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Selasa, 19 April 2011

Twitter Follower:Following Ratio means nothing

A number of my friends on twitter were recently unfollowed by @EleanorConway. I don't mind the odd unfollow, hell I've unfollowed uninteresting people before. But what Eleanor Conway (or her Social Media manager) did was mass following loads of people. Once they reached a certain followback target, she started unfollowing. In the past two days her follow count dropped from 8000+ to 42. As I type this her follower count is 8200 (and dropping as people got wind of her tactics).

What she did was a well known tactic of gaining a high follower:following ratio: follow, wait for a follow back, then unfollow. It's easy and anybody on Twitter can do it. They follow loads of people (in thousands), then some time later (this could be days/weeks or even months), they mass unfollow almost everyone. At the end of this campaign, they will have high number of followers making them look like some hot shot C-list celeb when in fact most of us have never heard of her. I have seen companies like @AudioTechnicaUK do that as well.

Do I have ill feelings for her? No. In the one week since she started following me, she has done nothing that interests me, so much so I think I would have eventually I would have unfollowed her myself. Would she has gotten to where she is if it weren't for the old follow then unfollow tactic? Perhaps, but we will never know. All we know is she got there using the dirty route. It would be better if she attempted to engage with her audiences rather than cast them aside to get a number that would satisfy her ego. It's sad really.

The lesson here is, when deciding to follow on Twitter, to know that the follower:following ratio means nothing. I have friends who have low follower counts, but I value their opinion just as equally (if not more) as some random dude with 50,000 "followers".

Twitter Follower:Following Ratio means nothing

Senin, 31 Januari 2011

January Tweetstats

Hei it's February! How was your January? Personally I thought January was a bit slow, but February is so going to kick ass.

Anyway, was looking at my Tweetstats for January, and it isn't a pretty sight. Have a look at this graph:

I am going to need a lot more sleep in February than I had in January. Problem is, will I?

January Tweetstats

I am going to need a lot more sleep in February than I had in January. Problem is, will I?

Rabu, 12 Januari 2011

Gravity for Symbian review

Gravity is a rarity among Symbian applications. It has a UI that not only looks good, but also works great. It is fast and comes with massive loads of features. What started out as a simply Twitter client, the sole developer at Mobileways.de has implemented support for Google Reader, Foursquare, Facebook and the open source StatusNet, with varying degree of success.

Considering how backwards Symbian is supposed to be (according to American blogs anyway), and how there are virtually zero competition on the platform, the number of features on Gravity is quite a feat. The sheer number of features, it's stableness and speed, easily makes Gravity one of the best mobile social network clients on any platform. And I say that with a straight face.

At a time when Nokia is urging developers to code in 'code once, deploy everywhere' Qt, Gravity is still reassuringly native. I've nothing against Qt, but so far none of the Qt based applications I've seen has convinced me it is better than native. Gravity is compatible with S60v3 and all modern Symbian touchscreen devices from Samsung's abandoned at birth Omnia HD to Sony Ericsson's cute Vivaz and Nokia's 'flagship' N8.

Let's begin with Twitter, as this is what Gravity was designed for. Gravity has almost all the features that I could ever want from a mobile Twitter client. It supports both native and old-style retweets, geolocation tagging of tweets, follow/unfollow, direct message (with threaded UI), the creation and management of lists, uploading images to popular image sharing sites (TwitPic, Flickr etc.), alert, multiple accounts, draft and schedule posts, homescreen widget, notification (in both screensaver on Symbian^3 devices, as well as audible/vibration) and much more.

There are a couple of features I would like to see added. For example an alert when someone follows, filters and the ability to open URLs to Opera Mobile rather than Symbian's native Web browser. Speaking of URLs, you can also set Gravity to save URLs to Instapaper and other services to read it later, a useful alternative to using the favourites function to bookmark posts to read later.

The Foursquare client is as basic as it goes. It only allows check-ins and shouts (to Twitter and/or Facebook - provided you have your Foursquare account is linked to them). There are no supports for leaving and viewing tips, nor is the ability to delete previous check-ins from the history present.

The most curious absence is the lack of Specials, a Foursquare feature that allows participants to reward check-ins to users, so don't go deleting that amateurish official Foursquare Symbian client just yet. Having said that if all you want to do is check-in or shout, Gravity is perfect.

If you are a Facebook user, you will be pleased to know that Gravity supports pretty much most of the important features of Mark Zuckerberg's Friendster rip-off, including Messages (in threaded conversation view), notifications (no friend requests here), News Feed and Status Updates, including replies. It isn't a Facebook mobile client replacement, offering even less than Facebook's touchscreen mobile website. But it is indispensable if all you want is a quick glance on what your Facebook friends are up to, post a status update or reply.

A built-in RSS reader in the form of Google Reader is the next major feature of Gravity worth writing about. This is pretty basic, but at least it has all the essential functions one would normally need form a newsreader software. Like the Twitter bit of Gravity, URLs can be posted to Delicious or added to Instapaper or Read-it-Later. There is an option to easily tweet the post as well.

In an age of 99p mobile apps, Gravity isn't cheap (£8 via the Ovi Store), and that's before taking into account the amount of good freeware social network clients you can get on competing platforms like Android and iOS. But if you have a Symbian phone, and you need a powerful Twitter application then Gravity is your answer. You could do a lot worse with £8 anyway.

I also have a relatively modern Android phone (with around ten Twitter clients installed!), and my girlfriend has an iPod Touch 4G which she tethers wirelessly to her ageing Nokia none-touch smartphone, and both of us always fall back to Gravity simply because we both think it is the most effective mobile Twitter application available on any mobile platforms.

Gravity for Symbian review

Sabtu, 14 Agustus 2010

Boring twitter stats

It is a Saturday. It is raining. Summer has long since pissed off, last seen in July heading south.

I am writing my Nokia C3 review, but I am also bored. So I decided to do something even more boring - publish a statistical analysis of my twitter account based on TweetStats! Just for you loyal readers.

Sorry.

I joined twitter on 26 May 2007.

I tweet most on Thursdays and Wednesdays, and least on Sundays and Mondays.

My peak tweet time is 9am, followed by 11pm. I have tweeted at every hour. I tweet least between 3-5am.

Looking at my aggregated hourly tweets, I tend to go to bed at 1am and be up by 6am.

Unsurprisingly I tweet most using Symbian's Gravity client, followed by Web and then Seesmic desktop clients.

I have posted 45 tweets using the full 140-character limit.

Of all evenings, I tweet least on Fridays. I am sure it is pretty obvious why.

I reply most to a guy in Australia, followed by a guy in Sheffield. Of my top 10 @, only two twitter users lives in London. Three are based outside Britain.

Most hashtags used: #cfg (152 mentions). Tweetstats can't look far back due to Twitter limitations, but I am sure #ovigoodthings would be second (ah good times).

I've posted over 400 pictures via twitpic, and that was before I changed my username in 2008.

I've met 80 tweeps in person, most of who are awesome, and some of who I now consider as proper mates. This makes me happy.

So that's that. Right, back to my review.

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Twitter Follower:Following Ratio means nothing

Twitter Follower:Following Ratio means nothing

January Tweetstats

January Tweetstats

Gravity for Symbian review

Gravity for Symbian review

Boring twitter stats

Boring twitter stats

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