It’s easy to forget this follow tidbit, but every single tweet on Twitter is retrievable. Actually, the Library of Congress is even trying to archive all tweets!  Yup, if you had a lot of time and felt like looking through twitter users past tweets, you would quickly realize that all tweets – the good, the bad, the boring – can be found. It’s time consuming, but it can be easily done.

This might pose problems for those that want to clean up their tweets.

However, there’s a new service out called “TwitWipe”. It promises to delete all of your tweets, but keep your followers, the list of people you are following, and your favorite tweets. It basically gives you a new clean twitter slate.

You can go check out TwitWipe’s info page (but FYI, it is filled with adult language). TwitWipe is increasingly popular because people are becoming more and more aware that their online persona has offline consequences .

To use this service, you must click the “Sign in with Twitter” button on the top right section of the page:

After that, you’ll see a “TwitWipe this account” button and a confirmation and disclaimer. Click the buttons to allow the process to continue. Don’t expect your tweets to be gone instantly. It’s not a fast process to delete all of your tweets… in fact, the creators recommend letting the service run overnight in order to get a clean slate! And don’t worry about possible hacking potential –  TwitWipe uses oAuth, so you are not giving out your password to TwitWipe. It’s a free service, but if you’re really happy with the service you are welcome to submit a donation.

Tweets that have already been archived by the Library of Congress obviously can’t be undone by TwitWipe. However, if you need a visually clean slate for your twitter account, TwitWipe is a possible free solution for you!

Have you ever noticed that Twitter doesn’t have a feature that allows you to easily backup your followers? Twitter may develop such a function eventually, but in the meantime, there is Tweetake to fill that void.

Just think of it: you have spent hours/days/years cultivating your twitter following and follower lists, so presumably everyone on these lists offers something of value to you. Now what would happen if these lists just disappeared (as it did last summer for many people)? Or what would happen if you changed your Twittername and wanted to refollow the same people of your old account? Do you think you could find everyone again in order to follow them once more? Probably not…and if so, it would certainly be incredibly time-consuming. Tweetake enables you to keep records of who you are following and who is following you so that you can go back and follow / request that they follow you again. You simply use your twitter name and password so that the Tweetake can utilize Twitter’s API to run effectively.

There are some limitations to Tweetake, but this probably won’t have a detrimental effect for most people. For instance, these are the current limits on the different types of records you can back up in one go:

*Up to 10,000 followers’ tweets

*Up to 1,000 favorites (but Twitter for whatever unknown reason may curb this to 200)

*Up to 10,000 friends’ tweets

*Up to 3,200 tweets

*Up to 1,000 direct messages

The creators of Tweetake suggest that it’s best to back up each category (followers, following, tweets etc) separately. And then make a note to back up every week, month, etc.
It’s a free service, but if you really like it, you can donate to the cause. If you’re one of those people who like to have a safety net (and it’s a good idea if you do a lot of socializing or business on twitter), this is a perfect FREE service for you!

Twitter revealed it’s very own “Follow” button at the beginning of the summer, and it’s becoming more ubiquitous throughout the internet. Perhaps you have seen it already:

Twitter’s Follow button acts very similarly to Facebook’s “Like” button. Assuming you already have a twitter account, when you click the Twitter Follow button that company/website/person/brand etc. will automatically be added to your twitter stream.

It’s easy to add your very own Twitter Follow button. You will see a screen that looks like this:

Enter the applicable information, and twitter will develop an HTML code for you to copy and paste onto your website. Voila! Your Twitter button is now ready to direct traffic to your twitter feed!

If you have a twitter account, you are going to love UnTweeps!

UnTweeps is a service that allows you to unfollow twitter accounts that are inactive. Think of it as a nifty little tool that spring cleans your twitter list. There are two reasons to do this: you want to purge the dead weight in your list to have your following count more reflective of reality, and if someone has been inactive long enough, twitter may reassign the twitter name to someone else and that could potentially lead to all kinds of confusion.

