social media - 2/3 - Konstantin Kovshenin

Tag Archives: social media

Robots Are Doing Better Than Humans on Twitter

This is all about an experiment I started back in July 2009, called TwiBots. Initially it was supposed to be a simple 24/7 online tweep (Michael Davis) saying a bunch of stuff randomly. But then we (Michael and I hehe) started picking out certain topics, feeding content from certain RSS feeds, filtering all content by keywords and regular expressions.

When the new Retweet API came along, I wrote an RT module which uses the Twitter Search API to find relevant tweets and users, then retweets those messages or just somehow interacts with a user. As soon as the Twitter Lists API was announced, I started working on the Lists module, which eventually became a simple “sorting-the-tweeps” based on their keywords – web design, design, wordpress, etc. Soon enough, I found out that Lists couldn’t contain more than 500 members (although some glitch made 501 possible). Web design 2, wordpress 2, etc wouldn’t be as fancy. I also tried building a conversation list of tweeps that by any means talked to the robot, but then again, the 500 limit broke all my hopes ;)

There were other modules which I worked on really hard, such as RThx module or Random Buzz, DM Control. Some of them worked, some of them were turned off after a few days (yes, you guessed it – Random Buzz, that really made some noize ;)

So, what did I achieve? Me – nothing. Michael did though, in 6 months he went up to 4500+ followers, while following a little more than 200 people himself, has been featured in ~ 250 lists, sent ~ 55,000 tweets and retweets all based on four keywords (or hashtags) – design, web design, wordpress and jquery. Built 4 lists based on these keywords, 500 members in each. Total list followers is a little less than 150 (which is quite good actually).

For comparison take a look at my account – (@kovshenin), in a little bit more than a year I got ~ 1700 followers. It took Michael a couple of months to reach that. The chart below illustrates the followers growth during the last three months. Human (me – blue) vs Robot (Michael – red). Yeah, I added a new module in mid December ;)

I manually logged into Michael’s account recently to check out how he’s doing, and I was kind of surprised to see that people really are talking to the guy, thanking him for retweets, asking him for further reads, wishing him a great day and handing over some coffee. Michael doesn’t usually reply to these and he’s a little bit shy sometimes, besides, he never drinks coffee ;)

A few days ago I decided to give Michael a rest, so tuned his backend to a new Twitter account with a few different settings, especially in timing. I’ll be switching to other keywords and feeds in the next few weeks. So let’s see if he’s as good as Michael, or perhaps better? ;)

I’m not sure what I’ll do with Michael’s account. TweetValue said it’s worth over $5k … anyone? ;) Or should I just throw it away.. Or run a contest for his password? …

Published 2 years ago with 17 comments tagged robotics, social media, twibots, twitter

Posterous vs. Tumblr

I’ve seen a lot of people using Posterous and Tumblr for quite some time, and most of them seem happy enough with the level of customization which is available at both services. I decided to give it a go a few days ago and here’s a short revision of what I’ve been through.

I started out with Posterous. It looked great, the standard theme suited me best, there weren’t any major changes to the whole setup, but one thing that I didn’t like is the auto-post to Twitter and the rest. I mentioned a few times on Twitter that I dislike having to click twice for a link to open. I mean if you re-post a link to an article you liked to your Posterous, tweeting about it is cool, but please, link to the article directly, not to your “click here to visit the link” page in your Posterous. That’s not user friendly.

I also liked the feature where you can select the image you’d like to use for your links, comment it and add a couple of tags. It makes it pretty easy to navigate afterwards. I didn’t like writing actual posts on Posterous, perhaps it’s too simple. Tumblr seems a little bit nicer in this field. Both services support posting via email, bookmarklets, mobile apps, etc, some of which are pretty useless ;)

Tumblr is very user friendly, but I was disappointed to find out that my username is already taken, then browsing to kovshenin.tumblr.com I found a 404 page, wha? I was confused so I went with the custom domain. Surprisingly it took around 2 minutes to recognize my DNS change and update all the links, unlike Posterous which made me wait for ~ 15 minutes.

