If one had 140 characters for every blog post that has been written covering every nuance of the new Twitter layout since its debut last week, it would likely rival Wikipedia for sheer size, and its content would trail it in pure excitement. And as the new Twitter (affectionally tagged as #NewTwitter) rolls out to the drooling masses in coming weeks, some who feel they have mastered the microblogging platform will find that amidst all the new screen real estate and widgetry, they've lost a big chunk of their ability to personalize their identity on the site - as one of the more popular grassroots movements, customization of one's background with contact information, is practically eliminated.

For nearly all entry level to mid-level social media experts, a key aspect of their Twitter customization repertoire has been the modifying of one's page background to serve as an informal calling card. Individuals and brands alike (myself included) often post e-mail addresses, provide more detailed biographical information, and instruct people on what they can expect from their tweets.

Loic Le Meur (@loic) uses it to show his presence on YouTube, Facebook and Seesmic. Chris Brogan (@chrisbrogan) highlights his work and book sales. Brian Solis (@briansolis) provides his e-mail address, Facebook URL and Web site. It's practically expected.

Google shows 36,000 results with the phrase to "customize your twitter background" and sites like Mashable have devoted entire tutorials on how to create custom backgrounds that offer personalization, expression and contact information.


But the "New Twitter" does away with almost all that space. Chris Brogan is reduced to a "Ch". Loic's background provides no information at all, and yes, mine has to be redrawn as well - assuming I'll make it a priority. It's all in the name of progress - cutting out personalization in exchange for new features - including the much-discussed multimedia in the stream and right hand pane, which may some day serve as a good place for Twitter's monetization efforts.

The result is not dramatic, in theory. Individual tweets within the new Twitter are centered (as before) and display more of the traditional background. (Like this one) One could also double down on their avatar and simple 160 character description in the bio, considering that "good enough", as Twitter again does what I think is well-intended, but catches some users by surprise - opting to do what they believe is best, even if it runs contrary to public opinion.


When called on the carpet by VentureBeat writer Owen Thomas (@owenthomas) about the changes, designer Doug Bowman (@stop) said the act of putting text in the background image had never been supported. Owen pointed to other user-generated behavior, including retweets, @replies and hashtags as good examples that users know best, but it doesn't seem there will be a rollback of the idea.

The New Twitter also reduces the options for some services to market themselves. Instead of seeing "From TweetDeck", "From Tweetie for Mac", "From Seesmic for Android" and so on down the line, the New Twitter no longer displays Tweet sources. I assume this is to reduce confusion from new users, and to focus on the content of the tweet instead of its source, but again, Twitter's full motives cannot be divined. Meanwhile, as with the background issue, the source displays itself in full on the direct tweet page.

Since the launch of "New Twitter", I have already seen friends and businesses ask for the right guidance in personalizing their Twitter experience, and finding their old approach to page backgrounds is going to be evaporated in coming weeks as the new site rolls out. With the many features and functionality, it comes at a small price. I eagerly await 36,000 more results in Google telling us how we all need to adjust to single-word skinny backgrounds (align left) to tell our story. Mine just might drop my e-mail and blog URL, and the rest will all have to be found somewhere else - say... Google. Or Facebook. But not Twitter.

I've long extolled the virtues of Blippy, the social network centered around your purchases - from iTunes, Amazon.com and Zappos to credit cards or debit cards you register with the site. If I can share a purchase, I will put it on Blippy, where I can exchange ideas on products I like (or despise) with friends and other consumers. In fact, I've gotten so connected to Blippy, I almost am disappointed when I pay cash or wish I could push big purchases (like the new house or new minivan) to the site. Part of the reason for the stickiness of the site? More and more features which make Blippy more interactive - including leveling up and the ability to become a fan of purchased products.

Elements of social gaming are everywhere in the most popular applications and networks. As was told to me by a peer at one meeting this week, "if you have five boxes to fill, people will want to fill those boxes." Today, when reviewing some recent purchases on Blippy, I found a new notification saying I had reached level twelve, and was only a few more reviews away from reaching level thirteen. So I wrote more reviews.


Thus far, it's not clear what benefit one gets for "leveling up" on Blippy. There's no public leaderboard, and my level is not listed on my personal profile - although you can see a raw count of the number of purchases and reviews, which play into the level count. One assumes that the level may someday be public, and if they go the Foursquare route, maybe it turns into badges or something of that sort. Either way, it continues the progress of Blippy becoming a strong reviews site, and a way to collect unfiltered feedback on products of all sorts.


Another way Blippy is tapping into popular activities from other top social networks is through the introduction of fanning products. Like you can become a fan of something on Facebook (though they now call those Likes), you can become a fan of any product or service on Blippy - from big companies like Apple to iTunes apps like Mint.com and Redfin and Netflix movies, such as Pulp Fiction.


The data flowing into Blippy is going to become increasingly valuable as more people register, share purchases and review items. A product's fan page shows how many registered people on Blippy use it, and what other items they may also have purchased. It's not improbable that Blippy could also show the aggregate amount spent on the network for specific products and show whether this is increasing or decreasing over time. (Think of how much money flows into AT&T from the thousands of Blippy users who pay each month)

Like other tangential social networks, including Cliqset, Blippy is becoming extremely feature-rich, and if you're not already using it, you're missing out. You can find me at http://blippy.com/louisgray.

