So we've all come to love those random tweets flowing all day long... getting insight into the lives and activities of other users on the internet. However random these tweets may be, we, along with many commercial businesses are fixated on this phenomenon. So what in your opinion constitutes a useful tweet?

A smart comment?
A good link?
A self promotional tweet?
A fact picked off of an encyclopedia (aaa.. wikipedia)?
Someone's factual everyday activity?
An "A lister's" random comment?
A celebrity's agent's blurbs?
A blogger informing us about a new post?
A tweet informing us of someone in peril?

So what are your thoughts? What constitutes a useful tweet?

Currently on the internet and on cable news networks there is a frenzy over social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. While all the social interaction between millions of users is good for these companies and might be useful for the internet as a whole, for the employers this could prove to be a big black hole. Lets examine where social interaction was on the internet earlier and where we are now.

First there was email. In the beginning it was very useful and still is but it quickly overwhelmed users with spam. Nevertheless, it became the official choice of business communication. Email is convenient, but not very interactive. My inbox is still crowded with emails from colleagues going back and forth over a requirements document. Every single day a company loses some productivity when employees spend time reading and writing emails. It has become the norm though and it is here to stay.

Next there were instant messengers. They require much less effort compared to emails and provide instant communication. Again, businesses were initially reluctant to allow such use since each minute an employee spends using such tools is a minute that real work is not being done. Things changed as employers opened up to corporate IMs such as Microsoft Communicator and Lotus Notes, but even today many employers block IM usage altogether.

And next there were social network sites such as Facebook and MySpace. These sites have the ability to suck up a user's time doing ultra unproductive social things like "Liking" a goofy comment a friend made on a picture. Most employers have rightfully blocked these sites on their networks. Things are changing though. Some employers in sales, advertising, "social media" and even real estate are promoting and encouraging the usage of social networks to gain clients. Whether such unsolicited connections work, remains to be seen.

And then there was Twitter. This is a whole different ball game. Twitter is a very simple concept. You just say whatever you want to say in 140 words or less and you connect with people you choose to connect and they do the same. So, as you "follow" more people and broaden your network, you start receiving more "tweets". This is a great tool if you follow people in moderation. But with the crazy cable news networks declaring it as the savior of everything and having competitions to get to a million followers, and twitter showing the number of users following you on your page, you are under constant pressure to keep growing your network. On top of that you have desktop tools like Twhirl that pop up all the new tweets you recieve from your army of follows. However irrelevant these tweets may be, they have the tendency to constantly get your attention and suck you up into reading them and clicking links you would probably not click. This may cause a huge loss in productivity. Some employers are waking upto this and blocking twitter access within their networks. Then again there are others within the sales, advertising and other such fields that are rallying their employees to get on the twitter bandwagon.

In my opinion, twitter is a great tool but following thousands of users does not make much sense unless all you want to do is promote yourself or your brands across a large audience. What do you think?

Well Twitter is down again and has been down for over 10 minutes now. Their status blog doesn't say anything about this yet and don't suppose it will. Already miss the constant stream of Twitter messages popping via Twhirl :(

A lot has been said about Twitterrank starting with this mis-informed article on ZD-Net. At least they gave Twitterrank creator Ryo Chijiiwa a chance to explain his side of the story. Its always a bad idea to give out your login credentials and its amazing to see how cavalier people are about it when it comes to these "social" applications/mashups.

Lets take a look at some applications that ask you for your twitter passwords:

TwitterRank - Gives you your vanity rank.

TwitterFeed - Sends out a tweet at short intervals every time you update a connected blog.

PollDaddy - Quickly create a poll and post it as your Twitter status.

Twitterator - Allows a Twitter user to "follow" a bunch of other Twitter users in one fell swoop.

My Tweet Map - This tool shows you the latest tweets from your friends on a map.

GroupTweet - Allows you to post a private message to a group of Twitter friends.

Twibler - Automatically posts your new eBay listings to your Twitter account.

Hahlo - Gives you a separate profile page and the rest of the Twitter features in a new look.

My Tweeple - Allows you to manage your friends and followers in Twitter on a single web page.

Twitter Karma - Flash application that fetches your friends and followers from Twitter and displays them for you, letting you quickly paginate through them.

AWeber Communications - Allows you to automatically send out a tweet whenever you create a broadcast email marketing message in AWeber.

I have just switched my blog from Blogger's blogspot sub-domain to my custom domain techtantra.net. I had initially read Blogger's instructions to switch to a custom domain. It seemed simple enough, so I went ahead and bought the domain from GoDaddy. I followed Blogger's instructions to the dot and waited as they said it would take time for the DNS settings to propagate over the internet. So far so good. But, after waiting for over two days and still not being able to access the new domain, I decided to delve a little deeper. Turns out Blogger missed out a few steps in their instructions.

So here are the modified steps I followed to get the custom domain successfully setup:

1. Log in to your account at GoDaddy.

2. Click "Domain Manager" under "My Products" in the left navigation menu.

3. Click the domain that you would like to use with Blogger.

4. Click the "Total DNS Control And MX Records" link under "Total DNS".

5. By default GoDaddy gives you a parked page and creates an "A record" for it. So under the "A (Host)" top section, select the A Name entry and delete it using the button on the right.

6. Under the "CNAMES (Aliases)" section, again, by default GoDaddy create a CNAME with host NAME as www pointing to @ (your domain). To edit this, click the pencil icon on the right. In the edit box, enter www under "Enter an Alias Name" and ghs.google.com under "Points To Host Name". Do not modify any other options.

7. Under the "CNAMES (Aliases)" section, click "Add New CNAME Record". If your domain is www.mydomain.com, then in the add CNAMES box, enter mydomain.com under "Enter an Alias Name" and ghs.google.com under "Points To Host Name". Leave the default TTL option. At this point your Domain Manager should look like this:




Now all you have to do is wait and allow the DNS entry to propagate over the net. Once that is done, goto your Blogger settings and under Publishing click the switch to a custom domain option. For anyone moving to a custom domain from Blogger, hope this helps in making your transition less painful than mine.