By Leslie Poston of Uptown Uncorked (Twitter/FriendFeed)


Twitter has been confounding traditional marketers with its wild success since it first appeared on the scene. Defying traditional measurement methods, and even defying basic web practices for a successful web site like consistent up time and scalability, Twitter has found its way into daily use for a growing number of people and businesses, including traditional news media like CNN and CSPAN. I would argue that its ease of use, lack of rules and "Wild West" atmosphere along with its a la carte usage practices have been its secret weapons.

Arriving on the scene to change all of that this week is Qwitter. Qwitter sounds innocuous enough on the surface - a web site that offers to send you an email showing who has unfollowed you and including the last tweet you sent before they did as a possible "reason" for the unfollowing. Up until now, the best feature of Twitter has been a level of anonymity for blocking people and unfollowing them. It kept people from getting their feelings hurt, from obsessing over metrics and popularity, and above all from harassing people over why they make decisions about managing their own Twitter stream.

What Qwitter has done with this unnecessary "service" (and I use that term loosely) is turn a very mundane, passive act that usually reflects more on a person's available time than a follower's actions into an act of aggression with some seemingly dubious "reason" behind it. I can see this turning ugly, as friends who discover that friends sometimes unfollow them take it personally. This means instead of realizing that on Twitter you can go back and forth with a kind of ebb and flow as needed, those with hurt feelings from being unfollowed proceed to email demanding logic, reasons, and possibly even threatening retaliation or repercussions. Qwitter feeds insecurity and neuroses by making something simple into some kind of seeming failure or insult.

If you don't understand what I mean by Twitter being a la carte or having a follower ebb and flow, look at my follower count during a debate or a hockey game - droves of people unfollow me until I shut up again. In general unfollow decisions really are that simple, and usually the person comes back after the Tweeter in question stops being so noisy. If they don't, it's still ok. It isn't personal. I know I personally don't tend to unfollow people at all unless they start to pitch me ads instead of being real on Twitter, but that's just how I use Twitter. The beauty of Twitter is that each user, up until now, has been able to make it fully their own.

The thing about the internet is that it has a tendency to turn aggressive in a hurry. Twitter has, until now, avoided that Internet Troll atmosphere and been a relatively happy place to connect with people online in a very low-key and self-directed way. There are a few Twitter Trolls, but not that many, thanks largely to the anonymous unfollow and anonymous block features. Qwitter changes that, and for what? Judging by their own footer, it seems they want to force a Twitter buy out by messing with the atmosphere on the Twitter site.


Qwitter is not affiliated with Twitter, but wouldn't it be cool if it was?
I am not the only one who has noticed the impact Qwitter could have on our beloved Twitter. Laura Fitton noted the effects the loss of anonymity would have on Twitter in several Tweets yesterday, as did fellow Tweeters Andrew Feinberg and others. In discussing with me the possibility that Qwitter made this service solely to create a disturbance in the Twitter Force and create a need for a buy out, Twitter user Joan Marie had this to say: "Buy us to stop the dysfunction we've introduced." Is Qwitter the latest in a long line of companies trying to monetize their product through being bought out? If so, I have to give them credit for being the first to try putting a disruptive, negative spin on a good thing - monetization through destruction is at least new, if a bit evil.

Read more by Leslie Poston at Uptown Uncorked.

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

One thing that seems to have been ignored a lot lately is the presence of Open Source microblogging tools which corporations and organizations can adopt to build community for their brand. The most popular of those is Laconi.ca, the code behind the once-popular Identi.ca. The "other" Open Source Microblogging tool, OpenMicroblogger, which I have covered here before, is making strides however, and just the other day launched its' own "App Store" for installing applications on OpenMicroblogger-powered sites.

OpenMicroblogger may have just pioneered a new space, termed, "micro-apps", in which very small apps can easily enhance the capabilities of a user's microblogging experience right on top of the microblogging service itself. OpenMicroblogger's app store has started with its own photo wall application which users can add to their profiles, along with a "post-to-identi.ca" application example, and "post-to-twitter" application example. The magical thing about it all however is that because OpenMicroblogger supports Wordpress plugins, any Wordpress developer can ideally write an app easily, and make money off of it in the store. In fact, the "post-to-twitter" application was written as simply a wrapper around Alex King's own Twitter Tools Wordpress plugin.

