The first thing you will notice is a site redesign. Thanks to Brazilian web developer Rafael Cavalcante site has a great new look and mascot. I have enjoyed working with him in this project and am sure he could help you with any web development you might need, as well.

The second major change is how you login. I will no longer be sending people unique passwords for them to login. Instead they will use Twitter’s Oauth interface. There are many advantages to this- many of which are behind the scenes- but the greatest is that you don’t have to remember yet another password to use FeedTwit. Instead you will login to FeedTwit through your own Twitter account.

One important note about oauth login… You have until August 16th to connect with the new FeedTwit or you will no longer receive any messages. That is the day (also known as the oauth-apocalypse) where Twitter is requiring all programs to connect with their users over oauth. Consider yourself warned.

Some of the other advantages of this new way of account verification will lead to:

• Quicker turn around for your @ replies
• No more duplicated messages (BUT PLEASE READ BELOW)
• Everything is just a little simpler- basically you just need to press the button on the FeedTwit homepage in order to begin

About duplicated messages
Previous users of FeedTwit will have to take one extra step in order to prevent duplicated messages: after you login to FeedTwit you will have to delete the RSS feed associated with your @ replies. Without boring you with the programming details, this is how I used to know if anyone mentioned you on Twitter. If you don’t delete this, you will receive messages by the new way AND by the old way = duplicated messages. I wish I could automatically remove this for you, but there’s no way I can do it without harming people using the service who haven’t had a chance to login.

I have worked hard to keep the rest of the site up and running through this transition. This includes the popular Twitter uptime status widget- that tells you if Twitter is running or not- and the Twitter usage statistics page- which shows you when people are on Twitter. Along with this I have cleaned-up the Twitter cell phone page, which keeps a list of phones people use on Twitter (be sure to add your own, by the way).

I hope you enjoy the newly redesigned FeedTwit site (and hope it works a little better). Tell me what you think in the comments below.

1. Tweet with Keywords. If there is only one thing you do, be sure to use keywords in your Tweet. This way, in the least, your tweet might appear in personalized results at the bottom of search engine requests for that keyword. If someone trusts your opinion enough to follow you, they might take your suggestion when you mention a what they are looking for in a tweet. Now, I am not suggesting you send a tweet with just keywords- please don’t spam! Nor should keywords be unnaturally squeezed into every tweet. Just find something productive to say that happens to include your keywords.
2. Always Include a Link. I’ve experienced the affect a link on Twitter can have on SEO. I’ve seen previously unindexed pages without any links going to them suddenly indexed by Google once they appear on Twitter- eventhough Twitter adds a “nofollow” attribute to a link. Get the Googlebot to your page by Tweeting it. Please remember that indexing and ranking are two different things. A page needs to be indexed in order to rank but a page won’t rank just because it is indexed.
3. Use an SEO-Friendly URL Shortener. The number of URL shorteners is growing in direct proportion to the influence of Twitter. This is because we want to share something, but need to do it within the 140 character limit that makes Twitter so much fun (that is how I think of it- really!). Don’t just pick a URL shortener because it offers the shortest possible link or because it comes with your favorite Twitter app. You need to make sure it throws a “301 Moved Permanently” header code. This code tells the one following the link to the new page that this old link is now in a new location- as opposed to a 302 code that tells them this change is only temporary. This is important for SEO because Google flows page authority through a 301 redirect but not through a 302. Search Engine Land has the definitive list of URL shorteners.
4. Use a Twitter Link Monitoring Service. There are a couple websites out there, twitturly is my favorite, that tracks links shared by a particular Twitter account. Make sure your Twitter account is being tracked by one of these websites. Twitter adds a “nofollow” attribute to links from their website, negating any link benefit from them, but these link monitoring sites often allow link authority to follow through the link. This does more than build links to your website- or whatever website you mention- but it also the content of your tweet becomes the anchor text (clickable words) of the link. This way, if you’ve used your keywords in your tweet, you will have a higher-quality keyword-based link. (Not all Twitter link monitoring services allow you to determine your keywords- Topsy uses the title tag of the webpage)
   

Can you think of any more tweaks to your Twitter account to benefit SEO? Share them with the rest of us, in the comments below.

Although Twitter has been used in previous civil unrest- from the Iranian protests to dissent in Georgia (which, rumors say, lead to Russians attempting to shut down Twitter’s service)- this is Twitters first successful revolution.

