What's On TV? Browse TV Listings from Your iPhone (Free today!)

In September, we first discussed the debut of i.TV, an iPhone app for local movie and television listings. Since then, new entrants have emerged to further integrate your iPhone with your living room entertainment, with TiVo launching its mobile site, and recently, Joost launching an iPhone application. One competitor, called "What's On TV?" offers a solid app that elegantly helps you browse your TV listings, search for new shows, and see program descriptions. Best of all, it's free on the Apple iTunes store for today only.


What's On TV: Getting Set Up
As with i.TV, the first step to getting What's On? up and running is entering your TV package. Start by saying whether you have Satellite, Cable, or an Antenna, which tier of service you might have (e.g. standard vs. digital), and enter your zip code and provider.


What's On TV: Seeing Your TV Listings
Once your channels have loaded, similar to online TV Guide or portal TV listings, you can uncheck those stations you would prefer not be displayed, and thumb channel by channel through the results to see what's playing. Interestingly, as with Apple's address book or iTunes, you can skip ahead by choosing the group of channels you wish displayed, helpful if you have hundreds to select from.


What's On TV: Searching for "The Hills" and Roseanne
Searching through the What's On? listings is relatively simple as well. Hit the search button at the bottom of the application, and you can search for upcoming shows by title, seeing when they display, on which channels, and can click through to get a description of the episode.

The What's On? application doesn't try to be the end-all be-all of entertainment apps, but what it does, it does well, elegantly, with good color cues, such as green for sports, and purple for movies. And after a "free for Black Friday" special turned out to be more successful than anticipated, the developers behind the application have extended the offer through Sunday. You can download the app here.

We've Only Just Begun to Syndicate Our Content

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

It wasn't too long ago that blogging and pull technology, including RSS, first became popular. If you published new Web site content, and wanted the world to know about it in real time, your delivery and distribution options were very limited.

Publishing content updates was pretty much the same as it is today. You would upload your new pages to the server and hope to see some decent search engine traffic. But you relied more on bookmark traffic, and other means of marketing, such as e-mail, to get people to your site. Important as it is to get new traffic, retention is equally as vital. Quality content, useful products, affordable prices and great customer service, are all factors in keeping people coming back to your site.

The early days of the wild, wild, Web.

In the early days, before Google, search engines took days, and often weeks, to crawl and index new content. There were a lot of hoops to jump through to get listed, and you could be waiting weeks to months for a manual review of your site for inclusion. If you didn't have the patience to wait that long, you always had the option of paying a nice fee for an express review, to get your site approved. But the days when Altavista, Lycos,Yahoo, and a few others reigned supreme were also the days the spammers dominated search results.

Therefore, if you were lucky enough to get indexed in a timely fashion, chances are some spam-related bottom feeder had already beaten you out, leaving your pages buried back in the search results. Because spam was so bad and such a problem, a lot of Webmasters adopted the " If you can't beat them join them " mentality. As a result, the search engines almost became rendered useless for a period of time, because they were filled with nothing but spam, mainly in part due to black hat SEO tactics.

E-mail was the name of the game, and it actually worked.

Newsletters are something I, and many other Webmasters, heavily used to inform our user base of new Web site updates/product offerings and so forth. This was as real time as it got back then. Composing daily and weekly e-mails got to be quite a chore, but proved to be very effective. This of course did not last long.Spammers eventually discovered, and killed e-mail marketing for the rest of us. How many of you have received or reported spam e-mail, or even what you perceived to smell like spam to Spamhaus or Spamcop? Even with these most opt-in compliant e-mail lists, you still have frequent headaches with people reporting your legitimate e-mail as spam. The spam reports are also e-mailed to your Web host, and usually to their abuse dept, which causes more unneeded headaches. For non commercial uses such as notifying small or close groups of people, e-mail is still effective and has its place. And nowadays, marketers who use commerce e-mailing must ensure their lists are opt-in/out, and that their compliant with the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. It also takes a significant amount of more e-mail addresses to click and convert. Besides, people are a lot more reluctant to submit their e-mail addresses today than they once were. Even if they do, the chances of them actually seeing the message diminishes greatly thanks to spam filtering, and disposable e-mail addresses.

We have come a long way in a short period of time.

Today we publish and consume more content faster than ever before. WordPress has become the new FrontPage. Web sites are now blogs. e-mail and newsletters have been replaced by RSS. Micro-blogging applications such as Twitter have filled the void in between. Today when new content is created and published, it's usually done on a blog, and syndicated automatically thanks to RSS and the blogging application used. Today when you publish a blog post, it's distributed and found instantly in RSS readers within minutes of being written. Google and other search engines love blogs, because they are constantly publishing new content. Blogs that update frequently often will have more influence and higher rankings in search. Blogs and traditional Web sites get indexed in search engines, but that's where the similarities end, in terms of real time publishing and real time distribution. Blogs are indexed within minutes, but Web sites often take longer, with a lower probability for achieving higher in the search results.

So just what happens after you click the publish button on a blog post?

When you click publish, your blogging software automatically sends a ping alert to special servers maintained by Google Blog Search, Yahoo, VeriSign and others. The ping lets them know that you have recently published new content. Ping servers then alert aggregators, search engines and others to send out bots to crawl the blog for updates. The ping also alerts data miners and text miners that you have updated. Data miners are in the business of metrics, and this data is often sold to and used by corporations. Text miners are the true bottom scrapers, also commonly referred to as "splogs". Splog is short for "spam blog" and is used to describe an auto updating blog, setup to scrape feeds at regular intervals and post them. They exist for the sole purpose of either displaying ads, such as Google’s Adsense or for the purpose of creating search engine traffic, which in turn is used to promote other splogs. Splogs are automatically generated, and there is not much you can do about them nowadays other than report them to the search engines. The next step in the process, which is set in motion seconds after you press publish, is sending the new blog post to aggregators such as feed readers like Google Reader, and sites that pull RSS feeds, such as alltop.com etc. The human redistribution process (sharing, bookmarking, etc) then takes over and the cycle is started all over again. Compared to the old days, all this happens within minutes.

In Closing

Publishers today do not have to worry or spend as much time with the distribution of their content as they did way back when. Time is now spent focusing on producing quality content. Gone are the days of the wild wild Web. We are now using smarter, and more effective tools and publishing methods to get the word out faster than ever before. What's next on the horizon for content syndication?

Read more by Mike Fruchter at MichaelFruchter.com.

BigTweet Sends Tweets from Any Web Page (Up to 280 Characters)

In one of my "couldn't be more wrong" predictions for the world of tech in 2008, I predicted that Twitter would move away from just offering text updates on its microblogging site, and would instead expand to possibly let users add pictures or even video, giving a better answer to "what are you doing?". Instead 2008 has been more about the site's native growth, the acquisiton of Summize, and just keeping the service up. Luckily, third party developers are finding new ways to leverage the site. Among them is a new bookmarklet-based site called BigTweet, that lets you share Web pages you find around the Internet and send them to your Twitter account. BigTweet even tries to double down on Twitter by letting you send upwards of 280 characters, should you want to. (Updates over 140 characters are broken into separate Tweets)


Sending a tweet from BigTweet's bookmarklet, to 280 characters
The concept of a bookmarklet is something that has grown increasingly familiar to users of various social networks. I've got a folder full of them that lets me add items to social networks like socialmedian, Twine and FriendFeed, or other more specific items, like those that let me add bookmarks to Delicious, and RSS feeds to Toluu or Google Reader.


The same tweet, with some symbols added in for emphasis.
BigTweet's bookmarklet enables you to share any Web page you are browsing and send it to your Twitter account. The full URL is truncated with the bit.ly URL shortening service (see their blog for an update), and prepopulates the title of the page with that on the site you are visiting. BigTweet lets you add a description of the URL you are sharing, all the way to 280 characters if you wish, counting down to your limit, and even add special characters, from smiley face emoticons to arrows, and other symbols.


Thanks to Twitter Still Needing OAuth, My User/Password Combo Go Here.
Like many, many other services that leverage the Twitter API, BigTweet requires you to enter your user name and password to get registered. The author, Scott Carter, promises he won't misuse your data, which has largely gone unquestioned by every other Twitter 3rd party service, with the exception of Twitterank a few weeks ago.

Sharing items on Twitter is something many are looking to do, in addition to using the site to post their location (from BrightKite), their new blog posts (from Twitterfeed), or just about anything else these days. BigTweet's bookmarklet means you can do it from anywhere, without leaving that page. The service's added symbols and double the characters are also a plus.

Hardcore FriendFeed users might find the service slightly redundant, as they can use FriendFeed's bookmarklet and have the native FriendFeed item hit Twitter as well. But the FriendFeed bookmarklet, as cool as it is, won't allow for custom symbols and will cut off anything beyond 140 characters, so there's room for another bookmarklet in your browser bar. You can check BigTweet out at http://bigtweet.com/.

TiVo's Mobile Interface Gets Things Recording on the Go

Despite having pioneered the world of set top boxes and time shifting recordings, TiVo hasn't become the dominant business success its many hard-core fans (including me) had hoped it would. While its issues ranged from competing with monopolistic cable companies to rigid payment structures, to being a near zero when it comes to blogs and the social Web, they have eked out the occasional update that has us hoping more is to come. Among them is their new mobile Web site, which launched just last week. (See WebWare and Gizmodo) On the road myself this week, thanks to the Thanksgiving holiday, I can connect with our home TiVo boxes using my iPhone and make sure I don't miss any TV I may have forgotten to tell the units to record before leaving the house.

TiVo's mobile application may not be as ground-breaking as their DVR interface is (or once was), but the offering is simple and just works. If you head to m.tivo.com, you gain the equivalent of their Web site, from daily picks and most popular TV shows, to a search option that lets you search for TV show titles, actors, directors and other show-related items.



TiVo Mobile's Simple Interface
Most importantly, by choosing the "Settings" option, you can choose which DVR is linked to your mobile account, after you have logged in, and you can add shows to the scheduled list of recordings. Either select a show from the daily picks and most popular items, or from your own search results.


Searching for NFL Turns Up a 49er Game
Using the mobile TiVo site via my iPhone, I was able to search on the term "NFL" and find all shows that had the NFL in the title. A few clicks later, and I was able to find the San Francisco 49ers' game at the Buffalo Bills is to be played on Fox this upcoming Sunday at 10 a.m. I could then click to "Record This Episode", determine the recording's priority, quality and whether it would start or stop outside of its scheduled time. Upon completion, I even got an e-mail confirmation to my account to let me know the request had been successful.


Setting the Recording and Getting Confirmation
Some of the characteristics of the mobile site are rather basic, from the links on gray backgrounds to the pull-down menus, but assuming the site is intended for use on a wide variety of mobile phones, and not elite smartphones like the iPhone, that makes sense. Now, if I find myself learning of a new show or one I'd like to record on the go, I can do so just by grabbing the iPhone and heading to m.tivo.com to TiVo's mobile site. Maybe there's hope yet still to keep this tech pioneer alive.

Don't Forget to Say Uno On Your iPhone!

UNO was among the first card games I ever learned to play. I remember being of kindergarten age, playing against my father, and starting out with only three cards per hand, rather than the usual seven, as my own hand was too small to manage a standard game. As I grew older, I was able to master the full deck, and determine strategy between all the Draw Twos and Draw Fours, Skips and Reverses. And now, I can play UNO on my iPhone, as the classic card game has been added to the application store, surprisingly with all the wrinkles the game has to offer.


Don't Forget to Tap UNO.
If you're willing to spring for the $7.99 it takes to get the application, you'll find the offering to be impressively developed, with flashy game play and all the nuances of the actual contest - from forcing you to "say UNO" when you're down to one card, to giving players the option to challenge Draw Four cards, if you believe they still have cards in their hand of the color being played.


Uh-Oh... A Draw Four!
Over the last 25 years or so, I've "progressed" from holding three cards in my hand to seven and now just one hand needs to prop up one iPhone, where I can push game play with my finger using Apple's touchscreen-enabled mobile device.


Rules are Rules, On the iPhone Or Anywhere
The standard UNO play can be done from anywhere between 2 and 4 players, and cards are scored just as they were from the original bright red package. Number cards are worth their face value, Draw Two, Reverse and Skip are worth 20 points a piece, and the Wild cards are a plump 50 points if you get stuck holding them in your hand by the time your opponent finishes play.

The game also offers features the original offering didn't - from playing songs on your iTunes library, to online multiplayer gaming, and alternate rules. If you're not above paying eight bucks for a card game, UNO is a great addition to your iPhone app library. You can find it on the App Store here.

Ten Tech Things I'm Thankful For

I don't know about you, but some of the technology we take for granted still seems exciting and mysterious to me. Ever stop in the middle of your laptop and say - wow... I'm seeing streaming video, live, wirelessly in high quality? Ever stop when on a cell phone and realize you're talking to someone thousands of miles away and hearing them respond in real time? It may seem like we take these things for granted, and only speak up when there are problems, but that's far from the truth. On this Thanksgiving holiday, I thought I'd highlight ten things I'm grateful for that impact us in a positive way.

1) I'm Thankful for a Competitive Culture of Curiosity

Without curiosity and aggressive competition, innovation would be at a near stand-still. Experimentation, testing and looking for new markets or way to improve existing markets or products enables new ideas to develop, and new approaches to be found for existing products and activity. In Silicon Valley, entrepreneurialism is encouraged and celebrated, and it's actually okay to fail or work at a failed company multiple times in one's career, so long as you keep trying.

2) I'm Thankful for Expanding Bandwidth and Data Storage

Any of us can look backward at our first computers, and modems, and laugh at how many megabytes of RAM or hard disk space we had, or how we might have tried to get to the Internet at 4-digit baud speeds. Over the decades, you've seen a move on the network side from 10 megabit to 100 megabit, through 10 gigabit on the corporate side, and to high-speed broadband for consumers, not to mention 3G for iPhones and other wireless gadgets. Hard disks have grown from megabytes to gigabytes and now terabytes, enabling higher quality images, video, music and other data exchanges to take place quickly and be stored longer. The growth of bandwidth and data storage has essentially paved the way for the online software repositories, iTunes, YouTube and many other intensive Web apps that are powering today's digital economy.

3) I'm Thankful for The Removal of Geographic Barriers

We may have to get a passport to travel from country to country, but online, I'm talking and engaging with people from around the globe every day. While places like the Silicon Valley still maintain a lead in terms of available networking opportunities, the Web lets me connect with entrepreneurs in Europe, bloggers in Australia, India, and Canada, or around the world. In fact, just a few weeks ago I managed to reach Robert Scoble by cell phone when he was traveling in China, as I'd mistakenly thought he'd already come home. While it would take a day of travel to see him, I could get him live with a few taps on the iPhone. Also, I've befriended people from a wide variety of countries and places around the United States on the myriad of social networks.

4) I'm Thankful for the Ease of Publishing

The Web has dramatically increased the potential to publish in real-time over the last few years. For free, I can register to send short updates to Twitter, or full-length blog posts to Blogger, WordPress or TypePad. There is no application to fill out, or editorial board to approve content. The ease of publishing lets anyone with a voice or something to share get out there quickly to all interested to see.

5) I'm Thankful for the Ease of Discovery

There's a reason Google is thought of as the most successful company of our generation. They focused on the ease of searching and discovery of all the world's information - starting with the World Wide Web at large, and expanding to images, videos, books, news, and trying to ease discovery across different languages with translation tools. Google, and others, expanded to desktop search and discovery to let you find even your own documents. This ease of discovery speeds academia and business, and lets even the most obscure opinions or publications be found, assuming you're on topic and the searcher uses the right keywords.

6) I'm Thankful for the Ease of Data Mobility

Yesterday, I saw a road sign saying "5 1/4 miles" to our destination, and it reminded me of the old 5 1/4" floppy disks, which gave way to 3 1/2" floppy disks, Zip drives, USB keys, and of course, attachments by e-mail, which negated the need for much of the portable physical media. Now, I know that my data is accessible from the Web on essentially any computer or mobile device, no matter where I am. All my e-mail accounts flow to the iPhone. All my bookmarks are synched from my home computer to the iPhone, and I can log into any of my online accounts from any computer to pull down my data or get my personal experience.

7) I'm Thankful for the Ease of Access to People

The combination of the ease of publication and discovery makes it easier than ever to find ways to contact people, by phone, by e-mail, or through social networks where they are active. The old days of the Yellow Pages and White Pages and Blue Pages that you needed to thumb through to find local businesses or your neighborhood directory are gone, replaced by personal address books that stay on your computer and cell phone, and online directories that are searchable. Additionally, those who publish are often easily reachable, even if just through comment pages on their site, giving you a platform for conversation and exchange.

8) I'm Thankful for the Opportunity to Exchange Ideas

Nobody is an expert on everything, but just about everyone is an expert on something. Where I have weaknesses, or limited understanding, it is fairly easy now to find resources or individuals who have strength, and who are open to discussion. Combined with the ease of discovery and publication, rather than posting items here and waiting for people to answer, I can go to these sources and engage with them where they want to engage at their point of comfort - be it on their preferred social network, their blog, their user forum or bulletin board.

9) I'm Thankful for the Acceptance and Promotion of Standards

As technology consumers, we have our idiosyncrasies. I may prefer to use Mac OS X computers, and use the Safari Web browser. You may prefer Windows Vista, and like Internet Explorer or Firefox. But, in theory, our Web experience should be the same. While there was a time when Mac documents and PC documents or Mac formatted disks and PC formatted disks were wildly different and non-transferrable, both platforms have practically unified so documents and applications are largely equivalent on all platforms and an experience can be universal. The acceptance of standards for all things on the Web, from the GIF and JPEG standards to those for HTML, Java, CSS and PHP, ensure that Web sites and applications can increasingly behave appropriately and within guidelines, regardless of the consumer's setup and geography. While I know things could still improve, the community has made incredible strides in pursuing unity.

10) I'm Thankful for Never Accepting the Status Quo as Good Enough

Where much is given, much is expected. As Web bandwidths increase, as disk storage increases, as ease of access increases, and the number of people getting on the Web and using it for all aspects of commerce, friendship, and communication increases, the capability of each site and application gains the potential for improvement. And I've yet to meet a site or an application that simply stops working, saying they have stopped all bugs, and that the experience could not possibly get any better. Google is constantly improving and experimenting with their search index and results. Microsoft and Apple are constantly rolling out new iterations to their operating systems, their applications and their Web browsers. And startups are always coming and going, not just in an effort to make the people working there some money, but because they want to make a real difference through leveraging the cutting edge of technology.

