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Use twitter to promote your website and blog

| No Comments | Posted in web 2.0 |Pali

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Twitter according to Wikipedia is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users (also known as twits) to send updates (otherwise known as tweets) which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

Twitter was seen as a tool to update your friends, colleagues and family about what you were doing or where you were. It was heavily criticized by some as a time waster and a distraction until some smart guys came along and they started using this tool to build their personal reputation or brand, to promote their websites and their blogs and last but not least breaking news. These Twitter is used as a tool for networking and online relationship building.

Since I was new to Twitter I set out to explore how I can use Twitter to promote blogs and website. You might find a number of articles if you Google “Twitter promote blog website”and the thought of going through them is intimidating. However, I had heard so much about Twitter and its advantages that I went through those articles and posts over a span of two days and here I’m sharing the gist of my findings on how to use Twitter to promote your blog or website

twitter002 Drive Traffic: By posting updates about your website or the blog you can drive traffic to your website. Since most of the followers you will have will be like minded people the traffic you create is useful traffic as chances are that the your followers on Twitter would be interested in the content you have linked in your tweet.

Make Business Contacts: Business contacts can be made using Twitter which might not be possible otherwise. Once you are following business contacts on Twitter you will remain up to date about their latest activities.

Establish Yourself as an Expert: If you are an expert in any area (and specially if you are an expert in a technical field) then Twitter is right place to establish yourself as one by answering queries of your followers.

Ask Questions: On a different angle, you can use Twitter to gain knowledge and become an expert in a field by asking questions to experts or people who are an authority on a particular subject.

Get Ideas for Blog Posts: By following the tweets of contacts or experts in a particular field you are bound to get some interesting ideas about topics of your blog posts.

Provide Live Coverage: Live updates on events can be provided through tweet. Recently the Worldwide Apple Developers Conference was covered live by some Twitter users one such user can be found at https://twitter.com/wwdc2008

Find and Share Resources: Last and not the least is that Twitter can be used to share and find resources for different fields as Twitter encourages  users to to share information.

However, one should be careful not to Tweet more than needed because too many updates in a day might upset some of your followers and it can get worse if someone officially complains about spamming. Therefore one has to ensure that when Twitter is used as a marketing tool one is not too direct about it and the updates should contain useful information which would be useful to your followers.

Problogger who is a respected blogger shares his process of using Twitter. Problogger sends an update whenever he posts on his blog and if there are quite a few comments on his first update then he follows it with another update giving feedback on the comments. Problogger uses Twitter in another innovative way where he asks his followers to let him know whether a particular post on his blog is worth Twittering or not and I’m sure he gets more responses on such queries than a regular update.

I would recommend adding Twitter to your online marketing resources and if you need tools to help you use Twitter then I recommend the tools listed on this page http://mashable.com/2007/09/29/twitter-toolbox/

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Twitter down? - Use Twiddict

| No Comments | Posted in web 2.0 |Pali

Those who use twitter have been finding the service down more often than up and it is frustrating.

Twiddict is a service which allows you to tweet even when Twitter is down. Twiddict constantly pings the Twitter service (adding to Twitters woes of too much traffic) to see when it comes up and then posts the Tweets you had sent when it was down as soon as the Twitter service is up.

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As rightly observed on mashable, if services are started which hope to be successful if your service is down then it is not a good sign for the service provider who in this case is Twitter.

I’m both happy and sad that this service is available like most people.

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How to comment on the pages on the Internet

| No Comments | Posted in community |Pali

Wibiki is a fun social community that lets you post links and comments on web pages everywhere!

The way wibiki works is that it lets you block advertisements and lets you replace ads with a mini link-sharing Wibiki - Make ad space your space board that’s been created by you and your friends. There are two options for getting wibiki to block ads: change your DNS server settings manually, or install the auto-configuring software from wibiki’s site. I would recommend the second option for those those who are not initiated but if you are adventurous go for the first option.

From there, advertisements which the server is able to identify are blocked. The blank space that is generated because of the blocking of the advertisement can be used to place your notes and thoughts. The format of these boxes are very similar to a Google text ad, with a header link in large and bold font, and smaller text for a description, and the user that has submitted the link. Clicking on the link will take you to a wibiki page where the information is simply enlarged. Click on the header from this main page, and you’ll be directed to the original source page. Click on the username and you’ll see their profile, listing all of the links they’ve submitted.

Wibiki - post your favorite links...

The notes that you put in on the Wibiki’s can be made public or private, and other users can submit to a wibiki directly from the page you’ve placed it on. Private wibiki boards in this manner allow for the formation of groups, and are called buddy boards. There seem to be other things you can do with wibiki boards, and the company has even created a board that pulls the community public timeline from Twitter.

Wibiki should be ready to defend themselves as they will attract a lot of flak as popular pop-up blockers are having a hard time to defend themselves. The argument has been that advertisements are a prime source of income for web site owners and have been supporting the Internet indirectly. There are a lot of false positives as well where good content is blocked because it is recognized as advertisements an example of this are the forums which have popups with information of the posts.

According to the Wibiki "Wibiki is developed by the people who believe in web ubiquity and freedom. Wibiki is working to make connectivity between users fun,dynamic and resourceful. In fact, the Internet is underutilized and needs to grow at the "edge". Wibiki is researching new ways to make the Internet easy to use and develop community awareness. We believe "Users Rule" and are developing software to nurture your rights on the Internet!"

I would suggest trying the application and see if it works for you because in the end it can be very valuable if Wibiki fits in your work process.