The posting features on Tumblr are very neat, you get to pick from Text, Photo, Quote, Link, Chat, Audio and Video. The Chat post type is pretty sweet, you can post conversations from Twitter, IRC, IM, etc. Something funny perhaps ;) Theming functionality for Tumblr seemed a little bit nicer to me, a wide range of options, editable page template and CSS, although I picked the most simple theme – black and white, without any graphics. It now looks like a scrapbook where I can post anything I want, any thoughts, perhaps personal notes, and maybe a little bit of humour. And get the feeling that nobody’s ever going to read it, y’know, sort of what Google Notebook used to be ;)

Posterous however can be used to post interesting reads, things you come across RSS feeds, posts on Twitter. The Posterous implementation in Feedly is pretty smooth (Tumblr is okay too), though it still makes you click twice ;)

I was also surprised how easy it was to link both Posterous and Tumblr to my Facebook account, I guess that’s a huge shoutout for Facebook Connect and the Facebook Platform. Literally – three steps, three clicks and you’re done. All posts to Tumblr and Posterous get posted in your Facebook profile feed.

Not really sure whether I’m going to use Posterous or Tumblr for anything, but it was fun playing with them both. I might say that I liked Tumblr a little bit more that Posterous, but both products are quite similar and if you don’t care about how to post, where to post, when to post, as long as you post, then you’ll be fine with any of the two ;) My first thought was – I’d rather use a new category in my currently self-hosted WordPress blog ;)

Published 3 years ago with 18 comments tagged blogging, posterous, social media, tumblr

blogging posterous social media tumblr

Foller.me Gets Featured on Startups Live TV!

StartupsLive.tv is definitely one of the best shows I’ve seen around these days and guess what! I got there!

Startups Live is the non-biased platform for any startup to get live exposure, a captive audience, and valuable feedback from potential business partners, customers, members, and investors.

I sent a request to Startups Live asking them to feature the Foller.me Twitter service I’ve created and bang! I got on the show! It was really amazing, I’ve never seen anything like it!

The girls are so wonderful! Charissa was the one interviewing me and Dannie took care of the promo and blog post. We had so much fun during the live recording, that we couldn’t stop reading the Foller.me profiles after the show, so if you missed the live version, you’ll never get to see what happened beyond the recorded version at Ustream.tv, sorry!

I was very nervous on the show, but Charissa and Dannie said that I never showed that (hope that this is true), although when I played back the recorded version and looked at myself, I kinda laughed. Do I really look that funny on TV? And the panda, oh that was weird, wasn’t it ;) but I couldn’t help it! Then, when Charissa asked me about the business model of Foller.me, wow! I didn’t know what to say, cause I haven’t really thought about that (much).

The guests in the chatroom during the show were amazing too, especially when we started reading their Foller.me profiles out loud, heh that was fun! And my brand-new-to-twitter brother @SoulSeekah got his one-minute celebrity spotlight on the show too, thanks for that girls!

Anyway, if you’ve missed the show, I feel terribly sorry for you! So go ahead and watch (at least) the recorded version on Startups Live. You won’t regret it.

Don’t forget to follow the girls on Twitter: Charissa Cowart and Dannie McClain. And definitely follow Startups Live on Twitter for the hottest news. Oh, I almost forgot, they have a Startups Live Facebook group. I suggest you join that too ;)

Published 3 years ago with 3 comments tagged foller.me, friends, personal, social media, startup, startupslive.tv, twitter, videos

foller.me friends personal social media startup startupslive.tv twitter videos

WordPress: Twitter Friendly Links Plugin. Stage Two

Missed the beta? No problemo! Just a flashback – the plugin transforms permalinks on your blog into short fancy links within your own domain name: http://kovshenin.com/wordpress/plugins/twitter-friendly-links/ into a short and Twitter friendly http://kovshenin.com/712 similar to what TinyURL does, remember?

I’ve updated the plugin a couple of hours ago to version 0.2. The new key features are the “Twitter Stuff” form in your edit post page, with the shortlink and an example of the message to Twitter, with a link that takes you directly to Twitter with the predefined text not more than 140 characters. Very handy indeed.

