We have already seen ‘Like’ button for Facebook which lets us show our liking for interesting Facebook updates and shared URLs. I always knew that this would some day come to Twitter as well and guess what, the day has come. Welcome a new Twitter application – LikeMyTweets.com that will give you an ability and your Twitter friends a chance to show their likeness for your tweets.

LikeMyTweets – What is and how do we get started?

To make it short and simple, it is a ‘Like’ button for Twitter. For the start, all you need is go to the LikeMyTweets.com homepage and click ‘Get the Like Button’. The application will ask your Twitter login credentials to validate your account. Once validated, the application will add a ‘Like URL’ to your every forthcoming tweets.

Here is what your tweets will look like:

On clicking the URL that accompanies “[Like it?”, the user will be taken to a webpage which will display a dialog box as show below:

The user may enter his/her Twitter username if they want you to know who they were. Alternatively, they may like it as an anonymous guest.

How to remove LikeMyTweets.com ‘Like It URL’ from my tweets?

Some user may after sometimes feel need to stop using the service for saving on the precious characters. To stop LikeMyTweets from adding ‘Like It URL’ to your Twitter updates, here is how you should proceed:

1. Login to your Twiter account.
2. Click Settings
3. Click ‘Connections’
4. Click ‘Revoke Access’ under ‘LikeMyTweets’
5. The ‘Like It’ button will be removed from the point onwards.

With all the recent uproar about Facebook’s lack of privacy, many people find themselves in the position where they feel uncomfortable with what Facebook is doing but don’t want to leave the site because it provides such a fantastic service.

I was in this position too and wanted to cut back on Facebook because it just takes up too much time in the day. Then a friend pointed me to a great site called NutShellMail.

NutShellMail

Nutshellmail is a free service which allows you to get an email sent to you which has all of what has been happening on your Facebook. It is highly customizable and it allows you to receive the updates at set times whenever you want or when you go to Nutshellmail.com and click update now. It lets you choose exactly what you want to receive and how many per email so you’re not overwhelmed and you can even select specific friends to only receive updates from if you have hundreds of Facebook friends. I set it to get an email before I wake up telling me all that’s been going on in the last 24 hours.

Obviously, there will be some things that you want to receive information on as soon as possible like if someone sends you a message organizing a night out for tonight. By the time the email gets there it might be too late. I use Facebooks normal email notification system for this just for messages and wall posts.

A great thing about it is that you barely have to visit the Facebook homepage and so it stops you getting drawn into that place where you spend hours browsing photos. It’s clean and super efficient. NutShellMail also works in conjunction with Twitter and MySpace too and you can get updates for all three of these sites in one go.

Set status updates using SocialOomph

SocialOomph is a tool which allows you to schedule updates in the future on your Twitter page. I like to use this with Facebook’s Twitter Application. What happens is you go to SocialOomph.com and enter a Tweet to be scheduled at a time to suit you. It is then sent to Twitter at that time and the Twitter Application sends it to your Facebook profile. Nice and easy and both Twitter and Facebook are updated every time automatically. I like to set 3 status updates in the morning which will go out throughout the day so I keep people updated with what I’m doing without actually having to be there.

Why would you want more privacy?

There’s many reasons. One is that people can find out a lot more about you than you ever intended for them to know. A potential employer might search your name on Facebook, see photos of you partying and decide not to hire you. You might meet someone and they see your religious or political affiliations and be put off meeting you again. You might be embarrassed about something that is put on your wall that family members might see.

Minimize Your Profile

For ultimate privacy you should minimize what you have on your Facebook profile. I cut out all the pages I’d become a fan of and only updated my status irregularly. It’s better to have irregular updates that are great than 50 a day which are terrible. You can start to store pictures to show friends on Flickr. The images are much higher resolution there and are not compressed massively like they are on Facebook. On Facebook I just have my profile pictures and an album called “What I’m doing now” which I update regularly. All other photos are made private and no more are added. If someone tags you, just de-tag yourself if you don’t want people to see it.

