TWKM Blog

Screenshot of the Twitter Trends gadget

I’ve put the final touches on a simple Twitter Trends gadget for iGoogle pages.

The gadget allows you to see at a glance what the current Twitter trends are, as well as trends for yesterday and the day before (in case you missed them).

Have a look at the gadget information page to learn more and add to your iGoogle page.

Enjoy!

I’m pretty excited about this! Part of my morning routine is firing up SocialThing to see what has been happening with my friends on Facebook and Twitter. Today I was greeted with the message on the right.

Matt Galligan, Co-Founder of SocialThing stopped by my blog the other day to leave a comment about the article I put together showcasing SocialThing and FriendFeed. In his comment he told us that a new version would be out soon and we could expect enhancements to the services offered and the stability and speed of SocialThing.

It would be great to see the ability to view one service’s updates at a time, e.g. click the Facebook icon and get Facebook statuses, click the Twitter icon and get Tweets.

Can It Replace Hahlo, Twhirl?

I have used Twhirl in the past to post and view tweets but lately I have been using Hahlo pretty exclusively. I notice that Matt is using SocialThing to post his tweets, which I don’t normally do unless I want my Facebook status set the same. I’m very interested to see if this new version of SocialThing can convince me to use SocialThing exclusively for posting tweets.

There have been two tools come out recently that take some of your accounts throughout the web and put them all in one place for you to easily peruse or share. If you are like me, you have many different tools you have signed up for on the Internet and your biggest problem is just keeping track of them all. SocialThing and FriendFeed can help.

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In my last post I mentioned some tips that you can use to avoid being seen as a Twitter Spammer. I want to follow up that post right away with some tips you can use to promote yourself on Twitter naturally.

I am a firm believer in word-of-mouth referrals. Word-of-mouth referrals are worth far more than their weight in gold and they can put you in contact with interesting and influential people. When I am looking to buy a house or car or even a coffee, I want to buy it from someone I know or from someone who comes recommended by someone I know.

To get this type of exposure is really fairly straight forward and easy, it is an organic and natural flow that does not need to be rushed or pushed. (more…)

I decided to write this post after getting a follow on Twitter from someone here in Calgary. I received an email on my Crackberry, informing me that funnyfest08 is following me.

How Twitter Users Identify Twitter Spam

I checked out funnyfest’s profile on the web and found that every second post, or more, contains a link to his website promoting a local comedy festival. Nothing interesting to say at all.

He also had 0 followers, although he was following 150+ people.

At that point it is registered in my brain as Twitter spam. It’s really that simple, it takes me 30 seconds to decide whether or not this is an interesting person who I would like to follow. His link-ridden tweets told me that this person has absolutely nothing to say, apart from proliferating links throughout Twitter to — well, no one, no one follows him. His very high following:follower ratio showed me that he was following people in hopes that they would follow back and create an audience for his promotional efforts.

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