White House Rickrolls Complaining Twitter Follower.

The spirit of fun is alive in the White House, even as debt ceiling negotiations go down to the wire Twitter and the White House might seem like a dry combination, but even with the debt ceiling coming perilously close to crushing everyone beneath it, the leader of the free world – or at least the people in charge of the White House Twitter feed – found time to have a bit of fun on Wednesday.

How? By rickrolling one of the 2.3m Twitter users who follow its feed and was complaining that it wasn’t very interesting.

“Sorry to hear that. Fiscal policy is important, but can be dry sometimes. Here’s something more fun,” the White House tweeted. And then it provided a link … to Rick Astley singing Never Gonna Give You Up.

David Wiggs, a self-described “energy tech enthusiast and mediocre golfer” whose tweet – “This WH [White House] correspondence briefing isn’t nearly as entertaining as yesterday’s” – sparked the outbreak of fun from Pennsylvania Avenue, liked it: “Hilarious”, he tweeted, and “Love it!”

“Rickrolling” is a prank that began on the 4chan message board (originally called duckrolling, as the link would lead to a picture of a duck on wheels); the first use to link to the Astley video came under the guise of being a secret trailer for the then-unreleased Grand Theft Auto IV. It then spread from 4chan and took off with Twitter in 2008 as huge numbers of people joined the service: the necessity of using shortened links for the 140-character service meant you could obscure their destination – and so hold out a tantalising treat that instead turned out to be Rick Astley singing.

In 2010 it was briefly doused when the video was removed from YouTube– but the White House found time to dig up another.

Meanwhile the deadline for the debt ceiling inched closer on Wednesday night – leading to a dramatic intervention.

Google Says: No Google+ Business Profiles >>>>>>>>>> Yet

Google has revealed that it is working on a Google+ experience for businesses and is asking brands not to create Google+ profiles just yet.

In a post and accompanying YouTube video on Google+, Product Manager Christian Oestlien says that the Google+ team is working on creating a unique experience for businesses that includes deep analytics and the ability to connect to products like AdWords. “How users communicate with each other is different from how they communicate with brands,” Oestlien argues.

As a result, Google is asking businesses to put their Google+ ambitions on hold.

“The business experience we are creating should far exceed the consumer profile in terms of its usefulness to businesses,” Oestlien says in his post. “We just ask for your patience while we build it. In the meantime, we are discouraging businesses from using regular profiles to connect with Google+ users. Our policy team will actively work with profile owners to shut down non-user profiles.”

Several prominent brands have already joined Google+, including Ford, Breaking News and yes, Mashable, which is now one of the top ten most popular users on Google+.

While the new Google+ experience for businesses won’t be ready until “later this year,” the company intends to launch a “small experiment with a few marketing partners” to test the brand-oriented accounts over the next few months. It even has opened up a Google Spreadsheet where “non-user entities” can apply for the program. It’s unclear when Google will shut down non-user profiles or how the process will work.

We’re not surprised that Google is building an optimized Google+ experience for businesses, but we are surprised that Google wasn’t more prepared for the wave of brands that have been joining its social network. The same thing happened with Google Buzz and has happened on Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and countless other social networks. Brands like to go where their customers are.

Rep. Billy Long’s Twitter Faux Pas: Amy Winehouse

The Missouri congressman who compared Congress to the late singer via Twitter apologized for his tweet.

Rep. Billy Long, R-Mo., said in an e-mail to theSpringfield News-Leader that he “meant no disrespect to Amy, her family or her fans.”

Yesterday, before the Grammy Award-winning singer had even been buried, Long tweeted, “No one could reach #AmyWinehouse before it was too late. Can anyone reach Washington before it’s too late? Both addicted — same fate???”

Long, an auctioneer before he was elected to Congress last year, said he does believe that spending 42% more than the government takes in is an “addiction.” Congress and President Obama are at odds on how to raise the nation’s $14.3 trillion in borrowing authority before Aug. 2.

The congressman’s original tweet was widely reported — and criticized. Across the pond in London, The Daily Mail tabloid called it “the height of bad taste.”

Winehouse, who was found dead Saturday, had a history of drug and alcohol addiction. An autopsy conducted Monday was inconclusive about the cause of her death. Her family and friends buried her today in a private funeral.

Long said about Winehouse:

She was one of the few true artists to come along in a long time. What happened to her was a senseless tragedy and drawing an analogy wasn’t meant to minimize the loss of life. If anyone took offense, I sincerely apologize.

Twitter’s Explosive Growth: 200 Million Accounts

The 200 millionth Tweep signed up for a Twitter account, and to commemorate the occasion we bring you this infographic tracing the history of the platform that led up to that mind-boggling number.

