Looking for a Twitter Map

Hey PLN! Got a question for you.

@schickbob is looking for an app that maps Twitter followers sort of like ClustrMaps does for folks who drop by your webpage.

I've tried foller.me and the Yahoo Pipes maps, but found the first far too clunky and the latter limited in its usage to only 100 followers.

I'm looking for something more substantial.

And so my question is: Do you use or know of any quality Twitter map services?

(Eagerly awaiting responses).

As Twitter is to consumer, oGoing is to business

"I am excited to launch a new social media communications platform for business users who want to connect, communicate & collaborate with their co-workers, peers, teams, customers, partners & prospects now!" Sanjay Dalal, founder, oGoing. "oGoing provides a robust social networking platform for the Enterprise. As Twitter is to consumer, oGoing is to business"

oGoing connects You with Your co-workers through the exchange of frequent answers to one question: "What's going on?" (What's going on at your work, projects, product launches, deals, partnerships, customer service, group brainstorming, & much more)

oGoing is the most innovative social + business networking service in the marketplace today for sending and sharing real-time updates with your co-workers anywhere in the world!

If you are a business, you want to setup your own oGoing Enterprise Microblogging, Communications & Social Network now. When you setup your business profile on Twitter, Facebook or other social networks:

• Your business has only one public profile accessible by everyone,
• You need to setup separate profiles for each employee (outside your control),
• You cannot have your employees & partners interact privately,
• You cannot control all your followers and followings,
• You cannot control and manage your own branding,
• You cannot send updates to specific people (select employees, partners or customers),
• You cannot create messages away from your competitor's eyes,
• You cannot monitor and manage access to all your employees,
• You cannot create one-to-one critical updates for your key customers or partners,
• You cannot restrict access for your own employees with a valid company email address,
• You cannot avoid spammers.

Would you want your business to operate under this public environment?

On oGoing, we setup oGoing for your own business or enterprise with a unique website created just for your business, for example,"mybiz.ogoing.com" which is secured, private & outside the public eyes. At your oGoing Enterprise network, only your business, your employees, your team members can share updates & messages with each other, and even communicate with your customers or partners - privately!! It's your own oGoing microblogging, communications & social network where you can brand it, customize it, monitor it, and manage it...

Imagine your sales leaders sharing updates with their team members, your marketing team sharing the latest news about your product launch, your CEO sharing the company vision & highlights with all employees (or a select few), your customer service team hand-holding their own customers, your business development team working hand-in-hand with your partners, and more. oGoing provides your own oGoing Enterprise platform to make all this happen...

Request your oGoing Enterprise Microblogging & Communications Social Network for a free trial for 60 days. Request your oGoing Enterprise.

oGoing - What's going on? Stay in touch. Join the conversation.

oGoing Features

oGoing provides a social media communications & delivery platform for sharing information in real-time.

If you already have a Twitter account, that's Great! On oGoing, you can share all your Twitter updates with your oGoing friends. oGoing has also launched Facebook integration, and APIs to allow for integrating oGoing with your business applications.

On oGoing, every user can setup their own unique profile beginning with user name, location, email, brief bio, website, photograph, and key information about your profession. Once you have setup your profile, you can then begin sharing updates with your followers - your co-workers, partners, customers & more. You can invite new co-workers to join oGoing as well.

But wait, there's more... On oGoing, you can setup multiple accounts with various user names, and link them together! Imagine a Sales executive setting up multiple accounts based on geography or vertical markets. Each account relates to specific sales teams working in their territories. This way, you can send updates to all your followers on all accounts at once, or choose which specific accounts to send updates to...

When you have that really long URL to share, and it takes up all the space in the update area... no more!! On oGoing, you can attach your URL separately (long or short), and it will appear on your update... and you still have all the space you need to write your update!!

oGoing even allows you to share the updates you love the most from your co-workers (or your own), and even share updates you like the most with your co-workers. You can easily track the most shared updates, most liked updates, and the most talked about updates...

On oGoing, you can immediately follow your followers automatically, and even send an automatic personalized message to your followers as they begin to follow you... besides, you can send direct messages to all your followers. Built-in messaging is a key feature of oGoing.

But what if I want to send my updates to my specific peers only, and don't want the rest of my followers to see them... no problem! On oGoing, you can include your special peers in your own Group... so the next time you have something important to share, only let your special co-worker friends on your Group know about this!

oGoing For Business

On oGoing, we setup oGoing for your own business with a unique website created just for your business, for example,"mybiz.ogoing.com". At your oGoing For Business website, only your business, your employees, your team members can share updates with each other, or share updates with your customers or partners - privately, or publicly!! It's your own oGoing portal where you can brand it, customize it, monitor it, and manage it... Imagine your sales leaders sharing updates with their team members, your marketing team sharing the latest news about your product launch, your CEO sharing the company vision & highlights, your customer service team hand-holding their customers, your business development team working hand-in-hand with your partners, and more. oGoing provides your own oGoing For Business portal to make all this happen...

Request your oGoing Enterprise Microblogging & Communications Social Network for a free trial for 60 days. Request your oGoing Enterprise.

oGoing Team

oGoing is founded by Sanjay Dalal, serial entrepreneur & innovator, and a silicon valley veteran. oGoing Engineers have been working hard to bring oGoing to you (and are working round the clock to bring you oGoing)... Contact Us if you are interested in joining oGoing Team.

Back to School: Ideas for Twitter in the Foreign Language Classroom

The first day back after break was tricky.

In addition to my Fine Arts classes, I'm teaching three Latin courses. They are whole-year courses and the Mid-Terms in each tend to be somewhat memorization-intensive.

I remember my own days of stultifying high school Spanish being led repetitively through endless vocab drills and suffering the wrath of a teacher who couldn't understand that every sentient being wasn't born with the ability to roll r's.

And so, I've tried to break things up a bit.

As all foreign language teachers know, rote memorization is just part of the game. You just can't learn a language without being immersed entirely in verb forms and noun declensions.

It's just the nature of the beast.

