Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send updates (otherwise known as tweets) which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

Pownce

Tumbler

Jaiku

775.18.07.08

I was also introduced to Twitter, an actual service to assist you with your microblogging, helping you to answer that one important question: What are you doing? (your answer must be less then 140 characters). fyi - tweet is and update on twitter...twokay.

I always hear how society today is so busy, well that’s the excuse you hear when someone doesn’t exercise, spend time with their mate or child, read, clean the house, etc. But I’m so happy they found that precious time to do a really important thing in life, telling others they are now at the supermarket. 

Twitter is a blogging platform designed around conversation, rather than information. They accomplish the give and take of conversation by restricting everyone to one short statement at a time. As a result, Twitter is a microcosm of quips, a flurry of microblogs. Mass texting on steroids. Users call it ‘tweeting'.

Twitter defines itself as a communication platform, stating on their home page:

"Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?"

According to that repository of public knowledge that is Wikipedia;

"Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send updates (otherwise known as tweets) which are text-based posts, ranging up to 140 characters long."

What makes Twitter a powerful communication tool is the ability to send and receive updates via your web browser, email, instant messaging or your cell phone. No matter where you are, you can quickly add updates to your Twitter profile for others to follow.

For example, when Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook was interviewed at a recent media industry conference, Twitter was alive with audience members commenting, complaining, and heckling the interviewer - during the interview. This is real time mass communication at its finest.

How does this affect your business?

At first, many people just don't get Twitter, and wonder if there's really any point to it. This is becoming less of a question as individuals and businesses are finding ways to effectively use Twitter to add value to their online business.

Think of it this way; the more contact you have with potential customers, the more likely they will buy from you. Twitter is an excellent tool for creating "top of mind awareness". By effectively using Twitter to promote your ideas, share knowledge and even advertise sales and other ecommerce offers, you become a source of quick information that your followers want to read.

Here are just a few of the benefits of tweeting on Twitter:

• It reminds people that you exist, keeping you on their radar and part of their decision making process.
• It shows people you have something worthwhile to share.
• It allows you to inform others of new offers, sales and breaking news immediately.
• It allows you to communicate more often.
• It allows you to form more relationships casually, since tweets are short and readable in one glance.
• Twitter pages get indexed by search engines and may show up for search inquiries when your website may not.
• You can ask for referrals, suggestions, feedback and help, and people will respond.

With so much marketing hype on the web, people are increasingly looking for companies they can trust. You can build this trust in your brand with prospects by allowing them to get to know you, and by providing them with information that they're truly interested in. Twitter allows you to do just that, in a matter of seconds.

Not sure this can be done? Big name companies using Twitter to promote their website and brand include Amazon, Woot, H & R Block, and Zappos, among others.

Check back next week for 4 Rules of Tweeting - Making Twitter Work for Your Business.

En un dels feeds de Mashable! d'aquest matí he conegut una nova eina basada en la web i que té prou bona pinta: Easytweets. Potser la primera barrera d'entrada és el fet que t'has de registrar, acostumats com estem a obrir l'aplicació i simplement logar-nos amb el compte de twitter, el fet que EasyTweet m'hagi demanat que em registri m'ha suposat un primer fre. Però ho he fet i a partir d'aquí m'ha començat a convèncer. El primer que pots fer és agregar tots els Accounts de twitter que tinguis i seleccionar el que vulguis veure a través d'un menú desplegable, de manera que amb un simple click pots veure tota la informació i twittejar des de l'account que vulguis. M'agrada que ja inclogui per ell mateix un escurçador d'URL, per tal de no haver de passar pel Tinyurl abans de postejar i, sobretot, el fet que puguis marcar exactament la data i hora que vulguis perquè s'enviï el tweet. El que no m'acaba de convèncer és l'organització del site en pestanyes que poden perdre efectivitat davant l'aplicació web pròpia del tweet ja que totes les accions queden molt més dividides visualment.

Dubto que jo comenci a fer servir habitualment aquesta aplicació-web, però la trobo molt útil i pràctica per totes aquelles persones que tenen diversos Accounts. Una versió beta que aniré seguint per veure'n l'optimització.

Dans le monde du web2.0, bien à la traîne finalement, ils ont appelé cela le 'microblogging', une espèce de mutan se situant entre le blog, le journal public du web, et le chat, la discussion en ligne interactive. Il s'agit d'un mutan car on y échange en général des messages plus court que sur un blog (~140 caractères max), plus long que dans un chat, on est un peu plus prolifique en nombre de posts qu'un blog mais bien moins qu'un chat, les délais de réponse sont allongés, une discussion peut prendre quelques minutes, quelques heures ou quelques jours, et on y échange en fait bien plus que de simples messages texte, il s'agit d'images, de vidéos, de liens...

Les services stars du microblogging s'appellent Twitter, Jaiku ou Pownce il vous permettent d'envoyer des messages directement depuis le web, avec de belles interfaces dynamiques AJAX, depuis un client java installé sur votre ordinateur ou bien encore, et c'est cela la vraie convergence et tout l'intérêt de ce genre de services, par SMS. Ils vous permettent de synchroniser votre statut facebook avec vos derniers messages, ainsi votre réseau d'amis sur facebook est au courant que vous êtes dans l'avion en train de partir pour les Seychelles grâce à l'envoi d'un simple SMS (ce que permets en fait nativement facebook).

Le SMS fonctionne d'ailleurs aussi très bien à l'inverse : vous êtes informé que Marc s'ennuie ferme en séminaire alors que vous êtes bien installé à une terrasse de station de ski en train de boire un de ces fameux vins chauds, il ne vous reste plus qu'à lui envoyer une photo du remonte-pentes ou de la jolie blonde qui est assise à la table d'à côté pour l'aider à se détendre, il ne vous faudra appuyer que sur deux ou trois boutons.. :) La différence avec le SMS ou le MMS c'est la convergence des interfaces (vos amis reçoivent vos messages par mail, par fil de syndication, directement sur le site du service, sur facebook ou tout autre site relayant vos messages) et la multi-diffusion systématique (un vers plusieurs).

C'est aussi cela le web2.0, la communication quoiqu'il arrive, l'échange et le partage en toute liberté, il ne faut pas y voir un enfermement virtuel, ce n'est en fin de compte qu'un moyen supplémentaire d'étendre sa vie sociale, celle qui est bien réelle, c'est une nouvelle manière de voir les relations entre amis, de garder le contact !

I have account with linked and twitter and I tried updating from hellotxt.com and it worked! You also have an option of updating by email and SMS. email option looks good, but the SMS option is an expensive one. Coz, you got to send an international SMS to a +33 number. Wish we also had an option to update using gTalk like we had in twitter. The site also allowing you to read and reply to the tweets you are following on the same page.

Anyways, found this site useful and thought I would share it with you.

