Top 20 Twitter Posts of 2008

December 30th, 2008 by Dev Basu | 45 Comments

2008 proved to a historic year for Twitter both in adoption through the sheer number of twitter users signing up to the services, but also as evidenced by many influencers writing about using Twitter for PR, Social Media, Branding and other such purposes. With such an influx of great information, it often becomes difficult to distill signal from noise. This round up of the Top 20 Twitter Posts of 2008 provides another valuable meta-list to bookmark and refer back to, as Twitter continues to grow exponentially in 2009.

20. Twitter in Plain English - A video by the well respected guys as Common Craft that explains the nature and application of Twitter effortlessly in just under 2 1/2 minutes.

19. Why You Need To Be Looking At Twitter- Twist Image writes about the gaining clout of Twitter, especially due to adoption by the governments, corporations, and top brands.

18.Top 10 Uses of Twitter - Top Rank talks about 10 uses for Twitter beyond just as micro-blogging service.

17. 15 Twittery Things For Your Holiday Enjoyment - MakeUseOf tally’s up some of the year’s more interesting Twitter tools, including one’s that measure your sphere of influence and help you find new friends and followers.

16. Three Ways to Maximize Your Twitter Time for Networking, Marketing and Fun - Copyblogger breaks it down on using Twitter as a networking and marketing tool.

15. How Twitter Made My Website Better- Guy Kawasaki explains the added value of Twitter in making his blog better.

14.Using Twitter for Customer Service - Comcast, JetBlue, Zappos and other well known brands use Twitter as a customer service tool. Find out why you should too.

13. Should Analysts use Twitter?- Jeremiah Owyang covers the use of Twitter for research analysts.

12. Corporate Twitter Accounts and Online Reputation - Social Media Today covers some best practices for creating and maintaining corporate Twitter accounts.

11. 16 Examples of Huge Brands Using Twiter for Business - Search Engine Journal covers 16 of the biggest brands and their use of Twitter to connect with customers and as a PR tool. Dell anyone?

10. How Twitter Can Help at Work- Traditional media heavyweight the New York Times weighs in on how Twitter can help at work.

09. Newbies Guide to Twitter -Feeling lost on how to start ‘tweeting’ with Twitter? Chris Brogan offers a simplistic zen guide to engaging friends and followers on Twitter.

08. Twitter and personal branding: The BIG mistake I see people make every single day - Web Ink Now covers personal branding mistakes commonly observed on Twitter and how to avoid them.

07. The Role of Twitter in Brand Management - Conversation Agent offers up valuable opinions on how Twitter is a powerful brand management and PR tool.

05. How ReTweets Spread - Dan Zarella’s research analyzes the viral effect of the retweet.

04. The Five Stages of Twitter Acceptance - Rohit Bhargava leads us through the process of denial, presence, dumpin, conversion, presence, dumping, conversing, and microblogging.

03. The Elevator Pitch Hits Twitter - Read Write Web writes about how Twitter is being as a tool for elevator pitches. After all, having a 140 character limit forces you to be as succinct as possible.

02. How to Use Twitter as a Twool - Guy Kawasaki tells us to forget the influentials and focus on reaching a critical mass of Twitfluence instead.

01. 50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business - So Twitter’s great but how can I use it for my business? Chris Brogan provides 50 actionable ideas on using Twitter for business.

Dev Basu is a regular contributor to Search Engine Journal. He blogs about online marketing for small businesses, search marketing, and all matters in local seo and social media. Catch up with him at his blog, twitter, or connect on Linkedin. Ideas for this list were also contributed by Nathan Ketsdever, who runs Creative Fusion Media, a Nashville SEO and Social Media agency.

