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Tips for Retweeting

1. Begin with the letters RT. Don't waste valuable characters (you've only got 140) with preambles such as "Retweet."

2. Give credit to the source of the tweet by using @author, where "author" is the Twitter username of the person you are referencing. Sometimes there will be multiple names attached because it's been passed along so many times; make sure you are keeping the original source if you trim the chain of users.

3. When linking to something, shorten the URL you are referencing through a tool such as http://ow.ly or http://is.gd.

4. Use the remaining characters to explain the point of view or the link in the original tweet, preserving the spirit of what the source said.

5. Think twice before retweeting sensitive material or information that may be untrue. You don't want to embarrass people or spread lies.

6. Think about whether what you retweet will have relevance to any of your followers before posting. And avoid spam -- it's all over the Web.

Spezify is a new search tool which presents its results using beautiful visual boxes from content it discovers based on search engine results and rich media sites like Flickr, YouTube where it scours to get imagery and even finds ways to present textual content in a pretty fashion.

Twitter has the potential to help foster the discovery of new music, and improve targeted marketing of music to groups of highly-involved and technologically savvy consumers, but it has to be done right," Ross Crupnick, entertainment industry analyst at NPD, said in a statement. "There must be a careful balance struck between entertainment and direct conversation on one hand, and marketing on the other. Used properly Twitter has the power to entertain -- and to motivate music fans to purchase more new albums, downloads, merchandise, and concert tickets.

1. Make your answers short. A 10-second sound bite is better than droning on and being cut off midsentence.

2. Never say “No comment,” which sounds as though you have something to hide. Instead, explain why you can’t answer, promise to get back to the reporter and follow through later.

3. Listen closely to the question, and answer thoughtfully. If the question seems to come from a parallel universe, don’t go on the offensive. Instead, say, “Here’s how I see it,” and clarify.

4. Use this kind of “bridging” to move from the interviewer’s goals to yours.

5. Tell stories, make comparisons and offer simple statistics to back up your points.

6. Keep your body language open and friendly.

It's time to think about the big picture and the strategies that drive social technology as opposed to the other way around. This includes how a company's (insert social initiatives) play a role in their entire ecosystem—and this will take our discussions from "conversation" to "transformation".