Twitter is a micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’s updates which are text-based posts upto 140 characters in length. This Tip Of The Day will show how to add Twitter feeds to your blog but first some facts about Twitter:
The State of Twittersphere Q4 2008 was released recently (generated using Tweet Grader) and shows:
- Total of 4-5 million users
- 70% users joined in 2008, 20% joined in past 60 days, 5-10 new accounts/day (so mostly noobies)
- Only 5% have 250 or more followers
- Only 0.8% have 1000 or more followers
- 35% tweeters have 10 or fewer followers
- 9% tweeters follow no one at all
Here are Tweet Grader statistics generated for @arungupta:
Lets add twitter feeds to your blog:
- Go to twitter.com/widgets and select Other as shown below:
It allows you to create Flash and HTML widgets for any web page. Twitter feeds can be directly added to some other popular social networking websites by selecting their option.
- Click on “Continue” and choose between Flash or HTML widget as shown below:
- Click on “Continue” and feel free to customize as shown below:
“Number of updates” is the number of tweets that will be shown and title can be changed as well.
- For blogs.sun.com, this obtained code fragment can be easily added to “_sideColumn” template.
Here are some other nifty tools to manage your Twitter account:
- Twitterfeed: Twitter your blog entries
- Twitterank: Page rank for Tweeters (85.01 as of this writing, live here)
- Twinfluence: Combined influence of twitterers and followers (as of Jan 2)
- TwitterCounter: Widget that shows twitterer follower
- TwitterFox: Firefox extension that notifies of tweets (really sweet and lots of other related plugins)
- SocialToo: Manage online interactions of Twitter (surveys, auto-follow/unfollow, Direct Messages to new followers)
- TweetStats: Trends and analysis as shown below:
Live stats for @arungupta are available here.
- TweetLater: Schedule tweets for a particular time/day and some other features similar to SocialToo (auto-follow/unfollow and DM to new followers)
- Easy Tweets: Schedule tweets in future, automatically post RSS feeds and other similar features
There are numerous other tools available to manage your Twitter account! What is your favorite ?
Please leave suggestions on other TOTD (Tip Of The Day) that you’d like to see. An archive of all the tips is available here.
Technorati: twitter microblogging blogs bsc milestogo
I want to find out how to do the reverse
Post a status update to Twitter and Facebook when I do a new blog entry. Have not been able to get a good enough Google query to find it 
Comment by Eric Arseneau — January 5, 2009 @ 7:52 am
Twitterfeed is your answer, that’s the first link in the list above
Comment by Arun Gupta — January 5, 2009 @ 9:55 am
Oops, yes I ran into that yesterday. Should have been more careful, would like it to work for Twitter and Facebook, so now I assume I can find a plugin that will take my twitters and echo them onto FB
Comment by Eric Arseneau — January 5, 2009 @ 10:00 am
That’s possible too, just install the Twitter application (http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2231777543) in your FB profile and then all status updates @ Twitter are synced up every 30 minutes with FB. That’s how my FB profile gets status updates
Comment by Arun Gupta — January 5, 2009 @ 10:12 am
thanx u arun gupta
Comment by sinema izle — March 7, 2009 @ 3:43 pm