Comments

45 responses so far ↓

JustinSMV on Dec 30, 2008 at 10:42 am

Dev this is an excellent round up of Twitter Posts in 2008. Will bookmark to read further! (Sphunn/Dugg)
Beverly Macy on Dec 30, 2008 at 11:23 am

Love the recap - just posted on Teaching Social Media at UCLA blog
Zach Heller on Dec 30, 2008 at 11:30 am

Great roundup, some of those posts were terrific and extremely valuable for me professionally. Did you see my Twitter post?

http://zachheller.com/2008/12/19/monetize-twitter-then-monetize-everything-else/
Jonathan Bentz on Dec 30, 2008 at 11:50 am

If I might add another Twitter post that possibly might have been overlooked, it would have to be the Twitter Rockstar series David Brown published on our blog. http://www.prospectmx.com/how-to-become-a-twitter-rockstar-sort-of
Nicholas Chase on Dec 30, 2008 at 1:05 pm

Dev,

Thank you for providing a common location for this information.

Twitter has provided me with the ability to interface with contacts like Guy Kawasaki and Sir Richard Branson, Chris Brogan, and Laura Fitton, Robert Scoble and Doc Searls, Rohit Bhargava and many influential thought leadsers in the Web 3.0 space.

Respectfully,

Nicholas Chase
http://www.twitter.com/nachase
http://donotreadthisblogunless.blogspot.com/
Gail Nelson on Dec 30, 2008 at 1:17 pm

Nice job of researching and rounding all of this up into one place. Thank you!
Jonathan "Not the cookie ladie's son" Fields on Dec 30, 2008 at 2:56 pm

Great list, Dev!

Would love to add this post that revealed what happens when a mega-co like Jetblue jumps into twitter…

http://jonathanfields.com/blog/jetblue-twitter-customer-service-or-to-spy/
Betsy Brottlund on Dec 30, 2008 at 3:57 pm

I wish everyone would read the newbies guide before twittering.

Nice round-up. Thanks for the work.
http://www.twitter.com/betsybrottlund
Scott on Dec 30, 2008 at 4:25 pm

Was I the only one hoping that these were the top 20 tweets (not blog posts about Twitter) of 2008?

Nice job pulling the list together either way!

@adjustafresh
Michael Gass on Dec 30, 2008 at 4:55 pm

Deve,

A great list to bookmark. I remember reading some of these but you have made some excellent additions. Thanks for taking time to share them.

http://www.fuelingnewbusiness.com
Eric from springleap on Dec 30, 2008 at 4:59 pm

Great list but i’ll guess we’ll have to try harder next year. I was sure that a number of comments we made on our twitter account would have made the Top X lists.
@tommy_landry on Dec 30, 2008 at 6:17 pm

Great list of posts. I hadn’t seen them all, but I will now.
HighTechDad on Dec 30, 2008 at 6:48 pm

This is an awesome list. I’m an avid biz and personal twitter user myself and that is part of the reason I wrote this post on “Using Twitter is like Fishing” - link to post

Need to re-read some of those articles. Thanks for the list.

-HTD
andy on Dec 30, 2008 at 6:55 pm

Some great reads here. However your are only looking at the postive reviews of Twitter. How about some godo posts on the limitations of twitter, particularly from a monetization perspective ( http://www.savingtoinvest.com/2008/12/why-twitter-will-not-help-your-blog.html ). I am an active user or Twitter and from a brand/presence perspective it has good potential, but it will face a lot of competition from other social media sites like facebook etc.
Loren Baker, Editor on Dec 30, 2008 at 7:25 pm

Awesome list Dev! I highly encourage all readers to Retweet this post and also share Twitter oriented posts you feel should be added to the list here in the comments :)
Robyn Levin on Dec 30, 2008 at 7:37 pm

Well done Dev! This is perfect content to share and Tweet about and I will. Thanks.

While guest teaching at Wharton, I talked about Twitter to the MBA class. The reaction from 1 student was, “Twitter gives me a headache.” He then discovered all the various ways to use Twitter in business & networking. He experienced #4: The Five Stages of Twitter Acceptance -
Mark Ramskill on Dec 30, 2008 at 8:14 pm

A well though out and interesting list Dev. I’ve linked to it on Twitter.

All the best to you and the Search Engine Journal team for 2009.

