tweets | Kris Smith has read these articles about "tweets" | www.croncast.com Kris Smith http://www.croncast.com/keyg/tweets This is the keyword feed for "tweets" from my read items in Google Reader. If you would like to search or subscribe to category/keyword rss feeds for items that I have shared with Google Reader visit http://www.croncast.com/c4_reading.php en-us Copyright for these items belong to their original publishers. No Croncast, Kris, Betsy, Comedy, Parenting, Funny, Palegroove, Croncast, eBay, Goodwill This is the keyword feed for "tweets" from my read items in Google Reader. This is the keyword feed for "tweets" from my read items in Google Reader. http://www.croncast.com/images/croncast_itunes.jpg tweets | Kris Smith has read these articles about "tweets" | www.croncast.com http://www.croncast.com/keyg/tweets This is the keyword feed for "tweets" from my read items in Google Reader. If you would like to search or subscribe to category/keyword rss feeds for items that I have shared with Google Reader visit http://www.croncast.com/c4_reading.php Croncast - Kris and Betsy Smith info@palegroove.com http://www.croncast.com Palegroove 3 New Ways to Measure the Social Web http://blog.mixpanel.com/3-new-ways-to-measure-the-social-web-11 Shared item

Post by Tim Trefren (Co-founder of Mixpanel, Inc.) guest posted at http://mashable.com/2010/02/02/social-analytics/

When most people think of web analytics, they think about pageview tracking; basically, measuring which pages on a website are being viewed. Pageview tracking is a well-established technology, but it's no longer meeting the needs of many of the most well-known companies in social media. Companies like FacebookFacebook, Zynga, Slide, and RockYou are spending tons of resources building their own internal analytics tools.

There's a reason for this: Social media is highly competitive, and the biggest advantage you can have is data. To improve and grow, these companies need to gather as much information as they can, and they need more than simple pageview tracking.

In the following sections I will cover three of the most important things to measure for social applications.

1. Funnel Analysis: Measuring Conversion Rates

One critical kind of analysis that social apps require is called Funnel Analysis. This is a way of measuring conversion rates, which is the lifeblood of all applications. The term conversion rate refers to the total number of visitors who came to a site, compared to the number of visitors who did a desired action (such as creating an account or purchasing an item).

What Funnel Analysis gives you is a more granular way of analyzing conversion rates. Instead of simply looking at signups divided by total visitors, you figure out the steps that have to be taken to get a user to sign up and measure the individual conversion rates between steps. As you can see from the image above, there's often a pretty steep dropoff between each step, giving you the namesake funnel shape. (Note: the image uses made up stats and is for illustration purposes only.)

This more granular look at conversion rates can have surprising results. Let's take a look at Twitter'sTwittersignup funnel:

1. Hit homepage
2. Go to signup page, fill out registration form
3. Browse suggested topics
4. Addadd e-mail friends
5. Search for someone

As you can see, the signup process is pretty complicated, and will benefit from detailed analysis. We might find, for example, that there's a huge dropoff rate (a dropoff occurs when many of the people who made it to one step don't make it to the next) at the Add e-mail friends step. Once we've discovered a dropoff rate like this, we have to figure out the root cause. The dropoff rate at the Add e-mail friends step could mean that users are unsure how to continue, causing them to leave, or they might not want to add their e-mail information. We would have to test to make sure.

Ultimately, Funnel Analysis is about finding and improving trouble spots in a website. With continual analysis, changes can be measured and ideas can be tested over time.

2. Engagement Tracking: Measuring What People Do

signup imageAs I mentioned earlier, pageview tracking is becoming less and less relevant for many web companies. Instead of the basic unit of measurement being the pageview, they are starting to track more directly relevant things, like the actions people are taking. Twitter, for example, may want to know how many tweets the average person sends and what they are searching for, not how many pages they viewed. Pageviews are just a way of approximating the information we really want, and as the web grows more interactive, they become less and less relevant.

Think about this: Sites exist today on which you never actually change the page. These are highly interactive sites, but they are impossible to track with pageviews, so traditional analytics tools are useless.

This will only become more common as time goes on and more companies develop highly interactive applications and adopt AJAX loading techniques.

3. Visitor Retention: How Many People Come Back?

This next technique measures a fairly complex but extremely valuable metric for successful web applications.

You can think of Visitor Retention as a measure of how sticky your site is. What we're really measuring is the percentage of people who come back again and again. The most common way of approaching this is to look at a group of users from a single time period (a week, for example) and track their behavior over time.

Here's an example of a retention table that should help clarify things:

Each row shows the weekly retention rates for a single group of users (sometimes known as a cohort). The first row, for example, is the cohort seen between December 7 and December 13, 2009. We can see that 15.15% of the users in that group came back after 1 week, 13.4% after 2 weeks, and so on.

This is crucial information, particularly for social applications, because most of the value lies in the size of the community. An application with low retention is like an empty shell many installs but few active users and you don't want to build an empty shell. You want a thriving, vibrant community.

Retention is a huge factor in building a strong community for a few reasons: You don't have much of a community if everyone is a newcomer (so more old users is a good thing), and the nature of retention is such that you get disproportionate returns on any increases you make. Without going into too much detail, an example would be that increasing retention by 33% might give you 50% more users in the long run.

Twitter is again a good example for us, as the network has been plagued by low retention rates. Twitter may seem successful now, but their low retention rate is troubling. In the past, companies that seemed to be extremely successful (think early Facebook apps) ultimately lost their edge because they couldn't retain their users.

It's entirely possible that Twitter itself could be a fad. With such low retention, I wouldn't necessarily be surprised but it is still too early to tell.

Conclusion

There's a lot to learn about analytics from the frontrunners in social media. The intense competition has resulted in many new and innovative ways to track and analyze visitor data.

We covered three such concepts in detail today: Funnel analysis, which lets you track conversion rates across whole parts of your site, engagement tracking, which is becoming more relevant than pageviews, and visitor retention analysis, which helps you understand and optimize the number of repeat visitors you get.

Permalink | Leave a comment



Tags: retention analysis rates users social ]]>

Post by Tim Trefren (Co-founder of Mixpanel, Inc.) guest posted at http://mashable.com/2010/02/02/social-analytics/

When most people think of web analytics, they think about pageview tracking; basically, measuring which pages on a website are being viewed. Pageview tracking is a well-established technology, but it's no longer meeting the needs of many of the most well-known companies in social media. Companies like FacebookFacebook, Zynga, Slide, and RockYou are spending tons of resources building their own internal analytics tools.

There's a reason for this: Social media is highly competitive, and the biggest advantage you can have is data. To improve and grow, these companies need to gather as much information as they can, and they need more than simple pageview tracking.

In the following sections I will cover three of the most important things to measure for social applications.

1. Funnel Analysis: Measuring Conversion Rates

One critical kind of analysis that social apps require is called Funnel Analysis. This is a way of measuring conversion rates, which is the lifeblood of all applications. The term conversion rate refers to the total number of visitors who came to a site, compared to the number of visitors who did a desired action (such as creating an account or purchasing an item).

What Funnel Analysis gives you is a more granular way of analyzing conversion rates. Instead of simply looking at signups divided by total visitors, you figure out the steps that have to be taken to get a user to sign up and measure the individual conversion rates between steps. As you can see from the image above, there's often a pretty steep dropoff between each step, giving you the namesake funnel shape. (Note: the image uses made up stats and is for illustration purposes only.)

This more granular look at conversion rates can have surprising results. Let's take a look at Twitter'sTwittersignup funnel:

1. Hit homepage
2. Go to signup page, fill out registration form
3. Browse suggested topics
4. Addadd e-mail friends
5. Search for someone

As you can see, the signup process is pretty complicated, and will benefit from detailed analysis. We might find, for example, that there's a huge dropoff rate (a dropoff occurs when many of the people who made it to one step don't make it to the next) at the Add e-mail friends step. Once we've discovered a dropoff rate like this, we have to figure out the root cause. The dropoff rate at the Add e-mail friends step could mean that users are unsure how to continue, causing them to leave, or they might not want to add their e-mail information. We would have to test to make sure.

Ultimately, Funnel Analysis is about finding and improving trouble spots in a website. With continual analysis, changes can be measured and ideas can be tested over time.

2. Engagement Tracking: Measuring What People Do

signup imageAs I mentioned earlier, pageview tracking is becoming less and less relevant for many web companies. Instead of the basic unit of measurement being the pageview, they are starting to track more directly relevant things, like the actions people are taking. Twitter, for example, may want to know how many tweets the average person sends and what they are searching for, not how many pages they viewed. Pageviews are just a way of approximating the information we really want, and as the web grows more interactive, they become less and less relevant.

Think about this: Sites exist today on which you never actually change the page. These are highly interactive sites, but they are impossible to track with pageviews, so traditional analytics tools are useless.

This will only become more common as time goes on and more companies develop highly interactive applications and adopt AJAX loading techniques.

3. Visitor Retention: How Many People Come Back?

This next technique measures a fairly complex but extremely valuable metric for successful web applications.

You can think of Visitor Retention as a measure of how sticky your site is. What we're really measuring is the percentage of people who come back again and again. The most common way of approaching this is to look at a group of users from a single time period (a week, for example) and track their behavior over time.

Here's an example of a retention table that should help clarify things:

Each row shows the weekly retention rates for a single group of users (sometimes known as a cohort). The first row, for example, is the cohort seen between December 7 and December 13, 2009. We can see that 15.15% of the users in that group came back after 1 week, 13.4% after 2 weeks, and so on.

This is crucial information, particularly for social applications, because most of the value lies in the size of the community. An application with low retention is like an empty shell many installs but few active users and you don't want to build an empty shell. You want a thriving, vibrant community.

Retention is a huge factor in building a strong community for a few reasons: You don't have much of a community if everyone is a newcomer (so more old users is a good thing), and the nature of retention is such that you get disproportionate returns on any increases you make. Without going into too much detail, an example would be that increasing retention by 33% might give you 50% more users in the long run.

Twitter is again a good example for us, as the network has been plagued by low retention rates. Twitter may seem successful now, but their low retention rate is troubling. In the past, companies that seemed to be extremely successful (think early Facebook apps) ultimately lost their edge because they couldn't retain their users.

It's entirely possible that Twitter itself could be a fad. With such low retention, I wouldn't necessarily be surprised but it is still too early to tell.

Conclusion

There's a lot to learn about analytics from the frontrunners in social media. The intense competition has resulted in many new and innovative ways to track and analyze visitor data.

We covered three such concepts in detail today: Funnel analysis, which lets you track conversion rates across whole parts of your site, engagement tracking, which is becoming more relevant than pageviews, and visitor retention analysis, which helps you understand and optimize the number of repeat visitors you get.

Permalink | Leave a comment



Tags: retention analysis rates users social ]]> Thu, 11 Feb 2010 12:05:26 -0500 tag:croncast.com,6077 Apple iPad: Breakthrough or Breakdown? http://www.everyjoe.com/articles/apple-ipad-breakthrough-or-breakdown/ Shared item I purposely waited a few days before writing my iPad article just to be sure that the initial excitement and hype is washed out of my system. I wanted to make sure that I'm writing as objectively as I can and not just let my emotions get the better of me. That being said, here are my thoughts on Apple's iPad.

iPad - image courtesy of Apple Inc.

iPad - image courtesy of Apple Inc.

The world has waited quite awhile for Apple to finally release its tablet. The world wanted it so much that in a way it worked against Apple. People built up their expectations of the iPad so high that it was going to be tough for Apple to surpass it. Did they? The simple answer is no. The iPad falls short of the world's lofty expectations. Is it Apple's fault? Not totally.

The world wanted Apple to produce a breakthrough device so much that when Jason Calcanis, founder of Engadget fired of tweets saying that he had been a beta tester for Apple and started to rattle off specs that were too good to be true, people believed him (this writer included). Why not? He's been writing about the tech industry and is one of the more recognizable names in the blogosphere that it seemed plausible. I hindsight, the solar panels should have been a dead giveaway.

On to the iPad. At first glance it does indeed just look like a big iPod Touch. Is it revolutionary and magically as Apple said it is? It should be had the world not been exposed to the iPhone and iPod Touch prior to it. On its on it is still revolutionary. Here's why.

1. The size is a big factor Sure it may look like a big iPod Touch but the bigger form factor just opens up a lot more possibilities. I've been a long time user of the iPod Touch and iPhone. I have both the first generation of iPod Touch and iPhone and thus have a little bit of experience with the devices. They both are great mobile devices. For checking important emails, looking up stock and weather quotes, reading a short article on the internet that really can't wait both these devices are top notch. But for reading books, watching movies, etc. It's just ok. After awhile your head starts to spin because of the eye strain and makes you want to put it down. The iPhone and iPod Touch are great mobile devices that can be used for short periods.

On the areas that the iPod Touch and iPhone are lacking, I think this is where the iPad starts to shine. Its size makes for an excellent device to watch videos on. The screen is large enough for personal viewing that it doesn't become such a chore. Reading books should be easier too although I shall reserve judgment on that until I actually get to try it.

2. Keeping it Simple - I've heard about a lot of people saying that the iPad lacks multi-tasking, etc. but I believe that Apple's attitude of keeping the iPad simple is actually is a strength. We've been surrounded by a culture of multitasking that it's gotten to a point that it's become a hindrance rather than helpful. When we work on our computers, we often find ourselves doing email, chatting, reading web pages all at the same time. It's becoming confusing and our concentration is suffering. I'm not saying this is always bad but in some cases keeping focus on things is good.

I also believe that the target users for the iPad are really people who aren't that techie. Let me qualify this. I'm not saying these people don't like technology or are adverse to it. I'm saying these people are the ones that like technology that just works. That's why a lot of people play games on consoles. Sure they can play games on the PC but it takes so much work to do so. Consoles are simple. You place the game, you play. Simple. The iPad is pretty much simple as well. It won't take rocket science to figure it out.

3. Touch me - The touch interface feels natural. It's been around for awhile but Apple's iPhone/iPod Touch interface that has been adapted for the iPad is the most natural touch interface I've seen. It's not a PC interface that has been adapted for touch. It's actually designed with the touch interface in mind. Therefore it just feels natural. People who aren't tech oriented really don't have a hard time figuring it out. Case in point, my tech challenged mother didn't have a hard time learning her iPhone.

4. It's what inside that counts In this case, one of the biggest things about the iPad announcement is actually the processor. Apple now has it's own processor inside one of its devices. It actually looks pretty good. If the impressions of people that have had a chance to play with the iPad. This thing screams and isn't power hungry. If this chip finds it way to the iPhone, we'll have quite the smart phone on our hands.

The iPad was designed to fill a gap between the netbook and a smar tphone. Will it do that? I think to a certain extent it will. I envision people buying this to have them in their homes and have easy access to email, photos, videos. Sometimes you just want to share photos with a friend and not necessarily project it on the TV. The iPad is a good alternative.

I also see it as a good addition to people who have desktops but want something portable to bring around the house to check emails, watch videos from anywhere and yes that includes the bathroom. I don't think it will get hot enough to burn your crotch as a MacBook/MacBook Pro does.

Will it revolutionize the way the iPod has? It has the potential to do so but only time will tell. For a 1.0 product it's good. I'm sure as with the iPod and iPhone the succeeding versions will only be better.

  • StumbleUpon
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  • E-mail this story to a friend!
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Post from: EveryJoe

Apple iPad: Breakthrough or Breakdown?



Tags: ipad apple touch ipod iphone ]]>I purposely waited a few days before writing my iPad article just to be sure that the initial excitement and hype is washed out of my system. I wanted to make sure that I'm writing as objectively as I can and not just let my emotions get the better of me. That being said, here are my thoughts on Apple's iPad.

iPad - image courtesy of Apple Inc.

iPad - image courtesy of Apple Inc.

The world has waited quite awhile for Apple to finally release its tablet. The world wanted it so much that in a way it worked against Apple. People built up their expectations of the iPad so high that it was going to be tough for Apple to surpass it. Did they? The simple answer is no. The iPad falls short of the world's lofty expectations. Is it Apple's fault? Not totally.

The world wanted Apple to produce a breakthrough device so much that when Jason Calcanis, founder of Engadget fired of tweets saying that he had been a beta tester for Apple and started to rattle off specs that were too good to be true, people believed him (this writer included). Why not? He's been writing about the tech industry and is one of the more recognizable names in the blogosphere that it seemed plausible. I hindsight, the solar panels should have been a dead giveaway.

On to the iPad. At first glance it does indeed just look like a big iPod Touch. Is it revolutionary and magically as Apple said it is? It should be had the world not been exposed to the iPhone and iPod Touch prior to it. On its on it is still revolutionary. Here's why.

1. The size is a big factor Sure it may look like a big iPod Touch but the bigger form factor just opens up a lot more possibilities. I've been a long time user of the iPod Touch and iPhone. I have both the first generation of iPod Touch and iPhone and thus have a little bit of experience with the devices. They both are great mobile devices. For checking important emails, looking up stock and weather quotes, reading a short article on the internet that really can't wait both these devices are top notch. But for reading books, watching movies, etc. It's just ok. After awhile your head starts to spin because of the eye strain and makes you want to put it down. The iPhone and iPod Touch are great mobile devices that can be used for short periods.

On the areas that the iPod Touch and iPhone are lacking, I think this is where the iPad starts to shine. Its size makes for an excellent device to watch videos on. The screen is large enough for personal viewing that it doesn't become such a chore. Reading books should be easier too although I shall reserve judgment on that until I actually get to try it.

2. Keeping it Simple - I've heard about a lot of people saying that the iPad lacks multi-tasking, etc. but I believe that Apple's attitude of keeping the iPad simple is actually is a strength. We've been surrounded by a culture of multitasking that it's gotten to a point that it's become a hindrance rather than helpful. When we work on our computers, we often find ourselves doing email, chatting, reading web pages all at the same time. It's becoming confusing and our concentration is suffering. I'm not saying this is always bad but in some cases keeping focus on things is good.

I also believe that the target users for the iPad are really people who aren't that techie. Let me qualify this. I'm not saying these people don't like technology or are adverse to it. I'm saying these people are the ones that like technology that just works. That's why a lot of people play games on consoles. Sure they can play games on the PC but it takes so much work to do so. Consoles are simple. You place the game, you play. Simple. The iPad is pretty much simple as well. It won't take rocket science to figure it out.

3. Touch me - The touch interface feels natural. It's been around for awhile but Apple's iPhone/iPod Touch interface that has been adapted for the iPad is the most natural touch interface I've seen. It's not a PC interface that has been adapted for touch. It's actually designed with the touch interface in mind. Therefore it just feels natural. People who aren't tech oriented really don't have a hard time figuring it out. Case in point, my tech challenged mother didn't have a hard time learning her iPhone.

4. It's what inside that counts In this case, one of the biggest things about the iPad announcement is actually the processor. Apple now has it's own processor inside one of its devices. It actually looks pretty good. If the impressions of people that have had a chance to play with the iPad. This thing screams and isn't power hungry. If this chip finds it way to the iPhone, we'll have quite the smart phone on our hands.

The iPad was designed to fill a gap between the netbook and a smar tphone. Will it do that? I think to a certain extent it will. I envision people buying this to have them in their homes and have easy access to email, photos, videos. Sometimes you just want to share photos with a friend and not necessarily project it on the TV. The iPad is a good alternative.

I also see it as a good addition to people who have desktops but want something portable to bring around the house to check emails, watch videos from anywhere and yes that includes the bathroom. I don't think it will get hot enough to burn your crotch as a MacBook/MacBook Pro does.

Will it revolutionize the way the iPod has? It has the potential to do so but only time will tell. For a 1.0 product it's good. I'm sure as with the iPod and iPhone the succeeding versions will only be better.

  • StumbleUpon
  • Digg
  • Facebook
  • Mixx
  • Google
  • TwitThis
  • Reddit
  • Yahoo! Buzz
  • Slashdot
  • E-mail this story to a friend!
  • BallHype
  • YardBarker

Post from: EveryJoe

Apple iPad: Breakthrough or Breakdown?



Tags: ipad apple touch ipod iphone ]]> Sun, 31 Jan 2010 10:48:16 -0500 tag:croncast.com,5953 Avary In The Aviary A Burden of Real-Time http://www.techstartups.com/2009/11/24/avary-in-the-aviary-a-burden-of-real-time/ Shared item By Senior Editor Kris Smith (@croncast)

prisonI have been loathe to write this post due to the nature of the subject matter but feel I must for a few reasons.

Over the last week and especially the past few days many of you have probably become aware of Roger Avary the twitterer.

You know, the guy that is tweeting from the big house as he serves 1 year in prison to pay his debt to society for vehicular manslaughter.

There is debate as to whether it is really Avary tweeting to share his prison experience or if it is one of his friends. I'm sure that will shake out in the future and we can either roil in disgust and awe that he shared this experience or be flattened when we find out that it was a sham. Either way, at this point it doesn't matter.

What does matter is that the story of a convicted man is being played out on Twitter. Even if it is simply his likeness being played by a friend and the tweets are fabricated it is no less engrossing. It is also provoking us to ask if we would do the same in his position?

The emotions that are moved by this situation are plenty. More people than will every admit have driven while intoxicated. Everyone can imagine themselves in the shoes of the grieving family that lost a loved one in the tragedy that landed Avary in prison. And finally, Americans love prison shows on television and crime novels. Think Shawshank Redemption but now on Twitter in real-time.

It is like a prison house diary released one sentence at a time. The inherent drama of a man in peril moves the story along as he seeks to fit into a new culture that he himself has only written about in movie scripts.

My personal abhorrence to Mr. Avary's crime forced me to immediately unfollow his Twitter account after deciding to follow. However his story this story, that is going on right now is significant for the changes that it represents in our culture. It is a base desire to be curious about that which we don't yet know. And as those outside the prison walls can now see in through real-time updates we should strive to teach from it, not just be entertained by it.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Avary In The Aviary A Burden of Real-Time is a post from: TechStartups.com



Tags: , , , ,



Tags: prison avary real story twitter ]]>By Senior Editor Kris Smith (@croncast)

prisonI have been loathe to write this post due to the nature of the subject matter but feel I must for a few reasons.

Over the last week and especially the past few days many of you have probably become aware of Roger Avary the twitterer.

