UK’s Oldest Twitter User
Ivybean104 is not your average Twitter user. She regularly tweets about her favorite TV shows and what she eats for dinner (chicken casserole if you’re interested). Ivy Bean has been bestowed as the UK’s oldest Twitter user at 104 years old.
Ivy has helped pave the way for Web 2.0 while living at Hillside Manor in Bradford. She first registered on Facebook two years ago and has grown her friends list to 4,800. Her example has led several of her friends to register for “computer-college” to learn the basics.
What’s interesting about the The Daily Telegraph story is that it seems like the Geek Squad helped register Ivy and issued a press release. Why else would Ivy’s first Tweet say, “I’m enjoying Twitter for the first time and having my photo taken” if they weren’t setting her up?
Ivy should be spending her day Tweeting her grandchildren and knitting fail whales, not being used for a photo op with the Geek Squad.
While I praise Ivy for learning how to use new technologies, I condemn the Geek Squad for exploiting Ivy Bean for press.
There are over 75 million Twitter users
FIGURES ON THE USE of Twitter from online analysis and performance monitoring company RJ Metrics show that the microblogging service has some 75 million users. However, they are not all active.
Today Roger Moore, founder and CEO of the firm, refreshed its analysis of Twitter takeup and usage, explaining that it had seen a boom in user numbers and was signing up some 6.2 million new users per month.
However, not all of these twitterers are contributing to the babble on the Internet, and in fact Moore found that roughly 25 per cent of accounts have no followers and about 40 per cent have never made a single tweet. Four-fifths of the user base have tweeted less than ten times, and just 17 per cent of Twitter users sent a message in the month of December.
Most of the non-tweeters appear to be new users, those who signed up after 2008, and Moore said that they are skewing the results. He explained that early adopters of the service were most likely to use it frequently, and more than made up for those who signed up and then realised that they actually couldn’t be arsed to do anything with it.
Summarising, Moore added, “When you look at new account registrations, no one can deny that Twitter is still growing like a rocketship (that’s good). However, upon closer inspection, the rate of new user signups has dropped meaningfully from its peak and many new users never do anything with their accounts (that’s bad). Furthermore, the percentage of accounts sending out tweets has steadily declined over the past six months (that’s worse).”
He added that with 75 million accounts, an active user base of around 20 per cent left roughly, “15 million highly active tweeters.”
How does Twitter not make money?
I confess I’ve not paid much attention to Twitter. As far as I’m concerned, the notion of mini-blogging dates back to the first day that Dave Winer started posting one-liners to Scripting News, which must have been well into the last century. Twitter’s only innovation has been to limit the post length to 140 characters and make it something you can do from a mobile phone or by instant messaging rather than merely from a browser. I’m sorry, but like fellow ZDNet bloggger Andrew Keen, I’m too long in the tooth to get excited about thumbing pithy remarks into the ether, let alone the prospect of having to read a constant stream of the same from friends and acquaintances.
My interest was piqued, however, by today’s TechCrunch report on Web services coming to Twitter. Apparently, a tweak to the Twitter API will make it possible to set up a Twitter account that allows an automated service to respond to queries such as “d weather 14202″ with an appropriate answer — in this example, the weather forecast for zipcode 14202. It’s pretty obvious that this has enormous potential, since similar services are already available via mobile phone networks, which any startup could now undercut by using the Twitter service, as TechCrunch’s writer explained:
“Currently, it costs a lot of money to launch a start-up in the SMS/mobile space — you have to license a shortcode monthly ($500-$1000/mo), pay a SMS gateway provider, and then pay anywhere from $0.03 – $0.05 per inbound or outbound text message. It adds up. But now, if a start-up chooses to use Twitter as a command line to their web service, it’s free (until Twitter starts charging for it).”
Twitter’s own 40404 SMS address is itself a shortcode, for which Twitter presumably pays up to a $1000 per month plus a few cents per message. The new API tweak allows Twitter to piggyback any number of separate direct response services within its own shortcode. That’s a potentially very valuable service offering.
