The Mobile OS

Nexus one runs on the Android Mobile Technology Platform 2.1 (Eclair) operating system which is undoubtedly one of the feature rich ones in the current market but the iPhone OS is way better in several different ways. The most primitive of all is that the usability factor of the iPhone OS. The reason why most of the iPhone users find it really hard to switch to other phones is the really awesome iPhone OS.

User Interface/Multitouch

One big selling point for most of the Apple products is the rich user interface and the iPhone is no doubt a forerunner in that arena. Multitouch on the iPhone allows the user to do wonders with fingers but this is one of the main features which is missing in the first release of the Nexus one. This is surprising since the Android OS 2.0 provides support for multitouch and guess we can expect this feature to be included in the next release of Nexus one.

The Cost

One other comparison metric which many are using to prove the superiority of Nexus One over iPhone is the cost of ownership. The comparison chart from BillShrink made its way to a good number of technology blogs. With the unlimited minutes + data+texting, the iphone does look a lot costlier but i wonder how many people go for that plan. For instance, i pay $66/month for my iPhone 3GS and it comes with unlimited data and 400 day time minutes a month. I have hell lot of rolled over day minutes which i am sure i am not going to use since most of the people who i call are on AT&T and the calls are free. I pay $780 an year or $1560 for the 24 month contract period. I assume most of the Iphone users pay around the same amount, may be a couple of hundreds more.

The App Store

In my opinion the best part of owning an iPhone is the appstore but many will disagree and give brownie points for the other important features. With over a 100,000 apps on the app store, you can find innumerable apps both free and paid. Be it productivity apps or motion sensor games or fun apps which have no particular utility, the app store is one huge repository. The Android market has also got a sizable number of apps but it is way behind the app store in this aspect.

The Music

The iPhone also doubles up as a 32 GB/16GB iPod which can be synced with your computer and also your itunes account. Finding podcasts, videos and other multimedia is really easy with itunes in comparison with any other phone.

Final Verdict

There is no doubt that the Nexus One is one wonderful and innovative piece of hardware and kicks the iPhone’s ass in several areas with better hardware, better battery life, bigger screen size, better camera etc but there is very little for it to be an iPhone killer. The next generation of iPhone is expected by the middle of this year and there will definitely be many enhancements on the hardware front. It is totally agreeable that the iPhone has its own flaws and restrictions but we should also remember that there are several other smart phones which boast of better hardware than the iPhone but they are no where in the picture. The Nexus One is definitely one of the best phones right now but there is a good chance that it might fade away in a few months like all the other HTC phones.

Like Lord Alfred Tennyson says

For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

Likewise

For droids may come and phones may go,
But the Iphone will go on for ever(at least for sometime!)

Twitter is definitely not perfect and except the search deal, the company has not made any real money till date. With ample scope for improvement in various arenas, Twitter is definitely going to hire more talented folks to get things done. Here is a take on the job profiles which Twitter ought to create right now.

The Whale Killer

The fail whale is one thing which most of early Twitter users would have seen every other minute. For those who are unaware, the fail whale shows up whenever there is a server failure. It mainly happens when there is a huge blow of traffic to the website. Things have improved a lot over the past few months but the fail whale still makes its presence felt once in a while. When many of the big corporations are using Twitter in full swing, it is really important to have a highly reliable server. With plans for corporate accounts, Twitter definitely cannot afford showing the fail whale to its paying customers. The ‘whale killer‘ needs to ensure that the website stays up and running round the clock without any intermissions.

The Trend Setter

‘Twitter Trending Topics‘ is really a valuable section to find what people are talking about. This is also one of the favorite destinations for spammers. As illustrated in the picture we can see that one of the spamming topics made its way in to the trending list. Getting on the list will give immense exposure in the form of traffic even if it is for a few minutes. Although some quality check is being done in the recent times, we can still see some spammy content once in a while. Not to leave aside the NSFW topics which get on top of the list many times. It is also important to combat spam to make Twitter a better place. Automating this process is greatly possible but only to a certain extent. The ‘Trend Setter‘ needs to keep this section clean and ensure that spammers don’t take advantage.

