Twitter

It used to be that good domains sold for a premium. Now, with celebrities getting on the Twitter bandwagon, they’re getting much attention from us lesser mortals. @aplusk, for instance (which is Ashton Kutcher) has broken the 1 Million follower mark. Other celebrities, have significant followings, too, such as @oprah with 500 thousand plus, and even @mrskutcher, with 700 thousand plus.

Arguably, the number of followers is not as significant as the quality. But then again, this only goes to show that on Twitter, branding would come in important at one time or another. And this means that like domains, Twitter usernames or accounts are probably going to be the next big commodity for domainers to buy, hoard, and potentially sell later on.

Good .COM domains sell for top dollar. Sure, regular ones sell for a little over six bucks, but premium ones can go for millions, like business.com, sex.com, casino.com, and other short, identifiable domains. Big blogs have been known to be sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

How about Twitter names? Will twitter name squatting be an issue? Twitter’s terms of service does stipulate that they reserve the right to reclaim usernames on behalf of businesses or individuals that hold legal claim or trademark on those usernames.

How about Twitter accounts? Can you build up a good Twitter stream and then sell it after a few months or years? Or will microblogging lose its magic now that it’s no longer a niche thing, but something mainstream?

I must admit to being a little perplexed by some of the reactions to Twitter imposing a thousand-per-day limit on the number of people users can follow.

Perhaps that suggests that I’m not a power user, and it certainly means that I’m not employing any celebrity or monetary tactics to improve my count (though if a charity benefits, I won’t complain much).

I do get that it’s something else that’s causing an issue for Twitter developers, particularly those involved with auto-follow apps. Thing is, I don’t really agree with auto-following people. To me, that implies that the Twitter users are blindly reciprocating just because they feel they ought to.

Now, I have recently subscribed to the viewpoint that it is good to reciprocate follows – however I do so manually. Granted, I only get a handful of new followers each day at present so it’s no great problem, but it does mean I have a better chance at weeding out spammers from the outset.

I just can’t get my head around the concept that anyone getting over one thousand follows per day can possibly keep up following them all back. There must come a point where reciprocating becomes meaningless?

I don’t really have an answer to this (there probably isn’t one) but I’d be interested to hear your views.

As a closing note, though, I do find it all rather daft when I read certain users calling Twitter’s actions “corrupt” and likening them to the Iranian government. It’s definitely time to tweet less about Twitter and more about life itself.

I’ve realised that the number of Twitter accounts I own is rising to compete quite happily with the number of active email addresses and domain names I own.

Not surprising, really, for as well as my personal Twitter account I have a number of identities tied to the various blogs I run. Admittedly, many of those function on autopilot, thanks to services like Twitterfeed. However, I do like to inject my own personality into them from time to time by manually tweeting.

Herein lies the problem.

My desktop Twitter client of choice at present is Tweetdeck, but (unless I’m missing something really obvious) there’s no easy way to switch accounts.

I know some desktop clients do allow this, but I’ve not found a reliable way of doing so. A couple of weeks ago I accidentally tweeted a reply to someone from the wrong account (via the web) because I’d forgotten who I was logged in as. Fortunately it didn’t really matter as it was strangely on-topic, but it could have been embarrassing or just off-topic.

If you’re a single account Twitter user, this won’t be a problem to you. My question is to those of you with two or more accounts. How many do you have, and how do you best manage them at your desktop and when mobile?

There are a large number of different icon sets available dedicated to the Twitter bird but Timothy Blake of CreativeNerds.co.uk has stepped it up a notch by compiling a myriad of Twitter icon sets into one very large icon pack containing over 75 images of the famed Twitter bird. One cool thing about this post is that you can easily see how many different interpretations people have of the bird. For the most part, it’s fat with a big head. There are a few variations of the bird, one I especially like is the chiseled, tough looking bird which is more aqua colored than blue. At any rate, have fun showcasing your twitter love with these icons.

According to deathbyemail.com, research by a Harvard economist indicates that Twitter may be to blame for the recent economic woes being experienced worldwide.

