Fewer Followers Or More Meaningful Connections?

By Corvida Raven of SheGeeks.net (FriendFeed/Twitter)

Connections. That seems to be the word of the week followed by followers. Everything is about connecting to others, but have you considered the type of connection you'd like to have with people?

In a previous guest post on Chris Brogan's blog, I wrote about my frustrations with the decrease in connections as my network increased. I highlighted popular and increasing problems with managing a network or community of over 500 people. One topic I failed to touch is whether or not those connections were short-term or long-term.

Short-Term Connections

If the connections are short-term, then an increase in followers might not be very hard to manage after all. You'll get immediate gratification and so will that follower, without the headache of maintaining that relationship. It's practically a win-win situation for everyone.

Long-Term Connections

However, if the connection is long-term an increase in followers might be the worst thing to ever happen to you. Previous connections may start to fall off the map and new connections may become harder to make.

Think about what type of connection you want to make with the majority of your readers. I use the word majority because it's hard to sustain long-term connections as the number of connections you attempt to make increases. You can't always pick and choose what type of connection you'd like to have with individual people across social networks. To tools to do so effectively just aren't available yet. Nevertheless, it's important that you establish what type of connection you'd like to make and apply the strategies you have for that type of connection with the majority of your audience.

In the long run, it'll make managing and making connections a lot easier on you and your audience.

Read more by Corvida Raven at SheGeeks.net.

SocialToo Launches a War Against Auto-DMs

As Twitter growth has accelerated, so too have some of the annoyances associated with the service - including the creation of spam bots, fake accounts impersonating others, and automated direct messages, many of which essentially include spam links. After initially including the option to send automated direct messages from within his social networking service, Jesse Stay of SocialToo is stopping the practice, immediately, and leading the charge to block automated direct messages (or DMs) from similar products.

As Jesse wrote in a post this morning (Time to Take a Stand - Yes, We’re Ending the DMs), "it seems many people either have not understood the service, or are simply abusing it, as I believe the spammers have started to take over this system."

In a case where a disruptive minority negated any positive benefits from the majority of above-board users, the ensuing complaints about auto-DM spam have escalated in recent weeks. Auto-DMs were behind much of the week's frustrations voiced by Loic LeMeur, which I previously covered here.

As an advisor to SocialToo, I am especially sensitive to the way Jesse's service, and its impact across Twitter and other networks, is perceived. Before he made the decision to stop the practice, we traded many e-mails and had many phone calls about what was the right thing to do, and would he risk losing some of his users by stopping one feature, or gain more because he took the extra step, which we consider to be right.

Every morning, I've opened my e-mail and been hit with a good number of updates from Twitter. Some might be following notifications, but many more are direct message nonsense. While I do get the occasional legitimate direct message, from the team of bloggers here, or from folks like Loic and Om Malik, I'm almost predisposed to delete, thanks to abuse from the surrounding riff-raff. As a SocialToo user, I am hoping this step by Jesse helps to clean up my Twitter and my e-mail, and that other services will follow suit.

Web Two Dot Oh DotCom Dot Cloud Colon Slash Slash

This afternoon I had the opportunity to attend a session presented by TechCrunch, hosted by Steve Gillmor, around cloud computing, featuring some of the Valley's thought leaders, from many of the biggest names in all of tech, ranging from Salesforce.com to Rackspace, Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Sun, Ning, FriendFeed, Facebook, Amazon.com and a small handful of startups. Each of the participants discussed how their product leveraged the cloud, what it was about this new approach to harvesting data storage and computing that made their products execute the way they do, and how they approached new problems of bandwidth, capacity, licensing, security and scale.

The event, essentially a two parter, with early-stage start-ups presenting for five minutes apiece in front of an expert panel for the first half, and a roundtable of technology elite for the second half, saw a healthy dosage of skepticism mixed in with what was largely a genuine desire for these companies to try and deliver higher-quality services for their users by taking advantage of new protocols.

With everybody saying the word "cloud" to represent customer data or computing being stored independently of local physical disk or blade servers, the word itself grew to be mocked. One 'expert' said cloud was the new "dotcom". Another compared the cloud to rabbits as they kept multiplying, and a third called the cloud "Kool-Aid". With the move of terminology over the last decade from "Dotcom" to "Web 2.0" to "Cloud", you can see why people would be necessarily wary of jumping on the newest movement with two feet.

All names aside, there is as much fact as there was fad in the cloud. The cloud's benefits are clear as data can be stored independent of physical disks, and doesn't require dedicated storage and server administration. Code developers want anytime access to infinite bandwidth and storage, and consumers want instant response times. As the panel debated the genesis of enterprise apps absorbing consumer application features, it was clear that each was facing challenges impossible just a decade ago, and the cloud's availability changed everything.

Paul Buchheit of FriendFeed referred to the Internet as just one big computer, and said that instead of shipping software in a big cardboard box with floppies to introduce version 3.0, you could just ship new code three times a day. Mike Schroepfer of Facebook talked about how his team could handle 1 billion status messages of 100 characters each on a different level of storage than the 1 billion images, each a few megabytes apiece. And Marc Benioff of Salesforce.com won the prize for the best quote of the day, saying, "As an industry, we are always overestimating what we can do in a year and underestimating what we can do in a decade."

Benioff's quote is no doubt true. The next engineering team I meet that hits the initial proposed date with all the requested features is the first one I will meet. But a decade ago, we wouldn't have expected to stream full-length feature films without buffering, or do many of the things we do online, always having been limited by location, bandwidth, memory, storage, or even operating systems. Now, the operating system is even less a part of the discussion. While the panel was held at Microsoft's Silicon Valley office, practically all presentations were done on Apple Macintosh, and featured FireFox, not Internet Explorer. Now, consumers and businesspeople expect to get all their applications and data from anywhere on any device. It was enough that Benioff even left his laptop behind on a trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in favor of his BlackBerry Bold.

It is happening. Not too long ago, yet another meme went around the Web on what the Internet looked like in 1996 - a blink of an eye when you think about it. In 1996, I was hosting a personal home page, using WebStar, on my Apple Macintosh Performa 631 CD, with all of 8 megabytes of RAM. Now, my blog is hosted on the cloud. The images themselves are on the cloud. My participation in social networks like Facebook and FriendFeed... is done on the cloud. And I'm taking my iPhone everywhere. I used to despise the term cloud, and used to rail against it with my colleagues at 3Cube back in 1998 to 2000, but it looks like I lost that battle. Good thing all of us as consumers are winning.

Is Twitter Broken, Or Are We Looking at It Wrong?

By Ken Stewart of ChangeForge (Twitter/FriendFeed)

Twitter is broken - again!?!

It's not the "fail whale" this time, but there is a lot of conversation going on about why Twitter isn't working for those looking for conversation. While Twitter reaches a point of critical mass and is being talked about more as a mainstream application among many demographics today, there is something fundamentally flawed with how it is being used.

Twitter has become, to many, a rolling billboard of information that might just give you indigestion. Dictionary.com defines the word twitter.

Twit - ter:

–verb (used without object)

1. to utter a succession of small, tremulous sounds, as a bird.
2. to talk lightly and rapidly, esp. of trivial matters; chatter.
3. to titter; giggle.
4. to tremble with excitement or the like; be in a flutter.

With a definition like that, why would we think it lends itself to having more than superficial conversations. Many might complain about the lack of threading and context, they also pin its success to the incredibly simplistic nature of the service.

"What are you doing in 140 characters or less?"

Wow, how did we get that mixed up? We grew hungry in our searches for massive followings, and feeling some quasi-social obligation to follow everyone that follows us. How many people in your subscription list do you actually converse with?

While some may argue that Twitter is an information source, and that following a massive number of people allows you to play the inevitable numbers game and find a few rare gems, in reality the chances of you missing rare gems is actually higher.

On FriendFeed, several threads have been circulation around, one from Robert Scoble, and one from Tina illustrating quite plainly the on-going debate many still have. Robert goes on to say,

"Twitter, you see, is really broken for interacting with large numbers of people. Friendfeed is much better."

Is Twitter any better or worse?

There is an old saying that goes, "If the only tool you have is a hammer, then every problem you find looks like a nail." In this bold new world we find ourselves in, thankfully there are many tools from which we can choose - maybe even too many. Certainly FriendFeed has its merits, but is Twitter broken?

Twitter is working better than it ever has, but let's wake up and realize that we are trying to make an appetizer the main course. The problem isn't with Twitter, it's our expectations that Twitter is a panacea to solve all ills, when in fact it is simply a hammer.

---

Ken Stewart’s blog, ChangeForge.com, focuses on the collision between the constantly changing worlds of business and technology. To connect with Ken, you may visit him at DandyID.

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Should RSS be Jettisoned On the Information Journey?

By Eric Berlin of Online Media Cultist (FriendFeed/Twitter)

A Stay N' Alive piece (is there a cooler blog name than that?) by Jesse Stay called My Hiatus From RSS – Is RSS Really Necessary? made me think about my own ongoing challenge/struggle/scramble to grapple with the massive number of news stories, blog posts, comments, tweets, and on and on that might potentially be of use, interest, or service to my own work on any given day.

In other words: with so much stuff going on every second of every day, how can we best make sense of it all, and efficiently if possible?

Jesse, taking heed of advice given to him by Forrester Senior Analyst and blogger Jeremiah Owyang, is experimenting with a plan that I toyed with some months back: abandon the RSS reader completely. Now, Google Reader is such an important part of my information-devouring day that it seems somewhat radical to give it the heave ho. But it also takes a lot of time to get down to zero new items. And I must admit that at times I wonder: is it worth it?

Not so much from an existential standpoint, but from an efficiency standpoint, it's always worth examining what the best way to get the most out of culting out on online media. So here's a quick breakdown of different ways, different paths, and different strategies of absorbing information on the wild web.

RSS
I'll start with RSS as it remains such an important part of my online day. I'm continually making changes to how I have things setup though so that I can get the most out of Google Reader, and in the least time. For example, noticing a seemingly simple feature – list view as opposed to the default expanded view – has saved me an enormous amount of time in getting to the articles I'm most interested in.

I'm not a big keyboard shortcut guy for specific sites, but some people love them. Here's a big list of keyboard shortcuts for Google Reader if you want to play for super efficiency points.

Another thing I've done is to create folders to separate high volume websites and blogs from lower volume ones. For example, I have a folder called "online media – big" where I have feeds for ReadWriteWeb, Mashable, The Inquistr, and so on, whereas "online media" includes a treasure trove of blogs spanning A VC to WinExtra.

Smart people networks
I think of social media platforms like Twitter, FriendFeed, and Facebook as "smart people networks" that allow for the sharing of relevant information from friend networks that are customized to individual preferences. Jesse seems to be on board with FriendFeed in particular:

If there was ever a better reason to be on FriendFeed, this is why you need to do it. Even if you don’t participate, make sure your blog is populating FriendFeed (I would add it to Facebook as well). This will be how I obtain my news. Now, instead of just tracking news, I’ll be tracking Twitter, Blogs, Youtube, and more through a Friends List on FriendFeed. If I was subscribed to your blog before and you’re on FriendFeed, I’m now tracking your blog via that method. I’ll be “media snacking”, as Robert Scoble calls it, and IMO, this is the future of news discovery, and takes much less time.

For a lot more talk and discussion of my feelings about Twitter and Friendfeed versus Facebook, check out this story on louisgray.com (and the comments are still kicking!).

E-mail alerts
Some number of years ago, I used e-mail alerts to scan Google Alerts notifications and RssFwd (recently shut down) to pipe RSS feeds to my e-mail account. These days, I've mostly moved my Google Alerts RSS feeds over to Google Reader for easier management.

I can see some utility in using e-mail to manage some influx of news – particularly breaking news alerts – but with a full declaration of bias I'd have to think that a solid RSS reader is going to be far more effective in handling a large volume of data.

Meme trackers and large aggregation portals
I'm talking about Techmeme, Memeorandum, and Google News mostly here, and throw in Drudge Report for kicks. I'll check out these sites during the day when I very quickly want to scan very hot news as its breaking.

Standalone sites
This is the old school approach, which probably more people (read: the non-tech elite regular folk) take part in than anything else. I know an online writer that used a system of hundreds of bookmarks for his job until very recently, for example. For some reason, I like to take this approach every now and then when I'm mobile. TechCrunch on my BlackBerry while on line at the supermarket, that kind of thing.

"Viral" / breaking news
Another category of sorts I think is the news that breaks so quickly and so hard that it's the kind of thing that everyone talks about and covers for a period of hours, days, or longer as the story unfolds. When something truly breaks above the noise, I find that I'll start getting a combination of text messages, instant messages, and e-mails on top of the typical online media layer of information. If the television happens to be on, this is a good way to get another level of coverage (cable news channels live for these kinds of stories to break). Twitter is great at picking up this level of news quickly as well as you'll see everyone start talking about the same thing at the same time.

Finally…
I must admit that it's tempting to pull the plug on one major category of the above in an effort to increase productivity, but I can't quite get there as yet, particularly when it comes to RSS and Google Reader. If anything, I'm continually trying to train myself to look for the kinds of stories that will most benefit me and suit my interests, to participate via social media tools such as Google Reader shared + note, Twitter, FriendFeed, blog comments, and so on as much as I can, and to try to waste as little time as possible during my online day.

It's not always easy!

Read more by Eric Berlin at Online Media Cultist

Don't Speak the Language? You Can Still Participate.

If you watch your referral logs and search alerts closely enough, there will come times when blog posts, tweets or other social media activity will point your way, but not be in your native language. And while it may be intimidating to try and engage in a tongue where you are not comfortable, translation tools have reached the stage where you can respond, in best effort, in the poster's language of choice, and participate. And that little bit of effort is absolutely recognized.

While we keep hoping for a panacea where every person in every continent can share information in real time, language barriers are still very real. Even after four years of high school Spanish, three childhood years in Mexico and my entire adult life in California, I'm no native speaker of Spanish - and there's no way I have enough time to try and pick up another language or two to participate with other Web users, be they in Europe, South America, the Middle East or elsewhere.

But if I see a blog post that mentions me or something I'm interested in, or if I get an alert from BackType or Google, I do try to respond. A quick analysis from Google's Language Tools, or even online services that go between English and Farsi, can get me a good idea as to what they are saying. If it makes sense, I will usually also leave a short comment, even it's as simple as "thanks for reading, I appreciate it," but in their language, not mine.

For example, earlier today I got an alert via BackType from this post: La fiebre de twitter “incluso amenaza a google”, where a commenter wrote, "Totalmente de acuerdo con Louis Gray: Twitter es un radar estupendo de actualidad."

Loosely translated, the comment reads: "Totally agree with Louis Gray: Twitter is a great radar for now."

Google's Translation tools are good enough that you shouldn't be ignoring posts from other parts of the world. And if you're concerned that your words could be misconstrued thanks to bad translations, try to use short sentences and avoid slang at all costs.

Online translation services have enabled me to have quick conversations in Farsi on FriendFeed, or to browse articles as uniquely titled as Google naikintuvai ir kitos naujienos, which translates as "Google fighters and other news" from Lithuanian.

There is no question the tools are not yet perfect. Go ahead and try any phrase and convert it to another language, and then back, to see if it stays the same. But the combination of BackType Alerts and Google Translator has me participating without boundaries. Give it a shot.

Coincidentally, earlier this morning, Google announced you can now translate up to 41 different languages with their service.

Twitter is for Following Topics and Listening, Not for Following People

Another slow news week means another opportunity to debate the "right way" to follow or be followed - and per usual, the forum is Twitter. Once described to me as the "backstage" discussion to the blogosphere's concert hall, there can occasionally be fisticuffs, especially when bigger personalities are involved. And tonight, Loic Le Meur and Robert Scoble are publicly debating whether following thousands of people on Twitter makes sense - with particular focus on whether programs that let you auto-follow add value, or instead, give credibility to people who aren't friends at all, but are spammers, or worse.

Even if you are a rabid information junkie, the constant updates from Twitter can be too much for anybody to absorb, even with a few hundred connections. To believe that I am seeing all of a friend's updates with 6,000 connections, or that Scoble can see the updates from ten times that many, is clearly impossible. So while a small population of Twitter is using the service to follow individual's updates, a huge number are instead using it to broadcast updates, monitor keywords, and occasionally, send direct messages to people or reply in public. Twitter is simply too much to handle as conversations are lost, people's updates can be of any type, and the limitations of the service, including the much-discussed 140 character boundary, make it a poor foundation for exchanging ideas in a crowd.

I use a auto-follow program from SocialToo and am an advisor to the company, run by Jesse Stay. I don't auto-follow to necessarily see an individual's updates, and I don't auto-follow to give a stamp of approval to who they are, or their Twitter stream. But I do use it to let me open up the opportunity to send direct messages to them, and they to me, and because on the occasions I do check in on Twitter, I want to at least have the opportunity to see their updates. But it does not mean I see their Tweets on a regular basis in any way.

That's right. I don't read your tweets. Practically the only way I would see your tweets is if I was following you on FriendFeed, if you were in one of my lists I read regularly, and even more likely, if that tweet got comments and likes, pushing it to the top of my visibility. Alternatively, I will have seen your tweets if you mention my user ID, the company I work for, or if you are mentioning a hashtag or a topic I am following.

When I do want to see an individual's tweets, I will go to their user page and scroll down to read, or I will check their FriendFeed. But I am not sitting with the Web interface open, or constantly refreshing TweetDeck, only to hit the API limit.

I use Twitter because I know my updates to Twitter go to both Facebook and FriendFeed, where I do have personal conversations and a real platform for discussion. I use Twitter for the opportunity to send instant messages, publicly, to individuals or groups. And I use Twitter to monitor mentions of me or my company via their search engine. But if I were to "really" follow people the way that some people think they are being followed, I would have to follow the new trend and start a massive unfollow process, eradicating more than 90 percent of those my Twitter account is following today.

Twitter has something special - a real-time search engine that can instantly take the temperature of today's Web users. It has a good platform to say what you are doing right now. But it does not have a good platform to follow people, or a large group of people, and it does not have a good platform for conversation. If you want people and discussion go to Facebook and FriendFeed. If you want to get a litmus test on a topic, go on and use Twitter. Just don't think I'm reading your Tweets. I know you don't see mine.