As a consumer and as someone who for more than a decade has worked in Silicon Valley, looking to help develop and distribute differentiated products that aid customers, I know I will never accept what we have as good enough. But I appreciate the opportunity to exchange ideas, to reach new people, to discover new content and to publish where I can. That's part of what's enabled exchanges such as this. What are you thankful for in the world of technology and what do you believe I left out?

Semantic Gifts Mines Social Profiles for the Perfect Present

If your online friends haven't already pointed you to their Amazon Wish Lists (as many did last year), but you are thinking of getting them a gift this holiday season, guessing what they would like can be a lost cause, as you try and figure how their online persona and offline persona connect. Semantic Gifts, a new site launched in alpha in time for this year's Black Friday, tries to bridge that gap by perusing your friends' social network accounts, combined with clues you provide, and returning gift recommendations.

As the site's author, Adam Seever of The Wantrepreneur, writes, "Your friends' online content provides clues about their interests. We can mine those text streams and suggest gifts for them."


First, define what you think your friend likes...

The service, in its alpha stage, is very simple. First provide the recipient's gender, what you believe they are into, and the price bracket, and then provide their social media accounts. Potential entries are Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, and a blog or other online profile.


Second, point to their online profiles...

Hit "Find Gifts", and Semantic Gifts, in the background, returns recommendations.

In my testing, using friends like Cyndy Aleo-Carreira, Jesse Stay, Kevin Fox and Robert Scoble, I found the site to be weighted toward offerings from Think Geek (which may say something about me and my friends), but also saw offerings from Urban Outfitters, Toys R Us, and others.

You're provided with three options, and can click "More please" to refresh and get three more. If you are completely at a loss as to what to get your friends this holiday, give Semantic Gifts a trial run. You just might be surprised. And if you think there are no good matches you want to buy, just get something for yourself instead.

Not Everyone Reads Your Tweets, and That's Okay!

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

As founder of SocialToo, a startup that has a Twitter auto-follow feature, I've heard my share of comments on why automatically following those that follow you on Twitter or elsewhere is or isn't a bad thing. Some people feel it is less genuine if you use a script to follow those that follow you, while others think that as your network grows it is hard to manually pick and choose those that should or shouldn't be followed.

A script makes this easier, and while it has the potential to introduce more spammers into those you follow, services like my own SocialToo.com provide tools to prevent that through manual and intelligent blacklisting of individuals you don't want it to follow. The "genuine" relationship issue is a concern that makes sense though, and it begs the question on whether following absolutely everyone can actually reduce the strength of relationships you have with those you follow. I think with that issue people are missing the point.

It's About Relationships

Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, and other networks similar are all about relationships. Building and fortifying those relationships are important on each of the networks you belong to. Relationships are what define an individual. I remember working at a small Genealogy startup, OneGreatFamily.com, where we were able to identify exactly who an individual was by their relationship to those around them. If we could identify their grandparents, parents, children, spouse, and other aspects of those around the individual, we could then match those in the network with similar relationships and guarantee with near certainty that 2 individuals in the database were indeed the same individual.

Therefore it's important to be able to identify yourself by those you connect with to further establish your identity on the internet. In this case we're doing it by those you associate with in different ways. For the most part, when people "follow" you on one of these networks, they are showing interest in you. For one reason or another, they came across your profile and have established some perception of who you are. They are interested in you.

Therefore, when they put forth that effort to follow you, the polite thing would be to pay back the courtesy and show interest back to them. I think the issue we're all running into here is that as our networks grow, it becomes more and more difficult to pay attention to each and every individual. Therefore, does it really help solidify that relationship if you can't pay attention to everything they post?

You can have the best of both worlds!

I find the more new followers I get, and the harder it gets to manage each and every potential relationship. I only have 2,000 followers - imagine if you are Robert Scoble or Guy Kawasaki with 20,000+ followers! Therefore, for me, automation has become necessary where possible. The secret which I have come to realize is that it's okay to miss things your friends say! I'd venture to say that every person has at least 1,000 real-life friends, so it's a very real possibility this will become necessary for you as well.

Here's the thing though - most of my friends don't even realize that I can't pay attention to everything they say because I've developed a way to ensure the important posts come to my attention. Therefore, if I can be sure I can catch the things they want me to hear, and I get the opportunity to talk back to them when that happens, I now have the best of both worlds. I am following them, and I'm able to pay attention to what they want me to hear as well. That doesn't necessarily mean I pay attention to every word they say. It's okay to skim, or even miss posts!

Here's how you can do it:

It's taken me a couple years to master this technique, and I'm constantly discovering new ways to manage it better. It's important you find a way that works best for you, but here are some sure tools to allow you to follow those that follow you, and get the information that both they, and you need to obtain to ensure the best relationship between all those you follow:

• TweetDeck - TweetDeck is an essential for any Twitterer. I only recently started embracing this 100%, but boy am I glad I did! TweetDeck has enabled me to create a "favorites" group that ensures the most important people I follow I can track every single one of their Tweets from. This now becomes the equivalent to only following those people who are most important to you. Through TweetDeck you not only are enabled to follow everyone that follows you (through services like SocialToo.com), but also track those people that are most important to you at the same time.
• Twitter Search - Also available in TweetDeck (You can create custom windows that only return Tweets that match terms you specify. Not only that, but you can filter by keyword amongst your friends and even exclude terms!), Twitter Search is essential for finding the information, especially amongst your friends, that you need to hear about. You can search for a particular user's name, your own brand, your competitors, particular interests you have, and more, and all results get returned with a link to add to your RSS Reader. This means that every new Tweet with that term in it gets sent as a new item in your RSS Reader.
• TwitScoop - TweetDeck also integrates Twitter Search with TwitScoop, which will give you the top trending topics at a given time, letting you know the hot topics before even the news hears about them. TwitScoop's website will then show you all the people talking about that subject at a given time. Today I was reminded of Charlie Brown Thanksgiving on TV because people on the East Coast were talking about it before it came on in my area.
• RSS - Use RSS religiously. With TweetDeck this becomes much less necessary, but through both Twitter Search and FriendFeed, all your results come back with an RSS link. Be sure to add the searches you must not miss out on to your RSS Reader and you won't miss anything.
• FriendFeed IM - I use this to have replies to my posts on FriendFeed delivered straight to me, as they happen. This keeps me from having to keep checking back on FriendFeed for new replies. I can even reply back right in my IM window! See our previous article on this.
• FriendFeed Lists - FriendFeed has provided a "group" functionality, which they call Lists, similar to what TweetDeck provides for Twitter enabling you to track and organize the individuals you follow on FriendFeed. Each list is available real-time, so you can have a window open, and refer back to that list regularly. Again, skimming is okay - if you have your search and alerts set up you won't miss anything through this method.
• Treat @replies and DMs religiously! - This is important. If someone really wants to get in touch with you they will send you a message, either publicly or privately. It's important to note that in Twitter, you can't privately send a message to anyone if they aren't following you back. This is why it is so important to try and follow those that follow you - it gives your followers just one more way to get in touch with you, and gives you one more way you can talk with your followers. Pay attention regularly to those that reply to you or direct message you. I try to make it a habit to reply to each one, whether it be a short, "can you e-mail me?" statement, or a more personal message. This is your closest opportunity to one-on-one communication on these networks, so take advantage of it.

In the end, tracking all those that follow you is simply a matter of organization. Automation is necessary for this, and there will constantly be new tools to enable this. While it's important to not be offended if people miss your posts, messages, or Tweets, it's also equally important to do everything you can to catch those messages that people want you to hear. In the end, it's okay if you miss a Tweet or two of those you follow. It's also all about hearing the things people want you to hear.

(Jesse Stay is CEO and Chief Architect ofSocialToo.com, a startup that enables relationship management for those you follow on the Social Web)

Read more by Jesse Stay at Stay N' Alive.

Babysitting 2.0: Matthew and Sarah to Be Livestreaming Tonight

Online friends who make the transition to real life friends can be a lot of fun, especially if they retain the elite level of geekiness that made us find each other on any variety of networks. In the last few months, I've gotten to know Drew Olanoff (of ReadBurner and Strands, pictured on the left) quite well, and found him amusing, sharp and optimistic - all very good things. Tonight, we're going to put Drew in a rare, elite, class of friends by handing our five month old twins, Matthew and Sarah, to him and his girlfriend, Jeannine Schafer, tonight, as my wife and I step out for a rare evening alone.

And the best part of this babysitting gig is that you can follow along. Drew has always had a flair for podcasting and lifestreaming, so tonight's babyfest should be no different. (as he promised last night on Twitter)

Tonight, he'll be broadcasting the babysitting 2.0 event via Qik, and liveblogging it on Strands, where he is the community manager.

Since I won't be watching, I'll have to trust you let us know if things go awry.

You can follow along here, starting at 7 p.m. Pacific:
http://qik.com/strands

Drew's Strands account can be found here:
http://www.strands.com/drew

Should be fun! Enjoy all the bobbing, crying and feeding. We know Drew will!

25 Different Uses For FriendFeed

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

FriendFeed can be used for many different purposes.

The service's brilliance and simplicity leads people using and interacting on the site in a variety of ways, and each person's feed is different, based on who they follow, how they use lists, and what services they view. This post touches upon 25 different uses for FriendFeed, and displays how FriendFeed can be used, by anyone, for many different purposes.

1) Use it for its core function only, which is to aggregate all of your web activity into one central location.

2) Follow existing friends and make new ones. There is a good chance most of your social contacts already have FriendFeed accounts. If they are not on FriendFeed, your job is to recruit them. FriendFeed has an active and growing member base, finding new people to subscribe to is never a problem. I often spotlight unique members to follow on FriendFeed, you can locate the recommendation lists here, along with a short bio on each member.

3) Just feel like chatting? Use FriendFeed as a real-time message board. You can comment on every piece of content that is imported into the site. The content being aggregated into FriendFeed is very diverse, and spread across a multitude of topics. You will always find something that interests you. Create a new conversation instantly by using the post "message" feature, which will post your message directly to your feed, or topic related room.

4) Not in the mood for conversation? Participate by social voting, ("liking") the content members share.

5) Make FriendFeed your homepage. With the beauty of RSS, you can customize your feed to make it a start page. Import your favorite news sources, podcasts, Twitter stream etc. Duncan Riley wrote a few handy Greasemonkey scripts that add tabs containing most of the the popular social networking services such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader, and more to your FriendFeed.

6) Use FriendFeed for a private digital picture archive. This idea was spawned 6 months ago with the birth of my daughter, Kaylee. I needed one central place for storage of all the videos and pictures we shot of her. I also needed privacy options, as this would be for family members only. I set up a new private FriendFeed account, imported the video and picture RSS feeds into her account, and I was done. The next step was emailing family members a link to establish an account. Now when I upload new baby videos to Youtube, or pictures to Picasa , I simply notify my family members to check Kaylee's FriendFeed url. Some of my family members have even taken a fancy to FriendFeed. Grandma is now good for a few "likes."

7) Create imaginary friends. Socially stalk friends that don't use FriendFeed by using the "imaginary friends" feature. For example, if you know your friend's Flickr username, you can create an imaginary friend with that Flickr account, and every time your friend publishes new photos, you will be able to view them on FriendFeed.

8) Looking for invites to try out the latest shiny toy? Just ask in the Invites room, and you shall receive.

9) Create a focus group. By using the rooms feature, you can create a mini-feed for a particular subject or group of people. Everyone in your room can share stuff on the relevant topic, along with commenting and liking. You have the options to make your room public, where anyone can join, or private, where you have to invite or approve each member.

10) Search for groups first. Don't create a group if one already exists.

11) Use FriendFeed as a research tool. Use the advanced search function as your first starting point. There might even be a room created for what you are researching. If you are on a time crunch and need answers quickly, post a message on your feed, or the relevant room for quicker responses.

12) Brand monitoring. Companies can monitor for brand mention by using the search function to find it. FriendFeed aggregates data from many sources, so if it's on Twitter, or being blogged
about, more than likely it's on FriendFeed. Monitor your personal brand as well. Use the search function to track the amount of exposure your content is getting, and find what services and members are pushing the traffic.

13) Use FriendFeed for micro-blogging. With the exception of a few things, everything you can do on Twitter can be done using FriendFeed. It compliments micro-blogging, rather than replaces it.

14) Liveblog an upcoming event. Simply set up a room and invite others to join and participate in the event's coverage and festivities.

15) Use "likes" as a bookmarking system. It's not a Delicious replacement by any means, but it is an easy and quick way to mark and locate content for later use.

16) FriendFeed can be used as a Twitter interface. All tweets aggregated into the FriendFeed system have an @reply option using your Twitter credentials. You could also create an imaginary friend to follow certain Twitter feeds of interest.

17) Go straight to the fire-hose. Use FriendFeed as a social media search engine.

18) Share web pages easily with a single mouse click, by using the FriendFeed Bookmarklet. You don't have to rely solely on RSS and posting to the site. This is also an excellent off-site tool for clipping bits of content into FriendFeed. You can also directly post stuff to FriendFeed by email, using Mail2FF.

19) Organize the people you follow, separate the serious from the lol cats using lists. Lists allow you to create custom mood feeds.

20) Use Friendfeed as a collaborative business tool. Chris Brogan, has an excellent post on the possibilities.

21) Use FriendFeed as an RSS Reader. While it's no Google Reader, it will and already does the job.

22) View random Flickr picture feeds. View random Youtube videos.

23) Use FriendFeed as a platform for self promotion and the promoting of others. Support your peer's content by sharing it. If you are a lesser known voice that is just starting out,FriendFeed can be a powerful platform for getting your name out there. Good quality and character speaks for itself and it gets noticed on FriendFeed. Make sure you follow this advice first, if you want to be a rockstar on FriendFeed.

24) Use the FriendFeed widgets to showcase your FriendFeed activity on your blog or web site.

25) Use FriendFeed on the go. Browse the mobile FriendFeed on your smart phone or iPhone. You can also keep up with FriendFeed in iGoogle by adding their iGoogle gadget.

Read more by Mike Fruchter at MichaelFruchter.com.

Sharing, Self Promotion Always a Two-Way Street

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


Last month, I touched upon 35 tips for getting started with social media. Today I want to expand a little more on that, and focus on one key area for success, sharing and self promotion.

You just wrote a good piece of quality content, you are proud, and you want the world to know. The next step in the process, a topic that frequently comes up, mainly from beginners who are just getting started in social media, is deciding whether or not to self promote/share your own content. Social media is all about getting the message out there, and one of the easiest and fastest mechanisms for doing this is blogging. One can instantly create and publish content, but if no one is reading it at the other end, frustration sets in. It's time to change and learn new tactics. This is okay in the early stages because beginners make mistakes,and it's expected. What really matters is how you learn and grow from your mistakes. Some people feel as if promoting your own content is taboo, or there is some golden rule set in place forbidding this practice. I say go for it. You should absolutely promote your own content. Of course there is a right and wrong way to do this. Otherwise you come across as nothing more than a person with one agenda, your own. The last thing you want to do is come across as a desperate person spamming for clicks. Sharing and promoting are basically the same thing, there are just different tools and level variations used to achieve the same results, traffic.

One of the core fundamentals of social media is giving more than you get. Once you understand this principle, you will not have to rely on self promotion completely, you will have your network assisting you. Remember, sharing is caring. It's always a two way relationship and never one way.

Just starting out?

Self promote as often as possible, express restraint and etiquette on how you self promote. If you don't take the first step of informing the world that your blog exists, no one else will. Don't be fooled, nothing comes easy. You must crawl first before you walk. There is nothing wrong with broadcasting on Twitter, or sharing your content via Google Reader. Do it in a respectful manner, avoid luring people in under false pretenses, an example is using linkbait. Be honest and genuine in your approach, this means being yourself. People are willing, and do help other people. It's hard to believe in this day in age, but yes it's true. If you are new to this, let people know and ask questions, most of all have patience. Need a post dugg, stumbled, retweeted ? Just ask someone. Myself and many others will go out of our way to help a newbie just starting out, as long as you are sincere in your approaches, and are willing to learn and most importantly listen.

Self promotion starts with promoting others first.

Promoting your brand (you) and your content is the first step to getting noticed. This is easier said than done. You can use megaphones such as Twitter and Google Reader all day long to broadcast your message, but if no one is listening, you are wasting your time. The tools are facilitators only, not the final outcome. In the beginning stages these tools are more essential than ever. These are the primary instruments among many that you will use to promote others. The right to self promote, I believe, is earned to some degree. By promoting others first, you have earned this right, and you can expect the same in return, in due time.

Find, establish and continually grow your network.

Building your network is not about adding as many followers on Twitter and Facebook as humanly possible. All that equates to is building a meaningless numbers list. Building your network is about networking and establishing real relationships with the relevant people who are in your field. If your blog is about social media, then that is what your core network should be comprised of. Find the social media bloggers you read on Twitter. and subscribe to them. Retweet, and promote their content using other methods such as, bookmarking, Google Reader, Digg, StumbleUpon, etc. If it's a post you really like, be sure to let them know on Twitter or by leaving a comment on their blog. Take it a step further, write a blog post and positively link to them.This is how you establish and build an online network from nothing, and if chances permit, possible new offline relationships. Not everyone will take notice and reciprocate back, that's okay, it's to be expected. There are plenty of fish in the sea, reel in the line and recast.

Your network is a family and team, treat them as such.

Your core network online should be treated as a family. Always keep them on your radar, and be informed of their activities. Online this means being a support system. Sharing and promoting your network's content is only one dynamic for maintaining a healthy team. There might be times when members in your network need emotional support, or support for charitable reasons. Make sure when possible, you make an attempt to reach out and offer assistance. Families are teams, they stick together. Your success online, depending on how you want to measure it, relies heavily on your network and their reach.

You never get a second chance to make a first impression.

When starting out, make sure to promote your best content only. People's first impressions need to be reserved only for your home-runs. Wow people the first time, and there is a good chance they will be back. Content that is not home-run worthy, should be picked up naturally.

Use the best tools possible to facilitate promotion for self and others.

Sharing starts with RSS. Google Reader is the main workhorse for sharing your content. It is also the place where your networks, team members content resides and gets promoted. Besides being the most easiest and common way to share content, it also takes it a step further by allowing you to add notes onto the content you share out. Notes are a great way to add to the conversation, give an opinion, give a recommendation, or directly solicit conversation or feedback. Try to make an effort to use notes on the content you create and share. This makes your content stand out more, and adds a little depth and clarity about the subject matter. Don't forget to note your friend's content as well. Lastly, it is worth mentioning the power that lies behind the public linkblog Google Reader generates for the content you share.

Twitter is another fire starter. It's a quick and powerful tool to broadcast a message in real time. The power is in the listeners and responders in your network. For maximum reach your social profiles need to be established and maintained on the relevant sites. Twitter is one of these sites, do not rule it out. There is a reason you will find that most, if not all of your team members use Twitter for communications and promotion. New content also breaks first on Twitter, so listen and retweet as often as possible.

