Knowing who you should follow and getting recommendations and insights from the network of people you follow is important in making twitter more valuable to you and your business use of twitter.

Every Friday on Twitter there is a phenomenon called “Follow Friday”. Basically people will tweet who they recommend that people should follow. Think of it as a lightweight recommendation or endorsement activity engine. This will help you to find and follow the people that you want in your network of connections.

Here are 7 Best Practices to use when engaging in Follow Friday on Twitter.

1. Use the hash tag (the pound sign # = hash tag) and include this in the body of your tweet #followfriday

2. Recommend people who you think are worthy of following and that your network would benefit from following and connecting with them.

3. Break out your #followfriday tweets by some sort of category if possible. For example I might recommend people that are great analysts, engineers, foodies, artists, software developers, branding or marketing executives by specifically stating in my tweet why you should follow them.

4. Use Follow Friday to give back value to your followers network and reward the people that you respect and whose tweets you find valuable. Make sure you include the @ before the name so that people can easily click to that users profile page.

5. One of the keys of all social networks is that you have to give to get. So give and share the brain trust of people that you think are deserving of it. It will come back to you in the form of more loyal and engaged network!

6. Watch for your network to recommend people via Follow Friday and you can discover some real gems and make connections quickly. Pay special attention to the people that you respect.

7. Don’t blindly follow everyone that is recommended. Allocate a few minutes and check out the bio and tweets from the recommended people before you decide to follow those recommendations.

Here is a sample #followfriday tweet and an effective way to communicate who you are recommending and why.

Happy Following! FYI you can follow me at @Rumford

Twitter is announcing a new hand held device that appears to be like a full featured twitter interaction device. Word on the street is that the Twitter Wingman will be released in 3 months to the general public. Tentatively named the Twitter Wingman; it is roughly the size of a large page device, it has enhanced features such as:
** Ability to group people (big value there)
** Built in 5 Meg camera with a flash
** A $30 - 40 price tag with a two-year contract on Boost Mobile
** Integrated GPS with real time maps that allow you to locate other Wingmen in the area.
** Bluetooth data transfers between Wingmen.
** Dedicated hot keys for sending direct tweets, picking up new followers, and retweeting.

Check out more details in this great video from the team at WIRED.

While all of this could prove promising… I have to ask myself… “Do I really need to carry another device? Couldn’t we just build most of this functionality right into an iphone app?” This clearly does have a push to drive more acceptance on the low end based upon the price point. Let’s not forget that once you have a device like this it could become a very solid channel to drive geo specific & relevant advertising through.

Although this is an April fools joke. It is not too nutty to become something that just might work.

I can say with certainty that Twitter is aiming for the mainstream. They are trying to move past the early adopters and heavy tech users. Why do I say this? Well just a few hours ago Twitter has started to “educate” their users with word definitions for words such as “Widget”. They started showing these word definitions on the home page of users profiles with short “Simple Simon” types of descriptions.

A widget in the simplest of terms is a self contained mini-data delivery device for web site content. They allow content to be distributed to multiple sites in a compact size. In the case of Twitter it allows your latest tweets to be displayed on your website or blog by simply cutting and pasting a code snippet.

Here is an example of a live twitter widget. Put one on your site and users will see your latest tweets as well as number of followers.

Here is a short video interview where Jeremiah Owyang who is an analyst at Forrester Research asked me “what is a widget” about 18 months ago. We talk a bit about facebook, but the concepts fully apply.

I have been using Twitter for over 2 years and I sometimes forget that people do not see all of the uses and functionality of Twitter. So I wanted to ask a simple question and not skew the data with my reasons for asking this question.
Please take the Survey: How often do you favorite a tweet?

Twitter Advertising Has Arrived: While many have speculated about Twitter and it’s potential paths to revenue, I was never concerned with how they might monetize.  They have audience, they have data, they have velocity, they have immediacy, they have a social graph. They will have advertisers. They can add value at several intersecting points that advertisers would be pleased with. The options for Twitter to connect, add value, relevancy and build audiences are built in and provide several profit intersection points.

I would like to point out 3 areas of prime real estate and value opportunities where Twitter is likely to offer advertising for businesses. These areas are of significant marketing value that could add value for Twitter, users and the advertisers. All of these examples bring value to all parties involved; win, win, win across the board. None of these concepts/executions are very intrusive and have proven to be models that have worked for years for advertising giants like Google. You can click on any of the images to see larger illustrations.

1. Friend recommendations area is a premium advertising spot that is ideal for movies, business, brands, music, etc. The screen shot below is an actual screen shot, it has only been altered by highlighting paid sponsors in yellow. These “Suggested Users” could easily be paid placements. At this point I can’t confirm or deny that these are actual paid placements. But our exhaustive research across multiple Twitter accounts would indicate that these suggestions are coming from a fairly limited list of less than 200 accounts to follow. Britney Spears shows up more times than I can even mention. I can see how this would work well for promotion and marketing; thus facilitating buzz around movie launches, product launches, new cars, album releases,  etc.

2. Twitter could also provide recommendations for people to follow on users home page with a “People You Should Know” section. Algorithmically correct and relevant people intermixed with paid sponsors that are relevant based upon tweets that I have published or information from my profile would prove valuable to users. This could work as it would passively allow users to find new people/businesses/brands to follow and interact with. Twitter knows most users locations so this information could also be geo targeted for local businesses. (ie. the local Pizza Port Brewery in Solana Beach, CA).

Distribution = Audience = Awareness = Revenue.

NOTE: Facebook also uses a very similar model for the “Free Gift Of The Day” and it has been reported that this is Facebook largest revenue stream.

2A. Twitter could also wrap a social context element and tell me when someone I follow happened to follow one of the sponsors; thus generating extended reach and “endorsement” from my trusted network. (ie. Steve started following HRBlock)

3. We could also draw from the Google/Yahoo proven models of paid placement and sponsor placement based upon relevancy. Any time you can provide relevant information and facilitate connections and valuable information to users,  it generally will be accepted by the marketplace. The example that I have illustrated is an example for search results for the keyword Cars.  The Sponsor Results on the right of page are all actual twitter accounts that would draw awareness and readers/followers that could very well be interested in the relevant topics/content that these brands tweet about. This could help them grow their audience, distribution and influence. It could also help users find other people that they might have a common interest with.

3A. The relevant tweet is an actual tweet from GM Volt and could easily be placed in the results column and identified as a sponsored placement. (Yahoo does exactly this)

None of these advertising models are confirmed by Twitter. I will say that this could very well be the near future, it is not a stretch in the slightest. They could be paid placement with a Cost Per Click Model or a Cost Per Impression Model that goes to the highest bidder/most relevant/ highest performing advertisers. This is the model that Google created and it is the Goose that lays the golden egg of over 95% of Google’s revenues.

The reality is Twitter will offer some advertising models in the near future.  So having a legitimate and engaging presence with an audience on Twitter will only solidify your future opportunities in this eco-system. You can learn more about how business can use Twitter from our Book “Twitter as a Business Tool” as well as by following us on Twitter http://www.twitter.com/tweetbizbook