In a time of economic uncertainty, it would appear that at least one Microblogging tool has come up with an ideal way to monetize microblogging. Build a platform, already familiar to developers, that makes those developers money. Developers then come to your platform, build apps for it, and encourage others to use it as well. OpenMicroblogger is quickly proving itself to be one of the easiest to adopt platforms out there. And in its infancy having recently hit 1,000 downloads, it would appear that I am not alone in that opinion.

It's important to note that while there is a proof-of-concept platform out there at openmicroblogger.com, OpenMicroblogger is open source software, not a service. Any site that implements OpenMicroblogger for themselves can utilize these applications for their users. Therefore, if a developer writes an application for the OpenAppStore, it becomes available to all OpenMicroblogger implementations. Developers can sign up at OpenAppStore.com to add their app to the store and set a price.

This is just the beginning of a very interesting future for open source microblogging. While it may never be a competitor to Twitter, open source, as it always has, will always pose a threat, and perhaps, ironically, Open Source may have beat Twitter to the punch at monetization.

Read more by Jesse Stay at Stay N' Alive.

For the last few months, I've been using Posty to deliver updates to Twitter and Identi.ca simultaneously. While TweetDeck thus far has a more robust interface and more options, the fact I can update multiple networks at the same time has been keeping me using Posty. Today, Cesare Rocchi posted version 1.6 of the application, which adds some critical functions that had me going back to the Twitter Web site - namely direct messages, and for some, retweeting.

Posty supports the ability to microblog to Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, Tumblr, FriendFeed and Identi.a simultaneously, much like Ping.fm. In the Adobe AIR app, you write your message on the right, select the networks you want to hit, and Posty submits them in parallel.

While I tend to use Posty simply for submitting, you can also catch up on your friends' timeline or the public timeline of each service, giving you a small window into the world of what's going on at Twitter, FriendFeed and the rest.

As Cesare lays out in a blog post today, the newest version adds support for direct messages for both Twitter and Identi.ca, support for favorites in both Twitter and Identi.ca, support for retweeting, and integrated URL shortening, using the http://is.gd engine.


I can DM directly from Posty now.
The application is still small in stature, and lacks some of the UI customizations seen in TweetDeck for example, but when it comes to usability, Posty just does its job well, and I'll keep using it, at least until TweetDeck integrates Identi.ca or FriendFeed, which would make things a lot more interesting.

You can download Posty here.

By Jesse Stay of Stay N' Alive (Identi.ca/FriendFeed)

While they admit it's purely a rumor from an unproven source, the iPhone blog is reporting that they have a source that is claiming that in time for Christmas we may be seeing turn-by-turn GPS-guided directions in an iPhone firmware update.

According to their source:

"Apple has begun quietly demonstrating an internally developed iPhone GPS Navigator program that includes turn-by-turn, 3d views etc. Visually, it is very similar to Tom-Tom, but with the expected Apple eye candy. They were sketchy about the details, but it seem that this will not be part of the core software (I.E. they intend to charge for it). It was also unclear whether they were using cellular-based data to share traffic information, but some of the screens seemed to indicate that it would."

iPhone and Apple rumors are a dime-a-dozen these days, so while exciting it is probably not true. Such a rumor wouldn't be unfounded though, as just in June, Tom Tom, the maker of GPS devices and software, announced they were close to producing an iPhone app of their own. Why we haven't seen that yet, it's hard to tell, but my guess would be something related to the iPhone NDA for pre-released Apps. I imagine they are dealing with the approval process right now. From companies I have consulted in the past, the problem of knowing if your app will or won't get approved has been an ongoing issue.

Could the Tom Tom app not be out yet because it is indeed competition with what Apple is about to release? Competition is good, so let's hope we see something like this soon, regardless who makes it.

Read more by Jesse Stay at Stay N' Alive.