FriendFeed is the glue that keeps it all together. FriendFeed has become one of the most powerful tools for aggregation, promotion by far. Its sole purpose is to aggregate the content you generate from any of the 49 different types of services it supports into one central location. What knocks it out of the park is the simplicity, growing community and social features. You can instantly share any type of content, and often within seconds have a seal of approval on your shares in the form of a vote, which is called a "like" on FriendFeed. The more votes an item gets, the more you are looking at a home run. Voting is an added bonus, the real power is the ability to comment on shared items in real time. You can also post images and messages directly on FriendFeed. Remember we talked a little about asking? Like any other site, spend the time, look around and start to actively participate. Establish and maintain a strong following here, and you will be pleasantly surprised with the results.

Image by Padawan under Creative Commons license.

Read more by Mike Fruchter at MichaelFruchter.com.

Introducing Exchange Rates for Blog Comments and Interactions

Editor's Note: Allen Stern and CenterNetworks are not affiliated with this post or the exchange rates table -- yet. The CN logo has been helpfully borrowed.

In May, Mathew Ingram, Fred Wilson and others said that for non-professional bloggers, comments were how they got paid. The interaction and discussion that takes place on blogs, between the author and the consumer, is what most write for - the conversation. But recent tools that let people comment elsewhere, or interact on the original content in other ways has some saying users' actions simply aren't enough. As much of the conversation moves off the original blog, or people are sharing items in Google Reader or hitting "like" in FriendFeed, they are showing interest, but not engaging, causing some to wish for a simpler time when those services didn't allow users to show passive approval.

One of the more outspoken voices on this topic has been Allen Stern of CenterNetworks, who wrote on this blog earlier this month:

"early adopters are screwing early adopter blogs - period. Clicking share on google reader is not like leaving a comment on the source. Clicking like on ff or retweeting on twitter is not the same as leaving a comment on the source. I will have more on this soon as I think that lazyness has slowly ruined what was something beautiful."

And while he and I don't always line up with our beliefs on the same spot in the blog evolution chart, there is no question that some activities do more to encourage the original author and their content than do others.

In that spirit, here is the first attempt at an exchange rate for interacting with blogs. As Allen has been a chief proponent of giving original authors their due, I believe the unit of metric is best labeled as a "CN", in honor of CenterNetworks. It's also no coincidence you could call these "C Notes" or "Comment Notes".

To start, I argue that a comment on the original author's blog post should be counted as "1 CN", to establish a baseline.


Actions that are worth more than 1 CN, depending on one's network size and influence, include:

• Making a comment on the original blog, then blogging about that discussion on your own blog. (10 CN)
  
• Writing a new blog post on the same topic and linking back to the original author as the source. (5 CN)
  
• Submitting the blog post to StumbleUpon with a strong description and good tagging. (3 CN)
  
• Submitting the blog post to Digg, Reddit, or Hacker News. (2 CN)

Actions that are worth between 1/2 CN and 1 CN, depending on one's network size and influence, include:

• Retweeting the item on Twitter. (.8 CN)
  
• Digging an already submitted story. (.6 CN)
  
• Adding a vote on Reddit, Hacker News, or Mixx. (.5 CN)

Actions that are worth less than 1/2 CN, depending on one's network size or influence, include:

• Posting the item natively to FriendFeed. (.4 CN)
  
• Posting the item to Socialmedian or Strands. (.3 CN)
  
• Posting the item to Facebook. (.25 CN)
  
• Adding the item to your Tumblr blog. (.25 CN)
  
• Sharing the item in Google Reader. (.25 CN)
  
• Adding the item to your Delicious. (.2 CN)
  
• Adding a comment on the original item on FriendFeed. (.2 CN)
  
• Liking the item on FriendFeed. (.1 CN)
  
• Adding a comment to a reshare of the item on FriendFeed. (.1 CN)
  
• Liking a reshare of the item on FriendFeed. (.05 CN)
  
• Adding a comment on the item in Shyftr. (.05 CN)
  
• Adding a comment on the item in Facebook. (.05 CN)

These exchange rates show current market valuations, and are subject to change, based on the increase and decrease in popularity of associated networks and the sway of conventional opinion. Rates quoted are valid as of November 23rd, 2008, and were determined by a non-scientific measure of effort, influence and reach of the aforementioned external sites and activities.

As your activity gets further and further away from the original blog post, and the blog post becomes less of the story, but the third-party service gets to be more of the story or the destination, it delivers less perceived value to the original author, be it psychological, social, or in some cases, actually financial. While some of us early adopters are all too happy to expand a blog post's reach through our various social networks, and enjoy the new communities that are built there, it's not surprising that those who are seeing less activity on the original source of their stories are feeling something's amiss. I know that as I've gotten busier, I've taken less time to comment on the many blog posts out there, even as I'm making comments on the various social media sites, and sharing like I always have through Google Reader.

So if you want to show your appreciation to the author of a blog you've found particularly insightful of late, or who has opened your eyes to a new topic, don't just take the easy way out and hit "share" as the item flows through your RSS reader, or hit "like" on your social site, but take the extra time to rise up the CN chart and put some food on that blogger's table by making a comment and engaging. Allen and many others will be happy you did.

Every Night, I Sleep Next to My iPhone

Young boys dreaming of becoming world-class baseball players may sleep with their mitts under the mattress, hoping to break them into playing condition. Adults with major security concerns may instead sleep near a weapon, by their bed or even under the pillow. For me, it's my Phone that is my bedside companion. And it has just about as much to do with being a dad as it does with being a geek. And heck, if there were a security concern at any time, maybe it could double as a thrown projectile in a pinch...

As the father of five month old twins, waking up in the middle of the night is commonplace. While Matthew and Sarah have gotten a lot better recently about going to bed on a regular schedule and sleeping through the night, there are nights when things go completely awry, and my wife or I find ourselves up at 2, 4 or 5 a.m. So rather than sit idly, holding a bottle, and trying not to keel over from fatigue, I have been reaching for the iPhone and catching up on e-mail and the Web instead.

When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone without a built-in keyboard or stylus, many thought the decision daft. But one beneficial byproduct of the iPhone's streamlined interface is that it is incredibly functional, even if held in one hand. I can tap on Safari to launch the Web browser, and tap again to hit frequent bookmarks. I can tap to read e-mail and delete messages. While I won't be typing out long e-mails or making blog comments in the middle of the night, I am catching up when others are sleeping. Even if we are able to get the kids back to sleep and I end up hitting snooze on the alarm through 7 or 8 on some weekdays, there's a good chance I've already caught up and read the night's activity - seeing who has found me on the various social networks, who has left Disqus comments, and if anything major has impacted world news.

So if you're in a different time zone than I am and you see some "likes" on FriendFeed or Google Reader shares that seem out of place or come in what had otherwise been a quiet time, you can bet this is what's happening.

The kids are in bed now, and have been since 9 p.m., thank goodness, but I know that won't last. When I finally power down and try to get some sleep, the last thing I'll do before turning off the light is put the iPhone down where it's easy to reach, and make sure it has enough power to let me catch up overnight.

Mint.com Says I'll Be Bankrupt In Sixty Days At This Pace

When Mint.com first integrated the tracking of investments alongside bank records and credit cards this May, I was really excited to have a one-stop destination to see all my activity. But now, my weekly e-mails coming from the site are nothing short of a cross between a thrill ride and horror film, as one line stares me in the face: TOTAL. And peeking at the last three weeks' worth of updates shows that if I were to lose the average amount of money I lost each of the last three updates, my net worth would hit zero sometime in January of 2009. (Not on a percentage basis, but on an absolute value basis)

While I don't believe every stock I own will hit zero, and that I will have emptied all of my accounts, taking on more credit card bills than my actual assets, what was once trivial is eye-opening. While many say the smartest thing to do during this trying time is to not look at all, for me it's like a horrible accident on the highway. You can't help but slow down and take a peek. But unlike most of those accidents, there's actually more blood than expected.


My Holdings Are a Complete Disaster this Year (FriendFeed Discussion)
After a mild Spring and Summer that had my investments slightly trending downward, we all know what happened next - a massive cratering that has seen nearly everybody's financial situation turned upside down. 401ks and mutual funds that used to be stable and trusted are actually performing worse than the very worst individual stocks I've picked. One of the funds I am in dropped 24 percent last week, and another fell by more than 17 percent.

In six months, names that used to have the word "Trusted" next to their name are anything but. Fidelity. Citibank. Washington Mutual? Lehman? And yes, we know other companies in the news were less safe - General Motors, Sirius, eTrade itself... but as my own holdings are plummeting, it seems there is no safe place to turn, no "safe" investment to hold the money until things improve, be it in six months, two years, or more. Forget about Web 2.0 companies being shaky. Everybody's shaky.

For me personally, in years past, in the occasional case where I've needed to spend more money than I've had in my Wells Fargo Account, whether it be to pay year-end tithing for church, or to pay taxes, I've always known I can dip into my eTrade account and move money around as a backup. Now, that safety net has been eroded to the point I don't know that I can do that if I need to. I don't believe I'm going bankrupt, whether Mint.com thinks so or not, but unless something changes soon, we're definitely going to be putting off purchases, getting more frugal and settling for something less than we really want a whole lot more often.

And maybe I won't be logging into Mint.com all that often just to prove how bad things are.

Web Apps Should Keep It Simple For Success

By Rob Diana of Regular Geek (Twitter/FriendFeed)

Most people have heard the KISS acronym (Keep It Simple, Stupid). There is a very good reason for this. If you keep something simple, it is hard to mess it up. Why do I bring this up today? Well, I recently wrote about a conversation with my brother where he asked about Twitter and the conversation moved to FriendFeed. He immediately saw some point to Twitter, but FriendFeed was hard for him to understand. Many people have written "what application XXX needs to go mainstream" posts as well. Kyle Lacy wrote a "What Twitter Needs" post on Tuesday, and I commented that Twitter is going mainstream whether the early adopters want it to or not. There was also a thread on SocialMedian regarding what sites were your internet addictions. A few comments mentioned that they did not "get" FriendFeed or they found it "confusing" or "hard".

This got me thinking about the differences between Twitter, FriendFeed and SocialMedian. Why is Twitter so popular? Because it is simple. Is there a learning curve? No, or at least nothing you could not figure out in about 10 minutes. Is it hard to use? No, just go to the website, type your update and click the update button. Because of their API, there are several client applications that make using and listening to Twitter even easier. The other benefit is that it is very similar to a widely accepted application, instant messaging. Many people know how to use instant messaging applications, so moving to Twitter is not a big stretch of the imagination.

SocialMedian is finding success for slightly different reasons. Parts of SocialMedian are not the easiest to use. The concepts of Noise/Volume, filters, relevance of topics and sources are definitely advanced features. However, when SocialMedian started importing blog feeds and Google Reader shares, they made it simple to contribute to the site. Unlike Digg, Reddit and Mixx, I do not have to go to the site to share information, it comes from my daily activities. I only need to go to SocialMedian if I want to read some other posts I have not seen, or to participate in some of the conversations. The other major "simple moment" were the networks and the widgets that the team is creating. If you wanted to follow the election, you could just use the election widget. They just created another widget for President-Elect Obama Transition news. These widgets grab posts related to these topics only. How easy is that!

FriendFeed is a different story entirely. Once you add your accounts and subscribe to various people, the site is fairly easy to use. However, many of the early adopters are used to subscribing to a blog using RSS and seeing every post. If they are subscribing to people's activity, they typically expect to see all of the posts for all of their subscriptions. If you subscribe to even just a few "active" people, you will miss a lot of posts. The important thing to remember is that you have to accept the fact that you will not see everything. Once you "let go" it is much easier to get used to. Generally, it is difficult for the average person to get used to the firehose of information that is fed to you.

Personally, I am an information addict and struggle trying to limit the amount of information I consume. FriendFeed is a very good service for information addicts like myself or even on a greater scale with the likes of Robert Scoble and Louis Gray. Am I saying that FriendFeed will never go mainstream? No, mainly because they are continually making things simpler. First, you could hide entries from a particular service. Then you could segment your subscriptions into lists. Recently, we received the ability to hide a specific feed for one user. With each iteration they are trying to make things simpler.

Why is simple so important? Because simple drives adoption in greater numbers. FriendFeed is gaining popularity already, but massive growth requires simple.

Read more by Rob Diana at RegularGeek.com.

FriendFeed List Organization, 60 Days In

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

In September, FriendFeed launched the redesign of their site, along with a new feature, lists. Friend lists are a way for you to help you organize your subscriptions into groups. In theory, it's a great system for trying to maintain an upper hand in controlling the voracious FriendFeed firehose.

So far, it's been approximately 60 days since I created and started using my lists. I'm in the process of overhauling my list system and these are some of my observations thus far.

Organization works.

The hard work is spent in the trenches, sorting members by interest, and creating the lists. Once the lists are established maintenance is relatively easy. Organization is the key for a better FriendFeed experience. Surf smarter on FriendFeed, not harder.

Create topical lists for your core interests only.

I use FriendFeed for a multitude of purposes. I first use it for a business tool, then a tool for recreation and everything else. I spend a majority of my time in my "social media/tech" lists. I'm in the business of social media, so my core list reflects those interests. These lists are comprised of friends and bloggers I follow in the industry. There is power in numbers, but small numbers is the key to making topical lists work. Keep your focus lists smaller, this makes it more focused, and can be more meaningful. When you try to create lists for everything, you will face an unmanageable nightmare as your subscriber base grows.

Keep your lists small and focused.

Trim the dead weight, and keep your core lists of focus small. Fifty or less should be a good starting point. Filter correctly, the goal is, information source quality and not quantity. You don't need several hundred voices echoing the same tune, when only the minimal is needed to produce the same results. The influential and key players are your authoritative voices for your core lists. Everything below this line should be branched off into a manageable new list.

Creating tiered lists equates to fake following.

I find myself spending too much time in my social media/tech lists, so I created three tiers as an overflow buffer. My tiered lists, which is what I thought was a great idea at first, is flawed and actually has decreased my interactions with a large group of FriendFeed members.

Here is how I set them up initially:

Page A: This is my FriendFeed all star page. Highly active members who I have established connections with and interact with daily. I often network with them on other social networks and platforms. This is my core inner network.

Page B: Members with moderate activity. Moderate for me is not also your posting frequency, but the content you post as well. I usually have a good tolerance level for topics such as politics and religion. However, when it overwhelms my feed, you will have then made it to the b-list.

Page C: Members with low activity. This also serves as a holding tank for members I have yet to classify, and who are newly subscribed to me and vice versa.

The top tier A, gets my attention the most. The problem I'm now running into is the list has gotten too large, and I have certain members tagged in multiple lists. The A page is myFriendFeed all star page, but a lot of the all stars, such as Robert Scoble also comprise of my social media/tech list. I have created duplication issues, because it's impossible to accurately label members, as most people have diverse interests in multiple topics. Lesson learned, keep it simple.

The second tier has become neglected, it's become a deserted highway I seldom travel anymore. To avoid letting these members be forgotten on my part, I will often upgrade them to page A. This brings them higher on the radar screen. When all else fails, I will use the red button, as outlined further below.

Page C was set up primarily as a holding tank for new subscribers that I have yet to classify. It has also inadvertently become a fake following list. I will peek my head in from time to time on that list, but as with page B, it does not get the time and amount of attention it should be receiving. The list is not totally flawed, the holding tank function also isolates the members with low FriendFeed usage, and for members whose feeds are filled with tweets about what they ate for dinner last night, along with repeated Brightkite checkins etc etc. I still find occasional items of value on their feeds, so I don't unsubscribe, and I rarely use the hide function.

The holding tank is exceeding and quickly reaching full capacity. FriendFeed seems to be experiencing another growth spurt, they come in waves, and we are in the middle of one now. I welcome new followers, and if we share similar interests, I usually will reciprocate. The current rate at which the new follower notifications are coming in is faster than I can green light their security clearances for approval, out of the tank and into other lists. I do my best to review all new followers, and if the situation warrants it, I will reciprocate.

Now the holding tank has become the primary destination for new subs, with minimal chances of getting a review to visit the list deportation and destination department. So yet again, I will set up some time, and prune through these lists to make sure I spotlight and highlight new members for visits to the list deportation and destination dept.

Lists have helped me excel and manage certain interests and activities much more efficiently. The downside is, it leads to fake following and or a severe lack of attention for a minority of my follower base. I have just under 1,000 people subscribed to me, and I'm equally subscribed back to about the same. No matter how hard I try, it's impossible to accurately manage, organize and keep tabs on this amount of people.

Push the red button and take back your FriendFeed.



Finally I decided to take back my FriendFeed, I needed a lifeline. This drastic problem needed a drastic solution, and rather quickly. The solution, thanks to a tip from Louis Gray was to create a new list and bulk move my entire follower base to it. With lists, my dilemma was what to use the home feed for.

My home feed became an inactive and wasted feature. Instead of creating a new list, I added everyone back to my home feed, and the playing field has been evenly leveled. Although it's still a sea of people and content, it's the way the old FriendFeed was, and in some respects I like, and miss that.

Read more by Mike Fruchter at MichaelFruchter.com.

TweetValue Debuts Another Way to Rate One's Twitter Profile

Some days, it seems like more people are developing tools to help people measure their Twitter profiles against others than there are people developing tools to make Twitter better. In the wake of Twitterank, Twitter Grader and others comes a new entrant: TweetValue, which assigns not just a numerical score to your Twitter account, but a dollar value, essentially answering the unasked question, "How Much is Your Twitter Profile Worth?" And unlike the more controversial services, it doesn't require that you enter your password, so you can check out your score and still sleep at night.

The new service is simple, in that all you do is post your user name, and TweetValue returns your "worth". In fact, it's not too surprising it's simple, as the "About" page claims TweetValue was created in a mere four hours by Swedish developer Jonas Lejon. The secret sauce, he claims is that the value "is calculated with a Ph.D algoritm (sic) that is based on your public information available on your Twitter profile."


TweetValue Shows Top Values Without a Dedicated Leaderboard
According to TweetValue, my own Twitter account is worth $1,034. It's not clear if that means I could sell my profile for $1,034, or that is what it's worth per month, or ... something else, but TweetValue helpfully offers the values of other visible Twitter users, including Chris Brogan, who weighs in at $8,145, and Jeremiah Owyang, who posted a value of $3,984.

So what do we have? Yet another metric without an underlying real value, and yet another way for us to measure ourselves. If you want to get your own TweetValue, head to www.tweetvalue.com. If you want to tell the world how you rate, go ahead and enter your Twitter password and send it through. They promise not to store it.

