Facebook Parks Some Vanity URL Seekers in Purgatory

Tonight's tech event that saw Facebook unleash millions of vanity URLs to its fanatic user base has to be considered an unqualified success. It raised significant awareness for the social network, and managed to deliver hundreds of thousands of new IDs every few minutes, without showing any signs of system failure. But while some elite hand-selected users were given their names in advance, another, likely small, group, is in an odd in-between land where the user names were shown as unavailable, but didn't look like they were owned by anyone.

Visible social networking folks, including myself, Jesse Stay and TechCrunch's Michael Arrington were among those remaining somewhat befuddled at our situation - unclear if we were singled out for user name reservations by a well-meaning Facebook employee (who will tell us eventually?), or if instead, we're just in line to be completely out of luck.


This is the URL that makes the most sense.
Like most good digerati, at midnight Eastern, I logged in to grab my username - aiming to get "louisgray" there, just like everywhere else. Fail. It said it wasn't available (at 12:01 a.m.). Neither was "louis" or even "louis.gray". In parallel, Jesse found that "jessestay" and "jesse.stay" were blocked, and on Twitter, Arrington reported "arrington, michaelarrington and michael.arrington were all not available."


This would be a fallback choice, and much less preferred.
While oddly, each of us individuals probably shouldn't care so much about a simple user name we've locked down everywhere else, the uncertainty has us a little befuddled. I want to take the optimistic approach and expect that this will be resolved in a matter of hours, but remain curious as to just how many hours, or if there is a problem with the database that has prevented folks like ourselves from getting the desired names - for whatever reason.

So, for now, while many in the social networking space exult in their being recognized for the names they got at birth, we'll still hold on to our number right now. I'm not compromising on a non-standard ID just for the sake of having one.

Podcast: TheSocialGeeks: I Want the Post, Not the Pre

Thanks to bumps in my schedule, including work, and of course, the twins, combined with the complexities of trying to get seven people in three time zones to get synched up, it has been some time since we got to participate in TheSocialGeeks podcast, chaired by Chris Miller (otherwise known as IdoNotes).

But on Wednesday, we made it, and got the chance to record. In addition to Chris and me, were Sarah Perez and Wayne Sutton.

In the podcast, which I have made available for download below, we discuss:

• Facebook's Vanity URL Rush
• LiveFlows
• Floxee
• Monetization of Twitter Streams
• Social Identity Management
• The Palm Pre
• SocialToo and other premium Twitter apps

You can read more about it in Chris' site, or Download the Recording Now. You can also: Subscribe in iTunes

.

Facebook Connect on My iPhone Games Is a Huge Win

When I attended the SXSW conference this March, I was able to see the announcement, by Dave Morin, the company's senior platform manager, that Facebook Connect would be integrated with iPhone applications, essentially adding the glue between the world's most popular social network with the digerati's most treasured mobile phone (a debut that was much anticipated). In the ensuing months, as I have seen Facebook Connect be added to more and more applications on my iPhone, I have really come to enjoy its benefits.

At the end of 2007, I said that the major benefit of having a Facebook account was for playing games with family, spread across the country.


Connecting With Facebook from My iPhone Finds My Scrabble Games
I would guess that behind accepting new friend requests, the number one thing I use Facebook for is just that - playing games, such as Scrabble, with my family, or Scramble, a Boggle-like game I sometimes play versus Anna Billstrom, if for no other reason but to remember how much better she is at it than I am.



I Can See Both Active and Archived Scrabble Games from Facebook
Now, thanks to the Facebook Connect and iPhone app integration, I can play the same Scrabble games from Facebook on my iPhone. Just by clicking the app and seeing My Games in Facebook, I can play my active boards, or review archived games with a few taps of my finger. The experience, with the exception of screen size, is virtually the same - and it has let me make a few moves when I'm not attached to my laptop. (which also reduces my tendency to use online resources for better moves)

I haven't always been a huge fan of Facebook. I can't sit on it all day and respond to status updates. But the network has a ton of data on me in my social profile. I've already asked them to be utilized and help block ads that are don't make sense for me, even if they are still doing a bad job at it themselves. But now that I am seeing how easily they can be leveraged for apps, I'd like to see even more iPhone apps to look this direction and connect with the Facebook Connect platform to know the real me and get my data. It really can enhance the experience.

Omnipresent Omniture Makes Facebook Apps Omnipotent

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

The Facebook Platform just got a whole lot more interesting today as the all-powerful Analytics company, Omniture, Inc. released a new suite of analytics libraries for developers writing for the Facebook Platform. The analytics aim to improve, in heavy detail how Facebook developers' apps are being used on the Facebook Platform. What's interesting about the launch though is, in the rumored upcoming introduction of a Facebook Payments platform, the potential implications for e-commerce on Facebook that this brings.

Omniture, a company with probably most of the major online retailers on its client roster, provides Analytics tools for companies such as BackCountry.com (my former employer) and others to be able to track users of their websites. Earlier this year they announced an iPhone Analytics suite, enabling iPhone app developers to track the use of their iPhone applications. E-Commerce and retailers can use the software to track conversions from click to actual purchase within links and ads. At their Omniture Summit conference earlier this year they even showed a demo of being able to track someone who visits an e-commerce site, and then ends up at a physical store location to actually purchase the item. The cross-pollenation of their various stats products to enable companies to know almost everything about their customers is quite honestly, a little scary. That's what makes Omniture so useful and powerful to their clients - it's the breadth of what they offer and the ability to see a customer across multiple products that makes them one-of-a-kind.

This Facebook announcement just made the customers that they track all the more real. With this tracking, Omniture is now able to identify purchasers on the websites they frequent by age, sex, location, network, interests, the demographics of their friends, the number of their friends, and much, much more. It's this user segmentation that will make companies like Amazon and Apple and Wal-Mart want to create Facebook applications to drive users to buy things on Facebook. All of the sudden, Facebook Apps just became very interactive advertisements.

One strategy many Facebook app developers employ is the creation of multiple niche communities under the umbrella of a much larger app company. Such a strategy encourages more wall posts by users from the app and a much more targeted experience within each application the developer launches. In addition to driving and tracking conversion, Omniture has made it very easy, using their SiteCatalyst product, to track and manage multiple Facebook applications at one time. For instance, an example they used was 3 TV Show apps, and the ability to track the number of times images were viewed within the apps vs. times videos were played or stories read. Such a strategy could enable a similar media company to compare various campaigns and determine what was most successful.

The Facebook App Analytics market is ripe with competition right now. With analytics companies such as Sometrics and Kontagent which both have free products at the moment, Omniture may not hit the smaller, core app developers which make up some of the top applications on Facebook. However, with the breadth of information Omniture provides and ability to truly track user engagement and conversion across multiple products, those developers could now seriously have some competition on their hands by much bigger players in the industry that can afford to pay for it. I am told that already at least one major media company has begun to use the product. At the same time, Omniture also provides smaller packages more affordable to the small and medium-sized business, so the smaller developers are not out of luck entirely.

This is a big move for both Omniture and Facebook, and will hopefully bring out some interesting new applications from many of the online retailers which are already using their software to track performance and conversion in their increasingly offsite online presence. In the wake of a coming payments platform for Facebook, Omniture could bring some interesting things to the network. It will be very interesting to watch and see how companies begin to use this and what information comes from the wealth of information Omniture provides.

Read more by Jesse Stay at Stay N' Alive.

SlideShow: How To Optimize Your Social Data Flow for All Networks

Following on to this weekend's post on knowing and mastering your social media data flow, I updated the information and have created a presentation for download, for easier portability.

How To Optimize Your Social Media Data Flow for All Networks

View more presentations from Louis Gray.

This is also the first time I have had the option to use my brand-new presentation template, so please do let me know what you think!

Know and Master Your Social Media Data Flow

This Is How My Social Media Data Flows. I'll Explain.
If you're anything like me, you are constantly creating social data. From your blog posts and your tweets, your photos and videos, bookmarks and status updates, you are creating new information, big and small. You might do so in spurts, or you might be creating new content throughout the day. But with so many different social networks out there, and friends scattered here, there and everywhere, there's always the potential you're not sending the right data to the right place. But if you start by knowing where your data is flowing now, you can make minor adjustments along the way to get the recipe right.

On March 24th, I told Harry McCracken of Technologizer that if I were to provide any Twitter user one piece of advice, it would be: "Always know where your data flows, and participate where it lands."


That simple piece of advice is a major challenge to most people. Whether they don't want to step out of their comfort zone, or they believe they only have time for one social network where they participate, most choose one or two places, while neglecting others. Others simply use services like Ping.fm to send all updates to all places at once, a scattershot process to something that probably deserves fine tuning.

