The opening up probably boosted the to and fro movement of snap-click photos, after all the old cliché holds good – a picture does say a thousand words. Especially when you find Twitter’s own 140 to be limiting.

A photo does say more; but does it say them effectively? Sharing photos comes with a few unsaid rules. It’s true for Twitter…it’s true for sharing any photo across the web. Let’s talk about them.

Choose your photos wisely

Everyone loves photos. Just like tweets, photos that you share on Twitter should also be interesting. Don’t share blindly…be picky. You wouldn’t want to post snaps of your office party en masse when it wouldn’t be of any interest to your followers. The best you can do is to share photos around a theme and support it with the text message. Like any other social platform, Twitter too comes with its own etiquette.

Get the photos right

Common sense. What would anyone do with photo that resembles a blob? If your followers can’t make out what your photo is all about, then either expect some “WTF” comments or being unfollowed by friends who have better things to do.

Twitter accepts photos that are 3 MB or smaller. But for faster uploads, you can crop and resize the image to a more optimum size. Online photo editors can do that in a jiffy. Twitter allows .gif, .jpeg, and .png files but not bmp, .tiff, and animated .gif images.

Twitter also gives you a user gallery which stores your 100 most recent shared images. The user gallery is a part of the Twitter profile, so it pays to keep it neat and compact.

Too much or too little

Great photos are one of the easiest ways to not only grab eyeballs but also gather Twitter followers. But go overboard with it, and you will be on a one-way ride to the spammers’ gallery of fame. Get the balance right between too much and too little. The right photo shared at the right time with Twitter has a better chance of scoring an impact.

Nix the watermark

This is a personal opinion, but I think that watermarking an image just about ruins it. Yes, it protects your photographic masterpiece but if you mean to protect your photo then upload it elsewhere. Twitter is the wrong medium for copyright-clad photos. But when it comes to promoting brands or a product, watermarking could be considered a must. In the meantime, Twitter really hasn’t found a way for users to protect their photo shares.

It helps to know where a Twitter photo is coming from

Tweets are usually time sensitive and location sensitive. Apps like Foursquare and Gowalla are built around geo-location and a lot of check-ins also piggybacks on Twitter. So tagging your Tweets + photos with geo-location data helps put it in a place. Think of Twitter powered breaking news, and the effectiveness of location tags becomes clear. It also makes the Twitter photos searchable by location. Adding location data leads to a better Twitter experience for everyone…not just the tweeter.

Hashtags to the fore

Adding hashtags to your uploads helps in their search and discovery. A Twitter based service like Hashalbum makes it easy to search for images in real time by letting you discover new photos based on their #hashtag. Hashalbum is a photo discovery tool that scans Twitter for images and sorts them into shareable albums by their #hashtags. This helps you to find photos in a specific topic of interest.

Eye-catching image effects

Thanks to the universe of image effects web apps (and mobile apps), even a photo taken with a standard cell phone camera can be enhanced and made interesting. Give your dull photos a makeover using apps like Instagram, Hispstamatic, BeFunky etc,

Ultimately, Twitter is about the community. So, don’t be shy and share socially with the network of your followers and friends. Photos are tweets with a more graphic face, so you have to respond to them just like regular tweets to keep the network fires burning.  Share with us your best Twitter photo tip. What more can you do to spread your photographic masterpieces?

Image Credit: Flickr

Out of 78 readers who voted, 45% don’t use recommendation apps at all (!), 24% use them all the time and find them useful, 23% use them sometimes, 6% used to use recommendation apps but don’t trust them anymore, and 1% keep trying to use them, but are usually disappointed.

Full results and this week’s poll after the jump.

While not many people voted, it’s still surprising to see that more than half of the voters don’t use these apps, and most of the voters don’t think they’re any good. I guess the market is ready for something different in this niche!

This week’s poll question is: How Often Do You Share On Twitter?

Twitter is a staggeringly large social network, and as such, millions of tweets pass through its line each day. We all know there are Twitter accounts which are almost empty, with 1-2 tweets every few days, and there are Twitter accounts from which we get a flood of tweets, which can sometimes drown our whole timeline. Where do you fall into the mix? Do you love sharing on Twitter and tweet multiple times a day, or are you one of those who prefer to tweet once every 2-3 days? Or maybe you don’t even own a Twitter account?

Do you love seeing many tweets from your friends? Or do you think people should limit themselves to several tweets per week so as to not create an over-crowded timeline for everyone?

