Webware

Corporate tools take note: You can tell Twitter exactly what you're doing, and it'll tell LinkedIn too.

Chalk one up for the cringe-worthy marketing term "personal branding": there is a new partnership between Twitter, hub for informing the world exactly what you're doing and thinking at all moments of the day, and LinkedIn, the business-networking tool on steroids. In an announcement Monday, the two companies explained that LinkedIn status messages can sync with Twitter.

"The business use case of Twitter is turning out to be very important, and more and more people are finding that the persona they create for themselves on the Web is part of their resume in many ways," Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said in a joint video with LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman that was posted to the LinkedIn blog.

So, in short, LinkedIn's "status" feature now syncs with Twitter with an optional check box--a feature that the two companies say should be rolling out over the next few days. Likewise, can set your Twitter status as your LinkedIn status by using the hash tag #li or #in, so that you can rest assured that your tweet about "watching Gossip Girl and eating cold pizza" won't immediately show up to potential clients or employers trawling your LinkedIn profile. (Full disclosure: This was my Twitter status tonight. If you believe that it renders me professionally unsound, please feel free to let me know.)

All snark aside, this is probably a very good bet for LinkedIn, which continues to grow fast and make money but which hasn't yet really jumped into the latest social-networking trend of real-time, streaming information. Inking a partnership with Twitter is much easier than launching some other kind of initiative to get members to update their statuses more often. Tweets sent to LinkedIn, presumably, could also be grouped in with LinkedIn status messages to form some kind of business-intelligence live stream. The sort of information that people want to share specifically with colleagues and professional associates could be of interest to high-end advertisers or the market research community.

Twitter, meanwhile, is going to want to stay in the limelight of the business community as it considers a long-term business model--one of the microblogging service's potential moneymakers has been launching a "dashboard" of analytics for people and companies who use it primarily for professional purposes rather than, you know, filling the world in on which beer was just discovered in the back of the fridge.

Also for Twitter, this is yet another potential source of tweets as it attempts to become the world's foremost repository of real-time information. Earlier this year, MySpace announced an official way to sync Twitter and MySpace status, and in a matter of weeks its link-shortening service had become the second most popular on Twitter (trailing Twitter's preferred Bit.ly).

Facebook, meanwhile, appears to have been more reluctant: a Twitter app on its platform has pulled tweets into status messages for some time, and an unofficial app lets members tag selective tweets with the hashtag "#fb" to cross-post them to Facebook, but the only time that Facebook has put out a big, official announcement about syncing with Twitter was when it added an easy-sync feature for "fan pages," profiles for brands and marketers.

Not surprising. Twitter is a hot name in marketing these days, and in order for Facebook to establish fan pages as an ideal spot for brands to build a presence, an easy Twitter sync is a selling point. But in the long run, it's an advantage for Facebook, which once tried to buy Twitter and was snubbed, to keep its treasure trove of what-the-world-is-thinking somewhat to itself. After all, it can get away with it: with well over 300 million active users, Facebook is significantly bigger than Twitter, and could be diluting its own product by openly sourcing status messages out to Twitter. LinkedIn, better known for its networking features than any kind of status updating, isn't running that kind of risk.

Until then: "At SFO airport at bookstore. Deciding between @gladwell and @tferriss. Need real, serious insights. Thoughts? #li."

A new study released on Wednesday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project has found some rather interesting tidbits of information about social network users.

According to the study, 19 percent of Web surfers use "Twitter or another service to share updates about themselves, or to see updates about others." According to the organization, its earlier findings in April 2009 found that just 11 percent of Internet users were using a status-update service.

But the reason why there has been such an uptick in status updates has much to do with the users themselves, Pew found. According to the organization, the growth is being driven by "social network Web site users, those who connect to the Internet via mobile devices, and younger Internet users--those under age 44."

The study found that 33 percent of those who are updating their status range in age between 18 and 29. Those aged between 30 and 49 make up 22 percent of the group. Just 13 percent of those who update their status are 50 years of age or older.

