Ruhani Rabin » Social Media

10 Useful Social Media Articles of Mid June 2010

Ruhani Rabin — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 08:39:05 +0000

Roundup of 10 useful Social Media articles of Mid June 2010.

10 Reasons Why Your Business Needs a Killer Social Media Strategy
"Your business needs a killer social media strategy. In order to tap the potential of this fabulous marketing tool, you’ll want to first determine if social media can meet your goals and objectives. If you’re still figuring out your marketing plan for 2010, consider the following 10 reasons why a social media strategy may be well worth the effort."
tags: socialmedia, articles
How to Audit Your Social Media Efforts: 20+ Questions to Ask Yourself
"When you audit your social presence, you will be able to make better business decisions when it comes to social media. You will be able to gather enough data from your own campaigns to help you improve your online marketing."
tags: socialmedia, articles
Era of The Social Media Dubeshag
"Douchebag kicks it up a notch. It is so negative and mean that I thought we needed something nice. We needed a social media term of endearment of some sort to make up for our transgressions."
tags: socialmedia, pr, articles
10 Reasons why brands fail on Twitter / Social Media
"Life for brands on Twitter is tough for sure but not “un achievable” a target, or so do I prefer to believe. And I can substantiate my stand."
tags: socialmedia, twitter, articles
Andy’s Answers: Measuring the ROI of your social media programs | SmartBlog On Social Media
"One of the brightest minds in tracking and measurement is Olivier Blanchard. We were lucky enough to have him join us at our last Word of Mouth Supergenius event, where he shared a bunch of practical ways he coaches brands on how to determine the ROI of their programs."
tags: ROI, socialmedia, articles
What PR Pros Need to Know About Foursquare
"I just don’t feel the need to compete for badges and mayorships — and not enough contacts in my personal network use it to make it a useful communication tool. However, I am intrigued by its marketing and PR potential."
tags: socialmedia, pr, articles
5 Easy Steps to a Winning Social Media Plan | Social Media Examiner
"But how do you make it all work together? You want to reach potential clients and establish your authority online, but what’s your plan?"
tags: socialmedia, articles
The Starbucks Mistake: Five Ways Foursquare Advertising is Getting Less Interesting
"Starbucks’ current program on Foursquare may kill the goose that lays the golden eggs (or at least demonstrate how that goose may die a slow, lingering death of neglect). I believe (and I’m curious if you agree) that Starbucks’ ubiquity combined with the offer’s difficult redemption is decreasing attention for Foursquare’s other offers."
tags: socialmedia, articles, geolocation
The Social Media Style Guide: 8 Steps to Creating a Brand Persona
"Anyone who has ever worked in corporate marketing, advertising, and branding is more than familiar with a brand style guide. It’s how we ensured that the brand was represented as intended through marketing aesthetics and messaging – including detailed usage instructions on font, style, color, language, placement, positioning, etc."
tags: socialmedia, articles
25 Reasons To Love Social Media
Social Media is now the trend. While the majority of brands and companies are just starting to get into the phenomenon, others still ignore the power of social media because they are afraid of how to handle the impact if they get negative feedback.
tags: socialmedia, articles, lists

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Rating: 7.0/10 (6 votes cast)

Best Social Media Enabled Smartphones of 2010

Ruhani Rabin — Tue, 18 May 2010 15:20:10 +0000

This is a showdown of most powerful social media enabled Smartphones which will dominate the social media scene of 2010-2011. These are the phones which will make you ultimate social media addict. Nope, iPhone is not included in this list, because it already has way too much exposure. Now it is time to give the contenders a chance to show their faces.

The elements that are mostly factor for choosing these phones are

Processor power range from 600 MHz and above
Android Platform ( with the exception of Blackberry and Symbian)
Social media engagement and multi tasking
Overall performance
Platform engagement such as twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Friendster, flickr

Now let’s see what we have over here:

HTC Incredible

Key Elements: High Performance 1GHz processor with Android 2.xx Platform, 8GB internal Storage, TV Out, 8MP Camera with HD Capability

Type: Touch Screen 3.7 inch AMOLED

Social Networking Engagement: ★★★★½

Price Range: ★★★★¼

Usability: ★★★★¼

Detailed Specification [ubergizmo.com]

Comments: Droid Incredible is the best Android device that you can purchase in America right now. It’s better than the Droid, even better than the Nexus One, and certainly beats off of any previous generation handsets like the Eris, myTouch, or Cliq. It’s also an excellent Smartphone no matter how you cut it. It comes with HTC Sense UI and Android Market Access. I would love to get my hands on this one.

HTC Desire

Key Elements: High Performance 1GHz processor with Android 2.xx Platform, 5MP Camera with HD Capability

Type: Touch Screen 3.7 inch AMOLED

Social Networking Engagement: ★★★★½

Price Range: ★★★½☆

Usability: ★★★★¼

Detailed Specification

Comments: HTC Desire is the best affordable high performance Android device that you can purchase right now. Almost everything as same as the Nexus One with the addition of HTC Sense. It’s also an excellent Smartphone no matter how you use it. The Social Media Addict’s power phone. I would love to own this one.

Motorola DROID / Milestone

Key Elements: Performance ARM Cortex A8 600 MHz processor with Android 2.xx Platform, 5MP Camera with HD Capability

Type: Touch Screen 3.7 inch AMOLED, Dedicated QWERTY keyboard with 5 way navigation

Social Networking Engagement: ★★★★½

Price Range: ★★★½☆

Usability: ★★★¼☆

Detailed Specification

Comments: Motorola Droid is one of the best Android device that you can get your groove on. The dedicated QWERTY keyboard made it extremely popular among the social networking addicts. It’s not so much better than the Nexus One Or HTC Desire. Yet it beats other Smartphone those are out there. It’s also an excellent Smartphone even it is not loaded with extremely powerful processing speed. I would definitely choose this if only this has a 1GHz processor.

