Twitter for Dummies (40 page)
Read Twitter for Dummies Online
Authors: Laura Fitton,Michael Gruen,Leslie Poston
Tags: #Internet, #Computers, #Web Page Design, #General
TwtVite: Event Planning
Type:
Miscellaneous
This quick and easy Web site lets people tweet out their RSVP to your event. It then keeps track of who has RSVPed for you. This service offers the added bonus of marketing before the event while people tweet about their attendance.
Also make an EventBrite (
www.eventbrite.com
) or Facebook Event (
www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2344061033
) page to make sure that you’re giving people a way to connect if they don’t use Twitter yet.
It’s worth mentioning that TwtVite parent
www.TwtApps.com
also offers eight more helpful and nicely integrated Twitter tools covering polls, jobs, greetings, travel, business, and even virtual pets.
Twitterfeed: Getting Your Blog Posts to Twitter
Type:
Publishing
This handy service lets you schedule periodic scrapes of your blog for new posts, and then link these blog bits up on Twitter. Twitterfeed gives you a simple and easy way to drive traffic to your site or alert friends to a new post without having to remember to do it separately.
Set Twitterfeed to check your blog only every few hours to prevent your Twitter stream from seeming spammy.
TwitPic
Type:
Multimedia sharing
TwitPic is a popular image-sharing service for Twitter. Users can upload photos via camera or mobile phone and then share those photos on Twitter. You can also add comments on the pictures themselves.
Xpenser: Keeping Track of Your Expenses
Type:
Financial
Xpenser is a neat tool that integrates with sites such as FreshBooks (
www.freshbooks.com
) and applications such as Quicken to help you keep track of your business and personal expenses on the go. After configuring your account, simply send a direct (private) message to xpn to keep track of your spending. Now, reporting your business lunch or tracking your gas mileage is only a tweet away.
You can use Xpenser to get yourself in the habit of recording your expenses. Because the updates are made via direct message, you don’t have to worry about your followers seeing the information.
Chapter 15
Ten Useful Twitter-Based Services
In This Chapter
Staying in touch with the world through Twitter services
Organizing your Twitter life
Keeping up with the folks on Twitter
With events like the Hudson River plane crash, Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher and Oprah coming to Twitter, buzz about the service is making Twitter go mainstream fast. Because of that, many businesses, causes, and people are creating Twitter-based presences, and hundreds of innovative Twitter-based services are emerging to support that. Some have separate Web sites, and some you just use directly through Twitter. In no particular order, here are ten that stand out because of their usefulness and overall appeal to Twitter audiences.
BreakingNews
@BreakingNews
http://www.bnonews.com
Type:
News. This simple feed gives you ongoing breaking news from around the world. Actual humans maintain and update it, not an automatic RSS feed. It has a good track record of beating many of the major news outlets for breaking news — and it has a good track record for accuracy, as well.
StockTwits
@StockTwits
http://www.stocktwits.com
Type:
Financial. Cofounded by Howard Lindzon, best known for mashing up Wall Street with video podcasting to create the highly successful WallStrip, StockTwits plays off the fact that investors who tweet like to tweet about stocks. StockTwits is essentially a community and social exchange of snippets of conversation about stocks, using Twitter as the conversation medium at its core. You can use StockTwits at its Web site, by following
@stocktwits
, or by using the TweetDeck plug-in.
Tweecious: Use Delicious to Organize the Links You Tweet
http://friedcell.net/tweecious/get
Type:
Publishing. If you post links to Delicious (
http://delicious.com
; a social bookmarking service that allows you to share links with your friends), this little tool makes it easy for you. Now, your posts to Twitter that include links can also automagically go to Delicious. Tweecious even looks at the rest of the tweet and automatically tags the link with relevant categories or keywords. Once you have a Delicious account, Tweecious takes only a moment to set up, and it even reads shortened URLs and extracts the original link.
People who like to keep track of a variety of Web pages and tend to lose them on Twitter may find this tool very handy.
TipJoy
@Tipjoy or
www.tipjoy.com
Type:
Financial. This payments service offers you a way to pay the person, business, Web site, or charity of your choice. Originally developed to let you tip bloggers — or any Web site — you can make payments with TipJoy right on Twitter incredibly easily. Follow
@tipjoy
on Twitter or go to its Web site to create an account. After you fund that account (you have to go to the Web site to do so), you can pay any amount to anyone on Twitter by simply tweeting
p $amount @username
.
Many people like to include a note or link about what the payment is for right in the tweet, which can help spread the word about an interesting cause, project, or product.
