Twitter for Dummies - Not All you want to know...

I use twitter in office like millions others do and some of them who don't understand what is it ask me lots of questions....and by this I am inspired to write my FAQ and few details about twitter and its features which millions of blogger's must have written about. Anyways I have to increase the number of post so here it comes....mind you it is not complete just a few of those which I can explain :)

Twitter: Twitter is a free social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. (first line in Wikipedia)

Tweets: Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to the author's subscribers who are known as followers. In simple sentence, write down anything in 140 words and person who follows you will see it on his timeline.

Handle: Handle is a username which you create similar to GTalk, Yahoo IM, etc etc. Some put in real name and some do come with awesome alter ego handle.

Tweeple: People on twitter are called Tweeple

Followers: It is similar to being friend with someone on facebook. Well similar not same, here if you follow someone they can see your tweets. But the other person cannot see your tweet because he is not following you.







Timeline: This is again similar to Facebook wall where you will see tweets of Tweeples whom you are following.

RT (ReTweet): This is done when you like someones tweet on your timeline and want to show it to your  friend. It is bit simple, "@XYZ says twitter is awesome" and you agree with it and want to share with your group followers you just RT it and it will show as "RT: @XYZ says Twitter is awesome"and this can continue over and over again.





DM (Direct Message): This is an interesting feature of Twitter, you cannot DM who is not following you and vice versa. So to have a private chat you have to follow each other.

List: It is bit confusing for the new user but if you want to see your favorite tweeples in one page just add them to your List which you can name anything and click on it you will see what they have tweeted about. It is like a mini-follow list.

Hashtag (#tag): This works as a subject line and things which can be put together. The best use of it was when it rained heavily in Mumbai and people wanted to know the exact situation about Mumbai Rains, tweeples at the start or end of the tweet would just type #mumbairains which others can search and know about it instead of typing Mumbai or Rains which can give lots of info.

Reply: You can reply to another tweeple tweet by just using @username, this will be seen by the tweeple and he can reply you back. But make sure when you use @username other tweeple who follow you and other tweeple can see the tweet. So there is no privacy.

And you will always say, twitter is so difficult to understand and don't know what is going on. You say these things because you are on twitter web which is the last thing you should do. There are gazzillions of apps for desktop, MAC, mobile and iPhone that you would not want to go on twitter website to tweet. You just download one of those apps and you are on twitter.

Desktop App:
Destroy Twitter
TweetDeck
Seesmic Desktop
PeopleBrowsr

MAC Apps:
MAC Lounge
Nambu
Tweetie
TwitterPod

Mobile/iPhone Apps:
Snaptu
Gravity
Dabr

BidPax - Save Money?

Bumped onto the website called bidpax.com via facebook ads on the right where it said buy an Apple Mac for Rs. 9.58 only.

So there I was...it took me time to figure this out but they are one heck of a website...guarantee making money on all products even if they sell them at 98% discount. 

So here it goes how they make money (i will go step by step):

1)     They put up an product up on for say 30 mins to go and product might be an 42" LCD, MAC Book, Nikkon DSLR etc etc

2)     Initial cost of the product Rs. 0.00 with 10 mins pending

3)     You can bid them but before that few steps more

a)     Create a login

b)    Buy Bid Packages [Bid packages are the number of bids you can do but you have to pay up for that check at the end]

c)     Now you can start bidding

4)     Now click on the product you want to bid.

5)     The bid amount will go up by 1 paise…yes yes 1 paise!!!!

6)     After you bid the time also increases by 10 seconds giving other users opportunities to bid higher than you.

So at the end when the clock which finally turns to zero, the highest bidder buys the product

So you would say what I am getting to...well look at the chart below 

      Bids           Cost          Cost/Bid

      30 Bids       Rs. 2,160  = 72

      60 Bids       Rs. 3,456  = 58

      100 Bids     Rs. 4,608  = 46

      200 Bids     Rs. 5,760  = 29

      350 Bids     Rs. 11,232 = 32

      500 Bids     Rs. 14,400 = 29

      1150 Bids   Rs. 24,000 = 21

You can see you have to buy out bids as said before, if we calculate each bid approximately cost Rs. 65 and below as we increase the number of bids we want to buy.

So you start to think of buying a LCD 32” Samsung TV on an average around 50K. People start bidding and coz they see only that product is sold for Rs. 0.01 and to the max at Rs. 10.01 and in the end the one highest bidder say Rs. 10.01 wins.

So let me start my maths here, as you can see the cost per bid in the column above maximum being 72 and minimum being 21 so overall average is around Rs. 40/bid

Let us now calculate 10.01 is the final winning cost, so 1001 times product bidding was done. Multiply it with 40

1001 x 40 = Rs. 40040

The website got back Rs. 40040 back from the user itself plus Rs. 10.01 as a bonus.

Now doesn’t that make a good business deal?

I would like to congratulate the guys who did it all…