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Archive for March, 2009

Twitter: Pro Accounts Are Coming

Thursday, March 26th, 2009

A wonderful article from Business Insider confirms what many have believed would be a part of Twitter’s financial plan: paid pro accounts. But, never fear, they’re not changing anything for their free subscribers. Instead, they’re offering more options for those who choose to “go pro”.

Here’s a quote from Biz Stone, one of the co-founders of Twitter:

Commercial entities like Whole Foods, Starbucks, Mission Pie, 52 Teas, JetBlue, even the Korean taco truck guy are all on Twitter—users and businesses alike are finding value.

Our question is, how can we help? What can Twitter offer for a fee that will improve the experience? Will it be account verification? Will it be lightweight analytics? Will there be opportunities for introducing customers to businesses on Twitter.

So many questions. But the key is to understand that Twitter will remain free for all to use—individuals and companies alike. We are thinking about simple business products that enhance and encourage what is already happening.

A separate article listed the 6 Features Twitter Users Say They’d Pay For:

* Slightly longer messages: 160 characters instead of 140.

* Unlimited or prioritized access to API. (Twitter limits how many requests an account can make per hour.)

* Auto-deleting deadbeat followers who haven’t logged in within a month.

* More reliable service. (Can’t really charge on a per-user basis for this though, unless there’s a separate Twitter that’s more reliable, right?)

* Link-click analytics. (Free already if you use bit.ly, though some limitations.)

* Guaranteeing that old tweets (all of them) are available forever, and easier to sift through.

Interesting stuff. What would you be willing to pay for as a premium Twitter service?

Twitter growth? 1382%

Friday, March 20th, 2009

Cnet News has a short, but fascinating article about the fastest growing company today, Twitter.

Respected ratings giant, Nielsen, said Twitter grew 1,382% from February 2008 to February 2009. Facebook was in second place with a still impressive 228% growth over the same period.

If your church leadership hasn’t heard about Twitter by now, they’re quickly becoming the minority. It’s time – nearly past time – to learn about Twitter for churches. Make sure your church leader has a copy of “The Reason Your Church Must Twitter” E-book for only $5.

Social Networks ‘are new email’

Friday, March 20th, 2009

An interesting article by the BBC (in the UK) about the decrease in use of email and increase in use of social networking for communications. In the article, they interview the CEO’s of Yammer and FriendFeed as well as a program manager at Microsoft.

As I state in the e-book, Twitter, in particular, and social networking, in general, is an augmentation tool for email, print and video. I don’t think it’ll eliminate email- hardly – but it will make it easier for use to choose the optimal communications vehicle for out content and conversations.

You can read the entire article here, but I’ve included a few key quotes below as food for thought:

“I think it’s a new form of communication; not quite e-mail, more lightweight and more real time, often with little bit of a publishing flavour to it,” said Paul Buchheit, founder of FriendFeed, and the creator and lead developer of GMail, while at Google

Ari Steinberg, an engineering manager at the firm, told BBC News: “It’s been interesting to see the way people change the way they communicate.”You used to e-mail content to people and you had to choose who you wanted to e-mail it to and you didn’t know if your friends even wanted to see it. Now you can passively put something out there and let people engage with it.”

What are your thoughts on the subject?

More Links Added

Wednesday, March 18th, 2009

As of today, there are 27 – err, make that 26, as one went bye-bye off the net – highly useful links to Tools for Twitter. We’re constantly on the lookout for the most useful and easy-to-use solutions for managing and using Twitter, so if you have suggestions, comment below with the link to your favorites!

Hint: To see what each link offers, hover your mouse over each one and it will give you a brief description.