6 Esenciales (pero aburrido) tareas autónomos odian hacer

Translate Request has too much data
Parameter name: request

The thing with freelancing is that it’s a business. You may be a graphic designer, writer, or web developer by profession but since you’re doing business, there are always some boring but essential tasks, you know, like organizing overwhelming to-do lists or filing disgusting taxes. Nonetheless, these tasks are so important that you must do them well in order to succeed in your business.

(Image source: Fotolia)

This article exists as a guide to offer helpful tips to not only tackle those boring tasks, but also make them feel very interesting to you. You’ve earned absolute freedom (and perhaps longer life) by entering the realm of freelancing, so let these tips save you further from boring and suffering tasks, let’s do it!

To-do lists are instrumental in making our work days productive. They tell us what we need to accomplish in a day, help us divide our tasks into manageable chunks and makes us feel productive as we cross items off it. That is of course the best-case scenario. What really happens with to-do lists is that they just keep on growing. When was the last time you managed to tick off every single item on your to-do list?

(Image source: Purpleslog)

Ever growing to-do lists overwhelm us and make us feel incompetent and unproductive. The more items added to the list, the more panic we are. Instead of steadily working through the tasks on the list, we end up procrastinating.

To have lists work for you, try limiting the number of things you put on them. At the end or start of the day, list down the five most important things you need to do and don’t add any more items no matter how tempted you are.

All it will take to feel productive is to cross off one item. Suddenly you have 4 tasks to do instead of 5. Get one more done and you’re down to 3. Before you know it, all the items on your list have been crossed off and you’re done for the day! How’s that for making you feel productive?

As freelancers, we live (and die) by deadlines. We know that a missed deadline has the power to make or break a client relationship. So yes, deadlines keep us in business but that’s what makes us hate them too. One missed deadlines and you might end up spending months to repair your relationship with a client.

(Image source: Fotolia)

Granted, a missed deadline isn’t the end of the world if you handle it right and if you miss it for a valid reason. But make it a habit or do it more than once and you’ll be struggling to retain clients.

A simple trick to avoid missing deadlines is to always give yourself a couple of extra days. Let’s say you can submit a project by Tuesday, but instead of committing to Tuesday, you tell your client you’ll submit the work on Thursday. This little trick takes care of all your procrastination problems and any freelancing calamity (computer crash, cold & flu etc) that might befalls you.

Doing your own taxes is the most hatred and dreaded task for freelancers. The entire idea of saving your receipts, bills, payments from clients, expenses etc is enough to give one a headache. Then there’s the filing of 1099's and all the other paper work.

(Image source: Fotolia)

Even if you’re the king or queen of organization, taxes have a way of making you doubt your system. You end up putting it off till the very last minute and then have to rush to get your papers in order.

Here’s what you can do to help doing your taxes easier: hire someone to do it for you. If you don’t want to do that, your best bet is using a tax program made for business that will walk you through each step and even calculate your taxes for you.

The silver lining to doing your taxes is the tax write-offs. Did you know that you can get a write-off for buying stock photos?

In freelancing, being passionate about your work or being good at what you do isn’t enough. What’s good about your talent if you don’t have clients? And you can’t get clients unless you market your business. Freelancers have to be their own cheerleading squad if they hope to find work.

(Image source: Fotolia)

The good news is that marketing doesn’t have to be sleazy. In today’s age of social media all you have to do is be present and help people. Sign up for Twitter and Facebook. Befriend people in your niche or the clients you’d like to work with and then interact with them. You won’t have to tell them you’re a freelancer, your social media profile will do it.

Strategically talk about your work on these channels and help out as many people as you can and provide value. Showcase your work through them and just interact. Word will soon get out about what you do and how awesome you are.

Don’t believe me? For the past year, I’ve found more works through Twitter than my website. How’s that for non-sleazy marketing?

Whether it’s following up with prospects or clients, the activity is time consuming and undesirable. You’d rather just be given more work to do. After all, that’s what you do best. But if you want more business deals then follow-up is a must. If you’ve just finished a project for a client, sending a follow-up email might land you more work, a testimonial or even a referral. With prospects it might land you a new client.

(Image source: Fotolia)

The evil bit about follow-up is that if you don’t do it at the right time, you’ve lost your chance. Follow up too soon and it looks like you’re rushing the client/prospect and they don’t like that. Wait too long and they might forget about you or worse, end up hiring someone else.

