A regularly requested feature by a lot of my readers for Twitter Bot Script, and other tools has been the automatic creation of Twitter Lists. Meaning that you do not have to get user ID’s or anything… Just type in a title, enter your user names, and press make list, and it works.

This is actually very easy to accomplish with a little PHP. You can download the script (free of course) from here at the Twitter Bot Script forum.

Keep in mind that most people only get 150 API calls per hour on their account. The only way to add people to a list through the API as of right now is to use their Twitter account ID number. So you have 1 API call to create the list, 1 API call to get the user ID automatically, and then a third API call to add them to the list. (Way to go Twitter.) This means that you can create a list with up to 74 people on it, and add people to that list at a rate of 75 an hour. Keep in mind each user is limited to creating 20 lists each with a max of 500 users. That’s room for 10,000 accounts that suggest authority and influence Muahaha.

Use this script wisely they are getting smarter at Twitter… Updated version on the way that will allow you to use either user ID’s if you have them cutting API calls to 1 request per user on the list allowing you to add 149 at creation.

I also recommend storing your created lists in a MySQL database or something as a way of tracking / managing them from your toolkit. For instance when you get the 200 OK status back from creating the list, it also returns all the xml data for it. Store that in a row so you can keep track of what you have made, and make it easy to build up.

There is a lot of buzz going around about ways to unfollow or delete all the people you are following on Twitter. While this is not a built in option of the Twitter Bot Script, there are some other websites that allow you to do this. However they are all ugly, require you to enter your login info, and make you wait while it goes through and unfollows everyone.

So I made a quick tool that does the same thing except it uses OAuth authentication making it trustworthy and secure, and you also don’t have to wait. Just submit your Twitter account and within 10 minuets your account will be purged.  A much safer, faster alternative.

Check out the Unfollow All tool with OAuth Here.

A few months ago I did a post about how to make a Twitter bot with php. The post is currently ranking number one for making a Twitter bot and I was getting tons of emails on tyler.tc on how to make the script more functional, and basically just do more. I put some ideas down and sent them to a few friends and got a great response. After putting some code together and releasing it online, TwitterBotScript or “TBS” has become a hit.

The reason being: Its simple to use, its constantly evolving, it allows you to expand your Twitter account (and marketing efforts) extremely fast, and its FREE. Think of TBS as an open source twitter bot script. Not only can you download it but its easy to build on with your own ideas and a little PHP experience.

Twitter Bot Script comes with what has been dubbed the TBS Toolkit, lets look at some features:

• Full GUI tweet management including “Show Status” which allows you to pause that tweet from appearing in your activities.
• Import tweets via a CSV file with the ability to set their status and type on the fly.
• Create globally used tweets, or create special tweets to be used only for replies and direct messages.
• The Mention Reply Tool will allow you to see all the recent @your tweets and automatically respond to them using the bulk responder option, or quickly write up a custom response. TBS will also keep track of the tweets you respond to so you don’t continually send duplicate responses like with other bot scripts.
• The Make Friends Tool is another awesome tool only available from TwitterBotScript. This tool will give you a bunch of new ways to make friends on Twitter. Account sourcing will allow you to randomly follow users from your friends or followers (toggle) while allowing you to reselect the target, and the required amount of followers for each person you try to follow on the fly. You can also find new friends via keyword searching, or by directly inputting lists of user names.
• TBS of course includes a status update tool that works just like your Twitter homepage.
• Sleep Mode will allow you to randomize the time at which your tweets appear on Twitter. When you automate with CRON, your script is run at the same time interval every time. By using sleep mode, the script will essentially sleep for a random amount of time making your tweeting look more natural to Twitter users.
• Tweet counter. So lets say you don’t have a larger number of tweets to work with and you don’t want to keep repeating them. You can globally set a tweet limit in TwitterBotScript limiting the number of times each message can be used.
• API Rate Limiting integration.

Another bonus is Twitter bot script requires almost nothing to run... A basic installation of Apache, MySQL, and PHP (and cURL of course) will do the job. But you will need CRON in order to use automation. In the next release, Twitter Bot Script will have a synthetic version of CRON like what WordPress uses.

Twitter Bot Script has been installed 598 times since it was released four days ago. I think with a little push Twitter Bot Script could easily become the king. I looked around today at the competition and most of the stuff out there is either very basic or very expensive.  This puts Twitter Bot Script at a distinct advantage as users get an advanced tool set that is constantly seeing additions and revisions, for free. Yeah, there is definitely work to be done but that’s the point. As I get more and more emails for I’ll know what direction to move in.

So go download Twitter Bot Script and play around with it. You don’t have to be marketing your Micheal Jackson t-shirts to have fun with Twitter Bot Script. Its great for easily finding new friends and exposure.

Also: If your handy with PHP and working with APIs, shoot me an email if your interested in working on this project.

This is a problem you will face when going to work for one of the largest social networking applications online. Facebook’s datacenters store more than 40 billion photos, and users upload over 40 million new photos each day.

Facebook has recently surpassed 200 million users and is reportedly seeking up to $100 million for additional servers.

The other day I was setting up a Wordpress sandbox to do some theme testing and I ran into a small snag. I wanted to populate the blog with data from smmguru.com and the Wordpress export feature is a bit flawed. For many reasons (mainly security) I did not want the sandbox blog running off the same database so a backup/import was the way to go. Unless you can upload a 6mb export to your site (highly unlikely) then you cant import any data.

The first route I took was manually trying to split the file but I quickly realized it would take forever with that many lines of code. I took my problem to Google and found a nice little gem called “Shoes.” Its a WXR file splitter written in ruby by  mvManila. The program is very easy to use and it runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux and there’s also a command line version for the nerds. You can get the latest version here (just pick the latest version number for whichever platform you are running.) The program will then install itself and your ready to roll.

Select the local copy of your WXR file, then pick how small you would like each chunk to be. You can even append a name that will automatically be ordered in number. For example entering “backup-part-” will create WXR files labeled “backup-part-1″, “backup-part-2″, etc. Then all you have to do is import all the files through WordPress and your good to go.

So lately there has been a lot of crying over Apple introducing variable pricing in the iTunes music store. Soon after both Wal-Mart and Amazon raised their prices following a similar pricing structure as Apple. A lot of the top tracks have been raised 30 cents to $1.29 for new hits while recent songs will still cost 99 cents and older tracks will cost 69 cents. While the music industry is always pushing for more pennies I think the raise on Amazon’s end came purely out of pricing strategy. As the fourth (Amazon) and second (Wal-Mart) biggest online music retailers it does not come as a surprise to me. If Apple is charging $1.29 for latest hits then they too can jump on the bandwagon charging the same amount or even a little less to appeal as a better value.

Although there is a recession I don’t think it will have much effect on music downloads. The people who pay for music now will continue to pay for it until it becomes ridiculously high. Personally I don’t see the incentive of download music online for the same price it costs to buy the CD without getting the CD or anything that comes with it. Especially when you can still find all the music you want online for free. It won’t be long for others to follow suite. Best Buy and Target where listed as the 3rd and 5th largest online music sellers my bet is they will change their pricing structures by the end of the year. Cant wait to see the numbers that Apple posts from its iTunes sales this year.

The artists seem to be making plenty of cash… I don’t see any rappers complaining about their Bently’s and bitches which says something. I think the music industry has seen a sift in consumer use like watching videos online or using online radio services. While im not a huge fan of Little Wayne his success is a perfect example. Up to the release of “Tha Carter III” album he flooded online mixtape outlets with music. Not only did this create an amazing hype train, it combated the leaking of his album material. Putting out over 80 tracks and remixes before putting out an album will make it so people really dont know what to expect on the album. And if the content is good, the hype and interest of whats on the album does the rest of the work. Some of the tracks on the album were songs released on mixtapes that were later extended or remixed.

The industry is not the problem. You just have to make the right records.

NPD Data.

Looks like Facebook ads is down again. I noticed they have been having issues for the last view days. Around Sunday or Monday I started noticing some whack ass CTRs and click prices… Later that day I was unable to create or modify any ads and the service seems to be tottaly down. Not sure if this has been an issue previous to this incident but I’m sure it wont be the last with the growing pains they are facing being a new player in this market.

I have not gotten any response back from Facebook as to what the issue is but I really hope they get this shit ironed out soon… I cant even get to my Ads Manager to pause my campaigns… Which really sucks because I happen to be doing loads of split testing right now. If you know anything drop a comment or shoot me an email.

Note: If you can still manage your ads I would recommend pausing them if you will need constant access to them.

You may have noticed lately a new trend in search engine technology. Latent Semantic Indexing or LSI, has become one of the new favorite ways to rank websites within search results. Following suit, SEOs are adapting techniques and creating new strategies to rank well using the new technology. To gain a coveted top 10 ranking you will now need to focus on keyword density or theme density. In the good old days you could simply stuff your content with keywords (keyword stuffing) and it would not take long before you were on the front page of SERPS. I have already shown why LSI came about and how it thwarts keyword stuffers. What all of this means is that you now need to understand how to use your unique content correctly incorporating themes for the best possible results.

Sounds great… But how do I masterfully theme all of my unique content? Simply put, it’s done by strategically placing expert verbiage and theme related words into your content. It’s really quite simple. People are so used to doing shady things to make their content rank and now that search engines have a more natural LSI technology; ranking will become a more natural process. The expert verbiage (synonyms) are search engine proven synonyms known as “SEPS.” Consider these SEPS your new best friends. So how do I find good SEPS to use for my content?

