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Lady Gaga was all set to launch her latest music video (via her 1,000th tweet) on Thursday. But it looks like the Internet has beat Mother Monster to the punch.

Perez Hilton has the vid in question, for the song “Yoü and I,” which Gaga has been teasing via Twitter for the past couple of weeks. The country-esque jam, in its visual incarnation, features appearances by Gaga’s male alter-ego, Jo Calderone, and her mermaid self, Yuyi.

NSFW: Mermaid sex.

Update: Shortly after the video appeared on Perez Hilton, Lady Gaga posted her 1,000th tweet, which says:

More About: Lady Gaga, music, video, you-and-i

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Go to Source

Lady Gaga was all set to launch her latest music video (via her 1,000th tweet) on Thursday. But it looks like the Internet has beat Mother Monster to the punch.

Perez Hilton has the vid in question, for the song “Yoü and I,” which Gaga has been teasing via Twitter for the past couple of weeks. The country-esque jam, in its visual incarnation, features appearances by Gaga’s male alter-ego, Jo Calderone, and her mermaid self, Yuyi.

NSFW: Mermaid sex.

Update: Shortly after the video appeared on Perez Hilton, Lady Gaga posted her 1,000th tweet, which says:

More About: Lady Gaga, music, video, you-and-i

For more Media coverage:

• Follow Mashable Media on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Media channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

Go to Source

What does this mean? It means that many different streams of the most interesting data published by Twitter, always in public but never all in one place and never right in the center of attention, have been illuminated and put front and center. Some people are already complaining that it detracts from the clean simplicity that is Twitter’s key differentiator – but as someone who has long paid attention to who is following whom and what is being favorited, I find it fascinating.

Sponsor

Every social gesture on the site, every structured action you can take, is now first class content on Twitter. It’s beautiful, really, and it’s rolling out to users starting today.

Everyone will know when you start following Justin Bieber.

Two questions I’ve asked Twitter: Will all these forms of data become available in a single API call? That would be great for developers. And will Activity Streams become visible inside Twitter clients like Tweetdeck and Twitter for iPhone? The company’s response: “As always, we comment on features when they’re available.”

Discuss

Go to Source

What does this mean? It means that many different streams of the most interesting data published by Twitter, always in public but never all in one place and never right in the center of attention, have been illuminated and put front and center. Some people are already complaining that it detracts from the clean simplicity that is Twitter’s key differentiator – but as someone who has long paid attention to who is following whom and what is being favorited, I find it fascinating.

Sponsor

Every social gesture on the site, every structured action you can take, is now first class content on Twitter. It’s beautiful, really, and it’s rolling out to users starting today.

Everyone will know when you start following Justin Bieber.

Two questions I’ve asked Twitter: Will all these forms of data become available in a single API call? That would be great for developers. And will Activity Streams become visible inside Twitter clients like Tweetdeck and Twitter for iPhone? The company’s response: “As always, we comment on features when they’re available.”

Discuss

Go to Source

Developers at Mozilla have been working on a similar framework for Firefox, and now Google says it will work with Mozilla to develop a single API that works in both web browsers.

The Web Intents API was originally conceived by Paul Kinlan last year. Kinlan, who is a Chrome Developer Advocate at Google, borrowed the idea from the Android platform, which uses Android Intents to pass data between Android Apps.

So just what are Web Intents? Well, the easiest way to understand them is by example. Take the sometimes overwhelming proliferation of buttons on web pages that allow you to do something with the current page, whether it’s Like, Tweet, +1, Read Later, Add to Instapaper and so on. Rather than adding a dozen little badges to your site, Web Intents creates a bridge that connects your site to any website your visitor wants to use. Web Intents define an API for your site to use and another API for the receiving site to use. Plug them together and transferring data becomes a quick and easy process, both for users and developers.

That’s a huge step up from the situation today. Perhaps the biggest win is that Web Intents put your visitors in control — they can select which actions they’d like to perform and which external sites they’d like to handle those actions. Some might share your page on Facebook, others on Twitter, still others might save it to their Instapaper account and so on, all from the same three lines of code you added to your site.

That’s not, however, all that Web Intents can do. The broader goal of Web Intents is to provide a generic means of communication between websites for tasks as varied as editing photos, listening to music or shortening URLs.

The second half of the video below demonstrates Mozilla’s take on how Web Intents ("Web Activities" in Mozilla’s parlance) might work.

For some sample code and working examples, head over to the new WebIntents.org site and check out the examples (the image example is particularly good at showing off the potential power of Web Intents).

For some more background on Web Intents, check out Paul Kinlan’s blog, particularly his overview post on the brief history of Web Intents. Tantek Çelik, the creator of microformats, also has a nice post on what he calls Web Actions (same thing, better name). Çelik breaks down the idea behind Web Intents and how they benefit not just developers, but users as well.

As Çelik writes, "web actions have the potential to change our very notions of what a web application is from a single site to loosely coupled interactions across multiple, distributed sites… In that regard, web actions have the potential to become a building block for distributed web applications."

[Handshake image by Aidan Jones/CC/Flickr]

See Also:

• Web Notifications API Hints at a Brave New Real-Time Web
• Speed Up Your WordPress Site With Google’s New Page Speed API
• Mozilla Shows Off Plans for an Open Web App Store

Go to Source

What can you use the application for?


Act.ly is an application for creating a twitter petition. “Signing” the petition is as simple as tweeting or retweeting the petition. Each petition is targeted to an individual so the tweet shows up in their mentions every time it is retweeted. Anyone with a Twitter account can set up a petition, be petitioned, or sign a petition. Petitions may be serious or humorous.

What is the history and popularity of the application?


Act.ly was created by 3dna, the team also behind NationBuilder. It was co-founded by Jim Gilliam and Jesse Haff as a tool for viral petitions. It has been used by politicians, rappers, nonprofit organizations, bloggers, and more. At the time of this review, it has 3,840 petitions, 170,164 tweets, and 402 responses to petitions.

What are the differences to other apps?


Because so many people use Twitter, this application can be far-reaching in its efforts. Users just have to understand the process for use and that a retweet (RT) equals a signature.

How does the application look and feel to use?


After linking to Twitter, users are taken to a home page. They may start a petition, view petitions catching fire, who’s in the hot seat, or smokin’ recruiters. To start a petition, users simply enter the Twitter name of the person or organization they wish to draw attention to and what they think this person should do. Because the tweet has the person’s Twitter ID in it, they will automatically see all of the RTs in their timeline.

Once the information is entered, users review the default tweet. They may change it if they wish, and the application reminds the user what information MUST remain in the tweet. When satisfied, users may embed Youtube or Vimeo links and save the petition. Once tweeted, the petition goes live.

To post the petition on Facebook, Digg, delicious, reddit, myspace, stumbleupon, or to embed a tweet button, options are offered. Sharing is easy and can help make petitions go viral or at least attract more attention.

Act.ly will notify the user via DM if the person who was petitioned responds in any way to the petition. This is one of the most interesting aspects of the website. While many are simple, personal requests like “Go home for the weekend”, some are very thought provoking responses from public figures. Some responses appear to merely be retweets, so it is uncertain whether they actually read it or just saw “RT” and did it. Some, however are actually sincere responses from those who were petitioned, for example Senator Gillibrand responded to a petition about Big Oil and promised to vote to close their tax loopholes.

In one case, Senator Gillibrand herself started a petition directed at the US Secretary of Transportation to ask Florida Governor Rick Scott to redirect rejected funding to high-speed rail projects in NY. The Secretary of Transportation responded by dividing up the funds among 15 states.

It’s also interesting to see who is in the hot seat as far as the number of petitions. As expected, many are political figures, but Google, Twitter, and Bravo TV are also under fire for various reasons during this review.

How does the registration process work?


Users must sign in with Twitter accounts and authorize the application. Act.ly cannot view direct messages or passwords with this authorization.

What does it cost to use the application?


Act.ly is completely free to use.

Who would you recommend the application to?


Anyone who wishes to start a petition, uses Twitter regularly, and feels that they can build enough interest to get attention for their issues may choose to try Act.ly. Whether for celebrity interests, ecological issues, nonprofit interests, government requests, or even personal petitions, Act.ly is easy to use and just may get a response from someone you don’t expect.

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The amount of Twitter abuse going around the Twitterverse is mind-boggling! Some offenses are worse than others. While we can ignore a few of them, there are some that we just can’t.

Don’t get me wrong. Twitter isn’t a cutthroat place where you make one mistake and people unfollow you. But Twitter is not a nonsense place (despite the Justin Beiber craze you see there some times).

We realize that you may be new, that you may be finding your way around, or simply trying out the myriad of new Twitter services that crop up. But what you need to realize is that your Twitter followers need to be treated with respect. Don’t go filling their timeline with one-word tweets that read ‘Lol!’ It makes you look like a bit of an idiot to be honest. Like that person on the train who laughs out loud in the middle of the crowded train. No one’s going to ask, what’s so funny? They’re going to give you a look and then ignore you.

The above scenario is what’s happening to you on Twitter if you’re using and abusing the following Twitter trends.

1. Follow Friday

(photo source)

Every Friday, we see our timeline filled with ‘#FF @thisperson @thisone, @thatone and @thisone too’.

Now why in the world would I want to do that? Who are they? What do they do? Why are you recommending them?

How to do it right: There’s only one way to get it right. Recommend one person per tweet and with a reason as to why, because they’re cool is not a reason. Explain why you think their tweets will benefit your followers or how they benefit you. Now that doesn’t mean that you recommend 15 people in a row – that’s just irritating. Tweet the recommendations throughout the day at intervals and never more than three at the same time.

2. Retweeting your own RT’s

If a person has more than a few followers, and is a nice, helpful person and tweet regularly, sooner or later, someone’s going to say something nice about them.

Now had someone complimented them in real life, they’d say thank you and would have felt all warm and happy for the rest of the day. On Twitter though, they RT the complimentary tweet.

I’m not sure why people think this is acceptable. You’re tooting your own horn! What happens to people in real life who toot their own horn a lot? They get ignored.