To take the hassle out of follow-up, come up with a simple system. Decide on what you feel is the appropriate time after which you need to follow-up then mark it up in your calendar. Next, draft a couple of follow-up emails to use as templates – one for your current clients and one for prospective clients.

Now every time you meet up with a prospect or finish a project with a client, mark the follow-up date on your calendar and on that day use your follow-up email template to send a follow-up email. The evil quotient of following up just went down.

There’s a reason it’s called cold calling – they give freelancers a chill. If you’ve ever made a cold call, you know what I’m talking about. The idea of calling someone you don’t know – worse, who doesn’t know you is enough to make the best of us break out in a sweat. You end up feeling like a sleazy sales person.

(Image source: Fotolia)

Well, the trick with cold calls is to not think of it as a cold call. Think of it as an introduction. Suppose you call up a company, introduce yourself and ask something as simple as ‘Do you work with freelancers? If so, I’d love to send you my details’. That doesn’t sound bad right? You’re introducing yourself and then making a non-pushy pitch.

What’s even better than thinking of cold calls as introductory calls is – to not make them at all. Seriously. Make email your best friend. Send cold call emails to any company you’d like to work with. Research them and find the correct person to send an LOI (Letter of Introduction) with all the relevant information.

Doesn’t sound so evil now, right? There’s always a way to make things easier.

The bottom line, however, is you have to put in efforts to try your best. It’s always good to remind ourselves that we enter freelancing because we are confidence with our strength and discipline. So keep this in mind, change your mindset to more positive one, put in some efforts and practice tips given above, then you are on the road of successful freelancing.

What other freelancing tasks do you find evil but necessary to do? What is the task you would never do again if given half the chance? Let us know your freelance nightmare so we can discuss the ways to tackle it!

Samar is a freelance writer, blogger and social media enthusiast. She offers rock solid tips for freelance writing success on her blog The Writing Base or SamarOwais.com and can be found hanging out on Twitter talking about writing, freelancing, productivity (or lack thereof) and travelling at odd hours of the day.

Ver Articulo Original

Read More..

¿Por qué es el nuevo Cool Geek

No hace mucho tiempo, frikis, o en mejores condiciones, el equipo intelectual y entusiasta de la tecnología, son gente bastante indeseable entre sus pares. Los ves con sus anteojos grandes negro bordeado de marca con sus inconfundibles aderezos torpes. No es de sorprender que aparecen extraños para la mayoría de la gente, ya que pasan la mayoría de su tiempo delante de la pantalla de su equipo favorito y apenas tiempo socializar.

(Origen de la imagen: greatdiane)

Entonces todos de un repentino, cool frikis convertido en. Ahora son admirados por sus pares para su intelectualidad superior a pesar de su aparente falta de sociabilidad. Ahora vemos el surgimiento del 'geek chic' como celebridades como Justin Timberlake vistió ropa geeky y las especificaciones geeky inseparables. Frikis como Bill Gates de Microsoft, Mark Zuckerberg de Facebook y Steve Jobs de Apple ahora son inmensamente ricos, famosos y lo más importante, adorado por todos los demás por sus innovaciones.

El mundo comienza a abrazar la Cultura geek. Los juegos son más populares que nunca y discusiones acerca de cómo vencer a los jefes en estos juegos no son ningún tabú más. Tecnología como iPhone, Facebook y Xbox 360's Kinect convertido en el más comentado sobre el tema en círculos sociales. Todos esperan con impaciencia la próxima innovación tecnológica fuera y ser el primero en jugar en él.

WoW. ¿Por lo tanto, lo que sucedió realmente en un lapso de sólo unas décadas?

Si el agua es lo que da vida en la tierra, Internet debe ser lo que mantiene viva a la edad de información. La generalizada del conocimiento a través de Internet significa que todo el mundo tiene acceso a la información nunca antes disponible en esa comodidad. Aquellos que no utilizan internet bajarse recortes del resto del mundo. ¿Y supongo que abren el paso cómo se desarrolla la internet? Frikis.