So, what I've been doing -- and what seems to be working pretty well -- is having students use Twitter for verb parsing review and translation practice. I first forayed into this pedagogical area maybe nine months ago and have since worked out a few 'tried and tested' techniques that I offer all language teachers. Here are the top three:

1. Twitter for verb parsing review: Have the students identify and parse verbs directly from a text into the hashtag of a Twitter feed. After ten or so minutes, stop and review the results in the feed. Incorrect parses are corrected and all correct and corrected items are saved to a second hashtag or to a wiki. In the future, I plan to make the second hashtag saved to FriendFeed for the archiving capabilities. Either way, this gives the students a collaboratively built verb study guide and is far more entertaining and engaging than sitting at a desk sounding out dozens of verb forms for what seems like hours on end.

2. Using Twitter as a 'lifeline' for translation exercises: Each student opens up the text, the Twitter feed, and a digital English/Latin dictionary in his or her browser. As each sentence is Tweeted, a virtual compendium of common mistakes inevitably is created. We then follow the system described in #1.

3. Twitter as formative assessment for foreign language translation: One of the nice things Twitter provides the foreign language teacher is a continuous, time-stamped record of posts searchable in real-time. I use this to gauge how individual students are progressing -- if I see students struggling in time or accuracy, it is a simple matter to gauge the problem and intervene as necessary.

These are just a few techniques that have worked well. I'd love to hear about things you all have worked out.

oGoing is Live! Introducing oGoing : "Twitter for Enterprise"

"oGoing is Live! I am excited to launch a brand new social + business networking service for business users who want to connect, communicate & collaborate with their co-workers, peers, teams, customers, partners & prospects now!" Sanjay Dalal, founder, oGoing. "oGoing provides a robust social networking platform for the Enterprise."

oGoing connects You with Your co-workers through the exchange of frequent answers to one question: "What's going on?" In real-time!

oGoing is the most innovative social + business networking service in the marketplace today for sending and sharing real-time updates with your co-workers worldwide now!

Using oGoing, you can update, reply and share with co-workers frequent answers to one question: "What's going on?" oGoing provides a social + business media platform wherein you and your co-workers talk about what's going on in their work, projects, deals and more...in real-time.

oGoing - What's going on? Stay in touch. Join the conversation.

oGoing Features

Go to: http://www.ogoing.com to sign up and get started today, and join oGoing colleagues from all over the world, and begin sharing your updates now! oGoing provides a delivery platform for sharing information in real-time.

If you already have a Twitter account, that's Great! On oGoing, you can share all your Twitter updates with your oGoing friends.

But wait, there's more... On oGoing, you can setup multiple accounts with various user names, and link them together! This way, you can send updates to all your followers on all accounts at once, or choose which specific accounts to send updates to...Cool!!

When you have that really long URL to share, and it takes up all the space in the update area... no more!! On oGoing, you can attach your URL separately (long or short), and it will appear on your update... and you still have all the space you need to write your update!! Very cool!!

oGoing even allows you to share the updates you love the most from your co-workers (or your own), and even share updates you like the most with your co-workers. You can easily track the most shared updates, most liked updates, and the most talked about updates... Is that cool or what?

On oGoing, you can immediately follow your followers automatically, and send an automatic personalized message to your followers as they begin to follow you... how cool is that!!

But what if I want to send my updates to my specific peers only, and don't want the rest of my followers to see them... no problem! On oGoing, you can include your peers in your own Group... so the next time you have something important to share, only let your special friends on your Group know about this! Ultra cool!!

oGoing For Business

oGoing is innovative and ready for your business!!

If you are a business, you want to setup your own oGoing Business Portal now. When you setup your business profile on Twitter or other social networks: You cannot control your followers, you cannot control your branding, you cannot keep some of your updates private, you cannot create programs away from your competitor's eyes, you cannot give access to all your employees, you cannot create one-to-one updates for your key customers or partners, you cannot avoid spammers. Would you want your business to operate under this environment?

On oGoing, we setup oGoing for your own business with a unique website created just for your business, for example,"mybiz.ogoing.com". At your oGoing For Business website, only your business, your employees, your team members can share updates with each other, or share updates with your customers or partners - privately, or publicly!! It's your own oGoing portal where you can brand it, customize it, monitor it, and manage it... Imagine your sales leaders sharing updates with their team members, your marketing team sharing the latest news about your product launch, your CEO sharing the company vision & highlights, your customer service team hand-holding their customers, your business development team working hand-in-hand with your partners, and more. oGoing provides your own oGoing For Business portal to make all this happen...

Just go here to request your oGoing For Business Portal for a free trial for 60 days - no strings attached.

Request Business Portal

oGoing Team

oGoing is founded by Sanjay Dalal, serial entrepreneur & innovator, and a silicon valley veteran. oGoing Engineers have been working hard to bring oGoing to you (and are still working as you read this)... Contact Us if you are interested in joining oGoing Team.

Launching oGoing - What's going on?

"If you like Twitter, you will love oGoing," Sanjay Dalal, founder, oGoing.

oGoing connects You with Your friends, family and co-workers through the exchange of frequent answers to one question: "What's going on?" In real-time!

oGoing is the most innovative social networking service in the marketplace today for sending updates to all your friends worldwide now!

You can find all your friends on Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Facebook and Myspace when you join oGoing, and invite them to get started.

Using oGoing, you can keep in touch with your friends, family and co-workers with frequent answers to one question: "What's going on?" oGoing is a social media platform wherein you and your friends, family and co-workers talk about what's going on in their lives, work, family, fun things, anything at all...in real-time. oGoing - What's going on? Stay in touch. Join the conversation.

oGoing For Me

Go to: http://www.ogoing.com to sign up and get started today, and join oGoing friends from all over the world, and begin sharing your updates now!

If you already have a Twitter account, that's Great! On oGoing, you can share all your Twitter updates with your oGoing friends.

But wait, there's more... On oGoing, you can setup multiple accounts with various user names, and link them together! This way, you can send updates to all your followers on all accounts at once, or choose which specific accounts to send updates to...Cool!!

When you have that really long URL to share, and it takes up all the space in the update area... no more!! On oGoing, you can attach your URL separately (long or short), and it will appear on your update... and you still have all the space you need to write your update!! Very cool!!

oGoing even allows you to share the updates you love the most from your friends (or your own), and even share updates you like the most with your friends. You can easily track the most shared updates, most liked updates, and the most talked about updates... Is that cool or what?

