Week in Twitter News: March 16, 2011

Here’s Why Developers Are Scaring Twitter: Tech News and Analysis «

Twitter is downplaying suggestions that it’s on a crusade against developers. But a new analysis of Twitter traffic indicates why the company may be getting nervous. While Twitter officials downplay the company’s crusade against new …

Publish Date: 03/15/2011 11:56

http://gigaom.com/2011/03/15/heres-why-developers-are-scaring-twitter/

Scripting News: Twitter’s new developer roadmap

PPS: Bad timing for Apple’s rollout of the iPad 2. They were hoping to dominate the news with hordes of groping fanbois camped on the sidewalk outside Apple stores. Instead there’s some real news (no not Twitter, Japan). …

Publish Date: 03/11/2011 14:44

Wonderful Fact About Twitter | SHM News

21st March 2006 Jack Dorsey was the first to tweet. It was an official tweet by the co founder of twitter. The era of micro blogging was started.

Publish Date: 03/16/2011 3:49

http://www.serpholicmedia.com/news/wonderful-fact-twitter-16661

Week in Twitter News: March 16, 2011

Twitter Trackbacks for BBC News – Fukushima workers withdraw after …

A spike in radiation levels at Japan’s stricken Fukushima nuclear plant forces workers to suspend their operations, a government spokesman says.

Publish Date: 03/16/2011 4:46

http://topsy.com/www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12755739

Topsy launches Twitter video search « News [Brafton]

Topsy, the company that offers real-time search for the social web, has announced that it will now offer video search options that allow users to find the hottest clips on Twitter. Brafton has long reported about the rise of video …

Publish Date: 03/16/2011 4:28

http://www.brafton.com/news/topsy-launches-twitter-video-search-800464058

Twitter links & articles for teachers, researchers & academics …

I use Twitter via @john_larkin to share news & resources. In keeping with that I have updated my list of links to resources, articles & views regarding Twitter.

Publish Date: 03/16/2011 8:06

http://www.larkin.net.au/blog/2011/03/17/twitter-views-news/

Ref sues AP, writer over Twitter blast | DAILYSPORTS NEWS TRENDS

Ref sues AP, writer over Twitter blast. Filed under SPORTS {no comments}. Basketball Veteran NBA referee William Spooner sued the Associated Press and AP sportswriter Jon Krawczynski over a Twitter… Source. Did you like this? Share it: …

Publish Date: 03/16/2011 4:45

http://www.daily-news-trends.com/sports-2/ref-sues-ap-writer-over-twitter-blast/

That’s the Week in Twitter News: March 16, 2011

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Twitter Backgrounds: The key to positioning yourself in social media

This week, we’re devoting this space to a five-part series on marketing with Twitter. This is part 1 of 5 parts. At the end of the series we’ll have a free report thoroughly covering this topic for you (if you’re a premium member). Don’t miss that. It’s one of the many benefits of premium membership.

Twitter backgrounds brand either you or your company

More and more home business people are now marketing their services on Twitter. As with any respected business you want to have a professional online presence. Many social networks allow for the modification of their default theme, and with that, Twitter is no exception. You can control your Twitter backgrounds.

But you want to take it to the next level. You want your Twitter background to stand out and have it’s own look. Making use of a focused Twitter background image that reflects your personal or business core values will create a substantial and indelible statement about you or your business.

So, how can you design your Twitter backgrounds?

First, you must be very clear about the image you wish to convey.

Think about this a lot. Ask your questions? Write down the answers. For example:

1. Do you want to be serious or whimsical?
2. Does this Twitter background reflect your personally or your business?
3. What’s the goal of your Twitter account? Are you prospecting for customers? Addressing support issues? Spouting off opinions? Giving good content? Connecting with family and friends?
4. What’s your style? Do you like clean design with muted colors? Or are you bold with bright vibrant look-at-me graphic style?
5. How long will you be using this Twitter account? Are we branding you with your company or is this a quick hit that will disappear in a short while?

Include your business name, perhaps a logo, anchor text link to your business website or possibly other social network URLs. Specific information you can include is a short bio, contact information or a picture of yourself. Next you want to consider your graphic look , and color for the sidebar. All of these pieces will display to the left hand side of the Twitter post area.

