If you’re crazy about Warcraft and can’t get enough of Twitter. Well now you can do both simultaneous.

As if each activity by itself wasn’t a time waster now you’ll never get anything done – except planning that next raid.

I think this is cool and am actually quite amazed that this is the first app like this with all the other apps out there for twitter, as well as the huge world of warcraft addon development craze.

Checkout a Video on the World of Warcraft Twitter Addon:

{via Mashable}

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I’m certain that I’m not the first person to complain that there’s just not enough time in the day to get things done. In fact I know of at least one other blogger who tipped me off on the polyphasic sleep cycle which he got from another blog on How to Hack Your Brain. This advanced sleep re-patterning is called: the “EveryMan“.

Everyman is a modified Sleep-Wake cycle that includes one 2-4 hour nap, and two-four mini naps. The Everyman boasts that a person can get away with 2.8 – 5 hours max sleep per day.

I’m suggesting a Group Experiment. Join if you want. Just Blog about your Experiences and Share you experiences on Twitter using the hashtag: #SLEEP09 .

Considerations:

1. Timing is Critical – you absolutely must take your core nap, and mini-naps at the same time EVERY day.

2. Beware that this will take a week or so to get used to.

3. There are social issues with this sleep cycle, will it interrupt your family, or work life?

Pick Your Poison:

1. The Everyman 4 Nap – 2.8 Total Hours of Sleep.
   1. Requires 1.5 hours of Core Sleep; and 4x-5x 20 minute Naps.
2. The Everyman 3 Nap – 4 Total Hours of Sleep.
   1. Requires 3 hours of Core Sleep; and 3x 20 minute Naps.
3. The Everyman 2 Nap – 5.2 Hours of Sleep.
   1. Requires 4.5 hours of Core Sleep; and 2x 20 minute Naps.
4. The Siesta – 6.3 Hours of Sleep.
   1. Requires 6 hours of Core Sleep; and 1x 20 minute Naps.
5. Or my 3.5 Hour Mashup.
   1. Requires 2 Hours of Core Sleep; and 3x 30 minute naps.

Please note my version has not been tested. I am testing it personally, and would appreciate anyone else’s feedback on it as well.

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I’m going to make this short. Many of us want or have wanted to reach out and become the social media superstar that we know is hiding inside. It’s scary though to become a consultant without being sure that you have the mad-skills needed to succeed as a consultant.

If you’re unsure if you know enough to offer true value – why not offer your services for free, or pay what you want, in exchange for a testimonial.

Say for example you know someone who owns a small business in your area, you meet with them, find out what their goals are for social media, and you put together a plan, teach them how to manage the network that you setup for them, get them started, then ask for a testimonial. If they like your work, they may give you a nice tip, if not -the testimonial will help you gain more clients in the future.

Working for multiple companies in essence interning will help you gain hands on experience that you couldn’t get just by using social media to promote your own blog, or online presence.

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Everyone is all a flutter today about Twitter’s value to the Iranians who are revolting against the latest Iranian Election.

I’ve been excited about twitter for quite awhile, even enough to program my own twitter app: TwtFollow.

I’ve also noticed twitter being used for many social changes, but think about it. This one service could via extending freedom of speech to thousands who otherwise would not have the methods of mass communication, may enact true and lasting changes in countries like Iran, where media blackouts are weekly events. Where they control every iota of information that their people ingest.

Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, may usher in a new era of world peace…or at least help expand communications between those who fight oppression and tyrrany. Who knows when the machines attack, we might use twitter to fight back. (Can you tell I just saw Terminator: Salvation?).

I believe that the more we learn to communicate with each other, the less control those in power will have over us in the future. I’m an optimist though.

What do you think of Twitter’s usage in the Iranian Protests?

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TwtFollow.com is a twitter app that adds a multilevel approach to building followers on twitter.

TwtFollow.com allows you to refer people down 10 levels. Each person you refer then refer people who follow their referrer, and their referrer’s referrers up ten levels.

