Social Networking Journal

How To Use Twitter Correctly

Well, that’s quite easy. Since Twitter is free to use and available in every country in the world, you can just register and post tweets, engage in superficial internet relationships which require little or no investment. However, there’s more than that in Twitter. In this article, we’ll try to have some insight on how to use the famous 140-character micro blogging service correctly, as well as introduce you to basic vocabulary every Twitter should know.

Before you start Tweeting, here’s the basic vocabulary of Twitter:

To ‘follow’ someone means to subscribe to another users’ tweets, or follow to subscribe from them. You may want to follow only followorthy users as they give you more valuable content than the others.
To Retweet or RT means to re-tweet tweets tweeted by other twitters, this can help you a lot, as it shows that you don’t care to put yourself in front of others.
You can also send Direct Messages (DM) to other users; they can only be seen by the users you send them to.

You now know the basic vocabulary of Twitter and chances are you didn’t even need that. And now, you’ve registered and now you want to post tweets. Your first tweet should usually say nothing more than a simple hello. When you have posted your first tweet, it’s now time to gather followers. You may want to find Twitters in your area at first, your friends or business partners. To do so, you can use Twitter’s own search engine.

Now you have followed some people, some are following you back, so your follower rate is growing steadily. What now? Engage in conversations. It’s easy. You can do it through the web or even get a fancy Twitter desktop application from the list at Twitter.com, as it is easier to track your replies and tweets with them. Also, using Twitter applications is a must if you plan on having more than one Twitter account.

How to formulate a tweet? For one, be briefer than the 140 character limit, as it makes the reader to actually read the tweet you’ve made – countless new tweets appear each second and the longest ones can actually be skipped by the average viewer.

Offering value to your followers or any outside reader is a must, if you want other Twitters to love you (retweeting and replying to your tweets equals love in Twitter). Be it an interesting link, or a personal reply, it can reach to your audience, as long as it’s interesting.

When all is said and done, all you need to do is post tweets. And gather followers. As for the gathering of followers, you need to consider one reason – why would you want to gather them? Will you twit purely for meeting people with shared interests, to advertise your business or something else? It’s entirely up to you; you’ll get followers no matter what you post. People will retweet your tweets from time to time, as long as you don’t come off as trying to take value (getting followers no matter what) from the other twitters.

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Is It Possible To Make Money With Youtube Videos?

Making money by putting videos up on YouTube isn’t a dream or a thing that only a man who has achieved enlightenment or other type of divine inspiration can do. It takes a lot of creativity to make a masterpiece, yet you don’t have to get hung up on that thought. YouTube offers a lot of competitive ways to get money from your pieces of media: starting from the official YouTube partnership which gives you money from the ad revenue of your videos, to affiliate marketing with the help of videos, as well as a few Black Hat methods that are still prominent and used in YouTube.

Believe it or not, some people earn six figures a year with YouTube. All they have to do is post funny videos on YouTube, producing a bomb from time to time. For example, Cory Williams, a famous YouTube comedian, claims to earn about $20,000 a month producing videos on YouTube, not to mention the money he earns from various sponsors. Video makers like him are creative and dare to the bone when they created the videos, but they are now living quite easy.

Does YouTube help the ordinary marketer make money?
It’s hard to say. One might think that an “O.K. to watch” video is all it takes, but it’s not. You have to put in many market practices to compete in YouTube. SEO for keywords and tags, NLP for explicit marketing, you name it. It’s extraordinary to see a marketer gain a short term YouTube success, because putting videos on YouTube as well as collecting a large number of subscribers is quite of a hassle. If your niche is popular, you may try to put up an amateur video, this will drive visitors to your site, at least I did.