Safari 4's Introduction A Clear Salvo In the New Chrome Wars

In today's Web-centric computing world, there is practically no more important software than that of the Web browser. While an argument could be made that one's e-mail is equally as important, the move to Web-hosted mail services, like GMail and Apple's Mobile Me means that the Web browser itself is where most of today's work gets done. The move from the operating system being the center of our world, and the prism by which we see everything, to that of the Web browser, was central to Netscape's annihilation by Microsoft, and has now practically come true, even as Navigator's time has now come and gone.

Almost 14 years after Netscape as a company went public, a new wave of browser wars is upon us. And while, yes, Internet Explorer, the standard on practically all Windows-based PCs, is still the market share leader, the innovation is not being perceived as coming from Redmond. Instead, it's products like Firefox, Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari which are pushing the envelope and working to enhance our browsing experience. Unfortunately for Microsoft, it's gotten to the point that even if they made a better product with all the possible bells and whistles, nobody outside of Dare Obasanjo would give them credit.

Yesterday, as practically every tech blog on the planet mentioned, Apple introduced a new 4.0 beta version of the Safari browser, including speed enhancements, and most notably, a Top Sites feature that mimics Chrome's most visited sites page. And while other usability enhancements were made, including to the toolbar, expanded browser history and further integration with Google's search bar, it was this addition of "Top Sites" that has everyone thinking about how Apple is taking on Google's Chrome even before the company comes out with its much-awaited official Mac version.


My Top Sites - After Editing Out All Work-Related Sites
And this is exactly the dialog that has long-been needed in the browser space but was lacking when IE finally reached the summit atop Netscape's corpse. Opera and OmniWeb and iCab all had their handful of users, but never gained the kind of mindshare and deployments possible from Firefox, Safari and Chrome. Now, it could be said that Microsoft is being hit from all sides after years of letting Explorer stagnate. (I first called it the Chrome Wars on FriendFeed yesterday)

Being hard wired both as an Apple fanboy and an early adopter, I downloaded Safari 4 beta as soon as I knew it was available. After finally updating the laptop with the latest security updates, we were good to go - and honestly, there will be no turning back. For whatever reason, over the last few weeks, I have had the worst time keeping Safari up and running. Every new tab welcomed a new opportunity to stall and require a force quit. But Safari 4, after a full day's aggressive use, hasn't fallen on its sword even once. And considering I spend practically all my waking hours in front of a browser, that's a good thing.

For me, it's the stability and the speed, and the support for standards, that will make using Safari on a daily basis a success. The Top Sites feature is interesting, a cute way to have 12 pages on hand to click through at all times, but it's not exactly going to save me a ton of time. With RSS, keyboard shortcuts and autocomplete, it's not like I was taking tons of time to enter URLs and go site to site. So yes, we like the new features, but we like it even more that it doesn't crash and will support new Web services that may be using bleeding-edge code.

And while I assume you already know, Safari is more than just a Web browser for Macs. It's also available for Windows, and forms the core browsing experience on the iPhone and iPod Touch. You can get the new Safari 4 beta here: http://www.apple.com/safari/download/.

Trendrr - Trend Tracking for Social Media and Data Addicts

By Corvida Raven of SheGeeks.net (FriendFeed/Twitter)

Practically everyone watches trends. For some of us, watching trends can be a daily part of our job. For others, it may simply be fun to keep an eye on what's popular on the Web today. Many of you might be using Google Trends, but after reading this you might want to add Trendrr to your list of trend tracking tools.

The basics of any trend-tracking tool applies to Trendrr. You enter one or more keywords and receive data about how each keyword is doing on the Web. However, one of Trendrr's key features is the amount of data presented. Trendrr provides you with graphs pulling data from sites as diverse as Technorati, Flickr, Google services, eBay, Twitter, & YouTube. However, we'd loved to see some data from services like Digg, FriendFeed, Delicious, and Diigo.

Trendrr also takes the data a step further by breaking down results from Google and Twitter. You can view how well your keyword is doing per hour, or per day, on Twitter. You can also view whether a keyword is getting more search engine hype than news or blog hype from Google Search, News, and Blog Search. Using the keyword "Grammy", I can see that there wasn't all that much hype in the days or hours before and after the Oscars on Twitter, but there were more mentions of "Grammy" than one might have expected during the Oscars:


On the other hand, news stories containing "Grammy" were on the up and up as seen in the following Yahoo and Google News graphs:


According to Google, blog posts featuring the word "Grammy" dropped significantly, while Technorati's data says otherwise:


So, what else can you do with all this data? You can annotate individual graphs if you sign up for Trendrr, compare and contrast different data sets, grab a graph's feed, and share your data in a variety of formats.

Google Trends & Trendrr

I wanted to compare Google Trends to Trendrr, but that's proven difficult to do. It's almost like comparing apples to oranges because the form of data available is different for both services. Google Trends provides only one graph and is focused on providing data about regions, and cities for keywords. Most of the data given is pulled from Google Search and News. Trendrr on the other hand is more about emphasizing how keywords are trending on social media services. I'd recommend using both tools in conjuction with one another.

All in all, Trendrr is a great trend tracking tool. However, one annoying quirk with the service is that you have to drag graphs to the "Scratchpad" in order to compare keywords unlike Google Trends where this is automatically done for you.

Read more by Corvida Raven at SheGeeks.net.

How Can You Teach Intellectual Curiosity?

For me, a significant amount of time I spend using the Web is not so much about finding friends and peers, but instead about finding information. I want the newest news now. I want to have my finger on the pulse, and will use whatever mechanisms available to me to get the data faster. Whether it be through RSS, e-mail news alerts, pre-defined search strings, or relying on selections by others on news aggregation sites, I have built an array of tools that makes sure I miss very little about those things I am interested in.

Whether it's a desire to act as a knowledgeable information filter, or simply because I am a data sponge, I've made the absorption of news and trivia a big part of my daily activity, and it turns out, if I think about it, that I've been wired this way for a very long time.

For whatever reason, just shortly after I learned to read, I can remember thumbing through the children's dictionary, fascinated by the origins of the letters of the alphabet, as they evolved from the Phoenician to Greek, Egyptian and so on. Later, I was buying the Guinness Book of World Records every year, and stalking the bookstores for the next edition of the World Almanac. My favorite section? The population rankings of the top 200 cities in the United States, as ranked by the census in 1980 and 1990. To this day, I can tell you Worcester, Mass. was #200 overall, and that Baltimore had 939,000 people reported in population in 1980. When the 1990 census rolled out, seeing new cities like San Diego and Dallas, Texas enter the hallowed ranks of million-plus citizen populations, I was excited. Seriously.

And before you cry out, "NERD!", I'll nod my head, quickly agree, and move on. I loved this stuff. Luckily, it branched out to sports as well. My favorite present of all time had to be the massive 2,000+ page encyclopedia, Total Baseball, which, when released in 1989, when I was 12, had hundreds of pages of baseball stories and even more, containing all statistics of all players, ever, in the major leagues. I promise I pored over every single page - and it's made me very popular when it comes to sports trivia conversations (or unpopular if you want to go head to head).

But I have learned you can't force the issue and kindle the same passion in others. Even if I explain to you why I am excited about something, I can't get you the same way half the time. And what boggles my mind at times is when it seems the curiosity is missing altogether - especially when it's about something that could effect your making a more educated decision.

For example, a few years ago, in speaking with a friend in the industry about how the changing world of media was making blogs an increasingly-important venue, they were asked by someone else, "What blogs do you read?" And their answer: "The ones Louis sends me." It seemed they were content getting their news the way they always had, and they weren't even curious enough to want to get the data when it was available. They were comfortable knowing they could be missing out on a source of news on their industry, and turning a blind eye to what I thought was a major development in the way news was being created and disseminated.

To me, it would have been a lot more acceptable if the individual had, acknowledging they hadn't gotten into blogs yet, asked which I thought were the best ones, or if they had remembered some of the recent forwards and posts that caught their eye. But the nonchalant answer defied my expectations of intellectual curiosity, and I was frustrated about it for a long time - wondering why they weren't seeing the missed opportunity. It's the same type of frustrations I am sure parents feel when their kids don't get interested in school, or in studying to improve when you know they have the potential.

There's no question that my consumption level for news, blog posts, RSS feeds, and friends' updates on many networks is above the average. I crave the data, and am always eager to find new ways to get there faster. But I wonder if there are ways to get people to share the same enthusiasm. Is it possible to force intellectual curiosity when others just aren't wired the same way?

Why I Still Prefer Twitter and FriendFeed to Facebook

Editor's Note: As I noted last night, Facebook is quickly becoming the standard by which many social networking and social media sites are being analyzed, described and measured. Still, as Eric says below, not all are converted, preferring more dedicated sites, including Twitter and FriendFeed. This pair of stories was written independently, and the timing is sheer coincidence.
-- Louis Gray

By Eric Berlin of Online Media Cultist (FriendFeed/Twitter)

I spent the last three years managing the production of a number of social networking websites. During 2006-2007, I produced ZonaZoom, an ambitious (and now defunct) attempt to grab market share of social networking Latino teens in the United States. And I spent a grueling, rewarding year producing quarterlife.com in 2007 and early 2008, the home of short-lived NBC show quarterlife (I'm not including the direct link as the site looks far different now than the version I helped to bring to life.)

So that's all to say that I dwelled in social networking land quite a bit over the last few years. But in my personal time I've never really been much of what might be called a "traditional" social networking person; I'm more of a microblogging/social media/information junkie kind of person, which has led to Twitter and FriendFeed and Google Reader becoming the hubs of my online media (so-called?) "social life." So when I think about how I like to use the web, I've long thought of myself as more of a Twitter/FriendFeed/RSS person, and less of a MySpace/Facebook person.

This made all the sense in the world to me until recently... when methodically, relentlessly every single person that I know, have known, or knew in some former life friend-requested me on Facebook. I exaggerate of course, but it seemed like everyone from the dude I hung out with at woodworking class during a Boy Scout retreat in 1985 to my mother's co-workers added me at some point recently.

So there was that, and there was also the fact gnawing away at me that Facebook's news feed is an elegant feature combining Twitter's simplicity with Friendfeed-like flourishes such as comment threads and the ability to embed images and video.

Therefore, I began to wonder: "Why don't I spend a lot more time hanging out on Facebook? It's got a lovely news feed, and a large slice of the people I know or have ever known in the world are right there for me to chat with and interact with."

I'm still working my way through the reasons why this is so, but here's a working list of why I still far prefer Twitter and FriendFeed to Facebook:

Talking to everyone I know/have known at the same time is not so appealing as it might sound

When it comes down to it, this is the big one for me. When I enter the Facebook news feed, I feel like I'm entering a vast hall where my professional colleagues, potential employers, family, current friends, old and dear friends, old friends that I lost touch with 15 years ago, online contacts, and on and on, are all waiting to hear a formal address from me at the same time. The result is that I have a hard time letting my guard down and actually enjoying the social media experience.

So for some reason – and I expect I'm not alone here – Twitter and FriendFeed feel like much more comfortable places to hang out… which is really the entire idea of social networking in the first place!

News, social media, and pop culture-based conversations versus life conversations

Software platforms create places where people can congregate and communicate and share media and all of those other kinds of wonderful things. The kinds of people that do congregate, and how they communicate and share creates an online culture of sorts that is unique to each software platform.

My experience is that Facebook tends to encourage conversations that center around what people are doing with their lives: video of ski trips, announcements about what people are doing after work, expressions of joy and despair about the minutiae of life, that kind of thing. Now, of course this kind of thing also goes on within Twitter/FriendFeed. But I believe the culture of Twitter and FriendFeed allows for conversations that I tend to be more interested in: hot social media topics, breaking news stories, pop culture debates, and that sort of thing.

So I suppose it seems to me a choice between cultures that tend to be more about news-driven topics versus life-driven topics. News-driven is more appealing to me for the most part.

Don't get me wrong. I enjoy hearing about what's going on in the lives of my friends and family as much as anyone. But I still think that things like e-mail and "real life" things like the telephone and getting together in person are still pretty great for that!

Conversation lurking

When I first joined Twitter in early 2007, I thought one of the coolest things about it was the ability to "conversation lurk" and eavesdrop on conversations between the likes of Robert Scoble, Dave Winer, Jason Calacanis, Mathew Ingram, and so forth. And even cooler was the fact that you could participate with the very real chance that a Twitter celebrity of the day would respond. These days, the best place to experience this kind of interaction, I've found, is on FriendFeed in places like the Best of Day section.

Facebook, which is more directly tied to contacts that require an approval process, doesn't really allow for this looser and more freewheeling form of communication and listening in.

What's up with "is"?

One of the functional things that perhaps drives or at least directs the culture of the Facebook news feed is the little word "is." In other words, whenever you post a status update to Facebook, your profile name and the word "is" automatically precedes it. So while "Eric is ranting about the social mediaz" works pretty well, "Eric is New post up about the social mediaz, here's the link" sounds pretty awful. So that little word "is" in itself helps to set the tone for the culture of Facebook's news feed.

Alternatively, Twitter simply asks "What are you doing?" and then lets you have at it. And to be fair and as others have noted, Twitter should probably do away with that question as tweeters have basically created a culture where anything and everything is discussed beyond "mere" status updates.

Flat medium versus social medium?

I'm not sure I completely agree with Adrian's piece at sevitz.com called, as luck would have it, Why I prefer Twitter to Facebook, but I like the introduction of the terms "flat medium" versus "social medium" in comparing Facebook and Twitter:

It’s just this tiny little thread that shifts it from being a flat medium like facebook status to a social medium. It’s that difference that connects you to people rather than positions you as mere observer. And whilst the observation thread is nice, by itself it starts to die as it isn’t self sustaining. Where as the observation with interactivity grows and gets stronger. |t means I become a participant in my friends lives occasionally even if that participation is just Stuart getting coffee.

Finally…

I'm curious to hear what other people think about all of this. I've tried to give Facebook a chance, particularly because I've never been a tremendous fan of the product. I admire what they've done to be sure and find the explosion of Facebook apps and its soaring popularity remarkable of course, but my personal test is whether I want to stick around someplace online –- if I get excited and engaged and eagerly explore every aspect of what the product offers –- or if I get kind of bored, mentally yawn, and then check my e-mail for 6,001st time of the day. And Facebook has always been in the latter yawn-worthy category for me, quite frankly.

So particularly because so many people I know love it, I've tried hard to give Facebook another chance. But for the reasons mentioned above, I still far prefer Twitter and FriendFeed.

Read more by Eric Berlin at Online Media Cultist

Facebook's Success Makes It the Social Media Prism and Translator

Facebook's impressive growth, and its gradual passing of MySpace in virtually every aspect, has brought the network to the point where it is universally recognized as the largest, most active, social site on the Web. This of course means that even outside our little bubble of Silicon Valley, our family members and less tech-obsessed friends might be using it - much more than they are the "edge" applications we might also be using. And as Facebook has evolved, adding more lifestream-oriented features, I've come to realize that it is becoming the standard by which practically all social media sites are compared, and even explained.

Case in point - over the weekend my wife, the twins and I, went to see my parents for a quick two-day visit. During a rare tech respite, I opened up the laptop and was blazing through my Google Reader feeds. My dad, curious, leaned over and said, "Is this your Twitter?", making a valiant attempt to guess at whatever oddity I was using. I said, no, that I was using Google Reader, which let me read new stories from hundreds of sites at once.


Then, hoping to explain Twitter, I referred him to the Facebook status. I said using Twitter, for many people, was like updating your Facebook status throughout the day, and choosing to see updates from others.

Extending the message to aggregation sites or lifestreaming services, such as FriendFeed, again, I find myself using Facebook as the starting point. I can refer to Facebook's news feed, and how it pulls in links and shares from other sites, allowing you to make comments or show you like something.

At this point, with 175 million users reported on the site, Facebook represents a significant chunk of online activity. When I threatened to "borrow" my younger sister's iPhone to ostensibly update her Facebook status on her behalf, you would think I was threatening to kill her future first-born. The simple status update on the network, to her, represents who she is to her friends and her family, and it likely does for many others out there - even if they aren't in their 20s, fresh out of college, as she is. As she told me this evening, behind texting, e-mail and the phone, she uses her iPhone for Facebook. She doesn't buy a lot of applications or play games, but she does Facebook, constantly.

Facebook, at this point, is almost as well known as AOL once was. And as we once would explain the World Wide Web and e-mail through the context of AOL, we are once again using an extremely popular site that isn't always best of breed as the standard-bearer for what other social sites are today. Does that mean Facebook does better status updates than Twitter? Probably not. Does that mean Facebook can do feeds and friends better than FriendFeed? Probably not. But then again, AOL wasn't exactly best of breed either, and for years, it ruled the world.

If we expect these odd tools that we geeks and early adopters have been pounding the table on to take hold, we just may have to speak the language that the masses know. Today, that language flows through Facebook. This might mean that after the dust clears, and nine out of ten startups are gone, that only Facebook will be standing. And just maybe that's what Zuckerberg and team are hoping.

February's Five Voices Spreading Thought Diversity

Part Twelve In a Monthly Series

The "five new blogs to watch" series, a monthly recurring feature here on louisgray.com, has now wrapped around a full year. Starting off in March of 2008, the February 2009 list marks the 12th consecutive month we have found five blogs that, in my opinion, have a lower profile than they should, and are ones you just might find interesting.

In the last year, including today's list, we have displayed sixty different voices who are bringing their interests, news and opinion into the world of blogs in their own way, but haven't yet cracked the upper echelon of visibility. It has been fun to uncover new names every 30 days, and now that we're one year through it, we'll review and see how the feature evolves. Looking forward also to your feedback to see if this is something you would like to continue.

Each of the bloggers highlighted over this time period has been added to my Google Reader list, via Toluu, and has, to date, been consistently informative, interesting or entertaining. Prior months' entries can be found for March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December and January.

This month's entries...

1) Sociosophy (www.sociosophy.com)

Focus: Blogging, Social Media Tools, Applications
Three Recent Posts:

• thisMoment - Beta Invites
• Trigga.me
• Chris Brogan - Blogger Week

RSS Feed: Subscribe Now

2) Damon Cortesi's Blog (www.dcortesi.com)

Focus: Coding, Security, Twitter
Three Recent Posts:

• The *Real* Top 20 Twitter Applications
• Attitude
• All ur Twitpics, in one line.