On oGoing, you can immediately follow your followers automatically, and send an automatic personalized message to your followers as they begin to follow you... how cool is that!!

But what if I want to send my updates to my special friends only, and don't want the rest of my followers to see them... no problem! On oGoing, you can include your special friends in your own Group... so the next time you are at your favorite restaurant, or doing something spontaneously good, only let your special friends on your Group know about this! Ultra cool!!

oGoing For Business

oGoing is innovative and ready for your business!! Setup oGoing for your own business with a unique website created just for your business... At your oGoing For Business website, only your business, your employees, your team members can all share updates with each other, or share updates with your customers or partners - privately, or publicly!! It's your own oGoing where you can brand it, customize it, and manage it... Just go here to request your oGoing For Business portal for a free trial for 60 days - no strings attached. Request Business Portal

oGoing For Business has all the cool features of oGoing For Me, and then some!!

oGoing Team

oGoing is founded by Sanjay Dalal, serial entrepreneur & innovator, and a silicon valley veteran. oGoing Engineers have been working hard to bring oGoing to you (and are still working as you read this)... Contact Us if you are interested in joining oGoing Team.

Twitter Lists: EducationPLN

I'm liking the new List feature on Twitter. Really makes it easy to follow different segments of your Twitter crowd.

I invite all of our TeachPaperless subscribers to join the EducationPLN List; I think it's really going to turn out to be a great resource for prof development, networking, and teacher camaraderie.

Join and Tweet!

best,
Shelly


ps -- Do note that @TheJLV -- a teacher, Yanks fan from NYC, and member of the list -- is currently live-blogging the MLB World Series... so there are quite a few Tweets describing pop-ups and line drives.

Just don't get yr hopes up thinking our list is all major league baseball all the time ; )

An EducationPLN Twitter List for You!

I've started an EducationPLN Twitter List and I invite you to join.

Lists are the new thing on Twitter; they give members the opportunity to set up interest-specific networks and I think they are going to prove rather helpful as we move forward in demonstrating the value of social networks to our admins and policy makers.

So join in, and welcome in advance!

(Note: these lists are still in beta form, so if you have any problem adding yourself to my list, please let me know and I'll add you).

The Five Minute Twitter Verb Crunch Drill

This is the outline of a five minute verb crunch drill I've been using with my Latin I, II, and III students. You and your kids will need to be comfortable using Diigo, Twitter, & Twitterfall, but the payoff has been great. My students practically beg to do the exercise and across the board I've seen kids' understanding of verb parsing go way up -- to the point now that much of the fear has been taking out of sight-reading (which is something every foreign language teacher will understand is hugely necessary).

I'll keep it simple; here's the drill:

1. Students open a passage or poem by whatever author you are working on. In my Latin III class, for example, the kids are going to be translating Horace's Satire 1.9. So they open up the text and open a Tweet feed.

2. Next, I assign each student five lines. They are responsible for highlighting each verb in their selection using Diigo.

3. Once the highlighting is complete, the students parse each verb (for example, in Latin the verb 'laudo' is parsed: 1st person singular present active indicative of 'laudare' meaning 'to praise'). The individual parsed verbs are Tweeted to our class hashtag.

4. As the students are parsing, I am running a live Twitterfall of their hashtag on the wall via LCD projector.

5. When time is up, (I'd say give 'em roughly a minute and a half per verb), we check the verbs as a class. Goodies (homework passes, free Internet roaming minutes, etc.) are given out to folks who either nailed all of their verbs or who improved from the previous day.

6. As we work, we reTweet correct verb parsings back to the feed. If we find mistakes, we fix them and Tweet the corrected versions back to the feed.

7. Finally, the students cut-and-paste the correct version of all of the verbs to their online notebooks (we use Google Docs).

This all takes about five minutes. By the end, the students have practiced their parsing, seen good examples and corrected errors, and have created a study list of all of the verbs in the selection that can be used to assist in translation.

Furthermore, they completed the drill using integrated collaborative real-time methods; thus instilled in the learning of the course content is the practical skill-building work of learning how to best use a network. And because this drill is done on a semi-daily basis, it doesn't feel like a 'tech lesson'; it just feels natural.

And in the end, each student has a copy of the original annotations in Diigo as well as a copy of the completed and corrected Tweets in their notebooks.

I'm sure this type of drill can easily be modified for other disciplines -- from vocab words in English class to major event chronologies in Social Studies to terms in Biology or formulas in Math and Chemistry.

Business Twitter hub in progress

I confess I'm a Twitter user and not just to keep up with friends. I use Twitter for on-the-spot news, links to coupons and keeping track of business, food and fashion trends.

Advertisement

I received a tweet from the Mississippi Hospitality and Restaurant Association drawing my attention to an article in The Wall Street Journal about how entrepreneurs use Twitter to get through a crisis.

The National restaurant and the Mississippi Hospitality and Restaurant associations stress that Twitter is a powerful tool for small businesses, especially during any sort of customer-service or public-relations crisis. However, I see an opportunity for Hattiesburg businesses to use Twitter not only for crises but to use it as a public relations machine, as well as to keep up with business articles in the Hattiesburg American.

I'm thinking of starting our own Hattiesburg business Twitter to keep all businesses and customers up-to-date with sales, holiday closings, hiring fairs and special events. Send an e-mail my way if you want to take part or even if you have ideas on how to run it and work out the kinks.
Openings

# The Grill and Grocery, 121 E. Pine St., opened next to Go Young Fashions. The G&G is a combination convenience store and a grill/takeout eatery with a very interesting menu. The G&G is open Monday through Saturday. Details: 336-7986.

# Elements Salon is moving to Canebrake Country Club, 1 Cane Drive, and will reopen as Elements Salon and Spa at Canebrake. The salon, with full spa and massage, has a tentative opening date of Sept. 30.

# Topher's Rock 'n' Roll Grill will open in the old Ray Ray's Fried Chicken building, 5252 Old U.S. 11 in Hattiesburg. The family-oriented, fast food restaurant plans to open Oct. 1. Owned by the parent company that also owns The Bottling Company and Mugshots, the restaurant promises tasty burgers and vintage music memorabilia. Details: 336-7418 or visit www.tophersgrill.com.

