Once again Twitter is at the forefront on providing users with the latest on whats happening in the world. South African motorists are using the power of Twitter hashtags to crowdsource information on the currently petrol / fuel crisis in South Africa that relates to the strike of workers in the industry.

After several motorist struggled to get petrol at several service station in Johannesburg and Durban, a new Twitter hashtag was started and is turning out to be a huge success on providing motorist with the latest information on where fuel is available.

Twitter users are using the hashtag #gotpetrol to notify other users on the micro-blogging social network where they got fuel. If you are on Twitter and in an area that has fuel shortage and happened to find a service station that has fuel, why not tweet with the #gotpetrol hashtag and spread the word.

Follow the #gotpetrol hastag below to find service stations with fuel.

Twitter has rolled out new functionality, starting today Twitter users will now also receive email notification when someone mentions them, retweets or favourites a tweet.

Twitter for long has already sent out email notifications notifying users of new followers and direct message, but with this new feature one can’t help but wonder how many people will actually welcome this new email notification addition.

Although it might sound like it’s convenient to receive email notifications when someone mentions or retweets you, this can become quite spammy for some users, luckily you can opt out to not receive email notifications by clicking unsubscribe on your first email notification. The options to opt out are yet to be added to your Twitter Settings page it seems.

Twitter trends was first launched as a useful way for people to find out what are being discussed around the world at the very moment. Last year Twitter started rolling out local trends for certain countries and cities, that enables you to target the trends to a more specific region, unfortunately South Africa was not part of the list.

As of yesterday Twitter has rolled out Twitter trends to an additional 70 new cities bringing the total number of location specific trends to 100. Good news for local Twitter users is that South Africa has been added to the list, and even furthermore Johannesburg also, sad that Cape Town did not make the cut as I believe there are more Twitter users in Cape Town than in any other South African city.

To browse trends in South Africa simply click change in the trends sidebar and select South Africa.

Since my post about the Cell C network issues of last night, I sat down to think and dug up some information as why I and many others follow brands on Twitter. The reason for me thinking about it was because I have an issue with brands tweeting stuff that has absolute no relation to them.

Take the Cell C twitter account for example, a quick look at their account reveals that they would rather tweet about how many spider legs there are in chocolate bars rather then about their own products or services.

So what are the main reasons for consumers following brands on Twitter? After some investigation I came up with the following reasons:

• Get updates on future products
• Stay informed about company activities
• Receive discounts and promotions
• Get updates on upcoming sales
• Get free samples, coupons, etc.
• Get access to exclusive content
• To learn about the company
• Share ideas and provide feedback
• Product support

All of the above makes sense to me, seeing as they are all related to the brand itself and that I presume that it’s also what brands are trying to give to consumers through social media.

Why do you follow brands on social media?

Back in 2009 Microsoft released an update to XBOX 360 consoled that allowed gamers to browse Facebook and tweet straight from their consoles through Xbox LIVE.

A few years down the line and us South Africans finally got Xbox LIVE in our own country, but despite all the hype it was not welcomed with warm feelings as most of the services and feature we got used to when using international accounts was now gone. Some of these features included the ability to browse Facebook and Twitter from your console.

Xbox LIVE South Africa is now 3 months old and things are finally starting to look like its taking shape as Microsoft has announced that from 26 January 2011 Xbox LIVE subscribers will be able to access Facebook and Twitter from their Xbox 360 consoles.

Facebook on Xbox LIVE features include:

• Connect with friends using Facebook
• Explore news feeds from friends and family
• Post, read, and respond to comments on status updates and photos
• View photos using the Xbox 360 built-in scaler for great-looking pictures
• With Friend Linker, find friends on Facebook that also have Gamertags and invite them to your Xbox LIVE Friends List
• Update your status with achievements in-game

Twitter on Xbox LIVE features include:

• Read Tweets from people you follow, post new messages and reply to existing  ones
• Automatically sign into Twitter when you sign into Xbox LIVE
• Link your Gamertag to your Twitter username
• Connect with Xbox LIVE friends who you follow on Twitter, view user lists and favourite Tweets

Please note that the Facebook, Twitter, video chat features and Xbox LIVE Party require an Xbox LIVE Gold membership.

At the beginning of this year Twitter surpassed the 10 billion tweets marks, now 2010 is at its end and 25 billion tweets later Twitter is giving us a window into what the world was talking about on Twitter over the year.

A massive 25 billion tweets was sent during 2010, and out of those 25 billion Twitter has identified the top 10 tweets of 2010 as well as the leading Trends in eight categories: News Events, People, Movies, Television, Technology, World Cup, Sports and Hashtags.

Top 10 Twitter Trends of 2010

1. Gulf Oil Spill
2. FIFA World Cup
3. Inception
4. Haiti Earthquake
5. Vuvuzela
6. Apple iPad
7. Google Android
8. Justin Bieber
9. Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows
10. Pulpo Paul

Its clear that South Africans made their mark in the social sphere with the Word Cup and Vuvuzela being in the top 10 Twitter trends of 2010.

For a comprehensive list of Twitter trends for 2010 broken up in categories visit the Top Twitter Trends in 2010 website.

We’ve all heard the absurd news about Julius Melama and the ANC Youth League (ANCYL) that wants to shut down Twitter. How they were planning to do it was a bit vague up until now, the guys over at local video sharing site Zoopy has put this video together.

Absolutely brilliant, great work Zoopy!

I was one of the lucky few South Africans that had access to #NewTwitter only a few days after it went live, and since then I have been playing around with it and discovering all sorts of new “hidden” features.

The #NewTwitter was created with ease of use in mind, no more navigating away from your main timeline to view images or videos, or going from page to page to follow a conversation between Twitter users, everything are now displayed on one page with the use of nifty slide out panels.

Apart from the fancy sliding panels there is a hidden features that I stumbled upon by accidentally hitting the R key on my keyboard. #NewTwitter has a handy set of keyboard shortcuts you can make use of.

After some playing around I found the above screen detailing a list of all available keyboard shortcuts for #NewTwitter. The shortcuts range from replying to tweets, retweeting, compiling new tweets, to going to certain user profiles with just the push of a button.

If you are enabled for #NewTwitter you can just press the ? key on your keyboard and it will bring up the above shortcut screen, now go test those shortcuts.

If you are on Twitter you can follow me at @diekloon

Although Twitter.com has always been the most popular way for users to make use of the micro social networking site, the market has lately been overwhelmed by desktop application that makes the social networking service so much better.

But Twitter is not sitting back, the micro social networking site yesterday launched a brand new and better Twitter.com that is almost an exact replica of their latest iPad App.

The new Twitter.com provides users with an easier, faster and richer experience than before by adding features such as embedded media options, more context and more information regarding tweets.

The new Twitter will maintain the timeline but underneath each tweet is where all the extras are built in. Twitter has also made changes to the design of their new site mimicking that of their new iPad application by adding sliding panels to the site keeping your timeline to the left and scrollable and allowing you to view all other info like profiles, media, replies to tweets etc on the right.

Twitter started rolling out the new changes gradually already and the roll out should be completed within the next few weeks. For more information check out the New Twitter section.

First there was the official Facebook Movie trailer, to premier end of this month, and now there is the the Twitter Movie trailer, or not really but this still is a damn good spoof video.

Can I have a twiskey?