twitter - News, Features, and Slideshows

Features

• Twitter Tips: How To Search Twitter Smarter

  It's easy to miss little gems of information on Twitter, the social networking service that allows users to exchange short messages. Because we all can't spend hours in front of the service, we miss important messages (or tweets) posted by colleagues, friends and family while we're away. As the list of people you follow on Twitter grows, the problem becomes more acute: hundreds of messages pass by and flow off the page before you've even had a chance to look at them.

• Twitter Tips: How And Why To Use Hashtags (#)

  Here's a look at how to utilize Hashtags to organize information that you contribute and consume on Twitter. As the tweets pile up, the extra time you take to thoughtfully categorize your tweets with a hashtag will help the greater Twitter community (and you individually) make the most of the service.

• Twitter Tips: How to Write Better Tweets

  Twitter's growing popularity has yielded one unusual result: It has exposed the frailty of writing skills in the business world. You can fudge bad writing in a 20-slide presentation, but not in a 140-character tweet. From abbreviation-laden tweets with no discernible value, to tweets that fail to compel followers to click through on a link, examples abound. The process of constructing a good Twitter message takes careful thought, time and analysis

• Twitter Tips: How to Safely Blend the Personal and the Professional

  Twitter holds inherent value for both your personal and business life. As a business person, building a presence on Twitter helps you connect with customers and peers, and perhaps get feedback on your products and services. For your personal life, Twitter can create what social media experts call an "ambient awareness" for the people important to you in your life — while each message might not be hugely significant, taken in total people can piece together you as a person or at least see the things you value.

• Twitter quitters just don't get it

  A Nielsen report this week revealed that Twitter has an uncanny knack for hemorrhaging users. In fact, some 60 percent of new users bail on the service within a month. For those of us who've been tweeting for a couple of years, this isn't exactly a shocker. Many longtime users have gone through that initial period of wondering what, if any, use Twitter might be. And maybe it's better for everyone if those who don't get it refrain from tweeting until they do.

• The Polite Way to Take a Break, Ignore, Unfollow on Twitter

  The more people you follow on Twitter, the more you realize the truth: Sometimes, you want a short break from certain people. Sometimes, you even need to break up. Topping the list of annoyances, there's the too much information (TMI) tweets, followed closely by the criminally self-promotional and the disgustingly self-indulgent. These tweets can trickle into your Twitter stream with great regularity, rendering the service at times useless.<br/>

• Bringing the Twitter-like Experience to the Enterprise

  Learning from the success people have had on Twitter, the short messaging service, a public affairs firm has begun using enterprise microblogging technology from Socialtext. It mirrors the Twitter experience, but for the purposes of internal, enterprise collaboration.

• How and Why to Launch a Business Presence on Twitter

  From an upstart airline to the cable company some people love to hate, organizations big and small have reaped success in improving customer service, receiving R&D tips, and marketing their products on Twitter. Here's expert advice on how and why your business should tap into Twitter.

• Twitter Tips: How to Use Twitter to Job Hunt

  If you're just using LinkedIn to job hunt, you're missing out on the power of Twitter. Here's expert advice on how to tweet your way to new contacts and opportunities.

• Twitter: How to Get Started Guide for Business People

  Don't understand what all the Twitter fuss is about or why you might want to use this social networking tool? You're not alone, but you may be missing out on useful information and professional connections. Check out our quick and easy guide on how and why to get started with Twitter.

• Twitter Etiquette: Five Dos and Don'ts

  Like any social network, the Twitter community has its own set of unwritten guidelines - or etiquette - that dictates good (or bad) behavior on the service. Some people call it Twittequette.

• How 10 Famous Technology Products Got Their Names

  Coming up with a great technology product or service is only half the battle these days. Creating a name for said product that is at once cool but not too cool or exclusionary, marketable to both early adopters and a broader audience, and, of course, isn't already in use and protected by various trademarks and copyright laws is difficult--to say the least.