Connect Social Media

Nielsen reports that the use of social network sites like Facebook, Twitter, Digg, YouTube and others has passed the use of email to become the 4th most popular activity online, growing at double the rate of the other four activities ranking in the top five.

Report Highlights

1)  Social network and blogging sites are now the fourth most popular activity on the Internet, surpassing email in 2008.  They now trail only 1) search, 2) portals and 3) online software, and sport a growth rate more than twice that of any of the other four largest sectors.

2)  Time spent on social network and blogging sites is growing at over 3x the rate of overall Internet growth

3) People under 18 years old are making up less of the social network and blogging audience, whereas the 50+ age group are accounting for more of the audience.

4) Growth in mobile social networking is exploding, with increases of 249% in the UK
and 156% in the US in 2008.

Download the Nielsen report Global Faces and Networked Places.

If you missed it, here’s our interview with Kristi Colvin from Twitterface.

Catch Part 1 of our interview with Candis Hidalgo - what makes for a great Twitter background image?

Here’s my interview with Hootsuite’s Ryan Holmes.

Browse my list of Twitter tools, featuring screen captures and videos, at Likaholix.

Learn more about my TwitterViews series here - I go one-on-one with the developers of the top Twitter and social media apps.

Learn more about how #followfriday works.

We continue our interview series with the developers of Twitter and other social media applications today by visiting with Candis Hidalgo of Twitbacks.com

Twitbacks.com

Jim Quillen:    Hi.  I’m Jim Quillen with Connect Social Media.  Today we are continuing our TwitterViews series, and we’re happy to have Candis Hidalgo on with us from the company Go Smart Solutions, the company responsible for the TwitBacks product.  Candis, welcome.

Candis Hidalgo:    Thank you, Jim.  How are you doing?

Jim:    Good.  Glad to have you on.

Candis:    Good.

Jim:    Tell us a little bit about yourself first.  We want to learn a little bit more about your product, TwitBacks, but tell us a little bit about yourself, what you do.  You’re the marketing communications director for the company, so why don’t you start that way.

Candis:    Sure.  I do work in marketing for the company, and it’s Go Smart Solutions, and TwitBacks is our latest product.  What I do is I pretty much am in charge of the press and releasing the press releases, and also marketing, marketing copy online and offline promotion, things like that.  It can be pretty fun.

The company, we develop self-serve advertising services for businesses, and the latest, TwitBacks, seems like a natural extension because we’re allowing people to brand their Twitter backgrounds, which is helping them to promote themselves.

Jim:    Right.  You had some great publicity recently, right?  BusinessWeek picked up your—

Candis:    That was a very nice surprise, yeah.  Misty, who is the CEO, got that email saying they wanted to include us in their article.  That was a great surprise.  We’ve been covered on the web by some tech blogs and things like that, but BusinessWeek is kind of a whole other level, so that was great.

Jim:    Right.  You probably use Twitter, right?

Candis:    Yes, I do.

Jim:    Why don’t you talk a little bit about how long you’ve used it, and what made you decide to get started.

Candis:    Sure.  I’ve used it for just over a year, I think maybe a year and a month.  Really, I started for the company.  Misty and I both are on Twitter, and we started really because we saw the potential that was coming out of Twitter for businesses and professionals.  Some people use it in a different way.  We use it more as a way to keep in touch with our clients, and to also promote things that are happening in the company.  Then also just to share information that we think is valuable to our followers.

Really, the reason that we got on board in the beginning was just because we saw huge potential there for using that medium.  So far it’s been great.

Jim:    That’s a question that comes up occasionally at corporate users of Twitter.  Do you guys have a corporate account, or do you have multiple accounts in your own names with the branded company logo on your image, or how do you guys handle that?

Candis:    I have my own personal account, and Misty, who again is the CEO, she had her own personal account, and we just kind of tweet our own style.  A lot of that is integrated with what we’re doing with the business at that time.  But we tweet a lot of non-business related things too.

We also have a Twitter account for a couple of the brands that we have.  We have a TwitBacks Twitter account, we have a Classified Flyer Ads Twitter account, which is one of our other brands.  For each of those accounts, we stick mostly to what’s going on with that particular brand, and that’s what the followers expect, so it works out nicely that way.

