Are you still wondering why you should use Twitter? Maybe this beautiful little eBook will help you make up your mind. It is titled the “Geeks Guide to Promoting Yourself With Twitter” and you can flip through it online in a very attractive interface.
If you use Twitter you might still enjoy reading this because it mentions a few cool tools that you might not have heard about. Keep the url for the next time someone asks you why you waste so much time on Twitter. Or send it around the office so everybody knows once and for all what Twitter is and how it can help your company…
Are you on Twitter? Why not follow me and @nextweblog too?
I hope you like that post!
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Written on October 4, 2008 – 2:44 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Think about it, doesn’t it make more sense to share interesting links on Twitter instead of Digg? They don’t get lost in the clutter and all your friends and acquaintances get to see them right a way. When browsing around on a few Twitter streams, you can immediately tell that most people realize this. It’s one big treasure chamber full of interesting links.
Unfortunately, the whole Twitter chatter is too scattered around to find out which links are popular - and there noteworthy -, this is where Digg wins. At least, Digg did until recently, since more and more mash-ups try to track all the shared links on Twitter. Check out these mash-ups:
Social Tops
David Petherick tipped me about this brand new service (they don’t even have a decent about page yet). Social Tops already offers a good overview of popular links by tracking all the tweets that are posted real time. You can see which links are popular today, last week, last month, or all time. And yes, there’s an upcoming page like well, so you won’t miss the Digg experience too much. You can vote up links by, you got that right, tweeting about them.
Most popular links on Social Tops concern Palin and those other candidates, TechCrunch posts, and the Daily Kos. On all of these mash-ups actually.
Twitturls
This mash-up is less user-friendly, but it shows perfectly what’s buzzing around the web. I don’t even know why I’m sharing it here, since it delivered me some interesting stories before any of the European tech bloggers discovered it. Twitturls has a nice punk-like vibe surrounding it, although that doesn’t translate to your feed reader - which is, in the end, the right place for this mash-up’s content.
Twitturly
Twitturly brings more of the Twitter feeling with it, as the mash-up also shows the latest tweets containing the popular links. That makes the popular links less abstract (meaning more context) and more personal.
Twitturly also the brightest and best lay-out of the three mash-ups: it’s clean and accessible. But the feature that makes this a last best kind of thing, is the language filter. Whether you’re based in France, Holland, or Germany, you can request the most popular Twitter links from your country without any hassle.
Written on October 1, 2008 – 11:00 am David Petherick, Contributing Editor, United Kingdom
Twellow, the ‘yellow pages for Twitter‘, has extended its usefulness with the ability to create your own biography entry of up to 2,000 characters.
As well as being able to claim your twitter profile, and classify yourself in up to 10 categories (although I’m in 14 for some reason), you can also add your social media links to your profiles on Pownce, LinkedIn, Flickr, FriendFeed, etcetera - and now add more details about yourself in a mini-profile or biography.
The search facility in Twellow can also reach into your brief summary to pick up keywords and links used there, and your biography information can also include basic HTML, so links and visual formatting can be added. The summary is indexed in search - the biography does not appear to be indexed yet.
Apart from being a great way to find people using Twitter with similar interests, and pinpointing interesting people to follow, categorized Twellow profiles are also becoming visible in Google and Yahoo searches. So I’d recommend making sure you claim your profile at Twellow and add your details and social links to ensure your online visibility and credibility stay high.
Written on September 30, 2008 – 5:44 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Canadian David Chan has created a rather cool and funny Twitter tool called SayTweet. It allows Twitter users to combine photos with Twitter updates. Just upload a canvas (picture) and point out which users are on it. TweetSay will then generate a picture with text bubbles consisting of the latest Tweets.
