Sanders Media

Today, I wanted to go over some of the various Twitter clients. Whether you use Windows, Mac or Linux, there is one for you.

1. Nambu: This is my personal favorite. However, it is Mac only. It sports a very clean interface, and almost has the look of Apple’s Mail application. It’s very easy to use, and it’s free.
2. TweetDeck: A few of my Windows friends like this one a lot. It is available in Windows, Mac OS X and Linux versions. It sports some handy features including spam protection and Facebook updates. It’s also free.
3. Twitterrific: This client has two versions: free and paid. The free version is fully functional, but is ad supported. It is Mac only. The iPhone version is one of the App Store’s top Twitter related downloads.
4. Twhirl: This is another popular Twitter client. It is available for Mac OS X and Windows. It has some great features including English spell check and image posting.
5. TwitterFox: This is more of a plugin than a client, but it bears mentioning. It is platform agnostic because it is a plugin for the Firefox web browser. It displays a small icon near your status bar that tells you when there are new tweets to your account.

If you’re a Mac user, I would definitely give Nambu a try. Windows and Linux users should look into TweetDeck. Because of TweetDeck’s Facebook inclusion, I may eventually switch over. Since many of us are on multiple social networking services, this becomes increasingly useful.

Wikipedia defines RSS as (most commonly translated as “Really Simple Syndication”) a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format. In this day of constant status updates, the RSS feed can be used to spread your message across multiple platforms (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) quickly.

My first introduction to the concept of RSS came from my use of Google Reader to pull all of the content I wanted to read into one place. I could check the sports pages, world news and weather in one place. I now use RSS to feed this blog to Facebook. Twitterfeed uses my RSS to post links to this blog on Twitter.

I have a client who uses a template service for her website. She posts quite a bit to the blog portion of her site, but the template service does not provide an RSS feed for the blog. This makes it impossible to effectively spread her posts across multiple platforms. Due to SEO concerns, she can’t simply re-post in each place.

Make sure your website has an RSS feed. It will improve your branding, and spread your message.

This is a question that has recently received a large amount of attention. In early 2009, Facebook came under fire from its users for a new terms of service (TOS) that seemed to allow Facebook to own any content posted on its website. After large scale user revolt, Facebook decided to revert back to it’s older TOS. I can’t say that I remember another online service ever being this sensitive to its users concerns. They have now held a user vote on what the new TOS should be.

The entire episode makes me wonder if any of what we put online remains ours. For me personally, it should be. While I understand that anything I upload or write will likely no longer be private, I feel that I should at least retain ownership.

However, it’s unclear how this will play out legally. We are used to ignoring the TOS for online services. This needs to change if we want to maintain ownership of our digital “stuff”.

I know most of you have heard of MySpace and Facebook, and you may think they are for people with too much time on their hands. Have you considered how they can help your business? You know the old adage, “It’s not what you know, but who.” Well, the best way to meet that “who” is to expand your network. 

MySpace and Facebook, along with LinkedIn, are providing new ways to find new clients, employees or professional contacts. While MySpace and Facebook may be more geared to the “social” aspect of social networking, they can still be useful. LinkedIn may be the best solution for professionals because it is strictly for business.

It never hurts to expand your network, and the internet has made it easier than ever.