Are you curious about the numbers? A while ago, there was a video that focused on a game that was recently released. The site gave the public what the public wants – exploits to the maps the game had, shown on uploaded videos, along with other unfair methods that were considered ‘player griefing’. The four videos got viewed about 5,000 times and about 500 hundred came to visit from each. That day, the CPM at the site the users were redirected to was at $3.21, so the earnings were at about $4-5 from the four videos uploaded on the same day. It takes about 40 minutes to make the video, and they are really a long-term investment. Keep in mind that the video wasn’t promoted in any way.

So what does this all tell you? Well, for one, it is possible to earn money directly through YouTube. It is also possible to just get plain traffic from YouTube, or convert sales with advertising videos. The golden age of YouTube won’t be gone that fast – there are 20 hours of new video uploaded at the popular video sharing website each minute. Furthermore, the team of YouTube is constantly thinking about new marketing methods and improvements that can be more appealing to the producers of videos.

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Twitter vs. Instant Messaging

Twitter has certainly been a bomb in the internet and the micro blogging platform it offers is getting more and more popular each day. It continues to break into new markets, and, at least it looks so, is starting to bite its share off of Instant Messaging clients as AIM has recently dropped 2 million users, leaving it with 28 million. Whether or not AIM lost its users to Twitter exclusively, remains to be seen, however, there certainly are a lot of advantages that Twitter offers against IM’s like GTalk, MSN, AIM and Skype. Another question rises – will Twitter manage to overcome its shortcomings against them?

The use of Twitter was incorporated in various Instant Messaging services back when Twitter started in 2006. The IM support was discontinued as Twitter gained some degree of popularity without the aid of Instant Messengers. Twitter has a lot more to offer than IM services. For example, new people to talk to. Your contact list in IM might be restrictive if you want to meet new people with shared interests. Twitter has no such restrictions – you can talk to anyone you like to talk and probably someone who you just couldn’t reach via IM.

One of the reasons why the use of Twitter has risen is the extensive availability of Twitter desktop applications. They offer almost the same degree of customization as IM’s do and usually allow the user to use other social networking sites with them. For example, Tweetdeck, a Twitter desktop application, also supports receiving Facebook updates, and will add the support of other applications in near future. The sense of a desktop application also gives the feel of an IM, so the user gets comfortable with the new service early. It’s arguable whether or not the Twitter applications will gain more popularity, but the applications are something that a casual IM user would probably be more interested in than posting from the web.

There are, however, some exclusive things that Instant Messaging services offer, like a real-time chat. Twitter conversations can long for days, with one party withdrawing from the conversation whenever they like to, and recover them whenever they like to, which is quite unsuitable for any kind of business, except for working at the post. Also, Twitter will probably never have Voice over Internet Protocol support like the instant messengers do, but the most important thing is the word “instant” in “instant messenger”

What it comes down to is this – whatever you may be using Twitter for, remember that it’s just a tool for tweeting aka microblogging. And altogether, microblogging means that Twitter is somewhere between blogging, instant messaging and social networks. People used IM’s for the sake of meeting new people and creating superficial relationships just because there wasn’t anything else available. But now there is, and it looks like that the IM’s are going to lose at least some of their users to Twitter – how much – it’s entirely up to the current trends of the users.

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How Is Hi5 Doing In Social Media?

Hi5 is a social network, created in 2003 by Ramu Yalamanchi, an entrepreneur of Indian descent. The site follows the criteria of those of any social media, has a neat, clean design and is mostly used by Hispanic people. As of 2009, they claim to have over 60 million active users. It is currently ranked as the 26th most popular site on the web by Alexa. There is, however, a question – will hi5 sustain their growth in the countries they’re active in, or they’ll surrender their share of the market to other, larger social networks like Facebook?

Hi5’s current market:
Hi5 is popular in Latin America and some countries in Europe e.g. Romania and Portugal. It is also quite popular in Asia, namely Thailand. The use of hi5.com is falling in the U.S. and other Facebook-migrating countries. However, it will sustain at least some of their user pool in the U.S. since immigrants will continue to use the service. The site is popular among people who share the love for hip-hop and reggae, so it’s quite easy for them to target their advertising.