My approach to this problem is to always create content while knowing its impact downstream. Here is what I have chosen to do with my data I am creating.

1. Blog Posts

Blog Posts that I create here at louisgray.com are packaged up by RSS, using FeedBurner, and end up in RSS readers. They also are published in headline form or excerpted, on FriendFeed and Socialmedian. Every day, updates in the last 24 hours are bundled up by e-mail and sent to FeedBlitz.

2. Twitter Activity

My Tweets, when posted, be they notifications of new posts (which I do manually, not automatically) or other content, are posted to Twitter and echoed both to Facebook and to FriendFeed.

3. Native FriendFeed Posts

When I post a new item directly to FriendFeed, it echoes to Twitter, which in turn, updates Facebook. Knowing this, I often author the headline using Twitter language, such as @ signs and hashtags, keeping the headline short. I can then, in FriendFeed, edit the headline to use normal language, optimizing the data for where it is consumed.

4. Delicious Bookmarks

Bookmarks I make on Delicious are shared to FriendFeed, and bounced to Twitter and Facebook. I ensure the headline and the source of the article are displayed, and now truncate that to hit Twitter's character limits.

5. Google Reader shared items

Shares I make in my RSS reader not only stick to the link blog, but they impact FriendFeed, Socialmedian, and the shared item counters, like ReadBurner, RSSmeme and now InFeeds.

6. YouTube Videos and SmugMug Photos

The YouTube and SmugMug activity I do is largely family related, so when it gets imported to FriendFeed, using RSS, it is echoed to Twitter and Facebook (like in #3).

7. FaceBook Status Updates

They stay in Facebook, period, which is why I usually just update it using Twitter.

The reason I list each of these specifically is because each stream of data has a different intent and possibly a different audience. Given much of the content flows through Twitter and FriendFeed now, I make a conscious effort to optimize the data for both services. I also recognize that when I post to both services, I just might receive comments and likes on Facebook, which is happening at an increasing pace.

Thinking about the data flow has an impact on how I behave. It is because of FeedBlitz that I prefer to have more than one post in a 24-hour period. I also know that as I am bookmarking sites that cover articles from this blog that I am getting to reward others who write about the same things I do. I recognize that by tweeting too much I could muddy my Facebook and FriendFeed, and have negative repercussions as a result. I also know that I need to make sure the headlines on my SmugMug photos and YouTube videos make sense once they hit Twitter.

It may seem regimented, but once you think about where your data is flowing, you will find a process that works with you. The good news is that RSS is not dead, despite some beliefs otherwise. In fact, it plays a bigger role than ever in terms of shuttling updates to and from services. I have set up my publishing preferences in this way for me because it matches what I believe to be the right data with its right destinations, and when activity from the community participates, I try to be there as soon as I know it has happened, through close monitoring.

And considering this is essentially my social media creation workflow, you might also be interested in the post I wrote last Spring on my own social media consumption workflow. It hasn't changed much at all since.

Don't Tempt the Online Mob. They Come Bearing Pitchforks.

There's no need for me to recap Twitter's two-day flub as you've already seen it 40 different places. What's most interesting to me about the entire situation is the rapidity of how the user community turned on the service and its founders in response to what was a relatively minor change that was confusingly and sloppily addressed. The response, which loudly came from all corners, mirrored that of previous blowups, which have also included Facebook and Digg as victims - the first around its terms of service and Beacon, and the second, around its blocking of illegal series of numbers that could unlock DVD region codes. Even Google Reader faced a backlash last year from users who expected a different interpretation of what friends were and who could see what.

See also:

• May 2, 2007: Unpopular Opinion: Digg Revolt Is a Bad Precedent
• December 26, 2007: Google Reader Blinks, and the Mob Wins

Every single case dealt with a Web 2.0 service driven largely by user generated or selected content, where the mob was reacting to changes handed down unilaterally from a seeming all-knowing company, without first communicating potential changes, or accurately foreseeing downstream effects. And in most of the examples (Google Reader being practically the only exception), the service had already chipped into its balance of goodwill, leading to a strained relationship with a vocal minority of users, setting the stage for the much larger backlash that was to come.

Did the services that made mistakes and got roundly slammed deserve the punishment? If you ask the users, the answer is yes. In today's world, the online communities that have been built around these popular products have a sense of entitlement, not just to specific features, but that they will be made a part of the process, spoken with and not just spoken to. And if they feel they have been wronged or lied to, all hell can rain down on the company or the individual bearing the broken message.

To me personally, the change in @replies for Twitter was frustrating and annoying, but what ticked me off was more the way in which it was delivered. As with the company's previous comments about following many users being "disingenuous", this week's move seemed like they were once again telling us of a right way and a wrong way to use their product. That their blog post was backtracked upon and respun as a product issue and then a technical issue made us feel lied to, and the team, despite having what by all means is a very successful product, disappointed us again.

Here's the thing: Before I get slammed (again) for being a FriendFeed apologist and/or Twitter hater... the truth is not so black and white. I think Twitter is great for what it is supposed to do - send short messages and help broadcast information quickly. It is now a utility, like e-mail, and we're all assumed to be there. But I, and many others, continue to get frustrated when we see the system and its people fall short of what is an amazing potential. You can have hundreds of millions of users, but the experience itself is diminishing, and the management seems disconnected, in a way that makes them look like they are in love with the latest celebrities to sign up and less enamored with us rank and file who evangelized their product the last few years, pointing out both the good and the bad as it came.

Similar too are the stories of those previously stabbed by the mob. The Digg fanatics believe strongly in their ability to push favorite items forward, and potentially upset the balance of the new world media. Facebook, once deemed a safe place for friends and family to congregate online, found itself on the wrong side of privacy choices and business. Google Reader wrongly hoped that those you e-mailed in GMail would be fine to share your RSS favorites with. In each case, the users believed in the product, wanted it to succeed, but disagreed strongly with the latest moves, and they would not give up until their voices had been heard and made impact.

Designing new products and services, and adding new features to existing ones, is very difficult to do in public, especially when you are trying to walk the fine line of placating existing users while attracting new ones. Twitter, in a flash point of popularity, is especially vulnerable due to the fact their own product, as also are Digg and Facebook, could be used by users to fight back. Did Twitter or Facebook or Digg lose users permanently due to such heated battles? Probably not for long, but the scars do linger, and the trust factor that might once have been there is gone, or at least damaged enough that the mob will keep their torches at the ready, waiting for the next time they're needed.

The world of product development, on the backs of user content, is changing the way people expect to participate. And when they aren't treated as equals, or they are talked down to, people are taking it very seriously, and there are more platforms for conversation than ever, with more people to reach than ever, so any service who is in this space who expects to make even "small settings updates" should strongly think of their potential impact and be ready in case things start to go wrong - fast.

10 Rules for Today's Consumers In the New World of Real-Time

The world of communication and product delivery is changing as the Web evolves and new services are introduced, enabling us to gain faster access to information, download richer media more quickly, and rapidly voice our opinions and feedback near and far in a wide variety of methods, including text, voice, video and imagery. As customers become more savvy and in tune with these new tools, we are also expecting those offering products and services to adapt, and as such, I thought it made sense to put forth what I believe are key tenets of a new consumer manifesto for today's real-time world.

1. We Want Access to Your Product As Quickly As Possible

We have become an "instant gratification" society. Our short attention spans are being rewarded with ubiquitous access to fast food, the rollout of ever-faster download speeds, near elimination of commercials, thanks to DVRs, and the ability to replace activities that were once limited to venues outside the home with in-home equivalents, including on-demand programming and simulated bowling on our Wiis.

When we order your products, or sign up for your service, we want access to them immediately. We don't want to wait for an approval period, and if the product is physical, we want it shipped quickly at the first possible convenience.

2. We Expect the Product to Work On Any Platform In Any Location

Many of us spend more time in the Web browser and our e-mail than we do in our Operating System software these days. We rapidly grow frustrated with any Web sites or applications that operate differently if you utilize different operating systems or Web browsers, and we expect to have access to your product, or a mobile equivalent, when we are away from our desktops.

3. We Want to See That You Allow for Feedback, Positive and Negative

The time of a siloed product experience is gone. We want to see that you provide a forum or link to a third party site that discusses your business and your products, and connects us with peers, where we can learn from one another in a venue that reaches you as well. And if you do provide a forum or bulletin for us to provide feedback, we will not look kindly on your deleting threads or comments of substance.

4. We Expect That You Respond to Your Customers, Quickly

Customers are talking about your products on their blogs, on Twitter, on Facebook and other aggregation sites. They may send you e-mail or post in public forums. While we can't expect CEOs of the largest companies to respond to every mention, we do expect company representatives to be listening, and for the smallest companies, we do expect founders and entrepreneurs to be accessible.