RSS Feed: Subscribe Now

3) Justin R. Levy (www.justinrlevy.com)

Focus: Public Relations, Marketing, Events
Three Recent Posts:

• Linking PR and Journalists Together via Twitter
• Are You Developing Raving Fans
• Are You Focused

RSS Feed: Subscribe Now

4) Dawn's Plan (dawnsplan.wordpress.com)

Focus: Internet Culture, Social Networking, Capitalism
Three Recent Posts:

• Friend Limit Frustration Exposes Tech World’s Weakness in Social Science
• Take this Ad and Shove it. Then Turn Advertising Distribution over to the Members
• What FREE gets you

RSS Feed: Subscribe Now

5) Elias Bizannes (www.liako.biz)

Focus: Data Portability, Internet
Three Recent Posts:

• Social melebrities and the externality of arrogance
• Semanticising Twitter for a revenue model
• The change brought by the Internet is a correction

RSS Feed: Subscribe Now

Want to be on this list? You can catch my eye by posting great information in the field of technology, social media, blogging and the Web. I'll be more likely to highlight you if you blog almost every day, and bring new stories to the table that don't repeat discussions launched elsewhere. And if you have more than 1,000 subscribers, you're probably too big for this.

To see even more new blogs I'm adding to my reader, or get a sneak peek for next month's highlighted blogs, follow my activity on Toluu. If you don't have a login to Toluu, send me an e-mail to louisgray@mac.com and I'll get that set up right away.

BrightKite: If You Think Your Life Is Boring, You're Missing The Point

Guest Post by Kipp Bodnar and Wayne Sutton of Talk Social News

Authors' Note: This post references Brightkite specifically because it was the application discussed in the original post Louis wrote. However, many of the features and uses discussed in this post also apply to other location-based social networks. Though Brightkite is the example, this post should be seen as a commentary on the potential of location-based social networking in general.

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Last week Louis threw down the challenge, when he asked to be educated on why he should use Brightkite. He was making fun of himself for having such a boring life. Because of this he felt that his placestream in Brightkite would always be the same and thus he should not use the service. While Louis has a point, location-based social networks should have their place in you day regardless of how boring you think you are.

Getting Local Without Posting An Update:
Like most all other forms of social media much of Brightkite's potential comes from observing. While participation is important, Brightkite offers a new way to observe people and places.

Below are some responses Wayne received to when asking How do you use Brightkite?" on his Brightkite profile:

gregbarnett says:

I'm using it to checkin and find new friends and I love learning about new places (restaurants, landmarks etc.) in the city I live in and also other cities and also to follow your obsession with hot dogs and donuts *lol*

dsims says:

I like the community aspect of seeing the notes and photos from at a place. Watching the placestream of Washington D.C. during the inauguration was awesome. I also use it to track places I've been to, and to share notes and photos about those places with others. I hate it when people use brightkite to post status updates that really have nothing to do with the location. I hope adoption increases because it does feel lonely to see that you are the only person to ever check in a certain spot, or even an entire city. Perhaps an integration of Google Latitude and Brightkite would help.

tbeseda says:

The placestreams are a great way to find new people who may not be so new after all (you see many of them every day!).

thunsaker says:

I've enjoyed seeing other parts of the world through the camera of another person. One person in particular @kewllewk travels quite a bit for his work and is always posting pics from foreign locations.

The above replies are only a sample, but using Brighkite to observe places in a new way was the most popular response to Wayne's question. To illustrate this, lets take a look at a place that some of us have been to, but all of us have probably seen on TV: Madison Square Garden. MSG is one of the most popular sports venues in the US and one of the icons of New York City. Regardless if you have been there or not a quick look at the Brightkite Place stream for MSG provides a new level of insight. It is a personal way to see such a monolithic place.

What if you are getting ready to go on vacation and planning what places to visit, a quick look at the Brightkite placestream for each could quickly help you determine which places will be a hit and which others look like misses.

So we convinced you! Their is value in checking out people and places on Brightkite, what is next? Participation.

Building Your Digital Footprint

Building your digital footprint use to mean having a blog or web site, maybe sharing some photos and videos. However, now with the popularity of the mobile web and location-based applications like Brightkite your digital footprint has gained a new dimension. Every place you visit now has the opportunity to be part of your digital footprint.

Lets take Louis for example, he will be on a panel next month at South By South West (SXSW) Interactive. Lets say he published a picture of the panel along with a couple of notes about what they are speaking about on Brightkite not only will all of his friends be able to check it out regardless where they are physically, but that image and note will always be tied to the Austin Convention Center's placestream. What happens at convention centers? Well a lot of conventions, so maybe someone a month or a year later is attending a convention in Austin and sees Louis' message and realizes that he needs someone to speak about that topic at an upcoming conference. The final result: a new speaking opportunity for Louis, from a simple checkin as part of his digital footprint.

Integration with Your Existing Social Media Workflow

A big plus for using Brightkite specifically is that it integrates with Facebook, Twitter and Flickr. You can post updates and photos automatically to one or all of those three services from Brightkite. Think about it this way, Brightkite makes Facebook, Twitter and Flickr location aware. If you are already sending photos to Flickr from your phone why not do it with Brightkite and add a location dimension to your photos while building your location-based digital footprint?

Facilitate Face-to-Face Communications

Brightkite also takes relationship building to another level.

Here are three quick examples:

• You can find where other local users are located in real time or places they have visited.
• You can meet other users at meetups or conferences when both check-in at the same location or near by.
• Also, Brighkite makes it easy for unprompted meetings.

For example, Wayne is often in downtown Raleigh at Cafe Helios and on more than one occasion he has checked Brightkite and a few friends have showed up because they saw his update on Brightkite or his update on Facebook that came from Brightkite. The same thing has happen during traveling also, people who he's only had conversations with before have showed up at the same location to meet face to face because of Brightkite.

To some this may seem like cyber-stalking but you have to keep a few things in mind. One it's all optional, you don't have to check-in where you don't want to be found and two you can configure your settings to where you check-in to an area and not a direct address.

Business Impacts

As more businesses are using social media to reach new customers or engage with existing ones online, the business impact of using location-based services can be huge for companies looking to reach targeted local users. We're already seeing companies using twitter for coupons or promotions and that's great but what if you wanted to reach people who you knew that visited your company previously or worked near by. With Brighkite you can easily do location based advertising by the block, or city and go beyond advertising to understand the real-word referrers that normally send people to your business.

Brightkite's potential lies beyond its basic social networking features. Its power comes from connecting people and places together in a meaningful way and showcasing information in a user friendly manner that can be accessed from via desktop browser, SMS, and mobile browser.

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When they aren't checking in on BrightKite or updating their own blogs, you can find Kipp Bodnar and Wayne Sutton on Talk Social News, a podcast focused on social media.

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Adult Party Games On the iPhone? Get Penalized.

Usually we keep the blog on the safe side of PG, but it's late on a Friday night, and we're bending the rules a little. In the months I've had my iPhone, we have profiled a good number of innocent games, from jumping frogs to falling blocks, but not all the fun comes for kids with cartoon animation. Apparently, adults want to have fun too - and now the iPhone can be involved, with a silly game called Penalized that offers challenges, with the penalties being what you desire - be it loss of money, loss of sobriety, or loss of clothing.

The game, which requires two or more players, of course, displays unmarked cards which when revealed can display categories such as "I Never", "Impersonation", "Trivia", "Rhyme", "Physical Challenge" and "Penalty".


Penalized: I've Never Done What Now?
Each card reveals a statement, such as: "I've never mentally undressed a member of the group. Double penalty if you are doing it now." or "All virgins receive a penalty (and everyones pity)."

As you can guess, the hope is that everybody else gets a penalty, and you don't. If your impersonation isn't successful, according to the group, it's a penalty. Get the trivia wrong? Penalty. Can't do a physical challenge? Penalty.


Penalized: Trivia and Penalties for All
The game itself presents an odd mix - the silliness of Strip Poker and Truth or Dare with the geekiness and isolation of iPhone Apps. So in order for this to work, you need to find someone geeky enough to download the app, but popular enough to get a group together and play the silly game. And before your sensibilities come into play, not all the items are PG-13 and above in nature. For every virgin-related or fantasy-type card, there are ones as casual as impersonating Ray Charles, or stating if you have never broken a bone.


Penalized: Challenges and Impersonations
The author, Scott Goldie, who you might remember as the author of FriendFeedMachine, knows the game isn't exactly aimed at my demographic, saying, "It's a fairly off-the-wall party game best enjoyed after a few drinks and with a group of friends... probably best suited to single college students rather than fathers like you and I."

But even if you're not a single college student, you still might want to check out Penalized and have a little fun. It'll set you back all of $3.99. And yes, iTunes rates it 12+ for suggestive themes, mild sexual content and mild profanity or crude humor.

Which Companies Will Blink First and Lead Us Out of The Depths?

Graphic via Dreamstime.com
One of the scariest things about the type of economic slowdown we are in today is that it breeds yet more slowdown. If you see the headlines, you can read that as companies anticipate lower revenues and diminished profits, or expanded losses, they are turning to layoffs, and in parallel, reducing their own spending, from program and infrastructure costs, to employee costs. Just this week, for example, HP announced 5 percent pay cuts for its massive salaried employee base, across the board, and the Mercury News reports more than 100 public companies in all industries have reported executive pay cuts since the recession began.

While this helps the company in the immediate term, the ripple effects downstream are quantifiable - which, in my opinion, could make the problems worse.

Assuming lower revenues is one thing. Lowering spending costs impacts all the company's vendors, in reducing their own revenues, spreading the pain around. And of course, reducing the number of paid employees, and reducing the pay to those employees who are left, impacts them such that they are less willing to spend.

It's a high-stakes game of chicken, for if companies expect the market to turn around, and want dollars to flow again, they have to contribute to the economy themselves, and all actions we have recently seen in the press point to companies simply trying to survive what for many is the deepest downturn in memory. But there cannot be survival if every company reduces its spend so that every company downstream, and its employees, fails as well.

During the 2001 to 2003 recession, there were a few bright spots of hope and prosperity here in the Valley, from Google, who rocketed to market-share nirvana in the face of strong competition, to Apple, who rebuilt themselves from a PC company to one built around electronic gadgets and digital sales, following the introduction of the iPod in 2001, and later, the iTunes Music Store, in 2003.

Also during the 2001 to 2003 downturn, government leaders told consumers that the patriotic thing to do would be to open up their wallets and shop - to help keep the economy humming - even as spirits were broken. Of course, the resulting debts and the issues that surround people spending above their means were main contributors to the stark realities we see today, from credit crunches to home foreclosures. But this time, consumers have (hopefully) wisened up, and they are likely more reluctant to spend their way out of this deep recession, especially if they are one of the unfortunate millions who are drawing unemployment benefits or see their bi-weekly paystub reduced.

On this blog, many of the companies and services we talk about have very little to do with capital creation and distribution. Some of the products are fun widgets or sites that enable people to connect in new ways, not so much finding new places to spend money or even have revenue themselves. We recognize that - and hold to the line that for the most part, this blog caters toward early adopters, and it is not necessarily our role to gauge every company's business acumen and prospects - best left to others. But surrounding those people are real businesses with real, tangible products and a real-life balance sheet - and many entrepreneurs and fellow bloggers work for these companies that have been impacted - including some of my peers who write on this site.

Silicon Valley is not immune to this financial crisis. Companies big and small have reduced forecasts and results. Companies big and small have reduced headcount, and many more have reduced their operating expenses, without drawing headlines. Down the food chain, many start-ups have found the VC well to be dry, and will either be shutting down or changing their prospects. But as 90 percent of start-ups fail, this shakeout could violently separate the good ideas from the bad - faster than they had ever desired.

So as practically every business has reacted to the downturn and closed the spigot on spending, which ones will be the first to reverse the trend and say, 'Enough!', instead, taking advantage of competitive weaknesses to seize market share, and approach a more-wary consumer base? We can't sit on our hands and expect Google and Apple to be the names that rise to the top again.

Will The Crowdsourced Novel AirBorne Take Flight?

By Eric Berlin of Online Media Cultist (FriendFeed/Twitter)

It's always fun to watch new creative experiments on the Internet play out. When it comes to novelists dabbling in the electronic realm, I fondly recall Stephen King's The Plant, "a serial novel published in 2000 as an e-book."

King wanted to see if people would voluntarily pay $1.00 for each installment versus the option to download for free. Perhaps an early sign of things to come, many people chose not to pay, resulting in the story -- a rather fascinating one if you're interested in how the publishing world worked in the New York City of the 1980s, before the age of the Internet -- never being completed in full.

Now we have AirBorne, "the world's first chain novel inspired by James Patterson." The concept is that best selling thriller writer Patterson will write the first and last chapter of this "crowdsourced" novel. The 28 of 30 "middle chapters" will be written by selected writers, who get the honor of writing one chapter apiece. Presumably, the writer of chapter 14 has to wait until the first 13 chapters are completed, or have a strong idea of what's going on in the story, to pick things up. That fact alone must have made this project a logistically challenging one.

In the 2000 online world that The Plant was released into, distribution options were relatively limited (a Web site destination and viral means limited to things like e-mail and IM), whereas AirBorne will be rolled out a chapter per day starting on March 20th through such "web 2.0" channels as Facebook, Twitter, and RSS.

It will be interesting to see how viral and popular (and airborne?) a project such as AirBorne can get. While chapters are limited to a lean 750 words a pop, will people be keen to churn through it for 30 straight days -- a lifetime in the online realm? And that's to say nothing for the editorial challenge of maintaining some form of stylistic and storytelling consistency through a cavalcade of 29 writers (including one battle-hardened pro) telling one tale.

More than anything, the concept behind AirBorne reminds me of a game that my friends and I used to play. A person would start a story by stating one sentence aloud (usually it was as goofy and bizarre as possible, of course). Then the next person would pick up the thread, and around the circle we'd go. I'm sure that many others have done the same, and I can infer that collaborative storytelling is a tradition that many people can appreciate and potentially participate in, as reader or author.

And as ReadWriteWeb notes:

The roots of the collaborative writing movement can be found in many web startups, including those like Novlet, Potrayl, Ficlets, Unblokt, Protagonize, and others we profiled here. A popular activity for creative writers, these communities offer various takes on how a co-written story should be developed, some focused more on "choose your own adventure"-style stories while others focus more on linear narratives.

I like the idea behind AirBorne, and think it's a worthy project for a well known author to participate in. That said, I think things could have been made really interesting if the non-author part of the crowd -- the online public -- were let into the process somehow. Or what if the group of authors were entitled to vote to move the story in one direction or another after each chapter was finished. For example, maybe after Chapter 15 was completed, the author of Chapter 15 asks a question, such as: Do you think Mike should drop the gun and give himself up, take a hostage and hole up in the control room, or start shooting and try to make a break for it? And the group of authors vote and dictate where Chapter 16 begins.

And, finally, speaking of AirBorne, I'm pounding the medicinal variety today to fight off the onslaught of a cold!

Read more by Eric Berlin at Online Media Cultist

Outbrain Unveils Revenue Plan With Advertising That's Not Evil

When Outbrain announced it had raised $12 million in its latest round of funding, I openly speculated that the team and its VC partners had wind of a revenue plan that the blogosphere at large hadn't been alerted to. Sure enough, just a week later, that secret has been revealed, as Outbrain, today, rolled out a new program that will display sponsored related links, attached to blog posts from its network of users, myself included. They call it "sponsored but good", and it represents an attempt to find a solution that is beneficial for readers, publishers and advertisers, which has proven very difficult for many vendors.

Outbrain is well-known for its rating widget that sits below users' posts, and tries to find related stories, both on the blogger's site and the service's network. Starting today, some posts will also feature a sponsored link - not to a paid-for blog article, but instead, to an organic article selected by the advertiser which will put their product in a good light.


An example sponsored ad, via Outbrain
I spoke with John LoGioco, the company's vice president of business development, yesterday, and he said he hoped the new program delivered a "perfect balance," as readers would find new and interesting content that was non-disruptive, advertisers would put sponsored content on trusted sites, and publishers could gain revenue.

The benefit package delivers a good share of revenue to the blogger in today's announcement, LoGioco said, adding he hoped the program would be one that be trusted and adopted by bloggers looking to add another incremental revenue stream along the more typical display ads, dominated by Google.


The hope? An advertising plan that works for all
"Advertisers are excited so far, because they know the power of trusted voices driving demand creation if people are considering a product but are in the discovery phase," LoGioco said. "They haven't really had a chance to take a piece of the conversation that has been positive about them and amplify it. We can reach the influencer audience, and it is scalable."

With Outbrain's growth in popularity, serving an ever-increasing number of recommendations from sites in the network, the company has reached the point where advertisers are looking to reach readers - ones that are tired of seeing pop-up ads and other tricks that get in the way of their information browsing.

"We have all seen how platforms can be good for the advertiser or the publisher, but rarely for the reader," LoGioco said. "The advertising is in a non-disruptive format, and it leverages authentic brand endorsements. We are being very honest and open with bloggers and publishers."

The target for the "Sponsored but good" program won't be for direct marketers, and it won't be self-serve. Bloggers can opt in to receiving revenue from the program, and can remove specific sponsored links, once registered with Outbrain, and use what they call a link zapper to zap live sponsored recommendations. And if you think you're share of the revenue pie isn't going to impact your life, you can even choose to pass it off to charity.

See Also: Coverage from CenterNetworks, Mashable and VentureBeat.

Omniture Announces Developer APIs, iPhone Integration

By Jesse Stay of Stay N' Alive (Twitter/FriendFeed)

I am at the Omniture Annual Summit in Salt Lake City, Utah watching Josh James, CEO and founder of Omniture, deliver the first keynote for the conference. Some fascinating and useful things have been announced, but perhaps the most significant was their announcement of a developer platform around the Omniture analytics and marketing suite. The platform, called the Omniture Developer Connection, aims to give a single point for developers to connect, learn, and showcase the applications they develop.

From their recent press release:

"Omniture Developer Connection further opens up the Omniture platform, giving developers new levels of flexibility to create, and integrate with, applications that leverage Omniture data to optimize online business," said John Mellor, EVP of Strategy and Business Development at Omniture. "With approximately one trillion transactions measured each quarter, our customers are sitting on a tremendous resource of information and we are committed to rapidly expanding the ecosystem of applications available to help them drive value from that resource."