Get professional Twitter backgrounds…

For a more professional and snazzy look (for those who want to use Twitter as a strategic branding tool), don’t include a title on the image.

You can use creative software such as Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro to build your background. You need to build a large image that will cover the computer screen without tiling. Create a background image 1280×1024 pixels. Using anything smaller will create a disjointed image in which your visitors see a confusing background experience.

For your sidebar, you can stack your images or photos, business info, and website; this bar begins on the upper left-hand side of your image. It can also include your name, job title, blog URL, specialty, social network URL, and more essential information.

Save your image as a jpeg or if you wish to have a faster loading image, save it as a gif. Save it and login to your Twitter account. On the upper right, click on ‘Settings’. From there you will want to click on the ‘Design’ tab. Find the link ‘change background image’. By clicking on ‘browse’, search for the image that you’ve created earlier. Leave the tile check-box unchecked. Lastly, click on ‘save changes’. As quick as that, you will have a custom Twitter background image.

Why a unique Twitter background image?

Your background on Twitter positions you in the marketplace. If you plan to use Twitter for online marketing, make the background more professional and reflects who you are. There are many picture editing programs that you can use aside from Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro so choose the program that matches your skillset and will assist you in creating the background you want.

If you would rather have someone else create the image for you, there are many resources on the web to help you accomplish your goal.

Twitter Gallery – Fun and interesting background designs, not able to modify, free and ready to use

Free Twitter Designer – Personalize your Twitter background that have the same look and feel as those done by professional graphic designers – free and easy to use

Twitter Backgrounds.com – They create a professional background for you for $99

Do you have other tools or services that you recommend? Or have you used these? Or do you have a Twitter background that represents your company or personality that you’d like to show off?

Post it in the comment section below. Show us yours and we’ll show you ours

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Making Money With Twitter: The essential Who, What, Why of Twitter profits

This week, we’re devoting this space to a five-part series on marketing with Twitter. This is part 2 of 5 parts. At the end of the series we’ll have a free report thoroughly covering this topic for you (if you’re a premium member). Don’t miss that. It’s one of the many benefits of premium membership.

Keeping your audience’s focus on Twitter when your tweets are among

thousands in a short time frame is a strategic move for many marketers who are making money with Twitter.

Isn’t it maddening when you read tweets regurgitating the last thousand mundane thought processes that someone has?

One key to making money with Twitter is to set your Twitter messages apart

Doing that helps build a foundation on which to present your marketing efforts?

Consider what you are posting so that your tweets are lost in the abyss of internet trash.

Ponder the Who, What, Why of your communication. When you remember the who’s, the what’s, and the why’s of your communications and you answer these questions intelligently, you will keep your audience with you.

• WHO?
• WHAT?
• WHY?

Consider this question: What are we selling to whom and why should they buy it? Is Twitter the medium that helps sell that product?

For online entrepreneurs who are really making money with Twitter, effective posting with valuable content is key

Even the best intentioned social media effort will fall flat if the “who, what and why” is not considered. Only those who practice the following guideline are really making money with Twitter as on online entrepreneur. Don’t be fooled by those who treat Twitter as spam. This must apply in even the unassuming of tweets.

Here are a few guidelines to mull over:

• Who do you think this tweet will benefit?
• What is it that you hope to gain or hope your market will get from this tweet?
• Why will it benefit your efforts toward making money with Twitter, or your customers, current and potential?
• While tweeting your lunch meeting with your followers may seem appropriate, which of the following will lock in a more profitable relationship with your audience?

“I am just getting back from lunch at my favorite restaurant. I had a lovely Asian chicken salad and a glass of Chardonnay. I enjoyed myself.”

Or

“Enjoyed a lovely business lunch w @username today. We spoke of joint ventures and how my company X and their company Y can work together.”

The first one may get you a reply or two from those who are happy you enjoyed a nice lunch, the second will demonstrate that you are an aggressive action taker, that you take your business seriously and are looking to create viable affiliate relationships with others.

Even the gurus are trying to figure out how often to tweet. But the true question is not how often as much as how much valuable information your tweets create. You can tweet every 5 minutes for hours on end if you feel like it. However, if all you are posting about is drivel without any true insight into who you are, what your company is about and what you have to offer, it does little more than keep your name in front of your followers.