How To Find Good SEPS:

It’s really easy and Google actually does most of the work for you. Simply enter a tilde “~” in front of your keyword within the Google search box and the synonyms will be automatically highlighted in bold within the search result pages.

Ex: http://www.google.com/#q=~car+parts Notice how different synonyms are bold within these search results. These search engine proven synonyms are what you want to work into your content. So if you are making a niche site for example, these SEPS will give you the basics of what search engines are looking for and what they place value on. These SEPS are also a great way to develop themes, sub-themes, and topics for your site.

Another great tool for finding awesome SEPS is the adCenter Keyword Group Detection Tool. Simply enter your keyword or keyphrase and it will spit out all kinds of goodies to get you started.

I’ll say this again also, there is nothing new about these techniques. Theme density, interlinking your pages, and using SEPS has been around for a while. Until LSI came into the lime light these were just well kept secrets amongst the elite who know that when used properly, can easily put a site in the top10 of any engines SERPS.

With LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) being the latest tool in the belt to thwart spammers, LSI has not only changed the way content is looked at but incoming links as well. While having incoming links is important, their effect is now lessened as not just any link will help your rankings anymore. The idea is to build a theme of links to all of your pages, or deep link them.

For example, deep linking to many pages within a website using anchor text that relates to the “theme” of the page is much more crucial than having a bunch of links back to your homepage. Anchor text keywords must also be thematically altered for inbound links to any one page. If this sounds confusing let me try and clear this shit up. Lets say the page you are linking to is about the “flu.” Right off the bat, LSI would determine if the phrase “naturally” occurs within the domain name [ie. www.fluhelp.com]. Next, LSI would look for some variations of related key phrases that could/should be used within the anchor text of the links:

“stomach flu”
“flu symptoms”
“bird flu”
“common cold”
“flu treatments”
“flu vaccine”
etc…

This is not a new practice by any means. Any real, decent SEO has probably been using themed strategies to achieve top rankings for years as the natural theming builds much stronger rankings and content. Most people who are new to the game think these new techniques have derived from the introduction of LSI technology when in fact “themed websites” have just been a closely guarded secret.

As always, the information and questions you find on forums can be highly inaccurate and misleading. When it comes to Google’s ranking algorithm there are a few known tidbits and a huge amount of speculation and rumors that although sometimes true can be highly misleading.

In the beginning search engine spiders would look only for the presence and frequency of keywords on a web page to determine that pages relevancy. As search began to grow it became clear that this type of approach would yield poor search results. A good example is the engine could match “car” and “automobile” but fail to recognize homonym (words with multiple meanings) such as “mouse” and “keyboard.” Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) is a new approach at understanding not only keywords, but the context in which they are used on the entire web page.

Using statistical analysis (LSI) can look at pages that have words which are often used in the same context. Lets say “apple” and “computer” are keywords, “Mac OS” is also there and are therefore also relevant. Another way to look at this is determining whether a page is about “windows” the operating system, or an invention to throw things out of your car. LSI technology is about looking more into the context of indexed content, and allowing a more natural method of search to happen. Consequently, the technology is not only used by Google but other search engines as well.

An excerpt from Google’s LSI Patent that gives the basic key requirements of their LSI technology:
“The system is further adapted to identify phrases that are
related to each other, based on a phrase’s ability to predict
the presence of other phrases in a document. More specifically,
a prediction measure is used that relates the actual co-occurrence
rate of two phrases to an expected co-occurrence rate
of the two phrases. Information gain, as the ratio of actual
co-occurrence rate to expected co-occurrence rate, is one such
prediction measure. Two phrases are related where the prediction
measure exceeds a predetermined threshold. In that case, the
second phrase has significant information gain with respect to
the first phrase. Semantically, related phrases will be those
that are commonly used to discuss or describe a given topic or
concept, such as “President of the United States” and “White
House.” For a given phrase, the related phrases can be ordered
according to their relevance or significance based on their
respective prediction measures.”

From a webmasters perspective there’s not much to worry about. If you are creating quality content with a theme, your rankings will most likely just improve. Those at risk as always are those looking to game the indexing system with keyword stuffing, or over working their keyword density until the page is no longer natural context. Randomly inserting keywords into an article / website will no longer get you those top rankings. In fact, over optimizing and duplicate content could not only hurt your rankings but be the death of them.  This this big change in search, its likely to have an effect on the way people create content. Again, the idea is to theme your content (more coming soon.)

That should give you the overview of what exactly LSI technology is. The general idea as always from the search engine’s end is a new way to bring natural search to the table, cut down on spam,  and those who are faking their way to the top. If you want more information on LSI I recommend reading through that patent up above. There’s a crap load of information in it.