Facebook Application

Facebook app is a logical evolution of the omnipresent website. You have an instant messaging system built-in which makes it easy for you to keep track of your friends. FaceBook id: thevolts

Price - Free

Sketches

This is an application in which you can scribble down your thoughts using your finger or a stylus. You then have an option to save them in your iPhone's virtual noticeboard or send it to your firends.

Price - £4.99

Twitterific Premium

The latest way to keep in touch with friends, Twitter helped bring 'microblogging' to the masses. Twitter me @thevolts

Price - Free(with ads), £5.99(no ads and extra theme)

Shazam

Shazam enables you to use your iPhone identify songs on the move. All that needs to be done is, you need to hold your iPhone up to the music for few seconds and within seconds you'ld receive the artist and the track's name.

Price - free for a trial period

Mobile Flickr

Flickr is the most used online photo-sharing means and the iPhone app brings users more of the same. Apart from viewing your pictures and your friends pictures you could also take photos with your iPhone 2 megapixel camera and immediately upload them into your flicker account for online viewing.

Price - £1.79

P.S. I'm getting my own iPhone 3G in a couple of weeks. :)

‘… over time, I've noticed a shift. Call it an acculturation, a calming, or perhaps an evolution - but information budgeting seems to have evolved among Twitterers’.

I decided to test out my own Twitter friends and arrived at a figure of 8 tweets a day or less equating to an acculturated Twitterer. The reasoning was on the basis of that for each of my Twitter followers they are awake for 16 hours and consume 8 ihpd (Internet-connected hours per day) at 1 tph (tweet per hour) on average. Over 7 days that would be 56 tweets.

Using Summize/Twitter I used the advanced search feature to count the number of tweets from some of the more active Twitterers that I follow between the 7 days of 10-16 July inclusive. You may be in this list:

bmn, deswalsh, dpn, frankarr, NickHodge, SarahStewart, spidie, sufw

The acculturation scores for this group of 8 Twitterers (not in the alpha order above) are:

The blue bars show the excess above the 56 tweets. Might it be that some more acculturation is needed for T1 and T2 :) T7 and T8 certainly are information budget-friendly. I did these numbers only for fun, and won’t be changing my Twitter friends as a result!

Dank Summize ist es nun möglich bei Twitter die Textstreams zu durchsuchen und zu Filtern.

Der neue Konkurrent von Twitter ist Plurk.com!

technorati tags: microblogging, search, twitter, summize, news

So what will it mean for Twitter then and its loyal users?

A sketch of search inside Twitter

According to the Twitter blog....

Like Twitter, Summize offers an API so other products and services can filter the constant queue of updates in a variety of ways. The Summize service and API will be merged with our own and integrated under the Twitter brand.

There is an undeniable need to search, filter, and otherwise interact with the volumes of news and information being transmitted to Twitter every second. We will be adding search and its related features to the core offering of Twitter in the very near future. In the meantime, everyone is welcome to access search.twitter.com—there’s no need for a Twitter account.

Good news if you ask me.

Summize is a great tool and in my opinion it is the best way of using Twitter for PR research.  It provides an instant snapshot of the live conversation about any given topic, product, company or person at any time.

Combine that with 5 new engineers now on the Twitter payroll and it might just help keep the fail whale away too...

I'm not really into the conversational aspects of microblogs, it defeats the purpose unless you are updating somebody else's microblog with information on what they are doing at the time that you are writing it. What would be handy is to tag your microblog!

technorati tags: microblogging, blogging, folksonomy

Microblogging adalah salah satu jenis layanan web yang sedikit saya ulas di Free Saturday Lesson kemarin di ComLabs ITB (Ditodong jadi pembicara dadakan, topiknya seputar Trend Web 2008. Slide bisa di download di account Slideshare saya). Dari jajaran layanan microblogging yang terkenal, sebut saja Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce dan yang sekarang sedang naik daun: Plurk, semuanya memiliki karakteristik dan cara kerja yang relatif mirip. Tapi masing-masing juga memiliki kelebihan dan kekhasan. Timeline horisontal, visualisasi post/teks dari rekan plurk yang terkumpul di satu layar dan interface yang relatif kaya mungkin menjadi alasan kenapa orang-orang menggilai Plurk sekarang ini.

Fun? Banget! Exist? Pasti! Ngabisin waktu? Tentu!
Lalu kenapa hal yang sebagian orang anggap nggak penting ini justru banyak digilai dan jadi menu utama browsing bahkan sepanjang jam kerja?
Kalau Abraham Maslow masih hidup mungkin beliau bakal membuat piramida kebutuhan versi dunia web, dan yang ada di puncak adalah microblogging, ngejunk di milis atau aplikasi-aplikasi facebook. Yayaya "lompatan logika 2.0", aktualisasi diri online hehehe.

· Seeing as its now the middle of July, which give or take a few days can be summed up as being the middle of summer, and the middle of 2008, now is a good a time as any to sit back with a cup of tea and a biscuit and think about how the year's gone so far, technology wise.

Specifically, this week I'll focus on a trend that has really kicked off in 2008: Micro-blogging. Users of social networking behemoths such as Facebook and MySpace will already be well aware of the concept of micro-blogging, with built in features called "status updates". Put simply, it's like text messaging crossed with social networking -typing a short summary of what you're doing, and posting it for your friends (or the world) to see. I shall leave the argument of 'why bother' out of this review, because believe me, it's a potentially huge argument that'll do nothing but go back and forth until we all get tired, so to start I'll look at who the leading pack consist of, and who's not far behind.

Current 'King of the Hill' is a site that I've mentioned on and off over the last few months: Twitter. Built using Ruby on Rails, Twitter celebrates its 2nd birthday this month, so, perfect time to dissect it compared to its competitors. It finds itself in a unique position, one rarely thrown upon just any old 2.0 website, in that it's currently enjoying huge success as being a close potential as 'the next big thing' in the world of 2.0 technology, much like MyFaceSpacebook before it. Sadly, this surge of popularity has seen an absurd amount of downtime, to the point where the same people who built them up are trying to knock them down, and find a replacement.

Replacements aren't hard to find, in fact, they're pretty much everywhere, each of them with their own daft 2.0 name. There's nation-specific services (such as Germany's Frazr), there's sites that try to combine micro-blogging with other micro-services (such as filesharing with Pownce, life-streaming with Google's Jaiku, and podcasts with Spoink), and there's even sites that don't provide anything different at all, and just seem to have tagged along for the fun of it (that award goes to Identi.ca). Is there anything amongst this mountain of websites, including Twitter, that has the potential to have its 15 minutes of fame?