This makes TweetSay a fun tool to create unique pictures for your blog or social network profile. For example, I twittered at Picnic last Friday about how Amazon CTO presented Dutch start-ups Soocial and Project E on stage. If I combine it with a picture from Project E’s co-founder Renato Valdés Olmos on stage, you’ll get the following result:
Though it’s a fun Twitter badge, I’m not sure whether people will come back to TweetSay often. This would change if Chan also offered a feature that makes it possible to combine pictures with a specific tweet. Users could then combine a picture of a person with a tweet he was actually posting around the very moment the picture was taken.
Written on September 24, 2008 – 1:15 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Last week I wrote an angry post about people who try to kill the business card. Although I’m friends with a couple of these wannabe killers, I felt I had to defend the ultimate tool for self-expression during first impressions. But now, with pain in my heart, I have to give a couple of these guys a stage. After all, I cannot appear too biased. So here it is, a business cards-killing service which just launched in private beta: Project E.
Next Web Editor David Petherick & Robert Scoble with ‘E’ Prototypes
Three Dutch designers Paul Geurts, Arjen Sondag, and
Renato Valdés Olmos want to get people connected with “a device operated by a single gesture. “Exchanging contact info and social networking info with E takes as long as a formal handshake”, Renato explained when I interviewed him at The Next Web Conference.
Eventually, the three guys want to have specially designed hardware that makes this contact exchange possible. While they’re looking for investors to make this production process possible, they’ve also worked on a service that does the same thing, but with (most) mobile phones. Just a few clicks and you’re connected with your new contact on the services you desire, like LinkedIN.
This social network isn’t actually yet integrated. The beta now works with Twitter, Soocial, and the network of the conference they’re launching at this week, Picnic. Integration with delicious, Netlog, and Last.fm is coming soon.
For now, Renato told me he’s excited to hear your feedback about the UI and the connectivity between different devices. So give it a shot, the first 25 lucky people who leave a comment will receive an invite from me.
Written on September 22, 2008 – 2:57 pm Robin Wauters, Next web enthusiast & Plugg organizer
Belgian artist Jan Leenders seems to have more tricks up his sleeve than just his recently introduced Twit2art project, which Ernst-Jan wrote about. He has set up the website AuctionArt.be, where his new painted creations will be put up for auction, always opening at 1€.
Bidding is done by e-mail, and the auction ends after exactly 5 days since the last bid is made (the buyer does have to confirm the sale by e-mail within another 24 hours). Every new painting put up for auction will be announced with a blog post, and the time of publication is the starting point for the 5-day window. There’s a handy ticking clock at the bottom of each post to keep you informed of the timeframe.
You can track auctions via Twitter, Flickr, RSS feed and/or by subscribing to an e-mail list.
A little more than 24 hours ago we posted a bookmarklet here titled TwitterKeys and then all hell broke loose. Here is what happened before we launched it and what has happened since.
On Tuesday evening, just as I was getting ready to go home, I noticed a Tweet on Twitter with a symbol in it which I hadn’t seen before. I copy pasted the symbol and Tweeted it:
Sander (@sandervdv) was working next to me and said “Hey, just open your Character Palette. There are tons of symbols there that you can copy paste”. I immediately did and then replied “Very cool, but kind of hard to find. Can’t we just put them all in a floating browser window so you can easily copy paste them while you are Twittering?”. Sander smiled and said “Sure, and I can even write a Bookmarklet so you can easily access it”.
Then I left the office and went home. At 8pm I opened my laptop and found Sander’s Bookmarklet code in my Inbox. I did a quick test with the help of a few Twitter users to see which symbols would work on all platforms and by 10 pm I uploaded the files, wrote a simple post with the details and launched the whole thing by Twittering the following line:
Immediately I noticed people starting to play with the characters and flowers, comets and stars flying all over Twitter. Within a few hours the Twitter founders found out about TwitterKeys and twittered about it:
Today we launched version 2 of TwitterKeys which displays even more characters. If you haven’t installed it yet do it now:
Drag this link to your browser
bookmarks toolbar: TwitterKeys
Here at The Next Web Blog we love to write about people working on Next Web technologies and services. But we also love to contribute a little ourselves from time to time. Hope you like what we do!
