Sachin Agarwal, the founder of the lifestreamer and blogging site Posterous.com took time out of his busy schedule to visit with me about his platform.

Posterous.com

Jim: Tell us a little bit about yourself and your company.

Sachin: Posterous is the easiest way to post everything online. You simply send an email to post@posterous.com. You can attach images, video, audio, documents, anything at all. We’ll convert everything to the most web friendly format and publish it online, for free. It’s dead simple, yet powerful. You don’t even need an account to use Posterous. We want to let people focus on the content, instead of dealing with setting up websites.

Before Posterous, I worked on Final Cut Pro at Apple for six years. I’ve been a Mac user my entire life, and so good product design in technology has always been important to me. I spent half of my Apple years working remotely from New York City. I think being at Apple, and being in New York (away from Silicon Valley) helped tremendously in designing a product made for the average consumer. Sometimes being in the middle of they valley here lets you forget what normal people know, understand, or want.

Jim:  What do you call your site…a blog? Microblog? Microsite?

Sachin:  Definitely not a microblog

Most closely, yes we are a blog. However, we want to move away from that term. “Blogging” scares people. It’s always meant long text posts, not rich media. Too many people have set up blogs and abandoned them, to want to try another one.

Recently people have been using “life streaming” which was coined by Steve Rubel. It seems pretty accurate. This is my life, in photos and video and text, on my website.

Posterous.com

Jim: What tabs are you opening in your browser first thing every morning?

Sachin: Tab one: posterous.com. Is the site still operational? Ok, good.

Then I’ll open email. Between my personal email, work email, and Posterous support box, I’ll have hundreds of unread messages. I’ll make a quick pass to make sure there’s nothing urgent, no fires to put out. I can’t get to all the support immediately, but I’ll answer any questions that are totally blocking users.

Then back to Safari. I’ll open my.yahoo.com to see news headlines and the stock market. And macnn.com to see if Apple released anything new (or who is suing them today).

Finally, I’ll check out Twitter. For me, Twitter is really just for real-time monitoring of Posterous. What are people saying about us? Are people complaining about anything? If so, fix it asap.

Jim: Share some “insider info” about how Posterous came to be – what was the inspiration and when?
Sachin:  Posterous came about because of pure frustration with the products and services that I was using. I had a blog on Blogger for years, but fell into the standard trap of not updating it frequently enough. Then I wanted to post photos more, but I had to use a site like Flickr. It was a mess.

I wanted to build a new way to publishing online, bring together the personal “blog style” website, with the rich media functionality of sites like Flickr and Youtube. Why are all these separate? Email *seemed* like the way to do, since it was built into iPhoto. Then the iPhone came out and there was no question about it. I wanted to post from my iPhone, and email was the only way to do it.

I remember being on vacation and posting some photos from my hotel room. That was a great moment. It was so easy, so painless, that I did it *from a hotel room*. It was the moment I realized this was bigger than just a tool for me.

Jim: Web 2 technology has created an explosion of social community sites featuring user-generated content.  How does Posterous meet a need in that space?
Sachin: There are some really great user generated content sites out there. Some are great at photos, some are great for video, and some for documents. But why do I need to use so many sites? Why do I need to decide which site to use, and then learn how to use it? How can I expect my mom to figure all this out?

Posterous fits a need by being the “Apple of blogging”. We make the hard decisions for you. We created a product that’s easy to use out of the box, doesn’t require you to make lots of decisions or learn new software. We want you to think of Posterous as “magic”. You just send us an email and what come out on the other end, just works.

Jim: Your home page answers the question “Who’s It For” and lists first timers, casual bloggers, social media pros and families/groups.  Can you walk us through examples of how each of those can take advantage of the Posterous platform?
Sachin:  We’re seeing a lot of people publishing online with Posterous who *never* had a web presence before. They never even thought they knew how to do it. But by using email to publish, a tool people already understand and use, we made publishing online accessible to many more people.