In addition to the platform, Omniture has released a series of sample applications, including a Wordpress plugin for tracking Blog traffic, and even more significant, a SOAP API for the iPhone so iPhone developers can communicate via SOAP within their applications, including interfacing and bringing live analytics and tracking into their iPhone applications. Omniture puts it this way:

"One notable omission in the iPhone SDK is the lack of a Web Services framework like WebServicesCore from the OSX SDK. Given the iPhone’s emphasis on online connectivity, it is at least surprising that there is no native framework stack for SOAP web services. So, what’s a developer to do?"

Now, developers have full access to the vast storage of data given to publishers via Omniture, on mobile devices as just one opportunity. Omniture, with over 5,000 customers, 5 of the top media companies, 6 of the top 10 retailers, 4 of the top 5 banks, 4 of the top 5 travel companies, and boasts 250,000 transactions per second, is the very definition of mainstream analytics. Now you will see sites such as Best Buy, JetBlue, Walmart, and many more begin to make a presence on the iPhone and more as they will now be able to track their presence on these mobile devices.

With the release of this developer platform Omniture has just opened up a goldmine of data around Site Analytics, and every developer has access to this information. Mobile and Social Analytics have just hit mainstream due to this platform, and will continue to strengthen due to companies like Omniture opening up their platforms to this data.

All developer APIs and documentation can be found at https://developer.omniture.com/.

Read more by Jesse Stay at Stay N' Alive.

TweetDeck: You Autocomplete Me (And User Names as Well)

TweetDeck's debut was a big one in terms of introducing a new way to absorb even the most active of Twitter accounts, through a column-based AIR desktop application, and the addition of groups, which let you break the stream down into smaller chunks. And last week, we talked about its addition of automatic translation and more. But developer Iain Dodsworth can make small updates as well.

The next iterative release of TweetDeck, which you can snag here, adds the ability to autocomplete Twitter user names any time you type "D" for a direct message, or an @ anywhere in the tweet.


Immediately, a small box will pop up and with the more letters you type, TweetDeck will display all that fit the string. It doesn't just look for first letters either, so if you type 'gray', you'll get @louisgray, not just all names that start with @gray, for instance.

See Iain's video below:

If you're sending a tweet to a friend whose name you type often, the autocomplete might actually slow you down, but if you're unsure on the spelling, or it's a long name, TweetDeck has found yet another way to enhance your Twitter experience. It will be included in the next full TweetDeck release if you're not the type to play with early builds.

It's Not That I'm Addicted, But I Just Can't Stop Playing iShoot.

Growing up, I wasn't one to play with Army men, GI Joes and shoot toy guns. I didn't play tank and make up elaborate war fantasies that involved bombing and artillery. I don't own a gun and I've never even considered being a member of the NRA. Practically the only regular games that involved violence in my youth were when my brother and I would sit down for a game of Contra on the old 8-Bit NES. But I've found the highly popular and already much-documented iShoot for the iPhone one silly app I can't put away.

The play is simple, a good thing when it comes to iPhone games, as I've mentioned before when covering Crazy Frog and Booty Blocks, for example. You are in combat with 1 to 3 other tanks, and blow each other to smithereens using weapons you have purchased. The goal is to be the last tank standing after you've cleared the screen of your enemies, having measured your shots by angle and force, adjusting for wind speed and terrain, of course.


Up to Four Tanks Can Battle On Picturesque Backgrounds
I remember playing a similar two-player game on old green screen Apple IIs, but iShoot is, despite its simplicity, much more involved. You'll get to learn which ammunition is most desired, when to move your tank to get a better shot, or whether it ever makes sense to toss up a wall of dirt to block others from taking you out.


Play Long Enough and You Can Rack Up Weapons
The game ranges in multiple levels, from Easy to Extreme. Easy is fun if you need to get acquainted, but you will want to try Extreme and see what it is like to fight when the tanks practically never miss and have you in their sights. And if you've mastered the ability to win in five rounds, ten rounds, or fifteen, and want to start flinging Shiva Bombs around as casually as you would Mortars (play the game and see what I'm talking about), you'll want to try the infinite round mode and just keep blasting away.


Not to Mention Domination Of Your Opponents
You know it's an interesting game when Nuke, which can kill you with one massive shot, isn't even nearly the most sought-after weapon. If well placed, my Shiva Bomb can take out three tanks with one blow. So far, 191 rounds into this massive iShoot-a-thon, I've killed 361 tanks, and lead in "Wins" 88 to 32, over the second highest competition. I don't know if I'll stop after 200 rounds. Maybe it will be 250 or 500. But there's a real reason why Ethan Nicholas has racked up more than a half-million dollars from the application, including $37,000 in one day. It's fun!


Don't Just Shoot - Shoot to Kill.
You can get it yourself, if you haven't already, for only 3 bucks, at the iTunes App Store. Also, there is an iShoot Lite, but don't be so cheap - get the real one. Seriously.

What's Growing Faster? Software Bloat or PC Capabilities?

There is an old adage in the storage business. No matter how large you make the hard disk, users will find a way to fill it. The same seems true in the bandwidth and networking business - build a bigger pipe, and customers will find applications that use it up. The same concept extends to me as a consumer, for my traditional software experience. While my laptop is tremendously more capable than its predecessors of 2, 5 or 10 years ago, it sure doesn't seem like the software loads any more quickly, and I still find myself closing applications or forcing them to quit when the whole thing grinds to a halt.

Back in late 1998 after I got a first-generation iMac, complete with a then-acceptable 32 megabytes of RAM and a 4 gigabyte hard disk, I marveled at the gargantuan install needed for the latest version of Microsoft Office. I remember specifically telling a friend to just wait... as the next one would take more than a gigabyte of space. Sure enough, that's practically accepted, and now, it's not too uncommon to see downloads, and even software updates, that are in the hundreds of megabytes.

But the issue is less about capacity and more about the perception of speed. Yes, my laptop can do more than its forefathers. It can do new things with the Web and with video that were never before possible. But booting Microsoft Office, Adobe PhotoShop, FireFox and other products still manages to slow down my system to a crawl. It's gotten to the point that I've even eliminated possible reasons for the slowdown. I hardly ever boot into VMware Fusion any more, to run Microsoft Outlook. I stopped using an external monitor at work, and try to recharge my iPhone only when I don't need full use of my MacBook Pro. And that doesn't even extend to other RAM and processor hungry apps, like one of my personal favorites, TweetDeck.

For whatever reason, it seems that software developers have, for the most part, chosen to add features, and not optimize for speed. I don't think it took more time to boot Microsoft Word 5.1 on my old Performa than it takes to boot Microsoft Word 2008 on my MacBook Pro, even if the Megahertz speed on the processor has increased from 33 MHz to 2.2 GHz, and the RAM from 24 Megabytes to 2 Gigabytes. And lest you think I'm picking on Microsoft, Apple's iPhoto has also been a slow to load memory hog in its own right.

If somebody told me ten years ago that I could increase my processor speed by 1,000 percent, and my RAM by about the same amount, I would have expected to be able to hit "Select All" on my Applications folder and then "Open" to run them all at once. But there's no way. At this point, even with my current machine, I probably can run Mail, iTunes, a Web browser and one more application without slowness. Add one or two more apps to the mix, and we're in spinning wheel city.

In one my recent tirades against how often my machine was slowing down, I heard the all too common reply: "Time for a new one?" but the answer should be no. It's time the pace of the treadmill whereby hardware needs to speed up to handle the new software should slow. Get it to work, and get it to work fast. Please.

You Don't Have 5,000 Facebook Friends, But You're Impacted Anyway

While rumors say that Mark Zuckerberg and the Facebook team will open up the network's friend limits in 2009, eliminating the often controversial 5,000 friend ceiling, a good number of highly visible people have found their engagement on the network capped, giving away friend connections on what's essentially a "first come, first serve" basis. If you're friend 5,001, you're out of luck, even if, in theory, you provide more value than friend #398 and #2,423 do. And before you say you're in no danger of ever reaching this cap (as I am not either), it turns out that Facebook's limits have something of a trickle-down effect on other networks.

Major reasons Facebook's limits have legs include:

• Fewer contacts to sync with other networks.
• Reduced exposure to evangelists.
• Reduced visibility of the friend's friends.
• A good number of people with an actual need for more friend or business connections.

This morning, we discussed the impact of the network's limits on FriendFeed, which, by the way, has no limits to how many people you can follow or who can follow you.

See: Facebook's 5,000 Friend Limit Has a Ripple Effect Across Social Networks

FriendFeed as a Productivity Tool

By Ken Stewart of ChangeForge (Twitter/FriendFeed)

FriendFeed, a content and conversation aggregation service, remains under fire by many who feel it is too much of one thing and not enough of another. They often draw parallels to the micro-blogging service Twitter, and how "easy to use" that service is as compared with FriendFeed.

As with any service that contains options, the ease of understanding the varied nuances of how to apply a service, like FriendFeed, is often hard to absorb. Even Allen Stern of CenterNetworks feels the service is simply too confusing. However, those who have seen the potential FriendFeed offers have taken to the service like a duck to water.

One complaint you might make would be the service is difficult for beginners, in that they have to grapple with not only how to use the service, but how to be included in the conversation. Even with this being potentially true, those of us with bustling online lives need a way to collect our various life streams from the many disparate services.

FriendFeed accommodates this very well.

But as a productivity tool, can FriendFeed hold water? Many come to the service and liken it to happy hour, with rampant memes, cuddly kittens, and of course babies galore! These uses simply illustrate just how flexible the platform really is.

The Tools:

With tools like search, lists and rooms, FriendFeed has much at its disposal to help you organize what interests you. I make heavy use of lists to help me discover things that interest me. Another great tool are rooms.

Options abound with rooms, as you might expect from a flexible service such as FriendFeed. To get more or less an idea of just what rooms are, think of a large open office space. Rooms would be like the cubicles that your erect to help segment the various departments, personnel, and roles; it's quite easy to peek your head above your divider and see the busy happenings of the FriendFeed participants, and then simply sit back down to focus on where you were.

Rooms have several options starting with the basic settings of name, nickname, description, and permissions. They extend out to being able to manage members and even import sites and services just like you would expect under your main feed. With a few quick clicks you can be ready to roll in minutes.

Many start rooms around a given topic or to serve a specific purpose. Some may be fun and some have a more serious tone. But have you thought about using a room as a productivity tool?

I quickly found that the FriendFeed room platform allowed me to create, link, and import a range of ideas relating to my blog - much like a miniature editorial calendar. I could share and elicit comments from those on my team, and with a tagging schema I could easily search on just about anything:

• [Link] - for links
• Post Idea: - for posts
• Posted: - for posted articles
• [Discuss] - for discussion threads

This one simple application of FriendFeed rooms helped me maintain some sanity in my busy life and keep my blog ideas separate from the rest of my work life - a necessity in my life at the moment. While this tool won't replace other productivity tools elsewhere in my life, it offers a nice landing strip for ideas for a person that spends a lot of time on FriendFeed already.

---

Ken Stewart’s blog, ChangeForge.com, focuses on the collision between the constantly changing worlds of business and technology. To connect with Ken, you may visit him at DandyID.

---

I'm Not Using Brightkite, and It Has Zero to Do With Privacy, Security

Sometimes, I bump into the occasional person who thinks we are too transparent online. How could I possibly expose my phone number and e-mail address to people? And isn't there some risk to talking about my twins online, knowing I live in Sunnyvale, California, and revealing their real first and last names? But I haven't acquiesced. I prefer being transparent and responsive to inquiries from practically anyone. That said, I haven't taken the next step, to provide updates to where I am at all times, through services like BrightKite.

Rob Diana, earlier this week, discussed how location-based services are growing in popularity, as evidenced by the recent addition of the option to include such data in GMail. (See: You Don't Need To Know Where This Rant Was Written) But as much as I would like to raise the flag of privacy or security, and go on my own rant about how it's none of your business where I am, the truth is that pretty much the only reason I haven't installed BrightKite is because of how predictable and dreadfully boring my updates would be - thanks to our consistent routine.

Can you imagine?

Wednesday

Louis checked in @ the office.
Louis checked in @ lunch.
Louis checked in @ home.

Thursday

Louis checked in @ the office.
Louis checked in @ lunch.
Louis checked in @ Safeway.
Louis checked in @ home.

Friday

Louis checked in @ the office.
Louis checked in @ lunch.
Louis checked in @ home.

Saturday

Louis checked in @ the barber shop.
Louis checked in @ the gas station.
Louis checked in @ home.

Sunday

Louis checked in @ church.
Louis checked in @ home.

Yeah... it's that bad. As you can imagine, since Matthew and Sarah debuted in June, we're not getting out much. And it's not like we were really getting out all that much before - as you can probably tell with all the blogging, FriendFeeding and Tweeting. BrightKite and other services might have been more interesting during my trip to Boulder, Colorado, but even my trip to Las Vegas from Sunday through Wednesday would have been mind-numbing:

Sunday

Louis checked in @ Las Vegas International Airport
Louis checked in @ the Excalibur

Monday
Louis checked in @ Kinkos
Louis checked in @ the Excalibur

Wednesday

Louis checked in @ Las Vegas International Airport

I kid you not. That's what it would be like. Sometimes, I'll peek at the BrightKites from folks I know, like Micah Baldwin, but even his life seems more varied than my own. Maybe I should look into getting a very minor version of BrightKite to liven it up a bit:

Saturday

Louis checked in @ the couch
Louis checked in @ the fridge
Louis checked in @ the kids' bedroom
Louis checked in @ the TV
Louis checked in @ the couch
Louis checked in @ the fridge

Or... not. So... Corvida said on February 4 that Google Latitude is Viral Marketing for Brightkite, but for someone who is so dull, why would I even look at using this product? Teach me.

Twickie Lets You Post All Your Twitter Replies to Your Blog

Just a few years ago, one could safely assume the majority of blogging conversations took place on the blog itself. Today, the conversation has been fractured, not just in terms of having comments on your blog posts on any number of aggregation sites, but also, of course, on microblogging services, like Twitter. So far, attempts to bring back replies and conversation to your blog from Twitter have been awkward. A new program, called Twickie, hosted on Chris Pirillo's domain, does the hard work of finding your replies and delivering you the necessary HTML, letting you bring your responses back to the blog in an easy way.

To start on the site, enter your Twitter name and password, find the Tweet you want to copy over, and then click the button labeled "Get @s". Pick the up arrow to get descending replies, and the down arrow to see them ascending.

Then, choose the HTML or CSS code and copy it into your post. Done. For example:

jordanwillms: wild eh? But I suppose an active follow is better than a random click thru on a traditional banner ad. Your perspective?

about 2 days ago

Thu Feb 12 01:55:07 +0000 2009

dcfemella: That's crazy.

about 2 days ago

Thu Feb 12 01:57:11 +0000 2009

jeffsonstein: a very strange revenue source. amazed at the public ego required to pay for that.

about 2 days ago

Thu Feb 12 02:01:50 +0000 2009

billso: Paying for placement seems like a great way to attract #419ers and #spammers .

about 2 days ago

Thu Feb 12 02:02:22 +0000 2009

stanleyyork: you use to have to pay for gmail? re: http://ff.im/118oa

about a day ago

Thu Feb 12 12:56:54 +0000 2009

tandriamirado: Liked "People are paying $500 _a week_ to be featured on TwitterCounter, and have their #'s go up. Insane...." http://ff.im/118oa

about a day ago

Thu Feb 12 13:02:17 +0000 2009

tandriamirado: I prefer to never be a Social Media super star than paying for it (cheating)! Even if Soc. Meds lead for business opportunities.

about a day ago

Thu Feb 12 13:07:30 +0000 2009

Copy. Paste. Done! That's it! Check it out at: http://twickie.pirillo.com/

TechBlips Puts Me Under the Spotlight

When Future US purchased the BallHype and ShowHype properties, there were questions in some corners of the blogosphere in terms of what the company had planned - and if they had overspent. When lacking details, many people tend to jump to the conclusion that there are no plans at all, but in the ensuing months, Future US has stepped on the accelerator in terms of rolling out new vertically-focused communities, covering everything from gadgets and Macintosh, to general tech, marketing, politics and even Wall Street.

TechBlips, the 12th property to be rolled out by the same team behind the "Hype" properties focuses on tech Web sites, big and small. Speaking of small, they made an effort to reach out to me, and delivered a solid Q&A profile, posted to the site this afternoon.

In the post, Douglas C. Perry, who sent me the questions, and does a great job in his intro, we talk about how louisgray.com got started, what sites I read every day, reactions from friends and coworkers, how I use Twitter, and why I blog in the first place, how I make time to do it, and some of my favorite stories. You can find the article here: TechBlips Spotlight on Louis Gray.

As I mentioned yesterday, it's a very unusual thing, still, for me to get the opportunity to speak up, but I very much appreciate TechBlips' interest, and the effort to put the piece together. They also have a very interesting site, much like Digg but with actual class and focus.

And if you like the interview, check out some similar pieces from the past:

Mark Evans: Who’s Louis Gray?
Scribkin: I AM BLOGGER: LOUIS GRAY

Christian Science Monitor Covers Twitter's Secret

Twitter hasn't just captured the imagination of the tech blogosphere. Even as debates rage whether to cover every little third-party service that interacts with the service, or every minor service update, more mainstream media is starting to recognize the service's potential - taking Twitter out of our little echo chamber world, and into the national consciousness. It's gotten so I'm not just getting bombarded by questions about Twitter online, but from friends and family as well. Last week, I was approached by Gregory Lamb, Staff Writer for The Christian Science Monitor, who wanted to talk about whether Twitter had gone mainstream, if it was worth $250 million, and even if it would be supplanted by more advanced tools, such as FriendFeed.

Lamb's article posted this morning, titled, "Twitter’s secret: the law of unintended consequences".

While I've gotten more used to fellow bloggers referencing my posts over the last year or two, getting the attention of such a respected paper as the CS Monitor is humbling. Lamb and I talked for only 10 minutes or so last week, as I walked with Erin Kontecki Vest and Micah Baldwin to our meeting at Lijit headquarters. Luckily, I was able to prove I can both talk and walk at the same time.

Quotes worth noting include the pair below:

"Charging a fee to use Twitter isn’t likely. 'Anytime you have a service that is free, customers are going to expect it to stay free,' Mr. Gray says. Advertising would seem to be a logical next step (Twitter has no ads now), but other social networks have found that users find them intrusive."

Twitter is a “disruptive” technology because it is in “real time,” Gray says. With blogging, “there’s still a lag between when they post and [when] you get it…. If you want to find out something that is happening immediately, the place to go is Twitter and not Google anymore. And that’s revolutionary. And that’s why Google, in my opinion, should be watching this closely.”

So... did I get it wrong? Would you pay for Twitter, and should Google not be all that scared of Twitter's growth as part of the real-time Web?

Whether you agree or disagree with my comments, I am glad to see some of the leaders of Web 2.0 surviving and thriving - poised on the verge of breaking out. And Gregory, thanks for reaching out to me. Appreciate it.

I Just Marked All Facebook Ads as Offensive. So Should You.

The world is still looking for a better way to target customers with ads and products they want to actually learn more about. And the world will have to continue looking, if the offerings on Facebook are any indication. On the rare time I am logging in to the site instead of setting up roost on FriendFeed, Twitter or LinkedIn, I am amused to annoyed by the stupid ads that have absolutely nothing to do with anything I would be interested in - from meeting other singles (not single) to losing weight (unless it involves bacon and donuts) and getting my share of the government's stimulus package.

Facebook, like many other sites, is desperate to bridge the gap from traffic to revenue and profits. Usually that entails filling all available non-content space with ads. And often, that means the filtering process on said ads is beyond miserable.


So today, I had enough, and marked all the ads I saw on Facebook as "offensive", as they let you do. But each time I marked one as offensive, a new one popped up. It was a virtual electronic game of whack-a-mole, only it looks like nobody won.

I'm all in favor of seeing ads for things I might be interested in - new tech, sports or political books from Amazon... CDs from artists I like. Apple or TiVo products... you name it. But the run of site crap is just that.

So if you want to send a message about how the ads offend you, if they do, then say so. Facebook will know the difference.


Oh... and I think it was probably a coincidence that Facebook started to go "on maintenance" after my ads feedback. Or was it?

You Don't Need To Know Where This Rant Was Written

By Rob Diana of Regular Geek (Twitter/FriendFeed)

Location-based services are all the rage. Mobile computing allows people to work from anywhere. Now, with GMail's new location based signature labs feature, people will know where you were working. Wow! This is fantastic! Now, anyone I e-mail will know that I am working from home or even at the beach! If you can not read the sarcasm, then let me tell you that I just do not understand why we need this. Thankfully, I am not alone in this feeling.

Svetlana Gladkova of Profy worries because email one of the few places you can still hide from people.

"Of course you certainly don’t have to use this feature and since it is in Labs you should be pretty determined to share your location with anyone you send emails to in order to activate it. But experience shows that the ideas that are born at Google first will eventually turn into wildly popular and used applications that many people will rely on for whatever purposes they may and this will make it much more difficult to hide behind your e-mail address in the future."

Even ReadWriteWeb's coverage questions why people would want to use it.

"Why would you want to do this? Maybe you want to highlight your jetsetting lifestyle. Maybe you want to remind the recipient that you're in a different time zone. Or you might just want to use it as a mnemonic device for searching sent e-mail based on the location from where it was sent."

Google is obviously making a very big move into location-based services. They recently launched Latitude, their location sharing service. Their are other location sharing services as well. Brightkite and Loopt seem to be the most popular or at least the most hyped. The real question is why do people feel that sharing their location is helpful?

I can understand that people may want to know who is currently in their city or who lives in the same general location, but that information can typically be found through most social networks or the social event and travel sites like Upcoming and Dopplr.

So, why do we need to know who is near at every moment? Outside of the coolness factor, what problem do these services solve? I can understand that UPS may want to know where their trucks are, but that can be solved using basic GPS hardware and applications. What benefit do people really get by knowing where people in their network may be in their town? I just do not get it, but maybe I am just being too practical.

Image by onebutan-iphone
Read more by Rob Diana at RegularGeek.com.

TweetDeck to Add Translations, Tweets by E-mail, StockTwits

TweetDeck has rapidly climbed the charts of popular Twitter clients since its debut last July, and with new capital backing, developer Iain Dodsworth continues to add more features to make the product practically indispensable. In the latest update, to debut tomorrow, Dodsworth adds new features that will help you communicate with a global audience, in multiple languages, monitor stock data, and even send your tweets by e-mail. And just think, this is one of Iain's minor point releases, not a major update - which is also in the works.

TweetDeck, as you recall, is a popular AIR application, easily recognizable by its tight multi-column format, which lets you follow all your Twitter data, be it updates from friends, replies, direct messages, search terms and groups. In fact, the success of TweetDeck has spawned different software products to emulate its interface, including FriendDeck, a tool for following FriendFeed, and most recently, Alert Thingy.

Tomorrow's iteration includes the ability to translate tweets you have both received or written into any of nearly 3 dozen languages. If you want to tweet outside of your native language, simply write your tweet in TweetDeck, click the dual-bubbled conversation bubble on the right, and select a language. A few example translations of my "I am not a Twitter addict, but I can see how that would happen." are below.

French: Je ne suis pas un accro à Twitter, mais je peux voir comment cela allait se passer.
German: Ich bin kein Twitter Süchtigen, aber ich kann sehen, wie das passieren würde.
Italian: Io non sono un tossicodipendente Twitter, ma posso vedere in che modo che accada.
Polish: Nie jestem uzależniony Twitter, ale widzę, że jak by się stało.
Vietnamese: Tôi không phải là một Twitter addict, nhưng tôi có thể nhìn thấy như thế nào mà có thể xảy ra.

Also, as not everyone is yet a Twitter addict, you might find yourself wanting to share items from Twitter to friends by e-mail. Now, using TweetDeck, you can mouse over any individual tweet, click "Other Actions", and select e-mail, which will pop open your default e-mail program, and set up an e-mail that says "Tweet forwarded by @yourusername", and includes the Twitter user, the tweet itself, and a little note: "Sent via TweetDeck (www.tweetdeck.com). You can see Iain demonstrate the e-mail from TweetDeck function below on video:


Click to see a demo from Iain Dodsworth
(Opens in a New Window)
You can also translate or untranslate individual tweets from this "Other Actions" menu.

Another interesting function to debut tomorrow is the ability to turn your TweetDeck into a full-fledged StockTwits terminal, showing your Friends, Portfolio, Recommended, Commentary and Everyone columns. If you are a StockTwits user, and have added stocks to your portfolio, you can see what the entire StockTwits community is saying, be it on AAPL, YHOO, GOOG or MSFT. See the screenshot below for what mine looks like (sans friends) following just Apple, Google and Sirius Radio.


The updated point release will hit TweetDeck.com tomorrow. If you're someone who skips point releases and wants a full update, you'll need to keep waiting, but I've been told it's not all that far away. Expect Iain to tackle major issues such as memory, multiple accounts and more then.

Tweetmeme Adds Leaderboard, Tag Clouds to Tweet Links Tracker

As Twitter grows in use, so grows its influence, and the total number of times the most popular items are shared and retweeted from user to user. As with Techmeme, Digg, RSSmeme and other sites that try to find the most interesting shares of the day based on user votes, Tweetmeme crawls the vast Twitter network and watches for frequently popular shared links, images and blogs. (See our initial coverage in July.)

Today,Tweetmeme expanded its offering with a pair of new features aimed at making the site more sticky. The first is a tag cloud, which analyzes the shared content, finding other words that Twitter users have included in their tweets, and displaying them below the items in their "popular links" page. The second is a leaderboard, which highlights those Twitter accounts which have most frequently been the first to share the most popular links.


In terms of determining influence and popularity, you've always seen a push/pull between enabling a gatekeeper with the power to move items up and down, and letting the crowd decide. Tweetmeme believes solely in the crowd - even featuring the total number of times the item was shared. Today's top shares are in the 400 to 600 range through all of Twitter.


Accounts on the leaderboard aren't much of a surprise - including RSS feeds for TechCrunch, Digg, popurls and ReadWriteWeb, for example. Additionally, the cloud below each item is tempting to click, but not functional. In theory, it'd be good to click on an item in the tag cloud and see other shared links that have the same tags. Maybe that's coming, but it's not yet here.

You can catch up on the most popular items, as determined by Twitter, at http://tweetmeme.com/.

Outbrain Gets Five Stars (And $12 Million) in Round B

While venture capital is said to be very expensive these days, hard to obtain, and with questionable potential returns given a closed market for public offerings and multiples for mergers and acquisitions, companies on the periphery of blogging appear to still be hot. We saw Auttomatic acquire Intense Debate late last year. You also remember strong funding rounds for my personal favorites, Lijit and Disqus, who are adding strong search and commenting functionality to sites like mine. Now, you can add Outbrain to the list, following this morning's announcement the company scored a $12 million round to expand its blog rating and recommendation platform.

Now, before you cry foul and ask where the money is in such a little widget, as is tempting, you can read between the lines in today's release to see that Outbrain has bigger plans - ones they no doubt shared with their VC partners, and not necessarily with me.

Outbrain is talking less about a widget, and more about finding great content across the Web. As one VC partner said, "Finding great content is getting both more difficult and more important... Outbrain's personalized recommended links offer great value to readers by combining their collective wisdom..."

If you think about it, Lijit and Outbrain are solving similar issues, from different angles. Lijit scours your personal blog and your social network of approved sites to find content you are searching for. Outbrain analyzes your individual posts, your previous blog entries and other blogs in their network to provide recommendations of what to read next. Both are useful, and both are getting traction. And it's good to see that good ideas are going to be rewarded, even when times are more difficult.

Sirius Radio Now Looks Like an Outer Space WebVan

WebVan's debut in the 1990s as a way to order groceries online and have them shipped to your home or business sounded like a fantastic way to leverage the power of the Web. But as we all know now, the costs of deploying expensive, expansive warehouses in many metropolitan areas, not to mention the costs of delivery and promotion, were way beyond what was sustainable. Hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital, not to mention stock holders after the firm went public, went up in smoke, as the company spiraled into bankruptcy.

The idea may have been ahead of its time or just poorly implemented, but it stands as a tragic example of where hope came ahead of logic. And now we're seeing it again - with all the news around Sirius XM Radio's potentially filing for bankruptcy, after the struggling satellite radio company found that slowed growth in the face of lower native car installations, competition from iPod/iTunes/iPhone, and the inability to pay massive accumulated debt, have combined to make the current plan unsustainable.

And again we have what looked like a very cool idea, costing billions of dollars to deploy, on the brink of failure. And again, we see shareholders who believed in the idea, ahead of the reality, getting wiped out. In what's already been a horrific last year for the stock market, Sirius' freefall has been notable - especially considering it's not involved in banking or real estate.

A few months ago, in a podcast with Wayne Sutton and Kipp Bodnar, I said we "knew" Sirius would pull through because it had a compelling offering, and that threats to its business were overblown. Boy, was I wrong. I may have been looking forward to getting Sirius Radio with my next car, whenever that happened, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen any sooner than my dialing up WebVan for some eggs and milk.

Suffering from BeOS Nostalgia? The Haiku Project Can Help.

In 1996, Apple was in freefall and the Macintosh was in trouble. As many Mac fans clung to their Performas and PowerBooks in vain, we prayed for a savior to swoop in and save the Cupertino company from what at the time seemed like certain doom. And before Steve Jobs and Next came in to provide Apple with its next generation operating system, there was a different white knight we expected to keep up the fight against Microsoft and Windows. The white knight was the Be operating system, and its founder, Jean-Louis Gasée. As history now shows, Apple's not choosing Be pretty much killed the OS and the company - as it faded into operating system history, alongside Amiga and others whose time has come and gone. But for its time, it had some intriguing features, which live on in the Haiku Project, which you can try out today.


Inspired by the BeOS, Haiku looks almost exactly like the older operating system, featuring the trademark yellow tabs atop floating windows, featuring a Linux-like terminal, and true multi-threading to take advantage of multiple processors.


And the Haiku project is more than a series of intriguing screenshots. You can actually run the project today, by downloading a virtual image from their Web site, popping into VMware, with or without a full set of applications, from Mail to Firefox to a PDF viewer and a Paint application.


I downloaded the VMware image with the latest nightly build, and sure enough... 1996 all over again. But it wasn't an OS running on a Zip Drive on a 603 or 604 processor. It was a virtual machine running on my MacBook Pro. Quick. Fast. Elegant. Not very useful, of course, but an interesting science project. It works.

So if you want to toy around with an elegant OS and you want to kick the tires or just scratch that nostalgia itch, check out Haiku. See also: OS News: BeOS Lives: Haiku Impresses.

BackType Adds FriendFeed Support to Comments Tracker

BackType, the one-stop destination to track comments by people you follow, across the Web, has announced a big addition today, with the integration of comments from FriendFeed, the popular social aggregator. And before I get the usual smattering of comments labeling me a FriendFeed fanboy, recognize that companies and individuals are looking to find out where topics and products are being discussed on the Web, no matter where they are. With the strong growth of FriendFeed, Twitter and other social services, BackType's extension to include the service is logical.

BackType, as you likely already know, offers not just the ability to follow people (like me) on the site, but you can also set up keyword alerts to get updates by e-mail when the topics are mentioned in comments online, and you can even see trends of these keywords over time.

Since signing up for FriendFeed about 16 months ago, I've logged nearly 8,000 comments (about 500 a month, apparently), so for BackType to tap into this rich content archive will be beneficial, not just for the FriendFeed power users, but for those who want to improve the monitoring of social media. BackType, one of my favorite new services of 2008, has stepped up its game and gotten even more useful. You can follow my activity on BackType here: http://www.backtype.com/louisgray.

OurStory Back from the Dead With New Business Model, Ownership

By Jesse Stay of Stay N' Alive (Twitter/FriendFeed)

On Friday, I had the opportunity to meet with a rather interesting client to talk about their social archiving and timeline product they had recently purchased. The 2007 Demo-award winning company, OurStory.com, has been revived under new management and ownership, and they've come up with a more focused business model to support the service in tough economic times. The company, which you may have seen reported previously in the news on sites such as VentureBeat and InfoWorld, sold to a Utah-based company for an undisclosed sum. The new management vows to take much of the existing features from before, while adding premium features and other targeted partnerships to ensure the site survives and grows in the hands of the new owners.

Sam Peery, the new CEO, told me in response to what they're doing different from previous management, "As far as a business model change, we aren't doing anything they didn't try, but we're focusing more on the Freemium model." OurStory's new VP of Business development, Jason Parker, added that, "A main shift compared to our predecessors is that we're taking a specific aim at sharing our technology with other sites which have an audience who could use and appreciate our story telling, sharing and storing capability...Anyone in the wedding, funeral, genealogy, or scrapbooking world can benefit from our technology."

What is OurStory?

OurStory is a Social archival and timeline tool that seeks to allow you to document yours', and others' lives in a nice, streamlined, and easy manner for you, your friends, or your family to contribute, edit, collaborate, and view together. The site focuses everything around its timeline, which goes back to any date in time and allows you to create "stories" around any particular date in history.

I tried it on myself, and was able to create my own timeline for free, add my date of birth, and write an entire story around it, adding pictures, either from my own computer hard drive, or through a simple Flickr search. I could then invite my Mom to contribute to the story and add her own version of my birth date.

In addition to stories, I can add pictures to any piece of the timeline from my hard drive or integrated search right from Yahoo image search or Flickr. Authenticating with either service, selecting the photo, and adding a date and description adds it immediately to my timeline. I can do the same with videos.

One example given at Demo 2007 was the announcement of a birth. You could, for instance, share the birth of a child right on OurStory, share it out to your family and friends, and all of your friends and family's e-mail replies in congratulation would be stored right alongside the event on OurStory.com.

Easy Retrieval of Stored Data

One of my biggest concerns with services like this is how I can ensure I still own the data I store with them. One interesting service that OurStory provides is the ability, for a fee, to archive your entire timeline to a hard-copy book, or on a DVD for safe-keeping. In addition, each person's "story" is also available via RSS. In essence, you could use OurStory as your own personal blog and even share with those you give it permission to share with. OurStory is also working to partner with other vendors to aide in this archival and ownership process.

Privacy Groups

As a hardcore user and developer of Facebook, privacy is a big concern for me. One of the biggest strengths of Facebook is its privacy controls and friends lists. OurStory seeks to make this simple by allowing you to create your own friend groupings, and assign permissions to each story on which friend groups or family groups get to see each story. Or you can assign all as public and share with the world - it's your choice. This is something your mom, or Aunt, or Grandma would like, and you could all share securely with each other.

Question Sets

Another interesting feature of OurStory is their Question Sets. If I'm stumped for something to write about in my life, I can select from pre-defined questions other OurStory users have defined, or create one myself, and ask my friends or family. I tried the question, "What is the first CD, Cassette or Album you remember buying?" and quickly learned that Louis Gray has very similar music history to myself. The best thing is that it added his story right into his own timeline, and allowed me to add it to my own as well.

The Future

OurStory is still breaking out of its shell at the moment, but it is very usable, and one of the most feature-rich solutions for recording your life history out there at the moment. Currently, with the premium features you can add multiple timelines for different people (for instance, I could create a life story for Abraham Lincoln) among other nice features. I'm told there's a way to forward an e-mail to the service and have it automatically record the contents of the e-mail to your life story, similar to the likes of Evernote, or even Posterous, assuming you wanted to use it as a blogging platform.

I fully expect them to branch out into the Social Networking arena soon, but we'll see where they go. They have had a Facebook app in the past and I hope to see that too make a comeback. They also tell me they just signed a contract with ScanDigital, a photo scanning service, which will allow you to integrate your scanned photos and media into their service for easy organizational and sharing purposes, along with allowing users to tell stories around them. They are also looking to be the backbone for other technologies that may be interested in such timeline-related story telling.

If you're looking for a new and creative way to tell "your story", I suggest you give them a try. This truly seems like a new Web 2.0 way of sharing your life story with your family and friends, and I think now, in this age of sharing your life everywhere you go, is the right time for it to blossom.

Read more by Jesse Stay at Stay N' Alive.

12 News Analysis Blips That Don't Warrant a Full Post

1. Real-time search (via Twitter, etc.) is complementary to Google search, not a replacement.
2. Facebook offering portable status updates is a feature, not a game-changer.
3. Alex Rodriguez is a cheater who is only sorry because he was caught, not because he used.
4. The Australian fires are horrific. So is seeing an ad prior to news covering the disaster.
5. Shocker: FriendFeed is not perfect. But it has more potential than people give it credit.
6. Apparently Micah Baldwin goes into strip clubs to study... economics.
7. Every piece of social software is jealous of TweetDeck.
8. Black History month or not, I'm a fan of Derrick, Corvida, Shey, Wayne Sutton & Bwana.
9. Mike Fruchter has extended his "Forty Elements of Social Media" post to a detailed slideshow.
10. Rumor has it that Google is laying off engineers. Matt Cutts is skeptical.
11. Step 1: Be named Fortune's best to work for. Step 2: cut 6 percent of staff.
12. Consensus on Mini-Microsoft revealing his face from under anonymity is that he shouldn't.

Of course, when I don't have enough time to cover it all, just follow along with my Google Reader Link Blog or see the updates on FriendFeed.

10 People To Follow On FriendFeed For The Month Of February

By Mike Fruchter of MichaelFruchter.com (Twitter/FriendFeed)

It's February, so it's also time for this months members on FriendFeed list to follow. As with the previous lists, which you can find below, this list highlights ten members on FriendFeed who I feel are unique in their own ways and add value to the community. Some of these names might be familiar faces, some might not. For those of you who have been around on the site for a while, you might already be subscribed to some of these members. With the exception of three to four people, I have been following most of these members since I joined FriendFeed, close to one year now. In previous lists, I never highlighted these members, so it's their turn now. You will also find some fresh faces on this list as well. There is a good chance the majority reading this are following me on FriendFeed, but if you're not, you're more than welcome to subscribe to me. As long as you add some value, and contribute to the community, I will usually sub back.

Previous FriendFeed members to follow lists can be found for the 2008 months of, July, September, November and December. The 2009 lists can be found for January.

1) Andy Brudtkuhl

Short Bio: Andy is the founder and chief web guru at 48Web, a small web startup in Des Moines, IA. Andy coaches and consults businesses on a broad range of solutions including internet marketing using social media, and search engine optimization. He formulates smart and effective web strategies to help businesses get going online. He is also a passionate blogger who blogs frequently about technology and social media. I have been following Andy on FriendFeed for close to a year now, and reading his blog for about the same. This guy is a smart thinker, and knows his stuff. This is someone I would feel confident and strong with in helping me formulate an effective online advertising and marketing campaign for my business. On FriendFeed he shares content ranging from social media, local news, tech and a little of everything else. You can always find something of interest on his feed at any given time.

What they find interesting: SEO, Tech, Web Design, Web 2.0, Social Media, Podcasting

FriendFeed: Subscribe | Blog:getanewbrowser.com

2) Anthony Farrior

Short Bio: Anthony has been in the computer field since 1999. During the day he provides desktop support services for the University of Penn Hospital. Anthony is a jack of all trades type. He is also an excellent freelance writer, previously writing for blackweb2.0 and thinkphillysports.com. Anthony has since started his own business, Solacetech LLC, which provides small businesses assistance with all facets of IT. He is Dell certified, strong with Windows and Linux, and can tackle any hardware/software/networking problem you throw at him. On top of all that, he blogs frequently on myphillynetwork.com about current news, technology, social media applications and whatever else comes to his mind. This guy keeps busy 24/7. Like Andy, I have been following Anthony on FriendFeed for close to a year. His feed is an eclectic mix of technology, social media, and current events.

What they find interesting: Technology, Social Media, Web 2.0, Hardware/Software

FriendFeed: Subscribe | Blog: myphillynetwork.com

3) Chris Charabaruk

Short Bio: Chris is a computer programmer with many years of development experience with games and open source projects. He is also an avid social media enthusiast. Chris hails from Pickering, Ontario, where in 2005 he co-founded the Toronto Independent Games Conference. TIGC provides educational and networking opportunities for game development professionals and those who would like to break into the game development industry. If you're looking for a talented, dedicated programmer, Chris is your go to guy. When I was playing games on my Commodore 64, Chris was writing code on it, enough said. Chris is very active on FriendFeed, and opinionated as well. If there is a technology or gaming thread going on, you can expect Chris to add his thoughts.

What they find interesting: Technology, Social Media, Gaming, Software Development

FriendFeed: Subscribe | Blog:coldacid.net

4) Derrick

Short Bio: Derrick is a coordinator in the film department at the Art Center College of Design, located in Pasadena, California. He is an avid writer, editor, blogger and bon vivant. Derrick is a popular and very creative FriendFeeder, a refreshing change from the social media side of FriendFeed where I happen to spend a majority of my time. On his feed there is always tons of likes and conversations ranging from food to Whitney Houston, to the evolution of Darwin's theory. If you're looking for the lighter side of FriendFeed, where people are conversating about things other than tech, head over to Derrick's feed, you won't be disappointed.

What they find interesting: Arts, Film, Food, Technology, Current Events, Humorous

FriendFeed: Subscribe | Blog:randomscreaming.com/blog

5) Joe Dawson

Short Bio: Joe provides product support at Barclays Clearlybusiness, located in the United Kingdom. Joe is another FriendFeeder who I have been following since I joined the site. This seems to be the common theme in this month's list. Joe is also an avid social media enthusiast. You can always count on Joe popping in on FriendFeed when he is not at work or spending time with his kids. Scanning his feed from time to time often leads to something I missed in my Google Reader. Joe's feed pretty much consists of technology and social media related content, and the occasional pictures of his kids. Who does not love kids? FriendFeed shouldn't be about business 24/7 all the time, yes I'm guilty of this, but I love random family and kids pictures as well.

What they find interesting: Social Media, Technology, Web 2.0

FriendFeed: Subscribe | Blog:joedawsons.com

6) Kipp Bodnar

Short Bio: Kipp is an account executive at Howard, Merrell & Partners, located in North Carolina. Kipp's background is in online public relations and web production including, Web site copy, podcasting scripts, blogging, and social media optimization. Kipp also co-hosts a weekly podcast at talksocialnews.com along with Wayne Sutton about news and innovations in social media.

What they find interesting: Marketing, Social Media, Social Networking, Web 2.0, Technology

FriendFeed: Subscribe | Blog:digitalcapitalism.com

7) Lindsay Donaghe

Short Bio: Lindsay currently works for GoDaddy.com as C# .Net Engineer. She has been a developer for over 14+ years, and is a true geek in terms of tech. Her first language is English, second is C#. She also has extensive graphic and user interface design experience. There is not much this girl can't do, and would make even the most techie of techs looks amateur. She is also married to Tad,who started the FriendFeed meme phenomenon and is technical wizard in his own right. Lindsay is a favorite to many on FriendFeed. She is very engaged in the community and very vocal, if she has an opinion she states it. Her feed runs the gamut from photography to current events, to odd and interesting content.

What they find interesting: Programing, Technology, Design, Web 2.0, Humorous

FriendFeed: Subscribe | Blog:macrolinz.com/macrolinz

8) Lu Tao

Short Bio: Lu is a product director at ChinaHR, China's leading job board which happens to be a Monster.com company. Lu is always in the background, often in stealth mode. When you least expect it, he strikes. Lu shares content relating to technology, marketing, global events and corporation related news. He is pretty much all business on FriendFeed, and that's fine with me. He is more of an active liker than conversation starter. When he likes something, it's usually a must see and or something that I shouldn't have missed.

What they find interesting: Technology, Online Recruiting, Marketing, Web 2.0, Statistics

FriendFeed: Subscribe

9) Shevonne

Short Bio: Shevonne is a freelance writer. She has been assisting private companies, government agencies, and non-profit organizations with their writing and editing needs. She has written government proposals and documentation for agencies such as the Department of State and the Homeland Security Institute. She keeps busy writing and being a mother of two children who are ages five and seven. Being a full time writer, it's a natural fit that she has a passion for movies and books, you can read her reviews here. She is highly active on FriendFeed and truly a great asset to the community.

What they find interesting: Art, Movies, Books, Writing, Technology, Variety

FriendFeed: Subscribe | Blog:dcfemella.com/blog

10) V Mary Abraham

Short Bio: Mary is a Lawyer who works for Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, a New York City law firm. She also practices and is a top resource for knowledge management. Mary is a sharp thinker and is in a league of her own. When she is not working on corporate and tax knowledge managements at work, you can find her discussing KM on her blog. Head over to her blog and be prepared to learn something new. She is also becoming more active on FriendFeed. She is a lawyer, she cant be spending all day on the site, but when she is on FriendFeed, she adds value and insight to the community. She also recently reached the one year mark for blogging, and is someone who is always willing to listen and learn new things, see not all lawyer's are evil.

What they find interesting: Knowledge Management, Law, Social Media, Technology

FriendFeed: Subscribe | Blog:aboveandbeyondkm.com

Read more by Mike Fruchter at MichaelFruchter.com.

I Fear I Can Only Burn the Candle From One End Now

Image via Dreamstime.com
Maybe I am finally getting old - or maybe the days of staying up until 2 and getting up at 6 day after day are finally catching up to me. Maybe it's the twins. But for whatever reason, I have found that getting up earlier than normal has much more of an impact on my system than having stayed up late the previous day - even if the total hours having slept in between are the same. I don't believe it is an issue of perception, and I don't believe it is an issue of personal preference, but it has most certainly happened.

On Thursday, I had a 7:15 flight out of San Jose to Denver to meet with Lijit, and as a result, I had set my alarm to spur me awake by 5, so I could be up and ready and packed and on my way. I slipped out of the house in the dark, winking at the kids as they, luckily for my wife, stayed asleep. And by that night, I was dragging. It might have been a factor of the high elevation, or a full day, but I was flagged by 10 - an unthinkable sin for my usual standards of uptime.

In contrast, the prior week, I had stayed up until 3:30 working on a writing project, and still managed to get up and get the family to church by 9 the next morning, with no downside, so far as I could tell. Had I instead opted to go to bed at midnight, and set the alarm for 4:30, to start the project, there is no doubt I would have been hitting the snooze bar enough times that I would have lost the opportunity.

After a high school job that had me working graveyard shift from 1:30 to 9:30 a.m. during the summers, and time at UC Berkeley spent as the online editor, when I would arrive as late as midnight, once the paper had gone to bed, posting through 4 a.m., and making morning classes, I just can't take the hit on the early side that I used to.

I've written about the issue of sleep, and how much of an impediment it is to my getting everything done. (See: Sleep Is a Waste Of Time and Insomnia - I Can't Get No Sleep)

The twins themselves are not really part of the problem any more. They, on a typical night, go to bed at 7:30 p.m. and wake up at 8 the following morning. It's perfect. And when Sarah woke up at midnight to 1 a.m. last night, I was delighted to get some one on one time. But had she woken up instead at 5:30 this morning, I'd have been bleary eyed and bitter for sure. While I recognize the change, and admit I probably need to plan on not carving into my mornings, I am fighting the change, as for me, it seems like a partial fail.

Twitter Announces OAuth Details, Hints At App Directory

By Jesse Stay of Stay N' Alive (Twitter/FriendFeed)

In an announcement on the Twitter developers mailing list today, Matt Sanford, a developer at Twitter who has been leading the efforts to integrate Twitter API with OAuth, announced details on how the new OAuth would work. In the announcement, he released a preview of documentation for the new OAuth methods, how developers would integrate using a sample Ruby on Rails application, and what developers would need to know to integrate.

Interestingly, the documentation also hints at other plans in Twitter's future as well. For instance, Sanford suggests users will be able to see what applications they have given access to and revoke that access. He also hints at a future catalog of applications and opportunity for developers registered within the API to be a part of that Catalog.

Announcement of such a catalog and authorization process has been speculated on for quite awhile now. It was mentioned as a possibility when I visited Twitter with Robert Scoble about a year ago. So seeing Twitter's plans to stick towards this path and continue towards this goal is welcome news to say the least. Also mentioned in the documentation is the suggestion that the basic auth API Twitter is using today will eventually be phased out.

Twitter plans to release the OAuth API to developers that are participating in the closed beta "by next week", and they have not announced a date it will open to the public yet. However with increased pressure to have better control over the applications that run on Twitter you can bet Twitter is now putting top priority on this particular issue.

Read more by Jesse Stay at Stay N' Alive.

Real Apple Fanboys Only Have Apple Watches

I make no apologies in terms of my Apple Mac fandom. Maybe it's the fact that I live 10 minutes from Cupertino, home base for what's arguably the world's most innovative computer company. Maybe it's because I'm stubborn and when I make a choice I stick to it. But whatever the reason, while my passion for their products can ebb and flow between product releases, I will never surrender my Apple fanboy card. And one of the most telling clues that I'm Steve Jobs disciple is worn on my wrist - every single day. You see... every single wristwatch I have sports the Apple logo. Two are the "Think Different" variety, with the numbers being presented in reverse order and the hands moving in counter-clockwise fashion. The other 4 are more traditional. Two are metal and the other two are leather banded.

In June of 2007, in a post for The Apple Blog, I gave Five Lesser-Known Tips on Being an Apple Fanboy. In that list, I said to "Present the Apple Logo in a Good Light", focusing primarily on how people use the sticker on their cars, but the same could extend to how you showcase the logo on the clothes you may wear, the watches you may have, or even how you position the product. A bad customer reference is no good - and know that as a Mac user, you are being watched at all times by curious PC drones who have always secretly wondered what it would be like "on the other side".


My Current Apple Watch Collection
My first Apple watch was the white face "Think Different" watch, which I ordered from Red Light Runner back in July of 2002, for a mere $49.95. The price for these increasingly-rare watches climbed to $79.95, $99.95, and later to nearly $200, before disappearing from the site, as well as its competition, at Missing Bite. But even as I knew my watch could score a few bills on eBay, I was not interested in selling, because to me, the value was more than a couple Benjamins.

The Apple logo watches may not all have the blessing of headquarters. One I got passed on from a former Apple employee who had been given it as an incentive award. Others I got from eBay or other sites. But even if they don't have the Cupertino seal of approval, I've gotten rid of all other watches. I can do without the databank watches from Casio, or the hipness of a Swatch, or the pretentiousness of Movado or Rolex. I don't need to do calculations with my watch, or peer at a compass, or convert units to military time. I just need to get the time, and promote a great brand while doing it. And just today, I took all the watches in for new batteries, and when needed, new bands - so they are in tip-top shape.

You've seen me be unequivocally promotional of sites and products I really like. But it was Apple that first won me over more than two decades ago, and it has been my single-longest obsession. You can get one of the few remaining available Apple watches out there and join the club by picking one up at Missing Bite for $59.95. There's no question in my mind it will be worth more soon - whether you sell it or not.

Think I'm nuts? And would anybody be caught dead with a Windows or Microsoft watch?

Got an Eye for the Details? Get Photo Spot for the iPhone!

By Phil Glockner of Scribkin (FriendFeed/Twitter)


NEXX Studio recently released a new game for the iPhone called Photo Spot. The goal is to find a number of differences between two seemingly-identical images. The concept behind this game isn't new -- newspapers and travel-entertainment books have included this sort of puzzle for years. However, it can become quite difficult at times!

The core gameplay is pretty straight-forward. There are four alterations for each image. The differences can appear on either of the two image copies. You are trying to beat a timer that ends the game if it runs out. You also get three 'hints' per game, revealing one alteration per hint. If you find all four changes in a particular set quickly, you get bonus points. To identify a difference, you just tap where you think it is, and if you are correct a green circle appears surrounding it.

What really impressed me about this game were some smaller touches that are often overlooked in other games that are rushed to the iPhone platform. First, the graphics are great. Bright, colorful, and consistent across all the game screens. I would equate it to a Nintendo game for the Wii, which is definitely worthy. Second, the effects and soundtrack are light, pleasant and cheerful, and the perfect accompaniment to the graphics. Plus, the game asks if you want sound or not when you launch, which is perfect if you are in a crowded area like the cabin of an airplane.

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by the playability of Photo Spot. Some photos are definitely more challenging than others, and sometimes you get a picture you've had in the past, but otherwise made with a lot of polish and attention toward keeping the action fun and light. Currently, Photo Spot is available for 99 cents in the iTunes Store.

Read more by Phil Glockner at Scribkin.com.

Gnip Says To Make Money, Make Sure Your Customers Have Money

Following on to yesterday's visit at Lijit, I knew my two-day trip to Boulder would not be complete without making time to visit Gnip, the interesting company started by former MyBlogLog and IGN founder Eric Marcoullier. So Micah Baldwin, my trusty sidekick and part-time chauffeur for the trip, and I caught breakfast with Eric and the team this morning, and visited their cozy headquarters. While we didn't get hours to sit with the executive team, as we did with Lijit, we learned that Gnip is growing and hiring talented developers, and has made an important discovery in its business model - target companies that have money and are willing to pay for your product.

In July of 2008, when Gnip first launched (See: Gnip CEO's Goal: Make Twitter's Data Flow Suck Less), the company made headlines for finding ways to move data around more quickly and without as much overhead, acting as an arbiter between different Web services. But as I was told today, making Web 2.0 services the primary client was pretty much a guarantee for low revenue. After all, if your customers aren't making money, how could you expect them to pay you?

As a result, Gnip, which has grown to 11 full-time employees, all of whom Eric says are required to be smarter than him in order to get hired, has gotten more activity with more traditional companies, including one market research firm that is analyzing as many as 100,000 different Twitter accounts and checks for user sentiment.

Gnip's office in Boulder has the industrious start-up feel to it. Desks are pushed together in a small space that reminds me of my freshman year dorm room I had to share with two other guys. But while the company is growing, it has a small quandary, as Boulder commercial real estate works great for small spaces and large spaces, I was told, but there just aren't enough options for medium-sized companies looking for an "in between" solution.

In fact, there is so little open space at Gnip's office that Eric, Shane Pearson and I talked on the front porch. Unfortunately, the front porch bench that adorned the office had been stolen overnight. The main suspect? "Stinking hippies", Eric tweeted.

Such growing pains are good, of course, because that means the company is growing, period, and it sounds like they are focused on continuing to improve the product, hire smart developers, and they even finally managed to grab the ever-elusive gnip.com domain, after using the gnipcentral.com site since launch.

To learn more about Gnip's unique view on the data world, check out their blog. Product news will no doubt be coming soon. Of the 11 employees, 8 are full-time engineers.

Bebo Announces Top 18 Finalists in B.E.S.T. Developer Competition

By Jesse Stay of Stay N' Alive (Twitter/FriendFeed)

Bebo has announced their top 18 applications for their B.E.S.T. (Bebo: Engage to Succeed Today) Developer contest . The competition, which seeks to allow developers to showcase their skills on the Bebo platform, was kicked off back in November . The competition gave developers just 2 months to build or port an application from scratch that was unique and engaging amongst the Bebo userbase. Frank Gruber (aka SomewhatFrank) , Dave McClure (aka Master of 500 Hats) , and myself (aka The "Social" Geek) were selected to judge the event. Bebo received near 2,000 applications, and has announced the top 18 of those for us to judge. Judging is currently in progress, and the results will be announced at a special awards ceremony on Feb. 18 in San Francisco . With permission from Bebo, the top 18 applications are (in the order they gave them to me, aka no particular order):

(Lil) Green Patch - By planting fruit with your friends you can help us all make the world a greener place!

Casino Empire - Practice scams, scam Casino owners, buy property, equip your alliance team

Street Football - Play your friends, enemies and other underground teams to win the title of 6-a-side Street Football champion of the world!

League of Heros - Create your own Super Hero or Super Villain and vie for supremacy of your city and the world!

FresboWorld - Shop for clothes and items to customise your avatar. Decorate your own virtual room with different furniture.

The Santa Express - Santa needs your help to make sure he delivers presents to the nice girls and boys, and bags of coal to the naughty ones.

Solid Soduku - Interested in numerology? Win by setting right numbers in right places... Invite/challenge friends and compare your abilities with the others.

Critter Wars - A fun critter game

Street Football - Take it to the Streets! Create and manage a Street Football team made up of your Bebo friends.

Fishbook - Fishbook is a fun virtual pet game where you can look after and feed your friends' fishes and collect cute little hearts.

Bowling Buddies - Enjoy a game of Bowling with your friends and show of your style through your own customisable 3D character.

The Streets - Walk through The Streets of dangerous cities, earn reputation and rank, build alliances and ultimately, an empire.

Bananagrams
- The object of the game is to form words as quickly as possible using
letter tiles. The first player to use all their tiles then declares
"Bananas!" and wins the game.

We're Related (My Family) - Allows you to create a stick figure representation of your family and display it on your profile.

Stunt Pilot With J2Play - Take to the skies and pilot your stunt plane through various acrobatic flight maneuvers.

Robokill Trainer With J2Play - Liberate Space Station Titan Prime in this classic arcade shooter with RPG elements.

Lucky Strike Lanes - Feeling lucky? Bowl with all your buddies in the Facebook version of what the media have called "America's first true bowling lounge."

Kick Mania - Kickmania! is an animated game. Low level violence - high level fun! Kick anyone's butt and watch them fly... into a wall of bricks!

I'm very excited to judge these apps, and my preliminary overview shows that the competition will be close! Congratulations to all 18, and I look forward to seeing which one becomes winner on the 18th!

Read more by Jesse Stay at Stay N' Alive.

Social Media Topics That Have Jumped The Shark

Guest Post By Adam Singer of The Future Buzz (FriendFeed/Twitter)

I try my best every so often to bring a dose of logic to the world of blogs on social media. What I thought would be fun would be a post about topics written by social media and meta bloggers that I personally don't think serve a purpose.

If you read enough SM blogs, you know why this is necessary. If not, congratulations, you can skip this post and live on blissfully unaware of what I'm talking about. Let's jump into it:

Posts complaining about the echo chamber

Common complaint: The echo chamber is boring, topics being discussed have already been discussed to death, topics are obvious, or there are simply too many blogs/people discussing a certain subject.

Why these posts are unnecessary: last time I checked, we were in control of how high the volume is set and what sites we subscribe to. There are plenty of great blogs out there and if you're smart enough to write up a post detailing why the echo chamber sucks, you're smart enough to filter out the noise from the signal. Not sure what complaining about it does. Instead of complaining about the noise in the echo chamber, figure out how you can maximize signal and minimize noise. If you don't like it, just don't read it.

A previous post bringing logic to this situation: there's no reason to feel overwhelmed.

Complaining about list posts

Common complaint: lists are selling out, gimmicky, overdone, boring, not deep content, etc.

Why these posts are wrong: harping on a specific way of formatting content doesn't seem very logical. People like lists - and there is definitely high engagement on those pages (I've checked the stats). I see no reason why the way content is formatted should matter if the content itself is useful or interesting. Yes, there can be bad lists - just like there can be bad blog posts not in lists format - the format itself is irrelevant. Lists are great, I'll prove it to you:

Lists:

1. Are scannable
2. Provide easy to read and consume content
3. Have the novelty factor
4. Are many times "must-share" content
5. Engage people
6. Are at times humorous, entertaining or incredible
7. Are a strong social Web meme
8. Get strong traffic

A previous post bringing logic to this situation: A Guilty Pleasure of the Blogosphere and Social Media: Lists

Social media "experts"

Common complaint: Everyone is a social media/new media consultant/specialist (insert other fancy, self imposed title here).

Why these posts don't matter: Making general complaints is kind of worthless. Complaining at the macro level accomplishes nothing - if you are going to write a complaint, call them out. Seriously. I've done it here, and even had a good reason/sample of what they had done wrong and laid out my case logically for the world to see. I thought it was fair, because they were wrong in writing what they did and didn't bother to listen when I brought the matter up privately. I saw no reason it wasn't the right move to show what they were doing wrong publicly when I was being ignored and they weren't even playing by their own rules.

A previous post bringing logic to this situation: Titles Are As Meaningless As Ever

Lack of good content

Common complaint: Lack of quality content in tech/social media/marketing/basket weaving/insert niche here.

Why these posts are wrong: Just because your favorite blogger stopped posting as frequently and instead is spending all their time on Twitter/FriendFeed doesn't mean there aren't hordes of other bloggers still writing smart content on your subject of choice. I know some of the early adopter crowd has a hard time believing people are still using tools that are a few years old - but the reality is there is plenty of great content being created in all platforms, not just the new ones.

A previous post bringing logic to this situation: FriendFeed And Twitter Have *Not* Killed Blogging

Conclusion

Sorry for getting all meta on you. I personally am not complaining, I am pretty happy with my current system for filtering content - but venture into these types of posts every so often thanks to random Tweets / FriendFeed links and thought I could do some good to help the situation. Feel free to point out the irony of this post in the comments, I'm well aware. Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire.

Of course, usefulness is relative - what I find irrelevant, you might find interesting. And, there's nothing wrong with that either.

Also if you're going to complain, at least offer some guidance/next steps to fix the situation. Rants are fine with a purpose. Steven Hodson is great at them - read his blog if you're looking for how to be snarky and do it with class.

What posts by social media bloggers do you think have jumped the shark?

Read more by Adam Singer at The Future Buzz

Lijit Search Is All About Relevance. Now Go Update Your Widgets!

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to fly out to Boulder, Colorado to meet with Lijit's executive leadership team, at the request of Micah Baldwin, the company's friendly tireless and unique evangelist. A happy Lijit badge wearer for the better part of the year, I initially started using the blog search engine thanks to its drop-dead simple integration into my site and associated search tag cloud (see the right column), but yesterday's discussion helped open my eyes to many things about Lijit that I have been missing, and you no doubt have as well.

Under our noses, Lijit has grown from a cute widget play to harnessing one of the most targeted search engine and content archives on the Web - but has done so in a way that's remarkably different than Google. Now, before you go to lijit.com and try to find a search button, let me explain...

Google's goal in life is to find the one right answer that is true for everyone. Search for iPhone, and you should get the same answer I do at the top of the results, blanketed by potentially relevant ads from the company's partners. Lijit's goal in life is to find the one answer that is most accurate, depending on where you are searching. Search for iPhone on my blog, and you will find the most relevant responses that come from my blog and my content from around the Web, including Flickr, Twitter, Delicious, YouTube and other social sites. Search for iPhone on Steven Hodson's blog (also using Lijit), and you should get a different set of responses based on his activity.

There is no one right answer, and there shouldn't be, because we each look at the Web through a prism that is colored by our own activity. Lijit does this well. Google does not - even if they are working on it. Just think about how you search Google today. You almost certainly are searching with multiple keywords, not just one, because a broad search for "bicycle", "train" or "beagle" is going to be way too muddled. But search for "beagle" on my site, and you will get something personal.

Meanwhile, Lijit has also stepped up its game in terms of a more targeted advertising network, around its publishers and its highly targeted search results. The more relevant the search and the more relevant the data around the searcher and the publisher where the search is taking place, the higher the click-through rates. The company showed us details that illustrated significant click through differences between them and Google - the 800 pound gorilla in the space. Publishers who opt in to the Lijit network can set a floor for what they estimate their cost per click should be, and Lijit will work to get that price - promising no less than 10 cents to the publisher per click on an ad.

The company also turned on revenue sharing for publishers, so if you have been running Lijit search on your blog for some time, you should log into your Lijit account and see if you've racked up any earnings. You could have money owed you haven't collected on!

The New Widget's Three Faces
Speaking of updates you probably didn't know about... I learned yesterday that the widget I have been using for Lijit was out of date. They now offer an "all in one" widget that not only shows a search bar and search terms (and reshare when people find your site from a search engine) but also detail on those recent visitors, including geography. At one point I was running a similar script from Feedjit (not Lijit) to get that data, and Lijit gives it to me in one place. To get yours, go to lijit.com, log in, and click "Search Wijit" at the top. On the left side, you can see a checkbox to make yours an "all-in-one Wijit!". There are even new options like a "Surprise Me!" bar that will take you to a random post on the blog you are visiting.

In the past, I have been fairly vocal in terms of saying that blogging is not about the ads and the revenue (at least for me). I believe that when you cross the line from blogging for the experience and for content discovery and move to pro blogging, it becomes all about the money. But Lijit has made strides toward making ads less intrusive and more relevant to you and the visitor, making them "less evil" and likely more rewarding.

The next big step for the company will be to better explain what they do and what they want to be when they grow up. I've already seen big moves, not just between when I first discovered Lijit, and today, but also in terms of how the company is a real business with a real roadmap and big plans. They're not out to take Google head on, or anything crazy like that, but they are about delivering the best, personalized, search results to the publisher and the viewer.

Like I have championed for Disqus to become the standard for blog comments, I would strongly hope Lijit becomes the standard for blog search. It just works, and the team continues to innovate. Now go update your widgets.

Are You Right For YouAre?

By Ken Stewart of ChangeForge (Twitter/FriendFeed)

With the promise of "making the small things you do every day easier," YouAre announced it was open to the public as of January 27, 2009. Starting in May 2007, YouAre.com sought to get it right before allowing the masses access to what some might call YATC (Yet Another Twitter Clone). But, the YouAre team disagrees (and with just a dash of wit I might add):

When they say that YouAre is just another YATC, our response is clear. Twitter was and still is an inspiration for us. But if YouAre is a Twitter clone, then WordPress and Movable Type are clones of Blogger, Pitas and LiveJournal.

Duncan Riley (Inquisitr) reluctantly labeled YouAre Twitter 2.0. But is it? According to YouAre, the service seeks to combine Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, a dash of Del.icio.us, and (you won't see this coming) innovation...

So what makes YouAre innovative? Let's take a look at what's under the hood.

The concept of YouAre focuses on combining a platform of microblogging (140 characters maximum), with the ability to share video and images as well. Additionally, you can build and share your personal and professional profiles with friends and colleagues, helping you to learn more about those to whom you subscribe and vice versa.YouAre allows you to compliment that mix with the ability to import favorites, much like Del.icio.us, includes their very own link compression publisher, MicURL, as well as support for microformats (XFN).

Unlike the natural comparison to Twitter, YouAre seeks to create a more cohesive and sticky experience, allowing you to create a more involved experience outside of the superficial and overly-simplistic personal billboard experience Twitter trends towards.

However, it's major detractor is the lack of overall population. YouAre opted to "get it right" and launch a more seasoned platform instead of seeing some of the major land mines Twitter has experienced.

Still, as will all social media platforms, the key is being social. Twitter is successful because it is simple to understand and direct in purpose - in spite of it's many shortcomings. The community that surrounds Twitter continues to generate more momentum for that service, and YouAre has the disadvantage of simply being viewed as YASMS (Yet Another Social Media Site). In short, YouAre has an uphill battle selling users why they should give the service a try.

I'm game... but only time will tell whether I will continue use and whether the service will be an ultimate success. Quite plainly put, YouAre depends greatly on whether you are interested, your friends are interested, and their friends are interested.

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Ken Stewart’s blog, ChangeForge.com, focuses on the collision between the constantly changing worlds of business and technology. To connect with Ken, you may visit him at DandyID.

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Where is Your Focus: Subscribers or Traffic?

By Corvida Raven of SheGeeks.net (FriendFeed/Twitter)

James Duthie of Online Marketing Banter has a really valuable post on 5 important lessons that he learned from his first year of blogging. I think everyone could agree to having learned a lot of the lessons that he listed, myself included. However, his first two lessons really inspired me to think about where my focus is when it comes to my own blog. 

Lesson 1 - Momentum disappears damn quickly.

Lesson 2 - It's not all about the traffic.

With these two lessons in mind, I think that as a blogger begins to evolve they have have to make a decision: you can work overtime to keep up traffic to continuously build momentum or you can stop worrying about the traffic and shift your focus to converting the traffic that you receive into subscribers. Some people focus on both, which can be a daunting task. Getting people to visit your site in the beginning of your blogging career is no easy task, unless you have great connections.My decision was to worry more about subscribers than traffic. I figured that with enough subscribers, you can begin to have consistently decent traffic, without worrying about the momentum that disappears all to quickly for some of us.

Know Your Goals

For me, this was an easy decision because I don't display any ads on SheGeeks, nor do I care to. Though recently I've been dabbling in sponsored links. Being aware of what you plan to do with your site can help you better understand what decision would be best for you. The answer to the aforementioned question is all so dependent upon the focus of your site and what you are attempting to achieve. I want more conversation. With more subscribers I can easily generate more conversation. This is easier for me rather than trying to generate conversation by trying to increase my traffic. And no, high subscribers doesn't necessarily mean high traffic, especially if your content is few and far in between.

Know Your Audience

On another note, I'm aware that the majority of my readers user RSS feeds to access the site. I'm also aware that the majority of my readers are probably "skimmers", meaning they don't read everything in its entirety unless it's truly worth their time. So traffic is just a moot point for me the majority of the time. What does this mean? Be aware of your audience and the tools they use. To me, the aforementioned facts reeks of a low click-through rate. So really, why bother?

What's Your Focus?

Which leads me to ask the rest of you: where is your focus when it comes to your blog: subscribers or traffic?

Read more by Corvida Raven at SheGeeks.net.

Twitter Squats on People Wanting Squatter Usernames

By Jesse Stay of Stay N' Alive (Twitter/FriendFeed)

On StayNAlive, I recently wrote about how I was able to change my Twitter username from "JesseStay" to just "Jesse", by a new rule, announced recently by Twitter, allowing anyone to obtain the usernames of people who had not updated their account in a long time, and did not appear to be using their accounts. The process was simple - just e-mail "username@twitter.com", and you could obtain the squatted username of your choice.

The process was so easy that I was able to obtain my first name. Mona Nokamura, who also writes on LouisGray.com, was also able to obtain her first name instead of "@monaaa", and users everywhere were finally able to get the names they have been trying to obtain since they joined Twitter.

Evidently, Twitter's systems must have been overwhelmed with requests, as they appear to be putting the kibosh on the average Joe getting the username they want. Prashanth from Control Enter left a comment on my blog sharing that evidently, Twitter is now responding to requests to "username@twitter.com" with the following e-mail:

"Due to high ticket volume, Twitter Support is unable to change usernames in cases of inactive accounts. Unless your user name issue involves Terms of Service violations, you’ll have to wait until all inactive user names are released. We’re working on a better long term solution for this."

If there is a blatant copyright violation or impersonation or similar circumstance, it is suggested you contact Twitter's Terms of Service group via Twitter's Web form. It would appear the gold rush for usernames is over for the time being, although it was nice while it lasted.

Read more by Jesse Stay at Stay N' Alive.

Eight Forms of Social Networking Depression: Are You Suffering?

Even if you have been staring at your computer screen all day, you've likely figured out it's a scary world out there right now. Scads of people are being laid off, in practically every market - including, very likely, people you know, work with, or even you.

Companies that you used to rely on as a standard are begging for bailout money, going out of business, or being purchased at prices well below what they would have received six months or six years ago. Savings and investment accounts are being decimated as credit card debt rises and retirement plans are mere fractions of what they used to be. And all that bad news piles up - making some of the more frivolous things we do online seem even less important than they used to be, giving some of us a sharper edge and making us a lot more irritable. The result can send some folks into what I'm calling social network depression - the manifestation of these frustrations, spilling over from the real world and into the virtual world.

There are many different ways you can see social networking depression illustrate itself. Here are a few cases:

1) The Depression of Getting Less Attention

The individual will claim to see less activity on a site than there used to be, even if they haven't changed the way they use it. (Example)

This suggests that the site itself might not be growing, that other users are spending time elsewhere, or that the service may have peaked, starting its inevitable slide downward. What as the interpretation is subjective, it may be random, incorrect, or the result of other areas on the site being more interesting.

2) The Depression of Repetition

The individual will grow bored of a network, saying the newness has worn off as the same jokes, stories and pictures get spread time and again. (Example)

The suggestion could be that as people fall into a routine, their sheer repetitiveness grows dull, and the social aspects are diminished. But it is not clear if the individual themselves is seeing shifting tastes or if external pressures are changing their outlook.

3) The Depression Of Despised Popularity

The individual can start to question whether what we do online is more a herd mentality than one derived based on our own preferences, and questions the popular users' value. (Example)

The suggestion is that as lists are created, the same names are repeated time and again - whether they are bringing real value, or not adding much from their presumed areas of expertise. But as with #2, even if a person's original value was extremely clear, by the time you've run into them multiple times, across networks, their own value to you is likely diminished.

4) The Depression of False Prophets

The individual will openly complain about some of the social aspects themselves, such as popularity contests and self-proclaimed experts. (Example)

That popularity contests were annoying in high school doesn't mean they don't replicate themselves online. But, depending on the month, the individual complaining probably participated, or would do so more often if they were included or winning.

5) The Depression of Absence

The individual can take a self-imposed vacation from social networking, or can turn their blog over to the resume gods, hoping to land a job, instead of landing the next dozen followers and friend connections.

6) The Depression of Lost Focus

The individual can claim that all social networking tools are distractions and should be turned off, to maintain focus on "real work". (Example)

The updating "ping" of TweetDeck can be a big draw for the popular Twitter user. But there is the potential to operate under what I've termed continuous parallel attention, letting you complete your work tasks, stay on top of social aspects, and listen to music all at once.

7) The Depression of Snarkiness

The individual can change the tone of their comment streams on Twitter and other networks, moving away from promoting people, sites and links, to instead, getting sarcastic, passing around the meme of the day, and generally acting in contrary to their typical personality.

8) The Depression of Lost Value

The individual can declare the world of social networking and social media a waste of time, and swear they're quitting, to focus on things with "real value".

So what can you do? Maybe you've suffered a hint of social networking depression yourself, and find you are blogging less, sharing less, commenting less and simply having less fun online than you used to. Maybe instead you've seen your friends go through various stages - taking what used to be a fun, collaborative environment, and make it something where you can hardly tolerate what they've become.

In my opinion, the very worst aspects of social networking come from the very things we of course enjoy, leaderboards and statistics. In August I asked bloggers to relax, saying "nobody is keeping score", warning of blogging burnout and the self-imposed guilt that comes from gaps. The same push to relax should be applied with social networking.

Why did you start social networking in the first place? It wasn't to count friends or to participate in memes of the day, I would bet. Instead, it was more likely to find out news quickly, and find people with whom you share common interests. Now that times are tough, and people are questioning how they are spending their time, offline and online, it's no surprise that those things which don't have a clear, defined, line to revenue are being discarded, or at least, seeing strain.

The truth is that the social networks are mirrors for ourselves. When we are stressed about work, about money, about relationships, these strains will impact who were online as well.

On Monday, I spoke with a great friend about how I'd seen them change from an aggressive go-getter and evangelist, to a bitter, depressed introvert over the space of a few months. It so happened the kids were making noise in the background of our call, and they later texted me to my iPhone:

"Just talking to you helped and hearing the kiddies. There's more to life than this crap."

And it's true! I'm lucky that I've got two built-in distractions I can come home to. Maybe you don't. But while many people are grousing about the social networks themselves, the way people behave, and rank themselves, letting the offline trials seep into their online personas, the products underneath are actually getting a lot better.

Please do question social networking in general. Try and find out what it is that you're doing online and how you are spending your time. Think about whether you have a good work/play balance, or if the time you are spending in front of your computer monitor is detrimental to your offline and online health. But be aware that if you're getting negative and lashing out at your followers, your communities, and the very platforms that let you do it, you could be exhibiting signs of social networking depression. And it's not likely the tools. It's you.

Why Google Latitude is Viral Marketing for Brightkite, Loopt

By Corvida Raven of SheGeeks.net (FriendFeed/Twitter)

"They're more about keeping tabs on your friends; we focus more on community and meeting new people based on the places you go." - Brightkite

There's no doubt that mobile social networks are vying to be the next big thing for consumers as the mobile handset arena heats up. Plenty of services have gotten their feet wet, but haven't really made it outside of the early adopter crowd. So it comes as no surprise that early adopters and techies are wondering if mobiles services such as Loopt and Brightkite should be worried about Google's latest product: Google Latitude.

In one sentence, Latitude is Google's location awareness application. It's geared to take over a niche that's been dominated by other aforementioned services for quite sometime now. The million dollar bubble buster is whether the competition should be threatened. Short answer: no.

We recommend reading ReadWriteWeb's take on Latitude.

Keeping The Community: Different Strokes For Different Folks

In The Community is What Makes Social Networks Different), I said, "The community is the key to separating social networks."

This is why I'd still choose Brightkite over Latitude. For me, it's not about showing where I am to all of my friends and contacts. Quite frankly, the ones that can meet up with me are probably already there or on the way. How do I know? I checked my text messages, posted where I was going as my Facebook status, and made a few phone calls to those who could meet up. Neither I nor my friends need Latitude or Google to do this for us. Latitude might be a backwards way of being lazy if you ask me.

Brightkite introduces me to new people to hang out with. This may not be for everyone, but it's a great way for people to network right in their community. The amount of information available for specific check-in spots is amazing! I can see who's been there, how many times they've been there, check out their profile and see if we have similar interests. Hey, they might even be friends with me on Twitter! For this sole reason alone, Brightkite and other similar services have nothing to fear for now. In fact, they might want to thank Google.

Google Latitude Is Viral Marketing For The Location-Awareness Arena

Google is a worldwide brand. It's highly respected among people who would actually use Latitude. The entire situation puts way more light on mobile social networks and location awareness than the smaller players could ever do at this point. Google pushes this concept to mainstream internet users, just as Facebook has done with RSS via the News Feed. The usage of each service will be entirely different, but the concept is still the same at the core: connect wherever you are!

This could be looked at as viral marketing for location-awareness services. Google may or may not get the bigger market share, but there's no doubt that quite a few people may fill unfilled with Google Latitude and leave in search of more features or a different way of interacting with the same concept. Google could add these features in the future, but remains to be seen at this point. There's a lot of things that Google keeps putting on the backburner. In the long run Latitude could be one of them, making room for others to dominate the space.

Read more by Corvida Raven at SheGeeks.net.

Pluck On Demand Supplies Contextually Relevant Content Widgets

By Eric Berlin of Online Media Cultist (FriendFeed/Twitter)

Most Web site publishers and bloggers are always looking for ways to add value for their readers. And smart online publishers look to add value while also marketing themselves to a larger potential audience.

Enter Pluck on Demand, "a new self-serve product that adds contextually relevant content and social media to your site, increasing pageviews and user engagement while earning you incremental revenue."

Add content and social media to any Web site
-- powered by Pluck On Demand

In other words, Pluck on Demand is a widget that you install on a Web page that drives contextually relevant content to your site, buffing out your site's content offerings and, in theory, also making your site more visible to search engine spiders, the almighty Google in particular. And the proverbial cherry on the top is sharing in the revenue made possible by increased page views.

Here's an interview with Eric Newman, Pluck's SVP & General Manager, who explains Pluck on Demand a little bit further.

(via Allen Weiner)

It is interesting to note that Pluck pulls content from the Blogburst network to serve to their widgets. And I also learned that Pluck was purchased by Demand Media. Thus, the name Pluck on Demand has more than one meaning, it seems!

I like the idea of Pluck on Demand, but from the publisher perspective the first obvious questions have to do with whether or not the widget is really worth adding, is it just more widget bloat, does it truly help with increased search engine visibility, is the content truly relevant and useful in terms of what the Web site already offers, and so on.

Bill Sweetman of One Degree is impressed, at the least, writing that he has "been piloting this service on one of my sites and have already seen a 10% increase in traffic that I can directly attribute to Pluck On Demand. And that's without taking advantage of any of the social media widgets!"

I look forward to installing Pluck on Demand sometime down the road on Online Media Cultist to see the results for myself.

Read more by Eric Berlin at Online Media Cultist

Let the FriendFeed Data Mining Begin In Earnest

With the FriendFeed co-founders' pedigrees including Google as their last stop, it has largely been presumed the team knew the value of search. In March of 2008, the online social aggregator first turned on their search engine, but as the site grew in popularity and features, many users were calling for more granularity in search - asking to see search results within a specific time period, or, more loudly, to see results from entries that had been gauged as interesting from the community, based on total likes or comments. Today, FriendFeed delivered the popularity end of the search database, and people are already diving into the data to see what they can find.

For example:

If you search for entries that have both 100 comments and 100 likes:

There are 11 total entries. The first ever was when we announced the birth of our twins. Of the other 10, see here, 4 are from Robert Scoble, and a second entry is by me, about Robert, and his potential monetization of FriendFeed. Other single entries are from Mona Nomura, Thomas Hawk, Monique, Conformist, and Akiva Moskovitz, also on the announcement of a new baby.

So yes, FriendFeed loves Scoble, tolerates me, and loves babies.
Of those 11 items, one was a tweet (mine), 7 were native FriendFeed entries, 2 were blog posts, and one was Robert's Facebook status update.

The most comments any post with the word bacon in the title has had is 80. (via Lindsay)

The most comments any post with the word sex in the title has had is 64. (via Mona)

15 Different Entries Have Been "Liked" More than 200 Times (see query)

In fact, the first entry ever to get more than 200 likes was an entry announcing a Jabber/GTalk IM bot for FriendFeed. Oddly, it got 445 likes and only 3 comments. Hmmm...

Of the 15 items, 5 were from Bret Taylor, FriendFeed co-founder, announcing new features. 3 more were fun items from Mona. Scoble only makes it once, though his note on January 10 did get 312 likes and 464 comments, which was epic.

Of the 15 items, 5 had both comments from me and likes from Robert. 4 were Bret Taylor entries. The fifth was Akiva's baby announcement. Matthew, a tad older, is already practicing his pickup lines.

Only one blog entry has ever received 150 comments on FriendFeed.

Avoiding accidental script anomalies, only one post has ever gotten 150 or more comments on FriendFeed. The conversation is completely in Italian about a cat, I assume.

Most blog posts don't get tremendous numbers of comments. (see query)

Aside from the previously mentioned Scoble monetization post, only one post I have ever made has hit 60 or more comments - a post in July on Web racism. And earlier that week, we managed 50 comments for the discussion of friending people online well outside your age range on the low side. Matt Dickman's guest post from last week also exceeded the 50 comment barrier. In contrast, Robert Scoble has six posts that reached the 50 comment mark on the site.

Also noted: 10 internal shares of mine reached 50 comments, while 46 internal shares have reached 50 likes. Of those, 26 were baby pictures of Matthew and/or Sarah. Such exploitation!

Only 4 Tweets have ever received 100 likes on FriendFeed. (see query)

Two were from me - one announcing the arrival of the twins, and the other, when my wife said she joined Facebook, but didn't add me as a friend. The other two? Akiva announcing the arrival of his baby, and Kevin Rose fooling e-mail correspondents by pretending his computer was an iPhone.

Eight FriendFeed entries with the word iPhone in the title have 50 comments. (see query)

Of those eight entries, three are from Robert, one is from Mona, and others are from Tina, Lindsay, Bret Taylor, and Chris Pirillo.

Seven entries with the word "Cat" in the title have 50+ likes. Dogs win with nine such entries.

I already predicted that search and the real-time Web, on both Twitter and FriendFeed, would be a big deal in 2009, and this step takes us even closer to being able to dig deep into the immediate (and historical) reactions of one of the Web's most unique and vibrant social communities.

You can see some more data mining fun in Scoble's feed.

Welcome To The Twittersphere

By Eric Berlin of Online Media Cultist (FriendFeed/Twitter)

As Twitter grows ever larger and more vibrant, so too grows the desire to extract meaningful data out of all of the conversations and information-sharing that's taking place.

Enter Twittersphere, a blessedly barebones service that comes from "Thomas Marban, the creator of the excellent popurls," according to Duncan Riley at The Inquisitr.

When you arrive at Twittersphere, there's a list of article names, and not that many at that. One or two at the top have very minimal, subdued red vertical lines to indicate "hotness", presumably, with subsequent stories trending from orange to yellow to green. The site tagline reads that "the current mélange of the most hyped stories from social messaging utility twitter.com, a screen into the greenhouse of worldshaking linkage and clutter."

And indeed, the feel of the site is clean and minimal enough to make you believe that this is a clutter-free zone. There are only three navigation links. The default view is "short," giving us the up-to-the-moment hottest stories being shared on Twitter, and then there is simply "medium" and "long term" links to see what is popular over relatively longer stretches of time.

The amount of time that those stretches represent, how the site collects its data, how "hotness" is determined, and how often the articles are refreshed are not indicated. Which, I suppose, is the point. There's nothing really interactive about the site and nothing to get in the way of simply seeing what links are popular according to the Twitter community.

I like the idea of Twittersphere, but fear there's not quite enough going on to keep people coming back in numbers. Personally, I'd go to a site more often that deals primarily with "RTs," or "retweets," those links that have gotten picked up from one Twitter profile and are passed around by others using the convention of RT. It would be fun to see not only which are the top links by RT, but which Twitter profiles share popular information, and which profiles are popular because they themselves are big sharers of information, or big RTers I suppose. This bit would go a long way in helping to measure influence on Twitter beyond mere numbers of followers. The metrics for how the site might be put together can be based on followers, number of RTs, link clicks, and some kind of algorithm that someone more technical than me could put together!

If this service doesn't exist already, I wouldn't be surprised if we'll see something like it quite soon as the array of Twitter-related services is growing nearly as fast as Twitter itself.

Read more by Eric Berlin at Online Media Cultist

Three And Out Takes Third Fantasy Football Trophy. Shrug.

As the Super Bowl wrapped up the year's NFL season, so to ended the year's fantasy football season - which on some days seems dramatically more important. And, now that the dust has cleared, my team has finished 1st overall, just like it did the last time I played, in the 2005-06 season, and the 2001-02 season, my rookie year. And while I should be elated, given my push to be competitive, and love of sports and all things statistical, ending up the winner is met more with a shrug than jubilation - partly because of the knowledge the competition is complete, with no more weekly battles, and also, as the margin of victory was already guaranteed, making today's game moot.

As I mentioned back on January 4th (See: Geek Leading Fantasy Football League During Playoff Push), I managed to take a lead after the 1st week of the playoffs, and knew I was well-positioned going into week two, but surprisingly, a lot of little things went right for my squad, and badly for everyone else - so while there were many upsets each weekend, the only real surprise in our league was that I managed to not only keep the lead - but score highest every single Sunday, increasing my lead.


By the time the Pittsburgh Steelers were crowned NFL champions this evening, I had finished the four-week playoff round with a total of 391 points, almost twice that of the second-place finisher, who had 217 points, followed by the stragglers at 190 points and 101. To give you an idea of how wild it is that I scored so many points, just three years ago I won it all with 281 points, beating out the second place team, who scored 239, and the prior year, I had finished second, losing 290 to 265 - much closer contests than the 2008-09 playoffs. (See: Kiss of Death League: History)

So how did this happen? As with any good fantasy squad, significant luck was involved. I had expected the Carolina Panthers to do very well, and possibly contend for the Super Bowl title. But as we were drafting one Saturday morning, I wanted to make sure I didn't post a zero in the initial Wild Card contests, and loaded up on the high-offense Arizona Cardinals, getting the quarterback and wide receiver pair of Kurt Warner and Larry Fitzgerald, as well as the San Diego Chargers' Darren Sproles, who I expected to rack up points returning kickoffs against what was supposed to be a superior Colts squad. But then Sproles became the primary running back as Ladanian Tomlinson was injured, and the Chargers beat the Colts. And virtually everyone knows what happened to Arizona. They went all the way to the Super Bowl, and both Warner and Fitzgerald set records along the way. It almost didn't seem fair as my team excelled while others were virtually eliminated by week one.


I'm torn because I love the fact I blew out the field. But I also would have liked some better competition, and to have been watching Sunday's Super Bowl with the knowledge my fantasy season could also be on the line. I love that I won by such big margins because I'm going to enjoy going through the stats, but it isn't exactly fun to talk trash (a major part of fantasy football) when you're ahead by 100 points, so for the last month, that piece has practically been eliminated.

How much did loading up on Arizona help me? According to the league statistics, Larry Fitzgerald and Kurt Warner were the 1st and 2nd highest scorers, garnering me 180 points between them. Add in the 44 points from Arizona special teams, and I'd be at 224, already ahead of the second-place finisher, and that doesn't even take into consideration the 74 points picked up by Sproles, who had an amazing first two weeks.

So now it's all done. At some point, I'll probably get a PayPal notification rewarding me about $200 or so, which is nice, but not life-changing. The first thing I'll likely do? Go out and see if I have to buy my own trophy to match the other two on my bookshelf. What's the fun in winning three times if you can't show everyone?

Are We Missing Something By Reading An RSS Feed?

By Rob Diana of Regular Geek (Twitter/FriendFeed)

People that read this blog regularly know that I am a big proponent of the conversation. I blog about what conversation may or may not be. I have written a tool to let you track where in social media people are talking about your blog post or some keyword you want to watch. I do this as a software engineer with no formal training in psychology, sociology or marketing. I do this as someone who regularly engages in conversations each day, as a normal person. In order to keep myself up to date on what other people are talking about, I use an RSS reader, specifically Google Reader.

This weekend I read a post on GrowMap.com regarding a blog review contest. Obviously, this has nothing to do with "conversation". However, there was something said earlier in the post that got me thinking:

Regular visitors to GrowMap are bound to have come across some great ideas in the comments left by Dennis Edell. Hopefully you’ve already visited his main blog DirectSalesWebMarketing.

What is so interesting about that quote? Well, I read GrowMap while within the familiar confines of my RSS reader. I rarely go to the source of a blog post unless I plan on commenting directly on the site. By doing this, I am obviously missing something. I am missing the conversation part of a blog post, the comments. Generally, I do not even know if there are comments on a post if I am within my RSS reader. Yes, I know that many feeds include feedflares that may include a comment count, but how many people look at those unless they want to email, Digg, tweet or generally take some action on the RSS item.

By missing the comments, we are missing part of the conversation. It is a large part of the conversation because it is the one part of the blog post where readers can interact. Are we shortchanging ourselves by not reading the post on the blog along with the comments? How much more intersting would your RSS reader become if it included the comments in the feed? Can somebody work on that?

See Also:
louisgray.com: The Trouble With RSS: I'm Not Involved
GeekWhat.com: RSS Readers Kill Readers’ Involvement?

Image by Photopia
Read more by Rob Diana at RegularGeek.com.