“What’s happening with all those inactive and deleted usernames that Twitter has? Some of them will continue to be held back for a few more weeks; some likely for much longer, Twitter cofounder Ev Williams said yesterday.

I caught Williams between sessions at the Chirp conference yesterday and put to him a question that Les Porter had asked me on Twitter: Please ask if they know when they’ll release inactive usernames in bulk. Thanks.
Williams said that Twitter hopes in the next few weeks to deal with one class of names, deleted names, and release them back for reuse.” (Searchengineland)

I am very excited that twitter is going to start becoming more green and recycling their old/inactive user names! The above statement I hope is merly their first step and they will figure out their strategy for inactive users that were once active but now are inactive for a year + They did address this a bit..

Things are trickier when it comes to inactive names, he said, which are those not used for over 6 months. Some names have been registered but never used at all (Williams mentioned one person who’d registered over 10,000 names but hadn’t done anything with them).

Releasing inactive, never-used names is easier than those that are have been used but later abandoned. That’s because in the case of abandoned names, someone may want to restart their account again in the future, he said. A bigger issue is what happens if someone has made a few tweets, then gone inactive. Do you delete those tweets in order to release the name back into the wild? (Searchengineland)

This last statement worries me personally because I have been on the war path to reclaim my personal brand. It goes to show how important it is to control your name as your brand. It’s been a tough trip for me.. Starting with this domain JamesCrook.com I had kept an eye on it for years. It went from personal site to redirection site and back again. Finally someone tried to sell it to me for $6000 which I didn’t even bother to respond to. He kept coming at me with new prices, I had james-crook.com then so I was in no rush. I believe his last offer was $700 dollars or he would register it for 15 years. I’m not going to be extorted and after two weeks I come to find jamescrook.com’s renewal had lapsed. $700 turned into $7 dollars and I agree I did luck out on this one.

Twitter on the other hand has been rough and a thorn in my side. I missed out on the great twitter land grab and now a user who tweets questionable comments has been tweeting it up and then went inactive for over a year now. I heard rumors on Mashable months ago that twitter has been working on a strategy to release names back into the wild. I understand in my situation I probably wont see the username released unless he closes the account. That wont stop me from checking every other day! Even if you are not in the social media or the SEO biz it goes to show you how important it is to control your name as your online brand. It effects you personally and professionally and unless I become famous so I can verify my twitter name i’m out of luck!

Does your company have a facebook page?

Surprisingly many business do not have their companies facebook pages setup! With last month user traffic stats released facebook drove more traffic then the google search engine. More people were checking their facebook pages then searching google for business or personal use. Properly setting up a corporate facebook page is essential social media practices. Operating your facebook page is also critical.. What is your strategy with interacting with your customers? A basic page that you provide your companies info? Or for instance your can run social media campaigns through your page just like Einstein Bagels. They had hundreds of thousand fans run through their facebook page with a simple bagel coupon. It was not a direct mailer the only cost to them were the free bagels and the salary of their social marketing team. Compared to direct mail campaigns this was basically free!

For events, ad campains, and anything else that is social driven facebook will amplify your site’s traffic with the end result increasing your search engine rank! Social media is todays best SEO tool!

Here is what I think is really cool.. Their track system they setup:

We have some really fantastic stuff in store for you at WordCamp Chicago!  We are doing TWO tracks this year:

• A User Track filled with presentations and information targeted to users, new and old, of the WordPress software.  Learn how you can leverage this phenomenal platform to take control of your content and publish your way to success!
• A Developers Track chock full of high level geek speak for those of you who design and develop on the WordPress CMS platform.  Everything from themeing to plugin development, and all points in between.
• (Tentative) A WP Genius table where you can touch base with some real WordPress gurus and get answers to your most burning questions.

I am looking forward to the MU (multi-user) version is being merged into the mainstream product. This will bring a lot of time saving for wordpress admins who manage multiple WP installs. Another welcome feature will be the option to install BuddyPress (previously required WP MU) with the merge of MU to the main core we now have the option to easily socialize our WP with Buddypress.

I am looking forward to Wordcamp Chicago, are you going? I am sure we will get knee deep into WP 3.0 features.

The main features we wanted to implement for them was to breath fresh air to the normal (standard) twitter usage. For instance instead of showing a standard twitter timeline which shows player’s twitter interactions with Chicago Kickball. User twitters are often drowned out by the host sites own twitter blasts. By having installing a twitter hash tag widget drawing on #chicagokickball specifically will focus the user -> site interaction.

Another way to draw in live updates is to install a twitpic plugin that enables players with smartphones to send in live picture updates to the main kickball site.

The last strategy to increase member usage is to rejuvenate the traditional twitter timeline with a brand new application called Tweet Board. Tweet Board turns the standard twitter stream into a micro-forum showing normal tweets but nesting replies more like a traditional forum style. This helps turn the traditional one way stream of comments into nest conversations. Most social sites have twitter streams so why not draw in more user interaction by turning your stream into a highly interactive experience!