15 Secrets of FriendFeed's Power Users

By Daniel J. Pritchett of SharingAtWork.com (FriendFeed/Twitter)

The FriendFeed social network is a powerful resource. With it you can connect to some brilliant people and learn new things as they learn them. Converse with interesting people around the world around similar interests. Stream together separate news sources into a single place and then kick off some great discussions about them. Read on for fifteen ways that other users are making FriendFeed a more valuable tool for all of us.

1. Promote other people's shares with likes and comments. Robert Scoble does a great job of directing his tens of thousands of readers to worthy content via his Comments+Likes page as well as his Google Reader shared items.

2. Promote other users' profiles to get them broader exposure Mike Fruchter puts out a regular series of "FriendFeed users to follow" on his blog.

3. Run an excellent room. Zee moderates some hugely active rooms like Startup Success and Apps. Hutch Carpenter created a different style of room: The Enterprise 2.0 Room doesn't have much user interaction but it splices together E2.0 news from a variety of sources like Twitter and Delicious.

4. Share videos. Not everyone is here to read blog posts and text blurbs. Rahsheen does a great job of publishing personal and humorous videos on a regular basis.

5. Cross-link as much as possible. If a related discussion springs up elsewhere on the internet, cross-link the posts so that people picking up one part of a thread can join in the conversation.

6. Build a well-liked FriendFeed add-on. Benjamin Golub's FFtoGo was so well received that Ben got a job at FriendFeed!

7. Pictures get attention, so post directly to FriendFeed when possible . This can include repurposing Google Reader shares. Take a look at these pictures to see how much more activity my native FriendFeed posts get than my RSS imported posts.

8. Stream in your other social media profiles when appropriate. If you use FriendFeed often enough you'll find yourself crafting your Tweets and your Google Reader shares with FriendFeed in mind. "How will this share display on FriendFeed? How can I make sure FF readers know what this link is about and why they should click on it?"

9. Advertise FF and your stream outside of FF. Zee has made his FriendFeed profile the centerpiece of his personal homepage. Louis Gray has his FriendFeed profile in a sidebar widget on his site. Get your own widget on the FriendFeed tools page.

10. Bring a good mix of content. Some of us tend to focus our FriendFeed activities around a particular niche that interests us. Others take a wider approach and share wonderful things from all over the internet. Check out Mona Nomura, Cee Bee, and Mo Kargas.

11. Share the things that make you unique. I love the fact that FriendFeed has a lot of librarians like Jill who are ready to jump in whenever I post a misguided thought on information science.

12. Tend your shares. Respond to comments on your posts and the posts you've commented on. Keep the conversation going and you'll add lots of value to the community.

13. Bump someone else's post rather than creating a duplicate. You've just read a great blog post and you want to share it with the FriendFeed community like the selfless poster you are. Before linking it directly, why not search and see who else has posted this? This is a great opportunity for you to "Like" an existing post and then add a useful comment of your own. Doing this will probably find you a few new worthy people to follow. Example: GMail's new Themes feature got a lot of simultaneous reactions. You can take your pick of posts on this topic and join an in-progress conversation.

14. Give a hat tip to the source that brought you any re-shares. This is good practice for any medium. Sometimes I'll find a good link on someone else's blog but then share the original article with a comment like "thanks Ted for finding this" and a link to Ted's related post.

15. Contribute to the FriendFeed Feedback Room. Anyone can do this and it's a great way to help the FF community. You'll be impressed at the quick responses of the FF staff.

More, more more!
Contributors are discovering new ways to interact with FriendFeed every day. Why not leave a comment describing your most valued FriendFeed practices?

Read more by Daniel Pritchett at SharingAtWork.com.

15 Tools for Your Twitter Toolbox

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

There are hundreds of Twitter applications on the market, many of which have been covered previously on this blog, including a number of clients, such as TweetDeck and Posty. With the Twitter ecosystem continuing to grow, as evidenced by last night's post on SocialToo, I wanted to touch upon a few that I use, and that I feel are unique and useful. This post highlights fifteen different Twitter tools that I believe would be excellent additions for your Twitter toolbox.

1) Twuffer



Twuffer is a simple, useful utility that allows you to schedule pre-written messages for posting at a later date in time. You could use this tool for setting up reminders for upcoming birthdays, meetings, appointments, paying bills and so forth.

2) Twistory


Twistory brings Twitter and Google Calender together for a marriage made in heaven. Simply add your Twitter backlog feed into any of your favorite calendar applications, and you have a perfect date/time synced Twitter diary. This is a great tool for efficiently creating one central, what I call, visual productivity hub for your Twitter data. This application makes Twitter an ideal application for a digital Rolodex.


3) Tweetake


Tweetake only has one purpose, and that is to provide you with a backup of all your Twitter data. Data is backed up via a .CSV file. It's good to periodically download a local copy of all your Twitter followers, tweets etc. If Twitter ever suffers a catastrophic technical failure, it can not recover from, you will be isolated from any data loss.


4) TweetStats


TweetStats is nice metrics tool that gives you graphed visual statistics for data, such as posting interface used, tweets per day, tweets per hour, tweet timelines and reply statistics. You can also see the latest trends being talked about on Twitter.


5) TwitterCounter


Twitter Counter gives you a graphed snapshot of your daily follower counts. You can track daily growth or lack of it, and it will also give you an estimated follower count for the oncoming month, based on it's data. The other notable feature they provide is a Twitter follower count chicklet. It's identical looking to the Feedburner counter chicklet, whereas this one displays your Twitter follower count.

6) TweetCloud


Everyone loves a good word cloud. Tweetclouds allows you to create a word cloud from a public Twitter users stream, or from any words of text you freely input.


7) TwitterLocal


This is a great tool for finding and filtering out public tweets within a certain geographical area. You can search for activity by city, state, or postal code. An RSS or XML Feed is generated for your search results. Add the RSS feed into Google Reader, and track local activity there. They also offer an Adobe Air App, so you can track tweets from your desktop.


8) Tweetburner


Tweetburner is a URL shortening service. It allows you to create short URLs, share them with your friends over Twitter, and view click statistics for your shortened URLs.


9) TwitStamp


TwitStamp allows you to create badges to display your most recent Twitter statuses on your blog or website. You can also create "twitcard"badges, as pictured below. These are clean and simple, and should compliment any website or sidebar nicely.


10) Qwitter


Qwitter is a helpful and creative way for using Twitter, basically as a support journal and tool for smokers looking to kick the habit. Each time you smoke, send Qwitter the number of cigarettes you just smoked by posting an update to Twitter. Every day, Qwitter adds together all the updates you sent that day and adds them to your progress graph. Qwitter can also connect you with other Twitter users who have or are going through the same experiences as you.

11) Twinfluence

Measure the combined influence of you and your followers. This could be a great boost to your ego. How influential is your Twitter social net?

12) Less Friends


Do all the people you follow on Twitter follow you back? This tool will help you find out. It may be time to do some pruning.

13) Twitturls

Twitturls shows you the most popular links being talked about on Twitter, in real time. Content is pulled from public Twitter streams, ranked and listed on the site. You can see what the current buzz is all about.

14) iTweet


iTweet is an alternative Twitter interface for use with both your web browser and your iPhone. The web based interface has a clean user interface, and comes loaded with pretty much everything you need. It has built-in auto-refresh, search and hashtags, full follow, block, notifications user profile features and more.

15) Twidroid


Twidroid, I thought deserved a worthy mention, because it's the first full-featured Twitter client available for Android mobile phones. It was released only a few weeks ago, and is currently available for download in the Android market.

Read more by Mike Fruchter at MichaelFruchter.com.

SocialToo Launches SocialSurveys for Polling Via Twitter

For the last few months, I've been using a service called SocialToo to transparently and automatically follow those people who choose to follow my accounts on Twitter and Identica. Rather than resort to manually deciding who to add to my list, or going to other services, such as Twitter Karma, SocialToo has been automatically synchronizing my lists. Today, the author, Jesse Stay, also a frequent contributor to this site, has rolled out a new feature aimed at making the service much more interactive and differentiated, with the launch of SocialSurveys, a viral way to quickly poll your followers on Twitter.

As with other online polling engines, creation of the survey consists of posting a question and listing potential answers. You have to list at least two choices, of course, but you can theoretically post as many options as you wish.

When the survey is completed, you can then check the box that sends the URL for the survey via Twitter, and hit submit. This sends the survey to Twitter, and automatically reduces the URL using the is.gd engine, to fit in Twitter's strict 140 character limit.

Given that SocialToo is "social" by nature, you can even sign up to follow surveys your friends have created, using RSS.

The addition of SocialSurveys is an interesting wrinkle atop what is already a fairly strong feature set for SocialToo, despite its spartan interface. You can not only autofollow the Twitter and Identica registrants, as I mentioned, but you can blacklist people from ever following you, or even automatically unfollow those who stop following you, essentially acting as your own personal Qwitter in the background. And if you want, you can even route your personal socialtoo.com domain to your Facebook profile.


How SocialSurveys Appear to Visitors

The Results of the SocialSurvey, In Bar Chart Form
SocialToo, authored by Jesse, is partly owned by Guy Kawasaki. Kawasaki, upon the launch of SocialSurveys, is sponsoring the site with Alltop ads for the first few weeks.

My ID on SocialToo, as with just about all other services these days, is "louisgray", and louisgray.socialtoo.com routes to my Facebook page. To see my first SocialSurvey, on who will own Yahoo! by 2012, check out: http://socialtoo.com/survey/view/49.

Simultaneous Downtime for SmugMug and Twitter

There comes a time in every site's life when it'd be easier to lay down than to keep fighting the uptime fight. And tonight, for whatever reason, both SmugMug and Twitter have opted out of the process. While life continues to function, and geeks still have the option to head to Flickr, FriendFeed or Facebook (or any other social network starting with F) to get attention, two of Web 2.0's more engaging companies took a much needed rest around midnight Tuesday morning, and as downtime is a much discussed issue, it appears both sites have gone the extra mile to deliver high-quality graphics to keep us amused as they tackle database issues or anything else that might be getting in the way of their standard operation.


SmugMug Takes A Breather
That means instead of floating birdies and a failed whale, we get pictures of an ice cream cone and caterpillar from Twitter, and the SmugMug logo watering old servers in vain.


Twitter Cools Off, Whale-Free
The Twitter Status blog doesn't indicate the reason for the database efforts, though it may be related to SMS delivery problems mentioned earlier in the day. Meanwhile, SmugMug's service blog doesn't mention any reason for the unexpected downtime, but image display on FriendFeed was completely broken.

As both services use Amazon S3, this could be signs of a wider outage, but that's just speculation at this point.

Meanwhile, Google is still up.

15 Tips on Improving Search Engine Visibility

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

I will first start by stating I am not an SEO expert.

Over the years, I have studied and tested various methods, guidelines and techniques for generating search engine traffic. Back in 1997, I took on paid clients and SEO became a full time career for a few years. AltaVista was the dominant leader in search in those days. Learning how to control and manipulate the engines to get front page search results became my main objective and an obsession. Today, things are a lot different, as there is basically one dominant leader in search, and the playing field is more level than it's ever been.

Most of these practices and techniques are still very much relevant today as they were then, so I thought I would touch upon a few of the key ones.

1) Start with your domain name.

You have heard it before a million times, register a .com domain name. The domain spelling should be as equivalent to someone typing that word in a search engine. It should be relatively short and easy to spell as well. Try to avoid hyphens and or any unnecessary or unusual character variations. Most search engines still to this day give a lot more weight to .com extensions, as opposed to other TLDs. Keeping the domain name easy to spell and avoiding hyphens is more for branding purposes, than SEO. Search visibility can still be achieved with a confusing, long character riddled domain that makes no sense at all, but will someone be able to find it, and most importantly remember it without the assistance of a search engine?

2) Establish quality inbound and outbound links.

Search engines, more specifically Google, ranks your site based on the amount of inbound links it has from other sites. Spend time and get authoritative sites linking back to you. Inbound links from these sites are worth their weight in gold. Links from an authoritative site also influence ranking. More weight is given to these inbound links because these sites are considered a trusted and or leading source as they are considered the most influential on a particular subject matter, e.g. Wikipedia.org

3) Understand PageRank.

Websites that Google believes are important and influential receive higher PageRank. A Higher PageRank can influence better search results and rankings. Authoritative sites, for example, usually have a high PageRank. PageRank is worth taking note of, but should not be your main focal point. You can check a site's PageRank by going here, or by installing the Google Toolbar.

4) Put relevant keywords on all of your Web addresses.

Make sure any content you publish on the web has the keywords of the subject or story headline formatted in the permalink/web URL. If your are writing a post, for example, about how FriendFeed was just acquired by Google, you would format the URL similar to this, http://www.yoursite.com/friendfeed/google-acquires-friendfeed.html, or http://www.yoursite.com/google-acquires-friendfeed.html. Notice the sub-directory in bold has the keyword of the story subject. Take advantage of whatever you can to give as much URL mention of the target keyword as possible.

5) Headlines and page titles should always contain the target keywords.

In combination with having the relevant keywords in your URL, the same emphasis, if not more, needs to be placed on placement of keywords in your headlines and page titles. If you do no optimization at all, at the very least always practice these three guidelines. It's also a good idea to put the relevant keywords of focus first in the headline and page title, and if possible somewhere in the start of your story content. Failure to practice these guidelines will leave your site buried pages deep in the search results, rendering it almost nonexistent, at least to the search engines.

6) Start a Blog.

Blogs are a major source and very relevant source of information for millions of people daily. Blogs are also influencing consumer's decisions to buy products. Think about the last time you searched for something on Google. There is a high probability that you found your information on, or were referred from a blog. Search engines, specifically Google love blogs for the rapid amount of fresh and timely content they produce. Setting up a blog is very easy, and if tweaked correctly can be a powerful tool for search engine traffic generation. Configure your permalink structure immediately after installing your blog. Spend five minutes tweaking the basic admin settings. I would also recommend installing and using plugins such as the "All in One SEO Pack" available for WordPress. Now you can focus on producing the quality content that will get your site linked to and noticed. Give and get as much "link love" as possible. Become an expert in your field and let your content reflect that. Use the power of RSS to convert that search engine click into a return visitor.

7) Use keywords as anchor text when linking.

Anchor text is weighted highly in search engine algorithms and subsequent search results. Anchor text gives the user and search engines descriptive information about the content of a hyperlinks destination. Use Anchor text keywords, especially as often as possible when linking to pages. Avoid using "click here" at all costs, this will do nothing to increase or improve visibility.

8) Install Web Analytics software.

Flying blind is foolish. You need to first measure, and understand your traffic patterns and behaviors before you can seek to improve it. Installing Google Analytics should be your starting point.

9) Utilize Sitemaps.

Sitemaps, are basically a list of all the pages pertaining to a particular site. This protocol allows you to notify Google about URLs on your website that are available for crawling and indexing, that may otherwise have not been discoverable by Google's normal crawling process. They also should help with getting your site crawled in a more timely fashion.

10) Use Google Webmaster Tools.

Google's Webmaster Tools, allows you to see your website the way Googlebot sees it. The tools provide data on finding out which sites link to yours, finding search queries that list your site as a result and finding which of your site's pages are indexed, and also showing you any errors Google encountered while crawling your site. Those are the core features, but there is more under the hood. The goal is to make your site as Google friendly as possible. The more data you are armed with and utilize, the better your chances are for higher visibility in search results.

11) Produce and publish quality content with some frequency.

Write quality content and publish on a regular basis. Sites that publish more frequently are seen as more reliable than sites that seldom do. This also helps for you to increase the amount of content on your site, which in turn yields more indexed pages, which then yields more visibility, increasing the quantity of search clicks to your pages.

12) Use Headline tags.

Headline tags (h1, h2, etc.) are a great place to use your targeted keywords, phrases and secondary keywords. Search engines recognize that headline tags are more important than the surrounding text, therefore they assign greater value to keywords found within them.

13) Don't forget about the other engines.

Google, the gorilla, produces the biggest quantity of search traffic for the majority, but don't forget about Yahoo & MSN. It's at least worth the effort to stay current on both of their publishing guidelines. Yahoo has a resource for web publishers, as does Microsoft to help you better optimize your pages for their engines.

14) Consistency is the name of the game.

Focus on what works and run with it. There is not one single magic bullet for achieving better search results. It's a combination of these practices and understanding what criteria the search engines look for when indexing your pages. Search is all about optimizing for the relevant keywords or phrase, master this practice and it will pay off. Don't expect results instantly. It takes time to build up your content, establish inbound links, tweak and re-tweak.

15) It gets better by using social media.

Guess what? If you are active in social media, you are probably already ahead of the game. Social networking profiles such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter all get favorably indexed, and always rank on the top of the search results. This is especially great if your goal is for personal branding. Being active and maintaining consistency, should easily allow you to own your name in Google. Social media is probably the most invaluable tool you could use for traffic generation, if executed correctly. User generated content and the applications that power them such as, blogs, wikis,video, social networking sites, bookmarking, microblogging, etc are the leading mechanisms for search engine traffic, and will only increase as time goes on.

Image courtesy of Silent under Creative Commons license.

Read more by Mike Fruchter at MichaelFruchter.com.

Twitterank's Leaderboard: Odd, Mysterious and Broken

The launch of a leaderboard for the once-feared Twitterank was inevitable. After all, in the online world, if you can measure something and give it a score, then by all means the next step is to rank people from high to low, and provide a leaderboard. It's happened with blog "influence" (Technorati). It's happened with mentions on Techmeme. It's even happened with how frequently people's items are shared on Google Reader (Feedheads, RSSmeme and ReadBurner). As ranking one's Twitter influence has been tried several times by a bunch of different sites, from Twinfluence to Twitter Grader, Twitterank was practically destined to join the crowd. On Friday, the site launched a "Top 50" list and after watching the dust settle a bit, I have to be extremely amused by the results.


Every ranking system has its flaws. And considering Twitterank's algorithm is both secret and changing, according to its author, Ryo Chijiiwa, initial hiccups are no surprise. But glancing at the top 50 tells me that Twitterank must measure influence in a very odd way, contrary to just about every other measure I've seen out there.

For example, according to Twitterank, the #1, highest scoring person in all the world is Scott Beale of Laughing Squid. (@laughingsquid) Scott's account garners a score of 237.591. His own Twitter account shows he (as of Monday after midnight) is following 1,636 people, has 19,307 followers, and has made 5,285 updates. This does not rank him among the top 50 on Twinfluence in total reach, but he does reach #20 on Twitter Grader.

