Twitter Tips: Monitoring a search

You saw in last post that Twitter’s search feature is a great way to get a feel for what Twitterers are currently saying about some topic. If you have a long term interest in that topic, then you probably want to monitor the search results over time. Rather than rerunning the search periodically, I told you in Chapter 6 about a few services that can do the monitoring for you. 

However, why bother with yet another Twitter tool when you can get the same result using TweetDeck? With TweetDeck you can create a column of tweets based on a Twitter search, and TweetDeck will constantly monitor that search and display the results in the column. Even better, you can create multiple search columns if you need to track multiple search queries. Nice.

Here are the steps required to create a search column in TweetDeck:

1.  Click the Twitter Search button in the toolbar. It’s the one with the magnifying glass icon. TweetDeck prompts you for your search string, as shown in figure 8.5.

2.  Use the text box to type your search query. The dialog box mentions that you can use AND, OR, and quotations marks, but actually any official Twitter search operator works here (see Chapter 6 for the details).

3.  Press Enter or Return.  TweetDeck creates the new column and displays the search results, as shown in figure 8.6. Note that you’ll need to scroll the TweetDeck window to the right to see the new column.

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Twitter Tips: Creating a TweetDeck group

If you have lots of Twitter pals, your All Friends column on TweetDeck can often get quite noisy. That cocktail party-like hubbub is part of the Twitter appeal, but there may be times when you’d prefer something more like a quiet night out with a few friends. 

For example, if you and a few of your friends are working on a project, tweets from those friends will probably be more important to you than the other tweets that come your way. Similarly, if you’re at work you might prefer to concentrate on just what your co-workers have to say.

This kind of thing just isn’t possible with the Twitter Web site, but TweetDeck offers a Group feature that lets you gather a subset of your friends into a group, and TweetDeck then displays just the tweets from those people in a separate column. 

This is a perfect solution because you can still keep an eye on the raucous goings-on in your All Friends column, but the tweets you really want to see are conveniently laid out for you in your new Group column. 

Even better, TweetDeck lets you define multiple groups, so you can keep track of all your different factions.

Here’s how it works:

1.  Click the Group button in the toolbar.  It’s the icon that shows a couple of people. TweetDeck displays the Add a New Group column.

2.  Type a name for the group.

3.  Select the check box beside each user you want to include in the group, as shown in figure 8.7.

4.  Click Save Group.  TweetDeck creates the new column and displays the tweets from just the group members, as shown in figure 8.8.

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Twitter Tips: Getting started with TweetDeck

TweetDeck is an AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) application, which means it can run on multiple operating systems. As I write this, TweetDeck runs on Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Mac OS X, and there’s a separate download for Linux. (Depending on when you read this, there may also be a Windows 7 version available.) Head for the TweetDeck site (www.tweetdeck.com), and click Install Now. Note that the installer first adds the AIR runtime files to your system and then it installs TweetDeck.

When you run the program for the first time, it prompts you for your Twitter username and password. When you sign in, the TweetDeck window appears, as shown in figure 8.1. As you can see, the TweetDeck window is divided into three columns:

A:  All Friends.  This is your friend timeline, and TweetDeck checks for new tweets once a minute.

B:  Replies. This is your timeline of replies sent to you and retweets of your updates. TweetDeck updates this list every 12 minutes.

C:  Direct Messages. This is a list of the direct messages you’ve sent and received, and TweetDeck updates the list every six minutes.

Working with tweets within TweetDeck is straightforward: move your mouse over the avatar of the tweet you want to mess with, and TweetDeck displays four icons:

A: Reply.  Click to send a reply to the tweeter.

B: Retweet.  Click to retweet the update to your followers.

C: Direct Message. Click to send a direct message to the user (assuming the two of you follow each other).

Other Actions. Click to see a menu that contains an impressively long list of commands, as shown in figure 8.2. Most of these commands are self-explanatory, but two are unique to TweetDeck:

l  Add to Group. This adds the user to one of your TweetDeck groups (described a bit later).

l  Search. This runs a Twitter search on the tweeter’s username and displays the results in a newcolumn.When you’re ready to post a tweet yourself, click the Tweet icon (the leftmost icon in the top 

toolbar).