The Securitas

Twitter has faced many security infringement issues and it keeps increasing with its popularity. Some of them were the server status vulnerability, compromise of DNS records, leakage of confidential documents and more importantly the recent site hack by the so called Iranian cyber army. The path has definitely not been smooth for this company with a little over 100 employees. Recruiting ‘Securitas‘ – the roman goddess of security to the team might help!

The Money Minter

We have talked about it with our friends, we have discussed the possibilities, we have even made suggestions but we are still unsure as to how Twitter is going to make money! Twitter is one huge information repository with many different monetization possibilities. The recent search brought in a pretty good sum and it was indeed a great start. The machinery is set in place, the molten metal is ready to get cast and all Twitter needs to do is find the right money minters to bring in the magic.

Some of these profiles may exist already and they are definitely doing a wonderful job. This post was just an informal take on this topic.

Image Credits: Trends , Money Mint , Securitas

Every day our twitter timeline gets spammed filled with several messages similar to the ones below.
“I just entered to win a Macbook pro. Simply RT to participate < some random link>”
“XYZ is giving away free passes to that dumb event, Check out how to get one for you <some random link>”

I have always wondered how successful are these campaigns and how well they provide a return to the people/companies who start these on Twitter. I explored one such recent campaign conducted by CyberMonday.fm which as the name suggests is a website where people can find coupons for laptops and other electronic gadgets.  The one started by CyberModay.fm was nothing new. They gave away a Macbook Pro to one random person who posted a pre-written tweet like the one above on their profile. Sounds fair! It is like entering a raffle where in instead of buying a raffle ticket you just post a tweet. So do you think CyberMonday.fm got their money’s worth doing this? Let’s see!

The Math Part

• Total Money spent for the campaign : $1199

(The winner was provided a $1,199.00 gift certificate to the Apple store in lieu of a Mac Book Pro.)

• Total number of Retweets : 63000 + (via Topsy.com)
  

• Total number of clicks: 286,000 + (via bit.ly public stats)
  

One good measure for internet campaigns is CPC or the Cost Per Click. It might not be totally applicable to a Twitter marketing campaign but it is definitely one good measure to look into.

CPC = Cost /Clicks
For this campaign
CPC = 1199/286000 = ~$0.004

$0.0004 is an extremely good CPC for any internet marketing campaign. Comparing it with Google Adwords, the minimum cost which an advertiser has to pay to obtain one click is ten cents ($0.10). Imagine how much money the advertiser would have spent if he had to get 286,000 clicks on Google and that too a major part of it on a single day. I know i am comparing apples and oranges here but this comparison was just to give a rough idea.

No wonder that the alexa graph of CyberMonday.fm had a big spike and rose up 19700%! The pictures and the numbers speak for themselves.

Using Paid Tweets? – Nah!

If the advertiser had decided to use a paid to tweet service like ad.ly or Sponsoredtweets.com, do you think they would have obtained similar returns? Definitely not!

For a budget of $1200 it would be possible to get less than 3 tweets from a web celebrity like Shoemoney or JohnChow. One other option is to get 1200 tweets from low profile tweeters paying them $1 a tweet. We should also not forget that the company in between (ad.ly or sponsoredtweets.com) takes a 50% cut for providing the service. Looking at a recent ad posted by Shoemoney, it gives a really bad impression.

Here is a paid tweet which was posted by Shoemoney. He charges somewhere north of $1000 for making a single tweet.

Here is the outcome. If the advertiser had paid $500 for this tweet the CPC is more than $1.This might be the worst case though. A recent screenshot in one of his blog posts revealed that one such paid tweet sent more than 8000 clicks.

