March to the Beat of Five New Blogs You're Probably Not Reading

Thirteenth Edition Of a Monthly Series

As the month of March fades with only a few hours remaining, there's still time to highlight five blogs that have recently entered my Google Reader and become regular visits for me. This feature, one I look forward to each month, almost escaped me, but don't think it's not a priority! For last month's collection, start here, and find links to all of the previous 12 months.

Having wrapped around a full year, I thought I would take a different approach this round, and I openly called for submissions, using FriendFeed (which mirrored my request to Twitter and Facebook). You can see that discussion here, and can find more than the five I've selected, should you choose to do so.

This month's entries...

1) #comments (comments.deasil.com)

Focus: Technology, Software, iPhone, Browsers
Three Recent Posts:

• VPS Hosting Review: Slicehost
  
• On the importance of UI indicators
  
• My iPhone 3.0 hope chest

RSS Feed: Subscribe Now

2) Joe Blogs (Joe Dawson's Blog (www.joedawsons.com)

Focus: Facebook, Family, Social Media
Three Recent Posts:

• Reshare and Care
• The Stream Is What Is Happening
• Facebook Connect for iPhone Launches

RSS Feed: Subscribe Now

3) Creative Capital (creativecapital.wordpress.com)

Focus: Finance, Technology, Entrepreneurs
Three Recent Posts:

• Facebook’s Thiel Explains Failed Twitter Takeover
• Why Now is the Best Time to Poach Talent
• Allegis Capital: A New Venture Capital Model for Today’s IPO-Free Market

RSS Feed: Subscribe Now

4) Black Web 2.0 (blackweb20.com)

Focus: Technology, Blogging, Startups
Three Recent Posts:

• Why Google Ventures Should Matter to You
• Kanye Admits Ghostwriters Feed His Blog
• Why You Should Tinker with Tinker

RSS Feed: Subscribe Now

5) Lost In Technology (www.lostintechnology.com)

Focus: Technology, Software
Three Recent Posts:

• SociaTwo Applications to Maintain Your Applications on Android
• Keep Track of Your Valuable Comments with BackType
• Find Your Router’s Default Username and Password

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.

Twitter Starts Rolling Out Popular Feature Requests

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

Have you noticed the recent changes to Twitter's web UI? For those that live in Twitter clients like Tweetie and Twhirl, you'll be in for a surprise if you head to the Twitter site these days. Twitter has come a long way since its popular debut at SXSW 07 in terms of performance. However, recently Twitter has started to up the ante on it's website and implement some of the most popular feature demands from the Twitter community.

@Username A.K.A. Mentions

No @replies aren't a new feature. As of yesterday, Twitter is now doing something that should've been done last year: picking up on all @ replies. Previously, you would only see replies that featured @username towards the beginning of a tweet. Now, it doesn't matter where you put the @username. Twitter promises to still pick it up.

Search Bar & Trends

Sick of going to search.twitter.com yet? If so, you might be excited to see the following:


That's right, a Twitter Search bar in Twitter. It hooks in to the search.twitter.com to grab yoru results. Here's a view of recent tweets mentioning "corvida" (that would be me):


The trends button only returned me to the homepage, so I have no idea what it will actually do. However, I have a sneaking suspicion that it will be a drop-down menu listing the latest trends linking to their search results.

Connections

Looks like Twitter may finally start giving users a way to manage the mass onslaught of Twitter tools to use. We're constantly giving our password to so many Twitter apps and services that we forget that some of them still have access to our account. The connections tab seems like it will be designed to handle such problems.



More To Come From Twitter?

I'm sure there is, but for now these are some great recent changes to Twitter's website. It'll definitely enhance the Twitter experience, while potentially eliminating several addons and extensions in the process. Not everyone has these features available in their profiles. So one would assume that Twitter is testing some of these features on selected accounts. Don't be sad if you don't have some of them. They're probably right around the corner.

Read more by Corvida Raven at SheGeeks.net.

10 People To Follow On FriendFeed For The Month Of March

My tag team partner in crime, Mike Fruchter, who I hope will be returning to top speed once again soon, is still letting real life trump his online activities, so I'm pinch hitting in a vital role, with his permission, highlighting ten well-deserving FriendFeed users who bring consistently interesting items to the fore. This month's batch, as with others, highlights people you may already know, and some lesser-known but equally as deserving folks who have so far hidden from the limelight.

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

Apologies for the lateness in the month... on with the list for March!

1) RAPatton

Short Bio: Robert Patton, an Ohio native, is a software architect and senior consultant at Optimum Technology, who can claim search engine design and e-commerce application development to his credit. He has a degree in computer science from Ohio State University, and is a father of two. A frequent sharer of items from UK-based publications, including the BBC, The Independent, the Daily Mail and The Telegraph, Robert, uncovers stories of interest to the community, well outside of the technology space, including updates on astronomy, health and Hollywood.

What they find interesting: Entertainment, News, Science

FriendFeed: Subscribe

2) Thomas Hawk

Short Bio: Thomas Hawk is the CEO of Zooomr, Inc., and is among the tech Web's most visible photographers. An East Bay resident, he is a popular blogger in his own right, and recently covered Oakland residents' violent response to a policeman's slaying of a youth at a BART station earlier this year - an incident predating this weekend's slayings of four police officers in the city. Thomas is widely considered an expert in photography in Silicon Valley and counts Robert Scoble as one of his proteges. (The two are pictured here with Chris Pirillo)

What they find interesting: Photography, Business

FriendFeed: Subscribe | Blog: Subscribe

3) Akiva Moskovitz

Short Bio: A recent father to a two and a half month old daughter, Akiva is the male half of the popular FriendFeed couple, including his wife, Rochelle. In addition to the updates on Audrey, who just so happens to share many of the same characteristics we like about our daughter, Sarah, you can see Akiva's comments on religion, technology and entertainment.

What they find interesting: Family, Photography

FriendFeed: Subscribe | Blog: Subscribe

4) Daniel Brusilovsky

Short Bio: Daniel Brusilovsky is the founder and CEO of Teens In Tech, a social media platform and community for teens, and a contributor to multiple Apple Macintosh projects, including the Apple Universe Podcast and MacMegasite. Daniel's young age shouldn't mask a deep interest and involvement in technology development and the startup culture - as he clearly displays excitement about meetings with entrepreneurs and seeing startups gain new rounds of capital.

What they find interesting: Technology, Social Media, Startups

FriendFeed: Subscribe | Blog: Subscribe

5) Bindu Reddy

Short Bio: Bindu is the founder of Likaholix, which shares many aspects of content discovery as FriendFeed does. Previous to Likaholix, Bindu was the head of product management for Google Docs and Sites, and was the first product manager at JotSpot. A graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay, Bindu also collected a Masters degree in Engineering from Dartmouth College.

What they find interesting: Music, Food, Technology

FriendFeed: Subscribe | Blog: Subscribe

6) Kevin Fox

Short Bio: Kevin Fox runs the design at FriendFeed, and previously worked at Google, bringing to life many of the applications you frequently use, including Google Reader and GMail. He also spent some time at Yahoo!, and long ago, wrote for the since passed on MacWeek magazine.

What they find interesting: Google, Technology, Travel, Politics, Photography

FriendFeed: Subscribe | Blog: Subscribe

7) Steve Rubel

Short Bio: Steve Rubel is a director at Edelman Digital, a worldwide public relations company. His Micro Persuasion blog, launched in 2004, is among the most cited in Marketing and PR departments when looking at social media trends. Prior to Edelman, Rubel worked at CooperKatz and company.

What they find interesting: Marketing, PR, Technology, Social Media

FriendFeed: Subscribe | Blog: Subscribe

8) Josh Haley

Short Bio: Josh Haley describes himself as a computer geek and music freak. He and his wife, Trish, design branded items, including clothing, in Houston, Texas. Josh is a University of Hawaii graduate, and one of the three leaders of a popular podcast called "FFundercats".

What they find interesting: Humor, Food, Family

FriendFeed: Subscribe

9) Stephen Foskett

Short Bio: Stephen Foskett is a technolgy analyst and IT consultant based in Ohio, who focuses primarily on storage and networking. He is a Microsoft MVP and contributes to multiple technology blogs and magazines.

What they find interesting: Cloud computing, storage, Apple, Sports

FriendFeed: Subscribe | Blog: Subscribe

10) Erin Kotecki Vest

Short Bio: Erin is the Producer of Special Projects for BlogHer.com, and is a contributor to the Huffington Post. She previously spent ten years as a broadcast journalist in Los Angeles, Orlando and Detroit, and was a staunch Obama supporter during his campaign. She has two children.

What they find interesting: Politics, Technology, Women's Issues, Humor

FriendFeed: Subscribe | Blog: Subscribe

iPhones Can Protect Your Warcraft Account, and Someday Much More

By Daniel J. Pritchett of Sharing at Work (FriendFeed/Twitter)

Two recent iPhone stories highlight some interesting potential for Apple's iPhone and iPod family.  First up is WoW Insider's announcement of a free iPhone Authenticator available in the app store for securing World of Warcraft accounts.  A Battle.net user is typically a World of Warcraft player but the accounts can be tied to any Blizzard game you might own, including their future releases.

As shown in the screen shot on the left, the Authenticator program generates a new string of numbers once every minute or so.  Once a player links the authenticator to an account, these numbers must be supplied along with a user name and password at each login — a two-factor authentication challenge.  This iPhone app is an alternative to the existing solution where gamers can pay Blizzard $7 for a key fob that generates a similar passkey every time its button is pushed.

World of Warcraft characters and items are regularly hijacked via targeted trojans and keyloggers.  They can be stripped bare in a matter of minutes, their contents flipped quickly for tens or even hundreds of dollars on WoW's thriving grey market.  Given the time and effort involved in securing an account rollback from Blizzard customer service, many players will opt for the peace of mind granted them by this new application.

The next iPhone may read fingerprints and retinas

The second tidbit comes from Apple Insider (via Engadget): An Apple patent filling hints at fingerprint and retina scanning potential in future iPhones. Apple is researching the potential for embedding biometric scanning devices (cameras, etc.) behind the touch screen of an iPhone.  Such enhanced iPhones would allow for secure identification in order to unlock the phone itself.  These enhancements would also allow the iPhone to serve as an easily obtainable high-powered authenticator for other systems such as Blizzard's Battle.net.  While we might only imagine such tools as being necessary for sensitive operations like banking or remote logins to corporate intranets, the Blizzard app demonstrates that it can be cost effective to secure our less critical digital holdings.

The Blizzard authenticator is a great example of high-powered security applications that the iPhone family can provide right now, and the recent patent filing by Apple gives us insight into other uses for tomorrow's iPhone.  We'll certainly have the mobile available as an ever-more-secure authentication tool, but we'll also be able to use it as a remote sensor for home and office medical purposes such as the recently promised glucose monitor or a biometrically secured retail barcode scanner.  There are undoubtedly more possibilities than I can come up with on my own, and I look forward to seeing some of them becoming reality in the near future.  If you've got a great example of alternate uses for mobile phones, please share it in a comment!

Read more by Daniel J. Pritchett at Sharing at Work

Britney Spears Passes Obama for Most Followed Human on Twitter

This evening, around 8:25 p.m. Pacific Time, pop star Britney Spears passed President Barack Obama for the most popular Twitter account representing an individual (Both trail CNN Breaking News). While Spears joined Twitter relatively recently, only 6 months ago, to Obama's more than two years ago, the diva and those who help manage her online presence have shot to the top of the rankings, as Twitter has moved out of the geek sphere and into the mainstream. Not surprisingly, she and Obama are trailed by other "real world" celebrities like Ashton Kutcher (#4 overall), Jimmy Fallon (#6) and Shaquille O'Neal (#7).


As of 8:25 p.m. Pacific time on Saturday, @britneyspears topped @barackobama.
Both Spears and Obama have more than 620,000 followers as of tonight, following Britney's passing of Barack.

Note: Previous reports from sites like WeFollow, TwitterHolic and TwitterCounter were incorrect, as Obama's following statistics were undercounted by almost 50,000, stuck at 571,885 for some reason. (See some premature notes of Spears passing Obama on Twitter Search and a tweet by someecards to that effect.)


@someecards was premature, but on target.
Earlier this week, sparked by a New York Times story, Spears' account, as well as others, were highlighted as being operated by "ghost writers" - sparking outrage from some corners of the Web who thought they were authentic. Guy Kawasaki, who admitted to letting others tweet on his behalf, said he managed all direct messages and replies, while others were able to post links. But Spears' account was never really a secret - offering some transparency to the process. In December, you can recall an interview by Jesse Stay with Lauren Kozak, her social media director, that discussed how the account operated.

As she said then:

"Yes, we do get Twitters directly from Britney. We also get Twitters directly from Britney's Entourage. We provide announcement and tour information. We also have messages which are designed to drive traffic around Britney Spears' properties when we have something cool go on."

Ghost writers or not, the account has gained significant visibility and popularity - despite only adding a tweet about once a day. Of course, in contrast, Obama has only posted an update once since his swearing in on January 20th.

As Twitter grows, you can see the growth in the pair's audiences. Refreshing either's page will show a few dozen followers joining each minute, though Britney is increasing hers at a more dramatic rate.

The Spears and Obama teams operate differently when it comes to Twitter, not just in terms of frequency of their updates, but in how they follow back. Obama's account follows more than half a million, with 60,000 or so not being followed, for whatever reason. Spears' account, in comparison, follows fewer than 80,000. Of course, it doesn't exactly seem possible that either user, or their handlers, is really paying attention to the updates from fans - as the numbers are astronomical, and they probably have other priorities.

It's not clear if Britney can maintain the top spot for long. Kutcher joined Twitter in January, and his account is rapidly gaining, showing more than 583,000 followers as of 7:30 Pacific time this evening. At the current pace, it may be he, and not Britney, who tops the followers chart.


Ashton is Looking to Pass Britney Soon
Oh... and for the record, I don't follow any of these accounts, so my own data did not contribute.

10 Business Models to Monetize Web Applications

By Rob Diana of Regular Geek (Twitter/FriendFeed)

During my morning reading, The Long Tail had a link to a survey of Web app business models. If you take a look at the charts listing the revenue models, you will see there are twenty models listed. However, that is not an exhaustive list of ways to make money. Some of the models, such as Fixed and Variable Subscriptions, have several "implementations" that you can attempt.

Having said this, why is it that monetization is so hard for many Web 2.0 applications? Let's look at what needs to be done to support the various business models.

Subscriptions

1. Fixed subscriptions are a simple concept where people pay monthly fee for a product or service. Typically, you can charge for removing advertisements or some level of premium features. The problems with fixed subscriptions are that you need to create a subscription payment system and you need something to charge for. The first issue can be rectified by integrating with something like PayPal. The second issue is what most sites have difficulty with, what do you charge for? Premium content or features are much harder to find as you want to ensure you can build as large an audience as possible. Premium features need to be really interesting, and generally not available for free elsewhere.

2. Variable subscriptions are much more interesting. These are things like charging for use of an API or data feed. These are difficult as it requires a large amount of tracking application usage, and the pricing plans are more difficult to administer. Again, there are the questions of whether your services are generally available for free or even that useful.

Third Party Support

3. Advertising is the most common form of third party support. However, most Web applications are not launching with advertisements, which I think is a mistake. Google AdSense may not help you make millions, but maybe it offsets the costs a little bit and it opens up opportunities for real advertisements in the future.

4. Sponsor is a glorified word for really nice advertiser. A sponsor typically has a permanent advertisement on the site. These are nice, but it typically requires a decent amount of traffic in order to attract one.

5. Paid content is the black sheep of third party support and generally vilified by bloggers. The amount of negative publicity that you could receive from paid content may not be worth the money, especially if your site is still young. I would definitely recommend against this unless you are an established blogger and can easily defend your position.

Products And Pay-Per-Use

6. Products and Pay-Per-Use are probably the hardest monetization models to use. Do you have a physical product or virtual product that you can sell? Are people even willing to buy your product? Products typically require a significant amount of capital to develop or purchase, so your costs are generally high as well. Pay-per-use models are also difficult to develop. PayPal is an excellent example, where they charge transaction fees for each transaction. Just like the variable subscriptions, tracking of application usage can be difficult and for transaction fees, there is a large amount of financial work involved. Most technical people do not have significant financial background, so there is a large knowledge obstacle to overcome.

Services

7. Branding tends to be a side effect of what you have tried to do with your application. However, there is good money to be made from consulting and speaking engagements. This is an interesting option, but it tends to be more of a personal option as opposed to monetizing your application directly.

8. Create a platform. This is part of the model for the iPhone. You can charge developers for the development kit. This is immensely difficult to do because your platform must be hugely popular. Twitter is becoming a platform, but has been so open with their API that they would have difficulty charging people at this point. With this option, you should start charging immediately when it is released.

9. Affiliate sales are also an interesting option and do not require a huge amount of initial work. The difficulty with affiliate sales is that you still have to create something that is worth buying. I would also think that the amount of revenue possible from affiliate sales is smaller than most people creating Web applications would want. Granted, I do not have experience with this model, but you are sharing revenue with the people who are your affiliates. You could create a larger sales network in this way, but people would have to want to sell your product.

10. White label services do not appear very often for some reason. This is similar to the platform model, but the difference is that your software is not obviously at the forefront of the product. Ning is the most widely known option in the social network space, but there is a significant amount of competition. This model also requires some portion of other models as well. Ning has fixed monthly subscriptions as well as variable usage subscriptions. You could avoid mixing models by charging a larger fee for the initial creation of the white label service, but a larger initial payment will also scare potential buyers away.

