This is a guest post from Jamie Fairbairn. The web is constantly evolving. On July 15th 2006 Twitter was officially launched and has since gone on to change the way many of us interact online. As Twitter approaches its 5th Birthday I thought it would be good to take a look at what it might be like if it was launching in 2011. Read on below to discover my 10 point Twitter wish list. Auto DMs wouldn’t exist Isn’t it…

One of the most useful features on Twitter is being withdrawn as of today – the hashtag. For anyone not on Twitter, a hashtag is the universal # symbol, and helps to separate individual conversations from the overall Twitter stream. For example, if I want to just talk with people about silly jokes, I would use the hashtag #sillyjokes. This would help others just follow that conversation by opening up a browsing window just for that hashtag. There are some…

If you’ve been watching the social stream the past week or so, you’ll have seen a slew of examples where a company has received a bit of a black eye in social media. From social media darlings JetBlue to Air Canada and the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, it’s been a bit of a wake-up call for businesses that may have avoided social smackdowns so far. And these are just the tip of the iceberg – Valeria Maltoni has a…

Third-party Twitter client Hootsuite has just released an update that takes it pretty much head and shoulders above the likes of Seesmic and Tweetdeck, amongst others. The company had already made a substantial update recently, with the introduction of HTML5 compatibility on its Twitter client. This update included site analytics via Google, geo-search options for local tweets, drag-and-drop image uploads and InstaLoad for better performance issues all round. Now, however, it’s upped its game considerably and offers the best Twitter…

One of the questions I’m most asked is how do you sell social media to your boss or client. Sure, we’re in the space and can see the numerous benefits, but how does that transfer to a wary client? A lot of that comes down to your belief in how social can work for businesses, and how you relate your client or boss’s needs into their social media equivalent. It’s not always easy, but it’s not rocket science either. With…

I received an email today that said I’m a “Twitter snob”. The reasoning behind it was that my follow-to-follower ratio was skewed – I had more followers than people I follow. Therefore, I wasn’t using Twitter correctly; instead of following everyone back that followed me (which I should be doing, according to the email), I was obviously a snob that only followed the “elite” and I should “re-evaluate my Twitter use”. The email ended by saying I shouldn’t advise on…

There are a lot of changes happening over at Twitter at the minute. They recently updated their Terms of Service and now they’re working on Project ReTweet, where sharing someone else’s tweet with your connections will be performed differently from the current user-generated method. As is usual when wide-scale changes happen at a company (or, in this case, on a digital stream), there are both fans and dissenters to the new proposals. That’s normal. But what if Twitter could bypass…

If you’re a blogger, you’ll know how comments make a blog. They can take the original post into a whole new level altogether, with opposing views and discussions opening up some great viewpoints. Personally, I’ve used the comments on some of my posts (and those on other blogs) as inspiration for new posts here. I’ll add my comment on the original post, and then expand on it with a new or slightly different take. That then opens the discussion up…

Have you signed up for Sponsored Tweets on Twitter? Or Magpie? Or TweetROI? Do you offer sponsored posts and paid reviews on your blog? If so, you might have to re-think how you share this information, thanks to a Terms of Service update from Facebook. Why does a Facebook update affect you if you’re on Twitter, or writing on your blog? Think of your Status Update box. Many users of both Facebook and Twitter have their accounts synced, so when…

Recently I wrote why I was moving my #followfriday recommendations from Twitter to this blog. So, without further ado, here are my recommendations for this week. I hope you check them out – they’re all worth getting to know. 1. Community. Kim Woodbridge (@kwbridge). I use WordPress for my blog as I love the whole WordPress community, and Kim Woodbridge sums up why perfectly. Always sharing great blogging tips through her wonderfully named (Anti) Social Development blog, Kim is wise,…