Finding Your Customers on Twitter

Though face-to-face networking remains crucial to the success of your business, taking advantage on online tools can be a great supplement to all your other efforts to find prospects. Personally, I’m not always comfortable at networking events. Trolling for customers online is very comfortable and often leads to the identification of a prospect followed by a live meeting for coffee. Using Twitter to identify prospects, see how they behave online, and then engage with them, can be an incredibly efficient use of your networking time.

Twitter allows you to use keywords and hashtags to find prospects who may even be geographically targeted. Try Twitter’s Advanced Search tool to locate prospects. Using the Advanced Search tool along with the Twitter Operators enables you to find the people or businesses you are looking for in the location you are looking for.

Tweetdeck, Hoosuite and other applications that assist you in managing your Twitter feed, can also be used for prospecting purposes. Use keywords and phrases to add columns in both Tweetdeck and Hootsuite targeting people and/or business you want to connect with. When the columns populate, scroll through, locate those that interest you, and check them out. It’s easy to follow potential prospects and engage with them on Twitter. Who knows, maybe they’ll make the first move and want to connect with you.

Several other tools exist to assist in your prospecting. Twellow is an example of a tool that lets you target prospects by categories like you would use to look someone up in the Yellow Pages. Twellow also lets you add yourself to the directory for free.

Every tool has its pros and cons, and there are many to choose from. Find the one that works best for you and start engaging with your prospects. Let us know how it goes and what tools you are finding most useful.

Now You Can Tag Facebook Friends From Other Apps

Facebook on Tuesday added the ability for people to mention friends on the service via Open Graph apps.

“With this frequently requested feature, companies like Foursquare can implement user mentions that work like they do in posts on Facebook,” a Facebook representative said in a blog post announcing the addition.

“When people mention a friend in an Open Graph app, the story on Facebook links the person’s name to their timeline, and their friend will receive a notification. The story will also be added to the friend’s timeline or, if enabled, to timeline review. There are no privacy changes associated with this new feature.”

Different than Action Tagging (tagging someone you are physically with), Mention Tagging is designed to be used when someone wants to reference a person in a particular post. For instance, tag the friends in a photo or suggest that a friend check out a restaurant where you’re eating dinner.

Developers who want to implement mention tagging will have to provide users with a tokenizer or some other way that they can reference their friends. Developers are also not allowed to prefill messages. Everything in a message needs to be written by the user with the intention specifically of sharing that message on Facebook.

Developers will also need to resubmit their actions and requests approval to Facebook for user messages and tags.

What apps would you like to see use Mention Tagging? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Twitter changes provokes anger from developers

Developers and users of Twitter have reacted angrily to changes made by the social network to restrict creation of third-party applications.

Any new app that wants to serve more than 100,000 users must now seek the company's explicit permission.

Apps which already have more than 100,000 users are allowed to double their user base before having to get Twitter's go-ahead to grow any further.

Critics said it would stifle the development of innovative products.

Revoked key

The changes came as part of Twitter's overhaul of its Application Programming Interface (API).

An API allows different parts of a program to communicate together, as well as letting one application share content with another.

In Twitter's case, its API has allowed for the development of extremely popular third-party services like Hootsuite, Twitpic and Tweetdeck - which was acquired by Twitter in May last year.

Twitter says the new rules, announced by its director of consumer product Michael Sippey, aim to "deliver a consistent Twitter experience".

Mr Sippey wrote: "If you are building a Twitter client application that is accessing the home timeline, account settings or direct messages API endpoints (typically used by traditional client applications) or are using our User Streams product, you will need our permission if your application will require more than 100,000 individual user tokens."

In this context, "tokens" are individual users.

The guidelines also covered how tweets are displayed within apps.

"If your application displays Tweets to users, and it doesn't adhere to our Display Requirements, we reserve the right to revoke your application key," Mr Sippey explained.

'Wiggleroom'

The changes are not expected to have an immediate impact on users.

However, the announcement was heavily criticised by developers.

Marco Arment, creator of popular reading service Instapaper, advised developers who were building on Twitter to "start working on another product".

"Twitter has left themselves a lot of wiggle room with the rules," he wrote in a blog post.

"Effectively, Twitter can decide your app is breaking a (potentially vague) rule at any time, or they can add a new rule that your app inadvertently breaks, and revoke your API access at any time.

"Of course, they've always had this power. But now we know that they'll use it in ways that we really don't agree with.

"I sure as hell wouldn't build a business on Twitter, and I don't think I'll even build any nontrivial features on it anymore."

Twitter is not the only service to put such restrictions in place. Last year, Google announced that it would begin charging companies that made heavy use of its Maps product.