Category: Twitter

Can Twitter’s new Suggestions for You Feature make you a power Tweeter?

With Discovering Who to Follow, Twitter let the world know that things were changing in Twitterland.

The change is the addition of Suggestions for You to the Twitter Find People menu. The suggestions are personalized and based on the people you follow and the people they follow. Recommendations for you also come from account profiles.

Twitter has had a Browse Interests tab in the Find People options for quite a while. I’ve found some people I wanted to follow that way. But Twitter thinks it has a better way to help me find exactly the right people to follow.

When the news of Suggestions for You first appeared, only about 10% of Twitter users got to try it. Apparently, The Bloggess was one of them. See Oh twitter. I don’t know whether I should feel touched or insulted. Keep in mind that The Bloggess is really good with Photoshop. Just sayin’.

Quite a few of the 90% of Twitter users who didn’t get it right away went on Twitter asking where it was. Others found it a good idea and helped spread the word.

Twitter apes Facebook with Suggestions for You – Sounds like a pretty good idea for those looking for friendship http://bit.ly/daonJk #EFCGMon Aug 02 17:20:02 via HootSuiteDeanna Alexander
DeannAlexander

Early images of how it would all work appeared at Mashable in Twitter Starts Offering Personalized Suggestions of Users to Follow and TechFemina in Twitter adds the ‘Suggestions For You’ tab.

A few days later, Twitter temporarily suspended the Suggestions for You testing. so that it could be rolled out for all users. A few people encouraged Twitter to keep it gone, gone, gone.

Dear @Twitter I want NO “Suggestions for ME” ! RT @TweetSmarter Twitter Has Disabled TheNew”Suggestions for You”Feature:http://j.mp/d5Yxm1Wed Aug 04 10:45:43 via Seesmicteresa benassi
tebenas

By now it’s popped into your Twitter account. When I noticed it in mine, I looked to see who was suggested for me. The first four suggestions were an Albuquerque local (my profile says I’m from Albuquerque), a music site (I follow several musicians), and a couple of web development guys (I follow lots of webdev people). On the mark for me, I thought. As I dug deeper into the recommended people, I found a few BlogHers, a few more Albuquerque folks, some more webdev people. Most suggestions were a good match for me.

twitter suggestions

Some were not anyone I’d want to follow. They were suggested because people I follow follow them. If you’re sure you’ll never follow someone, you can use the Hide link, and you’ll never see that name suggested again.

I thought the interface was easy. The account bio is there to help you, a follow button is right there. The only missing piece for me was that you can’t assign someone you decide to follow to one of your existing lists right there on the page.

Based on the suggestions, I decided to follow Nick Finck, Scott Fegette, Tim Berners-Lee and Lisa aka scenariogirl. And I’ll keep looking at the list of suggestions, because I thought they were accurate for my interests. My history with finding people to follow on Twitter has been rather random. This is a way to focus. I wonder how well it would work if I didn’t already follow a few hundred people and have relevant keywords in my bio. I don’t think it would be helpful to someone just starting out on Twitter.

Have you tried it? What did you think? Is it useful or is it another big publicity drum roll over nothing special? Do you agree with the sour grapes tweeter I quoted above or are you a convert? Take the poll!

[Cross posted in a somewhat different version at BlogHer.]

Useful links: Documentation, help files, child bloggers

Talk documentation to me lists some common sense steps for documenting a process. One of my pet peeves around the explosion of web apps, iPhone apps, and explosive new tools like Twitter is that the documentation and help information is inadequate. Putting someone in charge of documentation is always a good idea.

The Twitter Help Center is a good example. There was always something in the Twitter help files, but it was not very helpful for a long time. Now there are video tutorials on everything from how to retweet to how to find people. Twitter even has a YouTube channel for their videos.

How Young is Too Young? at Techipedia takes a look at successful child bloggers, some as young as 10. The kids respond to some questions about young bloggers and offer advice for young bloggers.

Burning Questions about Twitter: Answered!

Bonggamom says there are Things About Twitter I’d Like to Know. Since one person’s questions are usually lurking in the minds of others, I thought the answers might be helpful to share.

Bonggamom’s first question is “Is there anywhere in the blogosphere that lists down upcoming Twitter parties?” The answer is yes, with limits. Many Twitter meetups are organized through Twitter.Meetup.com. If you don’t find one near you, then use Meetup to start your own. Meetups are also organized and run through Twitmit. Twitmit meetups are scheduled via Twitter, Facebook and by email. Both of these tools allow you to search for meetups by location.

Bonggamom asks, “Does anyone know of any twitter tool that counts how many tweets occurred with a certain hashtag between a specific start and end date?” A number of solutions I found suggested (but not implemented) for this idea involved using the Twitter API to glean your information. I think Bonggamom is looking for someone who’s already done that part. Tweetreach can do the job, including meeting the requirement to limit the data to certain dates. SWIX tracks Twitter data. SWIX is a complete social media tracking tool—and not free. (I’ll be writing more about it next week. You know the drill—stay tuned.)

For the mobile user, Bonggamom wants to know, “If you don’t have a smart phone, what are some good Twitter apps to use?” NOT a smart phone. Ouch, that’s a hard one. But doable, according to The Best Mobile Applications for Twitter.

Just associate your Twitter account with Posterous and then you’ll be able to post updates on Twitter by sending emails to twitter@posterous.com. Whatever you put in the email subject will be converted into your Twitter status.

