Recently I saw some people posting in their facebook status something along the lines of ‘re-post this before October 1st or Facebook will start charging you for your account’ it’s similar to others I’ve seen, which went along the lines of ‘re-post this before xx date or facebook will delete your account’ Both of these are daft and annoying, Facebook will never charge you for it’s service due to it’s business model and I think that an account would be deleted for inactivity a long time after you’d forgotten about it!
But just to help re-assure some people out there though, when I found this great article on the Mashable website I thought I would share it with you.
Article taken from Mashable website click here to read the original piece
The rumor that Facebookwill suddenly start charging users to access the site has become one of the social media era’s perennial chain letters.
While Facebook prominently advertises that its service is “free and always will be” on its homepage, it hasn’t stopped false rumors of a pay scheme from going viral on numerous occasions, most recently in conjunction with the major profile redesign that the site announced earlier this month.
Given the ubiquity of these rumors, we thought it was worth exploring their origin — and why we can guarantee Facebook will never charge you to use its service.
A Long History
On AIM, this took the form of IMs that needed to be shared with friends to avoid account deletion. On Friendster, rumors spread that the service was getting “too crowded” — and hence, they needed to determine which accounts were active and remove those that weren’t. On MySpace, word was that the service was getting so popular that the site would soon start charging members, and the only way to avoid the fees was to — you guessed it — forward the message to your friends.
Of course, none of these situations ever actually materialized, but it didn’t stop millions of users from passing the message along. Snopes has a detailed overview of these scams and others that have permeated the web over the years, going all the way back to the early days of Hotmail.
Facebook’s Business Model
More importantly, the company’s business model revolves around having as many users as possible. Remaining free is paramount to doing that. Facebook makes its money on highly targeted advertising that’s based on the plethora of data that its members share on the site. Restricting users’ ability to use the site would actually be detrimental to that model.
Facebook didn’t even introduce its ad platform until 2007 — because the company wanted to focus on adding users as quickly as possible.
That’s not to say social networking sites haven’t found success in charging members for some services. LinkedIn offers premium memberships with features such as enhanced search, direct messaging and seeing who has viewed your profile. Some dating sites, like Match.com and eHarmony charge users to message each other. Still, those services are appealing to a specific audience — Facebook’s goal is to connect everyone in the world. That can’t be done if you need a credit card to use the service.
Why It Will Never Charge You
Of course, Facebook is in business to make money. Beyond advertising, it has found ways to profit directly from its users through Facebook Credits, a form of currency that can be used on the site in social games like FarmVille and Mafia Wars.
In the future, we expect Facebook to find additional ways to monetize. The company could grow its credit system to become a rival to PayPal. We could also see Facebook extending its ad platform beyond the social network itself and onto the wider Web — in order to compete with Google’s AdSense.
There’s also potential in ecommerce. Although Facebook’s Deals product fell flat, an increasing number of merchants are starting to sell their wares directly on the social networking site. Might Facebook one day provide its own tools for powering such activity? It’s certainly possible.
The one thing that all of these models have in common is that they need a critical mass of users to be successful. Facebook has that, and would never risk losing it by charging people for basic access to the tools that make its multi-billion dollar business work.
Article taken from Mashable website click here to read the original piece
Sync your Twitter and LinkedIn status
Twitter’s spree of partnerships isn’t stopping any time soon. Late last month, Microsoft and Twitter struck a search deal to integrate Twitter within Bing. Mere hours later, Google struck back with its own search deal with Twitter.
The latest partnership sees Twitter and LinkedIn join forces, now you can tweet to LinkedIn or make your LinkedIn status updates tweet, either way the two social media sites will cross-post if desired.
To activate simple login to your LinkeIn account and either click the Twitter icon or access your ‘Account & Settings’ and provide your accounts with permission to cross-post!
Ever dreamt of Olympic Gold?
Ever dreamt of Olympic Gold? Maybe London 2012 will be your chance for gold, but for us mortals the International Olympic Committee have come up with a way for us to beat some of those who have won Gold in ‘The Best of Us Challenge’. Now you might not fancy your chances against Michael Phelps when it comes to swimming, or against Nadal in tennis, but hows your golf? Or even easier, how many tennis balls can you pick up and hold in 30 seconds.
There’s a wide range of challenges on-line and all you need to compete is a camcorder and the ability to compete, check out some of the challenges below or visit http://thebestofuschallenge.olympic.org/
It's the end of Cligs as we know it
Cligs URL shortener to shut down!
Unfortunately news has been released that another URL shortening service is due to come to an end. These services are becoming a major part of the Internet, especially with social media sites such as Twitter, but as the owner of Cligs testifies;
“Short URLs are a feature, and are definitely not a business on their own.”
A post on the Cligs Blog yesterday (October 4th, 2009) read;
“It is with great sadness that I have to shut down Cligs. On Sunday, 25 Oct 2009 at 12:00:00 GMT, the service will stop accepting new short URLs and will stop logging analytics.
