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Archive for March, 2009

OnStar – Twittering in your Car?

Tuesday, March 31st, 2009

I know, I know, there’s a time when too much is, well, too much. This might well be the case. Here’s what TechCrunch had to say about it:

All you Twitter addicts stuck in traffic, some good news. You might not have to risk your life any longer sending out one-handed Tweets on your Blackberry or iPhone, while trying to hide the fact that you are doing so under the dashboard.

If you have OnStar in your car, you may soon be able to send and receive hands-free Tweets through OnStar’s voice-activated calling system. Andru Edwards at Gear Live discovered the potential feature. Your voice messages will be converted into text and sent to all of your Twitter followers. (Don’t worry if the translation is not perfect, everyone will think you are just using Twitter’s abbreviated style). It is not clear, however, whether or not the system tells you if you are over the 140-character limit.

Click here to read the entire article. Yeah, this may be a bit on the insano-factor scale!

YouTube adds a Twitter button

Tuesday, March 31st, 2009

Straight from TechCrunch:

Everybody’s doing it. Even YouTube has succumbed to Twitter mania. Below every video if you click on the “Share” link you will find three options: MySpace, Facebook, and now Twitter. You can expand the box for even more sharing options, but those are the main three and Twitter was just recently added.

Clicking on the Twitter button opens a pop-up window that takes you to your Twitter account and fills in a Tweet telling your followers to “check out this video,” along with the title and URL. The URL is not shortened, but YouTube is working on that. (Youtube URLs are short anyway, so it is not a huge issue). Adding Twitter as one of the key sharing options is a no-brainer. Now, if they could actually embed the videos in the Twitter stream like you can on Facebook and MySpace, that would be something.

Twitter changes Replies to Mentions

Monday, March 30th, 2009

In a move that makes a lot of sense, Twitter has changed the name of Replies to Mentions. The explanation is simple and straightforward, as explained by Biz Stone (@biz), co-founder of Twitter:

The @Replies feature was introduced because we noticed lots of folks putting the @ symbol in front of Twitter usernames as a way of addressing one another. For example: @biz what are you drinking in your avatar? (It’s a soy latte.) So, we started linking the @username references and collecting any tweets that began with @username on one page to make them easier to track.

However, folks started getting more inventive as they often do. Now people include @username mentions in the middle of tweets as a way to simply reference another account. For example: I’m flying @jetblue to Boston. Also, folks reference multiple accounts in a single tweet like this: I’m flying @jetblue to Boston with @ev @crystal and @goldman.

With a few more simple changes like this, I may be back to creating the latest version of the E-book.

Free Easter Viral Marketing For Your Church

Saturday, March 28th, 2009

Lots of churches will use mailers, door hangers and even phone trees (auto phone dialers with a pre-recorded message) to spread the word about their upcoming special Easter services.

But what if your church could reach thousands of people for free and nearly instantly? That’s the power of not only your network (church members), but of their network of family, friends, neighbors and co-workers!

social-graphAs the illustration on the left demonstrates, the exponential power of social networking isn’t how many people your church invites, but in how many people those friends invite from their network, and then how many people from that group invite friends from their network, and so on and so on.

For this Easter, or for any event where your church needs to maximize the power of social networks, think of how to leverage a simple, free and existing technology, like Twitter, to easily reach not only more people, but people with a personal connection to your church.

It’s more personal, more targeted, faster and free. That’s the power of a free viral marketing campaign using social networking for your church!

To learn how to use Twitter most effectively, make sure your church leaders have a copy of the $5 E-book, “The Reason Your Church Must Twitter”.