Jim:    I’m sure there are some Twitter apps that you use, maybe every day.  Could you talk a little bit about that?  What’s the one Twitter app that you can’t do without?

Candis:    Good question.  There are a lot of great ones out there.  Personally, I have to use TweetDeck.  I don’t usually ever Twitter without using TweetDeck.  Sometimes I tweet from my mobile phone and things like that.  Really, TweetDeck allows me to organize all my followers and everything that they’re saying and doing.

I don’t really know how I would be able to keep track of everything without using that, so that’s become pretty essential.  It’s been able to turn just the overall noise into something that I can actually understand and respond to, and to where Twitter’s actually something useful instead of just a bombardment of things.  That’s one thing that’s essential.

Of course, TwitBacks has become essential to me ever since we developed it because I couldn’t imagine anybody in a professional realm not wanting to have that branded background of some sort.

Twitbacks image gallery

Jim:    Let’s talk about Twitter backgrounds a little bit.  TwitBacks, for those who don’t know, helps users create free background images for their Twitter homepage.  There may be some other things that are available there too that you can talk about.  Can you share some insider information about maybe how it came to be?  I guess you did a little bit, but the inspiration for TwitBacks came from, I guess just the avalanche of publicity and the growth in the users on the service.

Candis:    Yeah.  When we initially developed TwitBacks—the day before Thanksgiving is when we launched it out.  But it was really started as kind of a side project because—there are actually a lot of them now that do similar things to what we do, but at that time there was nothing out there.  There were designers out there to provide backgrounds, custom backgrounds and just background images.

But there was nothing out there that let people brand their backgrounds easily without having Photoshop skills or something.  It seemed like really an obvious tool to develop, and I guess it was obvious because pretty much right after we launched it we just had a flood of users following our account and creating backgrounds and all that.  There definitely was that need there to get that branded background on your Twitter account.

Jim:    Right.  Why don’t you walk us through just the couple of steps that—it’s pretty simple.  I’ve been through it before, but just so people know the steps involved in using TwitBacks.

Candis:    Sure.  You just go onto www.twitbacks.com, and then if you’re a first-time user you just click on the first image there.  There are a couple links that will get you going.  You just click on that and you basically fill out whatever information that you feel that you want on your background, meaning name, maybe a short bio.  You can upload your logo or your picture, or both.  Then you can also add in links to your social presence on the web, Flickr or Facebook or whatever else.

You do all that, and then you just choose a background design that you like.  We have I think over 80 now that you can choose from.  Then you just click go, and there you go.  You can also, if you have your own background image, like say you got one from Twitter Background Gallery or Twitter Designer or something like that, they make some great backgrounds, you can use one of those backgrounds and upload it to TwitBacks and then still have all your branded information on there.

Jim:    Once you set up an account, you guys actually save those image files to come back to and edit if need be or create another one or whatever.

Candis:    Yeah.  That was something that we developed later on.  That wasn’t available with the initial launch, but it—from customer response, a lot of people were asking for that, so we provided that.  Now, if you come back in and you want to change things up later—I usually change mine every couple weeks just because I get bored with it, so I’ll go in and change it up a little bit.  You can always edit it or add a new one.  And if you create several, you can have them all there on your account.

Jim:    Right.  As an expert on the topic, what would you say makes for a great Twitter background image?

Candis:    That’s a good question.  I would say that there is no one background that is the best.  I would say if you’re going into it, look at what image you want to portray.  If you’re a professional, if you’re providing a service, or if you’re more there for the fun of it, or if you’re trading sports tips or whatever it is.  Find out what the one thing is that you want to portray with that Twitter account, and then find the background that speaks to that.  It really is about branding, so find that background that’s going to fit with whatever your branding is for that account.

It’s something that I guess a lot of people miss the mark on.  Me, I like sunflowers, but I’m not going to go and pick the background that has a bunch of sunflowers on it just because I don’t really think that that fits with what I want my Twitter account to portray.

I think that would be the tip, to make it fit with whatever branding that you want with that account.

