Blogs Worth Reading: April

I’ve decided to take a page out of Louis Gray’s book and highlight six blogs (in no order) that have really caught my attention in April, as well as one link that I feel is a recent notable read.

1) Bryan Person – BryanPerson.com, brains of Social Media Breakfast

• Before heading to an event, study the attendee list – Keep that in mind when coming for Social Media Breakfast: Singapore 2!

2) Dan York – Disruptive Conversations, correspondent for For Immediate Release.

• When Twitter Goes Down… oh, how we have come to rely on it – A weekend the Twitterverse remembers not so fondly.

3) Charlene Li & Josh Bernoff – Groundswell, authors of Groundswell.

• Listening with Summize and Tweetscan – All companies should know this by now.

4) Brian Koh – Harmless? Bananas!, Ogilvy PR and co-creator of The Open Room.

• New marketing, but are we ready? – crap 2.0?

5) Eric Berlin – Online Media Cultist

• Good traffic, bad traffic, silly traffic, traffic traffic – In case you still think hits is the be all and end all.

6) Tara Hunt- Horsepigcow

• Tweeting for companies 101 – great case studies, read this if you’re a company.

The amount of new blogs I’m subscribing to monthly is decreasing (I suppose there’s only so much information I can process), but if you know any great ones, recommend them in the comments space below!

Icio Week 12(b) – Twitter Posts

Incredible week for Twitter news. Let’s get into it.

• If you’re tired of checking Twitter on the web or on your desktop application, try one of these 17 visualisations (my favourite is Twitter Vision)
• Twitter is for conversations. Here’s how you track them.
• Did we just witness a Twitter marriage proposal? (credit to Andre for the Tweet)
• Twitter is the tech water cooler. I have no doubt about this.
• Yet another post on how to “get” Twitter.
• 5 ways to have fun on Twitter. #4 – Using Twitter to meet new people is my favourite. Just entering “Singapore” on Tweetscan works wonders.

If you liked all that news but aren’t sure how to get started on Twitter, my handy guide called Twitter 201 is available:

• Part 1: What is Twitter & what uses does it have?
• Part 2: How Twitter can be useful & how to grow your network
• Part 3: Best Twitter apps & general advice

Where Are The Twitter Journalists?

I open my Twitter homepage and see a Tweet of a shooting at Outram MRT from micamonkey

Not that I doubt micamonkey, but I didn’t want to go around telling people about it if it wasn’t true. So I checked out Channel News Asia (our local news channel) and got nothing. (click for larger image)

I opened Tweetscan and did a search for Singapore and here’s what turned up:

So here’s the question: Why doesn’t Channel News Asia have Twitter Journalists? If they can’t keep up with new media, then traditional media will really be in trouble sooner or later.

Edit @ 22:15:

CNA’s page now shows this:

Note the time posted says 4:55pm? But that’s not what my earlier screencap at 6:45pm says. Are you allowed to edit your timestamp for news as a journalist? Hmm.

Blogs I’m Subscribed To: February

I subscribe to so many new blogs a day it’s crazy. On one hand I feel like I should stick to just a few, on the other there is so much good material out there, it seems like I’m never following enough.

So I decided to come up with an experiment:

• Put all new blogs in a monthly folder on Google Reader
• Star great posts from the respective bloggers
• Take a look at the end of the month who’s worth keeping (I mean if they haven’t gotten a single star post in 30 days, I probably don’t need to subscribe to them)

The result? About 30 blogs stayed on my subscription list, of particular mention (in no particular order):

