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First Letterman called Twitter a waste of time, and then he tried his hand at operating the microblogging site with his very own twitter machine. Last night, Letterman regaled audiences with a list he called, “Top Ten Signs You Spend Too Much Time on Twitter.”

As folks who actually do spend waaaaay too much time on Twitter (and Facebook, and Foursquare, and various and sundry video humor sites, and just basically hiding from the nourishing rays of the sun…), we’ve annotated his list below.

10. You miss your son’s soccer game waiting for Lady Gaga to post what she had for lunch.

There’s tons of mobile apps to rectify that issue, unless you’re still rocking a Samsung Juke (which I totally was until about a month ago).

9. You answer the phone: “Twello?”

Who… who would do that? Honestly, is this something people do?

8: You’ve spent millions developing iPhone waterproofing technology so you can Tweet in the shower.

Yeah, I think a bunch of people have beat you to that…

7. You haven’t touched your CB radio in months.

C…B…wha?

6. You ask yourself, “What would Jesus Tweet?”

Query: Answered.

5. You sleep tweet.

When Twitter is ‘a rockin’…

4. No number 4 — writer on Twitter.

Obviously, said writer has not heard of @Anywhere.

3. You stopped paying attention to this list after the first 140 characters.

No, man, you had “Lady Gaga” in there, and that was totally a top trending topic last week.

2. Even Ashton Kutcher thinks you tweet too much.

Like Kutcher actually follows any of us common folk via Twitter. (BTW, I’m @Brenna_E if you wanna rectify that situation, dude — please tell me more about daylight savings time while showering me with inspirational quotes.)

1. You walked in on the landscaper retweeting your wife.

Yeah. This one doesn’t really make sense, but nice go at saucy, sexual innuendo.

Check out the Letterman vid below and let us know in the comments: What are the real top 10 signs you spend too much time on Twitter?

Tags: david letterman, television, twitter, video

David A. Yovanno is the CEO of Gigya, Inc., a leading social optimization platform for online business. He can be found on Twitter at @daveyovanno or e-mail dave(at)gigya(dot)com.

Now that most social networks are supporting functionality on third party sites — via Facebook Connect, Sign in with Twitter, Yahoo! Open Strategy, MySpaceID, and other similar technologies — entertainment companies are experimenting with a variety of approaches.

While movie promotions on Facebook, top sports moments on YouTube, and MySpace music pages remain key fixtures, many entertainment companies are also now actively focused on how to apply social strategies to their own sites to deepen relationships with fans and become more relevant. Here are four ways on-site social features are benefiting both fans and the entertainment industry today.

1. Making TV Participatory

TV has historically been a “lean back” form of entertainment -– just sit back on your couch and let your eyes and ears take it in. Reality TV shows like American Idol broke new ground by making TV participatory -– fans can take action and influence the outcomes — and social technologies are now helping to make TV a “lean forward” experience.

In the most recent season of Dancing with the Stars, ABC made the voting process social. Fans could sign-in to abc.com with a Facebook or Twitter account to cast a vote for their favorite couple, and then donate their status to help support that pair. For example: “Vote to keep Louie Vito and Chelsea Hightower dancing on ABC!”

In the realm of real-time engagement, another example comes from MTV, which enabled live chat for previously aired episodes of the popular show 16 and Pregnant on MTV.com, where viewers could discuss the often controversial content with other fans.

Benefit for fans: Viewers are empowered to not only vote, but get out the vote among friends. Voting with a Facebook or Twitter identity makes voting a personal, rather than anonymous, experience. For 16 and Pregnant, teens have a live forum for sharing thoughts and experiences.

Benefit for TV networks: Fans are highly engaged with the show online, and the shows gain significant exposure on social networks from donated status updates. Traffic is generated back to the show online and off. Offering users a choice of networks for participation appears to boost engagement. For example, data from Gigya shows that for a single episode of 16 and Pregnant, tens of thousands of messages were sent by chat users to their social networks with the following distribution: 40% to Yahoo, 29% MySpace, 24% Facebook, and 7% Twitter.

2. Bringing Live Sporting Events to Life Online

In the real world, sports fans experience events together, whether live at the stadium, with buddies at a sports bar, or with family in front of a new 50” LCD TV. Recognizing this, sports media are trying to make online viewership a bit more like the real world.

A slew of sports media added live social chat to their event webcasts this year, enabling fans to participate online alongside the event using their Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or Yahoo identity. TNT used it for the NBA Eastern Conference finals and NASCAR Race Buddy series, CBS for its College Football series, NBA.com for ongoing games, and the PGA for the summer tour events including the PGA Championship. Fan messages about the game were syndicated to the social networks as news items in the feed. Even Roddy White of the Atlanta Falcons has gotten into the act on his own website.

Benefit for fans: Live social media integration provides an opportunity to chat about stats, players, and highlights, and to virtually high-five other fans or friends –- almost as if they were watching together in person.

Benefit for sports media: Fans participating with real identities adds authenticity to the socializing. Interactivity means fans are highly engaged, generating more page views, and messages shared to the social networks drive more traffic back to the online event, creating a virtuous cycle.

3. Giving Music Lovers an Outlet for Self-Expression

MySpace proved years ago the power of grass roots social efforts to take an artist from obscurity to household name, with Sara Bareilles one of the poster children for resisting the traditional label model. Now music companies large and small are putting social channels to work, and taking a number of new approaches in the last year.

MuchMusic, a music channel on Canadian cable TV, incorporated celebrity tweets and live chat into their MuchMusic awards, bringing fans “backstage” to a behind the scenes interview room. Similarly, MTV incorporated live social chat into its webcast of the “Hope for Haiti” telethon with the aim of further engaging viewers for a special cause.

Reverbnation, a music marketing platform that helps individual artists manage promotion, fan relationships, and other aspects of the business, built a feature enabling fans to register on the site using their social network identity, then build and share their favorite playlists into the feed on Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. Rather than help the artists build a presence on the social networks and send fans away, Reverbnation has integrated their own site directly with those key platforms to make themselves a one stop shop for the social music ecosystem.

Benefit for fans: Social integration creates an outlet for communicating with other fans, and sharing passion for artists and music –- whether in the form of a comment or their own playlist creation.

Benefit for music sites and artists: Integration provides greater exposure for artists and tracks as well as increased page views for the site.

4. Driving Word-of-Mouth for Movies

Word of mouth is everything in the movie industry. Buzz puts fans in seats, and is the benchmark by which the industry gauges traction for marketing efforts. It’s no surprise that studios are experimenting more with social media far beyond basic trailer promotion.

The movie Paranormal Activity broke new ground by using grass roots efforts and word-of-mouth to build buzz and gain a wider distribution for the film. They also took advantage of social media promotion, enabling fans to invite their friends from social networks to join them at the same time that they purchased movie tickets.

Twentieth-Century Fox, together with MTV, got fans directly involved to promote Avatar. They put on a first-ever live interview with James Cameron and the Avatar cast, answering questions from fans, who in turn shared their reactions in a real-time chat via Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Yahoo.

Benefit for fans: Movie goers receive greater access to their favorite films and celebrities.

Benefit for movie studios: The campaigns generate new and widespread buzz before and during the theatrical release.

Conclusion

When fans connect to a company using a social network identity, they are establishing the basis for a longer-term relationship. The data shared by these connections will allow companies to better segment and serve their fans.

For example, in addition to awareness-generating efforts for individual films, a movie studio could gain greater insight into the specific demographics of those that are responding early to a release and adjust efforts accordingly. They could also more easily continue the dialog by remarketing to users around sequels or films in the same genre.

Whichever path entertainment companies choose, integrating social technologies on their own sites to deepen relationships with fans is a blockbuster opportunity.

