Tweetie supports ShoutEm
Posted by: Ilija Brajkovic on: 04/11/2009
- In: Help & Tips| News
- 1 Comment
When it comes to popularity of Twitter clients for iPhone, Tweetie is definitely one of the top contenders. With its cool features and ease of use it soon became one of the most used Twitter clients for iPhone. Our team likes it, too, and now we have another reason to like it even more: new version of Tweetie supports ShoutEm!!! Now you can use Tweetie as a ShoutEm client, and shout from your iPhone.
How to setup Tweetie to use ShoutEm?
Step One – Press the ‘+’ button
Step Two – Enter your ShoutEm network’s credentials and then click on the settings button (bottom right)
Step Three – Enter your network’s URL and add ‘/api’ at the end
Step Four – Shout!
Advanced customization of your ShoutEm network
Posted by: Ilija Brajkovic on: 29/10/2009
At this moment ShoutEm supports 18 different styles that you can use on your network (and we are adding even more styles, like Marble), but you may want to customize the look of your micro-blogging network just the way you want.
Using ShoutEm Admin pages, you can change look of many parts of your network, sometimes even without special knowledge of programming and/or designing. For example, look at the great example at HorseTweet network. These guys created a great skin using Settings page under their ShoutEm Admin panel. Let me show you what can you do using your admin page, and how can you modify some of our skins to look just the way you want.
For starters, let’s see the screenshot of my test network ilijabrajkovic.shoutem.com. I use “Elegant Dark Groove” skin, which (because of its dark color) gives me good foundations for what I want to achieve.
Let’s try to change it a little bit.
First, go to your admin page, then from the left menu select Appearance –> Settings. You’ll see the page where you have a lot of options to change the look and feel of your ShoutEm network. The first part of this page is called Header settings, and here you can change look of the header of your network. For example, you can change the logo image, if you have a logo for your network. Just be aware that the maximum size for the logo is 990×50 pixels. Also, you can setup background image for your header, and also text, navigation and background color.
In the Body settings part of the admin page you can change the way how the main part of your network looks like: list of the shouts on your network and users panel. You can setup Body font, Font size, colors… This procedure is pretty much straightforward, so spend some time playing with these settings and choose the right settings for your design.
Shout settings area gives you ability to change the look of a single shout on your network. You can change colors of the text, links, info and background as well as shout transparency.
You can see the preview of these settings applied to my test network in the screenshot below.
Also, if you want to monetize your network and you want to show Google ads on it, you can change the Ads style. You have the option to choose between five different styles: Red, Green, Blue, Dark and Light. Just choose the one the will be the best fit for the design of your network.
You can also change the background color and/or background image on your network. Using the simple color picker you can select the color, or upload a background image from your computer.
You can even upload your own Favicon. Just create an icon that is not larger than 16×16 pixels, convert it to .ico file, and upload it.
I’ve been playing with these settings for a little bit, here you can see the end result:
As you can see, most of the design is changed. This is just a quick, rough style change; I’m sure you can do better than me with a bit of effort!
This tutorial shows you how easy is to change design of your Shout’Em network, if our predefined designs don’t satisfy you.
Also, there are some other things that you can do to change some of the design of your network, but we’ll leave that for some other post. For now, go to your Admin page and play with these setting for a while, and if you still don’t have your network, go to http://www.shoutem.com and create one for free.
ShoutEm speaks Chinese
Posted by: Ilija Brajkovic on: 26/10/2009
- In: News
- Leave a Comment
In addition to 6 other languages you can use on your ShoutEm network, we are very proud to announce that you can now also switch to Chinese! Not just that, you can use versions of Chinese: Simplified and Traditional.
All we can say is:
歡迎ShoutEm
How to change the language of your ShoutEm network?
Changing the language of your ShoutEm network is very simple; go to Admin pages –> Settings –> Languages, and select any of available languages.
Also, you can always customize any of the current languages, and even translate the entire ShoutEm to your language. Using ShoutEm for local micro-blogging networks has never been easier.
