Quarterly review of weekly social media sites and tools
April 7th, 2010 by Andy Merchant
With over 3 months of the year gone already, I have revisited the Weekly Social Media sites, tools and posts round-up to offer a full rundown of the 65 social media tools that I’ve recommended in 2010, so far. Just in case you missed any!
1. BannerSnack is a fantasic tool that lets you create Flash web banners without the need for Flash knowledge. A free version is available where a small BannerSnack watermark is visible in the banner, while a branding-free version is on offer for a few dollars. Highly recommended.
2. Twitter Alerts allows you to receive Twitter messages via mobile phone (SMS), instant messenger or email. There is a small charge to receive via SMS.
3. Your Fonts enables you to create your own fonts in a few easy steps, which can then be used in programmes like Microsoft Word and Powerpoint. There is a small charge of $9.95 for the privilege.
4. This is a compendium of useful Facebook widgets from profile badges to Live Streams - very useful!
5. Interactive Buttons with Hit Counters are all the rage at the moment, and here are some of the best.
6. HeadWay is a WordPress plug-in that enables users with no coding knowledge to create a bespoke WordPress theme via an easy drag and drop process. There is a small fee to pay for the plug-in. Highly recommended.
7. T Lists is a very visual way of searching for Twitter lists. Just add your keyword to the search bar, wait for the results and finally follow or apply to the selected lists.
8. Twendly is a great way to find and connect with people on Twitter. Results are ranked in terms of relevancy to your given search term and the user’s level of activity over a 12-month period. Highly recommended.
9. If you like playing around with images but aren’t sure how to get some of the snazzy effects you see everywhere, Rollip might just be able to help. Upload your photo and select one of the 40 effects and add it to your image, simple.
10. TweetsQue, as the name suggests, lets you add Tweets and set time intervals for them to be Tweeted out.
11. Create your own iPhone or Android app for $25.00 - you have got be kidding right? That’s what iSites offers: “Create an iPhone app almost instantly! We take care of the app store submission in less than 24 hours”.
12. NutShell Mail has an interesting free Email Newsletter application for Facebook that enables your fans to keep track of new activity on your page.
13. Buzzom has a nice Twitter tool that give you a person’s Twitter score based on different criteria. These include influence, RT ratio, Tweet efficiency, RT rank and Following rank.
14. Vidinotes is a nice solution for getting video ‘How To’s’ down on paper. Simply upload your Flash video, capture a slide and add the notes to go with it. Finally download the PDF with the screenshot and accompanying note or print.
15. Twitcaps allows you to view real time images in Twitter as they are Tweeted. It also allows you to search for an image via keywords, locations or # then capture the image if you like it.
16. Tangler Live is a superb tool that allows you to have group conversation in real time. Create your room and then embed it into your post about the same event/issue - works great for live events when you want to speak to people interested in the same theme.
17. Web 2.0 Suicide Machine. Here is what the Guardian says: “”The Dutch website created by your unfriendly neighbourhood medialab moddr_ is designed to end users’ social lives on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn in a spectacular way.”
18. Avatara. Most people have seen the film Avatar, well now you can create your own avatar usable in over 30 online destinations including Facebook.
19. Sprout Pitch. Simply pitch your start-ups, projects and ideas to the world via video - “think elevator pitch”
20. Collecta Widget Builder lets you build customisable widgets for your website very easily. Just grab the code and embed it into your site!
21. Social Media comparison is first up today. Simply type in two competing search terms and see who comes out on top. After running the report you get a whole heap of visual results to show you who is top dog. Check out Apple Vs Microsoft.
22. Google Fight is a fun little keyword search tool. Add your two keywords and let them fight to the death, watch the fight sequence to see who wins or has the most search results. OJ Simpson vs Hommer Simpson.
23. Manage Tweets is a new tool that gives you an easily detectable way to find out who you follow, who isn’t following you back and which inactive accounts you follow. Recommended.
24. Social connector for Outlook is Microsoft’s attempt to make email more social. Currently it only supports LinkedIn but there are more to follow soon including Facebook. For a more in-depth overview and installation instruction check out the How to Geek blog.
25. Flavors.me is a great idea, and here’s what they say: “Flavors.me allows anyone to create an elegant website using personal content from around the internet. Ideal for personal homepages, lifestreaming, splash and microsites, celebrity fan pages, commercial promotion, brand marketing – and everything in between”.
26. Google Buzz Button Wordpress Plugin is first off the block today, originally designed by Mashable, now available for all you Wordpress bloggers.
27. Twiclur is a highly customisable Twitter widget that can be used to Tweet results from from your TwitterUserName, #Topic or @TwitterUserNam.
28. BlogBooker allows you to create a free high-quality PDF book of your blog posts including your comments, but only if you use Wordpress, Blogger or Live Journal.
29. Socialized Card is a page that has all your social/online identities. Great for something like Twitter where you can only add one link. View an example here.
30. Neat Chat is a very quick way of having a group chat - simply add a user name, click start and send the chatroom link around to the people you want in the group and off you go!
31. Type Tester is a neat tool that allows you to try out different text types, with various options such as size and spacing - great if you are a budding web designer.
32. Word It Out is a similar tool to the fantastic Wordle. You input your text into a box and it automatically creates a word cloud from your content that you can embed in your blog.
33. News Show Wizard is a Google tool that allows you to put a news widget on your site from pre-defined options including search impressions and style options.
34. Trends Buzz - what they say: “We are going to be yet another source of real time internet keyword snooping. In the first version we are going to gather hot topics from 6 different sources but there are more to come in the later stages”.
35. Sploder allows you to create you own Flash based platform or shooter game using a simple drag and drop system. Once the game is finished you can embed it into your own website.
36. Twitteronics is a Twitter analytics tool that will help you to track your brand’s presence on Twitter.
What they say: “Integrated Search, Automated Analysis, and Enhanced Reporting together with Influence Measures”.
37. Tweetbuzzer is a very visual tool. It constantly monitors Twitter for brand mentions, and shows some basic social media analytics such as daily mentions and the % of growth/decline.
38. Tweetalater is a simple Twitter site that translates your message into either:
ttt
uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
39. Tawidget is a nice visual events widget to showcase any up and coming events in your website or blog. The widget is highly customisable and links to your Twitter account.
40. Twitter Stats is a Twitter analytics tool for particular keywords (brand, product). It shows them visually on a timeline over a period of time.
41. Pressitt - full visability, this is a Liberate Media co-owned product. For those who don’t know Pressitt , it is a free Social Media News Release (SMNR) creation and publishing platform which has just come out of BETA with a multitude of new features.
42. The next tool is actually a WordPress plugin. Effective Calendar Plugin for WordPress allows you to display dates of events for example on your website.
43. QUDOS is a neat tool that allows you to measure your digital status and mange how you look online.
44. dlvr.it looks like an interesting tool that’s currently in public BETA, and here’s what they say: “dlvr.it provides bloggers, publishers and brands a way to instantly syndicate content and expand their reach on the social web and into new channels.
“Our tools make it easy to manage and measure the flow of your content everywhere your audience is. dlvr.it publishes your media, your blogs, all your content to your social channels, ensuring your audience sees it instantly.”
45. Want to know when your Twitter friends sleep? When do they sleep does just that, and checks your Tweeting patterns to determine when you’re in the land of nod.
46. TwilK is a Twitter tool that allows you to put your Twitter followers on your Twitter background.
47. This next one was pointed out by my colleague @liberatelloyd. PDF my URL does what it says on the tin. It PDFs any web page, and there is also a nice bookmarklet that you can add to your browser.
48. DoesFollow is a Twitter tool that quickly finds out if you are following someone or not - handy if you don’t want to go through a huge list of all your followers to find out.
49. Techweet is an aggregator of technology news. The homepage is separated into boxes, and each has a well known tech company sitting in it with their latest news. The thing I like most is the topics page which acts as an index. Here you can find the company you want, select it and review their latest news.
50. Scribble Maps is the quick and easy way to edit and share your map creations via a widget. Scribble allows you to add images, markers, text and shapes to your maps.
51. First off this week we have the newly announced Google Apps Marketplace. The Marketplace is full of useful additions/plugins to your existing Google suite of tools.
52. Giga Tweet is a live Twitter counter of how many Tweets have been sent and the ongoing number of Tweets being sent right now - interesting stuff!
53. A lot of noise can be heard about Foursquare. FourWhere is a mashup of both FourSquare and Google maps. What they say: “FourWhere helps you find places visited by Foursquare users, and read any comments/tips they made about these places”.
54. Base Kit allows you to create hosted websites from .psd files for £10.00 per month. So if you’re hot at designing in Photoshop but not so hot at coding, this could be a good alternative.
55. What do you suggest is a visual tool that uses Google’s suggestion feature. Type in a word or phrase, and then follow it to the answer. Very cool!
56. Stickr will let you post stickers on the Web. You can leave notes all over the Internet that track your activity, or that of your friends.View the video for a further overview.
57. Collecta #trends gives you top real-time trends right off the bat. Each trend gives you the latest photo, story, comment and update. Collecta can also be used for searching your own trends.
58. Trends is another real-time trending platform, which is more visual than Collecta and offers a good selection of topics to navigate. On clicking a trend you are presented with a wealth of information.
59. Toobla. What they say: “Get Visual. Easily collect, enjoy and share your favourite content, bookmarked websites and everything else.
50. Thumboo - simple to generate thumbnails via a submitted URL
61. First off today we have Wufoo a HTML simple form creation builder. Wufoo has a free option that includes: 1 3 Forms, 3 Reports, 10 Fields, 100 Entries / Month and a number of paid for plans for bigger sites. Check out the gallery for some examples. User,
62. Spezify is a fantastic visual search engine that produces results in the style of a mood board. It’s great for showing clients visual representation for what’s happening with your brands or products online. Recommended!
63. Strings caught my attention, here’s what they say: “Strings is a social tracking and filtering platform that allows you to share and uncover experiences that are relevant to you. Strings incorporates strong privacy controls, easy filtering, and tracking support that allows your actions on and offline to automatically identify personalised trends worth following.” It’s a free tool that’s currenly in BETA, look’s like it could be worth a trial.
64. Fliptop has two parts to it. One for publishers and one for consumers. In a nutshell it updates consumers via email when specfic content is updated to a website you enjoy reading. View the video for further details.
65. Hot blog or not? In their own words: “In one sentence, a platform specifically for bloggers to promote their articles and blogs including the possibility to find and build a network around their niche”
Tags: Social media, social media resource, social media review, social media sites, social media tools
April 8th, 2010 at 5:35 pm
65 social media tools that I recommended in 2010…
With over 3 months of the year gone already, I have revisited the Weekly Social Media sites, tools and posts round-up to offer a full rundown of the 65 social media tools that I’ve recommended in 2010, so far. Just in case you missed any!…