But it also set me wondering about Twitter’s own business model, and how it has to be making a ton of money already (unless its founders really are clueless). Because none of those shortcode services are charitable concerns; they’re all money-making ventures. They’re premium-rate text destinations, for which users normally pay to receive a response. They make money because the service provider gets paid a cut of the charge your telco puts on your phone bill.
Six ways Twitter can make money
A web 2.0-sized boatload of buzz has surrounded Twitter, the addictive service that allows its users to answer one simple question: what are you doing? The service has made appearances in everything from your friend’s blog to the New York Times, and everyone seems jazzed about how fun tweeting is. While we’re all having a good time, however, its creators, Obvious, keep hinting at how many practical uses they have up their sleeve for Twitter. Even though they haven’t revealed any of their cards just yet, the rest of us are left wondering: how is such a seemingly frivolous service going to make money?
As a user who has taken the Twitter pill hook, line and sinker, I’ve been mulling this question for some time now. I came up with a few strategies, but then I figured: why not run them by the Twitter crew themselves? The least they could say was ‘no comment,’ but fortunately Evan Williams, one of Obvious and Twitter’s founders, responded with a few of his own. Read on for my attempts at making Twitter some money (I’m waiting for my job offer Ev), as well as some choice words and ideas of his own from Evan.
- Twitter Pro – This is one obvious move. Twitter Pro could be a paid service that offers more features, unlimited tweets vs. a ‘standard’ account that receive a daily/weekly limit. It could also include a mobile phone/Windows Mobile/BlackBerry client with more robust tweeting/following tools that use the web to transmit tweets, avoiding those nasty SMS charges. It could also allow tweeting pics and videos from around the web with a Tumblr-like K.I.S.S. philosophy.
- Merchandise – A while back (though I admittedly can’t find a link right now), Evan said merch was a big revenue generator for Blogger, and Twitter has worlds more buzz surrounding it right now. Heck, they even rolled out a small batch of shirts for SXSW, over which users seemed to be pretty excited. As ready as we may be to plunk down some cash for the privilege of using a t-shirt to tell people where we waste most of our time, Ev directly replied to this one: “RE: merchandise – It was, at one time, a noticeable part of Blogger’s revenue, but that’s when Blogger was just me, scraping by; my guess is it wouldn’t make a blip in Twitter’s costs today. Unless we figured out how to be a trendy new apparel brand.” Sorry everyone, but it sounds like apparel isn’t exactly on their list of features to roll out in the next update.
- Twitter for Business a l? Google Apps – Customized, secure software that businesses can run on their own intranet. BlackBerry and WinMo clients are a more apparent option here. Obviously, this could become tremendously useful if Twitter built in some hooks that work like Stikkit and Google Calendar, allowing employees to easily tweet appointments and tasks to a centralized PIM system, and automatically be subscribed to their team’s tweets without any extra effort on their part.
- Twitter Forums, ad-supported – Finally, an innovation brought to the aging discussion forum format. Sort of a Twitter approach to Yahoo! Answers, allowing users to post questions and follow threads they’re interested in, with the Twitter format forcing everyone to keep things simple and on-topic. Instead of ads, this could also possibly be just for Pro customers. One of the catches here is that Twitter users only see tweets from people they are following. When submitting a question to a Twitter Forum, you would be able to see all replies to the question, even the ones from users you’ve never met and aren’t following.
Evan didn’t let me have all the fun with brainstorming, however, and he offered two of his own ideas which I would assume are a good bet the company is working on, since he shared them with this lowly blogger:
Two more-straightforward ideas: 1) Ads on the site. We have a little AdSense on there now, but we haven’t really tried. As the traffic grows, some tasteful sponsorships might be sellable. 2) Charging companies who are using it for marketing or other commercial purposes. If an organization finds Twitter to be a valuable communication tool with their customers/constituents/etc — especially if we’re sending lots of SMS’s for them, which cost us money — it seems viable to make an offering around that.