Give the market a reason to wait for your messages. Remember that you are using Twitter as ways to drive profitable traffic for your business. Waving gently at passersby outside of your brick and mortar isn’t going to get them in the door any quicker than it will within the social networks. Offering your audience something with substance is the only consistent way of making money with Twitter, will get them in the front door and hopefully have them return frequently.

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Use TwitFaxo to Follow/Unfollow

Faxo.com’s Twit Faxo is a powerful Twitter search tool that can be used for targeting followers as part of an effective online marketing campaign.

Multiple Operators
Twit Faxo offers targeted results by providing all, and, any and exact wording operators. Further filtering is done by choosing what profile part you want to search. There is also a feature that lets you search for users who follow or are followed by a specific account. There are a number of parameters you can set to limit results such as the number of followers/following the account, number of tweets range, and date of last tweet. One of the most useful features is the ability to eliminate users you have recently unfollowed.

Bulk follow, follow/unfollow
Follows and unfollows are automatically accepted. A report of your results is produced. You choose the order you want the results to appear in. There is also a feature to set a time limit for follow backs before automatically unfollowing an account.

Automation
Twit Faxo can be configured with five automatic settings. You can set a time period to wait before unfollowing someone who has not followed you back. You can set up tracking of following and unfollowing, and you can program your account to follow those who follow you and unfollow those who unfollow you. There is also an option to add an automated welcome message.

Rankings
Twit Faxo provides rankings for the one million most popular users on Twitter, along with their number of followers. Interesting to some, I suppose, but I can’t think of a use for drilling quite that deep. Still, if you want to know who the 100 or 1,000 most popular tweeps are, this tool will display that information.

If you use bulk following/unfollowing to grow your list, Twit Faxo can be a valuable resource. Using a variety of Twitter search tools produces different results, which can be amalgamated into a powerful online marketing campaign.

How many Twitter search tools do you use? Leave us a comment below.

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BudURL - Twitter tool for URL shortening

With only 140 characters available to work with, you have to shorten your URLs when you want to include links in your posts. There are many serviceable URL shorteners around, but why not try one that collects detailed statistics about the traffic around you? One of the best Twitter tools for URL shortening is BudURL.

The Basics
BudURL offers Twitter integration and a short domain name. You not only shrink a long URL, you can add notes and tags as well. Thanks to a clean, intuitive interface, managing your links is a simple task. You can schedule tweets for multiple accounts. BudURL also offers two bookmarklets to simplify tweeting.

Statistics and Analytics
This is where the application really shines. You can view real-time click statistics on each link along with detailed analytics. You can search multiple accounts using many labels and keywords. Your dashboard displays referrers and daily click totals in easy to read charts. This tells you not only how much activity your links are generating, but lets you know which social media platforms are the most active.

More Features
BudURL also provides a visual on your link activity. It displays a list of the retweets of your tweet and link. It also ties in mobile devices with QR codes. Their mobile landing pages make creating a mobile marketing strategy a snap. The Geo-IP data identifies location details for cities, regions and countries. This provides valuable geographic insight that can benefit your marketing strategy.

BudURL is a great way to shorten your links and analyze their reach. There are many applications to measure website traffic; this tool captures and measures your social network traffic. The site offers three premium packages for users, so you can find the perfect fit for your business. This is definitely one of the best Twitter tools available for URL shortening.

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Twitter tools for Online Safety

Twitter is so much a part of our lives now; we tend to relax our vigilance in protecting our privacy and our information. These five Twitter safety tips will help increase your security and your enjoyment of Twitter.

Use a strong password. This should go without saying. Use a combination of numbers and lower and upper case letters. Don’t use something obvious like your birthday. I often turn one of my favorite quotes into an acronym, and then add my “lucky” number. For example, “time waits for no man” might become 11twfnM. Twitter will never ask you for your password by email. When in doubt, go to the website.

Make sure you’re really on Twitter. Phishing scams abound and they use very authentic looking websites and addresses. Always make sure http://twitter.com is the base domain. There may be more to it, such as http://search.twitter.com/, but definitely not http://twitter.phisherman.com.

