5 Things for Wednesday

1) Twitter has started to email account users when someone retweets your tweets. Assuming you check your email often or get prompted when you get a new email, it makes it a little easier to know when someone has retweeted your work.

2) Twitter is buying Tweetdeck. If you use Tweetdeck already, you shouldn’t notice much change.

3) Who has rights to photos you post on social media? A woman posted a photo of the latest shuttle launch on a social media site. News agencies picked it up and used it but few asked permission. This has opened up the debate of who owns the photos, videos, and anything else you post to social media. You should read the privacy and permissions policies for each social media tool/platform/product you use to know.

4) Hashtags continue to be important in social media. I’ve discussed them in the past. Here’s a list of 30 hashtags you may want to follow that are specific to nonprofits.

5) People often ask me what is the future of social media? Is it a semantic web? Is it mashing up current tools? Is it a new and easy way to measure social media? Yes, Yes and Yes. What are your thoughts on the future of social media in the near and distant future?

Tools to help you post to social media

Here are two tools that you can download and will allow you to post updates to your Twitter and Facebook feeds.

Tweetdeck is a nice tool that allows you to see your various tweets, posts, what people you follow are tweeting or posting, etc.

Seesmic – advantage over Tweetdeck is that it allows you to manage multiple accounts, so you can Tweet for your special events and have a separate one for your advocacy if you like – and you’ll be able to manage them both with the same tool

Both of these tools are built using the AdobeAir platform. You will be prompted to download AdobeAir if you don’t already have it. It’s a fairly small download.

Please test out both and see which one is more useful to you.