It’s Friday again. on Twitter, that means that it’s the beginning of another #FollowFriday – one of Twitter’s all-time hottest hashtags and one of the microblogging platform’s best cross-promotion tools. Never experienced one yet? Here’s how it works. on Friday, active twitterers get on and send out some Tweets where they list (using @reply syntax) the people that they think their Twitter followers might be interested in.

It’s a simple concept, but it has a pretty powerful effect. if you produce good content during the week, you’re likely to end up on a #FollowFriday list, and that means that a lot of people are going to be aware of you who weren’t before. Likewise, if you do a good #FollowFriday, it might get picked up and retweeted to other people’s followers, thus increasing your own exposure as well. the question then, is how to do a good #FollowFriday.

How to do a Good #FollowFriday

1) Don’t Wait Until Friday to Start your #FollowFriday List!
Were you one of those people who started work Thursday night for a thesis due Friday morning? if so, now is the time to unlearn that habit. unless you want your #FollowFriday to consist of pouring over a week’s worth of Tweets, trying to remember which ones were actually worth mentioning, you should start a list on Saturday and begin collecting usernames for the upcoming #FollowFriday.

2) Get Topical with your #FollowFriday List
Instead of just Tweeting a huge list of @usernames, consider organizing them into a topic-system to make them (and your #FollowFriday in general) more relevant to your followers. try something like @ActionChick’s #FollowFriday list – I was retweeted once on her “People Suspect of Humor” list and got dozens of new followers over just a few minutes!

3) consider Pre-Tweeting your #FollowFriday List
If you’re going to be doing a lot of #FollowFriday posts, it might be a good idea to schedule them ahead of time (just in case you forget what day of the week it is). Use a service like TweetLater to automatically post your #FollowFriday list to your Twitter feed, whether you’re online or not!

4) Don’t forget to say “Thank You” When you Get a #FollowFriday Recommendation
If you get a #FollowFriday bump, make sure to say “thank you” PUBLICLY to the people who bumped. a good, if generic format is “@username1 @username2 Thanks for the #FollowFriday!” some people like to #FollowFriday back the people who #FollowFriday them – that works too, but make sure that person is actually worth being followed or you might lose some credibility in the eyes of your followers!

5) Use the #FollowFriday and #FF hashtags religiously.
#FollowFridays are always tagged with either #FollowFriday or #FF – and there are even Twitter web applications out there to aggregate #FollowFriday posts into an aggregate format like FollowFridays.Com People will still see them if you don’t put in the hashtags, but if you do, they’ll know exactly what’s up without having to ask.

And there you go! Now it’s up to you to start finding people interesting enough to want to recommend to your friends – and that’s a topic of discussion for another day. have a good #FollowFriday, Tweeple!

Here are some good posts and links I ran across in the last week.

• Dan Curtis gives you some helpful steps on how to handle and preserve you old, historic photos. I’ve been doing stuff with old photos lately, so this will be helpful.
• Dean at Genlighten has a geeky post about Genealogy sites and their APIs. since I come from a geeky background, this was an interesting read for me. It’s also a good read for people interested in other ways sites are allowing people to access their huge amounts of data.
• Linda at Documenting the Details has a great link on the problems with the “Point-and-Click” Genealogy at some of the major Genealogy websites. I know I have the same issues. hopefully, the post will help spread the word.
• Episode 2 of “Faces of America” is now available to view online. this one talks more about the great century of immigration and what some ancestors went through to get to America.

Editor’s Note: In this new weekly feature, CNN.com highlights five recommended Twitter feeds about a hot topic in the news. Let us know who we missed in the comments section.

(CNN) — this has been a wild week for tech news.

Google is going to stream and sell music. Facebook has music now, too, and new virtual gifts. Bing and Google added Twitter to their search functions. Apple has a new mouse. Microsoft has a new Windows operating system.

And Barnes & Noble announced its own e-reader, the Nook, which tech writers say will compete with Amazon’s Kindle. (Who knew Barnes & Noble was a tech company?)

There’s so much interesting tech news out there that it’s easy to miss something. Luckily, there are TONS of great tech writers to follow on Twitter, where you’ll catch all of the updates and behind-the-scenes info in real-time.

Here are five of our favorites you might not have heard about:

@fmanjoo (Farhad Manjoo, writer at Slate)

Manjoo, a writer at the online magazine Slate, is good at spotting below-the-surface tech trends that others miss. His Twitter feed is both newsy and irreverent, with random asides like “Cambria is quite a nice typeface” and “Need to find a way to tell my editor that my story will be late because of #balloonboy. … oh wait, he’s probably reading this.”

Followers: more than 2,700

Sample tweet: Barnes & Noble’s $259 Nook costs more than Amazon’s $279 Kindle. why? Tax. bit.ly/oVmKn

@evgenymorozov (Evgeny Morozov, blogger at Foreign Policy)

For a look at how technology is changing lives all over the world, Morozov is a good bet. he writes the “Net Effect” blog on Foreign Policy’s Web site and offers pithy observations about how the Internet and social media intersect with international diplomacy and policy. it sounds heady, but Morozov makes the topic accessible and interesting.

