Will ‘buzzing’ replace ‘tweeting’?

A Guest Blog From Colman Carpenter

Last week, Google started rolling out a new feature to Gmail users…Google Buzz. For now, those using Google Apps to manage their domain’s email miss out on Buzz, but Google have promised that they will be enabled in due course. Buzz is Google’s first serious entry into the social networking space, aimed squarely at the likes of Facebook and Twitter. Whilst Google have long been expected to expand into this area, Buzz ended up sneaking in under the radar somewhat, perhaps because Google didn’t want another high-profile damp squib on their hands (remember Wave)? But you can be sure that Google is serious about Buzz, and sees it as a core part of it’s future strategy.

The Java Balloon Project – The Highest Twitter Client In The Room

A guest post from Viorel Spinu, co-founder of Sety (Java custom development company)

I would like to introduce to you a new Twitter related story that happened this Friday in Bucharest, Romania.

Friday, the 18th of September 2009, the first auto-tweet has been sent from a helium balloon during the local WebStock IT NewMedia conference.

The concept

As an example of unusual Twitter application, we have custom programmed an IPhone to automatically tweet a photo of the room every minute. Next, we have attached the IPhone to a helium filled balloon and let it fly during the WebStock conference (a local Bucharest IT conference), having so created “the highest twitter client ever”.

Twitter down? Denial of service attack

As of writing, Twitter has been down for 2 hours – and according to its blog, twitter is defending a denial of service attack.

The hordes have headed over to Facebook to moan about Twitter, and to get their ‘status update fix’ – only to find that facebook is having problems too! Rumour has it that that’s a DoS attack too, but I have no statements to that effect.

It makes you wonder though doesn’t it – what would happen if Facebook and Twitter disappeared completely? Where would those who have built their business purely around one, the other or both be?

Clickable links in twitter backgrounds?

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.

Can Social Media help me find my Fairway Taxi?

Obviously I’m a massive fan of social media, but a late night conversation with someone who’s not quite converted yet led to this post.

In the conversation I was lamenting the fact that for the past 10 years I’ve wanted to own a Fairway taxi. One that looks like this:

taxi Some people dream of Audi A4s, some want Maseratis and Lambourghinis – I want a good old London cab.

7 seats, diesel engine, turns on a sixpence (so easy to park), and just look at those curves!

Many suspended Twitter accounts weren’t backed up

My inbox was full of frantic emails today from people on the Tweetmentor course who had suddenly found that their accounts were suspended.

The Twitter status blog says:

Earlier today, we accidentally suspended a number of accounts.

We regret the human error that led to these mistaken suspensions and we are working to restore the affected accounts—we expect this to be completed in the next several hours.

So hopefully things will be back to normal soon.

But interestingly, out of the emails I received, about 60% were from poeple frantic that they would lose all of their contacts, and have to start from scratch again, as they hadn’t backed up their followers.

7 New Twitter Apps from Killer Startups

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!

Twitter is NOT for sale!

You must have heard the rumours:

“Google is buying Twitter, please retweet”

“No they’re not, Apple is, pls RT”

Well, according to Business Insider, co-founder Biz Stone was on US programme ‘The View’ yesterday and emphatically stated “We are not for sale”.

With the big boys allegedly waiting to pounce, in my mind it can only be a matter of time before they have to monetise Twitter somehow – don’t forget that there are investors waiting for a return on their investment – and I don’t think the Adwords style ads that are showing on profiles at the moment is the final answer.

Launching Twinterviewing – Twinterviews with Tweeters around the world!

I’ve been thinking about it for a while – live Twinterviews with people using Twitter for business, but wasn’t sure how to go about it.

And then it hit me – we’ll do it through a Twitter account – and so Twinterviewing was born.

So how does it work?

Well, once or twice a week, we’ll run a live Twitter interview – by following the Twinterviewer and the Twinterviewee, you’ll be able to follow the thread of the interview, and we’ll be using hashtags so that you can see the whole thing later on. We’ll probably also archive the interviews here on Business on Twitter.

It’s FollowFriday! What’s FollowFriday?

It’s Friday today – on Twitter it’s known as FollowFriday.

Now, if you don’t know where FF came from, feel free to read this – http://mashable.com/2009/03/06/twitter-followfriday/ for the longer version, or below for the shorter version and why I think it’s good

FollowFriday began in January 2009, and it’s a way of recommending people on Twitter to your followers. You recommend a person, and then you say why others should follow them. You could recommend more than one person, and send more than one Tweet about this if you want. The important bit (to my mind) is to tell people WHY they should follow this person.

I'm happy to use Increase Sociability.