Twitter’s ongoing search for ways to monetise the service and generate an income may include charging corporate users for the privilege of sending out their tweets.

That’s according to co-founder Biz Stone, speaking recently to Marketing magazine. “We are noticing more companies using Twitter and individuals following them. We can identify ways to make this experience even more valuable and charge for commercial accounts,” he said.

A small sample of companies au fait with Twitter gave mixed feedback to the proposal. While LoveFilm said that it would depend on “price, demand and what else is around”, MD of We Are Social, Robin Grant, said that Twitter could charge for display ads or to access customer information for marketing purposes, while the VP of Dell, Bob Pearson, suggested that the company would look elsewhere if things became “complicated and costly”. read more

If you’re like me you’ve sent thousands of tweets over the past months and years. Some of these are pure nonsense, others are uninteresting ReTweets, or replies to other people’s tweets that just have non historical value. Some, however, might contain brilliance, and it would be a shame to loose all that content just because Twitter doesn’t find its business model and goes belly up.

Well, a cool new service called TweetBackup lets you backup your Twitter account and export it as a HTML file, via RSS, or in plain text. It’s in beta right now, and limited by the 3,200 tweet Twitter bug, but there are some ambitious plans for this one, including a restore functionality and more.

Signing up is free, and you don’t need to supply your Twitter password or anything. You do, however, have to follow @tweetbackup on Twitter for the service to work. Check it out, and also take a look at TweetValue by the same developer. That might not be as useful as a Twitter backup service, but it is fun to see what your Twitter account is worth, at least according to the TweetValue algorithm.

Earlier today, the Blog Herald interviewed Amanda Rose (Twitter: @amanda), founder and event organizer for Twestival (see earlier coverage), which gathers volunteer Twitter users everywhere this Thursday, February 12 to raise money and awareness for charity:water. Here you go.

How has Twitter helped the spread of the Twestival meme?

Twitter as a communications tool has enabled Twestival to happen.  This type of global, grassroots events series could never have happened even 2 years ago.  The immediacy of communication and the ability to tie communities together via Twitter has been crucial.  We are also using Twitter as the foundation of many of our fundraising efforts; Tipjoy.com is a great way for people to ‘tweet’ their donation and spread the word to others.

read more

Gina Trapani, of Lifehacker fame, have launched a new blog called Smarterware. She calls it her soapbox and the idea is to blog about whatever she feels like, in tech that is. Which is to say, expect reasons to convert to the Android and her must have Windows XP apps, to name a few excellent posts that are up already.

Here I will testify to the tech I love, admire the folks who are doing something right, describe how I use my favorite digital tools, and figure out ways to get work done more efficiently and creatively.

A good read for sure. And you got to love any launch post that has these words in it:

You won’t find ads or Digg badges or two dozen posts a day here. What you will find is stuff that fired off a synapse or two in my head and lots of sentences that involve the words “I”, “me”, and “my.”

I’ll most certainly follow this one.

The popular web design and development blog Smashing Magazine today announced the launch of their Smashing Magazine Forum, or SM Forum for shorts.

The idea behind it is to provide our community with a place to discuss problems, developments and ideas, ask to questions and provide answers. You can also discuss Smashing Magazine’s articles or just chat with the members of our community about anything you want.

Usually it’s a tricky business to combine blogs with forums, since blogs in general offer straight forward means of communication thanks to comments and trackbacks, but it is my belief that a spinoff forum can work if you’ve got the readership to back it up, and a topic that’s open for discussions. So in other words, the SM Forum will probably be pretty successful!

Update: It’s a hoax. Twitter confirmed that the account violated Twitter’s Terms of Use on Impersonation.

Okay, will the real Dalai Lama please create his real Twitter account.

Recognizing the importance of 140-characters, The Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama has officially joined Twitter yesterday, February 8.

You can join the 20,000 followers at @OHHDL. So, I followed him. Let’s see if he would reciprocate and follow me too. It would be cool telling others that THE Dalai Lama is following my boring and nonsense Twitter updates.

With an estimated six million users all over the world, Twitter is a must messaging platform that should be used to get your point across– just like what we’re all doing.

There are many reasons one might want to learn more information about a site they are visiting. Perhaps the site is a competitor that is beating you in the search engine rankings. It could be that the site is a spam blog or other site warranting an abuse report to their host. Maybe they are just curious to find out who is hosting the fast-moving server, making them want to switch to their host.

Whatever the reason, cutting through the veil of a site to learn what makes it tick can be a tricky feat, especially for those who are not familiar with the inner workings of the Web. Navigating through a mess of Whois results and DNS information can be very useful, but also intimidating.

So how does one learn more about a site, preferably without being inundated with confusing information? Here are five simple bookmarklets that can teach you more about a site with just one click. read more

Happy Monday, folks! If you’ve ever struggled to install Movable Type, you may have a new option soon: Six Apart has announced that MT will soon be available under the Parallels Application Packaging Standard. This will allow hosting companies to offer a simple install to their customers. If you have a Plesk control panel you’ll be able to install MT with the click of a button. MTers have always been envious of other open source projects that could be installed through things like APS. Hopefully this means we’ll see MT on other hosting platforms as well. read more

At least if you just look at the third party applications that you can use to update your Twitter account. Twitstat released a top 20 most used updating clients list today, based on the accounts tracked by @twitstat. Naturally, this means that the numbers are far from official or final, but it does give a hint on how people update Twitter.

A solid #1 is of course the web interface, clocking in at just over 32%. Perhaps a bit more surprising is the fact that TweetDeck is a solid second at 12%, while the link pumping Twitterfeed is #3 at just below 7%. Twhirl is just under 6%. Check out the complete list here. Hat tip: The Next Web

Twestival is taking the world by storm as one of the first international festivals and fundraising events taking advantage of the popular social networking and microblogging site, Twitter, to spread the word and generate enthusiasm.

On February 12, 2009, cities from around the world will celebrate with a Tweet-up style festival to raise money for charity: water, a non-profit organization that works to bring clean, safe drinking water to developing nation citizens by funding sustainable clean water solutions.

Currently, more than 175 cities world-wide will be celebrating their own Twestivals, including my new home town, Portland, Oregon, and town of my birth, Seattle, as well as a virtual Twestival on Second Life.

There are many ways to get involved. You can attend a gathering in your city (some listed below), upload or buy music from Twestival.fm, participate in the t-shirt design competition, or donate directly. There will be podcasts, videocasts, news reports, and live streaming from many of the event locations, too. read more