# Gatti Town is slated to open this fall. It is located between Best Buy and Toys 'R Us.

# Qdoba Mexican Grill is expected to open Nov. 1 on Hardy Street between Applebee's and Wachovia Bank.

# Auto Barn is being built at the corner of Emerald Lane and Broadway Drive. No completion date was given.

# An independently-owned burger shop is being built in the former Popeye's on U.S. 49 location. No completion date was given.
Events

# The Kitchen Table will host Young Chefs with Julia at 4 p.m. Sept. 28. Participants will learn to cook pasta jambalaya, white chocolate bread pudding with white chocolate sauce. Cost: $35. Details: 261-2224.

# Curves is offering a free 30-day diet program for Hattiesburg-area women Sept. 30 at Curves of Hattiesburg on the corner of Hardy Street and North 25th Avenue. Details: 450-2878 or visit www.curves.com.

Can Twitter Rake in the Ads to Justify $1 Billion Valuation?

The question about Twitter used to be, "Is it a business?" Now, the question becomes "How big can it be?"

And the answer is: It better be big. CEO Evan Williams confirmed last week that the microblogging service had finalized its new funding, reported to be $100 million, giving Twitter -- which now has no monetization program in place -- a whopping $1 billion valuation. Prior investors Spark Capital, Benchmark Capital and Institutional Venture Partners doubled down, and late-stage investors T. Rowe Price and Insight Venture Partners joined up.

With the funding, Silicon Valley and the venture community are once again setting their sites on the marketing budgets of American business to support another free "cloud" web service, in this case 140-word bursts of text. Indeed, they're counting on the exponential growth of advertising revenue in a flat market for a company that -- while certainly useful to marketers -- has yet to earn its first dollar.

"I think they can build some kind of ad business, but the more relevant question is can they build an ad business worth a billion plus dollars," said Warren Lee, VC at Canaan Partners. "That would require tremendous volumes of impressions and reasonable conversions. Lots of execution will be needed. Not impossible but unlikely."

The cash infusion (on top of $55 million already raised and the estimated $25 million Twitter has left in the tank), puts the pressure on Twitter to earn its first $100 million within the next year or two, and sparked cries of "bubble!" from the cheap seats, but that was true of AOL, Netscape, Google and Facebook.

'No precedent'
Yet Twitter is quite different. "It's the first one that's not a destination -- it's a distributed service," said Seth Goldstein, CEO of SocialMedia and investor in early Twitter backer Union Square Ventures. "There is no precedent for how to monetize it. "

Like Facebook, businesses already use Twitter to communicate with their fans and don't need to pay Twitter a thing to build followers or communicate with them. "What we see is a move away from brands using broadcast media to more engagement media," said Zephrin Lasker, CEO of sales-lead exchange Pontiflex. "If you have engagement on a one-to-one basis, extremely scalable, that's valuable."

Valuable to marketers, but is it valuable to Twitter? With the money comes an expectation of corresponding revenue, and while verified accounts, corporate services and analytics are interesting, advertising is the business that scales. While co-founder Biz Stone said there are no plans to start an ad business this year, it seems inevitable Twitter will be going toe-to-toe with Facebook in the ad market.

"What is interesting from an advertising perspective is the same thing that is interesting about Facebook: It is one of the only platforms of scale that has two-way messaging potential," said Michael Lazerow, CEO of Buddy Media, which sells ads on Facebook widgets. "But are they a $50 mil or a $1 bil business?"

Twitter could turn on revenue immediately, but appears to be in no rush to do so. Observers have, for example, long wondered why Twitter didn't start running contextual or keyword ads next to tweets, like Google. Twitter could run the ads based on the content of tweets combined with what Twitter knows about the user from their profile and registration details.

Outside factors
The problem with that is that more and more users access Twitter from third-party apps like TweetDeck or Tweetie not owned by Twitter, and those services, too, need a business model and may also incorporate advertising.

Mr. Stone said that ads won't come before 2010 and Twitter's early-stage venture backers have told Ad Age the ad business, narrowly defined, isn't that interesting to them. On its site, Twitter touts marketing success stories from Pepsi, Jetblue and Dell, which consist of the brands using the service to connect with fans.

The cash could allow Twitter to make some acquisitions; perhaps one of the URL shorteners like Bit.ly, one or more of the Twitter applications, or one of the many, many firms now making dashboards to manage Twitter for corporate clients.

With a valuation of $1 billion, Twitter's investors believe one or more of the following outcomes are likely: an IPO or an acquisition at a healthy price. Already Twitter has reportedly turned down bids from Facebook, Google and Microsoft.

How should my business market itself with Facebook?

How should my business market itself with Facebook?

Facebook is growing by 700,000 new members every day and is the third-most-trafficked site on the Web. Your business should be making the most of this marketing opportunity.

The most important thing to remember is that you’re there to build relationships with customers and prospects. Connecting in an authentic manner means approaching the world of social networking as a person and not necessarily as a brand.

You should actually start with your personal profile — if you’re not already on Facebook, sign up (it’s free), add a photo and a little information about yourself, find some friends on the site and begin to interact. Then, and only then, should you set up a business page with your logo.

After all, you wouldn’t start a sales call with a trial close — you’d get to know your prospects first and give them a chance to know you.

There are some distinct differences between personal profiles and pages. With personal profiles, people must request to become your friend in order to see your information, and you confirm these friendships manually. With pages, however, anyone can become a fan of your business page. Even better, all of their friends will see that they’re a fan and can join them; now you’re leveraging the viral power of the Internet to make new connections.

Content of your page and posts should be of service to the reader. Consider including reviews, tips, helpful hints, related articles you’ve found, relevant discussions, events and photos.

Next steps: Facebook ads may be purchased. These work similarly to Google AdWords.

Response provided by John Addessi, a consultant with the Kansas Small Business Development Center at Johnson County Community College.

A Young Teacher Reflects on Twitter in the Classroom

Been teaching a weekly course on Social Tech in Education, as many of you know.

Well, this evening I took a look at the blog of one of my students, a young teacher in Baltimore. Please, please, please read what he wrote yesterday about students' response to Twitter in the classroom and please comment on his blog.

I think it's a very powerful read.

