Tag Archives: tweets

Launched, I believe, only a few days ago, Twitgift.me, a product of the LAC Project, is a new way to send a real gift to your Twitter friends.

You simply choose a gift (which currently consists of chocolate chip, sugar, or peanut butter cookies), enter your own Twitter ID and credit card information, as well as the Twitter ID of the recipient. That’s it. The recipient gets a tweet notifying them of the Twitgift and they enter their own shipping information and can be waiting eagerly for the cookie arrival.

It’s a great concept. After all, sometimes you’ll discover wonderful people on Twitter, but you may rarely see them and never ask for their mailing address. Now you don’t have to; you can just send a Twitgift when that wonderful person has a birthday, needs a pick-me-up, or is celebrating something.

The cookies cost $19 and it looks like there is around $10 in shipping. Twitgift is looking for more vendors to add, so they won’t be an all-baked-goods type of place (not that I have any issues with cookies!).

UPDATE: The nice folks over at TwitGift sent me my own box of cookies after this post. I love chocolate chip cookies, so I couldn’t have been happier. The entire unboxing can be found in a post on my personal blog.

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Cheers!
Tweet Michelle @writetechnology, send her technology news at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net, visit her wine blog when you’re thirsty, and drop by her day job.

Twitter released a new Terms of Service today. You probably got an email about it, and they covered it – in brief – over on the Twitter blog.

The basics are just that you own your own tweets, although Twitter can republish them (since that is their purpose), they’ve left the door open for advertising, spam is bad, and there are specific guidelines for use of the API. The summary from their blog is

Advertising—In the Terms, we leave the door open for advertising. We’d like to keep our options open as we’ve said before.

Ownership—Twitter is allowed to “use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute” your tweets because that’s what we do. However, they are your tweets and they belong to you.

APIs—The apps that have grown around the Twitter platform are flourishing and adding value to the ecosystem. You authorize us to make content available via our APIs. We’re also working on guidelines for use of the API.

SPAM—Abusive behavior and spam is also outlined in these terms according to the rules we’ve been operating under for some time.

The two things that stand out to me are that I have ownership of my tweets, which heads off the whole Facebook TOS Privacy fiasco, and that Twitter is leaving the “door open” for advertising. By doing this, they’re allowing themselves to take their time deciding what advertising/sponsorship option works best for them.

What are your thoughts on the new TOS?

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Cheers!

Tweet Michelle @writetechnology, send her technology news at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net, visit her wine blog when you’re thirsty, and drop by her day job.

by Michelle Lentz

About a month ago, I posted that Twitter had officially added search and trends. Well, they’ve added them again, in that they’ve moved them. According to the Twitter blog,

A few weeks ago we started testing Twitter Search in the web interface for a subset of folks. We had the search box way up near the top of the page and the results on a separate page. It turns out that’s not the awesome way to do it. The best way to experience Twitter Search is when it’s a natural part of your normal Twitter experience.

I’d have to agree. Now, the Search box is in my right-hand column with Trends underneath. In this screen capture, I did a search on social media. Instead of going to a new page, my search now shows up right on my Twitter.com home page. Much more seamless than last month’s design, where I was taken to a new page of search results. Settings and Profile have both been moved back to the top of the screen, which is good.

Interestingly, you can also save the search. That’s a great feature, especially if you reference the same search repeatedly. (Maybe you’re tracking your brand.) However, once you save a search, I can’t figure out how to access it again. It’s supposed to be permanently in my sidebar, but that didn’t seem to stick. Ah, the joys of beta.

This newest redesign is in beta for a subset of users. Once Twitter gets some feedback, it may or may not roll it out to everyone.

Any thoughts on the newest changes?

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Contact Michelle with news, stories, events, and more.
Email: michelle[at]writetech[dot]net
Twitter: @writetechnology, Friendfeed: michellel
Blogs: Write Technology, Wine-Girl.net

by Michelle Lentz

Remember my post on Twitter Timewasters? Well, that’s been taken to a whole new level. It’s a new time waster that tracks how much time you’ve lost to Twitter.

Tweetwaster assumes each tweet takes you 30 seconds. It multiplies that by your overall number of tweets. It then lets you know how many days and hours you’ve lost creating tweets. Of course, it doesn’t take into account the time you’ve spent reading everyone else’s tweets, so I say just factor another day or two in there.

I would like to point out that I have a life, despite what this silly app might say. Obviously, it’s all in good fun. How much time have you wasted on Twitter?

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Contact Michelle with news, stories, events, and more.
Email: michelle[at]writetech[dot]net
Twitter: @writetechnology
Friendfeed: michellel
Blogs: Write Technology, Wine-Girl.net