Over the past few weeks, we’ve highlighted some tips and tricks for polishing your elevator and email pitch. If a pitch is designed to deliver a succinct presentation of your product or service, then it may be that the 140 character limitation of Twitter makes it a great venue for a pitch.

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Stowe Boyd is often credited with the idea of pitching via Twitter. He proposed the “Twitpitch” in order to help him schedule meetings with startups at the Web 2.0 Expo in 2008.

Twitter has grown in use and acceptance since Boyd’s idea for the Twitpitch, and the microblogging service can be a valuable site for entrepreneurs to pitch their ideas. But with the increasing level of chatter there, you need to make sure your pitch stands out. So if you do decide to use Twitter to pitch your ideas, here are a few things to keep in mind:

1: Pitch Publicly. If you target your message using the @ reply function, your conversations will only be seen by mutual followers and could be missed by others who might be interested in your idea. And if you use the direct message function, your tweet just ends up as an email would, without all the care and presentation of a full-blown email pitch. Of course, a public tweet runs the risk of being lost in the shuffle. And one of the drawbacks to pitching via Twitter is that, unlike the elevator or email pitches, you can’t really craft your pitch to suit your audience. If you want to have a bit more precision in your pitch, consider including a hashtag to link it with other conversations on the topic. (This is particularly useful when you plan to be onsite for an event, such as the Web 2.0 Expo.)

2. Complete your Twitter profile. Make sure your profile contains compelling and pertinent information about you and your company. Be sure to include your URL.

3. Include a URL in your tweet. If your tweet is a pitch, drive traffic to a webpage or blog post with more information about you, your company and your service. Consider linking to a page with a more elaborate pitch, not just merely to your home page. Whether you’re using a URL shortener (such as bit.ly) or not, it’s good to identify the type of link – a link to a blog post or a video, for example – so people know what to expect when they click.

3. Don’t use Twitter solely to pitch. There needs to be a compelling reason to follow you on Twitter and to pay attention to your tweets. If you only tweet self-promotional links and blurbs, chances are you aren’t going to maintain followers.

4. Don’t spam. While Twitter can be a great way to spread the message about your business, don’t repeatedly blast your followers with the same PR information.

5. Follow up. Twitter provides a real-time way to both monitor and participate in conversations. Do make sure that you aren’t just using Twitter to broadcast messages, but that you are actively engaging your followers as well.

There are numerous announcements you can pitch via Twitter: news, events, product launches, and employment opportunities, for example. But remember, as with the elevator pitch, it’s important to sell yourself, not just your products.

Discuss

…Like, say, the scorn of your friends.

In the spirit of Twitter, I’ll make this brief. If you’re running a Twitter contest or promotion, then please – I beg you – have entrants do something more useful, more conversational, more interesting than just retweeting a link to your latest sale item or a message about how fabulous you are.

I thank you. Your participants’ followers thank you. And at the end of the day, your brand reputation will thank you.

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More Noise to Signal.

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Rally Up, a new location-based social network with a strong focus on privacy, just became the first fully featured location-based social network with an iPad app. The app, which is available for free (iTunes link), includes all of the features of Rally Up’s iPhone app. Thanks to making good use of the iPad’s expanded screen estate, however, using the iPad app is far easier and a lot more fun.

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Location-Based Services on the iPad: On Hold Until the WiFi + 3G Models Arrive

The current version of the iPad has to rely on WiFi triangulation to pinpoint a user’s location. As long as you are in a city, this works reasonably well. We expect to see more location-based iPad apps, including from Foursquare and Gowalla, once Apple launches the WiFi + 3G version of the iPad, which will include a GPS chip. For now, Loopt’s Pulse is the only other location-based social network that has arrived on the iPad, but Loopt’s app doesn’t allow users to check in from the app and focuses on letting users browser photos, places, events and their friends streams instead.

Rally Up on the iPad

When we first reviewed Rally Up’s iPhone service a few weeks ago, we noted that the application puts a very strong emphasis on privacy and allows you to tweak these privacy settings individually for every single on of your followers and the people you follow. As Rally Up’s co-founder Sol Lipman told us, Rally Up is really more about connecting you to your “real” friends. It is important to note that Rally Up’s sophisticated privacy controls also gives you the flexibility to follow whoever you want to and just broadcast very little to none of your location data to people you don’t fully trust or know.

