Saravanan Sahadevan

Well continuing in our Communication Cost Cutting Series, I figured out that it was best to also use twitter as a solution too. Well social media does work at it’s best. 

There are couple of ways you could achieve this. Twitter may act to work for you on a personal basis or on a public basis. It just works well. What I meant was if you would want to reach a small number of people at the same time or reach a large number of people at the same time, twitter works for you. 

I’m not going to explain what is Twitter here but I’m again leading you into a different direction on communication cost cutting. 

Imagine you have 200 people following you. And most of them are your friends. If you were a close friend I’m sure you would even be following me through a mobile phone or any other portable application which is available free today. 

I now have an invitation to a birthday party of mine. But I’m not going to spend couple of bucks by inviting through phone calls or text-mesages. But I’m going to spend just 20 cents or for free if I’m on an online application by simply sending a text message to my twitter account. Now 200 people who followed me have got the same invitation. 

You could do the same through E-Mails but its common for people, mostly in Asia to be more glued to their mobile phones rather than a portable PC or a desktop machine. 

What if I would like to use it for a personal amount? Have friends overseas?

The cost sending a text message from your mobile phone to your twitter account is much more cheaper compared to directly sending an international text. I would suggest to only do so at important moments. 

Instead, get a mobile twitter application and get connected at a local Wifi hotspot and communicate instantly for free. It’s works just as quick as instant messaging does. 

Well once again, this are just ideas on how social web tools such as twitter could really cut your cost especially if your contact numbers are at large figures. What’s your option on using twitter as a cost saver? 

Do take some time to view the video below on What do people use Twitter for… 

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Over the years there have been a vast increase on ways we communicate with each and other. But somehow we do not seem to keep our communication bills on the grip. 

We as well sometimes feel that we are using cheap services and we tend to forget the amount used and then end up paying a great amount as well. Well I hope this article may open up your mind on ways we could split between options at the right time and reduce our cost. 

Text-Messages are cheap yet a killer. 

Don’t mind the heading, but that’s almost a fact. The cheaper a mobile operator provides on a text message rate, the more you are going to use it and it’s going to end up to the same amount you paid previously on your bill. 

Well, I wanted to keep this post brief as I wanted to stimulate a thought only, therefore get connected. 

Internet Connectivity, its so vital these days until it may be assumed as a need of a human being besides food, water, cloths & shelter. It’s nearly everywhere today that you have WiFi. First of all, if you are getting a new mobile phone, get one with WiFi built in it. Why? Because that’s your cost saver to text-messaging.

If you are going to use a data plan, its going to burn you down unless you are on a affordable unlimited data plan. But then again, its not the speed we like. I would always prefer hanging around at places that has a WiFi connectivity. 

So now, you have the connection, What next. 

The answer is direct. Learn how to persuade your friends to start emailing more as well. E-mails could be made at the speed of text messaging with today’s technology such as Push technology. Eventually, you would be texting at no cost. Accept for your connectivity bills. I’m not against texting. Trust me I love texting. Its just that we need alternatives at the time-being. 

Why I say this is because over here in most Asian countries, we do not have great offer plans like, 2000 sms’s a month that comes within a plan or so. It’s pretty limited. I do believe as well that things would change but it takes time. 

The next thing we have is instant messaging. Get your favorite IM’s hooked up to your mobile phones or your portables and save more. That’s about it. I’m sure I gave you a kick-off on how the internet could work for you somehow. You would need to test out your self and find out which way works the best for you. I would point all of you with another direction with the next post in the series on Twitter

This post was part of the Cutting Communication Cost Series

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I’m taking this moment to launch a weekly post series titled “Weekly Social Web Bytes” that concerns new and emerging trends in the social web today. I intend to provide news that matters to anyone that have an interest towards the social media background. For the rest, its just some piece of new information for you from my RSS reader.

This week seems to be busy throughout the blogosphere and the social web. Diving in towards the blogosphere, news, friends and people I adore 

• Michael Martin of Pro Blog Design has some unique collection of RSS icons again. Well if you are skeptical on choosing your RSS icons, well he did sort that out for me with his previous 60 RSS Icons collections. This time his gathered 50 RSS Icons for you. 
• Apparently Yahoo is in the midst of making some changes to its default search experience in a while to add some more spice to it for the right flavor? Perhaps to prevent any further buyout proposals? It is said that Search Monkey is a key part of Yahoo’s attempts to embrace the semantic web. Looks like some good user experience is on its way. 
• Well, this is a bit of the social web but I its kind off related. Scientist have found water on Mars! Alright go ahead with the huray! and so on. But the part I’m informing you is that, the guys from the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, Calif informed it to the world first with Twitter! Go ahead on follow them on @MarsPhoenix. There were rumors that’s Phoenix was messaging from Mars. Well, its rumors, what can you say more.
• I was browsing my del.icio.us feeds, I came across this. Something I guess might be similar to Radian 6, a social media analytic tool. Well it is called SM2 by Techrigy. Its more for the PR people. Well I would not be recommending that anyway. If I would, I would for Radian 6.

