Bots, Auto DM and TwitterFeed, Oh My!

On August 31st, 2009, wrote:

For as simple as twitter is, the complexity of using it is nothing short of astounding. Many people strictly update twitter via the web with nothing more than an account of their daily activities. Some “power users” have people that tweet for them, and some even have bots set up that removes the human aspect altogether. Then there’s the issue of the auto-dm. Many users rely on scripted messages to be sent when someone new follows them. Often impersonal and down right cheesy, the auto-dm makes many of us cringe upon receiving them. An extension of this inhuman activity is the use of TwitterFeed, a service that connects RSS feeds to twitter accounts. Users can pull feeds related to their interests and audience and auto-post them on Twitter. TwitterFeed is great when used to pull in your company’s blog posts or entries from your personal site. The problem is that many users rely on this entirely too much and will – Read the full article

Top 6 Reasons Why You Should Use URL Shortener Bit.ly

On May 12th, 2010, wrote:

Rising along with the popularity of Twitter as well as other instant messaging services with character limits are services for URL shortening. There are hundreds of services on the Web for this, letting people use the smallest space possible for sharing and linking to content. Some of them generate shorter links; some come with bars at the top of the application; some are content to let their links expire. Standing out among all these URL shorteners, however, is Bit.ly, created by John Borthwick of Betaworks. After serving as the default URL shortener for Twitter during the most part of last year, Bit.ly grew to become a web-wide tool. In December, Twitter stopped using Bit.ly, but this breaking of ties hasn’t stopped the URL shortening service from continuing to scale and serving as a useful tool for users, publishers, Internet marketers and eCommerce providers. Still need convincing that Bit.ly is the URL shortener for you? Here are the top 6 reasons – Read the full article