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Mindmapping on Web 2.0 - MindMester goes live!

| No Comments | Posted in collaborative |Pali

Codemart has also jumped into the foray of MindMaping with MindMeister. The emphasis of the application is MindMeister, the first 100% web-based collaborative mind mapping toolon real-time collaboration to allow truly global brainstorming sessions. MindMeister supports all the standard features of a classic mind mapping tool - only online, and with as many simultaneous users as you like!  

Using MindMeister in the brainstorming mode, users who might be geographically apart, can simultaneously work on the same mind map - and see each other’s changes as they happen. Another nifty feature is that Skype is fully integrated with Mindmeister and therefore conferencing through voip is possible when working collectively. Maps can be imported from and exported to standard desktop mind mapping applications such as MindManager and FreeMind, or even as a document outline or image file. Web 2.0 features like tagging, usage of AJAX and XHTML have been used to enhance the tool. However, the product is mainly built on Ruby on Rails.

The beta testing has been completed and the product is live. The basic version is mindmap, mind map, mindmaps, mind maps, mind mapping, online, mindmapping, fishbone maps, spider maps, idea, ideas, brainstorming, online real-time collaborationfree whereas the pro version is available for $49.90 (USD). Some of you might have used MindMeister when in beta, but now you should upgrade to a full user as the following features have been added.

  • Completely revised map UI (sidebar, new footer, palette removed)
  • Support for font sizes and styles
  • Support for notes on ideas (rich text editor)
  • Notifications on map changes by email and text message (text alerts via Twitter)
  • Title, descriptions and tags for maps
  • Detailed list view for maps with tags filter
  • Context menu for ideas (right-click)
  • Copy / paste between maps
  • SSL encryption for login and sign up

Many features have been enhanced and some of those are:

  • Import / export quality improvedmindmap, mind map, mindmaps, mind maps, mind mapping, online, mindmapping, fishbone maps, spider maps, idea, ideas, brainstorming, online real-time collaboration
  • Multiple image export formats
  • Zoom preferences saved per map
  • Icons, Colors, Styles and Notes also on root\Resizable input fields improved
  • Collaboration effects also for icons and style changes
  • RTF export with heading outlines
  • More consistent dialog UI

Recently MindMeister registered its 10,000th user which is great and it also means that more and more people are using Mind Mapping and are willing to experiment.

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links for 2007-04-20

| No Comments | Posted in delicious |Pali
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Write fiction on web 2.0 with twitterfiction

| No Comments | Posted in collaborative |Pali

With twitter going on to be pretty popular, there should be several offshoots of the ‘microblogging’ site. Twitterfiction - fiction in 140 words or less!Twitter fiction is one of them. Twitter Fiction is 140 characters of microfiction posted to the twitter fiction site. Wikipedia (though some do not trust the tool but most of the times I do ti) describes “microfiction or Flash fiction as fiction characterized by its extreme brevity, as measured by its length in words. While there is no universally accepted exact word limit, generally a short story is considered to constitute flash fiction if it is less than 1,000–2,000 words long, and most flash-fiction pieces are between 250 and 1,000 words long. (By contrast, “traditional” short stories range from 2,000 words to upwards of 20,000, and are mainly between 3,000 and 10,000 words long; they are distinguished from longer forms, such as the novel and novella, primarily by the intent that they be read in a single sitting.)”.

http://www.twitterfiction.com/Twitterfiction - fiction in 140 words or less!

Well, Allison at Slow Burn Productions has taken the idea to an even more extreme level. He’s mixed the idea of microfiction with Twitter, to come up with Twitter Fiction. Twitter is intended for very short updates to say what you’re doing at any time, and your Twitter messages are limited to 140 characters. The post on his web site at http://slowburnproductions.wordpress.com/2007/03/12/twitter-fiction/ reads “Announcing my latest project, twitterfiction.com. Twitter Fiction is a simple use for Twitter - just send your fictional masterpiece of 140 characters or less to twitterfiction@gmail.com and it will be posted to twitter.com/twitterfiction.”

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links for 2007-04-06

| No Comments | Posted in delicious |Pali
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| No Comments | Posted in web 2.0 |Pali

Twitter is a service that has got quite a few web 2.0 enthusiasts hooked. Twitter is a mashup of social Twitter, twit, web 2.0, service, popularnetworking, instant messaging and wireless communication that lets users post short (140 characters max) notes on what they are up to or thinking at that instant. Various users refer to their blog on Twitter as tumblelog (blog, with entries of 1 line).They can similarly check messages from other users in the network.You can use it with SMS (sending a message to 40404), on the web or IM. A continuous steam of presence messages prompts you to update your own. Fans say it’s an addictive window into a social stream of consciousness.

What Twitter does, is to merge a number of interesting trends in social software usage—personal blogging, lightweight presence indicators, and IM status messages—into a blend of ephemerality and permanence, public and private.

There are two major criticisms of Twitter. The first criticism is the triviality of the content. But asking “who really cares about that kind of mindless trivia about your day” misses the whole point of presence. The answer to this is that Twitter is to let your close friends and family know what you are doing and they do care. The second type of criticism is that updating on Twitter hampers continuity at work. For some people using Twitter has actually reduced the craving for the Internet and it is not necessary that you update Twitter after some time and you can choose to ignore it if you are really busy.

Twitterholic is a service that is based on Twitter. Twitterholic basically scans the Twitter public timeline for new users to watch. A few times a day, they calculate individual statistics for each user user in their database and compile a “Twitter Top 100? list based on the statistics tracked.

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