More social media resources from Mashable:

- How Musicians Are Using Social Media to Connect with Fans

- How The Roxy Became the #1 Venue on Twitter [INTERVIEW]

- The Science of Building Trust With Social Media

- How Companies Are Using Your Social Media Data

- How Twitter in the Classroom is Boosting Student Engagement

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, MarsBars

Tags: business, facebook, facebook connect, MARKETING, myspace, myspaceid, social media marketing, twitter, Yahoo

A new study shows that those who are fans or followers of a brand on Facebook or Twitter, respectively, are significantly more likely to buy products and services or recommend the brand to a friend.

Specifically, the study by Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate Research Technologies found that consumers are 67% more likely to buy from the brands they follow on Twitter, and 51% more likely to buy from a brand they follow on Facebook. Moreover, they’re 79% more likely to recommend their Twitter follows to a friend, and 60% more likely to do the same on Facebook:

Of course, those findings might be a bit overstated — many people actively seek out the brands they’re already fans of and follow or fan them on Twitter and Facebook. But there’s still much to be said for the mindshare that engaging those existing brand enthusiasts on social media sites creates, in turn keeping them active. Plus, the study also found that many consumers across a wide variety of demographics have negative perceptions of brands that aren’t using social media.

Overall, the study is another sign that social media is becoming a competitive advantage for those that are participating, and an increasingly major weakness for those that aren’t.

[via eMarketer]

Tags: facebook, statistics, trending, twitter

While most of the world happily enjoys the Internet’s free services such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Google, in China these are either inaccessible or might become so in the following months.

And, as shown by Google’s recent squabble with the Chinese government, it can be very hard to operate in the world’s most populous country. But Twitter’s Jack Dorsey has faith that Twitter will be able to operate in China, although it’s currently blocked by the government.

At a New York panel discussion on social media and digital activism, Chinese activist Ai Weiwei asked Dorsey whether he can promise availability of Twitter in China. Dorsey said: “I would say yes. It’s just a matter of time.” Weiwei called this answer “very philosophical”; knowing that a giant like Google has trouble securing its presence in China, a cautious answer like this by a much smaller Twitter instills little confidence.

Weiwei also pointed out a very interesting fact that westerners probably don’t think about: Twitter is a very different tool in Chinese and in English. “At 140 words, in Chinese, you can really write a novel. You can discuss most profound ideas really to democracy, freedom, poetry,” he said. Unfortunately, it seems that this fact didn’t escape Chinese censors, which have been blocking Twitter for nearly a year now.

Reviews: Google, Twitter

Tags: china, social media, twitter

It seems that the question on everyone’s mind over at SXSW this year is: What will be the next Twitter? Well, as our own Pete Cashmore said the other day during an interview with Bloomberg, and during a recent interview with Time.com’s Dan Fletcher: It’s all about location.

Twitter still remains a SXSW legend, even though some point to stats demonstrating that Twitter’s web traffic has been leveling off as of late. Still, the microblogging site asserts that it’s going as strong as ever, arguing that the true rubric for success is the number of tweets being sent out as opposed to the number of people logging on to Twitter via a web browser.

Now, location-sharing services like Foursquare seem to be creating a ton of buzz down South. Foursquare was first introduced a year ago at the SXSW conference in Austin, TX, and has only become more popular in the ensuing months — just the other day it garnered 347,000 checkins in a single day (mostly due to folks checking in in Austin). Other services like Gowalla have also joined the fray, as well as Facebook and Twitter, who have adopted or plan to adopt location features.

Check out the video below to see Pete chatting with Time at SXSW about Twitter and Foursquare, as well as how Mashable was born, the evolution of social networking, and what trends Pete sees dominating in 2010.

What do you think of the future of Twitter and the advent of location-sharing services? Let us know in the comments.

Reviews: Facebook, Foursquare, Gowalla, Mashable, Twitter

Tags: facebook, foursquare, gowalla, mashable, pete cashmore, sxsw-2010, twitter

A few hours ago, Twitter CEO Evan Williams keynoted SXSW in an on-stage interview with Umair Haque of Havs Media Lab. During it, Mr. Williams announced the @Anywhere platform and answered Mr. Haque’s questions.

While Mr. Haque did ask a lot of questions, some thought that he did not ask enough tough questions about the future of Twitter. Perhaps that’s why Twitter’s CEO decided to answer more questions via the microblogging site:

“I heard on the backchannel that people want me to answer tougher questions. What’ya want to know? Will answer 10. Go.”

The result was a flood of questions — and a flood of answers, including a few gems, including a definitive answer to: “Will Twitter be sold or merged in the next 2 years?”

The Questions

Before I dive into analysis, what I’m going to do is actually repost the first 12 questions and the answers Evan Williams gave in chronological order. Most of the questions he answered were superfluous or humorous, but I’ve bolded some very interesting questions and answers:

Q1: @ev why is location an after-thought?

A1: @bitcollector we didn’t start with location but are making serious in roads with it right now. It will be a major part of Twitter soon.

Q2: @ev when will you expand your capacity? The whale is cute and all but I see him way too often! Thank you!

A2: @MadysonsMallows we expand it every day. But we can do better.

Q3: @ev Here’s one: why is your api team so unresponsive?

A3: @mickhagen they’ve been really flooded and are getting more resources (2 new developer advocates this month). Also: come to Chirp

Q4: @ev OK, not a profit question. Soccer. Who will win the World Cup this year?

A4: @MatthewLumby sounds like you’re conflicted.

Q5: @ev What do you think is your next Aha! idea?

A5: @vivekunc always hard to know that ahead of time

Q6: @ev How do you see things settling out among Google, Facebook, and Twitter? Am interested because our daughter now works at Facebook.

A6: @BobMetcalfe she should probably apply at Twitter.

Q7: @ev What am I thinking right now?

A7: @TMDavenport @ladygaga

Q8: @ev Will @anywhere put API developers out of work?

A8: @steyblind only if they can’t think of what o do on top of it. It should allow them to create more value.

Q9: @ev what is your favorite bourbon?

A9: @thewebdawg now THAT’s a good question. I like Evan Williams Single Barrel, but that’s probably too obvious.

Q10: @ev Why would I ever, ever want a newspaper to @anywhere link to @anildash instead of using HTML to link to anildash.com?

A10: @anildash It’s not an either/or. It’s a hover action. Link still exists. Will result in more followers and ultimately traffic

Q11: @ev Why hasn’t Twitter named me as their Spirit Promoter since I made a Substancial Entity for Dialogue and Connection out of just tweeting

A11: @RoseProphecy um… Yeah. Have to think about that one.

Q12: @ev will Twitter be sold or merged in the next 2 years?

A12: @ds5384 No.

The Big Question Still Remains…

We’re still looking through the questions people asked and answers Mr. Williams gave, but we can say a few things:

- We like this transparent step by Twitter’s CEO with his very interested audience. He was perceptive of the audience reaction to his keynote and essentially opened up the floor to questions.

- With that said, he did not reveal all that much. Questions like the one below dominated his answers:

- The biggest piece was something we already suspected: That Twitter is not selling anytime soon.

- Another piece of news: Twitter will be revealing more details about how it will fight Facebook Connect at the Chirp conference. He provided this answer to GigaOm’s Om Malik.

- Twitter lists could be much better, and the team is working on making them a stronger feature.

Still, there are a lot of questions we have, including one we had hoped he would answer during his keynote today: Is there a Twitter advertising platform, and if so, when will it launch?

Hopefully we’ll get our answer soon. If not today directly from @Ev, then most likely at the Chirp conference next month.

Reviews: Facebook, Google, Twitter

Tags: evan williams, facebook, social media, sxsw-2010, twitter