Twitter has partnered with Telstra to launch Twitter SMS in Australia. “As always, it is free to receive notifications and standard text messaging rates apply to sending,” says Twitter’s Kevin Thau. “It’s the same pricing as sending and receiving text messages from friends.” To use the feature, users can simply send “START” to 0198089488. This page shows all of the official Twitter Text Commands. Twitter recommends Aussies follow the following accounts: @ australian (News from The Australian newspaper) @ delta_goodrem (Musician) @ kyleandjackieo (Australia’s #1 radio show) @ DanniiMinogue (Team Minogue judge for The X Factor) @ KevinRuddPM (Prime Minister) To follow via SMS, just send “FOLLOW” and the username. Twitter says more countries and more carriers will be coming soon. Aside from Australia, Twitter already has such support for the US, Canada, UK, India, Indonesia, Ireland, and New Zealand. Have You Read This?
Earlier, we looked at Twitter’s top trending topics of 2009 . They broke it down into several top ten lists based on various categories. Yfrog , a site that hosts images and videos for people to share on Twitter, has shared its top ten image searches for 2009. In other words, this is a reflection of what people are looking for images of on Twitter. Granted, Yfrog is not the only service that people use to share pictures on Twitter. TwitPic is an obvious one. Still, Yfrog is a reasonably popular one, and it would be hard to believe if TwitPic’s list was too different. Here’s Yfrog’s Top 10 of 2009 1. New Moon / Twilight 2. Jonas Brothers 3. Tiger Woods 4. Michael Jackson 5. Halloween / costume 6. iPhone 7. Adam Lambert 8. Kanye West / RIP Kanye West 9. Iran election 10. Miley Cyrus “In 2009 posting pictures and videos to sites like Facebook and Twitter became standard practice for the tech savvy,” a YFrog representative tells WebProNews. “Instant media sharing defined not only a new form of citizen journalism, but revolutionized how pop culture, politics and current events are captured and shared globally.” This is only one of the many top ten of 2009 lists we have covered, and don’t be surprised if there are more. Check out some of the other 2009 lists in the related articles and get ready for a new year. Related Articles: > What the Most People Watched on YouTube in 2009 > The Most Searched For Terms of 2009 > Death, Disease, Money, and Twitter on Bing > The Definitions That People Didn’t Know in 2009 > What People Talked About on Twitter Most in 2009
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The Things People Looked for Pictures of on Twitter in 2009
If You don’t think Twitter is useful for business now, new features may change your mind. Twitter announced that it has begun limited beta testing of a new feature aimed at businesses, called “Contributors.” The feature allows businesses to have more control over who is posting for their company Twitter account, and to make that information visible to users. Would you find such a feature useful? Comment here . “The feature appends the contributor’s username to the tweet byline, making the business to consumer communication more personal; e.g. if @Twitter invites @Biz to tweet on its behalf, then a tweet from @Twitter would include @Biz in the byline so that users know more about the real people behind organizations,” explains Twitter’s Anamitra Banerji. Businesses have already been finding different ways to personalize accounts. For example, the WebProNews Twitter account (feel free to follow it) utilizes “@cotags” to sign Tweets. However, this practice requires adding characters to tweets, and sometimes every character counts . If you’re trying to optimize your tweets for maximum retweeting ( which can in turn drive traffic to your site ), you want to leave as much space as possible for followers to add their own information. Twitter’s new “contributors” feature should solve this problem. Businesses who regularly utilize Twitter will be anticipating the roll out of this feature. There’s no telling how long this limited beta testing will go on though. The important thing for businesses to keep in mind is that Twitter is finally getting serious about becoming more useful to them. There are a great many ways that businesses can use Twitter and the company knows this of course. Now, however, they seem to be set to start really catering to businesses. The new “Contributors” feature is apparently only the first of an unspecified number of business features Twitter is currently working on. “The simple features that Twitter has offered to all users has worked for business users as well,” says Banerji. “As Twitter becomes more integral to businesses, they will need more business specific features from Twitter – both on the web and API. We have been working on some of these features and are ready to start a limited beta test of one that’s further along in development.” The key words there are “working on some of these features.” Twitter is looking to start monetizing its own business, and catering to other businesses is bound to be a step in that direction. Ads and commercial accounts are said to be coming to Twitter soon . The commercial accounts would come with premium features, such as analytics. In fact, Twitter COO Dick Costolo recently said that multiple authors would be a part them as well, and that is exactly what they’re testing right now. We don’t know what other features Twitter may have up its sleeve, but it will be very interesting to see what they come up with and how businesses respond. Either way, businesses are going to want to keep a close eye on what Twitter does, because it could have huge implications for key areas of how their businesses communicate online down the road. What features would you like to see Twitter offer businesses? What would make Twitter more useful to you? Talk to ArisYulianta and Friends… here . Related Articles: >