The forwarding data will be retained so that forwarding can continue for at least till the end of November; after that, there are no guarantees as to how long the service will continue to forward the short URLs to their destinations.
Shortly (in a few days), I’ll be deploying a mechanism to export your data. It is almost done and just needs a bit more testing before I’m comfortable releasing it.”
(to read the full blog post click here)
So what does this mean for the users of Cligs? Another shortening URL service will soon receive a large number of subscribers and traffic, are they ready? Can anyone make a business out of shortening URL’s?
We’re not sure what the answers are, but one things for certain, we’re sad to see the end of Cligs and now have to choose another URL shortening service.
Using Twitter? – Get a free Jack Johnson Tune from the forthcoming album!
Jack Johnson, the author of many mellow melodies that’ll make you want to stay in bed all day, has figured out a really cool way to promote his new live album on Twitter. 
It’s really simple: just head on to twitter.jackjohnsonmusic.com. There’s a premade Twitter message there (you can add 24 more characters if you like) that promotes the new album, titled En Concert, and all you need to do is login into your Twitter account and send it. The download of the promised tune (it’s a 192 kbps MP3) will start automatically.
This is probably one of the simplest and best examples of how a musician can promote his work via Twitter, because everyone wins: you get a free song off the new album, and Jack Johnson will probably get a free Twitter trend and lots of good vibes.
We received ‘Flake (Live from San Francisco)’ – let us know what tune you get?
BUSTED: Burglar Arrested After Checking Facebook During Robbery
One of our favourite social media stories during the past week, Facebook use leads to arrest of burglar.
Facebook use leads to arrest
According to The Journal, a 19-year-old Pennsylvania man was arrested earlier this week on a charge of felony daytime robbery. How did police catch him? Simple: the burglar left a trail, by way of checking his Facebook account before leaving the house with two diamond rings and forgetting to log out.
Jonathan Parker remains in custody on $10,000 bail, facing a maximum 10 year prison sentence if convicted. A friend of the defendant said Parker had asked him for help breaking into the victim’s house the previous night, so things are not looking too good for the perp.
So what do you think: is this a case of Facebook addiction, or just a very dim burglar? We’re sure there’s a burglar out there somewhere getting ready to tweet his thieving antics and maybe put up a photo album of his swag on Flickr…isn’t social media great!
United Break Guitars – Song 2
Following the huge success of the original song ‘United Break Guitars’ which has amassed over 5 million views to date, the second song of the promised trilogy has been released.
It was reported in the the Times that within four days of the original song going online, the gathering thunderclouds of bad PR caused United Airlines’ stock price to suffer a mid-flight stall, and it plunged by 10 per cent, costing shareholders $180 million.
It is doubtful that the second song will have such an impact, but it will certainly be interesting to see if the story continues to have a following.
Top Twitter user unfollows 106,000 tweeters!
Twitter has seen an explosion of popularity recently and so old school ‘follow back’ rules where you always follow anyone who follows you no longer apply, in fact one user who had an auto follow rule in place recenlty decided to take action as he was missing out no many useful tweets and his DM (Direct Message) inbox was full of spam.
When Robert Scoble realised that he was following over 100,000 people, most of whom he didn’t know he decided to clense his list, it isn’t possible to bulk unfollow on Twitter but rather than manually accomplish the task Scoble had a script written for him.
He writes of the experience:
On Monday I unfollowed 106,000 people on Twitter. The reaction so far has been quite interesting. More than 7,000 accounts have unfollowed me back. They did that so fast that I assume they are just bots that are looking to increase their follower numbers. I knew I’d lose them, but that’s sort of why I did it. People who are following me just to get another count on their follower numbers are just plain, well, lame.
But it’s worse than that. When I unfollowed everyone all my spam just stopped. Dead. No more spam. Not since Monday. Twitter is actually quite enjoyable. Not a single DM spam. Not a single piece of spam has come through the home page.
It seems much like in real life, twitter users are beginning to realise that it’s quality, not quantity that counts.
How Twitter can Help your Business
As a commercial tool for businesses to promote their services and to maintain continued contact with the clients who are interested, Twitter is ideal.
Twitter Icons
In a matter of 140 characters it is possible to remind customers of your company and direct them to your website or listen to your customer’s feedback and suggestions, helping you to provide a better service. But possibly the best reason for using Twitter is the Word of Mouth element, if you have something useful to offer or say then your followers will hopefully pass on your message (re-tweet) and who knows how many twitter users it will ultimately reach.
An additional bonus of Twitter is the way in which it now connects to varying applications, we believe it has become a useful tool and an excellent way of generating inbound links, though your website may not benefit from the authority of the link it is another way to attract visitors to your website and generate a following. Through blogging a business can create in bound links using Twitter (without even logging into Twitter) which will help to further promote their website and generate more traffic, alternatively your Twitter account can be used to maintain your Facebook fan page keeping your fans up to date with all your latest tweets.
