Twitter 2.0

OK. So, I Twitter (chadConnects) and I know there are a bunch of different Twitter tools and such out there but I hated having to Google something each time I thought of a Twitter idea someone might have already programmed. So, I just made this list and decided to share it in case it’s helpful to anyone. It doesn’t have the same boring ones most Twitter lists have.

Twitter With Other Media:

VisualTwitter: Twitter asks ‘What are you doing right now?’. With this service, you answer with a picture. 

Twiddeo: Twitter meets video. Twitter updates with Video. Upload from the web, your cameraphone and record from your webcam.

TweetCube: File sharing for Twitter.

Kazivu: Post videos from everywhere. Create and customize channels and Share them with your friends in Twitter and Facebook! 

TwitterCal: Tweet your Google Calendar. Add events from any Twitter tool.

Pikter: Share photos.

TinyLoad: File upload through Twitter. Uses MegaUpload, Rapidshare, FileFactory, DivShare.

URL Shorteners:

Tweetl: URL shortener especially for Twitter.

LinkASA: URL shortner that has the added benefit of being able to getting a preview page and/or add a tag to make things easier to remember.

Phweet: A Phweet is a shortURL that makes conversations and conference calls possible between Twitter friends and across other social networks. You can send or receive a Phweet on the web, on a SIP phone, or on your mobile phone.  And you can share who you are talking to in real time without having to reveal or exchange phone numbers or other identities.

LinkBunch: Lets you put multiple links into one small link which you can share over IM, Twitter, email or even a mobile phone SMS.

Twitter Aggregators:

Twitterfeed: Feed your blog to Twitter 

Feedtweeter: It focuses on getting your Plurks to Twitter and the other way aound in a sane way, but it (should) work with any RSS feed.

iStalkr: social feed aggregator.

WhereIsMe: Basically, a web identity aggregator. It takes all the places you do things on the web and centralizes them for you to show off.

YoName: What’s yo Name? People search across social networks, blogs, etc.

Twitter, You, & Someone Else…

Who Should I Follow: Twitter friend recommendations.

TweetWheel: Find out which of your friends knows each other with a cool visual representation.

DoesFollow: Find out if this person follows that person.

JustTweetIt: Find other Tweeters with similar interests.

Twellow: Twitter search directory.

TwitDir: A Twitter directory

Twitter Meets ….

Twitzon: Where Twitter meets Amazon

Twiggit: Twitter meets Digg. automated service that lets your friends on twitter know what articles you digg.

Tweetbeep: It’s like Google Alerts for Twitter. Put in a keyword or website, and get emails when others tweet it.

ToAnswer: It’s like Yahoo Answers for Twitter. A mashup that will help you get your questions answered quickly. Follow ToAsk & ToAnswer. From there, just ask or answer.

Twitter Tools for your Website:

JQuery Feed Menu: It’s for having one feed icon but letting users choose which one they want….including Twitter.

Escaloop: A badge you can put on your site that will automatically compile an ordered list of all your latest activity on bunch of social networking sites like Twitter.

Feevy: Display content from other blogs at your website with just one simple html tag…including Twitter updates.

MyTimeZoneIs: Mytimezoneis allows you to easily share your time zone with your friends or visitors to your website. Set your time zone from your Twitter account and display it on your website with their easy to use widgets.

TwitterCounter:  Does what it says on the tin. Plus, you can add a little badge to your site that shows how many followers you have.

Real Time Feeds:

Cursebird: Get a real time feed of people cursing on Twitter.

Twitspy: Real time Twitter public timeline.

TwitScoop: What’s hot on Twitter right this moment?

TwitBuzz: Buzzing links & conversations.

Tweetmeme: What things are hot right now on Twitter.

TwittEarth: Live Tweets from all over the world. Shows up on a Flash globe of the earth. 

Phones & Stuff With Twitter:

TwitterFone: Send message to Twitter with your voice. Send Tweets by dialing a local number and speaking your message to TwitterFone.

TwitterMail: Send an email to your own personal Tweetmail address and have it post to Twitter.

EmailTwitter: allows you to post Twitter updates and retrieve your Twitter timeline via your cellular phone or other e-mail enabled mobile device, without incurring SMS fees.

TwitterIM: Update your Twitter account on MSN. Twitter via Live Messenger or ICQ, automatic TinyURL replacement, & will automatically strip out automessages.

Moblf: Access websites on mobile via SMS text messaging. Get SMS updates about what your friends are doing.

HelloMyNameIs: E is a service that integrates all your existing social services into an E•ID, which you can share with anyone in the real world. To exchange E•ID’s, you just need an internet-enabled mobile phone like an iPhone or Blackberry. When you exchange your E•ID’s, E makes sure your contacts get added to your other social services like Netlog, Twitter,Last.fm, Soocial, automatically.

Twittd; Use an instant messenger to Tweet. (Skype, Windows Live Messenger, AIM, Jabber/GTalk, Yahoo Messenger).