6 Ways to Get Followers by Being a Polite Microblogger
Posted by: Ilija Brajkovic on: 20/10/2009
Image by Biewoef
1. Don’t be a spammer
If you have opened your Twitter account just to promote yourself, your services or your company, you’re doing it the wrong way. Twitter is not (only) about marketing! Of course, from time to time you can say something about your company; post a link to a product or service, but doing only that will simply annoy your followers. Worse yet, you’ll have a hard time getting new followers, and people will start un-following you, blocking you or even report you to Twitter as a spammer. There’s an exception to the rule: big companies can do this, because generally people are interested in what they have to say and offer, but for everyone else, it’s a bad idea.
2. Share interesting news and links
If you are, for example, a web designer, you’re probably reading a lot interesting web design related stuff daily. The rule is simple, but oft forgotten: whenever you find something interesting, share it! Be sure to use any of the URL shortening services (we recommend bit.ly), and shorten the URL. If the content you share is interesting, some of your followers will retweet it. Their followers will see that RT and your name, they’ll check your profile, and if they see that you post some interesting links for them, they’ll follow you. How long does it take to do this? Less than 15 seconds. By sharing interesting news and links you show Twitter community that you care about them. Don’t overdo it, though; link spam is frowned upon, even if you share great links.
3. Share interesting thoughts
Sharing links is fine but it can get monotonous; you’re not a machine, you can and should share your thoughts about almost anything. Show that you are a “person”, say what you think about politics, stars, events… This can start a nice discussion with your followers, which means your name will be shown in your followers’ timeline, which brings you name to more and more Twitter users. And some of them might join the discussion, and start following you. Don’t get offended if somebody disagrees with your thoughts. There will always be somebody who has a different opinion, if your view is different, just learn to accept the fact that not everyone is on the same page.
4. Join the discussion
Also, if you see an ongoing discussion, join it! Tell what you think about the subject, use the #hashtags if you see others are doing the same (or you can be the first one using it), so everyone can follow the discussion more easily. If you’re an expert on a particular subject, people will recognize it and be thankful for your participation. Rule for not getting offended also applies.
5. Recognize your audience
See who your followers are, visit their profiles and get to know them. Think about what kind of followers you want to have. If you have followers that mostly speak English, that writing in German won’t be such a good idea. If you have German speaking followers, and you want to position yourself as a good web designer who works with clients in Germany, than there is no need to write in English. If your company operates only in Germany, then there is also probably no need to write in English.
Sometimes, you’ll want or need to write in two languages. You have two solutions of this problem. If you, for example, tweet in English most of the time, but sometimes you tweet in your native language, then prefix your tweet with something like [lang=ger] if you are from Germany, or [lang=fr] if you are from France. This will immediately give a signal to your readers who don’t speak your native language that you’ll write in another language and that they can skip that particular tweet.
If you tweet half of the time in English, and half of the time in your native language, than having two Twitter accounts is not such a bad idea. On one account you can tweet only in English and have English speaking audience, on other account you can tweet only in your native language. For example, ShoutEm CEO Viktor Marohnic has two personal Twitter accounts: @vikot where he writes only in English and @vikot_hr where he writes only in Croatian. Another example is Stanislav Prusac, CEO of Polar, who also has two Twitter accounts: @prusac and @stanislavprusac.
6. Attend local Tweetups
Tweetup is a live meeting of Twitter users. Follow some people from your area, ask them if there is going to be a Tweetup somewhere near, or organize one! This way you can meet many other Twitter users, talk to them, and in the end, get more followers.
ShoutEm statistics for September 2009
Posted by: Ilija Brajkovic on: 15/10/2009
- In: News
- Leave a Comment
Ever wondered which Shout’Em micro-blogging networks are the first in terms of stats such as new member influx, number of members or shouts written? We’ve assembled a quick top list of networks for these three categories.
As you can see, having a lot of members does not automatically equal a lot of activity within the network, and vice-versa. Check out the lists below.
