photo credit: Sebastian Mary

January seems to be flying by and it’s that time of the month again; when Third Thursday is upon us and it’s time for the Manx Social Media Club to meet up for lunch. We always meet in the same place; Paparazzi in Douglas, so you should all be familiar with it, but I’d like to stress that lunch is open to everyone with an interest in Social Media. New faces are always welcome.

This month we have lots to talk about, the upcoming Twestival, some members are bringing tablets along to show off, whether Twitter needs filtering or not, whether Foursquare is declining in popularity and of course, the obligatory OS debates. The agenda is always open, so feel free to bring any questions, peeves and successes you want to hear. We’re particularly interested in where you’re using Social Media and the impact on your organisation and yourself.

So, if you’re interested in Social Media, come meet us at Paparazzi at 12:30 on Thursday 20th January. We’re usually the big table in the top right corner.

So, who were my picks this week. Well, as always, it was a pretty hard choice and I had to omit a number of people, but there was no way I could get everyone I wanted in. So I picked some of the tweets I enjoyed most this week, and my #ffs were the relevant tweeters. These were:

• @alyssa_milano
• @amadeus_iom
• @chrisbrogan
• @harbourcreek
• @masticatingmanx
• @mbageekdotcom
• @philgatt
• @problogger
• @scobleizer
• @sherrilynne
• @swoopiom
• @techburgh

Check them out, and if you like their tweets, make sure your follow them!

I guess I could throw a party, invite friends round for a BBQ and dance around the fire, but what does it all mean? Well, not much really! I’m an avid user of Twitter, so I’m bound to have good stats, but is my Twitter account really all that valuable? Well, it depends on the context in which you’re looking at it. I tend to tweet about interesting thing related to business and technology, so if you’re operating in that space, sure. But if you’re a sports fan, my Twitter account probably has less value than a constipated pigeon. If you’re interested in wildlife conservation, car restoration, fishing, or one of a million varied subjects my Twitter account would be useless to you because you won’t find a single tweet about them.

There are also a number of reasons why the figures used to come up with the grading are arbitrary and easily gamed, but that’s the subject for another discussion. In the meantime, enjoy the champagne!

Now that’s just awesome!

1. Creativity
2. User adoption potential (or actual)
3. Revenue generation potential (or actual)

So, what did our entry consist of. Well, you might have heard of TweetRoll, the Twitter widget we had created some time back. We’ve used the Sponsored Tweets API to add functionality to the widget to automatically detect if you’re signed up to Sponsored Tweets. If you are, the widget will display a special section that shows your price per tweet and invites viewers to the widget to purchase a Sponsored Tweet. The new functionality embedded itself really nicely into the existing plugin and the upgrade will be transparent to all users.

What the marriage of functionality really results in, is to give Tweeters a platform to monitise their Twitter stream and to use their online presence to do so. The widget itself is available as a line of JavaScript, a WordPress plugin or even a Widgetbox widget. You can see the new functionality running on the left hand side of this blog; just run your mouse over the “Sponsor a Tweet” link in the TweetRoll widget.

Is it good enough to win? Well, keep an eye on the competition page and we’ll know in a few days. In the meantime, you can read more on the TweetBurn blog: Making Money with TweetRoll

Excellent stuff by @zemoga and @wiltonbound, I’m following!

	Oh wow! .. MAX is coming to visit the Isle of Man. I’m sure he’ll have a great time here. #gfi
	Popping home with MAX to get a change of shoes (can’t go to the beach with my work shoes can I?) #gfi
	I was going to take MAX to the theatre to catch a show, but it seems to be closed #gfi
	I took MAX for a walk in Groudle Glen, IMO one of the best walks in the Isle of Man (check out the watermill) #gfi
	We made a short detour and popped by Gansey beach. MAX enjoyed getting his toes wet. #gfi
	As we were heading back to Douglas, MAX from #gfi saw a lighthouse and wanted a photo. SNAP!
	And #gfi, here’s the best place to chill out in Douglas, listening to the waves on the prom!

If you think that’s fun, check out their competition!

It’s from Geek & Poke, a great cartoon site I’ve bookmarked for further perusal. There seem to be some good cartoons there, so if there’s anything good, I’ll be sure to let you know.

I always think it’s great that you can find all sorts of fun and game on the web, although there are also some less desirable things like malware sites and other trying to sell you the best weight loss pills money can buy. But, there are always good things around that can help offset this hassle. Enjoy the cartoons.

Twitter Advert

It looks like Twitter has identified an area on their page which can be used for advertisements and it currently being used to advertised their Search service. Is this the start of mini ads being shown on Twitter? Will Twitter try and flog this space to third -parties? Will the ads be context sensitive?

Lots of questions, does anyone have any answers? The truth is, at some point or other Twitter needs to start monitising it’s service and this would be a great spot to start. What do you think?

Update: Techcrunch have spotted them too

As you can see it’s quite similar in concept to Twhirl and it will be interesting to see Facebook users get on board with this concept. There are some interesting ideas as to why Seesmic decided to launch this as a seperate app instead of integrating it with Twhirl, but personally, my Twitter and Facebook account are linked through the Twitter Application for Facebook, so I’m not a prime user for the app. To tell you the truth, I just love the search facility in Twhirl so much I’m addicted to it now. You can specify a search term, example, “wireless alarm” and it will integrate the results directly into your Home stream, so that as soon as someone tweets something with that term, you’ll know about it. I wonder if the Facebook client does the same?