It will probably not be the last. As Twitter grows in popularity, especially in non-Western countries, we can expect more. This is because Twitter offers:

• Efficient communication- If you can’t say it in 140 characters, is it worth saying? 140 characters can communicate a lot: just look at the Kyrgyzstan opposition leader’s tweets (translated)
• Mobile communication- You don’t have to be sitting at your computer to receive a tweet: you can get Twitter over your cell phone through your data plan or SMS.
• Nearly instant communication- With all the ways to connect to Twitter, you can receive these messages fairly quickly
• First hand communication- You can get information from people who are there, right now.
• Unfiltered communication- You choose who you follow so you get information from sources you trust.

These are the same things that make Twitter valuable for marketing.

• Efficient communication- People aren’t interested in reading your long explanation on why your product is superior. If you can’t say it in 140 characters, you’ve already lost your customer.
• Mobile communication- Why limit your marketing reach to people who are sitting at a computer? Social media is becoming the new Search Engine: people ask their networks about where they should eat, what movie they should see, or what doctor they recommend.
• Nearly instant communication- Sometimes I just want a quick answer to a question, and social networks can provide that from people I trust.
• First hand communication- Rather than a static web page telling me about a business or product, I can learn about it from someone who has used it themselves.
• Unfiltered communication- Rather than getting information from whatever website Google determines is giving me the right answer to my question, social networks help me get information from people I trust.

This is why if you are marketing anything, you need a presence on a social network like Twitter.

What do you think? Will we see more revolutions or civil unrest organized over Twitter? What does this say about the value of Twitter? Does Twitter have value outside of revolutions?

Leave your comments, below.

As a proud Jayhawk, I was glad to see Twitter pick Kansas to win the entire tournament. In fact, it predicted that all the #1 seeds would make it to the Final Four.

In addition to the Final Four, Twitter also chose these teams to be part of the Elite Eight:

• Ohio State
• Florida
• Washington
• Notre Dame

It also predicted eight upsets in the first round:

• Houston
• Ohio
• Florida State
• Minnesota
• Oakland
• Florida
• Washington
• Missouri

You can fill in the rest by deduction.

How can I quantify these results?
In order to compare teams, to see which would win, I’d need a way to quantify the teams. Last year I used GoogleFight to judge the winners. This basically figures out how many pages have been indexed for a particular term and declares the term with the most pages indexed to be the winner. In quantifying this I couldn’t just use the name of the university- that would favor teams named after states- so I had to lengthen the keyword string by adding “basketball” to the search string (as I did last year). By this method, Washington would win (just like it predicted last year).

Because Google didn’t predict the winner very accurately, I wanted to use Twitter to fill out my brackets this year. How could I quantify Twitter?

At first I though I would use Google site search to search Twitter for mentions of the teams. This involves adding “site:twitter.com” to a Google query string, plus the keyword, to give me the number of times a keyword is mentioned on Twitter. By this method Texas would win the tournament. Not likely!

I ended up using my favorite Twitter linking site, Tweetmeme. This would tell me how many people shared links regarding each team. Like Google valuing links into a site to determine which is the better site, I would use links shared over Twitter to judge the winner of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tourament. The team with the most links, won the game. By this method, Kansas would win. Now that’s a good prediction!

I’ll return here to comment on my results as the tournament unfolds. You can also follow me on Twitter: dizzySEO to keep up with my method.

One of the ways Corey suggested we could stop processing and start working is by managing your inboxes better but putting all communication into one place. Pick one email account and direct everything to that one place.

This is really hard when it comes to social media. Those of us involved in internet marketing are typically participating in many different social networks. Constantly monitoring social networks is hard work to process and can be a big distraction.

Then I thought about how my Twitter app, FeedTwit, could help. Although most people use it to send Twitter mentions as SMS to their cell phones, you could also use it to send your Twitter mentions by email. This way when anyone mentions you on Twitter you will be able to see it in the same place you’ve directed all of your communication. Once it’s in your inbox, you can then decide if there is something you have to do about it (reply, thank someone, answer a question, etc) or just delete it.

There’s more… since FeedTwit can send any RSS to your Twitter account as a direct message, you can use it to help monitor important RSS feeds or even other social media accounts- like your LinkedIn contacts- all in one location: your inbox.