Professor Martin Schmeldon of Harvard Business School recently released research findings that suggest excessive Twitter use may have caused the current economic downturn.

“We see the rapid rise of Twitter usage in 2008 correlating very strongly with a tremendous decrease in American productivity,” said Schmeldon. “Our regression analysis on the data suggests a causal relationship that may actually be larger than the impact of the much-touted subprime collateral debt refinancing triggers.”

We here at Performancing believe otherwise. Twitter definitely helps increase productivity. Where else do we get story leads? And Twitter is part of our social media marketing. (And guess where I found this nifty little piece of economic analysis).

And besides, my econometrics professor back in my undergraduate days had always stressed the point that correlation does not mean causality. This makes me think: it’s also possible that the supposed correlation also goes the other way around. Maybe with the Dow going down, people are flocking more and more to Twitter (to find other sources of income, perhaps?).

Is it April 1st yet?

I’ve recently had a very exciting Twitter-related epiphany. I used to stay in this walled-in garden that is my home page, where I banter about with my followed people, and those who send me direct replies. These days, I’m more actively seeking out relevant discussions elsewhere, through Twitter’s search functionality. More particularly, I’ve rediscovered Twitter through TweetDeck, as I find the multi-column display really useful–I can display different search results from my various areas of interest, be they social media (quite an active topic), literature, WordPress, premium themes and the like.

Through this, I get to get relevant updates from folks I don’t necessarily know. And I’m able to make new connections with those I share interests with. While I would consider myself a shy person–not particularly reaching out to people I don’t really know–I think getting introduced to people this way makes for a great way to expand my network and perhaps build up authority. And it’s part of my job, too, which makes it all the more great.

Somehow I feel silly I’m doing this only now.

Do you use Twitter the same way?

On Twitter, I use my usual username/nickname @jangelo, but at one point, I decided to change the “real name” assigned to the account as “Zorpox the Conqueror.” I really thought hard before deciding on this move, but my main reason was privacy.

Sure, “jangelo” is obviously me, or at least to those who know I use the handle. It’s not unique, but apparently, I’m the most searchable “jangelo” around–I get emails addressed to different folks whose names start with “J” and whose surnames are Angelo, after all.

On my blogs and other blogs and forums I contribute to, I don’t mind disclosing my full name. But I feel that a microblogging service like Twitter is something more personal. Or at least to me, that is. It’s more accessible, and it’s easier to just post haphazardly, without a second’s hesitation, and without the need to edit (unlike my blog posts, in which I spend quite some time editing and editing before hitting publish). So basically, this move is to protect myself from my own stupidity or carelessness.

I could, perhaps, just protect my updates, so that just my approved followers can read them, but in my opinion, that limits the reach of my Twitter account severely. So perhaps my method is an in-between solution.

Or am I just lulling myself with a false sense of privacy? And am I just defeating the purpose of making my profile publicly accessible after all?

Do you use your real name on Twitter? Or do you at least use an identifiable brand or nickname?

A few days back, I started following Twitter feeds from the local newspaper. I’m not exactly sure how they tweet their stories. It may be automated (as they publish or update on their main website), or manual (probably by someone who’s job is to tweet news stories all day. Sweet!). But this got my Twitter homepage getting flooded with news updates, half of which I probably don’t really care about. And so I wonder, does it make sense to subscribe to such a feed?

I’ve always thought of blogs as a pull mechanism of publishing content. This is because you write an article, publish it, and people read it by going to your blog. Those who get to read your published articles are most likely those who actually have an interest in the topic. Of course, one could subscribe to a blog through email or feed readers, too, but for that you have to make an active effort in subscribing or keying in your email. Email newsletters or e-group, on the other hand, push updates to you everytime there’s something new.

But Twitter is an altogether different animal. It’s both push and pull. You can access feeds from someone’s profile page, or you can follow these feeds and be updated automatically on your Twitter home page.

I could, perhaps, just unfollow the newspaper feed and just visit their Twitter homepage in case I needed updates. I think I’d rather be following people who really interact and build relationships through the medium. After all, I could always just “pull” news content straight off the paper’s Twitter profile page.