You know, the guy that is tweeting from the big house as he serves 1 year in prison to pay his debt to society for vehicular manslaughter.

There is debate as to whether it is really Avary tweeting to share his prison experience or if it is one of his friends. I'm sure that will shake out in the future and we can either roil in disgust and awe that he shared this experience or be flattened when we find out that it was a sham. Either way, at this point it doesn't matter.

What does matter is that the story of a convicted man is being played out on Twitter. Even if it is simply his likeness being played by a friend and the tweets are fabricated it is no less engrossing. It is also provoking us to ask if we would do the same in his position?

The emotions that are moved by this situation are plenty. More people than will every admit have driven while intoxicated. Everyone can imagine themselves in the shoes of the grieving family that lost a loved one in the tragedy that landed Avary in prison. And finally, Americans love prison shows on television and crime novels. Think Shawshank Redemption but now on Twitter in real-time.

It is like a prison house diary released one sentence at a time. The inherent drama of a man in peril moves the story along as he seeks to fit into a new culture that he himself has only written about in movie scripts.

My personal abhorrence to Mr. Avary's crime forced me to immediately unfollow his Twitter account after deciding to follow. However his story this story, that is going on right now is significant for the changes that it represents in our culture. It is a base desire to be curious about that which we don't yet know. And as those outside the prison walls can now see in through real-time updates we should strive to teach from it, not just be entertained by it.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Avary In The Aviary A Burden of Real-Time is a post from: TechStartups.com



Tags: , , , ,



Tags: prison avary real story twitter ]]> Wed, 25 Nov 2009 00:25:04 -0500 tag:croncast.com,5783 Man Arrested for Not Tweeting? http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Mashable/~3/Wfzi5Mn6AMo/ Shared item

In a bizarre case involving teen YouTube sensation Justin Bieber and a riotous crowd of his fans, a record exec from Island Def Jam Records was arrested Friday for, among other things, failing to Tweet when told to by authorities.

When the Beiber event at Roosevelt Field mall became unruly (video below), police appealed to the artist's label to send a Tweet telling the crowd to leave. When that allegedly didn't happen, police arrested James Roppo, a senior vice president of Island Def Jam Records, for endangering the welfare of a minor and obstructing government administration.

An Associated Press feed reads:

Police arrested a vice president from Bieber's record label, Island Def Jam Records, saying he wasn't cooperating with attempts to disperse the crowd. James Roppo, 44, of Hoboken, N.J., was charged with a series of misdemeanours, including endangering the welfare of children and obstructing governmental administration.

We asked for his help in getting the crowd to go away by sending out a Twitter message, said Nassau County Police Det. Lt. Kevin Smith. By not cooperating with us, we feel he put lives in danger and the public at risk.

The report doesn't put the police in a good light, especially considering that Bieber's feed does contain Tweets asking the crowd to leave.

But all may not be as it seems: contrary to the AP reports, the NY Daily News implies that the arrest was for sending out updates that Bieber was signing autographs even after the crowd had dispersed.

Roppo is pleading not guilty to the charges.

[via MediaMemo]

Reviews: Twitter

Tags: twitter



Tags: crowd police bieber arrested island ]]>

In a bizarre case involving teen YouTube sensation Justin Bieber and a riotous crowd of his fans, a record exec from Island Def Jam Records was arrested Friday for, among other things, failing to Tweet when told to by authorities.

When the Beiber event at Roosevelt Field mall became unruly (video below), police appealed to the artist's label to send a Tweet telling the crowd to leave. When that allegedly didn't happen, police arrested James Roppo, a senior vice president of Island Def Jam Records, for endangering the welfare of a minor and obstructing government administration.

An Associated Press feed reads:

Police arrested a vice president from Bieber's record label, Island Def Jam Records, saying he wasn't cooperating with attempts to disperse the crowd. James Roppo, 44, of Hoboken, N.J., was charged with a series of misdemeanours, including endangering the welfare of children and obstructing governmental administration.

We asked for his help in getting the crowd to go away by sending out a Twitter message, said Nassau County Police Det. Lt. Kevin Smith. By not cooperating with us, we feel he put lives in danger and the public at risk.

The report doesn't put the police in a good light, especially considering that Bieber's feed does contain Tweets asking the crowd to leave.

But all may not be as it seems: contrary to the AP reports, the NY Daily News implies that the arrest was for sending out updates that Bieber was signing autographs even after the crowd had dispersed.

Roppo is pleading not guilty to the charges.

[via MediaMemo]

Reviews: Twitter

Tags: twitter



Tags: crowd police bieber arrested island ]]> Sun, 22 Nov 2009 20:00:29 -0500 tag:croncast.com,5758 Twitter Startups Born from PR Firms http://www.techstartups.com/2009/11/13/twitter-startups-born-from-pr-firms/ Shared item By Staff Writer John Federico (@gadgetboy)
TweetLevel Screenshot
PR firm Edelman Public Relations has launched its own twitter measurement tool. The tool, called TweetLevel, is a qualitative tool that measures a Twitterers gravitas or importance based on the content of their tweets. It takes some serious semantic mojo to accomplish that and I have to wonder if Edelman is up to the task.

Of course, TweetLevel doesn't ignore numbers altogether. It does take into account the number of followers a Twitter account may have and the account's participation in the community (I assume that means tweet frequency). However, the tool places a much greater weight on what is being said and how trustworthy an individual twitterer may be.

Using a 100-point scale, here are some of TweetLevel's highest rated Twitterers:

  • Perez Hilton (score: 86.5)
  • Mashable (86.3)
  • Twitter Tips (85.2)

Perez Hilton!? Edelman's developers may have to go back into the lab for a rewrite

Microsoft PR Agency of Record Waggener Edstrom launched a similar tool called Twendz earlier this year. Twendz monitors trending topics on Twitter while providing sentiment analysis on those topics. As of this post, I was unable to get Twendz running in Chrome, Firefox or Safari on my MacBook running Snow Leopard 10.6.2. The Company plans to offer a premium version of the tool later this year.
Twendz Screenshot
DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

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Tags: twitter tool twendz edelman tweetlevel ]]>By Staff Writer John Federico (@gadgetboy)
TweetLevel Screenshot
PR firm Edelman Public Relations has launched its own twitter measurement tool. The tool, called TweetLevel, is a qualitative tool that measures a Twitterers gravitas or importance based on the content of their tweets. It takes some serious semantic mojo to accomplish that and I have to wonder if Edelman is up to the task.

Of course, TweetLevel doesn't ignore numbers altogether. It does take into account the number of followers a Twitter account may have and the account's participation in the community (I assume that means tweet frequency). However, the tool places a much greater weight on what is being said and how trustworthy an individual twitterer may be.

Using a 100-point scale, here are some of TweetLevel's highest rated Twitterers:

  • Perez Hilton (score: 86.5)
  • Mashable (86.3)
  • Twitter Tips (85.2)

Perez Hilton!? Edelman's developers may have to go back into the lab for a rewrite

Microsoft PR Agency of Record Waggener Edstrom launched a similar tool called Twendz earlier this year. Twendz monitors trending topics on Twitter while providing sentiment analysis on those topics. As of this post, I was unable to get Twendz running in Chrome, Firefox or Safari on my MacBook running Snow Leopard 10.6.2. The Company plans to offer a premium version of the tool later this year.
Twendz Screenshot
DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

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Tags: twitter tool twendz edelman tweetlevel ]]> Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:58:52 -0500 tag:croncast.com,5722 Using The Magic API http://www.techstartups.com/2009/10/27/using-the-magic-api/ Shared item By Senior Editor Kris Smith (@croncast)

filomeThis afternoon I noticed something funny happening with Google Reader shared feeds. It seems that feeds are now mixing namespaces for the main content of the posts.

Previously, all content was delivered via the 'summary' namespace. When I did a check after getting some null data fields in a database I took a look at the shared feed . . . sure enough there was a new namespace, content' for the main content. Makes sense. But it is a pain if you are expecting everything to be returned as 'summary'.

My guess is that they are saving time and money by not rewriting the original source feed main content namspace. However, it creates an XML namespace soup that is harder to navigate.

When stuff like this happens it makes me nervous, especially when I am building something on the back of it.

The last time this happened Twitter turned off pagination for getting recent tweets for your friends. It killed a really cool project that I spent more time working on than I care to recount. I'm hoping that Google will not do the same. Fingers crossed.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

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Tags: content google feeds api main ]]>By Senior Editor Kris Smith (@croncast)

filomeThis afternoon I noticed something funny happening with Google Reader shared feeds. It seems that feeds are now mixing namespaces for the main content of the posts.

Previously, all content was delivered via the 'summary' namespace. When I did a check after getting some null data fields in a database I took a look at the shared feed . . . sure enough there was a new namespace, content' for the main content. Makes sense. But it is a pain if you are expecting everything to be returned as 'summary'.

My guess is that they are saving time and money by not rewriting the original source feed main content namspace. However, it creates an XML namespace soup that is harder to navigate.

When stuff like this happens it makes me nervous, especially when I am building something on the back of it.

The last time this happened Twitter turned off pagination for getting recent tweets for your friends. It killed a really cool project that I spent more time working on than I care to recount. I'm hoping that Google will not do the same. Fingers crossed.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

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Using The Magic API is a post from: TechStartups.com



Tags: , , , , , ,



Tags: content google feeds api main ]]> Wed, 28 Oct 2009 03:35:40 -0400 tag:croncast.com,5681 CMP.ly brings you drop dead easy disclosure http://www.techstartups.com/2009/10/14/cmp-ly-brings-you-drop-dead-easy-disclosure/ Shared item By Senior Editor Kris Smith

CMP.ly - FTC Disclosure Guidelines for BloggersA few weeks ago the FTC updated their advertising guidelines for endorsements and testimonials to include blogs and other new media publishing methods. In the time between this update and today, DigComm (short for the Digital Communications Group), a company that builds digital communications tools for PR and social media agencies, has released CMP.ly.

CMP.ly is a simple solution for what could become a confusing and complicated landscape of sorting out what types of disclosures are needed different circumstances. CMP.ly makes this easy by allowing bloggers, SMS, tweets and podcasts simply link to a standard human readable disclosure.

The six standardized disclosures include:

CMP.ly/0 No connection, unpaid, my own opinions
CMP.ly/1 Based upon a review copy
CMP.ly/2 Given a sample by vendor/agency/brand
CMP.ly/3 Paid post cash payment or other compensation
CMP.ly/4 Employee/shareholder/business relationship
CMP.ly/5 Custom Disclosure

And for my disclosure I am a co-founder of CMP.ly. I have worked very hard on this project with a great friend, Tom Chernaik. I believe that this is an important tool for any publisher to remain transparent as the old guard is now prepared to regulate this medium starting December 1, 2009.

What is most important for us is that a site like CMP.ly is coming from people within the independent publisher community. It is our belief it can be used as a platform to prove that we're not new media, but the media.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/4

Post from: TechStartups.com









Tags: , , ,



Tags: ly cmp disclosure media connection ]]>By Senior Editor Kris Smith

CMP.ly - FTC Disclosure Guidelines for BloggersA few weeks ago the FTC updated their advertising guidelines for endorsements and testimonials to include blogs and other new media publishing methods. In the time between this update and today, DigComm (short for the Digital Communications Group), a company that builds digital communications tools for PR and social media agencies, has released CMP.ly.

CMP.ly is a simple solution for what could become a confusing and complicated landscape of sorting out what types of disclosures are needed different circumstances. CMP.ly makes this easy by allowing bloggers, SMS, tweets and podcasts simply link to a standard human readable disclosure.

The six standardized disclosures include:

CMP.ly/0 No connection, unpaid, my own opinions
CMP.ly/1 Based upon a review copy
CMP.ly/2 Given a sample by vendor/agency/brand
CMP.ly/3 Paid post cash payment or other compensation
CMP.ly/4 Employee/shareholder/business relationship
CMP.ly/5 Custom Disclosure

And for my disclosure I am a co-founder of CMP.ly. I have worked very hard on this project with a great friend, Tom Chernaik. I believe that this is an important tool for any publisher to remain transparent as the old guard is now prepared to regulate this medium starting December 1, 2009.

What is most important for us is that a site like CMP.ly is coming from people within the independent publisher community. It is our belief it can be used as a platform to prove that we're not new media, but the media.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/4

Post from: TechStartups.com









Tags: , , ,



Tags: ly cmp disclosure media connection ]]> Wed, 14 Oct 2009 04:33:28 -0400 tag:croncast.com,5662 Our online lives slowly leak away http://scobleizer.com/2009/09/18/our-online-lives-slowly-leak-away/ Shared item I just looked at the baby photos of Milan being born. Back then we did something pretty cool with a service called Twittergram. We recorded his first cry. But now Twittergram seems to have gone away and with it, our baby's first cry. That was only two years ago. You can see the link there, but it doesn't work.

This isn't the first time I've noticed things online disappearing over time. My first two years of blogging are gone. Some of that was backed up by the wayback machine.

I've seen other people's blogs, or other online items go away too. Hey, quick, find some of your Tweets from just four months ago. They are all still online, but you probably can't find them. Me neither.

Or, wait until you are hacked and don't have a backup, like happened with me. I love the folks who say you should have backed up. How do you back up everything you do online? You can't. Quick, back up all your Google Docs, your Tweets, your Flickr photos and all the metadata surrounding them (comments, tags, etc), your Facebook items, etc etc. You will die trying.

I know, I've been backing up like a crazy man lately since I got hacked. What's funny is one of my brand new hard drives died. Luckily I had a backup of that. But what if I didn't?

What if my house burned down tonight? I wouldn't be able to save everything. Heck, I'd be worried about getting my family out and screw the hard drives.

So our online lives leak away.

It gets worse after you die.

You think your family will be able to save your Flickr photos? Not if you don't give them your passwords. Here's why: they won't be able to find them.

I let my Flickr Pro account lapse cause I was too lazy to put in a new credit card. I couldn't even find my old photos. Why? Because Flickr's search only shows the last few photos and they turn off the calendar and all sorts of things if you stop paying for the pro account. Yowza.

Reminds me of an interview I had with Jeremy Toeman who built a new company called Legacy Locker. But now we need to put enough cash in there to keep Flickr accounts paid up so my sons will be able to see their photos after I die.

Some best practices I've learned:

1. If you care that it stays around, use services from big companies. Google will probably stick around for a while. Twittergram? Gone.

2. Put your stuff in multiple places. Why? Because maybe Yahoo will decide to turn off the Flickr service in 10 years. So, make sure your photos go to other services.

3. Back up what you can, but that won't help long term. Quick, if your dad handed you a hard drive with 10,000 photos would you be able to find anything on there? What if you got that hard drive in 30 years? Would you be able to even look at what's on it? Remember, when I was in college my entire life was on floppy disks. I can't even read those now.

4. Print out stuff that you really want to save. I still have my trunk of photos from my childhood, but lots of my photos taken digitally over the years are gone or hard to find.

5. Use services like Legacy Locker to ensure that your kids at least will have your passwords and rights to your stuff and accounts.

Any other best practices?



Tags: photos flickr online hard years ]]>I just looked at the baby photos of Milan being born. Back then we did something pretty cool with a service called Twittergram. We recorded his first cry. But now Twittergram seems to have gone away and with it, our baby's first cry. That was only two years ago. You can see the link there, but it doesn't work.

This isn't the first time I've noticed things online disappearing over time. My first two years of blogging are gone. Some of that was backed up by the wayback machine.

I've seen other people's blogs, or other online items go away too. Hey, quick, find some of your Tweets from just four months ago. They are all still online, but you probably can't find them. Me neither.

Or, wait until you are hacked and don't have a backup, like happened with me. I love the folks who say you should have backed up. How do you back up everything you do online? You can't. Quick, back up all your Google Docs, your Tweets, your Flickr photos and all the metadata surrounding them (comments, tags, etc), your Facebook items, etc etc. You will die trying.

I know, I've been backing up like a crazy man lately since I got hacked. What's funny is one of my brand new hard drives died. Luckily I had a backup of that. But what if I didn't?

What if my house burned down tonight? I wouldn't be able to save everything. Heck, I'd be worried about getting my family out and screw the hard drives.

So our online lives leak away.

It gets worse after you die.

You think your family will be able to save your Flickr photos? Not if you don't give them your passwords. Here's why: they won't be able to find them.

I let my Flickr Pro account lapse cause I was too lazy to put in a new credit card. I couldn't even find my old photos. Why? Because Flickr's search only shows the last few photos and they turn off the calendar and all sorts of things if you stop paying for the pro account. Yowza.

Reminds me of an interview I had with Jeremy Toeman who built a new company called Legacy Locker. But now we need to put enough cash in there to keep Flickr accounts paid up so my sons will be able to see their photos after I die.

Some best practices I've learned:

1. If you care that it stays around, use services from big companies. Google will probably stick around for a while. Twittergram? Gone.

2. Put your stuff in multiple places. Why? Because maybe Yahoo will decide to turn off the Flickr service in 10 years. So, make sure your photos go to other services.

3. Back up what you can, but that won't help long term. Quick, if your dad handed you a hard drive with 10,000 photos would you be able to find anything on there? What if you got that hard drive in 30 years? Would you be able to even look at what's on it? Remember, when I was in college my entire life was on floppy disks. I can't even read those now.

4. Print out stuff that you really want to save. I still have my trunk of photos from my childhood, but lots of my photos taken digitally over the years are gone or hard to find.

5. Use services like Legacy Locker to ensure that your kids at least will have your passwords and rights to your stuff and accounts.

Any other best practices?



Tags: photos flickr online hard years ]]> Fri, 18 Sep 2009 07:17:02 -0400 tag:croncast.com,5553 Dad's Rants Become a Twitter Hit http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/09/03/dads-rants-become-a-twitter-hit/ Shared item Until last week, Justin Halpern's 73-year-old father didn't know that he was a Twitter sensation.

Patrick Schumacker
Justin Halpern's father, third from right, takes in a baseball game beside Mr. Halpern's friend Brad Lamers and Mr. Halpern, far right.

His dad's quips have resulted in more than 231,000 followers under the account name @smydadsays. But after it attracted wide attention in recent weeks as followers retweeted postings, and blogs and mainstream media covered it, Mr. Halpern finally broke the news.

But his dad didn't really get it. He asked if I had to start up the Internet to get on Twitter, and then I felt better because I knew he wouldn't understand the grand scope of what was going on, said Mr. Halpern in an interview.

Shortly after the revelation, his dad, who doesn't have Internet on his personal computer by choice, changed the subject. Mr. Halpern asked his father if he wanted to see the site. He responded with an adamant no, so Mr. Halpern read him some posts to check for accuracy, to which his dad responded, Yeah, I said that.

Mr. Halpern said that if his dad had been upset by the account, he would have discontinued it. He's my dad, and I live in his house rent-free. That's not a very nice thank you, he said.

He has long been documenting the quips of his father, who grew up working on a farm in Kentucky and was a doctor for more than 40 years. As a child, he recorded them in his diaries, and when he got older, he would post them as his status on Gmail Chat to give his friends a chuckle. In August, he found a new medium for disseminating his father's expletive-loaded one-liners: Twitter.

Mr. Halpern started the account after he left a job in Los Angeles and was unable to retrieve all of his personal documents on his work computer. He had just moved back in with his parents in San Diego, and a friend suggested he use Twitter as a way to document his life, because he had stopped keeping journals. He was reluctant because of the 140-character cap on tweets, but then thought it could be a good way to keep a record of his dad's quotes. I didn't expect it to have more than 10 people following it, he said.

A month later, he has become an Internet sensation. On Aug. 3, he began posting such gems as Your brother brought his baby over this morning. He told me it could stand. It couldn't stand for s. Just sat there. Big let down. Watching the Little League World Series, he said, These kids are all fat. I remember when you were in little leagueyou were fat. Other posts are best read on his page.

Mr. Halpern works from home as a writer for Maxim.com, and his father is retired, so throughout the day he collects the funny, and sometimes outrageous, things he says and chooses one to post each day. Early on, one of his friends brought up the possibility of his dad not saying anything quote-worthy, but he knew that wouldn't be a problem.

During the course of a day, he says tons of funny things because there's no filter. He admits some of his dad's best quotes are over 140 characters and are disqualified because of the limit.

Since his account has blown up in the media he's been approached by book agents, publishers and producers. In Los Angeles he tried to make it as a screenwriter but didn't find much success. It's ironic to think that I busted my ass trying to get my own writing out there, and what has been successful for me is something I didn't even write, he said.



Tags: halpern dad said father twitter ]]>Until last week, Justin Halpern's 73-year-old father didn't know that he was a Twitter sensation.

Patrick Schumacker
Justin Halpern's father, third from right, takes in a baseball game beside Mr. Halpern's friend Brad Lamers and Mr. Halpern, far right.

His dad's quips have resulted in more than 231,000 followers under the account name @smydadsays. But after it attracted wide attention in recent weeks as followers retweeted postings, and blogs and mainstream media covered it, Mr. Halpern finally broke the news.

But his dad didn't really get it. He asked if I had to start up the Internet to get on Twitter, and then I felt better because I knew he wouldn't understand the grand scope of what was going on, said Mr. Halpern in an interview.

Shortly after the revelation, his dad, who doesn't have Internet on his personal computer by choice, changed the subject. Mr. Halpern asked his father if he wanted to see the site. He responded with an adamant no, so Mr. Halpern read him some posts to check for accuracy, to which his dad responded, Yeah, I said that.

Mr. Halpern said that if his dad had been upset by the account, he would have discontinued it. He's my dad, and I live in his house rent-free. That's not a very nice thank you, he said.

He has long been documenting the quips of his father, who grew up working on a farm in Kentucky and was a doctor for more than 40 years. As a child, he recorded them in his diaries, and when he got older, he would post them as his status on Gmail Chat to give his friends a chuckle. In August, he found a new medium for disseminating his father's expletive-loaded one-liners: Twitter.

Mr. Halpern started the account after he left a job in Los Angeles and was unable to retrieve all of his personal documents on his work computer. He had just moved back in with his parents in San Diego, and a friend suggested he use Twitter as a way to document his life, because he had stopped keeping journals. He was reluctant because of the 140-character cap on tweets, but then thought it could be a good way to keep a record of his dad's quotes. I didn't expect it to have more than 10 people following it, he said.

