The Unofficial URL Shortener Etiquette

Since I set up my own URL shortener (bada.ms) and one for my company (prc.ms), I’ve been thinking a lot about what the proper use of short URLs is. When is it OK to use your own short URLs and when isn’t it?

There’s no official rulebook on how and when to use short URLs, so I thought I’d compile an unofficial short URL etiquette guide. Below are some basic rules that I think we can all agree on, and I welcome your own thoughts and ideas in the comments: … Continue Reading

@State_ofsearch is now @Stateofsearch: How To Get That Twitter Account You Always Wanted

Ever since the start of the website about two years ago we have had one thing which was a bit annoying: we didn’t ‘have’ the @stateofsearch Twitter account. That account was taken by an Italian artist who lived in Dublin. We tried contacting her in different ways to try and take the Twitter account of her hands. After all, she had not used the Twitter account since she claimed it in 2009. There was only one tweet on it. We never got in touch with her and were therefor “forced” to use the Twitter account @state_ofsearch, so with the underscore.

We have ‘lived’ like that for two years. Until today. As of today we now own the Twitter account @stateofsearch. All followers of @state_ofsearch have been ‘moved’ to @stateofsearch, so if you were following us already: don’t worry, you will still see the same updates, you only have to keep an eye on the @replies you do towards us, but we’ll keep monitoring that, also because we also own @state_ofsearch. And if you are not following us: what? Do it right now!

The process of getting the Twitter account seems long, in fact it turned out to be quite easy. Within 10 days everything was fixed. Let me explain how I got the account, without actually getting in touch with the account owner. … Continue Reading

The Year 2011 Seen Through Twitter

There are many kind of reviews. This video by Jeremiah Warren is one which I found different and nice. It is 2011 seen through Twitter.

Automating Twitter Content by Ralph Tegtmeier aka @fantomaster

We are closing our very successful Integration series with a bang. The last guest post is written by no other than Ralph Tegtmeier. He is more know as “Fantomaster” in the industry and not just one of the biggest expert when it comes to automation, also an allround nice guy who I consider to be a good friend in the industry. Ralph writes, what else, about automating Twitter.

Here’s a quick bare bones breakdown on how to automate content generation and distribution for Twitter. Yes, there are plenty of other viable solutions and approaches, tools and techniques. However, the purpose of this article is merely to demonstrate how easy it can actually be to run powerful Twitter campaigns in as efficient a manner as possible without having to pay through the nose. There’s no ambition to list and critique every option under the sun here. So if your favorite service or app isn’t mentioned, that’s not to imply it isn’t any good or something – go ahead and use whatever you’re comfortable with.

Also, please note that this is about specific, Twitter targeted content only. Hence, I’m not addressing the various tools and services that enable you to auto- or crosspost e.g. your blog feed, your YouTube favorites or your Facebook wall to Twitter. Obviously, this form of content recycling can easily be automated via a slew of great options, but that’s not our topic here. Also, if you’re looking for yet another intro on how to ramp up the number of your Twitter followers by spamming them on auto pilot with purportedly “relevant”, keyword driven promo messages, please check elsewhere. … Continue Reading

Twitter Moves a Bit Towards Facebook

I always tell my students that one of the main differences between Twitter and Facebook is that Twitter is much more text focussed (the 140 characters), where Facebook is much more visual. Next to that Twitter is much more “newsy” and the updates are less permanent.

I can stop saying that now, if Twitter gets people to use the service the way they want to. Their redesign is very much focussed on sharing your status and less on news so it seems if you take a look at the introduction video they released. Besides that, I hardly use the web-version of Twitter, do you? Let us know what your thoughts are with the new Twitter design.

… Continue Reading

Tool: Downloading Your Tweets with TweetDownload

It is about time again we highlighted a tool on State of Search. Today we will be looking at a brand new one: TweetDownload. Have you ever had the urge to look back into a twitter conversation and then noted that it wasn’t that easy to do? For starters you have to “read backwards” on Twitter to understand the conversation. And on top of that Twitter only goes back four days.

Things might just get better soon with the launch of “Tweet Download”, a third-party service which lets you back up your Twitter account including tweets, DMs, followers, friends, favorites and the entire conversation. … Continue Reading

How to Get the Most Retweets – Scientificly Proven (infographic)

There is a nice button next to each post on State of Search. It counts the number of retweets. And off course we want it as high as it can possibly get, so that as many people as possible can see our content.

But how to get those retweets? It is actually, not that difficult. This infographic shows you five scientificly proven ways to get as much retweets as possible. Oh, and while you are here, can you please retweet? … Continue Reading

How Sentiment Analysis via Twitter can help you Beat the Market

How much power can be gained from 140 characters you wonder? Well in the case of the Derwent Capital Hedge Fund market an awful lot. In May this year Derwent Capital Hedge Fund started trading using algorithms and a trading model that follow comments posted on Twitter.

Paul Hawtin who is the hedge fund manager of Derwent stated that “For years investors have widely accepted that financial markets are driven by fear and greed but we’ve never before had the technology or data to be able to quantify human emotions.” Now we do. This newly developed algorithm allows is based on a research paper from the University of Manchester and Indian University which concluded that there was a strong correlation between the mood on Twitter and the rise/fall of stock and commodity prices in the FTSE 100 and the Dow Jones.  There are now 175 million users on Twitter producing around 95 million posts per day, a pot of gold for data analysts and mathematicians who have already started to find new ways to analyse rapidly growing source of real time data. … Continue Reading

Remember Twitter? It’s Still Growing! (Infographic)

Remember Twitter? It’s that service we used a lot before Google+ came around. No, seriously, who had heard of Twitter before 2006? Almost nobody, because it was just starting, they didn’t even call it Twitter until 9 months after the first idea. 2007? A few more users. 2008 really was the first ‘bigger’ year for Twitter, but look now, 2011: over 200 million users and growing. Who would have thought. An overview. … Continue Reading