But that’s not where twtFollow ends. TwtFollow is working hard to bring more follow tools, and hopes to one day be the twitter tool of choice to manage all aspects of following.

Why it could be a killer tool:

If you simply tweet out a couple messages and get 5 people to join twtFollow you can receive thousands of new followers in weeks.

Here’s an example:

You Refer 5 People.

• You refer 5 people.
• Those 5 refer 5 each for 25 new followers.
• Those 25 refer 5 each for 125 new followers.
• Those 125 refer 5 each for 625 new followers.
• Those 625 refer 5 each for 3,125 new followers.
• Those 3,125 refer 5 each for 15,625 new followers.
• Those 15,625 refer 5 each for 78,125 new followers.
• Those 78,125 refer 5 each for 390,625 new followers.
• Those 390,625 refer 5 each for 1,953,125 new followers.
• Those 1,953,125 refer 5 each for 9,765,625 new followers.

Grand Total: 12,207,025 new followers!

Is this likely? Hell No! – but if you only get 1% of that… you would have 122,000 followers!

I highly recommend trying it out – it’s free so you have nothing to lose.

In fact you might get referral commission one day if they add a premium social media features.

It has been a few weeks since my last confession…errr blog post. Don’t know where that came from, I’m not even Catholic.

I have been silent because I have been busy working on my first major php development project. It’s not huge but for me it was quite an undertaking and I must say I’m quite happy with what I’ve accomplished so far.

I’m sure the code is probably a little sloppy but hey – it works!

What it does:

It is a multi-level twitter follow program. You basically follow 10 people, share your link, and when others join they share their link. A person could easily get a couple thousand extra twitter followers if only 3-4 people join.

The program also features detailed stats, and is currently in Beta. More follow management, and twitter features will be launched later on, and any premium services that we launch will earn each person who joins – affiliate commissions down 10 levels.

Please give it a try and let me know what you think!

Here’s a ScreenShot:

Deltina Hay is a social media consultant and principle owner for the Independent press, Dalton Publishing. Her online presence includes social media sites like PlumbSocial, Social Media Power, and her publishing company Dalton Publishing.

Deltina Hay has presented for many social media and web 2.0 events. She’s also a regular contributor of social media news articles to many online news sites. She has a book on Amazon that you can check out:

A Step-by-Step Guide to Social Media Marketing and Web 2.0 Optimization

Now for the Meat and Potatoes:

I originally emailed Deltina with a whole list of Social Media questions that I had. As someone who knows a lot about social media, blogging, and internet marketing I was questioning if I had the skillset to consult companies on their social media optimization. I wanted to get to the heart of what it takes to be a successful social media consultant so that if I don’t have the skillset, I can cultivate the skills necessary to compete.

I’m very greatful to Deltina for her answers to these questions as they have been very insightful. I ask all those who enjoy this article to stumble, digg, retweet it, and share it as much as possible – and I also recommend that you visit Deltina’s social circles and get to know her better, if you don’t already follow her.

What exactly is a Social Media Consultant, and why would a business need one?

A social media consultant is a professional who knows how the Internet is evolving, and can help a company evolve with it by implementing, optimizing, and recommending the tools of Web 2.0 that are the best fit for that company.

What education is required?

This is a tricky question, since social media means different things to different types of businesses. Some companies may use the Social Web more for PR, others for marketing, others for SEO. Still others may need social applications, or want to build their entire presence

A well-rounded education then, may require marketing, PR, and SEO basics, as well as familiarity with HTML, PHP, CSS, and Web design.

What is the day to day grind for a Social Media consultant?

Setting up and keeping clients’ accounts up to date. Researching new tools and new features within existing tools. Building CMS sites and themes, coding PHP applications, creating HTML, PHP, or CSS skins for social tools. Reputation management, blog posting, blog commenting, etc.

How did you get started in social media?

As a veteran Web developer, writer, business owner, and book publisher, it was a natural transition.

What should a new social media consultant look to make in the first year?

