140Char

As more and more people use Twitter, so the number of spam/porn messages has increased – partly due to users succumbing to the numbers game and blindly following and re-tweeting anything they see.

So it’s a good move for Twitter to start blocking malware, as spotted by the F-Secure blog earlier today – making the service a little safer for the less-savvy.

It seems that the filtering itself comes via Bit.ly, checking against spam filters SURBL and Google Safe Browsing, and then adding a warning, as shown in the screen below from F-Secure (Obviously I don’t know any dodgy sites!):

One of the things I’ve had on my ‘todo’ list for quite a while was to revisit the various ways to connect my blog and related discussions and comments to the various social networks where they might be happening.

So I’ve now got Disqus running, which means you can log in and post comments via your Twitter and Facebook profiles, or even video comments with Seesmic. It will also hopefully aggregate any discussion taking place on sites including Friendfeed, which is also useful for getting an overview of all the conversations happening.

I’m also playing around with link posting via both Diigo and Delicious, and some other backend tools.

The end result should be a better and far more useful 140char.com for you – and hopefully some better and more efficient ways to share information for me!

I’m still trying to compile all the effects Twitter has on the link economy, but now Louis Gray has added another one, in his post: ‘Are you writing your headlines for Google or Twitter.

As an online journalist and blogger, I’m well aware of the best practice for constructing a headline to maximise SEO opportunities – although as a blogger I often ignore it in favour of indulging myself by being able to write for fun.

But now Louis is noticing headlines which aren’t aiming to contain keywords and search terms, but are also restricting themselves to 140 characters (or 125 characters to allow for a short url). He quotes the example of Techcrunch making sure their articles work for microblogging.

Personally, I hope that most people write their own message if they’re kind enough to Retweet an article from here (although there’s also the automated option). I’d rather have a smaller number of heartfelt recommendations than a flurry of copy-and-pasted headline Retweets (although the traffic might be nice!)

What’s interesting is that rather than simply prescribing the ‘correct’ way to use microblogging services, people are experimenting and coming up with the things they see working for themselves, or for other people. Which is a better option, as it allows people like me to completely ignore the supposed best practice if I want! Although if it’s guides you’re after, you can start with Dan Zarrella!

Meanwhile I’ll keep mixing personal messages with recommendations, and occasionally go mad whilst chatting about an event like #motogp. And, most shocking, I’ll keep using Magpie to send out the occasional (less than one a day) advertising message as long as it helps to cover hosting costs and some new projects! I’ll just keep relying on the fact that a surprisingly large amount of people continue to see value in interacting/following me despite the fact I’m rubbish at following rules outside of 9-5.30pm.

Cli.gs, a short url service with analytics, has released stats and analysis of 10.2 million tweets and 2 million links to see which domains are most used.

Unsurprisingly Tinyurl leads the way as the default shortening service automatically provided by Twitter.

Interestingly the data scrape being analysed contains data from 8 million users – a higher number than most people have assigned to Twitter. And from that figures comes the figure that tinyurl provides 75.09% of shortened links.

The next is is.gd with 7.67% and my own favoured choice of bit.ly in third with 4.84%.

Cli.gs itself is in a creditable 10th, with 0.35%

From all links, Twitpic is the third most popular, with blip.fm and brightkite also in the top ten.

Go and see some more interesting information at the original post on the Cli.gs blog.

And there’s a huge list of shortening services on the Microblogging Tools page.

Bearing in mind the huge influx of bloggers to the microblogging/microsharing space, and the huge amount of applications being developed, I wanted to focus more on in-depth posts to offer value, and not replicate what other people have already done.

At the same time I want to be providing an overview of what’s happening and what’s available.

So I’m going to trial the Postalicious plug-in for Wordpress to see if it provides some value – if the posts are too frequent/annoying, or aren’t providing value, please let me know!

tr.im is the latest in a fairly substantial list of services which offer to shorten your links to make them more compatible with microblogging sites like Twitter.

After all, when you’ve only got 140 characters to play with, you don’t want to be posting a lengthy website address – and even better, many of the newer services also include tracking of click-throughs. Particularly useful for marketing professionals to see whether it was their link which got traffic to their content.

tr.im works with Twitter and Indenti.ca and will automatically update your status. It tracks stats, allows comments on your urls, and your account keeps a history of your shortened urls (You can log in with your Twitter details). One of the main ways it stands out from other url shorteners is by offering to retweet popular shortened urls – bonus traffic!

Some of the other popular url shorteners are:

TinyURL is just about the grandaddy of url shortening. It does what it says on the tin, via the website or bookmarklet.

SnipURL: Shortens URLs, allows you to see how many people have clicked on them, and has useful options including showing the long url in brackets when the shortened url is copied – handy if people might mistake your url for a phishing scam etc.

Bit.ly: I started with tinyurl but switched to Bit.ly. It keeps stats for your urls, and splits them between Twitter (seperating out individual pages e.g. those clicking from twitter.com/home and twitter.com/badgergravling, and also those from 3rd party applications. Plus it records any conversations and retweets on Twitter and Friendfeed, comments, and metadata. It’s interesting that Twitterfeed (auto RSS posting to Twitter) seems to be using Bit.ly now. And most interesting is that you can set a custom term for your shortened url address – which can only be used once, so it’s yours forever if you pick a good one!

Some that I haven’t tried, and can’t in any way vouch for,  include:

Notlong:

Shorterlink

Doiop

Shorl

Shorttext

Tinypic (for images).

Zurl

Curio.us

Get-URL

and many many more. Interesting several that I’d heard of appear to have folded due to a combination of problems with hosts or spammers using their service. It’s important to make sure you check who is posting a shortened url before clicking on it, just in case – and obviously be aware if the link takes you to a site requesting any type of login information.

To see all the available url shorteners we’ve encountered, check out the Microblogging tools section.

Many of the benefits of using Twitter have been discussed in terms of individual communication, or opening up companies – but one major benefit I’ve experienced hasn’t been mentioned anywhere I’ve seen.

At it’s most simple, I get a lot less email to deal with. For all the time I’ve spent on Twitter, and the ability is has to act like social networking crack and make whole hours vanish in conversation, it’s had a hugely positive effect on the time I spend trawling through Outlook filing 100s of emails for attention if I get time, following links, and generally drowning in a see of email.

Twitter has changed that by allowing anyone who wants to contact me with a simple question get straight to the point – the same works for linksharing (along with Delicious,Stumbleupon and Digg).

I rarely browse websites, or read reviews and other content which isn’t recommended for me personally. I rarely get emails touting the latest viral comedy video clip, or joke photos – and when I do, it’s from people who I’d generally classify as Late Adopters. Which means for the first time in a few years, my main email accounts (including my work one) are now possible to keep relatively empty – when a few months ago I’d regularly be getting 150+ emails per day. It also means less time spent configuring spam filters and email rules to keep myself productive.

The final benefit is that it categorises communication somewhat. Without it becoming silo’d, it means that I can expect useful links on Delicious, documents on email, and a general overview of the best stuff on the web from Stumbleupon and Digg. And I can expect to dive into the latest Zeitgeist, and pick up on messages and links quickly in a few Twitter bursts throughout the day.

So if you want to help justify the time you spent tweeting – start counting the time you don’t spend checking emails…