Twitter Feed on Blogger? Where is it?

I've had a twitter feed on my blogger account for some time now, or at least, I thought I did.

No longer. The gadget for twitter feeds merely offers the opportunity to subscribe to my twitter account and does not display my tweets.

I must have missed the argument between Google Plus and Twitter.

It's exceedingly annoying that I can't be as social as I would like. LinkedIn has also stopped publishing twitter feeds.

I suppose it was only to be expected. Everyone falls out in the end.

Here's Wavin' at you Kid!

Thanks to Foamcow, the only real web developer I know, I got an invite for a Google Wave account.

Rubbing my hands with glee, I signed in. And then what?

Pete was the only listed contact, and he's far too busy working and tweeting to indulge in a spot of Google waving.

Happily, one of my Omani contacts saw my plea on Twitter and added me. She, Deepak and I got seriously stuck into a Wave conversation. Goodness me, how quickly the wave scrolled. We added maps and videos and ended up knowing each other somewhat better, but I haven't seen them on Wave since. Probably because the conversation could be carried out as effectively using Twitter or Live Messenger.

There's quite a Twitter community in Oman, and the majority have protected their tweets. There may be a feeling that Wave is not as 'protected.' Oman has only one ISP at present, Omantel, which is heavily censored. Neither can you be sure that the security services are not reading what you're writing. The filter even bans gmail from time to time.

Does everyone have to be online at the same time to participate in a Wave? Tweeting is more independent. You can pick up a tweet and reply when it suits you, rather than being constrained to follow a conversation in real time.

My five 'wavers' never seem to be online. So that avenue of enquiry has expired.

I have yet to work out how to incorporate Twitter and Facebook into Wave as Mashable suggested.

I had had an idea of how I might use Wave with my toastmasters group. I have to build a mini-website to inform my co-members about developments in a topic that I'm to present as the last project in the Technical Presentations manual. I thought Wave might be a suitable way of bringing people up to speed, particularly as I could use Wave to build a wiki, load photos, documents, maps etc.

Some hope. The club members won't even sign up for Google email accounts so that we could share Google Calendar and Google Docs. And if they don't have a Google account, there's no way they can be offered a Wave account in the future.

Enter the Google Wave cheat sheet. and a welcome clue. If you enter with:public in the search box, you see what everyone else is waving about.

Whoaaaaaaaah! An endlessly scrolling list of Waves that disappear out of the window in less than 3 seconds, most of which look as if they're junk. Too many Waves offering to check if your link works. That looks like spam. Honestly, it was disheartening.

I did follow two Waves. One on learning Swedish, since I did work in Stockholm as an au pair between 1969 to 1970 and learnt a bit of Swedish, and another for women in social marketing.

Love and bless them, the Google engineers have created something, essentially, because they can. We proto-Wavers are the sandbox. How many of us will survive the evolution of Wave?

Inventive ideas for using twitter - stock feeds and alternative websites

The trouble with web pages is that they stick right there on the net. You revisit a website and nothing seems to have changed. Except maybe for the blog. SEO advice is to maintain a blog so that Google will be constantly challenged by your addition of new content.

I have three main blogs, plus two or three others on the side. Often, I don't have the time to think through what to write. Sometimes, I'm just not inspired.

Hey ho twitter, although I conclude many of my days having to admit that I haven't had a single, brilliant, original idea to share with the twittersphere.

I love the interaction on twitter. I pick up stories and useful links to tips. I can ask questions. I can reply to questions. It doesn't really take up that much of my time. Tweetdeck runs quietly in the background (I turned off the sound alerts) while Twhirl also enables me to post and monitor content as well as upload a twitpic.

I'm not a mobile net user, because I spend so much time in front of a computer, that I want to get away from it while I'm out. There are other things in life.

But I was impressed by a twitter use that was tweeted today. An article in today's Washington Post describes how you can set up your Twitter account to follow market news. Surely better than having to download a desktop ticker. And you would be able to follow your customised twitter stream on your net enabled mobile.

It had to happen. I came across the profile of someone else who has revised the home page of his website to consist entirely of his twitter updates. Too busy, one presumes, to write something truly rational or descriptive about his life and work. So far, it details travels to meetings in exotic locations.

I'm always wary of people who list meetings as their principal activity. There is precious little evidence of anything useful coming out of meetings. All those summits that statesmen go to? The discussions have been held in advance by subordinate ministers and officials who phrase the final communique. If no-one is present at a meeting to minute its content, who knows if there is an effective outcome?

Mind you, I was wondering how to incorporate a FriendFeed page into my website yesterday. I haven't sorted it out yet, but Facebook friends will be able to click the appropriate tab in my profile.

Using Google to advertise your Twitter feed

Google is allowing Adsense users to define ads marketing their Twitter profiles. Instead of being directed to a specific web page selling a product, the ad clicker ends up at the advertiser's Twitter profile.

Apparently Intuit has spent a pile this way, promoting their TurboTax software. TurboTax spokeswoman, Colleen Gatlin, said that using Twitter humanises the company's interaction with potential customers. As well as being able to answer customer questions about the product quickly, it also gets customer feedback via Twitter.

I wonder if Intuit will publish the results of this advertising campaign as opposed to more traditional approaches.

Intuit's marketing department is analysing the results. As the marketing director says, it's not just the customers who subscribe directly who are the target, but their followers.

The same article also mentions newly launched Tinker. Tinker aggregates conversations from Facebook and Twitter relevant to 'event streams.' Oh and by the way, there'll be associated advertising.

To Twitter, or not to Twitter? And THAT inauguration

Do you use Twitter? I bet anyone reading this would know that it's THE micro-blogging service. What's more, it forces you to read what other people write rather than putting it off to another day.

I only follow 60 people. 72 poor souls have opted to follow me. Twitter cognoscenti aim for thousands of followers, which rather makes me think they're following the 'stack it high and sell it low' principle. Establishing a global reputation as an expert of sorts.

The online marketers are the worst. Floods of tweets hog the timeline, often with @ responses to people who I don't know and don't know what question they asked and probably wouldn't want to know anyway.

I hate the hashtags and text-type language. If it were about usability and accessibility, some twitterers would fail immediately. The main protagonists are trying to build their own corporate profiles so that they can convince companies that they are the Twitter 'experts.' I wonder how much money I could charge per day to show other people how to use Twitter for marketing?

But then there are many positive benefits to being a Twitterer. I get some very good tips simply by following people who link to new information resources and techniques. I've also been following a friend of my son who is travelling the States and was in D.C. for President Obama's inauguration. I asked him to bring me an inauguration souvenir.

Just this morning, Karen Blakeman twittered about a Wordle analysing the words used in Obama's inauguration speech.

I'd love to reproduce it here, but Blogger won't let me insert the code. Here's the link to Wordle: Obama Inauguration Speech.

What's a Wordle? An online graphical representation of the emphasis given to words on a web page. It's useful for keyword discovery.

And if you'd like to watch the speech all over again and read the transcript, then this BBC page preserves the inauguration for posterity. There's even a glimpse of the Wordle!