In the #2 position on Twitterank is Brian Solis (@briansolis), who weighs in with a score of 235.847, and Twitter activity of 582 following, 8,033 followers and 3,524 updates. This activity garners him the #43 position on Twinfluence and #22 overall on Twitter Grader.

While Twitterater's top list does have a lot of "household names" like Dave Winer, Michael Arrington, Jeremiah Owyang and Steve Rubel, there are some big oddities, including at least one account that has never sent a message on Twitter at all.


Let's be honest, there's no way I should be this high.
For example, Loic Lemeur (not pictured, but at 226.91) actually ranks below me in the rankings, despite his following and being followed by almost five times as many people, and sending ten times the amount of updates. Meanwhile, Leo Laporte gets a 179.87 ranking, well off the top 50 list, despite having more than 60,000 followers, behind only president-elect Barack Obama and Kevin Rose of Digg (that I know of). And the ever-present Robert Scoble gets only a 188.63, also keeping him off the Top 50.


Leo Laporte, with 60,000 followers, misses the leaderboard?


And Scoble, Mr. Twitter, doesn't break 200 either?
So how does that make any sense? I was going to guess that Scott Beale ranked highly thanks to his high followers to following ratio, but Leo Laporte's ratio is an astonishing 120 to 1, so that, in theory would rank higher. And Scoble's real numbers are off the charts in almost every metric.

Another canary in the coal mine - the account of @google, which ranks #13 overall, according to Twitterank's Top 50, but has only 366 followers, isn't following anyone and has never updated their Twitter account.

So... @google, a user with no updates, has a higher Twitterank than does Scoble, who tops out at 39,000 followers, and more than 15,000 updates. Whatever you think about the content of Robert's tweets, whether they be too frequent or too off-topic, to say that an unused account is among the top in the world is as they say in the Web world... a big FAIL.

That Twitterank has an algorithm which measures something is clear as it gets some of the names you'd expect, but there are still a lot of questions around this service. Right now, it's basically a toy, and has little value.

Brand Reputation Management Is Not a Monday-Friday Gig

The concept of a workweek starting at 8 a.m. on Monday and concluding at 5 p.m. the following Friday is cute, but not all that realistic in most cases. Whether you're in sales or engineering, marketing or technical support, there seem to always be tasks that need your attention outside of the listed business week in the company handbook. With the rise of the Web and realtime response and discussion across social networks, managing a brand's reputation is absolutely a 24 by 7 operation. Sometimes, as a groundswell takes on your company, or your products, waiting until Monday to react is simply not an option, for the damage will already have been done.

Today's victim is the pain reliever Motrin, who posted a condescending ad that had many parents seeing red. The ad, posted on their main Web site, essentially stated that carrying one's baby in a sling or backpack would cause undue pain, requiring their product. While delivering a need and solution makes sense, they unnecessarily mocked babywearing as being in fashion, and making you appear like a real mom. The condescending ad ignored the reality of needing to go "hands-free" simply to function, fashion be darned. As a father of twins, I may not be a mom, but I often carry one of the kids around in a sling or a baby carrier, whether to do dishes, or just to type without having to go one-handed. And Motrin's ad was misguided. After my wife viewed it, she said she was surprised the ad got through a series of reviews and passed.

(See the video archived on YouTube)

While not incensed as many mothers said they were, and in a household that didn't have Motrin in the medicine cabinet anyway, we discovered the ad through the power of Twitter, which was ablaze with mommybloggers slamming the campaign. (See: #motrinmoms)

On a weekend not dominated by major news, Motrin's brand got stomped on, and waiting around until Monday to pick up the pieces would be too late. After almost a day of getting dissed, the Web site finally went down tonight, either through exceeded demand, or by way of the company's intervention.

When I talk to brand managers about social media, I recommend three clear steps:

1. Understand
2. Observe
3. Act

They need to understand that your brand is at the mercy of its constituents. And you need to be using monitoring tools to rapidly discover and act upon how it is being used or mentioned - no matter what day it is.

Some basics to get started:

• Twitter Search - to see realtime mentions of your brand or keywords.
• TweetBeep - sending alerts of keywords or your brand to e-mail.
• BackType Alerts - to see whenever your brand is mentioned in comments around the Web.
• Google News search - alerts to e-mail for your brand.
• Google Blog search - alerts to e-mail for your brand in blogs.

These alerts will be automatically sent to you around the clock, even if the doors to your office are closed and the lights are off. Be aware of these services, monitor what is being said, and after all this, act. Don't just react, but do so thoughtfully.

And if you were curious to see just how I look wearing a baby carrier, check out the photo on FriendFeed.

See also:
Marketing Mystic: In Motrin moms debacle, the winner is Twitter
The Standard: Motrin learns there's a downside to viral advertising

Incredible Web Efforts Made to Shield Victims of Santa Clara Shooting

Note: I recognize this is an extremely sensitive issue, and one that continues to develop, so the words I use here are measured. Condolences to all affected by this horrible incident.

On Friday, as you most likely know, an employee of Santa Clara-based SiPort, who had lost his job that morning, returned to the office and took the lives of three of his former colleagues, the CEO, VP of Operations and head of human resources. In such a difficult economic climate as we are facing now, many saw the horrible incident as one emblematic of the tough times. Michael Arrington of TechCrunch called it "a Sad Day in Silicon Valley." Knowing the startup culture well, and living in Sunnyvale, neighboring Santa Clara, I've been watching the story, and was somewhat relieved to learn tonight that the alleged perpetrator had been brought into custody, having been captured in Mountain View.

The human tragedy here, when taken out of the macroeconomic view, is devastating. The three lives were not statistics or meant to be examples. These were people with families, with jobs and goals, people who were taken from the Earth way too soon, and in a horrific way.

But as information consumers, looking to learn as much as we could about this incident as news developed, to be both informed, and alert, as the suspect was not apprehended until this evening, it has been interesting to see how much effort has been taken to reduce the information available to the public in terms of learning about the company or the victims themselves. Almost immediately, on Friday night, SiPort shut down all pages of its Web site, with the exception of the main page, including hiding the management page. And today, the entire site itself is empty (unless you view the Google cache).

With today's Web world leaning toward one of transparency and posting copious amounts of information, it's no surprise that the victims of the shooting had created online profiles, including on the career-oriented site of LinkedIn. VP of Operations Brian Pugh and human resources lead Marilyn Lewis, who lost their lives Friday, had posted online resumes. (Pugh, Lewis)


The Mercury News' Early Version Cited LinkedIn as the Source
In fact, it was via LinkedIn that reporters garnered much of their data on the victims themselves. An early version of a story in the San Jose Mercury News stated, "Lewis, who lived in a San Jose, worked at NeoScale Systems before joining SiPort in November. 2006. In a LinkedIn profile, she wrote," but in a subsequent filing of the story, this piece was amended instead to say, "In an online profile, she wrote."


Subsequent Updates Did Not Mention LinkedIn
Just past Midnight on Sunday morning, LinkedIn's Web site is down, so it's not clear if the online career site has been asked to either take down or modify their profiles, but the effort by the Mercury News to remove the reference to LinkedIn in their article seems to have been done to discourage curious Web viewers from further invading the deceased's data. The way in which these victims lost their lives is well outside of the focus of Mike Fruchter's Mashable article from last month, What Happens to Our Social Profiles After We Die?, but the data we do post on the Web about our home, work and hobbies is something that cannot be hidden, or erased, even after we might be gone.

(Update: LinkedIn is back up, and both profiles still are there, without changes)

The incident is horrible, and very close to home, geographically, as well as in terms of understanding the issues of stress, strife with colleagues and the demands one's career can place on the rest of your life. I also understand the desire for families to want privacy and for news media and others to be extremely sensitive to the victims, but to pull the data, or make it more difficult to learn about the human side of this tragedy may make it more difficult to relate to, not less. It is also very interesting to see how efforts are made to pull data and have it disappear from a Web that is built to not lose it.

When Mom's Away, Dad and Twins Play

My wife is in the middle of crunch time to complete a massive paper for her Masters' Degree program in World History. With her facing a 30-page submission due in the middle of this upcoming week, I've been pulling extra time covering Matthew and Sarah, including virtually all of the last 30 hours or so. Not that I mind all that much, as it's afforded me the opportunity to get more pictures on the record, post some short videos to YouTube and sync up with SmugMug. And while the most ardent followers on FriendFeed (and Twitter or Facebook) have seen much of the content already, I thought I'd share some of it here as well, retaining some of the personal nature of this blog, even as we've swayed heavily toward tech, and you've seen new writers crop up.

As not everyone is as digital as we are, we've had requests from the extended family for more formal photos of the twins, so they can share them in Holiday letters and such. But when everything is digital, it's hard to explain to my grandmother just why there's no such thing as a negative any more. So... we trucked off to J.C. Penney's last Saturday and got the twins photographed in studio. As most parents will no doubt tell you, they were worst behaved when we needed them to be good, and were smiling most just five minutes after we left. In between the cries and complaints, the team managed to snag some pretty good photos. One is below, and all are uploaded to SmugMug.


Sarah and Matthew from the Recent Photo Shoot
As Matthew and Sarah get bigger, approaching five months, they have filled out quite a bit, and are no longer needing to be constantly held. This affords for more "tummy time" and they are now interacting more with one another, even if it is just a quick poke or stare.

Their growth also affords us the opportunity to try out new toys. My favorite (and theirs) is a new jumper to bounce in our doorway. Padded with blankets, due to their small size, both Matthew and Sarah have spent some good time in the jumper, bouncing to and fro, and expending energy until they tire out and beg for food.


Matthew in the Jumpy Swing
As has been true since their very birth, their growth is being chronicled and shared with you. Some might fear for safety and privacy, but we're knowing that transparency and openness is the way to go. Kay Ballard even called it "Family 2.0". All I can say is that as we got two kids at once, maybe it's fitting.


Sarah in the Jumpy Swing
To see all our baby videos, check out our YouTube channel at: http://www.youtube.com/user/asypta.

Glue Tries to Become the Web's Social Network Adhesive

The age of the walled garden social network seems to be fading. While you still have extremely active social networks with dedicated users, the data inside the vast majority of these sites is ripe for the taking, as you can display photos, status updates, new entries and other posted items, in new locations, thanks largely to RSS. In fact, the most widely known walled garden of the day, Facebook, is slowly opening up to the standard Web, as they recently announced Google will soon index those fan pages you have signed up for. But is there room for a different type of social network, that follows you to many different sites, running as an add-on to your Web browser?

Glue, a new entry from Adaptive Blue, hopes so. Their offering, an extension to Firefox, tries to show friends' activity on a myriad of different sites, starting with entertainment items, such as books, movies, music and restaurants. As you look for something fun to do, rather than reading a review from somebody you don't know, you can see what your friends have recommended. Additionally, rather than asking you to sign in to a single location, Glue decentralizes the information, and shares it with you as you go to integrated sites, from IMDB to Amazon, Flixster and more.


Glue shows your friends comments and likes of items around the Web.
Once you have added Glue to your Firefox browser, the extension comes to life any time your Web experience crosses paths with their list of sites. When browsing a film that your friends have said they "liked" or added a comment, shown as "adding two cents", you can see that atop your browser window, running in a horizontal strip above the page's content itself.

If your contacts have previously "liked" an item or added their two cents, you can put your mouse over their avatar and see what they thought. You can also click through any single individual's profile and see all of their relevant activity. If they have rated other books, films or music, you can scroll through their marked items. Instead of needing to go to a third-party service, like Shelfari or Goodreads, Glue tries to store this data, accessible from any enabled site.

As with many other services, Glue becomes more useful once you have registered your profiles with other networks, added friends and racked up activity. You can register different services, such as Facebook, Twitter, Last.fm, FriendFeed and LinkedIn, and can even use these networks to find friends who are already using Glue. Assuming you have activity on those networks, you won't have to start off lonely and without friends.

I'm not a huge Firefox fan, preferring Safari, and any time I find a new tool, I wish it had perfect compatibility, across browsers and platforms. That Glue doesn't support every browser out of the box might slow its adoption, but once it's installed, it is a very simple tool that doesn't require a lot of maintenance. If you spend a lot of time looking for new entertainment on the Web, Glue might mean you have friends coming with you to help decide, whether they know it or not.

You can "Get Glue" at www.getglue.com.

Additional coverage of Glue from around the Web:

• ReadWriteWeb:
  Put The Social Web In Context With Glue's New Browser Plugin
• CenterNetworks:
  AdaptiveBlue Launches Glue

Does Anybody Care About Non-Blog Commenting Anymore?

This Spring, when the tech blogosphere discovered Shyftr, a next-generation RSS reader, had launched with comments on their service, alongside full feeds, you would have thought they'd barged into bloggers' homes in the dead of night, stealing their money, their laptops and punching them around besides. Despite comments from me and others who believed this to be a natural progression of RSS readers and aggregators, their missteps landed them on virtual page one, and they haven't really escaped the many bad things thrown their way since.

But since Shyftr's unfortunate early flub, we have seen sites that are centered around other people's contents continue to grow in popularity, and in many cases, they feature conversations that are native to the service, but don't flow back to the blog. Meanwhile, some are doing more than just featuring a headline, but have excerpts that can at times display the vast majority or the entirety of a blog post. Has the Web collectively grown numb to this, and have we accepted this as "fair use"?

One tech developer wrote me yesterday, highlighting the way many posts were being displayed on the growing news discovery site, socialmedian. He wrote, "I'm sitting here finding example after example of this on Social Median? Do you think people are giving them a pass? Do people not realize that this is happening? Or do they just not care anymore?"

As socialmedian displays upwards of 1,100 characters of any given story, shorter stories could be posted in their entirety, without the original author's permission. As socialmedian now lets its users pull in content from Google Reader shared items and other sources, the author doesn't have to explicitly provide approval for their content to make it to the site. And on that site, users can engage in conversations around the content, without that data being ported back to the originating blog.

Some examples of these short stories (plus conversations) on socialmedian are here:

• Original story on Twitterati: Twitter Revenue Just a Matter of Time
• socialmedian story: Twitter Revenue Just a Matter of Time
• Original story on GHacks.net: Is Windows 7 any different?
• socialmedian story: Is Windows 7 any different?

As Shyftr operated this Spring, before having the Techmeme crowd go after them with pitchforks and torches, socialmedian unifies each article shared to the site in one thread, showing the multiple people who "clipped" it, and unifies the comments in one siloed stream.

So how is this different than the mini-scandal that erupted just over six months ago?

I've been a vocal proponent of socialmedian, and have seen the site take off over the last several months. I have also seen that the site doesn't pull in full feeds, but instead clips longer items. I can't remember the last time I published a blog post that was less than 1,100 characters after all. So I asked Jason Goldberg, socialmedian CEO, to help explain their limits and thinking. He wrote:

"While crawling the sources, we fetch short summary and full content (if exists in feed). While displaying the story on different pages of socialmedian, we first check if we have short description and show it after truncating to a certain limit. If short description is not present for the story we truncate the full content and show it. On the story page we check if we have full content for the story and display it after truncating it to 1100 chars. If we don’t have full description, we show the truncated short description."

Goldberg's response shows the team has given the issue of "fairness" a lot of thought. Unlike Fav.or.it, who believes it has every right to show full feeds and pull in comments from the original blogs, socialmedian consciously clips the data after a certain length. And outside of the story itself, depending on the page, or whether it's in an e-mail alert, these limits are even smaller, between 130 and 325 characters.

So what's fair? We've largely accepted that aggregation and bookmark sites like FriendFeed, Digg, Reddit, Hacker News and others are allowed to post URLs and headlines and allow for conversation. We have largely accepted that it is bad behavior to keep the full content of a post and integrate comments. But in between is a gray area. Can I borrow one paragraph? Two? Can I show the first few graphics you use? At what point does it move from linking and enter the land of scraping?

I would venture a bet that as the social Web continues to evolve, we have gotten more accepting of sites centered around other people's content. I believe you can't undo the move to aggregation sites, and conversations will occur where people want them to, not necessarily on your blog. I believe that sites that offer attribution and a link back to the original source are providing their own sites as a distribution and reference medium, so I don't find fault with services like socialmedian. But it's likely that others aren't realizing their content is getting in the site, and it's not getting out. So what are the standards that one should follow? And do we care anymore?

You can find me on socialmedian here: www.socialmedian.com/louisgray

Are We Really That Addicted To Social Networks?

By Corvida Raven of SheGeeks.net (FriendFeed/Twitter)

I think we may be taking social networks a little too far or too seriously. As MySpace underwent rapid growth, we saw one cell company relentlessly market to its audience: Helio. Do you remember the Helio? They were a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) that launched back in 2006. They marketed their phones to those who were serious MySpace addicts. Essentially they offered MySpace on the go, before all the mobile apps were made available to the public. Since then, there have been talks of Virgin Mobile acquiring Helio this past September, but you could esentially call Helio defunct at this point.

Today I caught wind of an announcement for a new Facebook phone. Is this where we are headed, people? Are the Facebook and Myspace apps not enough that we need entire cell phones dedicated to these social networks? Or are people just looking to get rich quickly off of the hype surrounding social networks? And it's not as if these have a record of working - remember Mobile ESPN?

These devices serve the same purpose as the Web site itself! Who in their right mind is going to spend money to access the site on the go via a completely different phone, when they can just as easily get an internet data plan added to their current cell phone to access the site or simply wait until they are near a computer. I'm beginning to wonder what mainstream is really thinking about when they see the hype that surrounds social networks. As much as I'm addicted to Twitter and FriendFeed, I would never purchase an entirely separate device just to access them. What's the point? I sense the beginning of a serious addiction problem for those that take things this far.

What do you think of technology like this? Is it a waste of money for both consumers and the company? Or will they become the next big thing in the future of tech?

Read more by Corvida Raven at SheGeeks.net.

Reno Bloggers Slam TwitterVoteReport After Limited Analysis

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

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

You can read Conrad's post here.

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

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

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

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

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

According to one of the organizers of TwitterVoteReport:

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

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

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

Read more by Jesse Stay at Stay N' Alive.

Recording: Emerging Media Event Panel

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

I have embedded the recording here:


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

Twitterank Can Have My Password, No Questions Asked

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to Discover New Content

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

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

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

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

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

1) Google Blog Search

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

2) Blogs/Blogrolls

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

3) Social Bookmarking

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

4) Twitter

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

5) Toluu

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

6) Share and discover with friends through Google Reader.

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

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

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

Read more by Mike Fruchter at MichaelFruchter.com.

It's Not About the Technology, Stupid

This morning, I had the opportunity to speak on a panel with the well-traveled and well-respected Chris Heuer and Tom Foremski of Silicon Valley Watcher. The three of us, speaking to a group primarily comprised of PR and Marketing professionals looking to get a grasp on new media and emerging social tools, discussed how to better track your brand online, how to interact with prospects, and how the move toward the semantic Web, including tagging and group-derived suggestions, would pose both new opportunities and challenges.