One great market we’re addressing is group sites for families. We’re seeing someone who is somewhat tech savvy set up a site for their family. They add all their family members as contributors simply by adding their email addresses on the site. Those family members can now post to the site by emailing post@smithfamily.posterous.com. They don’t need to create accounts or learn anything new. To them, it’s just an email list. But hey, where did this blog come from?

Bloggers who have been using other services for years are switching over to Posterous. Yes, they know how to run their own servers or use these other products. But then they see just how easy it is to post to Posterous. They see how well we handle rich media. And then they realize they don’t *want* to run their own sites or manage all the details. They would rather focus on the content.

Jim:  How might a business take advantage of a Posterous account?
Sachin:   Posterous works very well for businesses. Every business should have a web presence. Having a company blog that is updated frequently shows that the company is still alive, the blog is the pulse of the business. So having a blog that can be updated quickly, easily, with rich media, by many contributors, is very important for a business.

And with Posterous, updating the blog will also update the company Twitter account, and company page on Facebook. So with minimal effort, just an email, a business can keep all their social networks up to date.

Jim:  Ok, let’s say someone already has a blog, a Twitter account and a Facebook profile.  Where and how does Posterous fit into that mix?
Sachin:   I love Twitter and Facebook. I have communities within all these services, friends and family that follow me on these sites. But ultimately, Twitter and Facebook aren’t *my site*. They aren’t on my domain, they don’t have my look and feel, and I can’t control how they work.

So no matter what social networks I use, I’m always going to want *my home on the web* that is permanent, and personal.

Jim:  How are users taking advantage of the Google Maps feature?
Sachin:   Google Maps integration is one of the newest pieces of Posterous. When you email a photo from your iPhone, or post using our iPhone app [might be released at time this is published], we’ll put a Google Map on the post.

When you see a photo on a website, it’s always great to have as much context as possible. And location is one of the best ways to learn more about the photo you are viewing. Whether you are away on vacation and we can see what country you are in, or you are at a local bar, it’s really cool to see exactly where the photo was taken.

And the beauty here is it’s automatic. We believe in making posting easier, without too many options or settings. Since location info is already embedded in some photos, it made total sense for us to just pull it out and do something cool.

Jim:  The ability to update your Posterous page via email makes it very easy to use.  Four years ago, email was the #1 most popular activity on the Internet, but a recent Nielsen survey reported that email had dropped to 5th, passed in popularity by social media and community sites.  Will we see the day that email is marginalized or replaced with a more efficient technology?
Sachin:   First of all, I don’t believe that email is the 5th most popular activity. People who think that are either lying to themselves, or are too entrenched in the current Twitter craze. There are over 2 billion email addresses in the world. I get hundreds of emails per day. Business gets done over email. Schools run on email. Blackberrys and iPhones are popular because of email.

Show me the day we can run our lives on 140 characters or less, and then i’ll say that email is losing in popularity. But right now, people spend a lot of time in email, and that’s not going to change anytime soon.

However, I think it’s important to point out that the goal of Posterous isn’t necessarily “web publishing via email” but “web publishing using the best tools”. Today we think that’s email. It’s an iPhone app. It’s being built into Twitter apps. Instead of building complicated, bloated software, we want to build simple tools, and integrate into tools people already use.

If in a year there’s a new tool out there, a new technology for posting that makes sense, we’ll be the first to support it. Whatever makes for the best product and best experience for our users, we’ll be there.

Jim:  Talk a little about SimplyTweet’s integration with Posterous – how does it make life easier for a user?
Sachin:   SimplyTweet has done a really great job of integrating with Posterous. Like I said, instead of building new, complicated software, we want to integrate into the tools people already use. And millions of people are using Twitter clients on their iPhones.

All Twitter clients can post tweets, and they all let you post a photo online using a separate image hosting service. But SimplyTweet took things to the next level. You can post multiple photos to Posterous to get an image gallery. You can post long tweets, add tags to your posts, and much more.

Instead of just following what all the other Twitter clients do, SimplyTweet went ahead and did what’s best for the user.

