By Jesse Stay of Stay N' Alive (Twitter/FriendFeed)

On Wednesday, I received an interesting press release from Ryan Jerz and Bob Conrad, two Reno, Nevada bloggers who claim to have discovered through "independent study" that the TwitterVoteReport service, which I reported about earlier, was ineffective, inaccurate, and biased.

You can read Conrad's post here.

In the report, they reviewed reports from Nevada on election day, and studied the types of reports, the accuracy of the reports, and frequency of reports amongst individual users. According to them:

• Vote reports did not follow recommended use of hashtags (hashtags are words preceded with a number sign that are searchable in Twitter)
• Vote reports were potentially dominated a minority of users (one user in Nevada had 38% of the posted reports for that state)
• Vote reports were subjectively approved to be publicly posted on the Vote Report site
• Vote reports were subjectively "dismissed" from posting using inconsistently enforced criteria
• Vote reports were duplicated
• Vote reports were posted that appeared irrelevant as to intent of the Vote Report (one example from Nevada: "@DwayneH dude I love egg salad sandwiches, but liquor store is scary. downtown scarier, even. best of luck. #votereport").

While some points are valid, the entire tone of the release was very negative against TwitterVoteReport.com. The report made it sound like even though Twitter users in Nevada were so few in number compared to the rest of the nation, the entire TwitterVoteReport site and organization seemed biased, and that the entire site was a failure. It was simply too small a demographic to base such a study, so why post a release about it at all?

I did some research myself on the study, and in researching the one person they say dominated 39% of the posts the day of the report, the majority of posts by that person were simply retweeting valid responses they saw that did not include the #votereport hash tag. Contacting the organizers of TwitterVoteReport I'm told that the individual mentioned was also responsible for voter outreach on election day on Twitter for the entire USA, which would explain the flurry of posts. More than anything that user was making the cause less biased by pointing out posts that were not tagged with #twittervotereport.

Additionally, some of the very data the report cited was generated by the authors themselves. It was Ryan Jerz who sent out the tweet about egg salad, while using the #votereport hashtag, after all...

According to one of the organizers of TwitterVoteReport:

The goal was to get a report of what was going on at polling places around the country and we did that in a new and innovative way. And it was fun! This was an all volunteer project with no money or resources around so I think its fair to point out flaws but that's about it. The reason the data is transparent is so that people like you can look at it and IMPROVE upon it for future use. The goal is to show everyone what we did so that more people can work on it and improve it.

Based on my own studies of TwitterVoteReport, the project has been transparent from the start, and is a gold mine of data surrounding voter experience, registration, and issues. It has been an all volunteer project with many volunteers across the nation working to ensure the issues were heard. One developer in particular cranked out an iPhone app and got it approved and in the App Store within a matter of days. Sysadmins were volunteering overtime hours on Election day to just try and keep the site up, all on a volunteer basis.

I don't know why, but it would appear Jertz and Conrad could perhaps have some bias of their own. The release was very strange and makes me wonder about the motivations behind it, to say the least. With such a small sample of data that Nevada as a whole provided to the service, along with the entire stream of data being provided via API to any developer that wants access to it beyond what just made it to the TwitterVoteReport.com website, I think this study by Jertz and Conrad was a bit unfair. I still hold strong that TwitterVoteReport.com was a great, all volunteer project that contributed to incredible information about voter experience throughout the nation.

Read more by Jesse Stay at Stay N' Alive.

As mentioned previously, I had the opportunity on Tuesday morning to participate in a panel on emerging media with Chris Heuer and Tom Foremski, put on by PR Newswire in Santa Clara, conveniently between my home and work. The discussion ranged from how to approach new media targets as old media struggles, to how to leverage tags on social sites like Delicious and Flickr, and some basics on how to track client mentions and their brands on newer services, like FriendFeed. Chris helpfully recorded the conversation, and posted it to his blog on Wednesday.

