Twitter is beautiful. 140 is perfect. It IS tough sometimes to fit a thought in just 140 characters, but that’s the point! It makes you really think about what you’re about to say, shorten it to the most concise phrase possible, before you send it.

That text in italic was taken from someone’s comment somewhere. I copied it because I agree to it.

But do we need more space? Should 140 be the limit or not? Well, from how the micro blogging segment has grown thanks to twitter, I don’t think anyone is complaining.

But I came across this article, about ways to tweet in more than 140 characters. I think someone has been complaining. So let me make a point clear. Less is More.

I don’t want tweets to be like screeches. They need to be simple and useful, like the way it is. Because they are short, I can skim through my friends tweets rather than read, and still get to know what my friends have been upto.

Twitter is a micro-blogging platform. More than 140 words means, it will soon be a blogging platform.

So what I suggest. Tweet in 140 words. If you seriously need more characters, then think twice if you really should tweet it or is it better to blog about it and tweet the link.

Happy Tweeting!

Technorati Tags: message, short, twitter

Do you like numbers in your usernames or handles? Well, frankly I don’t. It’s the same feelings when it comes to profile URLs. I hate the long profile URLs for my orkut and facebook profile. Well, now at least facebook has given us a solution. Vanity URLs!

For those who do not know what vanity urls, here is a quick info. Vanity URL, is a domain name pointing to something to which the name relates. In case of Facebook Vanity URLs, we have http://www.facebook.com/jithinkr pointing to my facebook profile. So the old number based profile identification is replaced with easy to remember names!

And know what? FB vanity url’s are kind of blind to “periods” i.e. “.”.

Hence http://www.facebook.com/jithinkr and http://www.facebook.com/jithin.kr both point to my profile! Yay! But there is a problem. If you haven’t registered your vanity url’s yet, then be quick because a single vanity url can make so many other url’s unavailable!

Quick, get your facebook profile a vanity url! Click here to claim one! Do note that once selected, you can’t change the selection. So think before you select!

Technorati Tags: facebook, internet, profiles, urls, vanity

Micro blogging has become a craze. No doubt about that, all thanks to Twitter. With tweeting possible from mobile, people tweet on the go and are rather addicted to it. I came across this video on youtube which shows how much importance Twitter has in our lives. And how much trouble it has caused!

Recently I found that a lot of people following me. People with a greater number of followers. Going through their profiles and blogs still makes me wonder, what in the world, made them follow me. Because they have inspired me, made me think, brought back the about to lose values and revive my life.

Making Money Out of Twitter?

When I heard about Twitter Ads, I thought it was a great idea. But I hadn’t signed up with it or didn’t try to get beneffited out of it. What I didn’t think of was that, twitter was about relationships. It isn’t a good idea to bring advertisements into it. 

I myself would have dis-followed people who would spam with advertisements. Then why didn’t I think that people who follow me also could have similar thoughts and might reach similar decisions.

This was the article that changed my outlook towards money and the world that runs benind money. Ads On Twitter. A Good Idea? by Jason

Technorati Tags: advertisements, internet, Networks, twitter, values

The web grew, at a rate never anticipated. With science and technology getting better everyday, the impossible has indeed become possible. But today it has become an onerous task to get to the information you wanted. Yes, search engines exist. Google is as awesome as always. But there are somethings we need to know. Google shows the popular links. Then what about those links which hasn’t become popular yet? Even though not popular, the info you search for might be there in that website or blog!

Because of this there are two parties whose efforts sometimes goes in vain. One you, who searches for content and the other who uploads the content. Well the former party, you are in least problem. Why? Because there are so many content providers and you most often are satisfied with what you get. But what about the other party? The ones who uploads the content. They are craving for attention, your attention.

Why care? Because with the internet expanding and a dual life, becoming essential, sooner or later you shall find yourself at the giving end. Well, most of use already are at the giving end. Do you upload videos on youtube? Do you blog? Do you crave for subscribers? Yes, I know you do. You don’t want the articles you blog to remain unread. 

