Effective Twitter Backgrounds: Examples and Best Practices « Smashing Magazine

Effective Twitter Backgrounds: Examples and Best Practices

By Saud Khan, September 18th, 2009 in How-To | 11 Comments | Forum

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Smashing Magazine has been on Twitter for about a year now (@smashingmag), and it turned out to be a great medium to communicate with our audience, build connections, discuss design-related topics and give away some nice prizes. However, even a year later, we still don’t have a Twitter background page and now is a good time to change that. So because we decided to create our own Twitter page, we wanted to first find out how other designers do it and what tips and techniques they use to create a truly outstanding, beautiful Twitter page.

Your profile page is the only place on Twitter where you get opportunity to showcase your visual brand and possibly communicate additional information that can last longer than a tweet. You can customize your profile page by changing background, text and link colors. It’s as simple as changing the skin, but ability to change background image has allowed designers to create really unique profile pages.

Primary focus of this article is to explore various techniques to create unique, memorable and effective Twitter profile pages. However, before proceeding to the list, it is important to briefly discuss the structure of the Twitter profile page.

Twitter Profile Page

Most important thing to note is that the main content block in the layout of a Twitter profile page has the fixed width of 765 pixels, and it is always centered. This is good, because it makes it possible for you to show your background image using the extra space created on the both sides of the block when displayed at higher resolutions.

1280 Wide Screen Resolution

1024 Wide Screen Resolution

Other things that you should keep in mind:

  • timeline background is always white
  • menu bar background is always white
  • footer bar background is always white
  • logo is always the Twitter logo
  • picture can be changed
  • you can change text color, link color, sidebar background color and sidebar border color
  • you can change background image and background color
  • you can also tile background image
  • the background image start position is always top left corner

Note that if you are only interested in designing a nice profile page, you can easily do that by incorporating a stunning background image and customizing text, link and sidebar colors accordingly. But if your intentions are to be unique, incorporate brand identity and communicate additional information, then you will need to be little bit more creative with your background image.

Tips & Techniques

Following is a list of profile pages, illustrating various tips & techniques that you can incorporate in your own backgrounds. Please note that most of these profile pages incorporate more than one technique, and you should also consider mixing multiple techniques according to your own requirements.

Merge Background With Timeline / Sidebar

This is probably the least used technique among all tips and techniques discussed here. By merging your background graphics with timeline and/or sidebar, you can create a unique layout with a very distinctive look and form.

@adamplitt

@adamplitt

@adamplitt

@gaksdesigns

@gaksdesigns

@gaksdesigns

Mix Tiled Pattern With Other Graphics

Twitter allows you to integrate one background image that can be either tiled or not. But you can create unique look for your profile page by creating a background image that has both.

@spurrachel

@spurrachel

@spurrachel

Reveal More With Your Pictures

Your profile picture (it can be an avatar, logo or photo) is your main identity on Twitter; it will be displayed next to every tweet that you send out to your followers. For instance, you can use a background image that is somehow related to your profile picture and thus convey more information about yourself or your brand. In other words, you can use this classic approach of creating design around your logo or brand identity to communicate information in a more effective way.

@Doubleolee

@Doubleolee

@Doubleolee

@mailchimp

@mailchimp

@mailchimp

Reveal More With The Page Peel Effect

If you have an established visual identity, you can use page peel effect to show users who is actualy behind the Twitter profile. This technique provides you with a freedom to design the rest of the background as you wish, because you may no longer need to worry about integrating brand visuals and its colors.

@sitepointdotcom

@sitepointdotcom

@sitepointdotcom

@benek

@benek

@benek

Add Personalized Sidebar To Your Profile

The following profiles illustrate a specific use of the first technique by adding sidebars to the layout. You can add such panels to effectively highlight additional information that you want to communicate.

@aaronmillerillz

@aaronmillerillz

@aaronmillerillz

@robingood

@robingood

@robingood

@sickbrain

@sickbrain

@sickbrain

Show Yourself

In social media world, you are the brand. With Twitter, being one of the major players in social media, showing yourself on the profile page can be very effective way of strengthening your brand and community around your website.

@problogger

@problogger

@problogger

@unmarketing

@unmarketing

@unmarketing

Use Icons and Logos

Following profiles illustrate simple, yet very effective technique to communicate association with or involvement in certain community, service, skill, etc by showcasing relevant icons or logos.

@lanesa

@lanesa

@lanesa

@rjacquez

@rjacquez

@rjacquez

Add a Header Bar

Adding a header bar could be used for creating unique look for your profile page, but it can also be used to separate Twitter logo and top menu (which contain links to user’s profile) from the rest of your page.

@thegraphicmac

@thegraphicmac

@thegraphicmac

@elitistsnob

@elitistsnob

@elitistsnob

Less is More

Andre Gide once said that “Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better”. Here are few illustrations of how minimalism can be used to its full effect:

@line25blog

@line25blog

@line25blog

@idesignstudios

@idesignstudios

@idesignstudios

Accommodate the 1024px Width

If you care how your profile page will appear on 1024px wide screens, you will need to work near the top and left borders of your background image. Here is an example of how a nice visual design can be used properly for various screen resolutions:

@SohTanaka

@SohTanaka

@SohTanaka

Here is another interesting technique to ensure that your profile page has a very similar look on both 1024 and 1280px wide resolutions:

@adamplitt

@adamplitt

@adamplitt

Use Typography

Use of typography in Twitter backgrounds is not very common; however if used creatively, you can create unique, very effective profile pages to communicate additional information.

@dickieadams

@dickieadams

@dickieadams

@iamFinch

@iamFinch

@iamFinch

Put Information In a Memorable Way

Composition is the plan, placement or arrangement of the elements. You can arrange elements on your background in a unique and memorable, showcasing information that is important to you and your readers. This techniques allows you to create an environment, show your personality and provide additional information.

@sharebrain

@sharebrain

@sharebrain

@iamkhayyam

@iamkhayyam

@iamkhayyam

Do Whatever You Want To Do

The more original, creative and distinctive your background image is, the more likely it is to be memorable and strengthen your online presence. Experiment with beautiful, personalized illustrations, background images and typography. Make sure that your background image has a personal voice, doesn’t look generic and has an unusual twist. Your first time visitors will appreciate it.

@ramesstudios

@ramesstudios

@NIK0_BELLIC

@NIK0_BELLIC

Gallery

Now that we discussed a couple of techniques for the design of Twitter backgrounds, here is a collection of some well-designed profile pages to tame your appetite for Twitter profile page inspiration.

@MdFilmFestival

@MdFilmFestival

@fragments77

@fragments77

@happytreefriend

@happytreefriend

@LoungeKat

@LoungeKat

@ellingson

@ellingson

@hootsuite

@hootsuite

@G_Obieta

@G_Obieta

@willbryantplz

@willbryantplz

@gavrog

@gavrog

@grant_clark

@grant_clark

@hugeinc

@hugeinc

@JJunkins

@JJunkins

@Baldy67

@Baldy67

@thelaughbutton

@thelaughbutton

@bickov

@bickov

@jayjdk

@jayjdk

@nathanhoad

@nathanhoad

@robertomas

@robertomas

@mayhemstudios

@mayhemstudios

@ThirstEase

@ThirstEase

@cameronolivier

JAGTAG brings 2D barcode reading to Twitter

JAGTAG brings 2D barcode reading to Twitter
by Jay Donovan on September 15, 2009

JAGTAG_logoJAGTAG announces today that they are now able to utilize Twitter’s network to decode http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/05/26/interview-20-questions-for-jagtags-dudle..." target="_blank">their proprietary 2D barcodes and then easily broadcast the resulting links and media via Twitter’s re-tweet function. Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment has hooked up with the company to promote their new Blu-ray/DVD launch of X-Men Origins: Wolverine via this method. It’s an interesting way to use mobile devices outfitted with Twitter clients, to decode and share video and other content, especially as an ad campaign tactic. Will it catch on? We’ll have to see, but it’s definitely an innovative way to marry some existing technologies. I appreciate the “rigging together” of a concept like this. That’s a compliment, by the way.

From the press release:

Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment and JAGTAG, the only 2D barcode solution that does not require consumers to download an application and the only mobile medium to successfully deliver optimized multimedia to standard phones and smartphones, today announced the launch of the first viable Twitter integration from a 2D barcode tied to the Blu-ray/ DVD launch of X-Men Origins: Wolverine. The Twitter integration allows consumers to tweet with 2D barcodes, sharing exclusive video content from X-Men Origins: Wolverine with their friends and followers.

small-demo-request-AUG27I used an iPhone to test it out, but you could use any mobile platform and Twitter client that supports image upload. For the sake of practicality, the way it works is like this:

1. You take a picture of a JAGTAG you see out in the field (the one to the right is the demo tag from the JAGTAG website)
2. You save it to your library
3. You open a mobile Twitter client (I used TwitBird Pro)
4. Open and type a new tweet
5. Attach the photo of the JAGTAG in your library (TwitBird Pro uses Twitpic to upload and encode a link to the photo)
6. Append JAGTAG’s shortcode preceded with the @ symbol (@524824) to the end of your tweet.

So, the tweet would look like this:

getdonovan http://twitpic.com/f4mjj @524824

Once you do this, the JAGTAG will be decoded and that content will be returned as a link in your account’s @ mentions. You can then re-tweet that mention to easily pass the link on to your followers. The response will look like this:

524824 @getdonovan See our demo video here: http://tinyurl.com/nghfx6

Why is this important? Well there are a few things to note.

1. This bypasses the need for MMS functionality to decode a JAGTAG, say, if you are on an iPhone. MMS is still lacking on iPhone (until Sept. 25th unless you have already taken measures into your own hands with certain hacks available out there). So, you can use Twitter as a surrogate MMS solution for the iPhone. (Incidentally, JAGTAG does support an email solution for iPhone—emailing tag pics to jag@jagtag.net gets a similar response, just via email).

2. It automatically posts the content link into Twitter for you, eliminating the need to cut and past a URL string for the compelling content you want to broadcast on Twitter. This is a nice shortcut anyone on a mobile device can appreciate. And if it’s compelling content you are looking for…just check out JAGTAG’s recent campaign with Sport Illustrated for the Swim Suit Issue. ZING!

05_Flatbed_2 - APRILIt may seem like a bit of a convoluted process on paper, but anyone familiar with the ins and outs of mobile tweeting will likely not be daunted. Once I tried it out myself, I could see how I would use this functionality. Apparently Fox Home Entertainment is a believer as well. It will be a case study to keep your eye on to see if it catches on.

Now, if only I could find a JAGTAG to decode that’s not just an ad for a mobile phone or DVD (see Nokia’s JAGTAG-wielding ad in Wired for an example). That’s not really the content I want to pass on to others. It is still valuable but more for personal consumption. I think once JAGTAG reaches a critical mass of clients publishing content that, while still possibly ad-based, has functional and informational value on its own (location based content, time sensitive events, limited use content…basically all the plans their web site lays out) that we’ll see their speed to market with this Twitter-based experience will have proven worthwhile.

My Customers Don't Use Twitter, Why Should I? @Pistachio Explains.

Last week, Laura "@Pistachio" Fitton presented a fantastic webinar for Inbound Marketing University about the business benefits of Twitter. (Laura is a famous Twitter Queen, founder of the first Twitter for Business consultancy, co-author of Twitter for Dummies, and creator of a new Twitter applications startup.)  You can watch her IMU webinar here.

One of the major questions that she addressed in her presentation was,  "If my best leads and potential customers aren't on Twitter, why on earth should I be on Twitter?"

Laura has concisely determined five "off-platform benefits" of Twitter, even if you aren't using it to communicate with leads and customers directly.

Here are her five points summarized from the above video:

1) Twitter Page SEO: In her words, "Just search for Pistachio." It's a common word, but Laura dominates the search rankings. By being active on Twitter and having a Twitter handle that is a word people will search for, most likely it will rank well. 

2) Research: Use Twitter as a platform to gather consumer research on your product or industry. What are people saying about your company? Recruit research groups or host a live survey using a hashtag!

3) Content Generation Engine: You don't need your own Twitter account to collect the content that people are generating. Set up a widget on your website that aggregates tweets about your company, industry, or anything your non-Twitter customers might find interesting. Madonna collects the content her fans create about her and uses it to add fresh content to her website.

4) Word-of-Mouth "Passalong": Utilize the viral nature of Twitter and start a campaign that people will talk about on and offline. When Dell gave out coupons on Twitter, Twitter-users passed along the coupons to folks outside of their online networks too. 

5) PR Gravity: Lots of journalists use Twitter as a tool to search for people to interview for news stories. Stop pitching; instead, create interesting and informative content. Journalists who need your expertise will find you on their own.

Laura's final takeway: Make sure you're using Twitter and social media in a way that is unselfish. Serve your community by being helpful. Learn, listen, care, and serve!

Can you think of any other off-platform benefits of Twitter? 

Webinar: Twitter for Marketing and PR


twitter for marketing and pr


Want to learn more about using Twitter for Marketing and PR?

Download the free webinar for tips and tricks to drive inbound marketing using Twitter.

Twitter Study Reveals Interesting Results About Usage | Pear Analytics

A while back we embarked on a study that evolved after a having a debate in the office as to how people are using and consuming Twitter. Some felt it was their source of news and articles, others felt it was just a bunch of self-promotion with very few folks actually paying attention. But mostly, many people still perceive Twitter as just mindless babble of people telling you what they are doing minute-by-minute; as if you care they are eating a sandwich at the moment.  (See our last post on Twitter: Is Anyone Paying Attention?).

So we took 2,000 tweets from the public timeline (in English and in the US) over a 2-week period from 11:00a to 5:00p (CST) and captured tweets in half-hour increments. Then we categorized them into 6 buckets:

News, Spam, Self-Promotion, Pointless Babble, Conversational and Pass-Along Value.

See our entire whitepaper here.

Results

The results were interesting. As you may have guessed, Pointless Babble won with 40.55% of the total tweets captured; however, Conversational was a very close second at 37.55%, and Pass-Along Value was third (albeit a distant third) at 8.7% of the tweets captured.

Other Results

- 11:30a and Monday’s have the most frequent tweets with Pass-Along Value.  If you want something re-tweeted, try it at 11:30 in the morning, or try it on a Monday.  Maybe folks are feeling generous then.

- Spam seemed pretty consistent all day, everyday, but luckily was second-to-last on frequency.

- News seemed heavier at 2:00p and on Tuesday’s.  Note that we did not collect any tweets during the Michael Jackson news, in order not to skew the results.

- Conversational tweets were high between 2:00 and 4:00p throughout the study, and heaviest on Tuesdays.  Most people are busy on Monday catching up with work, so perhaps it takes until Tuesday to get into the swing of Twittering again.

Conclusion

With the new face of Twitter, it will be interesting to see if they take a heavier role in news, or continue to be a source for people to share their current activities that have little to do with everyone else.  We will be conducting this same study every quarter to identify other trends in usage.

Since Twitter is still loaded with lots of babbling that not many of have time for, you should check out the Twitter filter, Philtro.  These guys can not only help you filter the noise, but will also be allowing you to store the tweets you are most interested in real soon.

See our entire whitepaper here.

10 Ways to Archive Your Tweets

Did you know that your tweets have an expiration date on them? While they never really disappear from your own Twitter stream, they become unsearchable in only a matter of days. At first, Twitter held onto your tweets for around a month, but as the service grew more popular, this "date limit" has dramatically shortened. According to Twitter's search documentation, the current date limit on the search index is "around 1.5 weeks but is dynamic and subject to shrink as the number of tweets per day continues to grow."

What that means is something tweeted prior to a week and a half ago can never be retrieved via search.twitter.com. That's bad for users and it's definitely bad for data-mining. Unless Twitter corrects this issue on its own, we have to find another solution for archiving tweets ourselves. Here are 10 ways to do so.

One of the unfortunate side effects of the FriendFeed acquisition is the very real possibility that the company will eventually shut down its servers. There are many reasons why this is upsetting - the site's users now have to figure out how to extract everything from their natively posted content to their comment streams - or lose them forever. However, one of the most disappointing losses will be that losing FriendFeed's search feature. Since the service functioned as an aggregator of the social web, most users piped their tweets into FriendFeed, making the site a searchable archive of tweets which were still available no matter how old they were - quite unlike Twitter's own search. But if FriendFeed is going to disappear, we need to consider some alternatives.

1. The Archivist: A Desktop Tool for Archiving Searches

The Archivist is a Windows desktop software application built by members of Microsoft's Mix Online team. With this program, you can create Twitter searches which will then be archived to your PC so they can be data-mined by you at a later date. Recently, the program was updated so that it can be minimized to the system tray - especially helpful for when you want to track a Twitter search over a long period of time. They also added a data visualization feature which calculates who's tweeting the most about your topic.

2. Twapper Keeper: Archive Tweets Based on Hashtags

Twapper Keeper is an online tool which archives tweets based on a given hashtag. Once you set up a query, Twapper Keeper will periodically scan Twitter for that tag and then archive the tweets it finds on its own servers. Tweets are scanned approximately every 5 minutes but that can vary based on the velocity of the incoming tweets. Once archived, you can then organize the tweets into categories of your choosing which show up on the right-hand side of the archived page.

3. Twitter Tools: Archive Tweets in WordPress

Twitter Tools is a WordPress blog plugin which integrates your blog and Twitter account. Once installed and configured, the plugin can be used to both Twitter links to your blog and to create posts which contain your recent tweets. While this is handy for the WordPress blog owner, keep in mind that post after post of "Today's Tweets" isn't all that appealing to blog readers. You may want to create a separate blog for this if you intend to use WordPress as your own personal Twitter archive.

4. Twistory: Tweets in Your Calendar

Twistory is a service which lets you add your Twitter backlog feed to your favorite calendar application. The service lets you subscribe to any user's Twitter RSS feed which can then be integrated into a calendaring application like Google Calendar, Outlook, Thunderbird, or any other application that supports the iCal format. Tweets are added immediately to the calendar upon posting and the service can even import almost all the way back to your first tweet ever.

5. SweetCron, AmpliFeeder, or Storytlr: A Lifestream of Tweets

We reviewed SweetCron back nearly a year ago when it first launched. Essentially, this self-hosted lifestreaming application lets you create your own customizable version of a FriendFeed-like service, but one that's hosted on your own server. The software is installed on a server with PHP and MySQL running on it and then must be configured with the social media sites you want to aggregate. Of course, one of the sites you can pull in is Twitter.

AmpliFeeder works the same way and includes a number of themes to choose from. This service can also generate XML files which can be used to backup all your social streams' data, too. Recently, Amplifeeder launched their hosted version of the service (get started here), but unfortunately, it relies on FriendFeed to import your lifestream. And who knows how long that will be around.

Storytlr is a third option for creating a lifestream at your own custom URL. However, it's doesn't just function as an aggregator - it also lets you post your own, unique content too. (Our review).

6. Twinbox: Tweets in Your Outlook

TwInbox is an Outlook plugin which lets you receive your friends' updates directly in your Outlook inbox. With this plugin activated, you can search, archive, and group your tweets the same way you manage your email. You can also update your Twitter status from Outlook or retrieve tweets based on keyword searches. Of course, if you're in a corporate environment, your I.T. admin may enforce mailbox size limits which means you'll have to archive your "tweets" folder more often than you'd like to keep your PST/OST to a manageable size.

7. RSS Feeds

One of the simplest ways to archive tweets is to simply grab the RSS feed for your tweet stream of choice and add it to your preferred RSS reader. If you use Google Reader, for example, the service's "infinite scrolling" feature lets you go back to the very first item ever tracked for that subscription. Plus, Reader has a search box at the top for searching for keywords or phrases in your feeds which will also help you rediscover older tweets.

8. Tweetake, TweetDumpr, Tweetscan, BackupMyTweets: Twitter Backup Tools

Tweetake is a third-party service which lets you back up your Twitter account including tweets, DMs, followers, friends, and favorites. However, Tweetake is limited to backing up only the first 1000 contacts and there's no way to re-import the data into Twitter at the moment. It's mainly used as a personal archive of data which you can store for safe-keeping. TweetDumpr is a similar service but only focuses on backing up the tweets themselves from public timelines. Tweetscan also lets you download your Twitter message archive including replies to a CSV file. BackupMyTweets is yet another Twitter backup service which lets you backup your tweets daily and download them to an HTML, XML or JSON file.

9. Archive Tweets with Evernote

The popular note-taking application Evernote offers a feature which lets you send your public Twitter messages and private DMs right into Evernote where they can be searched and stored permanently. Unfortunately, in order for this service to work, you have to put "@myEN" into the body of any public tweet, making it less-than-ideal for archiving your every missive. Instead, this is a good way to archive select tweets you wouldn't want to lose.

10. Geek Tools Let You Archive in XML, PDF, HTML, TXT...or even with Python

RSS guru Dave Winer released a tool earlier this year which archives Twitter posts using the OPML Editor and optionally synchronizes with a structure on Amazon S3. Alternately, there's this simple Python script for archiving tweets. Sourceforge also hosts an app with lets you backup up tweets of different users as XML, HTML, PDF, or TXT. However, it can only perform backups of 3200 tweets at a time. Each subsequent backup will append the additional tweets to the current existing archive.

5 Twitter tips for your company - Fortune Brainstorm Tech

For anyone who’s wondered what ‘tweeting’ can do for business, here are the keys to using Twitter.

By Kim Thai, contributor

Thousands of companies have hopped onto the Twitter bandwagon, trying to find a way to bring in business (and hopefully, revenue) one tweet at a time. But it isn’t as easy to Twitter — especially for companies — as one might think.

For those who don’t know: Twitter’s a micro-blogging site that allows users to communicate with each other in 140 characters or less. Think of each “tweet” as a text or instant message — not really directed at anyone but visible to everyone. And those who want to follow particular people’s tweets can simply subscribe to their feed for real-time updates.

But don’t mistake it for a fluke: In the last year, Twitter traffic has multiplied almost 15 times over, with more than 37.3 million unique global visitors in May, according to comScore. And as tweeting becomes hotter, companies feel more pressure to join the social-networking tool in order to stay competitive. But many are struggling to understand Twitter culture and, as a result, their tweets can come off as desperate or inadvertently turn away potential customers.

So to help you avoid any Twitter faux pas and maximize your tweeting potential, here are five rules for using this social networking tool that’ll keep your company ahead of the competition.

1. It’s a two-way conversation

Know those annoying people who always talk about themselves and don’t listen to others? Well, don’t let that persona take over your Twitter feed. Remember to listen. Too many businesses are just blasting out press releases over and over again — or worse, have an automated tweeting system and wind up ignoring communication from their followers.

That’s the worst mistake you can make on Twitter, says Julio Ojeda-Zapata, social media expert and author of Twitter Means Business: How microblogging can help or hurt your company. “It’s like these companies are standing out on a mountaintop with a megaphone broadcasting how wonderful they are, but Twitter is an intercom, not a megaphone.”

To avoid this common mistake, use Twitter regularly, and consider assigning a specific person to tweet on a daily basis. This way, companies can follow users who mention their business, engage users through direct messages, and actually build relationships with followers, rather than inundate them with information.

2. Your Twitter and company voice should sound the same

Twitter may be a casual medium, but that doesn’t mean your company has to be casual about it. Businesses should do what makes the most sense for their brands, experts say.

The key? Make sure that your Twitter voice reflects your company culture, says Joel Comm, CEO of InfoMedia. For example, Zappos — a fast-growing, lighthearted online company that sells shoes and other merchandise — recently tweeted a quote from Pooh’s Little Instruction Book. Whereas for Discover (DFS), Twitter came in most handy for posts on consumer spending and financial resources for customers.

Twitter is all about transparency, so it’s important to be authentic when you tweet so that your company’s personality — whatever it is — comes through clearly. Comm likens the Twitter experience to a water-cooler conversation: Being relatable and fun is crucial, but staying true to your company’s core values matters most.

3. Tweet to attract and retain customers

Twitter can boost customer service to a new level, as Comcast (CMCSA) found when it established a Twitter account specifically to handle Internet complaints and other technical service problems. In a recent correspondence with a customer on Twitter, Comcast tweeted the same questions a representative would ask on a technical support hotline and received answers via Twitter. But instead of leaving the customer on hold for hours, Comcast was able to identify the problem immediately and send out a technician.

Consumers are impressed — and often surprised — by a company that openly and directly addresses customer-service problems. Twitter allows businesses, big and small, to take that extra step whether it’s about complaints or simple product queries. For example, Take Zettler Hardware, the oldest hardware store in Columbus, Ohio, which fields questions on common plumbing problems on Twitter, often responding to photos uploaded on Twitter (Twitpics), and replies with recommendations for replacement parts and repair strategies.

This kind of instant and robust customer service builds loyalty that’s hard to come by through traditional methods, says Rodney Rumford, co-founder of TweetPhoto. “The biggest sin,” he says, “is being silent.”

4. Twitter’s just the first step

While Twitter should be part of any savvy company’s daily marketing, it’s only the beginning of a successful social-networking strategy. “Twitter is a way to get your foot in the door,” Rumford says. “It’s the start to building a relationship.”

For business-to-business companies, Twitter’s a great way to network. Author Ojeda-Zapata gave the example of Mark Palony, a marketing manager at the software company SoftBrands (SBN), who was looking to collaborate with German software giant SAP (SAP). Palony searched Twitter for SAP mentions and began following an SAP worker near his area. He initiated some sports small talk through tweets and — with continual contact — moved on to actual meetings. Palony now calls it his “single best use of Twitter.”

Tweeting, Ojeda-Zapata says, is like having drinks online. It can easily lead to drinks in real life, formal business meetings — and eventually, company growth.

5. Have fun and be creative

The very nature of Twitter — from its 140-character limit to its fervent followers — attracts users with a short-attention span, so the best tweets keep users coming back. Interactivity can be a great way to do that: Auntie Anne’s and Dairy Queen ask customers about their favorite pretzel dips or Blizzard flavors through tweets, while at Home Depot (HD), confused shoppers can tweet for help as they search the aisles for particular products.

Twitter’s GPS function can also point businesses in the right direction. Cupcake Stop, a New York cupcake truck company, tweets its location to customers as it moves throughout Manhattan, and Union Pacific (UNP) lets fans track a historic steam engine road-trip across America.

The experts agree there’s no right way to use Twitter, but with these strategies, you won’t tweet the wrong way. Time to start the conversation.

Barnes & Noble makes a big splash into e-books

Barnes & Noble, which calls itself the world's largest bookseller, has given hints that e-books will play an important role in the company’s future strategy. Monday, we got the first insights to Barnes’ digital strategy with the company’s two-prong announcement of the Barnes & Noble eBookstore and its e-book reader plans—including the company’s partnership with Plastic Logic to produce an e-book device.

The eBookstore, launched Monday, offers 700,000 titles according to Barnes & Noble’s press release, but in a conference call after the release went out, Barnes & Noble clarified that it includes Google’s 500,000 free public domain books as part of that number. That means for now, Amazon's Kindle store has the edge: It offers more than 300,000 titles. As on Amazon’s Kindle store, the Barnes & Noble eBookstore will offer new releases and bestsellers at $9.99. Barnes says it expects its selection to increase to over one million titles over the course of the next year, including e-books from established publishers, independent direct-to-e-book publishers, and Google.

When asked about how quickly Barnes & Noble planned to grow its portion of the eBookstore (excluding Google offerings), William J. Lynch, President of BN.com, reiterated, “We’re committed to offering Barnes & Noble consumers every title available in digital format.”