5. We Expect That You Join and Lead the Conversation

In the absence of communication from you, rumors and negative feedback can snowball. And while you might be coached in handling crisis PR in case something gets out of hand on blogs or Twitter, the best way to get ahead of potential issues is to have a presence in these social areas before problems occur, so that your customers have a place to engage you, and you them, helping to redirect the conversation and react. Additionally, you can use your communication outlets to show thought leadership and teach us better ways to use your product in ways we may not have considered.

6. We Want to See That You Continually Improve Your Product

Thanks to the now assumed two-way conversation with your customers, we expect you will be making incremental updates and improvements that both meet your corporate objectives and satisfy user expectations - beyond fixing bugs. Not only do we now expect instant access and near real-time responses, but we hope for rapid iterations that add to our satisfaction. A stale product will lead to cranky users, and breed disloyalty, as we may migrate to alternatives that appear to be updating more frequently with more agility.

7. We Expect You to Use Your Product and Be Visible

One of the greatest endorsements of your own product is that you use it and make it a part of your own visible activity - making you appear as a peer with a shared experience in parallel to that of your customers. For the smallest companies, including startups with 1-10 employees, we expect to likely see your CEO and founders visibly consuming their own dog food, both exulting in its benefits and suffering through its disappointments. And if you do put up a central example of your employees or founder using your products, don't do it once and never update again, because we'll know about it, and it will a stark reminder of your pandering.

8. We Expect That You Will Embrace or Lead Standards

As we are helping you create a business by selecting your product instead of that of the competition, we expect you will help us, and the ecosystem as a whole, by either embracing existing standards that are agreed upon, or by forging new standards and releasing them to the community for the benefit of all. We reject proprietary methods that don't deliver significant differentiation, or aren't forced by antiquated legalities.

9. We Expect You Are Driven By More than Money Alone

As consumers, we are eager to be seen as your partner, and to contribute to improving the next iteration of your product, or in helping to grow the information base around it, through consistent feedback, formation of user groups, or in creating content related to your product. As such, we do not expect to be seen as blank checks, there to support your bottom line when quarters draw thin. Instead, we want to see that you share a passion for your products and your market, and know that you, as we are, are driven by the potential of what your product can enable us to accomplish. We want to know the story of what you are trying to solve, and how it can help the community, more than we want to hear about your margins and your EPS.

10. We Want You To Treat Us As Informed Consumers and Partners

We have real-time access to news and many of us are rabid information sponges who are experts about you and your product. We don't want to be talked down to, and often have significant history with your organization. We despise the tendency to architect service, support and marketing to the lowest common denominator, and greatly appreciate your expecting that we have a baseline of understanding that includes recent headlines on you and the industry.

---

While books including the Cluetrain Manifesto and Naked Conversations have chronicled the move by consumers and businesses to e-commerce and a new world of online communications, continued advancements toward real-time news and exchanges of ideas lay the platform for a revamped approach to consumer relations with business. We are finding out more about you than you ever believed possible, and we are more than willing to share it just as quickly - both the good and the bad. Embrace the change and embrace us as partners and we can be your greatest ally. Be truthful, transparent and trusted, and you can help us cross the chasm from customers to fans.

Social Media Outposts: Maintenance

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

This is a continuation of last week's post regarding creating social media outposts. The first part was creating outposts or as I refer to them, tollbooths. The core objective is for organic search engine traffic, and reserving the brand's identity on the given social networks I have chosen. It's no secret anymore that social media optimization works and it works well with regards to search engines. In the previous post, I outlined my reasons for choosing the social media platforms, today I will delve into maintenance, which is basically updating the outposts.

Maintenance starts with automation:

Automation is key to making this work. My outpost task is for commercial use, so it's not a viable option for me to manually update all of these outposts. Some of the outposts will have to be manually updated, but the majority of them will be automated. I will be covering some of the tools and features for automation that I use in this post.

Blogger:

Since I will be using multiple Blogger.com accounts for this task, and updating the majority of these blogs at the same time, the solution is post by email. This works because the blogs I will be updating are going to be receiving the same content. This also works with Wordpress blogs.

I simply create a mail list with all the distribution blogs post to email addresses. Using Outlook or Gmail, I compose the blog content. The subject of your email letters will be the titles of your posts, and the body of the emails will be the posts themselves. To include an image in your post, you can attach an image to your email. You can also use plain text or HTML when composing your posts via email.

Twitter:

To send status updates to Twitter, I will be using TweetDeck. I prefer TweetDeck because of the ability to group my followers, and because nothing comes close to it, at least for a Windows client. TweetDeck also allows you to post status updates to Facebook. There is one drawback though, presently you can not use multiple Twitter accounts on TweetDeck. This is a major hurdle as I will need to be updating multiple Twitter accounts at the same time. Seesmic would be better off for this task because it supports multiple Twitter accounts and grouping. Both of these are desktop AIR apps and are memory hogs, so there are plenty of other solutions for posting to Twitter. Eventually the clients will be taking over these Twitter accounts and will have their own preferences on how to post to Twitter. Most of these clients are not too tech savvy, and in speaking with them, the majority of them are used to using a browser for everything. Using Twitter.com to post will probably be the road they take.

Facebook:

For updating the Facebook fan pages I will be using a few of the built in options as well as using a few applications. For my objectives, I'm only concerned with automation for videos, status updates and notes. There are a ton of Facebook applications you can use for customizing your Facebook fan pages. Read this Mashable post for a good starting point. Spend some time browsing the application directory for a full sampling of all the current Facebook applications.

Status updates:

There are a few Facebook applications that will do this using your Twitter account's RSS feed. One that I have been testing out is RSS Connect. You can also use ping.fm to update your fan pages too. There are a few other tricks to do this, but either one that I mentioned should be suffice.

Notes:

This will be done by using RSS. Simply add your blog's RSS feed, set it and forget it.

Importing video:

Videos for the fan page will be imported in from our YouTube channel. You can either upload them manually to your page or use YouTube Video Box or YouTube Box for automation.

Importing photos:

I do this manually, as I want to be selective on what photos I add to the fan page. I suspect there is probably an application for this. I also allow on the the fan pages for tagging and adding of photos by fans.

Create custom boxes:

With basic HTML knowledge you can use Static FBML to create custom boxes to cater to your fan page needs.

MySpace:

This outpost will be pretty much bare-bones. Its only purpose will be for branding and vanity url purposes. I will customize the layout, upload a few target videos, link back to my central hub, fill in some profile data and that's all. The application gallery is very weak. While there is an option to export blog postings made on Myspace, I did not find an application to import RSS feeds into Myspace. MySpace is the weakest link in my outpost strategy, again only being used as a branded outpost and that's all. Set this one and forget it.

YouTube:

YouTube will be used for the main video hub. All videos are uploaded to YouTube through YouTube.com first, then distributed to all the outposts. There are tools to create videos and upload them to YouTube directly, I prefer using their website to do this. With our YouTube channels, the first thing we did was customize our channels.

1. Log into your YouTube account. Click the yellow "Edit Channel" button.
2. Set up your channel information - website URL, profile picture (88x88) and description.
3. Within Channel Design scroll down to "Advanced Design Customization". Set background, link and border colors.

If you are looking to automate the YouTube upload process, a good site to use for this is TubeMogul.com. TubeMogul will allow you to send videos to YouTube as well as Viddler, Vimeo , and a whole slew of other video sites.

One tool that does it all is ping.fm:

You can use ping.fm to pretty much update all of your social networks. Ping.fm supports over 40 social networking platforms. I have tried it out in the past and it works pretty well. One word of advice is not to cross your streams. The last thing you want to do is have double or triple updates of the same message broadcasted across your social networks.

That's pretty much the tools of the trade that I recommend and or use for updating my outposts. I'm still pretty much old fashioned and prefer manually updating the majority of my content, but when it comes to bulk and that's what this project is, these tools, once set up, save a lot of time and effort. In the end, it's all about working smarter not harder.

The next post, part three, is not necessarily about outposts, but more on brand monitoring and a big part of that is monitoring the social media networks for brand mentions. Stay tuned...

Image by Rejar under Flickr CC

Read more by Mike Fruchter at MichaelFruchter.com.

Twitter Launches Enhanced New Follower E-mails

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

It would appear that Twitter has launched a brand new format for their new follower notification E-mails they send out to users opting to be alerted to new followers. The e-mails are now in a prettier HTML format and include the new follower's name, Twitter username, and picture. They also include the number of updates, number of people they follow, and number of followers they have. While users aren't given the option to follow straight from the e-mail, you can block the user by clicking on a link in the e-mail.