Using the iPhone version of Rally Up is a lot of fun – in part thanks to the application’s minimalist design – but as with so many iPad apps, the larger screen makes browsing your friends streams and looking at their locations on a large map a lot easier. Rally Up’s iPad app also emphasizes the microblogging aspects of the service, where the extra screen estate comes in handy for posts with photos, for example.

Discuss

It is widely accepted that social media has transformed the landscape of marketing radically, and no longer can businesses – no matter their size or stage of development – afford to avoid social media. While the importance of developing one’s brand online remains paramount – most obviously through the registration of a domain name – the proliferation of social media platforms can be overwhelming, and startups might feel compelled to register and interact with every service in order to quicken the spread of their name.

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The multitude of social media platforms allow new businesses to establish their online presence, develop a brand and a message, and grow fans and followers – and of course customers – all without extensive investment in elaborate or costly marketing campaigns. The danger, however, lays in the proverbial “spreading oneself too thin” by attempting to make sure one’s startup has a presence in every social media network.

While new businesses should certainly take advantage of social networking, here are a few tips to help avoid social media overload:

• Avoid social-media-for-social-media’s sake: Social media endeavors should always be in service of clear business goals, not merely an abstract notion of “user engagement.” Develop a social media plan that supports your business plan.
• Use the services which which you’re most comfortable: Take advantage of social media networks to which you already belong and in which you are already active. It is preferable to develop a robust presence on one or two platforms than to create profiles on every possible site, particularly if these are in danger of becoming unused and out-of-date.
• Engage: Despite the far-reaching power of social media networks, these services are not bullhorns. Use them to engage in dialogue with potential investors and customers, not merely to push information out to them. While social media can be a great place to share information, promote a service, and so on, it is important to be responsive – listen, engage.
• Track, evaluate, and adapt: Many services offer analytics tools in order to ascertain traffic levels and engagement. Be sure to check these regularly to evaluate the ROI of a platform. And as the field of social media is ever changing, be prepared to adapt. For example, just because a service like Foursquare is popular now does not mean that you should be forever wedded to location-based marketing.

Although it is tempting to register for every social media site and to try to adopt every new tool, the drawback may be that in an attempt to network everywhere, your startup fails to network anywhere.

Discuss

It seems almost daily that we run across yet another friend who asks “So wait, what exactly is Twitter? What does it do? Why do I care?” Every time we get these questions, we have to pause, take a deep breath, and figure out why it is, exactly that this particular person would care.

It looks like Twitter itself has started to tackle this issue too, with its Clever Twitter Accounts blog on Posterous.

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Louis Gray first noticed the site, which he writes is “full of ‘Clever’ examples aimed to make you say, ‘Now I get it!’”. The site is put together by Sean Garrett, Twitter’s head of communications, and Jenna Sampson, a communications associate at Twitter. They have been posting different uses of Twitter since the beginning of the month, pretty much culling various media across the Internet looking for Twitter mentions, from the looks of it.

The blog starts out with how people used Twitter in Chile to find missing persons and moves on to a San Francisco specific Twitter account meant to receive 311 complaints.

Gray notes how most things Twitter does explode immediately in popularity, pointing to how many followers both @twitterapi and @twitter have, but so far @cleveraccounts, the account associated with the blog, hasn’t given us all that much to chew on quite yet.

So, while getting a nod on the “Clever Twitter Accounts” blog isn’t likely to tip your follower scales the way the now-deceased Suggested User List would have, we’ll be keeping an eye on it to see if any new twists on Twitter use pop up.

Maybe, the thing is, we already “get it”. If you have a friend who doesn’t appear to get it yet, though, send ‘em on over. Maybe they’ll be convinced by knowing they can follow the Japanese prime minister or navigate New York’s busy streets – all with the help of Twitter.

Discuss

Microsoft is testing a microblogging service called OfficeTalk that is much like Twitter. The service is designed for the enterprise and appears it will be offered as an on-premise service.

