going the way of facebook in an effort to compete. All of those may be true, but here’s what mashable has to tell us about the “New Twitter”.

Twitter has announced that it’s rolling out a new version of its web interface. Some users will start seeing the new look as soon as tonight, though the company says on its blog that it “will roll out as a preview over the next several weeks.”

News of the company’s plan to integrate multimedia into the stream leaked out earlier this afternoon, but we’ve now learned that the redesign goes much further than that. The new interface resembles that of a far more sophisticated web app (as well as Twitter’s recently released iPad app).

The multimedia partnerships we hinted at earlier today extend to 16 different companies: DailyBooth, DeviantART, Etsy, Flickr, Justin.TV, Kickstarter, Kiva, Photozou, Plixi, Twitgoo, TwitPic, TwitVid, Ustream, Vimeo, yfrog, and YouTube.

Much has been made in recent months of Twitter’s move into areas previously owned by third-party applications. Today’s announcement will no doubt renew such discussion, with many of the best features of Twitter clients like Tweetie, Seesmic Desktop, and TweetDeck  now becoming a part of the default Twitter interface. As we also pointed out earlier this afternoon, it also makes Twitter feel a bit more like Facebook.

Twitter CEO Evan Williams prefaced his announcement by mentioning that Twitter.com is already far and away the most popular way for accessing the microblogging service, commanding 78% of unique users (which the company defines as “Of all the people who logged into their Twitter account during the month, what percentage did so via each service.”). Combined with Twitter’s growing need to serve up impressions to advertisers, it’s certainly no surprise that the company is now looking to keep people more engaged on its website.

Stay tuned to Mashable for additional coverage and analysis of the new interface. In the meantime, check out Twitter’s video demo [above].


Top 5 Free Resources For Business Tweeps

Friday, September 3rd, 2010

TwitterGrade for Zoom Creates

As of the writing of this post, there are 7,682,986 registered users on Twitter.  Once your business has made the leap in to the Twitterverse, you’ll need to have some resources at-hand to monitor and contribute to this additional way of sharing yourself. Your adoring customers, clients, fan-boys, and industry peers will begin following you. How do you stay on top of the flow of followers, and keep everyone engaged?

For businesses to grab a share of those potential customers, they need tools to research, track, and position themselves correctly.  Here is the short-list of business-oriented resources you should be using for Twitter.

TwitterGrader
Find out what your business rank/grade is on Twitter.  Great tool to start your research.

TwitterCounter
Register for this free tool to begin tracking your subscribers, get weekly reports, predictions, and advice on who you should be following.  You can also overlay your competitors in the graph to see how you compare.

HootSuite
The “do-it-all” tool for business tweeps.  Register and set up scheduled tweets to be posted days, weeks, and months in advance.

LocaFollow
Geo-located Twitter happenings in a specific area.  Set it up to track your city or neighborhood, and keep an eye on what is trending near you.

TweetScan
Similar to Summize (AKA Twitter Search), get reports on topics which affect your business.  Sign up to generate email alerts. Find out who is talking about your business or brand instantly or report daily and become aware of how your brand is viewed by the Twitter masses.

If you incorporate some or all of the above resources into your Twitter endeavors, you will definitely see better results than if you hadn’t done any at all. How much of a difference will it make? No one can say for sure, but at least you’ll be able to see how your numbers and metrics are being affected and what measures you’re taking that seem to be paying off. Happy Tweeting!


Social Media’s Top 5 Trends

Friday, August 20th, 2010

So, what ARE the latest social media trends right now? Let’s allow Mashable to dish. For the full article, click here.

1. Social Scanning:  Smartphone owners have the world at their fingertips. As grandiose as that may sound, advances in mobile barcode scanning technology have given rise to applications that allow for comparison shopping, QR code place checkins and ultimately a social experience around product barcodes.

What this means is that at any given moment, any smartphone owner can pull out their device, fire up a barcode scanning application, scan a code and complete activities or gain access to a wealth of immediately relevant information. Really, what we’re seeing is the convergence of social media and barcode scanning to create “social scanning.”

These scans aren’t inherently social in nature, but because they can double as verifiable place checkins, they can also possess the social properties of a checkin: location-sharing with friends on the same service or via social network distribution.

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Cats tweeting? Meow!

Tuesday, June 1st, 2010

Ok, ok, I realize that this post may not have the ideal level of relevancy we usually provide, but as it is the first day back after a three day weekend, I’ll ask for a little empathy here.

So, here’s the scoop compliments of Mashable.

If you love your cat so much that you can’t stand to be away from it — even for a hot second — you’re in luck: Sony Computer Science Laboratories (CSL) Inc has developed a liveblogging device for Mr. Mistoffelees and friends.

This revolutionary new toy, which was created with the help of the University of Tokyo, comes all pimped out with a camera, an acceleration sensor and a GPS, which monitors kitty’s every move, translating actions like walking, eating and sleeping into tweets. Sadly, there are only 11 fixed phrases currently available (I’m guessing, “I left a lovely hairball in your sneaker” is not among them), but Sony CSL is hoping to improve Fluffy’s conversational skills soon.