Blackberry Bold II 9700

Key Elements: Performance 624 MHz processor with Blackberry 5.0 OS

Type: Standard Screen 2.44 inch, Dedicated QWERTY keyboard with Touch-sensitive optical trackpad

Social Networking Engagement: ★★★☆☆

Price Range: ★★★☆☆

Usability: ★★★★☆

Detailed Specification

Comments: Blackberry always have their niche features, this is one social media phone that is packed with power and comfort of typing. Very affordable and not to mention Blackberry Internet Services provides seamless corporate needs. This is one heck of a messenger phone, the only phone comes near to this on typing is Motorola Droid. I have one of this.

Nokia N8

Key Elements: High Performance 680 MHz processor with 3D Graphics HW accelerator. Build on Symbian ^3 platform. 12MP Camera, f2.8 lens, ND Filter, Smile Detection with True HD Capability. 16GB internal storage.

Type: Touch Screen 3.5 inch AMOLED

Social Networking Engagement: ★★★★☆

Price Range: ★★★½☆

Usability: ★★★★☆

Detailed Specification

Comments: Finally Nokia comes up with a true Touch Screen social media life enabled phone. Hi end camera features are one of the key element of this phone. Powerful and effective social networking engagement. Coming soon and Exp. release date 2010, 3rd quarter. I’m sure this will be contender to many Smartphone out there. Yes I would like to have it but I am worried that they might not have all the apps Android offers but and Definitely yes if I can test it out first.

Samsung I9000 Galaxy S

Key Elements: High Performance ARM Cortex A8 1GHz processor. Build on Android 2.x platform. Has a flavor of 8/16GB internal storage.

Type: Touch Screen 3.7 inch Super AMOLED

Social Networking Engagement: ★★★★½

Price Range: ★★★★¾

Usability: ★★★¾☆

Detailed Specification

Comments: Yet another Android phone on the loose, exceptionally pricey it seems. Comes with good social networking engagement. This one is expecting to come out 2nd quarter of 2010.

Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10

Key Elements: High Performance Qualcomm QSD8250 Snapdragon 1 GHz processor. Build on Android 1.6 platform. Powerful camera capabilities.

Type: Touch Screen 4.0 inch AMOLED

Social Networking Engagement: ★★★½☆

Price Range: ★★★★½

Usability: ★★★★☆

Detailed Specification

Comments: Pricey but truly eye candy android phone from Sony Ericsson. Comes with good social networking engagement. It’s powerful love to have one of these.

Conclusion

There you have it. Personally I would choose HTC Desire, HTC Incredible, Motorola Droid/Milestone, Blackberry Bold 9700 and Nokia N8. I know many of you might not agree with me about this list. But, you can tell me what is your favorite Smartphone and Why?

Is this post is stating me as a Android Fanboy? Maybe.

I would love to know your opinion. Do talk to me on Twitter or just comment below.

Rating: 9.8/10 (13 votes cast)

How to Make Use of Friends List to Tighten Facebook Privacy

Ruhani Rabin — Fri, 14 May 2010 10:00:22 +0000

Facebook lately turning up the buzz due to many privacy issues. They even rolled out new features almost every week. Even though it is really tough to stay in line with Facebook’s updated changes on privacy, It could be managed by making use of the “Friends List” feature. I’m not going to talk a lot, rather I would do a pictorial (Pictured Tutorial) instead.

Facebook’s “List” feature allows you to group your contacts into various categories. You can assign permissions specific to these lists. I just want to show you a simple step by step way of implementing a permission setting to a “List“

Step 1

Click here to open and edit your Friends.

Step 2

Now create a new list to categorize a group of your friends. For example the only people you trust to show certain things.
Name the list according to your preference
Add your friends into that list

Step 3

Now you have a new list of friends. Lets go to the Privacy Settings to set specific preferences for this list.

Step 4

Privacy settings has been divided into multiple areas. The rule of applying friends lists are more or less the same for each of the segment. I will go through part of a segment which will essentially give you the Idea to Implement these into other places too.

Step 5

For our practice, we are going to implement a goal. The goal is to make certain things only visible to one or more of my “Friends List”.

Choose “Personal Information and Posts“ segment at the screen shown in Step 4
Right side of “Bio and Quotations” you will be able to see a blue box with either “Everyone“, “Friends of Friends” or “Only Friends” label
Click on that Blue box to see the drop down menu
Choose the “Custom” option and a window will appear
move on to the next step

Step 6

Now we are going to select the options for “Bio and Quotations“.

Under the “Make this visible to” select the Drop down and change it to “Specific People“
Now you will be able to see an edit box underneath it
Type the name of the “Friend List” you’ve created on Step 2
Click on “Save Settings” button and you are done!
So my “Bio and Quotations” section only visible to the my friends under the list “People I Trust“

You can use this list on the other segments of Privacy Settings page. Just repeat the steps from Step 3 to Step 6 on each of the parts of the segments.

Tip 1:

Many people asked me the question – How to hide all my friends my profile page from everyone? I have the answer for that. You can use a “List” to accomplish that.

Here is how:

Create a new list. Example: “NoOne”
Do not add any friends to that list.
Go to “Friends, Tags and Connections” segment of your privacy settings page.
Click on the blue box at the right side of “Friends” part and select the option “Custom” from the drop down box.
On the “Custom Privacy” window, select “Specific People” under “Make this visible to” label
Type in the “Friends List” named “NoOne” you’ve created which has no friends in it.
“Save Settings” and you are done! your list of total friends will not be visible to any of your friends.