Change your status update to private

When updating your status on Facebook, click the arrow next to the little lock that comes up and change to “Friends only”. This way, your status wont become available to people searching Google and that will remain the default setting for all your future updates.

Consider alternatives

It is always a good idea to remember that their are alternatives out there. For photos you can use Flickr or Picasa, for videos you can use YouTube. Usually, the sites that specialize in one thing like videos or photos are better than the sites that do them all together because they focus all their effort on that one specific product and make it excellent.

The following is a guest post by Edwin. See the author box below the post for more details on the Author.

Social media has actually took the web by storm. There are more and more people registering and using Twitter, Facebook even Youtube now a days then there was a few years back.

The power of the internet has really exploded in size. People would much rather connect online then face to face. No wonder America gets fatter and fatter every day. Face it were F.A.T or in lighter terms Fat American Taxpayers. Take advantage of this opportunity.

More and more are using websites and blogs to express themselves their true selves. We write about what were passionate about. Then when we it the big Publish button we would like the rest of the world to read what we created. Social media plays a big part in getting traffic and a viewership. Why not mix passion and social media to roll in the traffic. After a while of searching I made a list of social media websites to help you branch your blog to the world or the nearest street corner.

Blog Engage

• PR:5
• Alexa:12,035

BlogCatalog

• PR:7
• Alexa: 367

Mixx

• PR:8
• Alexa: 702

StumbleUpon

• PR:8
• Alexa:207

Digg

• PR:8
• Alexa:100

DesignFloat

• PR:5
• Alexa:7,561

Reddit

• PR:8
• Alexa:314

Twitter

• PR:9
• Alexa:12

Technorati

• PR:8
• Alexa:896

Diigo (formerly Furl)

• PR:7
• Alexa:1,870

Bebo

• PR:7
• Alexa:560

YouTube

• PR:9
• Alexa:3

FaceBook

• PR:9
• Alexa:2

After you’ve read this article go out and take walk, get some fresh air. Now that I mentioned that I need to get out more.

There are various online marketing methods – search engine marketing, pay per click marketing, email marketing, social network marketing and so on and so forth. A recent marketing method leverages web errors to gain brand popularity and generate profit. The brand working on this mode of marketing is Burger King and this marketing method is ‘404 error marketing’.

404 Error & Marketing

What is 404 error?

404 is a common internet page which is shown when no content can be found for a specified query or when a user uses an invalid link for accessing a web content. To make it simple, it is the page which is not created for a website. For instance, http://techravings.info/xyz is one of the page where you can see 404 error for this weblog.

What is 404 error marketing?

It is a latest form of marketing where an ad is displayed whenever a user types in wrong queries or tries to open an unavailable page on a website, that is when a person hits a 404 page.

Burger King – The guys being 404 Marketing

BrandFreak revealed that the brand cashing using this form of marketing is Burger King. Burger King will sponsor those Digg.com searches that return no value and return a 404 error. They will blame this error on your tiny hands and endorse their Burgers with the following message:

“No results for ‘Your Search Error’ were found. Looks like your search had a typo. Blame it on your tiny hands. The beefy $1 Burger King Double Cheeseburger gives tiny hands some trouble, too.”

Here is a screenshot of such Digg.com error endorsing Burger King:

As evident, this message will accompany some pictures or occasionally, the famous Burger King video displaying a boy with too tiny hands to hold their burger. Watch that entertaining video below:

404 Error Marketing sounds Good!! What’s next?

That’s a nice question and I think no one can answer this question better than Josh Smith. Here is what he said while commenting on the 404 error marketing strategy of Burger King. In his own words:

There aren’t many places left on social news sites like Digg that don’t already have ads tied to them, but we found a few places that the company could use to boost revenue.

• New User Signup– This signup brought to you by VW where you can “Sign and Drive” today.
• New Submissions — This submission brought to you by Subway, the perfect meal for sub-mitting your way to the top of Digg.
• Digg History — Brought to you by the History Channel and Pawn Stars.
• Bury this Story — Brought to you by NickelBack, “Please click cancel!”
• New Fans — Brought to you by Match.com – Find your fans IRL now.
• Friend Recommendations — Brought to you by eHarmony — based on 29 Digg Dimensions.
• Comments — Sponsored by First National Bank, Second Life and the exclamation point from Yahoo!

The Bottom-line

It is quite obvious that web marketing is growing many folds. Inventing new methods of monetization and novel methods of brand promotion is something that we are sure to see. So just stick around to see what all we get for the sake of ‘marketing’ and ‘brand promotion’.

It is just like the real-life bet. You enter the gambling room and you are sweating. You took your hand near your pocket but take out no currency. You have grown unruly. You treat your Twitter followers as currency and bet them. Your conscience speaks – “Oh Twitter! Has it really come to this?” and I say “Yes!!” (unfortunately).

Well, what I am talking about is not ethics but Twitter. I recently came across a Twitter app that attracted me towards itself as well as forced me to ask myself a question – “Has it really come to this?”. The twitter app I am talking about is BetYourFollowers.com.

BetYourFollowers.com? Is it real?

BetYourFollowers is a Twitter game that lets you gamble your followers as currency. Now for the question – “Is it really a gamble? Do I really lose or win followers?” and the answer is (unfortunately)- “Yes”. It is real and you surely gain and lose followers on gambling. You chose up to 5 of your followers to bet in a game and then you play it. If you win, you gain up to 5 followers and if you lose, you lose up to 5 followers.

How do we play this game (or whatever you call it)?

Go to www.BetYourFollowers.com and sign in with your Twitter account. Authenticate BetYourFollowers.com to use your Twitter account using Twitter OAuth. Choose which followers you want to bet and start shaking it like a polaroid picture. Battle against other Twitter users. If you defeat them, you win followers and if you lose, you lose followers. You can select to bet up to 5 followers in a game.

What I might win?

You will win followers if you win the game. Your followers counter will start showing greater numbers and you may even find some new friends.

What if I lose followers?

The followers you lost can always chose to re-follow you. Ask them politely and they might follow you again. But in case you wagered @anddjournal (that’s me!), he may never follow you again.

Is it ethical?

I have no idea about how to deal with it – is it a game or an act showing degradation of web friendship? My twitter friends and followers are dear to me and I can’t even think of wagering them. When I first went to the BetYourFollowers.com website, I thought to play the game and I did so (perhaps it is my inquisitive nature that forced me to play the game). I won it. But I was constantly thinking of whether it was ethical for me to play it. After the game got over and after I got 5 more followers following me, I finally decided that I shall wager my friends no more.

My twitter and web friends are like my real-life friends. My Twitter followers and friends share my success and my pain. How can I put them on a silly bet?? As for you, you are wiser than me and I believe that you can decided yourself better.

Is BetYourFollowers.com a BAD Twitter App?

No. Not at all. I did not mean that. It is a fantastic piece of web technology and the guys at Bubble Fusion Labs have worked really hard to make it. I appreciate their effort. My point is simply that the Twitter friends are like real friends. If you can bet your real-life friends, only then bet your Twitter friends..!!

You possibly are not allowed to tweet at work as I am not allowed to tweet at school. I am a Twitterholic and I can’t resist tweeting as much as you can’t. So is there a way we can tweet at work or at school? Sure, there is. For both of us, here is a geekier solution that makes it easy to mask our tweeting as some important work. A simple yet handy utility by the name SpreadTweet lets you do exactly what you want – “tweet at school or at work”.

