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Tag Archives: Twitter

Dude, where’s my tweets?

By Cheryl | Posted in Twitter at 12 | February 2, 2011 – 12:59 pm

Research revealed this week has shown that the website king of microblogging Twitter has seen a noticeable decrease in the number of signups it gets.

So, does this start the decline of a site that has shaped the way we look at social networking? Unlikely.

Twitter experienced rapid growth in 2009 and reached it’s peak midway through the year; and although the numbers may not make for as good a reading as back then, Twitter still records massive growth annually.

Looking at stats for the US paints a different picture of the doom and gloom that critics has bestowed on the company, with reports showing that although signups are down, net usage is up. Americans now spend roughly 2 hours and 12 minutes per month on Twitter, compared to 1 hour and 51 minutes a year ago.

The Facts
Average Twitter users have 27 followers (down from 42 in August 2009)
80% of Twitter users have tweeted 10 times or less
The number of new Twitter users per month is about 6.2 million (down about 20%)

These facts might not make for the best of readings so how does this affect you and your business? One good way to look at them is that people you interact with on the site are going to be more loyal to the network. It’s these users who will spend more time on the site and understand how it works and who hopefully will provide more worthwhile information.

Comparing
Although many people constantly point out how much better Facebook is doing, is it right to compare the two? Of course not. Facebook attracts many of the younger generation because of its games and galleries, whereas Twitter has a much more simplistic feel. Both have their audience for business and pleasure and when both companies are worth a few billion, what’s there to complain about?

Conclusion
Being a fan of Twitter myself, I think its doing just fine. Of course the company doesn’t want to see a decline of users in their home country, but Twitter staff were confident that the new features would attract more people to the site again.
Another positive? Many critics have failed to mention that these statistics don’t include mobile or desktop client usage which is easily around half of all Twitter usage. Good job you have unbiased people like me…

Facebook and Twitter puts friends at top of wish lists

By Nicola | Posted in Social networking, Twitter at 12 | December 16, 2010 – 1:09 pm

With Christmas just a matter of days away, most of us are looking forward to a well earned break and overindulging (mostly on food and alcohol).

The average family spends a staggering £600 on food and drink over Christmas. That’s £50 a month per year in savings.

But top of our festive wish list of things we most want to do over the Christmas break is to spend the time with our friends and family, according to an online analysis of social networking messages.

Experts have studied exactly what we put on the likes of our Facebook and Twitter pages and captured all of the messages from a real time feed mentioning the word ‘Christmas’.

In the first day of the study, which was put together earlier this month by a social media agency, more than 40,000 messages were processed.

The man behind the wish list analyser, Steve Richards, said: “People want everything from iPads to a divorce.

“Putting the code together to analyse messages took about a week and the trickiest part was tuning it to properly recognise messages genuinely dealing with Christmas wants but smart enough to avoid spam.”

The system behind the study worked by looking at people’s messages for certain keywords and then breaking down all of the wishes and wants into individual categories. The top category here was ‘people’, which included wishes to spend time with family members and friends at Christmas or a specific individual such as a celebrity (mine would be Take That FYI!)

In terms of other results, there was much talk online about requests for certain Christmas presents. The list was endless but the ones that stood out for us were leopard cubs for men and tummy tucks for the ladies!

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Ten Most Addictive Sites on the Net

By Jemma | Posted in Fact Friday, website | December 10, 2010 – 1:02 pm

How many of us could not survive without the internet? I know I couldn’t…

But what are the specific sites that you just couldn’t survive without?

We did our best Columbo impression earlier this week to find out what are the Top Ten Most addictive Websites out there at the moment.

1. Youtube

Youtube is like Pringles ‘once you pop you can’t stop’. This site can keep you entertained for hours with videos from music to even how to clone yourself a Big Mac. It currently gets around a staggering two billion hits per day. Our favourite video at present would have to be the one and only Keenan Cahill from the US. Check him out here – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm_n3hg-Gbg

2. Fail Blog

This is a great site that will definitely raise a few laughs. It is basically a site were people upload their amusing pictures for all too see. Take a look at this if your boss can’t afford a Christmas tree this year – http://work.failblog.org/2010/12/02/job-lols-also-you-can-forget-your-christmas-bonuses/#comments

3. Overstock

Similar to Amazon, Overstock is fantastic website where you can buy goods at a discount price. You can be looking through thousands of products all day and night. Take a look – http://www.overstock.com/

4. Totally Looks Like

A very fun site that does exactly what it says on the tin; compares famous people to other famous people (which can be quite amusing). I got really confused between these two because he totally looks like the guy off Strictly Come Dancing – (scroll down the page)

http://totallylookslike.icanhascheezburger.com/

5. Facebook

Everyone knows what Facebook is and what it does, we also know how addictive it can be. From keeping your farm up and running to finding out the latest gossip, this is most definitely worthy of being in the Top Ten.

