Because Twitter's not just for twits ;)
By Stephen Bray
It’s half past six on a cold morning in Birmingham U.K. Professor Scott Lucas from the Department of American Studies at Birmingham University is already listening to the sonar like ping of Tweetdeck.
Lucas is, in addition to being a busy department head, and the author of a number of books and articles on U.S. Foreign Policy. He is also the Editor in Chief of ‘EA Worldview’, a blog that is regarded as seriously as any printed political journal.
Send a sweet tweet this Christmas and you could warm more than just a few hearts. A new charity campaign, Twitter Knitter, aims to take the tweets of those that use the hashtag #warmupcamden, and feature them on a wool scarf. These scarves are then given to the cold and needy around Camden, to keep them warmer during a time when most of us are tucked up inside with a roast dinner and a glass of mulled wine.
We’ve got big plans for 2011, and we want YOU to be a part of it!
We’re looking for regular contributors to this blog, after some great guest posts have gone down really well.
Questions?
How many blogs a month will you want from me?
As many as you like, but a minimum of one per month
How many words?
400+ words – not as difficult as it sounds 
What can I write about?
Well if you are a celeb on twitter you give them away to your followers…. just take a look at what @CarolVorders is doing
Yes, Carol Vorderman is giving away her size 6 shoe collection via twitter. Her boots as well. I think I saw a mention of clothes too.
After uploading a pic of the shoes or boots she is giving away, she is picking randomly from her replies that have the hashtag and the @reply. Carol would have quite a lot of loyal fans and they are probably very excited (sorry am a size 5, am struggling to get excited over too big shoes).
I’ve been asked this quite a lot recently, and as I have nothing to hide, I thought I’d blog about it 
Recently we’ve added a lot of posts asking for lists of people – copywriters, PR companies, recruiters, Marketing people – and we plan to add a lot more.
And lots of you have emailed me saying “Why are you doing this?” – some of you even think I have some evil master plan
OK, it’s not a solution that’s going to suit everyone, and it reliies on a download, plus you have to pay, but thanks to Mashable for telling us about ClickableNow from SHIFT Communications and Whitley media, which gives you clickable links in your Twitter backgrounds.
We’ll let them tell you about it:
ClickableNow is a paid service that adds clickable hyperlinks to your Twitter background, and it’ll set you back $19.95 (you can RT this post to win a free code), but otherwise using the service is rather simple. You can login using Sign In with Twitter, pay once (and use forever), drag-and-drop links onto your background image, and preview your page.
I’ve been a fan of Killer Startups for a while – the premise is that they add 15+ startup sites a day and allow users to vote on them. Unfortunately not as many people as could be are voting, and it seems that there are lots of (ahem) Killer Startups missing out on publicity, so if you could take the time to pop over and have a nose around, I’m sure it would be appreciated!
As this is a blog about Twitter, I’m only going to feature recent Twitter related posts on there, but there are others that are well worth a look too!
We’re looking to run another series of interviews with people who are using Twitter for Business purposes. It’s very simple, all you have to do is answer a few questions, in as much detail as you like.
Obviously, the more details you give us, the more likely we are to publish your interview first, but we’re not turning anyone away.
Simply copy and paste the questions below into an email and send to nikki@nikkipilkington.com, then follow Nikki on Twitter to be alerted when your interview is published!
How long have you been on Twitter?
![[365-289] Mr Fry](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3613/3393406996_3e94c78b0f_m.jpg)
photo credit: adotjdotsmith
One of the things I cover in the TweetMentor course, and one of the most overlooked things on Twitter (in my opinion) is the power of the Retweet.
The Retweet is an all round good thing in so many ways – I’m not going to go into them all here, but just point you to Retweetist before giving you an example.
Last night I published a short blog about the fact that Twitter had banned @TweepMe and why I agreed. It was one of many such blogs out there. Don’t tell anyone, but it wasn’t even the best….
I'm happy to use Increase Sociability.