The twittermania continues. “Every time a bell rings, a new twitter service gets it’s wings” – You may use this quote freely.

It’s almost impossible to keep track of all the new twitter services that are constantly launched. I’ve created a list of the most recent services.

The list goes from Tweetmarks and spamplets to Hiimok and HappyTwitDay.

The list is completely random and I’ll let you be the judge which of these services are the most useful.

1. Tweetmarks is a bookmarks tool for Twitter. Tweetmarks is a combination of bookmarking and twitter. It stores and tracks all the bookmarks you share on twitter. It can even synchronize with your del.icio.us account.
2. Share your funny or strange email spam on Spamlets. Simply start any tweet with #spamlet
   and it’ll show up on Spamlet.com.
3. Good-looking plain text-backchannels with TwitterFountain. TwitterFountain mash-up tweets and Flickr images based on tags into one animation. An example could be “Obama”. You will see all the tweets about Obama with matching images from Flickr in the background.
4. Send gifts to your twitter friends with hiimok. A tweet with a link to the gift will be sent to your friend. The gift could be an icon of a cooler filled with beer.
5. Queue up your tweets with Twitabit. If/when twitter is down, you can still tweet using Twitabit. Once twitter is back up, your tweets are delivered.
6. Twizon is mash-up between twitter and Amazon. This service is probably for shopaholics. Twizon lists all the tweets referencing Amazon deals.
7. Keep track your friends’ birthdays using HappyTwitDay. Using Summize.com HappyTwitday searches the twitterati for Happy Birthday-wishes. Follow HappyTwitDay on twitter to keep track.
8. Chirrup adds twitter chat to your blog’s comments. Using Javascript and PHP Chirrup pulls your twitter replies into your blog’s comment feed.

I bet a bunch of new twitter services has been launched while I was writing this post, but the above mentioned as some of the newest ones.

I didn’t say they where all useful, but let me know if I missed anyone.

What’s your favourite twitter service?

It’s no surprise that twitter can be a bit unstable from time to time. Twitter is probably the only service I know that’s almost more down than it’s up, and still have a loyal fan base and increase it’s number of users.

But what are the alternatives?

There are a lot of similar micro-blogging services out there, but can they replace twitter?

If you take a look at the various alternatives to twitter are they really an alternative?

Pownce:

About a year ago I wrote a post about Pownce and twitter. I compare the two services, but what really hit me was, that a year ago I wrote that twitter is unstable.

Twitter is still unstable and Pownce hasn’t replaced twitter. Why is that?

Pownce doesn’t have the simplicity of twitter. No one (except a few) has really bothered making any services for Pownce either and perhaps Pownce is just too feature-heavy?!

As always you are welcome to friend me on Pownce.

Plurk:

The brand new microblogging tool is called Plurk and everybody are talking/blogging about it. It’s probably the closest thing at the moment to twitter.

The timeline is very different and takes a little getting-used-to. However when some of your friends plurk, you can respond directly to their plurks by just clicking on it.

Plurk has a clever little extra thing that might be addicting to some users. It’s called Karma. It’s a score and the more you plurk, respong to plurks and add friends, the more Karma you get.

All the big blogger people are plurking. If they like it might breakthrough. Perhaps they should have waited and launched Plurk at some big blogger conference. That’s what twitter and Friendfeed did.

Add me as a friend on Plurk.

Some might also see Friendfeed as an alternative to twitter, but honestly I haven’t really jumped on the Friendfeed bandwagon yet.

I’m still not sure what to do with Friendfeed, but I would love to know, so if you have any advice or ideas, please don’t hesitate to share.

Which tool do you see as an alternative to twitter? Will you stick with twitter or move to another microblogging service?

According to experts the use of online advertising will increase by 23% in 2008. This is more than 40 billion dollars, but a riot might be around the corner.

Adsense has made Google one most valuable companies in the world and the ads on social networks such as Facebook help those companies make billions each year.

But could all this be in danger?

A new analysis from Deloitte indicates that more and more users are tired of online ads.

Are you one of them? Do you find online ads more annoying than ads in newspapers and television?

A good example is the latest protest against Facebook’s Beacon system. When Facebook users shopped online, Beacon told friends and businesses what they looked at or bought. The latest statistics show that users doesn’t spend as much time on Facebook and MySpace as they used to.

This tendency might turn Facebook and other social network’s ad-goldmine into a nightmare. There might be some light ahead though. According to the Media Summit 2008 in New York, there are other ways of targeting consumers online, but it requires courage.

As you probably already know blogs can circumvent this. If a blog recommends a product on Amazon, you usually don’t consider that advertising. If you let a blogger tell you what they think about a product, it will remove the suspicion towards a product.

But will companies entrust their brand to the users? Brands like Pepsi and Coca-Cola spent billions of dollars building a strong brand. Will they allow users to play with their brand and values on YouTube?

The companies will have to redefine their brand and if they want the users to be engaged, they have to let go of their perfect image. This transformation requires a lot of confidence and I’m certain some companies doesn’t want to risk it.