OfficeTalk is being developed by OfficeLabs, the Microsoft lab for testing internally developed ideas.

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The service looks almost identical to Twitter. Microsoft says themselves that they are in the very early stages of development and because of this “the OfficeTalk microblogging experience itself looks very similar to other well-known services.”

Microsoft is testing the service pretty much internally but is now accepting external requests from companies that want to join the pilot program.

Microsoft has a few screen shots of the OfficeTalk user interface. People create profiles. They communicate in 140 characters or less. You read the message of the people you follow. It includes a search functionality to find people on the service.

A company feed shows the posts of all the people who are posting. Like Twitter, you can see the person’s profile, the number of mentions, posts, followers and people who the user is following. It also has a url shortening service and threaded conversations they call comments.

<img alt="OfficeTalk-1-1.jpg" src="http://www.search-internetmarketing.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cache/08b71_OfficeTalk-1-1-thumb-610×497-15581.jpg" width="610" height="497"

Microsoft is pretty late to the market with OfficeTalk. Socialtext, Socialcast, Yammer and a host of others have been offering their services for at least a year. It could be a service that integrates with Sharepoint or the Office suite.

OfficeTalk is very early in development but it’s clear that Microsoft is seeking to differentiate by offering it as an on-premise service. The reality is that Microsoft will continue to offer on-premise and cloud-based services for a long time across a good part of its product line. So why limit OfficeTalk to on-premise? We are sure that will change. A microblogging service is a natural cloud offering.

Discuss

MindTouch has developed a top 20 list of the most powerful voices in open-source, compiled using Twitter and other sources. It’s a good example of how a research project can be transparent and in the process, help garner thought leadership for both the individual and the company.

MindTouch Vice President of Sales Mark Fidelman wrote a blog post yesterday, discussing the project and how they came to their findings.

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Our interest is in much the process as the results. This is the kind of approach that has a number of uses. It answers questions for the organization. It creates a center of intelligence for the open source community. And it serves as a useful resource for sales and marketing. It also helps show that real research can be done using a few simple tools.

Most of the people on the list will be of no surprise to veterans of the open-source world. Notables include Tim O’Reilly, Chris Messina and Jonathan Schwartz.

The results show the degree of amplification than the average active user. This is where you have to consider the “nuance” factor by defining what it means to be classified in such a manner. Fidelman explained the process in this way:

“We first set out to determine reach by examining the number of followers and buzz an individual has on sites like Twitter and Google. We then needed to determine how much impact an individual had with their followers and subscribers. We asked questions like: How often were they retweeted? How much buzz is created around their blog posts, tweets, and other messages? How often is the individual referenced in the blogosphere? Were they cited by influential people?”

To create the list, Fidelman used Twitalyzer, KloutTwittercounter, ReTweetRank and Twitter.

They also used Google, Google Blog Search, and Google Trends.

That’s a take on the process but what about the larger meaning for MindTouch. Fidelman had this to say in response to our questions:

Question:How does this project fit into your approach for building a company?
Answer:“We actually view it as building an industry. The Open source industry has a lot of innovative, influential leaders but until now decision makers haven’t had a guide to know where to tune in.

Question:How is the process of doing the research useful?
Answer:It helps mindtouch and the industry learn where to find the open source broadcasters. If the industry needs to get the word out, these individuals should be targeted first.

Question: Can you provide 3 tips for people in the enterprise looking to develop information that positions the company as a thought leader?
Answer: It’s about building a community around your personal brand. Matt Asay excels at this. He provides useful, relevant content that’s actionable. If I were to characterize it Into three dimensions:

1. Actively participate in the open source dialogue on Twitter, Google Buzz and niche open source networks.

2. Build a community around your personal brand by reaching out and networking with other bloggers, industry analysts and consumers of open source software and hardware.

3 Develop and create useful content on a personal blog or third party blog. The more actionable and useful the better. This is a big area to cover and I’m probably not doing it justice in two sentences. He adds…Perhaps a guest post on this topic will help?

Out of the information, Fidelman looked at the larger group and created a Twitter list. MindTouch, also did a little inclusive marketing by adding a badge that people can put on their site if they are on the list.