6. Cute overload

This has to be the cutest website well……EVER! It is basically a collection of really sweet and comical animal images that would put a smile on anyone’s face. Especially loving this one http://cuteoverload.com/2010/12/04/lets-check-in-on-boo/149245_478965538253_80329313253_5710148_160413_n/

7. Twitter

Tweeting is now generally a part of everyone’s daily routine – it’s even a real word in the dictionary! Where else can you find out what your favourite celebrity has had for breakfast or see a pic taken backstage at the T4 Awards? It’s a great way to be nosey in our opinion…

8.  F*** my life

This site allows you to vent your anger and frustration at whatever disaster may have occurred that day. You can also sit for hours reading through other people’s miseries and misfortunes. (Harsh but genuinely entertaining).

9. Ebay

Similar to an auction, EBay allows you to bid on goods and whoever has the highest bid gets the product. This is one of the main reasons why this site is addictive, you have to keep checking to see where your bid is upto, also to see if your own items are doing well.

10. 2Leep

2Leep Brings people and blogs from around the world together on one site. You can read all kinds of different blogs and view the same amount of weird and wonderful pictures from the globe. Here is a fine example, Art made out of pencils http://www.dumage.com/no-way-these-are-pencils/

So that was our Top Ten addictive sites; lets see how many of you go on many of the sites listed purely out of curiosity, we know we will!

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Ever wondered what it is like to be a musician or film producer?

By Nicola | Posted in Marketing, Twitter at 12 | October 13, 2010 – 12:02 pm

twitter musicImagine what it must be like to release your next film or song to the world and then have to sit with your fingers crossed hoping that the public like what you’ve been working on…

I personally think it would be scary stuff but boffins (sorry, highly intelligent researchers working for search firm Yahoo) believe they have one way of predicting the future.

They have decided to put the magic 8 ball back in their top draw in the office as they now claim that web search terms are a good predictor of the success of films, songs and video games even weeks ahead of release.

And they are not the only ones as a similar study conducted back in April this year showed that the number of mentions of a film on social networking site Twitter could predict its opening box-office take.

So, how did this prove this theory?

Earlier this month, a specific team of know-it-alls compared the total number of searches containing a given term, such as the title of a soon-to-be released film, determining how much that number correlated with the film’s success on release.

They decided to carry out the same process with all of the songs that were currently on the US’ popular Billboard 100 music chart and also with the up to the minute video games that had been released.

And guess what?

Their theory proved correct as in all three cases, the correlations were classed as ‘strong’. If the specific song, game or film was one of the top searched terms, it was a good enough predictor of its future success – even as much as six weeks ahead of time – impressive ey?

Study co-author Jake Hofman said: “In principle, these companies are sitting on their ability to predict consumer behaviour that could be used for their own benefit, or sold – the interesting question is whether this data should be restricted.

“In life, it’s not so interesting sometimes to predict the future, but to know what to do once you know what the future will look like.”

Wonder if they can predict tomorrow night’s lottery numbers….

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Top 10 most popular celebs on Twitter

By Jemma | Posted in Fact Friday, Social networking | October 8, 2010 – 12:03 pm

Lady GagaAs you already know, Twitter is one of the most popular social networking sites at the moment. The site currently has around 190 million users with those numbers going up on a daily basis.

Celebrities are known to tweet all the time but who is most popular?

Let’s take a look at the top ten….

1. Lady Gaga – 6,217,151 followers
2. Britney Spears – 5,918,518 followers
3. Ashton Kutcher – 5,764,023 followers
4. Barack Obama – 5,380,158 followers
5. Ellen Degeneres – 5,203,907 followers
6. Justin Bieber – 5,167,460 followers
7. Kim Kardashian – 4,775,782 followers
8. Oprah Winfrey – 4,226,440 followers
9. Taylor Swift – 4,193,985 followers
10. Katy Perry – 3,831,903 followers

Yahoo bids to get its cool back…Move over Facebook and Bing

By Nicola | Posted in News, Twitter at 12 | September 22, 2010 – 11:59 am

yahoo logoYahoo, formally known as the world’s most visited home page, is bidding to ‘get its cool back’ according to its chief products officer with the use of a new product strategy to make the web more personal.