Barnes & Noble’s eBookstore will support only EPub, the free and open e-book standard from the International Digital Publishing Forum. Books will have DRM, and will be downloadable to your device as well as digitally stored in Your Library. According to Lynch, you can download books to multiple devices; Barnes & Noble offers its latest eReader software across a number of device platforms, including mobile phones (iPhone, Blackberry) and PC and Mac computers, and as part of Monday’s announcement, noted that the eBookstore will be available across all device platforms via the eReader software (acquired earlier this year from Fictionwise).

If you lose your cell phone or your hard drive fails, no worries: Barnes & Noble makes it easy to access your books digitally. “We have on record proof that you purchased the file, so you can download as many times as you need to,” explains Lynch.

In addition to the eBookstore, Barnes & Noble discussed its partnership with Plastic Logic. Plastic Logic’s eReader digital book reader is due out in early 2010. The Barnes & Noble eBookstore will be the exclusive storefront for the eReader; the company declined to discuss any other level of cooperation between the two companies, though it would not be surprising for Barnes & Noble to sell the eReader in its stores. “We have over 77 million readers who go through our stores,” noted Lynch.

Even without knowing the device’s price, the integrated Barnes & Noble eBookstore means that Barnes & Noble and Plastic have reached a powerful combination so far only seen from Amazon in the nascent e-book reader market. The Plastic Logic eReader device will be 8.5 by 11 inches, with a wireless connection—making it a direct threat to Amazon’s Kindle DX (also about the size of a sheet of paper, with wireless, and integrated Amazon Kindle bookstore). The on-device bookstore integration is a critical component of the puzzle: With it, an e-book reader offers the ease and immediacy of a digital shopping and acquisition experience, in addition to the convenience of an electronic book. Without an integrated storefront, an e-book reader is a static, lifeless device.

50 Web 2.0 Twitter Applications & Sites

As twitter is growing rapidly so the twitter applications too. Lots of twitter applications are available on internet but here i am not going to discuss about the twitter applications, i will showcase the best designed and web 2.0 twitter applications. Designers really worked hard to design such applications according to web 2.0 standards.

In this showcase, i will show 50 web 2.0 twitter applications and sites. You can either get inspiration or use these twitter applications, this showcase will help you in both ways.

1. TwitPic

twitpic

2. WeFollow

wefollow

3. HootSuite

hootsuite

4. FriendOrFollow

friendorfollow

5. Magpie

beamagpie

6. yfrog

yfrog

7. Twitter Backgrounds Gallery

twitter-gallery

8. Splitweet

splitweet

9. HelloTxt

hellotxt

10. ilist.Micro

ilist-micro

11. Just Tweet It

just-tweet-it

12. ExecTweets

exect-tweets

13. Twittad

twittad

14. Qwitter

qwitter

15. TwitterHawk

twitter-hawk

16. Tweepler

tweepler

17. Tweet Value

tweetvalue

18. Bubble Tweet

bubble-tweet

19. Twitter Mail

twitter-mail

20. CelebrityTweet

celebrity-tweet

21. FeaturedUsers

featured-user

22. Tinker

tinker

23. Tweet Works

tweet-works

24. Tweet Manager

tweet-manager

25. ShoutEm

shout-em

26. Twuffer

twuffer

27. The Shorty Awards

shorty-awards

28. Twitgoo

twitgoo

29. Twilert

twilert

30. Twtbase

twtbase

31. Twitter Less

twitter-less

32. Twisten.FM

twisten-fm

33. Tweet Tag

tweet-tag

34. Tweet Bots

tweet-bots

35. TweeTube

tweetube

36. Flokio

flokio

37. Twitrans

twitran

38. The Mattinator

mattinator

39. Group Tweet

group-tweets

40. Tweeterate

tweeterate

41. Pingvine

pingvine

42. TweetStyle

tweetstyle

43. Twitshirt

twitshirt

44. Twapps

twapps

45. The Twitter Toolbar

twitter-toolbar

46. DivVoted

divoted

47. Twitmatic

twitmatic

48. Twitter Fone

twitter-fone

49. Ask On Twitter

askontwitter

50. FileSocial

filesocial

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