So I was going through the news of Yahoo collaborating with Twitter to share social content all across Yahoo network. Here are the main things that is going to happen:
- Yahoo users can have direct access to their Twitter feeds directly from Yahoo account. That means they can read, share any content from Yahoo or update their status in Twitter when they are logged in Yahoo network.
- Social actions like blogs, buzzes or article ratings that users have allowed to appear in Yahoo! Updates will be shared with their Twitter friends automatically.
- Yahoo Search and Yahoo media properties like sports, news, finance and entertainment will now include real time public updates from Twitter. So you will know the latest social buzz on your favourite area.
This collaboration is understandable. With new Google Buzz, Twitter will not want to leave an inch of space. And Yahoo is not going to make it easy for their strongest rival. But some months ago Yahoo launched a service called Yahoo Meme. We thought of it as a rival to Twitter microblogging service. But as predicted it didn’t get that popular. So perhaps Yahoo have given up hope on Meme as rival to Twitter, and they would rather try to block the popularity of Google Buzz with the help of Twitter. Google is their arch rival after all 
Did you check Google’s new social sharing service Google Buzz? If you are a regular Gmail user like me, then you probably already have tried it. With the integration of Flicker, Picasa, Google Reader, Blogger and even Twitter, this has all the potential to give Twitter a hard time as a microblogging service. On one line, it’s just like Twitter where you can update your status messages with your followers. Here you can even upload media like pictures and video.
Take a look at the picture to get some of the coolest features
It will give you the feel of Twitter when you see it, and with a lot more options for interaction with your contacts.
And as I have told you, you can integrate Twitter to your Google Buzz as Twitter is a free application. That means you can access all tweets from Buzz. And as Google is rolling it out as an integration to Gmail, lots of users will get notified and try it without much fuss. Besides, any Google product gets the attention without much fuss
So we have to wait and see, where Google Buzz takes us in the microblogging market.
You can not only choose from predefined image set, but also you can upload your own customize image to set as Twitter background. This option has been there in Twitter for a long time. So actually if you are new to Twitter or looking to customize your Twitter account for branding, here is how you can do it.
From Twitter account click Settings tab. Then click Design button in the settings page.
The point is that you just don’t have to buy custom Twitter background. If you have a good designing sense, you can create an image with your own logo, information or picture. As you can see from the screenshot, you can even choose any custom color to give a different look to your Twitter background, sidebar, text or even links. You can always give it a try for fun or for creating your own brand.
Change Colour:
Change Background Image:
And for truly professional theme, you can always avail a service where you can order & buy customized Twitter theme specific to your requirements. But why not try to customize your Twitter account for free at first
Some days ago Twitter launched a new feature called Lists. It is still in beta & available to a small group of users. Yesterday when I logged in to my Twitter account, I found that the feature is available to my account. So I explored it a bit.
And I have to say that the Lists feature can be quite handy especially to those who are following a large number of people. Twitter has become a number game. Most of us follow others a lot in hope that they will follow us back. Ultimately you end up following people whose updates don’t really attract you. And your true relations like friends or colleagues get lost in this crowd. But now with Twitter Lists you can separate any number of people under various categories. You create a new Twitter list with a name & can set the option to make it private or public. The list will have a url like http://twitter.com/username/listname. Your Twitter lists will appear on your account sidebar right below the search button. Now all you need to do is to go through your following list & add people accordingly in separate lists.
Thus you create totally different social niches like professional connections, friends, relatives or business guys just as you want. And then you can find the needed person from the corresponding list of short-listed people. By the way, at the top-right corner of your Twitter account, just beside the “following” & “followers” links, you can find “listed” link. It will show you the number of lists where your followers have added you.
It is quite a timely release from Twitter as people are just following each other without much care about who your true connections are. When this feature comes out of beta, it will help a lot of people. Just go through the pain of selecting for one time & from then keep in touch with the Twitter updates of those whom you really care.
There are so many automatic Twitter Follower Services out there now! You have to follow some guys on a downline & gather some referrals to get the downline for you. But the biggest problem with this kind of viral strategy in Twitter is that your so-called followers are not actually following you. They have followed guys like you because they just wanted to get followers for themselves & never care about opening your profile or checking your updates. In reality, your followers mean very little in terms of your business then.
But we still try different things. And there’s no harm in trying. A few days ago, I just found out this Twitter follower increasing service called FastFollowers. It’s a bit different. You can’t just auto-follow here. It is based on some credit system. They have a list of Twitter followers. When you follow them, you gain credits. When some other user follow you, he takes credit from you. Thus when your credit becomes zero, you can’t gain followers. To keep gaining followers you need to keep following guys. And you have to do that manually
Obviously there are few other ways of gaining Twitter followers like buying credits or participating in some promotion like subscribing to the owner’s feed. But the main thing is that your followers will choose to follow you manually, by themselves. It is surely somewhat better than increasing your Twitter followers automatically. There’s bigger chance of gaining an interested follower.
By the way, if I mention this blog post to them, I will get 100 credits. But I am not writing this only because of that. And I think you guys believe me 
I didn’t even use my referral link to gain credits. Feel free to try.
Yahoo Meme previously launched in Spanish & Portuguese, has been launched in English few days ago. I was busy as usual, and so couldn’t have a look at it. Now as I see, it is in invite-only mode. You can request for an invitation by giving your email address in “i want in!” box. I have just requested one.
You can say it’s almost the same service like Twitter or Tumbler.But as I browsed through the net, I have found some interesting information about it. When you create an account, it will give you a kind of empty blog where you can add text, images, videos or music etc. Apart from that you can add upto 100 words of description. And you will find repost button on each update made whether it is a text or any other media, just like a retweet. That’s surely a nice addon.
Things are more or less same. It’s a one way following system like Twitter & you can find people by searching them. Oh, by the way, you can also comment on other people’s update even if you don’t follow them. That’s kind a cool.
So, request an invitation & sit back to enjoy a nice little ride. I like that Yahoo has launched this product without much showoff.
I was surfing through the net & just stuck into this new Twitter marketing site. Its called TwitterGetter. Already a buzz has been created around it. It follows free viral marketing strategy that can achieve you hundreds of followers quite quickly. The best thing is that you don’t have to follow all of them. Just follow only a few at the start & join the program. Then let your referrals do the work for you. You can obviously remove your following list if you don’t like them.
Why don’t you give it a try? There is no harm in trying.
Twingly, the Swedish company that is working on the concept of spam-free blog search (still in beta) has launched its own microblog search engine. Instead of searching just one microblog service, it integrates several microblog services to provide results from. Currently it includes Twitter, Jaiku, Identi.ca, Swedish Bloggy.se, German Bleeper.de and even Pownce (it is dead, but a six month archive remains searchable). Go & check it out.