Pew determined that the Twitter user's median age is 31. MySpace's median age is now 26, down from 27 in May 2008. LinkedIn has also gotten younger by a year, featuring a median age of 39. But Facebook is one of the few social networks to buck the youth trend, upping its median age to 33, from 26 in May 2008.

It has only been a week since MySpace launched its two-way sync with Twitter, but already the service has made an impact on the popular microblog.

MySpace's "lnk.ms" is now the second most used link-shortening service on Twitter, according to statistics compiled by Twitter link tracker Tweetmeme.

Over the past 24 hours, lnk.ms was included in 15.66 percent of all tweets containing links, Tweetmeme claims. It follows only Bitly, which was used in more than 69 percent of tweets featuring links to outside sources. TinyURL, Owly, and Isgd follow MySpace's lnk.ms with 10.43 percent, 2.75 percent, and 2 percent share of tweets, respectively.

MySpace hasn't divulged how many users are syncing with Twitter. A company spokeswoman told me in an e-mail message that MySpace cannot provide any details on usage yet. Twitter did not immediately respond to request for comment.

The fact that MySpace has been able to make such a mark on Twitter in just one week is quite a feat. When the company announced two-way syncing with Twitter last week, it allowed users of both social networks to update their status and syndicate that to the other network. MySpace's lnk.ms is the result of that.

Whenever a user who has activated two-way syncing updates their MySpace status, a snippet of that update is syndicated to their Twitter profile. A unique lnk.ms link follows that tweet. When the user's Twitter followers click on it, they can view the full status update. If the updates are kept private, the update can't be viewed by followers who aren't also friends with the user on MySpace.

Before we get too carried away over the success of MySpace's link-shortening feature, it should be noted that Tweetmeme's calculations are based only on links it processes. Also, the company tracks link-shortening usage over the past 24 hours, so we have yet to see how MySpace's service will fare in the long run.

But so far, it seems that MySpace has made its mark on the service. And by the looks of things, it doesn't seem the Twitter community's use of lnk.ms will be slowing down anytime soon.

(Via TechCrunch)

Some believe that Twitter has the power to change big events like Iranian elections. I think that its strength may be in much smaller, but still significant, ways.

In fact, I was the matchmaker recently between a Barcelona cabbie and an American employee of a pharmaceutical company. Well, a matchmaker between the cabbie and this lady's BlackBerry, anyway.

It happened like this:

I have a Twitter search in TweetDeck that alerts me every time the word "Asay" is used on Twitter. (I need to be able to track down libel somehow!)

Is this taxi a twitterer?

(Credit: CC Robertrd/Flickr)

On August 30, I saw this tweet:

Hi! I'm a taxi driver from Barcelona. Somebody knows Jennifer Asay? She works for (pharmaceutical company). I've her Balckberry [sic].

I happen to be married to a Jennifer Asay, but not this one. So I looked up her name on the Web and quickly found her on LinkedIn. I reached out to her there to give her the e-mail address of the taxi driver, which he provided in his tweet. I also replied to him to give him her e-mail address. No big deal, right?

On Wednesday, I heard back from Raúl, the taxi driver:

Hi! I am the taxidriver from Barcelona.

She has found me thanks to you.
I will be with her for I will give back its telephone.
Thank you very much by your work.

Raúl

Nice, right? It gets better. Today, I heard from Jennifer, and it sounds like everything worked out, thanks to the power of Twitter (and LinkedIn):

I can't tell you how grateful I am that you reached out to me....by a miracle, Raúl brought me my BlackBerry today!

What are the odds? In our increasingly networked world, the odds are getting shorter all the time.

Again, it's a simple story, but one rich in possibilities too. Think about it. A twittering taxi driver reaches out to the massive echo chamber that is the Web and is heard by a complete stranger in Utah who also uses Twitter (me), who then turns to LinkedIn to find the sought-for person and connects them over e-mail.

There are lots of problems in the world. Communication--at least the possibility of communication--isn't one of them.

P.S. There's a very good chance that I've now ruined Jennifer's life by getting her back in touch with her BlackBerry addiction, but I want this story to have a happy ending.

