Hybrid Domainer

Twitter to implement Two Factor Authentication

By: Raymond Hackney

After a bunch of corporate Twitter accounts hacked, including one which led the stock market to take a temporary dip, Twitter is rolling out Two Factor Authentication.

When you sign in to twitter.com, there’s a second check to make sure it’s really you. You’ll be asked to register a verified phone number and a confirmed email address.

Here is the video they put out today with some instructions.

 

Twitter Gets A Patent For Twitter And Flippa gives you a chance to win 100 Credits

By: RH

Twitter had some interesting stories come out yesterday that were both directly related and indirectly related to the micro blogging service.

The Verge reports on Twitter getting a patent for Twitter. From that article:

Although Twitter famously has a pending patent on the familiar "pull-to-refresh" gesture, the company may have just acquired something more valuable: a patent on the Twitter messaging service itself. The new patent issued today with Twitter founders Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone listed as inventors, and broadly describes a messaging service in which users follow each other and sent messages don't have specific recipients, but are rather sent and displayed to those followers by the system itself. That's exactly how Twitter works, of course — it's definitely more of a broadcasting system than a direct messaging service, and the patent claims explicitly make reference to "broadcasting an update message" several times.

Read the full article to find out if Twitter will go after similar sites now that it has this patent.

FTC amends its DOT COM Disclosures to include mobile and social platforms. MSN covered the story with the following:

With all that in mind, the Federal Trade Commission just updated its guidelines for mobile and other online advertisers, on how to make those disclosures clear, conspicuous and deception-free.

The challenge, it appears, involves Twitter and other, short-form messages consumers get on social media. To illustrate that challenge, the FTC created a fictional celebrity, "JuliStarz," and had her issue the following fake Tweet:

"Shooting movie beach scene. Had to lose 30lbs in 6 wks. Thanks Fat-away Pills for making it easy. Bit.ly/f56."

The FTC says that tweet wouldn't hold up to its standards for several reasons. First of all, it doesn't disclose that JuliStarz is a paid endorser for Fat-away. It also doesn't specify that the amount of weight Ms. Juli supposedly lost isn't the standard result for the product.

This will mostly affect celebrities who endorse products and tweet about that product on Twitter. A follow up tweet is not considered to be ok as the audience may not put those two tweets together.

You can read the MSN article here

Lastly, Flippa who is an advertiser on Hybrid Domainer has been giving away 100  Flippa credits to one random follower every Monday in March. The last Monday is next week. Just follow @flippa to be in the running.

Twitter Fastest Growing Social Media Site for 2012

By: RH

Global Web Index conducted the study of the fastest growing social networks for 2012 and

The United States second amongst all countries, behind only Hong Kong, in percentage change.

Twitter came in number 1.

All Things Twitter on Media Bistro put together the following story:

Twitter beat Facebook and Google+ as the fastest-growing social network in 2012.

Overall, Twitter is now ranked fourth amongst all social networking sites in total active users, with Google+ securing a surprising second place.

Twitter’s 40 percent jump in active users between Q2 and Q4 of last year placed the micro-blogging platform well ahead of Facebook (+33 percent) and Google+ (+27 percent).

Read the full article on Media Bistro with graphs and other stats.

Incredibly Twitter doubled its user base in 2012 and that is covered here.

Twitter giving away $1million in advertising credits

By: RH

Twitter is giving away free advertising credits to US small businesses. On their blog they posted:

Since we launched Twitter Ads for small business in February, thousands of U.S. business owners have used Twitter advertising to quickly gain new followers, reach new customers and drive more traffic. In support of the Shop Small initiative and Small Business Saturday (#SmallBizSat) this weekend, we are giving away up to $1 million in free advertising credits to new advertisers. The first 10,000 eligible small business advertisers based in the U.S. will receive $100 in free Twitter advertising credits that can be used for Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts.

Read the full blog with example of how some have grown their business using Twitter.

Check your Twitter account for DM spam

By: RH

Check your Twitter account for DM spam

First off I want to apologize to anyone who got a DM on Twitter from Hybrid Domainer, we never send out spam and only connect with people we know or someone we have other contact info such as phone and email to contact about an interview.

I had been speaking with Kristen Reilly from Sedo and got a DM from her, since it was a trusted source and the message linked to something that I thought was about what we were talking about, I signed in with Twitter. That was the mistake, Kristen had her account hacked and she did not authorize the DM.

Here are some things to do if this has happened to you, check out the steps from Rays 20 (no relation) They provide an excellent step by step what to do.

Secondly I used inboxcleaner.com to delete all these DM's. This was a great resource, I had deleted 50 by hand one at a time.

I want to thank https://twitter.com/AndreaWhitmer from Nuts and Bolts Media as she alerted me to this on Twitter while I was doing something else and did not know about the Direct Message spam.

Keeping Up With Twitter

By: RH

Some domainers and domain companies use Twitter effectively and some don't care much for Twitter. Registrars like Namecheap with over 100,000 followers use Twitter effectively and give back to the industry and their non domainer clients by running contests that give away free or discounted domains.

Name.com (an advertiser) also does a good job communicating with their clients and offering discounts and the latest news on their promo codes. Name.com does also look to add some comedy to their tweets as well.

DomainMonster is up all early every day tweeting away and greeting their "monsters", the Lady Gaga fans may not appreciate the monster moniker as they are one of the largest groups on Twitter.

Twitter can be an effective tool for domainers if the account stays on point, followers look for info or quotes or domains for sale. Some domainers tweet about closing sales and other industry data.

Zendesk put together an informative look at just how small business is using Twitter. Hopefully it will provide some insight for those looking to improve their Twitter reach to grow their business.

Courtesy of Zendesk

Twitter Revenue And Marketing Strategies

By: RH

A look at Twitter revenue growth an their marketing plans.

This infographic was put together by The Nology and takes a look at how Twitter's revenue is expected to grow year over year.

The interesting part to me was that Twitter makes more per impression than Facebook.

Courtesy of The Nology

If you can't spend all day on Twitter, try Twilert

You may not have the time or resources to dedicate to being on Twitter all day but still need to be informed about a certain brand or topic.

Twilert allows you to get a daily digest email of whatever you want to follow. It works in a lot of ways just like Google alerts.

Below is a video that shows you how it works.  No one at Hybrid Domainer has any vested interest in Twilert and they are not an advertiser of Hybrid Domainer. We just think that its a cool app that many readers might like.

 

If you can get the Twitter handle to match your best brandables

Written by: RH

The search of Twitter handles becomes almost as crazy as the search for domains.  Twitter names you would think are available to get are taken as frequently as domains you would think are free to register.

I am not talking about top keywords or geo names.  There are so many people that sign up for Twitter even if they don't use it.  So over the last year I have now had 3 potential sales on five letter .coms not go through.  Two of the prospects assumed I had the Twitter handle and the last one just put in the email, "We are only interested in *****.com if you have the corresponding Twitter account."

All three Twitter accounts were active, and the deals just were not completed. Its funny sometimes I see short Twitter handles where the .com is available. So if you can get the Twitter handle for your top short .com domains it makes sense to get them. You never know if it prevents a possible sale. Again its not a must but might be good to have.

Free domain winner

For our one year anniversay we did a drawing for new followers on Twitter. The winner of the drawing was Bryan Smilk. @bryansmilk. 

Thank you to all who read the blog and follow us on Twitter. We will be doing one drawing a month for all followers for a free .com/net/.org domain.