Social networking

Upload Videos Longer Than 15 Minutes: YouTube!

Recently YouTube extended the (upload limit) video length from 10 minutes to 15 minutes for all YouTube users, it was a welcome sign for people who wanted to create lengthy video tutorial, how-to’s, entertainment videos etc.

YouTube Partner benefits:
We all know, YouTube Partner’s enjoy a lot more feature, opportunity than normal users; and why not, they bring in huge profits to YouTube and make people comeback to YouTube again and again.

Some of the exclusive partner benefits being:
1. Revenue share.
2. Possibility to upload lengthy videos.
3. Ability to customize the channel page. Make it look like a custom landing page.
4. Add or remove ads from their videos. etc

Good News For Normal Users:
In recent developments, YouTube has started rolling out a new feature to normal YouTube users, where-in people who abide by the rules(hopefully) get the opportunity to upload videos longer than 15 minutes.

To know, if your account has been enabled to upload videos longer than 15 minutes: log into your YouTube account and hit on the Upload button. Now at the top, you should see this message, if your account has been enabled:

Congratulations! Your account is now enabled for uploads longer than 15 minutes. Click the Upload button below to select a video.

if not, then you need to follow all the rules and wait some more time.

YouTube Promoted Videos
Another new thing added is, a link to YouTube Promoted Videos section, where you can promote any of your videos to target audience and pay only when people click on your videos. Well, this is a old thing for people who are familiar with YouTube advertising. But for those who had no clue about the videos that were displayed in the right hand side of their YouTube homepage, will now come to know that they are promoted videos! Every user has a link in their profile’s “Account Settings” to promote their videos now, making it more transparent.

Is this feature enabled to your YouTube account? What’s the maximum length video you have ever uploaded to YouTube so far. If enabled, what kind of videos you intend to upload?

Add Twitter Follower(s) Count To Your Blog

We have seen many blogs/websites showing “follow me” banners and links. But, it would be better to show the social proof to arise their willingness to follow(Better to have atleast 100 followers, before showing the follower count).

We can show our Twitter follower count (much like a feedburner chicklet) by using Twittercounter.com. TwitterCount uses Twitter Authentication API while you use your Twitter username and password to sign in, so there is no problem.
If you authenticate your Twitter ID, then your ID will be displayed in the “Interested to follow” field, so that you may expect some more targeted followers.

You can use TwitterCounter services even without authentication. Just follow below procedure:

Replace my Twitter ID (technotip) with your Twitter ID:
For stats: http://twittercounter.com/technotip
Follower Count Badge: http://twittercounter.com/counter/?username=technotip
or
http://209.20.76.117/counter/?username=technotip

You can use anchor tags to link to your Twitter profile:


<a href="http://twitter.com/technotip" >
<img src="http://twittercounter.com/counter/?username=technotip" ></a>

For more buttons, more colors! goto TwitterCount.com

If you are using WordPress and looking for a plugin, then you can make use of Twounter. It is a WordPress Plugin that fetches the number of followers for a twitter profile and returns it in plain text format. You can then use your CSS skills to style your follower count number.

Use the <?php echo twounter(’username’) ; ?> function in your template files to show the number of Twitter followers. (replace ‘username’ with your Twitter user name)
If you want to show it inside post then, use shortcode [twounter]username[/twounter]

Go Pro With Twitter ( hmm..not really! )

We can see some people tweeting valuable links, always. How is that possible? How can they find these valuable, interesting links always.

And to your wonder, you might have also noticed that, some people keep on tweeting valuable links without much delay. Are they really reading all those stuffs and selecting the best one and tweeting? They tweet links to YouTube Videos, blogs, Some photos, Digg story etc. How can they be all around the web at a time?

Now you can also be that pro….by using a tool or aggregator called StuffToTweet.com. It is an aggregator site, which has links to popular stories on Digg, Del.icio.us, CNN, New York Times, Amazon, YouTube, Some popular blogs, photo sharing sites etc.
You can also get the links to the tweets which are popular on Twitter.

Interesting enough, this site is built with the most wonderful tool WordPress. For many of the geeks or webmasters, building such website may not take more than 30 minutes. We can simply use the feed of some popular sites and aggregate it on to our website. And WordPress will make the process even simpler.

If you know of any similar service, then please share it with us in the comment section.

Now, only thing that we must make sure is: “Do not spam Twitter, with your valuable Tweets 🙂 “. Some people do not even bother to look at the story once, before tweeting it.

I prefer to use Twitter as a communication tool, rather than using it only to share links. But I was always wondering, how these people are tweeting valuable links from all over the web? Now we have the answer!

Twitter HomePage Re-designed

Twitter has finally re-designed its homepage. And it has taken upon the search and hot or trending topics as their main objective of the re-design.
To view the re-design, log out of Twitter and visit Twitter.com. Only the front page has been changed and everything else remains the same.

Twitter has finally re-designed its homepage. And it has taken upon the search and hot or trending topics as their main objective of the re-design.

Many people use the Twitter website for knowing the latest trendz and for real time search. And mostly use other Twitter clients for tweeting.

Here is a quote from Twitter blog:

Defining a “tweet” for the uninitiated and explaining how to create an account doesn’t resonate with everyone. “Why would I want to do that?” is a common reaction. However, demonstrating the power of Twitter as a discovery engine for what is happening right now through our Search and Trends often awakens a sense of wonder which inevitably leads to a much more compelling question, “How do I get involved?”

Twitter is smart enough and know that they need to keep on working for the betterment of their site and their service by getting constant feedback from its users.

This posts main purpose is to document the old homepage and the first re-design of Twitter.

To view the re-design, log out of Twitter and visit Twitter.com. Only the front page has been changed and everything else remains the same.

One dis-advantage, with this new design could be – It takes one more click to get that log in form! Think how many clicks you may need to do in a year or two 🙂

Did you like the new design? or You think the old one was better?