TweetDeck displays a What are you doing? text box, as shown in figure 8.3. However, this isn’t your father’s What are you doing? text box. Although there are buttons galore here, three are supremely useful to your average Twitterholic:

A: Shorten URL.  Use this text box to type or paste a Web address that you want to include in your tweet. Make sure the What are you doing? cursor is where you want the address to appear, use the list to the right of the text box to select a URL shortening service, and then click Shorten.

B: TwitPic. Use this button to share a picture with your followers using the TwitPic service . Click TwitPic, and then choose the picture you want to share. TweetDeck uploads the image to TwitPic and inserts a link to the image in the tweet.

 C:  TweetShrink.  If your tweet text is running long, click this button (it’s the downward pointing arrow to the right of the TwitPic button) to send the text to the TweetShrink service (once again, I cover this in Last Post). TweetShrink replaces certain words with short forms (such as ppl for  people  and twttr for Twitter ) to reduce the overall character count.

So much for the TweetDeck basics. The next few sections take you through four of TweetDeck’s most powerful features: window configuration, tweet filtering, search monitoring, and friend grouping.

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Twitter Tips: Configuring the TweetDeck window

One of TweetDeck’s greatest strengths is its seemingly endless number of window confirmation options. You can add more columns, remove existing columns, move columns left or right, adjust the window size to show more or fewer columns, and even shrink the window down to a single column. Here are the basic techniques to use:

A: Adding a column.  With the exception of the Tweet button, you click the buttons along the top of the TweetDeck window (the ones to the left, that is) to control the columns you see in the TweetDeck window. 

Besides the All Friends, Replies, and Direct Messages columns, which are displayed by default, you have a half dozen other options: Favorites, Group (see the section “Creating a TweetDeck group”), Twitter Search (see the section “Monitoring a search”), TwitScoop (displays hot Twitter topics as determined by the TwitScoop service; see last post), and two services that require accounts — 12seconds and StockTwits.

B:   Removing a column. If you don’t use a particular column, you should remove it to reduce clutter in the TweetDeck window. Click the X in the upper-right corner of the column, and then click the Yes icon when TweetDeck asks you to confirm.

C: Changing a column’s position. You can move a column’s position within the TweetDeck window by clicking the left and right arrow buttons that appear in the toolbar below each column. For example, if you have more columns than can fit within the TweetDeck window, a horizontal scroll bar appears so you can scroll your columns. If you find yourself constantly scrolling to a column you use frequently, consider moving the column to the left so that it’s back onscreen.

D:  Using Single column view. If you have a second monitor, a great idea is to display the TweetDeck on that monitor so you can keep an eye on your columns. If you’re stuck with a single monitor, one alternative is to shrink the TweetDeck window down to a single column, and then move the window to the side of your monitor so that it’s out of the way of your regular work. To make this happen, click the Single column view icon (it’s third from the right in the upper-right corner of the window).

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Twitter Tips: Filtering tweets

If you follow tons of people, then you’re no doubt well aware that the tweets come in fast and furious, and keeping up is a full-time job that threatens to undermine your real full-time job. TweetDeck can help here by letting you filter a timeline to remove tweets that match some criteria, or to only shows tweets that match 

some criteria. 

Your criteria can be one or more of the following:

A: Tweet text.  You specify a word or phrase and TweetDeck looks for matches within the text of each update.

B:  Username.  You specify a word and TweetDeck looks for matches within the tweeter user names.

C:  Source. You specify a word and TweetDeck looks for matches within the source of each tweet.

D:  Timeframe. You specify a number and TweetDeck matches tweets that were posted within that number of hours.

Here are the steps to follow to filter a column:

 1.  Click the Filter the tweets in this column button. This is the second button from the left in the column’s toolbar (unless you’re working with the leftmost column, in which case it’s the leftmost button).TweetDeck 

displays the filter controls.

 2.  Use the left list to choose the filter property you want to use: Tweet Text, User Name, Source, or Time Frame.

3.  Use the second list to choose either Include (+) or Exclude (-).  If you choose Include, TweetDeck only displays those tweets that match your criteria; if you choose Exclude, TweetDeck does not display those 

tweets that match your criteria.