Jim:    In technical terms, do you ever recommend that people put images over on the right side or behind the stream or above the stream?  I think on TwitBacks you guys use that left margin quite a bit.

Candis:    The reason that we do that is because depending on the screen size of whatever computer you’re viewing Twitter on, that is a background image.  It doesn’t expand and retract if you minimize your window or open it up.  With the informational part on the left-hand side—it’s kind of thin on that left-hand side too.  That’s all done purposely because that will be able to be viewable regardless of what screen size you’re viewing your Twitter background on.

Some people do have things over on the right side, and it looks great if you’re viewing it on a big screen.  But if you’re not, then it’s going to get cut off and it sometimes can look a little funky.

Jim:    Okay, good.  Talking about Twitter for a second, they’ve grown from two million users last fall to something in the neighborhood of 20 million now, which is pretty astronomical growth.  Is that good or bad for Twitter?

Candis:    I would definitely have to say that’s good because I think regardless of—I know some of the people that say that’s not good is there’s a lot of inactive people, and you see more fail whales and all these other things.  But I would definitely say it’s a good thing because regardless of the negatives, it allows for more diversity in the Twitter community so you, as a Twitter user, have access to so many more experts and opinions.  That’s one reason why it’s a great thing.

Another reason it’s a good thing is with the growth that Twitter’s experiencing, I think that naturally it’s inevitable that Twitter is going to enhance some of its services and provide some other neat features.  I guess that in itself is debatable.  Some people don’t want more features.  They like the simplicity of it.

From my opinion, I think it’s a good thing because with the growth, I think just the natural enhancement of the services is a natural follow up.

Jim:    I was just thinking, some of the other people that I visited with, it seems like everybody has kind of a common story about when they first got on Twitter, that they went on there, created an account, browsed around a little bit, maybe made a few posts that they didn’t really know what they were doing.  Then left it and then came back maybe two or three months later.  Did you have that kind of experience, and what advice would you give to somebody who’s maybe just starting today or this week on Twitter?

Candis:    I definitely had that same experience because going into this new thing, you don’t really know what it’s all about and how to use it, so I definitely have that.  I wasn’t really sure at first what to post.  You hear so much advise on all ends of the spectrum about what you should and shouldn’t do on Twitter, so it can be very overwhelming when you first start.

At first, I was just not posting anything about our company because I thought that that was taboo and you shouldn’t do that.  I think personally I’ve learned that that’s not the case, and I want to represent who I am and why I’m there.  There was definitely a learning curve there for me.

The advise that I would give to anybody that is starting out brand new is don’t listen to any one person to be your sole source of advise for what to do on Twitter.  For instance, Guy Kawasaki uses Twitter completely differently than Chris Brogan uses Twitter, and they’re both experts in their field and they have thousands of followers and they’re very well respected and very intelligent.

I would say decide why you’re there first and listen a lot first before you try and use it.  I know that can be hard because you want to use it, you want to get in there.  But I would say listen a lot first.  Look at people that you respect that are using Twitter effectively, and follow what they’re doing.  Follow what they’re doing, and I think that would serve you the best, depending on why you’re on Twitter.

Jim:    It’s definitely not a one size fits all philosophy.  People want to make friends on Twitter.  You want to feel like you’re talking to people, and more important than that, people want to feel like somebody’s listening to them.  What advice would you give as maybe the easiest way to make new friends on Twitter once you get started?

Candis:    There are some great sites and applications out there that can help you meet people that have the same interests as you or are maybe in the same field as you are.  There’s Twits Like Me or Twitter Local or Twello.  These are all sites out there that allow you to find those people that you might be able to relate with.  That’s one way.

But I may not be the best person to answer that because I don’t know if making friends, necessarily, is my purpose for being there.  I definitely want to have those relationships.  I don’t know if that’s technically the term that I would use as why I’m there.  To learn and interact with other professionals is our goal, so that’s something that I would seek out when I try and find other people.