This is one mistake I often see otherwise Twitter etiquette savvy people making all the time. We get that you’re happy someone likes you so much. We like you too. What we don’t like is you retweeting every nice thing someone tweets about you.

How to do it right: There’s only one way to do it right and that’s by not doing it. Instead, grab a WordPress plugin called Tweetstimonials and install it on your website or blog and let it serve as testimonials for you.

Trust me, a person visiting your website for the first times wants to read testimonials. They want to know that you’re trustworthy and that you and your service/business will take care of their needs.

As a disclaimer, let me just say that there are some (very rare) times where it may be acceptable to retweet a complimentary tweet. For example, you’ve just published a blog post or released a product you worked really hard on and spent hours perfecting. Then you get a tweet saying how much your post, product etc helped the person. Retweeting that tweet with a prefix reading ‘This just made my day!’ or ‘All my handiwork just paid off’ will go down much better with your followers.

That being said – don’t do it often!

3. Auto DM

Auto DM’s make me want to scream. They’re a waste of space and no one takes them seriously. Yet, so many people still insist on sending Auto DM’s the minute someone follows them. A generic ‘Hi! Thanks for following. Hope to connect with you soon.’ sounds harmless but the receiver knows that it doesn’t mean a thing. The person doesn’t even know yet that I’ve followed them, let alone know me! It makes me wonder if the person is for real.

How to do it right: There’s no way you can do this right. Half the people have turned off their new follower notification in their settings so chances are they’re never going to notice you followed them unless you took the initiative and tweeted with them.

But you know what does make me sit up and take notice? Receiving the same message as a public tweet. It tells me you keep tabs on who follows you, that you’re online right now and genuinely interested in making my acquaintance. More over, it makes you real and I can’t wait to reply to your tweet and connect with you.

4. Auto follow/unfollow

If you have a program that auto follows everyone who follows you, then I shudder to think what your Twitter timeline would be like.

The whole point of Twitter is to follow people who interest you – not follow back every Tom, Dick and Harry who follows you. It doesn’t serve any purpose. You’re blindly following people who you don’t know anything about. They could be spammers, they could be bots, worse, they could be people who stand for things that you abhor.

Choose your own people to follow. That way, you’ll have relative control over your timeline, will be able to engage more and probably actually know a good percentage of your followers.

Twitter isn’t all about having a big number of followers. You’d be surprised at what just a couple hundred followers can do for you that your 20,000 auto follows can’t or will never be able to.

As for auto unfollows. Stop. Please. That’s just juvenile. You end up coming across as a petulant and spoiled kid. Worse, you’re doing this automatically so you don’t even notice when someone unfollows you. A program does and since you’ve set it to unfollow every one who unfollows you, it’s doing just that.

How to do it right: There’s no way to do this right. Build relationships and friendships on Twitter the old-fashioned way.

5. Twitvalidation

Oh man. This one never fails to boil my blood. You decide to follow someone because you like their bio and what you can see of their timelines and think ‘Hey! This person looks cool. It’d be fun to tweet with them.’ So you follow them and the next thing you know you’re getting a DM from them to click on a link to validate that you’re a human and not a bot.

Twitvalidation is a service that sends out DMs to anyone who follows you asking them to verify that they’re not a bot by clicking on a link.

I mean, wth?! That’s not only insulting but it’s like asking me for money when we’re only meeting for the first time.

No one has the time to click on a link that will take them to another page to click on another link and so on just to prove to you that they’re a human being.

If you can’t take the time to check out your followers for their authenticity then we most certainly don’t have the time to validate ourselves through a program you’ve installed to check your follower’s validity.

How to do this right: By not doing it at all.

6. Tweeting the same tweet numerous times

(photo source)

So we get that you have blogs to promote on Twitter. You’ve written a killer post that you’re dying to show the world. We get it. We really do. But  instead of sending out the same tweet 50 times a day, take the time to space them out over a few hours and change the message.

Same tweets look like spam when tweeted numerous times.

How to do it right: Choose a program that let’s you schedule posts to be sent out at certain times throughout the day. Do a quick Google search, there are numerous free services. Next, take 15 minutes to write your tweet differently. If you can take the time to write a killer post, you can most certainly afford 15 minutes to write different tweets all linking to the same post.

Do this, and notice how your website visitors, followers and even comments increase.

7. Not hitting reply

With 20,000 plus followers, you’re a big shot on Twitter. But would it kill you to hit reply? This one is a pet peeve of mine and some of the most respected and prolific bloggers with thousands of followers are guilty of it.

Everyone understands that you’re busy, that you have hundreds of people vying for your attention on Twitter and we also understand that sometimes a tweet just slips your notice. But only replying to friends on Twitter is just plain weird.

Even if the person tweeting you has nothing interesting to say, after the third tweet, it’s time to send them a thank you for your time reply.

This is one of those trends that isn’t obvious. But try it out. Tweet 10 super popular folks with a large number of followers and see how many of them reply to you.

How to do this right: Just hit reply. It’ll take 10 seconds out of your day. Probably less.

8. Protected tweets

I don’t understand the point of protecting your tweets. If you want privacy, there’s Facebook for that. And if you want to control who reads your tweets or who follows you, again, go to Facebook!

If I have to tell you why protected tweets are irritating, irrational and just plain wrong, you haven’t understood what Twitter is all about.

How to do it right: Again, by not doing it. Unless you’re a 16 or below and just trying it out and are worried about the kind of people who might follow you, there’s no good reason for you to protect your tweets.

9. Facebook or LinkedIn connection request via auto dm

I’ve already trashed auto DMs but I felt this deserved a sub head of its own. If you’re sending out ‘Hi there! Thanks for the follow. Let’s connect on Facebook/Linkedin’ tweets then you need to stop.

For the love of Twitter, let’s first connect here on Twitter before moving on to LinkedIn or Facebook! Show me that you’ve noticed me first. Interact with me, say hi, find out what I do and if it’s compatible or related with what you do etc.

Asking to connect via Facebook or LinkedIn when I’ve just followed you on Twitter is like hoping for a feel on a first date. Which in case you didn’t get my meaning, is wrong. Just wrong.

How to do it right: By not sending these auto DMs. Once you’ve connected with the person on Twitter and have talked to them, they’re not going to refuse your Facebook or LinkedIn connection request if you know each other fairly well through your Twitter interaction.

10. Hash tag abuse

Seen those tweets that have so many hashtags that it looks like the entire tweet was just one big hashtag? Yeah, there are plenty of those out there and quite a few of them are probably showing up on your timeline.

This Twitter crime is committed by a lot of Twitter savvy people too. We realize that hashtags let you reach a wider audience and sometimes connect a tweet to a topic that would otherwise not have been obvious but use it relevantly!

How to do it right: Make sure that your hashtags a. make sense, b. are relevant and c. not more than 2 in a tweet. You can fit in three without pissing people off but still, don’t do it too often!

Your take on most used and abused Twitter trends

What are some Twitter trends that make your blood boil, unfollow people or lose all respect for them?

Share your thoughts and Twitter trends that you feel should be banished!

Go to Source

Of course, if you’ve got a great app you think we should include on this list you can suggest them by commenting below, or sending us a tweet @Hongkiat using the tag #hkwebapp. We’d love your feedback on the types of apps you’d like to see, and your favorite apps.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow is a very neat and nicely designed to-do app. It keeps the interface very simple by offering you just two options – today or tomorrow. If you can’t get it done today, put it on the tomorrow’s list, and do it the next day.

I’ve been trying out the app for a few weeks now, and I found the “deliberately” limited option really helps me focus on the task in hand. The app also has iPhone, iPad and Android app available, so you can get your to-do list wherever you are. Well worth a look for the to-do junkies out there.

InVision

InVision is an extremely useful tool for designers and developers that helps you to build up real working interactive prototypes in no time. All you need to do is upload your wireframes or designs, set up some links, and then you can run clients or users through your designs.

By testing your designs in this way and letting clients make changes earlier, you can invest more time on making great and functional sites, while avoiding the issue that the client wasn’t quite sure what they are looking for. Watch the screencast and you’ll be sold.

Sync.in

Aside from its pretty look, Sync.in is a great way to collaborate on different documents in real time, so you and everyone else you are working with the document can see changes reflected as you edit them.

If you’ve ever been working on a pitch, plan or anything else with multiple people, even in the same location, you’ll appreciate how simple and painless Sync.in operates document collaboration.

JayCut

JayCut is a surprisingly powerful online video editing tool which brings video editing to your browser.

I’ve been playing with the tool for a while now, and have found it fast, responsive and full of functionality. If you’ve got a slow computer, you move around a lot, or you don’t have access to other more expensive tools, JayCut is really something you should check out.

Most remarkably, the interface is really easy to use and understand compared to most desktop video editing apps, and you can access it all from your browser window.

Rails For Zombies

Rails for Zombies is an extremely well produced site for anyone who is interested in learning more about Ruby on Rails. It has a number of different lessons that teach you the basics in a new and interesting way.

One of the best things about it are the screencasts for each module which keep your interested while teaching you how to program. There’s also a very helpful PDF for each module to help to ensure you’ve got all the important information down pat.

Wetransfer

Wetransfer is one of the most interesting file sharing sites I’ve seen for a while. They allow you to upload up to 2GB per file, and it’s free so no registration is required.

Unlike other file sharing sites I’ve seen though, they’ve also got a really different business model – behind the page where you share the files, they have fantastically designed full screen advertisements. None of the advertisements are in your face, and every time I go back to the site, I actually feel like clicking through to see just what the ads are for. It’s pretty neat. (Suggested by Danny)

StrawberryJ.am

StrawberryJ.am is a neat new web app that helps you sort through the junk in your Twitter stream (with Facebook support coming soon) to see the stories you’ll actually be interested in looking at.

Anyone who follows a lot of people on Twitter will appreciate that it’s a very difficult to task to find the links that are actually worth looking at; StrawberryJ.am takes care of this for you so you spend less time looking at crap, and more time enjoying the good stuff. It’s currently in closed beta, but you can sign up for an invite from the home page.

Aviary Music Creator

Aviary has a collection of really interesting tools, and among them all I found one very enjoyable to play with: Roc.