Jim:  How did you/do you use customer input/feedback in your development process?
Sachin:   Customer input is incredibly important to use. We launched Posterous about 14 months ago, but even today we respond to every single support email personally. I read every single tweet on Twitter with the word “posterous” in it. We want to make sure we’re building a product that our users love, and address any concerns they have.

We built Posterous to fix a problem in our own lives, but now we’re building something we hope will be used by hundreds of millions of people. So there’s no way to do that without listening to all the great feedback we get from our users.

Jim:  How do you see Posterous evolving over the next 6-12 months?  What’s coming down the pike?
Sachin:   We’ve got a ton of new features in the pipeline. We’re now releasing our first iPhone app, PicPosterous. People constantly asked us, “Do you have an iPhone app?” and I’d ask, “What would it do? How would it be better than email on the iphone?” There’s no reason to build an app just for the sake of having an app.

PicPosterous is different. I designed PicPosterous to *replace* the camera app on my iPhone. With the iPhone, there’s a separation between taking photos with Camera and uploading photos via email. PicPosterous merges these two. Every photo you take via PicPosterous uploads when you take it. So you just create an album for an event and shoot photos into it. When the event is done, so are you. Your photos are already online.

We’re also adding themes and customization, and more features to make Posterous even better for groups.

More blogs:

Online use of social media surpasses use of email

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

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

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.

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

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

Learn more about the new social media site Likaholix here.

I get lots of questions each week from folks who are new to Twitter about the phenomenon called “Follow Friday,” so here’s a quick overview.

Follow Friday has become one of the weeks most popular Twitter “events” - and it’s an easy way to start getting involved on Twitter and building your Twitter network.  It’s essentially a recommendation service - you are recommending other Twitter users that you like by making a tweet that includes both their user name (with the @ in front) and the hashtag #followfriday. More about hastags here.

It’s also a great way to find new people to follow - just follow the users your friends are recommending.  How do you know who to recommend?  Everybody does it a little differently.  I recently posed that question for my #twitterguy hastag - you can see the responses I received here.  Here’s the RSS feed for all #twitterguy questions.

TopFollowFriday.com

A new site called Top Follow Friday popped up recently and is a good way to track the most endorsed Twitter users each week for #followfriday.  You can also click through and see a top users endorsement list - worth a glance.

So give it a try - just make a tweet and add your favorites and be sure to add the hashtag #followfriday, and before long you’ll be tweeting like a pro!

Online use of social media surpasses use of email

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

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

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.

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

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

Learn more about the new social media site Likaholix here.

Unique visits grew to 19.7 million and total visits spiked 7% (annualized pace of 84%) during the month of May to 134 million.

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/twitter.com/?metric=sess&months=12

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

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.

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

Learn more about how #followfriday works.

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

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.

Part 2 of our TwitterViews session with Candis Hidalgo from Twitbacks.com.  Catch Part 1 of our interview with Candis Hidalgo - what makes for a great Twitter background image?

Twitbacks.com

Jim Quillen:    On TwitBacks for just a second.  Twitter’s changing about every month, it seems like.  Something gets upgraded or altered, and I know there will probably be more changes coming in the future.  Does that impact your product at all, TwitBacks?  I’m not an expert at all on graphic design or anything, but does that change the way you have to deliver your product at all?

Candis Hidalgo:    Right.  So far it hasn’t, but I guess their growth indirectly affects us just because that does oftentimes lead to downtime on their servers, which trickle over to us.  And a lot of our users ask what’s the problem, why can’t I upload my background, and things like that.  That’s something that we don’t have any control over.  That definitely affects us.  Whenever Twitter is having issues as far as how slow they are or upload issues, then that’s automatically transferred to us as well, so that’s something that we’ve felt.

As far as changes that they’ve made, it hasn’t affected us yet, though, but I know it has affected some other Twitter apps.  There’s nothing that says that it’s impossible tomorrow, for Twitter itself, to come out with something that would allow users to do what they can only do on TwitBacks right now.  That’s something we’re definitely aware of, but so far, the changes that Twitter has implemented haven’t affected us.

