If you are one of those people who can’t download a Twitter Desktop client in their workplaces because your IT department has some lousy, medieval mindset and using it on the Web is a suicide for your try MyTweetPlace. The startup, as the name says is about using Twitter right within your browser. Trust me, it isn’t suicide.
Talk about more presentation or rather publicity of your Twitter profile. It appears people at Twitter are bent upon ensuring that your tweets are embeddable just as you can do so with videos, etc. They call it the Blackbird Pie and with that you simply bake yourself an HTML code that can be embedded anywhere on the Web.
Simply visit Blackbird Pie, enter your Twitter URL [like – http://twitter.com/smohkim/status/15222] and hit Bake it to generate the code. The code is very lengthy and it appears the developers are aware of how untidy this huge code appears. Meaning that you will soon be seeing a shorter form of this code.
I just finished talking about why Facebook got the better of Google on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Summing it up, it simply meant that users look forward to more engaging content, apps for which Google is so not the obvious choice to spend your time on during holidays. I also talked about trends changing as you move across and time and again one name or the other would come stronger than another. Welcome Twitter, which has snatched popularity in mentions on the television for 2009. Facebook, is a close second.
Once again there is no link to either of the brands on the Web, (and they are way ahead of the third placed MySpace). But what’s important is the fact how and why do the rankings/traffic stats differ. While Facebook has taken the bite away in the year past, Twitter has held its reign firm where it matters. It has been quick in breaking news, spreading links virally, etc and it’s quickness is one major reason why it still has a lot to offer for users despite Facebook desperately trying to be like Twitter.
At times a picture says a thousand words and the one above says it all. Of course this isn’t any news but I just felt like being an art critic and had great admiration for this piece of art. The bird and the dinosaur depicts a tale of its own, just give it a look, all those birds circling the dino and it just roars its way destroying each bird.
So what’s the connection? Well obviously Twitter is about a countless noise all around you where as Facebook is one center location where you get to hook with almost everything you do online. Be it connecting with friends, playing games or listening to music and while the two have a league of their own but to be honest Facebook appears to try a lot to add more of Twitter functionality and continues to step closer to the micromessaging functionality. I continue to use both services quite addictively and I don’t see either crossing over into each other’s domains.
There are quite a lot of apps out there for users to use Twitter on their smartphones, from Twidroid and Seesmic to Tweetie. But that shouldn’t be the reason why Twitter shouldn’t have a mobile version of its site. And boy there is quite some show by Twitter for its mobile site. The over all appearance looks quite neat and appealing, not to forget lively with more colors with the real time search right there on the page. Plus you get to see the @replies, favorites, etc right on the page, something which was missing in the previous version of the site.
Facebook is growing strong, very strong indeed and I bet its pinching others, primarily Google Friend Connect. Why? Well if Facebook grows its obvious people would prefer Facebook Connect too and bingo there is the urge for Google’s Friend Connect to grow further. The industry juggernaut launched Twitter integration without much of brouhaha.
With this any site that has Friend Connect on the site, users can simply log in with either their Google or Twitter account. This means if you are already logged in with Twitter, you are logged in already to the site, thanks to OAuth. What makes it more fun is that you can tweet about the site to your friends with a simple click without actually doing the copy paste stuff.
350 Million users isn’t everything that is making news today with Facebook. There is an even more intriguing, fascinating and well, quite interesting news about a guy using Twitter and Facebook. Why interesting? Well Dana Hanna had been doing this even on his wedding. Man he does consider it more important to Tweet or update his Facebook status and boy, I bet if he is as addicted as he is, Tracy (his bride) will have a tough time.
There is more coming up with the new version of TweetDeck and those includes its endless support for ReTweets, LinkedIn stream and geo tagging messages with maps. Talk about making a mess of the entire TweetDeck board, which is something I seriously don’t like at all. But that is something which can be taken care of as it enables you edit these lists directly into transparent pop out boxes and provides suggestions for people you can add to the list that you are to create.
Status updates on Facebook sound cool but to have them made via email is even cooler. Especially back in my office where the access to the social network has been blocked thanks to Farmville, Petville and God knows what else Ville addicts. The feature is still in test and would also enable them to comment on threads using the email. The feature is only available to a very few users but it is definitely set to come out pretty soon, giving users like me a chance to keep the Facebook status updates using email.
The RT has definitely gripped Twitter and it really is set to make itself much easy to use with time. Perhaps taking heed of the suggestions or maybe hates being compared to any other in the same category. I mean the RT is so much over its head that it has got the note right there above the message box. SO now we have RT, RT with SMS and most probably RT with French support. Way to go Twitter, but I bet many people don’t like it much. Any say our readers?
