Last month, I told you that I thought Seesmic's newest offering was the best Web interface for Twitter I had ever seen. In just the last month, I've seen new introductions from HootSuite, and a new entrant, Brizzly, continues to incubate. But amidst turmoil at Twitter, following a week of DDos attacks and downtime, Seesmic has bumped up its Web offering, adding inline previews for some links, Internationalization options, a new timeline for favorites, and hashtag support.

The updates are welcome and help to make the product be a more valuable tool in the social media portfolio.


You Can Preview Some Links In Line

Note the New Favorites Column and Hashtag Search
Seesmic's Web interface caught my eye initially due to its flexibility with adding multiple columns, having the option to display updates in single-line mode, much like GMail, and for its thoughtfulness in having direct messages outside the line of fire - no doubt reducing mistakes. Adding internationalization for Chinese and French users will no doubt help those folks, while adding more options, like a favorites column, is nice - especially for those who use favorites as bookmarks for later viewing.


The New Seesmic Web Service - Click for Full Version
Thanks to problems with Twitter's outages and OAuth failing much of the last week, it has been a difficult last few days for Seesmic, who had to close the Web version a good deal of the time over the weekend, and no doubt impacting this release. But with things looking like they are returning to normal, it's back to pushing new code.

See more about the new launch on the official Seesmic blog

PostRank, formerly AideRSS, is well-known on the social Web for its tabulation of "hot" blog posts and influential authors, based on social activity, including total number of comments, links within Technorati or Google, and postings to news sites, such as Digg and Twitter. The idea? Finding the best blogs and best stories from the mountains of information posted each day - finding experts and posts "that matter". Recently, the company turned on what I find to be a very interesting tool, essentially a group of APIs that third party companies can tap into, leveraging PostRank's information for themselves - to use any way they wish.

According to PostRank, fully 97 percent of all content published online doesn't have any audience engagement at all. For companies looking to find the most active, relevant content, PostRank can essentially scrape the cream off the top, and deliver companies, via the new APIs, that content which matters, with as much or as little as they would like.

Different data cuts available to PostRank customers accessing the Real-time API include engagement thresholds, topic and keyword filters, and of course, timing. Potential feed sources only will include those that have gained audience interaction over the last 30 days, for example. In parallel, with the release of Data Mining APIs, PostRank customers can go back into two years' worth of the company's data, searching by level of engagement, topics or themes.

The goal, according to the company's Web site? "Socially relevant content, delivered in real time." One of the company's case studies includes Advertising Age, who is now leveraging PostRank metrics to help determine the "Power 150" list, relying much less on Technorati and Yahoo! - relative dinosaurs from the Web 1.0 era.

AdAge's post, from back in April, explains why they selected PostRank:

"Why's PostRank so great? For one, unlike other metrics, they provide real-time data. We'll only be grabbing it once a day like any other metric, but you can be reasonably sure that your recent hot post will be accounted for."

Another partner is Gnip, who leverages PostRank to send relevant data to its own customers.

This release, while unlikely to land me the highest levels of social engagement I've ever seen, fulfills what many are saying is missing from Web services - a legitimate business model to enterprises that can deliver value. And PostRank is tapped in to all the right buzzwords. Real-time. Social. Engagement. While I tell you I have no fear of information overload, and can take the time to read all the blogs I do, others don't, so PostRank does the dirty work to only send the best ones through.

In the latest edition of The Social Geeks, Chris Miller, Wayne Sutton, Jeff(isageek), Sarah Perez, Corvida Raven and I talk about the big news from yesterday of Facebook acquiring FriendFeed, and what impact this could have the community and your data. You can also find the original copy on Mevio.com.

In my small little world, the news that Facebook had acquired FriendFeed has been the equivalent of a social news tsunami. No sooner did the news break then did I get a swarm of phone calls looking for my response - with people asking if their data would be safe, if I would delete my account, if I could handle acting the same way on Facebook as I have done on FriendFeed for almost two years.

You saw my initial thoughts, as I compared Facebook to the sweaty lunkhead who somehow attracted the perfect girl, which were part tongue in cheek, but fun to write. In parallel, I've seen posts fly from many people around the Web, some deeply invested in FriendFeed, and others, not so much. One of the guys who I respect, and have traded ideas with for the better part of four years, is Steven Hodson, the often-cranky author of Shooting At Bubbles and writer at The Inquisitr.

He and I connected this evening and talked about the deal. He thinks the selling of FriendFeed was inevitable, and I'm not so sure.

With the goal of keeping the call crisp, it times in at less than 20 minutes. Hopefully, it will be the first of many. Enjoy.