Obviously, this list is not complete, but these basic models can be implemented or even integrated into most applications. I have avoided the "holy grail" of internet applications, selling the entire startup, as there is no direct way to implement this. It is also ridiculously difficult to survive without any monetization and be purchased for a decent amount of money. Most potential acquirers would like to see some semblance of revenue and potential revenue before buying something. It does help to be the hot application in the hot industry, i.e. YouTube or Twitter, but there are very few opportunities to do that and there will be tons of competition.

Read more by Rob Diana at RegularGeek.com.

False Alarm on Credit Fraud Solved by My E-mail Hoarding

This evening, my wife handed me the phone, saying "It's Chase bank. They say there is suspicious activity on your account and to call them." Having never run into issues with fraud or identity theft, I've been lucky so far, despite liberally spreading my credit card details all over the Web, in a myriad of e-commerce sites and online services. With our recent travels, and my wife's own activity on the card, I thought there was a good chance this would be a false positive, which it was, but I came extremely close to canceling my card, and would have, had it not been for my often-mentioned e-mail pack rate behavior.

When I called into the fraud center, after identifying myself, the automated voice asked about some "odd" activities - one from a "record store" and another from an online eMarketing firm. Both sounded odd, so I ended up with an operator. As she explained to me, the "record store" was actually Apple's iTunes, to the tune of $.99. No problem. But the other one? It turned out it was based in South Africa, and had charged me $1.07. That was an odd number, but small, and I didn't recognize the firm. It sounded like "Quirky Marketing" or "Quirk iMarketing". Something...

When I said I didn't recognize the name of the service, the operator strongly advised me to cancel the card immediately. But I wasn't so sure. There was still the possibility I had made a mistake, and $1.07 didn't seem like a big deal. She again pushed me to cancel the card, saying if somebody in South Africa had my data, the next purchase could be a big one.

I asked her not to cancel the card, but after asking people on Twitter what they thought I should do, and seeing a near-unanimous response that I should follow the bank's advice, I was feeling like my smug naivete was going to catch up to me.

Searching Google for the firm name I thought she had mentioned found nothing memorable. And the South African connection sounded very weird. But there was one last place I could look - in my e-mail. As mentioned many times, I've saved practically all my useful e-mail going back more than a decade - making it an extremely deep personal database. So I searched for the term the woman had mentioned on the phone: "Quirk".

It turned up an e-mail confirmation from Quirk eMarketing from September 2008, for a product I had checked out called "BrandsEye". BrandsEye I would have remembered, but the "Quirk eMarketing" I'd largely forgotten. Their site left much to be desired, but my e-mail showed I'd signed up to a service that would charge 7 South African Rands a month to monitor online mentions. Depending on the exchange rate, one month's bill would be $1.01, and another would be $1.07. And while that didn't trigger any fraud alerts in September through February, today, it did. (Likely due to some other activity my wife initiated)

When I had gotten the online confirmation of my purchase back on September 28th of 2008, I moved the e-mail to my "Commerce" folder and saved it. I didn't know if I would ever need it again, but today, it came in extremely handy, and I won't be canceling my credit card. Phew!

New FeedFlare Displays FriendFeed Likes and Comment Counts

Bloggers who are tied into social media sites have long used FeedBurner's FeedFlare functionality to help promote their blog posts, from pushing visitors to Digg or Stumble posts, add them to Delicious, or e-mail them to friends. But increasingly, information from external social networks is being fed back to the blog itself - from the number of retweets a post may have received to the number of Google Reader users who shared the item, for example. A new custom feedflare, designed by Kevin Fox, the lead designer of FriendFeed, and the artist behind popular sites such as GMail and Google Reader, is now available to display the likes and comments your post might have gotten on FriendFeed. It's already running on this site, and can be seen on his RSS feed as well.


FriendFeed Activity Displayed on My Site
The FeedFlare can be displayed on your site, on your RSS feed, or both - and clicking on the comments and likes statistics takes you to where your blog post is shared on FriendFeed, bridging visitors of your site to the conversation there.

Setting up the FeedFlare for FriendFeed likes and comments is not a one-click process, so if you are interested, here's how you do it:

1. Download this compressed .zip file. It contains the three documents you need, and an "About" file. Unzip the file and you will see a folder titled "friendfeedflare".
2. Open the file "flare.php". Next to where it says USERNAME, replace "notlouisgray" with your FriendFeed user name.
3. Open the file "friendflare.xml" and replace the pathname of "http://www.yourdomain.com/directory/flare.php" with where you will host the flare.php file. For example, I host mine at http://www.louisgray.com/feed/flare.php.
4. Upload the files "flare.php", "friendflare.xml" and "friendfeed.php" to a directory on your site which matches the path you provided in step 3.
5. Log in to your FeedBurner account, and go to the "FeedFlare" section in the "Optimize" tab.
6. At the bottom of the page, where you have the option to add a "Personal FeedFlare", paste in the URL of your XML file. (e.g. http://www.louisgray.com/feed/friendflare.xml)
7. Hit "Add New Flare" and then "Save".

The FeedFlare Displayed In FeedBurner
At this point, the likes and comment counts on your items will be displayed on your blog or RSS feed. They will continue to accrue until you have 30 newer items in your blog feed.

A year or so ago, the blogosphere lit up around how social sites were stealing the conversation away from blogs, and operating in silos. With tools like this, and Disqus and BackType's integration of FriendFeed comments, the disparate conversations are becoming ever more unified.

If you like this FeedFlare, be sure to check out Kevin Fox's FriendFeed here, or his personal blog at fury.com. And if you get it up and running, it'd be great to see it on your site, so post your blog URL in the comments.

Rackspace Stock Undergoes the Scoble Effect Following Robert's Hire

In the two weeks following Robert Scoble's official announcement that he was to be joining Rackspace, Inc. and embarking on a new project called Building 43, the company's stock has jumped by more than 30 percent, rising at a pace three times that of the NASDAQ, as the broader market tries to recover from a horrific year. And while yes, the argument should be made the two are not connected, the rise in the company's stock has added approximately $300 million to Rackspace's market cap. If Robert were responsible for even 1% of the jump, he would already have delivered $3 million of net value to the company.


Rackspace's 2-week Rise Has Been Impressive
While Scoble hasn't been blogging as much as he used to, in his most-impactful years, simply getting linked to would deliver what smaller bloggers called "The Scoble Effect", as new visitors to the site could dramatically outnumber their regulars. And it's fun to think just maybe he can do the same for the Web hosting firm.

At the close of trading on Friday, March 13th, the last day before Scoble's news was unveiled, Rackspace stock closed at $5.98 a share. At the end of trading today, the shares closed at $7.81 apiece, a move up of 30.6% in two weeks. In fact, according to Google Finance, Rackspace stock has been up on 8 of the 10 trading days following his announcement.


Meanwhile, Microsoft Has Been Slowly Sinking
In contrast, Microsoft, the last public company where Scoble worked, having left their offices in June of 2006, has seen their stock decline more than 15 percent since he left. Of course, so has just about everyone else...

Facebook Adds More Filters to Home Feed

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

It would appear that some time in the last hour, Facebook has added more filters to the Home Page feed. If you mouse over the upper-right of any feed entry, you'll notice the "X" is missing, and instead, there's a drop-down that says "Hide". Click on that, and you'll notice the option to hide all of a user's posts, or just particular feed item types.

For instance, if you just want to hide a person's Delicious bookmarks or Google Reader shares, that will appear next to the Feed item entry for that share. Right now the types of posts seem to be limited, and Facebook has not provided an explanation as to the extent of the filters.

In this example, I can hide the user, or the service.

This change is just one step in a line of improvements Facebook has mentioned they were moving towards, in light of users' near revolt over the social network's new interface. In addition to more filtering capabilities, Facebook is still looking to make the Feed more real-time and is improving the highlights on the right-hand side of the Home Page. The new filters seem to be quite limited at the moment, but my hope is that we'll begin to see many more options to enable you to have greater control over the data you see as you log into Facebook.

Read more by Jesse Stay at Stay N' Alive.

Location, Location... Mobile

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

Two years ago the mobile web was not a huge deal to me. I hated the way Pocket Internet Explorer (PIE) displayed web pages. Add that to the fact that I was deeply committed to graphic design at the time, and you'll understand why I ignored this market. It was frustrating to look at, and even harder to interact with. At the time, no one could reach me there. It was...(gasp!) a dead zone! (Dun, dun, duuuuuun!)

Today in Mobile

Fast forward to today when I'm checking my e-mails and RSS feeds from my iPhone. I'm getting directions from the Google Maps app on both my iPhone and Nokia E-75. I prefer Live Search Mobile on Motorola Q9c running Windows Mobile. Now that the mobile landscape is changing I've been changing with it. You almost have to have a mobile app or optimized site in order to pitch me.

I have three cell phones utilizing two of the best mobile web browsers available: Skyfire (Nokia, Windows Mobile) and Mobile Safari (iPhone). I'm also a lot more mobile than I was two years ago. Mobile optimized sites are simply becoming a must in this day and age. I'm here to let you know that you'd better hop on the bandwagon. However, don't just hop on the iPhone's bandwagon, Instead, make your services available to every mobile platform.

Mainstream Web Compatibility

With three devices running three different Mobile OS' and browsers, it should come as no surprise as to why mobile web cross-platform support is important to me. However, this isn't just personal. Mainstream users are dying to catch on to the mobile web too. The problem: the junk doesn't work on their phones. You can blame it on the handset all you want, but your users shouldn't be forced into buying a specific phone just to play with your service. In the same breath, they shouldn't be tied to their computer either.

Of course this doesn't apply to everyone. Limited functionality is a given with the mobile web, but you can't expect it to improve if you don't at least attempt to improve it. My friends are really trying to get into accessing information on the go while we're out and about. They see me do it all the time on my iPhone and think the iPhone is some sort of gadget god. They should be thinking that your app or service is great, not just the iPhone. They can't do that because if you take the iPhone out of the picture, they still wouldn't be able to use quite a few of the services I use.

Mobile Me & You

My location is ever-changing. I'm deeply invested in accessing information on the go. It's making my work more flexible and allowing me to make my day more productive. Now I can still go outside and socialize, with everything I need only a tap away on my phones, and I hate when I encounter something that can't be done until I'm back home with my laptop.

These days I'm waiting for Skype's iPhone App to be released. Can we say unlimited calling for cheap? I'm loving all the location awareness and Geo-tagging features that are being rolled out into mobile apps. However, the sites need the same love people. Not everyone owns an iPhone, you know.

Read more by Corvida Raven at SheGeeks.net.

The Downward Spiral - As Companies Slow, So Do Their People

Yesterday, IBM said they were laying off 5,000 people. Today, Google said they were laying off another 200. Unemployment in Silicon Valley is easily above 10 percent, and for the remaining job owners, many have seen salary cuts, forced furloughs and mandatory vacation. Companies have cut estimates and forecasts, or reduced spending. And even as the stock market has had some up days of late, the feeling out there is still not good - a lot more AIG than IPO, for example. But in many offices and cubicles around the Valley and beyond, workers are exercising their own slowdowns, their spirits dulled, as they gradually get less and less productive, waiting for more bad news, and being numb to it when it finally arrives.

For many, while the dire times should drive a newfound sense of urgency, it never comes. Instead of putting in extra hours, these desk zombies float through their business days, murmuring in the hallways about how they heard rumors even more cuts might come, and refreshing the company sales dashboard to see if anything has changed since when they last looked at it twenty minutes ago. It hasn't. They might come in just a bit later than they used to. They might take longer lunches - spending less, but they'll be out of the office. And by three o'clock, they're either thinking about shutting down for the day, or in some cases, finally getting up the energy to clear their to-do list, having killed more than half their time filing e-mail and browsing the Web.

The office, once a bustling energy-filled environment interrupted by phone calls, fast-paced strategic discussions and the occasional peal of laughter, instead resembles an unpopular library, with the most activity being the frequent visits to the printer or copy machine, and the creaks of the restroom doors opening and closing. If there are ringing phones, they are either from vendors demanding to be paid, or employees' personal cell phones, as they take the call and then rush out to the back, or to a conference room.

These companies are dying. Not necessarily IBM or Google, of course - but there are companies strewn throughout the Valley and beyond that were set up to capitalize on momentum that disappeared and then reversed over the last 18 months. Dreams were blasted away as the public markets closed, acquisition offers never appeared, and customers started to say no in a big way. And inside, many employees gave up. They're still coming to work. They even might put on a game face when in meetings or talking with their boss. But their will and drive to be a success and make things happen is all but gone.

I speak to this because I've seen it and I've heard it - not just in this recession, but in those before as well. One friend of mine confided to me by phone a few weeks ago that he probably works a solid 2-3 hours a day in his software engineering job, frittering the rest of the day away. He doesn't believe his company has a chance, and he doesn't care - citing their move to cut staff and move other jobs to India. But he isn't doing anything to change it, and the putrid job market has him just barely treading water, let alone seeking other options.

Yet another friend of mine talked to me yesterday about how his company is winding down, trying to convince two potential acquirers to find something of value in the little that's left.

In a previous company where I worked during the dotcom bust, I distinctly remember seeing one of the business development management team members spending more time playing video games and updating his resume than trying to close deals - as I gnashed my teeth, wondering why I was working so hard at something that meant so little to others.

If you read many of the tomes that were written about the Silicon Valley's successes, from the earliest days of semiconductors and the Internet, to Sarah Lacy's "Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good", you can be regaled with stories of people who didn't give up, who didn't take no for an answer, and who put in twelve-plus hour shifts, putting the company ahead of themselves. But you're not hearing the stories of those who went the other way - as frequent as they no doubt are.

A recent satirical post blamed Twitter for the down economy, noting a correlation between Twitter's popularity and the Dow's plummet. And as silly as that is, many of these frustrated desk zombies are likely turning to social networking sites to kill time, to feel busy, and to chat with others around the world about their shared annoyances. Amidst calls for ways to deliver a social media ROI, the fatigued masses are sucking the ROI out of their companies, as their productivity drops down to almost nothing.

Now, don't get me wrong. Every company has its heroes, even those that aren't doing well. Even the biggest failures of companies that are roundly mocked starred impressive people with aggressive work ethics, and success amid despair. As I once asked a potential job candidate during an interview, "With your record showing a string of failed company after failed company, how can we be certain you won't bring that failure here as well?" Luckily for this gentleman, he had a good answer. But for some, the culture of failure around them becomes so internalized that they push it forward and it becomes self-fulfilling.

There's a reason that turn-around stories are so rare. Once momentum is going in a certain direction, a troubled company's best assets, the best employees, find a way out. And the ones that remain, those who couldn't attract another offer, are the ones who just might be plodding through and praying they get a severance package, or that the next round of cuts spares them as they muddle along. You know these people. They're the ones not making the headlines. But in reality, they are. They just don't know it - and maybe, their company doesn't know it either.

TwitPay.me - Twitter Payments in 140 Characters or Less

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

I recently returned from a new event called "Launchup" here in Utah, where several startups were enabled to pitch their business in front of an audience, get critiqued, and share with the world an idea. After the presentations, the audience was given the opportunity to each pitch their own products, each with just 30 seconds to share their idea. I was amazed to find that with just 30 seconds one product in particular, TwitPay.me really stood out, with little to no explanation necessary.

TwitPay.me reads simplicity across the board. The product, which aims to allow you to easily send payments to your friends on Twitter, accomplishes that with no need to sign up, and doesn't even need your credit card to make that happen. The service uses Amazon Payment Services to send and receive payments, which means all you need is an Amazon account. So basically anyone who has ever purchased something on Amazon is already set up to use this.

I was reminded of the product when its co-founder, >Jeremy Raines (@jraines, from Park City, Utah), sent me $1.40 via a Tweet, "@jesse twitpay $1.40 to check out http://twitpay.me :-)". I do have to admit it's one of the coolest (and most simple) pitches I have ever received! I went to http://twitpay.me, gave them my Twitter username, they then sent me a pin number via DM which claimed my Twitter account - no login or authorization at all necessary! Inside my account, I just had to associate my Amazon Payments account (a total of 3 clicks) with TwitPay, and I had the money I was promised.

To send a payment to anyone, no account is necessary (until you want to actually pay the person). Simply send the words "@username twitpay $dollar_amount for reason", username being your Twitter screen name, $dollar_amount being the actual amount to send to the user, and reason being the reason for why you are sending the money. I tried this myself sending Louis Gray my 2 cents with "@louisgray twitpay $.02 for your love of bacon". He just needs to log into TwitPay and approve the payment through Amazon now to receive his $.02.

The Potential

About a year ago I worked with Phil Burns and several others to start a service such as this. The potential was screaming at us - with Social Networks and cell phones, we now had the potential to completely get rid of cash in peoples' pockets. The idea never really took off for us, but I'm glad to see others embracing it.

Up until now there has been nothing really to replace the cash, the small amounts of money, which we keep in our pockets for those moments we only need to pay small amounts of money. Imagine going to a vending machine and being able to Tweet a particular Twitter account listed on the vending machine with your payment. Imagine making a bet with a friend and being able to Tweet them their winnings. Or what if you could "Tweet" your waitress their Tip?

TwitPay may have just seriously challenged services such as Paypal's business models with this innovative new way to send payments. The service is plain, simple, 140 characters or less, Social, and requires no account to use. Social Payments have yet to be breached, but I believe TwitPay.me may have just breached it with the ideal Twitter payment environment. Are we at the beginning of the end for the need of actual cash in our pockets?