So there you have it: six ways Twitter can make money, two of which are straight from the lion’s mouth. Judging from the sheer magnitude of buzz surrounding the recently-incorporated company, I wouldn’t be surprised if these six are but a drop in the bucket. There’s good news for those who fear change, however: no matter which way Twitter decides to start paying their exponentially growing bandwidth bills, Evan assured me that: “Our top concern when it comes to monetization will be to do so in a way that does not negatively impact users.” Good show guys; your users will appreciate being able to spend their time tweeting about how they’re spending their time, with the least amount of distraction.
Twitter Phishing Attack in Progress – Do Not Click Unknown Links
If you get a direct message on Twitter looking like this:
Lol. this you?? http://divinelink.net/?rid=http://twitter.verify.bzpharma.net/login
Do not click on the link!
The attack appears to be utilizing the SmartName domain parking service, which allows redirects to third-party sites. The DMs appear in the form of a legit URL, followed by something to the effect of ?rid=http://twitter.verify.bzpharma.net/login in the URL. Those URLs redirect to the latter URL, which is a phished site that looks like the Twitter login page.
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How to: Really Like Twitter
This is a guest post by Manal Assaad from The Manalyst.
You can follow her on Twitter @TheManalyst.
I live in the Middle East and you don’t need statistics to know that people here are more of Facebook fans, probably because we tend to be very talkative and 140 characters simply doesn’t cut it for most of us. Or perhaps because FarmVille doesn’t have an account on Twitter (for which I’m really grateful).
I asked some friends about that, and read some other people’s opinions on it, and barely any of them seemed to really like Twitter. But I kept seeing it everywhere online and was curious enough to try it, and finally took the leap about 2 months ago. After spending all that time interacting with people on Twitter, learning about it and from it, I really liked it and even became addicted to it! So I figured that liking Twitter or not liking it depends on your understanding of it, your experience with it, and basically how you start on it!
Facebook Vs. Twitter
Seriously, stop comparing between these two. I’ve been on Facebook for many years now and I’m practically new on Twitter but I knew they are completely different from my first day on Twitter. I was told that Facebook is much more fun than Twitter and that the latter is basically only updating your status. WRONG! I’ve had more interactions and more fun on Twitter in these 2 months than I’ve had in years on Facebook. Facebook is really great when it comes to keeping in touch with your family and friends easily, and checking out their photos, and sharing things with them. But Twitter is like having the entire world on wheels that keep the fun coming your way. I was also told that Twitter is lame. WRONG AGAIN! I said it before and I say it again now, Twitter is only lame if you’re following lame people (and dare I say, if you’re lame too!). In one hour on Twitter, you will learn more things than you would in a week on Facebook.
If you really learn how to use Twitter, it can be the best thing ever (until something even better comes along in the future, it will for sure, but for now Twitter is doing just great). Now here are some answers that would help you start on Twitter (they’re also good if you’ve already started but not really doing well!):
What Do I Use Twitter For?
Before you decide to use twitter, you need to know WHY you want to use it. Do you have a blog/website that you want to promote? Do you have a business that you want to grow? Or do you just have a lot of spare time and you want something new and cool to have fun doing? If it’s the latter, then you’ve come to the right place, because I tweet for fun mainly. Sure it doesn’t matter to anyone else why you want to be on Twitter (unless you’re a spammer, in which case STAY AWAY!), but it would help you to know what your goal is to know where to go from there. In my opinion, there is no wrong reason to be on Twitter, there are just wrong uses of it. If you’re not sure what the experience is going to be like, then read some posts about it first, but the experience greatly varies from one person to the other. Some people are addicted to it, some people think it’s very useful, and others just can’t understand it and even hate it. So I say the best bet is to just go ahead and try it for yourself!