If that 200 millionth Twitterer figure impresses you, get a load of the biggest number on this infographic: 350 billion tweets delivered each day.

Even though Twitter started out with users feeling cramped within its 140-character confines and talking about what they had for breakfast, today it’s turned into an explosive dynamo that instantly brings you news from all over the world. In fact, some have even blamed/credited it with overthrowing governments.

The service has enjoyed spectacular growth over the past five years — its official fifth birthday was in March, but it first became available to the general public in July, 2006.

And now that Jerry Seinfeld has jumped on the Twitter bandwagon, it reminds us that the little tweeting platform that was once about nothing, well, now it’s about something. Something big. One thing’s for sure: It’s changed the world.

Infographic courtesy Visual.ly

Kicking Off Conversations On Twitter

This was very eye-opening. In yesterday’s post I reviewed a few great Twitter bios. The best part about the post was the discussion below and someone asked very bluntly: “These are some great people, but how do I start talking to them?”

It struck me, because it is often easy to forget that starting out on Twitter might not be easy at all. So after you have started following a few people, how can you best start chatting? Here are a few very simple ways that allow you to kick off a conversation:

Post a few friendly retweets

If you aim to get in touch with someone, I found that simply retweeting that person a few times builds a great basis for discussion. Add a short comment too, in order to show your engagement with the content.

What works very well too is to put the RT at the back of the tweet so the content is first seen by your followers. I believe posting retweets is a fabulous first step to launch a first connection with someone.

Use a person’s Twitter bio as a starting point

Another way that has helped me many times in order to start talking to people is to relate to something interesting you read in a person’s bio. If you are building a following based on your interests, this will be very helpful. Simply tweet a comment on something that you found interesting and usually a great discussion is under way:

Relate to an article or piece of content

We all care and seek appreciation for our work. Which better opportunity is there for you to use a piece of content that you liked as a starting point for a conversation?

Leave a comment on the post or tweet it with a nice reference to the author. In many cases, I found that this can kick off a great conversation. If you show that you are truly engaged with that content it raises interest from the person mentioned and you can continue your conversations from there.

Answer a question

If you are attentive of the people you are following, you will see that many ask questions, hoping that some of their followers might respond. If this is someone you always wanted to chat with, then it is a no-brainer to take this up as a chance.

Before you know it you will end up in a nice conversation. Here is an example where my answer was even taken up further and got me featured on TechCrunch.

Don’t force it

Like in real life, the best conversations are those which come naturally. I found that trying to force a talk onto someone can turn out to be troublesome. Try combining a few of the techniques above and let them come casually as you experience Twitter.

So simply following someone and enjoying the content being tweeted is how I made Twitter work for me. A simple Tweet of appreciation, if the tweets from someone continually add value is also something you might want to try.

I am very thankful for GirlyGrizzly, bringing this topic up. After all it is the conversations that make Twitter such a wonderful place to be. Helping out by getting started with more conversations is something I believe is very important.

I have one question for you though. I considered to list replying to auto-DM’s in order to get conversations started, but I am not quite sure. Do you believe this is something we should do?

Via: @joelgascoigne and @LeoWid

http://blog.bufferapp.com/twitter-conversations

Great For #FF- DM Cleaner

Where has this tool been?  This tool will be particularly useful on #FF.  If you are one who uses Twitter’s DM (direct message) feature, this tool is for you. InboxCleaner is a twitter online application that allow you to clean your direct message inbox after reading your messages. You can delete upto 25 message a day.

InboxCleaner uses your twitter authentication to connect/access DM messages. After a successful login you will be provided with filtering options to “clean” all or select DM messages.

Checkout twitter’s DM cleaner @ InboxCleaner and Chrome InboxCleaner Application

Google+ Reaches 18 Million Users

Already using Google+? Follow Mashable News for the latest about the platform’s new features, tips and tricks as well as our top social media and technology updates.

Google+ continues to set records as the fastest-growing social network in history, but Google’s social juggernaut is beginning to show signs that it’s losing steam.

Ancestry.com co-founder Paul Allen (not to be confused with the Microsoft co-founder of the same name) posted his most recent analysis of Google+’s growth on his Google+ account Tuesday. According to his analysis, the search giant’s Facebook competitor will likely reach 18 million users by the end of Tuesday, but its growth rate has dropped by 50% from its peak.

“Last week we saw two days where more than 2 million signed up in a single day,” Allen said in his post. “If that rate had continued, Google+ would have reached 20 million users by last Sunday night. But the last four days have averaged only 948,000 new users, and yesterday the site added only 763,000. Yesterday’s growth of 4.47% was the slowest viral growth since Google opened up invites back on July 6.”

