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vccv says...
Sep 24, 2009

Posterous Tip: Turn Posterous tags into autoposted Twitter #hashtags

We all know that Posterous is the easiest way to share photos and videos with your friends on Twitter. Now, we've just added a new feature that turns tags on Posterous into #hashtags when you autopost to Twitter or any other microblog.

For instance:

Subject: It really does smell like teen spirit ((tag: grunge, nirvana))

becomes:


To enable this feature, just edit the "Advanced Settings" of your Twitter autopost site by visiting the autopost page and add "{{hash_tags}}" to your custom footer:

Filed under: autopost, New Features, tagging, Tips and Tricks, Twitter
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Chris says...
Jun 10, 2009

Simple tips for a better Twitter experience

With Twitter's huge recent growth, there are numerous brand-new users of the service. If that's you, welcome. Here are my quick tips.  (Experienced Twitter users, pls add your own suggestions in the comments section!)

1. Get good at Twitter search
The best way to get excited about Twitter is to experiment with its search function.  Try typing anything you care about -- your home town, your company, your hobby, or any Twitter username -- into the search box in the RH column of your Twitter home page. You'll probably be amazed at what you see.  (eg. The search below reveals Twitter users who apparently haven't figured out yet that there's a public search function!)

Unlike Google, Twitter searches what has been said by people in the last few minutes, hours, or days. It gives you a whole new way to get a sense of what "the world" is thinking right now about pretty much anything.

And there's a v cool advanced search function here. You can use it to create quite complicated searches like this one that's tracking down interesting articles about Twitter.

If you create a search that's useful, save it, or in the case of advanced searches, bookmark it! 

2. Don't take the update question literally!

Even though the main update box asks "What are you doing?" you don't need to answer that directly. Twitter started as a service in which people kept a few friends up to date with their activities.  But its usage has continually evolved, and now a lot of Twitter users, including me, prefer to answer this question:

What can you share that might interest others?  

You could provide a thought, a quote, an article, a provocative question, a video, a picture, a funny turn of phrase --  or just "retweet" what someone else has shared (see below).  The best way to have a great experience on Twitter is to figure out your own way of giving your followers and potential folllowers something they'll like.  (By the way, that rules out product pitches and charmless self-promotion.)

3. No need to Tweet all the time
Once you've signed up an account it's easy to worry that you have to tweet (ie submit a message) every hour. Don't. No one's counting. Once people follow you, they're unlikely to unfollow you unless you annoy them. So it's fine to tweet only when you have something interesting to share. Once a day, once a week, once a month... it doesn't matter. The whole Twitter world will be grateful for less noise, more signal!  Speaking of which...

4. Less is More
The ridiculously short character limit seems like a pain, but is actually the key to Twitter's success. Apart from the fact that it makes updates over SMS text-messages possible, it forces people to be disciplined and creative. To phrase things in a way that cuts to the core. And if there are times when you absolutely need to share something longer, you can try what I've done here - set up an account on a blogging service, create your longer post, and then link to it from Twitter. (Posterous is super-easy, by the way. You literally just email them some text or pics, and they auto-post.)

5. Shorten web addresses
And when it comes to linking, the limited character count means you'll need to use a service that shortens any web addresses you refer people to. Try http://bit.ly  It has the additional benefit of tracking how many people click on the links you send round. 

6. Help spread the good stuff by ReTweeting (RT)
Information can spread across Twitter like wildfire. It happens because if people see something they like, they ReTweet it. Here's how to do it:  And here are 3 reasons why you should:
- You're helping spread the word about things you care about.
- You're being generous to the Twitter user(s) you're retweeting. They will notice.
- You're giving your followers great content without having to write it from scratch!

7. Twitter is NOT great for conducting a conversation. Don't overdo.
You can reply to someone else's tweet by clicking the reply arrow, but bear in mind that :
- some of your followers may also see the reply (namely those that are also following the person you're replying to)
- anyone who clicks on your user name will see your full stream of tweets including public replies.
- in Twitter's current incarnation, it's hard for other users to follow a conversation, either because you're just looking at one side of it, or because question and answer are often separated by numerous other tweets. You prob don't want your tweet feed looking like this all the time:

My conclusion: Don't let replies become more than a small part of what you tweet. Direct Messaging, IM or email are much better tools for conversations, though I understand Twitter is working on features to make conversations better.