Tip 2:

I’ve came through another question – How do I stop my friends tagging me in photos and videos? Unfortunately you can’t stop it but you can hide it on your wall. Here is how:

Go to “Friends, Tags and Connections” segment of your privacy settings page.
Click on the blue box at the right side of “Photos and Videos of Me” part and select the option “Custom” from the drop down box.
On the “Custom Privacy” window, select “Only Me” under “Make this visible to” label
“Save Settings” and you are done! Now any photos or videos of you tagged will not be visible on your wall. In fact nobody will be able to see your photos or videos where you’ve been tagged in. Having said this the person who tagged you, still would be able to see you.

If you are really concern about your privacy settings you could set your privacy for “Friends, Tags and Connections” segment as the example picture below. Remember this is just an Example. I am NOT asking you to do exactly like this. These settings varies from people to people.

Well, I did tried to keep this post not long but as it seems it turned out to be a bit longer than usual. Nevertheless, if you go through this post, you will get an overall idea of implementing privacy settings by groups of friends. Even if your relatives, family and college buddies are in Facebook all together, you can still play smart without being going insane.

I can give you some Idea about List names, which should point you to the right directions.

You might want to group your friends in this manner:

College friends List – You can assign photo albums permissions visible only to this list so you wont get burned by your mom, or even better not visible to your work mates.
Family members List – post family photos and videos visible only to this list, so your family life is secured from others
Colleagues List – post photos or videos related to your work only for this bunch of people

There I said it, now use your Imagination to tangle it on your end. Don’t forget to share your ideas on the comments!

Rating: 7.9/10 (15 votes cast)

Every Tips You Ever Need to Know About Google Buzz

Ruhani Rabin — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 09:07:42 +0000

You felt left out. Alone.

You are at the Dark corner of your �room and confused about Buzz. But willing to try it out?

Understood! I’m here! I’ll show you everything you need to Rock on Google Buzz

So what is this Buzz about Google Buzz?

Google Buzz is a social media application integrated with your Gmail account. It is kind of like friendfeed and part of it looks like twitter. It allows you to follow your contacts and integrates itself with your verified websites.
In simple terms:
Share your updates to your known contacts or to the world
It’s integrated in your Gmail inbox, conversations are grouped just like your emails
No need to install any add-ons or software
Upload and share photos, maybe you can write a short story about that photo
Share a link, with your own words
Ability to like or comment on any Buzz
Connect popular Social Media platforms like Twitter, Flickr, Picasa, Blogger, Wordpress, Google Reader and many others.
Allows updating your Buzz when you publish any topics or photos on these social media platforms
Mobile device friendly
The power of �Ajax, no need to refresh your timeline. It is real-time
Allows you to email any of your favorite Buzz to others

That is the simplest way to put a description of Buzz when it is actually much more interactive. There are many other �possibilities.

Long story short.

I’m here to show you how to get started with Google Buzz.

Step 1:

If you do not have a Google profile, create one for yourself. I would suggest when you set the profile URL, please use your full name.

Remember what is your profile address which you can share via Email or IM.

Access your profile and click “Edit Profile” located at the right side top of your screen.

Fill up the necessary information. Scroll down to the “Links” section.

Google will then try to determine your websites and present you with a list of suggestion.

Add your favorite sites from the suggestions to your Google profile.

Now here is something you need to know. If you have any 3rd party sites like Posterous or Tumblr, you need to do some code changes in their themes. Go to theme edit mode. Place this piece of code right after the tag:

1	<link href="http://www.google.com/profiles/your.name" rel="me" type="text/html" />

This is to ensure that Google consider those sites verified as yours.

Note: the part “your.name” should be changed to your username on Google profile.

Edit your theme at Posterous (Advanced Tab), add the tag:

Edit your theme at Tumblr (Theme Tab), add the tag:

TIP: This is applicable on any website which allows you to edit the HTML of their theme or skin.

Rather than wait for the Google crawler to re-visit your site, you can use the Social Graph API Recrawl �tool to force recrawl your sites for verification. This wonderful tool created by �Brad Fitzpatrick and Brett Slatkin.

TIP: You can use the “Recrawl” buttons to force check your site status again. The Green arrow means your site is verified.

Privacy Concerns

In default setting in Buzz might expose contacts to each other or to the public. This issue pointed out by �Phillip Lenssen which could be a great concern about privacy.

What should you do:

Go to your Google Profile Page
Edit your Google Profile
Click on “About me” Tab
Go to Right hand section and un-check the box for “Display the list of people I’m following and people following me”

Step 2:

If you are not already on Buzz. You can opt-in anytime by going Google Buzz.

Navigate to your Buzz, it is right under your Inbox in GMail.

For the first timers, Buzz will present you with a list of suggested followers and will ask you to connect your sites.

Connect your sites:

Once your sites are connected, these sites will automatically post Buzz depending on the new content on any of these sites.

TIP: Once you connect your sites to Buzz, you can also set the properties of a specific site updates to “Public” or “Private”

Step 3:

Start Interacting. Once you start following people you will see their updates on your timeline like twitter.

There are many ways to interact with a Buzz.

TIP: If you like to see all the Buzz from a specific person. Use the option shown below.