Dial2Do: Basically voice to Twitter tool with more. Use it to send email or SMS messages, record remidners to help you remember things, and listen to your favourite internet content.

Twitter Organization Tools:

Tweet Party: friend grouping and messaging for Twitter

Twinfluence: Analyze your Twitter influence

The Mattinator: If you want to Tweet once and have it post to multiple Twitter accounts, this is the tool for you.

Tweader: Ever see all the @ replies and have a hard time piecing it together? Use this and see the whole thing in a nice row. See the conversation in a nice linear format you can read.

Twittulry: A service for tracking what URLs people are talking about as they talk about them on Twitter. It’s basically like Digg for Twitter. Each time that you send a link to your followers on Twitter, Twitturly takes a note of it and applies your vote to that URL.

TwitterNotes: Take notes anywhere using Twitter.

Weird & Cool:

Twistori: Real time Twitter art. This is the first step in an ongoing social experiment, based on Twitter.

Minific: Short fiction with a Twitter twist. Share your short bursts of creative spirit. Just tweet an extremely short (~131 characters) story and add the tag #minific at the end.

Foamee: Tracks who you owe a beer to. (or coffee). Follow ioubeer and/or ioucoffee. Then, send an I.O.U. to a deserving recipient. You get a page over there to keep track of everything and can stamp drinks as ‘Redeemed’ when you want.

Notified: Never miss your fav TV shows because it notifies you. Let all your friends on Twitter know what TV show you‘re watching or about to watch later on with a personalised message right on your Twitter page.

CommuterFeed: A free service that lets you post reports on traffic and transit delays in your local area using Twitter or Pownce.

Measure or Track On or With Twitter:

Twitter Grader: Get a grade based on the power of your profile.

Twitly: Organize your followers into groups

Twitzu: Ever wanted to do invites on Twitter. Create an event, broadcast it, and then get an RSVP.

TrackThis: Track your packages over Twitter. Just send a quick direct message to trackthis and they’ll send you a direct message any time your package location changes.

Tweetrush: Aims to provide estimated stats on Twitter usage over a period of time. 

SiteVolume:  Find out how many times a word is mentioned on Twitter, Digg, MySpace, Flickr, or YouTube.

DivVoted: Lets you vote for your favourite sites with Twitter. Great for showing off your latest designs, or checking out other peoples votes for inspiration.

TwittAd: Supposed to give Twitter users and advertisers the opportunity to meet for product placement & website promotion on your Twitter profile.

Twittaholics Anon:

Twiddict: If Twitter is down and you still want to Tweet, you can use this site. Strictly for addicts.

Twitabit: A simple way to communicate that stays up when Twitter is down.

Bonus Suckfest Twitter Tool:

Utterli:  Don’t really know what the heck this does and their tagline is terrible and vague. They have a video that explains they do cross posting with Flickr though! (sarcasm). WTF?!

Extras (updated 11-11-08):

TwitterRel: Easy way to find people who might like stuff you like. Could be used as a marketing research type of a tool but could also be used to find people you don’t actually know but might be kinda cool.

Twuffer: Finally! I knew someone would do this so it was only a matter of time. Basically, you can schedule out your tweets to go out at a set time interval. Like an auto-post Twitter schedule of sorts.

FutureTweets: Basically, the same thing as what I just wrote above. 

StockTwits: If you’re into the stock market, then this niche Twitter tool my be for you. It’s basically like Bloomberg for the small guy.

SnapTweets: Share your Flickr photos to Twitter. Two big social properties joined at the hip.

JigTweets: Basically, it lets you post pics, locations, sites, feeds & videos to Twitter. It’s kinda a little bar that sits in the upper right hand corner of your Twitter page and has a bunch of links so you can post these various types of things.

TweepleTwak: Keep an eye on Twitter followers and monitor trends in friend gains and declines across the twitterverse. Twitter Analytics anyone?

Twallow: Auto follow people on Twitter. You basically just type in a few keywords. When people type in those words, you automatically follow them.

TwitPay: Want to tweet someone money? Use this.

TweetStalk; It’s a way to follow someone without them knowing you’re following them.

Twittertise: Twittertise allows you to advertise on Twitter and track the success of branded communications with your customers. You can schedule your communications on Twitter and using URL tracking technology measure the effectiveness of your traffic driving techniques on the platform.

TwitterImage:  Custom Twitter Backgrounds. It’s actually pretty awesome.

TweetAnswers: Ask a question and then get answers. It’s a community effort.

TweetGrid: Create a Twitter Search Dashboard that updates in real time. Kinda weird but innovative.

SplitTweet: Manage multiple Twitter accounts.

TwitterMagnets: Magnetic poetry & Twitter…you know…like that stuff on your fridge.

GroupTweet: Lets you and the gang to send messages via Twitter that are instantly broadcasted privately to only the team members.

MrTweet: Mr. Tweet looks through your extended network to help you build effective relationships on Twitter. Stuff like this:

• Which are my followers I should be following in return?
• Who are the influential people I should be following?

