Hi folks! Just a short posting to wish all of you a happy holidays. It has been an incredible 2009, and we have never ceased to be amazed at the amount of support all of you have shown to us.

Growing from 0 to 300,000 users and making millions of connections have been an absolutely terrific experience.

Lastly, we have been a little quiet recently because we have been preparing some very cool updates to MrTweet to help you make even more meaningful connections.

We hope to unveil these changes soon, and hope for your continued support! =)

“This tool is very useful! Sometimes I would have to follow people for a few days to find out the information that this plug-in gives me instantly. It makes the decision of whether to follow much easier” - Rebecca Mayo (Review of V1 from Mozilla Website)

V1: Twitter habits and recommendations

In this version, we add on to the goodness of the first version, including features like:

1) Understand a user’s network and tweeting habits at a single glance. See useful information like who he interacts with the most, recommendations he has received, how often he tweets, etc.

Who he interacts with the most

2) Build up relationships by easily recommending him to MrTweet right from his profile.

Recommend awesome people directly from their profile

3) See Twitter search results in Google - an excellent way of getting both types of search results!

Twitter search + Google search = Happiness

4) Enhanced user interface for Twitter.com - threaded conversation, inline pictures, and many more (can easily be enabled/disabled)

Threaded conversations, inline RTs (and others)

Alright folks, convinced that this is goodness manifested yet? If so, head over to the firefox plugin page now!

Here is a summary of improvements we have made over this period:

Revamping Infrastructure To Support Daily Updates: Old time users might recall long periods of suggestions not being updated. We have managed to turn that around completely -Every time you come back to the MrTweet, we will update our suggestions for you.

Updated suggestions everytime you come back

Relevance over celebrities: This is the one we work the hardest on: Fine tuning our suggestions so as to facilitate discovery of relevant folks who share your interests, as opposed to merely popular people. Relevance is a never ending process… but we are trying hard!

Focused on helping YOU find people relevant to your interests

Option for OAuth: Which means you do not need to use your Twitter credentials if you do not want to

Support for OAuth where ever login is needed

New Dashboard: Allows for ease of viewing of your MrTweet suggestions

New Dashboard To Allow You To View Everything In One Place

Make Recommendations In The App: Which means you do not need to tweet out your recommendations

Recommend awesome people in the app itself

We are continuing to make changes based on your feedback, and please let continue to let us know how we can do a better job of being your personal assistant!

Tweetminister, an application that aims to allow political professionals to keep updated with the information that matters is one of the first to take a concerted effort in doing so.

Helping Political Professionals Get Started With Ease

With their understanding of the UK political scene, they have created a site that allows political professionals in UK to easily keep up to date with everything that matters without having to set up anything.

LiveWire Screenshot

MrTweet Goodness: Keeping TweetMinister Updated With The Most Influential Folks Automatically

With the ever changing landscape that is politics, with new influential players emerging out of nowhere, the MrTweet discovery technology allows them to retrieve a continuously updated list of influential people in the political scene.

MrTweet Recommendations Inside TweetMinister

This is early days yet of course, but we think this is an prime example of how domain expertise sprinkled with discovery magic can make life for professionals in the domain without any setup work.

If you are a political professional, make sure you check it out and give them more ideas!

Try it here: TweetMinister Livewire

Seriously, Loic has the most energy amongst anyone I have had the pleasure of meeting with. Not to mention Seesmic has tons of great stuff in the works. Be sure to tell Seesmic how you want them to improve their services!

Followers, followers, followers.

Discover If You’re Followable

These easiest and most humbling way to get more followers is to attract them with the content that you tweet. From links to the discussions you choose to participate in, potential followers will be able to decide within the first 15 seconds of viewing your profile, whether or not you’re followable. The best way for you to take advantage of this and improve your following is to go to the source: your profile (duh!).

Go to your twitter profile (you can find ours here: @corvida or @mrtweet) and look over your Twitter profile for 2 minutes. Done? Now, answer the following questions:

• Would you follow yourself or would you pass up the opportunity?
• What did you like about your Twitter profile?
• How might others feel about your profile after taking one look at it?

Glance over your profile again for 10 seconds. Done? Now answer the following:

• Do you think you’re followable?
• If so, how do you make your profile stand out?
• If not, what could you do to improve?

Share your suggestions, tips, and stories with us in the comments!