Thought leadership provides a host of important dimensions. Enterprise companies that approach the market with intelligence are usually the smartest of the group. Luckily, the tools have never been easier to use in helping filter out the information that matters most.

Discuss

Here’s an idea for you: instead of slowly amassing followers, like on Twitter, or carefully culling your friends list over time on Facebook, making sure everyone is in their appropriate list and category, collect and dispose of friends like you ask for the time or a spare cigarette on a busy city street.

That’s what Lokast, the self-described “disposable” social network lets you do – carry your throw-away lifestyle over into the digital world.

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The LoKast iPhone app was released earlier this week at the South By South West festival in Austin and is the perfect app for finding yourself among throbbing masses of the technologically inclined. But what is this disposable thing? From the email we received this week on the app’s release:

Disposable? Yes. That means unlike Facebook which is friends and family, this app is about finding random people in close range and being able to share and see parts of their public digital profile including downloading their public-share videos, music and pictures. The best part, is that after you’re in that close range, you may never see them again. IE: Disposable.

According to the press release, the name is short for “local casting”, as opposed to broadcasting, and “aims to eliminate the need for physical media sharing, thereby eradicating physical CDs, plastic cases, video DVDs or waiting to get back to a PC computer to share and experience content.”

We have to agree that SXSW seems like the perfect venue for this type of app and we’d say why not give it a shot? We haven’t made it all the way downtown yet to be close enough to give it a full whirl, but it looks more than capable from toying with it.

Now, the thing is, we can’t see a lot of people using this outside of big, hi-tech cities or conferences. Where does this fit into our day to day life? Are we really going to run around town staring at my screen trying to see if someone else with the same app is nearby? We don’t think so. For now, though, we’d say give it an install and run around collecting some demos and see what people are listening to.

Discuss

The fact of the matter is, we’re relatively far and few between, according to a study by Barracuda Networks. One day, we’re told Twitter is growing exponentially, the next, it’s a dying service that’s stalled out like your grandpa’s Studebaker. But does growth, or the lack thereof, actually translate into use?

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According to Barracuda Networks, the Internet security research company, Twitter looks to be an insider app, one that many people sign up for and never really use. Or perhaps it’s like the sixth grade dance, with a few doing the waltz and the rest lurking on the edges of the room, afraid to ask the girl from math class for a dance.

The company analyzed more than 19 million Twitter users and found that a surprisingly small number were actually brave enough to ask the girl to dance, so to say.

Out of the more than 19 million users analyzed, only 21 percent, or just under 4 million, are considered to be “True Twitter Users”, a term applied using some extremely lenient criteria. To be considered a “True” Twitter user, a user needs to have 10 followers, follow 10 others and have tweeted 10 times.

For the most part, Twitter’s explosive growth really seems to be a party that millions of people came, saw, and quickly decided to leave. But despite the sticker shock of these initial numbers, the report shows that those who decided to stay are becoming increasingly active. Last June, 30 percent of users had no followers, whereas only 17 percent are follower-less now. The same goes for people following other users – the number following zero, less than five and less than 10 have all decreased since last June.

So, maybe Twitter isn’t quite exploding and it isn’t quite stalling out. Instead, it’s still indeed growing at a very regular, unimpressive rate and most people decide they don’t want to use it after all. Quick, somebody do another study, before we think Twitter is just doing something average for too long.

Discuss

First, we’d like to thank all 596 survey respondents and the many Open Thread commenters who gave such interesting and valuable feedback in our recent post “Should Social Media Experts Be Required to Know Their Tech?“

Over the past couple days, we’ve been able to put together a decent picture and identify some knowledge gaps and points of confusion for many would-be social media experts. But first, let’s address why some of the RWW staff – and many of our readers, some of whom must hire social media experts – feel it’s important for even the most marketing-oriented of consultants to have a rudimentary understanding of the workings of the Web, including its ecosystem of companies and applications.

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You will always need to know more about the Web.

Konqueror is a popular browser among Linux users. The browser Mozilla hasn’t been supported since 2006, having been replaced by Firefox and, to a lesser extent SeaMonkey, both products of the Mozilla Foundation.

