Expansion…

First off, Michelle is now going to be helping out with content additions while we transition to the new post-driven format on the site.  She is an avid twitter user based out of the University of Kansas who I’ve known for quite some time and will definitely help keep stuff around here more fresh and updated than it has been.

Also, Im in the process of updating  few things, particularly CSS and usability:

• In the Bog Posts secton, where we are testing the new listing format, I’ve added breadcrumb nvigation to make it easier for you to get back to the homepage or the sub-sections without needless clicks.
• New CSS for search results to remove the 3-column layout
• Fixed some of the Feedback code so that most of you wont see that popup falling behind the video… some PC users might still have the problem but I’m working on it.

Comments and Ratings (beta)

I’ve started to roll out a new format for links.

You can see this new format active under the “Helpful Blog Posts” section: you will now see a styled list of relevant links, be taken to a link-specific page with a short description/commentary for that tool/site and then see the link for that post.

Also on this new page, I’ve added 1-5 star ratings for voting on your favorites (soon, I’ll be adding a “Community Favorites” page so you can see the highest rated links on the site) and an area for comments (powered by Disqus..soon to support rating others’ comments).

Let me know if anything seems awry… I havent done much cross-browser testing yet.

Houston, We Have a Problem

Just encountered a bug that is causing nav links not to display in IE7… working on a fix now, thanks to @nicktrusty for the heads-up.

In the meantime, it appears fine in FF2/3.

UPDATE: Turns out the problem was absolute positioning in the CSS… should be working in all browsers now (except maybe IE6… but when was the lst time you went to a site in IE6 and it actually worked?)

Ongoing Issues

Still working on issues relating to GetSatisfaction javascript interfering with Vimeo embed code as well as some problems with page highlighting in the header between the main site and blog subdomain… maybe not big issues for the rest of you, but its driving me crazy…

Getting Off The Ground

A couple major site updates last night:

• New logo (thanks to ProductiveDreams for the illustration psd)
• Added GetSatisfaction feedback javascript for user feedback
• Created blog subdomain for this update blog
• Reworked footer code… some tweaks still left to eliminate horizontal scroll bar

Added a couple links as well:

• Mr. Tweet link to “Find People To Follow”
• Twitter People Search to “Find People To Follow”
• Ultimate Guide to everything twitter to “Helpful Blog Posts”

The Short List

I hit the “go” button on How Twitter Works about two weeks ago because it seems like my number of “real world” friends on twitter has exploded beyond the circle of technology/internet fiends I have been following on the site for the past two years… I think that as soon as “old media” like the Chicago Tribune and New York Times are on twitter, you can officially call it ‘mainstream’.

With this comes questions:

“How do I get started?”

“Who do I follow?”

“You get twitter on your iPhone?… how?”

I’ve always been a strong proponent of the idea that twitter is what you make it: a resource for feedback, a place to quickly see what your close friends are up to, or a way to keep your finger on the underlying pulse of nearly everything.  So rather than fill this site up with my ramblings about how to do everything from change your background to send a direct message, I decided that it would be best to provide a repository of links to the best blog posts and news articles to help new users decide what they want to use twitter for and find people they might be interested in following.  The huge lists of “100+ Posts About Twitter” and the ones like it are overwhelming, so I want to keep this to a short list of only the best resources I can find… I wont find them all, so send me your suggestions.

After you have been on twitter for a little while, there are quite a few interesting tools out there to get some insight into your own twitter stats or to use the site from nearly every electronic device in existence, so I’ve included a couple lists to help find those as well.

Last but not least, I’ve created a feed of all the tweets coming in from users asking for help on twitter in the hopes that some more advanced twitter users will shoot these new users a message either giving them some advice or maybe pointing them in the direction of the blog post or how-to guide that helped them really ‘get’ twitter in the first place.

Take a look around and let me know if you think anything is missing… and if a link here really helps you understand twitter or helps you find that ‘one app’ that you have been searching for, let me know that too.

Enjoy.

-Andrew

(@acafourek)