This post is about Social Media. You must have understood, the “Why?”. I will tell you about the What and How.

In Social Media, the technology is available. You are expected to use it to make your content more accessible. Plus, thanks to social media, you can even make your content better.

With social media, people can easily access your contents, and rate them, comment on them and suggest them to others. So when others come to your blog or website, then they can choose based on your ratings. This even helps the search engines to take your link upwards in the search result. It also recommends the link to others who come across the comments and ratings. That’s being social!

In other word’s it raises your blogs popularity.

Let me explain it using YouTube. In youtube, you can watch videos others upload. You can comment upon how good, interesting or gross it is. You can rate it and if you like all the videos the user uploaded then you can Subscribe to the videos! For example, there is this website called CommonCraft. They create tutorials, which explain Web 2.0 phenomenons in Plain English. I liked watching them on youtube and I subscribed. I commented upon how good the tutorials are.

Before watching them, I saw that their ratings were high and the comments supported it. This helps in choosing the needle from the haystack. 

Similarly, if you have a WoW blog with great posts, that people like to read and follow, then register to a site which is exclusively for bloggers. For bloggers from India there is the Indiblogger website. For bloggers around the world there is Technorati.

Now, I am a fan of CommonCraft, because their tutorials are simply awesome. They are highly creative. Check out what they say about Social Media here!  Social Media in Plain English.

P.S. Images are taken from the Internet. No Hotlinking. All images have been uploaded to my server.

Technorati Tags: Blogs, comment, Networks, posts, twitter

Do you lead a dual life? One your real life and the second one on line?

Most of you will be. It has become almost essential to have an online life that represents yourself to the online community. To distinguish you among the umpteen anonymous users. To voice your ideas and opinions.

The things I will be telling you will include things you know already and things you might not be knowing. If you are an internet journalist and are up to date with the services that opened to the public lately, then it will be helpful if you make this post valuable via your valuable comments! If not, then feel free to read on about living life on the internet, connecting our dual life and making the most out of it.

What best represents you online? Is it your emailid, website, blog, orkut or facebook profile? Here is an account of my own online journey. I am sure it shall strike a chord with your own. I have blogged about all the services I have registered and use (because it was and is necessary. I might have not mentioned a few of them.) And what has to be done to bring them all together to represent you best.

When I actually started using the internet, in 2000( or was it in 2004, never mind) i didn’t have an identity. At that time I didn’t know about blogs, who can set up a website and how useful an email id is.

Websites, Emails and Blogs

Then I had some bizarre idea and thought of creating my web site. Yes, I didn’t even have an email id and I was going into hosting my own website (of course, my own means not my domain, but some free domain). Yahoo was hip those days and my dad helped me create a page for myself on the internet in geocities. I have long stopped maintaining it. But it’s still online and very well available. 

The wonderous thing was, there were visitors to my website then. I had thrown a number of links on the website and categorised them into groups for people to use. I called it JKRWorld. And with that I got my first email id in Yahoo! Mail.

From there on, I have become more and more experienced in my life both off- and on- line. Then came GMail. Because of it’s invite feature, I thought it was something big, and had my father register an account for me. The username (jithinkr) later on became my handle, an online identity. Then came blogging. I started off in some free domain, which I have no idea what it was. The idea of monetizing blog and making money out of ad revenue caught my interest. Blogger being a google product was trustworthy. But it wasn’t satisfactory. I moved on to wordpress and loved it there. And since I have been with wordpress. I used to blog at Novice Investigator.

WordPress.com blogs did not permit advertisements on their blogs. But I had come to realise that these were more than just money. Blogging had become a passion for me. And my blog represented me. My blog has been of great help to me. It gave the exposure, experience and the recognition. (I may not be recognized like Darren is but, still I like the recognition I get).