Sources: Media Summit 2008, Beacon protests, Deloitte Report

As some of you might know I became a father for the first time about 3½ month ago. Now I’ve played Ultima Online, Everquest 1+2 and seen MySpace.com grow. What will my son see? Will he spend his pocket money on things in a virtual world?

I think there’s a gold fever in the virtual world industry. Everybody wants to get a piece of the golden tweens (8-12 years) segment.

According to a report from eMarketer.com, 20 million American kids between 3 and 17 years will be a part of a virtual world by 2011. The big players on the market have already seen that and I guess that’s why Disney spent $350 million last August on the arctic ClubPenguin.com. For $5.95 your tween child can enjoy the life in his or her custom made igloo, if they aren’t bsy chatting with their friends on the ice.

Apparently $5.95 per month isn’t a problem for many parents. Every month the PenguinClub gets five million unique visits. Webkinz grew from less than 1 million to over 6 million last year.

Web 2.0 Money Maker

The headline from New York Times: “Pay Up, Kid, Or Your Igloo Melts” hasn’t scared Disney away from launching several virtual worlds the next year. Another example is Subeta.org where you adopt a pet and buy virtual goodies for them. For instance pay $20 for an angelic potion for your pet and it’ll grow faster. I have to agree with a lot of people on this. You pay for something that has no real value. You can’t touch a virtual toy.

The virtual worlds are growing faster than many other online sites. Mattel’s Barbie Doll has over 4 million users, StarDoll where you have your own celebrity paperdoll has over 13 million users and the very popular Finish Habbo Hotel with over 8 million unique visitors every month.

Just to give an impression of how many money there are involved in sites like Habbo, a 17-year old was arrested last year for stealing furniture worth over €4000 from a Habbo Hotel room.

At some point my son will get his own money and with his allowance he will be an independent consumer as well. Now which company or brand wouldn’t want to get a hold of him?

I guess he’ll be able to buy Big Macs from the virtual McDonalds and recieve free virtual JuicyFruit gum samples to ensure his loyalty.

Webkinz

If you are more into fuzzy pet animals than penguins then, the Canadian toy company Ganz is the expert. Their business model is a bit different than ClubPenguin.com. Each toy comes with a code that can be entered into the website to create an animated virtual version of it.

When you register your Webkinz you choose it’s name, sex and you get a bag of virtual money called “Kinzcash”. You are also supplied with a home for your pet. With the Kinzcash you can buy furniture and other goods for your home and when you get another Webkinz, it can move into that home or start a new one.

But the real genius lies in the fact that the account lapses after a year. If kids want to keep up the relationship with their virtual pets they have to buy another real toy (at around $12 each) – and there are 51 Webkinz and 29 Lil’Kinz toys to collect.

The most impressive thing is, Ganz has done this with no advertising at all. I’m no marketing expert, but combining real toys with a virtual toy is a great way to build a relationship.

Does a virtual toy have a value? Are you paying for your child’s virtual pet or similar? Would you pay for it? Is it okay to advertise in children’s virtual worlds?

Jook is both. According to Wikipedia Jook is a type of rice porridge eaten in many Asian countries, but thats not the Jook I’ll write about.

Jook was announced on the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas a couple of days ago and it caught my attention immediately. If the Jook can pull this off social networking is on the street, in the train or sub, in the park or on a plane. It’s everywhere.

So what is Jook?

Basically Jook is a standard for creating music player accessories that lets everyone, regardless of the mp3 music player being used, broadcast their songs to the people around them. An example could be: You are sitting on the train. The girl opposite of you is listening to songs or a podcast on her iPod. You broadcast your favourite song to her from your cell phone or Creative Zen. She falls in love with you, you marry her, win $1,000,000 and live happily ever after. Another example: You are outside playing live role play with four of your friends. You broadcast the theme song from Lord Of The Rings from your Zune to their Nokia N82, Creative Zen, iPod and Sony Ericsson W910i. You all feel very orcish and manage to slay the good guys.

Of course the examples are just imaginary, I mean who feels orcish?! Jook however is real and you can actually broadcast your songs or tune in to another Jook-user who is broadcasting.

So how does Jook work?

Jook has three modes settings as illustrated below.

“Me” mode: The white Jook button. You use your mp3-players normally and in privacy.

“Us” mode: The button pulses a red light to show other Jook-users that your are broadcasting. You can also see who is connected to your broadcast.

“U” mode: Green light indicates that you are looking for a broadcaster. In “U” mode you can connect to Jook users in “Us” mode.

Jook uses the power available in your headphones and broadcast in stereo.

So where does the social networking come in?

I’m glad you asked! Apart from the obvious solution that you could actually take the ear phones out of your ears and talk to each other about the music, Jook also comes with a social networking tool, where you can create your own profile, see who listened to your broadcast, rate other users music, share your playlist and so forth. The usual stuff known from MySpace, Facebook and last.fm. You can also share your personal information, cell phone number and webpage.

So will it work?

I hope it will. However for it to work mp3-player and cell phone manufacturers has to believe in the standard too. I guess Jook could manufacture their own ear buds and headphones, but it won’t be a huge success unless it comes bundled with a new iPod, Zen, Zune or Nokia phone. Its a great way to promote your band instead of the usual MySpace-way.