A month later, he has become an Internet sensation. On Aug. 3, he began posting such gems as Your brother brought his baby over this morning. He told me it could stand. It couldn't stand for s. Just sat there. Big let down. Watching the Little League World Series, he said, These kids are all fat. I remember when you were in little leagueyou were fat. Other posts are best read on his page.

Mr. Halpern works from home as a writer for Maxim.com, and his father is retired, so throughout the day he collects the funny, and sometimes outrageous, things he says and chooses one to post each day. Early on, one of his friends brought up the possibility of his dad not saying anything quote-worthy, but he knew that wouldn't be a problem.

During the course of a day, he says tons of funny things because there's no filter. He admits some of his dad's best quotes are over 140 characters and are disqualified because of the limit.

Since his account has blown up in the media he's been approached by book agents, publishers and producers. In Los Angeles he tried to make it as a screenwriter but didn't find much success. It's ironic to think that I busted my ass trying to get my own writing out there, and what has been successful for me is something I didn't even write, he said.



Tags: halpern dad said father twitter ]]> Thu, 03 Sep 2009 19:11:24 -0400 tag:croncast.com,5507 Common Sense Wins: Social Media to Be Allowed at SEC Games http://mashable.com/2009/08/18/sec-social-media-policy/ Shared item

secYesterday, we reported on the Southeastern Conference's (SEC) ban of social media at sporting events. The policy, which mandated that fans not disseminate any account, description, picture, video, audio, reproduction or other information concerning the Event, drew sharp criticism from our commenters and around the blogosphere.

It appears that the SEC has come around, at least somewhat, and issued revisions to their guidelines for fans. While video will still be off-limits, it looks like tweets, Facebook status updates, and even pictures will be acceptable, so long as they are for non-commercial use.

The new policy reads:

No Bearer may produce or disseminate in any form a real-time description or transmission of the Event (i) for commercial or business use, or (ii) in any manner that constitutes, or is intended to provide or is promoted or marketed as, a substitute for radio, television or video coverage of such Event. Personal messages and updates of scores or other brief descriptions of the competition throughout the Event are acceptable. If the SEC deems that a Bearer is producing a commercial or real-time description of the Event, the SEC reserves the right to pursue all available remedies against the Bearer.

Absent the prior written permission of the Southeastern Conference, game action videos of the Event may not be taken by Bearer. Photos of the Event may be taken by Bearer and distributed solely for personal use (and such photographs shall not be licensed, used, or sold commercially, or used for any commercial or business purpose).

In other words, the SEC is intent on protecting the broadcasting rights of CBS, but casual, not-for-profit social media use by fans will be permitted. This is also what SEC Associate Commissioner of Media Relations Charles Bloom told The Buzz Manager Blog today for the most part, it's all about video.

Is that the right stance? As I said in my previous post and again today on CNN Live (embedded below), it's hard to see today's camera phones competing with the quality and scale of broadcast coverage. That said, the SEC has a point in wanting to protect what's currently an enormous source of revenue. But so long as complimentary forms of social media like Twitter, Facebook, and photo services are allowed, at least the conference is moving in the right direction for both the fans and itself.

Reviews: Facebook, Twitter

Tags: college sports, SEC, social media



Tags: sec event media social bearer ]]>

secYesterday, we reported on the Southeastern Conference's (SEC) ban of social media at sporting events. The policy, which mandated that fans not disseminate any account, description, picture, video, audio, reproduction or other information concerning the Event, drew sharp criticism from our commenters and around the blogosphere.

It appears that the SEC has come around, at least somewhat, and issued revisions to their guidelines for fans. While video will still be off-limits, it looks like tweets, Facebook status updates, and even pictures will be acceptable, so long as they are for non-commercial use.

The new policy reads:

No Bearer may produce or disseminate in any form a real-time description or transmission of the Event (i) for commercial or business use, or (ii) in any manner that constitutes, or is intended to provide or is promoted or marketed as, a substitute for radio, television or video coverage of such Event. Personal messages and updates of scores or other brief descriptions of the competition throughout the Event are acceptable. If the SEC deems that a Bearer is producing a commercial or real-time description of the Event, the SEC reserves the right to pursue all available remedies against the Bearer.

Absent the prior written permission of the Southeastern Conference, game action videos of the Event may not be taken by Bearer. Photos of the Event may be taken by Bearer and distributed solely for personal use (and such photographs shall not be licensed, used, or sold commercially, or used for any commercial or business purpose).

In other words, the SEC is intent on protecting the broadcasting rights of CBS, but casual, not-for-profit social media use by fans will be permitted. This is also what SEC Associate Commissioner of Media Relations Charles Bloom told The Buzz Manager Blog today for the most part, it's all about video.

Is that the right stance? As I said in my previous post and again today on CNN Live (embedded below), it's hard to see today's camera phones competing with the quality and scale of broadcast coverage. That said, the SEC has a point in wanting to protect what's currently an enormous source of revenue. But so long as complimentary forms of social media like Twitter, Facebook, and photo services are allowed, at least the conference is moving in the right direction for both the fans and itself.

Reviews: Facebook, Twitter

Tags: college sports, SEC, social media



Tags: sec event media social bearer ]]> Tue, 18 Aug 2009 23:10:42 -0400 tag:croncast.com,5464 Sex Offenders Banned from Social Media Sites http://mashable.com/2009/08/13/sex-offenders-banned/ Shared item

patquinnShould sex offenders be allowed to use Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and other social networking sites? Illinois Governor Pat Quinn (pictured) thinks not, and this week signed into law a bill that bans all registered sex offenders in his state from using social networks.

This sounds satisfying on first listen after all, why wouldn't we want to take every possible measure to prevent the horrendous crimes of sex offenders? But many legal blogs are pointing out that the legislation is overzealous and possibly unconstitutional.

Peeing in Public? You Might be a Sex Offender

Salon points out that in 13 states you'll be added to the sex offenders register for urinating in public (in two of which, only if a child was present), while 29 states required registration for teenagers who had consensual sex with another teenager. In other words: it's not just child molesters and rapists who would be banned if such laws became accepted.

Then there's the problem of implementation: who is going to keep an eye on the thousands of registered sex offenders to see if they're using Facebook and Twitter? Surely there are better ways to spend police time than tracking the web habits of someone who had sex in high school?

NYTimes.com is Banned, Too

Other blogs, like Technology Liberation and Hacker Journalist, point out that the broad definition of social networking websites essentially bans these people from the web as a whole banned from posting a resume on LinkedIn, banned from reading the New York Times (or any major newspaper) online because it lets you set up a profile. The description reads:

Social networking website means an Internet website containing profile web pages of the members of the website that include the names or nicknames of such members, photographs placed on the profile web pages by such members, or any other personal or personally identifying information about such members and links to other profile web pages on social networking websites of friends or associates of such members that can be accessed by other members or visitors to the website. A social networking website provides members of or visitors to such website the ability to leave messages or comments on the profile web page that are visible to all or some visitors to the profile web page and may also include a form of electronic mail for members of the social networking website.

In short, punishing rapists and sex offenders may feel satisfying, but this isn't what the bill does: it'll likely affect those who committed far lesser crimes, prove unenforceable, and may even be unconstitutional.



Tags: sex members social web website ]]>

patquinnShould sex offenders be allowed to use Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and other social networking sites? Illinois Governor Pat Quinn (pictured) thinks not, and this week signed into law a bill that bans all registered sex offenders in his state from using social networks.

This sounds satisfying on first listen after all, why wouldn't we want to take every possible measure to prevent the horrendous crimes of sex offenders? But many legal blogs are pointing out that the legislation is overzealous and possibly unconstitutional.

Peeing in Public? You Might be a Sex Offender

Salon points out that in 13 states you'll be added to the sex offenders register for urinating in public (in two of which, only if a child was present), while 29 states required registration for teenagers who had consensual sex with another teenager. In other words: it's not just child molesters and rapists who would be banned if such laws became accepted.

Then there's the problem of implementation: who is going to keep an eye on the thousands of registered sex offenders to see if they're using Facebook and Twitter? Surely there are better ways to spend police time than tracking the web habits of someone who had sex in high school?

NYTimes.com is Banned, Too

Other blogs, like Technology Liberation and Hacker Journalist, point out that the broad definition of social networking websites essentially bans these people from the web as a whole banned from posting a resume on LinkedIn, banned from reading the New York Times (or any major newspaper) online because it lets you set up a profile. The description reads:

Social networking website means an Internet website containing profile web pages of the members of the website that include the names or nicknames of such members, photographs placed on the profile web pages by such members, or any other personal or personally identifying information about such members and links to other profile web pages on social networking websites of friends or associates of such members that can be accessed by other members or visitors to the website. A social networking website provides members of or visitors to such website the ability to leave messages or comments on the profile web page that are visible to all or some visitors to the profile web page and may also include a form of electronic mail for members of the social networking website.

In short, punishing rapists and sex offenders may feel satisfying, but this isn't what the bill does: it'll likely affect those who committed far lesser crimes, prove unenforceable, and may even be unconstitutional.



Tags: sex members social web website ]]> Thu, 13 Aug 2009 11:46:41 -0400 tag:croncast.com,5459 Twitter Not Suing Developer, But Spam Apps Should Watch Out http://mashable.com/2009/08/12/twitter-not-suing-developer/ Shared item

twitterbutlerThe developer of MyTwitterButler, a $10 auto-follow application for Twitter (eg. follow thousands of people on Twitter so they follow you back), is claiming today he's been sued by Twitter.

It's not true: the letter he published under the title I'm Being Sued by Twitter!! is a cease and desist asking him to stop breaking the Twitter TOS (auto-follow is not permitted, nor is creating an app to auto-follow, since the only real use case is to spam) and to stop using Twitter in his product name and domain name due to confusion with Twitter's trademark.

Drawing the Line

That one tidbit is the only interesting chapter to the story: Twitter has typically turned a blind eye to Twitterholic, Twittercounter and hundreds of legitimate Twitter applications using the Twitter name. Going after these legitimate applications would create bad PR, even though Twitter is indeed obligated to defend its trademark or risk losing it.

In fact, Twitter has won plaudits for allowing its ecosystem to blossom in this way. And after filing to trademark the word Tweet, the company was very clear that it would not be chasing down app makers who used the word in their names. On the subject of the Twitter trademark itself, Biz Stone wrote:

Regarding the use of the word Twitter in projects, we are a bit more wary although there are some exceptions here as well. After all, Twitter is the name of our service and our company so the potential for confusion is much higher. When folks ask us about naming their application with Twitter we generally respond by suggesting more original branding for their project. This avoids potential confusion down the line.

It seems increasingly clear where the line is drawn: creating spammy apps may not go down well, while those creating new applications would be best to use something more novel than Twitter in the app name.

We've put a note in to Twitter's lawyers asking for clarification, and we'll update if we get more details.

Reviews: Twitter



Tags: twitter follow name trademark app ]]>

twitterbutlerThe developer of MyTwitterButler, a $10 auto-follow application for Twitter (eg. follow thousands of people on Twitter so they follow you back), is claiming today he's been sued by Twitter.

It's not true: the letter he published under the title I'm Being Sued by Twitter!! is a cease and desist asking him to stop breaking the Twitter TOS (auto-follow is not permitted, nor is creating an app to auto-follow, since the only real use case is to spam) and to stop using Twitter in his product name and domain name due to confusion with Twitter's trademark.

Drawing the Line

That one tidbit is the only interesting chapter to the story: Twitter has typically turned a blind eye to Twitterholic, Twittercounter and hundreds of legitimate Twitter applications using the Twitter name. Going after these legitimate applications would create bad PR, even though Twitter is indeed obligated to defend its trademark or risk losing it.

In fact, Twitter has won plaudits for allowing its ecosystem to blossom in this way. And after filing to trademark the word Tweet, the company was very clear that it would not be chasing down app makers who used the word in their names. On the subject of the Twitter trademark itself, Biz Stone wrote:

Regarding the use of the word Twitter in projects, we are a bit more wary although there are some exceptions here as well. After all, Twitter is the name of our service and our company so the potential for confusion is much higher. When folks ask us about naming their application with Twitter we generally respond by suggesting more original branding for their project. This avoids potential confusion down the line.

It seems increasingly clear where the line is drawn: creating spammy apps may not go down well, while those creating new applications would be best to use something more novel than Twitter in the app name.

We've put a note in to Twitter's lawyers asking for clarification, and we'll update if we get more details.

Reviews: Twitter



Tags: twitter follow name trademark app ]]> Wed, 12 Aug 2009 11:54:59 -0400 tag:croncast.com,5451 What the Horizon Realty Fail Can Teach You About Social Media http://feeds.copyblogger.com/~r/Copyblogger/~3/gpW1cQxuF-0/ Shared item FAIL

If you haven't heard the story yet, a Chicago real estate company called Horizon Realty Group filed a lawsuit against one of its tenants on Monday. She apparently made a snarky remark on Twitter, claiming that the company didn't care about mold in her apartment.

Horizon is suing her for libel, looking for $50,000 in damages to their reputation.

She only had about 20 followers, so this looked like a pretty harsh David and Goliath story. Unfortunately, Horizon's legal and PR teams forgot what happened to Goliath.

By Tuesday afternoon, the story of Horizon's lawsuit had hit trending topics on Twitter. Which means that a peevish remark made in front of 20 people has now found its way to hundreds of thousands.

That megaphone is a lot more powerful than you think it is

Think you just have 20 followers? Think again. Your tweets are findable both on Twitter search and Google. And it's a routine practice for any smart company to look for its name regularly using both services.

Think the customer who just infuriated you has just 20 followers? Think again. Angry tenant Amanda Bonnen's megaphone was tiny, but the social web can't resist a juicy story. And the social web really can't resist a juicy Twitter story.

It's not about what you think is fair

Horizon Realty might be the most loveable, fair, decent and true company in the world. Right now, their name recognition has about as much appeal as Saddam Hussein. With mold.

Whether fair or not, Horizon has made a worldwide name for itself virtually instantly, connecting its brand with callous disregard for its tenants, or worse.

(Yes, there is such a thing as bad publicity. This is what it looks like.)

Do social media users read all the facts carefully before flaming? Of course they don't. Are there dozens of inaccurate accusations about Horizon flying around Twitter at the moment?

Absolutely.

Is that fair? No. Then again, filing a $50,000 lawsuit against a customer for a snarky remark made to a friend isn't going to strike many as entirely reasonable either.

The Meatball Sundae has no mercy

Horizon's Jeffrey Michael, trying to explain his position to the Sun-Times, said that Horizon has a good reputation to protect. His company says they can prove there wasn't any mold in Bonnen's apartment, and they couldn't let Bonnen bad-mouth them. So they took a traditional route. (Although it would have been somewhat more traditional to ask her to remove the remark before filing the lawsuit.)

A year and a half ago, in a post about Seth Godin's book Meatball Sundae, I wrote about my take on a nice little company called Kryptonite Locks.

Kryptonite got knocked down hard when they tried to play by old communication rules in a new communication environment. They hadn't actually done anything wrong, but they looked clueless, unfeeling, and arrogant.

You don't get to play by the old rules any more, and it doesn't matter what business you're in. You don't get the old privilege of anonymity. You don't get to bury your story on page 47.

There is no more page 47. Every story is somebody's page 1.

As a matter of fact, it isn't your story any more. It belongs to everyone, and they'll do what they please with it.

If you want to influence the conversation, you've actually got to get into the conversation. Respectfully. Meaningfully. Just because that's a social media clich doesn't mean you get to ignore it and hope it goes away.

The one-to-a-jillion aspect of social media means that any of us can hit the equivalent of the front page of the New York Times at any time. All that has to happen is that we find ourselves in the middle of a really interesting story.

So what's the story about you going to be?

(And if you work for a company, be sure and warn your legal team about Twitter users. You don't want to mess with those people we're crazy.)

About the Author: Sonia Simone is Senior Editor of Copyblogger and the founder of Remarkable Communication. She also offers a pretty darned good free class on email marketing.

Thesis Theme for WordPress



Tags: story horizon company twitter think ]]>FAIL

If you haven't heard the story yet, a Chicago real estate company called Horizon Realty Group filed a lawsuit against one of its tenants on Monday. She apparently made a snarky remark on Twitter, claiming that the company didn't care about mold in her apartment.

Horizon is suing her for libel, looking for $50,000 in damages to their reputation.

She only had about 20 followers, so this looked like a pretty harsh David and Goliath story. Unfortunately, Horizon's legal and PR teams forgot what happened to Goliath.

By Tuesday afternoon, the story of Horizon's lawsuit had hit trending topics on Twitter. Which means that a peevish remark made in front of 20 people has now found its way to hundreds of thousands.

That megaphone is a lot more powerful than you think it is

Think you just have 20 followers? Think again. Your tweets are findable both on Twitter search and Google. And it's a routine practice for any smart company to look for its name regularly using both services.

Think the customer who just infuriated you has just 20 followers? Think again. Angry tenant Amanda Bonnen's megaphone was tiny, but the social web can't resist a juicy story. And the social web really can't resist a juicy Twitter story.

It's not about what you think is fair

Horizon Realty might be the most loveable, fair, decent and true company in the world. Right now, their name recognition has about as much appeal as Saddam Hussein. With mold.

Whether fair or not, Horizon has made a worldwide name for itself virtually instantly, connecting its brand with callous disregard for its tenants, or worse.

(Yes, there is such a thing as bad publicity. This is what it looks like.)

Do social media users read all the facts carefully before flaming? Of course they don't. Are there dozens of inaccurate accusations about Horizon flying around Twitter at the moment?

Absolutely.

Is that fair? No. Then again, filing a $50,000 lawsuit against a customer for a snarky remark made to a friend isn't going to strike many as entirely reasonable either.

The Meatball Sundae has no mercy

Horizon's Jeffrey Michael, trying to explain his position to the Sun-Times, said that Horizon has a good reputation to protect. His company says they can prove there wasn't any mold in Bonnen's apartment, and they couldn't let Bonnen bad-mouth them. So they took a traditional route. (Although it would have been somewhat more traditional to ask her to remove the remark before filing the lawsuit.)

A year and a half ago, in a post about Seth Godin's book Meatball Sundae, I wrote about my take on a nice little company called Kryptonite Locks.

Kryptonite got knocked down hard when they tried to play by old communication rules in a new communication environment. They hadn't actually done anything wrong, but they looked clueless, unfeeling, and arrogant.

You don't get to play by the old rules any more, and it doesn't matter what business you're in. You don't get the old privilege of anonymity. You don't get to bury your story on page 47.

There is no more page 47. Every story is somebody's page 1.

As a matter of fact, it isn't your story any more. It belongs to everyone, and they'll do what they please with it.

If you want to influence the conversation, you've actually got to get into the conversation. Respectfully. Meaningfully. Just because that's a social media clich doesn't mean you get to ignore it and hope it goes away.

The one-to-a-jillion aspect of social media means that any of us can hit the equivalent of the front page of the New York Times at any time. All that has to happen is that we find ourselves in the middle of a really interesting story.

So what's the story about you going to be?

(And if you work for a company, be sure and warn your legal team about Twitter users. You don't want to mess with those people we're crazy.)

About the Author: Sonia Simone is Senior Editor of Copyblogger and the founder of Remarkable Communication. She also offers a pretty darned good free class on email marketing.

Thesis Theme for WordPress



Tags: story horizon company twitter think ]]> Wed, 29 Jul 2009 03:32:39 -0400 tag:croncast.com,5412 Twitter Finds And Friends http://www.ncnblog.com/2009/07/26/twitter-finds-and-friends/ Shared item I am a big fan of Twitter. It's amazing how quickly information can flow, from tweet to tweet, and person to person.

If you haven't done so, feel free to follow my tweets, and say Hello.

Today's Twitter Finds And Friends -

Finds -

Do you like bean bag chairs? Do you like personal finance forums? Then, you'll love Moolanomy's current giveaway. Register for the new Moolanomy Answers and you could win a Sumo Bean Bag Chair. (Tweeted by @moolanomy)

We recently spent an entire week removing clutter from our home and organizing our stuff. I'm totally digging Being Frugal's post - Why The Minimalist Lifestyle Appeals To Me. (Tweeted by @Zen_Habits)

Friends -

I am a big fan of @flexo from Consumerism Commentary.

I really enjoy @SunFinancial from The Sun's Financial Diary.

I learn a lot from @mymoneyblog from My Money Blog.

Follow me via Twitter

Twitter Finds And Friends



Tags: twitter friends finds moolanomy follow ]]>I am a big fan of Twitter. It's amazing how quickly information can flow, from tweet to tweet, and person to person.

If you haven't done so, feel free to follow my tweets, and say Hello.

Today's Twitter Finds And Friends -

Finds -

Do you like bean bag chairs? Do you like personal finance forums? Then, you'll love Moolanomy's current giveaway. Register for the new Moolanomy Answers and you could win a Sumo Bean Bag Chair. (Tweeted by @moolanomy)

We recently spent an entire week removing clutter from our home and organizing our stuff. I'm totally digging Being Frugal's post - Why The Minimalist Lifestyle Appeals To Me. (Tweeted by @Zen_Habits)

Friends -

I am a big fan of @flexo from Consumerism Commentary.

I really enjoy @SunFinancial from The Sun's Financial Diary.

I learn a lot from @mymoneyblog from My Money Blog.

Follow me via Twitter

Twitter Finds And Friends



Tags: twitter friends finds moolanomy follow ]]> Sun, 26 Jul 2009 14:00:42 -0400 tag:croncast.com,5383 The Tweeting House: Twitter + Internet of Things http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~3/8MXjIGDSWec/the_tweeting_house_twitter_internet_of_things.php Shared item I recently spoke to Andy Stanford-Clark, a Master Inventor and Distinguished Engineer at IBM. He's been working on a number of Twitter and real-time monitoring projects, many of them at the intersection of two big trends we've been tracking in 2009: The Real-time Web and Internet of Things.

Stanford-Clark has set up various systems for real-time monitoring of the Internet of Things, many of them using Twitter (he calls the resulting tweets "tweetjects"). One example got a bit of mainstream media coverage lately: a house that uses Twitter to monitor its energy consumption.