Roc is really a fun and interesting way to create music. There are 50 free instruments available, and you can mix and match to make all sorts of fascinating musical creations. You can also share and collaborate on different tracks, and it’s lightning fast to boot. For the musical guys among us, this one is definitely worth a look.

Feedly

Feedly is a very beautiful tool for following your favorite sites and finding new ones.

There are a bunch of different categories you can sign up to follow, as well as a huge range of popular sites. You can neatly divide all the different topics you are interested in, and get suggestions for other sites you might be interested to follow.

Historious

Historious is a great way for managing bookmarks that you otherwise wouldn’t find again, and has lots of helpful features too.

You can bookmark in just one click. You can tag your bookmarks, share your bookmarks with whoever you like. They also take a snapshot of the sites you bookmarked so even if they change in the future, you can view them as they were when you first found them.

Best of all is it has full text search for all your bookmarks, so you don’t need to remember the headline, just input any information from the post. It’s like Google for you bookmarks.

Switchr

If you’ve ever needed to convert audio files then Switchr is the site for you.

All you need to do is to select your file, the format you’d like to change and enter your email address. There is such a confusing array of audio file converter out there so having an easy tool like Switchr is really a lifesaver. It’s free too, so keep it in mind next time you need to play with audio. (Suggested by Ameer)

OhLife

OhLife is a journal for the modern age. Rather than opening up a diary or any other application, you simply get an email every day asking how your day went. All you need to do is reply to that email, and your thoughts will be saved for you.

I really like this app because it fits in with my workflow so nicely. I’m always on email anyway, so a quick reply to OhLife is very quick and painless, and a great way to reflect on everything you’ve been up to.

Conceptboard

Conceptboard is another great web app for online teamwork and collaboration.

Among many features, you can draw directly on a board for your team to see, drag files directly on to your concept boards, write over your documents, leave comments easily for others to see, invite colleagues and clients to participate and even work on it using your iPad. The free account gives you a lot of options and is worth a look. (Suggested by Roman)

That’s all for The Month

That’s all for this month, same time next month

Be sure to subscribe to our Newsletter or RSS feed to keep up with all the latest and greatest web apps, and all the other great content we offer.

Suggest An App!

This is going to be a monthly feature from now on, so if you have any great app you’d like to suggest for our next month’s round-up, here’s what you can do:

• Leave a comment below,
• Submit us via our tip submission form,
• Send a tweet to @hongkiat with hashtag #hkwebapp

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Twitter announced Thursday that it would up its advertising game by rolling out promoted tweets from specific brands over the next couple of weeks. For now, you’ll have to follow those brands to see the promoted tweets in question, but we suspect this is just the beginning of a lot of incremental tweaks to a potentially profitable product.

Here’s what we want to know, and what Twitter itself is likely a little nervous about. The first time you see a promoted tweet in your timeline, no matter what the reason, how will you react? Will you slam your laptop shut in frustration, or will the fact that promoted tweets are easily distinguishable from the rest of your timeline — and that you can dismiss them with a single click — win you over? Take our poll, then tell us all about it in the comments.

Will Promoted Tweets in Your Timeline Make You Use Twitter Less?
</center

More About: advertising, Promoted Tweets, timeline, twitter

For more Social Media coverage:

• Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Social Media channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

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To be clear, the sponsored Tweets will only appear in your timeline if you already follow the account that has paid for the spot. If that’s the case, a single Promoted Tweet will appear at (or near) the top of your main timeline when you log in to twitter.com for the first time in any given day. As you get new Tweets, these Promoted Tweets will be pushed down just like regular Tweets. But if you refresh the page, the ad will appear at the top of the timeline again, is our understanding.

These ads will also be clearly marked as “Promoted” with an orange arrow icon below the tweet (this is the way Promoted Tweets and Trends are currently shown on the sidebar or in search). And it will say the full company name of the company that is doing the promotion (just in case their Twitter handle isn’t perfectly clear). These Tweets can also be dismissed from your timeline with one click.

More to come. For now, read more on Twitter’s blog.

Update: A full talk with Twitter’s head of monetization, Adam Bain, on the move.

Go to Source

Twitter has long promised that when advertisements came to the stream, they would be served up in an interesting way. Indeed they have. Now, no matter what all your Twitter buddies are chattering about, no matter what time of night or day you open up Twitter.com and look at your stream of Tweets, any participating brands you follow (Groupon, Starbucks, Best Western, etc.) will have their most recent Tweets conveniently placed at the top of your page. For a fee, which helps Twitter bring home the bacon and keeps all the Tweets flowing. I like it. I think the parallels between this and Google’s advertising products are meaningful.

Sponsor

“You follow brands you like,” says Twitter’s Carolyn Penner, in a Tweet. “You want to see their tweets, announcements, and offers. We’re making sure you do. Simple.”

Those Tweets will then scroll down the page just like any other Tweets, but they will always start at the top. I think that’s a really non-invasive way to do it and strategy that really leverages the unique qualities of Twitter.

“This isn’t the equivalent of Google’s AdWords, which was Twitter’s original intention when it started its ad platform a year ago,” writes AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka, probably the tech news blogger following Twitter advertising the closest. “But Twitter may not need that kind of magic bullet to make this thing work – Facebook hasn’t found one, and things are working out ok over there.”

It may not be a magic bullet, but I think these promoted Tweets do have something in common with AdWords.

On Google, you’re searching for something and AdWords collects a fee for helping advertisers offer themselves up as the answer to your query. The program helps you find what you’re looking for, in theory.

Similarly, on Twitter – you’re looking for quick, timely updates from people and organizations of interest to you. These new Twitter ads help advertisers be a part of how you fill that need. In both cases, the ads are sponsored versions of what you came for, riding along with all the naturally occurring alternatives.

I expect it will work well. Will the company ever start serving up ads from branded accounts it believes you are likely to be interested in (and who pay for it)? Maybe. The relationship between promoted Tweets in search, in the stream and promoted accounts will be interesting to watch.

Presumably some brands will buy followers with the Cost Per Action promoted accounts, then buy privileged placement for their Tweets, too. Will people who buy followers that way start questioning the value of those followers without their Tweets starting out pinned at the top of the feed? I suspect they may.

The future is here, it’s being Tweeted and now there’s pre-roll. Keep it under 140 characters and I find it hard to object. It looks like a very smart system to me.

Discuss

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Twitter has long promised that when advertisements came to the stream, they would be served up in an interesting way. Indeed they have. Now, no matter what all your Twitter buddies are chattering about, no matter what time of night or day you open up Twitter.com and look at your stream of Tweets, any participating brands you follow (Groupon, Starbucks, Best Western, etc.) will have their most recent Tweets conveniently placed at the top of your page. For a fee, which helps Twitter bring home the bacon and keeps all the Tweets flowing. I like it. I think the parallels between this and Google’s advertising products are meaningful.

Sponsor

“You follow brands you like,” says Twitter’s Carolyn Penner, in a Tweet. “You want to see their tweets, announcements, and offers. We’re making sure you do. Simple.”

Those Tweets will then scroll down the page just like any other Tweets, but they will always start at the top. I think that’s a really non-invasive way to do it and strategy that really leverages the unique qualities of Twitter.

“This isn’t the equivalent of Google’s AdWords, which was Twitter’s original intention when it started its ad platform a year ago,” writes AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka, probably the tech news blogger following Twitter advertising the closest. “But Twitter may not need that kind of magic bullet to make this thing work – Facebook hasn’t found one, and things are working out ok over there.”

It may not be a magic bullet, but I think these promoted Tweets do have something in common with AdWords.

On Google, you’re searching for something and AdWords collects a fee for helping advertisers offer themselves up as the answer to your query. The program helps you find what you’re looking for, in theory.

Similarly, on Twitter – you’re looking for quick, timely updates from people and organizations of interest to you. These new Twitter ads help advertisers be a part of how you fill that need. In both cases, the ads are sponsored versions of what you came for, riding along with all the naturally occurring alternatives.

I expect it will work well. Will the company ever start serving up ads from branded accounts it believes you are likely to be interested in (and who pay for it)? Maybe. The relationship between promoted Tweets in search, in the stream and promoted accounts will be interesting to watch.

Presumably some brands will buy followers with the Cost Per Action promoted accounts, then buy privileged placement for their Tweets, too. Will people who buy followers that way start questioning the value of those followers without their Tweets starting out pinned at the top of the feed? I suspect they may.

The future is here, it’s being Tweeted and now there’s pre-roll. Keep it under 140 characters and I find it hard to object. It looks like a very smart system to me.

Discuss

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Bieber happened.

Yes, Justin Bieber just signed up for Instagram. And he tweeted out his first picture to his 11 million+ followers. The result? Boom.

After I saw the tweet, I reached out to Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom, and he confirmed the massive influx as a result of Bieber. He us Bieber is gaining about 50 followers a minute at this point. All thanks to one picture. Of traffic. It has 234 likes already. And that number is also rapidly growing. Systrom says he’s also getting one comment every 10 seconds or so. These numbers are unprecedented for the already popular photo-sharing service.

Celebrities on Instagram is nothing new — Snoop Dogg is a long-time user, for example. But Bieber is known for his cult-like following, especially on Twitter. His usage could really lead to another sign-up surge for Instagram. Instagram is just shy of 7 million users right now. And they were growing fast before Bieber — last month they hit 5 million users.

Most importantly for Instagram, they didn’t reach out to Bieber to get him using the service. This isn’t some publicity stunt. He’s just using it because he heard about it and decided to check it out. That’s the kind of publicity money can buy, but it hasn’t here.

Follow @justinbieber@justinbieber
Justin Bieber

La traffic sucks http://instagr.am/p/IMhuj/

about 8 hours ago via InstagramReplyRetweetFavorite

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“My Google+ account was flagged for violating standards. Saying hello to everyone apparently is against the rules maybe I should say goodbye?”

Google+ is of course a brand new product, one that’s still in beta, so perhaps Google’s automated banning process is what got Shatner shunned from using the service. Florian Rohrweck, for one, believes a ton of users reporting Shatner’s profile as fake is what got the man suspended.