Jim:    In terms of developing your product or enhancing it, how do you guys use customer feedback or input in that process?

Candis:    That’s a great question.  It’s one I love to answer because I would say that probably, this is a really rough figure here, but something like 90 percent of everything that we’ve developed since TwitBacks has launched has been in direct response to a request or feedback that we’ve gotten from our users.

We were very active on Twitter when we first launched because we were hungry for that feedback, and we are still active on Twitter now.  Really, we launched with six backgrounds to choose from, no ability to add social networking in there, and pretty much that was it.

Since then, we’ve expanded our gallery to, I think, over 80 different things to choose from.  We’ve added the ability to upload your own image and added the social network in there.  We added a new promote profile feature, which allows you just to advertise their service on the web through their Twitter profile.  We’ve added a lot of things, and pretty much that was all due to requests that we got from our Twitter users.

Twitbacks.com

Jim:    Do they just come to your website and make those requests, or do you get a lot of those through your Twitter account?

Candis:    Most of them are through the Twitter account, just either asks or direct messages through the Twitter account.  Some of them are just in the form of a question, what about this, do you guys do this, or it would be great if you did this.  Most of those are through the Twitter account.

Jim:    I guess that’s an easy way to communicate with you.

Candis:    Yeah, definitely.

Jim: Looking ahead here in the next 6 to 12 months, how do you see your product evolving? It sounds like you’ve added a lot of new features over just the last six months. It’s more image options to choose from and more data that customers or users can add to their profile. What’s coming up next?

Candis: Right. We’ll always be adding more backgrounds, so users can definitely expect that. Aside from that, we have a couple of things that we are kind of deciding which direction to go in, but it would be great if Twitter would allow some kind of HTML in the background. That would allow the links to be live and active. That’s almost the number one request that we get, but it’s something that we can’t implement yet until Twitter allows that.

That would be great because I think that that would make a lot of our users happy, and it would allow people to click onto those other links that users have, especially since the Twitter buy (sp) only allows, I think, 160 characters. It’s just real limited, but that would allow, that would really, I think, take the TwitBacks background to that next level. That’s something that we are crossing our fingers with, but we’ve had no word from Twitter yet that that’s going to be happening.

There are a couple of other things. I don’t want to necessarily say exactly what yet, but that we are working on to add some more—

Jim: The ability to add HTML into the image, that would be a pretty big deal, but is that like a 50/50 chance that they’ll do that, or are you getting indications that maybe that’s a direction that they’re heading?

Candis: We’re not getting indications. We’ve inquired, but we haven’t gotten any response one way or the other. So to say 50/50, I would say I would be hopeful that that’s the case. I really don’t know. I think it would definitely have to be beneficial for Twitter itself to be willing to go and make that change. Whether that’s the case or not for them, I’m not sure, unless they were planning on doing something with Twitter backgrounds themselves, in which case how that would affect us. We’ll see. But that’s definitely something we’re hoping for.

Jim: I can imagine. That would be great.  The BusinessWeek feature:  how did that change your business?

Candis: First, we were thrilled because it’s received its fair share of press, but the interest from BusinessWeek was just very exciting. Since that piece was published, we have seen an increase in Twitter backgrounds being created, and an increase in traffic. However, it hasn’t been a crazy amount that you might expect, and I think that’s just because it focused on 18 different applications, so it wasn’t really just about TwitBacks. It was about 18 really great Twitter applications.

I think more than anything, though, it’s just really kind of cool to have been noticed and recommended by such an established news source. I think that’s been the biggest plus on our end is just having that recognition. That was great.

Jim: When you guys do your marketing, do you ever have the inclination to just scan through user’s pages and see who doesn’t have a background?

Candis: Twitter users, you mean?

Jim: Twitter users, yeah. You scan through and somebody has their account set up but they don’t have any background. It’d be perfect for them to get one from you guys.

Candis: We haven’t gone there yet. I think that’s definitely a great idea, but we haven’t gone there yet. We are a pretty small company. Really, it’s just I do the marketing, and we have a customer service person and we have an admin person and that’s it. If we had more resources, that would be great.

