The latest feature rolled out by Twitter is lists.  This new offering by Twitter allows users to create lists of specific Twitter users.  Believe it or not, Twitter lists can be helpful to the business web site owner.  After all, social media has been proven to be a boon to the online business owner.

How Twitter works for business

As social media outlets go, Twitter is quickly becoming one of the more popular micro-blogging sites around.  The list of businesses currently using Twitter in one fashion or another is constantly growing.  Comcast, JetBlue, and Dell are just a few companies that realized early on that Twitter has great potential to help them get in contact with and support their customers.  Comcast is a perfect example of how a business can use a micro-blogging service to give fast and courteous service to their existing customers as well as garner new business by word of mouth from happy and support customers.

How Twitter lists work for business

Once a business has set up their Twitter account, it is very easy to start racking up the number of users being followed.  At last count, the official support Twitter account for Comcast has over 32,000 users it’s following.  Trying to keep track of that many conversations at once is completely impossible.  So, what is the solution?

Simple – Twitter lists.  Creating a list is a very quick and easy process.  Log into Twitter and click on the “New list” link found on the right-hand side of the web site.  A new window will open up where a name can be typed in as well as the type of list it should be (private or public).  Once the list is created, it’s then a simple matter of going through the “following” list of the account and adding members to the newly created list.

One great example for a business use for a Twitter list is a company that has offices and customers across the states.  If this business wished to group its customers by area, lists such as “northwest_customers” or “Oregon_clients” could be created.  Then, support teams could have direct access to specific customers based on geographic location.

Taking it one step further

Twitter has made it convenient to include user lists within web sites.  By going to the Goodies – Widgets area, one can find the easy to customize Twitter list widget.  Once customized, the code then can be grabbed and integrated easily within a business web site.  This widget provides a quick way to keep tabs on customers and makes it very simple for new customers to join in on the conversation.  The list widget can be placed on a front page of a web site or even within a support section.  Either way, including this bit of coding is a perfect way to generate more business.

Conclusion

Including Twitter within a social media campaign is a smart move.  Twitter is continuously adding new features to make the experience of micro-blogging easier.  The latest addition of Twitter lists is a splendid way to monitor topics and people who matter most and a great way to keep in contact with and give support to customers and clients.

Whether you run a small or large online business, the same basic rule applies: keep your visitors happy.  After all, if you don’t, your competitors surely will.  It’s a jungle out there, but these six tips should go a long way in helping you achieve success with your e-commerce venture.

1.) Engage Your Audience

There are a number of features you can incorporate to encourage interaction amongst your visitors.  On today’s highly advanced internet, interactivity is key.  Combine this with original, quality content and you could have an e-commerce site that keeps your audience tuned in.  This is how to convert repeat visitor into long-term customers.

2.) Make Purchasing Simple

This should go without saying, but the large number of failed e-commerce sites leads us to believe otherwise.  Most internet users could do without the lengthy sales pitches, technical jargon, and all the bells and whistles that make it difficult to uncover hidden order pages.  After all this time, many online merchants still fail to cut to the chase and give their customers the options that make them feel comfortable making a purchase.  If want to drive home sales, get to the point, and do it quickly.

3.) Open the Doors to Communication

When doing business online, you should make your contact information easily accessible.  This includes email addresses, business addresses, toll-free phone numbers and fax number.  By doing so, you are demonstrating the credibility that will instill the confidence consumers need to feel to do business.  Potential customers will know that you are there to address their questions or concerns and by making various options available, you can target a larger market and their preferred communications channels.

4.) Post Information in Fulfillment and Return Policies

Before purchasing something online, most customers want to know how much an item costs, how it will get to them and when it will get to them.  Most importantly, they want to know that they are covered if the item should be defective or damaged during transit.  While publishing this information will not sell your products or services, if do not include these details, there is a great chance that you will end up losing sales.

5.) Travel the Low Road

Surviving in the realm of online business requires detailed planning and sound budgeting.  Therefore, it is important to consider all your low-cost budgeting endeavors before throwing money into most costly campaigns.  There is a lot you can do, including networking, building strong partnerships and designing a website that is optimized for search engine traffic.  Spend a little time researching some cost-effective avenues to promote your site and you will have a much better chance of coming out with your bottom line intact in the long run.