Tips For Tweeting As A Company

1. A Single Account Or Multiple Accounts?
   There are pros and cons to doing either  and this is entirely dependent upon how you’d like to use Twitter as a company. We recommend using a single account if you’re only on Twitter for customer support and to enhance or strengthen current customer relationships. If you have multiple areas of expertise, we recommend using multiple accounts and reading tips 2, 5, & 6.
2. Use A CRM Tool
   Using a CRM tool such a Hootsuite is a great way to keep track of who’s tweeting what and when. In doing so, you can organize your tweets as a company, and better prepare for tips 3 and 4 (see below
3. Keep In Touch (Internally) You have to keep in touch with your team. Consistent internal communication is important to make sure things are flowing smoothly. It also helps insure everything that needs to be done, gets done in a timely and orderly fashion. No duplicate tweets from YOUR company!
4. Don’t Spam Your Followers
   Don’t spam your followers from multiple accounts nor from a single account with the same tweets. It’s annoying when people are following multiple company accounts for different news and you see the same tweets simultaneously.  Spread them out and keep track of what’s being tweeted by your company. (see tips 1 and 4 for more info)
5. Different Accounts for Different Campaigns
   If you’re using multiple accounts as a company take advantage of this opportunity to tweet about different deals, news, and topics of expertise across the various accounts. Designate each one for a specific area of expertise that your company offers.  This helps users follow what they find most interesting from your company and keeps you from losing followers when other tweets would just be considered noise.
6. Unify Your Company Accounts Via The Username
   The name game is a tough one to answer and we encourage you to find a solution that best fits what your company would like to accomplish with Twitter.  For multiple accounts, we’d advise using your company’s name or brand somewhere within the username of the account. This let’s followers know whether there will be personal tweets in between or if the account is strictly for company use. It also helps to confirm whether someone is following an official account of the company, or if you’re company doesn’t get social media yet.

Does your head feel better now? Awesome! Now it’s time to share some your company tweeting tips with us!

• What do you find most effective, tweeting from multiple accounts or a single account?
• What tools are you using to tweet as a company?
• Which tools did you find to be a waste of time for your company on Twitter?
• What companies on Twitter have shown great work or improvement for tweeting as a company?

Recommended and Related Reads:

• What’s Your Company’s Tweeting Style
• 4 Ways Companies Use Twitter For Business
• Tweeting for Companies 101
• 50 Ideas On Using Twitter For Business
• How NOT to Use Twitter For Business

Super Useful Software:

Self Control.app Google it. It’s wonderful. You can select the domains you want blocked
- Paul Carroll

Give Up:

I don’t. For me, the question is, how do you avoid working when using tools like Twitter and Facebook?
- Laura Anderson-Gavin

Best State Of Denial

I have no problem working w- ooooohh!!! Something shiny on Twitter!!
- dbabbitt

Making It Hard To Use Twitter:

Simple! use Gravity and the Facebook widget on my N97 and try to ignore the beeps and trinkles of them both alerting me to reply to tweets LIKE THIS ONE!
- awallafaShagba

Turn It Off

Turn them OFF. Unfortunately, if they are on, I just can’t resist the temptation!
- Astrid and Rene

It Is Good To Be Distracted!

I believe that personal distractions are good for the soul and that since I work alone at home, the connectness actually improves my productivity. Otherwise, working at home would be a social drag. Actually joined a number of new networking sites today and working to streamline yet increase my twittering and updating to further increase the portions of soul food! I think it’s working for me.
- Lordeeme

Healthiest Tradeoff

I have forgone smoke breaks in lieu of Twitter and Facebooking.
- Chrissa

Best One Of All…

I try to follow fairly boring people.
- Brett Patterson

It’s that time of the week again, folks! This week we’re giving away one cool The GodTwitter T-shirt. Made by the awesomesauce Tony Gigov (@tonygigov), creator of the Twitter Nonsense Comic strip. And who wouldn’t want to rock this shirt at their next tweet-up?

Now, are you ready to win it? Here’s, what you need to do:

• Leave a comment below answering the following question: How do you avoid personal distractions when using tools like Twitter & Facebook while working?
• You only need to answer this question once.
• Winner will be chosen randomly. The winner will receive one (1) GodTwitter T-Shirt in white or black (your choice).
• Entries can be submitted until Friday, July 3rd, 12:01 a.m. PST / 3:01 a.m. EST.

Good luck!

This is a guest posting by Shea Bennett. Shea is the founder of Twittercism, a blog that explores the various aspects of Twitter, from the great to the dark. We love Shea’s wits and guts, so we will be bringing his thoughts to you on a regular basis!

