Jasonified.

At 5 years old and I’m still wondering how Twitter is going to make (real) money.

Promoted tweets and trends, analytics, adverts, corporate accounts are all either done, in progress or being talked about.

Oh and Ads? Well the biggest issue thereis making sure they get seen.

You see it’s possible through plug-ins, apps and other sites to post to Twitter from the web, from apps, from Facebook, from Tumblr, from Linked in etc, without ever having to go to Twitter.

Users can post a status update from Facebook and it updates Twitter, from Foursquare and it updates Twitter, from Tumblr and yep, it updates Twitter.

Seth Godwin posts from his blog to Twitter. He doesn’t engage on Twitter itself which means it’s highly likely that with this “fire and forget” setup, he never visits Twitter and would never see an advert, promoted tweet or trending topic.

How many other people do the same thing? 

Twitter have developed a platform and a powerful API enabling developers to create their own user experience and in doing so have created their biggest problem to monetization. 

The recent message to developers to “stop developing Twitter clients”  is only one of a number of significant changes that will have to be made to the platform and API if Twitter is going to regain control and monetize *without* charging users or developers for the privilege.

*That* is their big challenge right now.

(oh BTW, this post should appear on Twitter automatically which means I didn’t have to look at Twitter to do it)

;)

Simple, forget soft-sell, forget giving away tips/info for free, forget EVERYTHING you think you know.

This is the formula for using Twitter straight from it’s creator.

It’s [INSERT DAY]. Start your own business. [INSERT LINK]

Check @jack ‘s timeline and tell me I’m wrong.

In a recent tweet I mentioned how I believed that location based services are going to be very “last year” and the new next big thing will be proxmity/vicinity services. In other words location puts you in a place and proximity puts you in a room, on a floor, outside a shop, next to a device etc.

(btw I’m not saying location itself is dead it’s just the first part of a process to enhance the offering - you need proximity for the detail)

Just now my Boxcar push notifications for twitter (which should work on my iPad and iPhone) were only coming through on the iPad and it got me wondering….

…wouldn’t it be neat to have a proxmity preference setting that said “I’d like to get push notifications but this is my preferred device (or my preferred device is the one I’m using/looking at) and if another device is nearby and has the same push settings, only display them here”

So, I can have my push notifications set on BOTH my iPad and iPhone but my (soon to be invented and make me millions of pennies) proximity system would ONLY notify me on my preferred device so I wouldn’t get multiple “pings”

One step further is to use my soon to be not invented or patented “proximity chip” (which would be fitted to a watch, ring, embedded under the skin etc) to detect *which* device I’m closest to and ONLY show the notification on that one!

Going further what if we ditch the ship and use a device with a camera that is kinect/3D/face aware which could throw it’s two pennies worth in, telling other devices that IT is the closest thing to me because I’m looking straight at it and so popup the message there.

Now that’s a future I can live in.

So Twitter finally rolled our push notifications for their iOS clients yesterday.

After waiting for “digital decades” (real world months) for Twitter/Tweetie to embrace push we have the finally ability to be notified via a pop-up message whenever anyone mentions us or sends us a message.

But wait, what about re-tweets? More importantly what about actually getting push notifications?

Up to now I’ve been using Boxcar to make up for the lack of push notifications on Twitter for iOS and it works perfectly. It’s almost instantaneous and not only covers entry level notifications like mentions and messages but also Re-tweets, new follows AND lets you know when you’re added to a list.

Since last night I’ve been running Boxcar on the iPad and Twitter with Push on the iPhone and the fact is Boxcar wins hands down.

In most cases Twitter either lags behind Boxcar or notifications simply don’t arrive and whilst Boxcar continues to light up with Re-tweets Twitter remains in its dozy slumber.

Add to this the fact that Boxcar can be fully configured with “Quiet times”, sounds and customisable notifications and the obvious question is why did Twitter bother?

(Oh and where’s the delete option in Twitter for iPad?)

Twitter is rolling out it’s brand new “killer” function, Twitter Lists. Essentially it allows you to group the people you follow into multiple lists which you can keep private or share for public consumption. If you chose to share your lists then others can click a single button and follow everyone in that list.

Neat hey?

Maybe but what’s really interesting about lists is that they don’t just work with the people you follow but *anyone* whether you’re following them or not.

This means you now have the ability to create multiple timelines that include people you are interested in whether it’s work, play, family, friends, business, news etc.

This could effectively render your default timeline defunct and you just tune into your various “channels”.

If you chose to make a list public, anyone you “follow” in this way can still see they are “listed” in a particular public list of yours, which is essentially just like being followed.

In Fact with sites like http://listorious.com/ featuring good lists to follow why not just bookmark peoples recommended lists instead of following them?

The only difference I can see with following is the rules that govern how @ replies are viewable to others and the ability to direct message someone.

Other than that it *seems* at first glance that Twitter lists could eventually make the traditional method of following/being followed obsolete and a new number will be chased, that of being “listed”

Thoughts?

As promised I ran my Twiveaway campaign and today I hit the button to generate a Winner and the name that came up was Twitter user @markpick.

Mark, you’re the winner of the competition and a new iPod Nano 8gb will be on it’s way to you as soon as you let me know your delivery details AND your colour choice. I’ll order it and let you know when it’s on it’s way.

I’m giving away a brand new iPod Nano 8gb model (winner chooses the colour) and all you have to to take part is this:-

Step 1: retweet this EXACT message on Twitter. Simply copy and paste the text below and post it to your Twitter account. If you don‘t have a Twitter account, you‘ll need to get one at http://
www.twitter.com

RT @jkneen is giving an 8g iPod Nano to one lucky follower. Follow @jkneen and retweet this msg to take part! http://tinyurl.com/5jfpdd

Step 2: Follow me on Twitter. You can follow me by ensuring you are logged into your Twitter account, visit this link and click FOLLOW.

That‘s it! As soon as you complete both of these steps, you’ll be taking part in the giveaway and will have a chance to win a brand new 8gb Ipod Nano!

Closing date is May 1st 2009. One winner will be selected who meets the criteria and will be able to choose their Nano colour!

Here’s neat trick which allows you to have several contributors posting into a single Twitter account without giving away the main accounts username and password.

I’ve managed to set this up on the BNILondon account at http://twitter.com/bnilondon

Here’s how to do it:-

1. Setup your main account
2. Get the usernames of all Twitter users you wish to post
3. Think of a Hashtag to use, we chose #bnilondon
4. go to Twitter search and setup a search for your hash tag, plus specify each username in the “from user” box e.g. user1 OR user2 etc
5. Check the search results ( you may need to post a test message)
6. Grab the RSS feed from the link on the results page

Now

7. Go to www.twitterfeed.com and create an account
8. Create a new feed, enter your target account username and password
9. Specify the feed URL and turn links OFF
10. Set to 30 minute updates and save

Now all you do is post a tweet from an authorised account (one that was specified in the “from user” part of the search) and iwth the hastag you chose and voila, your posts are placed into the target account.

Tada!

I’ve been reading about certain faux pas when it comes to using Twitter and one was specifically about the use of Auto responders.