CloudMagic is available as an application for Android and iPhone, as well in your web browser via their website, a handy Google Chrome extension and a Firefox add-on. Basically, if you are looking for a way to make searching for stuff easier, there is a one hundred percent chance that CloudMagic offers a way for you to use their service. We all want to make our lives a little easier, and CloudMagic could be just the solution you need.

What Does CloudMagic Do?

CloudMagic allows you to import your Gmail, Google Apps and Twitter account so they can all be searched from one place quickly and easily. With CloudMagic, you can type in a search query, and it will scan all three of the accounts for that term.

Therefore, if you typed in the name “John”, for example, it would find any instances of John appearing in your Google Apps, any emails with the name John and tweets. This makes it much easier to find something that could be on any of the accounts.

Setting Up Cloud Magic

Of course, if you are going to be using the Chrome, Firefox, iOS or Android version of the app, you will need to download and install them. If you are using the browser-based version, you can simply point your browser to cloudmagic.com.

Setting up Cloud Magic is a breeze. Whether using one of their mobile apps or doing it from your browser, the first step is creating a new account. Creating an account only requires an email address and a password. It literally takes about two seconds.

Once you have created an account the next step is to link your account with your Google and Twitter accounts. To do this, you will need to click on “Settings” on the mobile app and “Services” on the browser-based app. From there you will need to click “Add New Service” and log in with whichever service you would like to add.

If you log in with your Google and Twitter accounts on your phone, these accounts will be there when you log in on the computer, and vice versa. This makes it easy to use your mobile app while on the phone and your computer when you are at home.

Using Cloud Magic

Using CloudMagic is a snap. Once you have your accounts synced, simply click the search bar and enter what you are looking for. It will quickly scan all of your accounts to find items matching the term you entered. The search is blazing fast; it is quite impressive.

You can narrow your search to only specific things. If you only wanted to find calendar events that match your query, you can simply click the “Events” button. This way, if you wanted to find a doctor’s appointment without seeing tweets and emails about it, you could do so.

Of course, simply showing you the results would be useless. That is why you can click any result to be quickly directed to the proper application, either from your phone or from your computer.

Conclusion

This is a great application for quickly finding what you need from select services. I hope that they incorporate other services such as Facebook and other email clients (but let us be honest, almost everyone uses Gmail). As it stands, it is a great solution for organizing your Google and Twitter account, and I definitely recommend checking it out on your platform of choice.

Web Link
iTunes Link
Android Link
Chrome Link
Firefox Link

Over the past couple of years the free TwitterFeed service has been developed to allow users the ability to automatically update Twitter, Statusnet, Hellotxt, Facebook, and LinkedIn. This is made possible by the user submitting a single RSS feed; whenever a new item is added, the selected social network is updated.

Clearly there are considerable advantages in this, not least in saving time. In addition, various settings allow the user to determine the frequency of the updates, which URL shortening service to use and even allow you to prefix and suffix posts, useful if you regularly use the same hashtag.

Identifying Your RSS Feed

To begin using Twitterfeed, you will need to first identify an RSS feed. This might be the RSS feed from your blog, or even from your Twitter account if you wish this to be used to update other services.

Typically a browser will inform you of whether a website has an RSS feed available by displaying the familiar orange icon with three curved lines in the address bar. Alternatively, most websites display their RSS feed via an icon or link that you can click on to view.

With the RSS feed identified and selected, you will be ready to begin using Twitterfeed.

Setting Up an Account and Signing In

The developers at Twitterfeed are keen for as many people as possible to use their service; as a result, they have made it very easy to sign in. If you visit http://twitterfeed.com/ you will find several options to access the service. There is a choice of signing up on the website itself (via the Don’t have an account yet? link) or using OpenID and signing in with a Google, Yahoo, Blogger, AOL, WordPress.com or of course an OpenID login.

Once your credentials are authenticated you will be ready to start!

Creating a New Twitterfeed

Upon signing in you will be taken to your Feed Dashboard. From here you can create and manage any feeds that you set up – begin by clicking the Create New Feed button if the website doesn’t take you to that screen automatically.

The first thing you will need to do is give the feed a name so that you can recognise it in the Feed Dashboard. Once you’ve done this, paste in the URL for the RSS feed, and click the Test RSS feed button to check it.

Below this you will find the Advanced Settings option where you can determine how often Twitterfeed polls for updates to the RSS feed (and therefore sends updates to your chosen social network) as well as specify whether links are included, which service is used to shorten them, and any words to include as a prefix or suffix.