Definitely read the whole post but here’s the parts I was most interested in:

“How Radio Can Use Social Media To Remain Relevant, Win Back … - Here is the big secret about Radio, listeners want to hear what THEY want to hear. That is why the broad channel format on Sirius and XM is so appealing. Pick your genre of music and there it is, commercial free . . . but still you have but still you have to wait to hear the song you want to hear and you rarely know what is coming next.

Enter social media.”

So, I’m not a radio DJ (thank god) but I have been a DJ for about 15 years for events (wedding, barmitzah, ba-mitzfah, frat parties, class re-unions, etc) and swing dances. My alter ego is DJ Slam. I’m the guy in the picture who’s actually DJ-ing and not screwing around. You may not know this but I have a strong passion for Lindy Hop and have been doing it for about 10 years now. Traveling the US taking workshops, teaching workshops, DJ, dancing, etc. Until May, I ran the first succesful 21+ swing dance club in the greater Phoenix area having won local awards and whatnot. Club Red Swing.

Now, if you cared to notice I used past tense in that sentence becasue I’ve since closed it down and now do special events exclusively. Big stuff. Namely, on Sept 16th I have a band coming from London to play the club while I DJ the band breaks. The #1 Swing Band In The UK. The Jive Aces.

I’m going to take Dave’s idea and put it into action. I’ll be tweeting both of my sets as I DJ. If you want to find out what bad-ass jazz & swing from the the 30s & 40s (with some soul on the side) sounds like, tune in by following me on Twitter.  These guys are so crazy they turn on the lights, have sword fights WITH their instruments WHILE they’re playing. I figured, if they’re doing something crazy, so will I!

You can help me DJ…

Also, if you’d like to “hear” a tune, be sure to Twitter me back that particular evening and I’ll do what I can to work it into the set. It’ll be like you’re twitter dj-ing, or twdj-ing, or tweeterdj-ing or something… (let me know if you have a better made up word than that because it’s not coming to me) We’ll use the meme #Slam.

I’ll be interested to see how this little experiment goes and if I piss a bunch of my followers off becasue they don’t like getting updates on awesome swing and soul songs….

At the very least, you have iTunes open and fill out your music collection with stuff you can dance around in your kitchen to.

PS Thanks Dave for the great idea. I have a following already but this really just allows me to take it from club to club or state to state with my iPhone

PPS Incidentally, I pretty much just use my iPod and iPhone these days to DJ. I used to haul around records & tapes, then I moved to laptop and iPod, and now I’m just iPhone & iPod. It’s all fits in my pocket and you can’t beat that!

Formulas, by their very nature, come AFTER something really great has been created. Someone analyzes it, comes up with a parameter list, sticks it into a formula, and then shares it with the world. For example, if you wanted to know how to write great headlines according to a formula, you can check out CopyBloggers post on ‘10 sure-fire headline formulas that work‘.

Don’t get me wrong, formulas that are proven can help you go a long way in creating an ad that really pulls, or a race car that really moves, or a persusasion technique that really presuades, etc. But, if you want to create great stuff, you have to know when to push the bounds a little and really tap into the essence of the moment.

Let’s apply this to creating a sales letter and see what happens…
When you’re creating an ad, you hear the old school tell you that after your finished, put the ad down on the table and take a step or two back. Physcially take a step. Not metaphorically. Then, ask yourself, “What’s the biggest thing that stands out on the page?” Then, make adjustments according to what you want the ad to accomplish the most. Often times, you’ll find yourself very surprised.

How can we get a little “art” into the process of a sales letter? Well, I found a new new tool that might help out. It lives here and it’s a called Wordle.

I think the intention of it is to make pretty pictures but I wondered if it could be used for marketing purposes. You see, what it does is analye the words on a page and the more often it finds the word, the more bigger it shows up on the page.

This is, in effect, like taking your sales page and stepping back to have a look at how a person’s subconscious mind mind hear it as they read it in their head. Or, it’s just plain fun.

Pretty cool stuff, huh?

What this site looks like to Wordle

So, you can ask yourself if you’re actually communicating whta you want to with that sales letter?

PS. I typed in my website address and got the picture you see above. Pretty cool to see ‘marketing’ is the biggest word on the page since my site is about helping small businesses with their marketing.

PPS For the detail-noticing reader, the headline for this post seems to have a strikingly familiar resemblance to the CopyBlogger post I referenced above….hmm…..

Well Andy Jenkins just sent me an email with a pricing hint.  
He said “Liberty and Justice FOR ALL” - He made me SWEAR not to 
spill the beans on this one.  Just let me say, EVERYONE is 
going to be able to get their hands on this.  We’ll talk again 
as soon as I know it’s cool to tell you the “big secret”.

Oh, there’s also something called the ‘Net Effect and it’s some sort of magazine about internet marketing and whatnot. Guess I’ll read that when I have a little spare time….

In spite of that, but not in opposition to, you might have to cut something from your business because everyone else is running around in scarcity mode. 

Here are 2 things you absolutely, positively DON’T want to cut:

• Don’t cut marketing
• Don’t cut key employees