Sponsor

As Rory Cellan-Jones from the BBC reported recently, Stanford-Clark has installed sensors on a number of household objects - such as electricity meters and windows. From this he can monitor lighting, heating, temperature, phone and water usage. Stanford-Clark is able to turn his fountain, lights and heaters on and off by flicking switches on a web page or from a live dashboard application on his mobile phone.

He's also now hooked up his house sensors to a Twitter account: andy_house (it's a private account, so requires Andy's approval before you can follow it). Here's a BBC tv report about the house and other similar projects involving sensors and Twitter:

As well as his own house, Stanford-Clark has also set up Twitter accounts for his local ferry and bus - for example so they can tweet their real-time locations.

What Use is a Tweeting House?

Stanford-Clark told me that as well as providing useful data about what his house is doing - for example how warm is the lounge, or has he left a door open - the system can also apply intelligence to his house. For example it can cross-reference house data against AMEE (an open platform for measuring energy consumption), in order to infer the real-time carbon footprint for his house.

These experiments are just the start of what's possible by hooking sensors up to real-time messaging systems like Twitter. However there's a lot of infrastructure work that needs to be done first. Stanford-Clark told me that to get at this type of data for many everyday things, governments, city councils and companies will need to instrument public things with sensors - e.g. gas pipelines, buses, trains, ferries.

The problem for most organizations, including government, is that they aren't necessarily sure what uses there are right now for sensors. For example power companies may not see the economic value of replacing meter readers with automatic sensors. Stanford-Clark's response is that "a lot of other apps will spring out of the woodwork," when sensors are added and hooked into messaging software.

Stanford-Clark and IBM have identified 3 main things that are required for this trend to play out fully, conveniently summed up as "the three 'I's": Instrumented, Interconnected, and Intelligent. In my next post, I'll explore this more - plus some of IBM's other projects in this area.

Discuss



Tags: house stanford clark twitter sensors ]]>I recently spoke to Andy Stanford-Clark, a Master Inventor and Distinguished Engineer at IBM. He's been working on a number of Twitter and real-time monitoring projects, many of them at the intersection of two big trends we've been tracking in 2009: The Real-time Web and Internet of Things.

Stanford-Clark has set up various systems for real-time monitoring of the Internet of Things, many of them using Twitter (he calls the resulting tweets "tweetjects"). One example got a bit of mainstream media coverage lately: a house that uses Twitter to monitor its energy consumption.

Sponsor

As Rory Cellan-Jones from the BBC reported recently, Stanford-Clark has installed sensors on a number of household objects - such as electricity meters and windows. From this he can monitor lighting, heating, temperature, phone and water usage. Stanford-Clark is able to turn his fountain, lights and heaters on and off by flicking switches on a web page or from a live dashboard application on his mobile phone.

He's also now hooked up his house sensors to a Twitter account: andy_house (it's a private account, so requires Andy's approval before you can follow it). Here's a BBC tv report about the house and other similar projects involving sensors and Twitter:

As well as his own house, Stanford-Clark has also set up Twitter accounts for his local ferry and bus - for example so they can tweet their real-time locations.

What Use is a Tweeting House?

Stanford-Clark told me that as well as providing useful data about what his house is doing - for example how warm is the lounge, or has he left a door open - the system can also apply intelligence to his house. For example it can cross-reference house data against AMEE (an open platform for measuring energy consumption), in order to infer the real-time carbon footprint for his house.

These experiments are just the start of what's possible by hooking sensors up to real-time messaging systems like Twitter. However there's a lot of infrastructure work that needs to be done first. Stanford-Clark told me that to get at this type of data for many everyday things, governments, city councils and companies will need to instrument public things with sensors - e.g. gas pipelines, buses, trains, ferries.

The problem for most organizations, including government, is that they aren't necessarily sure what uses there are right now for sensors. For example power companies may not see the economic value of replacing meter readers with automatic sensors. Stanford-Clark's response is that "a lot of other apps will spring out of the woodwork," when sensors are added and hooked into messaging software.

Stanford-Clark and IBM have identified 3 main things that are required for this trend to play out fully, conveniently summed up as "the three 'I's": Instrumented, Interconnected, and Intelligent. In my next post, I'll explore this more - plus some of IBM's other projects in this area.

Discuss



Tags: house stanford clark twitter sensors ]]> Tue, 21 Jul 2009 08:00:00 -0400 tag:croncast.com,5319 Tweet Reel http://www.appsafari.com/utilities/9512/tweet-reel/ Shared item iPhone Application Gallery - appsafari.com
First shared by - SteveRubel
syndication+ 5 | Search 1 | Shares 1

Put your new iPhone 3GS video camera to work with the new Tweet Reel iPhone app. It lets you record video on your iPhone and upload them as tweets to tweetreel.com and share the link on your Twitter account. Now you can tweet videos you shoot right from your iPhone 3G S. Tweet Reel senses the orientation of both the video clips and photos you take, and rotates them automatically for playback and viewing online. The iPhone app also automatically adds a short URL to your tweets so that your followers can immediately find and view your videos.

As these are tweets, they will be public, not private. You don't need to create any accounts to use Tweet Reel on your iPhone. The app just needs your current Twitter login information. Commenting on Tweet Reel is done through Twitter. Your photos and videos get stored on the TweetReel.com website organized under a nice personal url like http://tweetreel.com/YourName

Tweet Reel is a great alternative to uploading your Videos to YouTube from your iPhone 3GS, if you already have friends on Twitter and want to share videos with them on the fly. Grab a copy and take it for a spin.

This 3rd Party App is available at the Apple iTunes AppStore. Browse the full list of all AppStore apps filed under the AppStore category.

View the developer website here
Download Tweet Reel at iTunes App Store
Price: $2.99


tweet iphone reel videos app

Tags: iphone tweet reel videos app ]]>iPhone Application Gallery - appsafari.com
First shared by - SteveRubel
syndication+ 5 | Search 1 | Shares 1

Put your new iPhone 3GS video camera to work with the new Tweet Reel iPhone app. It lets you record video on your iPhone and upload them as tweets to tweetreel.com and share the link on your Twitter account. Now you can tweet videos you shoot right from your iPhone 3G S. Tweet Reel senses the orientation of both the video clips and photos you take, and rotates them automatically for playback and viewing online. The iPhone app also automatically adds a short URL to your tweets so that your followers can immediately find and view your videos.

As these are tweets, they will be public, not private. You don't need to create any accounts to use Tweet Reel on your iPhone. The app just needs your current Twitter login information. Commenting on Tweet Reel is done through Twitter. Your photos and videos get stored on the TweetReel.com website organized under a nice personal url like http://tweetreel.com/YourName

Tweet Reel is a great alternative to uploading your Videos to YouTube from your iPhone 3GS, if you already have friends on Twitter and want to share videos with them on the fly. Grab a copy and take it for a spin.

This 3rd Party App is available at the Apple iTunes AppStore. Browse the full list of all AppStore apps filed under the AppStore category.

View the developer website here
Download Tweet Reel at iTunes App Store
Price: $2.99


tweet iphone reel videos app

Tags: iphone tweet reel videos app ]]> Wed, 15 Jul 2009 16:32:19 -0400 tag:croncast.com,5197 MythBuster Adam Savage Leads Twitter Revolt Against AT&T http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TechCrunch/~3/-mo11rkLQfg/ Shared item TechCrunch
First shared by - mattg
syndication+ 76 | Search 45 | Shares 1

For the last few weeks it hasn't been unusual to see AT&T among Twitter's trending topics following its disappointing performance at WWDC and the activation issues with the iPhone last week, the carrier hasn't exactly been garnering positive reactions from its legions of Twitter-using members. Today, it's reached the top spot on Twitter once again, and, once again, AT&T is the target of waves of contempt.

The source of the recent flurry of AT&T tweets is Adam Savage of MythBusters fame, who tweets that for a few hours of web surfing in Canada he was charged a whopping $11,000. AT&T is apparently claiming that Savage managed to download 9 gigabytes in Canada using his USB data connection (which he calls frakking impossible). What's worse, the customer service rep Savage was dealing with was apparently a bit loose with their decimal points, telling Savage that data is charged at .015 cents, or a penny and a half, per kb. Read that again there's a couple orders of magnitude difference there.

Now Twitter is in revolt. With over 50,000 followers Savage has a pretty loud voice, and his outraged tweets certainly resonate with a broad audience. In the end, he'll probably get a pass from AT&T nobody wants to mess with a man who blows things up for a living. But it's clear that AT&T needs to work on letting its customers know when they're spending exorbitant amounts of money on data charges. An AT&T spokesman says that any phone taken abroad that begins racking up excessive charges will automatically receive an SMS alert, but apparently there are no such mechanisms in place for members using the increasingly popular USB wireless connections.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.



savage twitter apparently tweets data

Tags: savage twitter tweets data apparently ]]>TechCrunch
First shared by - mattg
syndication+ 76 | Search 45 | Shares 1

For the last few weeks it hasn't been unusual to see AT&T among Twitter's trending topics following its disappointing performance at WWDC and the activation issues with the iPhone last week, the carrier hasn't exactly been garnering positive reactions from its legions of Twitter-using members. Today, it's reached the top spot on Twitter once again, and, once again, AT&T is the target of waves of contempt.

The source of the recent flurry of AT&T tweets is Adam Savage of MythBusters fame, who tweets that for a few hours of web surfing in Canada he was charged a whopping $11,000. AT&T is apparently claiming that Savage managed to download 9 gigabytes in Canada using his USB data connection (which he calls frakking impossible). What's worse, the customer service rep Savage was dealing with was apparently a bit loose with their decimal points, telling Savage that data is charged at .015 cents, or a penny and a half, per kb. Read that again there's a couple orders of magnitude difference there.

Now Twitter is in revolt. With over 50,000 followers Savage has a pretty loud voice, and his outraged tweets certainly resonate with a broad audience. In the end, he'll probably get a pass from AT&T nobody wants to mess with a man who blows things up for a living. But it's clear that AT&T needs to work on letting its customers know when they're spending exorbitant amounts of money on data charges. An AT&T spokesman says that any phone taken abroad that begins racking up excessive charges will automatically receive an SMS alert, but apparently there are no such mechanisms in place for members using the increasingly popular USB wireless connections.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.



savage twitter apparently tweets data

Tags: savage twitter tweets data apparently ]]> Sat, 27 Jun 2009 07:57:11 -0400 tag:croncast.com,5196 3,700 Tweets And 480,000 Characters Later, There Will Be An Original Novel On Twitter http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/b_V0IbkVox0/ Shared item tfr_finalWho says 140 characters isn't enough to say something constructive? Matt Stewart is writing an entire novel that way.

Yes, Stewart is publishing his entire 480,000 character book at 130 characters at a time (to leave room for hashtags and links) on Twitter. To be clear, the book, called The French Revolution (being released today, appropriately on Bastille Day), is already written. But Stewart and his agent couldn't get any publishers to bite, so they decided to go the non-traditional route, to say the least.

Here's how this works: Every so often, Stewart is tweeting out sentences (or incomplete sentences) from the book. No, he's not doing this by hand, he got a programmer to help him automate the process. The result is slowing spilling out the entire narrative of the book to his Twitter feed.

If you think this would be impossible to follow in a regular stream of tweets, you're right. That's why Stewart has a website chronicling the whole story thus far (or, of course, you can simply click on his Twitter page to read it though backwards). Stewart expects that will will take about 3,700 tweets to get the full story out there.

Others have taken this approach to put pieces of writing on Twitter, and plenty have even crowd-sourced the writing of works on the service. But Stewart believes his is the first full-length literary novel to be released first on Twitter. To commemorate the launch, you can also find his book for free on Scribd, or find it on Amazon's Kindle for $1.99.

The obvious question is: Is the book any good? It's too hard to tell at this point. We're only about 80 updates into the 3,700. Regardless, this seems like a good idea for a guy who couldn't get a book deal. Who knows, maybe he'll even land a book deal now to write about his experience in publishing a book on Twitter.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors



Tags: book stewart twitter writing novel ]]>tfr_finalWho says 140 characters isn't enough to say something constructive? Matt Stewart is writing an entire novel that way.

Yes, Stewart is publishing his entire 480,000 character book at 130 characters at a time (to leave room for hashtags and links) on Twitter. To be clear, the book, called The French Revolution (being released today, appropriately on Bastille Day), is already written. But Stewart and his agent couldn't get any publishers to bite, so they decided to go the non-traditional route, to say the least.

Here's how this works: Every so often, Stewart is tweeting out sentences (or incomplete sentences) from the book. No, he's not doing this by hand, he got a programmer to help him automate the process. The result is slowing spilling out the entire narrative of the book to his Twitter feed.

If you think this would be impossible to follow in a regular stream of tweets, you're right. That's why Stewart has a website chronicling the whole story thus far (or, of course, you can simply click on his Twitter page to read it though backwards). Stewart expects that will will take about 3,700 tweets to get the full story out there.

Others have taken this approach to put pieces of writing on Twitter, and plenty have even crowd-sourced the writing of works on the service. But Stewart believes his is the first full-length literary novel to be released first on Twitter. To commemorate the launch, you can also find his book for free on Scribd, or find it on Amazon's Kindle for $1.99.

The obvious question is: Is the book any good? It's too hard to tell at this point. We're only about 80 updates into the 3,700. Regardless, this seems like a good idea for a guy who couldn't get a book deal. Who knows, maybe he'll even land a book deal now to write about his experience in publishing a book on Twitter.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors



Tags: book stewart twitter writing novel ]]> Tue, 14 Jul 2009 20:19:34 -0400 tag:croncast.com,5187 How Should a Business Respond to a Social Media Attack on its Brand? http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SethSimonds/~3/BAvYpefycoY/ Shared item Dave CarrollLeveraging social media against corporate brands for personal gain serves only to damage an entire mode of communication.

Social media provides an inexpensive and powerful platform for regular people to make their voices heard to a massive audience. Unfortunately, people don't always use that power in reasonable and positive ways.

When a business faces an attack on its brand through social media, what is the appropriate response?

For instance, what about party-goers who have a few drinks, get out of hand, and are expelled from a club? When iphones come out and the club brand is ravaged online by angry tweets and videos about poor service, how is the club supposed to respond? Is the club supposed to publicly admit wrongdoing when none was committed and set a precedent for others to complain so they can get free stuff? It's a slippery slope for both a brand and the consumers that enjoy it.

Consider: A video in which country singer Dave Carroll mourns the damage of his Taylor guitar (supposedly) during a flight on United Airlines:

On his website, Dave Carroll moans the saga of his flight with United Airlines and the discovery of his damaged guitar. After getting the runaround from low-level company representatives about a damage claim, he concludes:

I realized then that as a songwriter and traveling musician I wasn't without options. In my final reply to Ms. Irlweg [The United Airlines representative] I told her that I would be writing three songs about United Airlines and my experience in the whole matter. I would then make videos for these songs and offer them for free download online, inviting viewers to vote on their favourite United song. My goal: to get one million hits in one year.

It's an interesting marketing plan for a small time musician in need of some publicity. He finished his diatribe with,

I should thank United. They've given me a creative outlet that has brought people together from around the world. We had a pile of laughs making the recording and the video while the images are spinning on how to make United: Song 2 even better than the first. So, thanks United! If my guitar had to be smashed due to extreme negligence I'm glad it was you that did it. Now sit back and enjoy the show.

And so he launched his show with website updates and a youtube video that continues to gain leverage through social media.

One of the drawbacks of social media is that most users have short attention spans and little use for fact-checking. I did a bit of my own fact-checking about Dave Carroll and his #unitedbreaksguitars experience: It turns out that United explicitly states on its website that it is not liable for damage to fragile items and includes the type of cases approved for transport of musical instruments.

Dave states that he witnessed ground crew throwing his band's instruments and yet he neglected to check his ostensibly-beloved Taylor guitar upon arrival. He says, The guitar case looked ok and we were tired.

Now, take the perspective of the United Airlines representative dealing with this situation: A guy complains to you that his expensive guitar was damaged but that he didn't notice it until a day after his flight. What is your first thought?

If your silly claim/fraud detector went off, good. It should. There are many ways a guitar could be broken in 24hrs and it would be ridiculous for an airline to welcome a suspicious liability.

Dave admits to filing a claim after leaving the airport. I'm familiar enough with shipping claims to know that once you leave the location of a business you're filing against without confirming damages, your chances of successfully settling a claim dramatically dwindle.

But all was not lost for Dave Carroll and the Sons of Maxwell. They had social media, some production talent, and a desire to embarrass a company into bending its rules just to shut them up.

United Airlines responded via Twitter to the barrage of tweets directed at them concerning the video:

united-airlines-responds-to-guitar-video

Is this a step forward for social media? I don't think so. Dave Carroll and his Sons of Maxwell get some cheap publicity but at what cost to the rest of us?

We encourage companies to engage their customers through social media but little is said about how to deal with rogue campaigns bent on embarrassing a brand into cooperation.

It's tempting to jump on the UnitedBreaksGuitars bandwagon and gleefully watch as social media is used to force a company into action. ( This in spite of legitimate reasons for inaction.) It's tempting to say the customer is always right and ignore the need for policies meant to protect companies from fraudulent claims. It's tempting to get caught up in the seductive power of social media and forget that some people are interested only in promoting themselves.

Did United Airlines break Dave Carroll's guitar? Perhaps. But the only person he should be singing to right now is himself for not checking his guitar for damages when knew the rigors of its journey.

If social media is going to be a sustainable conversation between consumers and brands, it's important that we show respect to the brands that bravely step into this space. We need to be responsible participants in social media and use the powerful tool we've been given for good causes and not for senseless complaints.

Social media need not be about consumers whining to get free stuff. It must not be.

How do you think United Airlines and other companies faced with a similar situation should respond?

Share this post on Twitter

photo: dave carroll music
Hat tip to Stuart Foster for alerting me to this story via twitter.
Share and Enjoy: StumbleUpon Digg del.icio.us Reddit E-mail this story to a friend!

Related posts:

  1. Sexual Harassment And Social Media
  2. How Do You Deal With Trolls? Trent Reznor (NIN) Walks Away From Social Media
  3. A Tale Of Two Business Models



Tags: social media united dave guitar ]]>Dave CarrollLeveraging social media against corporate brands for personal gain serves only to damage an entire mode of communication.

Social media provides an inexpensive and powerful platform for regular people to make their voices heard to a massive audience. Unfortunately, people don't always use that power in reasonable and positive ways.

When a business faces an attack on its brand through social media, what is the appropriate response?

For instance, what about party-goers who have a few drinks, get out of hand, and are expelled from a club? When iphones come out and the club brand is ravaged online by angry tweets and videos about poor service, how is the club supposed to respond? Is the club supposed to publicly admit wrongdoing when none was committed and set a precedent for others to complain so they can get free stuff? It's a slippery slope for both a brand and the consumers that enjoy it.

Consider: A video in which country singer Dave Carroll mourns the damage of his Taylor guitar (supposedly) during a flight on United Airlines:

On his website, Dave Carroll moans the saga of his flight with United Airlines and the discovery of his damaged guitar. After getting the runaround from low-level company representatives about a damage claim, he concludes:

I realized then that as a songwriter and traveling musician I wasn't without options. In my final reply to Ms. Irlweg [The United Airlines representative] I told her that I would be writing three songs about United Airlines and my experience in the whole matter. I would then make videos for these songs and offer them for free download online, inviting viewers to vote on their favourite United song. My goal: to get one million hits in one year.

It's an interesting marketing plan for a small time musician in need of some publicity. He finished his diatribe with,

I should thank United. They've given me a creative outlet that has brought people together from around the world. We had a pile of laughs making the recording and the video while the images are spinning on how to make United: Song 2 even better than the first. So, thanks United! If my guitar had to be smashed due to extreme negligence I'm glad it was you that did it. Now sit back and enjoy the show.

And so he launched his show with website updates and a youtube video that continues to gain leverage through social media.

One of the drawbacks of social media is that most users have short attention spans and little use for fact-checking. I did a bit of my own fact-checking about Dave Carroll and his #unitedbreaksguitars experience: It turns out that United explicitly states on its website that it is not liable for damage to fragile items and includes the type of cases approved for transport of musical instruments.

Dave states that he witnessed ground crew throwing his band's instruments and yet he neglected to check his ostensibly-beloved Taylor guitar upon arrival. He says, The guitar case looked ok and we were tired.

Now, take the perspective of the United Airlines representative dealing with this situation: A guy complains to you that his expensive guitar was damaged but that he didn't notice it until a day after his flight. What is your first thought?

If your silly claim/fraud detector went off, good. It should. There are many ways a guitar could be broken in 24hrs and it would be ridiculous for an airline to welcome a suspicious liability.

Dave admits to filing a claim after leaving the airport. I'm familiar enough with shipping claims to know that once you leave the location of a business you're filing against without confirming damages, your chances of successfully settling a claim dramatically dwindle.

But all was not lost for Dave Carroll and the Sons of Maxwell. They had social media, some production talent, and a desire to embarrass a company into bending its rules just to shut them up.

United Airlines responded via Twitter to the barrage of tweets directed at them concerning the video:

united-airlines-responds-to-guitar-video

Is this a step forward for social media? I don't think so. Dave Carroll and his Sons of Maxwell get some cheap publicity but at what cost to the rest of us?

We encourage companies to engage their customers through social media but little is said about how to deal with rogue campaigns bent on embarrassing a brand into cooperation.

It's tempting to jump on the UnitedBreaksGuitars bandwagon and gleefully watch as social media is used to force a company into action. ( This in spite of legitimate reasons for inaction.) It's tempting to say the customer is always right and ignore the need for policies meant to protect companies from fraudulent claims. It's tempting to get caught up in the seductive power of social media and forget that some people are interested only in promoting themselves.

Did United Airlines break Dave Carroll's guitar? Perhaps. But the only person he should be singing to right now is himself for not checking his guitar for damages when knew the rigors of its journey.

If social media is going to be a sustainable conversation between consumers and brands, it's important that we show respect to the brands that bravely step into this space. We need to be responsible participants in social media and use the powerful tool we've been given for good causes and not for senseless complaints.

Social media need not be about consumers whining to get free stuff. It must not be.

How do you think United Airlines and other companies faced with a similar situation should respond?

