While I per­son­ally pre­fer to use a desk­top client to access my Twit­ter account, I do some­times find myself uti­liz­ing Twitter’s web­site to post Tweets to my time­line.  I am not the biggest fan of Twitter’s web inter­face, as it is lim­ited in func­tion­al­ity com­pared to desk­top clients such as Seesmic, Twhirl, and Tweet­Deck.  For­tu­nately, there is alter­na­tive. (more…)

Tweet­Deck is arguably one of the most pop­u­lar desk­top Twit­ter clients cur­rently avail­able.  With the num­ber of fea­tures avail­able in Tweet­Deck, there is a lit­tle bit of some­thing for everyone.

Per­haps that is the prob­lem. In my opin­ion, TweetDeck’s user-interface appears to be a work-in-progress wait­ing to progress as new fea­tures are devel­oped instead.  Recent updates haven’t done much to improve the inter­face, and it cer­tainly could use some love.  The tiny but­tons which are the key to most of TweetDeck’s fea­tures look a bit out of place, and the default color scheme is as dark and gloomy as the Tweet­Deck web­site.  While you can change the color scheme in the set­tings win­dow, the default col­ors are not my idea of a good first impres­sion. (more…)

The Asso­ci­ated Press recently announced that the Fed­eral Trade Commission’s “Guide Con­cern­ing the Use of Endorse­ments and Tes­ti­mo­ni­als” will be revised soon.  All week, arti­cles have been pop­ping up across the Inter­net report­ing that these changes will intro­duce reg­u­la­tion of blogs and blog­gers by the FTC.

What they fail to report, is that FTC reg­u­la­tions already apply to blog­gers and their blogs.  In fact, these reg­u­la­tions apply to use of email, Twit­ter, Face­book, MySpace, just to name a few.

Blogs and dis­cus­sion boards are both dis­cussed in the FTC’s “Guide­lines Con­cern­ing the Use of Endorse­ments and Tes­ti­mo­ni­als in Adver­tis­ing, Notice of pro­posed changes,” but not as newly reg­u­lated media.  The pend­ing changes to the guide intro­duce new exam­ple sce­nar­ios intended to illus­trate how FTC reg­u­la­tion may apply in some sit­u­a­tions.  The guide is not the def­i­n­i­tion of the law, nor does it encom­pass every pos­si­ble sce­nario in which the FTC can take action.  The sole pur­pose for the guide is to act as, well, a guide. (more…)

Though the Seesmic logo may seem a bit car­toon­ish, the soft­ware is noth­ing less than pro­fes­sional.  With a wealth of fea­tures and a fre­quent release of updates, Seem­sic has quickly become my Twit­ter desk­top client of choice.  Not only can you man­age mul­ti­ple accounts with Seesmic, the vari­ety of dis­play modes avail­able make it rather easy to man­age the mul­ti­ple time­lines.  Seesmic will inter­act with your Face­book account as well.

Seesmic makes it easy to share pic­tures from your hard-drive with your Twit­ter fol­low­ers, or you can use your web­cam to snap a pic­ture.  Seesmic offers a vari­ety of image host­ing ser­vices to choose from.  Com­bine this with the inte­grated URL short­en­ing ser­vices and text short­en­ing, Seesmic helps you make the most out of the 140 char­ac­ter limit. (more…)

With the ever ris­ing pop­u­lar­ity of the Social Media pow­er­house Twit­ter, new appli­ca­tions and ser­vices pop up every week.  From fol­lower man­age­ment and sched­uled tweets to spam block­ing and desk­top clients, there are tools for just about every­thing you could think of.

It is my goal to seek out, try out, and shout out about these tools and their use­ful­ness.  I will be updat­ing this list often, and sug­ges­tions for new tools to add/review are always wel­come.  Post your Twit­ter appli­ca­tion and ser­vice rec­om­men­da­tions in the com­ment sec­tion or via Twit­ter: http://twitter.com/burnman. (more…)

These are inter­est­ing times in which we live.  Never before have so many peo­ple been able to spread their mes­sage to so many peo­ple as now.  Social Media is break­ing down bar­ri­ers which only a few years ago seemed impos­si­ble to cross.  With a few key­strokes and the click of a but­ton, you can get your mes­sage out to the world instantly.  Of course…  that isn’t always a good thing.

Take Twit­ter for exam­ple.  In addi­tion to keep­ing in touch with friends, many peo­ple uti­lize Twit­ter to stay con­nected with col­leagues and clients and build a per­sonal brand by focus­ing on what they are doing in their pro­fes­sional lives.  The added level of inter­ac­tiv­ity gives clients a sense of empow­er­ment while intro­duc­ing a pas­sive refer­ral sys­tem to a one’s brand.

This is where things get a lit­tle tricky, how­ever. (more…)