There is nothing like Twitter in Social Media and I am awed by the scope it offers.

Facebook and Orkut are aged now and have now started giving way to Twitter. So the new fashion statement is being on Twitter.

Gone are the days when people asked, “Are you on Facebook”?

The question now is, “Are on on Twitter”?

So if Twitter is so amazing and offers so much of scope and when my entire blog concentrates on Twitter, why a post on “hating Twitter”, you might wonder!!

Like everything else in the world, there are certain things with Twitter, that you might have expected, did not exist. These are things that you hate and hate from the core of the heart. There are some such things with Twitter as well. That is why I hate Twitter.

Having said that, I should not waste time before clarifying the fact that I am an ardent admirer of the 140 characters. The ability that these 140 characters have is much more than what even a blog post has. The only thing that matters is, “how you say it”.

So if I am able to monetize Twitter at the rate of about $1.00 per follower, it is only because I have learnt the art of using Twitter. But in doing that I burnt myself a lot. There were even moments when I cursed the micro blogging platform like anything.

So let me lay down the 10 things that I hate most about Twitter -

1). Twitter TOS – I am sure almost 90% of the people will agree with me. The “terms of service” associated with anything is annoying. So is Twitter. Some of the TOS is confusing and I do not want to get confused.

2). Twitter Ban on Users – Twitter bans users. I do not know why. The explanations from Twitter is again confusing. I had a username – rdilipk1. Twitter banned me immediately after I started tweeting. I remained persistent in the hope that someday they will remove the ban. That day has yet not come.

3). Twitter Support – I will not call that support. A blogging kind of an interface that gives you an option to enter your technical problem in a comment box which doesn’t get answered and is closed without you realizing that it is closed.

4). Twitter’s follower limit – Twitter has some kind of an algorithm that limits the number of people you can follow. Though they have some kind of an explanation to this, I really never understood it. Because there are instances when I have not really reached my follower limit, yet I cannot follow more people.

5). Twitter’s partial behavior – I have noticed quite a few accounts getting partial treatment, be it the follower limit or, automatic tweeting. Why should Twitter be partial?

6). Twitter Backgrounds – You cannot really do anything with the background that Twitter provides except uploading and using a customized background. Twitter can offer some customization on their existing backgrounds for lazy people like me who would not want to go through the hassles of uploading customized backgrounds.

7). Twitter’s ability to DM – Direct Messages are something that gets me the most flexibility to interact with people I follow and the people who follow me. But Twitter does not let me send DMs to more than 1 person. For that I have to look for scripts that I have to install but then I cannot carry them with me to any computer.

8). Twitter’s scope of ‘Lists’ – Twitter has introduced something called as “Lists” so that you can organize your tweets and your followers. But Twitter does not give me an option to categorize the existing followers into the lists. I cannot categorize them on interests that we share and with one click. Instead I have to individually add every follower to a specific list.

9). Twitter limited scope of “Finding People” – The essence of any social media is interaction and networking. Twitter’s “Find people” feature has limited scope and you cannot find people based on common interests or, common tweeting interests and subjects.

10). Twitter on phone – Twitter on phone is an interesting feature and I enjoy it very much. But the charges that the provider charge you per tweet is at time so exhorbitant that I prefer not to use it on phone. Twitter could do something with this.

Twitter might have limitation to quite a few things, given the nature of the internet, but what I feel is that they can at least work on thing like creating a user friendly navigation and sitemap on their help pages etc.

Having said all this, I would once again want to re-iterate that I am in love with Twitter. Nobody can be perfect. So I am okay with a bit imperfect Twitter and I love it.

Photograph courtesy Nara Vieira da Silva Osga

Twitter is about following like-minded people.

That is right! But the irony of the story is that it is not how Twitter is interpreted by most of the Twitterers. Today, Twitter is about showing off, the count of followers that you have and since there is a follower-to-following ratios that Twitter employs, twitterers know that they have to have followers and followings as well.

It is here that the race for generating more number of followers have started. And this race has turned ugly now. People blindly follow others and they in turn return the favor by following. There is no more a common interest between the followed and the follower.

Most of the application that you see today are targetting this objective and hence there is no relevance to the kind of people being followed. All applications focus on only one thing – that is generate followers.

But there is this service called as “Twollo” with a difference. Twollo is different in the sense that it identifies common interests that you have with other Twitterers and then helps you follow them.

What is “Twollo”?

Twollo is different. Twollo is an ajax based application that helps you identify Twitterers with common interests as you and then put an auto-follow instruction so that you do not have to manually keep following people with the same interests.

All you have to do is login to Twollo with you Twitter username password. Then you can setup key-terms that signify your interests – like marketing, article writing etc. You can also set a limit to the maximum number of people you want to follow. This is very important because mass following can be considered as spamming by Twitter and your accounts may be blocked. Twollo will then work in the background for you. It will identify such Twitterers who share common interests based on the key-terms that you have set and automatically follow them, thus increasing your presence on Twitter.