Consider this, if you will: I decide to write a book through Twitter, 140 characters at a time. Moroever, I do this stream-of-consciousness style, and just let it all flow out. I keep no backup. I write my book, tweet after tweet after tweet. Soon, thousands and thousands of my words are in the system.

For their own reasons, Twitter decides I’ve done something wrong, and suspends my account. All my work is lost.

What are my legal rights? Who owns those tweets? Can I get them back?

In Twitter’s terms of service, under a section called, “Copyright (What’s Yours is Yours)”, they state:

We claim no intellectual property rights over the material you provide to the Twitter service. Your profile and materials uploaded remain yours. You can remove your profile at any time by deleting your account. This will also remove any text and images you have stored in the system.

We encourage users to contribute their creations to the public domain or consider progressive licensing terms.

That’s fine, but under “General Conditions”, they also say:

We reserve the right, in accordance with any applicable laws, to refuse service to anyone for any reason at any time.

We’ve seen this happen before with accounts such as the fake Christopher Walken. The reasons for the suspension of that user were fairly clear, but what about all those tweets that he wrote? They’ve also been removed without a trace. The account had a loyal and amused following, and those tweets were funny and had value.

Twitter doesn’t provide any kind of backup service within the site; external ways to ‘save’ your tweets exist, but they’re more than little crude. The majority of tweets are, of course, hardly worth keeping forever, but some are. And I can see many instances in the future where Twitter will be used for different purposes and more and more of these tweets will have value.

One obvious example is where Twitter breaks a news story before anywhere else because the submitter was on the scene when it took place. That tweet becomes a source – who does it belong to?

Moreover, say Twitter decides to produce The Book Of Tweets, and selects 10,000 of the greatest-ever updates for publication. Can they do that without the permission of the authors? Can anybody do that without permission of the authors? Where is the line?

This is a very hazy area and my gut feeling tells me that until a legal precedent is set it’s going to remain that way. Until then, you might want to think about it a little – who owns your tweets? And would you be happy for somebody else to make money off them without your permission?

This is a guest posting by Nathan Egan. He is the Founder and Managing Partner of the Freesource Agency, LLC. Prior to starting Freesource Agency, Nathan worked at LinkedIn and has wonderful insight into the world of social media networking. Follow Nathan on Twitter: @nathanegan.

Participating on the social web scene has become near-essential for companies. For a growing number of potential customers, the majority of research, referrals, and recommendations are being done virtually through social networks like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace. There is an incredible opportunity for businesses to attract both customers and/or clients through social media.  Here’s why your company needs a social presence too.

1. Customer Connectivity

Social media is arguably the most powerful form of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) technology that the business world has ever seen. Your company’s social presence will allow you to connect with your customers in new and dynamic ways, that among other things, will give you rich data and feedback to help you grow and sustain your business.

2. Communicate with Prospects

I always tell my clients: “Connect to your customers because your customers are connected to your prospects”. Social media is an extremely efficient marketing platform and a sales prospecting tool. When executed correctly, a good social media strategy will generate organic, inbound sales leads through your current customer base.

3. Competitive Intelligence and Market Research

Social media is an incredible tool for “listening” to your competition and monitoring trends in your target markets. The massive amounts of accurate and real-time information you can collect through these systems can be leveraged in many ways, perhaps most importantly, you can make real-time adjustments to your sales strategy based on what your competition is doing (or not doing).

4. Customer Service

Social media enables your company to build brand loyalty in powerful and dynamic ways that were never before possible. A well-executed program will increase customer satisfaction, give you easy access to real-time feedback on product or services issues, and drive down overall operating costs.

5. Talent Acquisition and Employee Retention

As a whole, social media has changed the game of recruiting and retaining top talent. Learn to leverage social media properly and your organization will gain significant competitive advantages in terms of available human capital.

6. Global Reach

No longer is your company restricted to regional or even national distribution and communication. Social media allows you to publicize press, advertisements and company news to the world in ways that have been traditionally cost prohibitive. For example, a public television segment airing in a small geographic region of the US can now be uploaded on to YouTube and distributed through Twitter, enabling the segment to be viewed by an international audience.

7. Social Media is a Freesource!

Generally speaking, social media is a completely free resource and all it takes is your commitment to learn how to use it! Social media is here to stay, the websites like LinkedIn, Facebook, etc may come and go but this style of communication will not. You owe it to your business to learn how integrate the appropriate platforms into your overall communication strategy - your ROI will be tremendous!

Share the companies you know with a great social presence on the web!

• What advice would YOU leave for others that are hesitating to create a social presence?