Some Takeaways

• CPC is definitely not a good metric for Twitter marketing campaigns but i thought it would be a good measure for this case study
• Traffic does matter but what matters more is the number of conversions that the campaign yields. For example if the Commission BluePrint advertiser who paid Shoemoney had enough subscriptions or purchases then it is well and good. Integrating a conversion tracker and measuring it will definitely tell more about the success or failure of the campaign.
• For CyberMonday.fm , they had to show the best deals to people and make them purchase it from a third party site like BestBuy, Dell etc who in turn will pay a % commission for making the sale. Obviously a huge traffic burst would have done the trick for them.
• Cybermonday.fm is not a household name and i bet 9 out of 10 people would not have heard about them before this campaign. One thing to note is how a relatively unknown brand can pull up a successful campaign on Twitter.
• More than conversions, sales, traffic one other factor which many of the advertisers look for is brand exposure. A single tweet from a celebrity will definitely send the message far and wide.

There is no doubt that more and more businesses are going to use Twitter to promote their products and the amount of spam is going to increase drastically. One other thing to note is every one else except Twitter are making money in this process! How is Twiiter going to make money?

The real power of Google Wave can be witnessed only when more members of your contact list start waving! I know i am way behind in this race and most of you would have got a chance to try Google Wave. For those who are still looking for a Google Wave invite here is a chance.

Just do ONE of the things listed below.

1. Leave a comment in this post with your Gmail ID and i will send one at the earliest.

(Important: For privacy reasons it is better not to disclose your Email address in a public medium like the comments section. You can enter your Name and Email in the comment form instead and it will not be visible to anyone except the site admin. I will make sure that the email ID will be used only for sending you a Google Wave invite and not for any other purpose )

2. Retweet the message below and let me know via Twitter.

If you are still looking for a Google Wave Invite, SocialCouch.com has a few invites to give away! http://tr.im/FO4u

3. Just ask! If you follow me on Twitter or if you are Facebook friend, leave an @reply or a comment and i will get back at the earliest.

What is Google Wave?

If you don’t know what Google Wave is, take a look at this short video and it will help you to know more. Alternatively you can also head over to Google.com/Wave for detailed information.

Points to note

1. The invites will not reach your inbox instantly. You will receive the activation link in a day or two. So kindly be patient.
2. Invites will be sent on a First Come First Served basis.

UPDATE: Invites have been sent to all those who left a comment. I have got 15 more invites. So if you are looking to get one just leave a comment. I will post an update if i run short of invites.

One question which has been lingering in all our minds for quite a good time is ‘How is Twitter going to make money’? The COO of Twitter Dick Costolo revealed that Twitter will be launching an advertising business in the near future and also mentioned some of the other possible revenue streams for this hugely popular microblogging service which boasts of millions of users. This is the first time that an authoritative person from the Twitter HQ has spoken about the revenue model of Twitter putting an end to all the speculations.

As an end user we hate to see the ads right? But if they are implemented in an intelligent way in a complementing manner then it would definitely be a nice value addition from an user perspective. Now that we know for sure that Twitter is going to do advertising but it has kindled up more questions than answers. The biggest of the lot is how exactly is Twitter going to implement the ads in a way which doesn’t annoy the users and at the same time provides value to the advertisers.

Having plain old CPC/CPM based text and image ads will definitely not be the right thing and we know for sure that the intelligent team at Twitter didn’t wait this long to have a advertising model like that.

Advertising Model?

Dick Costolo has mentioned that it will have nothing to do with the new Retweet feature and so we can stop thinking from that point of view. Having ads between Tweets is something which most of us wouldn’t love to see but there are a handful of companies doing it currently. Ad.ly and SponsoredTweets.com are two notable companies which are doing pretty good in the in-stream advertising arena. With celebrities charging a 5 digit amount for posting a single ad tweet, it looks pretty lucrative. Twitter might very well kick these players out of this game and do it on their own.

