Twitter is preparing itself and its developers for the rollout of its ad platforms, Promoted Tweets and Promoted Trends, within third-party applications, starting with desktop apps.

The microblogging site launched “promoted tweets” in April 2010, which saw the likes of Virgin America, post branded messages which appeared into user’s feeds. It then went onto launch ‘promoted trends’ in June, which allowed brands to enter the trend column.

The company has made an update to its application programming interface (API) that gives developers access to two new fields related to Promoted Tweets and Trends. These aren’t ready for prime time though; it will be some time before you actually see Promoted Tweets in TweetDeck, Seesmic or any of the other third-party apps you may be using.

“Over the next few months, we will begin beta testing with a handful of desktop applications,” said Twitter Developer Advocate Matt Harris in a post on the Twitter Development Talk Google Group. “During this period, we aim to learn a lot, and we will apply those lessons when we expand distribution of Twitter Promoted Products to the broader ecosystem.”

Harris also confirmed something we have known for a while: those developers will get a cut of the revenue it generates through Promoted Content in third-party apps. The company is “still working out the exact value” of the revenue split.

Read More @ Tweets & Promoted Trends

Twitter is undoubtedly a good way to promote your business and to connect with as many people as you can. You’ll find that tweeters with huge numbers of followers use custom twitter templates on their profiles, including their logo and website branding.

You can choose your own custom backgrounds and customize your page to suit your interests and your business. Creating or changing your background image is not a difficult task and there are many different applications you can use free of charge. You don’t even have to download anything to your computer if you don’t wish to.

More  @  Twitter  BackGround

IDG News Service – The recurrent technical problems that have affected Twitter for the past seven weeks have also taken a toll on developers of external applications built for the microblogging service.

Throughout the outages, malfunctions and bugs that began the second week of June and hit their high point during the soccer World Cup, makers of third-party applications have tried to weather the storm while having little or no control over the situation.

The frequent and disruptive technical issues have forced these developers, many of whom generate significant revenue from their Twitter applications, to scramble to appease their angry users, while trying to protect their brands and cope with lost business.

More  @  Twitter Experiencing

IDG News Service – The recurrent technical problems that have affected Twitter for the past seven weeks have also taken a toll on developers of external applications built for the microblogging service.

Throughout the outages, malfunctions and bugs that began the second week of June and hit their high point during the soccer World Cup, makers of third-party applications have tried to weather the storm while having little or no control over the situation.

More  @  Twitter Experiencing Growing Problems

In May 2010, social platforms surpassed the number of visits by Internet users when compared to the search giant Google. Google is the most popular search engine in town, if not the only search engine that really remains “standing”. I mean who uses Yahoo for search anymore (anyone???)?

More  @  Social  Networking

Flickr makes integration with Facebook easy, Finally!

Yes, finally Flickr has added the ability to share your photos on Facebook. Your photos will need to be set up as “public” photos for them to show up on your Facebook Wall.

Social photo-sharing site Flickr has, at long last, added some much-need social networking integration to its online service. You can now simultaneously post your photos to Flickr and Facebook.

More @ Flickr Photo Sharing

If I had a dollar for every time I heard “but how can Twitter help my business” OR “Twitter? I don’t think it’ll help me”, I’d be a multimillionaire! Ok, so I exaggerate; but for sure I would be hundreds of dollars richer.

So why should you use Twitter?

Well, Twitter is free. Twitter is easy. Twitter is flexible. Twitter helps make quick contact and quick connections.

More @ Twitter for Business

Oh yeah, here we go! Yahoo’s jumping on the bandwagon, the social media bandwagon that is. And you know what, it’s with the use of YOUR free yahoo email address.

Yep, Yahoo 280 million or so email users will be able to share information and pictures, exchange ideas, and network online with others in their address books.

More @ Social Media Blog

A University of Maryland study released last week suggests social media addicted students may be real. 200 students who participated in the study were asked to abstain from ALL media for ONLY 24 hours.

Yes, all media which meant no cell phones, no computers, no television or ipods, and no newspapers (although how a newspaper is media I’m not quite sure).  And this abstinence was only for 24 hours.

More @ Social Media Group

Change is good right? Even when it’s happening as fast as it is on Facebook. Lots of people are complaining about the new changes on Facebook, the biggest one being the renaming of the “become a fan” function to the “Like” button.

More @ Social Media Blog