What Twitterers Are Thankful For

Do you want to tell the world what you're thankful for? Will the Twitterverse suffice? How about you followers and the few people that go to TurkeyTwitter? What is TurkeyTwitter you ask? It is a site that was launched yesterday to give those celebrating Thanksgiving a place to see the collective thanks of Twitter users. Sure, you could simply use Twitter Search, and search "thanksgiving," but TurkeyTwitter provides updates and stats about the things people are thankful for. It gathers tweets based on the #turkeytwitter and #thanksgiving hashtag. In actuality, it's going to give you a lot more than just what people are thankful for. If anyone tweets anything remotely related to the holiday and includes a simple #thanksgiving hashtag, it will appear, but it is what it is. It's Thanksgiving, and someone took the time to make a Twitter-based Thanksgiving site, so we're talking about it. Case closed. If you follow @turkeystats on Twitter, you can see the top ten thankful items tweeted out. The creators note that the site is just a quick experiment. They even offer advanced apologies if there's something that doesn't go well. Don't worry guys, I think we'll all sleep tonight if we experience some TurkeyTwitter hiccups. If you have some time to kill, if you don't like football, or you just want to know what strangers are thankful for, check out TurkeyTweets.

Twitter “Game” Discussed, Dismissed At BlogWorld

Regardless of what some individuals and marketers seem to think, the point of Twitter is not to amass as many followers as possible.  Experts discussed this and other no-nos - along with what you should do - at BlogWorld during a session titled "The Twitter Game - How To 'Play' Social Networking And Why It's A Bad Idea."

(Coverage of the BlogWorld conference continues at WebProNews Videos.  Keep an eye on WebProNews for more notes and videos from the event this week.)

This was a question and answer session, so apologies go out in advance if the tips seem a little disjointed.  The speakers weren't changing subjects at random.  Here's what Jesse Stay, the CEO of SocialToo.com and man behind StayNAlive.com had to say, however.

Stay stressed that Twitter is a broadcasting platform, with the whole idea of it being to initiate conversations.  Use it to build relationships with people, and use other tools as you see fit, too.  (Stay suggested beginning things on Twitter and then taking them to Facebook.)

Micah Baldwin, the CEO of Take Comics and creator of #followfriday, pointed out that Twitter use can put a human face on a large corporation.  He also said it's the "who" that matters more than sheer numbers - "followers are the megaphone," but who you follow is the voice.  And on that note, he added that the worst thing Twitter's done is introduce value to followers, and that auto-following is bad.

Reem Abeidoh, Outrider North America's social media strategist, supported and put a new twist on some of these points, saying that at the end of the day, no one's addicted to the platform.  It's the people who matter, instead.

Finally, Lucretia Pruitt, the director of social media at Collective Bias and blogger behind GeekMommy.net, said that following and engagement aren't tied as directly as people think.  She believes that social media is a tailored industry, as well, rather than one-size-fits-all, and that social media use should be specific to every situation.

WebProNews Video reporter Abby Johnson contributed to this report.