And I think this is a great example of what students and teachers can do together when not hindered by the ridiculousness that is so much of our educational system.

Twitter Strategies for Marketing Your Business

-“Brevity is the soul of wit,” wrote William Shakespeare. And it also appears to be the heart of the microblogging phenomenon, Twitter. Microblogging as a marketing strategy is bound to thrive, and sooner or later you’ll find it’s just smart business to communicate with your customers 140 characters at a time.
“Twitter is a great way to position yourself as an expert and go-to source in a particular field,” says Julio Ojeda-Zapata, author of Twitter Means Business: How Microblogging Can Help or Hurt Your Company. Ojeda-Zapata says people have found jobs, hired staff, promoted books, and been written about by major media outlets by blogging on the popular site. And while most business owners have heard of Twitter, relatively few are taking advantage of its power to promote their businesses.

The irony is that while blatant self-promotion and marketing on Twitter can be a recipe for failure, there are other uses that make it a back-end marketing and public relations bonanza. Here are three Twitter strategies every company should consider.

1. Search and respond: To see what your customers are saying about you, follow the advice of Tim O’Reilly, author of The Twitter Book, and search for your name, your company name, your Twitter name, and your brand or product. A few useful search engines include Twitter Search, TweetGrid, and Monitter.

2. Educate customers and be an expert: Natural Food Exchange in Reading, Massachusetts, is an independent, natural food store featuring the largest gluten-free stock of supplies in the state. Lisa Kalner Williams says the company uses Twitter as a way to distinguish it in the whole/natural food marketplace by tweeting useful information about celiac disease, a condition where a gluten-free diet has produced positive changes in those afflicted. Occasionally the company will do promotional tweets that mention gluten-free products available in the store.

3. Engage in conversations with customers: Of all the misconceptions that business owners have about Twitter, the biggest one is thinking of Twitter in terms of a monologue rather than a dialogue. “Old-school, one-way marketing is at best quaint and at worst annoying in this two-way world of social media,” according to Steve Mulder, director of emerging interactions at Molecular, part of Isobar, a global network of digital marketing companies.

A Challenge to Teachers: Mentor Young Teachers in Social Tech

There is something wrong here.

This picture (and please, if you are viewing this on a feed where the pic isn't showing up, please visit the main TeachPaperless page to see this) is unacceptable.

It is unacceptable on so many levels. But let me give some context.

This is a screen capture of a Tweet that reads: "I am scared of twitter". It was not written by a 35 year veteran fearing that social media is undermining his or her career. It was not written by an overburdened administrator fearing another lawsuit. It was not written by an overworked IT guy or gal nervous about whether the local network will be able to withstand the pounding social media has the potential to dish out.

This Tweet was written by a twenty-something new teacher in an ed school classroom.

My ed school classroom.

This is unacceptable.

What have we done? How have we allowed social media to become so seemingly monolithic that a young teacher would write this as his or her ONLY tweet?

We have to do better. This one's on us.

This is the result of scaring our kids into thinking predators were the de facto users of MySpace. This is the result of banning mobile devices in our classrooms. This is the result of teachers being threatened with termination for using social media and kids being blocked from using email at school.

This one's on us. We have to take responsibility for this. We have to turn this around.

Now, maybe I'm just overestimating this. After all, I'm sure it was just a joke, right?

Well, I would think that, and I'd appreciate the joke, if it weren't for the fact that in this first week of building our PLNs, this particular student had a total of four followers and one Tweet.

That's unacceptable.

But it's not just the student's fault for being unwilling to try out the network; it's also our fault for letting it come to this. Because the way most ed school programs are currently set up, there's no reason WHY any young teacher would think they'd be expected to have a professional working knowledge of social technology.

We've got to change that.

So here's what I'm calling on my fellow PLN members and ed school teachers to do: find three young teachers in your building, in your ed school, or through your PLN. Mentor those teachers. Teach them WHY they should build a PLN. Teach them what it means to participate as a professional. Don't worry about teaching them every little gimmick and gadget that comes down the pike; just teach them what it means to be part of a network, what it means to be connected, how to use a PLN to grow professionally as a teacher.

Furthermore, contact your local ed schools. Contact your alma mater. Tell those schools that as a teaching professional, you demand they include mandatory courses teaching and modeling the integration of social technology into classroom instruction; tell them that facility with social media should be a qualification for earning a degree.

We can't afford to let young teachers slip through ed school without a working knowledge of social technology and a foundational PLN. This begins with us. Serious or not, this is no joking matter.

Twitter Has Arrived (if you didn't notice...)

Today was the first day of the year for all faculty.

We've got a day of meetings with departments tomorrow followed by a day of tech camp for incoming Freshmen.

In exciting Twitter-related developments, I gave a short presentation based on what I delivered in Cambridge a couple weeks back and it went over gangbusters. Got several teachers on board both for using Twitter to build a PLN as well as to investigate applications of Twitter in the classroom.

Also, this past week saw our school open its own Twitter feed for the purpose of communicating info with parents and students. Our athletics, alumni, and campus ministry departments all started Tweeting as well.

This could be it. This could be a watershed moment in getting past the fear of social media. Folks are hungry for it; in all of my conversations today it was all people were talking about.

And what were the things that have seemed to put it over the top and haul it right into the mainstream?

Iran and TIME magazine.

That's the difference a summer makes.

Six years ago, we were talking about MySpace like it was a den of thieves just waiting to swallow up our children. Today, the principal is Tweeting and the Rugby team and Film Club have their own Facebook pages.

Now, we just got to get it right. Keep the ship on its course.

It's all about extending those 'right relationships' that teachers have been taught how to develop into the digital world. And it's all about modeling digital citizenship and healthy social media choices to our students.

And it's got to be an everyday thing. Social Tech should not be a 'special event'. It should be as common in schools as pens, pencils, desks, and chairs. It should be naturally integrated into the very fabric of school life.

I'm slated to give a presentation to our parent community in a few weeks. The topic is social technology in education. Because parent knowledge and parent involvement is the key. It's time to talk about social media directly to the folks who trust us with the education of their children.

Here's to the future. The future is now.

And if you can't tell, I'm extremely proud of the John Carroll School, a little independent Catholic high school that's jumped right to the forefront of the digital age.