TipJoy was founded by husband and wife team Abby and Ivan Kirigin and launched in a startup incubation program known as Y Combinator. After working together to raise $25,000 for Laura’s
@wellwishes
holiday and birthday charity campaign for charity: water, TipJoy invited her to become an advisor. We can personally vouch for their legitimacy and reputation.
ExecTweets
Type:
Networking. Like millions of other people, Laura pretty much laughed at Twitter when she first heard about it. Turns out that’s pretty normal. But what made the difference for her was noticing that she could use it to surround herself with successful, interesting people who would motivate her as a homebound working mom.
Nowadays, we have ExecTweets to let you easily follow the tweets of some of the world’s smartest, most successful executives. Richard Branson? Check. Jack Welch? Check. Dive in and find inspiration, leadership, ideas, and resources from some of the brightest business minds in the world.
EpicTweet
Type:
Entertainment. EpicTweet is a service that delivers only the tweets that Twitter users have determined to be the funniest, most retweeted, most important, or smartest. Twitter users vote on which tweets get included. An example:
“
BarackObama
: We just made history. All of this happened because you gave your time, talent and passion. All of this happened because of you. Thanks” 2:34 PM November 5, 2008 (
http://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/992176676
)
Link Bunch
Type:
URL shortener. In Chapter 7, we discuss that you can use Twitter to link to one URL, but Link Bunch offers a URL shortener for bundles of links. It takes several links and shortens them into one minimal URL that people can click to access the links. When the user clicks the Link Bunch link, he’s taken to a page where he sees all the links you bunched together and click on whichever ones he’s interested in.
Tweetree
Type:
Reading. This little service threads your tweets into a tree, which includes inline links, videos, and other files. If you think the Adobe Air application that you use to view Twitter leaves your stream looking cluttered, or if you have a hard time following conversational “threads” back and forth, Tweetree might be your answer to making your Twitter conversations easier to read.
TwitterGrader
Type:
Directory. This Twitter-based service ranks you using a secret formula developed by its creators at HubSpot. The system takes into account not only how many followers you have, but how you converse and engage, who follows, talks to and retweets you, who you follow and more. Your TwitterGrade of ## is a percentile, claiming that you are more, well, gradeable, than ##% of other Twitterers. The service helps you see how you measure up to other tweeters around the Web and specifically in your area and helps you find people whom you may want to follow because they mesh well with your ranking, interests, and location. Ultimately the grade doesn’t mean a whole lot, but it will definitely show you who is active in your area.
Blip.fm
Type:
Multimedia sharing. You can use this Twitter-based music service to DJ songs onto Twitter. It has an outstanding database of songs, and the service allows you to make mixes for your Twitter following.
Chapter 16
Ten Cool Ways to Use Twitter
In This Chapter
Making education fun and accessible
Getting a planned event up and running
Fixing problems (and brand images) through customer service on Twitter
You can use Twitter for much more than keeping up with your friends and family. Track your expenses, get your latest homework assignment, get restaurant reviews or recommended wines. . . . The possibilities are endless and expanding every day. In this chapter, we introduce you to ten cool ways you can use Twitter.
Plain Old Networking
Twitter is an extremely powerful networking tool for several reasons. As contrived as it is when you think about it, in practice, Twitter actually mimics the natural process of how humans get to know one another. People don’t like demanding, confrontational, face-to-face interaction; they prefer side-by-side, random interaction around gradually discovering the things they have in common. Routine, random, low-level interactions weave the fabric of community that builds trust and holds us all together. Twitter also creates an environment of random interactions that’s really conducive to discovering new people with shared interests and for getting to know a more total picture of who someone is and what interests them.
On a strictly utilitarian basis, just being able to forge an electronic connection using something as short and simple as a Twitter handle is incredibly powerful, especially since you can make that connection via mobile phone right when you first meet. Since October 2007, Laura has barely used business cards at all. It’s so much simpler for her to connect to the person she’s just met on Twitter by sending
f username
as a text message to 40404. It leaves an easy breadcrumb trail back to someone she’s chatted with and sets the stage for gradually getting to know more about them — or not — over time.
Breaking News
Twitter continues to grow as a resource for breaking news. Events like the recent earthquake in China, terrorist attacks in Mumbai, or the Hudson River emergency landing in January 2009 all broke first on Twitter and were then picked up by the mainstream broadcast media. Journalists and media organizations, along with consumers, now look to Twitter as a legitimate source for news.
Sourcing standards for journalism still apply, of course, and you can easily lose what really has happened until a definitive account is posted on a major news site, such as
The New York Times
or CNN.