Top 10 networks with highest member inflow:
| Name | Sub-domain |
|---|---|
| artylizer | creative micro-blogging | artylizer |
| NFL Shouts | nfl |
| H-art | H-art |
| Christian Music Chat | christianmusic |
| ShoutEm Support | team |
| jahboo | jahboo |
| Twitsurance | twitsurance |
| Zrikka | zrikka |
| News France Photographie | photographes |
| WeHarlem | weharlem |
Top 10 networks by the number of members:
| Name | Sub-domain |
|---|---|
| Zrikka | zrikka |
| Twibeo | twibeo |
| Horse Tweet | htweet |
| Ku Ku Roo Ku | kukurooku |
| artylizer | creative micro-blogging | artylizer |
| CaribTweet.com | CaribTweet |
| ShoutEm Support | team |
| Christian Music Chat | christianmusic |
| Razzle | razzle |
| The Real Estate Twitter Network | therealestatelist |
Top 10 networks by the number of shouts written:
| Name | Sub-domain |
|---|---|
| Ku Ku Roo Ku | kukurooku |
| Zrikka | zrikka |
| Cigar Shout | cigar |
| NMS Shout Outs | northmiddleschool |
| Nasz mini Śląsk | slask |
| Horse Tweet | htweet |
| NFL Shouts | nfl |
| CaribTweet.com | CaribTweet |
| artylizer | creative micro-blogging | artylizer |
| ShoutEm Support | team |
Would you like to have your own Twitter-like micro-blogging network and be listed on this list? It is very simple: go to http://www.shoutem.com, create your own network, promote it, and start shouting!
What We Learned at SeedCamp
Posted by: Viktor on: 13/10/2009
- In: News
- 7 Comments
Shout’Em went to SeedCamp this year. It took us three tries; we were selected as one of 20 finalists and we didn’t win anything, but it was definitely a great experience.
We can tell you one thing, though; getting in and getting something out of it are two different things. If you come underprepared, you can end up looking silly. Most importantly, being ready for all the questions you’ll be asked there will also help you understand what you need to do to make your service/product better.
Seedcamp mentors and teams on the street during the fire alarm at UCL.
1. Never forget the importance of numbers.
You work on your service every day. You love it; it’s your baby; you think you know everything about it. But do you, really? When was the last time you’ve looked at your stats? Do you know how many users you have? Do you have projections on how many users you’ll have in two years? How about this: how many users do you plan to have in two years?
If you want to present your service well, you need to be able to spew out all relevant numbers – approximations, at least – at any time, and draw a quick graph to go with the numbers. If you can’t do it, who can?
Dave McClure and his gang gave us an especially hard time when it comes to numbers. If you want to know more about it make sure you’ve read http://www.slideshare.net/Startonomics/startup-metrics-for-pirates-presentation
2. Don’t underestimate the people from the VC industry
We’re not saying we’ve done that 
, but we can definitely see how one could fall into that trap. These guys and girls may not be as tech savvy as your lead web developer, but very often know what they want and what they’re talking about. Watch out about numbers you’ve presenting. These folks may have completely different metrics than you. An example: take whatever revenue you consider good and multiply it by 100; then figure out how you can reach that number. Otherwise do not show any financial projections
3. Focus on your users. All of them.
A lot of the questions we were asked at SeedCamp had to do with various groups of users and how they can benefit from our service. Would your service be interesting to religious groups? How about women? On the other hand, can it be used to promote pornography? Would your users pay for your service or product? Which ones? Etc.
Geography is also very important. Some services work great everywhere; some work especially well in developing countries. You need to know not only that your service or product works; you need to know where it works best.
If you haven’t put yourself in the skin of your users – and we mean all the various types of users out there – then you won’t be able to answer these questions.
4. Keep it simple, stupid
The good ole’ KISS principle applies here, too. You need to know what you’re doing, who you’re doing it for and why they need it, and you need to be able to explain it in no more than a couple of sentences. Focus on one thing and try to make it as clear as possible. I’m sure you have plenty of ideas, but more that one idea at a SeedCamp mentoring seesion will just confuse your listeners.
5. Don’t forget the competition
Whatever you do, you have competitors. You also have services that you rely on, and services that complement your service. You need to know everything about them; if you’re competing with Facebook, you should know their numbers as well as you know yours. If your product doesn’t work without Twitter, then you need to know Twitter inside and out.