My focus this week is on Plurk; yes, another odd name, and yes, another micro-blogging site for you to try. In their own words they're a very "snazzy site", and from the moment you arrive you cannot help but agree. The layout of the micro-posts (or Plurks in this case) is set out in a timeline effect, allowing greater visibility on your Plurking pals, following the events of what's happening and when it's happening in a unique way, but still keeping the general jist of micro-blogging. A slight difference from Twitter, which has more in common with text messages (described somewhere I read as clean-slate messages), Plurk makes everything slightly more friendly, with an emphasis on actions, not too dissimilar from Facebook circa 2007 (Andy is, Andy thinks, Andy likes, et al...). Each “plurk” is posted to the timeline with the ability of threaded replies, and the service also offers “cliques” for plurk distribution and various privacy options. Mashable recently compared both Plurk and Twitter:

"The [Plurk] service has an odd, quirky feel to it; it’s much more visual than Twitter, and it’s fun to use. It uses colors to emphasize your ‘moods’, and it introduces the concept of karma, which should be familiar to Reddit users; the more you use the service, the more karma you get. In this case, karma even lets you unlock certain features, which almost feels like a mini game (if you like very boring mini games). Finally, just like Pownce, Plurk lets you divide your friends into “cliques”, which is just a fancy word for groups."

So is it enough? Will all these 'snazzy' features be enough to drag people away from Twitter, the next time it crashes? Better yet, has it got enough oommph to be the next MyFaceBeboBookSpace?

Sadly, it doesn't look like it. Much like Simon Cowell would explain to some pug-faced Christina Aguilera-wannabe dressed up in their Sunday best - sometimes, talent just isn't enough, you need to have 'the look', there needs to be hype. You could be the next big thing, but unless you gain a following, and convince that following that they love you, you could just be yet another karaoke singer down the local. Take Bebo for example; Bebo is like the Paul Potts of the Internet: it's far from being the best at what it does, and not only that, its rough on the eye, its slow, sometimes to the point of being unresponsive, yet it took just months for it to go from an average social networking website to one of the most frequently used and most talked about of the last year, to a point where AOL paid £417 million for it. Much like Potts, you have to forget potential, forget aesthetics; if enough people talk about you, sign up, and tell other people about you, eventually it builds up and up until you don't need to spend millions of advertising campaigns, because the public are doing it for you.

Can anyone remember Friendster? The site still has a huge 65 million people registered, but when was the last time you heard anyone talk about it? Friendster is like Craig David: 5 or 6 years ago it could have called itself the forerunner of networking, but a mixture of the 'fresh new look' of Myspace, coupled with a huge dollop of luck, hype, and great timing with the aforementioned site, Friendster soon faded into obscurity, with only the Philippines using it on a regular basis. Suffice to say that the $30 million Google once offered to buy it for is a long way away from being repeated.

The thing about Twitter is that it’s not the most popular micro-blogging service out there because it’s better than others. Okay, it's a good looking site, and fair dinkum, when its not suffering from downtime, it's simplicity is pretty addictive in a strange way, but even after that, it's only offering so very little, and sites like Plurk haven't taken it a step further, they're just repeating a good main course with a slightly different salad. The same problem lies with all of the other sites listed above; they've pitched themselves as being 'the solution' to 'the gap in the market', but there is no gap, and there never will be a gap until Internet users say so.

Wood for the trees moment here - If entrepreneurs are serious about investing in Micro-blogging, seeing it as having the potential to one day be on the same plateau as social networking, then they need their head seen to. The future for micro-blogging, for me, exists within social networking, and we have enough of those already.

~

· Sometimes whilst reading random RSS feeds, I may click on one that catches my eye, and it's not long before I find myself nodding along and agreeing with everything I'm reading. Such occasion happened last week in a TechCrunch post regarding the death of voicemail.

"It takes much longer to listen to a message than read it. And voicemail is usually outside of our typical workflow, making it hard to forward or reply to easily."

Author Michael Arrington conducted a Friendfeed survey (yes, another microblogging site) in which he asked if anyone actually still used Voicemail, or instead preferred using email, text messages, Skype, or any other type of communication.

For me, I can't help but agree. I find voicemail terribly annoying, time consuming and ancient. Gone are the days where leaving a voice message telling people I was 'away from my phone', or 'asleep' were important, nowadays it's a pre-recorded message, if anything. My work voicemail hasn't changed in the 2 years I've had my number; it has always been some stranger who left the company years ago introducing himself to the caller, before directing them to an email address long since deleted... maybe this would be a big deal, but nobody cares anymore; If I were to re-record it, my message were to be simply "why are you phoning me outside of office hours?" or "I'm more likely to respond to your urgent message if you text me, or email me, or just call me back in half an hour".

Leaving voicemail messages is just as tedious, and sadly in my line of work its almost expected of the worker, if they can't get hold of someone. Stutterings of Ums and Ahs before hurrying yourself through the call, hanging up, and realising you left out some important information which you then have to ring up and leave as a second message. Even once you have one, it takes about seven steps to listen to it, which brings up another good point - how often do these people you're calling check their messages? If you work for the same people I do - almost never.

From a similar column that appeared on The Times website:

"In today’s busy, busy world of instant communications, voicemail seems quaint. There is no way of knowing if or when a message will be received, and the industry estimates that 20 per cent of the billions of voicemails left each year simply sit there, unloved and unheard."

I'll let the TechCrunch article sum it up:

"More mobile carriers are offering text conversion for a monthly or per-message fee. It’s my guess this will become more and more common. Voice is here to stay as a data input method, but listening to messages will certainly become an increasing luxury, to be reserved for loved ones or those messages that aren’t transcribed properly (or you need to hear it for tone or emotion). For now most people don’t have voicemail transcription services. So think before you voicemail, more and more people just find it annoying."