It would appear as though Twitter is now competing head-to-head to the recently sold business, Twimailer and another popular e-mail service, Topify.  Both services provide similar data, and, in addition, show recent Tweets and other related data to the user to help in deciding whether one should follow or not.  These service also do the same with DMs a user receives through Twitter.  It will be interesting to see if Twitter decides to venture further into this area or if these other services will still be able to thrive.

The New Look for Twitter E-mail Notifications

With the current lack of API for new follows on Twitter (besides these e-mails), it will remain hard for any service to scale to mass proportions for free and afford to add new servers to meet Twitter's API limit demands and simple load for communicating with the API.  This will become even harder as advertisers cut back more and more on spending for these types of applications.

The Old Look for Twitter E-mail Notifications

It was for this same reason that (full disclosure), my own service, SocialToo recently launched a new prioritized e-mail service that you can receive bulk updates of your new followers, as well as unfollowers, along with information about each one. We just announced a new pricing model that you can purchase these daily e-mails for a one-time $20 fee.  Such a model was necessary to pay for a scalable architecture, and you can likely expect the same from many other Twitter apps in the near future.

As Twitter grows, with no known roadmap or business model, developers and businesses should use caution that their businesses can scale and adapt as Twitter, or Facebook, or any other social network or API they are building on top of has the threat to venture into their territory.  There is no word from Twitter yet on these new changes.

Read more by Jesse Stay at Stay N' Alive.

Welcome To The Reputation Economy

By Rob Diana of Regular Geek (Twitter/FriendFeed)


Everyone knows a good reputation is a valuable thing. With all of the activity on social media Web sites, your reputation can now come from a number of sources. You could be a well known blogger or entrepreneur, or even what some people call a social media whale, describing those people heavily active on social media sites. Because of the amount of public dialog that people now participate in, your reputation is even more valuable.

Where Does Reputation Start?

There is a fantastic conversation on FriendFeed regarding whether some of today's bright teens should go to college. I was late to the conversation and decided against participating because I had a larger topic in mind - this blog post. The reason I bring this conversation up is that for most people, their reputation building is started in college. Not only do they build reputation by what they do, but they start building something the moment they attend the school. For example, if you attend a fine university like Berkeley, people immediately assume certain things about you. The same can be said for any of the Ivy League universities, high tech universities like MIT and Carnegie Mellon, and other top schools. By having a degree from one of these schools, you have stated that you can survive a difficult and competitive environment, and for someone interested in joining or building a startup, this is excellent experience.

Obviously, after or alongside schooling, you are continuously refining your reputation through your work experience and other activities like blogging or social media use.

What Does Reputation Get You?

Technically, reputation is one of those "investment" items that does not have a direct return. However, your reputation may get you that interview you wanted. It may not get you the job directly, but it may get your foot in the door. If you get into the freelancing business, much of your initial contacts will likely be due to your reputation as well. Similar to your education though, it is something that needs "care and feeding". It does not go on autopilot, it is something that needs to be steered through various obstacles. How you handle these obstacles in your career directly affects your reputation, as well as your success.

Is Reputation More Important Than It Used To Be?

Reputation has always been important, however the area of importance is changing. Before the Internet, reputation may have been critical to getting the sale or a new job. Now, your reputation can be seen and tested every day by your social media activity and your blogging. The management of your reputation is now of critical importance. You just need to look at the various situations that "went viral" or took on a life of their own. People being fired for comments on Facebook is not an uncommon thing anymore. An advertising campaign can fail so badly (i.e. MotrinMoms) that it incurs that wrath of moms all over the Internet.

Welcome To The Reputation Economy

Reputation is now worth almost as much as revenue. FriendFeed is the perfect example of this. The reputation of the team is stellar. Because Paul Buchheit has a fantastic resume and has had great success, when he says real-time conversation is the next big thing, people are listening. Because he works for FriendFeed, people are watching FriendFeed closely. To compare the effect of reputation, look at me. I have a decent reputation in social media circles, but if I said that real-time conversation was the next big thing (without Paul saying it of course), I might get a link from another blog or two. That could even be the end of the conversation. So, never underestimate the power of reputation because it may be as important as actual currency.

Read more by Rob Diana at RegularGeek.com.

Creating Social Media Outposts

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


Roll-Your-Own Social Media Campaign: Outposts

I recently started a new job at a software company. One of my responsiblites is creating and launching an effective organic SEO & social media strategy for our customers. Our customer base deals primarily with the auto industry, not the keenest when it comes to marketing on the Internet, much less social web. The majority of our customers spend their advertising dollars on print, TV and radio ads. This strategy for the most part works well, as it's locally targeted to a geographical region.

My main objective with this task is primarily for search engine purposes only. Creating back links and outposts. Brand monitoring is also another objective. This is a roll-your-own strategy tailored for the three objectives I mentioned only. Educational training on social media comes later. These type of clients are salesmen who are on the sales floor all day long trying to move product, and often these clients will have an employee assigned to the Internet division, but that employee usually does not know the first thing about Internet marketing. Their sole task is updating online inventory and responding to Internet requests. These are the employees who will require ongoing training about Internet marketing and more specifically social media marketing, engagement and interaction. More on that on a future post, but lets get started.

Think of outposts as a sort of toll booth. This is the analogy I'm making here. It's pretty much the same in real life. On the Internet there are many toll booths for many destinations. You need to own and operate that toll booth, instead of your competitors.

1. Reserving and creating the brands name online, aka vanity urls.

The first step is creating accounts on the major social networking sites. All I'm concerned with at this point is Twitter , Facebook , MySpace , YouTube and blogging. Blogging for this objective will be using Blogger.com, eventually leading to in house blogs as well as hosted on the brands website using WordPress. I need to reserve the brand's name on these networks for search engine traffic, but equally important is to keep them out of the hands of name squatters and potential competitors. I'm not concerned about the smaller social networks, they can come at a later point if needed.

Why choose Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Blogger and YouTube?

Blogger:

• The ability to create dozens of blogs utilizing targeted keywords.
• Easy to use with no learning curve.
• Vanity URLs
• Google juice
• Marketing
• Branded outpost

Self hosted WordPress blogs will eventually be the main informational hub for consumers

Twitter:

• Real time search capabilities.
• An API we can hook into to pull and post data.
• Consumer interaction, engagement & lead generation.
• Broadcasting inventory, specials, etc.
• Vanity URL & tweets are indexable by search engines, Google being the prime target.
• Branded outpost

Facebook:

• The ability to create a public branded fan page & vanity URL
• Public pages are indexed by search engines. Google being the prime target.
• Consumer interaction, engagement & lead generation.
• Rich multimedia environment.
• Branded outpost

MySpace:

• Vanity URL
• Public pages are indexed by search engines, Google being the prime target.
• Multimedia environment, primarily will be used for video/photo purposes only.
• Branded outpost

YouTube:

• Vanity URL
• Distribution hub for videos created in house.
• Ability to create a custom channel.
• Embeddable share options for videos and soc nets.
• Indexable by search engines, great for Google juice.
• Branded outpost

2. Creating consistent brandable outposts.
Now that all these accounts are created, it's time to turn them into outposts. Remember an outpost is used for driving traffic back to your central hub. The hub in this case is the brands website.

• Outposts need to be streamlined and most importantly consistent across the board.
• Corporate contact information, banners, logos and URL name should all be the same.
• Outposts always link back to the central hub.
• Always use targeted keywords in profile information.
• Goal is to achieve uniform omnipresence on all outposts.
• When information is changed on the central hub, it needs to be reflected on the outpost.
• Link back to all your outposts. Always remember main emphasis is on the central hub.
• Encourage following and fans on your outposts and always follow back.
• Keep the outpost fresh with content as often as possible, this is key for search engines.

That's part 1 of this roll-your-own strategy. Outposts are relatively easy to set up and maintain, and are key for organic search traffic. Part 2 will cover maintenance of the outposts and will also dive into brand monitoring.
Image by thetruthabout under Flickr CC

Read more by Mike Fruchter at MichaelFruchter.com.

Facebook Getting Ready to Charge for Vanity Nicknames?

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

My friend, Jason McGowan, sent me a screenshot that, if it is what it appears to be, suggests Facebook may be getting ready to add a new strategy to its business plan. It appears that select users are seeing polls in Facebook, asking if they would pay to be able to have their own vanity nickname on the network.

The vanity id is currently in beta for a select group of users such as TechCrunch, Loic Lemuer, AllFacebook, and others, and allows you to have http://facebook.com/yournick point to your Facebook Page. In addition, from their mobile phones, users can send "fan nickname" to Facebook and become

fans of your Page from wherever they are. This would be useful, for instance, in a Baseball or Football stadium during a game to enter people into a contest or become fans of the team. It would appear with these polls that Facebook also intends to allow this to point to individual user profiles as well.

