A series of updates of popular BlackBerry® apps will be released over the coming days to make it even easier for users to stay connected with their BBM contacts. Research In Motion (RIM)on the 12^th of April announced that Facebook for BlackBerry, Twitter for BlackBerry, BlackBerry Travel™,  BlackBerry App World™ and BBM Music will now include BB Messenger connectivity. This would make it easier for users to stay in touch with their contacts, share experiences and content, and discover new things from their BBM contact list.

“Since we provided developers the means to build BBM connectivity into their apps, we have seen more than 800 hundred new BBM-connected apps come to market, which has been followed by a huge uptake by users – about one of every five apps being downloaded on BlackBerry App World is a BBM-connected app,” said Alec Saunders, VP of Developer Relations at RIM.  “Today we’re excited to announce that RIM has also integrated BBM connectivity into a number of our own popular apps and the BBM-connected revolution continues to grow.”  Read more »

Here is a list of things you should do on Twitter of you are really pressed for time.

1. Put up some awesome tweets

Find a list of awesome tweets that you may have hoarded somewhere within your day and post them to Twitter. This will hopefully get a retweet or two and build on your Klout and Kred.ly credibility while building great content from you.

2. Reply to tweets

Use about 10 minutes to engage other users on twitter and reply to pressing matters on the same. This is the best way to create a good rapport and ensure that your followers are not going to refer to you as a snob. You could also use this opportunity to follow up on some business referrals that may have been sent your way on the Social networks.

3. Follow some social influencers

Look for people who continuously churn out interesting tweets and more-so tweets in a related field and follow them. If your area of interest is cooking, go on ahead and look for Chef Gordon Ramsey and other guys who are great in the kitchen. If your aim is to follow issues on the stocks exchange and more importantly Kenya’s stock exchange, follow @SokoAnalyst, @coldtusker, @genghiscapital and @henrygithaiga. Their tweets will definitely interest you.

4. Unfollow irrelevant twats

Let’s face it. Some of us are the kind of people who go around collecting followers like trinkets or sea shells by the sea shore. Do yourself a favour, look for that one person who clogs up your timeline with irrelevant and in-bad-taste material and unfollow them. Call it what you want but the best description is not having to forego reading a tweet that could have improved your life by reading this useless tweet. Come on, grow a pair. And press that unfollow button.

Twitter is a social network. Twitter has a verification method that places a tiny blue checker on a user’s profile to signify that the user’s profile is certified as true. Authentic. Extraordinary. And so forth.

So yesterday, there was a huge buzz on Twitter after a link appeared and offered users a chance to have their accounts verified. Whether or not it was a spoof site is beside the point. The next hour or so saw many “your verification ID is bla bla bla bla bla bla” tweets that could only have meant one thing. Very many people gave access to this “Verification App” to have themselves verified.

Then cometh the Big Q: Why would you want to do that?

I really understand why everyone wants to be verified. A verification badge shows you have been accepted. Chances that you will be followed (and/or retweeted) because you are verified shoot to 79% as compared to 20% when you are not verified. Shouldn’t Twitter be against this? Seems like a raw model; to myself and some who I spoke to.

Okay, now the facts: Read more »

The key to 2012 and success this year has got to be in the social space. Look at it this way, everyone is going social. If you are not, you’re probably going to lose out. Same goes for mobile. It isn’t a wonder that companies like Apple have numerously had top engineering department employees go out to bars and leave iPhone prototypes in bathrooms and on table tops. This has not happened once.

You see, the reason is that Apple understands social. How a product is going to be accepted into a market can be directly gauged by how a small user test group will take a new device. This is undoubtedly a brilliant Acceptance Testing tool. In 2012, more companies better jump on this though. No-use coming up with a product that would have been improved had say about 50 test group users played with it before hand. Ask Nokia, they know. Every-time they are about to launch a new product into the market, they give it a test run. This is why tweeps like @oyolla had the Nokia 700 prototype months before and @Mwirigi a Nokia E6 running Symbian Belle.

God said “Give and it shall come back to you.” He wasn’t lying.

Bottom line: Take advantage to Read more »

First of all, this is Twitter. A social network. When did people start taking stuff on the social scene so seriously? For a sizeable number of tweeps, what they post on Twitter doesn’t really hold any water; It would price about as much as bar conversation would. Reason being it is held on a social space that was started to ease and cheapen message across the internet with a 140 character restriction.

Aside from the above, there’s a guy who wrote the article used Klout to calculate BigWig influence scores.

A while back I wrote on juuchini Klout is a web service that calculates influence based on tweets, retweets, replies and/or following. A list posted on a WestFm website here had a list of people who apparently have the highest Klout in the Kenyan social scene, hence running Twitter. Unfortunately, this could not be further from the truth. Keen analysis of Social Interaction and how social media survives show a lot of dependence on networks. Networks and how they are controlled is highly complex. Especially user controlled networks like Twitter and Facebook. For instance, how do you measure impressions on Twitter? How do you know how many Twitterati see your tweet? Read more »

Most people have been bullied at one point in their lives. It is common practice especially in lower age schools where the line between right and wrong is quite thin and impressions are everything. By impressions, the words crowd and Klout automatically follow.

