Building Mailing Lists, List Building, Social Media, Niche Marketing

By now you know that pretty much everyone in the universe has joined you in the Twitterverse. Yep, even the President, Martha Stewart and Steve’s mom have decided that you were right all along.

But a teensy problem with everyone joining the party is that they are bringing tons of wonderful, exciting, useful, new, curious, strange, odd and oh-dear-god-how-did-that-get-in-here hostess gifts.  And because so many of these gifts are now wrapped up in cute little packages without so much a tag hanging to show what might be inside, you never know whether you are going to get something “cute” or something “oh-dear-god-how-did-that-get-in-here.”

Basically, its getting harder and harder to find the good stuff on twitter–the stuff that’s relevant to you. And because the Mixx purpose has always been to help you find the content that matters to you–whether that’s stories, videos, or photos, we thought “who better than us to tidy up this little mess?”  And so we launch today what we humbly believe to be the most useful product the Twitterverse has ever seen: Tweetmixx!

As you might guess from the name, Tweetmixx blends the best of Twitter and Mixx to give you:

• A better way to search across twitter for content that is of most interest to you.  No need to follow 10,000 people in hopes of finding the best content about the Beatles.  Just enter “Beatles” in as an interest and we’ll find the best content being shared!
• A Shortcut to just the links your friends are sending.  We all have those friends that tweet great links that get lost among their AWESOME weekends and their mommy problems.  Cut out the clutter and get just those links using the YourFriends view.
• Automatic unpacking of all those itty bitty URLs into useful headlines and descriptions.
• An all-in-one Twitter dashboard that replaces having to go to one place to tweet, another to do saved searches, another to see your friends’ links, another to check out hot topics, and yet another to see the most popular content on twitter!  Whew–see how we like to save you time?

In short, Tweetmixx turns Twitter into a content recommendation site, even if you don’t follow anyone.

We could go on and on, extolling the benefits of Tweetmixx, but we think it might be better for you to head over there and give it a try–we’re pretty sure that you are going to love it as much as we do.

As always, we want to hear what you think, so please send your Feedback. If you can’t fit it into 140 characters, that’s ok.  We’ll let you run on–especially if you’re telling us how much you love, love, love it!

So what are you waiting for, go check it out:  www.tweetmixx.com

Posted by Kerry on September 9th, 2009 on MIXX.com

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Best Practices for Freehosts

Google has made some recommendations for “best practices” for sites that allow users to create their own sites. They give the examples of their own Google Sites and Blogger. So in other words, if you run some type of site that allows users to make their own pages, you may want to pay attention.

1. Make sure your users can verify their website in website management suites (like Webmaster Tools).
2. Choose a unique directory or hostname for each user.
3. Set useful and descriptive page titles.
4. Allow the addition of tags to a page.
5. Allow your users to use third-party analytics packages
6. Help your users move around
7. Help search engines find the good content from your users.
 

When Google says, “help your users move around,” they mean let your users access their data. This is a concept that Google has become very big on. As you may have read, Google has started a group called the Data Liberation Front to address data portability, and has created a site dedicated to instructing users on how to move their data to and from the company’s various products. Basically, Google is suggesting you follow suit.

When Google talks about helping search engines find you users’ content, they mean help the crawlers. “Help us find users’ content using XML Sitemaps,” says Greg Grothaus, Staff Software Engineer on Google’s Search Quality Team. “Help us to steer clear of duplicate versions of the same content so we can find more of the good stuff your users are creating by creating only one URL for each piece of content when possible, and by specifying your canonical URLs when not.”

These may not seem like issues that a lot of people would have to worry about, but you may be (or maybe not) surprised at how often start-ups come and go, which have sites that allow users to create content. Perhaps following these guidelines would cater to an increased chance for a successful platform. More information on the guidelines can be found here.

 
About the author:
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003. Twitter: @CCrum237

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Here’s a short video tutorial from Twitter on how to use Twitter and set up a Twitter account in 10 easy steps …

ALSO …
Fun Stuff: friends, favorites, and stats!

There’s more to Twitter than OFF and ON! Use the commands below to send private messages, mark updates as favorites, or even remind someone to update their Twitter page if you’re wondering what they’re doing!

@username + message
directs a twitter at another person, and causes your twitter to save in their “replies” tab.
Example: @meangrape I love that song too!

D username + message
sends a person a private message that goes to their device, and saves in their web archive.
Example: d krissy want to pick a Jamba Juice for me while you’re there?

WHOIS username
retrieves the profile information for any public user on Twitter.
Example: whois jack

GET username
retrieves the latest Twitter update posted by the person.
Example: get goldman

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

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 al3x

STATS
this command returns your number of followers, how many people you’re following, and your bio information.

INVITE phone number
will send an SMS invite to a friend’s mobile phone.
Example: Invite 415 555 1212

For more info on Twitter, or to view Twitter FAQs, please visit Twitter’s help page

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