Twitter in the Classroom Preso

Here's a public Google App preso of the slides from my presentation on 'Twitter in the Classroom' this morning at the Social Technology and Education conference at Harvard.

Follow along if you are here live, feel free to chat and mix it up!

Avoid IWantFollowers.com Or Get Your Twitter Account Suspended Plus 40 Legit Tools

By Luis Galarza - Free Internet Marketing.

So, Why Avoid Twitter Follower Generator IWantFollowers.com? Simple because it will upset your current friends, and might get your account suspended or in jail like we tweeple like to call it!...




We all love free Internet marketing tools and services, that's why I created this blog to share with you the best resources and tips you can get to start or promote an online small business. But, in the world of the free, some marketers will try to make you paid for their giveaways in unethical ways... One of those services is IWantFollowers!

If you are in any of the groups below you need to hold your horses and please keep reading:

- Are looking to increase the number of Twitter follower or friends?

- Are you looking for some kind of free social media marketing service or tool to help you?

- Have you heard of the "I Want Followers" free service?

- Are you a current user?

- Are you thinking to apply in the near future?



I Completely recommend you to stay away from this service and any other services that uses the Twitter API to send "SPAM" tweets through your account. I understand if you have to send a RT (ReTweet) mentioning the service you just sign up for at the moment of creating a new member file. But, IWantFollowers think that isn't enough marketing exposure for their tool, so they send automatic tweets to every free member about 2 times per day, making tweeps (People using the social network) upsetting their followers and friends. Because the tweet looks like you send it!

So, they make you look like you are the spammer!

If you know me for quite sometime, you might know that I don't recommend anybody to use unethical or illegal marketing methods, is just wrong! And when it comes to social media the best approach is what I call a "Social Marketing Interaction." To know what I recommend my clients to avoid when it comes to social media campaigns, please read my post titled "20 Bad Twitter Marketing Strategies To Avoid" for more information about the wrong ways to use this social network.


Here is what a Twitter that hates this type of non-permission advertising @ON_DEMAND_TECH (Alicia L. Harris) have to said about those unwanted automatic messages:

Click to enlarge image.

Just in case you can read what the image said, here it is: "I just opted out of IWantFollowers.com to stop the obnoxious automatic tweets on my account. Sorry for the bother friends"

As you can see, people don't like this type of promotion... Looks like whoever is the main owner of the site don't know nothing about social media. They should pay Seth Goldin for a consultation or by his book where he explain the birth of "Permission Marketing". Don't you think?

There are other free services that don't use automated SPAM messages generators that you can use to help you find new friends or future business contacts that have same interests. Don't worry I put a list of useful sites to find new followers without the SPAM or any unethical promotion practices right at the end of this post.


Here is what @RATN_110 another user of this so call free web 2.0 application have to said:

Click on image to enlarge.

Test Got My Account In Twitter Jail For A Week!

I'm always testing new strategies, tools, and services to see if it work as they said they do, so I can share my findings with my readers. But, this time I made an error... Well, the thing is that I have only one Twitter account, and I didn't open a new account to be use as case study. I know, big mistake...

So, I sign up with follower generator in question, everything look OK, they send a tweet promoting the service, and I thought that was OK, almost every other application does the same thing as a tweet or re-tweet. Then, the day after I saw 2 more tweets promoting the application without my consent, so I erase both messages, and just waited while I was doing my daily posting. Then the next morning I saw 2 more of those stupids ads, then my safety bell started ringing, but I decided to wait till next day... What a big mistake was that!

The next day I try to log-in into my account, and I was send to a page that said:

"Sorry, the account you were headed to has been suspended due to strange activity"

You can see a screen shot of the page, the page that it supose to be my profile page, now is just a embarrasing suspension notice, at least for the next 7 days :-( ...



Apparently, the site was doing some administration work and tech person made the application send a bunch of automatic tweets by using the free and VIP accounts, which soon was notice by the Twitter spam police and they quickly stop the problem by suspending over 1500 member profiles. The profiles will stay there for week, and my profile was also included in the mix.

Here is what their blog had to said:

"Account suspensions? Lost followers?

Yesterday, the technical support for the affiliate system our site uses was making some changes to optimize the program for the high traffic we’ve been seeing recently. One of the technicians was editing one of the automatic process sequences, and mistakenly reset the wrong process cycle.

Our system sends autotweets to our free users once or twice a day. This false reset affected the autotweet cycle, changing it to run eight times a day. Twitter detected the abundance of updates and automatically identified it as spam – the result? Twitter distributed 7 day suspensions to each account sending the tweets. Approximately 1500 to 2000 accounts were suspended for seven days.

Those of you who received suspensions should not worry, they are only temporary. We are trying to contact the Twitter dev team to appeal the mass suspensions and we will have them lifted as soon as possible. The suspended accounts would explain the loss of followers – those who lost a drastic amount of followers will see them return within the next seven days.

All affected VIPs will be given a complementary 3 day VIP pass in light of the event. Once again, we apologize on behalf of that silly technician, and we hope to see you again in the future!

Enjoy your week, Brandon"

Just and case here is a picture with the message on their blog:



How they think that simple apology will fix anything. I'm loosing around 70 new follower per day while in "Jail", plus that's not counting the amount of unfollow's I'm already getting right now! Lucky I'm not one of the VIP or paid members, because that will make thing worst... Well, I hope everything goes to normal soon.

I want to apologize for the unwanted automated promotions that they sent through my profile. I should it check the service a little more, I hope the friend that was using it, already opted out to avoid problems.



The Good List Of Tools.

Here are some great tools you can use to manage, and find follower. (Disclaimer: We are not responsible for any claim made by any of the following services, they made the list just because may top sites give a good recommendation.):

Follow and Unfollow

• Flashtweet - Bulk follow/unfollow tool.
  
• Twittangle - Untangling the mess of too many friends.
• Refollow - Refollow helps you discover, manage, and protect your social circle.
• TwitsLikeMe - Find new friends.
• Doesfollow - Find out who follows whom.
• Twitroduce – Connect.
  
