A few weeks ago, I discovered on the official Twitter Media blog that one of their developers had “scratched an itch” of his and coded a little script that allows you to embed tweets in your site like so;
This hasn’t been very widely reported as it’s not an official Twitter feature as such, it’s just something which one of their developers was experimented with and released on the Media blog as such. This is why it’s not quite as slick as it could be and why it will probably need some CSS integration work to sit into your site.
However, it’s alot more useful than taking a screen grab of a tweet for blog posts and as the tool for generating the embed code doesn’t obfuscate the mechanics, you can easily adjust the CSS to suit your own site styles.
Sometimes, things are so amazingly simple you wonder why the whole world hasn’t already been doing them before now.
How do you get the attention of top creative directors when looking for a job in NYC? Aside from buying billboard space across from their office window, you could do the internet equivalent for as little as $6.
April 22, 2010 at 16:06 ·
Filed under Social Media
Like many others, I was very intrigued by this mornings announcements by Facebook on their steps to venture into the wider web.
With over 450 million users worldwide, Facebook commands a vastly powerful social army who collectively have an unrivalled ability to seek out what’s hot, right now, on the web.
One of the most exciting elements is the ability to add a ‘Like’ or ‘Recommend’ button to your site.
This is linked to your Facebook profile, so that wherever this button appears (providing you’re logged into Facebook), you can just click it and this will then appear in your Facebook profile stream. This badge will also display if any of your Facebook friends have already liked or recommended this page.
After getting roughly the code I needed from the Facebook Developer page, I simply added a couple of PHP variables to dynamically insert the current page URL and then added the following code to my PHP page where I wanted the badge to appear.
For those familiar with CSS, you’ll see I added some rules to make the badge fit my site, you can fiddle with this as you see fit for your own site.
I have no doubt, there will very soon be a WordPress plugin to efficently provide this functionality but I quickly hacked together a solution to get the ‘Like’ widget you can see on this post (if you’re reading this on the front page of this blog). I simply added the following to the index.php file in my current theme folder.
If you’re reading this post from it’s own individual page, you’ll see a ‘Recommend’ button which can be achieved by adding the following code to the ‘single.php’ file in your current theme folder.
December 26, 2009 at 17:07 ·
Filed under Social Media
There have been some pretty inventive flash virals in the past and I found another great one today from Sweden.
I’m not entirely sure what the product is, and I generally hate heavy Flash apps as they take an age to load, this one is no different but I think it’s worth the wait.
You can then upload your own picture so you too can know what it feels like to be a hero, WIN!
January 27, 2009 at 12:13 ·
Filed under Social Media
I asked my Twitter followers this week if they thought Twitter had hit the mainstream. Of those who replied, all said that in their opinion, it had not. I tend to agree but I can’t help but think Twitter is very much on the cusp of it and I can’t help but wonder, at the end of 2009, will it be as commonplace in conversation as Facebook or mySpace?
According to Hitwise, Twitter use has rocketed over 1000% in the UK in the last year. This is phenomenal growth by anyone’s standards, and helps explains why Twitter has struggled to maintain consistent uptime in the last year as they strive to cope with surging demand. This week, market share also surpassed social media giant Digg for the first time.
Over the last year many, many people have embraced the idea of conveying a succinct nugget of opinion, trivia or irrelevant minutia to friends and strangers alike, in less than 140 characters. These include celebrities Jonathon Ross, Stephen Fry and John Cleese.
Jonathon Ross at his Twitter Account
Ross, in particular, has helped raise the profile of Twitter significantly as he posted while suspended from the BBC for making naughty phone calls on Radio 2. The mainstream media soon picked up on this and suddenly Twitter was being mentioned on TV, radio and newspapers nationwide.
Twitter hit the news once more when the first pictures emerged of the Hudson plane crash in New York on TwitPic, a third party site used to post image to Twitter. The guy who took the pictures was interviewed on many major news outlets worldwide, where he prefaced all questions with an explanation of Twitter.
Twitter was also a constant source of information when the attacks on Gaza started. with nearly all journalists banned from entering the region, many were forced to report what they had read on Twitter rather than what they had seen themselves. Many had also used Twitter to keep abreast of events during the Mumbai terrorist attacks.
This week, the big conversation on Twitter was all about Obama’s Inauguration, with many Tweeting from the actual event.
However, ask 10 people walking down your local high street asking people about Twitter and you’re very likely to be greeted with blank expressions. To become a “household name” takes alot more than just wooing the tech savvy.
Twitter has also not revealed how it intends to monetize. Millions of visitors is all well and good but if they are not making you a return, you’re basically a charity, aren’t you? I can’t help but think whenever they do eventually introduce a system to make money, will this curb the growth?
What do you think? Will Twitter ever make the mainstream?
I’ve always been a big fan of music and remember fondly the heady days of free (if illegal) music downloading with Napster circa 2001. Then of course, the music big wigs, woke up smelled the coffee and then realised it was being stole from under their noses. They subsequently took action and all free Napster bit the dust.
Since then, those unwilling to pay for downloading listening pleasure, have had to use Bittorrent or dubious peer-to-peer applications such as Limewire to obtain their favourite music, navigating the minefield of spy ware and trojans viruses which are riddled through both.
The other alternative is the immensely popular Last FM, with more than 21 million users in over 200 different countries. Last FM has been around for almost 7 years and is the undisputed king of streaming personalised music choice. However, I have now found an alternative in Spotify, which also complements Last.fm by hooking into it’s audioscrobbling service..
Spotify is a Swedish based service which streams music instantly to your computer via a lightweight downloadable app, available for Windows or Mac. You can search for artists, tracks or albums in a huge range of genres and listen to them all, free!
The tracks are interspersed with adverts every now and again but I find them largely unobtrusive, certainly better than many major radio stations. There are also banner ads integrated into the app but all advertising can be removed by paying for a premium service.
The songs stream instantly for anyone with a decent net connection and songs are cached on your computer for your next play. You can however, choose how much of your memory you want to allocate for caching.
All songs are licenced to play online although none can be downloaded, which is why it will never kill iTunes.
I’m guessing only a handful of record labels have signed up as there are some albums I can’t find so I hope more will follow giving a wider range of music to choose from.
There is also a social side (isn’t there always?) to Spotify, with the ability to share playlists and tracks with friends.
Personally, I think it’s great, it looks great, it’s very easy to use and I’m addicted to playing with it.. I’m finding songs I haven’t heard in years, good times. I just hope they don’t start charging further down the line when they build up a following, bad times.
Right now it’s still in beta, and it was invite only, but I found this open link on Twitter during the week and half the office is now addicted to it, try it out for yourself and let me know what you think!
Barry McGee