Read more by Jesse Stay at Stay N' Alive.

FeedBlitz Launches FeedBurner Alternative for RSS Automation

Since Google's acquisition of FeedBurner in mid-2007, the complaints have come hard and fast, as FeedBurner's integration saw frequent disconnects between the acquiring company and its new prize, slowness in updating feeds, and a complete lack of innovation, all amidst silence from Mountain View that had many wondering if the service would go the way of DodgeBall and other services into Google's black hole. At the end of 2008, I predicted an alternative would rise up to give bloggers an option to switch. Today, FeedBlitz, which has powered my e-mail distribution for nearly three years, has offered to do just that.

The new RSS management service, announced in a blog post, says it will offer publishers, marketers and bloggers improved branding, integrated search engine optimization, and some interesting additions, including social media marketing and metrics.

If you are already using the company's e-mail marketing services, the RSS addition is free. For all others, you can start using FeedBlitz to run your RSS feeds for as low as $1.49 a month.

Before moving my feed away from FeedBurner, which at times is tempting, I'll have to be sure existing subscribers wouldn't see any hiccups. FeedBlitz says they are eating their own dogfood, routing to the new self-hosted URL through FeedBurner itself. You can see how their "Blitzed" Feed looks here: http://feeds.feedblitz.com/feedblitz

With this long-awaited alternative, it will be interesting to see if the many complaintants are willing to make a move. It's often been said that the most-popular feature of FeedBurner has been the little chiclets that show up to date subscription counts, so FeedBlitz wil have to match this capability. Given they've displayed my e-mailed RSS count since 2006, I think they will be up to the task.

So Google, you've got some competition in town - and FeedBlitz says it's not done, promising it will "rapidly evolve". That's something FeedBurner is definitely not doing.

Three Twitter Tools That Enhance New Follower Notifications

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

Twitter's growing pains may have started early, but a lot of "tweeples" that have been on Twitter for some time are starting to feel their own growing pains. As Twitter's presence and exposure to mainstream increases, new follower notification e-mails are beginning to drown our inbox.

Twitter has no native functionality to help simplify the process of deciding who to follow back. As of right now, a lot of Twitter users are following this process:

1. Receive new follower e-mail
2. Click link to follower's profile
3. Review profile on Twitter
4. Follow back / Ignore
5. Go back and delete e-mail

This is a five step process that is being simplified by three new Twitter Tools: Topify, Twimailer, and Twittfilter.

Topify

Earlier this month, Louis reviewed the Topify service. So, I won't spend too much time on this. In fact, just head to the review: Topify Enhances Twitter Following Notifications (50 Invites).

To sum up the purpose of Topify:

"The result is a more complete picture of the individual, from within your e-mail, without forcing you to go to the Twitter Web site to learn more."

Twimailer

Twimailer is the enhanced follower notification service I prefer to use. Twimailer follows the same concept as Topify, but presents the information in a different way visually. Each e-mail provides you with the following information:

• 10 latest tweets
• Follower/Following count
• Twitter bio
• Follow back, Block, & Spam options

Unlike Topify, Twimailer doesn't require an invite to the service in order to use it right now.

Twittfilter

Twittfilter puts a spin on enhanced follower notifications. The approach taken with this service is to filter new followers along with enhancing the notifications. The service allows you pre-define which follower notifications you'd like to receive. Using a star rating of 1-5, Twittfilter will only pass along notifications of new followers that fit into the star rating of your choice. How is this done?

"Twittfilter will look at your friend/follow list, theirs, recent activity on both sites, friend follow ratio (and a few other things) and give you a score from 0 to 5. This can be automated but only by request."

The same algorithm is applied to your new followers. The downside to this (and most recommendation tools) is the possibility of missing out new followers that may have been of interest. Nothing's perfect, but Twittfilter does a decent job of picking accurate matches.

Better Manage Follower Overload

Now you have 3 of the best tools for managing new follower notifications. Each tools is great and gets the job done. The only real difference is the way the information is displayed within the e-mail sent by each service. After signing up for any of these tools your new follower process should be reduced from jumping back and forth between Twitter and your inbox to this:

• Receive new follower notification
• Read & Decide
• Delete e-mail

For those that are already using these tools, tell us your experience with them in the comments section.

Read more by Corvida Raven at SheGeeks.net.

Doodle Jump iPhone Game is Simple, Yet Challenging

Some iPhone games try and recreate the traditional console experience, reminding us of older NES cartridges, or are simply ports from PC titles. Others, like Lima Sky's array of offerings, leverage the iPhone's accelerometer to the point it becomes the entire focus of the game. Such is the case with Doodle Jump, a platform jumping game that has you working ever higher, trying to jump to safety, all while avoiding falling to your demise, or running into monsters and other bad news.

Doodle Jump, unlike a myriad of other platform jumping games we've all seen, never has you standing still, and there's no running for better position. From the time you hit the start button, you are jumping and on your way. Tilt the iPhone right to jump right, and lean to the left to go left. Along the way, you can find platforms that crumble or disappear underneath your feet, ones that move side to side, or be faced with monsters, who will kill you immediately, should you be unlucky enough to cross their path.


Doodle Jumping From Platform to Platform
The sheer simplicity of the game (tilt left, tilt right and shoot by tapping the iPhone) makes the fact that I fail every single time, somehow, annoying, but always makes me feel like I will do better the next time. I found myself tilting and aiming for the springs on some platforms to vault ever higher, and jumping to wrap around the screen to find platforms on the other side that were within reach. But I always died. Something always got in my way.


Trying to Avoid Monsters and Pitfalls
While the game is easy to start, full of platforms and options, the higher you go, the more challenging it gets. You can see markers on the side of the screen, showing how far other players around the world have gone, and you can see the number of platforms disappear, or be replaced with ones that won't help you all that much, as they break away at the mere touch.


Not Always Quite Getting Away from Danger
If you get far enough, and manage to avoid the monsters, or shoot them out of your way, you run the danger of being abducted by UFOs or sucked in by black holes. Your long-nosed four-legged character might be cute, but he's in serious trouble, and you'll want to lead him to safety. You can find Doodle Jump on the iTunes store for only 99 cents.

How To Cleanly Separate Personal and Work Social Media Personalities

As social networking and social media sites increasingly become as much about companies and brands as they are about people, you are seeing names like Zappos and JetBlue tweeting alongside you, and Comcast answering complaints. Companies might be making comments on FriendFeed and asking you to join their fan page on Facebook. Many of you, possibly tasked with maintaining the social media presence for your company, might be maintaining multiple accounts on practically every network, and trying to keep your personalities in check, lest you make the mistake of getting the two mixed up. For the last four months, I've been doing the same thing. Here's how.

Put Your Work Life In One Browser, and You In Another

Everybody has multiple browsers these days. Whether you prefer Safari, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, or something else, you probably have a second one which you use less. Rather than ask you to login and log out over and over, set up one of your browsers with bookmarks to all your work activity and the social media sites with that account, and keep your preferred browser all yours.

For my work account, I use Firefox, and for me, I use Safari.

When I open Firefox, the browser opens five distinct tabs:

• Gmail
• Google Reader
• Twitter Search
• Twitter
• FriendFeed

The GMail account tracks new subscribers and DMs. Google Reader populates the link blog. Twitter search watches what is being said online, and Twitter and FriendFeed let the company participate.

Running the browsers in parallel lets me do the work I need to in both, without suffering from multiple personality disorder.

Make A Second Login, Preferences for TweetDeck

TweetDeck, in my opinion, is still the best way to track groups and saved searches in Twitter. I set up TweetDeck so if I am logged in as me, the application has the standard black look and feel. But when I am logged in with the company ID, TweetDeck is in the company colors of blue and orange. Yes, the combination is somewhat garish, but it serves as a reminder to me that I'm logged in for work, so I won't screw up.


Logged Into TweetDeck as the Company

Logged Into TweetDeck as Me
Beyond the colors, you should leverage TweetDeck's saved search functionality to track your company and product mentions, as well as that of competitors.

Create a Second Disqus Account for Commenting

When commenting on blogs around the Web, as yourself, or for the company, it makes sense to use best practices and identify who you are. But you don't necessarily want to track your work comments to your personal ID. I recommend getting a second Disqus account that ties back to your work e-mail address, and have that registered in the "work" browser. When I make comments on sites as work, it says my first and last name, and then, in parentheses, the company name.

Always Work Methodically When Acting on Behalf of the Company

Tweeting or commenting or blogging or bookmarking as a brand is more risky than when you do it on your own. As with all things on the Web, you should consider how they could be interpreted downstream. But when you are doing something on behalf of a corporate entity that represents products, people, history and finance, you should take an extra breath before acting, and pay extra attention to every word, character or nuance.

Be Replaceable

If you do your job well, it should be easy for you to pass off the reins of the social media strategy at your company to somebody else with very little impact. If you make the company's social media presence all about you, it will follow you where you go next, and could negatively damage the company you are leaving, and distract from the company where you are going. See that you can work on behalf of the company without it being all about you. Try to offer personality without it necessarily being your distinct personality.

You'll note I don't often talk about work here on the blog. It was a conscious decision I made when starting the site at the beginning of 2006. It's not a secret where I work (check my LinkedIn profile) but it's not about where I work. It's all part of keeping things separate. Are you running the social media activity for your company, or looking to get started? I would be interested in the tips you may have as well.

Did eTrade Blow It By Making Their Mobile App A BlackBerry Exclusive?

As Apple's iTunes application store continues to grow, it is becoming an increasing rarity to find needs unmet by the company or its wide array of third party developers. But one clear vacancy is in the real-time stock information and trading department. I've been waiting for eTrade, my broker of choice, to develop an application for the iPhone for quite some time, but the company hasn't publicly made any strides to meet my needs. In fact, after rolling out a specialized application for the BlackBerry platform in June of 2008, we've had nine months of silence, and I'm left to believe the company is sticking with Research In Motion as their partner for the long haul.

The stereotypical image one has of today's Wall Street movers and shakers has evolved beyond the neatly pressed suits and ties, and sharp shoes, to include a hyper-obsessed BlackBerry addict, who can't look up in fear of missing an e-mail. But beyond the trading floor, consumers far from New York and other bustling metropolises are making updates to their portfolios - even in times of recession. And what eTrade has done by partnering up exclusively with BlackBerry on the mobile side is shut out the very real growing population who have selected other platforms, be they the iPhone, Google's Android, or even the Palm Pre.


eTrade Highlights Its Exclusive BlackBerry Deal
Today, using eTrade on the iPhone is barely passable. One simply has to log in through the standard Safari browser and use the non-optimized interface. It's good enough to get a near real-time update for portfolio holdings and balances, but too limiting to do much else. I'm certainly not using the Web site on the iPhone for researching stocks, reading news, making trades or seeing real-time updates.

I'm not saying the iPhone will kill the BlackBerry and render eTrade's move an abject failure, but even with BlackBerry's latest models, they don't seem to have the inside track on growth and innovation. They seem to have lost the swagger that made them a market leader for the last five or so years, while Apple and Google (to a lesser extent) have taken their place.

The iPhone is growing up to the point it's not just a game platform or a music device. I use the Mint.com application to see my up to date financial numbers, aggregated from many accounts. And Apple helpfully offers a basic stock price app. But they're no substitute for real trading.

An eTrade application for the iPhone should include:

• Real-time stock quotes
• Porfolio updates including gains and losses or trends
• Stock trading
• Company news and information
• Market overviews

For a company like eTrade, which is so broad in terms of its reach to consumers, to limit itself to a single mobile platform, especially one that seems to be on its way to being eclipsed by more nimble competitors, seems wrong. As an eTrade customer, I know I would use this application, and regardless the cost for it to be developed, eTrade would make up the amount in very little time, from the hordes of iPhone users who could start making trades on the go, from anywhere.

eTrade, your own stock is barely over a buck. I know you have other issues on your mind. But every day that goes by where I don't have an eTrade application on my iPhone means less revenue for you. Call BlackBerry up and tell them you want to see other people.

Being Transparent is Fine, But Please Use Smart Filtering

The current generation of Web users is sharing more than ever online - in ways my parent's generation would visibly flinch over. They are sharing their locations, their relationships, their personal photos, and their thoughts in real time. They are posting their updates to Facebook, to Twitter, and to MySpace, as they move toward being ever more transparent. On another level, personal brands are being built with transparency as the foundation, as they share personal photos, their music preferences, family news, and a constant stream of comments and observations on the world. And in parallel, companies are being pushed by an army of self-appointed social media experts to become more open and transparent themselves. But as with every new approach, there's a right way and a wrong way to do things.

Steven Hodson of WinExtra tonight questioned, "Just what is all this transparency getting us anyway?" Meanwhile, Silicon Valley gossip rag, Gawker, knocks transparency so often that it has its own tag. (See here)

At the SXSW conference last week, I sat down with Michael Sean Wright of Nice Fish Films for a 30-45 minute interview, streamed live on Ustream. During that interview, Michael commended me for being transparent. To paraphrase his comments, he said that not only was I blogging, but I was frequently sharing pictures of my kids, showing what music I was listening to on Last.fm, and making comments on blogs big and small across the Web.

But here's the thing. While I do intend to be transparent and share with you what I'm thinking, or what factors are in play when I say what I do, or where I might have bias, I am sharing only a subset of everything I do. I have intentionally filtered out information about my personal life and work life which I decided wouldn't add value to you, or wouldn't add value for me to share. For as much as I may be "putting everything out there", you're not seeing much from my hours at the office. You're not getting live tweets from me during church meetings, and you're not getting the minutiae of the day - from what television I'm watching, where I'm driving, or what my wife and I are discussing - even when it's tempting to quote her out of context and send it to Twitter.

The net result is that everything I share with you is intended to add value - either to you where you can learn something for yourself or about me, or to me, where it might further enhance this theoretical term so many people are calling "a personal brand". To say what I share with you is calculated might be overdoing it, but I am very cognizant of how what I am doing or saying is potentially interpreted downstream. I am hyperaware of how when I update something on FriendFeed, that it may also flow to Twitter or Facebook. I know that when I make a comment on Disqus, it is searchable by Google, and by BackType, and copied to FriendFeed. I know when I hit share on Google Reader, that it represents my endorsement of that content or find it interesting, and see the result shared to Socialmedian or other aggregation services.

If you want to be transparent, and build a personal brand you are proud of, you must always be thinking about filtering what gets into your stream, and how it could benefit you and your audience. Even for as much as I share photos of Matthew and Sarah, it's a subset of all those we have, and I try not to overabuse the privilege on the social networks where we participate. Even though I share songs I love listening to on Last.fm, I don't hit that button too frequently. Even though I have made nearly 2,000 updates to Twitter in just over a year's time, I am conscious of not overdoing it, impacting my followers, and confusing them in terms of what I stand for.

Earlier this week, Hutch Carpenter showed us how you can tweet your way out of a job by not thinking about how being transparent can negatively affect you. Similarly, ValleyWag uncovered photos that one tech employee chose to share with the world from his Honeymoon that would make you blush. In each case, the transgressor's transparency had not been filtered in such a way that benefitted them - but stepped well beyond the line of what's intelligent. But it shouldn't take a big mistake that costs you a job or your privacy to make you think about how transparency is possibly hurting you. Choose your filters, and you can mold the way you are interpreted into something you are proud of.

AllTop's Custom Pages Finally Tip Me to Using the Product

For some time now, Guy Kawasaki's AllTop service has been building out a wide array of pages dedicated to specific topics, highlighting bloggers (and their RSS feeds) who specialize in their market, be it in technology, business, news or sports. And I've largely ignored it, as I get all my news from Google Reader and social networks, like FriendFeed and Socialmedian. But this week's introduction of custom pages had me jumping on the opportunity to build out my own custom AllTop site, which, if I keep it maintained, could be a great "back page" to my site, highlighting the many blogs who bring me the best content each day.

If you're a longer-term reader of the site, then you know I try to highlight five new lesser-known blogs each month, and have done so for a year. The March 2009 edition is coming, I promise. I also have had the privilege of hosting some great co-authors who have strong blogs themselves. While the URL might read louisgray.com, the site is as much about these other sources for news as it is around me or the entrepreneurs and services we highlight.

The new custom AllTop lets me select from the many different AllTop pages throughout the service's network, and add them one by one to my own page, where I can move them higher or lower, left or right, in an attempt to deliver a one-stop page for the extended louisgray.com network.


My custom AllTop, which you can find at http://my.alltop.com/louisgray, shows not only the blogs from my co-authors, including Rob Diana, Jesse Stay, Mona Nomura and others, but also some interesting feeds from around the Web, including GrowMap, Conversation Agent, and Matt Cutts. I can also, thanks to AllTop's flexibility, pull in FriendFeed streams from active people on the site, including myself and Mona.


The end result is a page that mirrors Duncan Riley's work at Inquisitr IQ. I found myself cherry-picking the best of the Web from AllTop pages focused on Google, Twitter, Tech, Macintosh, FriendFeed, Egos and Social Media, for starters.

While AllTop calls them custom pages, there's still a lot of work to be done for them to truly be "custom". I can't customize the look and feel of the page, nor can I import feeds that don't already exist in AllTop. So if they haven't done the legwork to find a blog I would like to highlight, then they won't show up on my page. But it's absolutely a solid start, and one that I intend to build out more over time, and add to my sidebar somewhere, to keep you updated on the sites and people I find most intriguing.

