I honestly think most of us are missing the point about Twitter. I know this sounds like a pretty basic concept to raise at this point, but I guess some of us still don’t understand how to use it or we simply don’t care.

What good is it to have a million followers if nobody is really getting your message… or caring about it.

Everybody seems to have their own policies on how to use Twitter, stuff like following automatically or not and following only if you have more followers than the people your following… I have seen backgrounds with a flashy graphic saying “Follow Me and I’ll Follow You”. What’s the point of that? You don’t even know me or care about what I have to say.

I’ve made a decision on using Twitter on an organic way, I’ll take it slow and try to build meaningful relationships. I don’t care if I have a million followers or not, or if I’m following more people than I have followers. And I won’t post stuff that only makes sense to my best friend. My strategy will be based on honest conversation and try to contribute with something useful.

Like Gary Vaynerchuck said in its CNN interview, there is no strategy, just follow your heart and it will be fine. Check it out, the whole interview is very refreshing.

It’s so easy to loose visibility of what’s important when you have traffic building money-making wannabes shooting everywhere and Multi-Level businesses recruiting 24/7. I know, just don’t follow them back you say, but it’s still a waste of time to go through that, maybe there is a meaningful connection to be made in the middle of that clutter. Did we forget about email spamming?

Let’s try to keep our common sense in place, you’re not getting rich doing this… Twitter is a beautiful tool but that’s it, whether you use it for branding or personal networking. Can you get clients? Yes, but not like this…

Any thoughts?

Website: Quub

The Idea

Quub is a Status Update that claims to be different from Twitter. According to their About Us page, Quub is not Micro-Blogging but a Micro-Presence platform.

I got to say that my first impression looking at the screen was that it looks a little complex for a simple status update, but it has a great design.

Quub is currently under limited beta testing but they’re still offering 5,000 more signups, so hurry up if you want to take it for a ride before the rest of the world does. I think it will be a big challenge with the momentum Twitter has developed in the last year, but I’m sure Quub is aware. If they don’t focus on trying to defeat the giant, they can probably be able to engage a more exclusive crowd.

Features

• Instead of having a 140 character update, you answer 3 questions: Where Are You? What Are You Doing? and Anything Else You Want To Add. What makes it a 3 step update.
• You can separate your followers in groups.
• It is real-time.
• Privacy.
• I don’t see any connections to other platforms yet.

quub, the quick explanation from quub.com on Vimeo.

Follow Them

• Website
• Blog
• Twitter

Go test it and share your thoughs…

There are three main reasons why some small businesses and entrepreneurs are still resisting the idea of a Social Media strategy as part of your marketing: They are so busy with their business they are not aware of it, they think it is too much work or they think Social Media is either for brands or staying connected with your ant on the other side of the planet.

But I’ll give you 5 reasons why you should start considering it as a possibility:

1. This is where you prospect/client lives. Companies never had a bigger opportunity to get to know their target.
2. Conventional media like TV, print or radio have the worst ROI in history, and that has nothing to do with our current economic situation.
3. It’s a great customer service tool that allows you to interact with the consumer, get their opinions and even solve their problems. When you solve a problem you gain the loyalty of that particular customer, but when you solve a problem in front of the whole world…
4. Social Media is Free. It is not a walk in the park, but it does not cost you money like conventional media does, where you pay for creativity, production, strategy, placement and airtime.
5. Did I mention it’s FREE?

In fact, this is a great time to start a business and leverage from all these tools. Don’t think social media is Facebook and Twitter. With social media you can network with other businesses, collaborate with a virtual team in projects, run your web PR campaign, manage your customer service, provide content, generate leads and so on… you can run your business with it.

Contact us to find out more about it.

It was going to happen sooner or later. Kids move faster than ever. Not too long ago my daugher was listening to the band 30 Seconds to Mars, next thing, we bump into Jared Leto (band singer/actor) at the supermarket and she ignores the guy, at first I thought she was distracted so I told her…

She looked at me as if I was saying something embarrasing and kept walking. Hold on, did I say something stupid? ’cause you were the one listening to the guy… all of a sudden it’s not cool! But it wasn’t only my daughter I guess, nobody else was even acknowledging him.

