The New (New) Twitter
Twitter recently rolled out a brand new upgrade; their second major upgrade in a very short amount of time.
So what’s new with this new (new) Twitter?
Well, for one the login page looks quite a bit different:
Upon logging in you’ll also notice that your home page looks different as well:
So let’s take a look at this one at a time…
First, we see that our updates have moved to the right of the page instead of as the main portion of the page itself. If you hover over any of the updates on the right you’ll see a few new things:
You can reply, retweet and favorite a post (which all in all is nothing significant) but, here’s something that I really like, there is now an “Open” link which allows you to see the full post.
In this next image, I’ve clicked the open link and can see how many times it had been retweeted as well as the last 7 people to do so.
The @connect button at the top of your feed will show you all of your @ replies.
The #Discover button let’s you discover new content and it’s especially helpful that you can then enter in a hashtag or a keyword to find new topics that interest you.
Twitter has now even introduced Brand Pages – just like Facebook and Google+ have but that’s in a different post.
All in all, Twitter continues to strive to make your experience there more user-friendly and I think with this new update, they’ve done a great job!
What Does the # Sign Mean on Facebook?
Within Facebook you’ll often see the # sign, also called the hash tag, number sign, or the pound symbol. Facebook doesn’t actually have a pound sign feature itself. Instead, what you’re seeing are people who have posted a message on Twitter and at the same time have updated Facebook with this same message.
A great example of how this gets done is by using a free program called HootSuite. Hootsuite allows anyone to update their status on social networks like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn all at the same time.
If you’re making an update using Hootsuite and you want to make reference to a certain hash tag on Twitter then within your status update you’d use the # symbol. Since you’re also updating LinkedIn and Facebook at the same time, these hash tags simply get carried over to the other social networks.
So just know that whenever you do see that symbol, what you’re seeing is someone who is updating Twitter using a hash tag and has updated Facebook at the same time.
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How to Auto-Follow on Twitter
First off, let me start this off by saying that I personally do not use a service that auto-follows (or even un-follows) people automatically. I actually do everything by hand; at least while I still can. I use a service that alerts me via email whenever I have new followers and these emails come through at certain times of the day. I don’t always get to the emails right away even though it’s a part of my morning routine, but this can actually be a bit helpful too.
Let me explain why…
The service that I use (which is 100% free) is Nutshell Mail which is a service of Constant Contact. You don’t have to use Constant Contact to use Nutshell Mail – everyone can use it. I set up my accounts, and get emails throughout the day whenever I have new Twitter followers – it will also notify me of those who have un-followed me as well.
Now why my procrastination in following up with Twitter follows is a good thing is for this reason: I’ve often found in going through Nutshell Mail that if I don’t get to my followers in time to follow them (if I decide to), then within a couple of days those same people will have un-followed me. Maybe it was something I said or maybe, and it’s my strong belief that this is true, they weren’t truly interested in what I had to say but rather were just “auto-following” and then “auto-un-following” people to increase their numbers.
Anyhow, I suggest Nutshell Mail for those of you who want to do it by hand. If not, however, here are some other services to take a look at:
The first is SocialOomph (it used to be called TweetLater). They offer both free and paid accounts so you can give them a try to see if you like using them or not. That said, the automation part of their service does cost a fee but at the time of this writing it’s $3.97/month. Literally the cost of a cup of coffee depending upon where you get your coffee from.
SocialToo is another application that auto-follows people for you.
Another one is Twollow which offers paid services.
I know there are others, countless others, that I haven’t listed here a simple search in Google for “auto-follow Twitter” will pull them up for you.