Poseer conocimientos de primera mano sobre cómo funciona la tecnología y equipo dio a frikis una ventaja cuando internet surgieron primero. Fueron los pioneros a la hora de adaptarse a las nuevas innovaciones, dado que su pasión y su capacidad de estimular a aprender rápidamente salieron en el mercado tecnológico.

Si echa un vistazo a cómo se desarrolla la internet desde el primer día, sería asombrado de cómo llegó a convertirse en lo que es hoy. De e-mails a messenger chat, Web 1.0 a 2.0, de foros de los sitios de redes sociales; las posibilidades son ilimitadas. Cuando frikis estaban en una posición influyente en establecer lo que se convertirá en uno de los inventos más grandes del mundo, se convirtieron en personas poderosas.

Hoy, como anticipamos cómo se se trazó el futuro de internet o cualquier otra tecnología, todo es bastante bajo el criterio de estos llamados frikis. Tienen la capacidad de crear innovaciones que podrían revolucionar el mundo, justo como había monopolizado el sistema operativo Microsoft Windows y cambiar el modo en el sistema informático para que la gente percibe.

¿Qué puede ser más frío que siendo ese geek que tiene esa autoridad y experiencia para la forma del mundo?

En cierto modo, frikis son rebeldes contra el mundo. Lo vemos en Shawn Fanning, fundador de la infame Napster, que protestaban contra la industria de la música para la carga de música y software de código abierto Linux beligerantes contra el gigante Microsoft. Luego tenemos los hackers éticos o sombreros blancos, tratando de exponer lagunas en los sistemas informáticos con la esperanza de mejorar la seguridad para la sociedad en su conjunto.

(Origen de la imagen: Microsoft)

Incluso a nivel personal, estos frikis son considerados no conformista. Puede no parecer inteligentes a las personas que basan la inteligencia en formación, pero nadie puede negar sus logros. Bill Gates y Mark Zuckerberg abandonaron la Universidad (no cualquier colegio, pero la Universidad de Harvard). En lugar de seguir la ruta convencional y conservador de obtener grados, ambos siguieron su corazón y aún tener éxito en sus campos.

Es un logro admirable para ir en contra de las normas sociales y establecimientos para defender su pasión y valores. Otra cosa que es hace que destacan del resto como un pulgar dolorido, ya sea en forma buena o mala. Pero en cualquier caso, ser cool es acerca de ser notado primero. Es la misma razón por qué malas asses se consideran cool; reciben toda la atención simplemente por hacer algo diferente.

En un mundo de equipos y redes, la persona que exhibe el dominio de esos sistemas esgrime una cantidad significativa de control sobre el mundo. Película retrata los hackers como ser capaz de hacer maravillas y traer el mundo a sus rodillas, ya sea para mejor o para peor. Finalmente, se reduce a un tema: el conocimiento es poder.

(Origen de la imagen: Google)

Cuanto más sepa acerca de cómo algo funciona, mejor utilizará. ¿Si sabe cómo funciona el mundo, no tiene una ventaja sobre todos los demás? Se trata de cómo es con frikis. El mundo actual está saturado de tecnologíay son la tecnología y equipo entusiasta que puede comprender y utilizar mejor.

El mundo está avanzando hacia una dependencia de información, el más venerado que estos frikis son invocadas para ofrecer el conocimiento. Para que veas, los frikis mantienen un estado importante en nuestra sociedad porque finalmente seríamos incapaces de funcionar sin su orientación.

¿Más dudas que frikis son el nuevo cool? Nunca más.

No es necesario entender C, C++, C# o c objetivo convertirse en un geek, aquí hay algunos puestos de calidad ayuda a comprender y convertirse en un geek, al menos desde la perspectiva de pertenencias físicas.

Michael es un blogger independiente y colaborador regular de Hongkiat.com. Se graduó de la Universidad Nacional de Singapur con una doble especialización en psicología y medios de comunicación & nueva en 2011.He cree en el poder de las palabras escritas para influir e inspirar. Distinta de ser un entusiasta jugador de video, Michael participa también activamente en diversas actividades físicas en su tiempo libre.

Ver Articulo Original

Read More..

15 Experimentos de HTML5 inspirador (más)

Error in deserializing body of reply message for operation 'Translate'. The maximum string content length quota (8192) has been exceeded while reading XML data. This quota may be increased by changing the MaxStringContentLength property on the XmlDictionaryReaderQuotas object used when creating the XML reader. Line 1, position 8877.