I’m not going to say the cliché answer that I think a lot of people say, is just be transparent and be yourself.  I think that’s a given.  Of course you’re going to be yourself, or you should be yourself on Twitter.  As far as making friends and building those valuable relationships, just know what you’re doing from the start, and then just stay true.  Don’t shy away from that because you might get people that don’t like the way that you’re using Twitter.  That’s the nice thing about Twitter.  If anybody doesn’t like what you’re doing, they can just stop following you.

Jim:    Right, just go away and follow somebody else.

Candis:    That’s fine.  That’s their prerogative.  I would also say don’t take that personally.  I think a lot of people take that personally when other people un-follow them.  They just go right around and un-follow them back, and I don’t think that’s really worth your time to be playing that game.

I’d say just follow people who interest you.  If they don’t follow you back, don’t take it personally.  Follow people because you are interested in what they have to say regardless of whether they follow you back or not.

******************************************************************************************************************

Check back next week for Part 2 of our interview with Candis Hidalgo from Twitbacks.com, where she talks about :

1) Will Twitter eventually allow HTML in the background image?

2) The impact the Business Week story had on her business.

3) New enhancements coming to Twitbacks

If you missed it, here’s our interview with Kristi Colvin from Twitterface.

Kristi Colvin - Twitterface.me

Today we continue our TwitterViews series and speak with Kristi Colvin, the creator and founder of Twitterface.  You can also get the latest news about her upcoming product launch by following @tweetmeup. Here’s Part One of our two-part interview.

Jim Quillen:    I’m Jim Quillen with Connect Social Media and welcome to our session where we go one-on-one with Kristi Colvin, who is the creator and designer of the new Twitter application called Twitterface.  Hi, Kristi!

Kristi Colvin:    Hi.

Jim Quillen:     How are you doing?  Great to have you on.

Kristi Colvin:     Good, thank you.  You are my first Twitterface interview.

Jim Quillen:     Well, we’re honored to be your first interview.  That’s awesome.  Tell us a little bit about—well, I want to get in to Twitterface here in a little bit.  First off why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and kind of what you do?

Kristi Colvin:     I am, sort of to sum up, a user experience designer.  I have both worked for clients and for companies and been in charge of everything from the corporate branding to the product-line branding to documentation, usability.  I’ve run usability labs.  Sort of everything to do with what touches the user

Jim Quillen:    Okay.

Kristi Colvin:     So primarily software.  I’ve sort of been specializing in software products for the last, probably, decade.

Twitterface

Jim Quillen:     So a little bit of marketing, a little bit of software.  I mean, it’s kind of not a combination that you see a lot, right?

Kristi Colvin:     It’s not necessarily.  It’s been needed.  You know, I’ve worked for a lot of start-ups and they don’t necessarily have all the departmental—you know, they don’t have the money, the budget to necessarily have every one in place that they will have eventually, after being in business for a few years.  So I sort of fill a gap in a larger company.  I work a lot with marketing and with product marketing in a smaller company.  I tend to do all the creative.

Jim Quillen:     Yeah.

Kristi Colvin:     So it’s given me a lot of great experience so it helps all the clients I have.

Jim Quillen:     Oh, I’m sure.  Now what do you do in your spare time?  Do you have any spare time?

Kristi Colvin:     I don’t.  I was going to ask you what that is because I would love to experience that.  Right now I don’t but, you know, it’s so exciting, everything that’s going on right now.  Despite the somewhat questionable economy there are so many great opportunities out there for people willing to sort of invent their own opportunities.  So right now my work is really taking a lot of work in Twitter.  You know, my spare time is probably spent on Twitter, quite honestly.

Jim Quillen:     I know how that is.  I know.

Kristi Colvin:     Well, the people there are really fun so it can be a nice diversion from working.

Jim Quillen:     Oh, yeah.  It is.  There are some great people on Twitter.  Well, tell us how long you’ve been using Twitter and then what made you decide to get started as a user?

Kristi Colvin:     I honestly do not know how I found out about Twitter or why I joined.  I know when I joined it was last March so I’ve been on over a year now.  I did not do anything with it and at the time my first Tweet was about a client site that I was working on so I know that I was redesigning the (inaudible) website and that’s all I put for several months.