Here’s the plugin page by the way: Twitter Friendly Links and don’t forget to check out the screenshots!

Next. You might have noticed that I got a new line just under the tags list in every post – shortlink. I’ve added a function to the plugin called twitter_link() which returns the short link for a post when used within the loop. Here’s my code snippet in single.php:

if (function_exists("twitter_link")) {
    echo 'Shortlink: <a href="'.twitter_link().'">'.twitter_link().'</a>';
}

Make sure you use the function_exists() function to check before using, otherwise you’ll get an error message if for some reason the plugin is missing or deactivated (if you’re a Theme developer for instance).

One more thing. Most of you know Joost de Valk and his Sociable plugin. There’s a TwitThis button which takes you to Twitter.com and the predefined tweet text is simply the permalink of your post. Digging his well-written php code I managed to add my own button called Twitter, that does the same, but the predefined text is the title of the current post plus the shortlink, all trimmed to 140 characters.

So here’s my version of sociable.php (just replace the one in your plugin). Changes are on lines 518-522, 631-650 and 681. Please do not use this version of sociable.php unless you use the Twitter Friendly Links plugin, cause I haven’t written any checks before using the functions. Joost might consider this extension then polish it off in the next updates. The Twitter button may then be chosen from the Sociable section in your WordPress Settings.

Published 3 years ago with 8 comments tagged plugins, snippets, sociable, social media, twitter, WordPress

plugins snippets sociable social media twitter WordPress

New WordPress Plugin: Twitter Friendly Links

So, you promote your blog posts via Twitter, huh? Me too. And those long blog post URLs, ugh! Yeah, we got rid of those using URL shortening services like TinyURL and tr.im but what about the name and/or brand? Your blog posts might be fab – very interesting to read and three thousand comments on each. But are you getting people to remember your website address in Twitter? No. Do you get backlinks from Twitter using TinyURL? No. Can you measure site statistics from TinyURL links on Twitter? No.

I’ve been inspired by a blog post (jeez I can’t remember where I read it, I’ll add the link as soon as I do) about the importance of posting nice links into Twitter. So I decided to create a plugin for WordPress, that would allow you to have your own TinyURL within your domain name. Here’s a quick example:

http://kovshenin.com/wordpress/plugins/twitter-friendly-links/

Might look like this in Twitter:

http://kovshenin.com/712

Which will take you to the page above with a simple redirect. I called the plugin Twitter Friendly Links. The go part of the address is customizable (dunno why I picked “go”, it may be “to” or just “g” for go or “p” for post – any way you like it). The TinyURL link (http://tinyurl.com/c9wpdc) is currently 1 symbol shorter, but it IS very ugly, isn’t it?

Also, there are some URL shortening services that open up the desired link in a stupid frame with stupid ads. What if TinyURL decide to make some money on ads? My suggestion: move on to your own domain. Oh and what if you have a very long domain that doesn’t fit into 140 characters in Twitter? Unlucky! ;)

Here’s the plugin page: Twitter Friendly Links

Please don’t forget that I am in the middle of the development process, so don’t shout at the first couple of betas, okay? And gimme feedback on anything that comes into your head. Also, stay tuned for the next release this week. If everything goes as expected you will have an options page in your wordpress administration as well as short links to copy to clipboard for every post.

Cheers!

Published 3 years ago with 16 comments tagged links, plugins, social media, twitter, WordPress

links plugins social media twitter WordPress

Twitter: Just Another Way To Follow Nice People

Yeah I know there are loads of articles on following nice people on Twitter and getting followed back, but I found this method using WeFollow and TweetDeck very effective. And remember, in social media it’s not only about the quantity!

