I’m sure by now you’ve heard that Twitter has launched a new new design. I love it and I think you will too, but I’m not going to review it here, I’m just going to tell you how you can get the new design early, if you don’t already have it.

According to Twitter, the new new design will be rolling out to everyone over the next few weeks but there is a way to get it early. If you have an iPhone or an Android, simply download the new Twitter app to your phone, launch the app and soon thereafter you should see the new design the next time you log in on your computer. It took a couple hours to happen for me but it did work.

Tip: If you already have the Twitter app on your phone just upgrading to the new version should work, if not, remove the app and download again from scratch.

Update: As you’ll see in the comments, many people are saying this trick is not working for them. Twitter says it will but if it doesn’t, the only choice is to wait till they finally roll the new layout out to everyone. I’m not sure what’s taking so long, but Facebook took a couple months to get the new Timeline rolled out.

Facebook announced on their blog today that they have made a “bunch of improvements” that will be rolling out to users over the next several days. Rather than rewriting their post I’ll just give you the link here, but below is a video explaining the new sharing options which are going to make it a lot easier to share posts, photos and other content with your friends, family, coworkers and any other lists you create.

In addition to the sharing options which, if you’re familar with the new Google+ is very similar to their Circles, the other change I think most people will be excited about is the ability to @ tag anyone — friend or Page — whether you are friends with or have Liked them or not. And don’t worry, if you’re tagged by anyone who isn’t a friend it won’t appear on your profile until you approve it.

Once the changes are available to you you’ll get a prompt for a tour that will walk you through all the new features.

One of the best ways to get traffic to your website or blog is from the search engines, and in particular, Google, but you may not be ranking as high as you think.

If you want your pages to rank high in Google searches you probably pay attention to SEO and search for keywords and phrases people would use when searching for something you want them to find. I’m sure you periodically search for those keywords to make sure your pages are coming up within the first couple of pages, and preferably on the first page, and adjust your SEO if you don’t, but did you know that if you do a test search while logged into Google that you will see different results than everyone else does? You may be under the impression that you’re ranking on the first page when in realty you may not even be showing up in the top 100 results.

When you search Google to find out how you’re ranking, make sure you log out of Google first. If you’re logged in because you’ve been checking your email or using Google+ — or anything else you need to be logged into Google to use — you’re not going to get accurate results and may be losing out on a lot of traffic.

It’s become a very common occurrence lately to hear about a celebrity’s Twitter or Facebook account being hacked. It’s happened to Britney Spears, Justin Bieber, Ellen DeGeneres, President Obama, and many more. The most recent is New York Congressman Anthony Weiner who seemingly tweeted a lewd photo of a man in tight briefs to a Washington State college student. His claim is that his Twitter account was hacked and, unfortunately, it’s a lot easier to do than most of you realize, especially if you make use of WiFi in public places like Starbucks or the airport. If you’re using Twitter or Facebook in a public place, anyone sitting nearby could gain access to your account and do anything from posting updates or photos to closing your account. And here’s the thing… since it’s usually only the celebrities we hear about when their accounts are hacked, how many ordinary folks get hacked every day?

To show you just how easy it is for someone to hack your Twitter or Facebook account, let me tell you about a new Android app called FaceNiff. Anyone with a rooted Android phone and this nasty little app can take over your account by simply joining the network you’re using and running the app. Watch the video at the bottom of this article to see just how easy it is to hack someone’s Facebook page. Here’s the app description from their own website:

FaceNiff is an Android app that allows you to sniff and intercept web session profiles over the WiFi that your mobile is connected to.

The good news is that you can protect yourself… well, mostly… obviously if the BAU wants to access your laptop to find out if you’re a serial killer, they’re getting in, because, well, Penelope is just that good, but in most cases, the following suggestion should protect you.

Facebook and Twitter both provide a way for you to use their websites in secure mode by using an https URL. In Twitter, go to your settings and check the box next to “Always use HTTPS”.

For Facebook you’ll want to go to the “Account Security” section in your Account Settings page and put a check in the box next to “Browse Facebook on a secure connection (https) whenever possible”.

Please note that although both Facebook and Twitter are working on a way for you to use a secure connection when using your mobile devices, for now, you pretty much need to be using their official website and not a third party app, so be sure to check to see if there’s a way to secure the app you’re using.