The last few days in my RSS readers have had me feeling like we are in the middle of blog post reruns - the best of 2009 edition. Within the bolus of hundreds of new items welcoming my every visit to Google Reader, the debate flared up again this week as to whether the very act of consuming content within an RSS reader was a dying one. For the dissenters, the growth of social sites like Twitter and Facebook, and the announced closure of Bloglines is enough to say the tide has turned.

Meanwhile, the application developers and their active users swear any rumored decrease is false, and the RSS reader remains one of the most efficient ways to consume content.

The premise of the entire debate is broken. These are tools, and it is not a zero sum game.


In the same time as we have seen a general falling away of activity with Bloglines, once the most heralded competitor to Google Reader, we have also seen considerable innovation in the RSS Reader space. In 2008, we saw the debut of Feedly, a magazine-style Web-based RSS reader - and that service now sees hundreds of thousands of unique visitors per month. In 2009, we saw the addition of Lazyfeed and smart RSS-based filters. In 2010, Pulse debuted on the iPad, iPhone and Android and is selling many licenses to feed-hungry mobile fans. On the Web side, there is also continued development from edge cases including NewsBlur and Punching Soup.


Meanwhile, Google Reader reports usage is growing, and never stopped.

Those who have turned their backs on RSS readers often subscribe to the theory that news will find them no matter what, and to some degree, that is of course true. Twitter's press conference from Tuesday said 90 million tweets are being posted daily, and a full 25 percent of those tweets contain links - so there are more than 20 million links being thrown into the service, at the rate of more than 15,000 per minute. Subscribe to any prolific link sharers or news sources, and you're bound to get the opportunity to get some links thrown your way, and the news will find you.


Twitter has become such a force for news dissemination that the concept of discovering Tweets that "only contain links" and hiding the more mundane status updates is becoming commonplace. Even the new search built into Twitter's updated interface allows the option to search "Tweets With Links". This is a great step forward, making Twitter even more similar to RSS for full content.

The long-held advantages of RSS readers over Twitter are still there. You pick your sources, and you can come to a "full" in box of items at your leisure. Almost all feeds are full feeds, without truncation, something impossible to do in 140 characters. But new apps are not just discovering tweets with links, but some are unpacking the URLs in advance of your clicking, so you can get a full preview of the story to indicate in more detail if it will be of your interest.


For me, one of the major reasons I can not foresee walking away from an RSS reader in the near future is how closely tied into my own behavior something like Google Reader is for the act of curating a shared items feed (or link blog). My shared items play a key component of my downstream activity on social networks like Google Buzz and FriendFeed, and these shared items also hit Twitter on a dedicated account (@lgstream). If I turned my back on the thousands of people who have connected to this shared feed, I would need to restart it in a new place, and see if I could manipulate Twitter lists to be as strongly organized as my RSS folders. So long as I want to play the role of human curator, this will be a big activity for me, and RSS is the foundation for this activity.

On the iPad, Flipboard is a good solution for extracting news from Twitter and Facebook in a visually appealing way, with each link displaying much of the article underneath (via RSS). On the iPhone or Android, my6sense offers a mixed view, whereby I can see updates from Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz and RSS all in one place, agnostic to the stream. This is a great equalizer, putting each source on an even playing field, not forcing me to pick a favorite.

Debates over tools, applications and personal consumption preferences are short-lived, and not very useful outside of a small niche of update obsessed infovores. The tools we use today are significantly evolved - and much faster, with upgrades from the world of real-time and impact from our social streams. We are consuming more information from more sources than ever, and we are doing it on more mobile devices.

The important focus is to make sure that we are able to ensure the information finds us wherever we are - at the right time, at the right speed, and from a trusted source. For many people today, RSS is the best tool for the job, one with reduced noise, and personal focus. For others, the process of serendipity, personality and discovery trumps the reader experience and they are moving elsewhere. But the debate is not a debate. It is evolution. One company's closure when more and more are getting in the game doesn't indicate the closure of the market, but instead, a milestone.

Disclosures: I am VP of Marketing at my6sense. Google Reader, Flipboard, Feedly and Pulse are players in the information consumption and sharing space, and may be considered competitors or potential partners now or in the future.

Through my work with Paladin Advisors Group, one of the longest-running clients has been Emulex Corporation, a networking solutions provider focused on the convergence of Fibre Channel and Ethernet. One of the company's system engineers, Thomas Jones, has caught the social media bug in a big way, getting deep into blogging, Twitter and podcasting. You can find him at @niketown588 and http://www.niketown588.com. A week or so ago, he kindly took the time to talk with me in a wide-ranging conversation that covered not just social media tips and missteps, but blogging strategies, the ongoing debate of iPhone versus Android, and more personal questions, ranging from family to fantasy football.

This laid back, but content-rich podcast, can be found on his Web site in two 30-minute parts, or below in full. His soothing demeanor and friendly style make for good background listening if you want to hear about everything from Sonos to iPad, Mario Kart and TweetDeck.

The full content is below: