Back in 1996 when the Internet was still a baby I remember spending breakfast time with a paper in my hands and idling over yesterdays news for an hour or so. Not much has changed today, I still idle over the news but I read/watch it as it happens and I do not take it all from one or two sources, oh and I don’t read it off of a dead tree.

Information needs to be read, understood and absorbed but when you are presented with too much it can get overwhelming, as is the case on the internet. RSS gave us the option to aggregate the information we wanted as it was published, but something was lacking. It was more or less a one sided affair.

Soon social media started to take over, you could now read an article that was recommended by other readers who had more or less similar interests to yours. But here too things started getting a bit gray, as you could never really know whether the content you were reading was just not “herd mentality” at its best.

Is social media driven by "herd mentality"?

Twitter on the other hand is a social media maverick, if you will allow me to use that word, and here’s why…

People on twitter pretty much do the same thing as they would on other social networks.

• Status updates,
• sharing links & photos,
• conversing with friends
• even the odd marraige proposal and fight as well

Pretty much normal in today’s world. Except for the fact that it can all be done via one single interface and it HAS to be done in 140 characters or less. This makes the information not only easy to transmit, but easy to absorb as well.

Twitters Success As A Media Source Lies In Its Simplicity

To repeat an old cliché, the world is getting smaller and even though there are 24 hours in a day they seem to go by pretty fast. That’s why at the end of the day simple wins, and Twitter has nailed that process in.

You are more likely to hear of a plane crash, an earthquake, a Ob/Gyn visit gone horribly wrong {OK, that doesn’t happen often} and much more on twitter first rather than the mainstream media – who are basically weapons of mass distraction.

In a connected world, everybody needs their information as concise and as quickly as possible. If you have a following on twitter and you are in a position to let people know about anything newsworthy happening around you in an instant, you should.

This officially makes you a broadcaster, in lesser terms. News is no longer filtered, censored or controlled by conglomerates. It is now unfiltered, uncensored and spread by first person accounts, and you are the first person.

As Uncle Ben once greatly said, With great power comes great responsibility.

Our flagship twitter widget, TweetRoll, just got itself a nice upgrade. Apart from showing your friends and the number of your followers you can show your latest tweets as well!

By default the widget will show 3 tweets, but you can customize it to show 2, 1 or none. So far the TweetRoll widget has been shown close to 6 million times in just under 4 months. Which is amazing to say the least.

Also, a quick reminder you can customize the colors and localize the text on your badge.

Here are some more stats for you stats junkies -

1. 10,000 unique visitors a month.
2. Just under 1000 registered users for our custom version
3. Average of 30 widgets shown per minute at slow times and anywhere from 80 – 100 per minute at peak times.

If you have used our TweetRoll badge drop a comment and share it with us.

Twitter is used today for more than just telling your friends and family what you are doing, or as a conversation tool, it is also being used as a link sharing tool. I’m sure all of you have heard of Delicious and its ubiquity with bookmarking and sharing links on the web, well it seems tweets are slowly being ubiquitous with linking out as well.

In fact, it’s so popular that there’s a whole site that aggregates links and ranks based on the number of retweets it gets. Of course, there is a disadvantage of sharing links on twitter which is that none of these links are ever found again {unless retweeted or bookmarked} and it’s impossibly hard to dig into your update archives to see what you linked to previously. The URL shorteners {is that a word?} don’t help either, as you don’t really know what you’re looking at till you’ve clicked it.

Leaving the shortfalls aside, let’s look at some of the most prolific linkers on Twitter.

These are the people that guarantee to always show you the best of the best on the web, even though sometimes it might be recycled links. We did some digging for you and here are some of our favorites, in no particular order -

Most Prolific Linkers on Twitter

• PopURLS
• Guy Kawasaki
• Scobleizer
• WebAddict
• SmashingMag
• Designer Depot
• ImJustCreative
• mSaleem
• Blogoscoped
• ChrisPirillo
• HuffingtonPost
• Mashable

The list above is just a beginning, feel free to add yourself in the comments and if we find that you are a link-a-holic we’ll add you to the list.

Make sure and retweet this!

Gaining followers on twitter is more or less a reciprocal issue, the more people you follow the more followers you will get. But it does not necessarily work out like that all the time nor does it have to be that way.

A lot of the popular users on twitter have followers in the thousands to the tens of thousands simply because of their online persona, which was either because of painstaking reputation building or just being in the right place at the right time {a.k.a luck}. Of course, this does not apply to Barack Obama.

5 tips that can help you attract a larger following

1. Follow the big guys first – Naturally this does not mean you follow politicians, as we all know that’s a one way street. Instead follow people who are big in your circle and try and converse with them {even if they never reply}. Your new followers will like to see who else you follow and what your interests are. So if your circle of “followship” is big in influence, chances are you will climb that ladder slowly as well.
2. Give it some time – Social media is just that, social. In order for it to be effective you have to be, again, social with it. That means taking some time out of your busy schedule and actually using the service. It’s all about connecting with your friends/fans/followers as this might be the only way they can interact with you. So let them know you exist, 140 characters or less does not take much of your time. Really.
3. Be interesting, and humorous – Tweeting about your pizza being delivered could get more interesting with a side tweet saying, “She was the most beautiful pizza delivery girl I have ever seen in my life, I got her phone number too.”
4. Follow people to their blog – And leave a comment with your twitter profile in it. Of course this only works if the people you follow have a blog. Once they see you engaging with their content they will be more inclined to follow you back.
5. Follow links, and leave a comment there – Many a time you will find that a lot of power users link to articles as part of their tweets. Follow those links and leave a comment on the posts, if commenting is enabled. Chances are a good percentage of their followers will pass by that link as well and see your comment, which means they could end up following you on twitter too! Of course, this works best if you are one of the first few commentators.

So there you have it, 5 easy to implement tricks to attract more followers on twitter. I’ve been doing a handful of these myself and it is working out well so far.

In closing

It doesn’t matter if you use all the tips or some of them, the main idea is to implement something. Building a strong circle of followers on twitter can help you in various aspects of business, life and social consciousness in general. So you really have nothing to lose here.

Make sure you follow me

The rise of micro-blogging on twitter has not dampened the regular form of expression that blogging has with the web community. One can even state that blogging has flourished since the rise of twitter. The most important reason I think is a pretty obvious one, sometimes we just want to say, and read, more than 140 characters.

Twitter has spawned a host of applications and tools that can be used on a daily basis to make blogging easier, and more productive. I have compiled a list that should help you out in your day to day blogging activities.

Blog Quicker With These Twitter Tools

Track Trends

Twitter is all about trends. Whenever something new hits, people can’t stop tweeting about it. Therefore, it makes the perfect radar for your next topic. Use these select tools to stay up to date on new trends for your next blogging topic -

1. Twist – This web based tool lets you see trend graphs for twitter topics and spot new hot topics. Graphs are available for the last week and the last 30 days.
2. Tweetag – This is a very nice tool that not only checks the popularity of your topic but it also shows relative and complimentary topics around your main one. So if you searched for “video” you would see more related topics like “phone”, “camera”, “flip” and so on…
3. ReTweetRadar – Another tool that will help you find out what other people are actually interested in. When someone “retweets” your tweet that effectively means that they were interested enough in the topic to let their followers know about it. Which means more people will show an interest in that topic over time.

Increase your Productivity

Sometimes you just want all this technology to be of actual use to you. Application developers have built a ton of tools around twitter’s API for this very purpose, so you can use it to increase your productivity.

If you have any favorites leave a link in the comments.

1. Twit2do – A to-do list manager for twitter users. The service uses the Twitter API to manage your to-do list on twitter.
2. TwtPoll – Create a simple twitter poll for your readers via this handy tool. Simply enter your questions, your answer choices and provide the link via twitter or embed it into your blog with the JavaScript provided. A great way to engage visitors and friends on your blog and on twitter.
3. Twistori – Love, Hate, Think, Believe, Feel, Wish. A lot of emotions that can give you a lot of  food for thought.
4. Twications – is a FREE service that allows you to schedule reminders, memos, or notifications to be sent to your Twitter account and to your email address on the date and time you choose.

Form Connections

I get most of my blogging ideas from conversations and twitter is the ultimate conversation tool {though, some do debate that title}. So why not use it to connect with more people and get more blogging ideas?

One can never have enough stuff to blog about.

1. TweetSocial – Connect with other Twitter users and find some great Twitter tools and resources and, of course, some new followers!
2. WeFollow – Find like minded twitter users on this user powered twitter directory. Adding yourself is as easy as @wefollow #blogger. You can add up to 3 hash tags for yourself. Plus a great way to connect with others. The more connections you form the easier finding stuff to blog about becomes.
3. Tweetburn – Our very own database of topic experts. With more handpicked experts added on an ongoing basis.

If you have any other tools you use on a daily basis, and can’t do without, just leave a comment below.

There are a lot of people on twitter {tweeple as I like to call them} and there are a lot of real life brands on twitter too. Some of the more memorable ones are @google, @yahoo, @thisishowtofly, @CNN, @zappos among many many others.

Twitter is slowly becoming synonymous with a brands real life identity, it’s being used by many as an official PR channel. That is why it is becoming increasingly important for a brand to get it’s username on twitter as soon as possible. Unfortunately, the rest of the Internet knows this basic fact as well.

This has led to an increasing number of recognized brand names being squatted upon by a bunch of nobodies. For instance, McDonalds would probably want to get @mcdonalds on twitter, as you can see it is being held by a squatter. This is where the brand name has lost out on getting the one username on twitter that would be the most obvious choice {I’m sure they can easily switch it over though}.

Here is a list of some more usernames on twitter that are being squatted upon. I have to say that some are actual people, so I doubt the company can do anything there to change it.

• @dell – 4 Tweets since 2007? Seriously, you should sell it to Michael for a good amount. Speaking of which, @MichaelDell.
• sony – 1 update, no followers or following. What a waste.
• @disney – An actual person in California.
• apple – This looks like it was recently updated. Anybody know anything?
• @msn – Someone with no updates.
• @burgerking – A squatter
• @adobe – Another squatter
• @AMD – Some dude who stopped tweeting in September, 2008
• @kodak – Squatting since 2007
• @McAfee – Some dude
• @nortonantivirus – There’s a reason it’s on this list
• @firefox – Interesting avatar, but that’s about it
• @prada – Not very stylish by my accounts
• @gucci – …not
• @chanel – Rainbows gone forever?
• @thedude – OK, not a brand but an icon by himself. It’s actually some dude in Massachusetts
• @dreamworks – Someone called Dr Eam Works. Yeah, uh huh.
• @virgin -  I guess it’s still a virgin
• @mastercard – For everything else, wait…
• @visa – Beginning the day since April 3rd, 2007
• @abc – I wonder what ABC would pay to get this username?
• @circuitcity – Oh wait…nevermind
• @AIG – An actual person tweeting, not the corporate scum we have all come to know in the past couple of days

These are a but few immediate examples that come to mind. If you know of any leave a comment with the link to them and I’ll update the post.

This just goes to show you that if you are starting up a new company, or web startup, get your twitter username {and any other social media username} before someone else has the chance too.

Remember, twitter is free PR and going forward it is going to be a force to be reckoned with {like it isn’t already}.

With over 370 registered users who have customized their TweetRoll widget we tend to come by quite a few that take the time to apply the right colours to their widget, as well as localizing their text. If you are one of them then we would love to feature your TweetRoll badge on the soon to be launched “Showcase” section of our site.

If you have customized your TweetRoll widget, simply leave a comment here and we will take a look at your site for inclusion into our showcase.

As you can see, our very own blog has a customized version of the widget in the sidebar. I know it’s all white, but that’s the beauty of customization so that it fits right into your sites theme.

Customizing your TweetRoll widget is pretty simple all you have to do is register yourself on our site and go to the customization page to use the colour and text settings available.

If you do not know what colour codes your site uses you can find them by looking in your CSS file. Once you have your colours and text set, simply click on “Tweetroll Me!” and you will get the code for your widget.

You can leave the “Category” field empty if you like, though we do recommend you fill it in.

Just copy and paste that on your site and we’ll make sure that every time someone visits your site we will show them your badge in all it’s glory. It’s a great way to gain more twitter followers!

Make sure you retweet this post so your friends can get their own TweetRoll badge.

Hello and welcome to the official launch post of Tweetburn.com! We have been in “soft-launch” since the 12th of January, when we had released the first version of our widget, TweetRoll, out into the wild. Today March 12th, 2009 is our official launch day.

We’re really excited!

What is Tweetburn?

For the better half of 2008 Tweetburn.com was nothing but a parked domain. I knew I wanted to build something here, but nothing clicked.

Then in the final week of 2008, almost like a revelation, I thought upon the idea of  showing your twitter “friends” via a badge on your blog or website. I hit up @OwenC on IM and we decided to build this together.

By the first week of January we had a working example of the widget and I began doing a very rough layout to get this launched as soon as possible. My main aim at that time was to secure a solid base of distribution for the widget, which has been viewed over 2 MILLION times around the web in under 2 months, without any direct marketing efforts whatsoever.

Most of the buzz spread through word of mouth and people seeing it on other websites and blogs, and it just took off from there. To date we have over 350 registered users who have customized their TweetRoll with colours and that number increases everyday.

We’re very proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish and would like to take the opportunity to thank everyone for using our widget. You will continue to see many more improvements on it in the days and weeks to come.

Here are a few stats and screenshots of all the milestones we went past in terms of widget impressions:

1. February 3rd, 2009: 300, 000 impressions

2. February 11th, 2009: 500,000 impressions

3. February 23rd, 2009: 1 Million impressions

4. March 12th, 2009: 2 Million impressions

What’s next?

Make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed as we will be adding a lot more content here in the days to come.

Meanwhile, you can follow tweetburn, me and Owen on twitter.