Mark
http://twitter.com/ramskill
Friedbeef on Dec 30, 2008 at 9:57 pm

Thank you for assembling this - extremely useful, as I have just started twittering as well -

http://twitter.com/friedbeef
Dipali on Dec 31, 2008 at 12:36 am

Hi Dev,

Thanks for sharing stunned post. Its very useful collection of all post at one place. “Corporate Twitter Accounts and Online Reputation” its to good post.

http://www.twitter.com/dipalit
http://webanalyticstips.wordpress.com
Al-Kanz on Dec 31, 2008 at 1:37 am

Hi,

Thanks for sharing.
StalkerB on Dec 31, 2008 at 6:02 am

I was hoping for Tweets too :(

Here’s my personal top 5

I wonder what the turning circle of a pigeon is.
4:54 AM May 15th from txt

Nothing says party like a side ponytail!
1:08 PM Sep 21st from txt

I just used Google trends to compare Ja Rule and Sisqo. What did you do today?!
7:05 AM Sep 22nd from web

There’s a reason picking your nose after touching chillis is bad :’( 3:38 PM Sep 29th from web

Punctuation should definitely be seperate from the letters themselves. ÁáÀàĂăẮắẰằẴẵẲẳÂâẤấẦầẪẫẨẩǍǎÅåǺǻÄäǞǟÃãȦȧǠǡĄąĀāẢảȀȁȂȃẠạẶặẬậḀḁȺⱥᶏⱯɐⱭɑ…
8:12 AM Nov 10th from web

I need to Tweet more.
L.A.H. on Dec 31, 2008 at 8:34 am

Why does a list of the great 2008 posts have to reach back to 2007 posts?
15. How Twitter Made My Website Better - says Kawasaki posted it in October 07.
Dev Basu on Dec 31, 2008 at 8:44 am

Thank you all for your wonderful feedback and comments! Finding the best tweets of Twitter is a like finding a needle in a haystack, and even then it’d be much more subjective than an actionable resource list such as this one. Apologies for the occasional slip into an 07 post - it was not intended but I hope you find those to be as good of a resource as the one’s in 2008. Happy New Year everyone!
CT Moore on Dec 31, 2008 at 11:45 am

You forgot Loren Feldman’s awesome Twitter review: http://www.1938media.com/you-are-a-twitter-freak/
David Armano on Dec 31, 2008 at 11:51 am

This is a great resource! Just wanted to point out that you have the Conversation Agent link pointing to one of my posts on Guidelines for Brands using Twitter Vs. Going to Valeria’s post.

http://darmano.typepad.com/logic_emotion/2008/08/guidelines-for.html

Either way, I’m glad my content somehow ended up here, but I’d like to make sure that Valeria gets the link if that was the intent.

That said, if you Google “brands on Twitter” my post is the number 2 result. Been a big fan of Twitter for several years.

Thanks for this useful aggregation of links.
Torley on Dec 31, 2008 at 1:38 pm

I’d like to see the top tweets of ‘08! Terse and fun, I’m sure. :)
lab209 on Jan 1, 2009 at 3:44 am

You can visit my site to read a list of Twitter related tools.
Chris on Jan 1, 2009 at 4:05 pm

Nice article. I started out with Twitter a few months ago and I’m starting to get the hang of it.
dew on Jan 4, 2009 at 9:09 am

I HATE tweets that just post what someone’s last blog was. I’m probably already subbed to their blog if I’m following them, so the double announcement seems desperate to me. At least tweet something interesting in between (and please not the “I’m bored” tweets).

And I promptly unfollow any magpie tweets.
Eamon on Jan 4, 2009 at 5:24 pm

Readers might be interested in my list for Top 75 Blog Posts on Twitter (and using Twitter for a marketing strategy) http://www.spotlightideas.co.uk/?p=1088
kenekaplan on Jan 4, 2009 at 8:31 pm

Very helpful collection. Thank you. Happy New Year!
Oliver Feakins on Apr 23, 2009 at 2:51 pm

Great list! As twitter and social media become more prominent in today’s marketing mix, posts like these will surely need to be updated again and again.. Great post!
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Great lists!

great post sir..
thanks for sharing. really helped a lot here.
regards,
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