 4.  Use the box to type your criteria text (or number, if you’re creating a TimeFrame filter).If you enter multiple words, TweetDeck treats them as a phrase. TweetDeck filters the column, as shown in figure 8.4, where I’m filtering my All Friends column to show only the posts that include twitter in the text.

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Twitter Tips: Raising Twitter game with TweetDeck

Twittering on the Desktop: Twitter Clients

I’ve mentioned elsewhere in the book that the real essence of Twitter, its secret sauce, if you will, is immediacy: a friend’s update comes in, you read it; a thought surfaces, you tweet it; an interesting tweeter pops up, you follow her; a topic interests you, you search for it.

 If you happen to be hanging out on the Twitter site, then all of these Twitter itches (twitches!) can be scratched without delay (although constantly reloading your friend timeline to see if there’s anything new gets old in a hurry).

The rub here, of course, is that few of us have the staggering amount of leisure time required to constantly monitor the comings and goings of tweets and tweeters on the Twitter site. We have memos to write, spreadsheets to build, empires (however small) to rule. We have, in short, day jobs 

that require us to focus on local tasks.

Fortunately, that doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice the real-time Twitter experience. In fact, if anything it’s an opportunity to enhance Twitter immediacy because you can install on your local PC a Twitter client application that constantly shows you the latest tweets from your friends, and enables you to send updates, replies, and direct messages, follow people, search Twitter, and more, all from the comfy and familiar confines of your trusty computer.

Unfortunately, Twitter desktop clients are thin on the ground. Or, I should say, good Twitter desktop clients are thin on the ground. There are quite a few programs out there, but most of them are fairly pathetic, and some of those even charge you for the privilege! To my mind, there are only two really good Twitter clients for desktop use — TweetDeck and twhirl — and I cover them in the next couple of sections.

Raising your Twitter game with TweetDeck According to Twitter statistics site TwitStat (http://twitstat.com/), as I write this the most popular way that people interface with Twitter is via the Twitter site, although the percentage of users recently fell below 30 percent, and is dropping slowly but surely. That means that more than 70 percent of tweeters use some sort of client, and of those, by far the most popular is TweetDeck, with more than twice the number of users as the next most popular client.

That popularity isn’t surprising because TweetDeck is loaded with features, and it wraps those features in an easy-to-use, attractive interface. TweetDeck isn’t a Twitter client, per se, but more of a social media client because it can also integrate with other services, such as Facebook (currently being tested) and 12seconds. 

The focus here is on Twitter, of course, so I’ll just take you through TweetDeck’s Twitter-related features.

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Twitter Tips: Adding a Twitter Flash widget to Site

If you don’t have a Facebook or MySpace account, or a Blogger or Type Pad blog, you can still give your site visitors the gift of your tweets. Twitter actually gives you a choice of not one, not two, but 

three widgets that you can add:

A: Interactive Flash widget.  This Flash-based widget shows your username, avatar, and the number of people who follow you. It contains a scroll able list of your last few tweets, and also enables visitors to log in to their Twitter accounts and then interact with the widget by following you, replying to a tweet, or marking a tweet as a favorite. Tweet links also work, including @username links to Twitter profiles.

  

B: Display-only Flash widget.  This simpler Flash-based widget displays a shorter list of your recent tweets along with a link to your Twitter profile page. Your site visitors can’t interact with this widget.

  

C: HTML widget. This HTML-based widget shows your most recent tweets (the default is 5, but you can customize that) as text, as well as a follow me link to your Twitter profile. Tweet links (regular links and @username links) work, so your site readers can surf to the sites you recommend in your updates.

Which widget should you choose? Personally, I love the interactive Flash widget because it’s geared toward people with Twitter accounts, so I think it’s more likely to help you gain followers. If you’re worried about many of your site visitors not having the Flash player installed, then the HTML widget is the way to go.

Adding Twitter’s Flash widget to your site To add one of the Flash widgets to your site, you first need to copy the widget code. Here’s how it’s done:

1.  Sign in to your Twitter account.

2.  Surf to http://twitter.com/badges. The Get a Widget for Your Site page appears.

3.  Click Other.

4.  Click Continue.  The Which type of widget would you like? page appears.

5.  Select the Flash Widget option, and then click Continue.  The Which Flash Widget page appears.

6.  Select the widget you want to install, and then click Continue. You see either the Set up your Twitter widget page (if you selected the interactive widget) or the Customize Your Widget page (if you selected 

the display-only widget).