What we do is monitor the Twitter stream, so anybody who’s mentioning Twitter backgrounds, or where can I do this or that, we try and respond to those types of things because we know that we can definitely be useful to people who are directly looking for something like that.

Jim: What tool do you use to monitor that?

Candis: Just search.twitter.

Jim: Just search. Final thoughts. Your URL is www.TwitBacks.com.

Candis: Right, www.TwitBacks.com, and our blog is www.TwitBacks.com/blog.

Jim: Anything else upcoming that you want to talk about, or final thoughts?

Candis: I would just say our aim with TwitBacks is to have every Twitter background have a TwitBacks on their profile. That would be great. Everybody who doesn’t have those Photoshop skills or have the money to pay for a custom background. That’s our goal, and we would be very happy if we got to that point. We do have some other exciting things opening within probably the next four months, so be looking out for that.

Other than that, it’s been great. It’s been a great ride, an unbelievable experience just in six months to go from nothing to over 45,000 Twitter backgrounds have been created since we launched at the end of November. Really, that’s only been possible because of Twitter. The ability we’ve had to spread the word on Twitter.

Jim: How do you notify people of changes or updates? Is that, again, by following your TwitBacks account?

Candis: Just follow us at TwitBacks. Any updates, any new releases on backgrounds or changes to the site or anything like that we always announce on our twitter account. Then we also do announce them on our blog. Either one of those, you can keep up to date.

Jim: Very good. We’ve been speaking with Candis Hidalgo, who is the marketing communications director with Go Smart Solutions for the TwitBacks product at www.TwitBacks.com. That wraps up our interview today.

Candis, thank you so much for coming on.

Candis: You’re welcome. It was my pleasure.

Jim: We’ll see you on Twitter!

Candis: All right. Thanks, Jim. Talk to you soon.

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

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.

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

Learn more about how #followfriday works.

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

Quite a few people asked me how I add the retweet link at the end of my tweets, so I thought I’d make a quick post about TweetSmarter.com.  It’s a quick and easy way to add the link and allows others to retweet you with just two clicks of the mouse.

You can use their original interface or go to the “new cleaner interface”…

Just click on any symbol to add it to your post. Then enter your Twitter user name in the box at the bottom (make sure you’re logged in to Twitter).

After entering your user name, click the “Add retweet link” button.

Note that your RT link has been automatically added.  You can edit the word “retweet” if you like - sometimes to save space you might shorten it to RT, or if you have extra space you might add the word please :).

Then just click “Tweet it”….and your tweet is pasted into your Twitter update box.

Just click update to post your tweet. When another user wants to retweet your post, all they have to do is click on the link…

And Tweetsmarter adds RT and the user name at the beginning of the post.

A simple, two-click retweet for those not using Tweet Deck or another Twitter client that has a RT feature.

I usually leave Tweetsmarter open in a browser all day so I can access it as needed.  Give it a try!

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

See our interview with Candis Hidalgo of Twitbacks - what makes for a great Twitter background image?

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

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.

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

Learn more about how #followfriday works.

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

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.

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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.

We wrap up our interview with Twitterface founder Kristi Colvin.  (Here’s Part One of our interview about Twitterface.)

Jim Quillen:     Now tell us about your upcoming launch.

Twitterface

Kristi Colvin:     The day we launch is a free version free to all.  It will remain free but it does not have some of this integration and really some of the slick stuff that we have coming in the future.
Jim Quillen:     And when is your launch for the beta product scheduled?

Kristi Colvin:     My consistent answer is two weeks. {laughs} Now, it does not really matter when you ask me that but it seems to be the answer.  I honestly, right now the holdup is me.  I have to redesign something in the workflow.

One of the things about being a user-experience person is I am excruciatingly aware of where, you know, people can get hung up in some problems.  So I’ve got to do a very minor little shuffling and give that to the developers and then we will be ready to launch.  So I really hope, you know, within two weeks or so that we’ll get it out as public beta.