Think about links before you click. Many people use URL shorteners such as Bit.ly to share links too long for Twitter’s 140 character limit. This is common but you can’t always see the domain name, which makes it difficult to know exactly where you will end up. Use a browser that offers a free plug-in that shows the extended URL without clicking. If you do click a link, check the URL before entering any personal information.

Protect your privacy. This should be another no-brainer. If you wouldn’t give information to a stranger in the street, why would you give it to someone on line just because they claim to be your friend? Twitter > settings is the place to go to set your privacy settings. You can choose to hide your location. Parents should make sure their children are not sharing their location; there are just too many predators around to risk it. Adults should weigh the risks and benefits for themselves.

Keep your computer secure. Keep your operating system up to date. Windows lets you set up automatic updates. Keep your anti-virus and anti-spy software up to date. Remember that even a Mac can be vulnerable to attack.

Twitter can be a fabulous way to meet new people and share your interests. Just be as careful as you would in any non-internet situation and you will be fine. I hope these Twitter safety tips have helped.

How do you protect yourself on-line? Do you monitor your children too? Let us know by leaving a comment in the box below.

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How to Twitter using Twitbin To Track Your Tweets

Tweets appear and get buried so quickly on Twitter, you need to know how to Twitter more effectively. Twitbin is a Firefox plug in that adds a sidebar to your browser. No more checking in with Twitter 10 times a day. Buried tweets in your Twitter stream is a very confusing and frustrating phenomena especially for those who are trying to learn how to Twitter more efficiently.

Twitbin is efficient tool for those learning how to Twitter

Twitbin is an easy way to keep up with what’s happening using this clean, simple Firefox browser add-on.

The video below will guide you through the basics of Twitbin.

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MTTB announces new pricing structure

Today, My Twitter Toolbox site founder David Perdew issued a press release announcing a new pricing structure for those who join the site as new members. Starting today, these new members who join the site not only get access to just under 1,000 of the top Twitter tools in existence, but they’ll now have the option of spending just $5.99 a month for ten months to earn a lifetime Gold membership, or pay at one-time fee of $47 for immediate access.

This new pricing structure is part of a consistent effort to give our site visitors the best opportunity to stay up-to-date with what’s happening with Twitter, and social media in general. Our premium articles, blogs, and special reports uncover lots of helpful tips and insights to improve productivity with social media and make the experience more enjoyable in the process.

We know times are tight, and that many folks are facing an uncertain future where budgets often run short and economic pressures are still creating significant challenges for many individuals and families.

We also know that the information found on My Twitter Toolbox has created real value for businesspeople, bloggers, and social media fans that communicate and network with friends and associates every day. Our goal is to offer the best resource for top Twitter tools to our audience while easing the burden of online expenses associated with making the most of Twitter.

For specific details on this exciting new promotional offer, check out our latest press release on our Press Room page.

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Trendistic is one of the best Twitter search tools for specialized searches

The Twitter Search tool is a great place to start. Just type who or what you are looking for in the search box at the top of your Twitter page. You can add most of the same operators you use with a web search engine, such as quotes, OR and -. You can also search by hashtag. To save a search, just click the save search box. To retrieve a search later, use the search dropdown box on the timeline.

Snap Bird comes at searching from a slightly different perspective. You can’t access the public timeline, but you can search any user’s tweet stream as well as their favorites, tweets that mention you, and direct messages. Snap Bird stands out as one of the best free Twitter tools for searching back more than 10 days, which is the limit on Twitter search.

Summizer is a Twitter search tool for the iPhone with a clean interface. It scans the Twitter stream in real time and automatically updates your saved searches. Summizer uses the same advanced operators as Twitter search, so you can drill down to the data you want. Foreign language tweets are translated and you can share your searches by tweet and email.

TweetSaver allows you to search back through your own tweets. If you open a tweet, you can tag it or share it. Tags appear in a tag cloud, so you can further refine your search. Click the share button and increase your productivity by sending the tweet to one of your social media sites. The free plan saves the 3200 most recent tweets. If you need more storage than that, premium plans are available, with a discount for tweeting about TweetSaver.

Trendistic lets you search tweets by date and time. Enter your search term, then choose a day within the past week. To refine your search you can click on the time of day. This application is somewhat limited in scope, but if you want to drill down by time of tweet, this is a handy tool to have.