Currently services like my own SocialToo and others provide short, easy-to-remember URLs that redirect to your Facebook profile. Having such a vanity URL would enable users to have an even easier to rememb

er URL, based on the Facebook.com domain that you could pass out to your friends. I personally would pay for this - it's worth both the brand recognition, and SEO it would give any brand.

The vanity URLs also come with even more pressure from Google, who just recently launched their own short URL and user profile system. Google's user profiles are 100% free, and rely on your Google account username by default. (See mine here)

Having asked Facebook for entrance into the vanity URL program for both myself and SocialToo and received no response (hint, hint), I would assume Facebook is just waiting for the right time to launch this to all. I'm excited to see this program come forth and hope Facebook can soon allow many more into the program.

You can add yourself as a Fan to my Page at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jesse-Stay/12327140265

Read more by Jesse Stay at Stay N' Alive.

I Wish Ad Companies Would Truly Leverage Social Profiles

This evening, while reading early feedback on the brand new baseball season over on ESPN.com, I saw yet another ad for a singles dating service, promising me access to available ladies waiting to hear from me. My first thought wasn't to turn on Private Browsing in Safari and do some clicking around, but instead, a desire that ESPN and its ad partners would just leverage my Facebook profile, know I'm married (and not looking), and stop showing me ads that made no sense. It would help my experience, and dramatically help their click through rates and success.

Given advertising seems to be a necessary evil to make the Web go round, there really needs to be a concerted effort for companies to take the wealth of social information that is embedded in all these networks, and get the targeting ever better and closer to being truly personalized. The opportunity seems too great to pass up, and all the ingredients are there - even if the occasional privacy proponent claims concern.

Facebook and other networks like it, including LinkedIn, FriendFeed and Google, are amassing piles of information about me. They know what I like. They know my family situation and my career path. They know where I graduated from high school and college. They know what music I listen to, what sports I watch, and my favorite teams. They know where I used to work and who I still keep in contact with. But as previously discussed, even Facebook's guesses as to what ads are relevant to me are pure failure - which I only somewhat jokingly said we should help combat by marking them all as "offensive".

Forget about wondering how much money Facebook is going to make through selling ads on its own site, or selling credits and game points. I think the real money is in Facebook offering to team up with all the major advertisers on the Web (Google/Doubleclick included) and letting said advertisers tap into our personal profiles, giving them a cut of the downstream revenue. Facebook has proven they know us, even as their ad team does not. Turn over the right data to ad people who do know what they're doing, and maybe I'll stop being annoyed by ads that have nothing to do with me.

Stop Telling Me How to Use Your Products

In recent weeks, there have been a number of incidents where high profile online services have gotten into something of a battle with their users. Be it the on again off again user interface debate between Facebook and its user base, or Twitter's deciding just what is the right way or the wrong way to use their service, both products have ended up telling their own customers that they know best, and you should just suck it up. During these debates, some have said the best way to drive a product forward was to never compromise and listen to your users, while others celebrated the users getting a voice at the table.

But we're missing a major issue that I want to address. I'm fine with companies making changes to their interface, or adding features, or even deciding to prioritize some issues over others. That's business. But don't tell me how to use your products. Don't tell me what is the right way or the wrong way to use a product, when you've given us tools.

Take for example the hubris from Biz Stone at Twitter in his note to individual customers who were relying on their providing autofollow capabilities. Most specifically, he said:

"We’re going to discontinue autofollow because this behavior sends the wrong message. Namely, it is unlikely that anyone can actually read tweets from thousands of accounts which makes this activity disingenuous."

Oh really? What a bunch of junk this is. What's next? Google Reader telling us that there should be a limit to the number of RSS feeds we subscribe to, or that Yahoo!, Hotmail and GMail will limit the number of new e-mails we can receive in a day? After all, couldn't they write that "nobody can actually read e-mails from thousands of people which makes this activity disingenuous"?

Here's the reality - people are going to use products the way they want to, especially if you build a product that is flexible. And they will often use them in ways you never expected, or had even considered when you were first designing. And as you continue to build your service out, the solution is not to tell users there is "one right way", but instead to consider how you can make your product even better to an increasing number of people.

What I have seen from companies like Twitter and Facebook is a belief that you should only be connected to people you know in real life, and that you should only have a small number of people to be connected with. Yes, Facebook's dismissing the 5,000 limit, and yes, they're opening up to companies and fan pages, but they still require you to enter your true first and last name, and demand a synchronous follow.

Twitter's limits are even worse. What's so bizarre about this most recent volley about users being "disingenuous" by using auto-follow is how it impacts their most popular users. Where's the outrage that Barack Obama clearly uses auto-following software? Do you think Twitter is going to tell Obama that he can't actually follow 586,000 users? Do you think they are going to tell Robert Scoble that it is "disingenuous" to follow 85,000 people?

I also use a third party auto-following service from SocialToo (where I'm also an advisor). I use it because Twitter, thanks to other limitations in their product, will let me send direct messages only to those who follow me, and I want to let them contact me directly.

What Twitter and Facebook are doing by trying to tell their users that they know the right way to use their products is putting themselves above the users, and acting in an authoritative, but naive, manner. I think Biz' comment that it was "disingenuous" to follow thousands of accounts is covering the fact that Twitter's infrastructure wasn't meant to support such activity.

At risk of echoing Thomas Hawk's comment that I'm "Mr. FriendFeed", it's worth noting again that FriendFeed doesn't tell me how to or how not to use their products, and they aren't setting limits. They put out a service, and let the users have at it. That's impressive, and a major reason of why I'm bullish on what they do. For the rest of you developers who keep setting limits and claiming it's not your fault, but your users, you're wrong.

Facebook Adds More Filters to Home Feed

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

It would appear that some time in the last hour, Facebook has added more filters to the Home Page feed. If you mouse over the upper-right of any feed entry, you'll notice the "X" is missing, and instead, there's a drop-down that says "Hide". Click on that, and you'll notice the option to hide all of a user's posts, or just particular feed item types.

For instance, if you just want to hide a person's Delicious bookmarks or Google Reader shares, that will appear next to the Feed item entry for that share. Right now the types of posts seem to be limited, and Facebook has not provided an explanation as to the extent of the filters.

In this example, I can hide the user, or the service.

This change is just one step in a line of improvements Facebook has mentioned they were moving towards, in light of users' near revolt over the social network's new interface. In addition to more filtering capabilities, Facebook is still looking to make the Feed more real-time and is improving the highlights on the right-hand side of the Home Page. The new filters seem to be quite limited at the moment, but my hope is that we'll begin to see many more options to enable you to have greater control over the data you see as you log into Facebook.

Read more by Jesse Stay at Stay N' Alive.

How To Cleanly Separate Personal and Work Social Media Personalities

As social networking and social media sites increasingly become as much about companies and brands as they are about people, you are seeing names like Zappos and JetBlue tweeting alongside you, and Comcast answering complaints. Companies might be making comments on FriendFeed and asking you to join their fan page on Facebook. Many of you, possibly tasked with maintaining the social media presence for your company, might be maintaining multiple accounts on practically every network, and trying to keep your personalities in check, lest you make the mistake of getting the two mixed up. For the last four months, I've been doing the same thing. Here's how.

Put Your Work Life In One Browser, and You In Another

Everybody has multiple browsers these days. Whether you prefer Safari, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, or something else, you probably have a second one which you use less. Rather than ask you to login and log out over and over, set up one of your browsers with bookmarks to all your work activity and the social media sites with that account, and keep your preferred browser all yours.

For my work account, I use Firefox, and for me, I use Safari.

When I open Firefox, the browser opens five distinct tabs:

• Gmail
• Google Reader
• Twitter Search
• Twitter
• FriendFeed

The GMail account tracks new subscribers and DMs. Google Reader populates the link blog. Twitter search watches what is being said online, and Twitter and FriendFeed let the company participate.

Running the browsers in parallel lets me do the work I need to in both, without suffering from multiple personality disorder.

Make A Second Login, Preferences for TweetDeck

TweetDeck, in my opinion, is still the best way to track groups and saved searches in Twitter. I set up TweetDeck so if I am logged in as me, the application has the standard black look and feel. But when I am logged in with the company ID, TweetDeck is in the company colors of blue and orange. Yes, the combination is somewhat garish, but it serves as a reminder to me that I'm logged in for work, so I won't screw up.


Logged Into TweetDeck as the Company

Logged Into TweetDeck as Me
Beyond the colors, you should leverage TweetDeck's saved search functionality to track your company and product mentions, as well as that of competitors.