Followers: more than 1,700

Sample tweet: Indonesia: officials launch school raids to crack down on students bringing cell phones to class is.gd/4u5yH

@kimmaicutler (Kim-Mai Cutler, writer at VentureBeat)

Cutler’s coverage of virtual worlds, social media and online culture at VentureBeat is top-notch, and her largely unfound Twitter feed catches the big tech talking points of the day in a timely and interesting fashion.

Followers: more than 800

Sample tweet: Twitter co-founder Williams says U.S. growth has temporarily slowed, but international picking up bit.ly/3pipEX (via @venturebeat)

@adamostrow (Adam Ostrow, editor at Mashable)

Ostrow is editor-in-chief at Mashable, a blog that covers social media and pop technology news. His Twitter feed tends to have more of a behind-the-scenes and personal flair than the blog’s main Twitter handle, @mashable.

Followers: more than 14,000

Sample tweet: today can’t stop won’t stop – BREAKING: Google Launches Social Search – bit.ly/12sSRW … @benparr is live updating

@ryanblock (Ryan Block, founder of GDGT)

The founder of GDGT, a gadget blog, Block is an excellent source for reviews of new devices, like the Nook e-reader, and commentary on the tech industry at large. and he has a cool hat in his avatar photo.

Followers: more than 25,000

Sample tweet: just realized I no longer have any email addresses in use which are not hosted by or residing on Google’s servers.

Here is is the first weekend in March. Spring is only 15 days away and we can start thinking about baseball, beaches, cookouts and outdoor fun. Hopeful to get away and get a little R&R and spend more time watching waves and less watching progress bars. Here are your five Follow Friday Twitter fantastic Apps and have a great weekend.

RiotVine Get out and take your friends with you as RiotVine is a social event guide; we make it easy to discover all events around you, and share them with your friends. all it takes is a single click. Sign up, tell your friends and the great events you support.

riotvine.com/

CryptoTwit allows you to post status updates to your Twitter and/or Facebook feeds as cryptograms, and challenge your friends to solve them or if you are not in a puzzle-creating mood, you can just play a random one.

GigaTweet attempts to count the number of messages that have been posted on Twitter since its inception.

popacular.com/gigatweet/

In2s.us is a tool to shorten URL’s and keep track of hits, browser used, reference sites, operating system details, which will help in analyzing the hits for the link. It helps in marketing campaigns to understand the hits on Twitter for your tweets. It is a free service.

ManageTwitter is a Twitter Account Management Tool that you can use for cleaning your account .you can manage those who you follow, find out who isn’t following you back, find inactive accounts you follow, etc. It is a useful unfollow tool.

Days until Spring 2010 14 Days
Days until Clash of the Titans Debut 20 days
Days until Iron Man 2 Movie Debut 62 days
Days until Robin Hood Debut 69 Days
Days Until 2010 Elections 241
Days until a new President 1051 Days
Days Country Held Hostage Under Hope and Change 410

This entry was posted on Friday, March 5th, 2010 at 22:17 and is filed under Computers, Software & Internet, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Twitbit [$2.99 - iTunes link] is the iPhone Twitter client that just won’t quit — pushing updates and new features almost as fast as notifications. The latest is Twitbit 2.3:

• Support for Twitter’s new retweet feature.
• Support for Twitter’s new geotagging feature.
• Support for Twitter’s new lists feature.
• Support for Twitter’s new user search feature.
• Trends tab.
• Trend explanations.
• Account management redesigned.
• Search bar added to timeline.
• User profile added to tabs.
• Connect Twitter accounts to iPhone contacts.

I’ve been lucky enough to have a beta to try out for a while and 2.3 feels really solid. Overall the interface is fluid and intuitive, the functionality is very well balanced with usability, and the Push Notifications are typically crisp and well-concatenated given the limits of the iPhone modal popup system. If you want a fast, friendly, and pushy iPhone Twitter client, Twitbit might just be for you. And if you’re not sure, give Twitbit Lite a try first [Free - iTunes link].

And this being Follow Friday, if you need anyone to try it out with, give Team TiPb a shout:

• @theiphoneblog,
• @reneritchie (Rene),
• @backlon (Dieter),
• @iChadman (Chad),
• @JFSikora (Jeremy),
• @jamesus (James),
• @llofte (Leanna),
• @GeorgiaTiPb (Georgia),
• @JHamilton24 (Josh),
• @justin_horn (Justin),
• @msproductions (Matt),
• @skeetobite (Chris).

Screenshots after the break!

Follow Friday: Twitbit 2.3 Edition | The iPhone Blog

The 2-1/2-year-old Internet start-up, whose short text messages or “tweets” have become a global social phenomenon, is building up a team focused on generating revenue with a new range of yet-to-be launched products, judging by job postings on the company’s website.

Among the 26 job openings listed on Twitter’s site, four are specifically identified as being devoted to “monetization.” Striking licensing deals are key responsibilities for two other jobs.

“Twitter is looking for new members of our technical staff to work on cutting edge monetization projects,” several of the postings said.

The move to invest in such projects signals that making money is becoming a bigger priority at Twitter, as it seeks to evolve from being one of the Web’s fastest-growing social media firms into a self-sustaining online business.

“The company has crossed into the phase where monetization matters. They’re ramping it up,” said a source close to Twitter who did not wish to speak on the record about its finances.

A Twitter spokesperson said co-founder Biz Stone was not immediately available for comment. The company has about 120 employees, she said.

Tweets, which are limited to 140 characters, have grown into an established communications medium that has played a key role in world events such as the post-election protests in Iran last summer.

“They know they’re here for the long term now, so they need to turn on these monetization engines,” said Altimeter Group analyst Jeremiah Owyang.

Twitter, a privately held company, does not report earnings, but its website says: “While our business model is in a research phase, we spend more money than we make.”

The company spokesperson did not confirm if that is still accurate.

Twitter struck deals in October — widely reported to total $25 million — to license its data feed to Google Inc (GOOG.O) and Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O), allowing allowing tweets to appear within search results on the companies’ Internet search engines.

The job postings make it clear that generating revenue beyond the licensing deals is one of the 2010 priorities for Twitter, said Altimeter’s Owyang.

Twitter, which recently moved into a larger office space in San Francisco, had 19.4 million unique visitors to its U.S. website in November, according to comScore, up sharply from the 1.5 million visitors a year earlier. Many industry watchers believe the actual number of worldwide Twitter users is much higher, since many people access the service through third-party applications instead of the website.

In September, Twitter raised $100 million in a move that valued the company at $1 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter, from backers including mutual fund giant T. Rowe Price and private equity firm Insight Venture Partners.

Twitter executives have said in the past that the company is interested in offering premium services, such as analytic tools for certain customers, and that it was exploring ways to integrate advertising into the service.

According to the job postings, the company is seeking engineers to build out the infrastructure and front-end features to support monetization systems that include “customer applications and reporting.”

A posting for a product marketing manager for monetization said the person would focus on “enhancing business users’ understanding of the value of Twitter.”

(Reporting by Alexei Oreskovic; Editing by Richard Chang)

The Prime Minister will use a speech on Tuesday at the TUC conference in Liverpool to try to “bind in” his union critics to a strategy of protecting front line services such as schools and hospitals while cutting spending elsewhere as Britain emerges from recession.

His efforts to bring them on board follow Friday’s “chicken balti” summit at Chequers at which the Prime Minister attempted during a curry lunch to win over a group of union leaders whose criticisms have undermined his position as he plots an autumn fightback.

However, one of the guests at the Chequers gathering, Billy Hayes, leader of the UCW communication workers, issued a blunt warning that his union would “not accept” wage freezes, or cuts in services and jobs.

Mr Hayes also demanded a list of hard-left policy changes, including nationalising the construction and transport sectors, scrapping the planned replacement for the Trident missile system and abandoning plans for national identity cards.

Mr Brown will tell the TUC on Tuesday that Britain is on the “road to recovery” – the optimistic view of the future than he has put forward since the start of the recession.

However he will warn: “Things are still fragile, not automatic, and the recovery needs to be nurtured. People’s livelihoods and savings are still hanging in the balance and so today I say to you: don’t put the recovery at risk.”

After accusing the Tories of promoting policies which “risk the nation’s future” Mr Brown will deliver a “special message” to union delegates: “We have to make tough choices in public spending and we will need the support of the labour movement in protecting the front line first.

“Our opponents have one approach to reducing the deficit: slashing jobs and abandoning national pay bargaining. We have another: taking tough choices and empowering those who deliver services to innovate and secure greater value for money.”

Mr Brown’s repeated warning of “tough choices” suggests the government is about to announce specific plans to reduce spending which are tougher than previous proposals, possibly including a pay freeze.

Up to now, Mr Brown has been thought to be more reluctant to press ahead with big cutbacks than either Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, or Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary.

“Such policies are no more acceptable that the Tories’ planned massive cuts to state and welfare spending.”

Mr Hayes admitted: “To present a positive future under Labour is a very difficult task now.”

Mr Brown’s TUC speech represents the start of his autumn fightback after a summer in which his long silence over the release of the Lockerbie bomber and perceived failure to show leadership over the Afghanistan conflict have added to his political problems and seen Labour drifting well behind the Conservatives in the opinion polls.

After his TUC speech he will attend a European Union summit before flying to the US for a G20 gathering of world leaders. That is quickly followed by Labour’s annual conference in Brighton where he will give his last keynote speech as Labour leader before the next general election.

His position, however, has been undermined by union leaders with Derek Simpson, boss of Unite, claiming that Mr Brown should stand aside if he is not prepared to take his party down the “Old Labour path” – although Mr Simpson later issued a “clarification” claiming the Prime Minister had his full support.

Ministers and Labour MPs do not expect a new challenge to Mr Brown’s leadership around the time of Labour’s conference – although some have warned he could face a fresh coup attempt in the winter if he has not managed to close significantly the poll gap between his party and the Tories.