6) Price for Profits

Unreasonably low prices are great if you’re in the non-profit business, but not when you are trying to generate steady revenues and brand loyalty.  There are many ways to keep your customers around without sacrificing profits.  It is up to you to determine how to achieve this while keeping a competitive edge and making profits in the process.

Source: http://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/2009/08/13/six-essential-tips-towards-e-commerce-success/

A major release of an operating system typically brings significant changes that require users to learn new skills.

But backers of the open source FreeBSD 8 operating system say that’s not necessarily going to be the case with its next major version.

FreeBSD 8 is currently in its beta release cycle with a final release targeted for August. The new release will be the first major release since FreeBSD 7 in February 2008, with the most recent point update being the 7.2 release in May of this year.

While the jump to 8.0 might seem a big step, FreeBSD contributor and Absolute FreeBSD author pointed out that most users have little to worry about.

“FreeBSD has a two-tier development process,” Lucas told InternetNews.com. “This two-tear method lets our users be very conservative, using only well-tested and widely deployed code, while we can further improve the code and add new features.”

“The newest version of FreeBSD, including the changes that were made just minutes ago, is called FreeBSD-current,” he explained. “Any new features go into FreeBSD-current for community testing and further development. Every so often, we cut a major release from FreeBSD-current. This is a .0 release, such as 8.0.”

Lucas added that once 8.0 is released, FreeBSD-current will continue receiving new features and further development. Once those features are tested and debugged, they might be backported to FreeBSD 8. As a result, the latest FreeBSD 7.2 release is based on an older version of FreeBSD-current, but includes bugfixes and additional features that have been tested on the development version of FreeBSD.

Another longstanding focus of FreeBSD is on simplifying the technical task of migrating to new releases.

Matt Olander, CTO at enterprise hardware systems vendor iXsystems, told InternetNews.com that his firm will be working to help his customers migrate from older versions of the OS to the new release when it’s out.

But Olander, who also serves on the FreeBSD Project’s marketing and public relations teams, described FreeBSD as “notoriously famous” for its easy migration across versions, with successful migrations to FreeBSD 7.x from far older editions like 4.x.

That makes it easy to recommend to customers, he added.

“We will install whatever platform the customer chooses, although we’re certainly partial to BSDs and FreeBSD in particular,” Olander said. “Usually my first question, if I’m brought into discussions for an opportunity and the customer is using another operating system, is ‘Have you tried that on FreeBSD?’”
What’s new in FreeBSD 8

FreeBSD is one of the earliest open source operating system projects and is a direct descendant of the original, open source BSD work performed at the University of California, Berkeley. According to Lucas, the FreeBSD Project is driven largely by volunteers with very few actually working as paid developers on the effort.

“While the FreeBSD team has excellent communication skills, many of our people have lives and careers outside of FreeBSD,” Lucas said.

That certainly hasn’t stunted the new capabilities baked into FreeBSD 8, however, with the OS — often thought of as primarily a server-based operating system — offering big improvements that may benefit desktop users, too.

“FreeBSD 8.0 includes many new features and abilities over the 7.x series,” Kris Moore, founder of the PC-BSD project, told InternetNews.com. “On the desktop side of things, probably the most important feature will be the new USB stack, which greatly improves support for USB devices, and fixes lots of long-standing bugs. Improvements to drivers [and] speed improvements are also in the works.”

PC-BSD is a desktop derivative of FreeBSD that is currently owned by iXsystems.

“So far, we’ve seen some major improvements from the newer FreeBSD base, such as the USB fixes, greatly improved Wi-Fi support, and a significant desktop responsiveness improvement,” Moore said, adding that work on PC-BSD version 8, which will based on FreeBSD 8, has just begun.

Despite the improvements in FreeBSD 8, the project’s supporters reaffirmed that the idea is to keep disruption to a minimum.

“The FreeBSD team works hard to minimize user surprises,” Lucas said, adding that the fact makes his book still relevant, despite having been first published in 2002. “Absolute FreeBSD’s usefulness will decrease over time, as with any tech book, but I expect it to be useful for a few years yet.”

Source: http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3830041