Unless you have been living under a rock you will have heard about HTML5. It’s just everywhere now, thanks to the promotion of the Apple CEO ex-CEO Steve Jobs and certain developers who believe that HTML5 can take over Flash.

Well, in fact we don’t see this situation happened yet, but HTML5 is really magical in reference to its video capabilities, canvas illustration and animation which work really well and smooth. The fact is that it’s so promising that projects are popping up all over the places that have been made as a way of testing the boundaries of HTML5.

Believe its power or not, we will be showcasing you 15 enlightening experiments which make the best use of HTML5, and guess what, you can experience gravity, music-based animation, and rendering of creatures that just works like creatures! Have a fun time with them and oops, they’re best served with the latest version of Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome.

Just in case you’re not satisfied with these HTML5 fun, we have more for you!

A collaborative effort between artist Mark Ferrari and coder Joseph Huckaby, this is a gorgeous collection of moving nature scenes such as forests in winter, seascapes and stormy mountains. They are relaxing to look at and really stunning, with sounds attached to the pictures. If you want a little time to relax from work you can go through these pictures and feel your tension just melt away.

Another one by the amazing Mr Doob, this one is less interactive than the first but still cool. It gives a basic copy of Google’s main search page. But when you point your cursor the whole page begins to ‘fall’ until all of them crash at the bottom. The Google logo works as an active link that refreshes the page. A good game for those great companies which hates Google, may be.

Made by Kenneth Jorgenson, this might be the only place you can see the phrase ‘Refresh for more delicious trees :)’. It is exactly what it says: you click on the website and it takes you to a white background. A black ink drawing of a tree will begin to ‘grow’ while counting on how many branches are in progress. You can refresh to see as many times as you wish.

This is another fun and addictive one for you to enjoy. You basically start out with a couple of ‘magnets’ that can be dragged around the screen. Particles of light orbit around them and if you shift positions you can change the shapes they make. If you want more magnets and particles you just double click and drag them to where you want them. Yes, it’s all about magnets and physics!

Want to see a visual representation of how much television celebrities earn per episode? This is a cool little graph that shows stacks of color bars which represents how much a specific celebrity makes per taping of a television show (or made, in cases like Charlie Sheen). It was made as one of many projects and experiments by Daniel Rapp.

Paul Truong made this interesting application that allows you to paint using a constantly moving, multi-colored ribbon across the screen. It makes shapes and designs, and the effect is quite pretty. All you have to do is to drag it across the screen, talking about simplicity eh.

Here comes a cool demo using the revolutionizing WebGL (Web-based Graphics Library), which is best served with Google Chrome. With the demo, you can draw on the water to make ripples, or drag the sphere to move it around and press some keyboard keys to set the light direction and toggle gravity, all for witness how the moved object interacts lively with the environment, scarily realistic.

Yet another stunning demo applying the magic of WebGL, which you can see a group of extremely beautiful and most importantly, lively jellyfish moving in the water, irradiated by the ray of dreamlike sunlight. Witness the period that HTML5 and WebGL brings web to life, best viewed with Google Chrome.

Voxel rain means multi-colored 3D boxes descends to form a rotating big block. It’s like showcasing the possibilities of computer in 1990s, and now it comes to web browser by utilizing the power of HTML5, the brightest era of internet is not more far.

Often we web designer wonder how much possibilities HTML5 can really helps us to breakthrough in web typography, and this demo gives you the answer, more than ever! You can choose to witness stereoscopic effect, neon effect, or even moving neon effect, the future of web typography is in the hand of HTML5.

I just can’t hold the glory of HTML5, it’s spinning, it’s rotating… it’s cool.

Bored of HTML5-based 2D sketching service? Check this out. Simply draw a line, and press Space then drag left or right, and you will see your drawing rotating in 3D perspective. 3D sketching is not more complicated with HTML5.

Mta.me Conductor inspires you by spawning points that will move continually to form lines, and when the lines “collide” to each other they will triggered some interaction. All to prove that HTML5 is not just about code but interaction, and that’s what web users really care for.

An interesting shooter type game but the hero is Gmail, free it from the evils! Just like the classic shooter game, you got the life, score, and the almighty laser beam. Probably one of the potential demos to showcase the capabilities of HTML5 doing as a game. Watch out, Flash.

