Look no further than dlvr.it, a new service that I wrote about last week. dlv.it is still in private beta, but we have some invite codes if you’d like to try it out for yourself. The first 25 WebWorkerDaily readers to sign up with the code will be able to start syndicating and tracking content through dlvr.it today.

Invite code (case sensitive): WebWorkerDaily

Happy feeding!

Related GigaOM Pro Research: Report: The Real-Time Enterprise

There are many tools that will send a feed into Twitter, usually with the title of a post followed by a short URL. A short description is optional as is adding a few words as a preface to the tweet. I see this kind of automation as laying a nice foundation to a Twitter stream.

I’ve been using Twitterfeed to handle integrating my blog and podcast feeds into my Twitter stream, but I recently learned about competing service dlvr.it and was given a demo of the app the other day. First impressions? I like it, and here’s why.

Routes. Twitterfeed lets you take a single feed source and publish it to multiple destinations, so my Dashboard ends up listing each feed and then all the destinations where they publish. dlvr.it takes a different approach by letting you set up “routes” starting with multiple sources and ending up in multiple destinations. Suddenly, you’re not thinking in terms of “this feed goes to these places and then this feed goes to these places.” Instead, the thought process is “here are all these different feeds that I’d like to go to this destination or these destinations.” It’s the groupings of feeds that matter.

For example, I want all the feeds from my blog posts and podcasts each week to go to the Twitter account I set up for them (@alizamedia). With Twitterfeed, I have to set up each feed, one at a time, and then choose @alizamedia as the destination account. With dlvr.it, I can choose 10 different feeds as the sources and feed them to @alizamedia as one route. I could also feed my blog posts geared toward working moms into my motherhood-oriented Twitter account, so I’m pulling content from multiple sources in one fell swoop.

Stats. How you group and send feeds is just the tip of the iceberg with dlvr.it, though. You get stats, too. You can see the number of clicks, posts and clicks per post for each of your routes. Then you can see trends graphs for click volume and another for posts volume. You can also check out activity, and see which post got how many clicks per day.

Under the “Social” category for stats, you can see the number of followers who shared a dlvr.it link from your Twitterstream into theirs i.e. retweeted it, but dlvr.it also calculates what it calls your “Direct Reach” and “Extended Reach.” Here’s how it defines those terms:

Direct Reach: Direct Reach looks for the dlvr.it short url generated that was posted to your stream, then counts any of your dlvr.it short urls that are outside of your stream plus the number of followers of anyone who retweeted your link. So Direct Reach is the number of people who have seen your content via other sources that have retweeted your dlvr.it short URL.

Extended Reach: In calculating extended reach, it looks for any use of your content item’s long URL. This is a great number to have, because it doesn’t matter if the URL to your content was shortened by dlvr.it or any other URL-shortening service, or was used in its original form. Each time dlvr.it finds a link somewhere to your content, it then calculates the follower count of the person who posted the link and adds it to the total, giving you a pretty good idea of how far reaching your content is.

I’m not much of a stats and numbers geek, but these numbers are actually interesting to me; I haven’t seen this kind of calculation to not only show how many people have retweeted you but the number of people who have seen your content before. I’m all for apps that build in robust and useful statistics in addition to providing valuable functionality.

dlvr.it has a number of other features such as the ability to post directly from dlvr.it, being able to add hashtags as well as a front-end message to tweets generated by the service, being able to filter feeds so only posts with certain keywords hit your Twitterstream, as well as setting feed pull frequency, maximum number of new items, and daily post limits. Many of these features can be found on services like Twitterfeed, too, but one that I didn’t recognize from elsewhere is the ability to “trickle” content over time into your stream, and in an upcoming version of dlvr.it, you’ll be able to set the frequency that content is trickled into your stream.

How do you deliver content from other content sources into your Twitter stream?

Related GigaOM Pro Research: Report: The Real-Time Enterprise

1. What are your business goals? What are you trying to achieve?
2. Who are you trying to reach? Where are they talking?
3. Where are the conversations happening around your company or brand? How can you appropriately join the conversation?

In a direct fight between Twitter and Facebook for business — which is challenging, because Facebook and Twitter are two distinctly different kinds of tools with different functionality — I can’t say that Facebook always wins. Let’s take a look.

Community/Size

Yes, Facebook is bigger, while Twitter is getting the media hype right now. But while it is tempting to go for sheer numbers in the hope of engaging consumers, you need to understand that people use each tool differently. The way you accumulate page fans on Facebook and followers on Twitter is different. So even though you might have a larger pool to dip into on Facebook, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll actually reach anyone you really want to reach. You might gain a fan on Facebook just because someone sees someone they know becoming your fan. You gain followers on Twitter — genuine and engaged followers — because they actually want to hear what you have to say.

Sure, Facebook has Facebook Social Ads (which I’d argue are far more effective than the traditional banner and skyscraper ads). However, there is no more direct method of reaching out to the people you want to connect with (potential customers, clients, etc.) as  following them on Twitter, responding to them with an @ message so they know you’re listening to them, or retweeting one of their messages.

Analytics

While I really like Facebook’s Insights statistics tools, I don’t think you can discount the number of third-party applications that are parsing Twitter data in meaningful ways. You can track clicked links from your Twitterstream using Cli.gs or Bit.ly. You can measure Twitter influence with a tool such as Twitter Analyzer, and your growth with Twitter Counter. You can get a sense of sentiment using Tweetfeel, Twendz or Twitrratr. Yes, you have to cobble together disparate tools to get the full picture, but Twitter usage is measurable.

Viral Promotion

Facebook’s news feed turns just about everything a member does into a potentially viral action; there is something so pervasive and easy about it that can make any marketer giddy. Still, Twitter has viral potential, too, and I would argue that it’s actually more powerful. When someone retweets you, they have to think about it and have to take an action to make it happen. They have to take a very deliberate step, unlike the automatic nature of Facebook’s news feed. They are conveying an implied and personal seal of approval of you to their followers. There is intent in Twitter, which is far more powerful than Facebook’s news feed.

Advertising Platform

There’s no question that Facebook wins here. But so what? Until more traditional marketers realize that social media isn’t about advertising, they aren’t going to use social media appropriately or effectively. Social media is not about placing an ad to capture eyeballs. Social media is about engaging in meaningful and appropriate conversations with consumers, because today’s savvy consumers are no longer passive couch potatoes watching a stream of advertisements. They are empowered with social media tools that provide them with the platforms to have their say about the products they love or the companies they hate.

Facebook Connect API

Hey, I won’t argue that Facebook Connect is cool. But not every brand or company needs that kind of Facebook integration to participate meaningfully in social media. That kind of integration isn’t as impressive — or as useful — as the functionality that is provided by a multitude of Twitter-specific third-party applications that can enhance your use of Twitter. From Twitterfeed to TweetLater to TwtPoll, there are tools that can help better manage your Twitter presence. These tools do not exist for Facebook, which can be more challenging to manage.

Final Thoughts

Facebook is more mature and has a much larger community of members than Twitter, but I’d argue that maturity and size don’t always matter. It’s what you are trying to achieve, who you are trying to reach and which tool or set of tools best serves your needs that really counts. For the record, while I love Twitter, I’m definitely not saying any single social media tool is the be-all and end-all for authentic and effective social media marketing.

Editor’s note: If you’d like to keep up-to-date with social media, the real-time web and how we all consume and create information on the Internet, check out the NewNet section on GigaOM Pro, our subscription research service.

What do you think about the Facebook vs. Twitter face-off?

Image by stock.xchng user andysteel.

I know we are all crunched for time. Sometimes, I don’t even know how I keep up with all of my writing and blogging, client projects and social networking sites. But I have found some cool “social aggregation broadcasting tools” that are making at least some of my tasks easier to handle.

What is a Social Aggregation Broadcasting Tool?

Okay, I have to admit, I just made that term up but I think it covers what I’m trying to convey. There are tools out there that help you aggregate your social networking sites for the purpose of broadcasting a message to more places with fewer steps hence Social Aggregation Broadcasting Tools (SABT? lol!).

These applications are a combination of standalone apps like HelloTxt or ShareThis along with the connectivity features within many of the social networking tools. Some SABTs help you pull all, most or many of your social media sites into one place so all you have to do to broadcast a message the ones you’ve aggregated is to post once within the SABT and the tool distributes that post to your MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. – so easy. Something like ShareThis facilitates a slightly different type of action – allowing your readers to do the distribution of your content for you so I would consider this a Passive SABT.

So I would say there are Active SABTs, Passive SABTs and Integrated SABT functionality like what you get on Utterz, for example. When I post an Utterz, I have my Connections set up so that it automatically posts to my blog and my Twitter page. I can also have it post to my Blip.TV account, Pownce, among others.

Are you with me so far?

On the flip side, Social Aggregation Broadcasting Tools are different from Social Aggregation Listening Tools (SALT?!?) that are sites like FriendFeed that pull together your feeds and the feeds of your “friends” so you can hear what they are Twittering about, Facebook statusing (?!), ad nauseum. But let’s not forget the feed features now on so many of the social networking sites made popular by Facebook and quickly adopted by MySpace, LinkedIn and many others. I’d call those Integrated SALT functionality.

So Where is the Time Management Aspect Here?

Clearly SABTs are the time savers here. Although having your friend feeds from all of their social networks brought into one place for “easy reading” must save someone out there some time, I am still finding SALTs to be the proverbial firehose that I’m trying desperately to drink from before I choke.

Another type of broadcast tool I have not mentioned because it is more of an add-on – although it does save you time – is the tool that allows you to easily post to one of your blogs or social networking sites. These would be tools like Twhirl that lets you post to several Twitter accounts easily. Or any bookmarklet such as Typepad’s that let’s you post a link and excerpt of an article or blog post you are reading to your own blog or Tweetburner that does the same for Twitter. Or Twitterfeed that let’s you enter your blog RSS and automatically checks your blog for new posts and Tweets them.

Let’s call these Narrow SABTs for right now, not because they are narrow in power but because they are narrow in reach yet still useful. They aren’t mass broadcasting tools but, of course, once you have set up for SABTs properly, posting to your blog once, for example, could trigger a series of automatic actions to broadcast that post with just one click of the Publish button.

The key to remember is that you only need 1 or 2 of each at most to pretty much cover all your social networking bases. So instead of posting to 30 different sites, you shouldn’t be posting more than 4-6 times at most to get full broadcasting distribution. And for those using the most popular social networks, you can probably get that down to 2-3 posts. That means you publish the same post in 2-3 SABTs and those 2-3 actions then reach over 10x that many sites instantly. Then you add on the Passive SABTs and the potential reach of your post grows exponentially as others share your content for you.

These are the SABTs that I personally use.

Active SABTs

1. HelloTxt – Covers Twitter, Plurk, Jaiku, Pownce, Facebook, Plaxo, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Meemi, Beemood, Gozub, Frazr, Numpa, Mexicodiario, Fanfou, Feecie, Hi5, Bebo, Myspace, Brightkite, at press time

Passive SABTs

1. ShareThis – Allows others to share your content on Reddit, Facebook, del.icio.us, Technorati, Yahoo! Bookmarks, Windows Live, SlashDot, N4G, Blinklist, ma.gnolia, Digg, MySpace, StumbleUpon, Google Bookmarks, Yahoo! MyWeb, Propeller, Newsvine, Mixx, Furl, Mister Wong, Faves, Simpy, Yigg, Fresqui, Care2, Kirtsy…

2. AddThis – Readers can post your share your content on Google Bookmarks, Delicious, Digg, MySpace, Facebook, Furl, Yahoo MyWeb, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Newsvine, Live, Technorati, Twitter, Yahoo Bookmarks, myAOL, Ask, Fark, Slashdot, Propeller, Mixx, Multiply, Simpy, Blogmarks, Diigo, Faves (Bluedot), Spurl, Link-a-Gogo, Mister Wong, FeedMeLinks, Backflip, Magnolia, Seganlo, Netvouz, Tailrank, Blinklist, and..

Integrated SABT features

1. Utterz – Let’s you form “Connections” with Blogger, LiveJournal, Tumblr, TypePad, Twitter, WordPress, Movable Type, Flickr, Yahoo Groups, Twitxr, Drupal, LiveSpaces, YouTube, MetaWeblog API, Pownce and Blip.TV as of press time

Narrow SABTs

1. Twhirl – Have more than one Twitter account (like me)? This desktop app let’s you open a tiny window for each to cross post when/where appropriate.

2. Tweetburner – If you are reading something interesting that is worth tweeting about, click this bookmarklet, add your comments, then Tweet.

3. Twitterfeed – Use this tool app to link your blog and Twitter account so a single blog post can Tweet automatically.

What are you using to save time and manage your social network postings?