CloudContacts Teleports Your Business Cards to the Virtual World

Like many of you no doubt, over the last several years, I've amassed a solid collection of business cards, from both work and social engagements. I have business cards in boxes, in piles on my desk, on my dresser and table at home, and in virtually every zipper pocket of my laptop bag. I have business cards from Web companies that haven't launched yet, and I have business cards from companies that have already gone out of business since we shook hands and traded paper. And while I always thought someday I would sit down and input each one by hand into my address book, it never happened. That's why when I heard about CenterNetworks' Allen Stern's new venture, CloudContacts, I was intrigued. When we met up at SXSW last week, I took the plunge, and have to say that not only did the service do exactly as I expected, but i tees up some interesting possibilities through advanced features I hadn't considered.

The first step of starting with CloudContacts is the one of getting your cards into the service. You could physically hand Allen a box, like I did at the event. You could mail CloudContacts your cards. You could scan the cards and e-mail him the results. Or you could even, with a feature announced last month, take a picture of the card(s) with your phone and e-mail it in.

Once CloudContacts has your cards, the real work takes place, and the cards are entered into the system. I gave Allen my cards on Saturday and gained a login by Monday, so turn-around time is very quick. Upon logging in, I was presented with a page that showed the contacts listed by first and last name, company, address, and phone, just like you would expect from online address book services, including the one Apple features in MobileMe.


But CloudContacts' true value comes from mainly two areas. The first is the one you would expect, where you can download all your contacts (in CSV file, VCards or as Yahoo! and GMail contacts), and the second is that when you click on "view" next to any card, you not only see a picture of the scanned business card, but you also get as much data out of the Web as CloudContacts could find, from a picture in Google Maps showing their address, to searches on LinkedIn and Facebook for their accounts, and even their last few tweets, if the card was lucky enough to have a Twitter account listed. You could even play super-geek and scan a code to have your phone call the person, if dialing proves too difficult.


For me, the major test was downloading the 200+ cards I gave to CloudContacts, and then importing them into my Apple Address Book, which syncs up with my iPhone, Mail and most programs. It happened perfectly, recognizing potential duplicates I'd actually entered myself, and adding the rest. Now, all those business cards I was lugging around or running into can be sent to the big recycling bin in the sky.


The question is, now that the hard part is done, can Allen Stern and CloudContacts flip the data on its head and start to make a LinkedIn-like social network out of it? Will I in the future be able to see who else uploaded the same business card? It looks like the foundation is being laid for the service to become more than just a next generation address book. But even if it never does, it's already been a great benefit to me. You can find CloudContacts at http://www.cloudcontacts.com.

How to Blog Live Events and Publish With Lightning Speed

One of the major trends I've been irked by at the last few events I have attended is the general lack of blog posts and reactions to panels and keynote speakers. While in years past, one could expect solid reaction stories from attendees, many are instead choosing to "live tweet" the proceedings, or with the right equipment, are recording it and posting the results as a podcast or YouTube embed. While I was at the SXSW this weekend, I thought I'd practice what I preach, and post, post, post. I ended up writing 14 posts over the four-day period from Friday through Monday, including 6 separate entries on Saturday. And in one case, on Sunday, I had a post up and on the site even before the panel had concluded, posting it at 10:50 for the 10:00 to 11:00 session. I thought I'd tell you how I do it and how you can do it too.


Saturday's Six Posts from SXSW
Pick A Comfortable Note-Taking Application

I both take my notes and write my blog posts in Apple's Mail. Mail leaves my raw text as text, without putting in rich style elements, and without fear of losing my data if the application ever crashes. Mail also is flexible enough that I can open two active "New Message" windows and place them side by side, one to take notes, and the other to write the post.

Find one that works for you, even if it's WordPad.

Start With the Background Details

If you're blogging a panel or a speech, make sure to get the background details right by copying them from the program or title slide, and into your notes - including the name of the speech, and the participants, where they work, and their titles, if provided. From this point, you can, in your notes, reference them by last name, first name, or simply their initials, to shorten your note taking.

Consider The Goal of Your Story

There's a reason you're at the panel or event. Is there something that is most relevant to you or your readers? Are there individuals on the panel who you think are more interesting, or might be more quotable? If so, be predisposed to be more alert and a better note taker when they are speaking, and more likely to skip the comments from others if you need to catch up and have fallen behind.


My live notes from the "Run for the Hills" SXSW Panel
Take Down As Much as You Possibly Can

Just like reading quickly helps you power through RSS feeds, typing quickly can get you the best quotes. While some reporters turn to shorthand for live interviews, when typing, you can use abbreviations, word fragments, and ignore misspellings as you type your notes, but be sure to go back and fix the mistakes, especially if you end up using the material.

When I take notes, I tend to write down the last name of who is speaking, and type their every word. If they are a very fast talker, I am constantly filtering what they are saying and trying to determine if the statement they are currently making is "better" than the one I am currently typing. If it is, I'll delete the sentence I've started, hit return and start a new one. But if you have the ability to write down every word of every sentence, that's the very best way, giving you a chance to have a full record.


My post draft from the "Run for the Hills" SXSW Panel
Form the Story In Your Mind as It Develops

As the panel or speech unfolds, you should be getting an idea in your head as to your angle. On Sunday, a panel called "Ditch the Valley, Run for the Hills" took an interesting turn when one panelist said the Valley's high cost prevented all except 20-something bachelors from starting companies. That led to my title, "Is Silicon Valley Too Expensive for Normal People to Launch Startups?". Similarly, a panel on recommendation software led to a clash between editorial recommendations and community picks.

If you can see the story unfolding, it's a great time to actually start writing the story, as it happens.

Know the Law of Diminishing Returns

At the "Run for the Hills" presentation, which started at 10, by 10:35, the panelists had moved off the main topic, and were taking questions from the audience. To continue taking notes at that point would have been less useful, so the right move was to start fleshing out the post, while keeping one ear on the proceedings, in case either a more interesting story, or a continuation to the existing story would come up.

Also, have a built-in filter for comments and quotes you know will never make it into the story. Instead of writing down one person's witty banter, you could be taking down the notes from the next commenter instead.

Write While You Still Remember and Have the Quotes

The sooner you write the story, the fresher it will be in your mind, and the less likely you are to find interruptions. Since you remember the discussions, you can scroll through your notes, copy them into the story, and format them to fit your angle. Using the quotes you have separates you from those who are simply recapping the story.

Practice and Then Practice Some More.

I have been taking notes from phone interviews and putting them to press since my college days at the student newspaper. I've done the same when interviewing customers at the office, or simply summarizing comments from company executives, press and analysts for several years. Trying to take notes, verbatim, and chronicling an event can be challenging the first few times you do it, but the more often you do it, you will find your notes and quotes become more thorough, and your time to publishing will get very quick indeed.

The Clash of Editorial Recommendations and Community Suggestions

On Saturday, Charlene Li discussed how social networks are to be "like air", integrated into all the Web sites we visit. She painted a future whereby your friends and who you are as an individual would dictate the content and delivery of your Web experience. Just how to make that Web experience social, but in the right way, is a dilemma services are encountering, including executives at Pandora, Strands and Blip.TV, who talked at length today at the SXSW Interactive conference about how much power the community, and recommendations, should weigh on their products' experience. They also debated whether editorial recommendations had a place, and could be trusted.

When an application or service becomes social, the recommendations one gains from the community and your fellow friends hold significant weight. On Amazon, you might be told to purchase a book or DVD. On Pandora, you might start hearing music from a new artist. And Blip.tv? Well, they're still looking for the right solution, before they start tossing out videos of dogs on skateboards, due simply to popularity, as CEO Mike Hudack said today.

When done well, algorithmically generated recommendations can promote user action, including purchases, which then in turn makes it tempting to integrate social recommendations in practically every element of the eCommerce engine, the panelists agreed.

"Amazon is the quintessential recommender of the influential purchase," said Alex Hillman of Independents Hall. "If I am logged in and it knows what I bought before, it starts recommending things. I do trust it, and it is surprisingly accurate."

But Trevor Legwinski, who runs Marketing and Business Development for Strands, cautioned against showing too many options throughout a service.

"On the eCommerce side of things, (we are challenged) with how we increase our revenue, and what could provide a better consumer experience. But from an eCommerce perspective, if you give them (users) too many options, they will leave the site," he said.

Sites like Amazon.com, Netflix, Pandora, Last.fm and many others rely on the wisdom of crowds to try and figure out your own interests. And sites of all types have been asking you for more and more information for decades, harkening back to some of the most invasive registration regiments out there, around Web dating sites. And even if you put "a crapload" of data in, as Hillman called it, you probably should just save the time and go out on a date instead.

But these products are each working on finding the right mix of input from the community, and that of those hired by the company. Tom Conrad, CTO of Pandora, called it blending expert influence with community filtering.

"Collaborative filtering comes from purchase behavior and community behavior," Conrad said. "But it does have a self-reinforcing characteristic to it. If you tell it people that buy Nine Inch Nails also buy Ministry, it is reinforcing and it is hard to break out of that pattern, and it is even harder with the long tail where there is not enough data to build recommendations, so you have to build systems around factual information around the product."

One of the more visible recent developments in the world of recommendations came from Twitter, who seemingly hand-selected a small number of people to be recommended accounts. The move, which has seen total followers to these accounts skyrocket as the service dramatically grew in visibility, has had many influential users questioning the practice, and others begging to be included.

Today's panel questioned if the uproar was justifiable, considering there was no science behind the recommended list. And while they questioned if those selected offered new users a representative view of the microblogging service, the concept of an "editorial recommendation" was not dismissed outright - even while some panelists had avoided editorial selection in their own products.

"We don't publish top ten lists," said Conrad. "There is no way to find out what songs get the most thumbs up. We never say there are interesting bands to check out, as it's about you, not us. It's about what you think is cool."

Comments around the Twitter signup process generally recommended the service would be better served to ask for more questions up front, and try to leverage their search engine to show experts on topics the new users claimed interest in.

"Twitter could solve that problem if you could pull up other Twitterers who match those terms," Hillman said.

The panel concluded in agreement that the human experience, and recommendations from machines that start with human input were considered "the richest", and it was agreed that the human element would never "go away", but that engines needed to continue to improve to offer a smoother experience for services that relied on the wisdom of others.

"Any time you have a problem with a multiplicity of potential solutions, you have an opportunity as a developer for a recommendation solution to bring an answer to that problem," said Conrad. "Anywhere you have lots of potential solutions, you can narrow it down to one solution that is an answer."

Finding the Web's Best Content - Do You Want it New or Trusted?

My major driver for attending the SXSW Interactive conference this week was to participate in a panel, held this morning, discussing how to find the best and most interesting content on the Web, getting beyond simple aggregation. Sharing the stage with four very interesting peers, from Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb and Gabe Rivera of Techmeme to Melanie Baker of PostRank and Micah Baldwin of Lijit, we discussed both our secrets and our motivations for getting to the highest-quality content quickly. In my opinion, the "right" way to find the best content wasn't so much a workflow discussion or a tools discussion, but one of motivation - what drives you to take the effort to find it?

For Marshall and me, as bloggers, we are very interested in finding new stories and product releases ahead of others. Gabe, working with his tool's algorithm, hoped to find relevant news, partially defined by the number and strength of relevant links and content. Micah and Melanie both discussed how their products aim to do the dirty work of chewing through the vast amount of information to find the "best" and "most influential" sources and content. And for the many different people sitting in the room, each had their own pull - as we discussed what was driving their need to be constantly updated, and it was clear there was a dividing line - did you want to find it when it was brand new, or could you rely on recommendations from friends and peers?

I've talked quite a bit on the blog about the tools I use to find both new content and recommended, trusted content. Partially recapping from the panel, here's what we discussed:

To Find Brand-New Content

Google Reader is still the very best item I use every day to take in news from hundreds of different feeds, be they on technology, sports, business or social media. RSS powers my desire for immediacy, and Google Reader helps me both discover data only minutes after it is posted, but also share it and start to act as an information filter.

Referral Logs are a sneaky way to find new services. It's how I found many services that were in development, but had not debuted, including ReadBurner, Assetbar, Shyftr and others. Developers often check out stories with their own tools and due diligence can uncover scoops.

Search Alerts through Google, Twitter, BackType and other content repositories can give you a heads up when items you are most interested in are mentioned.

Old School Tools still are great ways to get connected. If you can post your phone number to your blog, do it. Make yourself available to content producers and entrepreneurs, so they can reach you with news.

To Find Top-Quality Trusted Content

Google Reader Shared Items let others who you trust act as information filters and pass along the very best of those sites they are using from around the Web.

FriendFeed's Best of Day tools let you find the most important stories, as determined by social activity, including likes and comments, and can be segmented by all those you follow, or lists, meaning you can see what a subsegment of your friends are finding most interesting in a time period, be it 1 day, 7 or a month.

TechFuga and Techmeme are two aggregators aimed to get high-quality content in the technology space, and other non-tech verticals are being built out, including the family of sites from the Ballhype crew, including Showhype, BeltwayBlips and the like.

Twitter Search and Leaderboards like TweetMeme let you see what are the most distributed tweets and links.

RSSmeme and ReadBurner help display the top shared Google Reader items of the day.

There's much, much more of course. We've talked about my social media consumption workflow before, and the way I do it may differ both from how you do, and from the way others on the panel explained their process. You can see additional coverage of the presentation from this morning here: SheGeeks: Beyond Content Aggregation – Filtering Services, Popular, & Relevant Content and Beyond Aggregation — Finding the Web’s Best Content at SXSW. An outstanding thread on FriendFeed, sparked by Eric Berlin, can be found here: “Monday, bright-ish and early-ish at Austin's SXSW, session called Beyond Aggregation - Finding the Web's Best Content”.

Facebook Drops the Walled Garden, Opens Up Possibility for Track

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

Today, Facebook announced they are now making it possible for anyone to open up their status updates and more, to the world. This means that by going into your privacy settings on Facebook and selecting "everyone" on various profile options, Google can now index it, non-friends are able to see it, and it puts Facebook "face-to-face" in the "worldwide conversation" with Twitter. Yes, Facebook has just killed the walled garden.

Over the last few months, people have been flocking to Twitter due to its open nature, searchable interface, and ease of conversation. Up until today, Facebook has only enabled status updates, conversation, posts, and profile data to be available, at a very maximum, to a user's friends and networks. Very limited data about a user was exposed to the world, nor was it indexable by Google. Google mostly had the capability to index a user's name, friends, and that was about it. Now, status updates, profile data, friend lists, and more can be visible to the world at the user's discretion.

We also saw the beginning of this today with the implementation of this data via TweetDeck, the most popular Twitter client's, integration with Facebook. Now even more data will be available to applications such as TweetDeck.

The Advantage Over Twitter

Twitter has been known as a wide-open platform. One that by default, anyone can read and publish. Users, at option, can make their profile and status updates private like Facebook, but it's an all or nothing choice.

On Facebook, your data remains private by default, but users can opt, at will, to make just pieces of their profiles available to the world. It doesn't have to be all-or-nothing. Users have full control, and can feel more at ease with Facebook. Perhaps the only thing that would make this better would be making status updates open to the public by default - I expect (and hope) we'll see this soon.

Let's Bring Track to Facebook

Facebook has indicated they have integrated this into their native search now. However, the availability of these status updates publicly does allow any developer to write such a search interface, and access the data, almost real-time on Facebook's massive server infrastructure.

Summize has been acquired by Twitter, but perhaps we'll start seeing other search services start to index this data. Currently, it would seem that only Social Graph data is available via the API, but I fully expect a public timeline to be available in the near future for them to be successful at this.

Let's add to this Facebook's existing SMS interface and the ability to integrate Facebook into your mobile phone, perhaps we will see Track again, but this time through Facebook, and very soon.

Goodbye Walled Garden!

Today marks a significant move in the history of Facebook. Today they tore down the walled garden they were sorely criticized for in the past. Now any user, under their own control, can make their data available to the public.

Facebook has hinted already at removing the 5,000 friend limit. I think that, along with more open APIs (aka public timeline), and access to comments and likes via the API will make Twitter start wishing they accepted Facebook's offer for purchase a few months back. Facebook, again, has just changed the game.

Read more by Jesse Stay at Stay N' Alive.

FiveThirtyEight Founder Speaks On Stats, Elections and Baseball

Even as many voters sat on pins and needles, the 2008 presidential election was among the easiest to predict, according to Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com, whose site skyrocketed to stardom amid high visibility throughout the primary and general election season last year, as he took a thorough background in statistical analysis and focused on the world of politics, hoping to improve the accuracy of polls and predictive analysis. In his comments on a keynote at the SXSW Interactive conference today, he said media outlets relied too much on most recent news, and could improve their prognoses if they instead turned to historical statistics and trend data.

Nate said he started FiveThirtyEight.com "out of frustration" with the traditional media properties, including CNN, MSNBC and Fox News. He said their coverage "wasn't empirically valid and correct," adding, "polls were too much of the narrative and they were taken too seriously as they were poorly conducted and interpreted."

Armed with a history of crunching baseball statistics to predict how well players would perform in the future from his time with the Baseball Prospectus, Nate tried to spot irregularities in polling or find variables that indicated how voters in each state were likely to trend which most pollsters were missing. One example included how in the Appalachian region, voters who declined to state their ethnicity, choosing to instead be labeled as "American", were doing so as a badge of pride, but also indicated a level of "redneckness," as he put it.

