Twellow Blog

Updated Twellow Profile Stickers

Matthew Daines — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 16:56:47 +0000

We’ve added a few back end improvements to the site and while we were at it decided to improve the method for placing official Twellow profile linking stickers on a user’s own website. The new stickers offer five choices of stickers to choose from.

Red
Blue
Green
White
Custom

The first four are static images that can be placed via inserting the snippet of JavaScript code into your website, while the Custom version allows you to place a dynamic DIV into your page with a custom background color. The sticker text on the custom version can also be set to whatever color you need by editing the JavaScript code accordingly.

The custom version utilizes PNG transparencies to render the sticker in a smooth manner, so you will need to take into account browser compatibility issues when using this version. It is also optimized for Mozilla and Webkit-based browsers in order to offer rounded corners to match the static versions, so IE users will be out of luck for now.

You can get your Twellow profile sticker on our stickers page here. You must be logged into your Twellow account in order to get the correct JavaScript code for your profile.

Cheers!

Matthew Daines
Twellow Lead Developer

OAuth Comes To Twellow

Matthew Daines — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 19:17:02 +0000

For some time now we’ve been working on an implementation of the Twitter OAuth system to provide a more secure environment for our Twellow users. We are pleased to announce that Twellow has integrated this security improvement, and our users can now upgrade their Twellow accounts to take advantage of the enhancements provided by OAuth authentication.

By switching to OAuth in our system you will experience the following key benefits:

OAuth is more secure
OAuth provides the same access you are used to
You can use a different password for Twellow
Twitter access limits are increased with OAuth
Tweet directly from Twellow

The process for current Twellow users to upgrade is quite simple. The following steps are all that is required:

Log in using your Twitter screen name and password
Enter a new password to be used with Twellow and click the “Continue to Twitter” button
Make sure you are logged into Twitter under the correct account and click “Allow”

And that’s it! Once we receive your authorization from Twitter you will then be logged into Twellow. In the future you can use either your Twitter screen name or email address plus the new password you selected to log in. You won’t need to use your Twitter password again on Twellow.

A new feature that we’ve added along with this update is the ability to tweet directly from Twellow, so users don’t need to switch between Twellow and Twitter for simple posting of updates. In addition there are a few behind-the-scenes improvements in performance that should help as Twellow continues to grow.

Enjoy!

Matthew Daines
Twellow Lead Developer

Extended Bio Issue

Matthew Daines — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 14:47:00 +0000

We are currently working through an issue with our extended bios where some data loss has occurred. We hope to have this restored shortly. Please bear with us.

Thanks!

UPDATE: 10:25am

We have successfully restored all but a very few extended bios in our system. If your extended bio seems to be missing or recent changes have been lost you will need to re-enter it. We apologize for any inconvenience!

Twellow Down Time

Matthew Daines — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:47:50 +0000

We’ve experienced some unscheduled downtime for the last several hours, but we’ve been able to restore the site. We are looking into the causes of this outage, but it appears some data has been lost from our system.

If you registered with Twellow between about midnight on January 25th and midnight on January 26th, Eastern Time, you will need to re-register. If you edited your profile during this period you will also need to re-edit your profile as these changes appear to have been lost by our system.

Our apologies for any inconvenience this might have caused.

Matthew Daines
Twellow Lead Developer

UPDATE: As of Wednesday morning at 9:30 am Eastern, Twellow is still operating as it should. Any residual errors from this outage should be mostly cleared up. If you see any problems with the service please contact us and let us know.

Twellowhood, Great Britain And Ireland

Matthew Daines — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:01:08 +0000

It’s indeed a pleasure for me to introduce the addition of Great Britain and Ireland to our Twellowhood feature. Now our users in the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands can browse the map for Twitter users located in their vicinity.