SEE ALSO: GOOGLE+: THE COMPLETE GUIDE | VIDEOS | REVIEWWhy is Google+’s growth slowing down? Google Trends indicates that the buzz around Google+ has died down some, which is natural for any major news item. Allen makes the important point that Google+ hasn’t been promoted by any of its other properties and that the social network is still invite-only. Once Google+ is promoted on YouTube or on Google.com, its growth may simply skyrocket.

Allen estimated that Google+ hit the 10 million user mark sometime on July 12 or 13. Google CEO Larry Page confirmed that Google+ had more than 10 million users during an investor earnings call on July 14. Its most followed user, Mark Zuckerberg, now has more than 250,000 followers, despite not posting a single public item on his Google+ account.

 

 

 

 

Graph via Paul Allen’s Google+ page

Launch Your Google+ Posts To Twitter.

A big Twitter management app has just added connectivity to Google+ for those of you who want to integrate your two accounts. Learn how below. ManageFlitter allows Twitter users to monitor which of their followers is active and which isn’t, in order to choose who is worth a follow back and who isn’t. And now they’ve added Google+ functionality, too.

If you have a Google+ account, you can sync it to your Twitter account using ManageFlitter. Here’s how:

1. Visit the Twitter Account Management page on ManageFlitter
2. Find your Google+ account URL and put it in the text box on ManageFlitter
3. Connect to your Twitter account

And that’s it! ManageFlitter will tweet any new posts you put up on your Google+ account to your Twitter account. They’ll tweet the full post if it’s less than 140 characters, and they’ll link back to Google+ if it’s longer.

As ManageFlitter explains, Google+ doesn’t have an API yet, so it can take anywhere from 5 minutes to 1 hours to get your Google+ post up on Twitter. And when they do release it, they’ll allow you to send your Twitter updates to Google+ (but watch out for this when it comes, as it might turn off some of your Google+ connections).

This is one of the first ways to connect your Twitter and your Google+ account. Give it a shot, if you want to share what you’re saying on Google+ with your Twitter followers – but remember, they are very different networks and, just like connecting Twitter with Facebook, there are certain etiquette guidelines for each.

Workin On Facebook, HardlyWork.in On Work.

HardlyWork.In allows you to check your facebook profile and news feed while on the job and at work. This tool is so sneaky your boss will never see it. This “Tool” turns your Facebook news feed into an innocuous spreadsheet.

Twitter Scores>>>>New Record.

After an epic run, the U.S. women’s soccer teamsuccumbed to Japan today in the final of the Women’s World Cup tournament. And if you were paying attention to your Twitter stream today, you may have seen an influx of Tweets about the game, which ended in a penalty shootout. Twitter just Tweeted that the Women’s World Cup final scored a new record with 7,196 Tweets per second. Even U.S. President Barack Obama joined in Tweeting about the game. And from the Tweet, “today’s end to the Paraguay/Brazil game is now 2nd with 7,666 TPS.”

After an epic run, the U.S. women’s soccer teamsuccumbed to Japan today in the final of the Women’s World Cup tournament. And if you were paying attention to your Twitter stream today, you may have seen an influx of Tweets about the game, which ended in a penalty shootout. Twitter just Tweeted that the Women’s World Cup final scored a new record with 7,196 Tweets per second. Even U.S. President Barack Obama joined in Tweeting about the game. And from the Tweet, “today’s end to the Paraguay/Brazil game is now 2nd with 7,666 TPS.”

The Men’s World Cup soccer tournament last year also achieved record engagement on Twitter at the time. For basis of comparison, last year’s men’s World Cup Final marked the largest period of sustained activity for an event in the service’s history, with over 2,000 Tweets per second (TPS) during the last 15 minutes of the match, and 3,051 tweets per second when Spain scored its winning goal in the final match.

Of course, Twitter, which just turned five years old, has grown significantly in the past year, especially in international markets. In May we saw Twitter see a significant peak in Tweets Per Second, following the announcement of Osama Bin Laden’s death. The event reached a high of 5,106 Tweets per second.

In terms of past events, Super Bowl 2011 saw 4,064 TPS, and the all-time high was New Years Eve 2010 in Japan, which hit 6,939 TPS at its peak. On the day of the Japanese earthquake and Tsunami in March, Twitter usage reached 5,530 TPS. And during the Royal Wedding in England in April, Twitter reached a peak of 3,966 TPS.

This past week, Twitter announced that its users are sharing 350 billion items per day and600,000 users are signing up for the service daily.

(Twitter via TechCrunch)