According to 20 ways to use Twitter from your mobile phone, any phone with SMS capability can use Twitter.

First see: How to activate your phone for Twitter

Then text your update to:

  • In the US, use 40404.
  • In Canada, use 21212.
  • In India, use 5566511.
  • Anywhere else, use +44 7624 801423

Bonggamom wants to know, “How do you insert all those special characters like notes and hearts and smileys into your tweets?” Like these . . .

•*¨*•.¸♥.❀*¨`*♥.¸.•*¨`*¸♥•*SWEET DREAMS¨*•.¸♥.❀*¨`*♥.¸.•*¨`*¸ .•*¨•*¨♥.¸.❄•*•*¨`*♥.❀•*¨•*¨EVERYONE♥.¸✻.•*¨`*¸.♥❀.•*¨•*¨♥.Sat May 15 03:03:41 via Twaitterdimeotane
dimeotane

I use Twhirl by Seesmic on my desktop, and there are special characters in the Edit menu. For using Twitter in your browser, Next Web has a bookmarklet that provides special characters. Twitter Symbols is also a browser bookmarklet. You can add on the Greasemonkey scripts to Firefox, specifically the Tweetsymbols script, which allows you to drag symbols in to your Tweet input box. I looked around in the Twitterific app I use for Twitter on my iPhone and couldn’t find a way to insert special characters there.

Next, Bonggamom is burning to know, “Is there any tool around for effectively managing your Twitter followers, i.e. be able to sort them alphabetically, by age, by location, be able to search for a specific follower, etc?” I couldn’t find any online way to sort followers aphabetically. Like Bonggamom, I wish there was a way to do this. I find it really hard to search among my followers when I’m looking for someone in particular whose Twitter name I’m not 100% sure I remember correctly. It’s much faster to use Twitter’s Find People search and look for their name.

Foller.me will put all your followers’ locations on a Google map. You can search your follower’s bios with TweepSearch. Many bios mention location. A bio search might reveal age, but I don’t often see age mentioned in many Twitter profiles.

It was fun for me to find all this information. To Bonggamom, I can only say thanks for asking.

Cross-posted at BlogHer.

Useful Links: Accessibility tweeps, NFB Complaint, 3G woes

The ultimate “follow Friday” list for accessible tweeps or perhaps it would be more correct to say people who tweet about accessibility.  Oddly, the names in the list are not linked to the relevant twitter pages, making following the suggested people rather labor intensive. One Twitter name on their list is wrong. Tom Babinszki is @tbabinszki, not what their post says. Complaints aside, it’s a useful resource list for those interested in accessibility information on Twitter.

Law Schools Discriminate Against Blind Applicants: National Federation of the Blind Files Complaints Against Nine Law Schools. This action from the National Federation of the Blind may have far reaching consequences similar to what happened with the Target lawsuit.

The other day someone was asking my opinion about whether to not to buy an iPad, and if she did, whether it was worth the extra hundreds to get an iPad with 3G capability. My position was go for the 3G if you’re going to do it. I think it’s a good policy to start with the maximum capability you can get in  a new device. It you start from the lowest point, you have to upgrade almost immediately to keep the device useful for a period of years. Then yesterday, something happened to several AT&T towers in the Albuquerque area, and my phone lost service for the day. After repeated attempts to get through to AT&T from my neighbor’s land line (I don’t have a land line) I finally talked to someone at AT&T. They had me turn off the 3G capability on my iPhone and use the Edge network until the 3G problem was fixed. I was stunned by how slow service was using the Edge network. Honestly, I’d never realized what a significant difference 3G makes. Now I can speak from experience when I tell people that they should go for the 3G if they are going to spend the money  for a device of any kind. And, by the way, 3G is back in working condition  in my part of Albuquerque today.

Playing with the BlackBird bookmarklet

Twitter finally came up with a way to embed a tweet into a web page without having to use a screen grab to get it. They call it Blackbird Pie. Almost within minutes, a handy bookmarklet doing the same task was released.

Drag the bookmarklet to your bookmarks bar, find a tweet and click the bookmarklet. Copy the HTML provided in the pop up.

blackbird bookmarklet code

Then you simply paste that HTML into your page and you have a tweet that functions just like a tweet on Twitter. All the clickable bits work. The timestamp is correct.

Here’s what I copied as an example.

You can donate a book with a comment about your favorite reading. How easy is that? http://bit.ly/9Bmz3zTue May 04 13:14:51 via SeesmicVirginia DeBolt
vdebolt

Today at First 50 Words, I posted a piece called 10 Reasons Why that contained images of 10 tweets. I prepared the post a couple of days ago. At that time, images were the way to go. This new feature from Twitter—and the new bookmarklet that makes it even easier to use—are great advances in Twitter use.

Useful links: Dissected tweets, photo apps, Google places

This is what a tweet looks like from ReadWriteWeb is the sort of thing that would make a great poster to put in your office. Endlessly fascinating. (When I saw the headline in my RSS reader, I got all excited, because I thought the post would be about Twitterscapes.)

Demo Girl has been quiet lately, but she’s back with 3 Fun Photo Editing iPhone Apps.

Google Local Business Center Becomes “Google Places” at Search Engine Land says you can add tags, photos, QR codes, favorite places, coupons, and real time updates to your business listing with Google. More at Google Places.