Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Why Twitter is Good for Your Web Page / Blog

Twitter is live and your Web page is, well, not.  Typically your Web site will be a static entity, maybe lots of stuff to find and see, all very nice, very nice ... but boring like mowing a golf course.

Presumably you update your Twitter session with your deathless Tweets at least once or day or at least more often than you update your Web site so this is liveness that you can carry over.

This is also a fast way to communicate whatever you like as in information,  links, or so to your audience, clientele, whomever is likely to visit your site.  This gives them additional reasons to return and that's the big deal on the Web.  How do you get them to come back.  So.  Give them a reason.

To integrate this with Facebook, authorize the access on both sides.  Thereafter, anything you Tweet will be propagated to Facebook.  Note that the process in Facebook is slow and is buggy so only a portion of your Tweets will get through if you write a lot of them.  Nevertheless, it will work fairly well if your activity is not so high.

In use, you might go to Twitter to send a message out to your Web audience but you return to Facebook because, I don't know, you like pictures of cats.  This will work just fine as there are no hurt feelings if you drop off conversations in Twitter.


To get the HTML for embedding a Twitter stream in your Web site, click the gear icon on the upper right side of the Twitter window.  From there click Widgets and select the session for which you wish the widget (probably only one).  Set up the widget using Twitter's controls for light / dark, etc and then COPY the HTML it makes.  Paste that into your Web page HTML and, presto, now it knows Twitter.

This has been very useful to me for information that doesn't warrant a new Web page or a blog article.  Some call that microblogging.  I call that a stupid invention of a word.  It's a Tweet and it's short / fast.  Sometimes that's useful.

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