Create a Second Disqus Account for Commenting

When commenting on blogs around the Web, as yourself, or for the company, it makes sense to use best practices and identify who you are. But you don't necessarily want to track your work comments to your personal ID. I recommend getting a second Disqus account that ties back to your work e-mail address, and have that registered in the "work" browser. When I make comments on sites as work, it says my first and last name, and then, in parentheses, the company name.

Always Work Methodically When Acting on Behalf of the Company

Tweeting or commenting or blogging or bookmarking as a brand is more risky than when you do it on your own. As with all things on the Web, you should consider how they could be interpreted downstream. But when you are doing something on behalf of a corporate entity that represents products, people, history and finance, you should take an extra breath before acting, and pay extra attention to every word, character or nuance.

Be Replaceable

If you do your job well, it should be easy for you to pass off the reins of the social media strategy at your company to somebody else with very little impact. If you make the company's social media presence all about you, it will follow you where you go next, and could negatively damage the company you are leaving, and distract from the company where you are going. See that you can work on behalf of the company without it being all about you. Try to offer personality without it necessarily being your distinct personality.

You'll note I don't often talk about work here on the blog. It was a conscious decision I made when starting the site at the beginning of 2006. It's not a secret where I work (check my LinkedIn profile) but it's not about where I work. It's all part of keeping things separate. Are you running the social media activity for your company, or looking to get started? I would be interested in the tips you may have as well.

Facebook Drops the Walled Garden, Opens Up Possibility for Track

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

Today, Facebook announced they are now making it possible for anyone to open up their status updates and more, to the world. This means that by going into your privacy settings on Facebook and selecting "everyone" on various profile options, Google can now index it, non-friends are able to see it, and it puts Facebook "face-to-face" in the "worldwide conversation" with Twitter. Yes, Facebook has just killed the walled garden.

Over the last few months, people have been flocking to Twitter due to its open nature, searchable interface, and ease of conversation. Up until today, Facebook has only enabled status updates, conversation, posts, and profile data to be available, at a very maximum, to a user's friends and networks. Very limited data about a user was exposed to the world, nor was it indexable by Google. Google mostly had the capability to index a user's name, friends, and that was about it. Now, status updates, profile data, friend lists, and more can be visible to the world at the user's discretion.

We also saw the beginning of this today with the implementation of this data via TweetDeck, the most popular Twitter client's, integration with Facebook. Now even more data will be available to applications such as TweetDeck.

The Advantage Over Twitter

Twitter has been known as a wide-open platform. One that by default, anyone can read and publish. Users, at option, can make their profile and status updates private like Facebook, but it's an all or nothing choice.

On Facebook, your data remains private by default, but users can opt, at will, to make just pieces of their profiles available to the world. It doesn't have to be all-or-nothing. Users have full control, and can feel more at ease with Facebook. Perhaps the only thing that would make this better would be making status updates open to the public by default - I expect (and hope) we'll see this soon.

Let's Bring Track to Facebook

Facebook has indicated they have integrated this into their native search now. However, the availability of these status updates publicly does allow any developer to write such a search interface, and access the data, almost real-time on Facebook's massive server infrastructure.

Summize has been acquired by Twitter, but perhaps we'll start seeing other search services start to index this data. Currently, it would seem that only Social Graph data is available via the API, but I fully expect a public timeline to be available in the near future for them to be successful at this.

Let's add to this Facebook's existing SMS interface and the ability to integrate Facebook into your mobile phone, perhaps we will see Track again, but this time through Facebook, and very soon.

Goodbye Walled Garden!

Today marks a significant move in the history of Facebook. Today they tore down the walled garden they were sorely criticized for in the past. Now any user, under their own control, can make their data available to the public.

Facebook has hinted already at removing the 5,000 friend limit. I think that, along with more open APIs (aka public timeline), and access to comments and likes via the API will make Twitter start wishing they accepted Facebook's offer for purchase a few months back. Facebook, again, has just changed the game.

Read more by Jesse Stay at Stay N' Alive.

Seesmic Launches First Dedicated Client for Facebook Updates

One of the introductions displayed during Facebook's Dave Morin's panel at the South by Southwest conference today was that of a new desktop client for Facebook status updates, delivered by Seesmic's Loic LeMeur. The new app, available for both PC and Macintosh, running on the Adobe AIR platform, lets users view updates from friends and post new status updates to the popular social network, much like the myriad of applications built for Twitter, from TweetDeck and Posty to LeMeur's own, Twhirl.

During the debut of the application, Loic was keen to try and help redefine Seesmic. He said simply, "Seesmic is more than video now, it is about sharing with friends."


Connecting to Facebook With the Seesmic Desktop Tool
I currently update my Facebook status with my updates I send to Twitter, so for those people who use Twitter and synchronize the two, there may be little need for the new tool, but there are many others who have made Facebook their home for social networking with friends and family. With some now 50,000 applications running on the Facebook platform, as Morin mentioned today, the new Seesmic application both has the option to be seen by very many users, but also the chance it could be overlooked, unless Facebook also chooses to push its visibility.


Updates from My Friends and Updating Myself
There is some curiosity as to why Twhirl was not made the conduit for these updates. The product, primarily focused on Twitter, also enables updates to FriendFeed and, of course, Seesmic. It could be that Facebook wanted a native app dedicated to their site, or it could be that Loic wanted to gain the market visibility by building a new category of desktop utilities. (Of course, you could see CenterNetworks' video to learn more)

You can find the new Seesmic Facebook updater at http://www.seesmic.com/facebook. From there, you'll be taken to the Facebook site, upon getting connected, and you can download the AIR application. Loic officially announced it on his blog here.

Apple iPhoto to Integrate Facebook Connect

During Dave Morin's presentation on a search for a more social Web at the SXSW conference today, the senior platforms manager for Facebook mentioned the company would be integrating Facebook Connect with Apple's iPhoto consumer program, in what could be a big step for Cupertino away from their forced vertical integration with Mobile Me, and more toward an adoption of the broader social networking community.

As Facebook grows in visibility, it's no surprise that companies big and small are looking to tap into the service's reported 175 million accounts. As Morin said during his presentation, "The desktop is getting more important in terms of integration with the Web." And the move for iPhoto users to upload their photos to Facebook, add tags and other social data further blurs the line between what is a desktop app or a Web app.

Apple has long considered it one of the leaders of the Web - despite having zero presence in search, portals or social networking in general. The company's long in the tooth iTools to .Mac to MobileMe transition has never really gained traction with the masses, even though the company's iPhone/iTunes and iLife families have been tremendously successful. That they are moving to work with Facebook and support the integration of the service indicates they're trying to dismiss the "not invented here" mentality.

Morin did not indicate which version of iPhoto would include the Facebook Connect option, or a timeframe, but given the presentations by multiple iPhone app developers having integrated the same technology and APIs, it likely won't be too long.

Facebook Connects With the iPhone for Mobile Social Apps

Today at the SXSW Interactive event, Dave Morin, Facebook's senior platform manger, introduced a wide-ranging integration of the company's Facebook Connect platform with iPhone applications, aiming to connect friends, using their true identities, through popular mobile apps. As Morin described during the standing room only panel, "your iPhone apps can now have friends."

In the last few weeks, Facebook has made significant changes in how they help its 175 million users share information, including expansions to the network's social graph and a revamped feed stream, but also has talked up what's a new move for the previous walled garden - looking to connect Facebook and your data on the network with the rest of the Web.

Morin said the updates start with profiles for "everyone", not just individuals but also, brands and companies. The new Facebook, now available on the Web, on the desktop and on the iPhone, essentially helps you "map out the most efficient way for you to connect to your friends," he added.

At launch, the new Facebook Connect for the iPhone will be supported by many of the most popular iPhone applications, from Tap Tap Revenge to Urban Spoon and the Social Gaming Network's array of applications, including iBowl, iBasketball and iGolf.

With such a huge user base, application developers are going to be extremely eager to attach to Facebook, undoubtedly, and the iPhone has still not yet peaked. I can expect to soon log in to any of my iPhone apps and take on friends and family, as the company looks to become the standard for your personal identity online, if you're at your computer or mobile.

Likaholix Launches Recommendation Engine Based On Social "Liking"

New services for people to connect to peers and share their interests are cropping up around every Web corner. Some, like Facebook and FriendFeed, have found strong, growing communities, where people find things they care about, and discuss those items. And as FriendFeed has discovered, the simple act of "liking" an item and enabling comments, helped the site differentiate itself from practically every other aggregator out there. This morning, Likaholix, sprung from the minds of some former Googlers, follows suit with a site dedicated to just your likes - whatever they may be, but adds on suggested items, recommendations, and even experts.