Most of you heard about a Twitter directory called Twellow. Well, to me it’s kinda old and also annoying when you have to register and fill out your profile, then browse through people by interest and start following some (ordered by popularity of course). I don’t like this method because:

You’re less likely to get a followback, ’cause the tweeps on the first few pages are like the celebrities of whatever category you’re browsing
You have to look through their latest activities, to make sure they still tweet about categories they’ve gone for
There are loads of people that submit themselves into more than 5 categories – I doubt that they’re gonna read your tweets, cause they’re focused on promoting theirs
Twellow is ugly

Take a look at WeFollow. The title says it all – User Powered Twitter Directory. The best thing about WeFollow is that you don’t even have to register. You don’t even have to follow @wefollow (although I encourage you to, just to keep up with what’s going on there). The steps are pretty easy: browse to add to directory page, authorize WeFollow on Twitter and voila. Pick up to three hash tags to follow and you’ll see yourself tweet a “wefollow #tag1 #tag2 #tag3″ public. Okay, that’s only the beginning.

Now the real fun comes when you start to look for people to follow. The traditional method is opening up a search screen in TweetDeck with a ‘#tag1′ query to find people buzzing about tag1. Yeah, you’ll find loads of people using #tag1 in their tweets, but that doesn’t mean that they’re very interested in #tag1 and they might have just used it once in a month, and there you go running after them… Nah! Remember @wefollow. Tweeting out wefollow … expects you to actually follow (!!) your chosen tags, rather then just to get listed in the directory (some still don’t get the point though). I follow five tags, three of which are on my wefollow list (you can’t get more). Oh when I say ‘follow a tag’ I mean have it open as a Search ‘#tag’ column in TweetDeck (hope you get what I mean).

Anyways, back to following. Once you have a Search ‘#tag’ open, use a Filter and add ‘wefollow’. All the tweets in the column will look similar to ‘wefollow #yourtag and two more’. Now, these are the people, who joined the directory several minutes ago (or hours.. or days.. depending on the tag you’ve chosen). Go ahead and follow some (just make sure the other two tags are not completely irrelevant to the first – generally a bad idea). There’s a big chance you’ll get a follow back, especially if they’re at around 100-500 followers. And those are the people that interest you the most, not rockstars and celebrities.

Oh, and please turn off those auto-reply on follow – they’re way too annoying! Thanks.

Published 3 years ago with 3 comments tagged social media, tweetdeck, twitter, wefollow

social media tweetdeck twitter wefollow

WordPress Junkies: Blogging via iPhone

I wrote about offline blogging with Windows Live Writer some time ago, and now I realized that it’s not that fun! Alright, I have two good news. The first one’s that I received approval for my second wordpress plugin (Related External Links) to be hosted at the official WordPress Plugin Directory. I commited the first beta a few minutes ago so go ahead and vote it up: Related External Links (thanks!).

The second news is… Y’know I’ve been dreaming about it since it was first announced. Yeah, I finally got myself an Apple iPhone!! Woot! It’s so sad that Moscow hasn’t got 3G internet yet (MTS announced it for the end of 2009) but I’ve got Wi-Fi at home and office plus EDGE everywhere else, so I guess I’ll survive. The first thing you definitely have to install on a brand new iPhone is TwitterFon. Get it for free from the iTunes Application Store (via iTunes on PC or App Store on your phone) and you’ll be tweeting 24/7, sending TweetPics along with your iPhone GPS coordinates. Jeez I’m so excited (BTW follow me!).

Anyways. Back to WordPress. I really appreciate that the WordPress team made this iPhone App. You can get it for free at the iTunes Application Store. It’s very user friendly and all the functionality you’d need is plugged into this little app. I’ve made some screenshots (thanks to @CMoz) to show you the whole process. Make sure you read the comments to each shot.

One more thing. If you’re into iPhone, you should definitely check out: Apps and Hats. It’s a brand new video blog about iPhone apps, which is launching 20th of March. Make sure you subscribe to their RSS feed and/or follow the Apps and Hats Twitter account. I think they’ll be using TwitterFeed to tweet their blog updates. Cheers!

Published 3 years ago with 8 comments tagged 3g, apple, blogging, friends, iphone, itunes, links, mobile, plugins, rss, social media, twitter, twitterfeed, twitterfon, WordPress

3g apple blogging friends iphone itunes links mobile plugins rss social media twitter twitterfeed twitterfon WordPress

← older posts newer posts → back to top

WordPress, Automattic and Open Source