Posts Tagged
twitter
If you’re looking to reach an audience with your online communication, there can be no better platform than one of the social giants, Twitter. However, there can be times where your tweet doesn’t seem to have garnered any interest – not because it’s not interesting, but because it was poorly-timed. After all, you could be tweeting one of the most interesting messages in the world but if your target audience is asleep, they’re probably not going to see it when it’s most relevant.
Timely’s here to fix that. It ensures that your tweets are sent out there when they’ll have the highest impact. Read on to find out more.
Twitter can be an awesome tool and is, with no doubt, my favourite social network. Personally, the sleek design and functionality of the Twitter app on Mac draws me to use native apps instead, but when I was a Windows users, the web app was my favourite method of connecting. Luckily, being browser-based, the Twitter website can be manipulated with some extensions to customise the experience you have with it.
In today’s roundup, we’re going to take a look at some of the best browser extensions that optimise, customise and manipulate the Twitter experience on the web.
After taking a break from social networking, I was interested to see a review of the Twitter app Wren in our sister site Mac.AppStorm.net. Wren’s a beautifully designed app for posting on Twitter … and nothing else. You can’t see your Twitter feed, DMs, @replies, or anything else. All you can do is post your thoughts to Twitter.
Sounds like a crazy idea perhaps, but truth be told, most of us are bombarded with too much information anyhow. It’s nice to share your thoughts online throughout the workday, and sometimes you come across something you feel you’ve got to share. Problem is, you’ll likely find yourself still browsing random links a half hour later instead of getting back to work.
Wren is a Mac-only app, and it’s only for Twitter. But turns out, most social networks have a way to post online without getting distracted by your feeds. Here’s how you can use Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and even Reddit and Hacker News in a distraction-free way.
About a month ago, the very first superstore came to my small town of Tak, Thailand. Everyone was excited to have the extra shopping destinations, restaurants, ice cream and donut shops, and even an Apple Store of all incredible things. But the thing that struck me most about our new superstore was how many signs and advertisements there have social networking links.
Sure, it’s been easy to see the change Facebook has brought to communications here. Only a few years ago, internet shops were filled with children chatting on MSN and checking Hotmail email. Today, every computer is filled with kids checking Facebook, and you’re more likely to be asked your Facebook name than your phone number.
I’ve logged out of social networking for the past week for some personal reasons, and it’s been an interesting break. While I’ve missed communicating with friends, I’ve also found that I’ve been less bombarded with random stuff I didn’t want to hear about. We get so used to fanning every business and interest we have, that it’s easy for social networking to become overwhelming. I’m looking forward to using it again, but almost think I’d be better served by a Facebook with only a couple dozen of my closest friends and family.
Have you ever tried taking a break from social networking? Did you find it beneficial, and did you change your networking habits as a result? I’d love to see if anyone else, for personal reasons or just for the sake of the experiment, has ever tried taking a fast from social networking, and what your thoughts on it were.
Getting things scheduled isn’t productivity. Getting them all done at the right time is. I do have a scheduling system to keep up with all of my blogging assignments for a couple weeks at a stretch. I rarely get them all done on time, but at least the schedule and the bleeding number of things that rollover to the next day everytime I miss working pushes me to put some more effort.
So a demanding boss, a nagging secretary, or a paycheck forces us to maintain a schedule for our professional life. But what happens to your personal and social commitments? Usually they get pushed aside to make way for the sake of a career. Of late, I have been trying to find work-life balance and I found feedCal. The web app automatically takes your social feeds and puts them in your calendar. Join me as I evaluate if the web app can help me be more social.
Despite being one of the earliest forms of electronic communication, today email is probably the most disrespected formats. Be it the unscrupulous marketing mailers, mountain of spam or an overloaded inbox, everything works against the underlying platform – email. Even being a free, simple and relatively unintrusive modes of communication isn’t helping enough.
Every attempt made by technology companies, large and small, to improve the condition of email has either failed miserably or ended up just as a cosmetic addition. The need to being formal and elaborate is touted as one of the setbacks preventing email from becoming an effective communication tool. Shortmail is here is to change just that.
(more…)
Even before the social media revolution, we have always linked to popular things things we find online, usually the latest trends and things that popular people are using. I like Will Smith and might be willing to check out the gadgets or apps he is using. However, not everyone likes Will Smith (outrageous, I know). But we all like our friends (at least we hope so!).
Usually, there is a very good reason we’re friends with the people we are – we have a lot in common. So, if they liked something, there is a very good chance you might like it too. Strawberryj.am, wants to show you what is popular, right now. The web app does this by analyzing what links your friends are sharing the most. Let’s take it for a spin to find out more about this social app.
I’ve just finished designing a website, and I used a ton of CSS: everything from laying out my content, to styling elements like the headings. Then, Twitter released Bootstrap, and I’m pretty disappointed I didn’t delay starting to design it.
Say you’re a web designer new to the scene and don’t know all the ropes. Bootstrap from Twitter is aimed at providing a bunch of really useful CSS classes and IDs in a single library that’s simple to use, removing a lot of the load of designing a website from scratch. Bootstrap is a package, and includes a ton of user interface elements styled to be usable in any web app, or site.
The most awesome thing about social networks is the ability to share stuff with friends and loved ones. And it is really ironical that the same sharing feature is fast becoming the most annoying thing as well. From over enthusiastic peers to professional spammers, people just mindlessly click away the retweet and like buttons, overwhelming the social stream.
It took decades to reign in email spam, but thankfully, spam in the social stream is getting the attention it deserves from early on. KnowAboutIt is an app that helps you fight all the social noise and spam by highlighting stuff worth looking at. The web app makes sure you know about the best links passing through your social streams. Interested to learn how it pulls that off?
The biggest problem that faces anyone trying to make a name for themselves, their band, book or company is gaining quality exposure. You could have the best idea in the world, but without a great marketing department capable of generating word of mouth discussion, it’s likely to stagnate and die.
What’s more, most digital products (software, books, music, etc.) are available for free online. This takes the wind out of the sails of most would-be musicians, artists and authors. What’s needed is a new payment model that works with this trend, instead of the conventional ‘pay and receive’.
Pay with a Tweet have solved both of these problems. It does pretty much what it says on the can and on the face of things it seems like a cop-out for artists. But frankly, for the clever entrepreneur it’s anything but. It’s finally a way to make paying forward a real part of business.
