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Tweexchange – search for new twitter usernames and relevant web domains

Robin Wauters from Techcrunch has reported the launch of a new Twitter tool which sounds a little different.

Tweexchange examines a Twitter username and then sees if that username is available.

If the username isn’t if provides you with some suggestions. The company that has built it has also teamed up with Web hosting company Go Daddy to provide suggestions for the web domain names too. This could prove quite useful if you are an agency and need to ensure you get the right username and domain for your client.

Robin comments:

When a Twitter username is ‘pending removal’, you can also opt to be notified as soon as it becomes available (Twitter deletes usernames 60 days after their suspension). Note that the latter service will set you back $5.

From the comments at the bottom of the article, I get the feeling many people are a little underwhelmed by its service as they think it is very simple. However, I think it’s a nice idea but I would be interested to hear how it plans to spend the $155 million of funding it has received.

Twitter streams start to appear in directory listings and live searches

There was some interesting news out yesterday about Citysearch, a local business directory service in the US that is now allowing it’s members to add their Twitter streams and Facebook pages into their directory listing profiles.

The post on City Searches’ blog states:

Our new Claim Your Page product, allows all business owners to claim their Citysearch business profile and take control of their listing data.

This marks the first time in the local, online space merchants will be able to list social business data (Facebook Page URL too) side-by-side more traditional data like phone number and address. We firmly believe they are now equally important to consumers and businesses, and we are happy to see them appear this way on our site.

I have to agree with them, I think there has been a bit of an attitude shift in the way Twitter is viewed by business owners. People I now meet seem to be starting to take it more seriously now. For many it is still a bit of fun but I have definitely noticed a number of entrepreneurs looking at ways to use Twitter to raise the profiles of their businesses.

The blog continues:

As part of this launch, we’re excited to unveil Twitter’s new Sign-Up API. Any merchant without an existing Twitter username can now create one entirely and directly from Citysearch through Claim Your Page. Empowering small and medium businesses with social media is an important goal of ours heading into 2010, and we believe Twitter is one of the most important channels a business can utilize to connect with customers and better manage its reputation online.

It seems people are finally starting to believe that Twitter is an important business channel and I expect its importance to grow even further in 2010 albeit not as quickly as it has done this year. I also expect Linked-in to become a much more widely used product now that it’s API key has been opened up for other developers to play with. Get ready to see lots of clever little tools that help you liaise with your Linked-in connections. You can link up with me here.

How to manage Twitter followers – free Twitter app

After a fairly busy news period for Twitter last week, I thought it was about time I shared something which was useful for managing your Twitter followers and people you are following.

To be honest I have many different strategies for managing my Twitter followers as it can be a time consuming process if you have a lot of people to manage. I use a variety of different Twitter clients (like Tweetdeck) but if I am looking to Trim my followers I use a free service called Twitter Karma.

Twitter Karma allows you to see who you are following and who is following you back. If you are following lots of users but they are not following you, you might decided that the best thing to do is trim them back as Twitter looks at your follower to followee ratio. It prefers you to have 1:1 and be engaging regularly as often as possible.

OK, so it won’t win any beauty competitions for it’s fantastic design but it is a useful free application and it describes itself as:

A Flash application that fetches your friends and followers from Twitter when you click the “Whack!” button, then displays them for you, letting you quickly paginate through them. By default, the list contains all your friends and followers and is sorted by last update, showing those who most recently updated first. You can sort the list alphabetically either ascending or descending by Twitter ID. You can filter the list in several ways: only friends or only followers, all friends or all followers, and mutual friends.

Twitter Karma is a good little free tool but it does have its drawbacks. For instance because its free, it does break quite a bit and you don’t get the pretty FAIL Whale, so be patient. My advice would be to try it and if it breaks come back in a few hours as it may have fixed itself.

There are other Twitter applications which help you manage your followers but I have found this one to be really simple and easy to use.

I will be posting about another interesting and useful Twitter app  for this area tomorrow.

Manage Twitter Followers: Have A Spring Clean

Some easily get carried away with Twitter, following everyone under the sun thinking it will boost their profile in the popularity stakes. Actually, you’re not going to get anywhere doing that. If you have already been labelled a ‘mass Twitter follower’ isn’t it time you had a spring clean so you can properly manage Twitter followers? It will be worth it in the long run.

