I’ve long been looking for a Windows-based Twitter client that can delight me as much as its native Mac counterparts. Too many clients for Windows depend on Adobe AIR, something which isn’t an ideal arrangement, in my opinion. TweetDeck and Seesmic are both powerful tools, but why can’t someone make a Windows-native app that works just as well?
Seesmic apparently saw the wisdom in that idea, because it recently revealed a new Windows-only Twitter client that doesn’t require AIR to run. I jumped at the chance to take the software, which is currently only available as a preview edition, for a test run. Read the rest of this entry »
If you don’t have a professional blog or web site, you may think that you don’t need to worry about content strategy. Think again. Celine gave some great advice in her article “How to Develop a Content Strategy for Your Professional Blog,” but these days our blogs and web sites aren’t the only windows to our professional souls. If you use social media platforms for professional purposes, you should consider having a content strategy for the material you publish on them as well. Read the rest of this entry »
I’m very happy in my choice of Twitter clients at the moment. Tweetie is my weapon of choice for the Mac desktop, and it has served faithfully since its release. Doesn’t hurt that it’s free, either (though ad-supported). But I’m always glad to try out new contenders to the throne, and that’s why Twitt caught my eye today.
Twitt is a new, lightweight Mac Twitter client that has some interesting features I haven’t yet found elsewhere. Can it compete with perennial favorites Tweetie and TweetDeck, though? Using both those programs regularly has set my expectations fairly high, but Twitt definitely counts some surprising twists among its repertoire. Read the rest of this entry »

A good bio shares your experience, builds your credibility, makes a first impression and displays your personality. Having a great Twitter bio is important as it can make or break a person’s decision whether to follow you or not.
Not only do you need to pay attention to what your bio says about you, but also the other fields in your profile including “Web” and “Location.” The Twitter bio may be small, but it’s powerful. Here is a checklist to ensure you your bio passes muster.
Does your bio include relevant keywords? Do you want people to find you by your career, company, industry, location? Why are you using Twitter? Who are the people you want to connect with? Use these to figure out what keywords to use. Read the rest of this entry »
Twitter lists are a great way to group people into various categories, filter conversations, keep up with experts within a specific field and track a topic without needing to follow all of the relevant users — and can even be used as an RSS reader replacement. Despite being such a new feature, people are already using lists as a measure of influence.
I’ve spent the last few years working with online communities and collaboration technologies, and have come to expect to be able to collaborate with people when using online social tools. As a result, I wish that Twitter lists were more collaborative. Right now, Twitter lists and accounts have a one-to-one relationship. I create a list, and I’m the only person who can edit it. I started thinking about this limitation when Rael Dornfest created his Portland Food Cart list. I’m a huge fan of the Portland food cart scene, so I decided to follow his list instead of creating yet another one. The downside was that as there were some food carts missing from his list, I needed to send @replies to Rael to get him to add them — I couldn’t just add them myself. Read the rest of this entry »
Internet-based communication is changing so quickly these days that there seems to be an endless stream of beta releases. Yesterday, Simon wrote about some of the latest browser betas; let’s look at a few products and services for interacting with social networks, Twitter and instant messaging.
I don’t generally like living on the bleeding edge, but some betas are very usable, and I’ve already incorporated them into my daily workflow. Others look promising, but are not stable or are lacking too many features right now. But all of the following are worth trying, and watching as they develop. We’ll review them more thoroughly as they mature. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: adium, adobe air, beta, brizzly, Email, Facebook, facebook chat, file sharing, fluid, Google Reader, imo.im, myspace, seesmic, sms, socialite, tweetdeck, tweetminer, twitter, video, voxox
Do you know how people feel about you on Twitter? Are the tweets about you or your product mostly positive, negative or neutral? While things like feelings and sentiment can seem fuzzy and “touchy-feely,” there are sentiment analysis tools available for Twitter that attempt to classify tweets into either positive, negative or neutral categories automatically using algorithms and lists of keywords. For example, using words like “sucks,” “sad” and “hate” would be classified as negative, while “awesome,” “great” and “love” would be positive, with a neutral rating given to anything not falling into one of the other two categories. Read the rest of this entry »
Twitter Lists appeared last Friday, right before the weekend when many people tend to take a break from their computers. But that didn’t stop plenty of us from playing with the new feature and creating our Lists.
Based on the tweets I’ve seen, and some early posts on the topic, some are already wondering if Lists will lead to competitiveness or a way to “judge influence.” A.J. Kohn of Blind Five Year Old believes that Twitter promotes competitiveness and comparison by including “listed” as one of the three big metrics on each profile page, right after “following” and “followers.” Similarly, Chris Brogan believes Lists promote exclusion, rather than inclusion. Read the rest of this entry »