For the past few months we have used Twitterfeed to herald new blog posts by Speed staff using the @speedcomms Twitter feed, but recently we have experienced problems with Twitterfeed’s service going down quite regularly. So we are now experimenting with Google’s service.

The ‘socialize’ feature uses Google’s new URL shortening service named goo.gl to push blog posts out on Twitter almost instantly. If also offers a couple of interesting options that are above and beyond what Twitterfeed currently offers. It allows users to turn the keywords that they have tagged their blog post with into hashtags, which can help more people to discover your tweets and blog posts by using Twitter Search. The service can also reduce the size of your tweet, making it small enough for other users to retweet and share with their followers.

But there do seem to be a few teething problems at the moment. As not all blog posts are tagged with keywords, some blogging platforms such as WordPress tag them with ‘uncategorized’. Currently Google classes this as a proper keyword and has been tagging tweets with the #uncategorized hashtag.

Will scores of users now migrate from Twitterfeed to Google? Only time will tell, but I suspect that many users will give the new service a try the next time that Twitterfeed goes down.

(Cross posted on the Speed Tech Blog)

Twitter users are invited to add themselves to the map by tweeting the #ukhols hash tag followed by their age, gender, post code and their holiday destination.

Using social media like this can be a great way to build a brand’s profile online and generate lots of quality coverage in both the traditional media and the blogosphere. Vodafone’s map has already gained coverage in the Guardian, the Daily Mirror, and Brand Republic.

The mashup comes a month to the day since I launched my National Work From Home Day map, which was based on the #uksnow map developed by Ben Marsh, who is behind this map too!

And with that I’m off on my hols! See you in a week or two…

To support the day, I have developed a Google Maps mashup for Speed that uses Twitter to allow home workers to display their location. To take part you have to send a tweet containing #NWFHD and the first half of your postcode ie: “#NWFHD WC2H”. The site will then automatically update every 30 seconds throughout the day, displaying the location of Twitter users working from home.

One website that serves to draw attention to bad PR practices is PRfail.tumblr.com. The site was setup nearly a year ago by Jonathan Hopkins to aggregate examples of bad PR highlighted on websites such as Twitter, which sees many users attach the #PRfail hashtag to their tweets.

The site now features plenty of PROs who have pointed our mistakes made by their peers or by the companies they represent, but is this wise?

If I were to criticise a company’s mistake on my blog or on Twitter, Google would automatically connect my name and the name of the company I work for to the name of the company I badmouthed. So if I or the company I work for were to then pitch for a PR brief by that company it would only take a quick search of those names, for example Nike and Speed Communications, to bring up my blog post or my tweets in the first few results. I’m pretty sure that digging up old mistakes that a potential client would rather forget, is probably not the best way to make a good impression.

That said, identifying a ‘PR fail’ and offering a solution as to how the company might have dealt with that crisis more effectively could demonstrate expertise. Though I’m not sure how much expertise you can demonstrate when you’ve already used up 7 characters of your 140 character tweet with a #PRfail hashtag!

My mind’s not totally made up on this. Do you think we should be more careful about what we say online or use our freedom of speech to highlight bad PR in an effort to separate the wheat from the chaff?

It’s generally agreed that domain names should be short, memorable and easy to spell. That’s why you don’t see many websites like Order-A-Pizza-Online-And-Get-It-Delivered-To-Your-Door.com or 15inchPizzaIn15minutes.com.

Domain names that are short, memorable and easy to spell, like Pizza.com have therefore become very valuable commodities. But is this all about to change? Are the days of domain names selling for millions coming to an end?

Is the domain name dead?

I’ve noticed a trend recently in the Guardian and on websites such as Twitter, for domain names to be replaced by TinyUrl’s. This is perhaps most prolific on Twitter, where nearly 40% of users use the service to share links, yet have only 140 characters to do so.

For those of you who don’t know, TinyUrl is a website that turns big and nasty domain names like this – http://www.m-p-w.co.uk/2008/05/green-light-for-virtualisation.html in to small and friendly ones, like this one for my last post – http://tinyurl.com/3vcj8v. It’s sort of like txt spk for domain names.

We are becoming more accustomed to clicking on short links that we probably can’t remember or need to remember, yet alone spell. But despite this companies spend millions to get us to remember their web addresses. But is it worth it when their links may just be converted into TinyUrl’s or found through search engines anyway? I know so many people that google websites such as You Tube instead of typing youtube.com into their browser. I’d love to see some research into how people actually find websites. Do the majority of web users type the web address or use a search engine? I’d put my money on a search engine.

If the of rise of the TinyUrl continues will we see all websites linked to via their TinyUrl address or their existing url? Or will the two co-exist with companies, journalists and web users using whichever is shorter?

I think the latter, although I think the TinyUrl will have to be significantly shorter. For example http://tinyurl.com/3yc3wc is shorter than http://www.guardian.co.uk/media but only by 6 characters, and that is including all the w’s. So is shortening it really worth it? I don’t think so.

Firstly, I have started using Twitter. I think it’s ace. It’s perfect for all those little updates and questions that are too big to be my status on facebook and too small to be blog posts. Plus further networking opportunities to boot.

Secondly, I’ve used Blogger to modify the rest of my website. The pages are all now in blog format so I can update them anywhere and people can comment and subscribe to individual pages. Plus I have a feeling that it might boost my ranking on Google. Search engines love pages like that.

Check out my site and let me know what you think of the new design, and if you get the chance check out Tom Harle’s superb marketing and graphic design blog, Aspire To Enquire. It’s a really good read!

Google

I’d like to see Coca-Cola turn their cans and bottles green for a few weeks to celebrate their environmental efforts. But then again I’d like to see Coke become more environmentally friendly anyway.

It’s not the first time Davies has helped me. I quoted his Behind The Spin article, ‘Blog-it-yourself and watch your profile rise’ in my dissertation. I think this serves to prove that blogging can raise your profile. This is certainly true in Google. A search for ‘Matthew Watson’ shows my blog as the 4th result, just behind a Professor Matthew Watson from the University of Warwick.