Untweeps logs into your twitter account via twitter’s own API, and it scours your list for people who have not tweeted in the past certain amount of days. So if you enter 30 days, it will find all the accounts who have not tweeted in that time period and give you the option to unfollow the users. You can adjust the time period up to the past 15 days.

This is a free service, but you can only use it 3 times a month. If you want to use it more – or use its additional features like checking for inactive accounts under 15 days – you need to pay a monthly fee of $5. But unless you have a million followers, it’s probably unnecessary to use this service more than 3 times per month.

Give UnTweeps a try – you might be surprised how many inactive accounts you’re following!

Hey everyone, this just came to my attention and since I know so many of our readers use twitter, I thought I’d pass on the good word. There’s a new virus on twitter called “Tweet Viewer”. If you’re on twitter, DON’T click on any link attached to a tweet that says something to the extent of “See who views your twitter profile!” I assure you, the results are anything but “totally amazing” – the link’s tagline lies!

Look, most of you already intuitively know that links that promise to show you EXACTLY who is checking your e-presence is hogwash. These kinds of viruses are so successful because they prey on insecurities (ex: Who is checking out my tweets? Is my ex? Is my new crush?*Gasp* What about my parents/kids/boss/mortal enemy etc….) and curiosity (ex: I wonder what country these people are coming from?). This “Tweet Viewer” virus is just another variation on the “ZoMg! SeE wHo Is ViEwInG yOuR pRoFiLe” theme.

—*Sidenote….not a fan of the caps on/caps off way of typing and just a general rule of thumb, don’t EVER click on any link that *~~TyPeS LiKe ThIs~~*. More often than not, it’s a virus.—

Anyway, this “Tweet Viewer” link is expanding at about 159 tweets a minute. It’s easy to make sure you don’t get infected: DO NOT CLICK ON THIS LINK – bit.ly/tweetviewer If you do click on this link, you have to revoke the applications access by account by going to Settings > Connections > Revoke Access.

It doesn’t appear like this virus is infecting anything YET,  but it does perpetually spread itself so that is a problem. Your computer is vulnerable as long as the virus has access, so if you are infected act as quickly as possible to put the kibosh on this!

The fact that this simple tweet became so viral is indicative of carelessness and/or naiveté. If Facebook and Twitter were going to release a bonafide app that could show you who exactly viewed your information, it would be front page news. A development like that could be considered a culture-changer and the news and blogosphere would be buzzing with opinions about its implications.

It may be hard to stifle that curiosity, but never click a random link that promises gold (especially when it comes in a form of less than 140 characters a la twitter). If you have a question about a links legitimacy, either search Google or send a message to the friend that “sent” the link to you and ask them if the link is legitimate or if it’s spam. If it of the spam variety, your friend might not know they’ve been infected and will thank you for alerting them. If it’s a safe link, you’ll hear it firsthand – a win/win scenario! A little bit of caution goes a long way – if the link is coming from a questionable source, it never hurts to double check before you click it!

Have you ever wanted to poll your twitter followers? Great news: there is a great twitter-friendly polling website called PollDaddy that you can use for free. It’s easy to use, the interface is very straightforward, and it’s a unique way to pose questions to your followers. Plus, polls are fun and people like taking them just as much as they like making them!

The process to make a twitter poll via PollDaddy is simple. First, you need to create a poll question.

Next, fill in the possible multiple choice answers your followers have to choose from and arrange them in the order you want them to appear (you are allowed up to 20 answers).

If you want your followers to vote and answer in their own words, select the
“Other Answer” box, located underneath the “Poll Settings” headline. You can also change the default language from English to one of the other given languagThe final step is to enter your twitter usernameand password, and PollDaddy will post it to your twitter page. You don’t need to make an account to do this, and PollDaddy promises not to store your Twitter login information.

You message will appear as a succinct and clean tweet with a link to your poll.

For example, the tweet would look like this

It’s really that easy! If you use WordPress for your blog, PollDaddy also made a good WordPress plugin that allows you to create and manage  polls for your blog if you want.

With PollDaddy (and just to be clear: we are NOT affiliated with them in any capacity) you can make a professional poll in a matter of minutes; however, if you use another polling website designed specifically for twitter, we’d love to hear about it!

It’s important to tweet regularly so that your twitterfeed appears dynamic to potential followers and remains engaging to your current followers (speaking of which – follow us! @micronichetool ). However, life can get busy and sometimes it’s really inconvenient (or impossible) to be online at a particular time in order to tweet. For situations such as these (vacations, emergencies, schedule conflicts, etc) having the ability to pre-schedule your tweets can be incredibly advantageous for you and your business.

There are a few services that allow you to pre-schedule your tweets on twitter (some also work for facebook) and they are free, mostly intuitive, and user-friendly. Twitter did indeed just change its terms of service – specifically, twitter now forbids third parties from inserting paid tweets into user’s twitterfeeds – but since you don’t have to pay these websites/apps to insert your tweets they are still functional and safe to use.

One service that works well is called twuffer. It’s a straightforward service and it’s easy to use. To log into twuffer, simply enter your twitter username and password and you will then see a screen that looks similar to this:

twuffer

Type your desired tweet in the top box, arrange your settings as you see fit, set your tweet time and date, and hit the green button that says “set status!”

Twuffer provides tabs that give you dashboard information, a list of your queued tweets, and a list of your successfully sent tweets. The one drawback to twuffer is that once you submit your tweet, you cannot edit it while it’s queued. In order to change a tweet, you have to delete the tweet entirely and start from scratch. It’s not a huge deal, but it’s important to be aware of this tiny shortcoming all the same.

Another pre-scheduling service is called Later Bro, and this is compatible with both twitter and facebook. When you go to Later Bro’s homepage, you are given the choice to login with either your facebook or twitter account; if your twitter and facebook are synched together, it doesn’t matter which one you choose.

Later Bro

Once logged in, choose your correct timezone, type in your status/tweet, and select the time you want your message to be posted.

Later Bro Pre-Schedule

Both of these websites are easy, breezy, and free to use! If you want to schedule posts, these services will certainly help you. There are other services you can use, including: Futuretweets, tweetsqueue, hootsuite, twaitter, etc. If you know of any more websites that pre-schedule tweets and/or status updates, let us know!

An interesting report recently released explained that everyone on twitter only has 5 degrees of separation from each other. In theory, this means you could trace your connection to anyone on twitter in five followers or less. I decided to test this for myself using Micro Niche Finder’s twitter account.

The results were surprising. Every random celebrity I could think of had some connection to our twitter account within 5 degrees of separation (with the exception of MC Hammer – we have 6 degrees of separation). Sometimes there were even multiple connections to a celebrity, as in this example with Stephen Colbert ( he’s the host of the popular show ‘The Colbert Report’ in the United States):

Interconnectedness of Twitter

The twitterverse is indeed a lot smaller than it may initially seem. Several companies, using complex algorithms, have determined that even though most people are 5 followers away from each other, the second most common degree of separation is a mere 4 followers away from each other. A company called Sysomos created a pie chart that shows the interconnectedness of people on twitter:

Twitter Degrees of Separation Chart

Even more interesting is the fact that about 22% of all twitter relationships are reciprocal (where both people follow each other) – a whopping 88% of all twitter connections are one-way (in real life, this would be considered stalking, but for social media networking, it’s fine!). This has serious implications for retweets – no matter how many followers a person may have, a retweet has the potential to reach thousands (perhaps even millions) more people. To illustrate this point, the Department of Computer Science at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology computed the potential impact of retweets and came up with this spiffy little graph:

Retweet Graph

The importance of these studies for internet marketing is that it proves that one well written tweet can travel quickly throughout the twitterverse and reach an audience of gigantic proportions. If there happens to be a link in that tweet (to your blog, your affiliate website, your website, etc.) the potential for a higher number of page visits, rankings, and sales increases.

If you want to see your connection to other twitter users, two good websites to try include http://whofollowswhom.com/ (this is in depth but takes a while to compute though) and http://twtrfrnd.com/ (this may also take a while too, and may not be as in depth). The results may even surprise you!

On our Facebook Fan Page, we have added a new feature called “Affiliate Spotlight”. Basically, we are finding and highlighting affiliates of ours that are advertising Micro Niche Finder in innovative and successful ways. We ask them a few questions, get their perspective on internet and affiliate marketing, and sometimes convince them to spill a secret (or two) about their most effective strategies.

We are excited to announce that our inaugural affiliate spotlight is an über-successful marketer hailing from Clarksville, Tennessee named Gary Conn!

You may have already heard about him. He’s kind of a big deal.

To read what he has to say about his experience with internet marketing, affiliate programs, and Micro Niche Finder, go to our Facebook Fan Page, and click on the box that says “Affiliate Spotlight” (it’s on the left hand column, under our ‘fans’ box).

We will be updating our Affiliate Spotlight regularly, so be sure to check it out every now and then. Furthermore, if you feel you deserve to be highlighted on our affiliate spotlight, leave a comment on this blog, send a tweet, leave a comment on our Facebook page, etc. and tell us why we should consider you!

Twitter’s entire platform is user intuitive and straightforward, which is largely why it has become so popular so quickly. However, new users can become confused with the abundance of “@” and “#” signs. Here’s a simple breakdown to help you navigate these cues of communication.

First, the “@”.

Everyone who joins twitter has a name – ours is micronichetool – and so when you want to send a specific public message, or a “shout-out” as it is also known, you would merely type the “@” in front of the twitter name of the person you wish to tweet to. For example, if I want to send a public tweet to Stephen Colbert, I would type @Stephenathome followed by my message. Not only will all of my followers be able to read this public tweet, but Stephen Colbert  would be able to see that tweet too.  If anyone types your name such as @yourtwitternamehere YOU will be able to see the tweet in addition to all of their followers. It’s a great way to stumble upon new people and converse with your followers.

To check if you have any “shout-outs”, on your home twitter page look on the right hand column for the text reading “@yourtwitternamehere”. Click on that and you will see all the tweets in which you are mentioned!

Now, the “#”.

What we in America call the pound key is known as a “hash” in much of the world. Adding this sign to your tweets is called “hashing”.

 If you wish to start or join a distinct conversation or trending topics, you would hash # the words together. For example, if I want to start a conversation about the great uses for Micro Niche Finder, I would hash #greatusesformicronichefinder . There are no spaces with hashing.  The # only recognizes the word immediately following it, so if you include a space, instead of twitter reading #greatusesformicronichefinder it would only read #great uses for micro niche finder. Instead of being in topic about Micro Niche Finder, you’ll be in a topic about “great” and who knows where that can take you (Ex: had no cavities at dentist. #great or won money on the UFC fight #great). You don’t want to accidentally end up far off course.

It may seem strange at first to hash # with no spaces, but the human eye is good at parsing the long phrase into individual words and it’s the best way to make your conversation a topic.

On the right hand side of your home screen, near the bottom, you will see a section titled “Trending Topics” followed by a list of hashed trends (such as #musicmonday , which happens every Monday and people talk about what music they like or are currently listening to). You can click on those trends and peruse around, gaining valuable insight into the minds and opinions of people. You can join in the conversation yourself but adding your thoughts with a # and that topics conversation hashed (ex: “let it be” is still a great song #musicmonday ). Partaking in conversations like these are one way to gain new followers, so make sure your tweets are worth reading in order to make a good first impression.