I have embedded the recording here:


To instead download the 30 megabyte file in MP3 format, do so here. The conversation lasted about an hour, and you should be able to distinguish between the three voices, including mine, on the panel. If you have reaction or questions, feel free to relay them in the comments.

Today Twitter was abuzz around the launch of a new site that ostensibly provides you with a numerical ranking, based on your followers, those you follow, and their collective clout. Twitterank, like Twitter Grader and others, is trying to deliver some kind of service to separate the influential from the less influential, as if we need more ways to do that. But the piece that has everyone stirring about their goals is the fact they ask for your Twitter user name and password. Today, I checked out Twitterank, just like so many others, and gained a numerical score that may have no value at all. In that process, I trusted the developer and the site with my Twitter login data, and frankly, that's of no issue to me in any way. As I said the other day, I believe people are inherently good, and if you're trying to harvest a host of passwords, Twitter wouldn't be the place to do it in secret by any means. So I have no concerns.

The whole concept of Twitterank is questionable. First, why would anybody care what their rank was? Second, what would a numerical score of 50 mean? What about 100 or 200? No idea.

Additionally, the service's default checkbox that sent the results of your Twitterank score to Twitter surprised many people, myself included. I was just checking out the service to see what the fuss was about, only to find people making comments on my Tweet, which had made its way to Facebook and FriendFeed as well. Sure enough, my Twitterank of 230.65 had been released in the wild.

So the service itself has some oddities, even if it was my fault I left the box checked. But in my opinion, that they ask for your login credentials isn't one of them. Many other third party services, from Twitter Karma to Social Too ask for your Twitter login and password. According to developers at those sites, the goal isn't to load up on user names and passwords, to start tweeting under your ID, but instead, they are forced to thanks to Twitter not having implemented OAuth. Twitter Karma writes:

"Unfortunately, until Twitter implements OAuth, applications that act on behalf of Twitter users, such as Twitter Karma, require your Twitter username and password to access your data."

But the concern around such a new service, which initially didn't have a name associated to it, had many wondering if its goals were nefarious. ZDNet called Twitter users gullible, and Mashable asked if the service was stealing your password.

The downsides of somebody hacking into my Twitter account and getting my credentials are low to begin with. In theory, if my account were compromised, they could Tweet on my behalf and make me look like a fool for some time, until I managed to get to Twitter support. In the meantime, you'd be sure to hear about it, and I assume others would be vocal in my favor. Another concern would be if you or I used the same login and password combination on other services. The perpetrator could then guess your ID on other services, or even access your financial records or anything else sensitive. But again, given the other Twitter developers' comments in regards to OAuth, I tend to believe this is something the coders are working around, and I don't think this is a mass account grab.

Late this afternoon, following the initial voiced concerns, the author rapidly put together a blog post answering some questions. See "Some follow up…" In that post, he, like Twitter Karma, points back to the microblogging service's limitations in terms of needing the user name and password combo.

"There are ways for Twitter to make that data available without requiring you to give out your password to 3rd party sites (Facebook, Yahoo! and others have such systems) but Twitter doesn’t yet offer those options to developers. As soon as Twitter adds more secure authentication mechanisms, I’ll switch to that."

As right as we are to be smart about where we put our login data, I don't think we should be so quick as to raise questions about what people's negative motives could be. For every 1 bad apple, there are easily 99 good, and the bad apples don't usually get away with nonsense for too long. As for those of you who really do want to tweet on my behalf, send me an e-mail, and just maybe I'll give you my password. Or not.

By Mike Fruchter of MichaelFruchter.com (Twitter/FriendFeed)

The quest for finding new content to read is neverending. Gone are the days of visiting numerous websites to get the latest news. Increased RSS adoption, both for publishers and consumers has significantly enhanced the discovery and distribution process. Content is being published faster then ever before, and we are discovering and sharing it as fast as it is published. This happens within minutes, giving "hot off the press" a whole new meaning.

