December 2009

With FirstFollower.com any Twitter can now identify who their first followers are. The site allows its users to see not only their own first follower but the first followers of other twitter users as well. The program is designed by Victor Babichev, a Russian developer.

The site is very easy to use. All you have to do is enter the desired Twitter handle. Take note that you should eliminate the” @ “sign and that you should capitalize if it is needed since the site is case sensitive. After that, click on the “wanna know” button. After this, you will be given the name of your first follower along with a pre-generated message from Twitter that states their praise of allegiance to you as a user.

lightweight Twitter app is just a small sample of the kinds of social graph analysis that can be made possible by Twitter’s open user data. However, given the fact that Twitter has change the way they listed their followers in the beginning of this year, there are some doubts as to whether the program is indeed accurate.

Think about it – who was the first person to follow you on Twitter and are you following them too? Chances are, you probably would not exactly remember who first took notice of your existence in the micro blogging site and followed you first in the world of Twitter and it would not hurt to find out. Sometimes the results can be pretty interesting and fun. Take for example

If you are into online shopping then you must know the value of comparison sites which helps you find the best deals that are available in the market. If you want to have the best deals then you should check out Giddi – a product rating engine that caters to a wide range of categories from house hold items to apparel and accessories. Giddi sorts out the products and ranks them in terms of popularity, age, price, brand and their overall rating which is gathered from user reviews.

Giddi gets product information from numerous ecommerce sites and then they sort the products on the different factors that have been stated above. You can also use Giddi to check the prices that different shopping sites on a particular product that you want to have. Although you might also want to consider making a separate search for price comparison since their price comparison tool is not that exhaustive.

One great thing about Giddi is that the sight does not focus on electronics which almost every product comparison sites usually revolve around. They have different categories which include health and beauty products and home appliances – products that you do not usually find on other comparison sites. This fact alone helps Giddi have a potential edge over the other sites.

Giddi is also easy to navigate and there are more specific options which make the sorting process easier and manageable. The site has an index of over 600,000 products and 1.6 million reviews making Giddi a solid product comparison database that you can use for your online shopping needs.

WordPress 2.9 has been recently released to WordPress users. The latest version is called “Carmen” and includes a lot of notable additions which include a image editing tool so that you can scale, crop and rotate your pictures, simpler video embeds and to save you a lot of time, there is now batch plugin updating.

WordPress 2.9 focuses on making publishing and the managing of your blog content easier. Since WordPress holds plugins in high regards, it just makes sense that WordPress made the plugin compatibility and update process as easy as possible so that they can be compatible with the current version as well.

There is also a new Trash feature. Instead of seeing the word “delete” you will be seeing the word “trash” instead. Every time you trash a post, page or comment it gets moved to the WordPress trashcan where it will stay for 30 days. So if you change your mind and you want to retrieve something, you are able to get it back as long as a month has not passed. All you have to do is to go to the new Trash tab and you can restore or permanently delete the content.

WordPress 2.9 can also automatically repair database tables in order to keep things more optimized so you can now have custom fields in the contact area, comment metadata and other features as well.

By default you will find that the new version supports Flickr, YouTube, Google Video, Photobucket, WordPress TV, Blip TV, Daily Motion, Scribd, Poll Daddy and many more.

The iPhone’s App Store may be seeing a competition with the Android Market with the latter growing at a very rapid rate. AndroLib, the online store has declared that they had just reached the 20,000 mark meaning that they have doubled in size within the last five months. According to AndroLib, Android was able to hit the milestone earlier today and shows no sign of slowing and they are very excited with this development. It is assumed that the Android market will be able to hit 30,000 in the next 2-3 months which is one good way to start the New Year. Google does not disclose the figures of the Android Market but AndroLib and others are able to track what apps are added and at what rate. By the different statistics gathered, it is quite clear that the Android development is on the rise. The success of Android is evident in the month of November which is considered to be the biggest month in the history for both new apps in the English language Android Market and is considered to be their biggest gain month.

Experts think that 2010 will be a good year for Android with all the handsets coming up and now that almost everything is going mobile. Twenty thousand apps is a nice way to kick off into the New Year. 15 percent of all applications in the Android Market are games which are very similar to the App Store’s statistics but it has been noted that the methodologies for categorizing the same application type is not necessarily the same.

Facebook, one of the biggest social networking sites has recently launched a new privacy setting tool for their millions of users. It did not take long for privacy and security firms and experts to comment on Facebook’s privacy move and some have advised against using the new privacy setting.

Although Facebook has described the changes as something that would set a new standard when it comes to user control, experts see an underlying goal. This is to make the users share more information which makes Facebook’s search partners – Google and Bing become more valuable.

Frontier Foundation made a comment on the changes and stated that the Facebook privacy transition will only have users share more Facebook info with everyone and this can be a “worrisome development that will likely cause a major shift in privacy level”. They also mentioned that the changes actually limit the amount of user control over personal data.