(Skip this post and get one of 200 invites: here)
No matter how many new lines of business Google finds itself in these days, its core value has always been search and retrieval of information. That mantra has been seen in sites developed by its former employees, like FriendFeed, with its integrated search, and now, also with Likaholix, who takes things a step further, by not just crawling a database, but auto-competing search terms, as does Google Suggest. And these auto-suggestions come packed with a ton of books, restaurants, and even movies and music - in what may be a vain hope that you won't see the same few dozen self-proclaimed social media experts lauding the latest technology update over and over.


Likaholix's Search Engine Auto-Suggest Feature In Action


Likaholix's Search Engine Results

Likaholix even suggests items that nobody likes, guessing that somebody will, and eventually, they would be selected.


Surely Somebody Finds South Park Funny?

As Likaholix is all about what you like, you're credited for being the first to like any item. On your profile, not only does it show what things you like, and who you like, but it shows how many times you were the first to like an item, and introduce it to the community.


Searching for Twitter Shows It's Not Yet Been Added

And should you be the first to like something, Likaholix helps you fill out your data profile with a description, and even images or videos pulled from Google to help round out your item.


Introducing a New Like to Likaholix



A Friend's Profile on Likaholix
Like with FriendFeed, your stream of likes and comments are found on your profile. You can also see how many different people liked an item, and who they are, and see recommended items based on what you've told the system you like. You can also view how many other users of the service you like, and who likes you.

Find yourself an expert in something? Claim you are with Likaholix - whether you're one of the previously mentioned social media experts, or if you have a love for science fiction, SEO or even art. Claiming expertise puts a star next to your profile, and will display your name with a star beside it anywhere it is mentioned, including on the list of contacts your friends have.


Tudor Bosman - Science Fiction Tastemaker on Likaholix
The core focus of Likaholix is to recommend to you more things you might like, based on things you say you enjoy, and those items your friends do - developing an automatic recommendation engine of sorts. For example, this morning, I was told I probably would like TiVo, because Sanjeev Singh, who I have liked, says he likes TiVo as well. In this case, Likaholix is right. It's not always right of course. I have less of an interest in bebe.com (a fashion Web site) or Downtown Brown beer (considering I don't drink), but I assume that as I like more things, and my friends do as well, this list can get better honed.

And as you like items, you can even share them in the usual places, like Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed - extending the reach of the site.

Likaholix is opening up today in a private alpha mode, as they say. Existing users, like me, can invite friends to try out the service. The user interface is spartan for now, but the team has no doubt been working on the recommendation engine for starters, and a sharper GUI can come later.

You can find me at: http://likaholix.com/louisgray. Be one of the first 200 to use this code, and you can get in as well: http://burnurl.com/xdB3aH

Serial Early Adopters Get It All Wrong

By Cyndy Aleo-Carreira of Shakespeare I Ain't (E-mail / Twitter)

I've been on Facebook now for longer than I've had my current Gmail account, and yet I can honestly say I never saw much use for it before the last six months.

Part of writing about tech means that you are forever jumping on the latest social network, trying out the latest app, and trying your hardest to keep ahead of the curve. You leave a trail of login IDs in your wake, rarely revisiting the majority of things you sign up for. You are a serial early adopter.

Of course, the serial early adopters consider themselves elite, above the masses, and when the hoi polloi begin to join a social network, it becomes passé, signalling a time to move on to the next big thing. The problem is, however, two-fold with this approach to determining what's hot and what's not. Without the arrival of the masses, what hope does a company have for profitability? The early adopters are never numerous enough, nor loyal enough, to support a company beyond the intial uptake.


An Early Adopter Panics When the Mainstream Nears...
Even more importantly, though, is how useful an app or a social network is. No offense, but how many times am I supposed to interact with the same people on multiple social networks? My FriendFeed subscriptions look a lot like my Twitter follows, which are probably the same people I'm connected to on LinkedIn, and so on. Up until about six months ago, my Facebook friends list looked much the same.

Six months ago was when things started changing. That was when "the masses" began signing up, and suddenly, I was connected to my cousin in Florida I hadn't seen since she was less than a year old. I found a friend from first grade who now lives in Montenegro. I get to "talk" regularly with my best friend from college who's living in Mexico and my junior prom date who moved South.

I don't need to see the same updates on Twitter and FriendFeed and Facebook from the same people every day. The redundancy of information eventually becomes tiring. Adding in the perspective of the "regular" people outside the tech sphere not only broadens a viewpoint of how things are perceived, but also what's important in the overall scheme of the world, not just the insular world of tech.

So the next time you remark that an app has "jumped the shark" because the unwashed masses have started showing up, think about whether you want all of your daily social interactions to be in the narrow world of tech or whether you should appreciate a wider horizon brought to you by those who aren't as "hip" and "in the know" as you are. I signed my dad up for Facebook myself.

Read more by Cyndy Aleo-Carreira at Shakespeare I Ain't. You can find her on Facebook here and Louis is hiding here.

Web Two Dot Oh DotCom Dot Cloud Colon Slash Slash

This afternoon I had the opportunity to attend a session presented by TechCrunch, hosted by Steve Gillmor, around cloud computing, featuring some of the Valley's thought leaders, from many of the biggest names in all of tech, ranging from Salesforce.com to Rackspace, Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Sun, Ning, FriendFeed, Facebook, Amazon.com and a small handful of startups. Each of the participants discussed how their product leveraged the cloud, what it was about this new approach to harvesting data storage and computing that made their products execute the way they do, and how they approached new problems of bandwidth, capacity, licensing, security and scale.

The event, essentially a two parter, with early-stage start-ups presenting for five minutes apiece in front of an expert panel for the first half, and a roundtable of technology elite for the second half, saw a healthy dosage of skepticism mixed in with what was largely a genuine desire for these companies to try and deliver higher-quality services for their users by taking advantage of new protocols.

With everybody saying the word "cloud" to represent customer data or computing being stored independently of local physical disk or blade servers, the word itself grew to be mocked. One 'expert' said cloud was the new "dotcom". Another compared the cloud to rabbits as they kept multiplying, and a third called the cloud "Kool-Aid". With the move of terminology over the last decade from "Dotcom" to "Web 2.0" to "Cloud", you can see why people would be necessarily wary of jumping on the newest movement with two feet.

All names aside, there is as much fact as there was fad in the cloud. The cloud's benefits are clear as data can be stored independent of physical disks, and doesn't require dedicated storage and server administration. Code developers want anytime access to infinite bandwidth and storage, and consumers want instant response times. As the panel debated the genesis of enterprise apps absorbing consumer application features, it was clear that each was facing challenges impossible just a decade ago, and the cloud's availability changed everything.

Paul Buchheit of FriendFeed referred to the Internet as just one big computer, and said that instead of shipping software in a big cardboard box with floppies to introduce version 3.0, you could just ship new code three times a day. Mike Schroepfer of Facebook talked about how his team could handle 1 billion status messages of 100 characters each on a different level of storage than the 1 billion images, each a few megabytes apiece. And Marc Benioff of Salesforce.com won the prize for the best quote of the day, saying, "As an industry, we are always overestimating what we can do in a year and underestimating what we can do in a decade."

Benioff's quote is no doubt true. The next engineering team I meet that hits the initial proposed date with all the requested features is the first one I will meet. But a decade ago, we wouldn't have expected to stream full-length feature films without buffering, or do many of the things we do online, always having been limited by location, bandwidth, memory, storage, or even operating systems. Now, the operating system is even less a part of the discussion. While the panel was held at Microsoft's Silicon Valley office, practically all presentations were done on Apple Macintosh, and featured FireFox, not Internet Explorer. Now, consumers and businesspeople expect to get all their applications and data from anywhere on any device. It was enough that Benioff even left his laptop behind on a trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in favor of his BlackBerry Bold.

It is happening. Not too long ago, yet another meme went around the Web on what the Internet looked like in 1996 - a blink of an eye when you think about it. In 1996, I was hosting a personal home page, using WebStar, on my Apple Macintosh Performa 631 CD, with all of 8 megabytes of RAM. Now, my blog is hosted on the cloud. The images themselves are on the cloud. My participation in social networks like Facebook and FriendFeed... is done on the cloud. And I'm taking my iPhone everywhere. I used to despise the term cloud, and used to rail against it with my colleagues at 3Cube back in 1998 to 2000, but it looks like I lost that battle. Good thing all of us as consumers are winning.

Why I Still Prefer Twitter and FriendFeed to Facebook

Editor's Note: As I noted last night, Facebook is quickly becoming the standard by which many social networking and social media sites are being analyzed, described and measured. Still, as Eric says below, not all are converted, preferring more dedicated sites, including Twitter and FriendFeed. This pair of stories was written independently, and the timing is sheer coincidence.
-- Louis Gray

By Eric Berlin of Online Media Cultist (FriendFeed/Twitter)

I spent the last three years managing the production of a number of social networking websites. During 2006-2007, I produced ZonaZoom, an ambitious (and now defunct) attempt to grab market share of social networking Latino teens in the United States. And I spent a grueling, rewarding year producing quarterlife.com in 2007 and early 2008, the home of short-lived NBC show quarterlife (I'm not including the direct link as the site looks far different now than the version I helped to bring to life.)