This is such an addictive game that it should be illegal. Seriously, once you sign into one of their servers you will want to play for hours. You are basically flying around shooting things while avoiding getting shot by other players. It is simple and so fun to play, and the fact that it allows for a multiplayer experience is a serious plus that puts it above Flash games that are so popular right now.

Enjoy the article so far? Recommend it to your friends and peers.

Be the first to our articles and get latest updates on freebies.

Ver Articulo Original

Read More..

Mejores terceros comentando sistemas – revisados

Error in deserializing body of reply message for operation 'Translate'. The maximum string content length quota (8192) has been exceeded while reading XML data. This quota may be increased by changing the MaxStringContentLength property on the XmlDictionaryReaderQuotas object used when creating the XML reader. Line 1, position 9056.

The evolution of online feedback and commenting has come a long way; from the old school guestbook to forum and feedback form, and from native platform-dependent commenting systems to today’s 3rd party commenting systems that work cross-platform regardless of what programming language or scripts your site is based on.

These 3rd party commenting systems do more than just allowing visitors and readers to drop comments. Most of them support comprehensive comment managing backend, spam control, blacklist/ whitelist management, integration with social media, theme customization and much more.

Today, I’m going to bring to your awareness three of the most commonly used (by bloggers and site owners) 3rd party commenting and discussion systems, respectively Disqus, IntenseDebate and LiveFyre. I’ll also discuss some of their key features, what I like and what I think they may lack of. Lastly, at the end of each, I have also thrown in a couple of useful links for your reference.

Disqus is a mature comment management system and perhaps the most used amongst bloggers and website owners. Introduced back in 2007, it is currently serving more than 750,000 websites. According to a recent study done by folks at Lijit, 75% of the websites using 3rd party commenting system are powered by Disqus.

Whether you are using Disqus for the first time or migrating from other commenting systems, integrating Disqus with your website can be fairly simple. Right after you’ve signed up with Disqus, do check out the Import / Export section to find out more instructions on how to import your existing comments from various platforms (WordPress, Blogger, Movable Type, or other commenting systems) to Disqus.

Disqus is mobile friendly; its interface swaps according to different media so commenting is not affected even if your readers are on mobile browser. On top of that, Disqus also offers a mobile app for the convenience of site owners to manage comments and their communities on the go. Disqus apps are currently available for iPhone and Android.

Leaving comments or responding to a comment on a Disqus-powered system is a bliss, it is almost real time. Latest comments are reflected instantly without the need to refresh the entire page. For site owners, you can (optionally) be notified via email when a comment has been made on your website, and the best part is – you can respond to it right away from your email. And for commenters, you can even attach additional media (photo, link, video, etc) along with your comments.

Disqus’ core platform is free, but if you need more out of your commenting system, Disqus offers 3 subscription-based paid packages, each with their own respective of premium tools.

Here are more Disqus features worth knowing:

Compatible with search engines, in another word – SEO friendly.Integrates with Akismet.Allows commenters to post as guest, or login via OpenID or social networks IDs (Facebook, Twitter, Google and Yahoo).Allows user to flag comments.Easy comment moderation via admin panels.Supports blacklist/ whitelist and word filtering.Allows site owner to display Tweets and other reactions.

The easiest way to sell IntenseDebate is probably stating who are the folks behind it. IntenseDebate is an Automattic product, the same guys who brought you WordPress, PollDaddy, Akismet and other cool web services.

If your blog is running on WordPress and you are looking for a 3rd party commenting system for a chance, you know this may be your best bet as IntenseDebate is created and maintained by the same people who coded your blog platform.

Reputation points is one of the key features I like about IntenseDebate. It allows users to reward well-thought and constructive comments with points and have them appear on top of others less quality comments. I find it a pretty good way to encourage higher quality discussion.

IntenseDebate sends an email to commenters whenever someone response to their comment. Not only this is a good way to keep the discussion going, it also makes readers keep coming back!

Similar to Disqus’ comment flagging, IntenseDebate allows you to report any inappropriate comment and on top of that, IntenseDebate allows you to state the reason for reporting.

Another great function of IntenseDebate is that it allows users to simultaneously tweet when they post a comment. It is yet another great way to draw more attention and traffic to the post.