The Web does a lot more and a lot less than the average bear would think.

For the most part, we humans have a hard time admitting that we’re “average bears,” though. Before you earn the moniker of “guru” or “expert” or even “professional/consultant,” you need to be far above average in your knowledge of the Web, not just how to get a few thousand Twitter followers or how to increase sales by X percent through Facebook promotions. Those things can come down to common sense or secondhand advice from true pioneers in social media.

Generally speaking, a social media expert will have been around the block long enough to know a CMS from a CPU, to know a bit about servers and DDoS attacks, to know what kinds of operating systems and browsers and even hardware the tech elite prefer to use (or debate over). And the good ones will remain humble enough to keep learning and will always admit there’s more to know. Some of the wisest social media advisors I’ve know will ask to not be called experts, in fact, for how can any one person truly be an expert on something as vast as the Internet?

Flip Side of the Coin: Imagine someone telling you he was a broadcast media expert. That includes television – national, local, cable, satellite, you name it – and all kinds of AM/FM and satellite radio. It might also include pre-show advertisements in movie theaters. That also includes media spend, account management and metrics for all kinds of ads, from branding to direct response. Essentially, the person is claiming to be a one-man ad agency – an impossible claim at best and a fraudulent one at worst.

How to Fill the Knowledge Gap: Start listening to people who disagree with you. Search the farthest corners of the Web for new people and new ideas. Stop hanging out in echo chambers and start telling yourself every day, “I know that I know nothing.” That phrase seems to have done Socrates some good; chances are it could help you, too.

You need to communicate with developers.

Haskell is a rare and complicated programming language. .NET sounds more familiar, but it’s a framework, not a language.

In almost every social media project that doesn’t involve something as simple as setting up a Twitter account, you’ll have to work with and rely on the expertise of developers.

You might not want to learn a programming language yourself – it can take a lot of time, which is a precious commodity. But if you don’t know the basics of what programming languages can and cannot do, as well as what languages your developer colleagues use, you’ll end up frustrated and inefficient. And the aforementioned developer colleagues might feel disrespected as well; being asked to deliver fantastical products or results from someone with no understanding of your work isn’t a fun experience.

Flip Side of the Coin: Imagine a CTO telling you, an interactive marketer, to run a direct mail campaign and get 500,000 new registrations. It could be done, perhaps, but it’s not efficient or a good way to use your skills. Even if he told you he wanted 500,000 new signups, is that a realistic goal? Is it based on current adoption trends? Does this guy have any idea what he’s asking for?

How to Fill the Knowledge Gap: Read up on the basics of programming languages; spend a few hours here and there on Wikipedia and O’Reilly books. Then, ask questions of developers you trust. Don’t be afraid to “sounds dumb” or be inquisitive.

You need to rely on hard data and facts, not gut feelings.

It may seem to be the ad-free fluffy bunny of the social networking world, but Twitter turned a profit through search deals in 2009.

On occasion, we social media folks make intuitive choices that turn out to be dead wrong. While there’s a lot to be said for making bold choices for your users and clients, there’s much more value in making solid choices based on observed trends, analyzed data and tested outcomes. In fact, it’s plain irresponsible to make recommendations to clients based on feelings rather than facts.

Always challenge yourself to make sure your opinions and advice line up with facts, not the other way around. As a wise man once wrote, “You don’t use science to prove that you’re right, you use science to become right.”

Flip Side of the Coin: Rather than looking at marketing budgets or user traffic, your CEO tells you to spend $1 million on an AdWords campaign because “Google and advertising are where’s the money’s at online, right?” It seems like a ridiculous gamble with no logical reason or rhyme.

How to Fill the Knowledge Gap: Test everything you might suggest. Test it over a reasonable period of time, making sure to take peak times into account, and get a reasonable data sample. Learn about A/B and multivariate testing, website analytics, SEO and all the dirty details of traffic and user responses. Most of all, never, ever assume.

You need to know about the finance and investment market to identify competitors, potential partners and pitching opportunities.

Friends and family (and fools) will always be the first to invest in any startup.