It’s easy to start using FeedTwit:

1. Follow @FeedTwit from your Twitter account
2. In less than an hour you will receive a password.
3. Take that password to http://feedtwit.com/ and login
4. Tell FeedTwit what you want to receive as a direct message to your Twitter account

1. From your Twitter account, tell Twitter you want to get all your direct messages sent to you by email (from Settings > Notices > Direct Text Emails)
2. Follow @FeedTwit with your Twitter account
3. When you get a password by direct message, take it to http://feedtwit.com/ and sign in
4. Tell FeedTwit what you want to receive: your Twitter @ replies (mentions), your favorite RSS feeds as a direct message (which is how FeedTwit is better than Twitterfeed) or even the RSS feed from another social network.
5. Soon you will begin getting your Twitter mentions as emails

Why would you want your Twitter mentions by email?

• Easily monitor what people are saying to or about you without having to visit the Twitter website
• Keep a log of people who mention you on Twitter so you can
  • remember to suggest them on #followfriday
  • thank them for telling people about you

Can you think of any other uses of getting Twitter mentions by email? Leave them in the comments below.

Here’s some other things you can do with FeedTwit besides get your @ replies

• Keep track of your LinkedIn network through your Twitter account
• Keep up with local traffic through your Twitter account
• Follow a blog through your Twitter account (better than TwitterFeed)
• Follow a twitter list through texts/direct messages
• Twitter track a keyword, phrase, or hash tag
• Privately follow people on Twitter using their RSS feed. For instance,
  • follow political figures in an account you use for business
  • follow your competitors without appearing to endorse them.

What are some other things you can do with FeedTwit? If you have any other ideas, leave them in the comments below.

No matter what you call them, when you use Twitter by text messages you run into a big problem when it comes to your mentions- Twitter won’t send you an SMS when someone mentions you!

Sure you could tell Twitter to send you a text every time someone you are following posts an update- but do you really want that many messages?

A better solution is to use a Twitter app like FeedTwit- that can send your Twitter mentions to you by SMS.

FeedTwit is easy to use, and requires no program to install on your cell phone. All you need to do is:

1. Follow FeedTwit from your Twitter account
2. In less than an hour you will receive a direct message with a password.
3. Take that password to http://feedtwit.com/ and login.
4. Tell FeedTwit you want to get your @ replies as text messages
5. Begin receiving your Twitter messages by SMS

• The first of the twitter games is Twivia. Like it sounds, this twitter game requires you to answer trivia questions for points.
• The next of the twitter games is Twitbrain. This twitter game is about how fast you can solve a math problem.
• Tweetbomb is the most vicious of twitter games. Every day this twitter game suggests someone for you to tweet without any message. Eventually they become overwhelmed by empty messages from everyone- and they’ve been successfully twitter bombed.
• BeatMyTweet is one of the twitter games I would have the hardest time doing. This twitter game gives a series of characters that have to be unscrambled into a word or phrase. I hate games like this (because I can never do them).
• WhoseTweet is the most unique of the twitter games. This one sends you 20 tweets made by your friends and asks you to guess which one sent it. The more friends you have, the harder this twitter game becomes.
• The last of the twitter games mentioned in the Mashable article is Tweet140. This game tracks how close you consistently come to the 140 character maximum to each tweet. In my experience, this is a twitter game that will require skill and a deep vocabulary.

These twitter games sound like fun but they are all make me think (okay, maybe not TweetBomb). I spend the entire day thinking through math and word problems- I want juvenile and immature twitter games.

Here’s my suggestion. The other day a twitter friend posted an update that, out of context, sounded really bad. This gave me an idea for my contribution to this list of twitter games.

The object of this twitter game is to get someone to reply to you with something that sounds worse that it’s meant.

Rules for this twitter game:

1. No cusswords or explicit comments (the reply should IMPLY something not just come outright and say it).
2. You can’t submit your own tweets. Someone has to catch you in the act.

The next step in this twitter game is to share the tweet with the rest of the twitter world- by re-tweeting it with the hash, “twit”. Here’s how to re-tweet:

1. Copy the violator’s tweet, including their twitter name.
2. Paste the tweet in your “What are you doing” box. To designate your post as a re-tweet you should start the tweet with the abbreviation “RT”. If you skip this step you will look like you are the twit sending the message to your friend. If they catch you doing this, they can call you out as a twit!
3. At the end of this tweet add, #twit. Any word preceeded with a pound/number sign is called a hash- it is a simple way of cataloging tweets.
4. Press the “Update” button to send this re-tweet.
5. For example:
   • a friend (@myfriend) sends an update: 12 inches long? Mine is much shorter than that!
   • you can call them out by sending another update that reads: RT @myfriend 12 inches long? Mine is much shorter than that! #twit

Now the rest of twitter will know your friend is a twit.

