Xmas Contest: ReTweet to Win a Premium WordPress Theme
How long has it been since I’ve held the last contest on Blogsessive? Too long, but since holidays are close, lets have some fun and make two of you folks the owners of a brand new premium WordPress theme from ThemeForest. It is a simple contest and everyone owning a Twitter account is invited to join in!
Xmas Contest Prizes
Two of the contest participants will each win a premium WordPress theme of their choice from ThemeForest. Contest prize selection is restricted to the WordPress category on the previous mentioned website.
The two winners will be randomly picked by me on the day of December 26th. Read the rules below.
Click here to read the full blog post!
How to waste my time on Twitter
And anyone’s else for that matter. It’s not hard, you just have to ignore the most basic common sense rules of web-sharing and communication.
Be an ‘Internet Marketing Guru’
Yes, a guru, a ninja or a rockstar. You choose your title. After that, add me on Twitter. I’m a trusty fellow and allow Twitter to announce me when I’m added so that I can check everyone out and see their beautiful tweets. But not you Mister I.M. Rockstar. Let’s see how your profile looks:
- Following: 65.000 (roughly)
- Followers: 64.000 (roughly)
- Tweets: 5000 (roughly)
Out of all these people you’re following or follow you, you TALKED to how many? You retweeted how many links from them, or from other accounts/websites? Why are your last 5-6 pages filled with links to your amazing schemes to make money online fast and online sales pages to obscure ebooks for which people have to pay to learn that they can use AdSense to monetize their blogs? Come on! Add me! See if I care!
Twitter is about communication. About states. About the moment. Twitter is about friends and great content. Twitter is not about “I’m a guru in my own backyard!”. Twitter is about “I’m an Internet Marketing ENTHUSIAST, and I want to SHARE some amazing content with you!”
Click here to read the full blog post!
How to make your blog and tweets work together like a charm
Tweetmeme buttons, plugins to show latest tweets on blogs, Twitter accounts linking to the owner’s blog, new posts being tweeted, and blog addresses and twitter links in signatures. If that’s not enough, I don’t know what else would show that blogging and tweeting go hand in hand for tons of people. If you think of names, blogging and microblogging, you kind of see the connection. If you think microblogging appeared later, you’d think much of the blogging knowledge is applicable. But how can you be on both platforms and make them work individually and as a team?
1. Spot the similarities
Blogs and Twitter are of the same species. They come from the world of the social web where the same rules apply. You know, give before you ask, be nice, share relevant information, never, ever, ever limit yourself to broadcasting, be conversational, help out. It’s not rocket science and it’s definitely not new. To make it more clear, here’s the example section: comment on other blogs before you expect comments – or – retweet before you expect your followers to retweet your 140 characters of content.
Catchy and interesting content is crucial for both. If your blog post is a big hit, make your tweets the same. “New blog post + link” won’t make a lot of people click. “Star Trek is real! We can all now teleport! + link + Fresh from the blog” might work a lot better.
They both need frequent updates. If you’re planning to create a blog and never post after the first time, you’ve failed. If you’re planning to get a Twitter account to say hi and have a cool button on your blog without ever doing anything more, you have failed. People expect updates from both bloggers and microbloggers.
Both need monitoring. You need to check responses, reactions and trends to be on top of your game. And if you’re blogging and tweeting right, that will take a whole lot of time.
Click here to read the full blog post!
New phising attempts via Twitter DM
A new wave of phishing attempts makes its way through the direct messages (DM) system on Twitter.
You might receive a DM from one of the people you follow that could look like this:
Username: haha, that u on here? http://videos.ds*****w.com/
Clicking the link will take you to a page that for the untrained eye looks exactly like the Twitter login page. DO NOT enter your username & password. It’s not a Twitter API or anything. You’d just be giving away your authentication data.
Also, don’t be quick to judge the one sending you the DM as a spammer and report him/her. He might only be the victim of one such attack.
Live Coverage of the Revolution in Moldova
Let me start of by asking you one thing: have you ever doubted the power of social media? The U.S. president, Barack Obama stands proof of its power and now the Revolution in Moldova too.