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay. And if you find my iPhone, please tweet it. :-)

URL shortening service Trim is reopening its doors, restoring service to both existing Trim links and the core of the site that lets users make new ones. A company blog post that details the change of plans says that the company will continue to run Trim "indefinitely" while a trustworthy buyer is sought out.

Trim originally began experiencing problems late last week as all of its shortened links stopped working for several hours. Then, over the weekend, the company announced that it would be shutting down come the end of December, taking all of its shortened links with it.

In Tuesday's announcement, the company reiterated that the move to shut down, then re-open was not a publicity stunt, nor will it ever change how the service handles URLs such as adding a framebar or interstitial advertising that forces users to wait, or click through an ad to get to the source link. Such options could bring in revenue, but the company says that would go against the very principals Trim was founded on.

The post also warns other link shortening services that the odds continue to be "stacked" against them with Twitter using competitor Bitly as the built-in link shortener. "This is a basic reality of challenging monopolies," it says. "This type of favoritism will become an issue for all Twitter developers."

While Trim had a heavy following, users may not be willing to come back to it without knowing when or if another company will buy it. It's also unclear how long parent company Nambu Network would be able to continue operating without a buyer, despite the offer to keep running it at a loss.

Here's a must-have Firefox add-on. Called Multi Links, this extension lets you simply right click and drag your mouse across the screen to select multiple links at once. It's just like selecting multiple files on your computer, and highly effective for tearing through a page of links you want to look at or save for later.

By default, selected links open up in new browser tabs, although you can go into the options to choose whether you want them to open up in new windows, or be bookmarked instead. You're also able to change the color scheme of the box, and the outlines of the selected links--just in case you're into that sort of thing.

Want to open up multiple URLs? Just drag your mouse over them with this handy extension.

(Credit: CNET)

Advanced users can utilize keyboard shortcuts to limit mouse work. For instance, holding down the control or shift button while creating a box means you can hop around a page of results--selecting the items you want to open or save, while skipping over others. The extension is also coded to ignore extra links on search pages, which keeps you from unintentionally opening up the cached and similar links on each result. This worked fine on Google and Bing, but not on Yahoo or Ask.

This extension is definitely worth keeping around because it does not interfere with normal, right-click behavior. My one hope is that future versions will forgo the options menu in place of a small pop-up, or slide-out menu that asks what you want to do with links after selecting them.

See also: Snap Links (which does the same thing, but has not been updated since February) and Selection Links.

Gmail's Google Maps link to CBSi's address on the iPhone via Smart Links's translation. Instead of the lengthy URL, you now have the actual address with the link embedded to it.

(Credit: Dong Ngo/CNET)

Chances are that you have seen extremely long links when you receive an e-mail that contains a Google Maps address or driving instructions. This gets annoying, especially on mobile devices, because not only do the links take up a lot of space, but they also make it hard to find out the important information, such as the address, hidden within it.

Now that has just changed for Gmail users who use the iPhone or Android-powered devices to read their e-mail.

On Tuesday, GoogleMobile announced the Smart Links feature, a mechanism that automatically shortens a raw link and converts it into a meaningful phrase with the link embedded. Click on the phrase and the link will open just like with the original raw link.

For example, when you receive a Google Maps link of CBSi's address via Gmail using the iPhone's browser, instead of seeing a long string of characters, you will see the actual like this 235 2nd St, San Francisco, CA 94105. The address is hyper-linked and when clicked on will launch Google Maps showing the location of our HQ office.

Smart Links is part of GoogleMobile's Interative Webapp series that focus on developing and enhancing Gmail features specifically for the iPhone and Android-powered devices.

Currently, Smart Links supports four types of links: Google Maps address queries, Google Maps directional queries (with one destination), Google Sites Web pages, and links to YouTube videos. It's available only in English and, for now, only works with e-mails composed in plain text format.

In the future, Smart Links will also work with more link types, such as Google Docs, according to GoogleMobile.