While the conversation got technical at times, I felt the places where I connected best with the audience was when I talked to them in terms of e-mail, iTunes and spoke their language in terms of understanding how they had to answer to multiple clients, who each wanted to broadest visibility, in a time when media outlets are disappearing.

A few hours later, this afternoon, I was back on the phone talking social media to a group of PR people looking to, again, figure out just what the heck Twitter and FriendFeed are and why they would have any value to their own outreach campaigns. And I could tell, based on their responses, that to take on these new tools sounded daunting.

Frankly, we, as consumers and developers, for the most part, are not doing a very good job of explaining these tools and making them simple enough to comprehend to the average layperson, let alone adopt. In describing these services, we need to do a lot less about talking about 140 character limits, feeds and aggregation, and instead talk more about connections, sharing and community.

What we need to do is help translate these honestly geeky tools into something that makes sense to the mainstream. Instead of talking about how many people you're following, APIs and how you use TweetDeck to follow specific terms in Twitter, start by explaining that the service is essentially text messaging that gets recorded and can be sent to many people at once. As for FriendFeed, I always explain it by breaking up the service into its two pieces. The Feed captures all your activity online. The Friend lets you see what your friends are doing, find new ones and interact with each other's content. Don't talk about 40+ supported services and how you can redirect to Twitter or Facebook. Start with the basics.

At Blog World Expo this September, Chris Brogan famously teased Jesse Stay with a comment I posted to Twitter:

"Look, tech dork, software doesn't solve problems, humans solve problems."

But the mistake is an easy one, especially for people who don't have a background in PR, communications or marketing, because the technology itself can seem so exciting, and to be honest, it can at times be fun to sound more knowledgeable and "elite" above those who don't have the same understanding.

At times, I find myself clenching my teeth and wincing when I hear an engineer or elite technologist try to explain how something works. What users don't want to hear is the process of how things work, but instead what the results are, and how they can benefit. So let's be real clear - these new tools, no matter how many lines of code you have developed, have in most cases been made to offer a solution, so make the story about the user, not about you.

Help use their language and their own frames of reference to make the services less intimidating and overwhelming. Don't throw them into the deep end without a life jacket, but walk them down the steps holding their hand until they get used to the water.

Is Social Media Keeping You Out Of Touch With Reality?

By Corvida Raven of SheGeeks.net (FriendFeed/Twitter)

For me, social media is one of the greatest things to hit the web since RSS. I love using tools and services like Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Brightkite, Toluu, Disqus, Tweetburner, ReadBurner, RSSMeme, and tons more. The vast amount of connections I've been able to make since March would not have taken place had these social media tools and services never existed. They've made connecting with others across the globe so easy and simple. They've also landed me numerous jobs and job offers. However, when I decided to use social media to get off the computer and out of my house I began to wonder if social media was keeping me out of touch with reality.

For one, because of LinkedIn, I've yet to update my resume. Honestly, my resume is months behind my LinkedIn profile at this point and I dread updating it. I dread it because it's so much easier and much more flexible to update my LinkedIn profile. Resumes have too many rules and restrictions. I find it hard to show my personality in my resume. This is quite the opposite for me when using LinkedIn.

However, I began to realize that if LinkedIn disappeared off the face of the web, I'd have to do some serious thinking about how I would update my resume now. Also, I love the recommendations feature of LinkedIn and I've accumulated numerous recommendations. Unfortunately, I can't drag these over to my resume. Who's really going to read them in the corporate world? When I set back and thought about all of this, I felt so out of touch with reality. If there ever came a day where I needed to get a job offline, I'd probably be devasted because all of the work that I've put into my accomplishments are available online and I have no desire to pull them offline. "Real people" would think I've lost my mind.

Secondly, I'm beginning to become irritated with my offline friends that have no clue about the tools that I use. They come to me with questions and problems and I can't help but wonder what the heck do they do online? How could you not know about the vast array of tools available that can help you accomplish just about any task. This irritations progresses everytime I log into my online class. Unfortunately, the school has no type of social media offerings that I know could make things a lot easier for me. Give me a calendar or an RSS feed! Send me a tweet or something. We use forums for our group projects and I feel like they're out of touch with "my world" and I'm some type of alien. Meebo chat anyone?

Unfortunately it gets worse, but I won't elaborate on how. Instead, I'd like to ask you what are some ways that you feel social media is keeping you out of touch with reality? What are you doing to bridge the gap? Tell your story in the comments section or on FriendFeed!

Read more by Corvida Raven at SheGeeks.net.

BackType Adds Digg, Reddit In Path To Comments Nirvana

Last week, I had the opportunity to meet with Christopher Golda and Michael Montano, founders of BackType, and talked with them about the growth of the site, and their continued efforts to become the blogosphere's number one repository for comments, tracking, search and alerts. Among the first steps they promised, and have already delivered, was the option to add comments you make on social services Digg and Reddit to your profile page. Along with the site's recent integration with FriendFeed, BackType has risen in visibility and functionality, even as few are using the site to its fullest potential.

As Golda and Montano explained over lunch Thursday, the site was originally started to track comments activity by friends they followed from around the Web. With so many different commenting systems out there, from WordPress to TypePad, Disqus and more, no one service provided a full history of individuals' activity, and they saw an opportunity to create a product that was built around comments and the people who make them, rather than individual blogs and their readers.

As BackType has gained awareness, the founders have so far been surprised by the high number of people using the site for social media marketing - tracking keywords for their company and the competition, but it's become a natural evolution of a service that can gauge a company and its products' visibility across the Web. Extending the services that BackType tracks, like Digg and Reddit, makes the product's database more robust and diverse.

Additionally, the rapid integration of BackType to FriendFeed has helped raise the product's visibility, they said. Now, assuming the blog you comment on is being tracked, any comments you make on the Web, assigned to your e-mail address and name, can be pulled into your FriendFeed stream, like Disqus and IntenseDebate have been doing for some time. (You can see my BackType stream in FriendFeed here)

Interestingly, at least for now, the BackType integration into FriendFeed does not track comments from Disqus or IntenseDebate. Golda and Montano offered FriendFeed a "Disqus and IntenseDebate free" version of the feed, as to not avoid overlap from those who had already turned on those services, but FriendFeed took that as the standard, meaning users who want all comments still need to integrate both services. (For example, my Disqus feed is also live.) This might change later, but FriendFeed would need to make the update, and their "to do" list is no doubt long.

As BackType's database has grown, so too has its functionality for companies looking to track their keywords across the Web. I've even set up an RSS feed from BackType for the company where I work, so if we are mentioned in a comment somewhere, our PR firm will see it and have the opportunity to respond or evaluate quickly. You can set your own alerts by e-mail on the BackType.com site or use their Trends site to see the velocity of updates. (Examples: Google, Seesmic, and Obama.)

Smart marketers and public relations people are already searching news, blogs, and Twitter to monitor their brand. To track the brand across comments throughout the Web using BackType is just as important. While you can still follow people and discover what they're saying at the blogs they frequent, and discover new sites, I think BackType will become a more integral part of people's social media monitoring than anyone ever expected. Adding Digg and Reddit, while small additions, just makes their sphere of tracking even more thorough.

In case you want to see what I'm saying on BackType, follow me here: http://www.backtype.com/louisgray.

30 Different Uses for RSS

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


I'm making an effort to become less reliant on visiting websites for the data I need. Spending a majority of my time in Google Reader, I decided RSS could help me accomplish this task. I no longer have to visit Yahoo to read my horoscopes or sports scores. I now track my Ebay auctions from Google Reader. These are some of the ways I started to recently use and rediscover RSS.

This post touches on 30 different ways RSS can be used.

1) Tabbloid is a "hatchling" project that comes to us from Hewlett-Packard. It's a very simple and useful utility that turns your RSS feeds into a personal magazine via PDF format. You can generate your PDF files on the website, or have them emailed to you.

2) Track deals for hotel and airline fares at Expedia,Travelocity,Orbitz and Kayak.

3) iTunes music store RSS generator allows you to set up notifications based on your genre for new releases, top songs, top albums, featured albums and exclusives.

4) Track your favorite sports team news and game scores at Yahoo Sports. Basketball | Baseball | NFL | Hockey

5) Simpletracking.com lets you view the latest tracking information from all the major US shipping carriers. No need to go directly to the carrier's website anymore. Get notified when your package tracking information has changed directly from your feed reader.

6) Create customized news feeds and track specific keywords. You can get a feed for any search you do on Google News. First do any search on Google News, then simply use the Atom or RSS link on the left-hand side of your search results page to generate the feed. Here is what my FriendFeed Google news feed looks like.

7) Track your favorite online comics strips. Tapestry Comics maintains an RSS directory of comic strip feeds. Dilbert, xkcd and several hundred more feeds can be found here.

8) Create customized Ebay auction search feeds. Keep track of Ebay auctions with ease.

9) Set up custom feeds for job searches using the Indeed job search engine. As with Google News, the process is the same. RSS job feeds are automatically generated on the search results pages.

10) Get real time reports about current traffic incidents in your area. Traffic.com delivers RSS feeds of traffic information for most major U.S. cities.

11) Be notified of severe weather warnings and advisories for the United States, issued by the National Weather Service.

12) Get notified of the latest movie and dvd releases courtesy of Movies.com.

13) Get notified of current airport delay courtesy of Flightstats.com.

14) Listen to the President of the United States radio addresses.

15) Get the latest NASA news articles and press releases.

16) Read your Daily Horoscopes.

17) Send RSS feeds to Twitter using TwitterFeed.TwitterFeed is a simple utility that will check an RSS feed for updates and send them to Twitter accordingly.

18) Get notified of RSS feed updates via SMS messages sent to your phone.

19) Convert RSS feeds to audio recordings. You can also subscribe to them as podcasts via iTunes, and download your recordings as an mp3 file.

20) View the latest public pictures being uploaded to Flickr. You can also generate custom RSS feeds based on a multitude of parameters detailed here.

21) Generate custom Picasa RSS feeds for your family pictures. You can also generate feeds from public pictures. All search result pages will generate an RSS feed for that keyword. Here is one I set up for "Dogs."

22) View the real time public Twitter time line. You can also get your Twitter account time line by going to your Twitter profile page. Scroll to the bottom right of your profile page and you will see an RSS link located there.

23) Keep track of your recently played Last.fm tracks. Replace mfruchter with your Last.fm user name. ws.audioscrobbler.com/1.0/user/mfruchter/recenttracks.rss

24) Keep track of what you and your friends are bookmarking. If you wanted to find out what Louis Gray has bookmarked recently, you could go to his FriendFeed or Delicious url. Better yet you could check your Google Reader. To find yours or a specific Delicious user's RSS feed, simply goto their Delicious profile page and scroll to the bottom right of the page where you will see an RSS icon. You can also generate custom RSS for specific keywords/tags. All tag search result pages will have a corresponding RSS feed option. Here is one I set up to track of all recent public bookmarks tagged "twitter."

25) Watch the most viewed YouTube videos of the day. You can also customize this to your liking based on this criteria.

26) Keep track of new products on Amazon.com. Never miss when new items become available. You can generate an RSS feed for just about any product category Amazon has to offer.

27) Try an RSS feed matching service to find new feeds based on your interests. One that comes to mind is Toluu. Toluu allows you to upload your existing OPML file to their service, they in-turn will match you to new feeds and members who share similar preferences in feeds.

28) View all of your publicly shared RSS items on one web page. This is a great built in feature of Google Reader. Any item you star or share is automatically saved on a public html page that Google generates for you. Here is what my shared page looks like. To see the public page containing your shared items, click the "Shared items" link in your Google Reader. You'll see a list of everything you've chosen to share, along with a link to the page where they are displayed.

29) Use Google Reader as a new tool for microblogging. With the ability to “share” or “share with note" option in Google Reader, you can leave comments and invite conversation on posts you publicly share. Aggregate Google Shared items into a site like FriendFriend, so others can voice their thoughts as well.

30) Get the best of FriendFeed without ever going to the actual site. FriendFeed generates RSS feeds for almost every user function of the site. You can view your mainfeed as well as your, comments and like feeds in Google Reader. Have you created any topical lists? You can get RSS feeds for your lists too. I have found this function particularly useful as I can now track my "social media whales" list in RSS. Often I spend more time in Google Reader then I do on FriendFeed. RSS gives me a backup and safety net, so nothing goes under the radar.

Read more by Mike Fruchter at MichaelFruchter.com.

Web 2.0 and the 21st Century Gypsies

By Mona Nomura of Pixel Bits (FriendFeed/Twitter)


I contemplated sharing this, since 1) it's quite embarrassing and 2) I'm a private person, but the past few days have been so bizarre, I just had to share.

Short version: I'm a hobo. Long version: I was moving out of my old place, and into a long term sublet November 6th, while I took time to search for "the perfect apartment". The subletee backed out last minute, my old place found a new roommate, a friend of mine agreed to let me crash last minute, but his new girlfriend decides to fly in to surprise him, so I had to leave, STAT. To top it off, my credit cards are in transit, so hotels were out of the question, which led to well... Hobo status.

Enter Web 2.0.

When my friend told me I needed to find another place to crash STAT, my first instinct was Craigslist. He saw me browsing and said: "Are you insane? Craigslist is full of freaks. Go to couchsurfing.com." and couldn't believe what I saw. From their site:

What is the CouchSurfing mission?
When we incorporated CouchSurfing International, Inc. as a non-profit, we filed our official mission statement as:: "CouchSurfing seeks to internationally network people and places, create educational exchanges, raise collective consciousness, spread tolerance, and facilitate cultural understanding."
-- via couchsurfing.com's FAQ

Basically, couchsurfing.com is a network of 21st Century Gypsies.
It's a site filled with travelers and people who host - world wide. It's not about finding a place to crash, but connecting people and not as dangerous as it sounds. Participants:

1. Create extensive, detailed profiles.
   
2. Engaging in local activities, discussion groups, chats, are the norm.

There are several precautionary measures to ensure a person is not a crazy.

Call me insane, but desperate times calls for desperate measures, and I sent out a 911 message and found someone willing to put me up for a night, while I exhausted options, looking for a new sublet. The experience? Interesting to say the least. I met a nice young gentleman from Spain, new to San Francisco, and very very single. Don't get me wrong, he was far from creepy, educated, and well mannered. I chose to take this gentleman's offer, since my request was extremely short notice and I jumped on the first person that responded.

It's been a few days since signing up and posting the 911 message, but the community is still getting back to me. Couples, singles, females, males, groups... I'm really amazed at people's hospitality. Granted, this site is not for everyone, but a great networking tool for students, avid backpackers, and budget travelers.

If it weren't for this predicament, I would've never found this site, got to see a different element of Social Networking, and thought it would be neat to share.

Now please excuse me, I'm going to try and sign these folks up to Twitter and FriendFeed.

Read more by Mona Nomura at Pixel Bits

Five Blogs To Be Checking Out This November

Part Nine In a Monthly Series

November brings a bit of coolness in the air as the summer heat becomes a memory and most of us in the Northern Hemisphere turn to Winter. But while it might be getting colder outside, there's still a lot of hot writing going on, both from sites you have heard of and many you likely haven't. For the last nine months, I've highlighted five blogs each month that I think warrant your checking out.

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

This month's entries...

1) Rob Jensen / Microblink (www.microblink.com)

Focus: Microblogging, Twitter, Pownce, Plurk
Recent Highlight: Where to Find Election Coverage
RSS Feed: Subscribe Now

2) Cass / Media Geek Girl (mediageekery.blogspot.com)

Focus: Movies, Media and Life (from Singapore)
Recent Highlight: IM Just Got Interesting
RSS Feed: Subscribe Now

3) Thought Clusters (www.thoughtclusters.com)

Focus: Technology, Software
Recent Highlight:
Hindsight Experts
RSS Feed: Subscribe Now

4) Jason K / TekPopuli (www.tekpopuli.com)

Focus: Technology, Apple, Google, Microsoft
Recent Highlight:
Voter Suppression 2.0 — GOP Turning to Robo-Tweets
RSS Feed: Subscribe Now

5) Editechial (www.editechial.com)

Focus: Blogging, Funding, Media
Recent Highlight:
Hype Happens
RSS Feed: Subscribe Now

To see even more new blogs I'm adding to my reader, or get a sneak peek for November's highlighted blogs, follow my activity on Toluu. If you don't have a login to Toluu, send me an e-mail to louisgray@mac.com and I'll get that set up right away.

You Control Your Online Noise Velocity

With an ever-growing number of applications out there enabling you to get near-instant access to news stories, friends' status updates, and social networking activity, many people are feeling panicked. A not too uncommon refrain I've seen is that there is too much "noise", and this fear of noise is what is holding back the growth of some services, or stopping people, who may have already chosen one they liked, from signing up to more news sources and social networks.

But the authors of these services aren't in the business of telling you how you should consume your data. What the best services have done is given you the flexibility to choose how much data you have at your fingertips, how quickly you want to get it, and in what form. And just because a popular site like Twitter or FriendFeed may be turning on features that enable a more real-time, firehose effect, and can now be found on your mobile phone or your IM client in no way means you need to sign up, or turn your life over to the updates.

Mark Evans, a sharp Canadian blogger, writes today, Help, We’re Being Digitally Bombarded, saying "consumers of digital services and content are being swamped, and madly scrambling to keep up." He echoes the comments of Erick Schonfeld, who in his coverage of FriendFeed's new IM tool said, "I need less noise in my life, not more noise."

I get that Mark and Erick aren't going to turn on those features right away, and most won't. Mark specifically hasn't been enamored by FriendFeed thus far, saying "I don't know why FriendFeed hasn't resonated with me," in a previous post. (Has Friendfeed Stalled?) But in my opinion, services whose product is essentially information and updates from users should be able to turn up the speed as fast as possible, or let you slow it down if you aren't interested. And that's what has happened here.

There will always be a core element of users on the edge who love the newest, fastest features. I find FriendFeed's real-time updates interesting during peak times, but prefer to walk through lists one by one most days. I also don't run any Twitter client, so I don't look at friends' updates as they flow by. I read my Google Reader feeds in quick bursts, rather than leaving the applications open all day. And on top of each of these workflow issues, you always have control.

1. You control how many feeds you sign up to.
2. You control how many friends you add.
3. You can filter how many services you see.
4. You can choose where you access the result.

I've written about the issue of noise a few times before, of course.

In April, I said, How You Handle the Information Overload Is Up to You. In August, I wrote, There is No Social Media Overload, and also in April, I outlined My Social Media Consumption Workflow. In the last six-plus months, my social media consumption workflow hasn't changed much. I added socialmedian and Strands.com to the mix, but I am in no way overwhelmed with noise and its velocity because I know I am in control, and I use filters to show the best data from the best people.