7.  Customize your widget as follows:

A: Interactive widget.  Use the Select a style list to choose a predefined design for the widget, and use the Widget size list to choose a width (narrow, wide, or full).

B: Display-only widget. Click Badge Color, and then click the color you prefer.

8.  Copy the code:

A:   Interactive widget.  Click the Copy link.

B:   Display-only widget. Click Copy to Clipboard.If your Web host provides you with an online editor, use it to insert your widget code. How you do this varies depending on the host, but here are the generic steps: Open the page in the editor, place the cursor where you want the widget to appear, and then press Ctrl+V (or  Ô+V on your Mac).

If you edit your pages locally, open the page or file in your HTML editor, place the cursor where you want the widget to appear, and then press Ctrl+V (or  Ô+V on a Mac). Save your work, and then upload the revised file to your Web host.

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Twitter Tips: Adding Twitter HTML widget to website

If you opted to add the HTML widget to your site, here are the steps to follow:

 1.  Sign in to your Twitter account.

 2.  Surf to http://twitter.com/badges. The Get a Widget for Your Site page appears.

3.  Click Other.

4.  Click Continue.  The Which type of widget would you like? page appears.

5.  Select the HTML Widget option, and then click Continue.  The Customize and Get the Code page appears.

6.  Use the Number of updates list to select the size of the tweet list.

7.  Use the Title text box to change the title if you don’t like the default “Twitter Updates” title. If you don’t want a title at all, select the No Title check box.

8.  Highlight the code in the text box and then press Ctrl+C (or, on your Mac, Ô+C) to copy it.If your Web host has an online editor, use it to insert your widget code. How you do this depends on the host, but here’s the basic idea: 

Open the page in the editor, place the cursor where you want the widget to appear, and then press Ctrl+V (or Ô+V on your Mac).

If you craft your site locally, open the page or file in your HTML editor, place the cursor where you want the widget to appear, and then press Ctrl+V (or  Ô+V on a Mac). Save your work and then upload the file to 

your Web host.

If you want to customize the Twitter widget code, there’s not a lot you can do, but you’re not without options. First, here’s the default code (prettied up a little to make it easier to read):

Here are a few customization ideas to consider:

To change the title, edit the text between the <h2> and </h2> tags on the following line:

<h2 class=”sidebar-title”>Twitter Updates</h2>

To format the title, insert a style attribute in the <h2> tag and add one or more text formatting properties. For example, the following code displays the title with blue, 20-point text:

<h2 class=”sidebar-title” style=”color:blue; font-size: 20pt”>Twitter Updates</h2>

 To change the text for the link to your Twitter profile, edit the following line:

"follow me on Twitter"

To adjust the number of tweets displayed, edit the count value in the second <script> tag.

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Twitter Tips: Inserting the Twitter Flash Widget on Your MySpace Page

If you have a MySpace account, you can let your MySpace friends know that you have a secret Twitter identity. Twitter offers a Flash-based widget that displays your recent Twitter updates. Actually, there are two widgets to choose from (see figure 7.7 a bit later in this chapter):

1:  Interactive widget.  This widget shows your username, avatar, and the number of people who follow you. It contains a scrollable list of your last few tweets and also enables MySpacers to log in to their Twitter accounts and then interact with the widget by following you, replying to a tweet, or marking a tweet as a favorite. Tweet links also work, including @username links to Twitter profiles. This interaction is a great feature that will hopefully get lots of MySpace users to follow you.

2: Display-only widget. This simple widget displays a shorter list of your recent tweets along with a link to your Twitter profile page. MySpace users can’t interact with this widget, so it’s less useful as a marketing tool for your Twitter account.First, you need to get the widget code. Here are the steps to follow:

 1.  Sign in to your Twitter account.

 2.  Navigate to http://twitter.com/badges. You see the Get a Widget for Your Site page.

 3.  Click the MySpace logo.

 4.  Click Continue.  The Which Flash Widget page appears, as shown in figure 7.7.

5.  Select the widget you want to install, and then click Continue. You see either the Set up your Twitter widget page (if you selected the interactive widget; see figure 7.8) or the Customize Your Widget page (if you selected the display-only widget).