The actor himself hasn’t provided any details about the ban – nor has Google, who we’ve contacted about this – but I have a feeling that this was merely an anomaly and Shatner’s Google+ account will live long and prosper once it’s reinstated.

Also read: Shatner Shills MyOuterSpace.com: A Social Network For Sci-Fi Geeks

(Picture via Flickr user Greg ‘greginhollywood’ Hernandez – used with permission)

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“My Google+ account was flagged for violating standards. Saying hello to everyone apparently is against the rules maybe I should say goodbye?”

Google+ is of course a brand new product, one that’s still in beta, so perhaps Google’s automated banning process is what got Shatner shunned from using the service. Florian Rohrweck, for one, believes a ton of users reporting Shatner’s profile as fake is what got the man suspended.

The actor himself hasn’t provided any details about the ban – nor has Google, who we’ve contacted about this – but I have a feeling that this was merely an anomaly and Shatner’s Google+ account will live long and prosper once it’s reinstated.

Also read: Shatner Shills MyOuterSpace.com: A Social Network For Sci-Fi Geeks

(Picture via Flickr user Greg ‘greginhollywood’ Hernandez – used with permission)

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The final game, between USA and Japan, set the new all-time high with 7,196 per second at the end of the game. The Paraguay vs. Brazil game is the new number-two spot with 7,166 tweets per second, according to a tweet sent by @Twitter.

The previous record was set just as New Year’s Day began this year in Japan — with 6,939 tweets per second. The Women’s World Cup Final also far outpaces the Men’s World Cup 2010 Final. Some 3,283 tweets were sent per second then, when Japan beat Denmark in the final match. It’s certainly curious that all of these top-tweeting moments occurred around Japan.

As far as non-soccer sporting events go, in February, Twitter users outdid themselves during the Super Bowl, compared to previous years, with 4,064 tweets sent per second.

Here’s a collection of some of the tweets sent after Sunday’s USA vs. Japan final:

@SInow

@BarackObama

@PTI

@AntDeRosa

@jameshicks

@piersmorgan

@NOTSportsCenter

@TwitterWhale

@ninagarcia

@joelmarcey

@honeybadger

@tommyhilfiger

More About: twitter, Women’s World Cup, World Cup Finals

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Jerry Seinfeld is now a member of the Twitterati, sending his first two tweets out this Friday.

The famous comedian and actor has chosen @SeinTime as his new Twitter handle. His first tweet reads, “Greetings Tweetarians! I have just landed on your Planet. This could be my last Tweet.” He followed that up with, “Second Tweet! Am I done yet?”

While the account has not officially been verified by Twitter yet, The New York Times
confirmed with one of Seinfeld’s representatives that @SeinTime is the real deal.

“It’s really Jerry. The day we’ve all been waiting for,” the rep told NYT.

Seinfeld apparently changed his mind about Twitter in recent weeks. In May, he stated that tweeting didn’t interest him. Perhaps his wife, @JessSeinfeld, helped change his mind.

Since joining, Seinfeld has amassed more than 25,000 followers, and that number is quickly growing. He joins a list of other famous comedians to embrace the service, including Conan O’Brien, who has turned himself into the master of the 140-character punchline.

More About: jerry seinfeld, Seinfeld, twitter

For more Social Media coverage:

• Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Social Media channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

Go to Source

Jerry Seinfeld is now a member of the Twitterati, sending his first two tweets out this Friday.

The famous comedian and actor has chosen @SeinTime as his new Twitter handle. His first tweet reads, “Greetings Tweetarians! I have just landed on your Planet. This could be my last Tweet.” He followed that up with, “Second Tweet! Am I done yet?”

While the account has not officially been verified by Twitter yet, The New York Times
confirmed with one of Seinfeld’s representatives that @SeinTime is the real deal.

“It’s really Jerry. The day we’ve all been waiting for,” the rep told NYT.

Seinfeld apparently changed his mind about Twitter in recent weeks. In May, he stated that tweeting didn’t interest him. Perhaps his wife, @JessSeinfeld, helped change his mind.

Since joining, Seinfeld has amassed more than 25,000 followers, and that number is quickly growing. He joins a list of other famous comedians to embrace the service, including Conan O’Brien, who has turned himself into the master of the 140-character punchline.

More About: jerry seinfeld, Seinfeld, twitter

For more Social Media coverage:

• Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Social Media channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

Go to Source

Jerry Seinfeld is now a member of the Twitterati, sending his first two tweets out this Friday.

The famous comedian and actor has chosen @SeinTime as his new Twitter handle. His first tweet reads, “Greetings Tweetarians! I have just landed on your Planet. This could be my last Tweet.” He followed that up with, “Second Tweet! Am I done yet?”

While the account has not officially been verified by Twitter yet, The New York Times
confirmed with one of Seinfeld’s representatives that @SeinTime is the real deal.

“It’s really Jerry. The day we’ve all been waiting for,” the rep told NYT.

Seinfeld apparently changed his mind about Twitter in recent weeks. In May, he stated that tweeting didn’t interest him. Perhaps his wife, @JessSeinfeld, helped change his mind.

Since joining, Seinfeld has amassed more than 25,000 followers, and that number is quickly growing. He joins a list of other famous comedians to embrace the service, including Conan O’Brien, who has turned himself into the master of the 140-character punchline.

More About: jerry seinfeld, Seinfeld, twitter

For more Social Media coverage:

• Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Social Media channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

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Update: thanks to your support, my to-do list has received an astonishing 1700 tweets! This inspires me even more to keep giving you quality articles and tutorials : )

Web Design resources used in this to-do list:

Domain resources:

1) GoDaddy

Hosting resources:

1) iPage

2) HostGator

See more from my list of top 10 web hosting.

Blog resources:

1) WordPress

2) WooThemes

Twitter resources:

1) Twitter

2) MarketMeTweet

3) Tweet Adder

SEO resources:

1) SEOMoz

2) Keyword Research Tool

Misc. resources:

1) FileZilla

1. Get a Domain

Tool you should use: GoDaddy

I am always creating websites and it is extremely important to choose a good domain. Very often, I see domains like RandySullivanBestWebDesigner.com. It’s a really long, boring domain that nobody is going to remember or even finish typing in their browser. The great thing about domains is that they’re really cheap. But good names get sold fast, so if you thought of a good domain it’s generally a good idea to snatch it as quickly as possible. What I do is I put a twist on my domains. For instance WebDesignDev.com is really short and to the point – it tells the world I am a web designer and is a really catchy name – catchy enough for you to come to my website and read my articles and tutorials. I can bet that next time you want to read a fresh article or tutorial you will remember “WebDesignDev” because it’s so short and to the point and you may just type the name directly in the browser. As a matter of fact, almost 25% of my thousands of visitors are direct type-ins.

For all of my domains, I use GoDaddy, it is the largest domain registrar in the world and that is for a reason.

Use this discount link to get .com domains from them for only $7.49.

2. Host your domain

Tool you should use: iPage or HostGator

The most important thing about running an Internet Business is to have a reliable host. If you don’t have one, you are wasting your time. I recommend to everyone to always use either iPage or HostGator. Both hosts are cheap, reliable and I have never heard a bad word about them. They answered any questions I have had in less than 1 hour. If you do decide to try to find a better host, please do your research. The worst thing in the world is to find your website is down, your host’s support is “unavailable”, and once it becomes available you find out they don’t have a recent back-up of your website. Ouch! I have had this happen to me more than once with different hosts, and I would hate to see that happen to you. I know for a fact that if you use iPage or HostGator you will not run into that problem.

Tip: if you go with HostGator, use coupon 25PERCENTSALE to get 25% off your entire order.

3. Connect your domain and hosting

Tools you should use: 1) Domain from GoDaddy; 2) iPage or HostGator

It’s really simple to host your domain. Log in to your GoDaddy account, on the left side you will find Domains > Domain Manager, click on Domain Manager and then click on your domain. You will see the tab Nameservers, click on that and change the name servers to the ones that iPage sent you in the welcome e-mail. Make sure the option “I have specific nameservers for my domains” is selected before you update. The name servers will be something like:

NS1.IPAGE.COM and NS2.IPAGE.COM, only the 1 and 2 will be replaced by your server number. If you ever lose your welcome email, just send iPage a support request and they will send you a back-up of the email most likely within 1 hour. Once all of this is done, you will be able to create and upload your website.

4. Create a blog

Tools you should use: 1) Domain from GoDaddy; 2) iPage or HostGator;3) Premium WordPress Theme.

Every web designer must have a blog. There is NO excuse not to have one.  I have one – webdesigndev.com, and you should have one too. Whether you are going to blog about web design articles and tutorials and help other web designers, like I do, or about your web design work, or about something completely unrelated, you should still have a blog.

Install your blog. This is super easy, and I will show you how to do this in under 1 minute using Install Central or Fantastico. Not all hosts have Install Central or Fantastico, but iPage gives you Install Central for free (or HostGator gives you Fantastico for free). To begin, go to http://www.YourDomain.com/cpanel and log in with the control panel login and password your host provided. Scroll to the bottom of the screen and locate the Software/Services section, under which you will see Install Central (or Fantastico). Click on Install Central/Fantastico. Once you are in, on the left side you will see “WordPress” under the Blogs section, click on that, then click on New Installation link. Install Central / Fantastico will then ask you to specify the details such as your domain, the location of the blog (you can just type “Blog” in there to have it on http://www.YourDomain.com/blog), your admin user name and password, admin nick name, e-mail, site name and Description. Once you fill in the details, click “Install WordPress”. You will then be asked to confirm everything by clicking “Finish Installation”. Click Finish Installation and you’ve just created your first blog!

Add posts to your blog. After you install your blog and go to it, on the right side you will see a link called Login (YourDomain.com/wp-login.php – this is the link  you will use from now on to log in to your blog’s admin panel).  Click on the link and log in with the admin username and pass you created in Fantastico while installing WordPress. Now you are inside the WordPress Dashboard, which is where I am right now as I am writing this To-Do list : ) On the left side you will see Posts section, and under it “Add New”. Click on Add New and you will be able to create your first blog post.