Furthermore, you need to be prepared to what your competitors might do in the future. You may be alone now, but what if Google decides to start a service similar to yours next month? If you cannot answer that question, you have a problem, and people from the industry will notice it.
—
All of the above may sound a bit gloomy, but believe us, we’ve also learned that simply coming to an event such as this is a fun experience. You’ll meet new people and see how other startups prepare for such events. It’s an invaluable lesson, and even if you don’t win over a big investor, you’ll go home knowing much more than before.
How to Get into Seedcamp (In Three Tries)
Posted by: Viktor on: 15/09/2009
So, we’ve managed to get into Seedcamp with our white label Real-Time/Mobile/Microblogging solution ShoutEm.
It wasn’t easy, but it’s been an amazing experience, and we’d like to share some of the important things a young startup company needs to have in mind when applying for such a fund or working towards VC investment in general.
First, some brief history. It took us three tries; the first one doesn’t really count, as it consisted of me filling up an application in half an hour, pitching one of the social networks we’ve built; what the hell, we thought, we can give it a try. Of course, that didn’t get us anywhere.
For the second Seedcamp, we’ve worked like crazy for a couple of months trough the whole summer and had everything setup on time. Unfortunately, we’ve got another one of those “Sorry, but no thanks” emails. We haven’t given up hope, because we knew we’ve had a great product. Here’s what helped us succeed on the third try.
1. Launch a web based service, and keep working on it. Well, this one is quite obvious. We’ve launched ShoutEm at LeWeb08 and gave it everything we’ve got from there onwards.
2. Apply to all startup competitions out there. If you don’t try at all, you can never succeed. We were finalists of almost every startup 
competition in Europe: Mobile 2.0, LeWeb 08, TheNextWeb and finally became one of the winners at Mini Seedcamp Ljubljana in April.
3. Polish your pitch to perfection. We kept it simple and clear, making sure that our audience gets what we’re about – microblogging, real-time, mobile – in no more than a minute. We’ve also cleared up our presentation and demo. We’ve changed the initial design and made it more appealing and fun. Make sure you’ve only got a couple of slides; somewhere after the 5th slide the audience stops paying attention.
4. Now practice it to perfection. Don’t let a lousy presentation ruin your pitch. I’ve practiced our presentation in front of various audiences, such as VCs and journalists, and got rid of nervousness.
5. Build a significant user base. Another one that’s easier said than done, especially if you’re 
hoping for Seedcamp and similar events will be your starting point for reaching a wider user base. But, if you’re able to do it, it’s easier to convince your audience that your product is valuable. At this moment, ShoutEm hosts over 7000 networks. Ex: HorseTweet, NFLShouts.
6. Don’t forget the business side of things. The people that need to understand your product are Vcs. We’ve worked on understanding how they think and what they expect to hear. We’ve adjusted our pitches to emphasize our business achievements, current and past. When we reached Seedcamp, we’ve already had a couple of deals with major companies such as VIP (Vodafone Croatia), RealNetworks and 24 sata (Styria) and generated some cash income which was reinvested back into development.
7. Some other things that helped us: we’ve never forgotten about the value of good PR, which brought us coverage on TechCrunch, Mashable, TNW. Also, we’ve gotten a lot of friends and users all around a world that are spreading the word about ShoutEm!
New styles and new features
Posted by: Ilija Brajkovic on: 14/09/2009
While Viktor and Sasa are traveling around the world promoting Shout’Em (first at Seedcamp, now at TechCrunch50, then again at Seedcamp), the rest of the Shout’Em team is working hard to bring you new features.
Marble is here
As you know, you can use predefined styles for you network (or you can create your own style), and today we present you new style, Marble, which is available in 3 colors: Gray / Orange, Green and Blue.
If you want to test new styles, login to your administrator page, click on Appearance, then Styles, and among other styles, you will see three new: Marble Gray / Orange, Marble Green and Marble Blue. Choose any and click Save, and your network will have fresh new look!
Marble Gray / Orange
Marble Green
Marble Blue
Other features
There are also many other new features, for example:
- Pages for network administrators have totally fresh new look and navigation. Now they’re much more user friendly, we’ve added sidebar that contains feed from team.shoutem.com and also feed from Shout’Em blog which brings you all posts tagged with “tutorial”.
- Owner of the network is a friend with every new user in the network
- Attachments are now embedded in the feed
- Integration with Facebook is now much better. When you forward something to Facebook, your attachments (pictures, links) are forwarded too.
- …
If you wish some new features to be added, please send us a shout at http://team.shoutem.com. If you still don’t have your own microblogging network, what are you waiting for?! Go to http://www.shoutem.com and create one!
Also, we are developing mobile applications for Shout’Em networks (you’ll be able to use them very soon), and we are looking for beta testers. If you want to have sneak preview, contact us.
We’re heading to TechCrunch50 2009 conference
Posted by: Ilija Brajkovic on: 11/09/2009
No rest for Viktor and Sasa. After successful presentation at Seedcamp and reserved place at Seedcamp Week 2009, now they’re heading to San Francisco, to attend TechCrunch50 2009 conference, held on September 14-15. TechCrunch50 is the global competition conference for start-ups, which brings start-ups, investors and media together, helping start-ups to get funded and recognized by the community. Shout’Em will be present at the DemoPit, where you’ll be able to see Shout’Em in action, create your own microblogging network, and hear all about our plans, such as the upcoming launch of a full-featured white label mobile social networking service for all major mobile platforms. See you there!
Shout’Em has been selected for Seedcamp week 2009
Posted by: Ilija Brajkovic on: 10/09/2009
Viktor is getting ready!
Shout’Em team, Viktor and Sasa, will visit London once again, because Shout’Em has been selected for Seedcamp week 2009! Croatia lost against England, now they have to pray to God (and Fabio Capello) to help them visit South Africa next year. That’s what happened yesterday in London.
First things first. Viktor and Sasa had only 3 minutes to kick some ass, and show judges that we deserve to participate in Seedcamp week. And they did it. 3 minutes of clear symphony was enough to deserve big applause . Judges had 7 minutes to ask them some questions, and of course, everything ended very quickly, so they could sit down and enjoy presentations from other teams. We hoped that Eduardo da Silva would join them on stage, but he sent an email saying that he is not allowed to leave hotel today, but even without him, presentation was perfect. Other teams were also fantastic, but Viktor and Sasa had a felling that they were good enough to be selected for Seedcamp week 2009.
Move away, I want to invest in Shout'Em!
Evening was reserved for “geeks night out”, and watching the football match England vs. Croatia in Red Bar. Food and drinks provided by Seedcamp crew were great. Everything was great for our team except the game that Croatia showed at Wembley. They had no chance against England this time, some of Croatian players should choose different career. Maybe they could invest some money in Shout’Em? 100% win!
Evening ended in tears, but with hope that new day will bring new victories. And it did! Seedcamp crew announced top 21 teams that will participate in Seedcamp week 2009, and Shout’Em is one of them!!! As Borat would say: very nice! Whole Shout’Em team is very proud and excited, this is big recognition for all of us, but we will not stop now. Let’s hope Seedcamp week 2009 will bring us more happy moments. And some money . Fingers crossed.
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- Hrvoje Bujas: E pa ljudi....sky is the limit...:) samo naprid...
- Micro Blogging « umur: [...] Micro blogging is a web service that allows you as the blogger or as the subscriber to broadcast short messages which is usually limited to 14
- Micro-blogging.. helpful? « ltrochymenko: [...] can ”make education more efficient, but also a little bit less of a task. That’s why microblogging might be the answer to a lot of educ
Follow us on Twitter
- shoutem: RT @twittea: Free Technology for Teachers: Why Teachers Use Twitter http://twurl.nl/8dtpqq
- shoutem: RT @twittes: Twitter lists, creators vs curators, and who owns the meta-data? http://bit.ly/vLK9y
- shoutem: RT @BuzzEdition: MUST READ! ~ Twitter: The Art of Influence http://retwt.me/1HiSF (via @mayhemstudios @Alyssa_Milano @problogger)
- shoutem: @twittes ShoutEm can also be used in a classroom. We have some nice use cases.
- shoutem: RT @twittes: 6 Examples of Using Twitter in the Classroom http://bit.ly/1ahY2d
