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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

Read more by Eric Berlin at Online Media Cultist

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

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


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

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


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

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

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

By Rob Diana of Regular Geek (Twitter/FriendFeed)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Watching and judging the best Super Bowl advertisements each year has become as traditional as the game itself. While the Pittsburgh Steelers and Arizona Cardinals will be battling it out on the field for the Vince Lombardi trophy, companies and advertising agencies themselves are looking for their own big prize - tremendous visibility in front of one of the world's biggest audiences.

Tomorrow, thanks to an idea spawned by Brian Solis, carrying on a tradition run by Jeremiah Owyang last year, we will be holding a Twitter-wide survey, using SocialToo, to get the opinions of thousands of people, live, during and after the big game. (Also see: Jeremiah's post)

To participate in tomorrow's big survey, and say which Super Bowl commercial was the big one, go to: http://socialtoo.com/survey/view/1221 and vote.

You can also discuss the ads, as they happen, just by posting your thoughts to Twitter and adding the hashtag: #superbowlads. When you use that hashtag, your comment will be added below the survey on SocialToo.

The results will be tabulated after the game. Participating to help spread the word are Brian Solis, Jeremiah Owyang, Guy Kawasaki, Jesse Stay, Chris Heuer, and others.

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DISCLOSURE: I am an advisor to SocialToo.

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