Part Eleven In a Monthly Series

Even if you are an avid news watcher, social media addict or feed reader, your library can seem repetitive, and you can get into a rut or cliquey. I do it. We all do it. But over the last year, I've tried to keep my eyes open to new voices who have hit the blogging scene, captured my attention, or simply don't have the readership I think they should. This month is no different. And in case you think I don't stand by my picks, it's worth noting that every single author on louisgray.com was previously highlighted in this series, so when I find someone I like, I stick with it. If this is your first time running into our "Five New Blogs" series, please do check out any from the prior year.

Each of the bloggers highlighted over this time period has been added to my Google Reader list, via Toluu, and has, to date, been consistently informative, interesting or entertaining. Prior months' entries can be found for March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November and December.

This month's entries...

1) Chris Charabaruk (www.coldacid.net)

Focus: Windows, Drupal, Social Media
Three Recent Posts:

• Twitter's slow suicide — will an API cap strangle the service?
• Oh no! Affiliate links!
• The real-time age is heralded in.

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2) Know the Network (www.knowthenetwork.com)

Focus: Technology, Internet, Google
Three Recent Posts:

• Is there room for innovation in Email?
• Most Underhyped Apps of 2008!
• Vista Performance Tweaks

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3) Andy Brudtkuhl (www.getanewbrowser.com)

Focus: Gadgets, Technology, Business, Media
Three Recent Posts:

• 11 Twitter Analytics Features I Want
• Why Your Business Needs Amazon S3
• Diigo Groups is Future of Social Bookmarking

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4) 140Char (www.140char.com)

Focus: Microblogging, Twitter, Seesmic, Yammer
Three Recent Posts:

• The one essential suggestion for effective Twitter beginners and gaining followers
• A solution to the loss of trust in Twitter apps?
• Looking at linking and short urls on Twitter

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5) Eric Friedman (www.marketing.fm)

Focus: Google, Web services
Three Recent Posts:

• Prioritizing and Organizing Feeds in Google Reader
• Thinking about web services
• Brands talking to each other on Twitter

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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 [email protected] and I'll get that set up right away.

As an advisor to SocialToo, Jesse Stay, the developer of the service, and I trade a lot of e-mail... we also talk on the phone and exchange direct messages via Twitter on how to improve his service. Some of the ideas I've had already have made a small impact on the service, while other pieces will come much later. But last night, Jesse sounded an alarm that the service itself could be in jeopardy, thanks to proposed changes from Twitter's API team that would set limits which essentially cripple SocialToo's capability. And as much as I want to champion the immediacy of Twitter, the real-time aspects of the service, the community, and its outstanding search engine, this isn't the first time I've been left feeling cold about how the team has impacted its users or development community.

Previous Discussion:

• Twitter Chokes Unauthenticated API Requests By IP, Sites Gasp for Air

If you have your head buried in RSS feeds and the tech Web, you've likely already seen the major issue - either from the SocialToo blog itself, or on sites like ReadWriteWeb, CNET and others, including Chris Charabaruk and TweetLiberty. Essentially, the limits are a hard number that aggressive services could easily surpass, assuming solid customer growth. And as developers like Jesse and others start to use the Twitter community and trends as their data set, they keep running into roadblocks. At first, Twitter was failing due to simple aspects of scale, but now, it seems as they make headlines for record traffic and involvement in world news, they are making headlines again for the wrong reasons - things that could be better massaged with improved tact and transparency.

Twitter's move, at its heart, looks to be one to protect themselves. As API Lead Alex Payne wrote yesterday, "This is essentially a preventative measure to ensure that no one API client, even a whitelisted account or IP, can consume an inordinate amount of our resoures." (sic)

But there didn't seem to be any options for services, even whitelisted ones like SocialToo, to get a work-around. There was not an option to pay to get increased access capabilities, or even tips on how to optimize code so that it takes less effort to achieve the same result. Twitter wants revenue, and the development team wants Twitter to succeed. So does everybody else, essentially. But my understanding is that Twitter has made it very difficult for some services to do the things users are asking for - including automatic following and unfollowing, because they aren't really that interested in providing such functionality. That doesn't sound promising for developers of SocialToo, Qwitter, FriendOrFollow and others. What other providers, such as FriendFeed and Facebook, offer in full, Twitter parcels out in bits and pieces, and seemingly expect the community to be grateful for it.

So now, Jesse and others are faced with a tough situation - is it even possible to optimize their code? Should they ditch Twitter as a development platform altogether because the company treats them like leeches instead of celebrating their efforts? Jesse asked in an e-mail, "Why develop for the Twitter platform any more if we know we can only grow to your limit?", adding one option for him may just be to exclude the most popular users outright to reduce stress on the system.

I'm not sensing a developer mutiny overnight. Twitter at this point has practically become a mainstay of most digerati's online experiences. Even if there are products that are better, Twitter has the momentum. Twitter has the growth and the buzz. But they are acting like they know it. Alex followed on to today's discussions, via Twitter of course, saying: "If people just asked us rather than making assumptions, there would be no story :)" But I'll be direct here - I saw Jesse's questions. He asks lots of questions and gets some answers. There is still a story. The story is that people who have made some very innovative and interesting products on a service with no revenue are very concerned about whether they can trust Twitter and if Twitter wants them to succeed - period.

By Mona Nomura of Pixel Bits (FriendFeed/Twitter)

RockYou, the popular Social Media widget platform, has won awards. They've also raised more than $50 million in funding. They may have outstanding applications and widgets, but the company seems like it's trying to commit start-up suicide - by e-mail. If e-mail etiquette faux-pas were a crime, they would have a life sentence, as RockYou has leaked private information not once, twice, but three times - yesterday's being the most recent example. Yesterday, RockYou forgot to BCC recipients, again, and blasted an e-mail exposing everybody's address in the CC field.