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Just as I had lunch yesterday over at Chutney Mary’s, I was having this in mind. Vicknes was telling me to start providing some facts that would show the advantages of social media. I would like to keep the example as basic as possible and effective for the common people. 

So, How about getting to know which restaurants are the best through the social media networks available. 

For instance, the food over at Chutney’s were pretty good. I shared my part over at twitter by informing that the food was delicious. Now think about this. We are going to use twitter as a platform. Having a huge follower list and friends may be benefiting. Im making this statement in thought that the audience are Malaysians. 

Alright, the scenario is this. Im desperate for a great Japanese restaurant as I need to take out someone at the particular moment. The social media is still growing at Malaysia. And the internet did not seem to be giving me much of an info. Google map’s did not highlight me any. Furthermore, I only have a mobile phone with me.(assuming you don’t have a data plan) So what do it do? 

Twitter! as it works well on text messages. Since I have a mutual list of followers & friends. They should be a help to me when I do need it the most. So I twitter. “Urgent guys, What’s the nearest Japanese Food in Bangsar Baru.” Instantly you receive flooded amount of replies suggesting you where to go and what’s best on the menu. Well. That’s a quick opener on the possibilities of the social media usage. I would go on with various series of explanation. Taking more common examples into count.

On another note.. I would be giving you my thoughts on Mutual Contacts Vs Random Contacts soon. That’s the core ingredient to an active social network. I believe its important. 

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Twitter is seriously one of the best social networking tools around till date. Yet many still fail to use it. People are rather lonely without having your buddies and so on, at twitter. Seriously, talk them into it. It seriously pure fun. Besides that its networking and self marketing. 

For instance, I had a blog brainstorming session yesterday with a couple of bloggers & friends. The session was at Starbucks. It was raining at the time I went there and I had an umbrella. And as we were about to leave, I was aware that someone had just stolen my umbrella at Starbucks!

Immediately this issue was twittered by a blogger(Novinthen), and my it became a topic within friends and followers. So what I’m pointing out here is, the amount of social interactivity involved in twitter. Reaching people far away instantly. By having more people you know in twitter seriously adds an extra ingridient to twitter’s sweetness. 

So what are you waiting for, start twittering and FOLLOW ME @Saranx.

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Im sure by now, you would have been fed up by all the rumblings against Twitter outages. To me, the rule goes by don’t bother. Cant we all leave without twitter for a day? I do actually hear “never” from all those rumblings. Its become so important, it has sort of monopolized the whole micro-blogging network. 

I don’t see how twitter’s outages do actually effect people. All I faced was that the twitter messages were delayed or maybe the service was shut for most a day. That’s all. Even machines do get sick right? So probably twitter is really weak. But then again I stress this, “I still do receive people’s messages right?”. Okay, we could argue about liveliness but come on, this stuff does not happen every single day. It works too most of the time. Okay, I know what you are trying to say. I totally agree with you. Hey, Im just being nice to twitter. 

And on the other hand, its just a social media application. Its weird to see how people react so emotionally. Too glued with the virtual world maybe. Twitter no matter what maintenance issues it faces, twitter will still play its role well. The concept of just 140 characters is the bomb. We do have other competitors but non is powerful compared to twitter’s simplicity sense. We don’t need all the extra stuff. We just want to convey text. And that’s why twitter does still rock on. 

In another view point, twitter is part of the social media world where communities are grown. Why not just stop grumbling and build your self on other micro-blogging services for now? We have got a good list go with below. 

• Pownce - The media type of twitter with extra functionalities such as sending files & music. 
• Jaiku - The twitter replica with exclusive RSS feed streams import enabled. But the problem is, you need to be invited to use this service. 
• Friendfeed - A life stream sort of aggregator which has slowly built it own community on it as well. 

As for me, all this listed services above including twitter are just a place to interact with communities. That’s the whole concept of social media. It’s de-centralized. That’s why it rocks ! I would always be with twitter and would also try to build my self on other platforms too. The only centralized thing in the social media world would be bringing back your community on your blog a.k.a Centralized Home on The Internet. 

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