Share this post on Twitter

photo: dave carroll music
Hat tip to Stuart Foster for alerting me to this story via twitter.
Share and Enjoy: StumbleUpon Digg del.icio.us Reddit E-mail this story to a friend!

Related posts:

  1. Sexual Harassment And Social Media
  2. How Do You Deal With Trolls? Trent Reznor (NIN) Walks Away From Social Media
  3. A Tale Of Two Business Models



Tags: social media united dave guitar ]]> Thu, 09 Jul 2009 09:20:37 -0400 tag:croncast.com,5137 Trust Agents is Coming http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/chrisbrogandotcom/~3/NtVwSfZHfNI/ Shared item Shared by Kristopher
testing tag generation

Julien Smith and Chris Brogan - by Matthew Dimakos Julien and I are pretty excited that Trust Agents is getting closer to being released. The date for publication is August 24th, but you can pre-order Trust Agents even now, if you want. As this is our first book, the experience has been pretty crazy.

We wrote the book together on Google Docs, talking over IM. It was very collaborative, sometimes with us both working on the same page at the same time. Often times, we'd send people tweets or comment on their blogs to reach out to them about parts of the books. Each time, we were excited that the very way we wrote the book related to what we talk about in the book.

In the coming months, we'll surely encourage you to buy a copy or thirty of the book. I'll try not to advertise it relentlessly, but I will do my best to share the experiences, and/or I will encourage some of you to pick it up, as it might relate to what you're coming to the blog to absorb.

Julien has also set up TrustAgent.com, which we'll use for some other experiences.

In the mean time, take a look at the nifty cover!

Photo credit Matthew Dimakos



Tags: book coming trust agents excited ]]>Shared by Kristopher
testing tag generation

Julien Smith and Chris Brogan - by Matthew Dimakos Julien and I are pretty excited that Trust Agents is getting closer to being released. The date for publication is August 24th, but you can pre-order Trust Agents even now, if you want. As this is our first book, the experience has been pretty crazy.

We wrote the book together on Google Docs, talking over IM. It was very collaborative, sometimes with us both working on the same page at the same time. Often times, we'd send people tweets or comment on their blogs to reach out to them about parts of the books. Each time, we were excited that the very way we wrote the book related to what we talk about in the book.

In the coming months, we'll surely encourage you to buy a copy or thirty of the book. I'll try not to advertise it relentlessly, but I will do my best to share the experiences, and/or I will encourage some of you to pick it up, as it might relate to what you're coming to the blog to absorb.

Julien has also set up TrustAgent.com, which we'll use for some other experiences.

In the mean time, take a look at the nifty cover!

Photo credit Matthew Dimakos



Tags: book coming trust agents excited ]]> Fri, 19 Jun 2009 17:14:58 -0400 tag:croncast.com,5060 Twitter. Needs. Competition. http://www.scripting.com/stories/2009/06/16/twitterNeedsCompetition.html Shared item Never has it been more clear -- we are building a dangerously precarious centralized system that will, given everything we know about computer networks, at some point, fail. It's so important now that the US State Department got in the loop in the last couple of days.

Meanwhile there's an incredibly vibrant competition in the Twitter client space. At least three leading apps: Twitterdeck, Seesmic and Tweetie, are slugging it out. Each with strengths, waves of new versions, users comparing products, always something new to look forward to. The kind of rapid evolution we desperately need in the back-end.

There's a little bit of Facebook in the mix (it has a lot of users, but not many of them use these clients, I think) and yes there is Identi.ca, but it has a very small user base compared to Twitter and Facebook.

In a thread that was spawned from a Twitter post earlier today, we talk about the possibility of a competitor to Twitter coming from Google or Facebook. Not sure who else could launch a back-end that would find enough support among users to gain critical mass. And I agree, totally, with Don Park, that if Facebook wants to play, they must start from scratch, with a totally simple system that matches Twitter, and adds stability, performance, beauty, or a few sought-after features.

Google would compete by building a system out of components of the open web, the small-pieces-loosely-joined approach. I outlined how this would work in an earlier blog post.



Tags: twitter facebook system users end ]]>Never has it been more clear -- we are building a dangerously precarious centralized system that will, given everything we know about computer networks, at some point, fail. It's so important now that the US State Department got in the loop in the last couple of days.

Meanwhile there's an incredibly vibrant competition in the Twitter client space. At least three leading apps: Twitterdeck, Seesmic and Tweetie, are slugging it out. Each with strengths, waves of new versions, users comparing products, always something new to look forward to. The kind of rapid evolution we desperately need in the back-end.

There's a little bit of Facebook in the mix (it has a lot of users, but not many of them use these clients, I think) and yes there is Identi.ca, but it has a very small user base compared to Twitter and Facebook.

In a thread that was spawned from a Twitter post earlier today, we talk about the possibility of a competitor to Twitter coming from Google or Facebook. Not sure who else could launch a back-end that would find enough support among users to gain critical mass. And I agree, totally, with Don Park, that if Facebook wants to play, they must start from scratch, with a totally simple system that matches Twitter, and adds stability, performance, beauty, or a few sought-after features.

Google would compete by building a system out of components of the open web, the small-pieces-loosely-joined approach. I outlined how this would work in an earlier blog post.



Tags: twitter facebook system users end ]]> Wed, 17 Jun 2009 05:07:33 -0400 tag:croncast.com,5048 How FriendFeed's New UI Made @ErikJHeels Inadvertently Say FU To His 1000+ Followers http://friendfeed/erikjheels http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/erikjheels/~3/njXfONEHxqc/ Shared item

Social networking terminology #fail: connections contacts followers following friends subscribers subscriptions.

FriendFeed's Bad UI And Worse Terminology

FriendFeed recently redesigned it's user interface (UI). From a reading perspective, it is better. From a management perspective, it is worse.

One of the problems with social networks like Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, Google Friend Connect, LinkedIn, and Plaxo is that the major social media players can't agree on what to call stuff. This causes confusion for those new to these services (whatever you call those people - members? subscribers?) and to old-timers like me.

For example, when Bob signs up to read Sue's tweets on Twitter, Bob is said to be following Sue. From Sue's perspective, Bob is a follower. Twitter does a pretty good job of identifying "following" and "follower" lists. Twitter's definition of "friend" is much more confusing. Is Sue Bob's friend? Is Bob Sue's friend? Or are they only friends if they are following each other?

Ignoring the confusing "friend" issue for now, FriendFeed's terms for "following" and "follower" lists is very confusing. For example, when Bob signs up to read Sue's FriendFeed account, Sue becomes one of Bob's "subscriptions." FriendFeed groups are also considered "subscriptions." From Sue's perspective, Bob is a "subscriber." But "subscriptions" are very confusing when viewed in a grid. A list of my "subscriptions" can be interpreted to mean either (a) users that have subscribed to me or (b) users that I have subscribed to.

Twitter's "following" and "follower" nomenclature is not perfect, but it is much more clear than "subscriptions" and "subscribers."

Mutual Followers On FriendFeed

I have made it a habit to try to follow those people who are following me on FriendFeed.

FriendFeed makes it easy to manage a list of your followers:

2009-05-19-friendfeed-followers

FriendFeed makes it easy to manage a list of your followers that you are not following:

2009-05-19-friendfeed-followers-not-following

But FriendFeed makes it difficult to manage a list of those that you are following:

2009-05-19-friendfeed-following

And FriendFeed makes it extremely difficult to unfollow anybody you are following, requiring you to click through to the follower's profile page and then click "unsubscribe" in order to unfollow a particular user:

2009-05-19-friendfeed-following-to-unfollow

FriendFeed's Nasty Hidden FU "Feature"

While FriendFeed provides a list of your followers that you are not following, it does not provide a list of those you are following who are not following you back.

So this morning, I decided to unfollow all of those that I was following and then re-follow only those who are also following me. As I have mentioned previously, it is difficult to have a conversation if the relationship is not mutual and only one person is doing the talking.

Inexplicably, FriendFeed has two modes for viewing your followers, "browse" and "manage." In "browse" mode, actions are hidden by default, some are available by mousing over followers' avatars. In "manage" mode (which should be the only mode), actions are visible.

This morning, while viewing my followers in "manage" mode (and confused by the whole "subscriptions" "subscribers" thing), I thought I was looking at a list of those I was following. I then confused the "Remove" action for "unfollow" and proceeding to remove all of my 1000+ followers from my account.

This bears repeating. FriendFeed has a "Remove" function that, in Twitter language, forces one of your followers to unfollow you. This is worse than Twitter's "blocking" feature. One click, no "Are you sure?" dialog box, and your follower is gone. 1000 clicks and 1000 followers are gone. This was, of course, the exact opposite of what I intended to do.

In contrast, to actually unfollow somebody you are following, you have to click through to their profile page and click the "unsubscribe" button.

In short, FriendFeed makes it easy to say FU to your own followers and force them to unfollow you in one click while making it painfully difficult to unfollow somebody you are following. It is worth noting that the browse/manage modes that exists for your list of followers is absent for the list of those you are following.

Lessons Learned

Most social networks make it easier to add followers than to remove them. But FriendFeed's confusing UI takes it to a new level. To my 1000+ followers who I inadvertently said FU to this morning, I apologize. I will gladly follow you back if you'd like to re-follow me at http://friendfeed/erikjheels.

To FriendFeed I say: please fix your UI.

Dear FriendFeed, I have one more request. FriendFeed's social media badge is the best in the business. But could you please give us an option to use shiny large icons like the ones you use on your own website rather than the teeny tiny ones that are included in the badge by default?

Large social media icons FriendFeed's website:

Tiny social media icons in FriendFeed's badge:

View my FriendFeed

To all social media providers I say: let's standardize social networking terminology to be less confusing to all users.

And if FriendFeed could restore my followers, that would be a bonus.

Erik J. Heels is not a new media guru. Neither are you. On Twitter he is @ErikJHeels.

Related Posts

  1. RT @ErikJHeels How To Write Web Headlines That Work In #Twitter http://erikjheels.com/?p=1800
    All web pages are shareable items. All titles are Twitter tweets. Get used to it.
  2. WHY IS @ERIKJHEELS YELLING ABOUT HIS FOLLOWERS' AVATARS?!
    I WAS GOING TO CALL THIS POST 'HOW TO GET NOTICED' ON TWITTER, BUT I CHANGED MY MIND AND DECIDED TO USE THAT AS A SUBTITLE INSTEAD. SORT OF. THEN I REALIZED THAT SOMETIMES AN ARTICLE CRIES OUT TO BE IN ALL CAPS! THANKS FOR UNDERSTANDING!
  3. Google's Antisocial Social Networking http://erikjheels.com/?p=1461
    Google Reader's new Comments feature highlights the major flaw with Google social networks: baffling user interfaces.
  4. How To Be A Millionaire On #Twitter
    In two easy steps!
  5. How To Twittersquat The Top 100 Brands
    A call for the creation of the Uniform Username Dispute Resolution Policy.
  6. LinkedIn Punishes Power Users
    LinkedIn can't do basic math, thinks that 5/50 equals 5/500.
  7. Drawing That Explains Social Networking
    How to visualize social networking.



Tags: friendfeed following followers social twitter ]]>

Social networking terminology #fail: connections contacts followers following friends subscribers subscriptions.

FriendFeed's Bad UI And Worse Terminology

FriendFeed recently redesigned it's user interface (UI). From a reading perspective, it is better. From a management perspective, it is worse.

One of the problems with social networks like Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, Google Friend Connect, LinkedIn, and Plaxo is that the major social media players can't agree on what to call stuff. This causes confusion for those new to these services (whatever you call those people - members? subscribers?) and to old-timers like me.

For example, when Bob signs up to read Sue's tweets on Twitter, Bob is said to be following Sue. From Sue's perspective, Bob is a follower. Twitter does a pretty good job of identifying "following" and "follower" lists. Twitter's definition of "friend" is much more confusing. Is Sue Bob's friend? Is Bob Sue's friend? Or are they only friends if they are following each other?

Ignoring the confusing "friend" issue for now, FriendFeed's terms for "following" and "follower" lists is very confusing. For example, when Bob signs up to read Sue's FriendFeed account, Sue becomes one of Bob's "subscriptions." FriendFeed groups are also considered "subscriptions." From Sue's perspective, Bob is a "subscriber." But "subscriptions" are very confusing when viewed in a grid. A list of my "subscriptions" can be interpreted to mean either (a) users that have subscribed to me or (b) users that I have subscribed to.

Twitter's "following" and "follower" nomenclature is not perfect, but it is much more clear than "subscriptions" and "subscribers."

Mutual Followers On FriendFeed

I have made it a habit to try to follow those people who are following me on FriendFeed.

FriendFeed makes it easy to manage a list of your followers:

2009-05-19-friendfeed-followers

FriendFeed makes it easy to manage a list of your followers that you are not following:

2009-05-19-friendfeed-followers-not-following

But FriendFeed makes it difficult to manage a list of those that you are following:

2009-05-19-friendfeed-following

And FriendFeed makes it extremely difficult to unfollow anybody you are following, requiring you to click through to the follower's profile page and then click "unsubscribe" in order to unfollow a particular user:

2009-05-19-friendfeed-following-to-unfollow

FriendFeed's Nasty Hidden FU "Feature"

While FriendFeed provides a list of your followers that you are not following, it does not provide a list of those you are following who are not following you back.

So this morning, I decided to unfollow all of those that I was following and then re-follow only those who are also following me. As I have mentioned previously, it is difficult to have a conversation if the relationship is not mutual and only one person is doing the talking.

Inexplicably, FriendFeed has two modes for viewing your followers, "browse" and "manage." In "browse" mode, actions are hidden by default, some are available by mousing over followers' avatars. In "manage" mode (which should be the only mode), actions are visible.

This morning, while viewing my followers in "manage" mode (and confused by the whole "subscriptions" "subscribers" thing), I thought I was looking at a list of those I was following. I then confused the "Remove" action for "unfollow" and proceeding to remove all of my 1000+ followers from my account.

This bears repeating. FriendFeed has a "Remove" function that, in Twitter language, forces one of your followers to unfollow you. This is worse than Twitter's "blocking" feature. One click, no "Are you sure?" dialog box, and your follower is gone. 1000 clicks and 1000 followers are gone. This was, of course, the exact opposite of what I intended to do.

In contrast, to actually unfollow somebody you are following, you have to click through to their profile page and click the "unsubscribe" button.

In short, FriendFeed makes it easy to say FU to your own followers and force them to unfollow you in one click while making it painfully difficult to unfollow somebody you are following. It is worth noting that the browse/manage modes that exists for your list of followers is absent for the list of those you are following.

Lessons Learned

Most social networks make it easier to add followers than to remove them. But FriendFeed's confusing UI takes it to a new level. To my 1000+ followers who I inadvertently said FU to this morning, I apologize. I will gladly follow you back if you'd like to re-follow me at http://friendfeed/erikjheels.

To FriendFeed I say: please fix your UI.

Dear FriendFeed, I have one more request. FriendFeed's social media badge is the best in the business. But could you please give us an option to use shiny large icons like the ones you use on your own website rather than the teeny tiny ones that are included in the badge by default?

Large social media icons FriendFeed's website:

Tiny social media icons in FriendFeed's badge:

View my FriendFeed

To all social media providers I say: let's standardize social networking terminology to be less confusing to all users.

And if FriendFeed could restore my followers, that would be a bonus.

Erik J. Heels is not a new media guru. Neither are you. On Twitter he is @ErikJHeels.

Related Posts

  1. RT @ErikJHeels How To Write Web Headlines That Work In #Twitter http://erikjheels.com/?p=1800
    All web pages are shareable items. All titles are Twitter tweets. Get used to it.
  2. WHY IS @ERIKJHEELS YELLING ABOUT HIS FOLLOWERS' AVATARS?!
    I WAS GOING TO CALL THIS POST 'HOW TO GET NOTICED' ON TWITTER, BUT I CHANGED MY MIND AND DECIDED TO USE THAT AS A SUBTITLE INSTEAD. SORT OF. THEN I REALIZED THAT SOMETIMES AN ARTICLE CRIES OUT TO BE IN ALL CAPS! THANKS FOR UNDERSTANDING!
  3. Google's Antisocial Social Networking http://erikjheels.com/?p=1461
    Google Reader's new Comments feature highlights the major flaw with Google social networks: baffling user interfaces.
  4. How To Be A Millionaire On #Twitter
    In two easy steps!
  5. How To Twittersquat The Top 100 Brands
    A call for the creation of the Uniform Username Dispute Resolution Policy.
  6. LinkedIn Punishes Power Users
    LinkedIn can't do basic math, thinks that 5/50 equals 5/500.
  7. Drawing That Explains Social Networking
    How to visualize social networking.



Tags: friendfeed following followers social twitter ]]> Tue, 19 May 2009 19:13:52 -0400 tag:croncast.com,4992 Twitter? Yes, Absolutely. But Not As a Robot, Please. http://mashable.com/2009/05/25/twitter-yes-absolutely/ Shared item police badge imageThe top story on Reddit today is a piece from a couple of days ago about the Boston Police department and its amusing Twitter response to a citizen's humorous question.

The story goes like this: the Boston Police tweet about incidents on the streets of Boston; one of their tweets was the following:

INJURED OFFICER: Officer from district 4 transported to Beth Israel Hospital, human bite to arm, suspect in custody.

A user named @willcady asked the following:

@Boston_Police if that was a zombie bite, would you tell us?

to which @Boston_Police replied:

@willcady Yes, absolutely

This short exchange, amusing as it may be (the subsequent Reddit thread is equally hilarious) tells us more about the benefits of Twitter as a tool for corporations/governments/public services than any study can. Twitter is the ideal channel for the Boston Police dept. to show its human face. I can't imagine any other communication channel that would be better used for both disseminating timely and essential information and creating a better public image for such an institution. Can you imagine a police department cracking jokes in their official PRs, or even at their own web site? On Twitter, however, it feels natural, and when you put the right person behind that Twitter stream, you can really show that you care about your users, customers, or - in this case - citizens.

Furthermore, it shows the importance of actually using Twitter as it's intended to use, not only as just another place to dump the contents of your RSS feed. Yes, you can do that, but then no one will actually read your tweets. But if people recognize that there's a real person updating those tweets, someone who really has something to say, Twitter can do wonders for your public image.

See also: The 7 Ways to Approach Twitter

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Jodiecoston

Reviews: Twitter

Tags: Boston Police, twitter



Tags: twitter boston police image public ]]>police badge imageThe top story on Reddit today is a piece from a couple of days ago about the Boston Police department and its amusing Twitter response to a citizen's humorous question.

The story goes like this: the Boston Police tweet about incidents on the streets of Boston; one of their tweets was the following:

INJURED OFFICER: Officer from district 4 transported to Beth Israel Hospital, human bite to arm, suspect in custody.

A user named @willcady asked the following:

@Boston_Police if that was a zombie bite, would you tell us?

to which @Boston_Police replied:

@willcady Yes, absolutely

This short exchange, amusing as it may be (the subsequent Reddit thread is equally hilarious) tells us more about the benefits of Twitter as a tool for corporations/governments/public services than any study can. Twitter is the ideal channel for the Boston Police dept. to show its human face. I can't imagine any other communication channel that would be better used for both disseminating timely and essential information and creating a better public image for such an institution. Can you imagine a police department cracking jokes in their official PRs, or even at their own web site? On Twitter, however, it feels natural, and when you put the right person behind that Twitter stream, you can really show that you care about your users, customers, or - in this case - citizens.

Furthermore, it shows the importance of actually using Twitter as it's intended to use, not only as just another place to dump the contents of your RSS feed. Yes, you can do that, but then no one will actually read your tweets. But if people recognize that there's a real person updating those tweets, someone who really has something to say, Twitter can do wonders for your public image.

See also: The 7 Ways to Approach Twitter

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Jodiecoston

Reviews: Twitter

Tags: Boston Police, twitter



Tags: twitter boston police image public ]]> Mon, 25 May 2009 13:41:03 -0400 tag:croncast.com,4972 Are Tweets Copyrighted? http://spamnotes.com/2009/03/29/are-tweets-copyrighted.aspx?ref=rss Shared item ticked off because his tweets were republished in a newspaper or magazine (or in ESPN). I'm not sure if these are the same tweets which cost Mr. Cuban $25,000 in a fine to the NBA.

Either way, there's likely little recourse here I'm sorry to say.* Well, there is: STTU. If Mr. Cuban approached me on this I'd say "save your money and energy." There's little to gain by pushing this hopeless legal claim. You risk looking like a bully, and worse yet, someone who is unsophisticated about social media. Let me put it this way, I'd much rather be the dude who gets the call from the person who receives your cease and desist letter.

* (There's no way in heck - even if you are a famed haiku writer - that an individual tweet is copyrightable. The chances are probably even less in the case of a Tweet sent by Mr. Cuban in the heat of a game. A collection of tweets maybe. Even if an individual tweet is, a person who reproduces it can make a fair use/implied license (and probably other) arguments for why the republication (or Retweet) was appropriate. Finally, if you haven't registered (or haven't w/in 3 months of publication), your damages will be minimal at best. I guess if they took a screenshot of your tweet or published your photo you could somehow cobble together a claim through these facts?)

NB: here's a post by Evan Brown that touches on this w/reference to Twitter's terms of service.

Added: some clarification in the comments. There's no length requirement or quantity requirement. Here's a good post by Jonathan Bailey that talks about the issues.


Tags: tweets cuban tweet even person ]]>ticked off because his tweets were republished in a newspaper or magazine (or in ESPN). I'm not sure if these are the same tweets which cost Mr. Cuban $25,000 in a fine to the NBA.

Either way, there's likely little recourse here I'm sorry to say.* Well, there is: STTU. If Mr. Cuban approached me on this I'd say "save your money and energy." There's little to gain by pushing this hopeless legal claim. You risk looking like a bully, and worse yet, someone who is unsophisticated about social media. Let me put it this way, I'd much rather be the dude who gets the call from the person who receives your cease and desist letter.