Tips: If you want to learn everything about Twitter, you can start here with Mashable’s Twitter Guidebook (who you should follow as well).
Who Do I Follow?
There is no general rule here. There are people from everywhere tweeting about everything all the time (Yes, all the time!). So you can decide to follow whoever you want to follow and that depends on your goal as per the previous point. Basically there are different types of tweeters, and you can learn about them from Guy Kawasaki’s The Six Twitter Types or Mashable’s The 10 Users You’ll Meet On Twitter. You might want to follow people in your niche so you can get the scoop on all the related news if you want to use Twitter for professional goals, or follow interesting people who tweet about anything that you can find online, or maybe specialized people (or brands) who just focus on one topic like technology, politics, movies, celebrity news, etc. You can follow all the celebrities you love, if you’re into that sort of things, to keep up with their latest updates, the most active and interesting ones being Ashton Kutcher and Alyssa Milano. And there are non-celebrities but really amazing people that you would want to follow like Guy Kawasaki (He has the greatest stuff but don’t expect him to talk to you though), Diana Adams (The most lovable person on Twitter with lots of interesting links and will reply to you), Blair Semenoff (He keeps the interesting links coming, and he still stops once in a while to thank you for a retweet or retweet something interesting you shared), Scott Stratten (this dude is hilarious, enough said!) and many others (you can just check out my VIP list to see who I personally like).
Tips: You can start by following people based on their interests or professions by checking out sites like www.listorious.com or www.wefollow.com; and you can also follow people from the blogs and websites you like.
P.S.: Don’t go on a following frenzy and follow everyone you see. You are only allowed to follow up to 2,000 people at first, until the number of your followers is right about that much (The rule is you can only follow 10% more than the number of your followers once you get to 2,000).
Who Would Follow Me?
Unless you are a celebrity, you will probably suffer with that a bit. Don’t expect the number of your followers to skyrocket anytime soon, and that’s OK. Don’t worry because you will get followers anyway. But the number and quality of your followers will greatly depend on your tweeting skills. Just expect a lot of spammers (people promising you lots of money or followers), bots (accounts with numbers in their names and pictures of hot chicks, especially if they offer you porn) and marketers (basically the same as those who call you up at inconvenient times, or send you junk emails) to follow you in the beginning. And whatever you do, PLEASE don’t fall for those telling you they can get you thousands of followers. I know we all want to have thousands of followers to brag about, but soon enough you’ll know that getting followers who are really interested in YOU and love what you do is much more rewarding than a huge number of followers who don’t really care about you.
Tips: If you really want to reasonably increase the number of your followers then start by following back those who already took the time to follow you, and also look for others who often follow back but make sure they are worth following (as mentioned in the previous point).
What Do I Tweet?
Of course that’s also your business and no one should tell you what to do with your own account, but if you simply want to tweet about meaningless things in your day (like what you had for lunch or dinner, what your mom just said to you on the phone, how upset you are about something, the color of your PJs, etc), don’t expect people to care enough to follow you. Apart from that, you can tweet about anything you like. You can share interesting links you find online, you can share various news, quotes, your blog posts (if you have one), jokes, etc. It all depends on what kind of followers you want, and on what you enjoy best. In my opinion, it would be best to include a bit of everything, that way you know that no matter who is following you, they would at least like some of your stuff, and that would get you other followers as well. And surely it matters what your followers like because you’re not there tweeting “for your eyes only”. The whole point about Twitter, the way I see it, is that you share things you already know and enjoy with others who you think would enjoy them too. So yes, it is (or at least should be) about sharing! Now the best thing you can share with your followers is a conversation. Make sure you always engage with your followers by initiating conversations with them, commenting on their tweets or answering their questions, retweeting the ones you like, or thanking them for retweeting yours and replying to them as often as you can. Always, ALWAYS, make time to talk to people. It’s not called a “social” network on a whim, you are expected and you should socialize with people.
