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Silicon Valley is abuzz over a new mini-blogging service for mobile phones that some predict will be a mass-market hit with the reach of a YouTube or MySpace.

Over the past two weeks, Twitter has attracted the sort of hyperbole the Valley reserves for its next internet darling – though such self-reinforcing adulation also led to dotcom mania.

Jonathan Schwartz, chief executive of Sun Microsystems, singled Twitter out at the end of last week as the latest hit from the post-YouTube generation of “viral� internet applications that have the potential to attract massive online audiences.

Read Mini-blog is the talk of Silicon Valley for the full story.

Technorati Tags: Twitter, Financial Times

I love my Mac, but I also run several PCs and I was hoping there was a windows Twitter client like the fantastic Twitterific. Enter Twitteroo.

Features include:

* Update your Twitter status from your Desktop
* URL shortening via rurl.org
* Twitter notifications
* View your Friends timeline or the Public timeline
* Clickable links from status messages
* Refreshes automatically or manually
* Set refresh time and notification transparency
* Support for international characters in status messages
* Browse to Twitter user page or personal websites
* Customize Twitteroo font size
* Set transparency for main Twitteroo window and notifications
* Optional sound notification when new tweets arrive
* Bite-sized cookies made from real Twitter

One of my favorite features being the support of URl shortening.

So, my Windows friends, rejoice. There is a tool for you too!

via: Talk New Media

Technorati Tags: Twitter, Twitteroo, Twitterific

Great collection of Twitter links: 76 Links That Rock Twitter! What are you doing?

I’ll most certainly be adding them to our links page!

via: The Daily Geek

Technorati Tags: Twitter

Didn’t You Hear asks “Twitter needs rules?”.

Twitter doesn’t need rules. I’ve said it before, Twitter is a tool, use it however you like. Whatever makes sense for you and your friends is how you should use Twitter. Over time I’m sure etiquette guidelines will evolve and people will begin to emulate what the most popular people on Twitter are doing with it.

I have to agree with this article that this isn’t Instant Messaging, but at the same time, It’s IM on steroids. It’s not email, it’s not IRC, it’s not any of those things and yet it’s all of them.

I’ll have more thoughts on this in a longer post coming up. In the mean time though, this article did have some decent tips:

# Remember that your tweets go out to each one of your Twitter friends. Tailor your message to the media, and your friends will thank you.
# Remember to check other’s tweets. Twitter isn’t supposed to be your own personal soapbox, so make sure you are involved in your entire community.
# Twitter is new, and like all new technologies, there is a time when everything is being sorted out and the rules are being established. Try new things and see what works, because it may just change the way you think about communication (or it may not, but you’ll never know until you try).

I’d add one tip to that list: beware - twitter is addictive! In a totally good way, of course.

Technorati Tags: Twitter

Find the default twitter badges to limiting? Then you’ll love the Twitter Wordpress Sidebar Widget, which gives you full control over how it looks and it’s just about as easy to setup.

Technorati Tags: Twitter, Wordpress, Widget

Though she already has a blog, a podcast and a character in the virtual world of Second Life, Kera Richard has recently become obsessed with a new online tool for connecting with friends. For the past three weeks, she has joined the crowds on Twitter.com, a site that invites everyone to answer the question: “What are you doing?”

“I didn’t get it at first,” said the 32-year-old Randolph, N.J., project manager for a financial services company. “How much information do I really need to let the world know about me?”

But soon she was “Twittering” a dozen or more times a day, broadcasting quick, as-they-happen updates to friends who had chosen to link to her through the service. Topics ranged from her lunch (tomato soup and a pretzel) to work annoyances (a high-pitched buzz from a nearby computer). She sent updates from her office and home computers, and used her cellphone to send posts from her car and a bar at happy hour. “It became addicting very quickly,” she said.

Read the whole article: Friends Swap Twitters, and Frustration.

Technorati Tags: Twitter, WSJ, Wall Street Journal

Finally, something even the PC crowd can use: A plugin for Firefox that lets you post to twitter right from your browser. Pretty slick.

via Neurotic Fishbowl.

Technorati Tags: Twitter, Firefox

In the spirit of “digg me” and other social bookmarking tools, someone has made it very easy to add “TwitThis” links to your page so people can quickly generate a tinyurl link and send it to Twitter! Very slick. Check out the TwithThis site to get setup.

I’m installing the Wordpress plugin right now!

Technorati Tags: Twitter, TwitThis

The public beta for Twitterific 2.0 is out and looks like it has some pretty nice new features. Among my favorites: Read and Unread, favorites, spelling!, respond to author, direct messages and a few others. This is by far my favorite Twitter tool, aside from Twitter, of course.

Read the full details at MacMegaSite or snag the download from IconFactory.

Technorati Tags: Twitter, Twitterific, IconFactory

More than a few people have been calling Twitter Microblogging and just as many disagree. I just stumbled upon this, for example:

Let me ask a few questions:

1. Is sending a group AIM to folks microblogging?

2. Is sending a group email microblogging?

3. Is sending a group SMS microblogging?

My guess is that many would say items 1-3 do not fit microblogging. Why not? They are all messaging mediums that allow folks to update people just as quickly as using Twitter.

source: A Billian Miles

I agree and disagree with the idea that Twitter is microblogging. The truth is, it’s whatever you use it for. It’s a tool and no one can tell you how to use a tool, especially a publishing tool. Sure, there might be some expected ways it would be used, but the real tipping point in an online tool or application is when people start doing things with it that it was never intended for. Many would argue that Wordpress is a blog publishing tool, and that’s what Matt and the gang at Automatic designed it as. But over time people started using it as a CMS and now they are adding more and more features to it to support that use.

Twitter is a tool. If you want to use it as group IM/SMS - it works for that. If you want to use it to “microblog”, I’m sure the folks at Obvious would love for you to use it that way. Bottom line, as long as you aren’t violating the terms of service, use it how you like.

Technorati Tags: Twitter, Microblogging