* (There's no way in heck - even if you are a famed haiku writer - that an individual tweet is copyrightable. The chances are probably even less in the case of a Tweet sent by Mr. Cuban in the heat of a game. A collection of tweets maybe. Even if an individual tweet is, a person who reproduces it can make a fair use/implied license (and probably other) arguments for why the republication (or Retweet) was appropriate. Finally, if you haven't registered (or haven't w/in 3 months of publication), your damages will be minimal at best. I guess if they took a screenshot of your tweet or published your photo you could somehow cobble together a claim through these facts?)

NB: here's a post by Evan Brown that touches on this w/reference to Twitter's terms of service.

Added: some clarification in the comments. There's no length requirement or quantity requirement. Here's a good post by Jonathan Bailey that talks about the issues.


Tags: tweets cuban tweet even person ]]> Mon, 30 Mar 2009 06:26:00 -0400 tag:croncast.com,4952 HarperCollins Pays Big Advance For A Book Of ... Tweets http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/pcorg/~3/547368661/ Shared item Shared by Rick Klau
Skip the middleman and just publish @scottsimpson. Either that or just do a deal with favrd.com.

Yet another person is figuring out how to make decent money off Twitter that isn't CEO Evan Williams: HarperCollins has commissioned former Valleywag editor Nick Douglas to collect and edit Twitter Wit, a book of ... well, witty tweets. According to Valleywag, Douglas is getting a "five-figure sum" for the book, which is slated for release this fall; Douglas and HarperCollins editor Kate Hamill set up a submission site that automates the collection of the tweets (from anywhere and everywhere) and gets each user's permission to republish. Given Twitter's seemingly unstoppable surge in popularityJohn Battelle compared its search potential to YouTube's, and NBC's Nightline dedicated a segment to it last night (via MediaMemo)who knows, it just might fly off the shelves. Anyone else care to wager?

Related

Promo:
Our streamlined mobile application for the BlackBerry and other smart devices brings you the latest headlines quickly on the go. Click here to download.



Tags: twitter harpercollins book tweets douglas ]]>Shared by Rick Klau
Skip the middleman and just publish @scottsimpson. Either that or just do a deal with favrd.com.

Yet another person is figuring out how to make decent money off Twitter that isn't CEO Evan Williams: HarperCollins has commissioned former Valleywag editor Nick Douglas to collect and edit Twitter Wit, a book of ... well, witty tweets. According to Valleywag, Douglas is getting a "five-figure sum" for the book, which is slated for release this fall; Douglas and HarperCollins editor Kate Hamill set up a submission site that automates the collection of the tweets (from anywhere and everywhere) and gets each user's permission to republish. Given Twitter's seemingly unstoppable surge in popularityJohn Battelle compared its search potential to YouTube's, and NBC's Nightline dedicated a segment to it last night (via MediaMemo)who knows, it just might fly off the shelves. Anyone else care to wager?

Related

Promo:
Our streamlined mobile application for the BlackBerry and other smart devices brings you the latest headlines quickly on the go. Click here to download.



Tags: twitter harpercollins book tweets douglas ]]> Fri, 27 Feb 2009 14:53:44 -0500 tag:croncast.com,4900 Tweetbacks: Mashable Post Inspires Innovative Twitter Service http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Mashable/~3/Ig3M-9MxyZc/ Shared item In a post earlier this week, we mentioned the concept of Tweetbacks essentially the idea of showing Twitter activity relating to blog posts in the same way that comments are displayed on most blogs today. Much to our delight, this feature has already arrived, via Dan Zarrella, who has built exactly what Mashable guest contributor Rachel Cunliffe envisioned.

What Tweetbacks does, after adding a line of code to your blog template, is display all of the Tweets that link to that blog post. It does this by finding mentions of the URL on Twitter, accounting for the top 5 link shortening services like TinyURL and Bit.ly. The result is a listing of Tweets about your blog post that looks much like regular blog comments:

In other words, if we had Tweetbacks installed on this blog (which we might someday soon!), and you tweeted check out this awesome mashable post http://tinyurl.com/tweetbacksrule that Tweet would show up in our comment area. This is truly fantastic while we get a lot of comments on most Mashable posts, it pales in comparison to the volume of tweets that some of our entries generate.

Twitter CEO Evan Williams was pretty excited about the development too, tweeting @danzarrella just launched something I had drawn on our whiteboard a couple weeks ago: http://tinyurl.com/9e4ank Zarrella has already added a WordPress plugin to the service for easy setup.

If you enable Tweetbacks, let us know about it in the comments!

---
Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:

10 Ways Twitter Will Change Blog Design in 2009



Tags: blog twitter tweetbacks post mashable ]]>In a post earlier this week, we mentioned the concept of Tweetbacks essentially the idea of showing Twitter activity relating to blog posts in the same way that comments are displayed on most blogs today. Much to our delight, this feature has already arrived, via Dan Zarrella, who has built exactly what Mashable guest contributor Rachel Cunliffe envisioned.

What Tweetbacks does, after adding a line of code to your blog template, is display all of the Tweets that link to that blog post. It does this by finding mentions of the URL on Twitter, accounting for the top 5 link shortening services like TinyURL and Bit.ly. The result is a listing of Tweets about your blog post that looks much like regular blog comments:

In other words, if we had Tweetbacks installed on this blog (which we might someday soon!), and you tweeted check out this awesome mashable post http://tinyurl.com/tweetbacksrule that Tweet would show up in our comment area. This is truly fantastic while we get a lot of comments on most Mashable posts, it pales in comparison to the volume of tweets that some of our entries generate.

Twitter CEO Evan Williams was pretty excited about the development too, tweeting @danzarrella just launched something I had drawn on our whiteboard a couple weeks ago: http://tinyurl.com/9e4ank Zarrella has already added a WordPress plugin to the service for easy setup.

If you enable Tweetbacks, let us know about it in the comments!

---
Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:

10 Ways Twitter Will Change Blog Design in 2009



Tags: blog twitter tweetbacks post mashable ]]> Thu, 08 Jan 2009 23:07:54 -0500 tag:croncast.com,4765 While blogging in crisis job #1 is listening http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/fastcompany/scobleizer/~3/ofx27S9lPqo/ Shared item

Every blogger can bloviate and tell you what he or she sees happening. But I'm noticing a trend among bloggers. Very few listen. I read hundreds of bloggers on a regular basis, along with many thousands who are brought into my view via TechMeme and my hundreds of Google Reader friends.

How many actually are actively seeking out the opinions of others and trying to bring those to their readers. I can tell you how many: almost none.

How many have a Google Reader Shared Items feed like the one I have done for years? A few. Louis Gray is amongst the ones I read often and regularly, but despite a few exceptions here and there very few of the top bloggers do that.

How many aggregate thousands of people's tweets, blogs, photos, videos together and go through and tell you which ones are best like I've done every day on FriendFeed since I joined in February? A few do, hello Louis Gray again, but not enough of the top bloggers.

So, if we're really in an economic crisis (we are, despite the stock market going up 600 points so far today) how can bloggers really be knowledgeable if they don't read other people's blogs and prove that over and over and over again by using these tools to demonstrate what they are reading?

Why do I think that's so important? Well, for balance, for one thing. You saw some people thought I was too negative last week. But if you had looked at EVERYTHING I was putting into this system and reading and writing and doing videos on you would have seen a much more balanced and nuanced view of the world.

I assume my audience is smart and wants to see the world through many viewpoints. I hope you are reading these feeds because there are some damn cool things going through the system and these are my ways of highlighting them and making us all smarter in this time.

Also note that I overlink to people who disagree with me. Why do I do that? Because in these times it's too easy to buy into your own press releases and start believing you have all the answers. In these times it's even MORE important to consider the other side, whether we're talking about the economy or politics.

But maybe I'm alone in that view, it sure seems not many bloggers are willing to show you what inputs they are reading and what's informing their judgment.



Tags: bloggers few reading view through ]]>

Every blogger can bloviate and tell you what he or she sees happening. But I'm noticing a trend among bloggers. Very few listen. I read hundreds of bloggers on a regular basis, along with many thousands who are brought into my view via TechMeme and my hundreds of Google Reader friends.

How many actually are actively seeking out the opinions of others and trying to bring those to their readers. I can tell you how many: almost none.

How many have a Google Reader Shared Items feed like the one I have done for years? A few. Louis Gray is amongst the ones I read often and regularly, but despite a few exceptions here and there very few of the top bloggers do that.

How many aggregate thousands of people's tweets, blogs, photos, videos together and go through and tell you which ones are best like I've done every day on FriendFeed since I joined in February? A few do, hello Louis Gray again, but not enough of the top bloggers.

So, if we're really in an economic crisis (we are, despite the stock market going up 600 points so far today) how can bloggers really be knowledgeable if they don't read other people's blogs and prove that over and over and over again by using these tools to demonstrate what they are reading?

Why do I think that's so important? Well, for balance, for one thing. You saw some people thought I was too negative last week. But if you had looked at EVERYTHING I was putting into this system and reading and writing and doing videos on you would have seen a much more balanced and nuanced view of the world.

I assume my audience is smart and wants to see the world through many viewpoints. I hope you are reading these feeds because there are some damn cool things going through the system and these are my ways of highlighting them and making us all smarter in this time.

Also note that I overlink to people who disagree with me. Why do I do that? Because in these times it's too easy to buy into your own press releases and start believing you have all the answers. In these times it's even MORE important to consider the other side, whether we're talking about the economy or politics.

But maybe I'm alone in that view, it sure seems not many bloggers are willing to show you what inputs they are reading and what's informing their judgment.



Tags: bloggers few reading view through ]]> Mon, 13 Oct 2008 18:28:30 -0400 tag:croncast.com,4523 Tying Your Tubes with WordPress - My Session at WordCamp Portland http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Tinyscreenfuls/~3/404847932/ Shared item I'm giving a session at WordCamp Portland today on Tying Your Tubes with WordPress, all about integrating all the difference places you probably write, read, and discuss things on the web into your WordPress blog. This post is the reference for the session, with the slides (such as they are - most of it is going to be discussion) and links to the plugins I talk about.

Here are the few slides I put together, on Google Docs. I'm working on them as we speak, but by the time the session starts, they should be more or less final:


And here are links to the plugins/tools that I'm going to talk about:

  • Alex King's Twitter Tools - to put daily tweet digests on your blog as posts (great for archiving them, since Twitter cut off access to tweets older than a few pages).
  • K2 Theme - besides the TON of other great things it can do, it's great for putting tweets, etc. in a sidebar using Asides. The K2 Support Forum is a GREAT resource if you have questions or need help.
  • How to exclude a category (say, your tweet digest) from your site's RSS feed. Either have people subscribe to the funky URL you get from this, or if you use FeedBurner, just tell it that the funky URL is your source feed.
  • FriendFeed Comments - show comments and likes that your post gets on FriendFeed right on the post itself.
  • FriendFeed Feed Widget - for showing your last 10 or so items that end up on FriendFeed right on your blog. There are some other cool badges on that page. Similar to Twitter badges, which I don't use (I use Twitter Tools' daily digests instead).
  • soup.io, for publishing blended feeds. I use this for my lifestream and my linkblog.

I'll add any other info that comes up during the session, and if you have any questions, post them in the comments! Woo hoo WordCamp Portland! :-)



Tags: session post twitter friendfeed blog ]]>I'm giving a session at WordCamp Portland today on Tying Your Tubes with WordPress, all about integrating all the difference places you probably write, read, and discuss things on the web into your WordPress blog. This post is the reference for the session, with the slides (such as they are - most of it is going to be discussion) and links to the plugins I talk about.

Here are the few slides I put together, on Google Docs. I'm working on them as we speak, but by the time the session starts, they should be more or less final:


And here are links to the plugins/tools that I'm going to talk about:

  • Alex King's Twitter Tools - to put daily tweet digests on your blog as posts (great for archiving them, since Twitter cut off access to tweets older than a few pages).
  • K2 Theme - besides the TON of other great things it can do, it's great for putting tweets, etc. in a sidebar using Asides. The K2 Support Forum is a GREAT resource if you have questions or need help.
  • How to exclude a category (say, your tweet digest) from your site's RSS feed. Either have people subscribe to the funky URL you get from this, or if you use FeedBurner, just tell it that the funky URL is your source feed.
  • FriendFeed Comments - show comments and likes that your post gets on FriendFeed right on the post itself.
  • FriendFeed Feed Widget - for showing your last 10 or so items that end up on FriendFeed right on your blog. There are some other cool badges on that page. Similar to Twitter badges, which I don't use (I use Twitter Tools' daily digests instead).
  • soup.io, for publishing blended feeds. I use this for my lifestream and my linkblog.

I'll add any other info that comes up during the session, and if you have any questions, post them in the comments! Woo hoo WordCamp Portland! :-)



Tags: session post twitter friendfeed blog ]]> Sat, 27 Sep 2008 18:39:25 -0400 tag:croncast.com,4459 The Continuing Death of Twitter http://www.evilgeniuschronicles.org/wordpress/2008/08/02/the-continuing-death-of-twitter/ Shared item So I haven't a created an original tweet over on Twitter - one that wasn't either housekeeping or a reply to someone else - in a month. That mode of interaction exists entirely on my Friend Feed account now. Any tweets that do happen are exhortations to get followers to move over to FriendFeed with me, or crossposted FF comments. I'm happy with that.

For a month of Steve Gillmor has been telling me that I was philosophically inconsistent for still having any Twitter in my life. He thinks I should hide it all on FriendFeed if I'm such a hardcore switcher. I've toyed with the idea but am not ready to pull that trigger. FriendFeed has a beautiful transition plan in place automatically so why not take advantage of that a little long. Now I heard on his show that Steve too has ceased to originate tweets, in his case choosing to use Identi.ca exclusively. If he's getting fed up, then things are coming to a head. He's been a die hard proponent for longer than is reasonable and a better friend to Twitter than it was to anyone else as it enters the fast part of the toilet bowl swirl. I've always wondered how much of this love of Twitter by Silicon Valley types even as it was sucking ass was for the service itself and how much is residual affection and loyalty for the founders? Odeo was winning awards for best podcast startup when all it had was a under construction page, so this dynamic of over-valuing their ventures is real.

Now, as if all the various unreliabilities weren't enough, users are finding their accounts blocked for TOS violations and removed with no apparent cause. I've obviously been done with Twitter for a while, but this should be check and mate for everyone else. When the unreliability goes beyond website downtime, rollback of feature sets, intermittent unavailability of your account data into full fledged spurious lockouts from the account, it is time to bail. Twitter is like your drunk uncle, and now this is the 5th baseball practice in a row that he has failed to show up and give you a ride home. Are you going to trust it to be there when you need it? I don't.

I'd suggest that everyone that still cares about the Twitter mode of interaction move to Identi.ca or FriendFeed (or both hooked together), leave a pointer in your Twitter account that you are moving over and shut out the lights. Enough is enough. I understand you once loved the service but if you continue to use it now you are entering the codependent enabling phase of the relationship. Don't come crying to me when you get hurt. It doesn't deserve your loyalty, so withdraw it. I'll see you on the other side, as geniodiabolico at both FriendFeed and Identi.ca. Check and mate.



Tags: twitter friendfeed account identi ca ]]>So I haven't a created an original tweet over on Twitter - one that wasn't either housekeeping or a reply to someone else - in a month. That mode of interaction exists entirely on my Friend Feed account now. Any tweets that do happen are exhortations to get followers to move over to FriendFeed with me, or crossposted FF comments. I'm happy with that.

For a month of Steve Gillmor has been telling me that I was philosophically inconsistent for still having any Twitter in my life. He thinks I should hide it all on FriendFeed if I'm such a hardcore switcher. I've toyed with the idea but am not ready to pull that trigger. FriendFeed has a beautiful transition plan in place automatically so why not take advantage of that a little long. Now I heard on his show that Steve too has ceased to originate tweets, in his case choosing to use Identi.ca exclusively. If he's getting fed up, then things are coming to a head. He's been a die hard proponent for longer than is reasonable and a better friend to Twitter than it was to anyone else as it enters the fast part of the toilet bowl swirl. I've always wondered how much of this love of Twitter by Silicon Valley types even as it was sucking ass was for the service itself and how much is residual affection and loyalty for the founders? Odeo was winning awards for best podcast startup when all it had was a under construction page, so this dynamic of over-valuing their ventures is real.

Now, as if all the various unreliabilities weren't enough, users are finding their accounts blocked for TOS violations and removed with no apparent cause. I've obviously been done with Twitter for a while, but this should be check and mate for everyone else. When the unreliability goes beyond website downtime, rollback of feature sets, intermittent unavailability of your account data into full fledged spurious lockouts from the account, it is time to bail. Twitter is like your drunk uncle, and now this is the 5th baseball practice in a row that he has failed to show up and give you a ride home. Are you going to trust it to be there when you need it? I don't.

I'd suggest that everyone that still cares about the Twitter mode of interaction move to Identi.ca or FriendFeed (or both hooked together), leave a pointer in your Twitter account that you are moving over and shut out the lights. Enough is enough. I understand you once loved the service but if you continue to use it now you are entering the codependent enabling phase of the relationship. Don't come crying to me when you get hurt. It doesn't deserve your loyalty, so withdraw it. I'll see you on the other side, as geniodiabolico at both FriendFeed and Identi.ca. Check and mate.



Tags: twitter friendfeed account identi ca ]]> Sat, 02 Aug 2008 17:05:38 -0400 tag:croncast.com,4289 Twitter is Old and Busted. FriendFeed is the New Hotness. http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Tinyscreenfuls/~3/321476404/ Shared item Shared by Mike
"until it croaks completely" :)

(This post started as an email to @verso on Twitter, in response to her question I'm wondering how much longer #pdx will take it from Twitter. Come on baby, you know I love you won't work forever will it? Alternatives?) I had been trying to reply via Twitter itself, but it's been either down or eating my updates - oh, the irony!)

FriendFeed finally sucked me in this week. I finally got it. It's the next logical step up from Twitter, because it is a superset of Twitter - I see my friends tweets, often before I do through Twitter itself, and I can reply to them once, and have it go to both places (FriendFeed and Twitter). Plus there's so much MORE FriendFeed can do - import and show people's blogs, shared items, photos, etc. It kicks ass, seriously. I highly recommend you give it a try. Twhirl, the popular Twitter client, works with it (though I haven't got that working well yet), and http://fftogo.com is an awesome mobile interface for it for your phone (looks and works great on my iPhone).

The thing that got me to accept it (I've been resisting for a while now) was there was finally enough social gravity - enough of my network was participating there, and there were conversations happening on FF (a LOT of them) that I was totally missing out on because I was staying completely in Twitter.

It's not a Twitter-alike, with a few differentiating features (like Jaiku and Pownce). It's a whole new, better, crack-like way to interact with people. It is the evolution of what Twitter started.

I'm jabancroft on FriendFeed - feel free to subscribe to me. I'm still going to use Twitter as my micropost method, until it croaks completely. But in my FriendFeed, you'll also see my blog posts. photos I upload to Flickr, things I share on Google Reader (with my commentary), and more. And the coolest thing about it all is that there's CONVERSATION happening around ALL of those things. It's amazing. I love it.

So come join me. You don't have to give up Twitter, or Jaiku, or whatever. You can connect them up in FriendFeed. But don't limit yourself to just one channel of conversation, when you can have so much MORE on FriendFeed. It's fun, it's easy, it makes me smarter, and a big part of my network is already there. I'm convinced! :-)



Tags: twitter friendfeed completely finally jaiku ]]>Shared by Mike
"until it croaks completely" :)

(This post started as an email to @verso on Twitter, in response to her question I'm wondering how much longer #pdx will take it from Twitter. Come on baby, you know I love you won't work forever will it? Alternatives?) I had been trying to reply via Twitter itself, but it's been either down or eating my updates - oh, the irony!)

FriendFeed finally sucked me in this week. I finally got it. It's the next logical step up from Twitter, because it is a superset of Twitter - I see my friends tweets, often before I do through Twitter itself, and I can reply to them once, and have it go to both places (FriendFeed and Twitter). Plus there's so much MORE FriendFeed can do - import and show people's blogs, shared items, photos, etc. It kicks ass, seriously. I highly recommend you give it a try. Twhirl, the popular Twitter client, works with it (though I haven't got that working well yet), and http://fftogo.com is an awesome mobile interface for it for your phone (looks and works great on my iPhone).

The thing that got me to accept it (I've been resisting for a while now) was there was finally enough social gravity - enough of my network was participating there, and there were conversations happening on FF (a LOT of them) that I was totally missing out on because I was staying completely in Twitter.

It's not a Twitter-alike, with a few differentiating features (like Jaiku and Pownce). It's a whole new, better, crack-like way to interact with people. It is the evolution of what Twitter started.

I'm jabancroft on FriendFeed - feel free to subscribe to me. I'm still going to use Twitter as my micropost method, until it croaks completely. But in my FriendFeed, you'll also see my blog posts. photos I upload to Flickr, things I share on Google Reader (with my commentary), and more. And the coolest thing about it all is that there's CONVERSATION happening around ALL of those things. It's amazing. I love it.

So come join me. You don't have to give up Twitter, or Jaiku, or whatever. You can connect them up in FriendFeed. But don't limit yourself to just one channel of conversation, when you can have so much MORE on FriendFeed. It's fun, it's easy, it makes me smarter, and a big part of my network is already there. I'm convinced! :-)



Tags: twitter friendfeed completely finally jaiku ]]> Fri, 27 Jun 2008 20:05:35 -0400 tag:croncast.com,4198 Why FriendFeed will go mainstream (Part II) http://scobleizer.com/2008/05/18/why-friendfeed-will-go-mainstream-part-ii/ Shared item

In the first part of this two-post series you read my ideas on why FriendFeed won't go mainstream. In this part I get to answer why it will go mainstream.

First, something funny: Thomas Hawk just posted this to FriendFeed: Things in life that are addictive: digital photography, Flickr, Tommy's cheeseburgers, those tangy sea salt and vinegar blue chips in the blue bag, coffee, Red Bull, and friendfeed. Of course that started a conversation.

So, why is FriendFeed going to go mainstream:

1. The team. Among the seven people who are currently working on FriendFeed is the guy who gave Google it's don't be evil tag and who wrote Gmail. Another guy on the team did Google Maps. Yet other people on the team did impressive things. This team will be unhappy with themselves if they just get me and Thomas Hawk and Louis Gray to use it. They are building something from the bottom up to be used by millions of people.