Having gone head-to-head with the likes of Facebook and Bing, who it lost its number two search engine spot to in the US, Yahoo has started to go down a steep hill, which has seen its page views slipping and a number of product launches failing to excite the world’s press.

But there is one man who believes he can change all that. No, not Superman, Batman, not even Captain America… it is a guy called Blake Irving.

After just 100 days in his new job, he has decided to unveil what he believes to be a fool proof plan to get Yahoo back to its former glory.

He said: “You are going to see things that happen fast, that are innovative and that make customers and advertisers delighted. Yahoo in three years is a global series of web experiences across a variety of different devices that gives people what they want; the content, the folks that they care about.”

“There is a bunch of bringing cool back to Yahoo saying a lot of the things that you want to do on the web are here.”

So there.

In fact, in the next few months as part of his plans, Yahoo will be showcasing a number of new products. These will include:

  • a version of Yahoo mail that is faster, has an improved user interface, blocks spam and integrates with Facebook and Twitter
  • a fresh layout in Yahoo Search that presents more content around entertainment and news searches
  • a Yahoo iPad and tablet app due for release in 2010/2011
  • revamped ad formats
  • connected TV partnerships with video-on-demand content sources, social networks, games and shopping




    • Talking to BBC News, Mr Irving said: “I think in the next 15 years more than half of users will be accessing services through mobile devices. I see it with my own kids who are just as comfortable typing on glass as they are on a keyboard.

    “It’s going to be a different world and a huge percentage of what Yahoo will do, will not be on PCs.”

    Makes sense really?

    Irving looks like he is already getting the backing of the remainder of Yahoo’s committed fans, who have continued to stick with the brand when the ‘new guys’ came on to the scene.

    And even his new colleagues are loving his ideas.

    Yahoo’s chief technology officer Raymie added: “You have to be committed to building leading edge experiences and that is what we at Yahoo are doing and I think all these mobile connected devices represents a tremendous opportunity for us to recommit ourselves and to engage and delight users.”

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    New and improved Twitter on the way!

    By Cheryl | Posted in Social networking, Twitter at 12 | September 16, 2010 – 11:51 am

    Twitter New LogoTwitter has just announced a complete revamp of the site, replacing the original single-pane layout with a two-sided pane view.

    Since its creation, users have always had to click links which take them to an external site to view media; this change means that anything can now be viewed in the right pane without leaving the Twitter screen.

    There’s been a change to the profile pages too, with a bigger picture and more prominent bio with the added bonus of viewing other users’ profiles in the right pane, rather than clicking through to each page.

    The reason for Twitter’s overhaul? They wanted to integrate media from other sites, with 16 deals being made with photo and video sites including YouTube, Vimeo, UStream, TwitPic and Flickr allowing them to have visual content embedded on the site.

    From left to right
    On the left pane, under your timeline, you will find @mentions, retweets, searches, and lists, creating a single streamlined view.

    The right side will continue to show the usual features such as followers and trending topics. This will also be were user profiles and media appear.

    It’s the little things that make a difference
    One of the best of the new additions for me is the overlaying ‘What’s happening’ box. Originally, the box was confined to the top of the page and even though the box remains there, you can click the paper/pen icon on the upper right to compose a new tweet, meaning you can tweet without losing your place in the message stream.

    Going with their own ‘more keyboard, less mouse’ approach, a shortcut has also been added to the overlaying comment box, and pressing “n” on your keyboard will open a new box.

    Another subtle change made is next to everyone’s username, real names have been added in light gray so as to not be intrusive. This could be useful and is a nice touch, but maybe should have been kept solely on the profile view on the right pane instead.

    Flickr
    All Flickr fans will be excited by the integration of their favourite images site. You are now able to share a link to an entire Flickr set of pictures, view all the thumbnails in the right pane and even view pictures in a slideshow, which is automatically created.

    During their press conference, the team at Twitter said they had been focusing a lot on infrastructure and reliability, noting their growth wasn’t easy to handle but they were working on it. We probably won’t be saying goodbye to the whale soon, but with Twitter seeing around 90 million tweets a day, I’m sure we can forgive them for a small amount of downtime.

    The end of desktop apps?
    People have made a living out of creating apps, including TweetDeck, aimed at developing on the features Twitter is missing. Does this new update make Twitter clients irrelevant? Probably not. People are always going to want features that Twitter doesn’t give them, plus a lot of users don’t like to keep their browser open all day, meaning a small app running in the corner of their screen will always be their preference.

    Shortcuts…less effort!
    The new Twitter is all about keyboard shortcuts, here are some of the options you have to choose from:

    Actions
    j next tweet
    k previous tweet
    Enter to drill down into or close a selected tweet
    Space page down
    Shift+Space page up
    / jump to the search box
    . refresh and jump back to the top

    Individual actions
    f : favourite a tweet
    r : reply to a tweet
    t : retweet
    m : send a direct message
    n : compose a new tweet
    Esc : cancel a compose window or help window

    Is it available now?
    The latest version is currently rolling out and should be completed within the next few weeks.

    Improvement?
    Twitter is well known for its simplistic style and this new layout doesn’t deter far from the original. They have done a great job in
    bringing together other sites and making it easier to view tweets and profiles. Now the wait until we can try it out…

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    MySpace comeback?

    By Jemma | Posted in Social networking, Twitter at 12 | September 1, 2010 – 11:47 am

    MySpace logoMySpace introduced a new sync button yesterday which can be used to connect with popular social networking sites, Facebook and Twitter. The feature will allow users to sync status updates between each site and is one of many steps MySpace are trying to boost their popularity within the social networking world.

    The fall of MySpace
    Myspace was first launched in July 2003 and was extremely popular, but by 2008 is was overtaken by Facebook and the popularity continued to dwindle. We are now seven years on from the introduction of the music based site, so can it turn round it’s luck?

    ‘This is particularly exciting for artists who can now use this tool as a complement to their MySpace Music presence and share their vast library of content, including full album catalogs, to people who’ve liked their Facebook page.’ explained MySpace in a press release.

    Comeback?
    As well as the introduction of the sync button, MySpace launched a new colour scheme this year, resembling the look and feel of Facebook; an obvious attempt to attract more users back to the site.

    This looks like a great opportunity for new music artists of today and it is an all round better and faster way of updating your status.

    So MySpace is coming back on the map, but when did you last update your MySpace status?

    The phrase ‘if you can’t beat them join them’ comes to mind, and this is certainly the case when it comes to Facebook.

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    I want candy! (TabCandy that is…)

    By Cheryl | Posted in Social networking, website | August 13, 2010 – 12:07 pm

    TabCandyFirefox is currently developing a new feature that could change the way we look at tabbed browsing.

    The developers are currently busting a gut (not literally, I hope) to make sure TabCandy is ready for release with Firefox 4 and the word on the street is that they are rushing to get some patches reviewed and approved before the deadline.

    Head of the Tab Candy team, Aza Raskin has said of the project: “How many of us keep tabs open as reminders of something we want to do or read later? We’re all suffering from info guilt. We need a way to organize browsing, to see all of our tabs at once, and focus on the task at hand.”

    Available on Windows, Mac and Linux platforms, TabCandy could change the way we use our browsers in the future and make it a must for all future releases.

    So…what does it do?
    It can be time consuming flicking through tabs, all of those vital seconds wasted before you finally find the one you’ve been looking for. But with one keystroke, Tab Candy will show an overview of all tabs to allow you to quickly locate and switch between them.

    Groups
    You can organise all your tabs in separate groups for your work, holidays, games and social sites, making it easier to switch between them. What makes it stand out is that you can then share these groups with other people. Switching to a grouped tab would mean only the relevant tabs are shown in the tab bar, helping you focus on what you want.

    Piles
    It’s not just about the web pages. The desktop feature ‘Piles’ would allow the user to put their pictures, PDFs, songs in to piles which can then be named and saved.

      Features

    1. Organize tabs into groups that you can be named and placed on the browser as desktop-like view.
    2. Save tab groups to look at later.
    3. When you switch to a grouped tab only the relevant tabs are shown in the tab bar, which helps you focus on what you want.
    4. Search through your tabs.
    5. Have multiple profiles allowing you to sign into the same site with different logins in two different tab groups.
    6. Share tabs or tab groups between different users, computers and devices.
    7. Set up a shared tab group where several users can co-browse and see what each other is looking at on the screen.
    8. Choose colours or image backgrounds to distinguish different tab groups.
    9. Rearrange tabs and drag them anywhere inside a group or between groups.

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    Twitter at 12

    By Cheryl | Posted in Social networking | July 20, 2010 – 12:34 pm

    Every day at 12 we will be taking to Twitter to ‘tweet’ you the latest news from IT Answers and QuadroNation. Join us for 140 characters of fun, facts, blogs, offers and everything in between.

    http://twitter.com/ITweetAnswers
    http://twitter.com/NR_QuadroNation

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