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Its #ff (Follow Friday) tomorrow in the world of Twitter. How many of you will get it wrong!?

So you have Twitter account ... tick. You write some interesting stuff... tick. You want more followers... tick. You have lots of followers... umm, no.

Many people want more followers on Twitter to either sell more stuff (potentially) or just because it makes them feel good about themselves. There are many ways to do this [link to social media examiner] but one that has become very popular is Follow Friday or in it hash tag form: #ff.

The idea is you tweet about someone including their twitter name and then give a description of why you think people should follow them. They do it in return and everyone gets more followers...theoretically. The Good:

In reality what happens is people add as many people of their followers as possible within the 140 character limit!

...and the bad:

The result is that it becomes impossible to know who to follow so you revert back to the good old way of reading tweets and seeing who gets mentioned! To show how many people use #ff (good and bad) I took this video of my desktop software Tweetdeck. As you can see its nuts!

Finally, if you’d like a laugh, read The Oatmeal’s take of Follow Friday:

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The Web’s Cold War - Google begins to take on Facebook with the launch of Google Plus

The cold war between Russia and the US was a battle of superpowers for global supremacy and the current battle between Google and Facebook is the web equivalent. Google has recently launched Google Plus which is a new way of networking with your friends in the real world.

Google has been the king of ‘search’ for quite some time but Facebook’s fairly recent rise to supremacy on the web in general means that it is a clear competitor in terms of drawing advertising. Combine that with the fact that Facebook is very much ‘in’ with Bing, the Microsoft Search Engine and you can quickly see that Google is feeling threatened.

Google bases its advertising model on what you search for where as Facebook does it on your Social Graph (the stuff that you like and makes you who you are). This potentially is a much more powerful basis for selling advertising which combined with the fact that people spend over 22% of all online time on social networking sites (source: Mashable)

“No matter what Google says, Google+ is the company’s response to the rise of Facebook. The two companies are in heated competition for talent, page views and consumers. While Google controls the search market and has a strong presence on mobile with Android, it hasn’t been able to crack the social nut. Its most successful social product, YouTube, had to be acquired, and it still ranks as one of the most expensive acquisitions in the company’s history.” (http://mashable.com/2011/06/28/google-plus/#18169Google-Icons)

M.A.S – Mutually Assured Socialisation is a reality. The Facebook vs Google War has begun!

Here's one of Google+ videos featuring Robert De Nero:

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Today we acknowledge and celebrate the technological advancements that enable people to connect with real-time information, communicate from miles apart and have their voices heard. Social media is a force to be reckoned with. In the past year, it has been an outlet for victims of injustice, s...

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"It's supposed to be a dialogue not a monologue" - Social media slideshow, a must watch for marketers who only send information and don't engage.

This is slightly old now in terms of stats and a bit long, but sooo right!

What the F**K is Social Media: One Year Later

View more presentations from Marta Kagan

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The return of the full-fat blog for business!?

Twitter announced it's 5th Birthday yesterday and is going from strength to strength as more people use it, but for a business is Twitter on it's own enough to tell the full story?

We are all too busy sometimes to update a blog or a news page but posting a Twitter or Facebook status is a lot more manageable as we can normally snatch a few seconds to update the world on what is happening with our business or personal lives.

By doing this we have all become micro bloggers and some of us are addicted. These are essentially blogs on a diet or ‘blog-light’ as Coke would call it! However if you’re a business is just giving a snapshot of your business news, thoughts and musings enough to fully engage people?

My thoughts are that the answer is no. Often giving a thought on something general to their business on Twitter is perfectly valid but there is no substitute for really getting to the crux of the matter in a full blog post and then using your micro-blogs to tell the world about it.

Rob, Marketing Director for TSH.

Let us know your thoughts on Twitter: @totatlsocialhub

Or Facebook: www.facebook.com/totalsocialhub

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Could this be the end of Twitter clients? I hope not!

Many of us access twitter through 3rd party applications called Twitter clients.

These are either on our phones, PCs or even through other social media channels such as Facebook that have official apps for tweeting content from Facebook. Twitter has announced that they won’t be encouraging the development of any more Twitter clients claiming that 90% of people access Twitter through the companies approved applications and software, however the majority of marketers using Twitter as far as I know use external ‘clients’ such as Tweetdeck, Hootsuite and Seesmic.

Twitter’s coding chief Ryan Sarver made this statement on the twitter software development discussion:

“We need to move to a less fragmented world, where every user can experience Twitter in a consistent way"

I approve of maintaining high standards but we should also allow the people to choose. Such is the democratic nature of the web and social media. If people like something, more people use it and it grows, if they don’t it dies. What Twitter is saying is more autocratic and that only their approved ‘clients’ will be part of the Twitter experience, which goes against the web democracy philosophy.

Total Social Hub is an enterprise level ‘client’ for social CRM and as well as having other social media channels, it connects with Twitter. As we get near the end of our beta testing of the software we will be watching the announcements from Twitter very closely and will keep you all informed.

Rob Marketing Director, Total Social Hub

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Social Media Revolution (via Socialnomics09)

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Want to try a great new SMMS (Social Media Management System)?!

We are looking for beta testers of a new social media management system called Total Social Hub.

With the rise of social media as one of the most effective and engaging ways to market your business or client's brands we are announcing the launch of a new social media management system for marketing and PR professionals.

If you're an agency, business or organisation who wants to use social media marketing more effectively, simply complete our online survey which should take you no more than about 5 minutes (we promise;-).

In return you will get trial access to the beta version of Total Social Hub to manage your clients or your own social media marketing channels.

Click this link to complete the beta trial survey now: Beta trial survey

Or visit our website to find out more about us: www.totalsocialhub.com

Complete the 5 minute survey to be part of the beta test group.

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Total Social Hub's Blog is launched called The Hublog. This is an infomation portal for details of the development of one of the most exciting new social media marketing tools to be launched this year. If you would like more information please visit Total Social Hub's main website or follow us on our social networking channels (links below).

The beta version of the software will be launched at the end of February. If you would like to be part of the Beta testing group please get in touch.