Twitter announced yesterday that they will be adding photo uploading from within Twitter, similar to the way we can do it on Facebook, as well as a new photo and video search and sharing feature. Obviously this wasn’t good news for TwitPic and some other third party apps but based on this video it’s going to be a nice addition.

From Twitter’s blog:

Millions of people share photos on Twitter every day. We’re going to make that easier than ever. Over the next several weeks, we’ll be releasing a feature to upload a photo and attach it to your Tweet right from Twitter.com. And of course, you’ll soon be able to easily do this from all of our official mobile apps. A special thanks to our partner Photobucket for hosting these photos behind the scenes.

For users without smartphones, we’re working with mobile carriers around the world so you can also send photos via text message (MMS). Share what’s happening in your world, anywhere you are.

We’re really excited about our new search and photos experiences and can’t wait for you to try them. We believe both make a huge difference in making the world feel even smaller.

For those of you old enough to remember the original Twitter (okay, I know it wasn’t that long ago) the first design was quite narrow, too narrow given modern monitor widths, but it had one very nice benefit; it gave us plenty of room for really cool custom backgrounds. When viewed on a 1280 pixel wide monitor we had a whopping 250 pixels to work with on the sides, plenty of room for logos, photo of our friends and family, custom artwork, etc. The screen shot below shows how Twitter looked when viewed on a 1280 x 1024 pixel monitor.

Then along came Twitter 2.0, around September of 2010, and they decided to stretch the width to rather ungainly (even wider than YouTube) dimensions. They did this to widen the right panel, leaving more room for information and media to be displayed. In doing so, they cut the space we had to work with for our backgrounds by more than 50%, down to 108 pixels on a 1280 wide monitor. Although many people kept their backgrounds as they were since they still looked okay on 1600 pixel and wider monitors, many of us redesigned our background to fit so things weren’t cut off for the 40% or so who were viewing on something less than 1600 pixels; small laptops and iPads, for example. Here’s what Twitter 2.0 looked like.

So, here we are, after about 8 months, with Twitter 3.0. The area on the left where our tweets appear seems to be about the same width but the right side panel width has been decreased, giving us back more than half of the background real estate we lost with Twitter 2.0. Unless Twitter is playing a cruel joke on us and reduced the width to make room for a third column, for now anyway, we have about 172 pixels of background area on the sides on 1280 pixel monitors. And by the way, the new width just happens to be exactly the same as Facebook’s. Can I get an Amen?

Fan Gating or Like Gating are terms recently coined to describe the practice of using a two-stage reveal welcome tab as the default landing page on your Facebook business (fan) Page. The most popular use is to offer an incentive, such as a free eBook or discount coupon, to incentivize clicks on the Like button. Depending on the offer, this technique can result in a considerable increase in the percentage of Like clicks. But, I’d like to point out another use for a reveal landing tab; simply to give someone a visual confirmation and a personal thank you.

How many times have you filled out an online form and gotten zero confirmation that it worked? You filled out the form and clicked the submit button and nothing happened. The form probably cleared but you had to assume that the information had actually been transmitted. When we fill out a form online we expect to at least see a message letting us know that the information was sent, and if the website owner is smart, they show us that message along with a link to something else they want us to see. So, why not do the same thing on your Facebook welcome page?

Even though you may not be suggesting that a visitor click on the Like button to get a free eBook, download an mp3, or get 25% off their next online order, you can still thank them for Liking your Page and then give them something else to do, increasing the value of the landing tab. Facebook welcome pages have been shown to increase Like clicks by 25% or more, but the primary goal of the page is to get someone to click the Like button and adding too many links to your other social networking places, as well as your website and blog, can end up sidetracking people who might click one of those links before they click the Like button. A better idea is to put most of those links on a second (reveal) page.

Here’s how it could work. A potential fan clicks a link to visit your Facebook Page and instead of landing on the Wall or Info tab as usual, they land on a nice welcome page with graphics, photos, and some actual information about what the purpose of the Page is and why they should Like it. Normally, when they click the Like button the button disappears but nothing else happens, they are still viewing the same page. Instead, I recommend using a reveal or two-stage page so once someone clicks the Like button the page changes to reveal a message; perhaps “Welcome to our Facebook Community. Now that you’ve Liked our Page you will begin seeing our status updates in your news feed and we hope that you’ll join in the conversation. We also hope you’ll visit our Page often to contribute on our Wall.” Then, in addition to your message you would suggest other places they can follow you like Twitter and include links to your website or blog.

You’ve added to your Facebook visitor’s experience, making it far more personal, and let them know that you appreciate them, and at the same time used your Facebook Page as a typical landing page, giving someone multiple choices of places to visit without reducing the effectiveness of the primary purpose of the welcome page, which is to get more clicks on the Like button.

If you’re familiar with using FBML code to achieve the two-stage reveal for a tab page you’ll need to use a different method now that Facebook switched to iframes, but there are several very good apps you can use that make the process quite simple. I recommend the Static HTML app by Jason Padvorak and Timothy Mensing, or TabPress by the folks at HyperArts.

If you like the idea of using a custom landing tab on your Facebook Page but don’t have the ability to design HTML pages, click here to find out what Social Identities can do for you.

When Facebook launched the new design for Pages they moved the row of tabs that linked to our Wall and any custom tab pages that used to run across the top of the page and put them in the left sidebar as text links below our photo/logo/banner. Although I kind of like it the new way, the truth is that our custom tab pages don’t stand out as well as they did as actual tabs, but there are a couple of thing you can do to take care of that problem.

With the old tab system you were quite limited in how many characters you could use so tab names needed to be very short, which made it hard to be descriptive in some cases. I’m not sure what the new character limit is but it’s over 50 characters and your titles can take at least two lines. This won’t matter to you in cases where short titles, like “About Us” or “Contact Us” will work just fine, but it does come in handy when something like “Free Videos – Learn How to Get the Most Out of Your Blog” works way better than “Free Videos”.

Another thing you might want to consider is using your banner to point out the tab links. I’ve used a bright red arrow and a bit of text to direct the viewers attention to the navigation links.

Update: Twitter launched a completely new design on 11/10/2011 so don’t bother reading the rest of this post. We no longer have a transparent right side panel.

Edit: Please note that this hack now appears to only work with Internet Explorer 8 or older but not IE9, Chrome or Firefox.

When viewed on any browser other than early versions of Internet Explorer, the right side panel on the new Twitter pages has a transparency of 70% allowing the background to show through slightly. This can be used to your advantage with a creative background design. For example, it’s a great place to put a large copy of your logo or a  photo. Here’s a post I wrote showing some examples of what can be done.

But, wouldn’t it be cool if the right side panel was completely transparent? Yeah, it would, but unfortunately Twitter doesn’t allow us to change the transparency in the settings… unless you know the trick.

To keep the right panel from looking too much like it’s just hanging in space I added a transparent white overlay on my actual background image to create an edge on the top that extends to the far right, but the Twitter panel itself is 100% transparent. Click here to see my actual Twitter page.

This little hack has been around for a while and I’m not sure who deserves the credit for coming up with it in the first place, but it will take you about 30 seconds to do it and if you don’t like the results you can simply change it back. Keep in mind that this isn’t going to look good on just any background, you’ll need to make sure the image isn’t too busy and has enough contrast so that the text and links are still readable.

The Incredible Twitter Transparency Trick:

1. Click on “Settings” and then “Design” to get to this page. http://twitter.com/settings/design. Make sure you’re logged in.

2. Copy this bit of javascript code:

javascript:document.getElementById("user_profile_sidebar_fill_color").value = '';document.getElementById("title_theme").innerHTML = 'Click The Save Changes Button At Bottom To Finish!!';void(0);

3. Paste the code directly into your address bar, replacing the URL for the design page.

4. Hit the “Enter” key.

5. Click “save changes” and you should now have a completely transparent right side panel.

Edit: Thanks to Al Schmidt for pointing this out in the comments, but this will not work in IE9 for some reason. When you hit the “enter” button it just sends you back to the previous page.

You may have heard that UberMedia, the company who owns mobile Twitter clients UberTwitter and Twidroyd, recently acquired TweetDeck for a reported $30 million. UberMedia CEO Bill Gross is apparently working on building a Twitter empire and I don’t think Twitter likes the idea. They just suspended UberTwitter and Twidroyd.

I understand how the name UberTwitter is in violation of Twitter’s trademark but do they really own the letters Twi?

via TechCrunch