All desktop clients provide some sort of search feature, but not everyone wants to bother with a dashboard. If all you want is a quick search, these are some of the best (and often free) Twitter search tools get the job done.

What tool are you using to search through Twitter? Leave us a comment in the box below.

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New Twitter applications

This week we’ve added 29 new applications to our site!

My Twitter Toolbox is constantly seeking out the latest and greatest new applications for the benefit of our readers, who look for new ways to interact with the site. Our growing list of best free and paid Twitter tools is updated every week, so be sure to check back often to find helpful programs that help improve your social media experience.

This week’s entries include the following:

CozyTag
CozyTag allows you to power up the tags you use online by allowing you to create and track them all across the Web. The site pulls in tags from Twitter, Flickr, LiveJournal, Blogger, YouTube, and 53 other services.

FreeSearch
FreeSearch enables you to search across social media, social networks and the web generally to find the people you want to find – from inside Twitter. You simply follow @freesearch, reply with a name of interest, and the search results come back in a tweet within minutes. You can also conduct private searches and restrict searches to specific networks like Twitter, LinkedIn, Classmates, Digg, TypePad, and several others.

GovLive
GovLive is the most advanced aggregator of real-time government news on the web, provided free to the public directly from Twitter. Every news item comes direct from agencies and officials without editorial or political bias. GovLive began as a service to get information to people quickly during emergencies and has evolved to become a sole source for all government news, big and small.

Instant Tweetup
Instant Tweetup is one of several new iPhone applications that provides a fun and easy way to make new friends, connect with local people and find out whats going on in your community. By using Twitter to search your local area, Instant Tweetup shows who is nearby, up to 10 miles, and lets you send them a tweet. It’s a good way to connect with people after gigs, conferences, seminars, or even to find someone to have a coffee with.

Journalist Tweets
JournalistTweets helps journalists connect with each other. If you have a Twitter account, you can click a gray arrow below any tweet on the site to reply to that journalist right there.

LinksAlpha
LinksAlpha.com is a Real-Time news tracking and publishing site. LinksAlpha.com also provides social activity measurement application that enables you to track social activity happening on any news Site or blog.

MicroBlogBuzz
MicroBlogBuzz lists the latest trends on micro-blogging services Twitter, Jaiku and Identica. You can see the trends (buzzes) of the last 60 minutes, 6 hours, 24 hours, 48 hours, 7 days, and 30 days. All the micro-blog posts on this site are loaded from external micro-blogging platforms.

Music Followers
Musicfollowers is a great way to find people to follow with similar music tastes on Twitter. This is a search mashup with Idiomag. All you have to do is enter your two favorite artists and it returns a list of Twitter users that have mentioned those and also other similar artists.

MyTweetMark
MyTweetMark is a site for creating, targeting, and measuring marketing campaigns on Twitter. You can gain more followers and contacts by using the site to reach out to people you wouldn’t normally have access to. The site also has analytics for measuring tweet views and you can create a business profile for your blogs and to help create a social media contact list.

Propnotes
Propnotes is a location-based site where users can find, review, and talk about local condos through updates. The has over 4,000 properties with information local to certain provinces in Canada.

TelAware
This iPhone application takes the tweets of businesses and connects them to a physical location. This way, when you go out you can open this application and see the tweets of businesses close to where you are, and it doesn’t require you to follow the account.

Turpial
Turpial is a client written in Python which is light, fast, fully functional and integrated to the user desktop. Its feature set includes the ability to shorten links and support for retweets, direct messages, favorites, follow/unfollow, and attaching images to tweets.

Tweet & Give
Tweet And Give is a new application that donates money to charity at no costs to users. The app uses ad revenue as the source of charitable donations. A minimum of 80% of the site’s gross ad revenue will be donated. Users can choose a charity from our list of select charities, and the funds generated from their activities on the site will go to their chosen charity.

Tweet2PSM
Updates your personal message in Windows Live Messenger with your current Twitter Status, with customizable time interval. This script requires Messenger Plus!.