Get a theme for your blog. When you just came to my blog you probably thought to yourself “I wish I could have a blog like that.” Well, I have to be honest, I paid $70 for my WordPress theme which I got from WooThemes and the great thing about it is you can personalize it! It’s really a huge benefit not to spend 100′s of hours making it from scratch. Once you have purchased your theme, it is really simple to upload it.  I personally use FileZilla for uploading, which is 100% free and works like a charm. Once you download FileZilla, open it, and it’ll ask you for the Host, User Name and Password. For Host put the name of your website, for user name and password use your *Cpanel* user name and password, not WordPress. Once you are in, you will need to upload the theme to Public_html/Wp-Content/Themes folder (first find the public_html folder, then click on Wp-Content folder, then click on the Themes folder). Once you are in, simply drag the unzipped Theme from wherever you saved it on your computer to the Themes folder. Another way to upload is through your hosting cpanel. Log in to your cpanel, click on File Manager, then go to the Public_html/Wp-Content/Themes folder and click on Upload which is in the top navigation. Upload the zip file of your theme and then unzip it.

Customize your theme as you like. Once you have finished uploading your theme, log in to your WordPress admin (YourSite.com/wp-login.php) and click Appearance on the left side, you will see your theme there. Click on it and a preview will open up. In the top right corner you will see Activate, click on that and your theme is now live! If you bought your theme from WooThemes you can play around with all the fun features and settings.

5. Get Twitter followers

Tools you should use: 1) MarketMeTweet; 2) Tweet Adder.

Twitter is a huge source of my traffic. After I write a new article or tutorial and tweet it I often get hundreds of tweets and retweets. Twitter allows me to dominate the web design niche. I see my Twitter followers as the people who I value and who value me and my work in return. What I did to get over 31,000 followers on my WebDesignDev account was I went to one of the biggest names in Web Design industry, PSDTUTS and every day manually added their most recent 500 followers (yes, it took a LONG time to do this). Those people would then come to my website, check out what great content I have, and follow me. Not only did they follow me on Twitter, but they became regular readers! I also noticed that Twitter followers are the loyal readers – they will stay on my website longer than someone who just came from Google or Yahoo.  So over night you can start driving hundreds of targeted visitors to your website who are really interested in your website! P.S. I now have only 400 less followers than PSDTUTS, 28,000 and growing!

Tool #1: I currently use MarketMeTweet as my Twitter management software. The features I love the most are:  1) I can set a feed of my scheduled tweets and bulk upload hundreds of tweets at once and 2) I can easily find the right people to follow with MarketMeTweet‘s Friend Finder feature and auto-follow them; 3) Twitter Branding. So I can set my Twitter account to update every 30 minutes for me, or for any other 10 minute interval I choose and Tweet my most popular articles. I let MarketMeTweet concentrate on my Twitter while I concentrate on my business and blog.

Tool #2: Tweet Adder was made with one purpose in mind – to help you get Twitter Followers. This is a great program I use to supplement MarketMeTweet.

6. Learn SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and build traffic to your site

Tool you should use: SEOMoz

SEO is one of the most important things you need to learn to have a successful Internet business. Writing everything I know about SEO will likely take at least several hundred pages, but I will give you the most important things below. I have studied SEO for the past 5 years and have put in countless hours learning it. I can say it has paid off – my blog webdesigndev.com for example, gets around 50% of its traffic from search engines.

Tip: use SEOMoz. Right now they are offering a free trial for 30 days, don’t miss it. After that, they cost $99/month for a Pro plan which is peanuts compared to the SEO benefit you get. SEOMoz is used by Facebook, eBay, Yahoo, New York Times, Disney and many other extremely successful companies. Click Here to check them out.

Titles. Your <title> tag is your most important tag on the page, which is why you have to know how to set this tag properly. Before you set a title of your pages, you need to ask yourself: ”What do I want people to find on my website/blog?” Most people think that they can set titles intuitively, but this is not always the case. You want to make sure you target the keywords that: 1) best describe your web design business/blog and 2) bring you the most traffic. I will discuss how to research titles shortly, but let me first discuss the <title> tag in more detail. You can see that the home page of WebDesignDev has <title>Web Design Tutorials | Create A Website | Make A Website | Learn Flash</title>. I am targeting 4 different keywords in a single title: 1) Web Design Tutorials; 2) Create A Website; 3) Make A Website; 4) Learn Flash. It is generally a good idea not to put too many keywords in the title since search engines will look at where in the title the targetted keyword is to see its important. So the keyword that appears say 50 characters after the beginning, is not nearly given as much weight as the keyword that appears first. I am targetting 4 keywords in my title,  which is about as high as you want to go. It is of utmost importance to know which keywords will bring you the most traffic and which keywords to put first. If you just put “Web Design” for example, as the only thing in your title, you will probably not get much traffic. You must be thinking “but you just said the first keyword is the most important!” Yes, but “web design” is such a competitive term that you will need to do a LOT of SEO to get any kind of ranking there. Put a much more targeted keyword, such as “web design” followed by the name of your city, like “web design toronto” for example and follow it with several other keywords. Why is this a good title? And why is the title of WebDesignDev good? Look at the first 2 words – they are the same “web design” keyword that’s so hard to rank for, but they are followed with the word “tutorials” which is exactly what I am trying to target. I rank top 5 on Google, by the way, for that keyword : ) I am still giving my blog a chance to rank for “Web Design” by putting those 2 words first.

Keyword research. This is super important. If you don’t know what keywords to target, you can’t possibly bring many organic (search engine) visitors/customers to your web design website/blog. Google has a terrific keyword research tool. I always use this tool before I create a title for any of my new articles to make sure that I choose the title that both describes what my articles are about and can bring me the highest number of visitors. In the box type the keyword that you think you want to use. Make sure to keep “use synonyms” checked so that you get all kinds of variations for the keyword. Once you get the results, to the top right of the first keyword you see in the list, right above it, you will see a drop down box that says “Broad”.  Make sure to click it and select “Exact”. “Broad” simply tells you the total searches for that keyword including any search in which that keyword is just part of the search. This won’t give you an accurate idea of how much traffic you can expect from the keyword, so select “Exact” to see exactly how much traffic the keywords bring.

H tags. H tags vary from H1 to H6, H1 being the most important. You MUST have an H1 tag. This tag should come as early after your <body> tag as possible. Your H1 tag must contain your most important keywords. It is also the biggest tag visually, so use css styling to make it smaller.  I won’t go into detail on how to use CSS in this article. Somewhere lower on the page you should use H2 tags for parts of your page that are second in importance. For example, my H1 tag is the same as my title: Web Designer TO-DO list (MUST-HAVE resources for Web Designers), and my H2 tags are the sections of my article, i.e. “Get a Domain”, “Host Your Domain” etc. This gives search engines a structured layout of what my page is about.

Meta tags. These tags are not as important as they once used to be, but you should still not neglect them. The meta tags go inside your <head>  </head> tags. Search engines may refer to your meta tags if they don’t find the search keyword anywhere else in your article. Make sure your meta description tag is not too short, and not too long, since that can affect your rankings adversely. Also, make sure you have a reasonable number of meta keywords. A sample of meta description and keywords tags would be the following:
<meta name=”description” content=”Web Designer TO-DO list (MUST-HAVE resources for Web Designers) brought to you by WebDesignDev.com” />
<meta name=”keywords” content=”Web designer to do list, must have resource for web designers, web design, resources” />

Page Speed. This is VERY important. If your blog/web design site loads slowly, you will not rank as well as other websites. I have personally seen an increase of 200% in traffic simply by switching hosting. Make sure to use only the fastest hosting: iPage or HostGator. Even if you already have hosting, shared hosting is very cheap and I would strongly encourage you to switch to the hosts that are known to be the fastest on the net.

Keyword density on page. This is another very important part of SEO. Search engines will look at how many times a certain keyword is repeated on the page to judge how relevant your page is in comparison to others. Make sure not to abuse this: intentionally “stuffing” the page with numerous keywords is considered “black hat” and is frowned upon by search engines. They will give you a penalty if you put too many keywords. And while it is impossible to know the “perfect” keyword density, strive for somewhere in the range of 5-10%.

Internal links. Many people don’t realize that the anchor text of your internal links, if used properly, can give a HUGE boost to your rankings. And the best part of it is that these links are free! Use the same Google keyword research tool to see how to set the anchor text of your internal links, such as your navigation links. Always have a link either in your footer or your top navigation with your most important keyword pointing to your home page.  This means every internal page you have will give your main page a boost for that keyword!

External links. These are harder to get than internal links, since someone else has to link to you. But these links are considered extremely valuable by search engines. Every external link is a “vote” for your website, and the text for that link tells search engines the subject of that vote. Try to get as many external links as possible.

Content is king. If you have quality content, not only will people find it interesting to read, but other websites and blogs will link to you too. By writing this web designer to-do list, I am hoping I have provided you with something that you found extremely useful that will help you in your web design career.

Use Google Analytics (http://www.google.com/analytics/). You need to analyze which keywords are bringing you traffic. You also need to use the keyword tool I mentioned earlier to see which keywords are not bringing you traffic, but which you can add to you pages. For instance, you could be ranked #9 for a given keyword, and by simply tweaking some words on the page (i.e. adding more repetitions of that keyword) could push you to the first page. Don’t be afraid to experiment. People’s biggest fear is “I am already ranking ok, if I change something I could get less traffic.” Write down or remember the changes you make. If something you do negatively affects your ranking, you can simply undo it and get the rankings back very quickly.  Use this principle to improve your rankings.

Don’t be afraid to take action – action gets you results.

This is all the time I have today to devote to this to-do list, but I will add more as soon as I can! Check back often for updates!

If you love my Web Designer To-Do list and resources page, make sure to follow me on Twitter@WebDesignDev. Also, if you haven’t done so already, I strongly encourage you to read my guide on How To Make A Lot More Money Online Doing Web Design.

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The above is a tweet from about 3 years ago that recently came to my attention via Luke Wroblewski. It’s hardly controversial, however, I think the quote above can be taken too literally.