• MyCleenr - The best way to clean your contact list.
• TweeterGetter - Get new followers.
• TwitterLamp - The SMART Way To Follow People.
• TweetSum - Follow and unfollow people via drag and drop.
• TwitterForBusyPeople - Friends at a glance.
• Twitter Karma – Find out who is following and unfollowing you.
• TweepMe - Get followers.
• Twitterless - Get updates when someone stops following you.
• Twiping - Contact management software.
• Qwitter - Qwitter e-mails you when someone stops following you.
• TwitterRatio - Follower/friend ratio.
• FriendOrFollow - Who are you following that’s not following you back? Who’s following you that you’re not following back?
• Twitseeker - Who you are looking for by what they are talking about.
• TweepDiff - Find out who you are missing.
• Twollo - Auto-follow.
• Twittermass - Management and optimization services.
• Twitnest - Visualization of your followers and theirs.
• Twitter100 - With Twitter100, you can see your followers at a glance (up to 100).
• Tweepler - To follow or not follow that is the question.
• Who follows whom - The quickest way to see who several users have in common.
• Buzzom - Social profile management.
• Hummingbird - The Pro Tool for Twitter Marketing at $200.
• Twubble - Twubble can help expand your Twitter bubble.
• WhoshouldIfollow - Find new friends.
• Tweepi - A geekier, faster way to manage your profile.
  
• TwitterSnooze - Hit the snooze button on your “verbose” friends.
• iFollowBack - Follow back people.
• Twitterator - Follow a bunch of people in one go.
• Twtrfrnd - Discover your common shared friends.
• Mutuality - Allows you to make bulk operations with your account.
• TweetPenguin - find new followers with similar interests.
• Less Friends – Do the people you follow, follow you?
• TweetEffect - When did you lose or gain followers?
• WhoTheTweet - Fins out what someone is tweeting about.
• Twollow - Auto follow people.
• Tweepular - Manage your followers.
• TwerpScan - Checks the number of followers on your contact list, the number of people they are following, and the ratio between those.
• MyTweeple - Manage your Friends and Followers.
• MyTwitterButler - Automatically follows users based on “keywords”.
• Twitoria - How many friends are you are following?
• ExecTweets - Find and follow top business execs.
• TwitHive - Monitor and Interact with the Twitter Hive Mind.
• Foller.me – Before you follow..
• FollowLists - Create and share lists of your friends.
• FriendMePlease - The easiest way to make new friends.
• UnTweeps - Unfollow tweeps who have not posted tweets recently.
• Sherflock - Find and track your flock.

#followfriday

• #followfriday statistics – Lists the most popular tweeps on #followfriday.
• TopFollowFriday - See who endorses you and who endorses whom.
• NewFollowFriday - Get to know your followers better.
• TweeHits - FollowFriday based hitlist.

Maps and Location

• Twittearth - Live twitts all over the world.
• Twittervision - See where users tweet in realtime.
• mmmeeja - Plot Your Followers On A Map.
• TwitArea - Sharing places.
• TweetMapper - Where your tweets are.
• geoTwitterous - Shows where someone is Twittering from.
• GeoChirp - Google maps mashup.
• Happn.in – Happn.in shows you what people are twittering about in your city.
• geoTwitter - Google Maps and Twitter mashup.
• Tweetmondo - Find users near you.
• TwitterLocal - Find tweets based on location.
• Nearby Tweets – Instantly find Twitterers nearby.
• TwitterMap - Shows tweets on the map.
• TwtMaps - Get a map that shows all your friends locations.
• Tmeet.me – Where do you want to meet?
• Atlas - See tweets from around the world.
• ChirpCity - Local stuff.
• LocalTweeps - Help localize the Twittersphere.
• Stweet - Integrate with Google Maps.
• Geo.ly – Share your maps with short URLs.
• Twuzzer - Find out what’s being twittered in your neck of the woods.
• Twaller - Discover what travelers are tweeting about.
• Tweeple of India - Tweeple of India.
• MyTweetMap - Shows where someone is Twittering from.
• SadakMap - Messages on a map.
• Boarding - Find stranded passengers.

Popularity and Rank

• Toptweet – The world’s top personalities, all in one place.
• Twitrankme - Profile rank.
• DailyRT - The most popular tweets on the web.
• Twitturls - Popular links.
• TwitterScore - How does your profile score.
• Twispot - Hottest tweets in one spot.
• Chirpio - A place to rate & follow users.
• Twinfluence - Influence Analyzer.
• Tweeting too Hard – Where self-important tweets get the recognition they deserve.
• Twtpets - Who has the cutest pet.
• Tweeple Rank – Ranking the top recommended people.
• Twielsen - TV ratings based on social media chatter.
• HereBeforeYou - Were you here before your friends.
• TrazzlerBuzz - Tracking popular places.
  
• Twittypop - Who is the hottest boy or girl?
• Twitemperature - How hot are you.
• Tweeght - Popular thoughts and quotes shared.
• Tweeterate - Rate the tweets you get from your friends.
• Twitrank - Is a list of the top 150 users.
• Twitalyzer - Tracking influence and measuring success.
• Twitterholic - Find out who the top users are.
• Popular Tweets – A compilation of the top 10 tweets.
• TwitterLinkr - Popular links people are tweeting.
• Twittergrader - Measure the power and authority of your profile.
• Top Twitter Friends – Who do you talk to most often.
• Tweettop - Who to follow.
• Tweetrank - Ranking.
• Twigheaded - Find out how big headed someone is.
• MrTweet - Your personal networking assistant.
• TweetoftheYear - Tweet of the Year.

Retweet

• Retweetist - Discovering trends, popular topics and popular people by tracking Retweets across the network.
  
• Retweetit - Retweet Exchange.
• ReTwitd - Retweets.
• TweetMyLink - Tweeted links.
• Retweetrank - Find any user re-tweetrank.
• Plzrt - Please retweet me.
• Please Retweet Me – Please retweet me.
• Retweetradar - Finding trends in the mountains of information ‘retweet’ed.
• ReTweetability Index – The ReTweetability Index measures and ranks users based on the infectious power of their tweets.

Spam

• Tweetblocker - Cleaning up the twitterverse.
• TwitChuck - Taking spam.