~

· One quick lump before I wind it up (and because I couldn't go this week without mentioning it...): iPhone 3G: will it blend?!?!

~~~

That was the week in lumps, a week in which: The Mail on Sunday thinks it has revealed the identity of Banksy, having a partner is all well and good, but having a 'friend with benefits' is much more rewarding according to these stats, we won't have to wait until next Spring for the new series of Heroes, Wimbledon kids champion Laura Robson may be British, but only just, Primal Scream are apparently responsible for the My Bloody Valentine reformation, 3 million of us will be attending a festival this year, and 'Fanboy' has made it inot the dictionary, as '[a] boy who is an enthusiastic devotee, such as of comics or movies.'

and this stupid German man beheaded a waxwork model of Hitler. The top Digg comment sums it up for me:

"Some vandalistic tosser gets his (christian) name in the paper for wrecking a waxcrafter's hard work on a drunken dare, and the German establishment applauds him.

Good going on being about *63 years* late with your big, daring political gesture Frank L. What's next? Beating up an actor because they play an unpopular character on TV.

I bet his mother's proud."

ttfn
x

So, I've done it. I now have four main feeds, for daily news, must read, should read and could read. They're fairly loose definitions but 'must read' is by people/organisations that I consider dead-centre of what I need to know and consistently come up with good stuff. Should and could read are just lesser gradations thereof.**

During this, I noticed the following trends. Unfortunately I didn't make note while going through all this of exactly who was saying what, so you'll just have to accept them as anecdotally true:

• Several bloggers had just stopped. End of.
• Many had apologised, over the past few months, for not posting for a while. I've done the same myself.
• Several had moved, but not offered any RSS forwarding. As a result I hadn't been getting stuff in from them for a while. This is quite an oversight on their part, and as good an advert for Feedburner that I can think of.
• Some, particularly those that had relocated, now seem to talk more about social media more than they used to, in particular Twitter and Facebook.

Taken together, these do all seem to point to a shift away from blogging and towards other more interactive forms of social media.

Actually, I can qualify this a little now - strangely enough, since setting up my contextual feeds, which is proof of a kind.

For example, Jennifer Gniadecki writes on Problogger about how blogging is more like an after-dinner speech than a true conversation. It's akin to a quote I recently heard that, if someone spoke to you like they do in advertising, you'd punch them. Similarly, if someone pontificated at you like they do in blogging, without letting you get a word in edgeways, you'd probably wander off or fall asleep.

Neville Hobson also comes to the rescue by bringing up the 'is blogging dead' issue, via Jason Calcanis's recent announcement that he's - shock horror - going to be emailing instead because he thinks it's a more intimate way to do business.  He also links to the CheapEasyGlobal post I commented on earlier this week which brings to the fore the idea that it's a publishing revolution, not just blogging.

What do I think? Well, I do know that I really really really loved blogging but nowadays it's become more of a chore than I'd like. I also think that other forms of interaction/publishing such as Facebook, Twitter and Friendfeed are more ubiquitous and encourage relationship forming much more quickly, and at the end of the day maybe this is what clients are more likely to pay for.

So where does blogging fit? In a way I like the after-dinner speech analogy. To use another analogy, it's the dreadnought of your social media arsenal where you put across good, solid ideas and opinions rather than the small arms of microblogging or the repeated stabbing of social networks. Or, to return to my food-related analogy when describing Twitter, your blog is the full Wonka bar. And suddenly I'm strangely tired but also hungry...

* I'm sure everybody is insanely jealous of my having a short breather between jobs, but unfortunately I have some sort of throat 'thing' that made the doctor whince, and which makes me fall asleep instantly and without warning.

** I've plonked them into a Netvibes public tab if you're interested. I've also used iGoogle for my own personal amusement, mainly because I'd like to integrate the presentation-friendly approach of tabs with the search/archive/analyse-friendly approach of Google Reader. But iGoogle does suck.

I was subscriber to the newsfeed Web2.0 and received this article: Writing Once, Publishing Many Times, Makes Context Critical. It describes the problem that many microblog (twitter) comments suffer from: context loss. For people following the microblog and aren't in the conversation the context is almost certainly lost on them.

The solution: Quote! Instead of just writing "Me too!" You can write: "I also want to have free stuff." It's a fair complaint, but feels like I'm reading a complaint that could have been written for USENET in 1994 when I first got online. I wonder if is Louis Gray top poster? ;)

technorati tags: usenet, microblogging, context, twitter, socialmedia, folksonomy

Do you know how many novels are published every year?

Last year’s numbers for Asia, Australia, Europe and the UK don’t appear to be available yet, but figures for the USA were released last week and I believe they show us the global shape of the industry.

According to Bowker, 50071 new fiction titles were published in the USA in 2007, which reflects a 17% increase on 2006 and an almost-100% increase on 2002.

50000, and that’s only the novels published by the industry in the USA.

50000 averages out at 960 per week.

How do you plan to prevent your novel from disappearing under this landslide of novels?

Hang on a sec. Let’s rewind further back than that, and particularly for the as-yet-unpublished novelists among us:

How can you convince a publisher to consider your novel from among the mountain of submissions that precedes this landslide of novels?

Juliet Annan, founding editor of the Penguin imprint Fig Tree, said last year that the number of novels that don't get published is “enormous”.

She reads ten, already filtered through literary agents, in any given week. “I turn down almost all of them,” she said, adding that she’d taken on only three or four in the previous eight months. “The general quality of novels submitted to publishers has, it is generally agreed, improved, thanks to creative-writing courses. But courses are seen by some in the industry as no more than a cynical way to bring extra revenue to universities. And the problem is that the market is overwhelmed with competent novels.”

Okay. So, given that we all write the best novels we can write, and many of us are writing novels that are at least as good as successfully published novels: what else appears in the equation that enables some authors to get their work noticed?

How can an author stand out from the crowd?

The key to this question is in the focus on the author, rather than the author’s work.

We’ve all heard the ‘Platform’ buzzword. We’re told the first thing industry professionals will ask about an author is, “What’s her platform?”

So what’s it all about? It’s about status, starting position, credibility, and a whole load of other qualities.

It’s about marketing.

We all know that publishing houses can run publicity campaigns for only a small number of their authors, and it’s easy to understand why. Even if we leave aside the availability of resources, can you imagine what the landslide looks like from a publisher’s point of view? The competitive pressure for them to gain the attention of bookshop buyers and influential reviewers must be immense. Under such circumstances, there are only so many authors they can promote.

It’s a fact of life for most of us that if we don't promote ourselves, we won’t get promoted.

FinePrint’s Colleen Lindsay addressed this point recently on Nathan Bransford’s blog, when he asked for great promotion ideas:

Well, as someone who came out of publishing from the marketing and publicity side, I can tell you only one thing for certain about what kind of publicity works and what kind doesn't:

EVERY BOOK IS DIFFERENT.

There's no golden rule. There's no quick fix. TV ads? Rarely sell books. Newspaper ads? They exist more or less only to placate authors and agents with large egos. Book reviews? Good or bad, they don't sell books. Book tours? These can be an enormous success (300-500 people at an event with an 80% sell-through) or a an expensive letdown (four people sitting uncomfortably in folding chairs while an author reads from his or her book). I've had authors experience both kinds of events on tour - often on the very SAME tour.

You can't point to one thing and say "This works!" Because inevitably, it will work for only one very specific book.

Social networking? Online viral marketing? Great if your target audience is under the age of 40 and computer savvy. Not so great for a book geared toward retirees in suburbia, however.

Bookmarks? Fine for the authors who can afford them. Know that more than 3/4 of the bookmarks you leave behind at a bookstore event will be immediately tossed out. The same goes or buttons, flyers, brochures, and even t-shirts. Bookstores don't waste valuable POS counter-space like that for very long.

I'm not saying that there aren't good tools for promoting and marketing your book. But each book has to be looked at as a totally new project.

Publishers don't work this way; they don't have the time or manpower or money to craft the perfect publicity or marketing campaign for every book.

So authors should always go into a new publishing venture with the knowledge that he or she should be prepared to do the bulk of their own marketing and publicity.

The question you should be asking yourself, because you can bet it’s what a publisher will ask your agent when she submits your manuscript to him, is this: what is your marketing plan?

Mine is to get involved in social media.

What is Social Media?

There are various definitions.

Search Engine Watch says it is, “...a category of sites that is based on user participation and user-generated content. They include social networking sites like LinkedIn or Facebook, social bookmarking sites like Del.icio.us, social news sites like Digg or Reddit, and other sites that are centered on user interaction.”

BatchBook says it includes, “forums, message boards, blogs, wikis and podcasts. Social media applications include Google, Facebook and YouTube.”

The people at Bottle PR talk about, “software tools that allow groups to generate content and engage in peer-to-peer conversations and exchange of content.”

And Wikipedia defines it as, “an umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio.”

It helps me to think about the big picture, going right back to Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 and all that nerdery, which calls for another fistful of Wikipedia definitions so we can pin it down:

Web 1.0 refers to the state of the World Wide Web before the Web 2.0 craze, and included most websites in the period between 1994 and 2004.

Web 2.0 is the second generation of the World Wide Web, especially the movement away from static webpages to dynamic and shareable content.

Wb 3.0 is a term used to describe the future of the World Wide Web, introduced to hypothesize about a future wave of Internet innovation.

Well, okay. Except that I think the future is already here.

If Web 2.0 was the development of social media tools and their use by tech-savvy early adopters, I see Web 3.0 as the organic and multi-linked networks of interactive communities that are already active and growing rapidly all over the internet, right now.

It isn’t about tools and technology. It’s about people and people.

Here’s a thought-provoking SlideShare presentation from Social Media Evangelist & Online Marketing Pro Marta Kagan

[slideshare id=496437&doc=whatthefissocialmedia070208-1215026815612657-8&w=425]

Why social media?

Social media is about relationships. It’s a global network of fully-engaged and well-informed interest groups. What better community could there be, for novelists whose best possible promotion is word-of-mouth promotion?

Social media is about friendships. For as long as a reader is immersed in a novel, the author’s world lives her mind. Does any other form of entertainment provide such an intimate form of communication? That’s why, as readers, we like to get to know our favourite authors. And that’s why, as authors, we should make friends with our readers.

They’re out there, you know. Hundreds of thousands of them. And they want to be our friends.

When should we get started?

When is the right time to start promoting ourselves? Should we wait until our book is on the shelves? Or when we have a publication date? Or should we start building a base earlier than that?

My instinct is to start earlier, to give my potential readership the opportunity to share my journey towards publication and to grow with me. In fact, I’ve already started.

I often see newly-published or about-to-be-published authors making promotional posts in reader forums all over the internet, and I've read residents complaining about these drive-by posts.

I would rather build a firm foundation and establish real relationships, in real time. Building a social media presence won’t happen overnight and I want to be ready to celebrate my publications as part of a community.

It works, you know, and it really is organic.

One month ago I looked at my blogging network, my membership of two writing communities, and my website, and I asked myself: where should I go to start building new relationships and extending my potential readership?

And that's how I ended up on MySpace.

I can see your cringes from here!

Yes, I know that some of the shoutiest, scrappiest, ugliest webpages on the planet come from MySpace (but that doesn't mean every MySpace page has to be hideous, does it?) and I know as well as you that MySpace is all about kids.

Well, I thought I knew that. But it turns out I was wrong. MySpace recently launched a global redesign, and look at these stats I found on their press release:

• The MySpace homepage has a higher 18-34 composition than any other portal
• 45% percent of all the users on MySpace are over the age of 35
• 40% percent of all mothers in the US are on MySpace
• 25% of Americans are on MySpace
• MySpace is the most trafficked website in the US
• 12% of all online minutes are spent on MySpace
• 13.6% of all internet users in the world are on MySpace
• With 15 languages available, MySpace is the most translated social network
• MySpace is the place where bands and artists hang out online (over 6 million world wide) to connect with fans and share their music
• On average 300,000 new people sign up to MySpace every day

Okay, so the press release is US-centric and I’m a Brit, but I also discovered that the MySpaceUK group has over 2 million members. Not bad, considering there are only 58 million of us to start with.

You know what MySpace did for indie musicians? My gut feeling is that it’s going to do the same thing for authors.

A friend told me he questioned the integrity of those stats because they don’t mention all the people who've migrated to Facebook and left their MySpace accounts up but inactive.

I think he’s probably correct about that trend, but figures from last month show it isn’t a done deal yet. I’d say it makes sense to keep a foot in both camps.

Anyhow, I joined MySpace and ‘friended’ all of my writer friends who have profiles there. Nothing much happened for a few weeks, but I had a neat page and I’d added to my presence on the net.

Then I joined a new group on Shelfari and mentioned my MySpace page in my introduction, and within twenty-four hours I had eleven new friends on there. And these people aren’t writers networking with other writers. They’re readers! They’re genuinely friendly, lovely people, and they read the kind of novels I write, and they want to be my friends.

And I want to be their friend. And that’s how it works.

Where does this magic take place?

There’s a fairly comprehensive, categorised list of social media and networking sites here.

Yes, there are lots of them, and that can be overwhelming. It also raises a danger we need to keep in mind: that we might get sucked into social media too thoroughly and spend more time doing that than we spend writing.

To make this real, we need to be active participants in the communities we choose; to be genuinely interested in the people there; and to recognise that each community is unique. But we also need to manage our time sensibly.

That’s why I’m taking this slowly and letting it build organically.

The newest concept for me is microblogging. I’d heard of Twitter before getting interested in social media, but had no desire to add my exclamations to what I thought of as graffiti on the internet.

When, finally, I took a proper look at it, I discovered its potential for networking. And on the same day professional blogger Darren Rowse introduced me to Twitter’s younger cousin, Plurk.

I joined both sites and one week later I’m still taking the temperature. With its timeline and threaded conversations, Plurk feels organic, user-friendly, and more welcoming than Twitter.

As far as target audience is concerned, I think both microblogging sites want everyone to come in and play. It's what we each do with it that will form our individual experiences.

They’re certainly popular, and both growing fast. This graph from compete.com shows their respective membership numbers.

Here are the places I frequent at present. You’re welcome to add me everywhere.

del.icio.us

Shelfari

Facebook

LiveJournal

MySpace

This Plurk link is an invitation that will take you to my profile. If you join from there, it will automatically link you to me and we can start networking right away.

Plurk

Twitter

LinkedIn

Let’s network and start making lots of new friends.

Here are my latest shared links at Readle Meme:

• iPhone 3G ripped apart, battery is user replaceable! (via Digg)

  2008-07-13

  dugg a story on Digg iPhone 3G ripped apart, battery is user replaceable! 7:38 am - Comment

• Listening to Autechre's latest album on my iPhone 3G. http://preview.tinyurl.com/readle (via Twitter)

  2008-07-13

  posted a message on Twitter “Listening to Autechre's latest album on my iPhone 3G. http://preview.tinyurl.com/rea...” 6:51 am - Comment

• WordPress For iPhone & WordPress for iPhone (via StumbleUpon)

  2008-07-13

  stumbled upon a site on StumbleUpon WordPress For iPhone & WordPress for iPhone 5:43 am - Comment  From the page: "The WordPress for iPhone App is nearly ready to go. It supports WordPress.com blogs as well as self-hosted WordPress.org blogs running version 2.5.1 or newer." - Svartling

• Sounds: Acousticsamples - new website and sample banks: Arno at Acousticsamples wrote in the forums, th.. http://twurl.nl/on50k3 (via Twitter)

  2008-07-13

  posted a message on Twitter “Sounds: Acousticsamples - new website and sample banks: Arno at Acousticsamples wrote in the forums, th.. http://twurl.nl/on50k3” 5:25 am - Comment

• Sounds: Equinox Sounds - Looped Atmosphere FX: Equinox Sounds releases Looped Atmosphere FX, a loop lib.. http://twurl.nl/ip1j13 (via Twitter)

  2008-07-13

  posted a message on Twitter “Sounds: Equinox Sounds - Looped Atmosphere FX: Equinox Sounds releases Looped Atmosphere FX, a loop lib.. http://twurl.nl/ip1j13” 5:25 am - Comment

• Re: Acousticsamples : new sample banks (via Tumblr)

  2008-07-13

  posted an item on Tumblr Re: Acousticsamples : new sample banks 5:02 am - Comment

• looped atmosphere fx (via Flickr)

  2008-07-13

  published photos on Flickr looped atmosphere fx 4:58 am - Comment

• Re: Acousticsamples : new sample banks (via Disqus)

  2008-07-13

  commented on a blog post on Disqus Re: Acousticsamples : new sample banks 4:56 am - Comment  "I wrote about it here: http://making-music.blogspot.c......" - Svartling

• Sounds: Acousticsamples - new website and sample banks (via Blog)

  2008-07-13

  posted an entry on Making Music Sounds: Acousticsamples - new website and sample banks 4:56 am - Comment

• Sounds: Equinox Sounds - Looped Atmosphere FX (via Blog)

  2008-07-13

  posted an entry on Making Music Sounds: Equinox Sounds - Looped Atmosphere FX 4:35 am - Comment

• Goes through my friendfeed at: http://friendfeed.com/svartling (via Twitter)

  2008-07-13

  posted a message on Twitter “Goes through my friendfeed at: http://friendfeed.com/svartlin...” 3:32 am - Comment

• Apple iPhone 3G - En riktig Smartphone! (via Tumblr)

  2008-07-13

  posted an item on Tumblr Apple iPhone 3G - En riktig Smartphone! 3:24 am - Comment

• Sony Ericsson Patti is now SE W902 (via Google Reader)

  2008-07-13

  shared an item on Google Reader Sony Ericsson Patti is now SE W902 2:33 am - Comment  testing the share feature in google reader för iPhone. Cool :) - Svartling

• Google Notebook (via StumbleUpon)

  2008-07-13

  stumbled upon a site on StumbleUpon Google Notebook 1:50 am - Comment  From the page: "If your browser does not support the Google Notebook browser extension, you can still use our bookmarklet to clip from web pages and view your notebook while you browse the web." - Svartling

• Mobility: Tatango - Mobile communication (via Jaiku)

  2008-07-13

  posted a message on Jaiku Mobility: Tatango - Mobile communication 1:41 am - Comment

• Apple iPhone 3G - En riktig Smartphone! (via Blog)

  2008-07-13

  posted an entry on svartling Apple iPhone 3G - En riktig Smartphone! 12:24 am - Comment  Hakan Dahlstrom and Baard Overgaard Hansen liked this

• Effect: Antress Modern Plugins - Modern VH-ME / Pc / Free (via Jaiku)

  2008-07-12

  posted a message on Jaiku Effect: Antress Modern Plugins - Modern VH-ME / Pc / Free 5:27 pm - Comment

• Google's iPhone app rocks! (via Google Reader)

  2008-07-12

  shared an item on Google Reader Google's iPhone app rocks! 12:09 pm - Comment  I can't find this in the Swedish version! - Svartling

• My Thoughts on iPhone/Touch Applications (via Google Reader)

  2008-07-12

  shared an item on Google Reader My Thoughts on iPhone/Touch Applications 12:09 pm - Comment

• Effect: Antress Modern Plugins - Modern VH-ME / Pc / Free: Antress unveils Modern VH-ME, a free distort.. http://twurl.nl/dcmfvd (via Twitter)

  2008-07-12

  posted a message on Twitter “Effect: Antress Modern Plugins - Modern VH-ME / Pc / Free: Antress unveils Modern VH-ME, a free distort.. http://twurl.nl/dcmfvd” 9:25 am - Comment

• Effect: Antress Modern Plugins - Modern VH-ME / Pc / Free (via Tumblr)

  2008-07-12

  posted an item on Tumblr Effect: Antress Modern Plugins - Modern VH-ME / Pc / Free 8:48 am - Comment

• VHME (via Flickr)

  2008-07-12

  published a photo on Flickr VHME 8:46 am - Comment

• http://www.instapaper.com/iphone (via StumbleUpon)

  2008-07-12

  stumbled upon a site on StumbleUpon http://www.instapaper.com/iphone Saturday at 4:43 am - Comment  Now you can read saved web pages on the go, even offline, with Instapaper. - Svartling

• Startup Meme & Blog Archive & Collection of Google Bookmarklets (via StumbleUpon)

  2008-07-12

  stumbled upon a site on StumbleUpon Startup Meme & Blog Archive & Collection of Google Bookmarklets Saturday at 4:40 am - Comment

• Mobility: Tatango - Mobile communication (via Tumblr)

  2008-07-12

  posted an item on Tumblr Mobility: Tatango - Mobile communication Saturday at 4:25 am - Comment

• I didn't like Twitteriffic on the iPhone, so I installed Twittelator (i think that's the name?) instead. Much better! (via Twitter)

  2008-07-12

  posted a message on Twitter “I didn't like Twitteriffic on the iPhone, so I installed Twittelator (i think that's the name?) instead. Much better!” Saturday at 2:31 am - Comment

• tatango_b (via Flickr)

  2008-07-12

  published photos on Flickr tatango_b Saturday at 2:22 am - Comment

• I just added a new feed 'My Sony Ericsson Blog' http://www.toluu.com/feeds/486574905 (via Twitter)

  2008-07-12

  posted a message on Twitter “I just added a new feed 'My Sony Ericsson Blog' http://www.toluu.com/feeds/486...” Saturday at 12:57 am - Comment

• Apps We Like: NetSketch Collaborative Drawing Shares Your Chicken Scratch Over WiFi (via StumbleUpon)

  2008-07-12

  stumbled upon a site on StumbleUpon Apps We Like: NetSketch Collaborative Drawing Shares Your Chicken Scratch Over WiFi Saturday at 12:46 am - Comment

• SitePoint Blogs » 9 Ways to Put Site Screenshots in Your Web App (via Google Reader)

  2008-07-12

  shared an item on Google Reader SitePoint Blogs » 9 Ways to Put Site Screenshots in Your Web App Saturday at 12:40 am - Comment

• Official announcement regarding my retirement from blogging. (via Google Reader)

  2008-07-12

  shared an item on Google Reader Official announcement regarding my retirement from blogging. Saturday at 12:40 am - Comment

• Posty Updated – Now Has Tons More Features, Plans for Identi.ca Support | sarahintampa (via Google Reader)

  2008-07-12

  shared an item on Google Reader Posty Updated – Now Has Tons More Features, Plans for Identi.ca Support | sarahintampa Saturday at 12:40 am - Comment

• THE HOBO DAYS: Under The Stars (via StumbleUpon)

  2008-07-12

  stumbled upon a site on StumbleUpon THE HOBO DAYS: Under The Stars Saturday at 12:28 am - Comment

• thmbnl: small pictures for your big picture (via StumbleUpon)

  2008-07-12

  stumbled upon a site on StumbleUpon thmbnl: small pictures for your big picture Saturday at 12:27 am - Comment  From the page: "Thmbnl is a compact utility for showing thumbnail-style images of pages linked from your website or application. Developers can sign in, grab our code libraries and samples, write…

• Jason Calacanis Retires From Blogging, Listen Up Bloggers & This Means Something | sarahintampa (via StumbleUpon)

  2008-07-12

  stumbled upon a site on StumbleUpon Jason Calacanis Retires From Blogging, Listen Up Bloggers & This Means Something | sarahintampa Saturday at 12:23 am - Comment

• @rutgerblom Yes but it's hard to write on the virtual keyboard. But it will be better :) (via Twitter)

  2008-07-12

  posted a message on Twitter “@rutgerblom Yes but it's hard to write on the virtual keyboard. But it will be better :)” Saturday at 12:15 am - Comment

• svartling: Testing Twitteriffic ön iPhone 3G

  2008-07-11

  svartling: Testing Twitteriffic ön iPhone 3G

• PRYLINFO TV: Smartphone: Händerna på Apple iPhone 3G!

  (author unknown)

  2008-07-11

• svartling: Modular Software: Sensomusic - Usine 3.68a / Pc / Pro / Free: Sensomusic updates Usine to version 3.68a.. http://twurl.nl/zlpsll

  2008-07-11

  svartling: Modular Software: Sensomusic - Usine 3.68a / Pc / Pro / Free: Sensomusic updates Usine to version 3.68a.. http://twurl.nl/zlpsll

• svartling: Effect: SUGAR BYTES - Robotronic 1.2: Sugar Bytes unveils version 1.2 of the vocoder plugin Robotronic... http://twurl.nl/ocnfp1

  2008-07-11

  svartling: Effect: SUGAR BYTES - Robotronic 1.2: Sugar Bytes unveils version 1.2 of the vocoder plugin Robotronic... http://twurl.nl/ocnfp1

• IPhone 2.0 Unlock: iPhone OS 2.0 Unlocked

  (author unknown)

  2008-07-11

  The new iPhone OS 2.0 software has been unlocked and jailbroken. It was released just hours ago and it has already been cracked by the iPhone Dev Team.

• My Touch Keys | iphone screen protector, itouch screen protector. - World’s Most Controversial Keyboard

  2008-07-11

  From the page: "For a lot of people, Appleâ€s software approach to providing what is almost universally a hardware feature continues to either deter or confound. I know several would-be iPhone purchasers who felt as if they could not do without a physical, tactilely responsive keyboard."

• macosxhints.com - Use MobileMe push email with any email address

  2008-07-11

  From the page: "You can set up MobileMe to use any email address as a 'push' email on the iPhone. The first thing you need to do is set your non-MobileMe (.Mac) email address for auto-forward to your MobileMe (.Mac) account. "

• MobileMe Push Mail Hands-On: iPhones MobileMe Push Mail Hands-On Shows Why BlackBerry Is Dead

  2008-07-11

  From the page: "As you can see in the video, MobileMe push mail is now active, fully operative, and perfectly armed. My iPhone is now getting all email in real time, both over a Wi-Fi connection and using a cellphone network"

• Friendfeed - lite roligare än Jaiku och Twitter | Ohsohightech.se

  (author unknown)

  2008-07-10

  Bli medlem på friendfeed, släng upp dina feeds och sedan är det bara att följa med flödet. Gå med i Sverige gruppen också

• Get A Less Noisy FriendFeed With Moopz - ReadWriteWeb

  (author unknown)

  2008-07-10

  With Moopz, Carey brings us a conversation-tracking interface for FriendFeed that lets you keep tabs on what's hot, what's recent, as well as what's quiet (dare we saying "upcoming?"). The interface is very similar to FriendFeed - you can interact with the stories by liking and commenting, but the big…

• svartling: Synthesizer: KX77FREE - Kx-Modulad 1.8 / Pc / Free: KX77FREE's KX-MODULAD is a pretty cool FREE analog .. http://twurl.nl/3mivxb

  2008-07-10

  svartling: Synthesizer: KX77FREE - Kx-Modulad 1.8 / Pc / Free: KX77FREE's KX-MODULAD is a pretty cool FREE analog .. http://twurl.nl/3mivxb

• svartling: DAW: Cockos - REAPER 2.4: Cockos unveils version 2.4 of the great shareware DAW / Sequencer - Reaper. C.. http://twurl.nl/asqd8z

  2008-07-10

  svartling: DAW: Cockos - REAPER 2.4: Cockos unveils version 2.4 of the great shareware DAW / Sequencer - Reaper. C.. http://twurl.nl/asqd8z

• App Store hands-on, notable apps

  Ryan Block

  2008-07-10

• MobileMe Is Up! [MobileMe]

  Wilson Rothman

  2008-07-10

• iPhone App Store Walkthrough, Apps Now Available (Verdict So Far: Works Perfectly) [IPhone App Store Walkthrough]

  Jesus Diaz

  2008-07-10

• Apple lanserar Mobileme

  (author unknown)

  2008-07-10

• Create Digital Music & Ableton Live Beer; Music Tech Beverage Nominees

  2008-07-09

• Social: Google Lively - A social 3D world

  2008-07-09

• Social: Google Lively - A social 3D world [3]

  2008-07-09

• Electronista | iPhone praise, concerns: WSJ, NYT, USA Today

  2008-07-09

  From the page: "The iPhone 3G's official launch on June 11th is just over two days away, and several industry heavyweights have already offered their opinions on Apple's next generation device, offering mostly praise, peppered with a few criticisms."

• iPhone 3G Pics + First Impressions

  Howard

  2008-07-08

  Here’s the iPhone 3G. It’s shares about the same footprint as the original iPhone but the 3G is more tapered. In case you didn’t know, the 3G has the same features as the original except you get: HSDPA support (the original had EDGE which is pretty slow) and GPS. The…

• Windows Media Center Update Might Get Partner Later In the Year [Media Center]

  Matt Hickey

  2008-07-08

• Flixwagon releases open public version

  Ben Robinson

  2008-07-08

  We've talked about Flixwagon a number of times in the past, but I was emailed by their PR today, to notify me about the open public version now available - in case you have forgotten/didn't see what Flixwagon does: Flixwagon is a mobile phone and web application that allows users…

• svartling: I just added a new feed '1FPS' http://www.toluu.com/feeds/833969096

  2008-07-08

  svartling: I just added a new feed '1FPS' http://www.toluu.com/feeds/833969096

• Eee 900 at Work - And The Winner Is…

  mconnick

  2008-07-08

  Back on July 4th, I wrote the following: Now most people think of the Asus notebooks as “netbooks”, primarily suited for working with Web applications like Google Docs, i.e., working in the Internet cloud. Now this was probably true for the early eee PCs, given their limited RAM and especially…

• svartling: Effect: GaryGs Audio Plugins - danDelion / Pc / free: GaryGs Audio Plugins has released a simple free m.. http://twurl.nl/u8vg6i

  2008-07-08

  svartling: Effect: GaryGs Audio Plugins - danDelion / Pc / free: GaryGs Audio Plugins has released a simple free m.. http://twurl.nl/u8vg6i

• svartling: Effect: Softube - Tube Delay: Softube launches Tube Delay, a new valve preamp / delay effect for both W.. http://twurl.nl/avkatl

  2008-07-08

  svartling: Effect: Softube - Tube Delay: Softube launches Tube Delay, a new valve preamp / delay effect for both W.. http://twurl.nl/avkatl

• Powerset is the best iPhone-optimized Wikipedia

  dusanb

  2008-07-08

  This is hardly a hot news, but it's ultra useful for the iPhone/iPod Touch owners. Powerset is the best iPhone-optimized Wikipedia. Period. Unlike other Wikipedia services optimized for Apple's handset, not only can you search Wikipedia articles with Powerset and read them optimized for the iPhone/iPod Touch's scree, but you…

• Feeds: regator - Finds the news [3]

  2008-07-08

• Feeds: regator - Finds the news

  2008-07-08

• svartling: @svartling Yeah, free is cool :)

  2008-07-07

  svartling: @svartling Yeah, free is cool :)

• svartling: Effect: Terry West Plugins - EasyVox 1.5 / Pc / Free: Terry West Plugins - EasyVox, a free effect for p.. http://twurl.nl/h5hbai

  2008-07-07

  svartling: Effect: Terry West Plugins - EasyVox 1.5 / Pc / Free: Terry West Plugins - EasyVox, a free effect for p.. http://twurl.nl/h5hbai

• svartling: Effect: ARADAZ VST - Aradaz Amp 2 Green v1.1 / Pc / Free: Aradaz VST releases version 1.1 of the great .. http://twurl.nl/vjzxke

  2008-07-07

  svartling: Effect: ARADAZ VST - Aradaz Amp 2 Green v1.1 / Pc / Free: Aradaz VST releases version 1.1 of the great .. http://twurl.nl/vjzxke

• svartling: Synthesizer: KarmaFX - KarmaFX Synth Modular 1.03: KarmaFX updates (bug fixes) Synth Modular -  th.. http://twurl.nl/akeicb

  2008-07-07

  svartling: Synthesizer: KarmaFX - KarmaFX Synth Modular 1.03: KarmaFX updates (bug fixes) Synth Modular -  th.. http://twurl.nl/akeicb

• TinyURL.com - shorten that long URL into a Tiny URL

  (author unknown)

  2008-07-06

• Software: Truecrypt 6 released [5]

  2008-07-06

• Software: Truecrypt 6 released

  2008-07-06

• Lifestream: Swurl - a new brilliant agrregation service [11]

  2008-07-05

• Lifestream: Swurl - a new brilliant agrregation service [10]

  2008-07-05

Initially, I saw it as another way to waste away my day and to be a major distraction, preventing me from getting the things done that I really needed to get done.

But over time, Twitter has become a critical tool in my Social Networking efforts. Yes, it experiences service outages (quite frequently, might I add), but those incidences have not hindered the ROI that I’m getting from the time invested in using Twitter… because I don’t use Twitter as an IM service.

Here are some ways that Twitter has benefitted me over the last few months:

Met and interacted with other like-minded people – some of my best online friends are folks that I communicate with frequently on Twitter. Let me rephrase that statement – ALL of my BEST online friends are people that I interact with on Twitter. Many of these friendships started with a simple Twitter conversation that was eventually taken off-line for a deeper level of conversation and relationship building.

Found resources that helped me solve a technical computer-related problem – after sending out a desperate tweet asking for help with an email problem, several people in my network responded with links to Outlook help forums and with personal advice on how to solve my problem. They saved me tons of time in searching and reading articles.

Located several Squidoo experts by blasting a tweet to my network asking “whom they would  recommend as a lens developer.”

This is just a sampling of how using Twitter has help me. While writing this blog, I started a conversation with fellow tweeter, Kristen Beireis, AKA life_enthusiast and she said to mention that you can increase your cash flow with Twitter.

I couldn’t agree more, because I’ve found and built relationships with several new business partners – now working on two new JV projects with fellow Twitterbuds and have over the last few months developed long-term relationships with a couple of new copywriting clients.

Bottom line: Twitter can be whatever you decide to make it… a business builder or a time waster. Quite frankly, I only spend between 20 and 30 mins/day actively using twitter. Although I have it “live” most of the time, depending on the type of work that I’m doing.

Right now, I have 931 people who follow my tweets and I follow just over 1,200. These are highly targeted people, with whom I have lot in common. In fact, many of them are connected with me as a Facebook Friend… or on my Facebook Fan Page… or as part of my Facebook Social Media Marketing Mastermind Group.

Of all the Social Networking tools and apps that I use, Twitter is my Secret Weapon. My goal is to someday, have ALL of my contacts in my Twitter network. And here’s why…

The one big advantage I have when using Twitter is that I can instantly message each of my Followers, not with a SPAM sandwich, but to let them know about things that I’m involved in that they can benefit from, such as, a new blog post, a new Social Networking tip that I’ve recently learned, links to helpful resources, announcements about Social Networking interviews and events that I’m participating in or along with other experts.

In marketing terminology this is called Branding. Twitter is a great tool for helping you to become a recognized expert in your niche. And when people have a need for what you have to offer – guess who they’re going to come to for help – YOU!

If you’d like to become a recognized expert in your niche and have access to real-time Social Networking information, then let’s connect now. Follow my tweets for a while and see how I use Twitter. Also, connect with a lot of the people in my tweet network and see what they’re doing.

Yep, I’m now a Twitter or micro-blogging Evangelist. I’m no longer a “Twitter Hater.”

Let’s Tweet!

Jim Turner

P.S. If you’re already using Twitter, let me know about the success stories you’re experiencing by leaving a comment below.

P.S.S There are other micro-blogging apps available – Plurk, Pownce, Tumblr and most recently, Identi.ca. I have accounts in some of these, but I’m sticking with Twitter because I’ve spent too much time and effort building my current network.