I am all for the information providers giving us the keys to the equivalent of a Ferrari, but if we choose to motor along in a Toyota instead, that's absolutely our call. Just be on the road, and don't give up your license.

Be a Real Friend to Your Social Networking "Friends"

Not every single contact you make online is somebody you would want to spend time with in real life. While you might be following thousands of people and making new "friends" on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, FriendFeed and all the other networks, you would likely hesitate before sending them an open invitation to your home. But I've personally seen many examples of people I've known online crossing the chasm and operating in the world once reserved for classmates, colleagues, fellow church members and family. What might have started out as a casual acquaintance, or connection through similar interests can easily transform to one where you can connect in a more personal way.

The debate of labeling such a contact a "friend" is not new. Mark Dykeman, in a post on Mashable, asked in September, Is a Social Media Friend Really a Friend?, asking, "Would you trust a social media friend with your money? Your home? Your significant other? Your children? Your life?"

The answer of course is not uniform. Each example listed above has a certain weight of importance, and implied risk. But even if you don't want to casually hand your keys and credit cards over to somebody you have been throwing sheep at on Facebook for two weeks doesn't mean you can't find real connections with people who will help you out.

A few examples:

1. Would you invite a friend you met online to "crash" at your place for a few nights instead of finding a hotel?
2. Would you refer a friend you met online to a job position you found, and introduce them as a trusted candidate?
3. Would you purchase a product and ship it to an online friend in another state without getting paid up front?
4. Would you pay the phone/Internet/electrical bill for an online friend who you knew was short on cash?
5. Would you split a hotel room with an online friend at a conference even if you'd never met?

I use these examples because they are all things I've either done or had done by friends of mine online.

For example, although I had looked high and low for a Nintendo Wii Fit throughout the Bay Area, and on Amazon.com, I had no success in finding one. (See my complaining on FriendFeed) But Jesse Stay, who has been a blogger here over the last two months, and someone I got to know on multiple social networks, let me know his mother has a knack for tracking down the evasive products. Sure enough, on Halloween day, a box came to my office, containing the Wii Fit, and displaying the address of Mrs. Stay, from Massachusetts. My wife and I are now amusing ourselves in acting like we're going to use the Fit to pursue something resembling an exercise program.

In the age of PayPal, pushing money around also has become easier, assuming you have it. If you watch people's comments on Twitter and other networks closely enough, you can sense stress, or, when there are gaps, know if something has impacted their usual schedule. Sometimes, it's a money issue, and reaching out via PayPal, or making a call to the utility that's getting in their way can give them the breathing room to keep going as they were before. I'm not suggesting you start playing charity and laying out thousands of dollars, but in the time where you can lend a helping hand, we've reached the point where online acquaintances are just as deserving as those offline. And if you ask them to pay you back is of course up to you.

Similarly, way back in 2001 a friend I knew from an Apple online stock board said he wanted to fly out to see the MacWorld Expo, but he didn't have a place to stay. Having never met him, I offered my apartment for three nights, and he and I took off to see Steve Jobs in person. I also shared a room at the recent BlogWorld Expo with someone I'd never met.

Why so trusting? A few things. First, I believe people are inherently good, and I've chosen to interact with good people online, who share ideas, are trustworthy and positive to be around. Robert Scoble says "you are defined by who you follow" and if I were following people online that I wouldn't be friends with in the real world, then that is my mistake. You also, thanks to the ease of publishing and dissemination of opinion, have the option of publicly embarrassing or outing an individual who has wronged you, so the incentive to do well and act within accepted guidelines is strong.

Of course, not every friend is equal. Just because almost 2,600 people have chosen to follow my account on Twitter doesn't mean that I am going to give them cash and a place to stay. But for those who I have had many interactions with over time in multiple networks, and traded e-mail or phone calls with, I know I am building relationships that have a potential to transition to real world. That's why I know at some point, I am going to take my wife out and let Drew Olanoff babysit my twins, why I bet my kids will be having playdates with Milan Scoble and Thomas Buchheit, and why I've tried to help find new careers for many people whose blogs I read and whose work I follow. These investments I'm making now are going to be paying off, and I encourage you to take a look at your own online "friends" and see if you too can be a real-world friend to them.

FriendFeed Launches Instant Messaging Client

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

FriendFeed is on a roll lately, completely outpacing Twitter and other services in updates and access to your entire social graph. Just the other day I spoke about Enjit, a service which enables you to receive the entire FriendFeed firehose of data over your IM client. And now, as of today, FriendFeed has made an announcement of their own stating they will be providing their own instant messaging client to the service.


Add IM capability to your FriendFeed in Account Settings
To enable the service, go into your FriendFeed account settings, and click the button to enable your IM notifications. If you have a Gmail address or other Jabber client, your address will have already been populated into the address bar. Otherwise, fill it out. After clicking the enable button you'll receive a message via IM asking to add the FriendFeed user to your IM client, and then asking you to confirm by clicking on a link. Once you do that, you're set up!

From the account settings you can choose to enable either all posts, all posts and comments from your friends, or all posts and all comments on the site - FriendFeed is truly opening up their entire fire-hose to all with this update! Watching my IM client, (you can add me at jessestay@gmail.com), I am seeing updates almost every second, if not more.

In addition to receiving posts and comments, you can also post back. This includes following and posting to rooms! To post messages back, FriendFeed has provided the following commands for their interface. From their Web site:

FriendFeed assigns a number to each entry when it is sent to you. You can use this number to comment on or like the entry. See the commands below for some examples.

@me message
Post a new message to your feed

@me
List the entries in your feed

@roomname message
Post a new message to the room with nickname roomname

@roomname
List the entries in the room with nickname roomname

@N comment
Comment on entry N. When you receive entry and comment notifications via IM, they are all prefixed with @N. You can reply to them by prefixing your comment with the same @N.

@N
Show entry N. Useful when you get a comment on @N and you want to see the original post.

like N
Like entry N

@nickname
List the entries in the the given user's feed

pause
Pause IM notifications

resume
Resume IM notifications

list
List the most recent entries you have received via IM

help
Print the list of IM commands

FriendFeed has just made their move in this microblogging and aggregation game of chess. Neither Facebook nor Twitter has the slew of aggregation and microblogging features and openness FriendFeed provides, so it will be interesting to see how this progresses. Dustin Sallings and Ken Sheppardson are rumored to be working on a Track IM solution to FriendFeed, so it will be interesting as things take shape if FriendFeed can beat Twitter at its own game.

Read more by Jesse Stay at Stay N' Alive.

Twitter Planning to Open Up the Firehose "by Thanksgiving"

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

In an assuring statement in the Twitter API Developers Group, Alex Payne, the API lead at Twitter, shared that they have plans to have their Fire-hose of Data available to developers and users by "Thanksgiving at the Latest".  The Firehose, or Twitter's continuous XMPP stream (the protocol that powers services like Jabber and Google Talk), has been at the center of controversy for Twitter, where they opened it up briefly to developers, and had to take it down again when they realized the traffic was simply too much for their servers.

The shut-off of the firehose has set off a slew of critiques, including my own, even sending Steve Gillmor to Identi.ca briefly, and ending up in a get-together of like-minded Twitter and other developers to "bearhug" Twitter.  Twitter responded saying at times there would never be a Fire-hose again, and at others, that they were now sending users to services such as Gnip to access the data.  With Gnip closing its doors on its own XMPP stream recently though, it would appear even more frustration is brewing amongst developers.

All that controversy may just come to an end however, as Payne stated in the developers group:

For what it's worth, we've actually been cranking on the "firehose"
solution all week. We've evaluated several queueing systems, and I've just finished work on a proof-of-concept backup plan if those don't pan out. We'd really like to have a solution in place by Thanksgiving at the latest.

There's no doubt with FriendFeed opening up their Firehose of Social Media data, and Gnip cutting off it's XMPP stream that Twitter is feeling the pressure lately to open up real-time data to developers and users.  With Gnip out of the picture, Twitter now has no more resources to send people to in order to hold people off until they get their API in order.

Proof is in the pudding however, and it will definitely be interesting to watch as Twitter attempts to tackle this problem.  Maybe we'll all be getting a little early Christmas gift from Twitter after all?

Read more by Jesse Stay at Stay N' Alive.

Wakoopa Is Going to Give Away My Web App Obsessions

I often get comments from people asking just how much time I spend on social networks, writing blog posts, and reading RSS feeds. Most of the time, that answer is hard to get, as I spend a few minutes throughout the day making sure I miss as little as possible, and try to limit the time it takes to write most posts to about 20 minutes or so. But there are software solutions out there to help track all my application and Web service activity, which, in theory, could give away exactly how much time I am wasting allotting to each task. Among the easiest, and growing increasingly popular, is Wakoopa.


Wakoopa, upon registering, provides a small tracker that, once installed on your computer, monitors both your foreground applications, and those in the background. It also tracks most major services, including Twitter, FriendFeed, Google Reader and Facebook, to find out how much time you're spending online.

Beyond tracking your own activity, making you guilty for each minute you might spend at the office on a social network instead of buried in Microsoft Office apps, you can review software you use, see other reviews from fellow Wakoopers, and monitor activity from around the service - including seeing the most popular applications from across the network, and seeing live activity, which streams vertically, much like Twitter's feed.

Wakoopa formally launched in early 2007, and has started to gain traction in recent months. In October, they were added as a supported service in FriendFeed, and according to Compete.com, they grew 12 percent month over month, seeing yearly growth of nearly 300%. (Usual caveat: Compete.com stats are questionable)

Given I already stream much of the social activity I do around the Web, and try and be as transparent as possible, I see little downside to keeping the Wakoopa Tracker on, showing you how often I use Adobe Photoshop or Apple Mail, when I boot up iTunes, or if I'm updating Facebook. Do I expect to meet new friends and peers through Wakoopa just because we share an affinity for word processing programs? Probably not. But if Wakoopa over time starts to tell me that I'm doing way too much socializing, and not enough business, that just might impact my future behavior.

If you get into the service, you can even highlight your own software and Web activity on your blog with embedded widgets, or see what other folks are using around the Web. The image at the top left of this post showing my top ten software apps is updated live based on my own activity, so you can see the service in action. You can find me tracking my activity at http://wakoopa.com/louisgray.

My 9 a.m. Morning News Trumps Your Evening News

I am an information glutton. I want to know all the news, and get it as it happens, preferably before everyone else. By the time it's discussed in the afternoon, I want to already have seen it, dissected it and reacted to it. It's this demand for a real-time news firehose that has me turning to Twitter for real-time events instead of Google News, and what has had me looking to Google Reader and FriendFeed before mainstream news sites or Web portals for just about everything else.


Google Reader Tells Me 9 a.m. is the Primetime News Hour
As Google Reader's Trends statistics show, I read every single item that flows through my RSS reader, even if it's just for a second. But the time you're most likely to catch me, unblinking, in front of my RSS reader is around 9 each morning. The statistics show I'm parked on Google Reader most often at 9 a.m. with other spikes around 3 p.m. and 5 p.m., and on those days when I start earlier, 8 a.m.

Assuming a typical workday, I have probably taken in between 800 and 1,000 new items from RSS before the evening news comes on. By the time the news networks have selected what they'll focus on for 30 minutes, with each story getting maybe a minute's worth of attention, interrupted by commercials, I've likely seen the news break and get spun by multiple people whose opinions I trust. By 11 p.m., when the late night news comes on, I've more than moved on. And you can forget about waiting around for the next morning's paper.

By the time your papers are hitting the driveways of people across the country, much of the news is 24 hours old. That's why you've seen a rise of 24-hour news networks, headline news, and new ways to get the news shoveled ever quicker. I may not be a morning person, and the twins certainly aren't helping there... but I know to get the news early. Google Reader and other tools enable you to pick who your information filters are, and when you want to get your news. Don't wait for the networks or the paper to choose when you should get it. Just go get it already.

Online Facebook Efforts Prove Successful for the Obama Campaign

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

There's no question that Barack Obama won this election, and in a big way. With 7.3 million more votes than the McCain/Palin ticket, and almost twice the number of electoral votes as McCain/Palin, he obviously did something right. Today, Facebook released some statistics in a blog post, which reveal some of the reasons Obama and his campaign were so successful this campaign. (See: The Facebook Blog: The Spirit of Democracy)

According to Facebook, more than 5.4 million people clicked the "I voted" button on their network yesterday. Based on the McCain and Obama fan Pages, McCain garnered only 625,000 supporters while Obama built up an audience of four times that, with 2.5 million supporters, also making his the most popular page on Facebook, just above Michael Phelps, who has 1.6 million supporters.

In the days prior to the election, Obama garnered the largest growth in Facebook history, with 18,000 Sunday night, 25,000 Monday night, and an entire 40,000 new fans on election day. In contrast, McCain lost 300 fans/supporters on election day. Also on election day, Facebook tracked 1.1 million wall posts talking about Obama, and only 280,000 wall posts talking about McCain.

So far, 1 million people registered their status to get people out to vote via the causes application, and over 4 million status messages were sent out on or around election day. Facebook also partnered with RockYou to get out the vote and registered more than 50,000 voters. With over 5 million people on Facebook stating they voted, and the largest group on Facebook being those under 25, there's no doubt Facebook is a tool every candidate should pay careful attention to in the next election. With 1/6th of its North American users willing to say they voted, I'd say McCain made a big mistake this time distracting his focus from tools like Facebook and other Media outlets.

Do you think McCain's loss could have been due to lack of Social Media efforts?

Read more by Jesse Stay at Stay N' Alive.

Combine Friends and Google Reader for Best News Filtering

By Chris Miller of TheSocialNetworker (Twitter/FriendFeed)

For those of you that truly digest RSS, it has become more than a super-sized meal. You are gorging yourself to keep up. Each day you find yourself discovering new feeds through links and sites like Toluu. I slowly dug through hundreds of feeds a day, mastering the Google Reader keyboard shortcuts as I utilized it more. I found myself making folders, sorting feeds, importing more OPML and watching the unread count grow larger every morning. And you could forget about trying to catch up after a long weekend!

So this is where I began to change my mindset and workflow. I surrounded myself with trusted friends that have the same indulgences and interests as myself. I began building a wide array of people and started adding them to my Google chat client so they would also show in my reader. I then sat back and watched as the shared links came in. Not too surprisingly, many of the exact articles I found interesting, they did also. That is why they are my friends in the first place. As the shared items grew, my need to visit my own folders lessened.

Let me explain more in detail. I had about 14 folders for sorting purposes and a general bucket. The general bucket got looked in on at an ever increasing gap in time. I found myself scanning the first few then marking all read. This means those feeds could possibly be removed, but it was nt like I was wasting space or anything, so of course they stay. I would find a good story here and there, but the most part I had added them for one good story and found nothing else really came out. The effort to weed through is now larger than the effort to ignore them.

The remainder of the folders were sorted by my own mental process and it works great. Each folder gets attention at least twice weekly, some daily. When I am working on a project or article, well maybe more than once a day. What happens to the rest? They either sit a few days until I change back to that folder or I mark them as read and declare feed bankruptcy on a semi regular basis.

Here comes the change. Once I started noticing that my freinds were sharing the same feeds I found interesting, I took a chance and started working from those folders more often. I grew my friend base and even solicited more of my Twitter followers and other networks to link up. My library grew as well as my enormous filter.

I have basically outsourced my feed reading. I rely on a large amount (always taking more) of workers, that I hire for free, to sort through my news, announcements, stories and excellent blog postings. They then provide filtering and share to me what should be focused on immediately. I choose to look at the others when I have a moment. Like sitting in the car waiting on yet another child to finish yet another activity. Bless the Google Reader for Blackberry.

I then, in return, become a worker for my friends by sharing an filtering feeds to a finer granularity that many of them use as a feed. Mainly the staff that works for me. They have now gotten a cleansed feed that has been through many filters and then the final siphon. All built around being a friend, sharing with a click and then doing the same in return. I thank all my filters and would like to expand my empire. So add me as a friend and lets get to filtering. idonotes@gmail.com for google chat (not e-mail, Twitter me otherwise).

---

Chris Miller, for starters, is the author of TheSocialNetworker and the podcast TheSocialGeeks. He is an avid social media consumer, tester and early adopter, which leads to his apparent enthusiasm to write and podcast site reviews. He even sneaks in his own opinions. You can find Chris on all the social networks (yes, really almost every one of them) as IdoNotes, including Twitter.

---

Event Calendar: Panel on Emerging Media (November 11th)

For those of you located in the San Francisco Bay Area, you may want to check out an interactive discussion coming this next week, presented by PR Newswire, titled "Focus on Emerging Media - Where Are We Now, Where Are We Going".

Chris Heuer, Social Media Strategist at Social Media LLC, Tom Foremski, Editor of SiliconValleyWatcher.com and I will be participating on a panel, and it would be great to have you in attendance, so long as you sign up by Friday, November 7th.

Date:
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Breakfast and Registration: 8:00 AM - 8:30 AM
Presentation: 8:30 AM - 10:00 AM

Location:
Hyatt Regency Santa Clara
Bayshore Room
5101 Great America Pkwy
Santa Clara, CA 95054

Description:
Communications professionals have more opportunities than ever before to reach target audiences in the communities in which they congregate, but the trick is knowing what tools will help you reach these audiences and how to engage them once you've made contact. This interactive discussion, led by PR Newswire's Director of Emerging Media Michael Pranikoff, will explore the new tools and technologies, and how to best utilize them to communicate an organization's message to its intended audiences.

Want to Attend?
Sign up before November 7th here.

See you there!

FriendFeed and Enjit: Open Up the Firehose to the Entire Social Web

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

FriendFeed just hit a huge milestone recently as developers have finally tapped into its real-time feed of updates, and provided a Google Chat or Jabber interface on top of it all, enabling both users and developers to gain real-time data about the entire Social Web. Two Developers very prominent in the Laconi.ca world, Dustin Sallings and Ken Sheppardson, have headed up the effort and provided an easy way for you and I to receive your FriendFeed updates, real-time, over simple instant messaging. The service is called Enjit.

One of my favorite parts of Twitter when I started seriously using it about a year ago was that I could send and receive my Tweets, real-time, via Google Chat or other Jabber-supported services. I simply needed to add the Twitter user to my client, and all my friends' Tweets would come through as they were sent to my IM client. This meant I could open it up on my desktop, my phone, or wherever else I had a Jabber-supported IM client. I remember Scoble sharing with us in awe via Qik and elsewhere about how he was getting Tweets every second or more, and how amazing it was to see communication around the world, as it happened.