Just be careful to not write any dangerously ambiguous tweets yourself, or your twitter friends will be sure to call you out as well.

Here’s another suggestion to add to the list of twitter games: #ThatsWhatSheSaid.

If you have ever seen an episode of The Office you know how to play this twitter game. All you need is a friend who says something ambiguous that could me misconstrued as something said by a woman about a man. In case you don’t catch my drift, here are a few examples:
[youtube]wLQKsuogUXo[/youtube]
To play this twitter game, once you catch someone saying something you simply press the “reply to” image to the right of their tweet and type #ThatsWhatSheSaid. All your friends will see your tweet and, if they follow the “in reply to…” at the end of your twitter message they will see what your friend said in the first place.

That’s my contribution to twitter games. I hope you have fun (and hope you don’t catch me).

You can use FeedTwit to Twitter track these hash tags, to keep up with what other people are saying.

Of course, if you want to keep up with your friends even when you are not at your computer, you will want to use FeedTwit to get your twitter @replies by text message.

The most useful Twitter SMS commands include:

ON

turns ALL SMS notifications on

OFF

turns ALL SMS notifications off.

STOP or QUIT

stops all SMS messages immediately. CAUTION: when I used this command recently it disconnected the pairing between my cell phone and twitter account. I couldn’t reconnect until I went back to the website. This seems to be a very powerful twitter SMS command.

ON username

turns on SMS notifications for a specific person. For example, ON dizzySEO

OFF username

turns off SMS notifications for a specific person. Using on/off username from SMS only stops notifications to the place the command comes from; you’ll still collect a person’s updates on the web. You don’t have to use ON/OFF username from your phone, you can also set individual notifications from a person’s profile page, or check your following page and manage all phone notification settings there. For example, OFF NC_SEO

FOLLOW username

this command allows you to start receiving notifications for a specific person by SMS. Following someone from a phone for the first time will also cause you to follow them on the web. Example: follow dizzySEO

LEAVE username

this command allows you to stop receiving notifications for a specific person by SMS. Using follow/leave username by SMS is the same as using on/off username. There is no way to stop following a person on the web without visiting their profile and removing them. The off, leave, stop, and quit commands will only disable updates for the device(s) from which they were sent. Example: leave davidkyle

@ username + message

directs a twitter at another person, and causes your twitter to save in their “replies” tab. Example: @dizzySEO your Twitter SMS command post was really helpful http://is.gd/q7NO

D username + message

sends a person a private message that goes to their device, and saves in their web archive. Example: d dizzySEO your Twitter SMS program ROCKS!

WHOIS username

retrieves the profile information for any public user on Twitter. Example: whois dizzySEO

GET username

retrieves the latest Twitter update posted by the person. Example: get dizzySEO

NUDGE username

reminds a friend to update by asking what they’re doing on your behalf. Example: nudge dizzySEO

FAV username

marks a person’s last twitter as a favorite. (hint: reply to any update with FAV to mark it as a favorite if you’re receiving it in real time) Example: fav dizzySEO

STATS

this command returns your number of followers, how many people you’re following, and which words you’re tracking.

I heard about Twitter track commands with twitter but then I realized that they no longer work. @feedtwit is a good work-around for the tracking commands. Give FeedTwit the RSS feed for the phrase or #hashtag you want to follow and it will send you every mention of that phrase by direct message, and consequently SMS. Also note: you could get a ton of SMS messages if you pick a really popular or relevant term.
Track a word on Twitter and get all updates containing your chosen word on your device! Note: you can only track with SMS or IM (you cannot track via web).

track word

starts tracking a word

untrack word

stops tracking a word

untrack all

stops tracking all words

track off

stops tracking all words

tracks or tracking

returns a list of words you’re tracking

One feature I have always thought was missing from the Twitter SMS commands was the ability to get your twitter @replies by SMS. You can get anyone else’s messages by SMS but unless you have turned on Device Updates for someone who is sending you an @reply, you will never know they are trying to reach you through SMS.

That’s one of the features of FeedTwit. If you follow @FeedTwit you can receive your Twitter replies by SMS.

FeedTwit is actually a service that sends the contents of RSS feeds to your Twitter account by direct message. It provides this service for any RSS feed- including the RSS feed of your @replies. Not only does this allow you to receive @replies by SMS, it also directs all your @replies to your direct message folder, so you will never miss one again.

Check out FeedTwit today and you will be able to get Twitter @replies by SMS.