SpreadTweet is an Adobe AIR application cleverly designed by @elliottkember to disguise your tweeting activities inside a spreadsheet. There are three variants of the application – resembling Office OSX, Office 2003, and Office 2007. The three variants will require you to have Adobe AIR Runtime environment on your work or school PC. But in case you do not have Adobe AIR Runtime environment installed on your work/school pc, you can use the fourth variant of the tool -  the web version of SpreadTweet.

Singing in to your Twitter account using SpreadTweet’s web version is easy using OAuth. For other variants of SpreadTweet , you will need to enter your login credentials.

Try SpreadTweet Web Version | Download SpreadTweet

It is a fact that we have several of emails and social networking accounts. To share them all with a fellow twitterer or a Facebooker is quite hard, especially on Twitter where there is a limit of 140 characters and would require you to send 5-6 tweets or direct messages for sharing all of your web contact info. It always take hell of my time to summarize my contact info and share it on social networks. Further, social networks are not quite safe a place to share your contact information so openly. So is there a way I can share my all the web contact info in a shortened and secured way? Yes kids you can (sort of).

I don’t really know what Per Schmitz was thinking about when he conceived the idea of bringing something like DooID but I am sure that he certainly knew what was on my (or other social networking junkies’) mind. I am thankful to Per for this wonderful web app named DooID. Lets have a quick peek at this new web 2.0 app.

Sharing your web contact information is made easy using DooID which provides you a single URL for all your web contact info. A simple address such as http://www.dooid.com/aditya will contain all your web contact info (social networks and email addresses), a nice and neat tagline, a simple 350 characters bio and your picture – it is all in one single place contained under one single URL.

DooID is sure to gain success as every social media enthusiast and social networking junky will be looking forward to gain his/her web contact virtual card. So if you haven’t already signed up, act now and get one at DooID.

Oh yes, there is also an option to go pro. It is a nice and cool way to show off certain of your other social networking fancies with add-ons and cool layouts. But it is good enough for business people who would like to use features such as iPhone version of their contact card or would like to use email form so that their visitors may contact them without knowing their email address or would like to personally brand their contact card. So am I going pro? No, not anywhere sooner because I may not use it much. It would be used just for sharing my contact info on social networks. But in case I start using it on a regular basis, I would definitely go pro.

Get a web2.0 contact card for yourself at www.dooid.com

It was one or two days back when I got a tweet from @TrendyDC wishing me a great week ahead. I get several of such tweets and I am thankful to all those who wish me as such. However, I was impressed by and attracted to her tweet. The obvious reason was the styling of text. It made it stand out among other tweets which are as regular as they can be.

Now consider two tweets or status updates:
1. Wish u a good day!
2. ωιѕн υ α gσσ∂ ∂αу!

The second one definitely stands out. So after finding that the second one was impressive and attractive, I went on googling for how I can too make my status updates stand out from the crowd of status messages flooding every single second.

After spending a nice amount of time googling using several search terms, I found what I was looking for – a text styler. I came across many text stylers but most of them very pretty nasty actually. The one that I found nice and neat was Sherv.net’s weird maker. It is a pretty nice text styler which converts any text you write into 9 different styles that you can simply copy and paste into your status updates on Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Just go to Weirdmaker’s webpage and enter your text and then copy any of the stylized text and paste it anywhere you want. Simple!!

Just turn around and have a look at the web thingy and you will see a whole lot of social networks and communication channels. Most of us can be found on various social networks like FaceBook and Myspace, microblogs likeTwitter, instant messaging and most of us also possess two or three emails. Different type of people use different communication channels to reach you and it really gets exhausting to try and manage your social life against these fragmented conversations on various communication channels. To simplify this exhausting work of tracking conversations across various communication channels and social networks, Silentale is here to help.

Silentale  is still in beta and you need to request an invite before you can use it. However, you can get a free invite just by commenting here. I will tell you about getting an invite soon. Now let us get back to the Silentale service and see what we have got at hands.