I want to offer a few thoughts about what we really need to know about content in order to begin developing a design concept.

First let me state I absolutely agree with the meaning behind Jeffrey’s statement and I think he too would agree his words are sometimes taken too literally. He said as much in a comment on his blog.

“Content” doesn’t mean “having all the copy.

I’m sure when you’re about to start a project for a client you ask early on for the content. If your clients are like many of mine you won’t get all the copy prior to starting the design and you’ll need to get more information from them.

Is it really necessary?

What You Need to Know About Content

Design is communication. Naturally we need to know what we’re trying to communicate in order to be able to communicate it effectively.

This is key to design.

Ideally we’ll have real content to work with. I’ll always ask for it and hope to get it as soon as possible. Realistically it almost never happens.

When you design specifically around prewritten content you have art direction. You have different designs for each piece of content.

While you may be art directing the content on a site, most of the time we’re creating a single design or several similar designs for different sections of the site.

Think about how you would design a blog. You can’t possibly have all the content in advance, because most of it won’t even be an idea as you’re designing. The very nature of a blog suggests the design has to come before most of the copy.

You can know in advance that future blogs posts will mostly be text heavy or that they’ll feature images or other media in some way. You should also know what the topic of the blog is.

Your design can know much about what that content will be long before the content is created. You may not be able to design a post specifically around its content, but you’ll have enough information to come up with a design for the blog as a whole.

We don’t need all the copy in advance. What we need to know is information about what that copy will be. We need to know things like:

• What is the site is about?
• What will the content be about?
• What type of content will be present (text, images, video, audio, etc)?
• Who is the audience for the content?
• Will the content be short, medium, or long form?
• How will people find the content?

What we need isn’t so much the exact copy as it is knowing the subject of the copy and associated information. We need a strong understanding of the nature of the content, but not the content itself.

The more information you have about the content prior to design, the more likely the design can turn out well, but again you don’t need to have the exact copy in order to design.

Not having all the copy doesn’t mean you know nothing about the content.

Planning Content

Knowing that we need some information about content, we need to at the very least set a plan for what the content will be. What should we plan for before design in order to be able to design effectively?

Ideally we’ll have a content strategy in place to define the purpose of the content and set out what the message we’re trying to communicate will be.

We want to plan for topics and ideas and how the content will relate to achieving site and business goals, marketing, and search engine optimization.

We want our content strategy to answer questions like:

• What content should be created
• Why create this content
• Who is the best person to create this content
• Where will this content be put to best use
• When should this content be published
• How will this content be created, text, image, video, etc.

Before designing we need to develop the information architecture for the site in order to design site navigation, help search engines find the content and help them understand it too.

When I’m entrusted with developing a content plan my process for content creation is to research the industry, brainstorm ideas, organize the potential pages, prune those pages, and revise by iterating the entire process again.

I’ve written in more detail about most of the above and have linked to those details throughout this post. The important thing to understand here is that planning content prior to design is not only important, but a requirement for effective design.

Do we need all the copy prewritten? No, but we do need to know as much as possible about what that copy will eventually be.

Summary

I realize I’m not saying anything new or profound here. This post is more a reminder that while you don’t need to have every bit of copy in order to create a design, you do need to have a lot of questions answered about the what the content will be.

It’s also a reminder that while most clients won’t ever deliver all the copy prior to you beginning the design that’s ok. You don’t need it.

Design in the absence of copy can still be design. Design in the absence of any knowledge of content is certainly decoration. Seldom though, do we have absolutely no knowledge about content.

We may not have all the details, but we almost always have some information about what the content will be, usually enough to develop a concept for the design, plan the site architecture, etc.

Do you insist on all the copy prior to designing? What information do you require at a minimum?

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Advertise here with BSA

Design TNT is a new resource website of design goodies which has just made its entrance into the design industry. The website was launched Yesterday (Jul, 11) and is already getting lots of attention. Design TNT’s mission is to provide all designers out there with high quality resources – all in one place!

And today we are happy to announce a giveaway to help our readers gain access to this new resource! We will give away 10 one month pro access to Design TNT!

How to enter

• Retweet the contest link and post the URL to your tweet in the comments area (To get the URL of your tweet, sign in to Twitter, click Profile and locate your tweet. Then click on the time stamp link of the tweet and you’ll be redirected to the URL of that tweet).
• One entry per person
• 10 random winners will be selected on July 18, 2011

Here are the awesome categories of products you can find at DesignTNT:

Addons – they have just the addons you need for your favorite software such as Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop. Make your job a lot easier by using our presets, styles, actions and scripts.

Brushes – here you can find an amazing library of PS brushes, from floral swirls to grunge and abstract, all top notch resources. You can use their PS brushes starting with CS version of Photoshop, so download and enjoy!

Textures - improve your designs and save you time with ready to download and use textures! As a designer, you don’t always have the time to create your own textures. DesignTNT has an attractive collection of textures for you to use in your design projects.

Tutorials - improve your skills and learn some new tricks to become a better designer! DesignTNT’s tutorials will give you some valuable tips and update your performance in using programs such as Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop among others.

Vectors - save precious time on your design projects with the royalty free vector sets from DesignTNT! These vector resources are just what you need to create amazing artwork with less effort.

Web - Save time and money in creating or updating your website with premium web resources! If you consider that your web presence is very important, then this is the right place to be!

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Advertise here with BSA

Here on WDL we love to offer freebies, giveaways and everything we can to our readers. In this contest we’ve teamed up with TN3 Gallery to give away 10 of their Pro licenses. Keep reading to learn how you can be one of the lucky winners of this great prize.

TN3 Overview
With TN3 Gallery you can easily create amazing photo galleries and slideshows with slick transition effects, as well as multiple albums, CSS skinning, XML and Flickr support with a host of additional features. No browser plugins required.

How to enter

• Retweet the contest link and post the URL to your tweet in the comments area (To get the URL of your tweet, sign in to Twitter, click Profile and locate your tweet. Then click on the time stamp link of the tweet and you’ll be redirected to the URL of that tweet).
• One entry per person
• 10 random winners will be selected on July 13, 2011

About TN3 Gallery

TN3 Gallery is a full fledged HTML based customizable image gallery with slideshow, transitions and multiple album options. Compatible with all modern desktop and mobile browsers. Powered by jQuery.

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Contest Rules:

• In order to be eligible to win, hit the tweet button below this post, then leave a comment with a link to your tweet. (How to link to a tweet »)
• Only tweet and comment once.
• 10 winners will be randomly chosen from the comments, given a valid tweet.
• You must leave an email address in order to win.
• Comments will remain open for about a week.

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Google’s +1 buttons have only been out for about a month, but they’re already more common than the tweet button on major web destinations.

BrightEdge, an enterprise SEO platform provider, analyzed the 10,000 largest sites on the web and found a 33% surge in placement for Google’s +1 button during the past few weeks. The company found that +1 buttons are now on 4.4% of those sites, up from 3.6% in June. Meanwhile, Twitter’s plug-ins are displayed on 3.4% of the sites.

Both Google and Twitter trail far behind Facebook, whose plug-ins, most notably its “Like” button, are on about 20% of the sites’ front pages. Note: Although the chart below lists Twitter’s plug-in as a “Twitter Share,” BrightEdge CEO Jim Yu says it refers to the Twitter tweet button.

To put +1′s growth in perspective, Facebook’s “Like” button showed up on 50,000 websites a week after the company announced a web-wide “Like” button last April. It was on more than 100,000 sites within a month. Twitter, meanwhile, made its tweet button available to publishers last August.

A Google rep declined comment on the report.

The study also notes adoption for links to Facebook Pages or Twitter feeds on front pages. Such links are much more popular than buttons, but still, more than half — 51% of the sites — have no Facebook or Twitter link on their front pages.

More About: facebook, Google, Google +1, like button, trending, twitter

For more Social Media coverage:

• Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Social Media channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

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The Aim

The aim here is to embed the most recent tweet from our Twitter account in our sidebar, and enable visitors to retweet, reply, or favourite that tweet, directly from this site.

At time of writing, it is working and looks like this:

Our lastest tweet, with Retweet, Reply and Favourite buttons

The Solution

I had seen this kind of thing at the top of Yoast.com before, and recently Joost posted about Twitter’s new Web Intents, which provide the functionality for the retweets etc.

However, as I noted in my comment, there was no mention of how to embed the latest tweet, or how to get the tweet ID from that tweet into the URLs for the Web Intent buttons. So I had to do some Googling.

I found a ton of posts very similar to Joost’s, outlining the general usage of Web Intents, but no explanation of how to integrate this with embedding the latest tweet.

So I had to try and figure it out myself. Not being a developer, this was no easy task.

I found a method for embedding your latest tweet, many thanks to Kristarella. This worked fine for displaying the tweet, but I still needed to get the ID of the tweet to use in the Web Intent links.

This is where I had to get my hands dirty. I made a copy of the blogger.js script, and made some changes to the twitterCallback2 function as follows:

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function twitterCallback2(twitters) {
  var statusHTML = [];
  var linksHTML = [];
  for (var i=0; i<twitters.length; i++){
    var username = twitters[i].user.screen_name;
    var myID = twitters[i].id_str;
    var status = twitters[i].text.replace(/((https?|s?ftp|ssh)\:\/\/[^"\s\<\>]*[^.,;'">\:\s\<\>\)\]\!])/g, function(url) {
      return '<a href="'+url+'">'+url+'</a>';
    }).replace(/\B@([_a-z0-9]+)/ig, function(reply) {
      return  reply.charAt(0)+'<a href="http://twitter.com/'+reply.substring(1)+'">'+reply.substring(1)+'</a>';
    });
    statusHTML.push('<li><span>'+status+'</span> <a style="font-size:85%" href="http://twitter.com/'+username+'/statuses/'+twitters[i].id_str+'">'+relative_time(twitters[i].created_at)+'</a></li>');
    linksHTML.push('<a href="http://twitter.com/intent/retweet?related=webdesignfs,thebenhunt&tweet_id='+myID+'" class="twitter-retweet" title="Retweet">Retweet</a><a href="http://twitter.com/intent/tweet?related=webdesignfs,thebenhunt&in_reply_to='+myID+'" class="twitter-reply" title="Reply">Reply</a><a href="http://twitter.com/intent/favorite?related=webdesignfs,thebenhunt&tweet_id='+myID+'" class="twitter-favourite" title="Favourite">Favourite</a>');
  }
  document.getElementById('twitter_update_list').innerHTML = statusHTML.join('');
  document.getElementById('tweet-links').innerHTML = linksHTML.join('');
}

What I’ve done here is set a variable myID = twitters[i].id_str; which returns the unique ID of the tweet.