Tips: If you’re not getting many followers, it might mean you’re not a good tweeter. Try to see what others are tweeting and learn from them. You can also see what your current followers like and retweet, and tweet similar things.
P.S.: When you engage in a conversation with someone, make sure you move that to the Direct Messages so you don’t annoy the rest of the followers, unless you think they’d be interested in it. Also, if you initiate a conversation with someone and they don’t answer you back, it’s not the end of the world! (I’ve come to learn that personally, and I was even featured in a post for it). Perhaps they are very busy, or maybe that’s just their style and they don’t like to talk to people. If you get too irritated with it then you can always unfollow them, unless they really tweet valuable things which would redeem their lack of sociability.
When Do I Tweet?
Practically whenever you want and whenever you have time. Once you get the hang of it, you will probably find yourself addicted to it and browsing the net from site to site to find interesting things to share all the time. But I’m sure you have a job or an actual social offline life, and you can’t afford to tweet at all times. But take note that the frequency of your tweets is related to how many followers you get. If you rarely tweet, then you probably won’t get as many followers as you’d like. So just make sure, if you can, that you would tweet at least a couple of times a day. But seriously there is no rule here either, it all goes back to what you’re comfortable with. Just don’t stress over it. If you can make time to tweet interesting things every day, then do so and you will see the difference it would make. If you can’t, then it’s not a big deal, but just make your time there worth it.
Tips: You can use services like Hootsuite to schedule your tweets to a later time. So if you have some free time now, but you know you will be busy the next day or so, you can tweet a few extra things and schedule them to when you would be offline. One thing I personally do is that I reschedule the really interesting things for 6 hours or 12 hours later so that followers who missed them the first time can check them out the second time when I am offline. Just don’t overdo it and keep the repeated tweets at least 6 hours apart and schedule them for the peak times depending on where your followers are.
Of course, there are a lot more things that you need to learn about Twitter and you can find them everywhere online written by much more experienced tweeters. But the 5 things above are what will directly affect your Twitter experience, the rest are just techniques that would make your journey easier.
If you’re still hung up on the 140 character limit, just remember that some of the best things come in small packages… Just look at how small the iPhone is! Or kittens… those are really cute too.
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How Much Is Your Twitter Account Worth?
Ever wondered how much your Twitter account is worth? Tweeter Value can put a price tag on your Twitter account. It is more for fun than for anything else. But we all like a bit of fun, don’t we?
What exactly does Tweeter Value do? It puts a theoretical value on a Twitter account, and that’s it. Keep in mind that buying and selling Twitter accounts is against Twitter Terms of Service, so don’t get any ideas. It’s meant to be used for fun.
How does it work? It uses an algorithm to estimate how much Twitter account could be worth. Many things are taken into consideration, including: followers, following and tweets.
And how much is your Twitter profile worth?
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Twitter Etiquette: 7 Common Sense Rules for Twitter
With Twitter going mainstream and gaining masses of newcomers on a daily basis, I see more and more senseless messages floating around. To be completely honest, it’s not only the new guys, but some seasoned twitters as well. People say “Social media is 90% common sense”. In regard to that, the “rules” I will list in this post, you have probably already figured out on your own, I hope. Apparently not all did, tho’.
In this article I will try to explain you some basic principles that you use when you socialize. Think about what you tweet – on the other side is a person and not a Twitter account. Unfortunately, some people on Twitter and online in general, do things they would not do in person. For instance, when I search on Twitter for a specific topic, I get so many spam like tweets that have nothing to do with the subject. By doing that, you waste your and other people’s time.
The following is a list of 7 common sense rules you should use on Twitter
- Get rid of useless ReTweets. Remember #followfriday recommendations? They used to be cool, but these days all you see is people retweeting list of names that has no meaning. I usually ignore these huge RTs. Sometimes people greet multiple friends at once – OK I understand this – but why do ten people have to retweet this?