Once you’re happy, continue to Step 2, where the service you wish to send your RSS feed to can be selected. Twitter, Statusnet, Hellotxt, Facebook and LinkedIn are all available, although each must be setup individually; if you want to send the same RSS feed to multiple social networks, you’ll need to use the Edit option. Similarly you can also send different RSS feeds to the same social network.

When your selection is made you will be asked to authenticate with the chosen service, so enter your username and password, add any tags that you consider useful and then click Create Service.

You’re all done – Twitterfeed should soon start sharing your RSS feed with the chosen service as an update. To get an idea of how effective this is, check my Twitter account below where the majority of updates are posted in this way.

Setup a Facebook Feed

Twitterfeed can be used to setup a feed that will update a Facebook account. Of course, there are many ways in which this can be done within Facebook itself, although Twitterfeed is a useful alternative as it doesn’t require a Facebook app. Additionally, Twitterfeed can be used to update Facebook Pages that you have created.

In order to take advantage of this option, when you reach the second step of the process select Facebook and then authenticate using the Connect with Facebook button. Once you have done this a drop-down list of Facebook Pages will be displayed and it is an easy task to choose the one you want to update and click Create Service to finish.

Why Not Try Twitterfeed Yourself?

There are many ways in which Twitterfeed can be used to furnish social networks with your updates, whether they come from a Twitter account (where the page URL can be used to determine the RSS feed) or from a standard website feed.

Ultimately, this is a time-saving service, one that can be used to great effect by anyone using multiple social networks who wish to update regularly. It can also be used by websites and blogs wishing to extend their reach into social networking.

That is where Covert Chirp comes into play. It is designed to keep your Twitter habits on the down low and keep you from getting into trouble if you should not be tweeting. Of course, we do not condone tweeting when you should be doing other things, but if you should choose to do so, then you will certainly want to check out Covert Chirp.

Installation & Set Up

The first step is downloading the free Twitter client from the iTunes app store. Simply click here, or search for Covert Chirp directly from your device.

When you first boot up the app, it will take you through a brief tutorial that will explain the basics of how to use it. It is quick and painless, and it lets you see what each of the buttons do so you can get in, do what you need to do and get out.

After the tutorial, you will need to authorize the application to get access to your Twitter account by entering your user name and password. The app will provide you with a code and ask you to enter it for verification. Click the box on the top of the screen between “Cancel” and “Sign in” and type the numbers.

Features

Covert Chirp is designed to look like the iPhone Notepad. This way, it looks as if you are reading or taking important notes, instead of checking your Twitter feed for the latest news on Kim Kardashian.

Once you have everything authorized, the app will show some random technical stuff on the screen that certainly looks like notes, even if I have no idea what they are talking about. Click on your user name from the “Notes” screen to view your Twitter timeline.

This will bring up your friends tweets on a screen that still looks like a bunch of notes. If someone happened to look over your shoulder, there is no reason that anyone would think you are browsing Twitter. The top of the screen even says “Action Items” to further create the illusion of being some notes for work or school.

If you feel concerned that someone may still be looking, you can quickly tap the garbage can icon on the bottom of the screen to bring up that technical jargon we mentioned earlier. You can click the small “@” symbol on the bottom of the screen to reach your interactions and the envelope will bring you to your direct messages.

You can have multiple Twitter accounts on this client. Simply click “Notes” to go back to the account screen and click the “+.” You will have to repeat the process I outlined earlier to add more accounts.

Obviously, posting a new Tweet is an important part of using Twitter, and you can do that with ease. Simply click on the “+” from your timeline and you will be taken to a screen labeled “New Notes” where you can create your tweet.

Conclusion

This application does everything you would expect from a Twitter client, only it does it in stealth. Honestly, I like the look and feel of the application enough that I am using it along with the default Twitter app when I need a change of pace, even if I am not concerned with being discrete. This is an app I recommend checking out if you are looking for something different.

Are you stealth tweeting like it is going out of style? Are you morally opposed to tweeting on the down low? Let us know in the comments!

The idea is to find and follow other users who are posting interesting and exciting content. Where Twitvid differentiates itself is in the creation of “subchannels.” These are channels that users create that are followed independently of that users overall account. If you have a group of friends who are only interested in a certain type of video, you can create a channel, and direct them to follow that channel only.

Twitvid hopes to become a place for users to watch and discuss videos at the same time. They have implemented a system for users comments to appear along with the video, to facilitate discussion.

The end game here isn’t going to be to beat YouTube, because there is no one out there who can contest them now. Rather, this is a place where videos from other services can reside in a social setting.