The security firm Sophos emphasized that readers should read the terms of these changes carefully and said that “If you don’t read carefully you could find that every post you make on Facebook, and your personal information, is visible to everyone in the world who has a computer rather than just your Facebook friends.”

The privacy changes at Facebook were said to set significant issues for those who are unable to review these settings carefully. Millions of users have already been greeted with the new privacy tool and they either have made changes or ignored it and moved on to using the site the way they always have, unaware of the consequences of the changes that they have made.

Trend Micro, another security firm stated that the controversy over these change is a good sign. “I like that there is controversy about these settings. It shows people at least notice that there is something going on.”

For those who are concerned about their privacy and security, it is best that you get to read and understand the privacy guidelines on the site. To be on the safer side, place your private photos, information and connection somewhere else.

Twitter recently launched their support for another language – Italian. Considered as the language of romance, around 70 million speaks the language and has entered the Twitterverse’s dictionary.

This development only goes to show that the Twitter translation project is going well and is developing rapidly. Last October, Twitter asked users to help translate the site – something that Facebook has been doing as well. Since then, Twitter was able to launch the Spanish, French and Japanese versions of the site making the Italian version the fifth language to be supported by Twitter.

The popular micro-blogging site was said that they were aiming to complete the “FIGS” (French, Italian, German, Spanish) languages first. So for now, only the German language remains to be accomplished. Considering that Twitter is crowd sourcing most of the work when it comes to translating the site, the rate of their accomplishment has impressed a lot of people.

Twitter spokesperson Jenna Sampson said that “We’re excited because today with the launch of the Italian version of our site becomes even more a platform for global communication. As always, we wish to thank all the translators who have participated in the project and who have shown us their skills.”

Now that Twitter is turning into a more rich and diverse site they now have viewpoints in a global level. This greatly helps the network information to grow continuously in every crevice and nook of the planet. As more events will be shared, there will be a higher level of awareness affecting the millions of users by use of their tweets.

Twitter has cited out some Italian users who are now tweeting in Italian such as the famous Italian singer Laura Pausini and the famous Italian journalist Beppe Severgnini. The launch was made in Italy where a pizza party was held.

If you are interested in using Twitter in Italian, all you have to do is to get in to your settings and select the language Italian from the drop down menu.

A few days ago, an unfortunate incident happened when Windows based machines froze and locked out users showing only a black screen in their monitors and in some cases, only the My Computer folder is seen. This was called by the media and experts as the “Black Screen of Death”.

This is not a common issue and it has been found that the mishap was not connected to Microsoft’s security updates as everyone concluded. Prevx, a UK based Security Company for one offered a software fix immediately announcing that this malfunction can potentially affect millions of Windows users and blames the mishap on the latest security patches that were deployed by Microsoft. Prevx now admits that the mishap was probably caused by malware and did not come from any misgivings in Microsoft’s part.

Mel Morris, Prevx’s CEO wrote an apology in his blog to Microsoft for the inconvenience. He stated that the issue seems to be related to a characteristic of the Windows registry which is related to the Window’s Registry when it comes to the storing of string data. To parse the Shell value in the registry, Windows would require a null terminated string. But if malware or any other program modifies the shell entry to omit terminating characters, the shell will not be able to load properly. The result of this is the infamous Black Screen showing nothing but the My Computer folder.

Microsoft was not happy with the mishap and Roger Halbheer, Chief Security Advisor of Microsoft ranted about Prevx in his own blog clearly stating that Prevx has broken their trust by spreading the false reasons for the incident and advises people not to rely on any other source except for the Microsoft Website itself.

Sally Falkow, Bulldog Reporter’s social media columnist and PRSA National Capital Chapter and PRESSfeed teams up to gather social media experts and anyone who is interested in the ever expanding world of social media in Pasadena, California on December 1, 2009 for a special professional development workshop in order to determine what is in store for social media in the coming year 2010.

There is no doubt that social media activity has skyrocketed over the past years. Today over 80% of internet users are sharing content and going online. Since people are now adopting social media, companies and businesses have migrated to the online world as well. Almost every major brand name now has their own Facebook page, Twitter feed and YouTube channel.

If you are in to social marketing through social media it is recommended that you attend this workshop. This is not just another panel session that would give you only theoretical overviews. The workshop is a practical how-to session with a case study that illustrates the best social media strategy that you can surely use.

You will be getting specific information about the right influencers, results for measurement, example of how to add a social media press release and how you can use a social media newsroom to increase your online coverage.

Sally Falkow is one of the two finalists nominated by PR News as PR Trainer of the Year and has hosted the Social Media Club. She has taught over more than 300 corporations how to plan and implement a social media strategy. She is currently the president and chief strategist at Expansion Plus, an Internet marketing and PR agency that is based in Los Angeles. If you need the best social media tips and advice then she is the person that you should listen to.