More IntenseDebate features:

Supports numerous widgets to show off your comment stats, most recent comments, most popular comments and top commenters. Allows users to login via OpenID, Twitter, Facebook or even WordPress.com ID.Developers can take advantage of the Plugins API to make commenting and discussion even more interesting. E.g., adding PollDaddy polls, embedding YouTube Videos, etc.

I noticed that IntenseDebate seems to be a little slower in terms of loading speed compared to Disqus and LiveFyre. Anyway, it could be my setup or my Internet connection.

Last but not least – Livefyre, the latest addition to the 3rd party commenting and discussion system market. They may be new but that does not make them the weakest. And as the matter of fact, pardon my subjective opinion; LiveFyre is my favorite among the three.

It is simple, very human-engaging, easy to use and consists most features we see in Disqus and IntenseDebate.

Livefyre allows commenter to tag other users in their comment using the ‘@’ symbol, pretty similar to what you can do on Facebook. Tagging LiveFyre, Facebook, Twitter users are supported.

Every time you enter a comment, you can also choose to have them posted simultaneously to Twitter, Facebook or both. Similarly you can also share someone else’s comments on Twitter and Facebook.

Whenever someone chooses to “follow” a conversation, they are automatically listening – meaning they will get notification whenever there is an update. Livefyre shows you in numbers, how many commenters are online and how many are listening to a particular conversation.

Other notable Livefyre features include:

Supports comment votings and user ratings.Mobile-friendly interface.Centralized admin panel for comments moderation.Supports blacklist/ whitelist and spam control.Social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) sign in.

If you have experience using any of the mentioned commenting systems, or you’d prefer sticking with WordPress (and others) native commenting systems, I’d love to hear your comment. :)

Enjoy the article so far? Recommend it to your friends and peers.

Be the first to our articles and get latest updates on freebies.

Ver Articulo Original

Read More..

Iconos de la barra de herramientas [freebie] 28 (PSD incluido)

Anuncios

Para continuar nuestra agradecida gracias a nuestros lectores y la comunidad en general, estamos contentos de lanzar otro paquete de iconos de calidad libre: 28 iconos de la barra de herramientas. Estos iconos vienen en formato PNG en 2 diferentes tamaños 32 x 32 y 16 x 16 píxeles junto con el archivo PSD de Photoshop con capas de los iconos.

Estos iconos están diseñados exclusivamente para los lectores de Hongkiatpor GraphicsFuel.com y se entregan en formato Photoshop y PNG.

Todos los iconos son libres y pueden descargar, editar y utilizarlos para sus proyectos individuales o comerciales. No debe albergar los archivos fuente descargada en el servidor y redistribuirles como su propio todo o en parte. Si te gusta los iconos, que considere la posibilidad de compartirlo con un re-tweet o un Facebook como :-)

Esperamos que disfrute de este conjunto de iconos!

Tenemos más iconos, PSDs, plantillas y otras cosas que se pueden descargar. Y están todos libres. Retirarlos ahora!

¿Disfrutar el artículo hasta ahora? Recomiendo a tus amigos y compañeros.

Sea el primero en nuestros artículos y obtener las actualizaciones más recientes de regalos.

Ver Articulo Original

Read More..

8 Cosas Twitter puede aprender de Sina Weibo

Translate Request has too much data
Parameter name: request

Sina Weibo is not a joke. It’s the hottest microblogging service in China now. It consumes 90% market shares of China’s microblogging services, with more than 140 million users in less than 2 years, while Twitter gained 200 million users in less than 5 years. It’s new, it’s hot, and it’s becoming bigger and stronger.

I was a dedicated user of Twitter for around 2 years, but I decided to convert to Sina Weibo recently. I’m ultimately satisfied with the Sina Weibo, and in this post I’m going to list out 8 particular things that Twitter can really learn from Sina Weibo, which also serve as possible reasons that why Sina Weibo can gain 140 million users in just less than 2 years of its realms, beating all other China microblogging services.

Note: Wanting to explore Sina Weibo but don’t know anything about Chinese language? No worries, here’s a complete 20 pages guide from Digicha to help you understand all essential basics about Sina Weibo! Account set-up guide here.