The thing is, if you don’t manage your Twitter followers properly on a regular basis, you could end up with a long list of people that you are following that has little or no relevance to what you’re all about.

Managing your Twitter followers can work in two ways – you can spring clean the people you’re following on Twitter, and you can also spring clean those who follow you if you wish.

Manage Twitter Followers That Follow You

If multiple people that you don’t like are following you on Twitter, you don’t have to have it that way. You can select ‘block’ from the Twitter settings next to that follower. It’s quite simple. If you have been pestered by someone you know and don’t like, or don’t really fancy someone who’s into rabbit shooting following your ‘I love rabbits’ profile, then you have the control to do what you want with your Twitter profile, so you can manage Twitter followers properly.

…And The Ones You Follow

On the other hand, it might be that you have had a crazy mass following session and ended up following 500 people. It can be difficult to follow this many people unless you use a Twitter client to group your followers. It just makes for more catching up on other people’s updates and not only that but you could look like a bit of a spammer if you don’t engage with them properly. This is especially true if you’re a brand trying to break into the social media market. Using Twitter can benefit you, but only if you do it right. Too many businesses have the preconception that if they follow hundreds of people then each one will follow them back. If only it was so easy. You have to work for your Twitter juice, it’s always quality over quantity, and it really does pay to have a spring clean every now and then so you can manage Twitter followers. If you think you’ve been a little bit too hasty with the number of people you’re following, its time to get the virtual duster out.

Two types of Twitter users finally identified – which one are you?

A new study on Twitter users has been revealed this week. The study was done by two professors Moro Naaman and Jeffrey Boase and it has identified that there is two types of Twitter users.

You can read the full article from The Miami Herald here. It states:

The majority, or 80 percent, were what they called `meformers” — Twitter users who sent out messages that revolved around themselves, updating others about their activities or sharing thoughts and feelings.

The other 20 percent are “informers” — people who were actually sharing information. Not surprisingly, the informers tended to have larger social networks and be more interactive.

The article also refers to the recent change to Twitter’s main question ‘What are you doing?’, if you didn’t know it has changed to “What’s happening?”

It adds:

“Although the meformers’ self focus might be characterized by some as self-indulgent, these messages may play an important role in helping others maintain relationships,” they wrote in their study.

I think this is quite interesting and very true, there are two distinct groups on Twitter but I am sure you could segment these users even further if you looked more closely.

The only downside to this study is that it was only looking at 3,000 tweets sent by 350 Twitter users. We tweeted yesterday about Twitter going through the 6 Billion tweet mark and according to the latest statistics there are more than 44 million Twitter users, so although it has prompted some interesting debate, I am sure there will be lots of other people with their own opinions on this.

Personally, I think I fall into the informers category as I try to shy away from being too focussed on myself. However, I read lots of streams from a variety of different types of users. I think some “informers” can actually share too much information but that is the topic for another post.

What do you think, do you fall into the "meformer” or “informer” category?

How Do You Define Twitter Users?

The average Twitter user doesn’t just use the application as an ‘occasional’ activity – more often than not, they live and breathe it. Twitter users are dynamic, friendly and overall, rather interesting.

Of course, this isn’t the case with everyone. There are some Twitter users who have very little to say, yet they have gained followers for being, well, famous. This is heavily evident with some business brands. They see that social media is the way forward and venture out into the big wide world of Twitter. After signing up and creating a profile, they assume their work is done. They think they can sit back and watch people flock to follow them. Realistically, without posting any Tweets they are unlikely to get a mass following, but they could certainly pick up a few early followers by simply having their brand name on Twitter. Brands sell, and in the world of social media, you are immediately at an advantage if you market your brand on a site like Twitter. Twitter users will find you and if you keep up to ‘tweeting’ then they will choose to follow you. If you don’t keep it up you’ll soon be relegated to the Twitter scrapheap.

Twitter users aren’t all about brands and famous names though. There are some ‘normal’ people on Twitter who simply want to make new friends and experience the craze. These people can often do very well on Twitter, but it takes time and effort to build the relationships. Whereas being a brand or celebrity might give you an initial boost, the plebeians have to work just that little bit harder. But it is so much more enjoyable when you have built up your Twitter following from scratch by sharing good content and being engaging.

So, the moral to this story is that you can’t define the average Twitter user – they are all different and all use Twitter for different purposes.