How Do I Access “My Tweets, Retweeted” With The New “Activity” Tab?

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One of the most important social media metrics on Twitter (hint: _WAY_ more important than number of followers or follower ratio) is “My Tweets, Retweeted”. This tells you what of your content is being reshared by your audience (i.e. what is being amplified). If you pay attention to this you can get a pretty good feel for what is working and what isn’t and hone your content, tone and targeting accordingly.

Unfortunately the new “Activity” tab that Twitter have rolled out has removed the old tab for this. So how do you get to it?

Here’s the link… https://twitter.com/#!/retweeted_of_mine

Useful? I hope so.

How to Increase Sign-ups by 200%

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From the ThinkVitamin blog:

He said that they tested various phrases on the Highrise homepage for the call-to-action button. They originally had used various permutations of “Free Trial” and “Sign-up for Free Trial”. Then they tested the phrase:

“See Plans and Pricing”

This resulted in a 200% increase in sign-ups. That’s right. 200%.

He believes it’s because people are afraid if they click a link that says “Free Trial” then they’ll somehow automatically signup for something and be trapped. However, “See Plans and Pricing” encouraged them to explore, without the fear of commitment.

If that isn’t a case for conducting A/B Testing, then I don’t know what is.

SCAM – $500 Gift Card for COLES – FREE

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UPDATE: The purpose of this scam is to get people to fill out a survey. Every time the survey gets filled out the scammer gets paid a small fee. That’s the reason for all of this silliness.

There’s an Australia-specific scam doing the rounds of Facebook at the moment purporting to be giving away a Coles gift card with the text:

$500 Gift Card for COLES – FREE

If you click on the link you are taken to a page with the following text:

Step 1: You must share this page

Step 2:Click “Add Comment” & Type, Thanks! into the comments below

It is 100% certifiably undeniably a scam. Do not fall for it. If you fall for it and I know you don’t be surprised if I make fun of you the next time I see you.

The clues?

  • The countdown for the giveaway resets itself to 1300 every time you refresh the page.
  • Look at the punctuation and spelling… Doesn’t seem right does it? Certainly not like the work of a branch of the largest company in Australia.
  • The URL the link redirects you to when you click it is http://yeyenut.info/ and the link it asks you to share is http://toolapz.info/. Does this look legit to you? If yes, does it look legit AND even vaguely affiliated with Coles?
  • If you share the link and say “Thanks!” how is Coles going to find you if they aren’t your Facebook friend? Seriously, actually stop and think about it for a second.

There have been a few of these lately – No real purpose, benefit or threat to them which can be seen (although I’m keen to hear from anyone who has a different opinion here) but because of the lure of FREE STUFF they inevitably spread like wildfire.

Please, stop and think.

What’s your way of figuring out if something is a scam or not? Share below!

UPDATE: The purpose of this scam is to get people to fill out a survey. Every time the survey gets filled out the scammer gets paid a small fee. That’s the reason for all of this silliness.

How To Kill A Startup – An Email I Should Have Sent 2 Years Ago

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Sellerwise.net was my first real tech start-up.

As a business it had a lot of potential – a genuine need in the market, lack of competition, a massive potential customer base, and fantastic initial take-up… And then one day the company I was singularly reliant on (eBay) decided they’d develop and offer a competing product… Game over.

I’ll do some more posts on this in the future – I’ve learnt a metric crapload out of starting, building, running and now failing my first tech startup.

Hey everyone,

After 4 years, lots of fun, lots of learning, and a little bit of pain every now and then we’ve decided to shut down Sellerwise. The service will be switched off on the 30th of October 2011.

You can find similar functionality via eBay’s free Listing Analytics tool which can be found at  http://apps.ebay.com/selling?ViewEAppDetails&stab=1&mId=746&appType=1&appId=app.listinganalytics.com.

I’d like to personally thank all of you for using the service, especially those of you who’ve helped us develop the application with your valuable input and feedback.

If you’d like to keep up to date with what I’m up to next head over the http://tallpoppygroup.com and subscribe. I promise not to spam you – this is just a list for people who are infested in what my company is doing.

If you’d like to get in touch please contact me at <EMAIL> or on Twitter at @caseyjohnellis.

It’s clear to me that eBay is more and more towards favouring the “big seller” and the “big partner”. As a small solutions startup eBay has treated us with a mixture of contempt and ambivalence over the years. Commercially I can understand the reasons for this, but in my view it is counter to the spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship that eBay was initially founded on and brought to market with. I urge each one of you to support the startups which are working to bring balance back into this space.

I wish you all the best with your eBay selling, your other ventures, and life in general!

Peace and grace,
Casey

Thanks to everyone who’s helped, advised, and been a part of this project over the years – especially Jeremy Manoto, Michael Murphy, Ryan McLean and my lovely lady Viv Ellis.

I have to say that hitting send on this email, whilst quite sad, feels very good indeed. On to bigger and better things.

SCAM: In Memory of Steve Jobs, we’re Giving Away 1000 iPad 2′s – NOT!

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The text of this Facebook scam is as follows:

Title: In Memory of Steve Jobs, we’re Giving Away 1000 iPad 2′s

Link (DO NOT CLICK): http://promo-ipad.net/?801&fb_comment_id=fbc_10150343605577550_19262669_10150344652707550

URL: promo-ipad.net

Body Text: To celebrate the life of Steve, we have decided to give away 1000 iPad 2′s to honour Steve, who passed away earlier this week.

Fortunately it doesn’t seem to be malicious at this stage – The page you get taken to simply asks you to re-share the link on Facebook and put the text “Thank you Steve” in your status. It looks like an experiment to me, or a sort of guerrilla tribute to Steve Jobs.

That said, as this picks up momentum on Facebook and more people re-share it it’s quite possible that the author could pivot the scam into something more malicious. The tendency with scams is the more popular they are the more trusted they become, and the more popular they get as a result.

A few thoughts…

  • Steve Jobs died just over a week ago. They are giving away 1000 iPad’s. When I check they had 198 left… It’s been on 198 for a day now – Have they stopped giving them out? Forgotten perhaps? Or maybe the scammer is leverage the “scarcity principle” – If a person thinks that they are about to “miss out” they are far more likely to act without thinking things through.
  • The end date is October 16th 2011. It’s October 16th 2011 in the USA right now. See the above point.
  • How would those running the competition contact you to tell you that you’ve won? They aren’t your friends on Facebook – Are they? Or haven’t you thought this through?
  • Where is the competition disclosure statement required by law pretty much everywhere? For that matter – In which jurisdiction is this competition being held? If it was a legal competition this stuff would be there.
  • The landing page is copyrighted “Applepromo 2011″. Did anyone actually google “Applepromo” to see who they are or if they are in any way connected with Apple? I guess now that the phrase is in this post we’ll see!

You’ve been warned. Please think before you re-share this stuff. At best it’s a bit of a waste of time spent excited about something that will never happen. At worst it’s a pivot point into identity theft, viral infection, and a host of other fun things naughty people can do once they have your trust.