- Don’t be pushy. Don’t know how to exactly explain or name this one, but I will try my best. Sometimes people try to promote their product, which is fine by me, but they take wrong approach. I have seen they send their tweets (with the link to their product) to many users at once, usually those who have many followers, with the tweet containing no real information what the link is about. It is annoying and most of us just ignore such tweets.
- Be nice. I think this one is self explanatory. People enjoy pleasant conversations. Say hi sometimes or thank or reply to a question – not every tweet has to contain a link to your website. If you only post information your followers will feel like you don’t care about them. Also, don’t ignore it when people tweet you, take time and reply to them.
- Do not repeat yourself. I know you want your blog or product be seen by everyone, but if you repeatedly tweet that link to your followers, they might just ignore or unfollow you. Try to limit that to a few times a day.
- People have names. It feels good if people actually address you by your real name sometimes and gives you a feeling you interact with a human being. You don’t have to do it every time, but once in a while is nice.
- And they have short memory. Since Twitter lacks threaded conversations, it is sometimes difficult to know what a certain tweet was a response to. Try to include some sort of indication what question you are referring to. I sometimes RT the message in my reply to make it obvious to what I was replying.
- Give credit and share. If you find something you like, share it and tell where it comes from. If someone tweets something interesting that you want to retweet, thank him and mention him in your retweet. Again, I know this is hard to do every time, especially if you follow many people, but once in a while is nice.
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How to Avoid Being Filtered from Twitter Search
If you use Twitter search, you probably noticed that all tweets do not show up. That is because Twitter started filtering out certain tweets from Twitter search. And there are not many worse things than your tweets not showing up in the search results, especially if you use Twitter for business. Being filtered out is not good for your social presence either.
What kind of tweets are being filtered you ask? Recurring tweets, meaning if you post same sentence a few times in a row it will only show up once among the search results. Tweets from people who are often blocked by others. And of course, tweets sent from accounts marked as spam will also be filtered. And believe me people use Twitter search a lot, I do on a daily basis. Being filtered out, you will have a hard time connecting with other people.
A few tips to not get filtered from Twitter search
- Don’t spam. That one’s easy.
- Don’t post the same thing every few seconds. If you want to promote your website or whatever, better do it over a couple of hours. It’s also annoying to see your product or blog linked five times in a row.
- Don’t retweet spammers. You’ll have to learn how to spot spammers. Check out people’s profiles, watch their tweets.
- Mix the words. If you really have to tweet about the same thing many times in a short period of time, you can mix the words to avoid filtering.
Oh, there’s one more thing you can do. Check if your profile is showing up in Twitter search. Go to Twitter search and type in your username without the @. Or better yet, type in from:yourusername. Make sure your last tweets are shown. That’s about it. If you have any more ideas, post them below in the comments.
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Top 6 Twitter Tips and Tutorials for Beginners
Twitter is getting so huge and gaining new users by the minute, so I thought I would make a list of the most read posts on my blog from the last few months. These could be very handy for new Twitter users and may as well help more seasoned tweeters too. Below you will find a recap of the most read and retweeted Twitter tips and tutorials of this blog for the quarter 3 of 2009.
- 20 Twitter Directories to Find More Friends and Followers – Join these and you are bound to get many followers.
- How to get the most out of Twitter search – Tips on using Twitter’s powerful search engine.
- 10 tips to get more Twitter followers – Find out how to get followers and not scare them away.
- Top 7 Photo Sharing Tools for Twitter – Find out where to share photos on Twitter.
- Optimize Your Twitter Bio to Get More Followers – Even the 160 characters short bio is important.
- General Twitter tips for starters – A must read for every beginner.
For more Twitter tips follow me on Twitter and subscribe to my RSS feed.
Related posts:
- A Better Way to Share Photos on Twitter
- 7 Best Ways to Share Videos on Twitter
- Top 7 Photo Sharing Tools for Twitter