Especially if you’re communicating with or about startups, you need to understand a little bit about venture capital, if for no other reason than to understand an app or company’s place in the market. VCs can sometimes be good barometers of a startup’s health or the likelyhood of future success.

Likewise, with regard to our survey question about profitable social media apps and companies, knowing about various stages of development can help you know when to suggest key partnerships. Collaboration between two entities can give a boost to both.

As a strategist, a consultant or any kind of expert, you need to be able to spot a sure bet just as quickly as a sinking ship. And in the startup-filled world of social media, few are better at this all-important task than those with an understanding of tech investment.

Flip Side of the Coin: Your CEO informs you that the company is about to start a marketing campaign on a website that, through your social and industry connections, you know is about to go out of business. In fact, every website of its kind if flailing; you’re surprised he wasn’t aware of the situation.

How to Fill the Knowledge Gap: Read ReadWriteStart, of course! We recommend (and frequently interview and comment on) various brilliant VCs, angels and experienced entrepreneurs on this channel.

We hope you’ve found this information entertaining and informative. The remaining questions on the poll were, by and large, answered correctly. There still seems to be some confusion on the definition of the word “hacker,” but I’m convinced that one will simply take more soapboxing on my part.

What words of advice do you have to share with your less technical colleagues in social media? How can we all improve our game online while making the Internet a better, smarter place? Let us know in the comments.

Discuss

It looks like Google has decided against releasing new iPhone apps for the time being and has focused most of its mobile development efforts on web apps instead. While the Buzz web app is very good, however, it can’t quite rival the speed and comfort of using a native iPhone app. Fiam‘s Buzzie is the first Buzz app for the iPhone ($1.99 – iTunes link) and even though it is still missing some features,

it already gives us a good idea for what developers can achieve by using the Buzz API.

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Posting to Buzz

Posting to Buzz from Buzzie is as easy as hitting the compose button, choosing if you want to attach your location to the post and hitting “send.” You can use the app to send both private and public messages.

One feature that is missing here, however, is the ability to attach photos and links. Sadly, you can’t set any defaults for the editor, which means that – by default – it always wants to attach your location, for example.

Photos and Links

The app handles posts with photos beautifully. You just tap on the photos and they appear in full-screen mode. Photo sharing is one of Buzz’s best features and this app rightfully puts a lot of emphasis on making the photo browsing experience as seamless as possible.

The way the app handles links takes some getting used to, though.Instead of just tapping on the link, you have to push the little paperclip icon at the bottom of the screen. That’s not a deal breaker, but it will surely confuse some people.

Verdict

Google is betting on HTML5 and web apps to deliver its products without having to go through the App Store approval process. Buzzie, however, shows that there are still some clear advantages to developing a native app. The app just feels a lot snappier than Google’s web app for Buzz and even though it doesn’t offer any new features, it makes using Buzz on the iPhone a lot more fun. A few features – like attaching photos to your posts or browsing the map for messages – are still missing, though chances are that the developers will add these in one of the next revisions.

Hat tip to The Next Web for spotting the app first.

Discuss

Today, Twitter took the wraps off a new feature of the site. When logging in, it prompts the user to set defaults on being discovered with their email address or mobile phone number. It’s called “Be Found on Twitter”. Our contact at Twitter told us that, like many new features, this will show up for some users today and others soon.

Up to this point, Twitter allows people to create a persona for themselves that may not be directly correlated to the real world. You can’t do that on Facebook (assuming that you’re following the terms and conditions). This change in settings – even if it is optional – represents a shift in how the service is working behind the scenes to connect people that already know each other. Personal data is moving in between the social networks and becoming a key part of cloud services.

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Do You Want Followers? Default Settings Make it a Reality

So far, Twitter hasn’t offered a way to make this kind of connection easy. We believe the reason this service is being offered now is simple: Twitter wants to take your email inbox and turn it into relationships.

Below is the screen that popped up for Web client users of Twitter that are being offered this enhancement. (Note: Those are my personal email and mobile phone digits, but I chose to opt-out of the service. In case you want to contact me, email is still an option.)

