The #FASTForward Blog » What #Twitter Needs to do for Personal Knowledge Management: Enterprise 2.0

What Twitter Needs to do for Personal Knowledge Management

by Bill Ives

Here is an interesting post from Andre Yee at eBizQ, Is Twitter’s Growth Sustainable? He raises four issues: attrition, demographics, user experience and usage patterns, and monetization.  I think that each of these are real concerns. However, I think the key in number three: user experience and usage patterns. If they get this right the others will take care of themselves. 

Andre points out that “Facebook, MySpace and other social networks have a richer user experience beyond broadcasting. This means additional usage patterns and these translate to greater user affinity and stickiness.” The simplicity of Twitter is a large part of its power. However, I think there needs to be more for sustainability.  One part is the actual interface itself, as TweetDeck has proven.

Another part is the ability to use Twitter as a personal knowledge management system. I do this with my blog so I naturally started doing this with Twitter. I tweet  or retweet links to things I want to go back to. Since it is Twitter, a social tool, I am also sharing them but in many cases that is secondary. Twitter does the social part fairly well. But the archive part is very primitive. It reminds me of del.icio.us. Once I got a few hundred links it became clumsy and I stopped using it.

Do you use Twitter for personal knowledge management? How do you think it can improve in this area?  Are their third party apps that help here?

#Apple + #Twitter = A Better Combination Than You Might Think - #BusinessWeek

Apple + Twitter = A Better Combination Than You Might Think

Posted by: Arik Hesseldahl on May 05

I’ve been waiting on this rumor for awhile, not because I have any knowledge of talks between them, but because it simply felt inevitable. As Valleywag tells it, Apple is in talks to acquire Twitter, talks which writer Owen Thomas describes as “serious.” Such a deal would have Apple paying $700 million in cash for the Web service.

Twitter’s the major Web property of the moment, and so rumors about possible acquisitions aren’t a new phenomenon. Apple’s enormous pile of cash makes it a possible acquirer, meaning a rumor about such a deal was almost certain to emerge at one point or another.

I don’t know if this rumor is true, but I’m not prepared to dismiss it out of hand because it makes a great deal of sense.

Where’s the synergy, you ask?

Apple isn’t a particularly strong player on the Web — MobileMe is about the extent of it — and so Twitter would bring, among other things a strong Web development team with a proven record for building successful products. Twitter founder Evan Williams has already sold one successful Web startup — Blogger.com — to Google.

But the real story is the iPhone. I don’t know if there are any statistics to back this up, but anecdotally I’ve noticed that a lot of iPhone users tend also to be Twitter users. The Twitter client Tweetie is as of this morning ranked #32 on the top 100 paid iPhone applications. But the connections between the iPhone and Twitter go deeper than that.

Search that app store for Twitter and you find that not only are there a lot of Twitter clients, ranging from Tweetie, to Twitterific to ZipTweet but that support for the service is built in to an awful lot of iPhone Apps. USA Today’s iPhone app has Twitter support, for example. Read It Later Free does too. Several streaming radio apps let you post a link to what you’re listening to to your Twitter feed. Mobile Fotos, a photo-sharing app, supports Twitter, and integrates with all the major Twitter clients. I didn’t count them all, but there are lots and lot of iPhone applications that mention Twitter in their descriptions, and some of those mentions are simply “follow us on twitter,” but a great deal of them include features that somehow integrate with Twitter. (If anyone knows the number, please say so in the comments.)

Apple might be seeing a trend among its applications developers that isn’t clear from the outside: If iPhone users love Twitter, then apps developers are building Twitter support into their applications. That gives you two arguments in support of an acquisition: Users love it, developers love it. Those are almost reason enough to bring the entire Twitter ecosystem under Apple’s control, and make it an official part of the iPhone ecosystem.

Whats the third? It’s cheap. Apple has $4.5 billion in cash plus another $20.5 billion in short term investments plus another $4.6 billion in net receivables, which all adds up to a cash hoard that just shy of the $30 billion mark. Paying $700 million for Twitter now would be a difficult offer to turn down for the Twitter guys, and it would give Apple control of the what’s arguably the most important Web company going right now, and keep it out of the hands of the likes of Google, Microsoft, and Facebook.

So while at first this seems a weird rumor, don’t dismiss it out of hand, because it makes a surprising amount of sense, and I would not be surprised one bit if it happens.

Every iPhone user I know has a Twitter client on it, heck even all the iPhone developpers I know use the Twitter API in their apps. It's a wild idea but then again think about Apple wanting to get into the living room and into your digital live. Just think about #tags: realtime, interactive, broadcast, narrowcast etc. It's all about game changers, no doubt Apple & Twitter qualify in that area.

The Art of Writing Great Twitter Headlines — Copyblogger

The Art of Writing Great Twitter Headlines

by Brian Clark

Twitter

Twitter has become the place for sharing content links. If your content catches attention on Twitter and spreads, suddenly you’re getting significant traffic from people who may have never visited your site before.

But don’t forget to share other people’s quality content on Twitter. This helps you build up a Twitter audience that values your editorial judgment, which in turns helps you when you have something of your own to share.

In both cases, what you share on Twitter is not just about the actual value of the content. It’s also about whether the content gets viewed and appreciated in the first place.

Yep… the difference is in the headline. You’ve heard this before, right?

Same as it Ever Was… But Worse

Every time I tell people about the 80/20 Rule of Headlines, they seem shocked. Remember that one?

On average, 8 out of 10 people will read a headline, but only 2 out of 10 will go on to read the content. This is in a typical headline environment, such as a newspaper, magazine, or web page.

In an RSS reader or email inbox, the percentages are likely worse. The battle for attention intensifies due to the nature of the environment.

Now, think about a Twitter stream.

People are scanning more ruthlessly than ever, looking for interesting tidbits. Your content link is competing with conversations, quips, and tantalizing revelations related to this morning’s breakfast cereal.

Time to up your headline game. But first, let’s review the foundational elements of solid headline writing.

What’s the Reward for Reading?

The first thing to keep in mind is that a headline is a promise. It promises some kind of benefit or reward in exchange for attention. That reward could range from an amusing diversion to the solution to a pressing problem.

A good way to make sure your headlines always offer a compelling reward is to use the 4-U approach. This is a copywriting technique taught by AWAI.

Your headlines must:

  1. Be USEFUL to the reader,
  2. Provide him with a sense of URGENCY,
  3. Convey the idea that the main benefit is somehow UNIQUE; and
  4. Do all of the above in an ULTRA-SPECIFIC way.

For a whole lot of elaboration on this, check out How to Write Magnetic Headlines.

For a shortcut, revisit the various headline categories that should cover any type of content you’re dealing with.

The Triumphant Return of the Short Headline

Some people will tell you that a good Twitter headline is as short as possible. This is due not only to the 140-character limit that Twitter imposes, but also because in order for your headline to spread, people need room to retweet it. Twitter culture dictates that you give credit to the person who originally exposed you to a tweet when you retweet, so extra space is needed for the hat tip.

Too many people, however, focus on “short” and forget about “as possible.” A better way to think about it is as long as necessary, but no longer. Luckily, history provides us with some strong encouragement in the short headline department.

A quick review of The 100 Greatest Advertisements by Julian Lewis Watkins shows that 95% of the most effective headlines from the early years of magazine advertising were eight words or less. This is because magazine copywriters had to write tight headlines due to space concerns, just like Twitter users.

Studies done from the direct mail industry show that about 50% to 60% of the most effective headlines are eight words or less, leaving ample indication that longer headlines work, too. On a webpage, there are no space concerns, so web copywriters found that longer headlines communicated more benefit right at the top of the page where eye-tracking studies show people focus, and therefore worked better.

So, Twitter brings us back full-circle at a time when content is the new advertising. But it’s clear that a well-written short headline has power, especially when in a level-playing-field environment where everyone has the same constraints.

Rewrite for Retweets

For the most part, you should write your article and blog post headlines pursuant to the same guidelines given above. There are certain cases where I’ll modify my own content headline for Twitter, but it’s rare.

The real value in headline rewriting comes when tweeting other people’s content. Let’s face it, many people write pretty crappy headlines, even when the content is solid. Doing the editorial work can help you build a loyal Twitter following, because you’re finding content that might otherwise be lost in the noise, and then rewriting the headline to better entice people to pay attention.

This can be easier than it sounds. Too many writers love to use obtuse or clever headlines that fail to do justice to their content.

Simply apply the 4 U approach after reading the content and before you tweet. Over time, this will become second nature to you, and your reputation on Twitter will thrive while you send traffic to people who need to learn what you know.

Valuable Content Rules

It’s clear from observation that people will retweet based on the headline alone, before even clicking through to the content. This is the same phenomenon that we figured out with Digg.

But unlike the anonymous free-for-all that is Digg, Twitter is a bit different. Your followers may retweet based on a headline alone, but only because they trust you. Your past performance and editorial judgment in selecting (and producing) quality content is what leads to that trust.

Quality content is still the essential ingredient, but make sure people actually appreciate the content you share. Becoming a better headline writer will make that happen for you.

About the Author: Brian Clark is the founder of Copyblogger and co-founder of DIY Themes, creator of the innovative Thesis Theme for WordPress. Get more from Brian on Twitter.

Sun will Applikationsserver Glassfish in die Cloud bringen

Sun will Applikationsserver Glassfish in die Cloud bringen

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Meldung vorlesen und MP3-Download

Sun will den quelloffenen Anwendungsserver Glassfish für den Einsatz in Amazons Elastic Computer Cloud (EC2) verfügbar machen. Das gleiche gilt für die hauseigenen Open-Source-Tools für Identity Management, darunter OpenSSO (Web Access Management) und den Verzeichnisdienst OpenDS. Die Ankündigung kam im Rahmen der in Santa Clara noch bis morgen stattfindenden MySQL Conference & Expo 2009. Angesichts der überraschenden Übernahme des Unternehmens durch den Datenbank-Spezialisten Oracle ist jedoch nicht ganz klar, ob Sun das Vorhaben in die Praxis umsetzen kann.

TwitPub Premium Tweets

About TwitPub

TwitPub is a powerful platform but it’s so easy to use.

TwitPub allows users to subscribe to premium content (or tweets) that have more focus on topics of your interest. E.g. Horoscopes, Jokes, News, Stock Tips, Feng Shui, Events, Headlines and more!

This is very different from other premium content on the Web, as TwitPub allows you to follow premium content that is on the beat via Twitter. And Twitter makes content available in concise and timely formats that are highly accessible from the web, any Twitter clients of your choice, or even receive as SMS on your mobile phone.

For Publishers: Earn Dollars While You Tweet!

TwitPub is just another fantastic way to monetize Twitter. The best way to be rewarded for generating quality content (or tweets) is to get paid for it. All you need to do is to have a Twitter account and set it to private (or protect your updates so it’s not publicly visible) in your Twitter settings.

Next, signup for TwitPub and our system will automate approvals when a person subscribe to your Premium Tweet on TwitPub. Plus, you set the price on how much you want charge per subscription! It’s easy. Less hassle and gives you more control! All you have to do is Tweet!