Now, because of FriendFeed, not only do we have access to the world of Twitter, but we now have access to Identi.ca, Pownce, Facebook, blogs, Flickr, Delicious, and almost the entire Social Web, real time, and you can now get that as it happens in your IM client. The premise is simple:



The First Step: Add Enjit (FriendFeed) to Your IM Client.
Set Up

To get set up with FriendFeed IM, all you need to do is open up Google Chat, or any other Jabber-supported service or client, and add feed@enjit.com to your Buddy List. You can name it "FriendFeed" if you like, or just leave it as is. Then, send: username to that user in your IM client. You can get your remote key from FriendFeed here.

Using Enjit FriendFeed IM

As soon as you are authenticated, you'll start getting updates from FriendFeed immediately. Your updates will come in the form of [xx][source] entry_author: entry text | comment_author: comment text - "xx" is just a unique id for each comment or post on FriendFeed. "Source" is the service the update or comment came from. "entry_author" is the author of the post or comment. Following that is the text of the comment or post.


Send and Receive Updates to FriendFeed Using IM.
Sending Updates to FriendFeed

Sending updates is easy! To send a new post or status update to FriendFeed, send post your message, where "your message" is the message you want to send to FriendFeed. To respond as a comment to any post, send xx your comment where "xx" is the "xx" above uniquely identifying the posted item you want to comment on, and "your comment" is the comment you want to append to that post.

Enjit and FriendFeed have essentially just given us all a Command-Line into the Social Web. Now, in one place, you can receive and send updates to all your updates through a simple command-line chat interface. With FriendFeed's recent integration with Twitter and the ability to send your posts to FriendFeed back to Twitter, you could even use it as a Twitter chat client! Now, the clencher - Dustin Sallings is well known in the Laconi.ca crowd for creating chat-based Track on Identi.ca and Twitter. Will we see real-time track come to FriendFeed soon? Thanks to FriendFeed, we now have chat and real-time updates back on Twitter.

Read more by Jesse Stay at Stay N' Alive.

Are Social Networks The New In Box?

By Corvida Raven of SheGeeks.net (FriendFeed/Twitter)

There comes a time when an Internet addict must step out of their in box... and into another one. Anyone that receives a ton of e-mail can relate to the headaches that just thinking about your in box can cause. Can you imagine sifting through hundreds of e-mails on a daily basis? Wayne Sutton does. Major bloggers do this all the time. So, it should come as no surprise that more people are referring new connections to their social networking profiles as their default way of contact instead of giving out their e-mail addressess.

I can admit that lately, I've referred more personal connections to my social network profiles instead of my Gmail address. Why is this change taking place? Here are two theories I have:

1. It's (Psychologically) Easier to Manage

You may be wondering how hopping from social network to social network is easier than managing all of those messages in one central location. Simple: information overload. When you look at your in box and have over 100 messages to sort through, your mind may automatically drain of energy. The task ahead could seem daunting. However, if you break down those messages and place them in separate locations, it's the same as breaking down a large project. Sure, spreading your messages out could require more time, but at least you'll still be encouraged to get through them all. It also beats staying on one site for numerous hours, reading and replying to messages.


2. Mainstream Adoption

This may seem a little out of left field, but I think the adoption of social networks into the life of mainstream Web users is causing more people to use their social networks as an in box. I have no idea what the e-mail addresses are for my friends that are not early adopters. How do I contact them? Through Facebook, MySpace, and DowneLink. These are all mainstream social networks that my friends live in. Most of my friends head to these sites before checking their e-mail. In fact, some of them only check their e-mail to see if there were any notifications sent to them from their social networks, which may even be the only e-mail they receive (outside of spam). As the mainstream moves onto these social networks, you can bet your bottom dollar that they'll be directing their new friends to their profiles. It's not just about being able to see more information than an e-mail address could ever give. It's an easier and more logical way for them to manage their social network.

Are social networks easier to manage than a standard in box? For some it could be a nightmare hopping all over the place. For me, it's great. It helps me to effectively separate my personal life from my online life. For my friends, it's a default setting and one that they wouldn't change. Is your favorite social network becoming your new in box?

Read more by Corvida Raven at SheGeeks.net.

Search Engines, Web Sites Dress Up for Election Day

As with last week's Halloween celebration, which saw many prominent Web sites alter their logos to highlight the holiday, today we're seeing prominent names, including Google, Yahoo!, Ask.com and FriendFeed tweak their brands to reflect the elections being held today throughout the United States.


This morning, I voted, and got the usual "I voted" oval sticker, complete with American flag. See above how some of these sites are marking the day of the ballot box. Know of more? Let me know.

Now Is Not the Time To Scale Back On Social Media

Amidst all the talk of economic recession (or worse) and politics, I have seen an underlying current of people who are tiring of social media, seeing it as "less important" than the bigger world issues, and maybe less interesting than maybe it was three, six or nine months ago. Without doing a dedicated poll myself, my gut feeling is that the reasoning is that while people retrench and worry more about their jobs, their families, their wallets and their future, all the fun of bookmarking, liking, linking and blogging falls to the wayside. But I think this is wrong, period. If anything, the economic weakness should make it more important than ever for companies and individuals to double down on social media, as these new tools have enabled less expensive ways to find like-minded individuals, who just might be your next customer.

The world of marketing, advertising and public relations is changing. It's no longer about finding tricky ways to force prospects to your Web site, your products, your content and your story. Instead, it's about going to where your customers are. And it's very likely that many of them have found solace and community in far-flung places like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and FriendFeed, where they are talking with peers, with or without you. Rather than spending tens of thousands of dollars to increase the perception of your brand through print advertising, or sending a check to Google each month to sponsor search keywords, you could devote more time, but much less money, by listening, communicating and participating, bringing a human voice and face to what could previously be seen a static brand.

As the economy tightens and budgets are reduced in response, it makes sense to think differently, to borrow Apple's phrase, and find new ways to reach your prospects and partners less expensively. While not every executive in the boardroom needs to know exactly what Twitter is, they will absolutely understand that you can achieve a higher return on your investment through spending less money, and spending the right amount of time in more targeted areas, where you can attract and retain business, whether these communities are physical or virtual.


Additionally, the typical social media user is a more sophisticated buyer than the general populace. They aren't interested in your "spray and pray" methods of e-mail blasts, run of site banner advertising, or even your impersonal PR pitches. They expect and demand personalization and knowledge of themselves, by you, as an individual. They want to be wooed and to be given a seat at the table when it comes to making suggestions about your product, where you should sell it, and at what price. With proper utilization of social media, there lies a greater sense of community between the buyer and the seller, the customer and the brand, making it a collaborative effort where both parties will work together to ensure a successful transaction takes place.

There's no question that those folks who have been using social media as a time killer or strictly for recreation, to distract from work, might find their time better spent. But that's true with all things, as activities can cross from hobby to obsession, or from utility to distraction.

What has happened in the world of social media over the last few years is the growth of micro-communities whose members can be reached in new ways, regardless of location or time. To cite changes in the macroeconomic climate, or the political climate, as reasons to back away from this growing evolution in communication and marketing is short-sighted. Those companies that can take advantage of the reduced costs of customer communication, acquisition and support will extend the gap over those who sit on the sidelines.

See Also:

• BuzzGain: Can Social Media Marketing Scale is the Wrong Question to Ask
• Web Strategist: Intel’s Community Marketing: Fishing Where The Fish Are

Strands Goes Mobile With New iPhone Interface

Last month, I said I believed there were three major trends in the future of social media: Unified accounts, transparency with connections to the real world, and adaptation to the mobile Web. As more consumers, including me, are seeing an increasing amount of their Web activity taking place on mobile devices, the need to create customized interfaces for all those iPhones, Android-capable handsets and Blackberries is getting ever more important, and those that don't do a good job of it will find their growth stunted.

Today, Strands, the social content discovery service which at times has drawn comparisons to FriendFeed and Plaxo, took a major step forward with the introduction of their new iPhone-optimized mobile site, found at http://m.strands.com.


Strands Mobile, In Action, On My iPhone
Back in August, when I first discussed the lifestreaming site's beta offering, I found myself fairly critical of its user interface, saying it minimized some of the best features, including the actual feeds from your friends' activity. In the last few months, thanks to feedback from its growing user base, the team has doubled down efforts to simplify the UI, and they managed to do well enough that the site works well, even in my 3.5" wide iPhone.


Features Like "Hot Posts" and "Discovery" Are Available On Mobile Strands
As one would expect, the mobile Strands offering operates the same way as its online companion does. You can see most recent updates from those you follow, see "Hot Posts", "Discover" new people who you might not be following, view your list of friends, and even read your in box, which can fill up with people taking action on your items, be it to make a comment, or simply flagging a "like" using their thumbs up. And you can participate by clicking the thumbs up or making comments yourself, right on the phone.


You Can Also Check Your Inbox Or Followers Via Mobile
Diehard Strands aficionados will no doubt appreciate the new introduction, taking the burgeoning social network on the go. If you are an iPhone addict, like me, make sure you bookmark their new site, and send feedback if you find issues. You can also check out an introductory video on their blog, here.

Forget the Bradley Effect. What About the "Get Off My Phone" Effect?

To say that Tuesday's election is long-awaited is a massive understatement. It's been called historic by most, and otherwise labeled the most important election in our generation by the many who take into account the controversial last few years, our economic struggles and continued challenges abroad. And while Democratic candidate Barack Obama is largely expected to end the day with enough electoral votes to ensure his capturing the White House, some are concerned the "Bradley Effect", a phenomenon showing voters are less likely to vote for a minority when in the booth in private than they professed to be when surveyed in public, will have enough impact to knock him off the pedestal. But aside from the presidential election, how many of us have lied on a survey, just to politely get it over with? I know I have, including multiple times this evening, just to get the pollster off the phone.

When a political operative somehow manages to get through our Caller ID and gets me on the line, the fastest way to get the call completed is to agree to everything. If I'm not in the "hanging up on them" mood, I always agree to every single thing they're proposing. Yes, I'll vote for that guy. Of course I am in favor of your proposition and measure. "In fact, my wife and I already voted by mail!", I told one hapless gentleman a few hours ago, much to his delight.

My underhanded evasiveness no doubt gets a checkmark on his clipboard, and with one stroke, he and his backers can put two more votes on the board, as they try to rally enough last minute support to push their person and their measures over the top. But to be honest, most of the time, I couldn't tell you one person from another, especially in the local races, and will be doing my research online.

So how often is this happening? Are pollsters around the country, and at the local levels, finding overwhelming support for just about every bill, only to see tomorrow's election results be swung the opposite way? As much as the political pundits may wonder if America is ready to have an African-American president after all, I wonder about the telemarketers hitting their numbers and wondering why things didn't actually go their way.

Don't worry about me. Tomorrow, I'll vote. And I am sure on how I'm voting for just about everything, before some last-minute cramming tonight, but if you called my house this evening, sorry if I misled you. It won't be the last time.

RSSMicro Adds FeedRank to RSS Search Engine

RSSMicro and FeedCamp have been out since 2006, trying to measure hot topics, popular RSS feeds and offer a broad search engine through millions of feeds. (See Search Engine Journal for a 2006 review.) In the last week, RSSMicro introduced a new measure they call FeedRank, which utilizes an algorithm they claim taps into a feed's updating frequency, quality of content, and whether the sites are "known", to deliver a numerical score, graded on a steep curve.

The new FeedRank is said to have eliminated many spam Web sites through ensuring the quality of the content on the source, and its unique information across articles. But even if you think you are a top content producer, you might be surprised at how poorly you're rated. In fact, only 1% of all feeds rate better than 7 of 10. 3% rank as a 6, 6% as a 5, and 9% garnered a score of 4. The vast majority of blogs (including this one) get a score of 3/10 or less.

Given the preponderance of low scores, I'd be surprised if most bloggers would want to display their FeedRank.

But outside of that single measurement, RSSMicro, and its companion site, FeedCamp, could give the much more popular Google News and Google Trends a run for their money - if anybody knew about them, or if they worked harder to make their site look current.


Today's Top News and Images are Political, Of Course
The main RSSMicro page highlights top news, videos and images from almost 6,000 different news sources, on top of the more than 4 million RSS feeds they say they scour with their search engine.

The FeedCamp site, powered by RSSMicro, shows the top terms across the many feeds they cover. Unsurprisingly, you see terms like Obama, McCain, Election, Palin and Voters atop today's list. You can also delve into the archive to find out what terms were popular at any date, starting with June 9th of 2007. At that time, Bush and Iraq were top topics, but today's presidential candidates were nowhere to be seen. Flash forward to November 1, 2007, and Clinton ranked as the #7 topic, with Obama as #43. McCain didn't crack the top 100.

The sites are worth checking out, especially for trends, assuming somebody can crack the code and track keywords over time.

If you are interested in seeing where your feed sits in FeedRank, use the FeedRank Checker on this page. And if you crack a 4 out of 10 or higher, consider yourself privileged.

Netflix Edges Closer to Making the Perfect Web Video Site

It seems when it comes to the world of Web video, there is as much discussion of the limits saying what you can't do as there are the discussion of the features themselves. If you get your movies via iTunes, you hear about how it can play on one device at a time, for a limited time. If you opt for Amazon Unbox, there is a different set of restrictions. Meanwhile, Netflix is still mostly known for its DVD distribution, and until lately, it has been restricted to Windows computers - locking out Mac and Linux users. As MG Siegler of VentureBeat noted yesterday, Mac users can finally get their hands on instant streaming via the Web, as we move ever closer to that "anytime, anywhere, any movie" panacea that we're all seeking.

My personal preference, especially since the introduction of movie rentals, has been to use iTunes. Downloading films via iTunes makes them available to my laptop, my iPhone, and, using the Apple TV, to my living room. But iTunes doesn't have every film. In fact, none of these services do. Often, if there's a movie I really want to see, but don't want to pay full price for, I have to check iTunes, Amazon and Netflix to see who is serving it up. But if the answer is that only Netflix offers it for rental, I'm quite hesitant to put the movie in my queue, and wait the better part of a week to get the physical copy in the mail. We've reached the point where near instant is the only acceptable speed.

With the advent of Netlfix offering instant streaming of films via the Web, I gain yet another instant entertainment source - and I don't have to pay per film, like I do with iTunes or Amazon Unbox, as the instant streaming is part of our family's monthly fee.


Netflix Offers Many Videos for Instant Viewing, but Not All
Per VentureBeat's article, I headed to http://www.netflix.com/silverlightoptin and, after agreeing to be part of the beta program, I updated the Microsoft Silverlight software on my computer. One restart of Safari later, and I could add any of the available instant movies or TV shows to my Instant Queue. The offerings were slim, to be sure, but I would expect Netflix to work hard to migrate the rest of their library to offer the same capability.


I Could Add a Video to My Instant Queue
In a silly mood, I was able to add "Nuns on the Run" to my instant queue, and a minute later, I was seeing Eric Idle debate his role as a thief amid increasing violence in his line of work. Netflix measured my bandwidth capabilities, and set the video quality so that my connection wouldn't be overwhelmed and stuck buffering. Only once did I find the Web connection slowed to a speed that the movie stopped, but a simple refresh of the browser caught the movie up to where I left off, and we kept going.


The Nuns Were On the Run In Minutes


Internet Connectivity Issues Will Always Be There
I appreciate iTunes' per-movie pricing and instant downloads to the Apple TV. If I can find the film there first, and plan on being home to watch it, that will be default for our home videos. But if I want to watch a film solo, on the laptop, and Netflix offers it, this option will be a great backup.

Yet, as with the other services, questions still are there. Can I take the video with me? No. Can I play them on my iPhone? No. So for each situation, I probably will find myself bouncing from service to service, without one reigning supreme.

Twitter Planning to Implement OpenMicroblogging Standard

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

For those that follow me here or on my personal blog, you know I'm a big fan of open standards for microblogging.  I even left Twitter for Identi.ca and FriendFeed for a short time partly because of this.  The concept of "OpenMicroblogging" is simple - if your microblogging service supports it, I can then subscribe to any user on any other microblogging service that supports it, and then follow those users right on the microblogging service I'm most familiar with.  It is a protocol, similar to TCP/IP, the same protocol websites use to communicate with your browser over the internet.

Currently, Microblogging is a very closed model.  It can be likened to the days of AOL and Compuserve, where we have multiple networks, like Twitter, and Plurk, and Yammer, and many other "Twitter-clones" which all essentially do the same thing.  Each network is closed, can't talk to the other networks, and they're doing so in hopes that it will make it hard for users to switch networks.  (And I even argue you see this to some extent in the major networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Myspace)

We all know what happened to AOL and Compuserve.  Some guys invented this thing called the web, based on open standards such as TCP/IP, allowing multiple nodes on the network to all talk to each other.  So long as your software spoke this open standard, you could be a part of the network, and the great thing about it is the standard was really owned by no one - it was a community agreement, something everyone was working together to live by, and because of this, soon the "World Wide Web" outgrew AOL and Compuserve in numbers to the point that AOL and Compuserve were forced to open up their networks to allow their users to access the Web.  While no individual "website" was as big as AOL or Compuserve, the World Wide Web as a whole grew to become much, much bigger than even the two combined.

Enter Twitter

Twitter is at risk of the same fate AOL and Compuserve met.  As a closed network, they may be big, but as smaller open networks come about that can all communicate with each other, there is a chance that those networks as a whole could outgrow Twitter itself.

It appears Twitter may just be learning from AOL's mistakes however.  In a bug report posted last July in the Twitter Development Bug tracking system there is an issue titled "OpenMicroblogging Support".  The user, "4braham", posted it, suggesting "Support for the OpenMicroBlogging specification would allow for Twitter
users to follow users of other microblogging services."  Alex Payne, API Lead for Twitter, responded, saying, "Sure, someday, after it sees some adoption."  Then, in August, he added, "Changing this to 'Accepted' just so it doesn't jump out at me when I'm scanning for new issues. It's going to be
some time before work on this begins, though."  So it would appear that Twitter very much has plans and interest to join the OpenMicroblogging effort.  You can login and click the "star" for the issue here to vote for it if you think this is something important for them to integrate.

Twitter implementing the OpenMicroblogging protocol would be a wise choice, and put them at a leadership position in this space, currently dominated by the likes of Identi.ca, OpenMicroblogger, and Leo Laporte's Twit Army.  Not just that, but it would immediately empower them as the largest site of what has the potential to be a much larger network of users of interconnected sites in the future.  With their lead API developer writing a book, and seemingly being short staffed as they write a new version of the API while at the same time trying to address issues with the existing API, I agree with Alex - it may be awhile before we see this.  Let's hope they get things in order and we can see this some time soon.

Read more by Jesse Stay at Stay N' Alive.