This depends on their background. If they have the skills to do basic CSS and PHP – building themes and such, they can make $100k out of the gate. But if they need to hire most of the skilled labor out, they are more likely looking at around $30k to $40k.

What are the top three tips you’d give a new social media consultant?

• Educate yourself before heading out of the gate – don’t just stick up a shingle.
• Do not call yourself and Internet marketer, and don’t spam!
• Build your own optimized Social Web foundation first.

What are the most important things to get recurring social media traffic to a site?

Offer quality, original, relevant content. Write content that will help people, not fluff full of links to other people’s posts. Establish yourself as an expert, and they will come to you…

How do you manage to get social without seeming like a spammer?

Transparency and authenticity. Social media is not a “take one pill” solution. Like any good campaign, it takes time to build a reputation. If you go out there inundating people with promotions, events, and branding, then you will get tagged as a spammer. However, if you take the time to build a solid and consistent presence, respecting submission guidelines and only posting items of interest, then you will be well received. Just because you have a business message does not mean you are spamming – just be transparent about it.

How important is video & audio to your success in social media? Is it necessary or can a person be as successful sticking to print?

My main focus has been print, but I still believe in a well-rounded Social Web presence. If it makes sense to produce podcasts, I encourage it. And even if a company has no video of their own, they can still build and embed video galleries of other’s work.

Who in the industry inspires you the most?

Innovative people who get things done and give things back, like Matt Mullenweg, J.D Lasica, Todd Defren, and Seth Godin.

How do you sell social media to non-believers who think it’s just about tweeting info about your latest bowel movement?

The first step is that I never tweet about my own bowel movements. People come to me because they have already been sold on the Social Web. I never do hard selling – they get it or they don’t. I do tell them, though, that the Internet has evolved, and if they do not evolve along with it, Darwin’s theories will do the rest for them…

Does being a Social Media Expert also entail SEO practices?

Yes. SEO as we know it is not going away yet. If you call yourself a Social Media expert, you should already be an SEO expert.

What social sites do you use the most often for your consulting business?

Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, Digg, LinkedIn, and Squidoo.

What is the most important thing for a new social media consultant to learn?

That you can’t use old methods on the new tools. Forget what you know about old-school marketing, and learn how to be authentic and transparent. Also, do your homework. Do not represent yourself as something you are not.

Will social media be around in 5 years – and will it still be called social media?

Yes, it will be around in 5 years, and from here on out. It may not be called anything, however, other than “the Internet.”

A company is wanting to tap into social media – what are the steps you take to make them more social?

1. First, an RSS feed (usually in the form of a blog) – that is the backbone of their Social Web presence.
2. From there, an optimized presence in media communities like Flickr and YouTube.
3. Then, I may recommend a couple social networking sites – not too many.
4. Then, on to social bookmarking and crowd-sourcing, social calendars, social pages – specifically what makes the most sense for their business.
5. Then, on to integrating all of them.
6. The last thing I do is train them to do the upkeep on their own – I do not believe that anyone need be dependent on developers or consultants to maintain a healthy presence if they do not choose to be.

What defines success on the social web?

Measuring success in the Social Web is like measuring the success of any marketing or Web venture. You first must define your goals and begin with a base line. Only then can you measure what it was you set out to accomplish.

What Books do you recommend for those wanting to become Social Media Consultants?

I would recommend reading Chris Grodin’s book and my own, A Survival Guide to Social Media and Web 2.0 Optimization.

What should a business look for in a Social Media Consultant?

Look for someone with an already optimized presence themselves. Do not choose someone who wants to put you everywhere out there – look for a consultant who wants to understand your business needs and limitations. Ask to see their portfolio or case studies. Social media should not be a hard-sell. If someone is pushing you into something, they are probably not a good fit for you. Also, most of the social tools out there are free, so be clear on what you are being charged for.

Copyright 2009 by Deltina Hay.
A Survival Guide to Social Media and Web 2.0 Optimization

www.socialmediapower.com, www.plumbsocial.com, www.daltonpublishing.com

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This is the simplest tip I’ll ever write about – it’s also the hardest.