Twitter also introduced the new geotagging API and this will allow users to add location coordinates to their tweets. It will definitely make the twitter search feature rich but more importantly it gives a nice playground for Twitter to experiment location based advertising. Imagine a situation where you tweet about a restaurant and an ad shows up which gives you a discount code which you can use while paying the bill or may be provide offers to the restaurants near by (like FourSquare). It will be a ‘win-win-win’ situation for the user, the restaurant and Twitter as a company.

SuperTweet

Robert Scoble wrote about  SuperTweet wherein ads are presented to the user based on the metadata harvested from the tweet. Implementing it in an unobtrusive way will be the biggest challenge if Twitter plans to go ahead with a model similar to SuperTweet.

API Access

There are hundreds of third party apps which make use of the Twitter API. Currently Twitter imposes a restriction on the number of API requests per hour. There are already a few apps which pay Twitter to gain extended access. Twitter is also planning to make money by providing service level agreements where priority and access guarantee will be provided to the interested parties. This will be a big boon to the companies who have paying clients using their twitter API based apps, web clients etc

Premium Accounts

It is well known that many companies use Twitter as a marketing/customer support tool. Dell drove over $2 million sales via Twitter, JetBlue uses it for customer service, Starbucks posts new offers and there are many other big brands which get a lot of value out of Twitter. By the end of this year Twitter will be launching corporate/premium accounts which will provide enhanced analytics and other features which business might find useful.

Glad that Twitter is gonna make some real money!

Image Credit: RandomAnimal.org

Paul Stamatiou- Co-founder, Skribit.com

1) Paul, tell us briefly about yourself and your startup Skribit.com.

I am a 23 year old alum of Georgia Tech, currently living in Atlanta. I am mostly known for my 4 year old tech blog, PaulStamatiou.com. Skribit came out of Atlanta Startup Weekend back in 2007, from a problem I had with coming up with original topics to write about on my blog. Two years later and I have been working on Skribit full-time for about a year. Skribit helps bloggers “cure writer’s block” by receiving suggestions about what to write about via our sidebar widget or suggestions tab. The Skribit website lets website owners manage those suggestions and lets readers follow suggestions they like and get notified of changes and when they are published.

2) Like most of the startup guys you do wear different hats. (Programmer, designer, marketer, user support). Which one do you like the most and how hard is it to change hats and act accordingly.

I definitely, definitely wear many hats. Changing between them is not much of an issue, except for when I am programming and “in the zone”, it’s hard to get back to it and in my train of thought so I generally block out a few hours of development, switch to replying to user support for a bit, then go back to developing (which goes hand-in-hand with designing/front-end work that I do). My favorite is probably developing and fine-tuning the user experience for various features of Skribit. Communicating with our users via email, Get Satisfaction, Twitter or whatever it may be is also rewarding but I feel like that will soon be a job in itself – keeping track of all the Google alerts for Skribit can be rather time consuming.

3) When you graduated out of college most of your classmates would have picked up high paying jobs at top notch companies. Going the startup route is definitely not an easy choice both financially or with regards to job security. Your thoughts and experiences?

I figured the best time to try out the startup life is right out of college while I’m used to living cheaply. It would be very hard to go from a high-paying job to doing a startup later on. However I am in a rather interesting situation as my blog pays my basic living expenses so I am not really going into much debt working on my startup like others doing a startup right out of college might. Several of my friends are working jobs with amazing pay – upwards of $100k – but whenever we meetup and chat, it is easy to see that they hate their job. They regularly stay in the office from 8am to 11pm doing work they dislike. I work many hours as well, but it’s in the comfort of my own apartment and I enjoy what I do. That being said, I fear that one day if/when I do work a regular office job, adjusting will be very hard for me as I’m so used to the being-my-own-boss and working from home lifestyle.

4) Social media has helped many startups to gain the exposure and the attention which they deserve. How well are you leveraging social media for your Startup? Any good learning?