List of successes:
Hi5.com offers many translated versions of their site, as the site’s popular used in many different countries. They happened to quickly tap into markets of which other sites weren’t conscious with their translated versions. Hi5 music is quite developed, with the same features MySpace music offers, but their music is more targeted to their members, simply because many of them share the same taste.
They’ve adopted OpenSocial applications to a degree other sites can only dream of – more than half of their members are said to use third-party developer apps to use with hi5.com.

List of downsides:
They are known to advertise via unsolicited bulk mail aka spam and there have been reports of phishing e-mails appearing as hi5.com friend requests.
Hi5.com is getting fewer and fewer visitors each month. More and more people are turning to more popular sites like Facebook and other sites with more members than hi5, but it is arguable whether or not it’s the fault of hi5. Although subject to some innovations, they added their own IM service within the site a few months after Facebook did and generally are slower to add new features.

It looks like hi5.com has a few years to live, after that it’s only downhill. Although there is a chance that the social networking can make a comeback, they’ve have lost about 20 million users during the last year and now claim to have some 60 million active members. 60 million is still a lot, but competition is fierce in the social networking vertical and the reign of Facebook could cause hi5.com to lose a lot of visitors to Facebook in the future. The site will probably sustain the markets it has conquered, while losing in those they haven’t, but in short, it seems like it’s an uphill battle for hi5.com to compete with the larger sites. However, if they decide to fight, we might witness some innovative features added, so it is worthwhile to follow the activities of the social networking website.

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A Beginners Guide: 7 Smart Ways of Getting Followers at Twitter

Gathering followers at Twitter is essential, because if you’re using Twitter for business (or would like to do so in the future), you have to have a great deal of followers who’ll account for your traffic, sales and general popularity. In this article, we’ll try to have a look on how to gather a great deal of followers on Twitter, how to keep them, and introspect the new trends of Twitter following.
I’ve collected seven quick and smart ways to boost the number of your followers and would like to share them with you.

1. Work on your profile.
It’s the only thing that your potential followers can see. Customize it; make it beautiful, it’ll work and attract followers. At least if your profile is beautiful.

2. Participate in Twitter games/trends.
My profile recently got quite of an attention (read: followers) because I submitted some entries to #twitterfilms. Put yourself on the line with stuff like this. Once you have a load of followers, you may also start games yourself. It’ll get you even more followers.

3. Off-Twitter relations which drive traffic to your Twitter.
This should be the first on the list, but for some reason, it scares people away quite a lot. It isn’t hard to add a link to your Twitter at your e-mail and forum signatures, is it? People who have a load of followers weren’t made famous exclusively by Twitter.

4. Start a contest.
“God, this is overused”. Well yes, it is, but it’s also effective. There are a lot of things you can make contests about even without prize money or material prizes. You can offer links from your site, free e-books or exclusive content. Anything works, as long as it is valuable.

5. “Retweet, Retweet!”
Keep your eyes open for something funny, retweet it first by using the RT button. How does it help you? You’ll gain value in the eyes of the person you tweeted, and if you offer something valuable in the future, it’s more likely that the person that you retweeted will retweet your message too!

6. Be intelligent and open to discussions.
There isn’t anything much to add here, is there? That’s a crucial rule for gathering Twitter followers. Make your Twitter more about other people, only then you’ll get noticed yourself.

7. Follow people in your niche.
It’s a more targeted audience, it’s a smarter audience and audience that will listen more to what you say.

Twitter is mostly NOT about content. It’s about making other people feel evaluated by you, your tweets, and a great deal of the followers you’ll receive is from your online reputation. While you may get a lot of followers explicitly through Twitter, there will probably be a lot of problems in sustaining the growth of the numbers. Here is a zen of Twitter – Twitter is merely a reflection of the outside world, and your popularity on the outside world reflects the one on you’ll have on Twitter. It is, however possible to get some results by Twittering directly, but they won’t be as big as they ought to be.