I’ve then used this to set the tweet_id parameters in the Web Intent links, which I have stored in the linksHTML variable.

Finally I’ve output the Web Intent links, with their newly found tweet IDs, to a placeholder <div id="tweet-links"></div>

And hooray! It works! … Almost.

The Problem

The problem was discovered when I retweeted someone else’s tweet, and then refreshed our homepage. The tweet and its buttons disappeared.

The tweet and buttons disappeared

Some more time on Google, and I discovered that the json feed I’m using as per Kristarella’s method, does not support retweets. So if the latest tweet is a retweet, nothing will be displayed. Rubbish!

Back to the Drawing Board

I found a promising looking post on maraboustork.co.uk, which demonstrated how to use Twitter’s atom feed instead, which supports retweets, and then convert that into a json object for output. They even have a WordPress plugin for it!

I spent some time implementing this method only to find that when you use the atom feed, the tweet ID is not available, so this method would not be compatible with the Web Intent buttons after all.

Help Wanted

So I switched back to the original json method, and that’s where I am right now. The integration is working at the moment, because our last tweet was not a retweet. But as soon as we post a retweet, the latest tweet will disappear, leaving only the username link (which is hardcoded).

I can live with that for now, but it’s not ideal, so I’m appealing to our readers to help me out on this one. As I said I’m not a developer, so I don’t know if the code changes I made above are the right way, or even a particularly good way to go about this.

If you can help me out, you will receive much praise and kudos from me, and your solution will be published here forever more to help out anyone else in the same boat (I have already come across quite a few).

Thanks in advance!

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U.S. President Barack Obama will be holding the first Twitter Town Hall, where he will answer questions about the economy and jobs via Twitter, Wednesday at 2 p.m. ET.

Mashable wants to help your voice be heard. We’re going to send @BarackObama a question from our @Mashable account, and we want you to have a say in what we ask. Vote on which tech-related tweet we should submit:

What should @mashable ask President Obama during Wednesday’s Twitter town hall?online surveys

Be a part of the Mashable Community voice. What question do you think Barack Obama should answer about tech and the economy? Let us know in the poll, or vote on our Facebook page.

If you have an alternate idea, let us know in the comments. Every suggestion will be taken into account.

More About: barack obama, community, obama, Town Hall

For more Social Media coverage:

• Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Social Media channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

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The latest stable version of WordPress, 3.1, was first released on 23 February 2011.

Now, less than 5 months later, the blogging software has been downloaded over 15 million times according to a tweet posted mere minutes ago (and the download counter).

Joomla just recently announced that its software has been downloaded 23 million times (note that this is the total number, not for any specific versions of the software solution).

For your information: WordPress 3.1 is what TechCrunch uses to power most of its sites.

The latest version of the popular blogging software product is actually WordPress 3.1.4, which is a maintenance and security update for all previous versions.

Just yesterday, a blog post about the next version, WordPress 3.2, was published, revealing that it will be released ‘very soon’ (release candidate here).

WordPress 3.2 will finally drop support for Internet Explorer 6.

Related: Automattic Hits 300 Million Unique Visitors, Roughly $10M In Revenue

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We’ve seen a fantastic response to the Freelance Mac App Bundle over the past week, and thousands of our readers have taken advantage of the awesome deal we put together. If you haven’t picked up your copy already, there isn’t long left! In 24 hours time, the doors will close and we’ll stop accepting any more orders.

Just as a quick reminder, for the next 24 hours, you can get your hands on all the following for the rock-bottom price of $49:

The Apps

We’re featuring eight awesome applications that can make your life easier, and more enjoyable, as a freelancer. These are:

• Billings – Powerful time billing and invoicing for anyone (Usually $39.99)
• TextExpander – Save time and keystrokes with frequently used “snippet” abbreviations (Usually $34.95)
• WriteRoom – The best distraction-free writing environment (Usually $24.99)
• Radium – The easiest way to listen to internet radio on Mac (Usually $24.99)
• Arq – Online backup built especially for the Mac (Usually $29)
• LittleSnapper – Build up your own versatile design scrapbook (Usually $29)
• 1Password – Have you ever forgotten a password? Never again (Usually $39.99)
• Alarms – Prioritise and track your daily tasks (Usually $16.80)

Marketplace Resources

In addition to the above apps, we’re also throwing in a few fantastic Envato marketplace items:

• Highlight WordPress Theme (Usually $35)
• Ultimate Client Manager (Usually $20)
• Translucent Business Card Template (Usually $6)
• Rockstar Freelancer eBook (Usually $29)

And a Free eBook!

Even if the bundle isn’t for you, anyone can grab a free copy of Smashing Magazine’s Successful Freelancing eBook, worth $9.95, just for sending out a tweet about the bundle! Head over to the bundle page to find out more, and grab your free eBook.

Don’t Miss Out! Grab the Bundle Today

This awesome offer will only be available for 24 hours, and we’d hate for you to miss out. After the timer hits zero, you’ll never see another offer of this magnitude again – don’t be kicking yourself when you realise the bundle is no longer available tomorrow!

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Originally posted at Crave

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The Prize

• 1 reader will get a full license for Fanurio time tracking and billing software for freelancers.

The Sponsor

The sponsor for this giveaway is Fanurio. Fanurio is a time tracking and billing software application, highly appreciated by freelancers for its intuitive interface, flexible timer and ability to produce detailed invoices.

Fanurio Features

• Full backup functions
• Control the timer from the iTunes-like mini view
• Organize projects using services and expenses
• Create partial invoices anytime during the project
• Export invoices to HTML or PDF to print them or to send them by e-mail
• Import contacts from Address Book and CSV files
• Runs on Mac OS X, Windows and Linux
• Cross-platform version that can be used from a USB stick

How can I participate ?

• Follow @fanurio and / or @crazyleaf on Twitter
• Tweet this article (using the floating Tweet to the left or using the Share box at the end of this article) and post a comment with the tweet.
• Comment on this article.

Important ! Post the comment as a guest (in order for us to have your email address so we can contact you if you win). To do that just type the comment and select “Post as” and then “Guest”.

Notes

• The Giveaway ends on July 3rd 00:00 CET. All comments submitted after that date won’t participate.
• The winners will be determined randomly using the random list generator at Random.org.
• Be sure to enter your email correctly and post as a guest (with full name and email address) so we can contact you after the giveaway has ended.
• Comment only once. Multiple comments with the same email address will not be considered.

Get the stock images and vectors you need for your designs on Stutterstock

Want to advertise here ? Contact us

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The Prize

• 1 reader will get a full license for Fanurio time tracking and billing software for freelancers.

The Sponsor

The sponsor for this giveaway is Fanurio. Fanurio is a time tracking and billing software application, highly appreciated by freelancers for its intuitive interface, flexible timer and ability to produce detailed invoices.

Fanurio Features

• Full backup functions
• Control the timer from the iTunes-like mini view
• Organize projects using services and expenses
• Create partial invoices anytime during the project
• Export invoices to HTML or PDF to print them or to send them by e-mail
• Import contacts from Address Book and CSV files
• Runs on Mac OS X, Windows and Linux
• Cross-platform version that can be used from a USB stick

How can I participate ?

• Follow @fanurio and / or @crazyleaf on Twitter
• Tweet this article (using the floating Tweet to the left or using the Share box at the end of this article) and post a comment with the tweet.
• Comment on this article.

Important ! Post the comment as a guest (in order for us to have your email address so we can contact you if you win). To do that just type the comment and select “Post as” and then “Guest”.

Notes

• The Giveaway ends on July 3rd 00:00 CET. All comments submitted after that date won’t participate.
• The winners will be determined randomly using the random list generator at Random.org.
• Be sure to enter your email correctly and post as a guest (with full name and email address) so we can contact you after the giveaway has ended.
• Comment only once. Multiple comments with the same email address will not be considered.

Get the stock images and vectors you need for your designs on Stutterstock

Want to advertise here ? Contact us

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In Living Color

Once I got looking through these photos I was shocked at the intense colors that are just everywhere we go. I think we become so used to it that we don’t even connect the world of digital design to the real world anymore. So check out the below examples that I grabbed a few dominant colours out of. All photos are available high res if you wish, just drop a comment in this post, or send me a tweet (@AndrewDertinger)

DISCLAIMER: I am in no way claiming to be a professional photographer, so please don’t be hatin’ in the comments. Photos snapped with Canon EOS Rebel T2i.

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In Living Color

Once I got looking through these photos I was shocked at the intense colors that are just everywhere we go. I think we become so used to it that we don’t even connect the world of digital design to the real world anymore. So check out the below examples that I grabbed a few dominant colours out of. All photos are available high res if you wish, just drop a comment in this post, or send me a tweet (@AndrewDertinger)

DISCLAIMER: I am in no way claiming to be a professional photographer, so please don’t be hatin’ in the comments. Photos snapped with Canon EOS Rebel T2i.

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This post is part of our daily series of posts showing the most inspiring images selected by some of the Abduzeedo’s writers and users. If you want to participate and share your graphic design inspiration, just send us, via email, the image with the link from where you found it, also use “Daily Inspiration” in the subject, and don’t forget to send your Abduzeedo username; or via Twitter sending to http://twitter.com/abduzeedo.