As recent as 3-4 years ago, I checked no more then 5-10 websites per day for my tech related news. I relied on a portal, mainly Yahoo for headlines, local and sport news. There was so much more information accessible to me, but I had no real mechanism to harness it. I discovered new blogs back then by doing Google searches and following links from blogrolls. When I found a new blog, I would bookmark it locally in Firefox. This process, over time made my bookmarking folders a junkyard of lost links. With the exception of a few, most would never see a single mouse click ever again. While the mechanisms (RSS readers) were in place then, it was not until Google launched Google Reader in October of 2005, that I really took notice and began to understand what that funny looking orange icon I saw on every blog was about. It would change the ways we create, discover, distribute and publish media on the internet.

Today, I'm currently subscribed to 638 various social media and technology blogs. I can go through several hundred of these feeds in a matter of minutes. Reading, notating and sharing in the process seamlessly and effortlessly, thanks to RSS and Google Reader.

This post outlines some of the methods and tools I use to discover new voices.

1) Google Blog Search

This is one of the easiest ways for finding new content. Google Blog Search is great for finding the most relevant blogs on any particular subject. It updates and crawls extremely fast. Posts will show up in the search results rather quickly. You can also search and sort published blog posts by the last hour, last day, past week, past month or any date range. I use this in combination with a number of Google Alerts, that I have set up to monitor specific keywords of interest. If a blog is publicly publishing and has RSS enabled correctly, it should show up in the results.

2) Blogs/Blogrolls

Follow the links. Bloggers will almost always reference and link back to the source of their subject. Bloggers often feed off of each other. The source usually goes back to another blog or blogger which provoked or inspired the link in the first place. I discover a lot of new blogs this way. Bloggers often guest post on other blogs, these are usually voices that are in demand and are a great source for discovery. Blogrolls, besides being an overlooked sidebar widget, are actually good for discovering new blogs as well.

3) Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking sites are great for discovery. Bookmarks are usually niche targeted/tagged and for the most part represent quality content. Sites like Delicious and Diigo are both great resources to tap into. I prefer Diigo for discovery because it offers more social aspects to it compared to Delicious.

4) Twitter

Twitter is an excellent tool for discovery. Twitter goes hand in hand with blogging. If it's on a blog, the chances are extremely high it's been broadcast on Twitter. Twitter is as real time as it gets. The first platform bloggers use almost immediately to broadcast their new content is guess where, yep Twitter. Use Twitter Search to find exactly what you are looking for. You can also narrow your results down further using search operators or advanced search. Pay attention to re-tweets as they will also point you in new directions for discovery.

5) Toluu

Toluu is in the business of discovery. Toluu, with mathematical precision matches you to new feeds and the members that shared them. Follow members with the same relevant feed interests. Toluu has numerous features such as feed suggestions and tagging that ultimately leads to the discovery of more targeted feeds. The deeper you drill down in the system, the better it gets. My favorite feature is the activity feed pictured above. I can see and get suggestions throughout the day about the new blogs that my friends are discovering and sharing.

6) Share and discover with friends through Google Reader.

Consider subscribing to your friend's Google Reader. If your friends read, share and have similar interests, there is a good chance that they are discovering obscure blogs you may or may not know about. I check my friend's Google Reader as often as I check my own for new content.

7) FriendFeed has become a reliable and necessary tool on so many levels. On FriendFeed, the most obvious way to find the content that is relative to you, is from your subscriptions. If you are looking for blogs, and or technology related content, find and subscribe to the members who are producing and sharing this material. These members often associate and follow in groups on FriendFeed. It's easy to find them. Try taking advantage of the advanced search function. This not only allows you to search your friend's content, but FriendFeeds entire user base, including rooms. FriendFeed is aggregating data from over 48 web services, so you should have a pretty high hit rate for finding whatever it is you are searching for. I will also scan the FriendFeed Google Reader shared public url for a complete random snapshot of what's being shared at any given time. Last but not least, you can join the Share your Google Reader room to find new content.

These are just a few examples of how I find new content. How do you discover new voices?

Read more by Mike Fruchter at MichaelFruchter.com.