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Mobile Social Networking

With social networking websites like Facebook, Myspace and Twitter gaining popularity every day, it’s no surprise that mobile social networking is on the rise, too.

A number of today’s mobile phones and devices are now equipped with internet access so people can now gain access to these websites with little or no barrier. In fact, some cell phones are even designed to make visiting a social networking website easier.

Advantages of mobile social networking

• Freedom to stay connected no matter if you’re enjoying a day at the park or waiting for a flight at the airport.
• Ease of use. Now you don’t have to be tethered to a cumbersome desktop computer to update your ’status’ online.
• The ability to send and receive quick messages to family and friends without logging into an Email program.

Disadvantages of mobile social networking

• Cost. Wireless plans don’t come for free, so be sure that your calling plan isn’t going to cost you a small fortune for accessing your favorite social networking website.
• Social Networking addiction. With no reason to log out, you might end up spending an inordinate amount of time “Twittering.”

  The truth is, social networking is fun to do and the ability to upload photos and video from your mobile phone makes the experience more interactive – it’s almost like bringing your friends and family with you wherever you go!

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Bebo Marketing

One thing you don’t hear much about is “Bebo marketing.” Compared to Myspace, Bebo has never received seemingly that much attention from marketers. Does that mean Bebo has avoided the fate of being spammed like so many other social networks?

Of course small time marketing goes on Bebo. Some people look to get as many “friends” as they can to join them. Then it’s an all you care to eat spam smorgasbord once they do. This seems relatively unavoidable in modern times.

Bebo has probably been spared some of the major spam problems experienced by their larger rivals just because of their size. But as they start to get bigger (in parts of Europe they’re actually number one.)

One thing seems unavoidable for social networks. When they hit a ubiquitous size and have millions of users, marketers and spammers are likely to be attracted to the arena. It’s hard for many people who wish to sell you something to resist the lure of such cheap forms of communication. Right now Bebo marketing doesn’t appear out of hand. But that could certainly change in coming years as more users join.

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Myspace Opens Submissions For “Married On Myspace”

Are you a fan of Myspace? Are you engaged to be married?

If so, Myspace.com recently announced that they are taking submissions for their newest reality TV show, called Married On Myspace.

The interactive online series will allow one lucky couple to receive the wedding of a lifetime while the MySpace community contributes to planning and experiencing their big day first hand.

The series consists of 13 webisodes and Myspace users will ultimately decide all the details of the nuptials, including the location the lucky couple will marry, where they’ll hold their respective bachelor and bachelorette parties and even what they’ll wear!

If you, or someone you know would like to submit your application to participate, please visit Married On Myspace.

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Netflix Ratings Via Facebook Connect

Netflix has announced that you can use Facebook Connect to update ratings on the movie download website. You need to optin to the service first. Once that’s complete, the two services will be integrated.

Once you’ve linked your Netflix and Facebook accounts, you’ll have a number of new options that you didn’t have before. You can share your ratings with whomever you like.

This would seem to indicate that Netflix is finally moving towards a more integrated online experience. Their by-mail service still has a lot more offerings than the video on demand, which is a crying shame. “Instant Play” movies have all the advantages in the world over using the mail to get the job done. Digital movies leave a much better carbon footprint and are better for the customer.

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Bebo Expands European Presence

Bebo is pushing its services further into the European market. The website is already quite popular in parts of Europe but is hoping to push its influence further by offering French, German, Italian, Spanish and Dutch language versions.

Bebo is owned by AOL. AOL bought Bebo last March for $850 million and is looking to earn a return by increasing the brand’s recognition internationally.

Bebo has 22 million users in the UK market, which is by far its biggest stronghold.

Bebo currently lags well behind Facebook and MySpace in total number of visitors worldwide. Tighter integration with local markets appears to be their plan for closing some of the gap between themselves and competitors.

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