After the recent election which are said to be manipulated by the communist party, Moldavian teen and teenagers started today that will probably go down in history as the first European revolution covered by live blogging and twittering.
Police, army, students, students that speak my language, as Moldova was once part of my country, Romania. Smoke, fire, fights, gun shots. These are the images that are spread via YouTube, Flickr, Twitter and personal blogs.
Click here to read the full blog post!
Jennyfer, I Won’t Follow You! Ever.
I’m a moderate Twitter user. A couple of tweets a day, sometimes announcing new blog posts, sometimes engaging in conversations. This evening I managed to finally get some free time to enjoy my Twitter account.
The minute I started tweeting, in other words became active, I received 3 fried request. 2 out of these 3 requests were made by new accounts under the name “Jennyfer”, following about 2000 users.
Every account like this has one or two tweets maximum and all sound like this:
- I’ve made $6000 last night with ‘Some name’;
- $15.000 overnight. Click here to find out how.
It’s easy to see that these are spam accounts, and yet they average about 10 followers.
So, when I get a request from one of these accounts, what are my choices? Let’s see:
- Ignore the request;
- Block the user.
But what about my desire to actively fight spam accounts? What if I don’t want to “block” the user and protect myself? What if I want to report the user and protect everyone else?
I really think that Twitter needs a “Report spam” button and some text filters as most of the phrases these spam accounts use are standard presets.
So, Twitter, will you help the community actively defend itself?
Update: Until such options will be – if they will ever be – integrated, the one alternative is to follow Twitter’s spam dedicated account @spam, and report spam to them.
Enough with Twitter vs. FriendFeed vs. Plurk Already
Yes, that’s right! Enough with it! Why do we have to make all these comparisons between these services, when sometimes it just isn’t the case?
For the past month my RSS reader has been literally filled with Twitter posts, FriendFeed posts and now it’s time for Plurk. Each blogger tries to find the next big microblogging platform, “the Twitter killer”. I always love a visionary post, but sometimes we need to take a step back and analyze the facts. Twitter is not going to disappear any time soon.
Yes, Twitter had, and still has problems, but I can bet it’s a temporary thing. We’re talking about a huge financial investment here, and no investor will sit and watch his money flowing out the window. Further more, many communities have been built on Twitter. People have spent lots of precious time growing their number of followers, no one is going to give that up so easily. Beyond that, Twitter has a value that only few realize: it’s a great instrument to help you develop your writing skills by focusing ideas in concise, 140 character long, messages.
Twitter has the advantage of time and awareness. That’s one advantage that FriendFeed and Plurk don’t have. And no, I’m not writing this post because I’m some sort of Twitter fanatic or evangelist. On the contrary, I know I’ve never used it at its full potential due to time limitations. Further more, I really enjoy participating in discussions over at FriendFeed, but I’m not a Plurk user, and probably won’t be any time soon. I find it awkward for my taste. And sincerely, I prefer a bird instead of a headless animal.
Click here to read the full blog post!
A Week With FriendFeed
“Twitter is stressing out a bit now.” Does that sound familiar? I’m sure it does. With all the buzz around Twitter’s tech problems, people started looking around for a service to fill in during downtime. And this is where FriendFeed comes in to play.
Some have used it for a while, others – like me – have only recently joined. After a week of being a FriendFeed member, I thought about sharing my experience with it with goods and bads.
What’s FriendFeed about
Just in case that the service’s name doesn’t ring a bell, FriendFeed is all about sharing your social activity with the world in a minimalist – and recently mobile friendly – environment.
With the recent addition of rooms to the service, people can form groups around their interests, hobbies or website. From my point of view, this is the greatest thing until now with FriendFeed.
People are able to share stories in these rooms and to comment upon them. Also, the interesting thing is that you could run a debate starting with a question and most of the times, get enough answers. So, FriendFeed adds a lot to the conversation. Rooms are moderated by their creator (administrator) and can easily be setup as private if you wish to restrict the public access.
Click here to read the full blog post!
Loading ...