Jim Quillen:     And how do you get the message out, obviously through Twitter?

Kristi Colvin:     No.  It’s going to be a soft launch.  I mean I am glad you’re my first interview but I’m really not going to do PR or anything right now.  I have no idea how many people may use it.  I’m a little scared of that so I’m just going to put the word out and we have a slew of people, about 20 people who are going to test the alpha for us in the last couple of days before we launch as public beta.  We’re just going to do that to just get an immediate gut check on okay, there’s nothing huge that’s going on that’s happening.  And then we’ll launch as public beta and I’m just going to very gently release it on Twitter and see what happens.

Jim Quillen:     Yeah.  Well, that’s a good idea.  It seems like Twitter changes a lot over time.  I mean, it’s changing fast.  There are more users coming in.  I mean we had what, two million last fall and now there’s well, projected to be over 30 million, I guess here at the end of April and then 50 million by the end of the year and so forth.
As a developer of a software tool like Twitterface, how do you keep pace with that?

Kristi Colvin:     It’s very nerve wracking.  You know, also the way that the API—the API is limited in terms of what Twitter let’s you do.  So you don’t have really—you only have control up to a certain level.  And I’m unaccustomed to that, you know, to being sort of—to having your entire business model, your entire software development model run off of someone else’s is a bit unusual for me.  I think the best you can do is just react as quickly and as smartly as you can.

They have released something and I’ve known about it and I just have not designed it in yet but the saved searches.  I’ve had that for a while.  I was one of the initial people that I guess they beta tested it with.  And so those saved searches I do not have in Twitterface.  We will have it.  We have searching and stuff but we don’t have the saved capability.  So, you know, things like that you just have to adjust and do the best you can and fortunately people are so accustomed to using these third-party products that it’s sort of unusual.

I don’t like it that they tolerate a lot of problems but they actually do.  They tolerate API limitations and Twitter going down all the time and fail whale and, you know, it’s really there’s a lot of tolerance that the user has built up.

Jim Quillen:     Do you see that changing in the near future or in the future?  I mean, there are a lot of and it’s kind of interesting that there’s so many people piling on and—

Kristi Colvin:     I don’t know.  You know, tight knuckle people sort of in the back of my mind can see what maybe some of the issues are and but the mass mainstream, you know, if Oprah gets a whiff, farewell, what is she going to think?  You know, that’s what I don’t know.  Is your general computer user who is not a geek, who is not a developer, who’s not technical, you know, will they get frustrated and abandon is definitely a possibility.

I am hoping Twitter spends some of that money that they have on serious infrastructure and hardware and things like that to accommodate all these people.  I think they must be because now there are probably a few significant issues recently, it seems to be holding up fairly well.

Jim Quillen:     Though you still have the outages, but maybe not as many fail whales as we’ve seen before.

Kristi Colvin:     Right.

Jim Quillen:     Switching to Twitter for users, what advice would you give?  What advice would you give to a person who’s new on Twitter?

Kristi Colvin:     They need to really focus on a few basics.  They need to get some type of avatar in instead of Twitters’ default and put up a background or choose one of Twitters’ options that’s not the default.  They need to set themselves up to use it, basically.  You know, set up the bio, put a link in to somewhere if they have one and then make a few updates, even if they’re very awkward.

One of the things that I think commonly happens is that people just start following people.  Well, when you go in and you look at their profile you think, I don’t want to follow this person.  They don’t have any updates or whatever.  It’s all a bit strange.

So they need to both follow people immediately so that they sort of get something going on and make some updates and then just start, gingerly, talking to people.  You know, not obnoxiously but just start joining the conversations, sort of, gently.

Jim Quillen:     Can you make a mistake on Twitter?

Kristi Colvin:     I think that you can.  It depends on the people around you how badly the mistake will be perceived.  One of the things that greatly annoys me is I frequently get expectations in my direct message about Tweet this out and Tweet this out and Tweet that out and I want you to pull out this and that and the other thing and I sometimes, I mean, I depends on what it is, who it is, what I’m doing in the moment.  Sometimes I do send something out and a lot of times I just roll my eyes and I’m kind of annoyed.