Then I read an article in July, around July sometime from Darren Rowse the ProBlogger and he had put up this article that said, 538 bloggers on Twitter and his whole purpose in listing all these people, painstakingly, was to say hey, if nothing else Twitter is a really cool tool and if nothing else, the thing that you all have in common is that you’re bloggers.

So I looked at that list and I thought, well, you know, I have this Twitter account sitting there.  I have done nothing with it.  I really don’t get it.  I used to be offended when people followed me because I didn’t understand.  I didn’t know them.  I thought why are these guys following me?

So I went and followed 100 people from that list and it was really that first 100 people changed everything in the past year for me because when you follow enough people and you sort of get it and it becomes relevant to you because you start having conversations, then it just completely shifts what Twitter is to you.

Jim Quillen:     Right.  I know a lot of people I talk to mentioned the same experience.  They started—and I’m the same way.  They started on Twitter.  They signed up.  They got an account, filled it in a little bit and made a couple of posts and then went away and left it for several months and then—

Kristi Colvin:     Well that’s what it—the recent statistic that came out and said Twitter retention rate is only 40 percent, whatever.  That is really got a lot of skewed data, I think, because so many people may not use it immediately or may not get it immediately, but they definitely keep their account open.  They come back to it.

I’ve been very active since last July.  So it’s a unique experience in that because it involves often random strangers, until you really—something happens that is relevant to you, you won’t get it.

Jim Quillen:     Right.  Well what would you say that you like best about Twitter if you had to pinpoint—

Kristi Colvin:     The people.  The software itself is questionable.  It gives me trouble all the time.

Jim Quillen:     Coming from a software developer.

Kristi Colvin:    Exactly but, I mean, I’m constantly on the verge of writing bad user experience posts about it, but it really is the people and the context and the connections and just the caring, you know, that you will experience from people that you really do not know that you may never meet.

One of the strangest things I’ve discovered is I’m starting to get almost kind of upset because there are all these people that if they were here where I live, I would want to hang out with them all the time and I can’t really do it except on Twitter because I’m very social that way.  So when I like someone on Twitter now I’m almost frustrated, like, oh my gosh am I never going to go to lunch with this person or so it’s kind of interesting that bond.  It’s totally the people.

Jim Quillen:     Yeah.

Kristi Colvin:     That has me there.

Jim Quillen:     Do you use any other, I mean, besides your own that you’re going to be using, but do you use any other Twitter apps to help you maneuver around or makes your life a little more productive?

Kristi Colvin:     I use a few.  My favorites tend to be Mr. Tweet and Twitalyzer and TwitterGrader.  I think that Twitalyzer is great at helping you get insight into your own behaviors and patterns as a Twitter user and so, especially in business, if you’re struggling you can actually get some real data there that kind of points you in the right direction.

And Mr. Tweet, one of the things I love about Mr. Tweet is the way that they describe the people and show you the connections you can immediately see, Oh, yes.  I want to follow that person.  Or not.  It’s far more powerful.  A lot of these third-party tools have made Twitter far more powerful than the actual Twitter.com stuff for itself.

Jim Quillen:     Yeah.

Kristi Colvin:     That’s what’s exciting about being part of it.

Jim Quillen:     What do you think about Mr. Tweet’s branding?

Kristi Colvin:     You must know that I did it! {laughs}

Jim Quillen:      I had to throw that one in there.

Kristi Colvin:     I love it.  It’s wonderful.  Actually, I feel bad for Mr. Tweet because I’ve been so busy.  I feel his branding is a little incomplete.  So Mr. Tweet, I totally owe you more design work.

Jim Quillen:     You have a good excuse, it sounds like.

Kristi Colvin:     I do.  He understands.

Jim Quillen:     Well, let’s talk about Twitterface a little bit.  Your website says Twitterface can change the way you tweet.  You have a couple of URLs really.  There’s Twitterface.com and then there’s another site Twitterface.me, right?

Kristi Colvin:     Yes.  Twitterface.me is the blog so because I have a tendency to need — and I’m naturally enthusiastic — and I need to promote things before they’re ready, so I basically set up a blog because there were things to say.  Also I do a lot of—I have a lot of opinions on branding on Twitter and being a business on Twitter and how to use it and brandjacking and all kinds of issues that go along with doing business on Twitter, so that’s really why I set up Twitterface.me was to have a place where I can talk about these things.  It’s the official blog.