2. Them who owns a unique database will be able to build value. FriendFeed knows every item that's been commented on and is building a database of interesting other stuff too.

3. By aggregating all social software sites together they are getting a database that'll let them build a search service that'll be very interesting (and already is to me I already go there at least 20% of the time I want to find something or someone).

4. Their UI sucks and is brilliant at the same time. In the old post you read how it sucks. In this post look at what's brilliant about it. First, it's always fast. You gotta watch this video with Kevin Fox, interaction designer at FriendFeed, to get his philosophy behind building UIs. Think he doesn't know crap about design? Go read his resume (PDF), he designed Gmail 1.0, Google Calendar 1.0, and Google Reader 2.0.

5. It is freaking fast and much more reliable than Twitter. Today I've been putting dozens of Tweets into Twitter and they show up in FriendFeed BEFORE I can refresh the page. It is amazingly fast at gathering new stuff from Twitter. I have not found any other service as reliably fast.

6. It's very flexible. For instance, check out these links:

  1. Everyone who has shared an item on Google Reader.
  2. Everyone who has shared a song on Last.fm. or on iLike.
  3. Everyone who has Tweeted on Twitter (do a test and see how fast yours shows up there).
  4. Everyone who has shared a video on YouTube.
  5. Everyone who has written a blog post.
  6. Everyone who has put, or favorited, a photo on Flickr. On SmugMug. On Picasa.
  7. Everyone who has posted something on FriendFeed itself (link or a note).
  8. Everyone who has shared an event on Upcoming.
  9. Everyone who has bookmarked an item on Del.icio.us.

Those are just a sample of the things you can search on. Just visit the advanced search and select the servce you want

7. FriendFeed is a place where you can study people's gestures and signals. Huh? Well, when I like something in FriendFeed it means I found it to be interesting and not just pure noise. When I comment on something it means I found it important enough to engage with. You can see items I've commented on, items I've liked, and both of them added together. You can also do that for everyone on FriendFeed.

8. If you want to watch everything your kids are doing, you've got to follow them around multiple services. That takes too much time. It's far easier for your kids to just say follow me on FriendFeed.

9. The most interesting early adopters and smart people have already signed up so you can track them. Here's just a small sample:

  1. Singer Samantha Murphy.
  2. Presidential candidate Barack Obama.
  3. Open source developer (did bleeding edge work at BBC, now doing projects at MySpace) Ben Metcalfe.
  4. Venture Capitalist Brad Feld (guy behind NewsGator and others).
  5. Google exec Bradley Horowitz (while at Yahoo he spearheaded purchase of Flickr, Delicious, and others).
  6. Dave Morin, head of Facebook's application platform.
  7. Gary Vaynerchuk, owns a wine store in New Jersey that sells $50 million a year and does WineLibrary.tv
  8. Joi Ito, head of Creative Commons.
  9. Joshua Schacter, founder of Delicious.

I could keep going, but gotta run to catch a plane to New York.

So, which way are you heading? Is FriendFeed going to be an epic fail? Or the best thing since Facebook?

What did I miss on either side of this argument?

UPDATE: the conversation is already underway on FriendFeed here.



Tags: friendfeed google fast interesting twitter ]]>

In the first part of this two-post series you read my ideas on why FriendFeed won't go mainstream. In this part I get to answer why it will go mainstream.

First, something funny: Thomas Hawk just posted this to FriendFeed: Things in life that are addictive: digital photography, Flickr, Tommy's cheeseburgers, those tangy sea salt and vinegar blue chips in the blue bag, coffee, Red Bull, and friendfeed. Of course that started a conversation.

So, why is FriendFeed going to go mainstream:

1. The team. Among the seven people who are currently working on FriendFeed is the guy who gave Google it's don't be evil tag and who wrote Gmail. Another guy on the team did Google Maps. Yet other people on the team did impressive things. This team will be unhappy with themselves if they just get me and Thomas Hawk and Louis Gray to use it. They are building something from the bottom up to be used by millions of people.

2. Them who owns a unique database will be able to build value. FriendFeed knows every item that's been commented on and is building a database of interesting other stuff too.

3. By aggregating all social software sites together they are getting a database that'll let them build a search service that'll be very interesting (and already is to me I already go there at least 20% of the time I want to find something or someone).

4. Their UI sucks and is brilliant at the same time. In the old post you read how it sucks. In this post look at what's brilliant about it. First, it's always fast. You gotta watch this video with Kevin Fox, interaction designer at FriendFeed, to get his philosophy behind building UIs. Think he doesn't know crap about design? Go read his resume (PDF), he designed Gmail 1.0, Google Calendar 1.0, and Google Reader 2.0.

5. It is freaking fast and much more reliable than Twitter. Today I've been putting dozens of Tweets into Twitter and they show up in FriendFeed BEFORE I can refresh the page. It is amazingly fast at gathering new stuff from Twitter. I have not found any other service as reliably fast.

6. It's very flexible. For instance, check out these links:

  1. Everyone who has shared an item on Google Reader.
  2. Everyone who has shared a song on Last.fm. or on iLike.
  3. Everyone who has Tweeted on Twitter (do a test and see how fast yours shows up there).
  4. Everyone who has shared a video on YouTube.
  5. Everyone who has written a blog post.
  6. Everyone who has put, or favorited, a photo on Flickr. On SmugMug. On Picasa.
  7. Everyone who has posted something on FriendFeed itself (link or a note).
  8. Everyone who has shared an event on Upcoming.
  9. Everyone who has bookmarked an item on Del.icio.us.

Those are just a sample of the things you can search on. Just visit the advanced search and select the servce you want

7. FriendFeed is a place where you can study people's gestures and signals. Huh? Well, when I like something in FriendFeed it means I found it to be interesting and not just pure noise. When I comment on something it means I found it important enough to engage with. You can see items I've commented on, items I've liked, and both of them added together. You can also do that for everyone on FriendFeed.

8. If you want to watch everything your kids are doing, you've got to follow them around multiple services. That takes too much time. It's far easier for your kids to just say follow me on FriendFeed.

9. The most interesting early adopters and smart people have already signed up so you can track them. Here's just a small sample:

  1. Singer Samantha Murphy.
  2. Presidential candidate Barack Obama.
  3. Open source developer (did bleeding edge work at BBC, now doing projects at MySpace) Ben Metcalfe.
  4. Venture Capitalist Brad Feld (guy behind NewsGator and others).
  5. Google exec Bradley Horowitz (while at Yahoo he spearheaded purchase of Flickr, Delicious, and others).
  6. Dave Morin, head of Facebook's application platform.
  7. Gary Vaynerchuk, owns a wine store in New Jersey that sells $50 million a year and does WineLibrary.tv
  8. Joi Ito, head of Creative Commons.
  9. Joshua Schacter, founder of Delicious.

I could keep going, but gotta run to catch a plane to New York.

So, which way are you heading? Is FriendFeed going to be an epic fail? Or the best thing since Facebook?

What did I miss on either side of this argument?

UPDATE: the conversation is already underway on FriendFeed here.



Tags: friendfeed google fast interesting twitter ]]> Sun, 18 May 2008 21:55:05 -0400 tag:croncast.com,4018 AideRSS Updates Filtering: Adds Twitter http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/readwriteweb/~3/291748525/aiderss_updates_filtering_adds_twitter.php Shared item Allen Stern points out that RSS filtering service AideRSS has added Twitter to its PostRank algorithm. AideRSS works by measuring social media interaction with blog posts, and then comparing them to what's normal for that blog. The service then algorithmically applies a ranking to each post allowing users to filter out only the best posts based on the theory that people will only bother interacting with the most interesting or worthwhile content.

We're huge fans of AideRSS at ReadWriteWeb. Not only have we written about them a lot, we've also used AideRSS to filter aggregate feeds for the top content for a number of our toolkit posts. Adding Twitter support is an interesting move because it confirms Twitter's growing influence in the social media space, and lets blog owners see how their content is being spread across the microblog service.

Since we published our first look at AideRSS last July, their PostRank algorithm has changed a lot. At launch, PostRank included information from comments, Digg, del.icio.us, Technorati, IceRocket, and Bloglines -- now the latter three have been replaced with Twitter links and Google blog search conversations. Some of those changes likely had to do with API restrictions, some likely with just general tweaking to make the algorithm perform better.

Because AideRSS calculates PostRank against only that blog's past performance, the ranking is a fair representation of that blog's best work. For example, a PR 10 post on ReadWriteWeb would require different interaction metrics than a post on a small personal blog. PostRank would be easy to cheat -- you could comment a million times on your post, get your friends to Digg it, tweet it, add it it del.icio.us -- but since the service isn't measuring you against other blogs, there's really no incentive to cheat it.

AideRSS also announced support for OpenID.




Tags: aiderss blog postrank twitter post ]]>Allen Stern points out that RSS filtering service AideRSS has added Twitter to its PostRank algorithm. AideRSS works by measuring social media interaction with blog posts, and then comparing them to what's normal for that blog. The service then algorithmically applies a ranking to each post allowing users to filter out only the best posts based on the theory that people will only bother interacting with the most interesting or worthwhile content.

We're huge fans of AideRSS at ReadWriteWeb. Not only have we written about them a lot, we've also used AideRSS to filter aggregate feeds for the top content for a number of our toolkit posts. Adding Twitter support is an interesting move because it confirms Twitter's growing influence in the social media space, and lets blog owners see how their content is being spread across the microblog service.

Since we published our first look at AideRSS last July, their PostRank algorithm has changed a lot. At launch, PostRank included information from comments, Digg, del.icio.us, Technorati, IceRocket, and Bloglines -- now the latter three have been replaced with Twitter links and Google blog search conversations. Some of those changes likely had to do with API restrictions, some likely with just general tweaking to make the algorithm perform better.

Because AideRSS calculates PostRank against only that blog's past performance, the ranking is a fair representation of that blog's best work. For example, a PR 10 post on ReadWriteWeb would require different interaction metrics than a post on a small personal blog. PostRank would be easy to cheat -- you could comment a million times on your post, get your friends to Digg it, tweet it, add it it del.icio.us -- but since the service isn't measuring you against other blogs, there's really no incentive to cheat it.

AideRSS also announced support for OpenID.




Tags: aiderss blog postrank twitter post ]]> Fri, 16 May 2008 17:03:47 -0400 tag:croncast.com,4007 Advanced Twitter Fu: Become a Master http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Tinyscreenfuls/~3/289919849/ Shared item Everyone talks about Twitter. It's hard to describe why people like it and use it so much. You have to use it, and connect with some people, to really see why it's worth it. If you're looking at it from the outside, like watching the public timeline, it's going to seem stupid and useless. That's because, used like that, it is.

BUT.

If you know what you're doing, Twitter is a REALLY POWERFUL and REALLY COOL way to connect with people. You can find basic, entry level explanations about why you should use Twitter everywhere. I even wrote such a post a couple of months ago (which includes the excellent Twitter in Plain English video, which you must watch if you haven't already). The rest of this post is going to assume you have a (very) basic understanding of what Twitter is, and how it works. If not, go read my previous post, watch the video, and come back. I'll wait. :-)

The Twitter Fu is Strong With This One

What I want to talk about here is some advanced Twitter Fu - techniques for power users (I hate that term), and people who are ready to start taking advantage of some of the really remarkable things you can accomplish with it. This isn't comprehensive, of course, but I do speak from experience. What I'm going to write about comes from my daily use and experience with Twitter (which started in July 2006, making me an old timer in the Twitterverse. Most importantly, I want to show some ways you can use Twitter to accomplish something REALLY remarkable - connect up people in a community (or build a new community) with strong ties.

Here's the reason I think all of this is so important. My job, and Intel Software Network's mission, is to build community. Community grows from connections made between people with a common interest. One way people make connections is through conversation. Real conversation in their natural human voice, with another human. You can't have a conversation with a corporation. You just can't. This is why I'm always harping on conversations, conversations, conversations! Twitter (and blogs, and other net tools, too) makes it easy to have more conversations, and thus build more connections, with other humans. You increase your human surface area - the ways people can connect with you. If you're a software person, think of it as exposing a new API endpoint for people to hook into and use. And when you have more and more of these human connections, a really cool thing emerges - community. See how that all ties in?

Enough philosophical background. Let's get on the the real, practical things you can do to become a high level Twitter Fu Master.

Grow Your Network, Carefully

Twitter is useless without following people. But it's worse than useless if you follow people you don't know. The public timeline, while it may be an entertaining peek into what the entire world is saying, isn't going to do anything to connect you to those other people. Your network is the heart of Twitter. Guard it jealously. Follow people you know (either in real life, or through online interactions, or whatever). Don't follow people you don't know, or who you don't have any reason to follow, other than because they followed you. In other words, don't follow someone if you have no idea who they are. Reciprocating a follow on Twitter is NOT required, and no one is going to get offended if you don't follow them back just because they followed you.

I did this in the beginning, and I found that it just added noise to my Twitter stream. So I pruned my following list down to people I had either met in real life, or knew from some other interaction. Basically, it came down to do I have to think for more than half a second to know who this person is? If they don't pass that test, I don't follow. You've got to keep the signal to noise ratio of your Twitter stream as high as possible. It's hard enough only following people you DO know.

However, as commenters below have reminded me, it can be fun and useful to add new followees based on who the people in your network are talking with. You'll naturally get to know new people through Twitter, and your network will grow. This is a good thing. I just think you should be careful, and no go crazy and add everyone and their dog (or cat) without a reason. Or, as @scobleizer says, You are defined by who you follow. ;-)

Use a Desktop Client and Your Phone

There are two times you'll want to use Twitter: when you're at your computer, and when you're not. For when you're at your computer, I highly recommend using a desktop client application, which makes your Twitter stream kind of like an IM conversation. It's always there, you can pay attention to it, or hide it in the background. But having a desktop client has lots of advantages over using the Twitter.com web page to engage with your network.

There are lots of desktop clients to choose from. I personally use and love one called Twitterrific, from Craig Hockenberry and Icon Factory. It's Mac only, but I love it because a) it's beautiful, b) it uses Growl for notifications, and c) I've been using it since it came out, and I'm used to it (inertia is a powerful thing). If you're not on a Mac, or for some reason you don't want to use Twitterrific, there are some awesome clients that use the cross platform Adobe AIR runtime (Windows, Mac, and now Linux). Spaz, Twhirl, and Alert Thingy are worth a look. They all do pretty much the same thing, but some offer features like integration with FriendFeed, Jaiku, Pownce, etc. Try them all and find one you like.

A desktop client is for when you're sitting at your computer (which, for me, is most of the day). If you're anything like me, you have a whole bunch of browser windows or tabs open at any given time. It's worth it to have Twitter outside of that, in its own place. You can see the stream of conversation in your network flow by, hop in and tweet or reply to something, and get alerted when there's a reply or direct message directed at you. If you need to concentrate, and avoid distraction, just hide or close the app.

When you're away from your computer, use Twitter on your phone. Any cell phone that can do text messaging is a great Twitter client. Just enable your Twitter account to work via text messages on your phone. You have full control over what alerts/incoming messages you receive (all, direct, etc.). I follow so many people that the volume of tweets is just too much to deal with in text messages (not to mention expensive!), so I only get a text message from Twitter when I receive a Direct (private) message. But, even if you get no text message alerts at all, it's important to set this up, so you can SEND tweets from your phone. Then, get in the habit of doing it.

If you have a phone with a web browser (iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, or whatever), you can use the Twitter mobile web interface at http://m.twitter.com. It's fast, light, and provides an easy way to both read your tweets and post new ones from your phone. Depending on the device you have, there are other options. iPhone owners should check out an amazing web-based Twitter interface for iPhone called Hahlo (and rumor has it there will be an iPhone version of Twitterrific as soon as Apple launches the iPhone App Store - I can't wait!). For BlackBerry and Windows Mobile devices, there are free applications you can install on your phone to use Twitter. I haven't used any of these, so I can't really make a specific recommendation, but do some Googling, ask around on your Twitter network, and you can probably find one that you like.

Integrate Twitter With Your Online Life

Remember how I said that the whole point of all of this is to increase your conversational surface area, to make it easier for people to connect to you by conversing with you? To aid in that, you'll want to include hooks/links to your presence on Twitter from the other places where you interact with people.

At the very least, put a link to your Twitter page on your blog and in your email signature and on your business cards.

Beyond that, there are a ton of great options for integrating your Twitter microposts (as I call them) on your blog, from a simple javascript badge to more complicated integrations (like the way I do it on my blog, which I explain how and why in this post). You can make this as simple or as complex as you want. Go nuts. But do it.

If you use social networks like Facebook, chances are there's a way to integrate your Twitter conversations. Facebook lets you connect your tweets with your Status updates on Facebook, and vice versa. I haven't used them, but there are ways to integrate Twitter with your MySpace page and I'm sure there are more. Again, do some Googling, and ask your new most valuable knowledge sharing tool, your Twitter network.

Don't Miss Any Conversations

Twitter lets you direct a message at a specific person in two ways. First is the direct D message, which sends a private message that only the recipient can see. This is kind of like a short email. The second, and far more common way is the @reply. You can indicate that a tweet is for a certain person by typing @theirusername. Twitter turns that into a link to that person on Twitter, and TRIES to bring that message to their attention. But they way they do it is broken. It doesn't work if the @username part isn't at the beginning of the tweet. It doesn't work if they don't have their Twitter settings configured to show them All @ replies. If you want to be a Twitter master, you have to take a couple of extra steps to make sure that you don't miss any messages directed at you using the @ sign.

This is where third party search tools like TweetScan and Summize come in. I'm assuming you're using a feed reader/aggregator like Google Reader (you ARE using an aggregator, aren't you? If not, we need to have a serious talk). If so, you can use TweetScan or Summize to do a search for your username, then subscribe to the feed for those search results. Presto - you'll know every time someone even mentions your name on Twitter, whether you're following them or not. At the very least, you need to do this. But search is powerful, and can do some other cool things, too.

For some reason, people often misspell my username on Twitter, or just make up some @username that has parts of my name, but isn't anywhere near correct. No problem. I just set up search feeds on Summize to look for jabancroft (the correct name), bancroft, jbancroft, and joshbancroft. That way, I hear what people are saying about/to me, no matter how badly they butcher my name. If you know of common misspellings of your username, you should subscribe to search feeds for those, too.

Also, if there's a specific topic, company, or product name that you want to track on Twitter, to see what people are saying, you can simply create a search feed for that word/phrase and subscribe to it. Twitter has a track feature, but it only works if you get updates via text message or IM - it doesn't work if you use the web or a desktop client app. I have a few search feeds on Twitter - one for Intel, for example - that let me see everything people are saying, good and bad. Can you think of something that would be useful for? If you can't, you're probably not trying hard enough.

But Wait! There's More!

Wow, this post got long. But I still have more to say. Specifically, some techniques about building groups and communities of interest on top of Twitter (something it lacks the native ability to do) using some simple tricks, and mashup tools. The online shoe seller Zappos.com has been getting a lot of press lately for their use of Twitter, and I've been involved in a couple of really cool mashups in the Portland geek community, like PulseoFPDX.com. How is this useful, rather than just interesting? Besides being a peek into the stream of collective consciousness of a particular group of people on Twitter, it's a great way to find people to connect with. You know, build community by connecting with other people you know and have something in common with.

And I've got a few more tricks up my sleeve, too, so stay tuned! :-)



Tags: twitter follow message network connect ]]>Everyone talks about Twitter. It's hard to describe why people like it and use it so much. You have to use it, and connect with some people, to really see why it's worth it. If you're looking at it from the outside, like watching the public timeline, it's going to seem stupid and useless. That's because, used like that, it is.

BUT.

If you know what you're doing, Twitter is a REALLY POWERFUL and REALLY COOL way to connect with people. You can find basic, entry level explanations about why you should use Twitter everywhere. I even wrote such a post a couple of months ago (which includes the excellent Twitter in Plain English video, which you must watch if you haven't already). The rest of this post is going to assume you have a (very) basic understanding of what Twitter is, and how it works. If not, go read my previous post, watch the video, and come back. I'll wait. :-)

The Twitter Fu is Strong With This One

What I want to talk about here is some advanced Twitter Fu - techniques for power users (I hate that term), and people who are ready to start taking advantage of some of the really remarkable things you can accomplish with it. This isn't comprehensive, of course, but I do speak from experience. What I'm going to write about comes from my daily use and experience with Twitter (which started in July 2006, making me an old timer in the Twitterverse. Most importantly, I want to show some ways you can use Twitter to accomplish something REALLY remarkable - connect up people in a community (or build a new community) with strong ties.

Here's the reason I think all of this is so important. My job, and Intel Software Network's mission, is to build community. Community grows from connections made between people with a common interest. One way people make connections is through conversation. Real conversation in their natural human voice, with another human. You can't have a conversation with a corporation. You just can't. This is why I'm always harping on conversations, conversations, conversations! Twitter (and blogs, and other net tools, too) makes it easy to have more conversations, and thus build more connections, with other humans. You increase your human surface area - the ways people can connect with you. If you're a software person, think of it as exposing a new API endpoint for people to hook into and use. And when you have more and more of these human connections, a really cool thing emerges - community. See how that all ties in?

Enough philosophical background. Let's get on the the real, practical things you can do to become a high level Twitter Fu Master.

Grow Your Network, Carefully

Twitter is useless without following people. But it's worse than useless if you follow people you don't know. The public timeline, while it may be an entertaining peek into what the entire world is saying, isn't going to do anything to connect you to those other people. Your network is the heart of Twitter. Guard it jealously. Follow people you know (either in real life, or through online interactions, or whatever). Don't follow people you don't know, or who you don't have any reason to follow, other than because they followed you. In other words, don't follow someone if you have no idea who they are. Reciprocating a follow on Twitter is NOT required, and no one is going to get offended if you don't follow them back just because they followed you.

I did this in the beginning, and I found that it just added noise to my Twitter stream. So I pruned my following list down to people I had either met in real life, or knew from some other interaction. Basically, it came down to do I have to think for more than half a second to know who this person is? If they don't pass that test, I don't follow. You've got to keep the signal to noise ratio of your Twitter stream as high as possible. It's hard enough only following people you DO know.