Thinking a bit into the future, perhaps Twitter will offer to take my email folders and auto-magically create lists of users from the email accounts and phone numbers in them.

This all gets interesting in the context that Twitter lists are viewable to the outside world – and inbox settings are not. There still seems like more work to do to make this all make sense, but for now, it seems to be somewhere between Buzz and Facebook’s approach to connecting users to their intimate relationships.

The Reverse of Buzz, or, Do Memes have Cellphones

We can see the motivation for Twitter to launch this feature. One of the challenges the service has is also its greatest feature: no rules. Anyone, anything can have an account today: devices, dogs, spacecraft, germs, conferences. All of ‘em are out there somewhere and are one button away from being in your feed.

Something to think about in this mixed model of accounts, is that although the settings on Twitter are now moving towards discovering email and phone numbers for our contacts, we don’t expect the Cassini Saturn spacecraft to have a mobile phone number.

Although Twitter is amazing for finding information about the world in real time, one of the things that Twitter has lacked is stickiness with intimate contacts.

Trying to get folks use Twitter to connect to their real friends, people they work with, and family members is a part of the battle for the real-time Web. Facebook has unique features and momentum in this area (e.g. requiring your real name), and Google Buzz made a big move in connecting the inbox for millions of Gmail users to its social service.

API Makes it Harder to Create Harmonized Settings for Users

This is a great example of where Twitter, being so decentralized, has to rely on partners to roll out these types of features. Traditional Web users see these features offered by the company, but others – Seesmic, Tweetdeck, Tweetie – may not ever offer this feature in their client.

One thing to watch will be how Twitter evolves the terms of service and default settings as it ramps up its efforts to compete further for mind share in the real-time web.

Taking this all into consideration, do you want to be found on Twitter?

Discuss

Earlier today, conversation tracking site UberVu launched Compare. The service allows you type your name and a competitor’s name into search boxes to produce information on your competing brand conversations on Twitter, Blogger, Friendfeed, Facebook, WordPress, HackerNews and Youtube. After all, if social media is the lead generator and customer service tool that we think it is, then it’s important for us to know where we stand against our competitors.

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Being a market leader has traditionally been based on sales, page views, unique visitors, members and engagement. It’s only very recently that companies have begun to look at their social media metrics in terms of the competitive landscape. Albeit, it’s clear that many have forgotten why.

It’s obvious why we turned to Compete, Quantcast and the less sophisticated GoogleFight to measure our competitors. We wanted to visualize our traffic victories. But with social media, what tangible benefit can startups gain from having 10,000 more Twitter followers than their closest competitor? Many would argue that its akin to counting freckles.

But if you look at what drives traffic to your site, then you’ll understand that social media is where we’re keeping our leads. Rather than just jockeying for traffic and search, we should also consider social media mindshare. But honestly, what could possibly be a metric for mindshare?

UberVu’s Compare is not the answer to all of your problems. It’s not going to build you a positive reputation or make you a market leader. Twitter, HackerNews and the slew of other sites that your users are engaging on are somewhere you can find out if you’ve screwed up or if your competition has screwed up. Good leaders know how to track brand sentiment and conversation to correct themselves, generate leads and fill a void when competitors are losing consumer trust.

The UberVu Compare tool is available at ubervu.com/social-media-comparison. If you’ve got other tools that help startups track leads or indicate a need for damage control, let us know in the comments below.

Discuss

Twitter founder Evan Williams posted a message yesterday that was easy to misunderstand: “Met the Dalai Lama today in LA. Pitched him on using Twitter. He laughed.”

Some one had already set up the account @DalaiLama though, one week before Williams met with the religious leader. Five hours after the seemingly dismissive tweet, the @DalaiLama account was listed as confirmed authentic and began publishing messages. This almost exactly one year after a hoax account (@OHHDL The Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama ) got 16,000 followers in one weekend before being declared a fake and shut down by Twitter Head Quarters. Just welcomed to the site moments ago by Twitter’s new VP of Communications Sean Garret, @DalaiLama appears to be real.

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Apparently laughing at Twitter doesn’t mean you aren’t going to use it. That’s a good attitude to have.

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