Social media has helped Skribit a bit, but not as much as it will in the near future. We have been “laying low” until we are ready for a real launch, big marketing push and spreading the word. Even without actively spreading the word about Skribit just yet, we have seen people talk about Skribit on Twitter and their blogs. Social media makes is easy to find the people talking about us so we can go in and thank them, offer feedback, solve any issues they might have and so on. This will be put to the test very soon – we are tentatively planning on actively spreading the word about Skribit in the next month.

5) Going to the big blog conferences and startup events does help a lot, but how good is to spend money for registration,travel etc and more importantly the time while the startup is in bootstrap mode. Is it really worth the efforts?

I am kind of mixed about the rewards of attending big conferences. Chances are if you are online everyday, actively read all the big blogs and Twitter, you will know most of the things people talk about at the conference panels, sessions and speeches. And if not, most everything from that conference will be online shortly after for you to catch up on. You don’t need to go to such a big and expensive conference to learn. That being said, you do go to conferences to network with others in your space and build a relationship with them that might turn out to be beneficial to you both. A good friend of mine spent a few thousand dollars to attend a music technology conference out-of-state. But the sequence of events after that conference landed him an amazing interview on NPR for him and his startup. There are many other stories like this. You need to go out there and meet people; can’t do everything online!

6) Having a blog helps and that too being a popular blogger helps a lot! How has your blog helped you in your startup journey or otherwise?

My years of blogging have helped develop a loyal readership that values and trusts my thoughts on things. That has helped me build a story around Skribit that I have tried to embody on the Skribit about page. We’re trying to get the point across that Skribit is not just some startup from a bunch of no-names, but rather is founded from real bloggers that understand the space. While I have used my blog to discuss Skribit and document our growing pains and so on, I don’t really consider that marketing rather than giving people an inside look on how a startup operates. In short – I think Skribit in a good position to be backed by my blog and help get the first users trying it out.

7) What are your future plans with skribit?

Building up our userbase and managing a happy community!

8) Finally, has there been any big mistake in your journey and what did you learn from that? In order words have you ever felt you could have done things in a different way?

Honestly I can’t say that we have had any big mistakes lately. One thing that is up for discussion is how we have been holding off on promoting the product while we were actively developing it. Some prefer to market from the very beginning. We chose to wait a bit until we were happy with our product and know that people would not just try it out, dislike it and never come back again.

Hope you enjoyed the interview. If you have any questions or suggestions please do use the comments section.

One big lifeline of Twitter is undoubtedly the plethora of third party apps that are available to the users. Every single day new apps are being created by developers around the world. Finding the app which you might need is definitely not an easy task. There are some websites to our rescue that categorize and document the best twitter apps that are available. Here are 10 awesome websites which will help you to discover new Twitter apps.

One forty

Oneforty.com is dubbed as the unofficial app store for Twitter and it currently tracks over 1900 apps. The ‘Essentials’ section of this website is a must visit for anyone who wants to get started. With the apps neatly categorized Oneforty is the best one of the lot.

Twitdom

Twitdom.com tracks 1300+ apps and categorizes them into four basic categories- Tools,Mobile,Clients and Browser. The site also has a ‘books’ sections which lists some of the useful resources for using Twitter in a better way.

Twi5

Twi5.com has close to 575 apps in the repository and provides various subscription options so that you can stay updated with all the new apps that are profiled.

Twtbase

Twtbase.com application database apart from providing categorized apps also provides a nice search feature.

TwitOauth

TwitOauth.com showcases apps that use the Twitter Oauth authentication mechanism.

Twapps

Twapps.com is another gateway to third party twitter apps and has close to 125 apps in the archives.

Daily Twitter Apps

DailyTwitterApps.com documents apps in a blog style. If you are looking for some daily dose of Twitter apps head over!

