Though we didn’t know Kevin Rose guest blogs, he did it on TechCrunch. Why? Because the founder of Digg has 10 great ways that will increase your Twitter followers. Other than being an investor the guy is a “guru” on Twitter – only outranked by President Obama. And why do we cover it? Because we want to know if a previously obscure individual can become one of the leading personalities on Twitter, because many think the eleventh tip is … be a celebrity.

I’m not going to write all the 1o ideas in here, but there are a few that I certainly appreciate so if you’re serious about micro-blogging on Twitter they’d really help (don’t ask how much):

• First you’ll need a bio. It’s the only way you can let new people know who you are. We can add, that you may also need a picture to go along with that.
• Link to your Twitter account everywhere. Stick it in the subway, on a tram, in a train/plane or whatever places you visited out there. And we’ll use it … here’s Charl (quite active fella) and here’s me (a noob).
• A brilliant idea. Kevin mentioned the contest Jason Calacanis had for his readers. If he were to be the most followed guy on Twitter, a random member would get a MacBook Air as a prize. Of course he never made it to the top position, but he sure added a few thousands of followrs. You can come up with such an idea, too.
• Get involved more … Easier said than done

What do you guys think? Is there a way we can “make it”?

Image courtesy of action_datsun

Next up on our office photo features is financial technology company Peresys -

Peresys is a technology solutions provider to the financial markets, specialising in the delivery of FIX (Financial Information Exchange) protocol-enabled applications and services. Peresys’ purpose of connecting trading communities has seen the company pioneer the introduction and growth of electronic order routing of financial instruments in South Africa and increasingly the rest of Africa. (more…)

There is no doubt that only few companies on the Internet experiment success as frequently and with the magnitude, Google does.

Their newest venture makes video downloads from YouTube as easy as mouse click. Launched in a highly limited version for now, the download tab on videos is currently available on some of the videos from President-elect Barack Obama’s ChangeDotGov Channel.
The option allows you to download videos in high-quality MPEG4, H.264 format, making them suitable for iPhone and even tv playback While the option for all users to download YouTube content freely is no small matter, one must note that many Internet addicts already use rip-off software to download these videos.

Despite having the feature regularly at some point in future, many of the videos might still be without the option for obvious copyright reasons.

Meanwhile, hold your horses. There’s no need to get too excited about it, because the experiment of allowing free video downloads could trigger legal hassles in the near future. So better wait and see what they come up with.

[via ArsTechnica]

Texting more than talking is what is cool with Gen-N and Instant Messengers that are becoming popular not just on the web, but also on modern mobile handsets. Staying in touch is the key and talking is not always a necessity.

Local company Siya is an IM option (download the application from the Siya WAP site) for those who like to stay connected with their buddies 24 x 7 and that for free. Of course, the free clause is only for downloading the IM, because further use will charge you a small price. But the guys at Siya claim that it will cost you a lot less than your normal text messages.

While you still need to check if your provider does offer the support, Siya comes with other cool such as the newest ringtones, wallpapers and games, plus the hottest news. However, before you get your fingers busy, do read the fine print first.

Siya is based in South Africa

Facebook might be the biggest social networking site on the planet, but it is still playing second fiddle on home soil to MySpace. However, now that the Comscore numbers are out, we had to see what Facebook and Myspace did last year.

In 2008, Facebook had 54.5 million monthly unique visitors compared to nearly 76 million for MySpace.

Even though the gap seems to be narrowing down, given the current growth rate (in 2008 Facebook was at 3.8% and MySpace only 0.8%) it’s still unlikely that Facebook will emerge no.1 in US by January 2009 or even the end of the year. However, 2010 could be a different story altogether.

Start up site Ning made the largest strides forward in 2008 with a growth rate of 388% while Classmates came in third behind MySpace and Facebook with some real good numbers and a growth rate of 66%.

It seems that the battle for social networking supremacy on American soil is getting hotter by the year, isn’t it?

via TechCrunch

If you are eager to delve into Google Chrome 2.0 right away and wish to get the first feel of it, the pre-beta is now available for all those who fancy their hand at it.

This quite clearly is not something for people who would much rather wait for the final thing, but more for the anxious developers wanting to experience cutting edge Chrome.

Chrome 2.0 obviously sports several updates and new features that include support for user scripts, comfortable profile switching, form autofill for every page that you can find on the web and the much loved full page zooming.

It is not yet fully compatible with features such as Greasemonkey, but considering that this is pre-beta version, you would not worry about that too much.

If you wish to wait for the beta version, then you could just ignore all the hoopla and look the other way but in case you want a piece of the action then you will need to download the Google Chrome Channel Chooser and join the Dev channel, so that you can work with it. [via LifeHacker]

One assumes that it is news when Google does something and it goes unnoticed, so when they did change a very visible aspect of their appearance and that does get noticed, we are not really shocked.

Google have decided that the cool-blue G that they picked as their favicon just last June needs a revamp and they have gone forward by taking a cue from their past- the company’s classic yellow/blue/green/red color scheme.

Though that seems like falling back rather than moving forward, one must admit that the recent sudden surprise was indeed a pleasure when it comes to visual experience. The new G clad in the four bright colors obviously is Google’s attempt to develop a set of icons that would scale better to some new platforms like the iPhone and other mobile devices.

This ensures that the more vibrant G is much more likely to stay around longer than the old blue one. But by their admission, this is by no means the last time you will wake up to a change in your Google apps and browser. This is still a long way away from being the favicon final for Google.

Men at Google are obviously working overtime on this. Right? [via TechCrunch]

Bandwidth Blog would like to congratulate the winners of last night’s Crunchies. In attendance to collect awards were Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft chief software architect Ray Ozzie, Amazon CTO Werner Vogels, Google product chief Marissa Mayer, Twitter founders Evan Williams, Biz Stone, and Jack Dorsey, imeem founder Dalton Caldwell, and many more.

In adition to the winners, Y Combinator’s Paul Graham, Seesmic CEO Loic Le Meur, and Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis also made appearances on stage. The slideshow above gives a feel for the event and the party afterward, which was in the stunning Rotunda of City Hall (thank you, MySpace). Or you can check out people’s reactions on Twitter. Results and video of the ceremony after the jump (more…)