textPlus, the popular application for iDevices and Android that lets you text or group text for free, launched version 2.5 of their app on Thursday with a major new enhancement that delivers a pinch of nostalgia, thanks to the debut of communities based on topics that are reminiscent of the Web gone by - harking back to early AOL and Compuserve forums when "A/S/L?" meant a lot more than DSL. The searchable communities database brings with it the potential to connect people of similar interests across the Web - to chat, via text, in real time.

Just like the AOL chatrooms of old, practically any sensical term searched already has results, initiated by textPlus users fanatical about any topic - be it to discuss television shows American Idol and Glee, to adore cute little puppies in the Dogs room, or the mainstays of public forums, sports, technology, and yes... porn (although I assume text porn is pretty tame).


textPlus has gained a significant following for its free alternative to carrier-based texting, and the option to carry on conversations with a group of friends through the app - something US telcos have not yet solved, even as international carriers have. The company's move to create topic-based discussions, no matter the source, helps transform the product to a portable community for any Apple or Android mobile device.


Since I first tiptoed into textPlus last year, the product has added several new features that provide serious polish. You can opt out of its add-supported model for a full 12 months by paying $2.99 (which I did), and you can even scan your local address book (at least on the iPad version) to find which of your friends are already using the app, making them very easy to send texts to. The iPad app is especially sharp, bringing text chats into both portrait and landscape modes in full screen.


If you find communities in textPlus that strike your fancy, click "become a member" and you will be following that community's updates. You can also leave any community by swiping left to right and choosing "Leave". The product's simplicity was welcome, and might even be too easy to join or start communities, as many rooms feature just the initial creator, while others, like one on "Dogs" was at its limit of 100 registrants. I would be intrigued by textPlus opening the option to more than 100 active users for hot topics, and seeing the conversation blossom.


You can find more about textPlus' new app and its free texting communities at http://www.textplus.com/ or on iTunes and the Android Marketplace. textPlus is a product of Gogii, a Kleiner Perkins-funded startup based in Southern California.

After last week's post showing how many people use LinkedIn as a stale resume repository and are not tapping into the business network's many benefits, a follow-up video has surfaced from YourBusinessChannel highlighting common myths about the network.

Have you run into the issue where you think you have enough connections on LinkedIn and don't need any more? Ask yourself a follow-up question - does your business have so much revenue you could not possibly need another dollar?

Mark Perl, a renowned LinkedIn expert, and I talk about the value of the network, contrasted with other sites, including Google and Facebook, and how you can take your static profile and make it an active one with new connections and recommendations.

The iPad played a major role in today's record-setting earnings from Apple, and strong sales of the device are helping developers find new ways to leverage the product's screen and form factor, at the intersection of the portability of the mobile Web and the power of a desktop. Tonight, a new company called Flipboard debuts with an iPad app that brings your social streams into a completely new light - no longer the world of chronologically ordered status updates and one-liners, but instead, rich graphical pages, which can be flipped, like a magazine from one screen to the next as you go further back in time. The result is a highly compelling way to consume the news your friends share, and it immediately trumps all other RSS-based solutions for the iPad in terms of user experience.

Flipboard emerges tonight after lifting the shroud of secrecy on the project. The company has raised millions from VC firms including Kleiner Perkins, and the company has already made an acquisition, that of the Ellerdale Project. The Ellerdale team will be leaving their Menlo Park offices and joining Flipboard in Palo Alto at the combined companies' new headquarters, as they work on the new app. As I met with the team today, they described the fit as a perfect combination of Flipboard having an amazing front-end with Ellerdale providing strong back-end data. Ellerdale, if you may recall, was among the first partners to gain full access to Twitter's firehose of data.



Upon downloading Flipboard to the iPad, users are prompted to follow a number of curated collections of news sources, supplied by the app, or to connect their social streams, starting with Twitter and Facebook, to one of 9 squares, aligned in a 3x3 grid. You can even add Twitter lists you have made, to see a subset of those you follow in a new way.

Future versions of the app are expected to offer more than nine tiles, and will also see support for new networks, likely including Google Buzz.

After years of getting used to paging from the top down to see one-liner updates with a URL that launches a Web browser, Flipboard brings us back to the more traditional days of a cover page and flipping casually left to right to get to later pages of a magazine. Rich media from Twitter, Facebook or any other feed is displayed in line, including photos and video, and Web links are displayed with a preview excerpt of the story - while clicking out takes you to Safari on the iPad.


In the past few years, we have seen the debate rage of whether Twitter has surpassed RSS readers in terms of finding the best content on the Web quickly. Flipboard helps make services like Twitter and Facebook much closer to RSS readers, with a much friendlier UI that makes sense even to the most casual non-geek.

  Browsing Facebook on Flipboard is Actually Enjoyable

As the company described a meeting I had with them earlier today, this is the first "social magazine" for the iPad. The first page shows the most recent items from your stream, diving into the links shared from all those you follow, and as you flip the page left to right, you go back in time. Every person using the application has a different set of content and a personalized experience, based on their own social network.


While the application itself is downloadable for free, Flipboard is already thinking about rich ways to receive revenue. They explained their plans for full-page high quality ads, much like those in print magazines, and used similar language to that of Apple and iAds. But they didn't talk about a way to reward original content creators, or their downstream sharers, for their work. Theoretically, as third-party ads against RSS feeds have raised concern, this move may as well, unless it is assumed that third-party ads against excerpted articles is within the gray area.


In addition to browsing the articles themselves, you can see downstream conversation around the original content - be that comments on Facebook, or tweets from your friends that contain the specific URL. You can engage in that conversation from Flipboard by replying to Twitter shares or adding your own comments to Facebook, but it isn't aiming to be yet another Twitter client, so a TweetDeck or Seesmic killer this is not.

With Flipboard's unveiling, this closes the door on Ellerdale outright. Their site is expected to be made end of life as soon as tomorrow.

With sponsored trending topics and tweets becoming more accepted and mainstream within the popular microblogging service, it's no surprise Twitter is expanding its sales ranks to drive more business. After years of users and armchair quarterbacks questioning how the popular service could ever make money, the company certainly looks to be graduating from the realm of venture capital bringing in the dollars and more to one targeting true income. A few of this week's newest hires demonstrate growth in the sales department, with titles that point to structure similar to established firms - much like others that have hit the 200+ person plateau as they have.

Twitter's closely-watched Employee List has now grown to 239 people. It's assumed nearly all are employees of the company, with some contract employees. Ten more were added to the company rolls on Monday, including former employees of Ning, Yelp and Google, with total hires in 2010 approaching or just passing 100 on the year.

In past months, the plurality of new hires at the company have seemingly been engineers focused on helping the company expand its offerings or scale with continued growth, intermixed with the occasional UI expert or HR person. While those hires continue (see: Scott Smith, former Sys Admin for Ning @ohlolohlol and Alan Liang, formerly of Yahoo! @mixmasteralan), the more interesting new employees are those focused on revenue, including Amanda Levy (@amandalevy) and Josh Grau (@grauface).

Amanda was most recently director of sales at Yelp, after 4 years at the company, where she started as an account executive. Her LinkedIn profile claims her new title is Director of Sales, West at Twitter. Having a Director of Sales, West indicates similar positions at other regions, as the team builds. Josh was previously the head of business development of branded entertainment at Google's YouTube, and now bills himself as Program Sales & Marketing at Twitter. Not the only YouTuber to join team Twitter of late, Josh is joined by Sara Mustin (@saramustin), previously a partner technology manager at YouTube.

In addition to the publicly expanding sales staff and YouTube alumni, also joining Twitter this week are Terra Craig (@terrabirdy), Dan Coughlin (@DanTCoughlin), Justin Chen (@leftparen), Shane Connor (@shanecon123) and Pat Chan (@patc888). Given the low tweet numbers for some of the new hires, it's likely these are not primary accounts or are work friendly and not their personal streams.