Source: Mashable

True, when someone writes something you have a really good answer to, it’s only logical to write it right away in a mention. But what if this guy, who’s also online, has something to say back? When does it stop being OK and start being spam? With Blether, you won’t have to worry about it anymore.

What Is Blether?

To put it simply, Blether (or !blether) is a Twitter chat, but one that is not visible to people who have nothing at all to do with it. Every time you find yourself getting sucked into a personal Twitter conversation, all you have to do is tweet “!b @yourfriendsname” and a short message.

You’re not limited to one friend only; you can invite several friends to this chat, simply by tweeting all their names one after the other. You don’t have to sign up or even visit the Blether website. You can just head over to Twitter right now and do it.

When you do this, your friends will get mentions from @bellablether, as well as a DM, with the message you wrote and a link to a chatroom.

You will also get a mention with the chatroom link, so you can find the chat you initiated.

The Blether Chat

When you or your friends click the link, you’ll first have to authorize Blether to use your Twitter account. You may have to enter your Twitter username and password again, and it may be already signed in and you’d have to just click the “Authorize app” button.

If you don’t like authorizing third party apps, this is the place to stop. But you’ll be missing out. Once you sign in, you’ll be taken into your chatroom.

Now you can chat with your friends to your heart’s content, without disturbing all those poor people who are following you and your friends on Twitter. This is an in-browser chat; when the chat’s tab is not active, you will hear a small beep every time a new message arrives. The tab’s title will also start blinking.

More Options

If you are the one who initiated the chat, you can add new people to it from within the chatroom itself. Click on the “Settings” button next to the chat’s title and choose “Invite people” (currently the only available option). You can then type in a friend’s name and click “Add to contacts”. When you click “Done”, the new person will get an invite on Twitter to join the chat.

You can also create a new chatroom from your Blether dashboard, which you will access automatically every time you go to the Blether website after signing in with your Twitter account. Initiating a chat by tweeting is much easier, but if you still want to, you can add some friends to the list, type in the subject and hit “!blether”. This will send out invitations to the new chat.

From the dashboard, you can also view all your current Blether chats. You can click on any chat to view it and talk to the people in that room. Theoretically, you should be able to filter your chats by title or users, but when I tried it, it only worked with titles. Filtering by users didn’t work, unfortunately.

Blether On Mobile

One of the cool things about Blether is that it doesn’t limit your Twitter chat to your desktop. Being a web app, the service actually works on pretty much any device you can dream of. You can use your favorite Twitter client to tweet the invitation, or click an invitation link in your device when you get one.

You can now chat with your Twitter friends for as long as you want, all from your mobile device. You can also access your Blether dashboard from your device and view all your active chats.

Bottom Line

Blether is a truly awesome service that can save you, your friends and your Twitter followers a lot of time, spam and dignity (who likes to be a spammer?). Keep in mind that the service is still in beta, and therefore you may encounter some bugs. My experience with Blether was almost flawless, but betas are betas, and things can always pop up.

Let us know in the comments what your experience with Blether was like, or if you know of similar services we should try.

For now, you won’t be able to see the new version on the Twitter homepage – the change will be rolling out in the next few weeks. You can, however, see the change right now on the new iPhone and Android apps which just got updated. According to Twitter, if you download and login into the updated mobile apps, you will get early access to the updated version of the website as well. This didn’t work for me so far, but do let us know if it does work for you.

So what do these new tabs include?

• Home: An improved version of your regular feed. It now includes photos and videos directly embedded in tweets, makes it easier to access more options and is consistent across all your devices.
• Connect: From here you can see all mentions and interactions. You can easily follow conversations and see who tweeted anything that is related to you, and thus follow your Twitter impact.
• Discover: This is a stream of subjects which is curated according to your interests. This is also where you can search for specific subjects you’re interested in, find new people to follow and more.
• Me: The new Twitter profile page. It now includes all your content such as photos and videos, it is where you can track your DMs and easily access you lists, people you follow, people who follow you, etc.

Twitter went through a major redesign only last year, but it seems they have no intention letting other social networks get ahead of them. This new update definitely makes it easier to use Twitter, and I can’t wait to see its web version. Expect iterations from this update over the next few weeks. Learn more about the new design on this video from Twitter:

What do you think of the new design? Share your opinions in the comments.

Source: Twitter Blog

It seems that people were enamored by Charlie Sheen this year, as Tigerblood was the second most popular hashtag, right behind Egypt. American football’s biggest game, The Super Bowl, was also a very popular topic. It’s actually a very interesting way to find out what is popular. Some of the results were actually quite unexpected. I would have never guessed that Thor would be the most talked about movie of the year.