How can you guarantee more traffic?

WRITE MORE POSTS!

Did I say it loud enough for you? Fact: There are a million different things you can do to try and optimize your blog, but if you don’t have the traffic it doesn’t matter. Each blog post I write will bring in at least 200-400 unique hits initially from google and twitter.

That’s a fact. If I write 5 posts a day I’ll get at least 1000-2000 unique hits.

Your theme doesn’t matter, the number of plugins you install don’t matter, the design doesn’t matter (much…) It’s how much quality content you can spit out.

I’ve managed to write around 300 posts in 1 year, I feel disappointed in myself. I took a few months off to work on other projects. My goal for the 3rd year is to write 3 posts per day 5 days a week, or 5 Posts for 3 days a week, or 60+ Posts a month.

Setting goals is important if you’re going to be successful.

What are your posting goals for your blog?

Between Ashton Kutcher, CNN, Larry King, and Oprah the world is now buzzing over Twitter. I personally love twitter, and have used it to build up a number of web properties. (BTW Follow me!)

I love how easy it is to follow real-time trends. I love how fast a person can get questions answered. Sure you could use one of the answer sites like yahoo answers, or anzwers, or ask a ChaCha.com guide, but twitter is almost automatic.

There are many different things you can do on Twitter including:

• Looking for a Job
• Quitting a Job
• Posting Jobs
• Networking
• Getting Engaged
• Dumping People
• Being Dumped
• Getting Business Ideas
• Finding Funding for a Business
• Sharing websites
• Following every minute action a Celebrity takes
• Following the Swine Flu epidemic.
• Arguing Politics
• Social Branding
• Getting blog traffic by Twitter
• Getting Programming Advice via Twitter
• Get out of an Egyptian Prison (it really happened to a Berkley Student)
• Get restaurant recommendations
• etc…

So if there are so many wonderful things that you can do with Twitter… Why are so many people trying it, then leaving it?

According to Nielsen:

Compare it to the two heavily-touted behemoths of social networking when they were just starting out…we found that even when Facebook and MySpace were emerging networks like Twitter is now, their retention rates were twice as high. When they went through their explosive growth phases, that retention only went up, and both sit at nearly 70 percent today.

Of course Mashable did mention how Nielson only tracks return visits to twitter, and many users don’t use Twitter.com to tweet.

Due to twitter’s api there’s hundreds of different ways to use twitter without ever even visiting twitter.com – e.g. TweetDeck…

Does Nielsen’s Twitter statistics add up? Or do the numbers lie? Do more people ’stick’ than meets the eye?

IMHO I believe that the numbers are way off, and I think there might be more like a 10-15% drop rate. I know a lot of people who Tweet via 3rd party apps.

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I have an idea for a new business network revolving around social media, application development, and blogging.

My idea is to get some application developers, wordpress theme developers, bloggers. Start a site dedicated to coming up with new ideas for applications. Visitors will be able to submit their ideas for applications. Each idea will be submitted under the terms that we will not use any idea without compensating the person submitting an idea.

The idea came to me because there have been many times when I’ve thought of brilliant ideas for an application, or site but lacked the php knowledge to get it off the floor.

What do you think, will this idea Fly, or will it die?

Recap: Entrepreneur has idea, submits it to us, and we build the software application and bring the entrepreneur  on as a consulting member for that project.  People can also submit ideas for wordpress plugins, and themes which we might do for free or profit. All free stuff will basically be used for branding of the main service.

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You’re presumably reading this blog because you want to make money as a blogger.

Whether you want to make a lot or a little is irrelevant. In the world of blogging it is very possible for the average Joe blow blogger to make at least $1400 a month. The only major secret is constant effort.

To be successful and make fat cash – you absolutely must post blog posts frequently!

With twitter, and the 100+ blogs in my feed reader, I myself sometimes find distractions are a dime a dozen. How often do you find yourself doing something non-important (theme-tweaking, reading, games, twittering, etc..), in place of the important task of writing?