So it’s a subtle mistake because obviously I’m not throwing a big fit about it or griping someone out whatever but it is annoying me and so I’m probably not going to be as—I’m not going to have that friendly goodwill feeling, you know, that I might with some other people.

Jim Quillen:     Right.

Kristi Colvin:     So and then, you know, those are that’s a very subtle type of mistake. You know, one of the things I also see is just crazy things where people will like retweet themselves because they’re trying to push their business or they just—they’re too overt with their agenda.

We all have an agenda and people joke and I joke myself about it.  I can pimp anything on Twitter, you know, because I’m just naturally sort of chatty and bubbly and that comes real easy.  But I do have a sensitivity about—you want it to be mutually beneficial, not just here everybody I want you to look at my stuff.  It’s got to be reciprocal and mutually beneficial.

Jim Quillen:     What kind of mental rule of thumb do you use for that?  I mean, is it 80 percent giving value to the network and 20 percent maybe promoting your own?

Kristi Colvin:     I have no rules.  You know, it would be probably shocking to see my statistics on what I do when.  Someone the other day appalled me a little bit because he said, “You are a marketing guru,” and I was like, “What?  Why do you say that?”  And he said, “Because everything you say revolves around something that has to do with you, your friends or business, something.”  You know, I was like, “Oh, well maybe you weren’t supposed to notice that.”

But, you know, I think that’s just me.  The things I’m really interested in are the things I want to share.  You know, Twitterface, I mean, people may accuse me of spamming when Twitterface comes out because I’m going to be so freaking excited that I’m not going to be able to shut up about it, I would guess.      You know, I designed this in September.  It’s been a long time coming.  I just will probably be so excited that it will border on obnoxious.  So be prepared.

But it comes from enthusiasm not so much from, you know, I want everybody to go and do this and, you know, it just comes from more of a natural enthusiasm.  And I think people can tell.  You know, when you promote your stuff or you talk about what’s going on or you talk about what’s exciting and you have a good relationship with your followers and your friends on Twitter, they can tell that.

Jim Quillen:     Yeah.

Kristi Colvin:     That’s not obnoxious. {laughs}

Jim Quillen:     Yeah.  It’s part of being natural and being yourself and as people get to know you then they kind of expect, you know, I mean, if you’re excited about something they get excited about it.

Well tell us, and we’ll wrap up here I know you’ve got plenty of things that you could be doing right now besides talking to us, but the final thoughts on Twitterface.  Launch date, website again, and anything else you want to mention.

Kristi Colvin:     The product will be at Twitterface.com.  There’s nothing there right now but a splash page but that is the place to watch.  The account on Twitter is @TweetMeUp and what a lot of people don’t know you cannot get a Twitter account that has the word Twitter in it right now.  So @TweetMeUp is our tagline and that is why that’s our official Twitter account.

Of course, they can always—anyone can follow me at @KrisColvin and they will hear about Twitterface when it launches whether they wish to or not.  {laughs}But the official product update account is @TweetMeUp and really, it will be coming very soon.  I mean May will not pass before that product’s out.  So it will be coming sometime in the next two to three weeks.

Jim Quillen:     Well, you’re down to your last two-week period.  So Twitterface.com.

Kristi Colvin:     Yes and see now you have it recorded that I said two weeks so I may have to hold that to this date.

Jim Quillen:     Yes, we have a stake in the ground now!

Kristi Colvin:     Exactly.

Jim Quillen:     Yeah, you can’t say by May and not put the year in there and then have it come out in 2010.

So @TweetMeUp is the account to follow on Twitter for Twitterface and then your account is @KrisColvin, right?

Kristi Colvin:     Yes.

Jim Quillen:     And then Twitterface.com and the blog is Twitterface.me.  Thank you so much.  We’re excited to be your first interview about Twitterface and to talk about it at our blog and we wish you all the best and we’ll stay in touch.

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.