The map for this area can be accessed by clicking the newly highlighted region for Europe on the main Twellowhood map. As no mainland European nations are yet included in Twellowhood, the map will zoom directly down to Britain and Ireland. This region is divided into the following areas:

We know a lot of people have waited quite a while for this, so we really are pleased to make it happen. And since my wife is from London, it’s great for me to see places here where we have family and friends!

Cheers,

Matthew Daines
Twellow Lead Developer

Twellowhood, New Zealand

Matthew Daines — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 15:57:39 +0000

The “youngest country on Earth” is now also the newest country in the Twellowhood. New Zealand has now been added to our Twellowhood map feature, expanding our offering in addition to The United States, Canada, and Australia. You can now drill down into New Zealand from the main Twellowhood page, or link directly to it here.

Welcome aboard, New Zealand!

Matthew Daines
Twellow Lead Developer

Extended Bio Quick View

Matthew Daines — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:19:28 +0000

A large number of our registered users have taken advantage of our Extended Bio feature and entered some extensive information about themselves using this option. Up until this point this info was only available if one clicked into the full user profile page. We’ve recently added a useful link to all listings for registered users with extended bios so users can quickly view extended bios.

Simply use the “Click to view my extended bio!” links under applicable listings, and an Ajax request will be sent to our servers and the extended bio retrieved. The extended bio will then be displayed in-line where it can be conveniently reviewed. This makes it easier to get a good idea of how these people fit into any following scheme you might be building on Twitter. It also increases the visibility of a listing by placing the icon and text shown above on extended bio listings.

For an example of how this works please visit the Freelance category where several of our users have entered extended bios.

Enjoy!

Matthew Daines
Twellow Lead Developer

Twellow Suggests Twitter Users

Matthew Daines — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:49:26 +0000

The great value in using Twitter is in connecting with people who share your common interests. While Twitter itself offers a list if suggested users to follow, it’s not a personalized list, and it doesn’t really include people that might share common interests with you, unless you are simply a celebrity hound who does nothing but stalk movie stars, politicians, and large corporations. At Twellow we have a better way of suggesting people to follow.

We’re releasing our newest feature, Twellow Suggested Users, to help address the continuing need Twitter users have of finding relevant people to follow. This feature takes advantage of our large database of categorized Twitter profiles to find the ones who match up best with your interests. Are you interested in Dogs, Wine, and Hockey? Twellow will show you others who also share those interests. Interested in Musical Instruments, Spirituality, and Snowmobiling? If someone else is out there to match you up, we’ll let you know.

The key points of interest to help you understand how to use this feature are as follows:

Displays up to 500 profiles.
Follow users right from the list.
Ignore and hide profiles you don’t think are good matches.
Clicking More Info buttons on each profile shows the categories for that profile. Your matches are marked with a green star.
Adjust your profile categories if suggestions are not accurate, then return and view the new results.

We’ve sorted the matches by relevance, not by followers counts, so you might see a profile with only 10 followers near the top of your list along with another having 10,000. We believe that followers counts are not the truest barometer of a valuable match, and our Suggested Users list was built with this in mind.

Come take a look at your suggested users list. It should make finding Twitter friends a lot easier.

Matthew Daines
Twellow Lead Developer

Pagination Comes To Twellow All Categories Page

Matthew Daines — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:35:42 +0000

Twellow continues to grow, and as of this writing we have 1,812 active categories in our system. This has led us to redesign our “All Twellow Categories” page to be a little more browser-friendly. We’ve broken the one giant page down into twelve pages of categories so your browser doesn’t have to deal with rendering out all these categories on one page. As more categories are added the number of pages will necessarily increase, so this is just another step in the relentless march toward improvement.

Enjoy!

Matthew Daines
Twellow Lead Developer

Mashable Video Mentions Twellow

Chad Sweely — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 21:08:41 +0000

On Friday, October 23rd of 2009, the social media/networking news site of Mashable included a video by Adam Ostrow talking about the process of social media is important in monitoring your industry:

Chad Sweely
Twellow Support