Silentale is a new web service which brings all your fragmented conversations across various communication channels under one clean and organized interface. Now whether you get a tweet from someone or someone sends you an email, Silentale will automatically index all the messages, including the contact details and attachments (if any).

To get started with the task of bringing your fragmented conversations under one organized interface, you need to set Silentale connectors. ‘Connectors‘ are a way to connect a communication channel to your Silentale profile. Just click on ‘Connectors’ in your Silentale dashboard and you will see an option to add a communication channel to your Silentale account. As of now, you get to add – your twitter profile, FaceBook profile, AOL, your own Imap/Pop3 email account, Google Apps Mail, Google Contacts, Google Mail, Hotmail/Live Mail, LinkedIn profile and Yahoo Mail – to your Silentale account. Once you have connected one or more of your social network accounts with Silentale, it will start fetching conversations from associated networks and put into your Silentale timeline.

For viewing all your conversations across various communication channels, all you have to do is click on ‘Timeline‘ in your Silentale account. Your Silentale timeline will then show you all the conversations from various communication channels you have associated with your account. These conversations are categorized under sub headings pointing to their time of arrival – 1 hour ago, 2 hours ago and so on.

Besides, the Silentale timeline also depicts the total messages received and total messages sent, each month of each year and each day of each month, using a simple graph.

The Giveaway

Silentale is still in beta and an invite is needed for using it. Shannon Ferguson, one of the four team members at Silentale, agreed to give away 100 invites for TechRavings readers. So I decided to hold a giveaway. The rule of the giveaway is very simple. All you need to do is just request an invite by dropping a comment on this post. The invites will be given to the first 100 people asking for it on first come first serve policy. There are no lucky draws and no catches - just request an invite and get it.

The giveaway will end once all the invites have been given away.

So take action and drop a comment now. A comment such as – “Give me an invite” will also do.

Related Links for more info about Silentale:

What is Silentale?| Silentale FAQ

PS – If you enter this contest,  try dropping a word about this contest in your Twitter profile. It is not required but is appreciated.

Update on March 4, 2010:

The first twenty people who requested an invite has been sent. The second batch of requests will be processed soon. Thanks for your patience

Update on March 9, 2010:

All the invitation requests put on or before March 09, 2010 have been fulfilled. I am now sending invites after every few hours. This means that you get access to Silentale pretty fast. If you haven’t requested one yet, request now and grab the opportunity to enjoy this service for free. If you have requested and received, help others discover this giveaway by tweeting or mentioning about it.

Social bookmarking helps your blog in gaining exposure. The more is the number of social websites indexing your webpages, the greater is the exposure of your blog. My recent discovery is a tool that simplifies this work of social bookmarking of blog posts using a clean and minimalistic wizard. The web app I am talking about is called Social Marker and it is absolutely free to use. Let’s see what we have at hands.

Though it is every blogger’s desire to ping most people about their recent article, but the fact is that going manually through tons of hundreds of social bookmarking website and submitting to all is a great time-taking and almost impractical thing to achieve. A good option is to submit to only top social networks suiting to your blog post and use a simple wizard that can guide you through the process of submission to all the top social networks. Social Marker satisfies this need and does what is actually required.

To get started with Social Marker, there is nothing required on your part – no registration and no filling of lengthy forms. Just go to the website and enter the url of your blog post, the title of you blog post, a short summary and related tags. Next, select the websites where you would like to submit your content. Finally, click submit.

You will see that a web wizard comes up and takes you to each website where you wanted your entry to be posted. The wizard will ask you to enter your login credentials at every website. Just enter your login credentials (or select from your web browser’s saved logins) and you will see the submission taking place in real time. Since the submission takes place in real time in front of your eyes, you do not need to worry whether the entry was posted correctly or not.

Aditya’s piece of advice – I would advice to create an account for your blog’s related top 10 social networks. Store the login credentials in your web browser’s memory and use this Social Marker wizard every time you post on your blog. You will definitely see a great rise in your blog traffic.

Try Social Marker