<!–break–>

If possible use the HTML code: <p class="imgC"><a href="Link to the page you found the image"><img src="Link to the Image" /></a></p>

Do you want to see all images from all Daily Inspirations? Check out http://daily.abduzeedo.com

Adam

alex tass

Best Bookmarks

B.Romain

CristianValverde

cuded

fantasyinspiration

Feature Me

Flyerfolio

HdK

Hysterical Minds sent

Joseph

Meng To

Reznor

ruedi

Also, send your suggestions via Twitter to http://twitter.com/abduzeedo using #abdz in the end of the tweet.

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What happened? WPMU DEV is offering a premium WordPress SEO plugin for download, which was also offered for download on WordPress.org in a lite version. This plugin had copied large chunks of code from my own WordPress SEO plugin. Not just a couple of lines, hundreds, probably even thousands of lines were used and all they changed was the namespace in most cases. They added some functionality, but not a whole lot.

The WPMU DEV author was 100% in his right to do so, had he retained my copyright notice. It’d still be bad form and annoying Free Rider behavior, but he’d not be breaking the law. He did however, not maintain my copyright nor properly state anywhere in the plugin that my code was the source for his. Last week, when I found out, I tweeted about it. I was pissed, as you can see from that tweet. Now, a week later, I’m still mad, but also very, very sad.

WPMU DEV does a disservice to its customers

Not only does this hurt me, this is actually a disservice to WPMU DEV’s paying customers. You see, the code they have in there is a few versions old and contains bugs that I already fixed in my plugin. On top of that, their customers probably wouldn’t like to hear that they’re paying (through their subscription) for something that they could’ve gotten for free somewhere else.

I got a response from them last week, stating “Cool, we’ll look at it, and completely rewrite any code that may be copied. Again that’s totally against our policy, so very sorry!”. They didn’t take the page down as they should have, instead, they are going to rewrite the code. That means new bugs and a focus on recreating something instead of creating something truly new and worth while. If I were a customer, I’d feel cheated.

All this combined made me take a next step. This morning, Incsub, the parent company of WPMU DEV, received this cease & desist letter from my lawyer. If they don’t take down the page, I will press charges and seek assistance from the Free Software Foundation and possibly the WordPress foundation. I also took action to have the plugin removed from WordPress.org. I sent an email explaining the situation, and the plugin was removed instantly, for which I thank the WordPress.org team.

As you all know, my plugin is free and I make no money from it directly, other than the occasional donation, so this truly hurt my feelings. I still hope WPMU DEV resolves this quickly and in a way both kind to me and good for their users. I’ll keep you up to date.

Note: while I appreciate your comments on this, do realize that this is now a legal case. If you say anything explicit about WPMU DEV or this particular case please back it up with proof, or I’ll have to remove your comment.

WPMU DEV infringes on my copyright is a post from Joost de Valk's Yoast – Tweaking Websites.

A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don’t want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!

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Admitting that he had “not been honest with myself, my family and my constituents,” Rep. Anthony Weiner has confessed at a press conference that he sent via Twitter the picture that has captivated Washington for the past week — and that he lied about his account being hacked.

“I regret not being honest about this,” Rep. Weiner said in a tearful statement. “I was embarrassed, I was humiliated, I was trying to protect my wife, I was trying to protect myself from shame.”

He claimed to have tweeted the picture a week last Friday to Seattle student Gennette Cordova “as a joke,” then “panicked” and removed the tweet from his Twitter account. But Cordova didn’t understand what joke that would be. “Am I the only one still confused?” she tweeted during the press conference.

“Once I realized I had posted it on Twitter I panicked, I took it down and said I’d been hacked,” Weiner explained. He did not elaborate on whether he intended to send the photo as a direct message

Weiner said he has had “cursory direct message contact” with Cordova, and that she was not one of the women he was having an online relationship with.

Weiner said he has had online relationships with six unnamed women on Facebook, and that his wife knew about them in general — but that she did not know until this morning that he had lied about his Twitter account being hacked. He said he had never met the women in person, and that the relationships had been entirely based on conversations on the Internet, conducted from his home computer rather than a government machine. All the women had received inappropriate photos from Weiner. He claimed not to know the ages of the women, but that they had all claimed they were adults.

“It’s always true in social media that you are relying on those characterizations, and I took them at their characterizations,” he said.

“This was me doing a dumb thing, doing it repeatedly and then lying about it,” Weiner said. His wife was not standing by his side, and he broke down several times when mentioning her.

However, Weiner insisted that he would not be resigning, and that he would be “fighting very hard” to persuade his constituents that he should be reelected in 2012.

More About: facebook, pictures, politics, twitter, Weiner

For more Social Media coverage:

• Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Social Media channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

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Admitting that he had “not been honest with myself, my family and my constituents,” Rep. Anthony Weiner has confessed at a press conference that he sent via Twitter the picture that has captivated Washington for the past week — and that he lied about his account being hacked.

“I regret not being honest about this,” Rep. Weiner said in a tearful statement. “I was embarrassed, I was humiliated, I was trying to protect my wife, I was trying to protect myself from shame.”

He claimed to have tweeted the picture a week last Friday to Seattle student Gennette Cordova “as a joke,” then “panicked” and removed the tweet. But Cordova didn’t understand what joke that would be. “Am I the only one still confused?” she tweeted during the press conference.

Weiner said he has had “cursory direct message contact” with Cordova, and that she was not one of the women he was having an online relationship with.

Weiner said he has had online relationships with six unnamed women, and that his wife knew about them in general — but that she did not know until this morning that he had lied about his Twitter account being hacked. He said he had never met the women in person, and that the relationships had been entirely based on conversations on the Internet. He claimed not to know the ages of the women, but that they had all claimed they were adults.

“It’s always true in social media that you are relying on those characterizations, and I took them at their characterizations,” he said.

“This was me doing a dumb thing, doing it repeatedly and then lying about it,” Weiner said. His wife was not standing by his side, and he broke down several times when mentioning her.

However, Weiner insisted that he would not be resigning, and that he would be “fighting very hard” to persuade his constituents that he should be reelected in 2012.

We’ll bring you more details as the press conference continues.

More About: pictures, politics, twitter, Weiner

For more Social Media coverage:

• Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Social Media channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

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For his offending tweet concerning BluInc Media, Fadzil was ordered to issue an apology via Twitter, but instead of just issuing one apology to make things right, the Malaysian court ordered Fadzil to essentially an out-of-court settlement was reached that had Fadzil write his apology on the chalkboard over and over again to the tune of 100 times. As of Friday’s post, Fadzil had reached 70 apologies, which said:

I’ve DEFAMED Blu Inc Media & Female Magazine. My tweets on their HR Policies are untrue. I retract those words & hereby apologize.

Simple enough, especially in this, the age of copy and paste commands. In order to differentiate his apologies, Fadzil numbered each tweet, and his 100th was posted on June 4, and it received over 100 retweets. Of course, by that time, Fadzil’s story had hit the mainstream wires, appearing in a number of noteworthy publications, which Fadzil documented at his blog. One of the sites in question, Jezebel.com, questions the effectiveness of such tweets, and wonders if the punishment damages Fadzil’s reputation, reducing his effectiveness as an activist:

In addition to being humiliating for Fadzil, it will probably be really annoying for his 4,200-plus followers, some of whom may well unfollow him to avoid being subjected to his half-hourly apologies. The penalty may also damage his credibility as an activist — how much will his readers trust him after he’s agreed to retract one of his statements 100 times? BluInc probably considered all of this when negotiating the settlement, and in a way the punishment they arrived at is pretty ingenious.

As for Fadzil seeing a reduction in followers because of his apologetic tweets, in fact, the opposite happened. While he may have lost a member or two of his core audience, Fadzil’s Twitter follower count actually increased to over 5500, an increase of over 1300 followers. Conversely, Fadzil’s follower increase undoubtedly was a result of his story hitting the wires, so there’s no telling how many of his additional followers actually care about the causes he supports.

Was this an effective manner of punishment or, considering the instantaneous nature of the Internet news cycle, will Fadzil’s story be soon forgotten, reducing its potential impact?

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What happened? WPMU DEV is offering a premium WordPress SEO plugin for download, which was also offered for download on WordPress.org in a lite version. This plugin had copied large chunks of code from my own WordPress SEO plugin. Not just a couple of lines, hundreds, probably even thousands of lines were used and all they changed was the namespace in most cases. They added some functionality, but not a whole lot.

The WPMU DEV author was 100% in his right to do so, had he retained my copyright notice. It’d still be bad form and annoying Free Rider behavior, but he’d not be breaking the law. He did however, not maintain my copyright nor properly state anywhere in the plugin that my code was the source for his. Last week, when I found out, I tweeted about it. I was pissed, as you can see from that tweet. Now, a week later, I’m still mad, but also very, very sad.

WPMU DEV does a disservice to its customers

Not only does this hurt me, this is actually a disservice to WPMU DEV’s paying customers. You see, the code they have in there is a few versions old and contains bugs that I already fixed in my plugin. On top of that, their customers probably wouldn’t like to hear that they’re paying (through their subscription) for something that they could’ve gotten for free somewhere else.

I got a response from them last week, stating “Cool, we’ll look at it, and completely rewrite any code that may be copied. Again that’s totally against our policy, so very sorry!”. They didn’t take the page down as they should have, instead, they are going to rewrite the code. That means new bugs and a focus on recreating something instead of creating something truly new and worth while. If I were a customer, I’d feel cheated.

All this combined made me take a next step. This morning, Incsub, the parent company of WPMU DEV, received this cease & desist letter from my lawyer. If they don’t take down the page, I will press charges and seek assistance from the Free Software Foundation and possibly the WordPress foundation. I also took action to have the plugin removed from WordPress.org. I sent an email explaining the situation, and the plugin was removed instantly, for which I thank the WordPress.org team.

As you all know, my plugin is free and I make no money from it directly, other than the occasional donation, so this truly hurt my feelings. I still hope WPMU DEV resolves this quickly and in a way both kind to me and good for their users. I’ll keep you up to date.

Note: while I appreciate your comments on this, do realize that this is now a legal case. If you say anything explicit about WPMU DEV or this particular case please back it up with proof, or I’ll have to remove your comment.

WPMU DEV infringes on my copyright is a post from Joost de Valk's Yoast – Tweaking Websites.

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