CNN, in fact, is now one of the top Twitter accounts, at least by following. Anchors have integrated Twitter into their on-air shows, and
@CNNBrk
competed with Ashton Kutcher (
@APlusK
) to be the first on Twitter to get a million followers. (Ashton won, by the way, and donated 20,000 malaria nets to charity.)
Travel
Airlines, trains, car companies, and more all use Twitter to keep their corporate finger on the pulse of a lot more than just brand perception. Some airlines, like Southwest (
@SouthwestAir
), have taken it one step further and use Twitter to track flow at various airports, monitor problems in real time, report delays, and so on.
You can connect with many travel-focused companies using Twitter. If you lose a bag or are experiencing flight delays, some airlines, like JetBlue (
@JetBlue
), are trying to reach out and help customers through Twitter. You can even find cab companies on Twitter that offer more innovative ways to find a ride once you’re on the ground, especially if you have an iPhone.
Finance
As new Web applications like StockTwits, Xpenser, and more crop up to help you manage your money, Twitter has become a more viable method to track spending. Add in helpful financial advice from your fellow Twitter users, and you can see how Twitter might become a genuine force in the financial world.
Food, Wine, and Spirits
Yelp, Chowhound, food blogs, and endless Web sites that aggregate reviews or impressions of the restaurant industry are on Twitter. They’re looking to consumers, many of whom are sharing thoughts on where and what they’re eating in real time, right from the mobile phone.
If you’re wondering about a specific restaurant, increasingly you’ll be able to search for the name and see what people are saying about it.
Wine lovers have found a whole new world for their passion for the grape on Twitter. Whether it’s Twitter Taste Live (
#TTL
) by Bin Ends Wine (
@binendswine
), live streaming of tastings from personalities like Gary Vaynerchuck (
@GaryVee
), or just on-the-fly commentary about what and where people are drinking, Twitter is bridging serious gaps in the wine industry. More people are discovering wine or spirits that they might not have encountered before, thanks to the real-time recommendations of Twitter friends.
Books
Authors and readers alike have discovered new books to read and recommended books to others on Twitter. Famous writers, such as Neil Gaiman (
@NeilHimself
) or Paolo Coelho (
@PaoloCoelho
), actively engage fans around the world. Some authors have been able to land publishing deals through Twitter. Others release serials, one chapter at a time on Twitter. One service, 140Story, actually uses tweets to write stories.
However you look at it, Twitter is full of readers. When you start listening, you’ll find book clubs, writing groups, and more. And when you begin contributing, you’ll often discover a phenomenal amount of instant connection and support available on both sides of the pen through Twitter.
Music
Musicians, both signed and unsigned, are finding Twitter an effective tool to build a fan base, connect more deeply to fans, and get the word out about their music. John Mayer (
@JohnCMayer
), Dave Matthews (
@DaveJMatthews
), Britney Spears (
@BritneySpears
), and P. Diddy (
@iamdiddy
) are among the most famous musicians twittering, but thousands of recording artists at all levels are making innovative use of it, including Twitter veterans Matthew Ebel (
@MatthewEbel
) and Samantha Murphy (
@thehighwaygirl
).
Fans find Twitter a great place to discover new music, as well — especially with tools such as Blip.fm around. (Blip.fm allows you to share your favorite songs with your followers on Twitter.)
Education
Teachers are starting to tweet their lessons. Students are tweeting questions about their homework. Schools are using Twitter to communicate with their communities, quickly getting out information and cutting down on the cost of mailings. Conference attendees share insights and links from the conference, creating a virtual community for remote colleagues. Classes with a Twitter-fueled
back channel
(ideas, observations, questions, and comments coming from the audience) have been taught at colleges and universities around the world, including the esteemed Harvard Business and Law Schools.
Charities and Causes
Charities and causes find Twitter an easy way to get word out about their passions. You can even use Twitter to give microdonations to your favorite charity. The charity Social Media for Social Change (
@SM4SC
) exists only because of people who came together on Twitter. People use Twitter to raise awareness and money for a wide variety of international causes and charities. The ease of use makes it appealing to many agencies and groups.
Event Planning
The immediacy and reach Twitter allows can really help you get your next conference, party, or social-networking event off the ground. You can find everything you need, right in your Twitter stream. You can manage events on Facebook using a custom application within the platform, pulling tweets right into the launch page. You can even update both at once with TweetDeck or Seesmic Desktop. Twitter is also integrated with other event planning Web sites, such as EventBrite, allowing attendees to find and follow each other before and after the event itself.