Groups

• Tweetizen - Filter tweets and create groups.
• Twitly - You can seperate the people you follow into groups.
• ConnectTweet - ConnectTweet allows the contributors to your central stream.
• GroupTweet - Group message broadcasting.
• TwitBot - Allows multiple people to publish to a single account.
• Crowdstatus - Create your own crowds.
• TweetKnot - Tying people togetherTying people together.
• Social - For events and groups.
• Twitter Groups – Groups.
• Twibes - Groups.
• ThinkClimbing - Find and connect with Climbers.
• Tweetworks - With groups and discussions, TweetWorks helps you get the most out of this social network.
  
• Tweetparty - Group messaging.

This is is just a short part of "The Ultimate List Of Twitter Tools" post, so visit the post to get a complete list of aapplications put together by The Social Media Guide Blog.

To get unlimited advice about "Ethical Twitter and Social Media Marketing" visit the IE Club. I should had listening to my friends at the Internet Entrepreneurs Club.. LOL!...

Recommended Resources.

- Insider Secrets To Marketing Your Business Online.
- Search Marketing Lab.

Hopefully my account will be up and running good tweets and conversations in a short time, till then you can find me on Facebook or just leave me a quick comment on this blog and I will get back to you as soon as possible, thank to all my friend and tweends for your support.

To your success,

Luis Galarza, Internet Marketing Consultant In Massachusetts.

Blerp Me

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India Business Network Growing Strong

India Business Network is growing strong since the launch on June 15, 2009. Over one thousand business executives, entrepreneurs, managers, professionals and non-profits from all over the world have joined the India Business Network, and are interacting, collaborating, networking and doing business online.

"Our mission is clear: Grow India Business Network to over 1 million members strong worldwide. The fact that over 1,000 members already signed up during our soft launch underscores the need for a dedicated business network where professionals connect, collaborate and do business with Indian professionals worldwide. India Business Network is well positioned to provide a dedicated business networking platform for these professionals," said Sanjay Dalal, Founder, India Business Network.

Go to: India Business Network to join, interact, network and do business with professionals worldwide.





The mission of India Business Network is to provide an engaging and dynamic online place for business and social networking with Indian Professionals worldwide. India Business Network is a premier network of professionals who connect, collaborate and do business with Indian professionals worldwide.

India Business Network Website:

http://www.indiabiznet.com/

Business Networking Website:

http://indiabusinessnetwork.ning.com/

India Business Network provides exciting social media features such as collaboration through Groups and Discussion Forums, networking through Events, communication through Blogs, Videos and Notes, and even some fun through Photos, Music, RSS and more.

Members create a business profile, invite their friends and business contacts, search and connect with new friends, and build their professional presence at India Business Network. Further, members comment on each other's wall, write notes about their business and proposals, express their opinion, and make their point across through the lively discussion forums.

India Business Network enables members to upload business videos, introduce new presentations, experience music, share ideas and explore new opportunities with fellow members and businesses.

Invite your friends, colleagues and business contacts to join the India Business Network.

Already over 1,000 executives, consultants, entrepreneurs, professionals and members from various professions and corporations have joined the India Business Network since our launch a few weeks back. Join the India Business Network today, and communicate with these professionals, network, and do business.

India Business Network - Your online social network for doing business with Indian Professionals worldwide. Everyone invited to join.

About India Business Network

India Business Network is founded by Sanjay Dalal, a serial entrepreneur and innovator, with a vision to grow the network to over 1,000,000 active members worldwide.

India Business Network is launched on Ning, an innovative and easy-to-use technology platform for people to join and create new networks for their interests and passions and meet new people around the things they care about most in their life.

Follow India Business Network on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/indiabiznet
Find and Join India Business Network on Facebook at:
http://facebook.com/indiabusiness
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=95213884630

David King Marketing Lessons

By Luis Galarza - Online Business Tips.

What Can You Learn From My Twitter Friend David King? It is Just About Marketing? The Answer Is NO!...

Today I want to introduce you to one of my best online friends and business colleague Mr. David King from DavidBeKing.com a web site and blog dedicated to educate beginners or newbies about different important areas of business and Internet marketing.

David is a very friendly guy and as marketer he love to help others understand how to really build a strong business online or offline. His mind is set to become a successful marketer and putting his "David King" brand in the spot light... Now I don't want you to mistake him as another guru or master! He's someone that has learned everything he knows by taking training courses, applying what he learn, make mistakes, and eventually he learned what works best for his ventures.

He's a true friend, very smart, funny, and really knows the meaning of social media. Plus, he have some great tweets to share, I recommend you to follow him on Twitter on @DavidBeKing you will not regret it!

Here is a little video that he use to welcome his site visitors:



As you can see he is a really cool down to earth guy!




Where are the lessons?

One thing you should about David is that he really knows what he preach, he had tried many different strategies and picked a lot of 'Street Smart" marketing lessons from his successes and failures.

Some of the things you can learn from him and his blog are:

• Business procedures.
• Marketing strategies.
• Money management.
• Leadership.
• Social media marketing.
• Online selling.
• And much more...
  

But...

For me there is more, way more... Just by following his way he promotes his company you pick a lot of valuable lessons that can help Internet marketing beginners and advance entrepreneurs to better expose their company unique selling proposition to a targeted audience.

Here are some of the lessons David also have to share with others:

1. How to build social authority.
2. Web 2.o branding techniques.
3. The marketing power of friendship.
4. Business organization and Focus.
5. And the truth behind good Twitter marketing.
   

Yes, you can get this education just by following him, and keeping track of what he has to say!



Want Proof!

Well, here is a video where he shares some good information about focusing in the best part of your online business:



Hope you enjoy his teaching, as you can see he has a lot of knowledge about the Internet marketing industry that you can learn and apply on your venture and get positive results.

To get unlimited advice "and marketing lessons" visit the IE Club.

Recommended Resources.

- Bebiz: Niche Business Builder.

- Insider Secrets To Marketing Your Business Online.

One more thing you need to know is that Mr. King provides consulting services for new entrepreneurs and small business owners that you can use to have him get a closer look at your company or idea and give you the information you need to start on the right path or grow your current revenue, so hurry to his site at DavidBeKing.com to learn more about establishing a profitable online venture.

To your success,

Luis Galarza, Internet Marketing Consultant In Massachusetts.

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