Like with baseball, Nate called the political process a long season, where largest trends were not swayed by an individual game's data, or by a single primary.

"You don't get that much information at once. A puzzle gets solved a little at a time," Nate said. "People are trained to over-react to these kinds of things, and I would urge patience."

Having successfully predicted the 2008 elections more accurately than practically anybody else out there, Nate is now being courted to try and solve a wide array of other issues, ranging from predicting the Academy Awards (which was partially successful), to predicting economics. As could be expected, he was asked to provide his thoughts on the economic slowdown that has effected everyone, and how long it would be until potential voters started to blame the Obama administration, instead of the Bush administration.

"We haven't had a situation like this in the modern era," Nate said. "People are really scared, and they don't see the light at the end of the tunnel. You have people who are very pessimistic about the future of the country, but Obama has great approval ratings. Usually that doesn't happen. There is a kind of grace period of three to six months, and after this grace period, of about 18 months, people assign him as much blame as they would Bush for the economy, so he needs the economy to turn around sooner, rather than later."

But even armed with as much data and talent as he has, Nate recognizes that other factors are in play. Baseball players can get injured, and "you can only expect a human to do what they do what they were doing so many times," he said, adding, "in baseball, everything in the last 100 years is 99.9% accurate. The real world is not like that."

Speaking of not predicting the real world, the term FiveThirtyEight, which refers to the number of electoral votes available in a presidential election, may need to change, should Washington DC gain representation in Congress, throwing all the numbers off. Should that happen, Nate just may have to change his URL.

Is the Valley Too Expensive for Normal People to Launch Startups?

At a morning panel today at the SXSW Interactive conference, titled "Ditch the Valley, Run for the Hills", a great debate was struck between Penelope Trunk of Brazen Careerist and others on the panel, as she argued the high cost of living demanded by Silicon Valley and San Francisco pretty much excluded anybody from starting companies, unless they were 20-something single males. She argued the Valley's "coolness" and access to capital might not deliver enough benefits for shoestring startups trying to get off the ground. The issue of Valley costs was compounded by comments from Mike Maples of Hyper 9, who added his concerns that the state's financial struggles could see dramatic impact the standard of living many of us have taken for granted.

There is no question that over the last few decades, the Valley has gotten a disproportionate share of venture capital. In fact, Maples quoted a recent study that showed 90 percent of venture returns in the last 30 years went to companies founded within 10 miles of either Stanford University or MIT in Massachusetts. And panelist Robert Scoble, now of Rackspace, said the contributing reasons that the Valley attracted startups were three major factors, namely:

1. Access to Capital (Drive Sandhill Road, see 10 VC firms and get your money)
2. Scalability of Web sites (Access to people who have done it before)
3. Tech press (From Mike Arrington and TechCrunch to other tech blogs)

But with the economy changing, and initial rounds for startups dropping from the tens of millions to only two or three million each, the panel said day to day challenges for start-ups could be even more acute, given the reduced access to capital.

Trunk, who is based in the Un-Valley, in Wisconsin, most directly said the process simply isn't doable for people who can't accept risk to their foundation, be it food or rent:

"There is an elephant in the room, about startups," she said. "You are starving and it is super scary, unless you have a trust fund or a previous successful company. In this economy it is very scary. We would have gone under in Silicon Valley because rents are high and there is no safety net in the Valley. Thunk how you can sustain yourself with food and rent before getting your business model."

She later added that only eight percent of companies seeking venture funding are from women, but most are from 20-something men who are single.

Maples, based in Austin, said he recently has been investing in local startups nearby Austin, partly because he would prefer not to travel, but he also voiced concerns about the viability of the Valley, given state budget problems.

"There is also the growing problem of local government," he said. There's a good chance the California government will go bankrupt. The services you take for granted now may not be there two to three years from now, be it education for kids, highways, police and fire support. The nice things you want could progressively change, and that's not true in Texas."

Issues in the Valley don't mean that the San Francisco Bay Area isn't attractive to new companies, of course. The Valley, offering access to capital, people, press and experience, can be an incredible pull. Scoble mentioned Loic LeMeur's Seesmic as one example of a company that moved from Europe to San Francisco and embraced the culture that enabled you to take risks, and fail. Noting that he himself had participated in three startups that have experienced failure, Scoble said Europe entrepreneurs aren't celebrated for their attempted success, but only for their actual success. And many of the panelists cited statistics showing that the venture capital-funded startup was a rarity, and the exception.

"In the valley, failure is accepted, and almost celebrated," Scoble said.

As with most topics here at the conference, the conversation also turned to Twitter. Could Twitter have been started or funded if it hadn't started in San Francisco? Almost universally, the answer was no. Maples even reminded us, "Twitter was a mistake."

Can Microblogging Power A Blog Community?

By Rob Diana of Regular Geek (Twitter/FriendFeed)

With the growing popularity of Twitter, people are looking at ways to use Twitter-like applications for different purposes. There are the corporate Twitters, like Yammer. There are open source Twitters, like Laconica. Now, Dave Winer is trying to find a way to "shrink wrap" a Twitter install. He is basing his efforts on the open source Laconica, and he is documenting things as he makes progress. Dave feels that it is time we break out of Twitter. It is not that there are problems with Twitter, but he has an interesting idea:

"It might mean lots of little Twitters. I'm starting one here on scripting.com, and in the first few hours of use it's already interesting. It wouldn't in any way be a replacement for Twitter. But it offers an alternative. Sort of like the difference between a blog and a big website, when blogs were just booting up in 1999 or so."

Why is this an interesting idea? Mainly because there is minimal discussion on most blogs and websites. In some cases, a website expands by creating forums or message boards. People can ask questions, get advice and respond to some of these same questions. So, does it make sense to have a local Laconica installation for a website? And what do we call these things? Dave has wondered whether Twitter will become the term for what techies are calling microblogging. That is not the real question. If we call it a Twitter install like we used to with Xerox and copiers, who really cares. That is a simplification of the question.

The real question is one of benefits. Forums are really useful in large communities due to the number of people that can ask and answer questions. However, there is a critical mass of members that must be reached before there is enough traffic in a forum for it to be useful. With a microblogging installation, you can interact directly with your readers and keep the conversation local to the blog. The sense of community could increase greatly. Events could be based on the use of the microblogging stream. Live blogging for events like SXSW could be covered through the microblogging stream.

The big issue with using microblogging is the ease of installation, maintenance and use. If Dave could accomplish his goal of a shrink-wrap Laconica installation, this would be significantly easier. Forums have significantly more overhead in terms of maintenance and use. Microblogging could be a simple baby step in forming more of a community around a blog.

If you really want to name this idea, you can call it a micro-community. Or to be simple, let's just call it a community, because that is what it really is.

Read more by Rob Diana at RegularGeek.com.

Charlene Li Predicts Social Networking Will Be Ubiquitous, "Like Air"

Charlene Li, formerly of Forrester, and now plugging away at the Altimeter Group, spoke to a packed house at the SXSW conference today on the topic of the future of social networks. And if her predictions are to come true, we will some day wonder why we ever needed to go to dedicated networks to be social, as more social elements are weaved into everything we do - from news consumption and advertising to e-commerce sites and television. Her prediction? "Social networks will be like air - everywhere around us."

Charlene's presentation featured example mock-ups of how Amazon.com could show you reviews from just your friends, and not the world at large, and another with the New York Times, assuming that if you were trusted and knew influencers, you could attract a higher CPM from advertisers, thanks to your own individual value.

But don't expect this to happen right away. As Charlene reminded us, it took 20 years from Tim Berners-Lee writing up the foundation of the World Wide Web to the intricate social networks we have today, and while we now live in a place where "the tools are so powerful, you can fill out a form to connect to anyone in the world", as she relayed, there's still a tremendous amount of work to do. She adds, "It is very early, so patience is needed."

In her presentation, Charlene said that in order for social networks to become "like air", you would need three major elements, namely:

1. Indentity - Who you are
2. Contacts - Who you know
3. Activities - What you do (in the context of those relationships)

Assuming social networking can become transparent and invisible and everywhere, like air, the next steps, according to Charlene, are to:

1. Evaluate where social makes sense. When can data and content be integrated in the experience? Leverage existing identity and social graphs where your audience already is, and get permission policies aligned with an open strategy.
2. Get your back-end data in order. Remove multiple sign-ins, registration and profiles for people. Have a single identity for customers and prospects.
3. Prepare to integrate social networks into your organization.

Charlene recommended rethinking the way we approach social networks and social gatherings. As she accurately pointed out, conferences like SXSW feature many people with very similar interests, but the likelihood that we knew these people by name, or as friends, would be very low. She suggested being able to find out - in advance - who would be attending such events. How could social networks make life events better than they already are today?

Today's many announcements from Facebook and their Connect platform signify a big move of how social networking can become like air. The service is trying to deliver single-login sign-on to all sites. Of course, Facebook Connect is running head to head with the Open Stack platform in parallel, supported by practically everyone else, including MySpace ID, Google FriendConnect, LinkedIn and the OpenSocial movement. But while the two are not yet compatible, there is a shared vision to simplify today what are complex issues, including separating a person's multiple identities, like that of the personal life and business life (primarily broken out by e-mail address), and how you can avoid befriending the same people over and over again on each new network. She called this process "laborious".

In time, she speculated that social data on the social graph could help make privacy and permissions easier to manage, adding "context makes content privacy easier, and social signals provide a shorthand for our mental map of relationships." And while these elements are not yet pervasive, her conclusions had no doubts - as she said, "It is inevitable. It will happen. But it is going to take time."

Seesmic Launches First Dedicated Client for Facebook Updates

One of the introductions displayed during Facebook's Dave Morin's panel at the South by Southwest conference today was that of a new desktop client for Facebook status updates, delivered by Seesmic's Loic LeMeur. The new app, available for both PC and Macintosh, running on the Adobe AIR platform, lets users view updates from friends and post new status updates to the popular social network, much like the myriad of applications built for Twitter, from TweetDeck and Posty to LeMeur's own, Twhirl.

During the debut of the application, Loic was keen to try and help redefine Seesmic. He said simply, "Seesmic is more than video now, it is about sharing with friends."


Connecting to Facebook With the Seesmic Desktop Tool
I currently update my Facebook status with my updates I send to Twitter, so for those people who use Twitter and synchronize the two, there may be little need for the new tool, but there are many others who have made Facebook their home for social networking with friends and family. With some now 50,000 applications running on the Facebook platform, as Morin mentioned today, the new Seesmic application both has the option to be seen by very many users, but also the chance it could be overlooked, unless Facebook also chooses to push its visibility.


Updates from My Friends and Updating Myself
There is some curiosity as to why Twhirl was not made the conduit for these updates. The product, primarily focused on Twitter, also enables updates to FriendFeed and, of course, Seesmic. It could be that Facebook wanted a native app dedicated to their site, or it could be that Loic wanted to gain the market visibility by building a new category of desktop utilities. (Of course, you could see CenterNetworks' video to learn more)

You can find the new Seesmic Facebook updater at http://www.seesmic.com/facebook. From there, you'll be taken to the Facebook site, upon getting connected, and you can download the AIR application. Loic officially announced it on his blog here.

Scoble Joins Rackspace to Lay Foundation for Building 43

Times are tough in both old media and new media, as old media sites fight to try and stay relevant in the face of a rapidly-evolving sphere where disparate voices, from bloggers to social networks can command attention that was once only possible through corporate brands and news organizations. Robert Scoble, who has achieved one of the more visible personal brands online in the technology space, recently sat at the crossroads of this development, trying to make an old media brand (Fast Company) into a new one. The trial proved difficult, and as has been announced today, he's striking out again in a position I believe will have much more success - as he joins the Web hosting company, Rackspace, building a new plan he calls "Building 43". In his new role, Robert will have the chance once again to leverage his personal brand, offering new media expertise, to a technology company that wants to be seen as a thought leader.

Building 43 is named after the famous Google and Microsoft buildings, both number 43, intended to be what he calls a "decentralized community for people fanatical about the Internet". And Scoble won't be limited to simply posting a blog on the Rackspace site. You can expect the Building 43 plan to be diverse, on all the social media networks where Robert has been building a solid presence the last few years, including Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed.

When I talked to Robert by phone about his news a few weeks ago, I was impressed by the plan - not so much because it's a clear path to riches, because it's not, and all work will still be a challenge, but instead because it put him back in the trenches of Silicon Valley, doing and creating and evangelizing. (Although yes, his work at Microsoft was in Redmond, WA) The move by Rackspace will help the company be better known for innovation, and will undoubtedly raise their visibility as Internet innovators work with Scoble to be featured and interviewed. The end result could even mean that many of the people Robert and his team work with could end up being hosted by Rackspace, for starters.

There's a big difference between writing about the news and following the news and making the news. Scoble, who has a resume of working at tech companies like DEC and Microsoft, now gets the chance to be a part of a company that's doing just that, while letting him stick to what he enjoys. When he and I talked, he made it clear that this would not be a one person deal. Over time, he hopes to bring in more folks to be part of Building 43. Joining him at start will be his pal Rocky Barbanica, who also was part of his team at Fast Company.

You can find out more about Building 43 at http://building43.com/. TechCrunch's writeup on it is here: Scoble’s New Thing: Building 43 and Robert's is here: Robert and Rocky ride again at Rackspace.

TalkSocialNews Podcast and Video from SXSW

This morning, I had the chance to sit down with Kipp Bodnar and Wayne Sutton of TalkSocialNews, and discuss the hot items at SXSW, why we blog, and how social media can impact consumers and business. It was my first time meeting the pair in person, after a phone interview we held October of last year.

Video is embedded above.

Apple iPhoto to Integrate Facebook Connect

During Dave Morin's presentation on a search for a more social Web at the SXSW conference today, the senior platforms manager for Facebook mentioned the company would be integrating Facebook Connect with Apple's iPhoto consumer program, in what could be a big step for Cupertino away from their forced vertical integration with Mobile Me, and more toward an adoption of the broader social networking community.

As Facebook grows in visibility, it's no surprise that companies big and small are looking to tap into the service's reported 175 million accounts. As Morin said during his presentation, "The desktop is getting more important in terms of integration with the Web." And the move for iPhoto users to upload their photos to Facebook, add tags and other social data further blurs the line between what is a desktop app or a Web app.

Apple has long considered it one of the leaders of the Web - despite having zero presence in search, portals or social networking in general. The company's long in the tooth iTools to .Mac to MobileMe transition has never really gained traction with the masses, even though the company's iPhone/iTunes and iLife families have been tremendously successful. That they are moving to work with Facebook and support the integration of the service indicates they're trying to dismiss the "not invented here" mentality.

Morin did not indicate which version of iPhoto would include the Facebook Connect option, or a timeframe, but given the presentations by multiple iPhone app developers having integrated the same technology and APIs, it likely won't be too long.

Facebook Connects With the iPhone for Mobile Social Apps

Today at the SXSW Interactive event, Dave Morin, Facebook's senior platform manger, introduced a wide-ranging integration of the company's Facebook Connect platform with iPhone applications, aiming to connect friends, using their true identities, through popular mobile apps. As Morin described during the standing room only panel, "your iPhone apps can now have friends."

In the last few weeks, Facebook has made significant changes in how they help its 175 million users share information, including expansions to the network's social graph and a revamped feed stream, but also has talked up what's a new move for the previous walled garden - looking to connect Facebook and your data on the network with the rest of the Web.

Morin said the updates start with profiles for "everyone", not just individuals but also, brands and companies. The new Facebook, now available on the Web, on the desktop and on the iPhone, essentially helps you "map out the most efficient way for you to connect to your friends," he added.

At launch, the new Facebook Connect for the iPhone will be supported by many of the most popular iPhone applications, from Tap Tap Revenge to Urban Spoon and the Social Gaming Network's array of applications, including iBowl, iBasketball and iGolf.

With such a huge user base, application developers are going to be extremely eager to attach to Facebook, undoubtedly, and the iPhone has still not yet peaked. I can expect to soon log in to any of my iPhone apps and take on friends and family, as the company looks to become the standard for your personal identity online, if you're at your computer or mobile.

Nobody Can Hear You Scream If Your RSS Feed Is Dead

I didn't make any blog posts on Thursday, after a full Wednesday which included a visit to Google headquarters to meet with the Google Reader team. And even though I made a few posts on Friday, the first day of the SXSW conference, many people still think I'm on a temporary hiatus, thanks to a tag-team failure between FeedBurner and Blogger, who have significantly impacted many users by zeroing out their feeds, stopping their posts from getting out of their domain. It looks like I should have spent more time in Mountain View after chatting up the Reader team, to see just what the heck is going on elsewhere on campus.

As the resurgent Kent Newsome of Newsome.org noted today, in his post, "FeedBurner & Blogger Conspire to Assassinate My Joy", the XML file that Blogger generates to distribute RSS feeds was completely wiped out - and I have been impacted as well. No matter if I had 20 or 2,000 posts historically, the file reports it has zero kilobytes, and no amount of trouble-shooting thus far has been of any help.

In this world of RSS-enabled services, a failure of this level means that my posts aren't getting out to the previously-mentioned Google Reader. They aren't populating social networking sites like FriendFeed, Socialmedian and Facebook. And that will no doubt cripple visits for those affected.

As always, I at first considered the issue was my fault. I noticed FriendFeed this morning wasn't picking up my posts, and tried to delete and add my blog six ways from Sunday, but with no success to speak of. While Kent recounts his searches for real tech support, I was in the air during much of the day, and came back to find I was not the only one hearing the silence from Google, as others assumed silence from me.