Tweerrific

Tweerrific shares Twitter Applications, codes and widgets.

Twitter Fan Wiki

The Twitter Fan Wiki probably has the biggest collection of apps but it is too verbose! Nevertheless it is a great destination for finding new apps.

TweeterApps

Tweeterapps is a new kid in the block which profile interesting Twitter apps.

If you know of any others please free to suggest them in the comments section.

Photo Credit : Brain Solis

1) Why social media? What is the motivation for Dell to travel on this track?

The best explanation for Dell’s social media involvement comes from our CEO, Michael Dell, who said this: “These conversations are going to occur whether you like it or not. Do you want to be part of that or not? My argument is you absolutely do. You can learn from them. You can improve your reaction time. And you can be a better company by listening and being involved in that conversation.” October 17, 2007, BusinessWeek

You might also find Shel Israel’s interview (http://redcouch.typepad.com/weblog/2008/02/michael-dell-ph.html ) with Michael Dell helpful in understanding the background of Dell forging ahead in social media over last 3 nearly 4 years

2) How well are these social media marketing efforts benefiting Dell. How different is it in comparison with conventional marketing methods and how good is the ROI?

Social media benefits depend on what your business objectives are to start with.  There is no single ROI.  It all depends on what you are trying to accomplish.

In Dell’s case we have seen benefits in revenue generation; as an early alert to matters we want to address as a business; it has generated  customer-inspired innovation; and we have seen benefits in terms of relationships with our customers, as well as overall brand and corporate reputation benefits,  just to mention a few.

As for the difference with conventional marketing, I  guess it depends on what you consider conventional marketing.  If you mean advertising, two way conversations are very different than broadcast advertisements in terms of their tone, nature and cost.  However, if you mean other conventional marketing methods like meeting with customers at a trade show or even a series of meetings, social media has much in common with those personal and direct connections.

3) Richard, your LinkedIn profile tells us that you are a senior manager at Dell handling social media and Strategic Corporate Communications. Do tell us how a typical day at work is? How big is your team and how do you work along with the @delloutlet team?

I’m not sure there is any such thing as a typical day.  I start by checking Twitter and other “feeds” to see what is of importance to Dell and/or what is of interest to us from a social media perspective.  I share that information and commentary with relevant people in various parts of our business, then I usually have a couple of meetings related to our social media initiatives and how we can continue to use social media for effective and efficient business purposes…then repeat earlier parts of the day online depending on the day or what is up.

It’s not  my team…there are various Dell teams, from various businesses and we all work together, including @delloutlet.  We work to share and keep forging forward both in social media but also in connecting with customers…to listen learn and engage in ways that make sense for the business and for our direct relationships with customers and business partners.  We also work together to support more people in more parts of more of our businesses to discover the benefits and apply social media so that is useful in their job and for those interacting with, or interested in, Dell.

4) In the past Dell has tasted the bitterness of social media in the form of YouTube videos depicting exploding batteries, the Dell hell meme etc but now every social media case study talks about how Dell made $3M sales via Twitter and how the Direct to Dell blog increases customer interaction. How was this transition possible and how hard has it been?

The transition was both possible and straightforward when you go back and start from the answer to question 1.

5) We are all aware that @delloutlet is doing a great job in the US and @delloutletUK is also in place. Are there any plans to expand it on an international scale in countries like India, Germany and Canada where the twitter user base is growing rapidly ?

Check out dell.com/twitter and you will see this is rapidly underway.  Canadians asked for Dell Canada on Twitter and that is why Dell Canada is there…and look at what they are also doing on Facebook.  Dell in Brazil is growing strong on Twitter, as is Dell Outlet in Ireland and Australia in the small business market….I could go on but suffice it to say International growth on Twitter and elsewhere is a major consideration and priority.

User Questions

Sahil Parikh, Founder -Deskaway.com
6) How does a small business that is not known build a presence/brand on Twitter?

Hi Sahil and thanks for the question.  Twitter  is a great place for small business to broaden their markets and to really build loyal followers.  Technology is great for small business, we all believe in that at Dell J.  Have you seen the Dell tips for small business on Facebook …all about social media for small business? Specifically for Twitter, I always say identify your customers and listen first…then engage and join the conversations in valuable ways…and the customer relationships will strengthen and so will the business.  Hope it helps.

Harini Ganesh:
7) Is there anything that Dell has learnt from their competitors who run similar efforts on Facebook, MySpace,Twitter etc?

Hi Harini…that’s a great question. I think every business  that is a smart business is constantly listening, learning and engaging in this new social medium and that we all learn from each other and the various case studies and information around.

Himanshu Seth:
8) How did Dell get started with this whole twitter thing and do you remember how the first few customers on Twitter came in?

We really just started experimenting and then because of the specific business needs of @delloutlet there appeared  to be some great business opportunities and through experimenting some more we proved those things meshed.  I also believe the people and connections that were being made around Twitter also supported  the business growth.

9) Finally, Have you ever felt that Dell or your team could have done things in a different way? In other words, has there been a ‘big mistake’ in this whole social media journey which you could have avoided?
I think you always live and learn and can always improve, personally and as a business.  We always wonder about how to do things different – better and more effectively too.  So in that respect, sure we can look back and say we could do this or that different, or let’s try it this way or a new way…and we constantly do that and are open to that.   I know I personally stumbled some….but when you fall down, you stand back up, dust yourself off, learn from it, grow and do it better next time (I hope).  As for any “BIG” mistake, I would say no big mistake…there were a couple tiny mis-steps where we made quick and public commentaries and like I said, learned and moved onward.

Hope you enjoyed reading this interview with Richard.

Please do take a minute and consider participating in this social charity experiment. For every Retweet and comment i will send $1 to charity.

‘Social Charity’ is the act wherein a group of social media users support a charitable cause either by action or contribution.

The ultimate aim of such an experiment is to raise money for a charity organization through social media and at the same time provide some kind of benefit for the company/blog which initiates the experiment. To kick start this experiment, I am starting it on Social Couch and the benefiting charity will be Bhumi Chennai ( http://bhumichennai.org ) with Dr. Prahalathan being the person of contact. Bhumi is a non profit organization which works with under-privileged children in and around Chennai.

The Action Steps

1. For every new confirmed email subscription , Social Couch will donate $1 to Bhumi Chennai.

Opens in a new tab or window. When you enter your email address and confirm it, all new articles published on SocialCouch will be delivered directly to your inbox. This email will not be used for any other purpose.

2. For every new confirmed RSS subscription, Social Couch will donate $1 to Bhumi Chennai.
Subscribing via RSS will send in the latest articles to your feed reader.

3. For every comment posted on this entry, Social Couch will donate $0.5 to Bhumi Chennai.

4. For every retweet of the below text, Social Couch will donate $0.5 to Bhumi Chennai

Social Couch is donating $125 to BhumiChennai.org in this Social Charity experiment http://tr.im/CaO6 Please participate & RT

To make the $125 reach Bhumi Chennai one of these should happen before the end of the ten day time period. 125 new subscribers OR 250 comments OR 250 Retweets or a combination of these. An optimal success result can be something like this

25 new RSS subscriptons
25 new email subscriptions
30 comments
120 Retweets

A person can feel free to perform more than one action step. The total duration of the experiment is 10 days and any/all the action steps performed during the next ten days from the time stamp of the post will be counted. The subscriber count will be obtained from the Feedburner statistics and the Retweet count from Tweetmeme. The maximum amount which SocialCouch.com will donate to Bhumi Chennai through this socialcharity experiment is $125. The money will be paid via Paypal.

Why am I doing this?

• The Bhumi volunteers are doing a great job helping out the kids and staying in a land thousands of miles away this is the one small deed that i can do for now. On a lighter note i also want to increase my karma points!
• I know for sure that this money will be put to good use and Bhumi as an organization doesn’t have big overhead costs. The major part of this money will serve the deserving population directly.
• This will serve as a small case study for one of the projects which i am intending to start in the coming months
• This will bring in traffic and gain exposure for Social Couch as a blog and a brand. Although I have no plans of monetizing SocialCouch for now this might help me in the future.
• This will provide an opportunity for others to help a charitable cause without chipping in money.

Seriously! Is this Ethical?

I have discussed this with a few people and in my opinion this whole experiment is totally fine. First of all, i am not seeking monetary contributions from anyone and i am the only contributor. A few weeks back i read a nice post from Manas Tungare about the exploiting nature of Marathon Fundarisers. I would not put this on the same line but still it had some good points to infer. I am not exploiting my social graph directly too. As a reader if you have any objection regarding the ethics of this experiment do let me know and i will take the necessary corrective action.

What if it succeeds?
Stay tuned! I will let you know.

For now all i need is one step of action from you!

Search Operators

Twitter has published the whole list of search operators that will pull out valid results when you key in those in the search box. Let us take a look at how you can use some of the operators to get desirable results.

Finding local tweets/tweeps
Building conversations spinning around the local community is one thing that Twitter has enabled. Using the “near:” operator you can find people/tweets that come from the specified location.

Example: If i want to find tweets that are published by people who live in a 20 mile radius from Blacksburg , the query is near:blacksburg within:20mi

Searching for particular terms or events with a location parameter also works.
football near:blacksburg
conference near:blacksburg

Finding jobs/Hiring people

It is hard to find the right people to hire within a particular city and at the same time it is not an easy task to find the right job in the right place. A sample search query “PHP developer” near:”san francisco” pulls out many job postings.

This will also be helpful for freelancers who are looking for projects to work on. The same works well if you are looking to hire someone too.

Conversations/Tweets/ Links

If you are looking for interesting conversations or links to material on a particular topic these search queries will be of good help.

from:ramanujam to:RichardatDell – Lists all the replies that i made to @RichardatDell
from:ramanujam :) – Lists my tweets which had the smiling emoticon
from:ramanujam filter:links – Lists my tweets that had an external link

Save/Subscribe to searches

The Twitter search interface also provides an option for saving search queries. For instance, if you are a web hosting seller providing vps hosting then one good option to find new customers to do a keyword search for ‘vps hosting’. You may also have similar keywords like ‘dedicated hosting’ , ‘managed hosting’ etc. With the “Save this search” option you can create a link to these search queries and check them back whenever you want. Twitter does provide an option to subscribe to the search results in RSS format.

This is also one way to monitor keywords on Twitter but there are many third party tools which will help you to do this in a better way.

Twitter Advanced Search

If you are not the person who likes to experiment with the different query combinations then the Advanced Search is for you.With different keyword based search options, location parameters, attitudes, the advanced search helps to do a targeted search for specific information.

User Scripts/Addons

If you are a Firefox user there are a few options which will help you to use Twitter search in an easier way than others. The Twitter search addon will enable you to look up real time Twitter search results inside the browser.

The Twitter search results userscript (requires Greasemonkey addon) shows real time Twitter search results in Google search pages.

Better Twitter Search Engines

If you are a long time Twitter user then you would definitely know about ‘Summize.com’. Twitter acquired the company in July 2008 and integrated it with the main site. The search tool is definitely a great tool but there are a few other Twitter search engines which will help you to look up things in a better way.

Twazzup is one such website which provides better insights like news, photos etc along with the search results.

Bing tweets is a nice mashup which combines the trending topics in twitter and shows corresponding search results from Bing.

Twibs is a business directory/search engine where in business owners can add their Twitter accounts.

The above three are only examples and there are several other applications built using the Twitter search API.What is your favorite Twitter search application?