 6.  Customize your widget as follows:l  Interactive widget.  Use the Select a style list to choose a predefined design for the widget, and use the Widget size list to choose a width (narrow, wide, or full).l  Display-only widget. Click Badge Color and then click the color you prefer.

7.  Copy the code:

A:  Interactive widget.  Click the Copy link.

B:   Display-only widget. Click Copy to Clipboard.

With your code copied and ready for its MySpace debut, follow these steps to edit your MySpace profile:

1.  Log in to your MySpace account.

2.  Click Edit Profile. The Edit Profile page appears.

3.  Click inside the section where you want the widget to appear. For example, you might want to use the About Me section or the General section.

4.  Press Ctrl+V ( Ô+V on your Mac) to paste the code. Figure 7.9 shows some code pasted into the About Me box.

5.  Click Save Changes.  MySpace displays a captcha for security.

6.  Type the letters you see in the image, and then click Save Changes.  MySpace adds the widget to your profile, as shown in figure 7.10.

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Twitter Tips: Displaying Your Twitter Updates on Your Blogger Site

If you’ve got a Blogger.com blog on the side, you might want to spice it up by displaying your latest tweets. You can do that by adding a Twitter widget to your blog sidebar. This widget shows your most recent tweets (the default is 5, but you can easily customize that), as well as a follow me link to your Twitter profile. Tweet links (regular links and @username links) work, too, so your blog readers can check out the sites you include in your updates.

Here are the steps to follow to add a Twitter widget to your blog:

1.  Sign in to your Twitter account.

2.  Point your Web browser at http://twitter.com/badges.  The Get a Widget for Your Site page appears.

3.  Click the Blogger logo.

 4.  Click Continue.  The Add Twitter to your Blogger blog page appears, as shown in figure 7.11. The right side of the window shows a preview of the widget.

5.  Use the Number of updates list to select the size of the tweet list.

6.  Use the Title text box to change the title if you don’t like the default 

“Twitter Updates” title. If you don’t want a title at all, select the No Title check box.

7.  Click Add to Blogger. If you’re signed in to your Blogger account, the Add Page Element page appears, so skip to step 9; if you’re not signed in, the Blogger: Sign In page appears.

8.  Type your Google account e-mail address and password, and then click Sign in.  The Add Page Element page appears.

9.  Use the Select a blog list to choose the blog you want to use, if you have more than one.

10.  Once again you get a chance to edit the title by modifying the Title text.

11.  If you want to adjust the widget code, click Edit Content to display the code, as shown in figure 7.12. I talk about this code a bit later in this chapter and give you a few suggestions for customizing it.

12.  Click Add Widget.  Blogger adds the Twitter widget to the Layout tab.

13.  Click Save.  Blogger saves the changes to your blog.

You can now click View Blog to see your blog with its shiny, new Twitter widget (figure 7.13 shows an example).

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Twitter Tips: Including Your Tweets on Your TypePad Blog

If you’re a TypePad customer, you can let your blog visitors know about your Twitter shenanigans by adding a Twitter widget to your blog sidebar. Best of all, Twitter offers a widget that’s not only configured for TypePad, but it will also add the widget for you automatically. 

Adding the Twitter widget automatically

Here are the steps to follow to add a Twitter widget to your TypePad blog:

1.  Sign in to your Twitter account.

2.  Send your Web browser to http://twitter.com/badges to open the Get a Widget for Your Site page.

3.  Click the TypePad logo.

4.  Click Continue.  The Add Twitter to your TypePad weblog page appears, as shown in figure 7.14, and you see a preview of the widget on the right side of the page.

5.  Use the Number of updates list to select the size of the tweet list.

6.  Use the Title text box to change the title to something other than the default (“Twitter Updates”).  If you’d prefer to go without a title, select the No Title check box.

7.  Click Install Widget on TypePad. If you’re signed in to your Type Pad account, the Add a Sidebar Widget page appears, so skip to step 9; if you’re not signed in, the Type Pad login page appears.

8.  Type your TypePad account e-mail address (or username) and password, and then click Sign In.  The Add a Sidebar Widget page appears.