Facebook (96%) is now the most popular communication tool, followed by SMS (93%) and email (91%), according to a new survey from Prompt Communications. When consumers were asked which method they used most frequently to communicate, 37 percent said SMS followed by Facebook and the phone at 28 percent. Respondents feel that email is now less important than social media, but only 20 percent said they could live without it entirely. “Facebook is the most popular social network in the world, with over 350 million users, so it should come as no surprise to discover that people are using it as a primary tool for communication,” said Hazel Butters, CEO of Prompt Communications . “However, our survey results also show that people are still using more established methods of communication, from the phone to email. It is important for organizations to understand these trends if they want to reach their customers exactly where and how they would like to be reached. As attitudes change and new methods of human interaction develop, businesses must stay ahead of the trends.” Many people have concerns about their employers seeing their personal information, with 73 percent worried that their bosses will view their profiles on social networks. When it comes to their family’s access only 27 percent would not want family members to see their profiles. People overall believe that advances in technology have created a negative effect on their lives and interpersonal communications. More than half (60%) believe communication relies too much on technology, while 71 percent feel social media is making communication less personal. Despite these reservations, people are still using social media regularly. More than a quarter (28%) of respondents said they could only go one week without using social media. Related Articles: > Facebook Forms Board For Online Safety > Facebook Cracks 350 Million Users, Adjusts Privacy Settings > Nearly Half Of Consumers Would Recommend A Product On Facebook
PayPal has introduced a new Facebook app for sending money. The app is designed to allow uses to use PayPal to send money to anyone starting from Facebook. Users only need the person’s email address. PayPal Director of Product Marketing Heinz Waelchli explains how it works: Visit our send money application page and click on the “Get Started” button to install the application. Next just fill in the fields in the form and click the “Continue to PayPal” button. You’ll be taken to the PayPal site to log-in (if you don’t already have an account, you can create a new account in minutes). You’ll then choose your method of payment, if you use your PayPal balance or bank account to send money to friends and family within the U.S., it’s free. You can enter a personal message to your recipient if you like. Finally, click on the “send” button and that’s it! Your recipient will be notified by email right away. The receiver can then log-in to PayPal to claim the money or quickly sign up for a new account. It’s probably a good idea on PayPal’s part to have a Facebook app in place before any really significant Facebook e-commerce system takes over . Last month PayPal opened up its global payments platform called PayPal X, which provides APIs and a developer portal. This is likely an important move for keeping PayPal relevant in the social eye as well. On another PayPal-Facebook-realted note, PayPal is in the middle of its second annual ” Regift the Fruitcake ” campaign, an event, which calls upon people to create virtual fruitcakes and give them to their Facebook friends to raise money for 25 different charities. You can read more about that here .
The majority (86%) of women are now using popular social networks, a 48 percent increase over 2008, according to a new study by SheSpeaks. In addition, social networks including Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, have become drivers of purchase intent among women, with 50 percent of social media users reporting they have purchased products because of information on social networking sites, and 40 percent have used coupon codes found on social networks. The largest increase in social media use was among women 50 years of age and over, whose participation grew from 31 percent in 2008 to 70 percent in 2009. Social media participation was up across all age groups this year. “Last year our members were going online primarily to research purchases, but now they are looking to social media to help them research, guide and facilitate every kind of transaction, from social exchanges to purchases,” said Aliza Freud, Founder and CEO of SheSpeaks . “Women have become more comfortable using social media, and for marketers, the overall growth and habitual use of social media represents opportunities to reach and engage women of all ages, and influence their purchase decisions.” Facebook is the most popular social network among women with 95 percent belonging to the site, up 46 percent from one year ago. MySpace participation declined over the last year (63% to 42%), while nearly 40% of the women surveyed said they have Twitter accounts. Although many women use both Facebook and Twitter, 80% prefer Facebook. In fact, 25% of those surveyed abandoned Twitter after creating their accounts, while Facebook use only declined 7% for women after creating Twitter accounts. Facebook users also reported they are two times more likely to log in daily (72%), compared to Twitter users (36%). “Although Facebook is currently more popular than Twitter among women, they each share a purpose in women’s lives,” said Freud. “Facebook serves women’s need to interact with friends and share photos, while Twitter has become a tool that is primarily used for professional networking and learning about up-to-the-minute news, promotions and deals.” The study also found online video has grown in popularity over the last year. Almost 40 percent of women indicated they frequently watch video and TV content online, and 85 percent say they watch it frequently or sometimes. “Our members are spending more time watching video on the Web, especially now that more premium content is available,” said SheSpeaks CMO Fiona Pietruski. “It is important for marketers to recognize that influential female consumers are spending their time with many types of digital media, where they can be reached with advertising and marketing messaging.”