You might be wondering if this is a sales-pitch.

Don’t worry, it isn’t one.

Twollo doesn’t cost anything. It is a free service, though it has an upgrade available for a charge. But its free service is more than useful and you will not have to upgrade to use any of the above said features.

Then what are your waiting for? Just logon to Twollo and start making your presence felt all over the internet.

P.S. Twollo stores your Twitter information for it to work in the background.

Don’t forget to post your comment about the tool here. Also follow me in case you liked this post. You may even subscribe to my RSS feeds here.

What has a game got to do with Twitter?

This was the thought I had when I first heard about this application that was based on Twitter.

But like all other curious Twitter users, digging the internet for applications functioning on the Twitter API, I too, decided that I would check this out.

I signed up at SNODS and became a SNODS agent. Check out my badge here on the left.

Nice name indeed. SNODS standing for “Social Networks Online Defense Squad”. You tend to feel a bit more respectable with that kind of a department name.

The site is interesting and can bind you to it, once you start off. The basic objective of the game is to capture Twitterers. You earn a salary on a per hourly basis. The more people you capture the more your salary becomes. With the increase in salary, you can train more guards, buy more buildings which in turn will help you train even more guards, hold your captured Twitterers in “Solitary Confinement” and many more such things.

Each Twitterer has been given a rank basedo n the number of followers that they have. The more the followers, the better their rank and consequently the more salary per hour you will earn if your capture them.

The game is very interesting and can be a time-pass when you have some time to relax.

I keep looking out for such interesting things which can relieve me of my work-pressure at least for some time and SNODS proved to be a worthy discovery.

You might want to check out SNODS here.

Don’t forget to post your comments on what you think about SNODS.

What is the relevance of “Unfollowing“, when Twitter is all about “Following“?

Is that your question? It was mine too, till about some time back, when one day I realized, I am unable to accept any new followers. You are still confused as to what am I saying?

We will come to that point in some time. In one of my posts earlier, I had mentioned about blocking people who would spam me. There was an even better option of disallowing people to spam me. It was by “unfollowing” them.

So, you are wondering as to what is the difference between “Un-following” and “Blocking”. Right?

Let me explain it to you -

Blocking – This action restricts a person from sending you any more tweets but he still features in your followers list.

Un-following – This action removes the person from your followers list, thereby restricting his tweets from being visible to you and from clogging your dashboard.

You might be wondering the need to un-follow people. Why couldn’t they just be left there? When there is an option to block people, what is the need to un-follow?

Why would you want to unfollow somebody?

Twitter has a unique strategy to keep spammers and bulk followers from crashing their systems. Twitter has imposed a limit on certain aspects of using Twitter. Just check out the following -

• 1,000 updates per day
• 1,000 direct messages per day
• 100 API requests per hour
• Follow limit

The last point up there means that they set a follow limit to your account. This limit is set to 2000. So when your account has 2000 followers less than the number of people you are following, your account will freeze and you will not be able to add any more followers.

In a way this is a very useful tool. Why would you want to follow somebody who is not following your updates? Even if the other person is a celebrity, you would only want to follow him/her if they ar adding value to your tweets. Else, what is the reason? This is where “Un-following” comes in handy.

How do you un-follow people in bulk if, the number of such people are huge? This, indeed could be a difficult proposition. But Twitter is a technology that has can help resolve any problem.

The following are a few tools that can help you do this -

TwitIn -This is by far the best tool. It ha a very user-friendly interface and good features. You can bulk follow (they call it “Reciprocate’) or, un-follow people (which they can ‘Flush’). Extremely fast servers and a cool feature to increase your follower count as well.

FlashTweet – This is also a very useful tool. It has the same features as TwitIn except that here you just cannot increase your follower count by adding random tweeters. You can choose a friend’s name and all his followers will be added to your following kist (a maximum of 100 users). But its is extremely useful.

Twitter Karma – This is by far the best tool and it is free. You can bulk follow people and also un-follow them. It shows a list of people who are “only following” you and whom you are “only following”. The only problem with it is that their servers are quite slow. One can understand that with the kind of user following that Twitter has.

Huitter – This is again a similar tool but the only constraint is that it will un-follow or, follow without prompting you. This means that Huitter does not give you the option to choose which non followers to unfollow. Once you enter your twitter username and password, all those that are not following you are unfollowed. Hence, if there are any discrepancies in this app then you might end up unfollowing those who follow you.

Use any of the above tools as per you choice and comfortability.

How are you adding new followers to your Twitter account?

Twitter is now the talk of the town. Every internet marketer or, internet surfer has something to say about Twitter. You presence on Twitter is now counted by the number of followers you have on Twitter. But are you able to add enough followers? Is the follower count a status symbol? If yes, then where are you on it?

The easiest way to get followers on Twitter is by asking them to follow you in case they liked your profile and your contribution. This obviously means publicizing you profile. How will you do this?

