Twitter is a very useful tool to driving traffic to your web site, and in this article I discuss ways to get your Tweets Retweeted. I suspect that the top search engines are spidering peoples tweets, not necessarly to index or rank them, but using them to find content on the web very quickly. A popular post or article can be tweeted some several hours prior to it getting linked too. Search engines being interest in Twitter is very relevant to ensure their indexing is fresh and up to date.

1. Length:

Twitter limits you to only 140 characters per Tweet. A retweet is directly linked to the 140 characters as any retweet will be included at the front of the retweet: ‘RT’ @yourusername. Therefore, you need to keep you tweets short as possible, and leave sufficient space for the retweet information.

2. Phrasing:

There a few different types of phrasing, which are successful in achieving retweets. For example, definitive phrasing tweets which are authoritative and factual carry a lot of weight. Humorous tweets get retweets again and again for obvious reasons. Shocking tweets that provide information that isn’t widely known often get retweeted especially when they turn out to be factual. Carrot daggling tweets are often very intriguing to people. For example, you only give a snippet of information, or part of the story in the tweet and follow it will a url.

3. Content / Subject Matter:

This is very much fits the classic pattern of link bait on the web. For example, technology is big on Twitter and obviously celebrities. Content is king and will need to be current and relevant to your audiences.

4. Time of Day:

Research has shown that tweeting between 9am to 3pm pacific time is more likely to capture the maximum number of individuals are using Twitter. For example, if you tweet earlier you will capture Calaifornia one of the most heaviest percentage of users in the United States. Also, by tweeting before 3pm you will capture the United Kingdom audience. London has recently been deemed as the city with the most tweeters.

5. url:

To include a url very much depends on your Twitter strategy. If you are attempting to drive traffic to a web site, then obviously need to include a url. If there purposes of your tweets to raise you profile and follows, then I would suggest including urls selectively.

6. Pushing:

Email your friends asking them to retweet your tweets. Most people don’t mind helping you out, and it only takes a matter of seconds.

How can you be lonely when you have so many friends on Facebook?

Are you cursed by the social network generation of only having relationships with people you hardly know, or work colleagues that you would rather not know in person, let alone online?

Has time move on from days when groups of friends got together in person for a night out or weekend activity?

Do you feel pressured into having to join popular social networking site because your friends are there, or you need to feel part of a community because online is the only community available to you?

All these questions are faced by many lonely people, who’s only access to people or a community is only available via a social networking website. Users of social networking websites know that you do not have to publish information about yourself, or post minute by minute status updates, but are you excluded or even black-marked by people when you do not join the ‘community’?

In my opinion social networking websites are not the place for a lonely person, because it can quantify your isolation from the outside world and people in person. The news feeds or status updates are constantly updated with streams of peoples activity, opinions, and photographs. It is a continued reminder of how other people are living their lives in text and technicolor and who’s popular and who’s not. Photographs are probably the most heartfelt reminder of when you see people tagged in a photograph and you were not included.

The pressures of young people to join social networking websites is well documented. Bullying has moved from the playground to social networking websites, and is know as cyber-bullying. There has been many reported cases in the media of people being harassed which has driven a few to suicide attempts and self-harming due to the psychological damage people do to one another. Do not get me wrong, bullying is not anything new, and not limited to social networking websites by any stretch of the imagination. My point is, as with many things, and especially for young people, there are social pressures for people to join these networks whether they want to or not.

This is not just a teenager or young person problem. The Mental Health Foundation released a report that a staggering 53% of 18-34 year olds had felt depressed due to loneliness. The report did answer one fundamental question: nearly a third of young people stated they spend too much time communicating online and not enough time in person.

How will Social Networking websites look like in the future? Or more importantly, what functionality will sites such as Twitter and Facebook provide and how will we interact with friends, family and work colleagues 3 years from now.

In the coming years, Social Networking websites will more likely become the hub or portal to all our online activity:

1. email:

Most Social Networking already have a form of messaging or internal email system. Applications are already beginning to appear to incorporate existing popular email accounts such as Gmail, Yahoo Mail and Hotmail into Social Networking sites. In the near future internal Social Networking sites will allow you to email people outside of the its own internal network, either via it’s own system or using a third party.

2. ecommerce:

You will already find some major online stores allowing you to purchase directly via website like Facebook. In the coming years, this will explode. I am personally waiting for supermarkets to produce applications for sites like Facebook, to allow ordering of your weekly food/grocery shop directly from your profile page.

3. businesses:

More and more business will be conducted via social networking websites. Currently, most of the main stream businesses and companies will have a social networking present for marketing purposes. In the near future, business transactions will begin to appear via your Facebook profile. For example, not only will you see an ad for car insurance, the link from that ad will not take you to an external web site, the link will take you to that companies page, where you will be able to obtain a quote, and purchase the policy directly from your social networking site.

4. marketing:

Marketing on social networking website is already widespread. In the coming years, it will be bigger business and as the ad market becomes more competative, you will only begin to see ads from the companies that have huge marketing budgets. Gone will be the days of ads from local small businesses.

5. hub/portal:

As mentioned previously, social networking websites will become a hub or portal of all your online activity. This will include all the items mentioned in this article along with many others I haven’t covered.

6. billing:

Do you have paperless billing? Do you get an email reminder when your bills are due? If so, the next step is receiving these notifications via your favourite social networking website. This could be in the form of a private message, pop up, or a private comment placed on your wall.

7. calender:

Do you already use an electronic calender and organiser? If so, there will be applications soon that will allow you to import your calender into your favourite social networking web site. You will be able to customise this to receive notifications in your desired format.

I’ve been using Google Buzz for a couple of days. It would appear the UK didn’t get access until a couple of days after the American’s did. This isn’t surprising as Google is an American company and their headquarters is located in the United States.

To date, a couple of my friends and family have followed my on Buzz and I’ve followed them back. Also, several other people have followed me who I do not know and I think this is as a result of others I’ve followed, or comments I’ve made on Buzzes (not sure if the is the PC term) that I found through searching.  The immediate issue that struck me if you want to use Buzz as a means to communicate with friends, family or colleagues, every one needs to have a Google account. Needless to say some do and others don’t. I have attempted to convert a number of people to Gmail; however, to some people email is email regardless of what the logo is in the corner.

There are number of improvements I would love to see already, and it does appear Google have been quick to address on major concern of privacy. The issue of followers seeing who your Gmail contacts are is a concern for everyone and Google have addressed this and made it easier for the end user to find and amend this setting.

Like most social networking platforms there is usually a lot of noise and within that noise somewhere is the interesting information that you want to read and reply too. I find it irritating the there is no easy and quick means to delete or in Google Buzz language ‘mute’ posts that you don’t want to see. What I would like to see is a filter, where you can filter in or filter out tags or keywords that are relevant to your interest. Plus a big delete button or X that is easy to hit if you don’t want to see that post again.

I was hoping there would be more drag and drop functionality. Having to type or pasting links to other web pages, images or video is a pain. I want to be able to drop it into my post.

As there are so many social networking platforms available today, Buzz would have the edge if it became the one-stop-shop for all your social networking activity embedded in your email. I personally only use Twitter and FaceBook and what a wonderful place Buzz would become if I can read and post directly to any social networking site from Buzz.

As usual from Google, this a real sterling effort, and I hope that it’s developed into something that no one can do without. At the moment I do have an open mind, and wait with anticipation of how this will develop.