(e-mail addresses and source blurred out for privacy reasons)
At least this time, RockYou only disclosed e-mail addresses. Last November, RockYou's accounting department sent a mass e-mail requesting W-8/W-9 information to a mailing group address.


It sounds harmless, but according to my source, people were replying to the mailing list with private information. One company even attached a scanned copy of their W-9. RockYou took immediate steps to rectify their mistake by sending another e-mail, asking the recipients to instead fax their private information.


Two major errors even after they were reamed for their first error. RockYou's first major offense happened on September 16, 2008, when they sent an e-mail announcement of the site redesign -- revealing 200+ e-mail addresses. (full e-mail too long to display here, but can be viewed here, here, and here) Apparently, the recipients were added to third party spam distribution lists which caused a bit of frustration. So much so, a Facebook group: "RockYou Leaked Mailing List Support Group" was spawned from RockYou's mistake. How and why they continue repeating the same mistakes is beyond me. Especially since the second mistake could have lead to severe consequences because their ad-partners were replying to the mailing list with tax information. But oddly, the company continues to get raves from the Facebook fan base, despite the issues.

After the first major screw-up, AllFacebook's Nick O'Neill published a blog post and Tweeted:


But where is the post on AllFacebook?

404 - hmmm.

Odd. A quick Google search led me to an archived copy here and the AllFacebook blog post was copied and pasted on the Facebook group's wall. An excerpt:

"How large this slipup is has yet to be determined since I haven’t had time to parse through the hundreds of emails that were displayed. One thing is for sure: Aaron Choi will probably be jobless starting tomorrow."

AllFacebook published the article and immediately took it down - bizarre. Either which way, it is irresponsible and careless for a company to keep repeating the same mistake. Especially after cluttering the recipient's inbox with follow-up apology e-mails.

So even if e-mail etiquette may be a lame subject, faux-pauxs still occur.
Don't forget to BCC, folks!

Michael Arrington of TechCrunch also caught yesterday's slip here: RockYou Continues To Combine Spam With Stupidity

(Thank you, D!!)
Read more by Mona Nomura at Pixel Bits

Today was a big deal. While much of the tech blogosphere has covered, in full, Barack Obama's inauguration through the eyes of how technology played a role, from CNN integrating Facebook in its site, to different streaming services, including Ustream, the biggest developments will of course have very little to do with how quickly data moved across the network, or how quickly you got the news and distributed it. History isn't likely to look back on January 20, 2009, and mention the changes at whitehouse.gov, including the addition of a blog and RSS. That's all very cool, but it will all pale in comparison if the next one thousand four hundred and sixty one days don't roll out quite so smoothly - and there is a ton of work to do.

While I was on a conference call this morning when Barack Obama took the oath of office, I have since come home and watch the proceedings on television, thanks to TiVo. While I wasn't a starry-eyed Obamamaniac, there's no question I am glad he won. Without recapping the last eight years, it's clear there is a ton of cleaning up to do. And just thinking about where to start is daunting.

One can practically wax reminiscent over the time with foolish social issues were what occupied our thoughts when it came to the presidency, or what party to support. Gone are the times when you would wonder about who tossed their Medals of Freedom, or who inhaled, or whether somebody was a "wimp".

Instead, as we all know, Obama has started his first day as commander in chief with an incredible to do list. He is faced with a practically unprecedented situation, flanked by economic and social struggles domestically, and strife internationally. And while people from all parties know things have to get better, there is absolutely no sure answer. There are parts of this world, and large groups of people who hate who we are - not just because of the actions of the last administration, but due to differences that are possibly borne from centuries of frustration and resentment. Compounded with the aggressive tone of conflict that has been our foreign policy of late, and the anger is undoubtedly stirred.

What Obama has done to achieve his position as the President of the United States is incredible - and something I did not foresee coming. When I first talked on this blog about the 2008 election, I barely mentioned his name, talking instead about Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and potentially, Al Gore. But through an extremely coordinated campaign, and messages that struck home with many Americans, he led early in the primary campaign against Clinton, and never turned back. And while I voted for Hillary in the primary, I certainly was not voting against Obama - and as I'd once said about Hillary, the more I eventually learned about Obama, the more I grew to like him. Voting in November, for me, was very easy.

But even amidst the excitement, and the high hopes, I worry.

I worry not because of his potential, or his capabilities, or his record. I think he is very skilled. But I worry due to expectations and the short attention span of the American people who do not often have patience when it comes to policy. There will be no quick fix to our economic struggles. There is no clear end in sight for the Middle East struggles that have gone on as long as records have been kept. And you can't just hit "Control-Z" and undo many of the things that cemented people's opinions against the Bush administration. You can't just look at Guantanamo, Iraq, Iran and Pakistan and see the process unfolding smoothly, no matter your partisanship. And as has always been the case, simple "hope" and expectation of "change" will not be enough. It will take a ton of work. It will take patience, sacrifice, and cooperation, often between people who don't happen to like each other very much.

Over the next one thousand, four hundred and sixty one days, there will be scandals, both real and artificial. There will be surprises. There will be excitement and frustrations. There will be great speeches and boring ones. And if you think about it, theoretically, Obama and his team would have to royally screw things up to not have the American people say, in November 2012, that they will be better off than they are today, giving them a running start at reelection already. But anyone who thinks this is going to be a piece of cake is kidding themselves. Even as Obama spoke today, and gave a speech many are fawning over, the stock market fell. Even as many cheered in Washington DC, others were notified they were losing their jobs. And the wars around the world didn't take a time out.

This will be a very long process. I'm hopeful. I'm relieved that this first part of change has taken place. But this will be a long journey we will all be watching and be part of, as we experience the start of something very new. The whole world is watching.