However, as commenters below have reminded me, it can be fun and useful to add new followees based on who the people in your network are talking with. You'll naturally get to know new people through Twitter, and your network will grow. This is a good thing. I just think you should be careful, and no go crazy and add everyone and their dog (or cat) without a reason. Or, as @scobleizer says, You are defined by who you follow. ;-)

Use a Desktop Client and Your Phone

There are two times you'll want to use Twitter: when you're at your computer, and when you're not. For when you're at your computer, I highly recommend using a desktop client application, which makes your Twitter stream kind of like an IM conversation. It's always there, you can pay attention to it, or hide it in the background. But having a desktop client has lots of advantages over using the Twitter.com web page to engage with your network.

There are lots of desktop clients to choose from. I personally use and love one called Twitterrific, from Craig Hockenberry and Icon Factory. It's Mac only, but I love it because a) it's beautiful, b) it uses Growl for notifications, and c) I've been using it since it came out, and I'm used to it (inertia is a powerful thing). If you're not on a Mac, or for some reason you don't want to use Twitterrific, there are some awesome clients that use the cross platform Adobe AIR runtime (Windows, Mac, and now Linux). Spaz, Twhirl, and Alert Thingy are worth a look. They all do pretty much the same thing, but some offer features like integration with FriendFeed, Jaiku, Pownce, etc. Try them all and find one you like.

A desktop client is for when you're sitting at your computer (which, for me, is most of the day). If you're anything like me, you have a whole bunch of browser windows or tabs open at any given time. It's worth it to have Twitter outside of that, in its own place. You can see the stream of conversation in your network flow by, hop in and tweet or reply to something, and get alerted when there's a reply or direct message directed at you. If you need to concentrate, and avoid distraction, just hide or close the app.

When you're away from your computer, use Twitter on your phone. Any cell phone that can do text messaging is a great Twitter client. Just enable your Twitter account to work via text messages on your phone. You have full control over what alerts/incoming messages you receive (all, direct, etc.). I follow so many people that the volume of tweets is just too much to deal with in text messages (not to mention expensive!), so I only get a text message from Twitter when I receive a Direct (private) message. But, even if you get no text message alerts at all, it's important to set this up, so you can SEND tweets from your phone. Then, get in the habit of doing it.

If you have a phone with a web browser (iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, or whatever), you can use the Twitter mobile web interface at http://m.twitter.com. It's fast, light, and provides an easy way to both read your tweets and post new ones from your phone. Depending on the device you have, there are other options. iPhone owners should check out an amazing web-based Twitter interface for iPhone called Hahlo (and rumor has it there will be an iPhone version of Twitterrific as soon as Apple launches the iPhone App Store - I can't wait!). For BlackBerry and Windows Mobile devices, there are free applications you can install on your phone to use Twitter. I haven't used any of these, so I can't really make a specific recommendation, but do some Googling, ask around on your Twitter network, and you can probably find one that you like.

Integrate Twitter With Your Online Life

Remember how I said that the whole point of all of this is to increase your conversational surface area, to make it easier for people to connect to you by conversing with you? To aid in that, you'll want to include hooks/links to your presence on Twitter from the other places where you interact with people.

At the very least, put a link to your Twitter page on your blog and in your email signature and on your business cards.

Beyond that, there are a ton of great options for integrating your Twitter microposts (as I call them) on your blog, from a simple javascript badge to more complicated integrations (like the way I do it on my blog, which I explain how and why in this post). You can make this as simple or as complex as you want. Go nuts. But do it.

If you use social networks like Facebook, chances are there's a way to integrate your Twitter conversations. Facebook lets you connect your tweets with your Status updates on Facebook, and vice versa. I haven't used them, but there are ways to integrate Twitter with your MySpace page and I'm sure there are more. Again, do some Googling, and ask your new most valuable knowledge sharing tool, your Twitter network.

Don't Miss Any Conversations

Twitter lets you direct a message at a specific person in two ways. First is the direct D message, which sends a private message that only the recipient can see. This is kind of like a short email. The second, and far more common way is the @reply. You can indicate that a tweet is for a certain person by typing @theirusername. Twitter turns that into a link to that person on Twitter, and TRIES to bring that message to their attention. But they way they do it is broken. It doesn't work if the @username part isn't at the beginning of the tweet. It doesn't work if they don't have their Twitter settings configured to show them All @ replies. If you want to be a Twitter master, you have to take a couple of extra steps to make sure that you don't miss any messages directed at you using the @ sign.

This is where third party search tools like TweetScan and Summize come in. I'm assuming you're using a feed reader/aggregator like Google Reader (you ARE using an aggregator, aren't you? If not, we need to have a serious talk). If so, you can use TweetScan or Summize to do a search for your username, then subscribe to the feed for those search results. Presto - you'll know every time someone even mentions your name on Twitter, whether you're following them or not. At the very least, you need to do this. But search is powerful, and can do some other cool things, too.

For some reason, people often misspell my username on Twitter, or just make up some @username that has parts of my name, but isn't anywhere near correct. No problem. I just set up search feeds on Summize to look for jabancroft (the correct name), bancroft, jbancroft, and joshbancroft. That way, I hear what people are saying about/to me, no matter how badly they butcher my name. If you know of common misspellings of your username, you should subscribe to search feeds for those, too.

Also, if there's a specific topic, company, or product name that you want to track on Twitter, to see what people are saying, you can simply create a search feed for that word/phrase and subscribe to it. Twitter has a track feature, but it only works if you get updates via text message or IM - it doesn't work if you use the web or a desktop client app. I have a few search feeds on Twitter - one for Intel, for example - that let me see everything people are saying, good and bad. Can you think of something that would be useful for? If you can't, you're probably not trying hard enough.

But Wait! There's More!

Wow, this post got long. But I still have more to say. Specifically, some techniques about building groups and communities of interest on top of Twitter (something it lacks the native ability to do) using some simple tricks, and mashup tools. The online shoe seller Zappos.com has been getting a lot of press lately for their use of Twitter, and I've been involved in a couple of really cool mashups in the Portland geek community, like PulseoFPDX.com. How is this useful, rather than just interesting? Besides being a peek into the stream of collective consciousness of a particular group of people on Twitter, it's a great way to find people to connect with. You know, build community by connecting with other people you know and have something in common with.

And I've got a few more tricks up my sleeve, too, so stay tuned! :-)



Tags: twitter follow message network connect ]]> Wed, 14 May 2008 04:37:09 -0400 tag:croncast.com,3985 My Essential Twitter Tools http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Media20Workgroup/~3/264667519/ Shared item Many conversations are shifting to Twitter, this post proves it (network with others, by adding those in the comments). Twitter is extensible, and many third-party developers are creating tools around the simple data being exported for a variety of unique applications.

If you're using Twitter for personal, corporate use, or to manage the brand of a client, you'll need the right tools to find and engage the discussions.

Here are the tools that I'm using to improve my Twitter experience, note that all of these are using my profile, but you can change to fit your needs.

1) Client: Although I mainly use the browser to see what's going on (I click on profiles to see what people have said) Twhirl is the most popular client, using adobe air technology. Leave this on your desktop, instead of going to browser, also these clients may be more accurate in seeing who's replying to you, unlike the browser version.

2) Search: Use Tweetscan to see who's talking about you, your brand, or a topic you're interested in. For example, I may not just search on jowyang but also on owyang as some don't use the full name.

3) Conversations: Quotably is the top conversation' tracker, it threads together the discussions that members are having by looking at the replies, interesting to see how conversations spiral into different threads.

4) Aggregation: Friendfeed puts all of our RSS content onto one page, making it easy to see from one glance (rather than going to different properties) and you can even reply from friendfeed to different tools. It's smarter to organize around people, rather than tools.

5) Tagging Content: For advanced users, you can start to use the hashag # to add metadata around any tweet, this becomes more important as we rate and tag content. Here's a helpful primer. I'm not making much use of this feature yet.

6) Location Based: If you live in a particular area, and want to parse out a specific location, this Twitterlocal filter finds tweets based upon a users profile location. If you've a local business, this could become useful.

7) Alerts: (update) Often, people will blog about the conversations that happen in twitter, the conversation shifts back to blogs. As a result, I setup Google Alerts for the phrase @jowyang, I see it appear 3-5 times a week on blogs. Thanks Andrew for the reminder in the comments.

Out of the 6, now 7 tools I listed above, which ones do you use, or are there others you recommend?



Tags: tools twitter conversations location content ]]>Many conversations are shifting to Twitter, this post proves it (network with others, by adding those in the comments). Twitter is extensible, and many third-party developers are creating tools around the simple data being exported for a variety of unique applications.

If you're using Twitter for personal, corporate use, or to manage the brand of a client, you'll need the right tools to find and engage the discussions.

Here are the tools that I'm using to improve my Twitter experience, note that all of these are using my profile, but you can change to fit your needs.

1) Client: Although I mainly use the browser to see what's going on (I click on profiles to see what people have said) Twhirl is the most popular client, using adobe air technology. Leave this on your desktop, instead of going to browser, also these clients may be more accurate in seeing who's replying to you, unlike the browser version.

2) Search: Use Tweetscan to see who's talking about you, your brand, or a topic you're interested in. For example, I may not just search on jowyang but also on owyang as some don't use the full name.

3) Conversations: Quotably is the top conversation' tracker, it threads together the discussions that members are having by looking at the replies, interesting to see how conversations spiral into different threads.

4) Aggregation: Friendfeed puts all of our RSS content onto one page, making it easy to see from one glance (rather than going to different properties) and you can even reply from friendfeed to different tools. It's smarter to organize around people, rather than tools.

5) Tagging Content: For advanced users, you can start to use the hashag # to add metadata around any tweet, this becomes more important as we rate and tag content. Here's a helpful primer. I'm not making much use of this feature yet.

6) Location Based: If you live in a particular area, and want to parse out a specific location, this Twitterlocal filter finds tweets based upon a users profile location. If you've a local business, this could become useful.

7) Alerts: (update) Often, people will blog about the conversations that happen in twitter, the conversation shifts back to blogs. As a result, I setup Google Alerts for the phrase @jowyang, I see it appear 3-5 times a week on blogs. Thanks Andrew for the reminder in the comments.

Out of the 6, now 7 tools I listed above, which ones do you use, or are there others you recommend?



Tags: tools twitter conversations location content ]]> Sat, 05 Apr 2008 17:31:09 -0400 tag:croncast.com,3821 Why Should You Try Twitter? The Value, As I See It http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Tinyscreenfuls/~3/259232940/ Shared item I just wrote what became a rather long and detailed email in response to a friend and coworker's question why should I care about Twitter? Even though it's by no means exhaustive (I could come up with a lot more reasons!), this is what I shared off the top of my head, and it needs to be blogged. Remember, this is aimed at someone who I assume has no knowledge of what Twitter is or does.

The value of Twitter, to me, comes as a tool to communicate with my chosen network of people. You only ever see microposts (limited to 140 chars) from people you explicity follow. So, no spam, ever, and you control the flow.

It's become TREMENDOUSLY useful for me to quickly, easily communicate with people I know, and communicate to them what I'm up to, or what I'm thinking. I tend to think of what I put on Twitter as microposts stuff I might have otherwise blogged, or might not have. It can be very conversational, and very ephemeral you go with the flow, and don't worry about missing something. It's a river of conversation you can participate in or ignore as you choose.

Watch this video from Common Craft, which does a great job of explaining Twitter in Plain English:


I'm jabancroft on Twitter if you want to see the kinds of things I post (I'm an edge case I tweet a LOT) or follow me.

I'd suggest starting out with a small network, and ONLY add people you know in Real Life (or know well otherwise). Don't feel like you have to reciprocally follow back any people who discover and follow you. Feel free to un-follow people you feel are being too noisy. They don't get notice that you've dropped them, and won't be offended. You have the right to spend your attention as you see fit.

If you want to get an idea of some Intel people that are using Twitter, look at http://twitter.com/pulseofintel/friends and http://twitter.com/pulseofintel/with_friends (part of a little mashup I'm playing with, but haven't launched yet). There's also PulseofPDX.com (see what people in Portland are tweeting - the Stream of Portland's Collective Consciousness)

You can use Twitter via the web site, IM, SMS, or use a desktop Twitter application like Twitteriffic (my favorite, Mac only), Spaz, Twhirl, or Snitter (all three use Adobe AIR, so Windows or Mac).

Ignore the public timeline, or any tweets/messages from people you don't know. It's impossible to see the value of Twitter when you're looking at messages from strangers about what they had for lunch, or the fact that their cat is taking a nap. :-)

It's OK if you're not interested, or if you decide that Twitter's not for you. It's hard to explain to someone, but if you give it a fair shot, you might like it. Let me know if you have any questions, and let me know if you sign up, so I can follow you! :-)



Tags: twitter follow might value communicate ]]>I just wrote what became a rather long and detailed email in response to a friend and coworker's question why should I care about Twitter? Even though it's by no means exhaustive (I could come up with a lot more reasons!), this is what I shared off the top of my head, and it needs to be blogged. Remember, this is aimed at someone who I assume has no knowledge of what Twitter is or does.

The value of Twitter, to me, comes as a tool to communicate with my chosen network of people. You only ever see microposts (limited to 140 chars) from people you explicity follow. So, no spam, ever, and you control the flow.

It's become TREMENDOUSLY useful for me to quickly, easily communicate with people I know, and communicate to them what I'm up to, or what I'm thinking. I tend to think of what I put on Twitter as microposts stuff I might have otherwise blogged, or might not have. It can be very conversational, and very ephemeral you go with the flow, and don't worry about missing something. It's a river of conversation you can participate in or ignore as you choose.

Watch this video from Common Craft, which does a great job of explaining Twitter in Plain English:


I'm jabancroft on Twitter if you want to see the kinds of things I post (I'm an edge case I tweet a LOT) or follow me.

I'd suggest starting out with a small network, and ONLY add people you know in Real Life (or know well otherwise). Don't feel like you have to reciprocally follow back any people who discover and follow you. Feel free to un-follow people you feel are being too noisy. They don't get notice that you've dropped them, and won't be offended. You have the right to spend your attention as you see fit.

If you want to get an idea of some Intel people that are using Twitter, look at http://twitter.com/pulseofintel/friends and http://twitter.com/pulseofintel/with_friends (part of a little mashup I'm playing with, but haven't launched yet). There's also PulseofPDX.com (see what people in Portland are tweeting - the Stream of Portland's Collective Consciousness)

You can use Twitter via the web site, IM, SMS, or use a desktop Twitter application like Twitteriffic (my favorite, Mac only), Spaz, Twhirl, or Snitter (all three use Adobe AIR, so Windows or Mac).

Ignore the public timeline, or any tweets/messages from people you don't know. It's impossible to see the value of Twitter when you're looking at messages from strangers about what they had for lunch, or the fact that their cat is taking a nap. :-)

It's OK if you're not interested, or if you decide that Twitter's not for you. It's hard to explain to someone, but if you give it a fair shot, you might like it. Let me know if you have any questions, and let me know if you sign up, so I can follow you! :-)



Tags: twitter follow might value communicate ]]> Thu, 27 Mar 2008 21:12:34 -0400 tag:croncast.com,3762 How and Why I Added Daily Microposts from Twitter Posts http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Tinyscreenfuls/~3/238954248/ Shared item I've had a dilemma for a long time. it started when i began using Twitter a lot, which has been over a year now. For anyone who doesn't know, Twitter is a service that lets you post 140 character updates on what you're doing, which are read only by people who follow you, and you see only tweets (updates) from people that you follow. Sort of like a chat room where you get to decide who you hear.

Twitter is awesome, and I use it heavily. I've carefully cultivated a list of about 325 people that I follow. I know who all of them are, and I care about what they say. Most of the time.;-) (BTW, if you want me to follow you, just follow me, and introduce yourself - I'm friendly!) And there are almost 1000 people who follow me, which I find amazing. How can that many people be interested in what I say?

Anyway. Many people have noticed and pointed out the fact that I haven't been posting here on my blog as much since I started using Twitter. This is true. This is what happened:

I quickly came to think of the stuff I wrote on Twitter as microposts - short little notes about what I was doing, or something I found interesting, or asking a question. The kind of stuff I would normally post here on my blog, until I had a better place for it. Whenever I had a bigger idea that I wanted to share, or something with a lot of pictures, or that otherwise didn't work well within the 140 character micropost way of doing things, it became a blog post here.

Twitter became a kind of low-pass noise filter for my writing.

Lots of people who read this blog also follow me on Twitter. You're my network. My friends. My connections. And since you were using Twitter too, there wasn't a problem.

But I know there are lots of you who read my blog, but don't know about or don't want to use Twitter. I've tried to bring attention to my frequent microposts by putting them over in the sidebar, but I wasn't really satisfied with that. I mean, who looks at the sidebar? Most people just probably tune it out. I know I do.

I know lots of people that use services like LoudTwitter, or tools like Alex King's TwitterTools plugin for WordPress to do a daily digest post on their blog - to round up everything they tweeted that day, and put it into an automatic blog post.

The problem with this comes for people who subscribe to both the blog feed, and follow that person on Twitter. They're getting the same stuff twice. It's redundant and annoying, and I really didn't want to make myself any more redundant and annoying and redundant than I already am.:-)

So, after kicking the idea around a bit (on Twitter, of course), i think I've found an elegant solution. Using TwitterTools, I've set up that daily digest post. But, using some cleverness built into WordPress (the software that powers this blog), I've excluded those Twitter digest posts from the blog's feed. They show up on the site, so people who visit the site regularly to see what I've been writing will see my latest microposts, along with the regular big old blog posts. But the microposts won't show up in my feed. That way, no overlap for people who subscribe to my feed AND follow me on Twitter.

If you subscribe to my blog feed, and you WANT to get my microposts, I heartily recommend you set yourself up an account on Twitter (it's free and easy), and follow me there. I'm jabancroft. And don't worry. Everyone thinks Twitter is stupid at first. And then they fall in love. So give it a chance, and don't blame me for your future Twitter addiction.;-)

If you don't want to use Twitter, but still want the full Josh firehose, let me direct you to my life stream site, www.joshbancroft.com. On that site, and its accompanying feed, you'll get my blog posts, my Twitter microposts, my photos from Flickr, any videos i post on the web, and pretty much everything I write or create.

And I'd be remiss if I didn't also point out my linkblog at linkblog.joshbancroft.com (and it's accompanying feed), which is stuff I share from the hundreds of things I read every day in Google Reader and elsewhere on the web. Think of me as a news filter, your personal clipping service. I sift through all the posts, and pluck out the ones that I think are interesting. No more than a few per day. You can also add me as a friend/contact in Google Talk and Google Reader and get the same thing, if you know what that means. If you don't, just use linkblog.joshbancroft.com. I try really hard to make it interesting and useful.

Does that work for everyone? Drop me a comment below if you like it. Or hate it. Or know of a better way to do it. Or think it's the best idea ever, and want to do the same thing on your blog. I'm always happy to share!:-)



Tags: twitter blog follow feed post ]]>I've had a dilemma for a long time. it started when i began using Twitter a lot, which has been over a year now. For anyone who doesn't know, Twitter is a service that lets you post 140 character updates on what you're doing, which are read only by people who follow you, and you see only tweets (updates) from people that you follow. Sort of like a chat room where you get to decide who you hear.

Twitter is awesome, and I use it heavily. I've carefully cultivated a list of about 325 people that I follow. I know who all of them are, and I care about what they say. Most of the time.;-) (BTW, if you want me to follow you, just follow me, and introduce yourself - I'm friendly!) And there are almost 1000 people who follow me, which I find amazing. How can that many people be interested in what I say?

Anyway. Many people have noticed and pointed out the fact that I haven't been posting here on my blog as much since I started using Twitter. This is true. This is what happened:

I quickly came to think of the stuff I wrote on Twitter as microposts - short little notes about what I was doing, or something I found interesting, or asking a question. The kind of stuff I would normally post here on my blog, until I had a better place for it. Whenever I had a bigger idea that I wanted to share, or something with a lot of pictures, or that otherwise didn't work well within the 140 character micropost way of doing things, it became a blog post here.

Twitter became a kind of low-pass noise filter for my writing.

Lots of people who read this blog also follow me on Twitter. You're my network. My friends. My connections. And since you were using Twitter too, there wasn't a problem.

But I know there are lots of you who read my blog, but don't know about or don't want to use Twitter. I've tried to bring attention to my frequent microposts by putting them over in the sidebar, but I wasn't really satisfied with that. I mean, who looks at the sidebar? Most people just probably tune it out. I know I do.

I know lots of people that use services like LoudTwitter, or tools like Alex King's TwitterTools plugin for WordPress to do a daily digest post on their blog - to round up everything they tweeted that day, and put it into an automatic blog post.

The problem with this comes for people who subscribe to both the blog feed, and follow that person on Twitter. They're getting the same stuff twice. It's redundant and annoying, and I really didn't want to make myself any more redundant and annoying and redundant than I already am.:-)

So, after kicking the idea around a bit (on Twitter, of course), i think I've found an elegant solution. Using TwitterTools, I've set up that daily digest post. But, using some cleverness built into WordPress (the software that powers this blog), I've excluded those Twitter digest posts from the blog's feed. They show up on the site, so people who visit the site regularly to see what I've been writing will see my latest microposts, along with the regular big old blog posts. But the microposts won't show up in my feed. That way, no overlap for people who subscribe to my feed AND follow me on Twitter.

If you subscribe to my blog feed, and you WANT to get my microposts, I heartily recommend you set yourself up an account on Twitter (it's free and easy), and follow me there. I'm jabancroft. And don't worry. Everyone thinks Twitter is stupid at first. And then they fall in love. So give it a chance, and don't blame me for your future Twitter addiction.;-)

If you don't want to use Twitter, but still want the full Josh firehose, let me direct you to my life stream site, www.joshbancroft.com. On that site, and its accompanying feed, you'll get my blog posts, my Twitter microposts, my photos from Flickr, any videos i post on the web, and pretty much everything I write or create.

And I'd be remiss if I didn't also point out my linkblog at linkblog.joshbancroft.com (and it's accompanying feed), which is stuff I share from the hundreds of things I read every day in Google Reader and elsewhere on the web. Think of me as a news filter, your personal clipping service. I sift through all the posts, and pluck out the ones that I think are interesting.