Complaints are wide-spread in Blogger's help forums - from RSS Feeds are EMPTY today when publishing via FTP. to atom.xml is empty and simply empty feeds.

I'm concerned on quite a few levels here. FeedBurner and Blogger are among the most mocked Google products because of their presumed neglect. Yet they are two of the major foundations for my blog. Also, I am concerned because we are seeing this issue as a weekend starts and a major tech conference is starting up. There's a huge chance this issue won't be resolved if Google is asleep at the wheel. There's nothing I can do except accelerate my move to Wordpress. This doesn't make me feel all that lovey-dovey with Blogger at the moment.

Day Zero of SXSW Interactive In the Books. Full Schedule Ahead.

When I set up my trip to the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference, I assumed Friday would just be a travel day. Heading to Austin from San Jose, I thought maybe I would get in and find a badge, but would more likely just get unpacked and get ready for the weekend's efforts. It turns out I was wrong.

In the hours I've been in Austin, I managed to squeeze in a dinner with two bloggers who have contributed to the site this year, as well as one of the entrepreneurs I've grown to consider a close friend. Additionally, I managed to meet several bloggers I've known primarily through social networks for the past few years, and not to be outdone, we participated in a live UStream video interview. And all that has happened before attending any panels - though a full deck is planned starting plenty early tomorrow.

Phil Glockner of Scribkin.com and ReadWriteWeb, also a contributor to this site, is acting as my tag-team partner for the weekend. He generously picked me up, and we're crashed out at his place, far away from the noise of the parties, but close enough to the convention, and at a much cheaper rate than the nose-bleed prices I was seeing just before making plans final.

After getting our badges, he and I met up with Paul Buchheit of FriendFeed and Google fame, and Eric Berlin of the Online Media Cultist and Web Worker Daily. (Eric, as you know, also contributes to the site) Following our dinner, I met Allen Stern of CenterNetworks for the first time, and later saw Drew Olanoff and Sean Percival while we were en route to the UStream Studio.

The video interview on UStream, with Michael Sean Wright of Nice Fish Films, focused on "Are We Human or Are We Bloggers?", a clever way to discuss how we can remain personal and transparent, and leverage the blogging medium to make change and express ourselves. In the 45 minutes or so we had, we discussed how we started blogging, our interests, products we like, and how we use new technology. We also managed to talk about the strategy behind featuring additional voices on the site, and how we use Twitter and FriendFeed. I appreciated getting the time to talk with Michael, and he said way too many nice things about me - some of which I would have a very hard time backing up.

I've posted my SXSW schedule here: http://sxsw2009.sched.org/louisgray. If you are at SXSW and want to meet up, please do. I'm looking forward to it. Reach me by e-mail, by phone, or any network of your choosing.

FriendFeed Launches Desktop Notifier AIR Application

In time for the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive event, the popular information sharing and aggregation service, FriendFeed, has introduced a desktop application based on Adobe's AIR platform, letting you see updates on any of your friend lists directly on your desktop - essentially bringing the service's real-time feature out of the Web and ever closer to your core.

The notifier is fairly lightweight upon introduction, letting you select to receive updates from any list you choose, choose how long they will display, and where on your desktop they will show. And that's it! So it's not exactly trying to take away your attention from more robust AIR applications, like TweetDeck for Twitter.


If you don't mind the constant notification updates from FriendFeed, you can choose any of the lists you have preset, and individual notifications will pop up. Click on the notification, and you can be taken to the item, or click comment to start commenting on it.



A Pair of Notifications from the New FriendFeed App
The utility is likely best positioned for highly-targeted lists, say of close friends, family, or work. Otherwise, you've got yet another way to drink from a firehose. You can find the notifier here: http://friendfeed.com/settings/notifier. The company's official post is here: Get FriendFeed notifications on your desktop.

Topify Enhances Twitter Following Notifications (50 Invites)

Last week, we talked about one of the latest annoyances on Twitter being refollow spam - the act of a user leveraging a script to regularly follow you repeatedly, on a schedule. Since that post, Twitter has seemed to crack down on users of the practice, suspending those accounts. Now that it's safe to look at following notifications again, I checked in to a new service called Topify, which doesn't just send the text notifications that are Twitter's standard, but instead, detailed reports that show a user's avatar, their twitter statistics, and most recent tweets. The result is a more complete picture of the individual, from within your e-mail, without forcing you to go to the Twitter Web site to learn more.

As you can see in the below example, when a new user follows your account, you are notified as to whether you are already following them, their followers and following data, bio link, and recent updates.


If you want to message the user, just reply to the follow e-mail. This, in theory, could enable you to set up Auto-DMs from your e-mail, should you set up a rule. (But I wouldn't encourage it)

Topify is in closed invite-only beta right now, and is the brainchild of Ouriel Ohayon and @arikfr. You can get access to Topify with the following link for louisgray.com readers: http://snurl.com/doige.

You can find out more about Topify on their blog.

Google Reader Adds Comments for Social Conversations

Google Reader, the RSS feed engine that has become a major hub in my daily information gathering, pulling in feeds from the hundreds of blogs and Web sites I follow, is taking a step forward in terms of making the service more social, by integrating private conversations between friends. With today's release, every post and every share has an option to add a comment, which will be displayed to your friends who you are connected to.

Google Reader, which started out as a data silo, where you could passively read your news in isolation, has since expanded to include shared link blogs, the addition of notes, and the ability to follow friends and their items within Reader. Items from my shared link blog play a critical role in populating my profile on a variety of social services, including Socialmedian, FriendFeed and Facebook, as well as social news sites including RSSmeme and ReadBurner.

And now, you can make comments and have a conversation with friends, without having to e-mail articles out, and without having your private conversations aired in public on the original blog.


Making a comment on a shared item in Google Reader


The comment, added to a shared item in Google Reader
Last year, we saw a great deal of controversy around publishers like Shyftr, who, at the time, ran a service that displayed comments along with full feeds. In that case, many blog owners felt that Shyftr was potentially making money (through ads) on their content, and hijacking comments. The Google Reader team, who I met with today at their headquarters in Mountain View, is very keen to do the right thing, and is not confusing public, centralized, comments with the private conversations available in today's release. And, so far, there are still no ads.

If you are a Google Reader user, you can see a new item called "Comment View" below "Friends Shared Items". If friends have made comments you haven't seen, the item will be in bold. You don't yet have a parenthetical number showing how many comments are left unread, as you do with total available items. (1000+ anyone?), but you can see if conversations are happening, either on your shared items or those of your friends.

As a Google Reader junkie, I was worried that conversations happening in my shared feeds would bump them back into my "unread" items and make me have to see items more than once. But Google Reader is not doing that. Read items stay read, but are available in the "Comment View".


A Popular Comment Thread in Google Reader


The Expanded Comment Thread in Google Reader
As you make comments within the shared items of Google Reader, those comments are visible to all friends of the original person who shared the item - and you can see comments by other people on those items, even if you are not friends with them yourself, but unlike Notes, they aren't exportable to services like FriendFeed, so they stay internal to the Reader.

You can see which friends are connected to you, as their names will be links to their Google profile, and those who are not friends display only a gray avatar. And today's post by the Reader team clarifies that, at launch, this is English-only, and not yet available in the "All Items" feed. But you can probably expect those to come with time.

The new addition is yet another way that Google Reader is looking to get more social. They've come a long way since my original post two years ago now that asked them to integrate trends, recommendations and more social features. And from today's meeting, it's clear much more is coming to what is now clearly the gold standard for the online RSS experience.

Google's Move to Behavior Ad Targeting Should be Excellent for All

Today's Tech Web is ablaze with discussion around Google's announcement that they will be moving more toward behavioral targeted advertising in its offerings, letting advertisers learn more about the users they are messaging to, and, hopefully, letting consumers see advertisements that are more accurate, more targeted, and more interesting. If done well, advertisers will see higher click-through rates, consumers will be less irritated with off-topic ads, and Google will continue to make even more money.

Thanks to some of my more direct comments on advertising, I might be seen as being anti-ads in general, but that's really not the case. As often as I skip commercials and avoid ad banners, that's as much a function of them being completely nonsensical and having nothing to do with me as it is a function of some holy war against the market.

In June of 2008, I posted a comment using GMail/Google Talk to FriendFeed, saying, “I've seen a lot of stories lately around behavioral targeted advertising, and privacy. But in theory, wouldn't you rather see more relevant ads? Isn't this a good thing?"

It was my position that people were (and are) worried about passing data to a central source, and having Big Brother watch their online activity, but that I felt the concerns were overwrought. I have a tendency first, to trust services, and second, to expect the notion of privacy has changed dramatically in a world where we post all our particulars to LinkedIn and Facebook anyway.

At the time, responses ranged from Susan Beebe's direct, "I HATE online ADS . period. They suck big time," to Mark Krynsky's more diplomatic take, when he said, "I think it's a win for both advertisers and users and since I realize that ads are what allow me to receive great free content and services I welcome them."

Ads aren't going away. While my previous comments centered around what people should expect in terms of revenue from ads, or the ads being completely unqualified, today's move by Google signals a giant shift change in terms of what people should expect in this market. They're not the first company to embrace behavioral targeted advertising, but as the biggest, it should have wide ramifications.

I hope that this move means I will see fewer banner ads for dancing monkeys and silhouettes offering me low mortgages, and more ads for tech gear and sports items. I hope that Google's new direction means fewer false guesses of my interests, based on keywords in the content I'm reading, and more correct guesses, based on sites I visit - and trust me, I'm on the Web practically all day long, so the wrongness adds up. I for one welcome our new behavioral advertising overlords.

Kosmix Introduces Meehive to Deliver Personalized News Pages

With printed newspapers going the way of the dodo, Web services have long battled to find a replacement for the ink-stained papers of yesteryear, hoping to leverage the rapidity of the Web with personalized customization. In the 90s, many search engines turned into Web portals, hoping to find readers' eyeballs would be "sticky" and spend lots of time on their site. In this decade, the move has been more to RSS-powered solutions, like Google News, or trusting the aggregation of behavior, either from friends or the Web at large - in social sites like Digg or FriendFeed. And for me, I've never quite found the right solution.

I tend to turn toward the firehose of Google Reader, FriendFeed and Twitter to get the immediate news, but struggle at finding one single destination to browse all the top news, based on topics I've entered. Meehive, a new offering from Kosmix.com, has taken strides in this direction with a product they call Meehive, which you can find at www.meehive.com.


My Personalized MeeHive Daily Hive
Meehive is nothing if not diligent in trying to make you the perfect news site. Upon registration, users are walked through a series of preference pages, where you can choose, based on the topic at hand, from Business and Finance items, to Sports, to Entertainment, and US & World, Lifestyle, and others. You can also add RSS feeds directly to the site, like you can with portals from My Yahoo!.

When you walk through these selections, you can choose from the pre-defined checkboxes Meehive offers, or you can add your own items. For example, in sports, I said I was most interested in Major League Baseball and NCAA Football, but more specifically, prefer news about the Oakland A's and Cal Bears. Similarly, I was able to, in the Business and Finance section, set up interests on Web sites like Twitter, Technorati, Google and Apple. This gave my Daily Hive a much more personalized feel than the standard CNN or Google News.


In addition to my preselected interests, Meehive incorporates trends from the world at large. It shows trending topics on Twitter, and stories in the news at large, so even if I haven't set up a topic for American Idol, which I promise never to do under penalty of death, I can click the "In the News" keyword "American Idol" and find all I want on Fox's insult to the American people.

And as you can expect, like practically every other social site out there, you can find friends on Meehive and get connected, to see their own interests. I can click through to a personalized page for Anthony Ha or Jason Kincaid, for example. In fact, in TechCrunch's article from this morning, you can see that Jason's screenshot includes my own activity in the top right, as we were connected. (My MeeHive is Here)

As much as you might think I'm overloaded with information from the Web, I'm not, honestly. I find that often my first tendency after reading through my Google Reader items is to want to go back to the site and start again, only to find them empty. It's possible, with MeeHive up and running, that when I've hit zero on Google Reader, and tapped out my FriendFeed and Twitter, I can have a destination to find out what the rest of the world is doing outside my little bubble.

The Word on SXSW 2009 is at SXSWerds.com

By Ken Stewart of ChangeForge (Twitter/FriendFeed)

Need to get the word on South by Southwest 2009? Get SXSWerds.com, a targeted social media platform, brought to you by BlogWerds Media, dedicated to the niche content vertical of SXSW to deliver what's happened, what's happening, and what's happening next.

Co-founder Eric Berlin, who also writes here on louisgray.com, has positioned the Werds-brand as a highly-targeted content aggregation coupled with social media tools for what's coming next.

According to Eric:

"BlogWerds Media believes that the evolution of social media means getting focused on valuable yet underserved content niches. While a select few blogs and news memes get repetitive attention from 'all things to all people' content aggregators and social news sites, the vast majority of news stories and social media participation simply gets lost in the ether."

What is SXSWerds?

Think Alltop + Digg, devoted to a niche like SXSW, with the Werd-spiders fetching the latest and greatest information on all things SXSW just for you. Simply browse and read the latest and greatest stories, tweets, videos, and you name it as they unfold - or rely on crowdsourcing to deliver vetted content to you.

After logging in, you have a chance to vote on your favorite articles, run searches using my new favorite blog search tool Lijit, step out to Twitter search on relevant tweet entries, and quite literally, drink in the fire hose of content coming at you.

If SXSW 2009 coverage is not your bag, try a few of the other BlogWerds' niche properties, including:

• BlogWerds.com - Companies are online. Many have blogs. BlogWerds covers those company blogs.


• NewsWerds.com - Newspapers are online. Many have blogs. NewsWerds covers those online newspapers.


• ObamaWerds.com - Barack Obama buzz + social media = ObamaWerds


• AmericanIdolWerds.com - American Idol buzz + social media = AmericanIdolWerds


• SurvivorWerds.com - Survivor buzz + social media = SurvivorWerds.com
  

If you can't make it to SXSW this year, or if you just want to catch-up on the panel discussions you might have missed while catching a tune, mosey on over to SXSWerds and get the werd on what's hot and what's not at SXSW.

---

Ken Stewart’s website, ChangeForge, focuses on the collision between the constantly changing worlds of business and technology in an information-centric world. Ken is always interested in connecting; To discover the many ways you may connect with him, visit him at DandyID.

---

File Magic Syncs Files from Desktop to iPhone, Including Wireless

The more I add applications to the iPhone, I have to ask myself if there is anything this Cupertino-born handset can't do. With the newest introduction of File Magic, from SplashData, I can now leverage available storage space on the iPhone to synchronize any kind of documents, videos, music or graphics, through the power of drag and drop, or even wireless syncing. Even after trying out dozens of different apps, I still find myself getting excited about seeing the iPhone learn new tricks - even if it's the relatively simple task of getting data from my computer to the phone and letting me view it directly.


File Magic On the Desktop Syncs With iPhone
File Magic 2.0 comes in two parts - a free desktop application, and the iPhone app, available on the iTunes Store for $4.99. And the combination lets you escape out of iTunes as the file manager, and add all sorts of Microsoft Office document types, including .doc, .ppt and .xls, as well as .pdf files, impossible through iTunes. These files can even be opened in the iPhone app itself, which makes for a cheap eBook reader, should you want to go that route.


File Magic Connects Your Desktop to Your iPhone
Back when I had a first generation Handspring Visor Deluxe, the "in" thing was to beam your data, your applications or your documents to another user by infrared. Surprisingly, the iPhone hasn't let you do such a thing (even when Microsoft Zune made a big deal out of it... to little success). File Magic not only lets you share files from iPhone to iPhone, but you can e-mail the files to anybody in your address book, and yes, send files wirelessly from your PC or Mac.


As You Add Documents, You Can Browse Or View Them
I have gotten so used to my iPhone being connected to my laptop via USB that I was actually surprised to see how fluid it was to drop a new file on the desktop File Magic application, and see my iPhone start to receive it across the room. Given I get e-mail and Web updates on the iPhone wirelessly, that shouldn't have been a shock, but I'd accepted the "you must transfer files by USB" standard of late.

In my testing, I transfered over Microsoft Word documents, PDF documents, graphics files and folders containing images and documents. I transfered over a 32 megabyte .mov movie, and then watched it in perfect clarity on the phone.

It's like having a little desktop to go. My iPhone, so far, has largely been limited to running file data from Apple's iLife suite of apps. Photos, Movies, Music, and E-mail all are standard. But Word, Excel and PDF are now just as available thanks to File Magic, which is pretty darn cool.

You can find out more about File Magic on their site. The product is available for both Mac and Windows for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

The Newest Annoyance on Twitter: Follow and Refollow Spam

Unless you've turned off notifications when users follow you on Twitter, you are no doubt used to the e-mail messages you get when somebody has opted into seeing your updates. Follower updates are a staple of social services - and if you are maniacal about keeping e-mail like I am, you can start to see trends on the data, including when people are oddly manipulating the system, in a way that's not normal. And for whatever reason, a small number of Twitter accounts look like they regularly follow me multiple times a day.

I use auto-follow capabilities from SocialToo, letting me automatically opt in to see followers' updates. The way I use Twitter means there is little downside to having new incremental users in my feeds. So, in theory, if the user follows me just once - it's one and done. And I just don't see too much benefit to these new follow and refollow bots, even if I try to get creative.

Take a look at two examples: @PoliticalUpdate and @twtr.us.