For many, leaving such institutions is great relief as one is tempted to believe it is an end to the mental (and sometimes physical torture that is bullying).

Enter eBullying or Cyber Bullying:

Fact: The internet provides the perfect place for the existence of a cyber bully because of anonymity and expansive resources in easily-rallied participants.

You have heard of them before and know them; those guys that will wait for you to produce online content in form of a tweet, a Facebook update, an instagram image, a blogpost or even a twitpic and victimize you endlessly for it being ‘not up to their standard.’

They go an extra mile to make you feel like you’re going to take it down and/or delete it forcing a subsequent perverse form of satisfaction from your attempt to defend your content.

Well, here are a few things you should probably know about your cyber bully.

1. Cyber bullies thrive on reaction to provocation and conflict – The minute you start to curse out a cyber bully, you are fuelling their urge and interest to pound you even more. They get a kick out of having you react and throw tantrums. Trust that there are very idle people out there that pick out your rant as a weakness and you will never hear the end of it.
2. Cyber bullies are generally weak – The Bully behavior is normally deep-rooted and will probably arise from poor upbringing, a much-less-than-perfect childhood, daddy issues and a lot of other issues not related to you. It is not your fault he doesn’t like your poetry; it is because he probably can’t think of any two words that rhyme.
3. Cyber bullies thrive on attention – Look for any evidence of a cyber bully that continued to tarnish a brand when he is completely ignored by others. You won’t find even one. Simply because if no-one is watching (or listening), then they’re no longer interested. Read more »

via @akenyangirl (Naomi Mutua)

Every social network has its own set of etiquette, just like each community in real society does.

Twitter has seen a recent upsurge in Kenya, with most people shifting from Facebook to twitter, maybe from the fact that Facebook is a bit too invasive, and Twitter only projects what you put out. Twitter is also seen as the best source of fast and breaking news, and to some extent rendering traditional media irrelevant.

Whichever way you view Twitter, there are sometimes expectations on newbies. As when you join a clique of people in society, you are expected to conform or at least try to adhere to some standards.

Like I said, I’m not a guru, and I’m not an expert. This is simply what I have observed and learned over time (I joined Twitter in April 2009).

This is from a series of tweets I posted over the weekend, and hopefully  I will expound adequately:

#Twitter101

1. Know why you’re joining Twitter: is it from peer pressure, following a fad, or you have info to pass, or to listen to others?

The first thing you should consider is why you’re joining twitter. Most times people join in on recommendation, or because they heard it’s the latest fad. Others might be keen to follow certain people, and to hear what they have to say. Whatever reason you have for joining Twitter, that’s your business, but remember that it might define who you interact with.

2. When you do join Twitter, get a creative and easy-to-remember and type handle. E.g. ‘GingerRoots’ as opposed to ‘120yes57’.

Most tweeps get turned off from typing mixed letters and numbers in handles, especially when using an application that does not predict usernames, or when on a mobile phones. The easier your handle is the better. And remember, the shorter your handle is, the more space people have to tweet you within the 140 character limit.

Read more »

The web has taken over how we communicate in so many ways.

You no longer have to remember a birthday as Facebook warns you whenever a loved-one’s birthday is near. Twitter tells you when someone decides to think out loud and post (read tweet) something on their page.  LinkedIn keeps you in tandem with your professional crowd and FourSquare lets you know where your friends are via check-in when they share their location.

We are in the 21^st Century of the Generation X, humans seem to be moving more and more towards online meet-ups and away from actual physical ones.

Influence is everything. At least to those people who know what it is worth, it is everything.

What you eat, drink, watch, listen to, talk about, wear and even drive is constantly being observed by people and more importantly those who you influence. Facebook calls them friends; Twitter calls them followers while Helloo calls them Listeners (puke!). Read more »

We all love Twitter. And by ‘We’ I mean most people between their late teens and late forties.

Whether it is to share activities we are engaged all day, or to share pictures of what we are engaging in all day.

Some have even gone a step further and they check into places whenever they visit via location-based services like FourSquare.

Given the nature of Twitter and its 140 character limit, it is important that whatever you post be as short as possible. In this case, you need to learn some twitter acronyms.

Acronyms are words written in short-form and are very common with secretaries who learn it as a tool of trade and later lean on it for speed when taking notes.

Here are a few Acronyms you may have seen and consequently wondered what they mean:

CZ – Because (coz)

BRB – be right back

BTW – By the Way

GIB – Google It B**ch

DM(1) – Direct Message

Read more »

There has been a lot of discussion in the public domain about a new device called the Poken. It is a small device that is set to replace the need for business cards say in the next year or so by consolidating a user’s contacts in its small microchip and enabling on to transmit information on themselves in a fun and cool way.

1. Poken User meets other Poken User

2. User “’high four’s” his or her Poken with that of the other user. This is essentially holding them against each other (such that the       coils inside the token are more or less aligned).

3. The two Pokens flash green to signal that a bond was made. If red light appears, please try again as this means that the devices have not yet connected.

4. On a computer at home or anywhere, the User plugs in his or her token into the USB port. Read more »