Tweeting Places
Tweeting Places is geo-location based site that establishes a visual directory of places that tweet. Restaurants, hotels, coffee shops, universities etc. Users can zoom in on their own hot spots, add their own places, check out the site’s blog, and scroll around the world to find places that tweet regularly.

TweetReports
TweetReports provides the most advanced search filters, brand tracking and reporting features available – allowing you to monitor, track and conduct searches about your brand or your competitors whenever you like. You also get a premium tool that provides follower analysis, keyword analytics, bookmarking, and advanced searches using Twitter Lists.

TwitHorus
TwitHorus.com is a new application that aggregates and displays real-time tweet updates of tech companies by category directly from the source, making it easy to filter out the noise and find out what your competitors are up to. Twithorus.com also provides statistics/analysis on the tweeting activity of companies, insights on how users are reacting to updates of each company, and real-time search capabilities.

TwitStat.us
While Twitter does provide badges and widgets, the current badges and widgets merely display YOUR latest tweets. TwitStat.us goes one step further to showcase search results from Twitter’s stream, and the site makes it completely plug and play, completely free of charge.

Twitter For Busy People
T4BP is a fast and fun way to see what all your friends are tweeting at once. No registration or login required. Simply enter your Twitter name, and the fun begins. All your friends’ pictures are displayed, letting you mouse over them to quickly see what they are doing. All friends are reduced to a single picture, allowing you to check ALL of your friends in a single glance. Now, with TwitPic integration, you can even see posted pictures without leaving the site.

Twitter Power Search
Twitter Power Search is a simple site designed to surface real-time Twitter trends that rank best. Free Twitter tools are plentiful, and this is one site that arranges trending topics by current, daily,and weekly trends, as well as images, video, and audio categories.

Twitter StreamGraphs
This site shows a StreamGraph for the latest 200 tweets which contain the search word. The StreamGraph shows the usage over time for the words most highly associated with the search word. It’s a fairly sophisticated way of displaying trending topics in a way that requires a little on-site reading to understand.

TwitterForce
TwitterForce is a robust, full-featured integrative tool for Salesforce and Twitter, offered through the Force.com Labs program. With this tool, you can create contacts, leads, and cases based on incoming Tweets, or import an entire twitter conversation thread. You’re also able to discover and track the latest trends by setting up custom search terms to monitor, then create contacts, leads, and cases from search results in one click. TwitterForce also allows you to easily send outbound tweets to leads and contacts, and save a record of your outbound tweets as activities on contacts, accounts, and leads.

TwitterMySite
With TwitterMySite, you can add a Twitter button to your blog or website and get more people to follow you. You can also customize the image with your twitter ID or any text you wish. The site has a number of attractive, original “follow me” buttons that you can use to create a custom look for Twitter on your blog.

TwoTweet
TwoTweet is a way to reward your biggest and most socially active fans by discounting your digital music for each Twitter follower they share it with. All you have to do is upload your music, set the price, choose your Twiscount and tell your fans.

Twtr2src
Twtr2src increases your productivity by allowing you options on how you want to receive your Twitter timeline. You can post tweets to Evernote or send updates by email automatically. You simply enter your username on the site and enter some details to set it up, and you’ll get updates without having to work hard at it.

View140
View140 is a sleek, simple image search for Twitter. It goes through most of the major Twitter image hosting services and seeks out images associated to your search terms.

What’s Your Tweet Worth?
What’s your Tweet Worth is a complementary service to TwittAd which determines the value of your profile. From @Twittad – get a feel for how valuable you might be to advertisers on Twitter. A fun add-on site to the Twittad offering.

Whos Talkin
WhosTalkin.com is a social media search tool that allows users to search for conversations surrounding the topics that they care about most. Whether it be your favorite sport, favorite food, celebrity, or your company’s brand name, Whostalkin.com helps people join in on the conversations. The goal of the site is to deliver the most relevant and current conversations happening in the world of social media, using search and sorting algorithms that combine data taken from over 60 of the internet’s most popular social media gateways.

YourVersion
YourVersion is a real-time discovery engine that continuously discovers new and relevant web content tailored to your specific interests in real-time. YourVersion also lets you easily share that content with your friends through email, Facebook and Twitter. YourVersion launched at the 2009 TechCrunch50 conference and won the People’s Choice Award.

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