Jim Quillen:     Okay.  I want to get back to that point about using Twitter for business but can you share some, maybe, behind the scene “insider” info about how Twitterface came to be?  What inspired you to launch into this process and when it happened and just a little bit of information about that?

Kristi Colvin:     Yes, there was a night last September, September ’08 where, and I think it was even a Friday night and I went to dinner with my family and then came home and my wonderful Twitter interface had changed.  And I was very upset.  And because one of the things about Twitter that was so unique to me, as a user interface designer, is that it was very clean.  There were no more elements on the screen than necessary at all.

So I come home and I believe it even may have been when they added the election ’08 thing where it was at kind of at the top of your screen and I come home from dinner, literally, and my experienced had changed.  And as a user that’s always very jarring.

One of the things, you know, when you have a live website and millions of users you do have to roll in changes so that experience is very difficult.  You know, I can appreciate that it’s not easy.  But to go to dinner and to come back all of a sudden my interface was changed.  It wasn’t quite as clean.  It wasn’t quite as perfect and I was basically mad.

So I sketched out Twitterface in 15 minutes and plus I needed multiple accounts and I just, I don’t know.  I just was inspired to kind of sketch out my own.  So the name Twitterface actually originates from design your own interface and then when Twitter changes yours will not have to change.  Now, granted you’ll have to use this one that I designed but, ostensibly, your interface will not change just because theirs does.

Jim Quillen:     So did you save the napkin that you sketched it out on?

Kristi Colvin:     You know, I don’t—I’m sure I have it somewhere, probably.  It’s—I have those kind of things all over the place.  So probably I do have it somewhere.

Jim Quillen:     Okay, let’s get on that topic of business on Twitter.  That’s an interesting topic because there’s a lot of talk about, you know, Twitter’s great for building a business network, for finding out what’s going on in your market or your industry, for meeting new people, meeting new prospects and so on and so forth.

Then there’s another train of thought that says, well, you can’t really market or advertise your business on Twitter or you shouldn’t do that all the time because then people turn off, basically turn the radio off.  They’re always promoting.

So where’s the middle ground for that?  I mean, what advice do you have people when you say, well, I have a business and I want to be on Twitter but what do I do?

Kristi Colvin:     Well, there’s so many different types of businesses and, honestly, for a local-type business like a dry cleaner or a coffee shop or a grocery store, there is a different approach than I would take for, say, a consultant like myself or a design company that, potentially, you know, you can serve people globally.

Jim Quillen:     Right.

Kristi Colvin:     So there are different approaches.  However, all of them, all of them can make use of Twitter.  There are functional ways to use Twitter.  There are social ways and there are, I forget I’ve written about these on my blog.  I forget what I call it exactly but for example, CNN putting out news sources.  You know, their content information methods that people might want to sign up to that.  They’re not necessarily looking for a relationship with CNN but they want that breaking news.

Kristi Colvin:     So there are so many on the local level, functional things that you could do.  We have not even begun to explore all the business to consumer ways to use Twitter and that’s one of the things that we want to help people do after we launched Twitterface.

For example, Blockbuster, wouldn’t it be nice to tweet and say, do you have Wolverine in stock because I really want to see that and get some automated message back that says yes or no or whatever, put you on a waiting list.  There are just so many little things like that.

One of the things people don’t probably realize is 90 percent of my business right now is coming from people I’ve met on Twitter.  So as opposed to the old method of I typically got all my business word of mouth from other people who had worked with me, now people are getting to know me and getting familiar with me and researching me and finding out who I am and then asking me about business.  So it’s not that I go online and say, “Hey, does anybody need a software design today?”  You know, because that’s kind of lame.

Jim Quillen:     Yeah.

Kristi Colvin:     But, you know, or, “Hey everybody.  Come check out my software design sight.”  It’s that they hear me talking and sharing and I’m very opinionated and that is critical, honestly.  If you want to do business on Twitter, you need to share who you are.  You need to show what your opinions are because that’s how people come to know you.

