Today, in a press release, CheapTweet announces a partnership with DealTaker.

CheapTweet is a site that aggregates deals which are passed along through Twitter. There, a growing community of bargain-hunters vote on the best tweeted deals, making it a great resource for anyone to see real time information about the best deals out there.

Check out the DealTaker/CheapTweet cobranded page here. It’s a great way to see all of the great deals that the DealTaker team tweets and resulting conversations.

We are exited about this partnership with CheapTweet and look forward to seeing our communities grow together!

API or Application Programming Interface is a ubiquitous term used in the tech world everyday.  With the popularity of online social networking sites and the need to add features and content easily into your own site, executives are starting to understand the benefits of using and or providing a public API to third party organizations.  The term has become so popular that most executives now use API in their repertoire of business terms.  They should, considering users want these features and most organizations such as Salesforce.com, YouTube, eBay, Twitter, FaceBook, MySpace and LinkedIn provide an API for the public.  So, what exactly is an API?

APIs allow you to integrate third party content or features into your web site or web application using a set of common programming tools.  Basically, an API puts you in control of the data and how you want to present it.  It provides flexible, two-way communication and allows you to expand or enhance existing functionality.  APIs give you more control and greater options for integration than widgets or RSS feeds, but obviously require you to write more code in order to integrate it into your own applications.

One popular application called TweetDeck uses the Twitter API to enhance and expand Twitter’s features.  TweetDeck is an Adobe Air application that runs on your Mac or PC desktop.  TweetDeck provides many benefits.  For one, it provides a continuous stream of tweets without having to constantly hit the refresh button.  It helps you organize tweets by columns giving you a so-called tweet dashboard.  It also allows you to easily isolate users you follow by clicking on their icon and viewing their profile.  You can then view stats about that user.

Although the current features and benefits of TweetDeck are abundant, it only exists because of Twitter’s API and its ability to provide functionality Twitter has yet to offer.  This is of course good for Twitter, considering that 80% of their tweets or traffic comes through their API usage.

I’ve used the eBay and the YouTube API with great success in the past and look forward to providing one for DealTaker in the very near future.

The bottom line is this, APIs help both parties by allowing the reuse of features and content extending the existing business model while using less upfront investment.

1.) Get the location’s latitude and longitude (IE. 33.017262, -96.98494).

2.) Make sure you have 3 numbers before decimal point.  So we would left pad with a ‘0′ and we would end up  with 033 and 096.

3.) Add the + and – to our result, so +033 and -096 would be our result

4.) Take the first 3 numbers after the decimal point and add it to the end of result, so we end up with +033017-096984.

4.)Take the first 3 to 6 numbers after the decimal point and add it to the end of result, so we end up with +033017-096984 if we used 3 or if we used 6 we would end up with +033017255-096984955

5.) Post a tweet with the hash tag of #geotwit, the result and the rest of what your tweet.

Here’s an example of a full tweet: #geotwit +033017-096984 http://twitpic.com/6eh1a Spotted this car Friday in Lewisville, TX.

A pretty interesting article about how the businesses we work for will eventually, in the author’s opinion, control what we blog or tweet or discuss on the web.

I have definitely thought about how I would handle a situation in which I wanted to write an article, or twitter a sentence for that matter, with an opposing view to that of my employer.  I would hope that I would be able to approach the issue in a professional manner with an agree to disagree stance.  But truly I would be torn and here is why:  One of the things that we do as part of a “team” is to appreciate other view points.  We may not always agree with their platforms, actions, dispositions, etc.   But we also realize that a great customer service representative is probably a very social person, whereas a developer might see every phone call as an intrusion on their work.  If I am that developer I probably do not understand why anyone would want to sit on the phone all day, but I appreciate that difference none-the-less.   Better you than me I would be saying!

So back to my point – To me a company is a team of teams.  Many different types of people at many different points in their life all working toward common goals for the company(one would hope anyway).  Do I really want to discuss publicly company actions that may not only cause the company problems,  but could affect all of teams?  Understand I am not saying we should overlook discrimination or abuse.  And thank the founding fathers for our freedom of speech!  But I don’t think that it is such a bad idea that our writings reflect our company’s views or our company’s brand.  Not kowtow to them, but reflect them.  I mean isn’t this what working as a team is all about?

There is so much more to this discussion.  As more tools are created that blur our working world with our personal life, such as Facebook and LinkedIn have done, we will all have to find the balance between being true to ourselves/our own brand and remaining part of a team that blends and morphs us into something bigger than ourselves.

Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s co-founder described his creation as ”… an idea to make a more ‘live’ LiveJournal, Real-time, up-to-date, from the road. Akin to updating your AIM status from wherever you are, and sharing it.”

Google’s CEO described Twitter another way when he called it a poor man’s email system, “Speaking as a computer scientist, I view all of these as sort of poor man’s email systems.”   Although, his statement is rudimentary, it does have merit.  If you think of Twitter from a technical standpoint, it is easily a poor man’s email system, but a SPAM proof one at that.

You can SPAM your followers who, for better or worse, actively opted in to follow your conscious activity.  However, you won’t get your follower’s tweets unless, of course, you choose to follow them.  So, what we really have is just the evolution of a poor man’s email system that happens to solve what today’s email system can’t, that is SPAM!

Everywhere we turn information is being pushed on us – from ads, emails, text messages, RSS, etc. – we are living in a world of information clutter. Do we really need another communication system?  Does it really matter what your friends or Ashton Kutcher are doing right now?  “Brushing my teeth, just got off the elevator, flying the red-eye in a silver tube at 600mph over the Rockies,” can be too much.  Who really gives a tweet?

Either way, Twitter has become unbelievably popular and is most likely here to stay. Twitter’s active users have increased 900% in a year which leads all social networks including the all–powerful FaceBook.  So for now anyway, the clutter is here to stay.

You can follow DealTaker on Twitter at http://twitter.com/dealtaker

How does it work? Official DealTaker bargain hunters do the hard work of finding the very best deals and then post them to the popular Twitter site, which sends the updates or “tweets” to followers. Tweets can be received via the web, instant messaging or mobile texting. From there, deal takers simply click on the offer to buy online and save. It’s fun, useful and easy.

To follow DealTaker on Twitter, simply go to http://twitter.com/dealtaker, signup for an account if you don’t already have one, and click “Follow.” It’s that simple!

Who says you can’t do two things at the same time? If you tweet for DealTaker you can win at the same time!

Check out the Tweet for DealTaker Contest and put your Twitter account to work for you!

That’s cause we’ve all become enchanted with Twitter. For those of you uninitiated in Twitter… well… you’re missing out on quite a party!

Come follow us. Our main account is @dealtaker, but you can also follow all of your favorite Content Coordinators too!

My twitter is @dylanbiles. You can follow our President, Kevin Strawbridge, @kstraw.

Follow all the content coordinators -

BrattyJeni – @Kaligrl69

fheenix33 – @LisaD35

DraginFli – @Ro11erGirl

Siddeley – @Siddeley

BananaFrog – @LanaMarie101

So come tweet us up and join in on the conversation!