Some of the other highlights (or perhaps lowlights) include Rebecca Black as the most talked about musician and Charlie Sheen as the most popular actor. It’s at least good to see that important topics like Egypt and Japan made the list. People were obviously concerned for their fellow man, and that is great to see.

Source: TheNextWeb

The top argument against the use of Twitter that I hear from those who haven’t joined the service is that they don’t see the point. “I have Facebook, why would I need a Twitter account too?“, they ask me. Well, as much as I love Facebook, Twitter is the place where I hang out most of the time, as it gives me the freedom to network with those I didn’t necessarily know previously, or went to high school with for that matter. Not to mention the celebrities and social influencers it allows me to get closer to. Join me, as this one’s coming from the heart.

Quit Yapping & Start Listening

The number one thing people worry about when they do inevitably sign up for Twitter is what they’re going to tweet. “How can I be interesting?” “What can I tweet that would make people want to follow me?” I would reply that it’s not about that.

Twitter is best reserved as a “listening” platform. What I mean by that is that the chances are (really) good that if you’re passionate about something, whether it be sports, news, business, tech, or whatever, it’s probably already being discussed on the platform, so the best thing you can do is join in on that conversation.

The easiest way to find these conversations is – and always has been – Twitter search. Simply type in a word, hit “Search” and work your way into conversations.

The Art Of @Replying

What does a conversation look like on Twitter? It’s as simple as @replying.

Web applications like Twtrland (directory listing) are very useful for viewing how a particular account’s tweets are broken up. Mine, for instance, says that just under half of my tweets are @replies – pretty conversational.

What makes up the rest? Random bits of knowledge I tweet, music I’m listening to, things like Foursquare and GetGlue check-ins, and tweets about the Steelers and Penn State football, mostly. If I worked at it, I’d love to see the percentage of @replies be even higher, because that means I’m building valuable relationships.

Follow & List Those That Inspire

Gaining followers is as simple as building working relationships through conversation and following those with similar interests as you. WeFollow is still a great site if you’re looking for people to follow under a specific category.

Twitter also has plenty of great celebrities you can follow and learn from. They’re less likely to follow you back, sure, but there’s a lot to gain as far as entertainment value is concerned. Some of them even use cool apps you can experiment with, like Shaq, who uses Tout to post short video messages to his fans.

As you follow people, I think it’s smart to create lists based on certain criteria. I have lists for those that live in New York City, for instance, as well as those in my field. I even have a list for only websites, communities, and applications I follow. Keeping them separated helps keep your stream less clouded, especially if you use a web app like Tweetdeck or Seesmic Web (my favorite) to view your lists in separate columns.

Adopt Hashtagging Habits & Be (Trending) Topical

Once you nail down all of that, it’s time for a little advanced tweeting. The first article I ever wrote for MakeUseOf back in what feels like 1985 was called HOW TO: Effectively Use Twitter Hashtags. What’s a hashtag? #ThisIsAHashtag

If you use Twitter at all you’ve certainly seen hashtags, but why would you ever want to use them? There are plenty of reasons, expressing sarcasm/irony and holding a group conversation among them.

Popular hashtags often make their way into Twitter’s Trending Topics list, along with other relevant keywords associated with top news stories or events people are buzzing about.

Clicking on one within the list will show you all of the tweets using that phrase, which can be very topical and even pretty fun at times. Start using these daily to gain your tweets some additional views.

Help People Find You

The last sure-fire thing you need to do in order to be a Twitter boss is to make it easier for people to find you. I have my Twitter handle everywhere. It’s on my business cards, in my email signature, and there’s a link to it on every site I have a profile on. It’s how I prefer to communicate with people, and the fact that Twitter is so mobile makes it very much like reaching me via text message/SMS.

Being that available to your network opens up the opportunity to make more connections and have more conversations with those in the space, and if you’ve followed the advice above, people will seek you out just to talk to you.

Conclusion

Everyone has a voice on Twitter. It’s the reason the platform has almost singlehandedly disrupted the news space and caused technology companies to integrate it into nearly every device that comes out nowadays. Becoming a power user takes time. It doesn’t matter how many followers you have, or how quickly you can get them. What matters is your voice, and if you can have an effect on someone with even a single tweet, well, that’s something worth being a part of.

If you’d like to get closer acquainted with any of us, you can find us on Twitter as well (we have a list!).

** Editor’s Note : After several years of working for us, this is Steve’s last article for MakeUseOf. Everyone at MUO wishes him all the very best for the future.