View All Videos Is Twitter Scaring Google? There have been multiple reports that Twitter could replace Google. Twitter has quickly risen to become one of the most powerful sources on the Web. In 2008 alone, Compete found that the microblogging service grew 752 percent. Do you think this might make Google, the long-standing Internet giant, a tad-bit nervous or jealous? Recent Video: User Authentication Services: Good or Bad? Products such as OpenID, Facebook Connect, and Google Friend Connect are becoming quite popular today. They intrigue people because they provide user authentication ... Where Does Social Media Fit into Mass Media? Social media has produced a whole new era of media. But what does it mean for traditional media? It’s no secret that the newspaper industry is suffering, but does that indicate ... Is the Search Industry Heating Up? A lot has been happening in the search industry over the last year. Google is still the dominant player, but Yahoo and Microsoft are continuing to fight. Is there hope for the other engines?   Title and Alt attributes on Images By: Rod Abbotson Due to the advent of IE8 I have decided to add title attributes to most of my images so the subject is described on a mouseover. this used to happen in IE7 with the alt atribute, now its similar to Firefox and others in that alt attributes are not described on a mouseover... As most of my traffic is from users using IE (although Firefox is coming up to almost 25% nowadays..) I decided to start on this horrendous job...I have several thousand images to "title" most of the time I am just repeating the alt attribute... for example: <img src="home/dolphin.jpg" alt="Rebreather diver by Cedar Pride wreck" title="Rebreather diver by Cedar Pride wreck" width="250" height="188" /> So far I have rewritten 20 or so pages...I was wondering whether I am wasting my time? I was also worried about using the same as the alt.. but that is what is supposed tobe used by screen readers is it not or do they use title..?? What do other members think on this subject...I am assuming it will be Ok SEO wise..how about google image search??? » Reply to post... The Premier Event for Search Engine Marketing & Optimization - Register Now The eBusiness Directory Blogs, Marketing, Search, Web 2.0... It's all here, and it's FREE! Blogs Marketing, Technology ... Careers Career News, Job Search... Content Managing Content... eCommerce Retail, eCommerce... » Find Your Resources «

Thursday, July 09, 2009 Too Many Tweets Can Be Bad For All Parties Some people tweet a lot. I follow a good deal of them. Sometimes excessive tweeting can include plenty of wisdom. Often times, however, it is just annoying. Chances are that if you follow somebody, you do care what they have to say, at least to some extent. If they tweet too much though, you may find yourself caring less, and you may even decide to unfollow them. Do you unfollow people who tweet too much? Tell us. Excessive tweeting is at the root of more than one of Twitter's problems. The Retention Problem Twitter has been known to have trouble with user retention. People sign up and abandon their accounts. A common complaint about Twitter is that it contains too much "noise." In other words, there are too many random tweets that nobody cares about. I've always found it a bit naive to assume that just because you find a tweet useless,  it is useless to everybody. I've long considered that you control who you follow, so if you don't like somebody's tweeting, you have the power to stop following them. This is still true, but perhaps it is more complex than that. I may want to follow @soandso (I'm only using this as an example) because I know that they will say things that I need to know sometimes, but @soandso may also flood my Twitter stream with useless conversation that I have no interest in - noise. If that noise gets to become to much of an issue, I will likely end up deciding to unfolllow @soandso anyway, and try to obtain the info from somewhere else - somewhere that is less annoying. The lesson here (from the business perspective) is that if you want to keep followers, you should probably limit your tweeting. That's not to say that every Tweet has to be incredibly important. Just think before you Tweet, and keep your audience in mind. The Capacity Problem By tweeting too frequently, you may actually be hurting Twitter's accessibility. Interestingly enough, while I was researching this article, I encountered the "Twitter is over capacity" error message a couple times (one with and one without the Fail Whale), which if you'll notice in the illustrations below, is accompanied by "Too many Tweets! Please wait a moment and try again." If Twitter's not operating properly, it's not going to do anybody any good until it comes back. If you're tweeting too much, you're contributing to the problem. Twitter does limit the number of tweets you post in a day. "We do cap the number of updates a user can make in a 24 hour period, whether via the API or any other input method (web, mobile, etc.)," said Alex Payne, Twitter's API Lead in a Google Groups conversation back in January. "Right now, that number is 1000, but it's subject to change at any time. " I am awaiting confirmation on whether or not this is still the number, but whether it has changed or not, Twitter may reduce it more still, considering the capacity issue. If Twitter wants to keep growing, this has to be a turn off (despite all of the charm of the Fail Whale). Tweet How the Real Twitterers Tweet I thought it would be interesting to see how frequently the people who actually run Twitter tweet themselves. As far as I can tell, the frequency isn't too high. They tweet often, but not excessively. I browsed the last month or so worth of tweets from the following list of Twitter staffers (hat tip to Twittercism who has a huge list of Twitterers), and they all pretty much kept it to 20 tweets a day or less (5 or less or 3 or less in some cases, most were under 10). 10 of the People Behind Twitter 1. Evan Williams (@ev) - Twitter CEO 2. Biz Stone (@biz) Twitter Co-founder 3. Abdur Chowdhury (@abdur) - Twitter's "Chief Scientist" 4. Alex Payne (@al3x) - Twitter's API Lead 5. Crystal (@crystal) - leads twitter support team 6. Eric Jensen (@ej) - Co-founded Summize (Twitter Search) - search and text mining technologist 7. Greg Pass (@gregpass) - Director of Engineering and Ops 8. Jason Goldman (@goldman) - Director of product strategy 9. John Adams (@netik) - operations engineer 10. Rudy Winnacker (@ronpepsi) - operations engineer I have to wonder if Twitter employees have a limit in place for themselves. Of course they know what happens when there are too many tweets. No point in creating more work for yourself. Can You Tweet Too Little? Depending on what your goals are for using Twitter, I would say that it is possible to tweet too little. If you are using it for business purposes, then a lack of updates could reflect poorly on your effort to stay in touch with your followers. As long as you're not completely dead on Twitter for months at a time, you'll probably be ok though. In fact, I don't consider myself a very frequent tweeter. There is just as much (if not more) to gain from Twitter by absorbing the content that is coming in, than there is by pushing content out. The Moral of the Story Your Twitter frequency should be dictated by you goals. That said, you do not want to overdo it. You may lose followers from a lack of updating, but I would think you would be more likely to lose them when you update too much. Use moderation. Use other channels of communication when applicable. Use direct messages for one on one conversation. What are your thoughts on overtweeting? Undertweeting? Discuss with WebProNews readers. Was this article interesting? Comment Now... Subscribe to our Newsfeed About the Author: Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003.

07.09.09 Google Shares More Chrome OS Details Facebook Gives Businesses a Way to Increase Fans French Lawmakers Take Up Revised Internet Piracy Bill Microsoft Names New President Of Windows Division Create Events From the Facebook Publisher 3 comments Why It's Not Wise for Your Business to Overlook FriendFeed Marissa Mayer Talks Real-Time Search, Twitter AOL Names Bebo VP Head Of European Sales 3 comments Forrester: Interactive Marketing Spend To Double By 2014 Yahoo Adds Capabilities to YQL 1 comment Putting Twitter into Perspective 1 comment Yahoo Settles Lawsuit With NFL

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