So aside from the above, how can Twitter help your business?
It is a resource to connect to people within your industry ensuring that you are kept up to date with all the latest news, stories, trends and issues. Think of it as your industries news headline feed. Using such directories as Twellow and Wefollow you can find people within your industry to follow as well as people in other industries who may be of interest to you.
It can be used as a research tool, if you have a question you can ask the Twitter community and often will receive an answer within minutes.
Think of it as a networking opportunity, if you meet people who are using Twitter you can follow each other and maintain regular contact without having to directly interact, instead of waiting for the next business breakfast in a months time to speak to that person you have been aware of what they are doing and can instantly DM(Direct Message) them on Twitter. Better still, you may meet someone on Twitter whose services you would benefit from or who would benefit from your services.
It is a free PR/Marketing channel, though Twitter is about two way communication with the Twitter community it is also an opportunity to instantly make your followers aware of any promotions you are currently running or any success the business has had, i.e. we’ve just landed a huge contract and are excited to be working with… or as a large coffee shop chain recently tweeted – ‘free pastry with every coffee to all who quote code xxx until 10am this morning’ only those using Twitter were aware of this promotion.
If you do decide to use twitter feel free to follow us http://twitter.com/itpie or if you would like any help with your Social Media marketing plan, please do not hesitate to contact us.
5 steps to starting on Twitter
Step 1 – Sign Up – choosing a username which represents you or your company. If your lucky enough to have a well known name that people will look for and will be followed you may choose to use your own name (i.e. twitter.com/yourname) but if your using Twitter for your company then I imagine your company name would be a better choice and you can always use your own name as the contact details within your account, that is, out Twitter account is itpie (twitter.com/itpie) but when viewing our profile the account is attributed to me Geraint Rhys Jones.
Twitter Icons
Step 2 – familiarise yourself with the twitter website and complete your details. The home screen will list the latest tweets from the people you follow, profile shows all your tweets and shows what others will see when they view your profile. Find people is where you can search for people and invite people depending on your e-mail client. Settings is where you complete all your personal details. You also want to familiarise yourself with the language used on Twitter, though this will come with time and experience, but a quick guide of the key elements are below.
RT = ReTweet – when you decide to re-tweet someones message
@username = indicates a message directly to a person which is open to be viewed by other Twitter users, this is different to a direct message (DM)
#Keyword = a hashtag (#) is often placed before a keyword that is a hot topic, the Twitter home page shows the top hashtags being tweeted about in the right hand column.
There are many more elements to Twitter and Twitter themselves have released a guide so it may be worth reading it when you get the time.
Step 3 – personalisation – a lot of users have a unique background advertising their business details and services or having a bio about the twitter account owner. The one major decision to make is the profile picture, some people use a personal image and some use a company logo, twitter and many social media users recommend using a personal image as social media is about personal communication, either way, please do add an image as the worst sight is the standard brown twitter image, once you’ve decided what is best for your business, jump into the Settings>Picture section and upload your image.
Next you want to add your personal background, this is easily done if you have the right tools, essentially you need to use a graphics programme and then create your background which should measure approximately 1600 pixels wide and 1200 pixels high, if you decide to have a column on the left then it is advised that this is 200 pixels wide to ensure nothing is lost when viewing it on a low resolution monitor. Then its into Settings>Design to upload your masterpiece.
Step 4 – following people, though when you setup Twitter you may have decided to follow some people and you may have found a number of people you want to follow already now is the time to join some twitter directories such as Twellow and WeFollow. These directories help to get you found and also are directories you can use to find people with similar interests or within an industry your interested in, there are more directories but these are two of the main directories.
Step 5 – Start using Twitter and then prepare to take it to the next level with a Twitter application. Once you start using twitter you can easily tweet from the twitter home page, but you will find that the feed doesn’t refresh automatically and once your following a lot of people you will begin to miss tweets. In order to monitor what is going on with our Twitter account we use TweetDeck and would highly recommend it. TweetDeck allows you to group the people your following and shows any direct messages sent or received, it also allows you to monitor whenever someone tweets at you. But the best thing about TweetDeck in our opinion is the notification, TweetDeck automatically refreshes and notifies you of the groups who have tweeted allowing you to decide if you want to browse the latest tweets or carry on working. The final part which goes hand in hand with TweetDeck is bit.ly, bit.ly is a url shortning website which is used by TweetDeck and allows you to shorten urls, saving on important characters when tweeting urls but more importantly, provides you with analytics so you can see how often your urls have been clicked. Register with bit.ly and if your using Firefox you can install the additional plug-in.
Once you have completed the above 5 steps you should already be tweeting and really enjoying being part of the Twitter community, we only hope you follow us for more helpful advice, tips and tricks. (http://twitter.com/itpie)