Twice a day, starting on February 27th, I have been followed by @twtr.us, the first time at 3:56 a.m. my time, and a second time, at 5 p.m. that same day. Every day.


Also starting on February 27th, the account @PoliticalUpdate has been following twice a day - at 2:34 a.m. my time, and a second time after 11:35 a.m. (only nine hours later). Again, every single day.


So what is the benefit of such a clearly robotic practice? Is the idea that the follow notifications are a form of advertising, giving me a chance to see their name more than once, and increasing the times I'll go to check out their Twitter page? Do they also think we're naive enough to not notice?

Whatever product it is that both @PoliticalUpdate and @twtr.us are using does not contribute to the community in any way, and should be turned off. There is some good news, I guess, in that the twtr.us account looks to have been suspended, but my bet is that there are more accounts out there using the same service, and it should be stopped.

Know any other accounts who are using follow and refollow spam? Let me know in the comments. Jesse Stay, who runs SocialToo, and I would absolutely be interested in keeping them out of your in box.

(Also: See an earlier discussion on FriendFeed)

Stand for Something and Become Someone

On Thursday, I was invited by Brian Solis to attend a dinner briefing in San Francisco with one of his clients. Shortly after arrival, other invitees began to dribble in through the door - a venerable who's who in the tech blogging space, including Jeremiah Owyang, Harry McCracken, Robert Scoble and Loic Le Meur - making me feel very small indeed, not to mention a tad out of place. And while the client had an interesting offering (more on that soon), it was, of course, the side conversations between the attendees that drew the most value. (See the Photos)

Seated between Robert and Loic for dinner, I got the feeling there were Twitter users, bloggers and entrepreneurs who would have paid good money to trade places with me, but I wasn't out to sell anything or pitch anything. In fact, the best conversations I had were with Loic about why we do what we do, the reasons we don't push for ads on the blog, how we try to separate the work life and the blog life, and debate on whether I could be trusted with pre-release info on one product if I already used the competition or knew what they had planned.

To net down what was a great discussion, I primarily told Loic that:

1. Our reviews of products and services are honest, but primarily positive
2. We prefer not to write negative pieces, for our benefit and readers as well
3. That we can be trusted to keep things quiet when asked
4. We don't seek out or respond to controversy for page views' sake

And to me, all of those boil down to a major headline, which is "Stand for Something". Stand for being trustworthy and try to be remembered for quality, not controversy.

In the last few days, just following the conclusion of the dinner, you saw headlines about how Scoble has concluded his time at Fast Company TV - and speculation has started as to what's next for the visible technology evangelist. And yes, the issue was discussed a bit at the dinner as well. To be fully transparent, I knew about the change earlier in the week, from a phone call I had with Robert. And yes, he told me what's next, as well as some of the reasons for his leaving, which hasn't been discussed. But as a friend and someone I want him to trust, that's where it ends, as I believe the news is his to make and break - and if someone else beats him to the punch, it won't be me.

I could have stomped all over the relationship and posted the information Tuesday or Wednesday, but I thought it better to hold off - because the short-term burst of visibility and traffic would be outweighed by the longer-term negatives of breaking the confidentiality, and changing what you could expect from me on the blog.

At one point during Thursday's conversation, Loic said, "For some reason, I think you're someone I would trust." And this came even as we discussed the fact I helped raise the visibility of TweetDeck, a Thwirl competitor, when Iain first released his product. Would my previous posts on TweetDeck mean I would never give Thwirl the same opportunity? To me, it would not - with good examples being my coverage of Posty and PeopleBrowsr, when those products were launched or updated. Loic, and other entrepreneurs making news, should know that if they pass along confidential or embargoed information, that it won't be posted early, and it won't be sent to their competition. That's a big part of being trusted and standing for something.

For those longer-term readers of the site, you've seen me address the issue of writing negative posts, and another where I talked about what I believe as a blogger. I occasionally write these inwardly-looking posts to explain why I do what I do, and how I want to remain personal and understood.

Even though we don't have the strong traffic and visibility of some sites, the blog has gotten a good share of early access to services and to people. There are probably a dozen interesting products and services that I know are planning things before SXSW which have already gotten my interest. And every time I get an e-mail asking if I will respect a timeline, I write back "the next time I break an embargo will be the first time." As somebody who plays on both sides of the "make news" and "break news" wall, I get what people are trying to do, and the short-term rush of breaking the rules won't make me feel good for very long. And doing so can severely damage my reputation.

After discussing another issue, on how to deal with criticism, and ignoring those who would put you down for the sake of riling you up to get attention, Loic noted that we both try to be positive and avoid controversy, even if it can get you noticed. And that's likely a factor of why he posted a note to Twitter, saying, "You got me think again about quality versus quantity. Quantity matters less."

There's no question I would like to increase the quantity of posts here on louisgray.com. I wish there were a way to cover every single good story I run across with the same level of review and enthusiasm I can give the top stories. That's part of why we've gotten help from additional writers. But we will work very hard to avoid reducing the quality of the posts, even if it means we won't post as many, and we will miss stories as a result. And that's okay. Because I would rather stand for quality and stand for being trustworthy than to be known for throwing articles over the fence that could have been done much better.

As I told Brian yesterday, I greatly appreciated being invited to the dinner. It was at the dinner that I met Jeremiah and Harry for the first time, and it was also the first time where I could speak with Loic for more than five minutes. And as can always happen in a room full of people who really care about technology, we got to thinking again.

They say that everything you put online can eventually be found by Google. In August of 2007, well before most of you had seen this site, I said that your blog is your brand. So when you post things online, make them stand for something, and think about who you are and how you want to be interpreted. I want to stand for quality and trust, and we will refuse to compromise there.

You Should Be Using LinkedIn for Demand Generation

LinkedIn can be much more than simply a site to host your online resume, and connect with colleagues. While the site's core mission may be to keep your job history in one place, and to leverage connections you have to find new people, the vast, fast-growing, database can be leveraged for much more. At a time when many companies are cutting back on their marketing and prospecting budgets, LinkedIn presents a significant opportunity to find new targets and stir up business.

In late 2007, I talked about how LinkedIn is an incredible resource for sharp reporters and bloggers. Earlier in the year, I'd also given the company some suggestions to improve, many of which have since been implemented. But there is no question in my mind that most LinkedIn users are not taking advantage of the features that are there now.

Finding Targets By Territory and Vertical

LinkedIn's advanced search offers the ability to search by many different attributes, from the user's location to their title, and industry, not just their current job or school history. If you are a sales account manager, inside sales rep, a researcher, or in marketing, the right set of search combinations can get you a list of people, with titles and companies, giving you a starting point to get calling and e-mailing.

For example, if you own the Los Angeles territory, and want to reach technology VPs in the entertainment industry, enter the Zip Code ("90012"), choose the title of "Vice President of Technology, and the Industry of Entertainment. (See the search here)


The results are sorted by their linkage to you, starting with those you are connected to, and then to those who are connected to your friends. The more connections you have on LinkedIn, the more likely you are to have top matches. And once you have these names and companies, with their titles, it just takes a little Sales 101 to get their phone numbers and e-mail, either through the Web, or by being nice to their office receptionists.

You can see more examples here: (CTOs near Sunnyvale in Computer Hardware or Internet and VPs of Sales near Seattle in Airlines and Aviation)

If you're not sure exactly how targets refer to their industry, do a search first on someone you know, or are connected to, and use them as the template. That person you thought would choose "Entertainment" just might have put themselves in "Motion Pictures and Film" instead.

Finding Contacts by Title and Company

If you already know the company you want to break into, you can do searches on the company and reduce your targets by title. For example, on LinkedIn, you can search for "artist at Pixar" and pitch them the latest animation tool, or "scientist at Sandia" to find out who is keeping watch over our atomic weapons arsenal.

Depending on the query, you can end up with many targets, or you can drill down to the perfect one you need. (Such as the Technorati CEO)

Execute a Friendly Game of Competitive Espionage

Here's one I am particularly fond of. Even in the most cutthroat of environments, you can sometimes make friends with your competitors' staff, be it through trade shows, or other venues where you both need to show up at the same place and play nice. Getting connected to them won't hurt you all that much, especially if you hide your connections from others. But it can especially benefit you if they don't hide their connections, giving you a Rolodex you can walk through, to find both potential partners, and, potentially, naming their entire prospect and customer list by name.

The very best person to link to in this case is your competition's sales territory manager. I've done it. As LinkedIn shows you their latest connections, you can get good insight into which meetings they have held this week, and traded business cards. Or, you can go to their Web site, see listed customer references, and then cross-check those company names against your new friend's LinkedIn list.

It's pure gold. And if the person is high enough up in the chart, you might just want to hit Print on every single one of their LinkedIn connections pages and hand it off to Inside Sales. In fact, connecting to the competition is the primary reason I don't share my connections list. I want access to their business cards, but I don't necessarily want them to have mine.

If you're using LinkedIn in hopes of attracting a new job, or just to keep a PDF copy of your resume handy, that's fine. But if you already have a job, and you want to make it as successful as possible, you should be using the tools right in front of you. Don't be afraid to link up to more people, as it gets you more names as the connections extend and open you new routes of communication and search detail. I've been using LinkedIn for demand generation for years, and if you're in Marketing or Sales, I recommend you do as well.

Technorati's Revenge? The Site Is Beating Google for Blog Reactions

To laud Technorati is going against the flow, to say the very least. The once-omnipresent blog search engine has practically been reduced to a state of irrelevancy, thanks to inconsistent uptime, odd product launches and withdrawals, nonsensical redesigns, executive turnover and aggressive competition from others - primarily Google Blog Search. In previous posts on Technorati, I've referred to them as "totally toast" and "fighting off irrelevance". But surprisingly, especially in recent months, the moribund site has consistently beaten Google in terms of finding new and accurate links to my blog or mentions of the site, while Google's results have actually gotten less relevant over time, including false positives from blog rolls and the like. No doubt this had much to do with why Rob Diana, in January, said for the most part, that blog search sucks.

Google is set up to find all of the world's information, and it is doing a fantastic job at that, as we all know, and it is the gold standard for search in practically every regard. But it's maybe too good. The company's over-aggressive spiders are just as likely to trigger false positives in terms of knowing what is a blog and what is not, or what is a blog post or what is simply sidebar information. Last August, I highlighted one issue, when MyBlogLog activity was spawning false positives. On other occasions, I've seen updates from aggregation sites, like Socialmedian, do the same. At this point, my bookmarked blog search from Google to find reactions excludes no fewer than four sites, to try and filter down the accurate results.

And as I'm fighting off false positives with Google, Technorati is quietly finding me mentions that I can't get using Google, which relies on keywords instead of links. Not even the advanced blog search page on Google lets me find links to a site the way most bloggers want to find.

Technorati, for instance, found me links from LivingstonBuzz.com, BlackWeb20.com, and from Regular Geek in the last few days, which were pointing my way, but didn't mention my name or site domain - and I'm finding this to be the rule, rather than the exception. While at one point I'd stopped visiting Technorati, I've now returned to the site on a frequent basis to see responses, and participate in the conversation wherever it may be.

Technorati's benefits over Google Blog Search may no doubt be short lived. Maybe Google Blog Search will solve some of their issues soon, and develop new features, while Technorati has been relatively stagnant. And I'm still waiting for somebody to come up with the "inverse Technorati" idea I floated back in October of 2007. I'm not saying Technorati is perfect, or winning me over as a major force to be reckoned with in innovation, but if I want to know who is linking my way and extending the conversation, they're still doing a good job, and beating Google, which is a significant feat.

The Love/Hate Relationship With My Bluetooth Earpiece

With the state of California recently making it illegal to drive while using a cell phone that has not been equipped as hands-free, finding a bluetooth earpiece I was happy with was a must. A friend of mine passed along a top name-brand product, thanks to his having one too many. And while when it works, I have few complaints, just getting it to connect to my iPhone and stay connected is a multiple times a day struggle. Sometimes, it even seems like I spend more time getting the two products to talk than I do talking on them myself.

I don't want to throw the vendor under the bus, so I'll leave them out of it. But in my opinion, technologies should be able to auto-recognize one another, stay paired, and then work as expected. Instead, I find that the iPhone and the earpiece drop each other's connections any time I separate them by more than say, 10 feet, at any point, when I connect them they don't always stay paired, and I need to pair and unpair them multiple times a day.

The iPhone's setup for BlueTooth is relatively simple, I would think. Click on the Settings app, choose general, choose Bluetooth, make sure it's on, and then add a device to connect. Got it.

But what I'm finding is that the iPhone is a liar. It says it's connected, but if I try and make a call, it doesn't show the earpiece as an option. And on the flip side, if I pick up the iPhone to speak into it directly, it will flip the audio source to the earpiece without my asking. Grr.

The result is that I find myself charging the earpiece all day at work, overnight, and going through a multi-step process to keep them connected by brute force. Every time before I get into the car, I make sure I have both devices in close proximity. Then I clear whatever connection the iPhone thinks it has, I go back to the home menu and open up the preferences again. Then I force a new connection. And then, I still might find myself driving along the road, close to cursing, doing the dual device reconnection dance.

Given I often want my hands free at home as well - to type and take notes during an interview, or just to take care of the twins, getting the iPhone and earpiece to play well together is critical, and the flakiness is driving me nuts. When it works great, yay, but I'm not exactly set up to write an amazing testimonial.

What experiences have you found? Did I get a bum device? Does the iPhone just not take to Bluetooth all that well? Is it user error? I'm listening (as soon as I can get my earpiece in).

Boring May Be Profitable

By Rob Diana of Regular Geek (Twitter/FriendFeed)

YAWN. Supposedly, that is what we are looking for in an application. Before you misunderstand me, the idea started with a quote from Fred Wilson's blog, "the great moves are usually greeted by a yawn". I am not commenting on the product in question, Twilio, but the general idea. So, what are the great successes in software and internet businesses? Microsoft, Oracle and Google immediately jump to mind. I am not sure if anyone would have called Microsoft sexy or really interesting like they do with Twitter or FriendFeed. Oracle was never an interesting company, by most standards, because they work in data management, which only data people like myself find interesting. Lastly, Google was mostly greeted with "what do we need search for" questions.

Steven Hodson wonders if the future and Web 3.0 will be very boring:

"There is a hubbub of activity as everyone is rushing around putting all the pieces together... At some point though everything is in place – the building is completed and then everyone sets about to do the day by day business of working in that new building. You know the boring stuff."

Typically, boring means corporate or enterprise systems. Boring means data management. Boring also means stable. However, these things normally translate into large amounts of revenue. Social media and social networking have not really converted mainstream corporations. There are some early adopters using sites like Twitter, but that is not the norm. Social media will take some time to gain adoption because there is very little direct return on investment. Advertising is easy to measure, but using Twitter for customer service has no direct correlation to revenue. So, there needs to be a lot of convincing in order to start using social media in the enterprise.

On the other side of the coin is the semantic web or what many people have been calling Web 3.0. The semantic web will not be what people were originally expecting for quite some time. However, many of the semantic companies are trying to create a bridge to the future. A concept that is being promoted is "linked data" for the web. This is the infrastructure for the semantic web. Once the data is linked, we can query the data. But there is a lot of data management that needs to be completed before we can really take advantage of the semantic nature of the data.

Yeah, all of this sounds boring, but the revenue model is much different. To earn a significant amount of revenue on the internet, you need either a million subscribers paying $5 per month or a ton of traffic in order to generate ad revenue. An enterprise installation of social media software could easily start at $30,000 with yearly maintenance of 25%. Granted, corporate customers can be harder to get and typically require a dedicated sales force, but the revenue can quickly grow.

Yes, it is boring, but it is also profitable.

Read more by Rob Diana at RegularGeek.com.

Likaholix Launches Recommendation Engine Based On Social "Liking"

New services for people to connect to peers and share their interests are cropping up around every Web corner. Some, like Facebook and FriendFeed, have found strong, growing communities, where people find things they care about, and discuss those items. And as FriendFeed has discovered, the simple act of "liking" an item and enabling comments, helped the site differentiate itself from practically every other aggregator out there. This morning, Likaholix, sprung from the minds of some former Googlers, follows suit with a site dedicated to just your likes - whatever they may be, but adds on suggested items, recommendations, and even experts.

(Skip this post and get one of 200 invites: here)
No matter how many new lines of business Google finds itself in these days, its core value has always been search and retrieval of information. That mantra has been seen in sites developed by its former employees, like FriendFeed, with its integrated search, and now, also with Likaholix, who takes things a step further, by not just crawling a database, but auto-competing search terms, as does Google Suggest. And these auto-suggestions come packed with a ton of books, restaurants, and even movies and music - in what may be a vain hope that you won't see the same few dozen self-proclaimed social media experts lauding the latest technology update over and over.


Likaholix's Search Engine Auto-Suggest Feature In Action


Likaholix's Search Engine Results

Likaholix even suggests items that nobody likes, guessing that somebody will, and eventually, they would be selected.


Surely Somebody Finds South Park Funny?

As Likaholix is all about what you like, you're credited for being the first to like any item. On your profile, not only does it show what things you like, and who you like, but it shows how many times you were the first to like an item, and introduce it to the community.


Searching for Twitter Shows It's Not Yet Been Added

And should you be the first to like something, Likaholix helps you fill out your data profile with a description, and even images or videos pulled from Google to help round out your item.