From the right side drop down menu you can:

Email that specific Buzz
Find link to the specific Buzz
View all Buzz from that person
Mute that post so the conversations related to that Buzz will not appear in your Gmail inbox and Timeline
Stop follow that person
Report Abuse

TIP: You might see some Buzz are grouped and look like stacks, click on the stack top area to expand them

Things you can do when you post a Buzz:

Attach a Link
Attach a photo
Set the Buzz to either for everyone or make it private (shared with only selected people)
Add @Reply to a Buzz
Post via email just like Posterous or Blogger. Send an email from your Buzz(y) Gmail with a photo attachment to buzz@gmail.com . It will be posted on your Buzzline.. Owh.. My bad .. I mean Timeline
Do you know you can format your buzz in markup:

And here is the output:

TIP: Here is a topic from Mashable on “HOW TO: Integrate Facebook, Twitter, and Buzz into Your Gmail”
~

Extensions

Google Chrome: Do you know there is a Chrome Extension for Google Buzz called Chrome Buzz. It displays Buzz notifications on Chrome.

Another extension for Google Chrome is Buzzer which allows you to make updates to Google Buzz from Chrome. You need to set up Google Reader to connect it to Buzz.

Firefox: Buzz It! will make a buzz status update via Gmail with the link and title of the webpage you are viewing. It will also shorten URLs with Bit.ly, allowing the user to monitor their link statistics.

Buzz This button

Add Buzz This button to your web site or WordPress post. You can get some beautiful looking Buzz Buttons from Cheth Studios. You can right click and save this button too

Code for Wordpress Posts:

1	the_permalink() ?>&title= the_title () ?>&srcURL=http://www.yourdomain.com/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external"> bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/google-buzz-this-small.png" border="0" title="Submit to Google Buzz" />

Get the Buzz Button WordPress Plugin from ClickOnF5 website.

Alternative Code (JavaScript):

REMINDER: Please update inside the yourdomain.com to your website domain name.

Buzz from your mobile?

Open http://buzz.google.com/ on your phone. Also, you can find Buzz for your mobile devices here.

Hiding/Disabling Buzz

TIP: In case you don’t like to have Buzz in your Gmail, you can turn it off. Scroll down to the Footer of your Gmail, click on “turn off buzz“. That will bring you back to your Gmail without Buzz.

TIP: Create a Filter on your Gmail if you do not like too many conversations in your inbox.

Create a Filter with the word �label:buzz

Select “Skip Inbox” and “Also apply filter to XX conversations“. Click “Create Filter” and you won’t have any Buzz conversations inside inbox.

~
Well, this should at least bring you up to the speed using Google Buzz. I will change and add new tips time to time. I would love to know your own tips too. You can discuss your tips at the comments. On the other hand, why not start a conversation with my Buzz?
I am expecting some other features in Buzz, such as:

Shortening a link of Buzz and post it across other social networks and/or even in ping.fm
Privacy settings
Lists to categorize favorite Buzzes
Distribute a Buzz to a list of people
Star Rating of a Buzz
Buzz polls
Integration with Google Talk desktop application
Integration with AIR clients like TweetDeck, Seesmic
Integration with web clients like HootSuite

Just ideas…. don’t change your channel… more to come.. In the mean time you can Subscribe to my RSS feed to keep yourself Tuned.

Rating: 8.8/10 (32 votes cast)

Tired of Waving? Get Google Wave Desktop Client – Waver

Ruhani Rabin — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 05:27:11 +0000

Google Wave is a great way to communicate and collaborate (Yeah you know that already, right). But I also know most of you already being tired of experiencing the slowness of Google Wave in the browser. About time this Adobe AIR Tool called “Waver” came out to aid you on this “Waving“.

So what is Waver Anyway?

Waver is a nifty piece of Desktop Application for Google Wave which is similar TweetDeck or Twhirl. While TweetDeck or Twhirl is for Twitter, Waver is designed for Google Wave.
Savvy?

It is basically designed for iPhone, so the interface on windows doesn’t look so cool. But hey at least you have something, which is better than having nothing.

Get Waver at Adobe Marketplace for Free

What Waver lets you do (now):

View a list of waves
Reply to waves
Create a new wave
Manage wave contacts

System Requirements:

A Google Wave Account
Windows/Mac/Linux/iPhone
Adobe AIR Platform 1.5

This nifty piece of software is Coded by Jash Sayani. Give him some props.

Happy Waving people. While you are on it don’t forget to add me at Google Wave, use this address ruhani.rabin@googlewave.com. See you over Google Wave.

Rating: 8.2/10 (5 votes cast)

Easy steps to Facebook Connect Comment Box [How to]

Ruhani Rabin — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 06:08:51 +0000

Facebook connect is getting popular day by day. Not to mention the huge user base Facebook has developed along the time. It was a pretty much a hassle to go through the Facebook connect implementation for a website. Very recently Facebook opened up a new dimension and easiness of implementing Facebook Connect to any website. Lets take a look how easily you can implement Facebook connect comment box to your site.

Having said that, I must also say this is just a simple implementation of Facebook connect to your website. There are many more options available for you to implement if you go through the documentation. Lets take a look how easily we can implement a comment box for virtually any website that allows HTML and Javascript.

Here are the steps:

Create your website application using the wizard:Go to Facebook Developers Wizard, create your website profile on step 1

Provide a title for your website application and the URL of your website
Proceed to step 2, where you will be able to download the xd_receiver communication file for uploading to your website.

You must upload the xd_receiver.htm file to your website root folder before you click the “Test Setup and Continue” button. It will verify the existence of the xd_receiver.htm file on your website and brings you to step 3.
Step 3 will show you the Facebook Connect Playground page, where you will be able to play with certain things such as code implementation and various other options.. Since this is already covered by Tech Crunch, there is no point going further about the implementation of the connect with Facebook button. By default Step 3 will land you to the “Social Markup” section on Facebook Connect Playground page, Lets Click on the “Comments Box” section and continue with setup a quick and dirty comments box on a website.

At the Comments Box section, you will be able to copy a piece of code which will enable you to paste it to any HTML file and any particular section under the HTML tag.

NOTE: If you already included the script part of the code before anywhere in you HTML file, you can remove it safely..
Now, save and upload the file and go to your browser to test, here is an example of how it turned out without and with login..

Here it is without login to Facebook

After Login to Facebook Connect
Well that’s pretty much of it, now go and play with the playground. Here is a demo I’ve setup online (but I can’t promise it will be there forever)

Even though it Facebook says it’s a 3 steps implementation, in real life there are few more sub steps in between is involved. Wanna talk, come talk to me at twitter @ruhanirabin or join my Facebook Fan pages.

Rating: 8.4/10 (69 votes cast)

8 Best music sharing services for twitter

Ruhani Rabin — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 20:32:40 +0000

Twitter is becoming more powerful and engaging ways to share information quickly, easily, and almost instantly over the internet. Twitter enthusiasts implemented a lot of innovative ways to develop a load of applications including sharing images, video, documents and even files. What about streaming music? Yes there are quite a few applications that allows you to share and even upload music to share on twitter. Here are the best web applications tested to effectively share music on twitter.

1. Blip.fm

Blip.fm is the grandaddy of all music-tweeting programs. Probably the most used music sharing web application for twitter. It is twitter for the music, where users share songs with each other in a Twitter-style self updating stream. Allows re-blipping of songs, which is like re-twitting a tweet. It builds up a listener base (AKA “Followers”) just like twitter followers. Integrates seamlessly with popular web services like twitter, friendfeed and last.fm. It can automatically publish a tweet with the short song link for others to listen to your twitter stream. Recently it is also indexing music stream from youtube and Imeem. So far it is the best twitter music discovery and sharing application with the concept of twitter itself. Here is my Blip.fm profile. If you would like a quick tutorial on how to use Blip.fm, @sharonhayes has a great article on sharing music using Blip.fm. Also if you would like to know how to download music from Blip.fm, I’ve already posted an article about it.

2. Imeem

Imeem has been around quite a while and it is already well known for social music discovery and streaming web application. They emerged their site to be tweet enabled so that users can tweet any streaming song over twitter easily including short links. Some songs at Imeem are copyrighted so they only allow preview of the song. Imeem’s custom Twitter integration makes it easy for people to tweet what they are listening to on imeem, making this a good search term to include (imeem also powers blip.fm and twt.fm, but you still want to include those terms because people might be tweeting imeem’s music from there)

3. Tinysong and Grooveshark

Tinysong is the simplest music sharing tool powered by grooveshark which is similar to Imeem but much more neat and robust application framework. Grooveshark’s collection of song and streaming is optimized and efficient. Tinysong takes advantage of the engine and creates shortened URL for the song to easily copy paste and tweet in twitter.

Grooveshark’s main interface also allows users to tweet the song.

4. Songtwit

Songtwit is yet another discovery engine with the advantage of adding your own song and tweet about it. It also indexes Youtube song titles for wider range of search. Pretty simple and easy to use, creates short URL for the song too.

5. Song.ly

Song.ly is another good music discovery and sharing application for twitter. The discovery engine is powered by Russian media search engine Tagoo. Additionally it creates song.ly short URL for the songs you tweet. Doesn’t require you to log on to twitter and comes with a quick streaming of the song.

6. Twisten.FM

Twisten.fm is a powerful tool which searches the Grooveshark library for songs, but it takes 2 powerful additional steps by allowing you to share what you’re listening to directly from the site, and also searches your twitter timeline to create a stream of what your followers are listening to.

7. Twicli

Twicli is a free service that allows users to upload photos, audio and videos through the Twicli platform and display them to their friends on Twitter. Twicli is not directly a music discovery application but it is included here for the feature of uploading audio and able to tweet it with short URL.

Twicli has been designed with user experience in mind. We want the site to look and feel like Twitter offering a seemingly seamless transition from one site to another.

Users can upload photos and videos and comment on each, these comments are then broadcast on twitter via the means of @replies. The Twicli frontpage features the most recent content uploaded by Twitter users.

Twicli is powered by Picli’s social photography technology alongside integration with the brilliant Twitter API.

8. Twt.fm

Twt.fm primary function as a slick tool for tweeting tunes to followers makes it useful for finding and sharing music on Twitter. In case the song you are looking for is not indexed then you can also provide an mp3, youtube, or imeem link to your audio.

Well that is all for now, hope these will enhance your experience on sharing music at twitter. Don’t forget you can find me on twitter @ruhanirabin if you want to let me know about your opinion. Feel free to share your comments and thoughts. Alternatively you can simply stay updated via my RSS Feed.

Rating: 9.9/10 (8 votes cast)

7 Cool Photo Sharing alternatives for Twitter

Ruhani Rabin — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:07:01 +0000

TwitPic is currently the most popular and largest image sharing service for Twitter. Due to its popularity, there are also popular twitter clients that have built-in support for TwitPic. Now what if we need something alternative than TwitPic? There are some applications that worth a try?Here I’m talking about the possible TwitPic photo sharing application alternatives that counts.

Pikchur

Pikchur is a simple service that updates your social networks / micro-blogging platforms with pictures! No need to signup! Just login with one of our many supported platforms and start sending your Piks today!

Features:

Social posting to multiple social networks such as twitter, facebook, tumblr, friendfeed and many others at the same time
Private posting options
Pikboxes or categories
Geotag photos
Supported by Seesmic Desktop Client

Pikchur Website

TweetPhoto

TweetPhoto seems to be the true rival of TwitPic, it offers a number of advanced options, such as stats, geo-tagging, favoriting and many more.

Features:

Upload photos via mobile phone and the web to TweetPhoto
Share through Twitter and Facebook
Favorite the photos you like
See who views your photos; favorites your photos, comments on your photos
Track how many people looked at a photo
Automatically geo-tag photos sent from a GPS enabled phone
Use an integrated URL shortening service, http://pic.gd
Filter photos by Twitter or Facebook friends
Self-moderate comments
Search tagged photos throughout the site
Subscribe to RSS feeds by user or tags

TweetPhoto Website

yFrog

yFrog comes from the owners behind well know photo hosting service ImageShack and it is very simple to use. Upload, log in with your Twitter account, share and that’s it. Simple and fast. yFrog is also supported by The most popular Twitter desktop client TweetDeck and Seesmic.

yFrog Website

Pic.im

pic.im is a new and cool service from tr.im for sharing images within services like Twitter. Like tr.im, pic.im collects and then presents cool graphical reports for your shared images, such as how many times they were visited, from which locations, and referred by which websites. With pic.im you know exactly how many people clicked to see your images, and from where.

If you share images on Twitter, pic.im is not only the best name, it is one of the shortest. And because it is 100% integrated with tr.im, if you have an account at tr.im, you already have a pic.im account, and vice-versa. You can combine all your URL sharing needs in one place.

Pic.im Website

Twitgoo

Twitgoo is another simple photo sharing tool. You login with your Twitter login, the interface mimics pretty much of Twitter web interface, except that you can attach photos to your tweets. This is also supported by Seesmic Desktop Client

Twitgoo Website

Update: Twic.li

This topic supposed to hold 5 sites but this site also rocks. Twicli is a free service that allows users to upload both photos, audio and videos through the Twicli platform and display them to their friends on Twitter.

Twicli has been designed with user experience in mind. We want the site to look and feel like Twitter offering a seemingly seamless transition from one site to another.

Twicli is powered by Picli’s social photography technology alongside integration with the brilliant Twitter API.

Twicli Website

Virl

Virl is small and contagious. Share Your Photos, Shorten URLs & Spread the News. Use Virl for Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Delicious or Blogs & Websites Everywhere!

Personally I love the concept of Pikchur, Twicli and TweetPhoto. What’s your take? Do you know other cool and useful TwitPic alternative photo sharing tool? Let me know, I will update the list accordingly. You can find me on twitter @ruhanirabin if you want to let me know of any alternatives too. Don’t forget to share your comments.

Rating: 8.7/10 (7 votes cast)

Secrets of How to ReTweet Effectively Better

Ruhani Rabin — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 05:21:42 +0000

When Twitter started off, it was nothing but a place to put your status. Now, Twitter has expanded to become a Social Media Giant and fastest means of communications. With its powerful information sharing, it turn into a stream of up-to-date news. Over its last few years, Twitter came up with several actions, acronyms and tagging. One of the most useful action is “Re-Tweet”.

Updated Nov 5, 2009

This post has been listed in Official Twitter FAQ

Thanks Twitter Management for being generous.

What is RT or Re-Tweet?

Re-tweeting is a popular way to share a useful or interesting tweet. When you browse your friends or public tweet stream and found something useful. Most probably you would like to share that with your Twitter followers. They might not know about it. Therefore, you copy some ones tweet; append RT along with their name and post it back. Then it is instantly available for your contacts or the public.

Benefits of Re-tweeting

Increases visibility of you to other people and inside the public information stream.
You re-tweet someone’s tweet and it’s instantly visible to the public stream and to your Twitter friends and followers.
Credit passed along by tagging the original poster and current posters name. It is a polite manner.
Slowly but most likely build contacts related to your interests and topics
Passive marketing of yourself by helping others

When you should Re-Tweet?

A post has useful information that you like to share it within your followers
A post that has helpful information that can help out other users of similar interests
Information exchange and appreciate good tweets

What do You need if you want to do “Re-tweet”?

Twitter itself doesn’t provide an option to re-tweet (yet). So you need to get this feature from 3rd party applications.

Get a desktop application such as Twhirl, TweetDeck or Seesmic. See my previous post about Great Twitter Desktop Applications.
Start using one of the advance twitter web applications such as HootSuite.com, iTweet.com, TwitZap.com

Having mentioned the points above, RT posts by many people might lead simple users to confusion. Usually when you use twitter clients like Twirl or TweetDeck; they instantly attach the text “RT @username:” before the original post.

How Not to make a Mess when You “Re-tweet”

The concept of “Re-tweet” is simple, but flawed in some way. Using the “RT” prefix worked well when less people RT, but too many RT’s are not really scalable or clean. Too many RT of a single post makes it almost unreadable. It keeps on growing by adding the text “RT @username” at the beginning of the original post. Take a moment to look at the example below:

Too many RT of a single post make it almost unreadable

By now you have the idea how the Re-tweet might look like when they are re-tweeted by many users. Another simple example would be:

Another simple example

Importantly we should not forget the limitation of 140 characters. Every time any one re-tweets, it can easily add up to 12+ characters into that tweet.

Re-formatting of Re-Tweets

The confusion of looking at RT topics can be minimized and presented in a much more easier and readable manner. Here are some ideas:

Take extra 20-30 seconds of your time to analyze the post before you actually re-tweet it
Set your re-tweeted or tweeted post limit to 120 characters. That way you will have free space if someone wants to re-tweet your post.
Never modify the short link posted by the original poster of the tweet. Do check the link
Move the RT @username part to the end of the post
Remove duplicate words and hashtags from your post
Format RT possibly in this manner at the end of the post “This is a post that is re-tweeted (RT @username1 via @username2 @username3)”. Let’s explain the RT, it is originated from username1. Then username2 and username3 re-tweeted the post of username1. I will cover this part later in this post.
Use the word RT if you want to identify the original poster. Use the word “via” when you found it via someone else.
Make use #hashtags to identify important keywords but do not to overload it.
Appreciate and Thanks other users who’ve re-tweet your posts
Whether it is a link, quote, or interesting information, add value to what’s been said before by contributing in your own words something relevant to the content. Give your opinion, be critical, be complimentary. This presents that you have actually looked at it rather than just simply forwarding it on.

Here is an example of a well formed Re-tweet.

Example of a well formed Re-tweet

When you should use “via”?

“Via” represents a “Medium”. Here is a scenario. Person1 posted a tweet. Person2 re-tweet that post. Person3 re-tweet Person2 post. Consider the example given below:

50 Outstanding Web Designer Wallpapers http://bit.ly/J2oUF RT @awebdesignblog via @thirddesign @FlipBooks

Explanation: The tweet above is originated from @AWebDesignBlog and you found it via @ThirdDesign and @FlipBooks

When you should use “by”?

It’s pretty simple. “By” represents that the tweet written by the user. It is the tweet of the original author of an article. Consider the example given below:

Lazy Blogger’s guide to Super Charge #WordPress with 100+ Plugins http://j.mp/4wCrC2 by @ruhanirabin via @featureBlend @FlipBooks

Explanation: The article in the tweet above is written by me @ruhanirabin and you found it via @tech_Blend and @FlipBooks

Define the Readability

Most of the Twitter Desktop Applications attach the format “RT @user1: “at the beginning of the original post. I would strongly advice not to follow that format.

The question raised “Why?” Take a moment to look at the image below

Messy and Difficult to Read

Now take a look at more Readable “Re-tweet” below

Clearly defines the readability

Example above clearly defines the readability of the post and the person(s) who re-tweeted it.

Summary

Many popular twitter users are so dependent on the desktop software. They don’t really check how readable their posts are.

A little bit more details? Yes, the soul purpose of Re-tweet is to share useful information. Desktop software adds “RT @username” at the beginning of the post. So it is become hard for the human eye to find the original topic. Why? Because usually we read text from left to right.

You can easily make changes when you re-tweet. This makes it easier for your followers to read.

I welcome your comments. Be sure to stay up to date with my RSS Subscription, the easiest, fastest way to keep up with what’s happening on my site.

Rating: 9.1/10 (114 votes cast)

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Top 10 Most Useful Practical Twitter Tools for The Twitter Professionals

Ruhani Rabin — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 19:33:42 +0000

Since Twitter becomes a trend settler and a unique perspective to a micro blogging system. You should use it in a right way to boost up your productivity and connections around the world. Twitter has numerous web, desktop and hand-held device applications. Now with this wide range of Twitter related tools you might get into a real hard time to find the right applications. Specially when all the popular sites posted so many Twitter tools to use. The real life fact is you can’t and you wont be able to use all these tools in one shot. So I am gonna talk about selected Twitter tools which are the ultimate Swiss Army Knife. Nope I’m not going to include any mobile applications for Twitter because that really depends on the hand-held sets you are using. But for the info I am going to post the link to all the marvelous twitter tools those others already have enlisted. Well enough of my bla bla, so here are the tools that make you a Twitter Pro, these tools will help you to build your connections based on your interest and at the same time you will be able to keep track of them.

#1 TweetDeck – The Ultimate twitter desktop application

Previously I’ve written about the best adobe air desktop clients designed for twitter. Well, TweetDeck is the king among them. One piece of software will enable you to keep track of your twitter universe, manage and build connections. Tweetdeck takes all the information from Twitter and helps you manage the information overload by grouping them into manageable pieces or based on your interests.

TweetDeck Why?:

Multiple column based topic monitoring
Search twitter and monitor the search topics or even hashtags (No need to use twitter search website, real time saver)
Upload and insert the url of a photo via twitpic (Eliminate usage of twitpic website usage)
Do all the possible operations of twitter and more via the interface
TwitScoop Integrated, check the current trends in a column (nope you dont need to open twitscoop website)
Many url shortening services already integrated
Manage groups of contacts and monitor their tweets
Enables you to see your twitter profile details without opening twitter website
Enables inline translation of tweet
Integrates tweet shrinking services
Remembers your hashtags

#2 HootSuite – Social Media swiss-army knife

HootSuite is your one stop twitter and other social network management tool under one slick and effective package.

Features Included:

Multiple Networks : Multiple Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and Ping.fm Accounts Integrated
Team Workflow : Have a company or organization with more than one contributor? HootSuite makes it easy to manage multiple users over various social network accounts.
Track Statistics : Impress your friends, your boss or just yourself with our improved visualizations link statistics. Graphs show not only a summary but also individual message statistics!
Multi-Column Tabbed Layout : The new tabbed layout takes networking to new heights. Organize and customize your social network experience. Within each tab, you are able to create up to 6 columns. Drag and drop your tabs for easy organizing
Schedule Tweets : Provide rich, nourishing content to your followers at any time of day using the HootSuite tweet scheduler. Pre-schedule anything you like, from radio programming to birthday well-wishes. Or, tweet live!
View Threaded Conversations : Know what Tweet your followers are replying to with our threaded conversation.
And much more listed here

#3 SocialToo – a automatic feature tool

SocialToo includes the feature to send out surveys to your Twitter stream, and with the power of retweets, you can get some great results. Like Tweetlater, This tool is complete with automatic messages to people who follow you, automatic follow backs, and automatic unfollows when someone unfollows you. You can also subscribe to receive daily statistics about followers and unfollowers

#4 TweetManager – build up connections based on keywords

What it does? I’ve previously wrote about this one, you can have a look too.