The answer is “Twitter buttons”. There are a range and variety of Twitter buttons available on the internet, which you can use on your blogs or, websites. If you are running a blog on the WordPress platform, it is very simple. Just copy and paste the code into a text widget for your sidebar. In case you are not on WordPress, then you need to copy and paste the code into the HTML of your webpage, which is also not very difficult. But all that you need to ensure is that your button is at a place where it is visible to your visitors.

Here is a list of such buttons available on the internet -

My Buttons – There are two different buttons that I use on my blogs and which I like very much.

This is a design I like the most and looks sobre and cool. I do not know who was the creator of this design ( in case you know it, do let me know so that I can credit it to them)

Just right-click and save the button in case you wish to use this. Else you may just copy and paste the code below:

(<a href=”http://www.twitter.com/your_twitter_name><img title=”twitter_follow_me” src=”http://www.tweetingtip.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/twitter_follow_me_small.png” alt=”twitter_follow_me” width=”179″ height=”78″ border=”0″ /></a>)

This design is one that I created with a bit of idea from here and there. But I love this design, more so because there a bit of my hard word put into it.

You may use this design as you wish. (A bit of credit to me will be good). You can just save the image and upload it to your server or use the code below:

(<a href=”http://www.twitter.com/your_twitter_name><img title=”twitterfollow” src=”http://www.tweetingtip.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/twitterfollow4a.gif” alt=”twitterfollow” width=”200″ height=”125″ border=”0″ /></a>)

Web Design by mts – They have about 10 different Twitter follow me icons to offer.  Though the website is Non-English, you would not face any difficulty in understanding the download rules.

Twit Buttons – My personal favorite because they have a variety of buttons to offer. It is extremely easy to use the buttons because all you have to do is copy and paste  the html code provided.

My Social Buttons – This is another place where you can find some innovative and beatiful “Twitter follow me” buttons. Though the buttons are only a few, it is different and looks cool.

Randa Clay buttons – This website offers a collection of about 18 buttons which is again very simple and professional. Nice instructions as well.

Siah Designs – Josiah Jost has a list of very good and useful Twitter buttons. There is also an option of personalization for a small fee.

Vincent Abry buttons – It is a collection of 31 Twitter buttons and the collection is very good and different from the normal buttons.

Go ahead, and add one of these buttons on your blog and add followers to your Twitter account.

In the next post we will be discussing the basic rules of following and rejecting.

Is it courteous to block somebody at Twitter?

I asked this question many time a couple of day back, when I saw a couple of my followers, who I too was following (as a courteous approach in a social network, you do that) started spamming me with their tweets.

What are the rules of a social networking site like that of Twitter? Are there some basic guidelines of courteous behavior? What should be your approach towards people who have no regards to you?

Social Networks like that of Facebook and Twitter have their very specific guidelines. They say that they would not tolerate spam and spamming. They also say that every individual joining the network has to have the minimum courtesy to at least respect the privacy of the other person. But how far are these guidelines and rule followed? Are Twitter and such other networks monitoring the behavior of their users?

Indeed, Twitter is monitoring the behavior. I have seen quite a few account getting blocked because of such spamming and Twitter has been very strict at it. But with the surge in the users of Twitter in the past couple of months, when Twitters servers could not bear the load, wouldn’t it be unrealistic to expect Twitter to continually play Police to such behaviors?

It is for this reason that such social networks give you the option of “Blocking” and “Reporting” people. As a good citizen of such network sites we are expected to act wisely by blocking such spammers and reporting about them to the sites. But we are so engrossed in our activities that we forget the basic expectations from us and tend to then complain about the lack of restrictions at such sites.

It is indeed, “COURTEOUS” to block a spammer or, a person who does not know how to respect the rules.

All it takes is to press one button named “BLOCK”. Do it whenever required.

Photograph courtesy Oddball27

Are you tweeting? Wrong question, ain’t it?

Who is it that is not aware of Twitter today? Twitter is a global phenomenon and even Barack Obama is tweeting and has huge followers at Twitter.

So when such renowned personalities are using Twitter and are making their presence felt at Twitter, why should you and I stay away from it?

But what is the purpose of Twitter? Why would you and I want to use it? What are the benefits of using Twitter?

There are a lot of such questions which has the same number of answers most of which are unconvincing and a lot of the rest close to convincing but are yet far from the goal of convincing you and me. Just type in “Twitter” in Google and you would find millions of websites with close to a million of different information about this global phenomenon in 14o words. Then what is the purpose of another website, rather a blog called as “Tweeting Tips”?

It is just because I thought there was quite a bit that I could write about Twitter and I also felt that down the line there would a lot that you can contribute about Twitter. There is no other purpose to it.

Also, just wanted to mention that I had actually bought the “Thesis” theme and wanted to experiment with it. I had a domain name called “Tweetingtip.com” and I felt that this was where I could do all the experimentation.

Just Kidding!!!

Let’s TWEET together.

Tweet…Tweet…Tweet.