Twitter

This  section is about how to Twitter for business.

We also look at how to manage and monitor Twitter, ways to search on Twitter and many resources ideas and information about Twitter.

Firstly what is Twitter? Lets hear what Wikipedia says

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read each others’ updates, known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters, displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to other users – known as followers – who have subscribed to them. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications. The service is free over the Internet, but using SMS may incur phone service provider fees.

Since its creation in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Twitter has gained notability and popularity worldwide. It is sometimes described as the “SMS of the Internet“, as it provides the functionality—via its application programming interface (API)—for other desktop and web-based applications to send and receive short text messages, often obscuring the Twitter service itself.

Through SMS, users can communicate with Twitter through five gateway numbers: short codes for the United States, Canada, India, New Zealand, and an Isle of Man-based number for international use. There is also a short code in the United Kingdom which is only accessible to those in the Vodafone Network

Alexa ranks the site 27th in terms of web traffic. Estimates of the number of daily users vary, because the company does not release the number of active accounts. However, a February 2009 Compete.com blog entry ranked Twitter as the third most used social network, which puts the number of unique monthly visitors at roughly 6 million and the number of monthly visits at 55 million; however, only 40% of users are retained. In March 2009, a Nielsen.com blog ranked Twitter as the fastest-growing site in the Member Communities category for February 2009. Twitter had a monthly growth of 1382%, Zimbio of 240%, followed by Facebook with an increase of 228%.

Twitter Tools and Apps

Twitter applications and tools have emerged as it has started to go mainstream. Because Twitter is a live stream of information links and updates, the importance of filtering out what you want from this constant passing feed of  data becomes crucial.

Some of the tools that I have am currently using are:

  • Tweetlater: This allows you to set tweets to be sent while you sleep,working or otherwise occupied, measure how many people have clicked on your links and from where from the link embedded in the the Tweet. It also can be set to automatically follow back those who follow you and other interesting features.
  • Tweetdeck: This is a twitter tool that allows you to filter a lot of the live streams that pass your screen in real time and it has the following features
    • Lets me update my Facebook as well as do a tweet in one convenient location
    • I can also shorten a URL and send it with the Tweet and the Facebook update
    • Create Groups that I can track, like Social Media “Gurus”, Top Bloggers and Friends in an easy to view column format
    • It provides a feed from my Facebook page so I can see what is happening with my friends on Facebook
    • I can retweet from within Tweetdeck
    • I can update my favourites
    • Send a direct message
    • Add Twitpics to my Tweets
    • You can even email the tweet from TweetDeck

Note:  A New version has recently come out and it is certainly worth playing with

  • Tweet3: This Twitter Application doesn’t seem to have got much media attention but it has some really nice features and I find it really easy to use. It allows you to tweet from one or multiple twitter accounts by just clicking on a button. It also interfaces to Facebook if you want to update your Facebook from the app. The really fun feature is that it has an analytics feature that allows you to measure and monitor how many people have clicked on your URL that you have embedded with your Tweet and it shows a map of the world that allows you to see where the location of that click through has happened by city and quantities.