The device fits easily onto the cat’s collar, so as to avoid hindering its movement, which means your cat can tweet all over the neighborhood.

We’ve seen an influx of novel Twitter functions of late: tweeting trees, tweeting beds and even tweeting cows. While the tech may seem kind of, well, silly, we could see it being of use to people besides lonely cat ladies. For instance, such a collar could be exceedingly useful for zoologists and the like.


New geolocation on Twitter!

Friday, March 12th, 2010

From Mashable.com comes the latest news on Twitter!

Twitter has just flipped the switch on geolocation within Twitter.com. Now at least some users can pull up location-based information from individual tweets on the microblogging website.

While attaching locations to tweets has been possible for several months now through third-party apps, Twitter.com itself hasn’t done much geolocation until today. It was first noticed yesterday, but the full rollout seems to be happening today.

It’s a simple integration: With any tweet that has a location attached to it (mostly via apps that support it, such as Foursquare (Foursquare) and Tweetie (tweetie)), a small location icon will appear at the end of the byline of that tweet. Clicking on it will bring up a Google Map showing the location where that tweet was sent.

It’s a simple integration, but it’s important to the future of Twitter (Twitter). Location has become this year’s big trend, and with Facebook set to launch location features next month, the company can’t afford to be left behind.

See the screenshot:


Building your first Twitter application with PHP

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

I’ve written before about how great it is to work with a service that has a great API. Twitter was one of the tools that I talked about in that post and today I’m going to show you the basics of working with their API.

PHP is a great language for web applications, and it’s available with just about any web host. If you aren’t familiar with how PHP works, this tutorial will probably be a poor place to start. Today we are going to talk about how to work with the Twitter API and PHP, and you’ll need to know a few things about how PHP works to keep up. For a good refresher course on PHP, click here.

Click through and let’s get started!
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Evaluating the Buzz

Friday, February 12th, 2010

googlebuzzGoogle’s recent release of Buzz has been surrounded by hype and questions. Only a couple days after its release, it remains to be seen if this new social networking tool will actually take off.  Could it really become one of the social networking elite, or fall flat like Wave?

What is Buzz all about?
Currently, it shares a spot somewhere between Twitter and Facebook. It can be open to the public like Twitter, or updates can be private like Facebook. The API is open to developers in the same way Twitter is, but access is limited to those who own a Google account (similar to Facebook). You can send out short text updates to your followers, but it also has built-in media sharing capabilities such as: Twitter, Flickr, Blogger, Google Reader, Picasa, and YouTube. It only takes one click to tie in each service, as most of those services already belong to Google. You can have Buzz send out an update whenever you post to any of these services, or you can choose not to share. And just like Twitter and Facebook, Buzz is available on your phone to share from anywhere you happen to be. (more…)


I Accept the Challenge

Friday, January 8th, 2010
007-crazy 3D stripes

007-crazy 3D stripes

In response to Tweedle C’s post about Smashing Magazine’s Design Something Every Day challenge, I have accepted and am recording my progress in my blog, Holodek 365. So far, so good! I have managed to take some time out of each day (seven whole days so far!) and create something. I have heard that a 1000 mile journey begins with a single step or seven. Anyway, the idea is to keep your design time to under a half hour per day but sometimes I get carried away. I do, however, find myself looking forward to it each day. I can’t wait to make something and I especially can’t wait to see what other people have done. It is truly inspirational to see others progress, commitment and creativity from blog layouts to simple sketches to photography to type treatment, etc. They are all searchable on Twitter with #daily365.

It was recommended to go with a theme for your designs. Maybe for one month, try to design something retro. For another month try typographic posters. The possibilities are endless. I have decided to keep it simple and vector in the beginning and follow some Adobe Illustrator tutorials. I run across them all the time while doing research for projects at work but never have time to try them. Now I a just add them to my list as I come across them.


Social Media Revolution

Tuesday, December 29th, 2009

I came across this video about a month ago and was so impressed by it, I went ahead and pulled the stats out to use in client interaction. Take a few moments to take this in… well worth the time out of your day to see the real impact social media is having on the world as we know it.


Social Media Without the Browser

Monday, December 21st, 2009

feedalizrTwitter, FaceBook, MySpace, Digg, these are all great websites.  People use them to reconnect with friends, let people know what they are up to, offer customer discounts, and more.  Some people don’t use their computers for anything but these services and others like them.  While Google sees this fact and is moving forward with their idea that the browser should be the OS (Chrome OS), applications are popping up everywhere to help you maintain your statuses, and update your systems easier.

With the power of Adobe Air, every desktop can get some simple applications that tie into your different social media accounts.  One great one is feedalizr.  It can connect to FaceBook, Twitter, Flickr and more.  With this one application, you have access to all your favorite social media without waiting for your browser to load, and eating up your RAM with a ton of different tabs.

If you happen to be using Ubuntu Linux, you may be interested in some of the upcoming changes for the upcoming 10.4 release.  This next release is supposed to include a new feature called the Me Menu.  If you have twitter and Facebook accounts, this new menu is going to allow you to update your statuses and also tie you into the Ubuntu One online storage.  Pretty rad.

The line between offline and online is blurring more and more, and it’s interesting to see how this affects software development.