A lot of people classify Twitter as microblogging because this social networking service allows users to send updates called tweets to the Twitter web site. These tweets can be up to 140 characters long and you can send them using your cell phone, instant messenger or third-party applications like Facebook. While it may just sound like a lot of fun, Twitter is also a good way to network with both clients and people in your field.

When you use twitter updates are displayed on your profile page as well as delivered to any users that signed up to receive them. So, if you wrote a blog post you could twitter about it and everyone in your twitter network would be updated that you’ve just posted something. Which works well if you have a lot of followers on twitter.

If you don’t have many twitter followers don’t fret. Everyone starts with zero. A great way to meet new people interested in what you have to say is to send a message to track a specific keyword. You’ll receive posts on that keyword which will introduce you to some of the people in your field, people who may be interested in what you’re talking about.

Twitter also allows you to “nudge” people. A nudge in Twitter-speak is a friendly reminder to update a twitter account. You can also set up an auto-nudge to remind yourself to update your Twitter account every so often. Sending out nudges to your social contacts will likely make them feel special because you are taking the time to notice what’s happening in their lives. Auto-nudge is helpful because it allows you to continuously update your account with the important things you’re doing.

A final way to successful network on Twitter is to share your friends with others. If some of the people you follow are a good match for those following you can share their bookmarks to their Twitter feeds. Another option is to showcase some of your favorite Twitter members in a blog. Perhaps the people you showcase will return the favor.

The key thing to remember in social networking is the social aspect. Humans have a tendency to be curious and occasionally a bit voyeuristic. Twitter allows us to indulge that side of our personalities while meeting potential colleagues in our fields.

While there are many people who are quite willing to announce the death of the Yellow Pages, it hasn’t quite happened yet. Although, the monopoly print yellow pages had over local businesses has been broken by the advent and increasing use of tools like Local Search.

One of the biggest reasons the yellow pages are still alive and well is that there are lots of audiences that the Internet still doesn’t reach effectively. Demographics that include things such as age, income and geographical area affect Internet usage and will likely continues to do so far into the future.

Additionally, the tools that are available for local search aren’t quite perfect yet. Many of the online resources are trusted like the Yellow Pages are. And many consumers don’t believe they are as comprehensive as the print edition is known to be.

Beyond that there are plenty of small towns in America with small businesses that simply don’t have an Internet presence. While this may seem crazy to urban livers, the only way to find a local plumber in one of these places is word of mouth or the local Yellow Pages. Often times these businesses may not even have a basic web site or email address.

Another situation where the Yellow Pages trump the Internet is vacation. Many people unplug while they are out of town. Not to mention those that don’t have laptops and are still using only a desk top. However, the Yellow Pages can be found in any hotel around the United States when someone is looking for a local restaurant or business.

Beyond that, many people find it hard to browse pages and pages of restaurants rather than alphabetically finding what they are looking for. While the technology is certainly starting to come around, it’ll still be some time before the Yellow Pages draw its last breath.

Yahoo recently announced its purchase of Maven Networks in a $160 million deal. Maven Networks is an online video platform provider and so this purchase will give Yahoo a new way to expand its reach into the consumer video as well as advertising markets. It’s estimated that online video advertising in the U.S. will grow to more than $4 billion in 2011.

The interesting thing about the purchase is that it came just as Microsoft presented Yahoo an unsolicited bid for $44.6 billion. With the two companies arguing over the value of Yahoo, the Maven acquisition just adds another dimension. However, it appears the merger talks between Yahoo and Maven were happening before the Microsoft bid surfaced.

Yahoo has plans to invest in the growth of Maven’s overall video business as well as expand on its offering through video monetization services. In exchange Yahoo hopes to raise its video content syndication and advertising capabilities to publishers and advertisers. Yahoo would also like to join its library of licensed video content, as well as its relationships with advertisers and Web publishers, with Maven’s technology to manage and distribute online video to such media company titans as Fox News, Sony BMG, and Gannett.

Maven will retain its operations in Cambridge, Mass., and operate as a wholly owned Yahoo subsidiary.

Microsoft recently made changes to their Live Search crawler. These changes are meant to help reduce the amount of bandwidth resources used when a site is crawled. The upgraded version 1.1 has two main features – the ability to support http compression and conditional get.

According to a blog posted on the Live Search Webmaster Center the http compression will allow the search engine crawlers as well as browsers to compress files before downloading them. The revised msnbot will support gzip and deflate as defined by RFC 2616 (sections 14.11 and 14.39). Additionally Microsoft will provide a tool to check your server’s compression.

The second new feature, conditional get, allows the crawler to ask a server if the page has been changed since the last request. If the content hasn’t changed, a server that supports conditional get returns a 304 response (not modified). When the crawler gets this response, it doesn’t download the page contents (and continues to use the version already downloaded).

Basically, this just means a more efficient way search bots crawl and index your sites, as long as your servers support the new features. Many servers do support http compression. If you need to figure out how to configure this instructions can be found in the Live Search blog entry. Additionally, the Live Search team has a page where you can test whether your site and/or server support these two new features.

Search giant Google stands to gain another profitable avenue of ad income through a new creation they are dubbing “knol.” Knol is basically a version of Wikipedia – a community-created online encyclopedia. Udi Manber, vice president of engineering, announced on Google’s website that certain people were being invited to test the service for free as of last month.

Of the request Manber stated, “Our goal is to encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it. There are millions of people who possess useful knowledge that they would love to share, and there are billions of people who can benefit from it.”

Even though knoll is similar to Wikipedia, there are some differences. For instance, Google will have whole articles with author names and pictures while Wikipedia allows anyone to make changes to entries. Manber said, “We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content. Books have authors’ names right on the cover, news articles have bylines, scientific articles always have authors; but somehow the Web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors names highlighted.”

Another difference with be that knols about the same topic will remain independent and have the ability to compete for visitor attention. Wikipedia merges similar topics into one entry. Knol authors will also be allowed to have ads posted on their pages and share in the revenue.

Google did say they hope for knols on all sorts of subjects and that they do not plan to edit or endorse content. This means Google will take none of the editorial responsibility; it is the author’s alone.