Jim Quillen:     It’s really the ultimate relationship marketing tool, wouldn’t you say?

Kristi Colvin:     It is.  It is.

Jim Quillen:     Just wanting to know you first and then they come to know you and maybe trust you a little bit and then that’s—it’s I just kind of think of it as like a virtual business-after-hours.  You know, you wouldn’t walk up to somebody and say, “Hi, I’m Kristi.  I have some software designs I can sell you.  Would you like to buy some?”

Kristi Colvin:     Exactly or hand you a copy of their latest ebook.  That’s always, you know, I you just don’t, at a cocktail party, exactly walk up to someone.  Although I asked someone this and I said something about do you just shove business cards in people hands the minute you meet them?  And someone said have you ever been to like Webcon or whatever and I was like well, yes but I don’t recall that.  I mean that’s  not exactly what I would do even at a conference is like just pass out my ebook, my PDF or my business card.

So it’s really, you know, you have to have some social savvy to do well.  But you can train yourself to have that, even if it doesn’t come that naturally.  So Twitter really is a huge source of not only doing business but being motivated, inspired in my business, getting information that I need.  It is as much a part of my day as brushing my teeth.

Jim Quillen:     Well, let’s get to Twitterface a little bit and kind of walk us through.  What’s the cool factor?  I mean you designed it, and you’re a marketing expert and a user expert.  What’s the cool thing about Twitterface?

Kristi Colvin:     The coolest thing since I’ve been using the alpha for me right now is the multiple accounts because one of my issues, honestly when I release this beta and what I’ll be seeking a lot of user feedback on is having these panes in a web-based browser it’s a little bit more difficult to have multiple panes and size them and do different things like you can with some of the Adobe air clients and those columns.

So right now we’re limited to three at the moment and but within those three panes you can switch the mode of each of them so that you can be looking at a search, at someone’s profile or at your own account and then eventually you can also be looking at a group of people.

So switching those panes around and then also like in two clicks you can retweet something.  It’s huge.  It saves me so much time and that really, at the moment, when it releases that will be the coolest thing.

Ultimately, this is built for business so we are going to integrate with some third-party products and also design more business features ourselves and it will be a business portal to Twitter, so to speak.

Jim Quillen:     Okay.

Kristi Colvin:     So it will actually do much more, ultimately, than it is going to do the day we launch.

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Watch for Part 2 of our TwitterViews visit with Kristi Colvin of Twitterface on Thursday, May 14th.  Be sure to bookmark our site and check back for the conclusion of our talk.  Topics we’ll cover in Part 2 include:

• Twitterface launch date.
• Keeping up with Twitter’s growth rate.
• Fail whales and outages.
• Is there such a thing as making a mistake when using Twitter?
• What’s the rule of thumb for talking about your business vs. talking about yourself on Twitter?

If you missed my interview with Hootsuite’s Ryan Holmes, you can see it here.

See my list of Twitter tools, featuring screen captures and videos, in my Likaholix list here.

Learn more about my TwitterViews series here - I go one-on-one with the developers of the top Twitter apps!

You can find Twitter answers to my #twitterguy questions here.

Learn more about how #followfriday works here.

You can learn more about Twitter demographics and who’s using Twitter here.

Learn more about the new social media site Likaholix here.

Facebook today upgrades their service to allow live streaming updates of a user’s News Feed.  Users can opt-in to the live streaming feature by clicking a button at the top of their page.  In the past, a user had to refresh their browser to see updates to their News Feed.  As is their custom practice, the change will be rolled out in phases to the user base.

JR Raphael with PC World says the move in a response to the backlash from Facebook users over the Twitter-like update to the site in March of this year.

See my list of Twitter tools, featuring screen captures and videos, in my Likaholix list here.

Learn more about my TwitterViews series here - I go one-on-one with the developers of the top Twitter apps!

You can find Twitter answers to my #twitterguy questions here.

Learn more about how #followfriday works here.

You can learn more about Twitter demographics and who’s using Twitter here.

Learn more about the new social media site Likaholix here.