• Adam Stiles (of LinkRiver) – I’m admittedly not using LinkRiver a whole lot these days, but I do still follow what Adam has to say on his blog. I actually think LinkRiver has good functions, but just needs a little bit more critical mass.
• CC Chapman – Heard of CC for awhile from Six Pounds of sound, but a recent post which highlighted CC on Second Life talking to some students, as well as a great musical pick by bill last month really made me sit up and take notice. The man takes great pictures too.
• Claud Talking – I think I was randomly searching Tweetscan for “Singapore” and came across Claud. It’s nice to see a local blog know and “get” social media, without just being a Meepok blog.
• Tony Hung @ Deep Jive Interests – I probably first picked up this post on Twitter from Tony, and since then have been following him both on Twitter as well as FriendFeed.
• Tiffany Monhollon @ Personal PR – I first found Personal PR by a post on 27 secrets to linking like a master networker and then later came across 5 comments not to post on blogs which came in very useful for a project of mine. Instant subscription.
• Rex Hammond @ Rexblog – Twitter is something you’ll never understand, so stop trying. ‘Nuff said.
• Chris Clarke @ Student PR – I can’t even pick out one single post that’s more deserving of attention than other posts. Read everything.
• Frederic @ The Last Podcast – Picked up for How I Use FriendFeed, been following via RSS and FriendFeed ever since.
• Jeremiah Owyang – A lot of stuff flies over my head because I’m not a practitioner like he is. But there’s still a load of good stuff in there and he does try to write for the newbies as well, so credit there.

I’m following most (if not all) of these bloggers in Twitter as well, look for them via my Twitter page if you like. (And follow me too!)

More blogs to share? Drop your URL and/or RSS feed into the comments below. I’m always on the lookout for new, interesting and educational stuff to read, absorb and most importantly, share.

Twitter 201: Part 3 – Best Twitter Apps & Advice

Here’s the final part of Twitter 201 which will cover the best applications for Twitter, as well as a few things I’d advise against on Twitter. If you missed earlier parts, here are the links to part 1 and part 2.

Best Apps For Twitter

1) Tweetscan – Allows you to search for specific things that people are Tweeting about. This is a favourite of mine and I’ve had a great experience where I was searching for “chinese new year”, found someone else’s blog, commented on it and a reader of that blog then came here and commented. Can’t recommend this enough

2) Snitter is an application you download to your desktop and it looks a little something like this:

The benefit is simple: you don’t have to continually go to the Twitter website, but just update your Tweets from this instead. Your friends’ updates will be sent right to you as well. I’ve been using this for a few days and have found it to be fairly non-intrusive.

3) Twitter Cal helps with productivity and scheduling, which can be useful. I haven’t personally used this very often, but the perks are definitely there.

4) Facebook Application – search for this on Facebook, and anytime you update your Twitter status, your Facebook status gets updated at the same time. Pretty neat.

General Twitter Advice

Know who your audience is. This can make a difference between whether you Tweet yourself to remember the milk, or publicising something to friends.

Too much “noise”. Twitter your thoughts (Why I dislike Chinese New Year) vs actions (wondering which pair of socks to wear). Do keep in mind that Twitter also functions as an extension of your personal brand, and people will stop following you if you post too many frivolous Tweets.

Be aware of who you’re following. Best example of this – When Seth Godin isn’t Seth Godin.

Trivia

SianAh – Trust Singaporeans to come up with a Twitter clone for you to fill in what’s bothering you. Unfortunately, I think SianAh is gone now because I can’t access the website

That brings me to the end of the Twitter201 posts. I really hope you enjoyed it and most importantly, learned something that will help you use Twitter a little better. As always, feel free to comment if you have other uses/suggestions on Twitter below.

References:

Publishing 2.0 – Why I Stopped Using Twitter
Chris Brogan – Twitter Revisited
ProBlogger – 9 Benefits Of Twitter For Bloggers, Tips For Bloggers
Lifehack – Twitter: Use It Productively

Edit: There’s a new Twitter write-up on Makeuseof that just got posted which covers almost the same scope as this but with variants in the apps and with a section on word tracking. Worth a look!

Twitter 103: Apps For Twitter

Fimoculous introduces six apps that will probably help enhance your Twitter usage. My favourite of the lot is by far TweetScan.

Jac, Amelia and myself were thinking about how Twitter can be used for us, and a quick TweetScan search on “photography” quickly turned up some results that would probably of use to Jac, and I’m sure searches for food would yield similar results.

I think I’ve read quite a bit on Twitter, and I’m ready to progress to Twitter 201 which will talk about how us regular bloggers (ie the non-famous people of the world), may actually have practical uses for Twitter. This’ll probably occur after Chinese New Year, so stay tuned!