As you might know Twitter accepts more than just basic text. The service is UTF8 compatible which means that instead of tweeting “I love you” you could just as well use “I ♥ you”. Or how about this:
“I’m going to ✈ to ☭ in the morning after I make a ☎ to make sure my ♂ is ✔ with it. ✌ for now and don’t forget to ✍ and lets have ♨ soon!”
But how do you remember all these damn characters?
Aha!
TwitterKeys is a small tool we (@bomega & @sandervdv) developed here at The Next Web Blog which provides you with a floating window with all these funny symbols you can use in Twitter. These are the symbols we currently provide:
Drag this link to your browser
bookmarks toolbar: TwitterKeys
Now go and share this with your friends on Twitter…
Written on September 12, 2008 – 3:38 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Remember those early days of blogging when people used blogs like link dumps? I don’t, ’cause I wasn’t even in highschool yet. Anyway, I did read the Wikipedia pages about blogging, so that’s how I know. These days, link blogs aren’t really popular anymore. People don’t need guides anymore. They have each other and share links on social bookmarking, social news sites, Friendfeed, Google Reader, and Twitter. But what if you combine all blog posts from Twitter contacts? Do you have a re-invented link blog then?
Belgian blogger Maarten Schenk probably thinks so, as he has built Twiffid. This is a Twitter mash-up that generates a list of recently shared published posts on the sites your friends link to in their profile. Thus you can see what your Twitter friends are blogging about. Actually, it’s more like a tiny blogosphere considering it consists of just the writings of your friends…
When you load the list feed in your RSS reader, Twiffid actually is a handy tool. But when you decide to use the service on Twiffid.com, you’ll have a hard time. The thing is, the user interface is horrible. It looks like a website from the nineties, just like those old-fashioned link blogs. If Schenk hired a designer, the whole Twiffid experience would be so much better. I mean, the concept just begs for a cool lay-out.
Written on September 11, 2008 – 9:04 pm Robin Wauters, Next web enthusiast & Plugg organizer
Twitter founder Evan Williams tweetpoints (I totally coined that term!) to a job listing for the company on Craigslist, which shows at least one direction Twitter is turning in the infamous search for a business model. The position offered is one for a ‘Partner Relations Coordinator’, and these are the tidbits that reveal a little more about where it’s heading:
“Each month, Twitter gets contacted by hundreds of businesses, consumer brands, events, celebrities, non-profits, agencies and other organizations who want to use Twitter in various ways. The goal of the Partner Relations Coordinator is to work with these entities, while maximizing our relationships and opportunities with current/future partners to grow the Twitter community worldwide.”
You could say that this is partly a customer service role, and that would be true. But this also shows Twitter is looking for more ways to engage with partners and help them use Twitter. I’m sure that eventually, the company will start charging for some of these services.
I realize I’m stating some obvious things here and that there’s not exactly ground-breaking stuff to be found, but it’s interesting to see them starting to think about what to do with the microsharing service now that it has quite some adoption and momentum going for it.
Two of the roles for the new hire will be:
Identify strategic new potential partners in key verticals, including live events/festivals, music (and others TBD) to onboard them to Twitter.
Implement partner programs and processes, including managing database and tracking effectiveness of resulting partner campaigns.
Written on October 7, 2008 – 9:09 am
Are you still wondering why you should use Twitter? Maybe this beautiful little eBook will help you make up your mind. It is titled the “Geeks Guide to Promoting Yourself With Twitter” and you can flip through it online in a very attractive interface.
Written on October 4, 2008 – 2:44 pm
Written on October 1, 2008 – 11:00 am
Written on September 22, 2008 – 2:57 pm
So within a few hours these 4 Big Twitter users promoted Twitterkeys to their combined 95,075 followers. The result? About 15,000 unique visitors to the 
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