Why Twitter is great, reason #25

What's the ROI of putting your pants on in the morning?

Just like the ROI of social media marketing, it's too high not to do it, as Brian Halligan of HubSpot implies in one of the 10 items on his 2010 Marketing Wish List.

What's on your marketing wish list for the new year?

Gather Weekly: Super Earth, Hellenic hijinks, fix-it bills and more

This week's Gather articles (12/12-12/19):

Finance

• Has Obama sold out to Wall Street? Matt Taibbi thinks so
• Turn-back-the-clock financial reform: McCain-Cantwell Senate bill would reinstate Glass-Steagall Act
• Risky business: Will Moody's downgrade of Greece's credit rating result in EU economic collapse?

Politics

• Corruption in the Commonwealth: Lawrence, MA's Lantigua to be both Mayor and State Rep
• Why stop at mere medical usage? Marijuana legalization referendum to be on 2010 California ballot

Social Media

• Social media in business: Twitter beta testing contributor feature
• Social media shockers: 10 amazing Facebook tales
• Most popular topics on Twitter in 2009

Unemployment

• Xmas comes early: Senate passes bill approving unemployment benefits and COBRA extensions
• Senate passes cloture vote on war funding, unemployment benefits extension bill; final vote tomorrow morning
• House approves two-month unemployment extension in war funding bill
• Season of hope: House to vote on jobs, unemployment benefits extension bills this week
• Clock is ticking on new unemployment extension legislation

Science

• Astronomers discover water-rich Earth-like planet GJ 1214b

Humor

• Holiday humor: SNL's "Schweddy Balls" sketch (video)

Health Care Reform

• Finish line in sight: Reid announces final Senate health care bill

Gather Weekly: pot politics, social media, spending galore

This week's Gather articles (12/5-12/11):


Web

• Google launches real-time search feature (video)

Economy

• Obama on jobs creation, new stimulus: US must "spend our way out of this recession"
• Millions may lose benefits as Congress debates unemployment extension
• Obama may support using TARP funds to pay for jobs bill
• Cash for Caulkers could rebate up to $12,000 per home

Politics

• Coakley, Brown win primaries for MA Senate seat
• Senate Dems agree to drop public option from health care bill
• Senate vote on abortion amendment to health care bill expected today
• New Jersey is next gay marriage battleground
• House passes huge $447 billion omnibus spending bill

Social Media

• Hate Facebook? Sick of social media? Check out Seppukoo
• Social media wish list: 5 Twitter feature requests for 2010
• Facebook for business: 5 tips to increase fan engagement

Money

• 9 top international retirement destinations from Mint.com
• Twitter stock investing app StockTwits closes $3 million series B round of funding
• Is a falling dollar good or bad for you?

Marijuana legalization (yes this deserves its own category this week)

• Cannabis in the capital? Omnibus bill allows for medical marijuana legalization in D.C.
• Denver's Ganja Gourmet to provide culinary cannabis

Science

• Hot air in climate change debate: 2000s warmest decade ever

Hate Facebook? Sick of social media? Check out Seppukoo

Tongue-in-cheek anti-social network Seppukoo seeks to provide social media-haters with a way to display their disdain for the explosive social-technology phenomenon. The site offers users a way . . . more

TweetDeck v0.32: killer app for Twitter users

TweetDeck, one of the most popular desktop and mobile apps for Twitter, had a major release recently with version 0.32. With this version of TweetDeck you get:

• Integration with LinkedIn. Cross-update your status and track connections, group activity, and more through a LinkedIn network updates column. This is a nice complement to the excellent Facebook integration TweetDeck already had (MySpace as well, but who cares about that?)
• Twitter lists integration. This replaces the Groups feature that TweetDeck had been using for a while - sort of a proto-Twitter list in its own right.
  
• Full retweet integration that gives you the option of the old editable retweets or the new Twitter style of retweet.
• Very nice update of notifications: a box with actual tweets pops up, allowing you to view new tweets on top of the window of any app you're currently using without calling up the main TweetDeck window.
• Integration with Twitter's geo-location API. Tweets using the geotag feature (coordinates of the tweeter's location) have a red map pin icon - click on it to open a map right in TweetDeck. Very cool.

Do you use TweetDeck? What's your preferred Twitter application?

Check out what's new in TweetDeck v0.32 or watch the video:

Blogging for fun and profit: become a Gather Socialwriter and earn $

Gather is expanding their Socialwriter program. Socialwriters are Gather members who post about current trending topics to increase awareness of the Gather social network and promote discussion around these "water cooler" topics of the day.

I've been a Gather Socialwriter since the program went through its experimental phase in September, and it has been very successful for both us as writers and for increasing traffic to Gather. It's an enjoyable and rewarding program.

This is a great opportunity for people who:

• Enjoy blogging
• Would like some part-time additional income
• Are retired
• Work from home
• Are students
  

Blog about whatever interests you, within the confines of popular topics. Pay is based on page views for content, with bonuses for certain levels. Earn up to $500 per month.

If you are interested in learning more, leave a comment or email me: mrhe25@gmail.com.