Apparently most successful microblogging services in China, such as Tencent Weibo and Sina Weibo, focus heavily on making user’s social feedback easier in their own services. The reason is pretty easy, we human are social animal, therefore we care about what others think about us, and threaded comment is really a big plus in making the entire feedback tracking process easier.

What’s the deal of the threaded comments? Well, in Twitter you have to browse the @mentions to see what people think about your tweets, and those commenting tweets are even mixed with other commenting tweets with different topics. With threaded comment, you can see all users’ comments, properly sorted under your tweet by just one click.

After viewing the comment threads of user’s tweet, you can also add your own comment in the box provided in the comment thread. You can add @username to remind the author or any people about the tweet, or click on the ‘Reply’ button located on the right side of the commentator’s tweet to reply the commentator. So you can see how user-friendly is this threaded comment feature, as all comments and replying actions are done in a single section, comment thread.

One of the Sina Weibo’s features that most microblogging users praise about is its ability to insert rich media like images, videos, music, emoticons, and even polls without any plugin required. This sparks a really interesting debate between bloggers, do microblogging service really needs these features? The answer is absolutely yes, as if you’re the Sina Weibo’s user, you can probably see the images and videos pretty much existed in most tweets.

Surprisingly, the rich media offers far more than what you can imagine. By just looking on the emoticon feature, it has over 400 emoticons for you to use! Youngsters in China have particular interest on playing emoticons, so this is a cult feature for them. There are also fun images provided by Weibo in image feature, which also pretty much serves like emoticons.

You can also upload video from your own computer, or just input the link from video site, and it will show thumbnails about the video, how friendly. The best thing about the video feature is, if you input the link from supported video sites like Youku or Tudou, you will be able to view the video without even leaving the site, a great strategy for Sina Weibo to retain the users in its site!

One more notable feature is the ability to start a poll by any user, and it’s not just like the basic poll feature (Question) of the Facebook. You can put in the description, options, decide whether users can choose single or multiple options, and ultimately, set the visibility of the poll and its expiration date, really complete and awesome feature isn’t it?

Micro Topics is a relatively new concept in microblogging services, implemented by Weibo. It’s really easy to understand, Weibo takes any tweet that’s related to certain topic, then create an unique page for all users to view and discuss the particular topic. For instance, one of the hottest topics now is the World Of Warcraft Cataclysm, so a dedicated page is created for WoW gamers to discuss about the game and its newest patch.

Micro topics is also very useful in spreading news and knowledge. Want to discuss about the most recent Cisco’s issue happened in China? There’s a page for that. Want to know some killer tips to keep fit? There’s a page for that. Want to share your love diary? There’s a page for that!

Well if you like the topic, there’re a tweet box with tags added for you to share the topic on your own profile immediately, or you can push the link on the top of the topic’s page to promote the topic to your friends. I must convince that I’m really addicted to this feature, and the idea is simply ingenious.

Alright, so what will you do every time you want to check up the hottest trends in Twitter, but those top 10 hot trends are not in your interest list? I encountered this issue very often, but I no longer have the same issue in Weibo, as Weibo has a dedicated page for trends, literally named as Board of Fame. Be the hottest trends of last hour, or today or even this week, Weibo’s Board of Fame is always prepared to tell you what are trends that users really into in the specified time.

Categorization is king when it comes to sort overloaded trends, and Weibo scored full marks on this part by categorize all hottest trends into several categories such as general, sport, entertainment, finance, gaming, travelling, just about everything people might be interested about!

In the Board of Fame, you can view the first 10 hottest trends by the category, and you can probably dig into more trends by click on the ‘Check Out More’ link from the respective category. You can then view the remaining 40 hottest trends in the category or, well, if those trends still cannot satisfy you, you can even track back the hottest trends by setting the date located on the right side of the page, fantastic!

Verified Account is specifically created for celebrity and famous people, and you will be treated more like celebrity if you registered a verified account of Sina Weibo. The reason? Sina Weibo wants those celebrities shine even more, so again, as you might have expected, they created a dedicated page for highlighting celebrities, literally named as “Hall of Celebrity”.

What’s really great about the Hall of Celebrity is its detailed categorization. Sina Weibo categorizes celebrities very well into several key categories like entertainment, sport, finance, tech, etc. Then, inside the field like entertainment, there are even more sub categories such as actor, musician, and entertainment executives. Also, newly joined celebrities do not need to worry about their fame will be covered by elite users, as there is also a section which featured celebrities who just joined the world of Sina Weibo.