According to several gadget-site the look of the end-product may vary. I doubt Jook will have much success with the headphones and huge adapter connected to the player. It’s still a new product, so I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. Zune-users might also say that they already broadcast music, but that requires a Zune, so that won’t help any iPod or cell phone users.

I recently joined the 30 Day Challenge, where you learn to find a niche and make a few bucks from it. I’m no blogging expert, so I thought it couldn’t hurt to learn something new. Internet Marketing is the keyword in the challenge.

I went through all the Pre-season stuff, where they tell the newbies about StumbleUpon, delicious, twitter, facebok and Firefox and Firefox extensions, such as SEO for Firefox and Session Manager. Nothing new to learn there. Ed Dale, who made most of the introduction stuff, did teach me one thing, Bloglines. Until now I’ve been content with iGoogle, but now I see why Bloglines is so popular. I’ve decided to give Bloglines a shot and I’ll make it my homepage. Let’s see how it goes.

Anyway the challenge started August 1, so you can still make it. All you have to do is register and find a team on the forum. I’m still looking for a team, somehow I missed the email (curse the company and private spam filter) that it had started, so I just got in today.

Until now I’ve learned a few things already. I found out how to find a niche, or well at least find where I can find a niche, if you know what I mean. eBay has eBay Pulse, you can see the most searched words on eBay in the various categories, another tip is Technorati, Google Groups, Google Trends (formerly known as Zeitgeist) and Yahoo Answers, because obviously people want answers to the same questions.

I’ve analysed a couple of markets, and I think I’ve found a couple of niches, that could prove rather interesting. As you might know I’ve already started one blog – FIFA 2008 News, which has over 2000 visitors every day and its only a month old! That inspired me to start another blog, Football Manager 2008 News (yes, very original I know, wait until you see the theme on them).

The third lesson will be released within the next couple of hours, hopefully I’ll have a team by then.

The whole Blogline-thingy inspired me. I’d love to know which feed reader you use. Are you a Blogliner like I am (well at the moment) or are you an iGoogle or Google Reader kinda type? Perhaps you use a program instead? Or do you prefere Live bookmarks in Firefox or Flock? Or perhaps the feed option in Internet Explorer 7 combined with Windows Vista’s Sidebar? Or something entirely different?

Please share your experiences with feed readers, I’m apparently a bit behind there and I was just getting used to the cute graphics in the header on iGoogle.

Flock has released the latest beta version of their popular social browser.

The version is called 0.9 (0.8.99.1) and it is a great step forward compared to Flock 0.7. I’m really excited about the final version 1.0, which is to be released later this year (around fall).

I’ve become a even great Flockstar (fan) after the upgrade.

If you compare version 0.7 to 0.9 a lot has happened:

Some of the more interesting features:
My World

This is your home base. My World collects all the things you care about – your favorite sites, feeds and media streams.

Indicators
Flock lets you know when new media streams, feeds and search engines are available on the page you are visiting.

Notifications
Flock Icons glow when your favorited feeds, media or streams have new content posted.

You can see the comparison between Flock 0.7 and 0.9 here

Microsoft, the exclusive online media sponsor for Live Earth, has launched the MSN Live Earth Tree – an interactive online animation that lets people worldwide pledge their commitment to the environment and join the battle to halt climate change.

The Live Earth Tree can be found at http://www.liveearthtree.com/ and users are invited to visit the site to design their own unique leaf for the tree, and pledge to make small lifestyle changes to reduce their impact on the environment.

The tree will grow in size as people across the globe sign up to make their pledge and show their support for the causes underlying Live Earth, the concert series taking place across the globe to raise awareness of the current climate crisis.

The tree is a unique social networking site, as visitors can search the tree to find leaves created by family, friends and celebrities worldwide and regular updates on the number of pledgers – including who and where they are – will also be available.

The tree will be promoted across the MSN network, including Windows Live Messenger and the Live Earth Portal, and consumers can use the ‘send to a friend’ functionality to promote it via their Windows Live Messenger network.

The story of the developments of the tree will be told via blogs on Windows Live Spaces, MySpace, YouTube and other social network sites.

My wife and I already live very “green, we buy local and ecological food, use energy saving bulbs, have nothing on standby, no water is running, washing our clothes at low temperature when possible, recycle everything (metal, paper, plastic, glass, clothes), the toilets have two different “flush-settings” and a lot more.

You can my pledge is that I will use our car less. See my leaf here.

What do you do to help the Earth?

Inspired by Wendy’s “Can We Connect?” post, just a quick reminder.

About a month ago I created a page with all my social network profiles.

It would be great to connect to you, the readers, this way so feel free to add me as your friend, contact, homie, dawg, co-worker or love…ehmm forget the last one.

Twitter
Facebook
MySpace
Digg
WAYN
Del.icio.us
Technorati
MyBlogLog
StumbleUpon
LinkedIn
Streetadvisor
Flickr
Plazes
Blogcatalog
Wallop