40Tech

Back in August of last year, we wrote about Summify, a fantastic tool for getting to and sharing the highlights of your social streams and feeds. I’ve used this tool religiously for the past several months and have found it to be incredibly useful, especially with Twitter. Just last week, however, I received an email from the Vancouver-based start-up and discovered that they had become yet another in a long line of services to be snatched up and absorbed by a tech giant – in this case, Twitter. Great for them, but sad for you and me.

We’re big fans of Google+ here at 40Tech. In fact, if you follow the Twitter accounts of either 40Tech or Bobby Travis, you’ll see that we’re not posting there quite as much as we did in the past. Are we alone in the way Google+ has detracted from our ability to be as active on Twitter? Let us know how your social media usage has changed since Google+ has arrived.

I have a confession to make. If I follow you on Twitter, there’s a good chance that I don’t see any of your tweets. Twitter got so busy for me, that the only way that I could manage it, was to sort people into lists. I have several lists, but I have one super-special list for the tweets of users that I don’t want to miss. When I’m busy, that’s the only part of Twitter that I ever see. When I try out Twitter apps, therefore, list support is the first thing I check out. That’s why I use Plume . . . but I’m open to suggestions for an app that handles lists even better. If you know of one, let us know in the comments.

The revamp that Twitter rolled out on the Twitter website a few months ago was, by and large, a nice upgrade. The sidebar is now pretty useful, and the whole experience is a bit more streamlined and efficient. One feature that many people don’t like, though, is how the new Twitter handles retweets. The old method of retweeting (the “RT @” method) allowed you to editorialize a bit, if you wanted. Under new Twitter, the retweet button simply rebroadcasts the original tweet, unedited. You no longer have the ability to add any thoughts to the tweet, short of starting a new tweet. Google+, and the way it fosters interaction, has shown us that geeks love discussion and editorial, if the topic is right. If you want to bring back the classic RT to Twitter web, you can. Here’s how.

I’d like to take a moment to step away from the general worship and awe of Google+, and circle back (hehe) to our old friend Twitter. Actually, I plan to talk about Summify, and how it can take the often-overwhelming amount of information that is travelling through your Twitter stream at any given time, and sort it into a “highlight reel” that can be shared as a whole and as individual posts. It’s easy, it’s effective, and maybe just a little bit brilliant — and I have no doubt it will save you time and make your online reading much less hectic.

We’ve been getting some great feedback from you over the last few weeks, from how many devices you have connected to your network, to how many email addresses you use, to whether you cross post on Facebook and Twitter. Now we’re looking for your input again. We’d like to know at what point you say “enough already!” when you see a wall of tweets from the same user .

For all the talk about “new media,” it appears that old media still powers the online trends of today. Last month, HP released the results of a study that showed that user activity and number of followers on Twitter do not contribute strongly to trend creation and its propagation. Instead, mainstream media play a role in most trending topics, and act as a feeder of these trends.

We’re looking for a little reader feedback here. The title of this post says it all – do you post the same content on both your Facebook and Twitter accounts? If so, why? If not, why don’t you?

Are you guilty of following people on Twitter simply because they follow you? How will you know if they stop following you? Or maybe the reverse is true, and you want to see who is following you, but that you’re not following? In either of these situations, FriendorFollow.com can help.

Do you ever feel like your tweets are falling on deaf ears? Does it seem like the big shots get all the Twitter love? Timely is a web app that purports to combat those problems, enabling your tweets to be published “when they’ll have the highest impact.”