Social Networks

I do not remember when I started using orkut. Think it was in 2006. But I loved the idea of social networking. Finding friends with similar interests. Discussions and flame wars in communities. Discovering security issues and exploiting them. Again, I blogged about them and got a loyal set of readers. 

I remember that there was a surge of social networking sites at that time. LinkedIn, Hi5, MySpace, Facebook and so on. But I stuck with Orkut. Being a google product gave it a mark against the other services.

Recently I started using Facebook and finding it more comfortable and fun than Orkut, mainly because of the polls and also because most of my friends are there. It’s easier to communicate and comment in facebook. I haven’t ditched orkut and still continue using it.

Micro Blogging

In recent times we have this micro blogging services. If you have heard of twitter then you should be very well knowing it about. You blog with contents less than 140 words in twitter. It’s faster and easier to let people know what you are upto. It lets people who care about you know what you are planning to do. It’s like sending your friends a group message. The guys at Common Craft have this great video called “Twitter in Plain English“, that you can watch to better understand twitter and micro blogging services.

Tumble Logging

A variant to blogs, these make up short posts rarely text and mostly made of videos, pictures, links and sound clips. Tumblr is a free tumble log service. You can visit My Tumblr Page as an example. Tumblelogs help to make a blog out of things you come across online, like videos, links, photos and other blogs. It’s like sharing content and helping your friends come to know of the things that was interesting to you online.

Social Bookmarks

You come across lot of awesome websites online. You just love your browsers bookmarking option, because it helps you get back to the link and read it again whenver you want! But the bad thing is, with more bookmarking it isn’t just so easy to use them. And when you are forced to use a new system, you don’t have the bookmarks with you. There comes online bookmarking facilities. There is more goodness to social bookmarks, because you can access your bookmarks anytime you want and can also discover useful websites from other peoples bookmarks. Common Craft is the best place to learn these things the easy way. Learn all about social bookmarking using the video, “Social Bookmarking in Plain English“. I use Delicious for my social bookmarks. And I love it!

Micro Reviewing

I came to know that there were services that let you review movies you watch and services you use recently. It’s Blippr. It apes a twitter like idea and permits reviews of only 160 words. Hence the name micro reviewing. At present am not very active in reviewing things on Blippr, but it’s a great place!

I am alive at a lot of places! How many services do you use?

GReader, Twitter, Blippr, Tumblr, Delicious, Facebook. Hmmm..

I read this somewhere. 

Whenever someone visits my blog, the first thing they find is that it’s been some time since I had blogged. Though I would have been online and updated my status on all other sites, I wouldn’t have got time to blog. It would be nice if all those posts featured at the same place, so that my home page is a well updated site, brimming with information about me. About where I am, what I have been upto, what I discovered recently and what my opinion about the world and the internet’s current state is. The best would be aggregating all my posts to all those services, disjointed services. Un-dis-jointing my posts from all those services.

Lifestreams

A collection of all your online status, your tweets, your favorites, your pictures and your video uploads. All at one place. There are several services that make this possible. You can even feature it within your blog. (There are wordpress themes designed to include lifestreaming. Agregado is an example). There are websites like Soup.io, Storytlr that do just this. Of course, they have their own unique features. Say like, Soup.io is a tumblelog + lifestreaming, and Storytlr has the unique feature of making a story based on your online updates. My lifestream on soup.io is jithinrk@soup.io. It’s made of only my twitter feeds and delicious feeds.

There are softwares like SweetCron and Amplifeeder that lets you set up a website just for lifestreaming. 

Why Lifestreams?

It collects all your profiles and your feeds and displays it at one place, your homepage, website or blog. Your lifestream represents the complete you online. Complete information at a single place. It helps people who like to follow you, who like to know you. And hey! watch out for stalkers!

P.S.: It took me more than 5 hours to complete this post. Wonder why?

Technorati Tags: Blogs, internet, twitter