Same thing was going to happen to MySpace, one day it was cool to have one million flashing graphics flying all over your profile and now, kids won’t even admit they would spend the whole afternoon on it.

According to Compete.com, Facebook finally passed MySpace last December in unique visitors, but it’s even more impressive how it grew 195.06% in the last year compared to MySpace‘s decrease of -11.40%.

Technology is moving so fast these days that we’re actually witnessing how MySpace becomes a thing of the past just after it was both for $580 million 3 years ago by News Corp. At that time Rupert Murdoch was looking like a million dollars, today, everybody is wondering what is he going to do with that dinosaur.

We’re not even done talking about Facebook and we are already in love with Twitter, which is experiencing growth rates never seen before. We are already talking about how Twitter Search is taking Google by surprise. This is a company that was launched 2 years ago and has not made a penny yet.

Today we are looking at about 200 users for Facebook and 125 for MySpace, lets see what happens from here until the end of the year, which I think will be crucial for Rupert’s network.

Do you think is the simple and clean profiles? Or MySpace‘s technology is already too old? Do you think MySpace can reinvent itself? They just changed management…

Share your thoughts!

Check out the “Real Life Twitter” video by College Humor.

This video has become very popular in the last few weeks with more than 2,900 diggs and more 300 stumbles.

We are also including the “Flutter, the new Twitter” video, which has not been as popular with followers but it’s still funny.

Enjoy! And let us know what you think…

Real Life Twitter from College Humor

Flutter, The New Twitter

Website: Mixcloud

The Idea

Mixcloud will aim to become the YouTube of music by connecting content creators and listeners.

The platform will make it easy for users to search for music, mixes, podcasts and events within their favorite genre and they will be able to follow radio stations, djs and more.

On the other hand, it helps content creators promote their work in different formats and connect with their followers. The service is free both ways.

Features

• Content recommendations on your homepage.
• Follow people to get updates on their activity.
• They claim to have a powerful search integrated.
• Distribution to other platforms such as MySpace.

Follow Them

• Website
• Blog
• Twitter
• Facebook Page

We try to post all web startups and their ideas, share your thoughts with us on the comments.

Did you ever join a social network and never went back? Did you know there is probably outdated information about you or your business floating out there on the web?

Have you Google your name or your business lately and browsed through the results beyond the first page? How many people are sharing your name?

This Monday I received an email from Plaxo, a network I joined a few years ago. I completely forgot it existed and honestly, the only thing I remember about it is all the annoying emails reminding me to invite my friends to join (so we can all be annoyed…).

My first thought was that Plaxo must be trying to retain its last few users and it’s about to die. I got to admit it was a nice surprise to see how it has evolve into a streaming of all your activity coming from different social networks and it has a very nice and clean look.

I was also surprised to see old connections with people that I no longer engage with on a daily basis and people I’m still very much in contact with. The problem is that my profile is displaying outdated information about what I do as well as contacts, websites and so on. The question is, what if one of these old connections wanted to contact me for any reason? Networking takes time…

Here are 5 tips to secure your web identity:

1.    Find old accounts in social sites such as MySpace, Facebook, etc. and either update your profile or cancel the account if you don’t wish to keep it.
2.    If you think you might use some of the popular social sites to promote yourself or your business any time soon, create an account and secure your name.
3.    Create a Google Profile. It’s a new feature the search service offers to help build your identity. When the user searches your name, Google will display these profiles in the results.
4.    Store private information such as login/password in a secure place. You might think you don’t need them right now, but sooner or later you will be promoting your products/services online.
5.    Link your accounts. If you are currently using 2 or more social sites, see if you can link them together and share information.

If you haven’t started using the Internet as a way of marketing for your products or services, I can assure that you will sooner than you think. In the mean time, protect your identity.

Should you check out Plaxo? I think you should, just don’t annoy your friends with it… I kept it, it has been updated and it’s connected with all my other profiles.