8. Understand the realities of Twitter numbers
Twitter has enjoyed explosive growth. Some people are following hundreds or even thousands of others. But no one has figured out how to fit more than 24 hours in a day.  So most Twitterers can respond to only a tiny fraction of the tweets from the people they're following. In fact most tweets are probably not even seen by more than 10% of that tweeter's followers, because either the followers are not online at the time of the tweet, or it gets drowned out by the deluge of other messages. Also a lot of Twitter accounts are dormant.  So tweet with confidence... but don't be disappointed if the response is sometimes less than you hoped. 

9. Now read a REAL Twitter guide
Here are the best I found:
- for absolute beginners: http://bit.ly/A4DrC
- wide-ranging: http://bit.ly/jUBz
- Twitter jargon explained: http://bit.ly/2K5d2
- how to get more followers: http://bit.ly/xhXL
- the best 3rd party Twitter apps: http://bit.ly/1gtcbO

Oh, and finally...
...if you're unfamiliar with TED, the non-profit organization I run, it's all about "ideas worth spreading".  We put online short videos of talks on all subjects given by amazing people. Try these first.  There are hundreds more at http://ted.com.  But look out... they're addictive!

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Chris says...
Jun 26, 2009

Now THAT's what you call wingspan


Here's the amazing Solar Impulse, unveiled in Zurich today by Bertrand Piccard and his team. It's designed to fly purely from solar power, day AND night, courtesy of a vast surface area of solar cells.   TED's European Director Bruno Giussani, who was at the launch, says: "The plane has a 60-meter wingspan covered by solar cells, 4 propellers, a tiny one-pilot cockpit, and a total weight of 1.6 tons. -- that makes it the wingspan of an Airbus A320 and the weight of a car. It is an amazing sight."  

He shot this 15-second clip of the unveiling:

Piccard will be sharing his vision for the plane at next month's TED Global. He plans to fly the Solar Impulse around the world in 2012.

Here's Wired's take on the launch.   The Solar Impulse website.  And more background on the project.

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Chris says...
Jun 30, 2009

Meet Gene


I met a remarkable man just now on the street near our home in Tribeca, New York. Gene spends his day searching through the city's open trash cans pulling out cans and bottles for recycling.  On a good day, he can make $200.  Today $50.  In his makeshift pushcart pictured here... $2 worth.  By my calculation he personally ensures the recycling of more than 1m cans and bottles a year.

Gene walked at twice my speed, ignoring the traffic, still going strong at 8.30pm after traveling down from the Bronx early in the morning. He was upbeat, funny, cool and proud of his high-speed trash-picking technique.

I'm in the middle of Alain de Botton's brilliant new book "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work" on finding meaning in what you do. Gene should have had his own chapter. An inspiration.

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Chris says...
Jul 02, 2009

Mind the Moonfruit! Company hashtags could drown Twitter in spam.

The sly marketing folk at Moonfruit have been able to secure Twitter's number 1 trending topic just by offering 10 free MacBook Pros as prizes over the next 10 days, the prize being selected at random from all tweets containing #moonfruit.

Think about this for a minute:

- Currently #moonfruit is being tweeted more than 10,000 times every hour, so more than 200,000/day. 

- Unless you're willing to subject your poor followers to endless spam, your tweet has a miniscule chance of winning. 

- Would you post an ad for a random company through your friends' doors in return for for a 1 in 200,000 chance of winning a computer? (If you did that every single day your whole life,  chances are still overwhelming that you'd never win... ...and even more overwhelming that you'd end up with no friends .)

- Assuming each tweet gets seen on average by 20 people,  Moonfruit are buying media "impressions" here at a CPM rate of less than 50 cents... equivalent to 'junk' space online, and easily low enough to tempt in a lot of other companies.

- Bottom line... our words and connections are being bought on the cheap! And unless the Twitterverse wises up, we'll end up getting deluged with hashtag spam.  

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clementine says...
Sep 21, 2009

Are you alive?

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clementine says...
Sep 22, 2009

Beautiful Black and White Photography

                 
Click here to download:
Beautiful_Black_and_White_Phot.zip (337 KB)

  smashingmagazine

 

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serQan says...
Sep 22, 2009

Are you Happy? A Flowchart

via manuelahoffmann.com

Filed under: Pictures, Text
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Steve says...
Sep 21, 2009

The Science of Retweet Success

Fascinating study by Dan Zarrella that looks at what does/does not get retweeted, based on 40M retweets. Unsurprisingly, words and time of day matter immensely. Surprisingly, begging works! Yet, semicolons don't!

Filed under: Stats, Twitter
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clementine says...
Sep 22, 2009

Creative Truths

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