It might not be intuitive, but it’s true: you’re likely to get more followers if you write less on Twitter.

That’s not to say that one tweet a day will suffice, or that one a week is good enough – your market, goals and audience will determine the “sweet spot” of how many tweets per day is optimal, and you’ll discover this number over time using trial and error. But for those of you who want to get started growing your follower account today, here’s how to increase your Twitter follower count by writing less.
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If you’ve struggled to sell Twitter as a way to increase conversions and sales, you’re not alone. And in fact, this isn’t Twitter’s strongest suit: instead, Twitter offers businesses the subtle ability to engage your customers and really draw out their opinions of you, your brand and your products or services so you can become more nimble and meet their needs. Here are 5 ways to use Twitter for customer feedback.
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Privacy and security are two of the biggest concerns when social media, and rightly so. We’ve got five tips for you to improve your Twitter privacy, so you can tweet knowing that you’re secure.
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Out of nowhere, and at the peak of its powers, Twitter suddenly seems really, really amateur.

You’ve probably heard that TechCrunch is privy to hundreds of confidential Twitter documents. No doubt you’ve seen the reaction to that news. And maybe reading the first leak, a proposal for a Twitter TV show called Final Tweet (which may well be the dumbest idea for a name since Shafted), made you want to curl up and die. You’re not alone.

But this is all just hype. The real problems are on Twitter itself. The network seems to be developing another major issue pretty much every week. We still haven’t had a resolution to the replies fiasco. An enormous number of users are still not showing up on Twitter search. For the past week, many innocent people have been randomly suspended. We’re all following people we didn’t want to.

And Twitter isn’t doing anything about it – at least, nothing that’s working. Of course, a big part of this issue is their lousy PR – instead of focusing on being timely and prompt in letting users know that they’re aware of all of these issues, especially when they’re ongoing, they’d rather talk about tractors.

Create a successful business, and and growing pains are inevitable. But Twitter is now three years old. Calling it a ‘start-up’ is beginning to sound daft. The service has a level of coverage in the mainstream media that rivals anything else on the internet.

You don’t see this stuff happening on Facebook. And here’s the rub – even if you did, we wouldn’t be as aware of it because Facebook as a mass-communication medium sucks in comparison to Twitter. It’s difficult on Facebook to reach beyond your immediate network of friends; the ripple effect on Twitter makes this really easy. Theoretically, and thanks to the re-tweet mechanism, one update can reach every single person. Or about 23 million people, if you want to get picky.

Which of course for those of us who use the service is one of the best things about it. For Biz Stone, Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams, and their team, it’s also one of the worst.

Yesterday, Twitter made what it termed a “small settings update” to their system. Specifically, they’ve updated the Notices section in your Settings (on Twitter.com) so that you now no longer have any control over the replies you see on the network.

Previously, there were three settings available to users:

1. all @ replies
2. @ replies to the people I’m following
3. no @ replies

Option two is the default, and has been since December, 2007. Prior to this, there was only one setting available, and it was option one.

Now in your Notices page there are no settings available for this at all. Twitter has re-configured the system so all users can only see replies from people they are following.

(Note, with amusement, Twitter’s ‘help’ gaff on the right sidebar. The link also leads to a now outdated help page.)

This has, as you would imagine, caused a bit of a stink. But to whom? Who is affected, how will this change impact the Twitter stream, was Twitter right to act this way, and what, if anything, can be done?

A Little Bit Of Twistory

Way, way back in a time before dinosaurs, religion and bacon double-cheeseburgers – December 5, 2007, to be precise – Twitter made some changes to their reply settings. This was when we were first given the opportunity to control which replies you received on the network, as per the image I presented earlier.

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Pretty big news from Twitter.com broke yesterday – the interface on the Twitter.com home page has been tweaked, and you no longer have an @replies feed. Instead, it’s been replaced with mentions, which are accessed via clicking on @yourusername in the sidebar (i.e., @sheamus).

(click to enlarge)

This is a great step forward for Twitter. Previously the @replies inbox only listed tweets that began with an @ message to your username; now, any mention of your username (@sheamus, say) in a tweet will appear in this feed, irrespective of where it appears in the message. This includes re-tweets, #followfriday recommendations and so on.

I like this a lot because many people miss non-direct replies and this can only make the stream more engaging, certainly if you predominately use the Twitter.com home page as your main point of access.

However, it’s still not, in my opinion, as good as what can be done using a search pane on TweetDeck, and I’ll be doing (my very first) video tutorial about optimising TweetDeck in this way later this week, which will include tips on minimising that precious API drain.