9.  In the Configure section, select the check box beside each blog where you want the widget to appear.

10.  Edit the title, if you feel like it.

11.  Click Add Widget.  TypePad prompts you to change where the widget appears in your sidebar. By default, the widget appears at the bottom of the sidebar, so you might want to move it higher.

12.  If you want to configure where the widget appears, click Change Content Ordering, click and drag the Twitter widget to the new position, and then click Save Changes.

You can now click View weblog to see your blog with its brand-new Twitter widget (figure 7.15 shows an example).

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Twitter Tips: Adding the Twitter widget by hand

If your TypePad blog uses an advanced template, Twitter won’t be able to update your blog automatically. Not to worry, though, you can still do it by hand. Here’s how:

1.  Sign in to your Twitter account.

2.  Go to http://twitter.com/badges to open the Get a Widget for Your Site page.

3.  Click the TypePad logo.

4.  Click Continue to open the Add Twitter to your TypePad weblog page.

5.  Use the Number of updates list to select the size of the tweet list.

6.  Use the Title text box to change the title to something other than the default (“Twitter Updates”).  If you prefer to go without a title, select the No Title check box.

7.  Click the View the code link. Twitter displays the widget code in a text box.

8.  Highlight the code and press Ctrl+C (or Ô+C on a Mac) to copy it.

9.  Log in to your TypePad account.

10.  Click the blog you want to use.

11.  Click the Design tab. TypePad displays a list of the advanced templates your blog uses.

12.  Click the Sidebar template.  The Edit Template: Sidebar page appears.

13.  Position the cursor where you want the widget to appear in the sidebar.

14.  Press Ctrl+V (or, on your Mac, Ô+V) to paste the widget code.  Figure 7.16 shows the code pasted at the top of the sidebar template.

For some ideas on customizing this code, see the section “Adding Twitter’s HTML widget to your site” later in this chapter.

 15.  Click Save.  TypePad saves the template and now shows your tweets to your blog visitors.

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Twitter Tips: Adding the Twitter Application to Facebook Profile

On the surface, Facebook, while ostensibly a member of the same social networking club as Twitter, is a social horse of a different color. You can post photos and videos that people can comment on; you can write on a friend’s wall; you can join groups; and you’re free to encrust your profile with as many applications as you feel like configuring. However, although many Facebook users take advantage of all these social knickknacks, the truth is that all most Facebookers do is update their status every now and then.

As a nod to this reality, Facebook recently redesigned the user home page to display a “News Feed” of posts from friends and, most tellingly, a “What’s on your mind?” text box at the top that you use to update your status, share information, or crack wise. Wait: a “What’s on your mind?” text box? Remind you of anything? Of course! It’s Twitter, Facebook-style.

This leads to a very obvious question: If you’re already using Twitter’s “What are you doing?” box to update your status, share information, or wisecrack, do you have to then repeat each tweet in Facebook’s “What’s on your mind?” box? You could, I suppose, post different updates in Facebook, but who has the time or energy to maintain two feeds? For that matter, who has the time or energy to post the same updates on two different sites.

Fortunately, you don’t have to. The kindly coders at Twitter have come up with a Twitter application that you can add to your Facebook profile. This application includes an option to update your Facebook status when you post to Twitter, thus killing two social network birds with a single tweet stone (or something).

You can add the Twitter application directly via your Facebook account (click Applications, click Find More, and then run an application search for Twitter), or indirectly via Twitter. Here are the steps for the indirect method.

 1.  Sign in to your Twitter account.

 2.  Direct your Web browser to http://twitter.com/badges. The Get a Widget for Your Site page appears.

 3.  Click the Facebook logo.

 4.  Click Continue.  The Twitter for Facebook page appears, as shown in figure 7.5

5.  Click Install Twitter in Facebook. If you’re not already logged in to your Facebook account, Facebook prompts you to log in (or sign up, if you don’t have an account). If you’re already logged in to Facebook, the 

Allow Access page appears, so skip to step 7.

6.  Type your Facebook account’s e-mail address and password, and then click Login. Facebook’s Allow Access page appears.

 7.  Click Allow. Facebook asks you to log in to your Twitter account.

 8.  Type your Twitter username and password, and then click Log in.

You end up at the Twitter on Facebook page, shown in figure 7.6. (To get to this page in the future, click Applications, click Edit, and then click Twitter.) The Twitter application shows your friend timeline, as well as a What are you doing? text box, which you can use to post tweets from within Facebook. When you want to return to your real Twitter life, click one of the following tabs: Twitter Home, Profile, or Settings.