There's nothing you have to do to use this feature other than checking your Gmail account via the Web browser on an iPhone/iPod Touch (running OS 2.2.1 or later) or an Android-powered device.

Note that you need to use the mobile browser to take advantage of this feature, other mail clients, such as the iPhones Mail app, don't support it.

I tried the new feature with on my iPhone 3GS and it worked very well. However, I wish it also supported e-mails formatted in rich text or HTML formats. That would make it more useful as most e-mails are sent using these formats.

Without Smart Link, this is how the original link looks.

(Credit: Dong Ngo/CNET)

You might be using LinkedIn to stay connected with your business contacts, but there are alternatives on the Web that will help you network and enjoy some extra features while you're at it. Whether you want to hang out at some professional parties or you're more interested in sharing best practices, there are some really neat business-centric social networks on the Web you'll want to visit.

Go pro with these social networks

Focus If you're looking for answers to important business decisions, Focus is the social network for you.

After signing up for Focus, you can immediately start researching topics that have some relevance to your business. From finance to customer service, the site is filled with professionals both asking and answering questions on topics that impact business. To push its social element, Focus allows you to write a blog, connect with others in groups, or simply post comments to discussion boards. If you're looking to learn more about your industry and you want peers to help you do it, Focus is for you.

Focus will give you some insight on important business topics.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Netparty If you're a young professional, networking is one of the most important elements of your career. If you don't know colleagues, you might lose a competitive advantage over others vying for the same job. That's where Netparty comes in.

Netparty's goal is to connect young professionals in a party atmosphere. The site arranges networking events for young professionals in several cities across the U.S., Canada, Europe, and even South America. It sets up parties at different places around the city you live in, charges an admission fee, and even gives you directions on getting there. From the site, you can buy tickets and get on the V.I.P. list, so you don't need to wait in line. It's a great service. More young professionals should be using it.

Netparty connects young professionals in local hot spots.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

There's some chest-thumping going on over at TweetMeme, a service that rounds up "retweets" of popular links--much like Digg buttons--and aggregates them into a central site. A rival site, ReTweet, just announced its impending launch, and TweetMeme thinks the two are too similar.

More specifically, according to a blog post by TweetMeme's Nick Halstead, ReTweet's "retweet button Javascript and the Wordpress plugin code seemed to have been directly copied from ours." He said that TweetMeme is "seeking further legal advice."

Halstead says he was spurred by a commenter on a TechCrunch article who claims to have found the matching code.

ReTweet is not yet open to the public but claims that its product will be "off-da-hook."

Avid Twitter users are undoubtedly familiar with "retweeting," but here's a rundown: A retweet is a Twitter post (or tweet) that spreads around another user's tweet by posting "RT," the username of the account that originally posted the tweet, and then the content of the tweet (sometimes truncated so as to not push it above the 140-character limit).

TweetMeme has gained popularity because it makes Digg-like buttons that allow site visitors to send out retweets of articles or blog posts they may be reading, and industry blogs like TechCrunch and Mashable have begun installing TweetMeme buttons to count the number of retweets that a link has pulled in.

Halstead says the liaisons between the two Twitter app manufacturers go back a few months. "I had actually been contacted by their COO Tyson Quick in April to ask if we would support their plan to get Twitter to support retweeting natively on Twitter," he wrote on the TweetMeme blog. "At the time I responded that I would think about it, in fact what I thought was that they were obviously trying to get us to help them promote a service that would at a later stage turn into a competitor, so I ignored it."

ReTweet has said that the similarities in question came from the fact that the matching code was open-source.

Parent company Mesiab Labs responded in a blog post and says it has modified some code: "After some prompt discussions with our development team, we discovered that, indeed, one of our developers had based a prototype button and widget on tweetmeme.com's publicly viewable scripts and some of the same open source WordPress code," the post read. "As a company that prides itself on innovation and cutting edge development, we were a bit embarassed by the blunder, and promptly removed the scripts. Despite being well within our rights to use the publicly licensed code, we believe we can do better."

Since ReTweet has yet to even launch, this will have to be one to watch.

This post was updated at 12:52 p.m. PT.