Advertising on Twitter? Making money by tweeting presents potential ethical dilemma for users

Advertising is making its way into users' tweets on Twitter. This raises ethical questions for many users of the popular micro-blogging service. This weekend in the Sunday New York Times Business . . . more

Social Media ROI: Socialnomics video

Erik Qualman over at Socialnomics has created another excellent video in his Socialnomics series about social media and the impact it's having on marketing, customer interaction, and business. This . . . more

2009 Word of the Year: Unfriend

"Unfriend" was selected by the New Oxford American Dictionary as the Word of the Year for 2009 . unfriend – verb – To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking . . . more

Exposure: Gather.com

Over 120,000 people viewed something I wrote last month over at Gather.com. That is simply astounding.

This has been a rewarding experience over the past couple months in several ways. As one of the first "experimental" Gather Socialwriters I've been able to see how the program has grown and evolved. I've "met" some great people and I've been exposed to a ton of ideas and points of view that otherwise wouldn't have been on my radar screen. (I also make a bit of money blogging - what a country!)

Check out Gather.com if you haven't yet - it's a social network centered more on news, original content, and discussion than other networks out there.

Social Media Video: Did You Know 4.0

Fascinating look at the numbers related to social media. Truly taking center stage as the technology of the moment. Anyone involved or interested in social media should check out this video: . . . more

Enraptured

Apture might just be the new killer blog app. It's a small plugin that allows you to easily integrate multimedia into your blog posts. I'll start with a simple link to the Apture website. I can easily throw in a video demo right off their site including some related media:




Interested in visiting their office in person? Boom:



Basically Apture lets you search the web within the app itself for any kind of media - video, sound, images, websites, files - and create a link or embed the actual media right in the post. It can be pretty cumbersome to do Google searches and collect, say, an album cover image, a link to a band's page, a sound clip, and maybe a photo from a concert for a music review - Apture lets me accomplish all that within one app without leaving my blog post in an easy, streamless app.

Here's a little Dispatch for your listening pleasure, just because it's been in my head for the last couple weeks.

Locating and integrating all the above diverse media into this post took me far less time than it would have without using Apture.

Really excited about this.

Amateur Photography

Anyone know the easiest way to upload photos and integrate them with various media (i.e. blogs, online galleries, Facebook, etc.)?

I'm looking to minimize uploading, creating repetitive galleries, captioning the same pics over and over, etc. Any apps out there that integrate this stuff? Recommended methods?

I use a Mac.

My life is now complete.

From an email this evening (of 32 new since this afternoon? I need to opt-out more often):

Domino Sugar is now following you on Twitter!

Can You Digg It?

Sometime last year I checked out Digg - the service that lets people "digg" a story so that the most appealing stories filter to the top as they get increasingly popular. It's a great concept but in practice I found it annoying to click on the Digg icon and get redirected to the Digg page, have to log in, etc. - basically too many barriers to make it useful to me.

But last week Digg announced the DiggBar, an excellent browser toolbar. Simply put the Digg button in your toolbar and click it when you're on a page you want to digg - the bar pops up and allows you to digg it as well as other functionality.

Alternatively, you can now simply put http://digg.com/ before any URL to load the page with the Digg toolbar.

A great addition to make Digg instantly easier, more convenient, and appealing to use.

Kudos to Digg. I digg it.

Disqus Test Post

I'm testing out Disqus, a new comment system that allows for a lot more integration, interactivity, and schtonk. We shall see...

Blip

Blip.fm is sort of a combination of Last.fm and Twitter - each user has a stream of content consisting of single songs with short accompanying text, i.e. "Check out this new track from the Grim Vegetables!" You can build a playlist and listeners if people dig what you're playing. Simply enter a song or artist in the search box and "blip" the track. They don't have everything - I've been unable to find several songs so far - and sometimes tracks appear to be corrupt or incomplete, but otherwise it's a pretty cool service. Great for when a song pops into your head and you don't have it on iTunes and don't want to bother with downloading it. The public page updates with a constant stream of new tracks, so you can sample an incredible variety of music from the entire user base. You can also integrate your updates with other social networks like Twitter, Audioscrobbler, and more. Check it out.

Holla at me if you join.

Here's a sample from my feed:

The Internets: An Amazing Place

Been getting into this Twitter thing - it's actually kind of cool and surprisingly useful in a lot of ways. Less "having a bagel and juice now" updates than I previously thought. A lot of links, news, Q&As, etc; interesting social media.

But this in particular struck me as just one example of how the webernets changes things: I'm currently following Rainn Wilson ("Dwight") of The Office and he recently tweeted about new cast member Idris Elba ("Stringer Bell") from The Wire (which is awesome enough in its own right). I'm following String, man. Check out his (@driis) tweet from yesterday:

taping 6 episodes of the Office .. This ish is hilarious

Stringer MF Bell - now on the World Wide Intertubes!

Boom: Interview w/DJ Driis over at NPR. Great stuff - take a listen. Next week's ep is his first of six.

Tweet Tweet

I decided I couldn't let the geriatrics in Congress* one-up me on the social media front, so I finally signed up for Twitter. I will be "twittering" as mrhe25. You can follow the twittering here: www.twitter.com/mrhe25

This is sure to be a big waste of time for everyone involved!

*As Seth would say: Really? You, a member of the body running this country during a time of national crisis, are twittering during a joint session speech from the President. REALLY!?!