If you want your tweets to also get posted as your Facebook status updates, click the Allow Twitter to Update Your Facebook Status. When the Twitter application asks you to confirm, click Allow Status Updates.

"Twitter Tips: Adding the Twitter Application to Facebook Profile"

Reference : wiley.com 

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Twitter tips: Adding a “Tweet This” link to Web site

A great way to get the word out about your Web site or some content on your site is to get people to tweet about it. The problem is that it requires quite a few steps to construct a tweet about a site or page. Here are the general procedures:

 1.  Navigate to the page and copy the page address.

 2.  Switch to Twitter and paste the address in the update text box.

 3.  Return to the page and copy the page title.

 4.  Head back to Twitter and paste the title in the update text box.

 5.  Add your own text and then send the tweet.

Whew! However, you can do your would-be tweeters a favor by helping them to condense steps 1 to 4 into a single click of a link, which ought to make them more willing to tweet about your site.I’m talking here about creating a “Tweet This” link (or perhaps “Tweet This Site” or “Tweet This Post” or whatever fits your situation), which you place strategically on your pages (for example, at the end of a blog post or article).

If you use an online editor provided by your Web host, place the cursor where you want the link to appear and add the link text (such as “Tweet This”). Select the text, click the editor’s link tool, and then type the following general address:

http://twitter.com/home?status=Title (URL )”

Here, replace  Title  with the title of the page, post, article or whatever, and replace  URL with the address of the item. Here’s an example:

http://twitter.com/home?status=Word Spy (http://wordspy.com)”

If you need to edit HTML to add the link, open the page or file in your HTML editor, place the cursor where you want the link to appear, and then type the link using the following HTML code:

<a href=”http://twitter.com/home?status=Title (URL )”>

Tweet This

</a>

Again, replace Title  with the item title, and replace URL with the item address. Here’s an example:

<a href=”http://twitter.com/home?status=Word Spy (http://wordspy.com)”>Tweet about Word Spy

</a>

Figure 7.3 shows how this code creates a Tweet about the Word Spy link on my site. If a tweeter clicks that link, the browser switches to Twitter, asks the user to sign in, if he isn’t already, and then displays the specified text in the What are you doing? box, as shown in figure 7.4. Now all the tweeter has to do is add his or her own text and fire off the update.

" Adding a “Tweet This” link to Web site "

Reference : wiley.com 

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Twitter tips: Displaying a badge that shows total followers

If you have a successful Twitter account that’s amassed a sizable following, you might feel like bragging about it. I don’t mean that you should cover the top of your page with a massive banner that shouts out your total follower ship. Please don’t do that. I’m talking here about something a lot more subtle: a Twitter badge that not only points to your Twitter home page, but also includes a regularly updated count of your followers.

The code wizards at TwitterCounter (whom you meet again in Chapter 9) offer just such a badge, and adding it to your Web site is a relatively straightforward matter of copying and pasting some code. First, use your Web browser to navigate to the following address, where your name is your Twitter username:

"http://twittercounter.com/pages/buttons/yourname"

TwitterCounter displays a page that includes four button styles, as shown in figure 7.2.

Below each button style you see a text box that includes some HTML code. Here’s an example:

<script type=”text/javascript” language=”javascript” 

src=”http://twittercounter.com/embed/?username=wordspy”>

</script>

This code points to a script that resides on the TwitterCounter site, and that script contains the necessary instructions for contacting Twitter and grabbing your current follower count. This all happens behind the scenes, and fortunately you don’t have to give any of it a second thought (or even a first thought, for that matter).

After you decide which style you prefer, click inside the text box that appears below that style. Your browser automatically selects all the text, so press Ctrl+C (or Ô+C on a Mac) to copy it. Now open your online or local HTML editor, place the cursor where you want the badge to appear, and then press Ctrl+V (or  Ô+V on your Mac) to paste the code. If you’re working on a local copy of your page, be sure to upload the revised file to your Web site.

" Twitter tips: Displaying a badge that shows  total followers "

Reference : wiley.com 

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