In the page, user can either choose their favorite celebrities to follow, or simply click on ‘Follow All’ button to follow all celebrities in the particular field. I can understand why Weibo treats celebrities so seriously, as the celebrities themselves got tonnes of fans, so retaining them in the Weibo is the key strategy to convert their massive dedicated fans into loyal users.

Why is medal reward system existed in Sina Weibo? Because it’s fun, and it encourages users to tweet more! Well everyone is a gamer by nature. We love to play game, and we enjoyed earning reward that makes us proud in that particular game society. Sensing the benefits, Sina Weibo has implemented a very interesting medal reward system to let users have fun on earning medals for personal enjoyment or show-off.

If you think this medal reward system is just a game, you are underestimating Weibo. Well the entire system is not just about fun, but also one of the strategic plans in Weibo’s business ecosystem. Brands such as Nike and Transformers actually partnered with Weibo to market their products by offer medals, which mostly require users to perform certain action like retweet about their events.

This is also a really neat marketing strategy for the brands as it not only helps to spread the event message, but also allows the logo of the brand to be exposed in users’ profile as a medal. Weibo has even built a page to introduce, promote and remind users about those medals that are associated with certain event or brand.

In microblogging services like Sina Weibo and Twitter, every profile is a personal space. Even we’re not going to advertise ourselves, we hope to be different with anybody else. We hope to have, at least some style templates that are not too common in the entire platform, and Sina Weibo solved this question very well by providing over 60 style templates, categorized into 5 groups which are ‘Newest Promotion’, ‘Classic’, ‘Fashion’, ‘School’ and ‘Events’.

Of course, if you’re not satisfied with these templates, you can always do it yourself by using the template builder. With the builder, you can define font color, put custom background picture, apply tile background and adjust the picture’s alignment. Pretty much like Twitter’s template builder, so you won’t have problem on customizing your own style template if you’re Twitter-converted user.

I believe most of you will ask how about using Themeleon, a service that contains tonnes of quality theme designs for Twitter? Well, I love Themeleon very much, but it’s absolutely good to have more built-in design as it takes more steps to authorize the Themeleon and apply the design to the Twitter, not to mention that Themeleon lacks of good categorization and many people still do not know much about the concept of authorization, even causing some of them worry about their privacy.

Finally it’s a fresh concept that Sina Weibo brought to the microblogging service, Weibo Event. Weibo Event is going to revolutionize your concept about microblogging service from a place that collects everyone’s thoughts together, to a place that gets everyone involved and have fun together!

Yes, with Weibo Event, you are not just limited to see what other people are tweeting, but also joining events that other users are joining, sparking more tweets and fun! There’re thousands of events categorized into ‘Local Event’, ‘Prized Event’ and ‘Online Event’, with a few grand events featured on the top of the page. Most Weibo Events are sponsored by companies or individuals, so get ready to exchange your hard work with prizes!

I personally think this is a great feature that gives people one more reason to stay in the Sina Weibo. In past we can only see what people are tweeting, and may be joining certain discussion, and some people will eventually get bored with this repetitive cycle. With Weibo Event, we gather together to involve in certain events, thus we don’t only win prizes, but also make new friends during the event. Users can also promote the event to non-users, encouraging them to join the Weibo for their events.

So you can probably see that every major feature in the Sina Weibo exists to attract new users, retain elite users, and encourages all users to tweet more and have more fun!

But the war has just started. According the news from Huffington Post, Sina Weibo is planning its English version platform to compete directly with U.S. based Twitter. I think the war is pretty hard for Sina Weibo, as Twitter is already a greatly established microblogging service throughout the world, but hey, MySpace was once the social media behemoth that was ultimately taken by Facebook.

So what do you think about the competition between Twitter and Sina Weibo? Do you think that heavily censored yet feature-rich Sina Weibo will take over the Twitter as the mainstream microblogging service? Or Twitter will ultimately defend its realm with, may be, new feature? Which new feature you will like to see on Twitter? Kindly let us know your thought!

Alvaris is a web designer and developer. He also consider himself a charity runner and blogger in Holy Aviary.

Ver Articulo Original

Read More..