Introducing a New Like to Likaholix



A Friend's Profile on Likaholix
Like with FriendFeed, your stream of likes and comments are found on your profile. You can also see how many different people liked an item, and who they are, and see recommended items based on what you've told the system you like. You can also view how many other users of the service you like, and who likes you.

Find yourself an expert in something? Claim you are with Likaholix - whether you're one of the previously mentioned social media experts, or if you have a love for science fiction, SEO or even art. Claiming expertise puts a star next to your profile, and will display your name with a star beside it anywhere it is mentioned, including on the list of contacts your friends have.


Tudor Bosman - Science Fiction Tastemaker on Likaholix
The core focus of Likaholix is to recommend to you more things you might like, based on things you say you enjoy, and those items your friends do - developing an automatic recommendation engine of sorts. For example, this morning, I was told I probably would like TiVo, because Sanjeev Singh, who I have liked, says he likes TiVo as well. In this case, Likaholix is right. It's not always right of course. I have less of an interest in bebe.com (a fashion Web site) or Downtown Brown beer (considering I don't drink), but I assume that as I like more things, and my friends do as well, this list can get better honed.

And as you like items, you can even share them in the usual places, like Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed - extending the reach of the site.

Likaholix is opening up today in a private alpha mode, as they say. Existing users, like me, can invite friends to try out the service. The user interface is spartan for now, but the team has no doubt been working on the recommendation engine for starters, and a sharper GUI can come later.

You can find me at: http://likaholix.com/louisgray. Be one of the first 200 to use this code, and you can get in as well: http://burnurl.com/xdB3aH

The Future of Twitter: Integrated Search, Trends, Featured Users

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

People have been speculating on how Twitter is going to make money for what seems like forever. This slideshow from Fred Wilson, a venture capitalist with Union Square Ventures (which has invested in Twitter), features a screenshot that may signal how it's actually going to happen.

Slide 22 simply reads: Where We Are Going


And from what I can see, I like the direction that Twitter is going in here, and think it makes a lot of sense.

Making the profile experience central
Bringing Twitter search into the profile experience is a huge no brainer, and something long overdue stemming from the acquisition of Summize in July, 2008. Twitter search is a fabulous way to pick up trending data about what people are chattering about right now, amongst many other uses, so it makes all kinds of sense for Twitter to base their monetization strategy around this killer app within their community's midst.

Adding value, not just adding ads
I think I've probably screamed louder than anyone else for two years that Twitter should simply (for starters, mind) throw a 728x90 ad banner at the top of every single Twitter profile page. Even at a ridiculously low CPM, or so my argument went, you're at least paying for some bandwidth at that point.

Well, Twitter ignored me, and maybe that's okay. (I said maybe!) I really like that the emphasis – at least on this slideshow presentation – is on bringing relevant and trending data to the user through Twitter search in real time.

Featured/matching users
Having an Adwords-like system that lets advertisers pay to insert featured and matching user profiles based on keyword searches is a great idea. (And just maybe that's why Google CEO Eric Schmidt dropped some snarky comments today about Twitter being a "poor man's e-mail system?) I've always felt that ads stop being annoying and negative exactly at the moment and time when you're delivered something that you actually want, and this is an opportunity to do just that.

Trending topics and nifty queries
It will be interesting to see how or if Twitter will attempt to make money off of featuring "trending topics" and "nifty queries." This could be an opportunity for advertisers to partner with Twitter for creative integrated campaigns. Think "win a Honda by tweeting your favorite thing about it," with associated campaign hashtag, except more creative!

Harrison Hoffman at Webware notes:

We have known that integrated search has been coming for some time, and Biz Stone even wrote that it Twitter would start testing integrated search in February, so this is no shocker. It is interesting to see how the microblogging service might be going about implementing it, though.

I have to note that in comparing Biz's small screen capture in the Twitter Blog post linked above to this one from Fred Wilson's presentation, it appears that Wilson's shot might be older, so Twitter's integrated search might look different in its current state.

While the page design and UI may get fiddled with before final deployment, I think we're finally starting to see Twitter's revenue model come into focus. And in this current economic climate, you'd think they'd want to get started on the making of the money sooner rather than later!

Read more by Eric Berlin at Online Media Cultist

Personalize Your Feeds With Feedweaver

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

As RSS makes attempts at going mainstream, pioneering services such as Yahoo! Pipes, Toluu, ReadBurner, and RSSMeme are helping the process of expanding applications' possibilities with RSS. Now, you can add Feedweaver to that list.

One thing I've always looked forward to in the space of RSS is the ability to share personalized groups' feeds. I can't wait to see the day when we all will share groups of personalized feed recommendations with friends and family. The digital age would really be in effect for me if this were to happen. So imagine my delight when I ran across Feedweaver, a web feed aggregator that helps you personalize your feeds.

Simply put, you're able to turn a group of individual feeds into one feed for sharing purposes.

What will immediately catch your eye with Feedweaver is the site's design. This is one gorgeous site to look at. The simplicity of the site's design led me to feel like there wouldn't be a learning curve for using this site, something mainstream users often struggle with.

Creating a feed is simple, but also has the potential to be taxing. Once you give your personalized feed a name, you need to start adding URLs, and this is where you have your work cut out for you. On the Web, there is really no easy or automatic solution to adding feeds unless you have an OPML file. Unfortunately, Feedweaver doesn't offer OPML file support on the site, leaving you the arduous task of typing in every RSS link one by one.

Some of you may subscribe to hundreds of feeds. I do. If you were to create a personalized feed, how many blogs would you probably add? 10? 20? 50? 100?

Leave a comment saying "I definitely don't suffer from ADD," if you're happily willing to find and type in 20 to 40 RSS feed links to create one feed. It would even be easier if you didn't need to type in the exact feed link. Why not make it easier and let users type in site links too and have Feedweaver find the exact RSS feed link for us?

Feedweaver adds filtering into the mix by allowing the users to create keyword filters for each feed link that you list. When you're done, grab the url given by Feedweaver to share with friends and colleagues. Feedweaver allows you to come back and manage your group feeds without any fuss. If you have a few feeds that you'd like to send company employees or to groups of friends, Feedweaver would be a good service to use. All in all, it's an easy to use aggregator for anyone that's not dealing with information overload.

Read more by Corvida Raven at SheGeeks.net.

Find the Real Value of Influence Through TopFollowFriday.com

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

Many are arguing what the real definition of influence is on networks such as Twitter and Facebook. Is it really defined by the number of followers a person has? Can it be defined by number of ReTweets? Or does Twitter's own hand-picking of influentials as recommendations define influence?

A friend of mine, Scott Lemon, has produced a site that to me, has come closest so far to providing a true, ranked list of influential people. The site, called TopFollowFriday, was produced in response to a request by Jeremiah Owyang suggesting a list of the top referrals on Twitter through the hashtag, "#followfriday". The site aims to organize those recommendations and rank them by day, and overall. TopFollowFriday defines influence by recommendation of peers. Before we get into the site itself, let's give some background to #followfriday.

What is #followfriday?

#followfriday is the brainchild of Micah Baldwin of Lijit, who mentioned it on Twitter one day, and the idea took off. The idea is simple. Every Friday, pick your favorite people to follow on Twitter, and mention them with the hashtag, #followfriday. Every Friday the tag becomes a trending topic on Twitter, and the idea seems to be growing. Until now there was no good way of organizing all these recommendations however.

TopFollowFriday.com

TopFollowFriday takes all mentions of #followfriday and organizes each recommended individual by counting the number of recommendations for that individual. Scott Lemon, former CTO of MediaForge and senior engineer at Novell, put the project together in a number of hours to organize this data.

The site allows users to sort by all time number of endorsements, number of endorsements for just today, or number of endorsements given. Or you can search for any given Twitter user and find out how many endorsements they have given and received.

Currently, according to their stats, @mayhemstudios is the number one recommended user on Twitter, followed by @scobleizer, @humancell (Scott himself, probably from testing), @AlexKaris, and @JamesProps. It's unclear how far back the stats go, but I'm pretty sure they will be continuing to track stats moving forward and this service will get even more valuable.

While Twitter continues to guess at who should be recommended on Twitter, TopFollowFriday has it right. It's those the users recommend most that determine most influence on Twitter. Twitter should really look at an acquisition here.

Read more by Jesse Stay at Stay N' Alive.

The W In SXSW This Year Stands for "Work"

The South By Southwest conference in Austin, Texas is a unique animal, combining the excitement of a massive multi-band concert with the geekfest of a technology event. And if you read some of the breathless previews and last year's reviews, you could be forgiven for thinking it's pretty much a week-long excuse to party. This year, after keeping a fairly low profile for the most part since starting this blog in 2006, I'm signing up to go. But if you think I'm going for the parties, you're wrong. I'm looking forward to meeting new people, new companies, seeing new ideas, and participating in what I think could be one of the more dynamic panels on the agenda.

That's right, I'm ready to work. If I go to zero parties, but get connected with even more people that matter and are being innovative in a down economy, then we will have succeeded.

My goals for attending SXSW 2009 this year are simple:

• Participate in the "Beyond Aggregation" panel
• Get introduced to new companies and services
• Meet up with peers in social networking and tech
• Come away with great story ideas

As such, I am 100% open to starting to fill up my calendar, so do hit up my e-mail with a subject line that includes SXSW09. I get in on Friday night, March 13th, and don't leave until the afternoon of Tuesday, March 17th. Phil Glockner, the newest member of ReadWriteWeb, will be my tag-team partner coming and going, so I am absolutely looking forward to that. If you're really good, maybe you can brief or meet both of us at once!

The panel is one I am particularly excited about, and has, in my opinion, with the exception of myself, some of the most-interesting characters presenting at SXSW09 this year.

Topic: Beyond Aggregation -- Finding the Web's Best Content
Day: Monday, March 16
Time: 10:00-11:00
Place: Hilton A

Also on the Panel:

• Melanie Baker (postrank.com)
• Micah Baldwin (lijit.com)
• Marshall Kirkpatrick (readwriteweb.com)
• Gabe Rivera (techmeme.com)

As you can see - a packed lineup from one of the Web's best tech blogs, two intelligent services aimed to find relevant content, and the most-widely known tech aggregation site. Not too bad for one panel.

When I participated at BlogWorldExpo last fall, I was a little surprised at the low amount of blogging I found about the conference in general. While, yes, people were tweeting about it and using hashtags, these microupdates are largely in the ether. For SXSW this year, I plan on doing my part to keep the full blog posts coming. Hope to see you there if you're going. Hit me up on e-mail, or of course, call my cell at 408 646-2759.

Serial Early Adopters Get It All Wrong

By Cyndy Aleo-Carreira of Shakespeare I Ain't (E-mail / Twitter)

I've been on Facebook now for longer than I've had my current Gmail account, and yet I can honestly say I never saw much use for it before the last six months.

Part of writing about tech means that you are forever jumping on the latest social network, trying out the latest app, and trying your hardest to keep ahead of the curve. You leave a trail of login IDs in your wake, rarely revisiting the majority of things you sign up for. You are a serial early adopter.

Of course, the serial early adopters consider themselves elite, above the masses, and when the hoi polloi begin to join a social network, it becomes passé, signalling a time to move on to the next big thing. The problem is, however, two-fold with this approach to determining what's hot and what's not. Without the arrival of the masses, what hope does a company have for profitability? The early adopters are never numerous enough, nor loyal enough, to support a company beyond the intial uptake.


An Early Adopter Panics When the Mainstream Nears...
Even more importantly, though, is how useful an app or a social network is. No offense, but how many times am I supposed to interact with the same people on multiple social networks? My FriendFeed subscriptions look a lot like my Twitter follows, which are probably the same people I'm connected to on LinkedIn, and so on. Up until about six months ago, my Facebook friends list looked much the same.

Six months ago was when things started changing. That was when "the masses" began signing up, and suddenly, I was connected to my cousin in Florida I hadn't seen since she was less than a year old. I found a friend from first grade who now lives in Montenegro. I get to "talk" regularly with my best friend from college who's living in Mexico and my junior prom date who moved South.

I don't need to see the same updates on Twitter and FriendFeed and Facebook from the same people every day. The redundancy of information eventually becomes tiring. Adding in the perspective of the "regular" people outside the tech sphere not only broadens a viewpoint of how things are perceived, but also what's important in the overall scheme of the world, not just the insular world of tech.

So the next time you remark that an app has "jumped the shark" because the unwashed masses have started showing up, think about whether you want all of your daily social interactions to be in the narrow world of tech or whether you should appreciate a wider horizon brought to you by those who aren't as "hip" and "in the know" as you are. I signed my dad up for Facebook myself.

Read more by Cyndy Aleo-Carreira at Shakespeare I Ain't. You can find her on Facebook here and Louis is hiding here.

Melanie Mitchell: The Woman Whose Twitter Handle Became a Tattoo

A little more than two weeks ago, friend and fellow tech geek Drew Olanoff announced he would be raising money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation in an unorthodox way. He offered to put his skin in the game, literally, getting a permanent tattoo of the Twitter nickname on his forearm, to the highest bidder. Why? As he wrote, "kids deserve awesomeness". With his love of Twitter and tattoos besides, the unique offer was very "Drew". But the bidding was tremendous to say the least, not to mention fun. I even bid $333 and $555, pushing the bidding forward, even if I didn't expect or intend to win (but I would have paid).

And at the end of it all, Melanie Mitchell emerged as the winner, bidding $2,112 for the privilege. Now that the bidding has closed, and Drew has done the dirty deed, getting inked, and video taping the process, we checked in with Melanie to get the back story.


@melaniemitchell on Drew's arm (via twittertattoo.com)

A quick Q&A follows below:

Who are you and what do you do?

I am a marketing executive heavily involved in the search and social media industries (my bio: http://www.pubcon.com/bios/melanie_mitchell.htm). I also love to travel, read, spend time with family/friends and meet new people.

How did you find out about Drew's Twitter tattoo idea?

Drew and I are "Facebook friends" and he posted the twitter tattoo message there.

What did you first think?

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be a tattoo at first, but it was hard not to get caught up in the enthusiasm and passion that Drew had for charity and helping the kids. I thought it was a creative and interesting idea and decided it was something I wanted to be a part of.

What made you decide to participate? And to win?

A couple of reasons. First, it was for charity. I donate to other charities that are important to me, but hadn't donated to Make-A-Wish in the past, but I always thought it was a great charity. In fact, several years ago my friends and I had a conversation about what our Make-A-Wish "wish" would be if we had a choice. Mine was that I wanted to spend the day with the writers from "The Simpsons" during a brainstorming session -- after all they say laughter is the best medicine :). That show is hilarious and I can't imagine what ideas fly back and forth in that room! Second, while I don't know Drew personally, we are in very similar industries and we have cross over acquaintances. I respect him and his work and think he is even more amazing for coming up with the idea. I would (and am) proud to be on his arm. As far as winning, I suppose it was luck of the draw as there were other people also bidding, but I did consciously choose my last bid to be over a rounded number just in case someone else picked the next rounded number up.

Is Twitter an important part of your online life?

It is a part of my life and it is important as far as what I use it for, but I have to admit I don't spend several hours a day on Twitter. I use it to keep up with friends, network with people with similar interests, but also as a learning tool to learn more about areas I'm interested in (like health and nutrition as one example) as well as keep up with trends in technology.

What do you think this promotion says about social media?

It showed me that social media continues to be an amazing way to raise awareness about good causes, as well as foster support for them. Twitter in particular is beginning to shine as a cause marketing platform. Its ability to offer instant action and reaction is perfect for fund raising -- and you are already seeing success on it. In this instance, Drew inspired even more people to donate to Make-A-Wish as a result of his promotion. It was amazing that he brought thousands of people together for a worthy cause.

As you know, Twitter is a way to join the conversation and participate in what is of interest to you. Whether its charity or tattoos or mountain biking or running – there are people out there talking about what they like/don’t like and sharing information every day. It’s up to us as individuals to decide if we want to participate in the conversation and if so then where. Then of course you have the “re-tweets”, which broadens the reach of a "tweet" even further where you can be introduced to someone and their interests/ideas that you may not have otherwise found. Or go to search.twitter.com and search using the “#” sign if you are interested in a particular topic to help cluster results -- as was the case with #twittertattoo.

Now that Drew has the tattoo, what do you think of your name on some guy's arm?

I am honored to be on Drew's arm. As I previously mentioned, we don't know each other personally, but I knew “of” him and his work. Drew has a great reputation in the industry for being a smart and cool guy. Now throw in the fact that he got permanently inked for charity - its a great story and I am glad I'm a part of it.

Have you gotten more followers on Twitter or more notoriety as a result?

I did get more followers, but not more notoriety, however that wasn't the reason I got involved. Lots of people were involved with following the twitter tattoo story and promoting it through "re-tweets" or blog posts or video clips, but my goal wasn't to get more followers or 15 minutes of fame.

After the bidding closed, I was very humbled by the people, many that I didn't know previously, that reached out to me directly to thank me for being so generous. I thought (and think) Drew made the bigger commitment in that he has the permanent tattoo, but I went into it because I honestly thought it was a cool idea and I would have donated to Make-A-Wish afterwards even if I had lost. Since I was lucky and won, it gives me a great story to tell people that "Hey! I'm a tattoo now" :)!! Even my conservative parents think its cool.

---

Melanie was generous both in her donating to the charity and in donating her time to answer our questions. I've seen Drew in action and he's quite the evangelist when it comes to new media, this being a great example. Appreciate Melanie's donation and her responses. You can find her on Twitter here, or... on Drew's arm.

---

Video Below: