Time once again for a look at some of the links being smubbed to Twitter! Below are six of the most frequently retweeted smubs over the last 24 hours. Did you make the list?!

Universal Health Care - Change.org — smubbed by @theexpert



Why We Need a Public Option — smubbed by @theexpert






NPR: Do Record Labels Still Matter? — smubbed by gcn1



Dude Craft: Bead Me Up — smubbed by @sisterdiane






Button Floozies: “Sumptuosity” — smubbed by @sisterdiane



He Who Died on the Fourth of July — smubbed by @hotweir

Many of you already know how to send your own tweets directly to your Facebook page as a status update or as a feed. But, did you know that you can “retweet” your friends’ tweets to Facebook without having to download a client or having to install a Facebook app simply through the magic of Smub? I’ll show you how!

When you’re logged in to your Twitter account and viewing your incoming stream, go to the tweet you’d like to retweet and click on the time that it was posted (displayed directly beneath the tweet)….

Clicking on the time stamp will open the tweet up in a new page. The URL for this page is the permanent address of the tweet. Since Smub works with any URL, all you have to do now is smub it! To smub the tweet, you can type “smub.it/” before the “http” portion of the URL, or use the handy bookmarklets, toolbar or right-click function found on our Tools page.

Once you’ve smubbed the tweet, the Smub interface will pop up, showing all the different places you can share your new retweet:

To share your retweet on Facebook, just click on the Facebook icon. From there, you’ll be taken directly to Facebook’s interface where you can update your status using your retweet!

There are so many ways Smub can make sharing your online life even easier, but here’s one you may not have thought of: using Smub for sharing your Flickr photos.

Right now, if you wanted to share a photo you’ve uploaded to Flickr with one of your other favorite social networking sites, you’d have to go to the photo’s page, copy its URL and paste it into the entry field of the site to which you’d like to post. This may not sound like too many steps off the bat, but when you’re posting to a site that limits the number of characters you can use, like Twitter, for instance, you have the additional step of pasting your photo’s URL into a link-shortener, copying the new URL, then pasting that into the entry field, etc., etc..

Of course, using Smub can really streamline this whole process, particularly if you’ve installed one of our Tools, like the bookmarklet, toolbar or the right-click-to-smub function (shown above). With Smub, all you have to do is navigate to the page of the photo you want to share, use the Smub shortcut of your choosing, and — Ta-Da! — you’re instantly sharing the photo, including it’s automatically shortened URL, with any of your favorite social networking sites.

It’s just another one of the multitude of ways you can use Smub to make sharing simpler. Got some favorite shortcuts and uses of your own? Please let us know! We’d love to hear from you!

Here’s a list of some of the popular smubs making the rounds on Twitter today, just in case you missed them:

• Documentary filmmaker and Flint, Michigan native Michael Moore’s blog post on the fall of GM: http://smub.it/pfg (via @TheExpert)
• A clever twist on Twitter marketing from musicians Travis Barker and & DJ-AM: Free (music) Downloads for Your Tweets: http://smub.it/piw (via @Mashable)
• Facebook will soon have Vanity URLs! http://smub.it/jlj/fb.vanity.urls (via @janetleejohnson)
• Microsoft announces that Xbox Live will add Facebook and Twitter integration: http://smub.it/pl9 (via @Mashable)
• Five Reasons to Publish Your Content in Multiple Formats: http://smub.it/pl9 (via @tamariej)

Did we miss a smub you liked? Let us know!

Hello, my name is Janet, and I’m a Tweetaholic. I’ll admit, I have two Twitter personas going much of the day. I’ve figured out a way to have my Smub Twitter account open in my browser, while my personal Twitter account is open in TweetDeck.

So many people wonder what all the fuss is about Twitter, but I’m hooked. I turn there for news, information and updates from friends and colleagues. Because most of the people I follow have very interesting things to say.

That’s the thing about Twitter (or any other social medium, actually), you have to ‘give to get.’ That’s one of the reasons I find Smub a very cool tool for Twitter. I believe it adds context when I Tweet something that asks for action on the part of my readers.

Here’s what I mean - would you rather follow a URL that is Tweeted cryptically, like this:

Or one where the URL is fairly descriptive, like this:

I love being able to add just that little bit of value to my fellow Twitterers, by sharing information that’s descriptive and either understandable or compelling… depending on your point of view.

And the thing is, it’s falling-off-a-log simple to do. You simply type smub.it/ to the left of the http:// in the browser window, name it, tag it (if you want to) and select to share it like this:

Smub even lets you log in and log out of your Twitter account, right from where you are. I logged out of my personal account to Tweet this particular post (which is EXCELLENT, by the way, thank you, Liz Strauss!) using my Smub Twitter account. Smub and Twitter are a delightful combination of simple, quick, sharable tools that add value for the reader and creater alike…

Seth Godin, marketing coach for millions, has posted a primer on what makes “viral marketing” on his blog today. In it, he observed:

Something being viral is not, in an of itself, viral marketing. Who cares that 32,000,000 people saw your stupid video? It didn’t market you or your business in a tangible, useful way.

Marketers are obsessed with free media, and, as is often the case, we blow it in our rush to get our share. We create content that is hampered or selfish or boring. Or we create something completely viral that doesn’t do any marketing at all.

As the work of getting your brand (whether personal or business) in front of people becomes more important, we believe that branding every link you ever send can be a great way to enhance your marketing efforts.

Most people copy and paste to retweet, or simply forward emails they think interesting, engaging or funny. Your Smubbed links are highly likely to be forwarded or retweeted right along their way. In one simple step, you’re creating the opportunity to extend and market your brand by simply Smubbing web content of interest to you.

I’m sitting in my home office in Portland, Oregon, watching the snow gracefully fall in front of the window. Its been snowing here all week, an odd occurrance. We’re not exactly set up for snow events, so weird things happen:

• The local news starts at 4:00 a.m. and goes ’til 10:00 a.m., then returns at 4:00 p.m. ’til 7:30 p.m.
• School districts cancel classes two days in advance, then hope the snow hits
• Or, school districts open for the day, but close two hours later…
• Stores are overrun with people stocking up on bread and milk

It seems no one here knows how to handle the snow. Few of us (unless we’re skiers) have snow tires or chains, and very few of us grew up understanding how to drive in the snow. (No one wants me out on the streets this week!)

So what’s happening all over town, all over the NorthWest, and in other areas (I’m imagining in Las Vegas and Southern California), people unused to the snow have a reprieve from “normalcy.”

• We stock up on bread and milk, and get the urge to bake… (http://smub.it/jlj/crunchcookies)

• We set up informal networks to share information about weather conditions around town… like Portland’s #pdxtst (Portland Twitter storm trackers) (http://smub.it/jlj/pdxtst)

• …And we do an awful lot of picture taking and sharing… (http://smub.it/jlj/flickr)

And we share and share and share… on our blogs, on Facebook, via Twitter, in email and on the phone.

Perhaps it’s the holiday season, perhaps it’s the snow. But people are connecting and sharing experiences like never before. It’s a joy to watch and participate.

I like to Smub in the snow… you?

I was delighted yesterday to make my first Smub and find that our engineering team had unveiled one of my favorite new features - counting “hits.”

As you can see in the right-hand column, you can track the number of clicks on your Smubs whether you share them in email, via Facebook, Twitter, text them, or read them over the phone.

And, in addition to being able to count the hits, you can sort by number of hits (or by date, alphabetically, or by tag):

So at the simplest level, you’ll be able to see which Smubs are your most popular. And you can even test whether Smubs in Twitter are more clicked on than Smubs on your Facebook page. Or whether a Smub in an email worked to get people clicking…

Which of your Smubs are the most viral? Now you’ll know - and you just might be surprised!

Recent research findings by eROI, our friends in Portland, found that most kids get their first personal email address at about age 13. About 25% of them got one primarily so they could shop online. And 82% got one so they could communicate with family, while 52% got one to communicate with friends.

36% of those surveyed said they use email alerts for keeping up on MySpace and Facebook. These emails are an important part of how they interact with the networks they join.

But the study clearly shows that the preferred methodology for communication is texting.

We’re not surprised at this finding. Anyone who knows a kid (or a mom with kids) in college is clearly aware that texting is the usual way of communicating with them. One thing I do hope eROI asks next time is about Wall-to-Wall communications… I know that’s one way my friends chat with me on Facebook.

One of the principles in the development of Smub is to make it incredibly simple to share URLs via text (or SMS), IM, email and the social networks (MySpace and Facebook) that students and a growing number of businesses use.

As students enter the workforce, it’ll be interesting to see exactly how the tools we use will need to adapt to their communications preferences.

What if you could shortcut your way around the complexity and richness of the web with the simplicity of using one word? We’re testing this premise here at Smub.

We believe people are yearning for more simplicity in their lives. (When was the last time you yearned for more complexity? Here’s a pretty good solution for you then. Enjoy!)

So in conversations at the office yesterday, we got into discussing the real value we all find in using Smub, and it kind of all came down to one word access to anything online.

Here’s how we think about it, and we would be terribly interested in your thoughts:

I went over to Chris Brogan’s excellent blog on community and social media this morning. He had a guest post from Theresa Wu on what Generation Y expects from work. Since we’re marketing to Gen Y here at Smub, I thought the rest of the team would like to read it, too.

We all use the Smub Toolbar, which looks like this:

From the toolbar, I was able to create my Smub of the article, and I named it GenY. (Okay, perhaps GenY isn’t exactly one word, but when you read it or text it to someone, it comes across as a perfectly memorable URL.) And it beats the heck out of this:

http://www.chrisbrogan.com/guest-post-generation-y-in-the-workplace-explained/

I can let Heather know she needs to check out this article by simply saying “Check out geny. It’s a great article.”

I’ve mentioned before that I can use my Smub toolbar to gain access to other people’s Smubs. Once I know any Smub user has shared a Smub, all I have to do is go to my toolbar and type in their “handle,” and any one word will take me to their shared page.

For example… my friend Matt has a Smub account. (As an aside, he also has a blog called “The Monk and The Riddle of The Red Rubber Ball.” You can bet I Smubbed that down to “matt.”)

In my toolbar, I choose “Goto…” (vs. “Create) and type in “Matt” and “auto,” and up pops a BusinessWeek article on the automakers he found interesting in November, just when the brouhaha started.

And the word “auto” does a heck of a lot better job communicating a place Matt cares for me to see than this:

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_48/b4110000545461.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index+-+temp_top+story

Ironically (via Twitter), I found that Matt and I both have “geny” Smubs…

Guess where his goes? http://smub.it/matt/geny … Wanna see mine? http://smub.it/janet/geny

(Anyone can ‘consume’ a Smub, just by typing into your browser window, even with out a Smub account or toolbar.)

And sometimes, one word - even if it’s “GenY” or “geny” - is all it takes to get you where you want to go.

What do you think? Compelling? Interesting? Too much fuss? Let us know.