Automatically follow twitter users by desired keywords
Send mass message to 1000 or less users (use with care)
Send automatic response to people who @reply to you
Assign RSS feed to publish tweets automatically but personally I use TweeterFeed for that purpose
Manages dual account

#5 TweetScan – The Google Alert for twitter

When it comes to business intelligence, your first priority should always be to know and track what is being said about your company. TweetScan is a free service that will monitor a set of keywords, such as your company name or industry, and automatically send you E-mail alerts whenever somebody “tweets” about those terms. Think Google Alerts for Twitter.

#6 SocialOOmph AKA TweetLater

Going on a long vacation and don’t want to seem like you’ve fallen off the planet? You can schedule future tweets with Tweetlater, so your tweets will appear in the your followers feed at predetermined times. You can also automatically tweet about a blog post with the RSS feature. Tweetlater also includes services like automatic following and sending direct messages when others follow you, but I use SocialToo for those features (see #10). You can also set up keyword alerts to receive email updates of what people are tweeting about a topic, which could be yourself or your company.

#7 Twitter Karma

Twitter Karma gives you multiple ways of seeing who you’re mutual followers are, who you’re following, and who’s following you. You can also bulk follow and unfollow people thanks to the service. It’s a great timesaver and great for keeping your contact list up-to-date. If you ever wonder if Twitter Karma may be wrong, just head over to DoesFollow to verify whether or not someone is following you.

#8 TweetStats

Add this stats tool to the essentials pile. This site offers detailed stats of your tweets, who you sent them to the most and when you usually sent them… Really impressive breakdown of data.

#9 Buzzom

It would be cliches to mention that social media is the BUZZ in the market. The world is seeing a change in the activity of the people. These days people want to express, share and indulge in discussion. Among many social media network, Twitter stands as a unique way to share knowledge and connect to people. They call is asynchronous model where two people doesn’t have to be connected in real world. This is the very fundamental of Twitter which have made it stand out in the herd of social media network.
Twitter is growing and so is the Twittersphere. There are numerous Twitter API based applications in the World, and that have been the main plus point for Twitter to get this shape. It is certainly the most used social media after Facebook, and have user base growing above 100% annually.
Let me discuss about our application which has quite a few general functions available in the web along with few really unique ones. Buzzom (www.buzzom.com) is Twitter Account Management Tool from InRev.

Buzzom’s major features are listed below:

People Search and Follow them: Find people with keywords in their Bio. Find people who Tweet about the given keyword.

Cross Follow : Find people who are following some account, or who are followed by some account. they can then be mass followed with ease.

Account Management (Follow/Unfollow) (one will get the list and he can chose the people to follow or unfollow) Flush — Unfollow who do not follow you Grow — Find and follow people who are likely to follow back Reciprocate — Follow your followers

Direct Operation – Mass Follow/Unfollow people directly without choosing from the list

Follow Lock / Unfollow Lock — Lock relationships using this feature. There might be few people who one don’t want to follow or unfollow even though he are not reciprocated, such relationships can be locked. Once Follow Lock, Buzzom will never unfollow the account (till unlocked).

Social Media Services from Buzzom — There are lots of Internet Marketing services we offer, which includes preparing Twitter BOT.

Each feature has been carefully crafted as per the need of the people. Among these features, People Search and Cross Follow is the most valuable and have lots of potential to drive your business.

#10 CoTweet

Manage up to six Twitter accounts through a single CoTweet login. Invite colleagues to join your accounts to work as a team representing your company on the front-line of your Twitter presence. Add your personal Twitter account and manage all your tweeting through one interface.
Monitor keywords and trends directly inside CoTweet. Twitter search is seamlessly integrated within the application. Maintain persistent searches on your product, brand and company names and take immediate action.
Share the responsibility of being on duty. Get email notifications when tweets are sent to your Twitter accounts.
Assign tweets to your colleagues for follow up. They’ll be notified via email and the tweets will appear in their “Follow Up” queue. Once they’ve responded, you’ll receive an email containing their response along with the original tweet.
View your team’s responses in context throughout the application. See which tweets have been responded to and know who’s said what to whom.
Click on any username to view conversation history, recent tweets, Twitter profile information and follower/following status. Make notes on users for anyone on your team to see. Follow or unfollow users on any of your accounts in one convenient panel.
CoTweet works seamlessly with bit.ly™, the most popular and powerful URL shortener on the Internet. View click statistics on links from your tweets. Configure your bit.ly accounts with CoTweet to keep your link history in one place.
Reliably break news at specific times, or just prepare tweets ahead of time to deliver a steady flow of updates throughout the day.
Easily post updates from multiple accounts at the same time, increasing your reach with minimal effort.
Keep a record of all your tweets—those you’ve received as well as those you’ve sent.

Well thats all for now, I am not gonna to include anything like twitter search and hashtag links here. These are already integrated with TweetDeck along with TwitScoop, url shortening services and twitpic.

Do you know about any other Twitter tool that can be on this list? Share with me please.

These are the practical tools that you should use in a day to day basis to become a pro in Twitter universe.

Just take a look over these links if you want – They have been flooded listing of Twitter Products

Top 40 Twitter Tools via [longest.com]
Best 100 Twitter Tools via [commetrics.com]
Twittermania: 140+ More Twitter Tools! via [Mashable]
Top 21 Twitter Tools and Help Websites via [LiveCrunch.com]
47 Awesome Twitter Tools You Should be Using via [deontee.com]
85 Twitter Tools via [TheDailyAnchor]
60 Twitter Toolbox via [Mashable]
12 Twitter Tools via [UStandOut]

Rating: 8.3/10 (12 votes cast)