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Notorious Punk’d Actor Ashton Kutcher has become aware that he has over 850,000 followers on twitter.

He is also aware that CNN(the #1 twitterer), has over 900,000 followers. He has issued a challenge to Ted Turner ceo of CNN, as well as the rest of the Twitter Community. If he gets to 1 Million Twitter followers before CNN he will punk Ted Turner – hopefully on video for the whole world to see.

I originally got scoop of this over at TechCrunch, and you can read his Twitter Update as well. It’s pretty clear that Ashton Kutcher is seeking to be the first Twitter user to breach the 1 million followers mark.

Ashton may need a little more help, which is why I suggest that we all propel him towards that goal – I for one would love to see CNN’s ceo Punk’d. There are currently 10 million Twitter users, if we all work together we should surely be able to get Ashton to 1 million twitter followers by the end of the week!

Here is what I’m suggesting:

1. First follow Ashton Kutcher @aplusk.

2. Send the following tweet:

“RT @patrickcurl Help Ashton Punk CNN’s CEO. Read more here: Pls RT!” Click here to Retweet without Cutting and Pasting.

3. Lastly you can also follow me on Twitter and I will return the favor. @patrickcurl

Kutcher has also clarified that he is planning on doing the time-trusted classic: The ding dong ditch. Ashton has stated that a proper ‘ding dong ditch‘ will include a million ______(Fill in the blank) on the door step.

P.S. Also feel free to share this post via digg, stumbleupon, buzz, blogging, etc….

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Twitzap is a brand spankin’ new web-based Twitter client, focusing on 3 major features.

1. Super Fast Tweets. Twitzap lets you tweet very fast (they claim under 800ms) even when Twitter is down. If Twitter is down, Twitzap will still relay your message when it becomes available again.

2. Search Channels. You can add easy searches to the sidebar to refer to at a later time.

3. Realtime Updates. Finally, and best of all – Twitzap is updated automatically in real time. You can set the speed with the bar in the upper left corner. Move the bar all the way to the left, and your updates will be paused, move it to the right and they will speed along at a fast pace.

This is my favorite feature, as I hate how Twitter’s page has to be updated manually. I may actually never actually go to the Twitter home page anymore, now that I have Twitzap.

While Twitzap is still in beta (like every other great app out there), the twitter app offers a decent amount of features, and is definitely worth checking out. Click here to try TwitZap Now!

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Apps are great, but sometimes we can get overloaded by them. Whether they’re facebook apps, iphone apps, wordpress plugins, or myspace apps, sometimes more is not better.

In an effort to bring attention to only the best of the best apps, myspace has announced that they are rolling out a new “Editor’s Pick” category in its application directory, starting next week.

This new category will allow members to quickly sift through the best apps for the platform. Myspace has previously shown off a handful of featured apps, but they were rotated, and did not offer a mechanism for easy browsing.

Now users will be able to access a complete list of the featured apps. Applications on the list will be determined by a team of MySpace employees who work with the day to day application operations. (Myspace affirms that apps will be chosen by merit, and NOT paid sponsorships, of course that is yet to be seen.)

This is a great step in combatting the clutter of spammy apps plagueing sites like myspace and facebook.

Facebook has mentioned a similar program last summer, called a ‘Verified Apps’ program. It is yet to be launched though. Facebook’s program seems to be more structured, and probably more comprehensive than Myspace’s but at least this is a good start. [Via TechCrunch]

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This is my input on day two of  Problogger’s 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Challenge. Day 2 Darren wrote about the benefits of writing list posts.

I have often stated how lists are a great format for pulling content together in a neat, and precise method that will grab the attention of your visitors.

Darren of course being the master blogger has written a good summary on the use of lists.

You can follow my homework assignment here:  “7 Tools, Scripts, or Apps to Follow and Unfollow on Twitter. ”

Read what Darren Rowse has to say about Writing Lists.

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