So that's all to say that I dwelled in social networking land quite a bit over the last few years. But in my personal time I've never really been much of what might be called a "traditional" social networking person; I'm more of a microblogging/social media/information junkie kind of person, which has led to Twitter and FriendFeed and Google Reader becoming the hubs of my online media (so-called?) "social life." So when I think about how I like to use the web, I've long thought of myself as more of a Twitter/FriendFeed/RSS person, and less of a MySpace/Facebook person.

This made all the sense in the world to me until recently... when methodically, relentlessly every single person that I know, have known, or knew in some former life friend-requested me on Facebook. I exaggerate of course, but it seemed like everyone from the dude I hung out with at woodworking class during a Boy Scout retreat in 1985 to my mother's co-workers added me at some point recently.

So there was that, and there was also the fact gnawing away at me that Facebook's news feed is an elegant feature combining Twitter's simplicity with Friendfeed-like flourishes such as comment threads and the ability to embed images and video.

Therefore, I began to wonder: "Why don't I spend a lot more time hanging out on Facebook? It's got a lovely news feed, and a large slice of the people I know or have ever known in the world are right there for me to chat with and interact with."

I'm still working my way through the reasons why this is so, but here's a working list of why I still far prefer Twitter and FriendFeed to Facebook:

Talking to everyone I know/have known at the same time is not so appealing as it might sound

When it comes down to it, this is the big one for me. When I enter the Facebook news feed, I feel like I'm entering a vast hall where my professional colleagues, potential employers, family, current friends, old and dear friends, old friends that I lost touch with 15 years ago, online contacts, and on and on, are all waiting to hear a formal address from me at the same time. The result is that I have a hard time letting my guard down and actually enjoying the social media experience.

So for some reason – and I expect I'm not alone here – Twitter and FriendFeed feel like much more comfortable places to hang out… which is really the entire idea of social networking in the first place!

News, social media, and pop culture-based conversations versus life conversations

Software platforms create places where people can congregate and communicate and share media and all of those other kinds of wonderful things. The kinds of people that do congregate, and how they communicate and share creates an online culture of sorts that is unique to each software platform.

My experience is that Facebook tends to encourage conversations that center around what people are doing with their lives: video of ski trips, announcements about what people are doing after work, expressions of joy and despair about the minutiae of life, that kind of thing. Now, of course this kind of thing also goes on within Twitter/FriendFeed. But I believe the culture of Twitter and FriendFeed allows for conversations that I tend to be more interested in: hot social media topics, breaking news stories, pop culture debates, and that sort of thing.

So I suppose it seems to me a choice between cultures that tend to be more about news-driven topics versus life-driven topics. News-driven is more appealing to me for the most part.

Don't get me wrong. I enjoy hearing about what's going on in the lives of my friends and family as much as anyone. But I still think that things like e-mail and "real life" things like the telephone and getting together in person are still pretty great for that!

Conversation lurking

When I first joined Twitter in early 2007, I thought one of the coolest things about it was the ability to "conversation lurk" and eavesdrop on conversations between the likes of Robert Scoble, Dave Winer, Jason Calacanis, Mathew Ingram, and so forth. And even cooler was the fact that you could participate with the very real chance that a Twitter celebrity of the day would respond. These days, the best place to experience this kind of interaction, I've found, is on FriendFeed in places like the Best of Day section.

Facebook, which is more directly tied to contacts that require an approval process, doesn't really allow for this looser and more freewheeling form of communication and listening in.

What's up with "is"?

One of the functional things that perhaps drives or at least directs the culture of the Facebook news feed is the little word "is." In other words, whenever you post a status update to Facebook, your profile name and the word "is" automatically precedes it. So while "Eric is ranting about the social mediaz" works pretty well, "Eric is New post up about the social mediaz, here's the link" sounds pretty awful. So that little word "is" in itself helps to set the tone for the culture of Facebook's news feed.

Alternatively, Twitter simply asks "What are you doing?" and then lets you have at it. And to be fair and as others have noted, Twitter should probably do away with that question as tweeters have basically created a culture where anything and everything is discussed beyond "mere" status updates.

Flat medium versus social medium?

I'm not sure I completely agree with Adrian's piece at sevitz.com called, as luck would have it, Why I prefer Twitter to Facebook, but I like the introduction of the terms "flat medium" versus "social medium" in comparing Facebook and Twitter:

It’s just this tiny little thread that shifts it from being a flat medium like facebook status to a social medium. It’s that difference that connects you to people rather than positions you as mere observer. And whilst the observation thread is nice, by itself it starts to die as it isn’t self sustaining. Where as the observation with interactivity grows and gets stronger. |t means I become a participant in my friends lives occasionally even if that participation is just Stuart getting coffee.

Finally…

I'm curious to hear what other people think about all of this. I've tried to give Facebook a chance, particularly because I've never been a tremendous fan of the product. I admire what they've done to be sure and find the explosion of Facebook apps and its soaring popularity remarkable of course, but my personal test is whether I want to stick around someplace online –- if I get excited and engaged and eagerly explore every aspect of what the product offers –- or if I get kind of bored, mentally yawn, and then check my e-mail for 6,001st time of the day. And Facebook has always been in the latter yawn-worthy category for me, quite frankly.

So particularly because so many people I know love it, I've tried hard to give Facebook another chance. But for the reasons mentioned above, I still far prefer Twitter and FriendFeed.

Read more by Eric Berlin at Online Media Cultist

Facebook's Success Makes It the Social Media Prism and Translator

Facebook's impressive growth, and its gradual passing of MySpace in virtually every aspect, has brought the network to the point where it is universally recognized as the largest, most active, social site on the Web. This of course means that even outside our little bubble of Silicon Valley, our family members and less tech-obsessed friends might be using it - much more than they are the "edge" applications we might also be using. And as Facebook has evolved, adding more lifestream-oriented features, I've come to realize that it is becoming the standard by which practically all social media sites are compared, and even explained.

Case in point - over the weekend my wife, the twins and I, went to see my parents for a quick two-day visit. During a rare tech respite, I opened up the laptop and was blazing through my Google Reader feeds. My dad, curious, leaned over and said, "Is this your Twitter?", making a valiant attempt to guess at whatever oddity I was using. I said, no, that I was using Google Reader, which let me read new stories from hundreds of sites at once.


Then, hoping to explain Twitter, I referred him to the Facebook status. I said using Twitter, for many people, was like updating your Facebook status throughout the day, and choosing to see updates from others.

Extending the message to aggregation sites or lifestreaming services, such as FriendFeed, again, I find myself using Facebook as the starting point. I can refer to Facebook's news feed, and how it pulls in links and shares from other sites, allowing you to make comments or show you like something.

At this point, with 175 million users reported on the site, Facebook represents a significant chunk of online activity. When I threatened to "borrow" my younger sister's iPhone to ostensibly update her Facebook status on her behalf, you would think I was threatening to kill her future first-born. The simple status update on the network, to her, represents who she is to her friends and her family, and it likely does for many others out there - even if they aren't in their 20s, fresh out of college, as she is. As she told me this evening, behind texting, e-mail and the phone, she uses her iPhone for Facebook. She doesn't buy a lot of applications or play games, but she does Facebook, constantly.

Facebook, at this point, is almost as well known as AOL once was. And as we once would explain the World Wide Web and e-mail through the context of AOL, we are once again using an extremely popular site that isn't always best of breed as the standard-bearer for what other social sites are today. Does that mean Facebook does better status updates than Twitter? Probably not. Does that mean Facebook can do feeds and friends better than FriendFeed? Probably not. But then again, AOL wasn't exactly best of breed either, and for years, it ruled the world.

If we expect these odd tools that we geeks and early adopters have been pounding the table on to take hold, we just may have to speak the language that the masses know. Today, that language flows through Facebook. This might mean that after the dust clears, and nine out of ten startups are gone, that only Facebook will be standing. And just maybe that's what Zuckerberg and team are hoping.

You Don't Have 5,000 Facebook Friends, But You're Impacted Anyway

While rumors say that Mark Zuckerberg and the Facebook team will open up the network's friend limits in 2009, eliminating the often controversial 5,000 friend ceiling, a good number of highly visible people have found their engagement on the network capped, giving away friend connections on what's essentially a "first come, first serve" basis. If you're friend 5,001, you're out of luck, even if, in theory, you provide more value than friend #398 and #2,423 do. And before you say you're in no danger of ever reaching this cap (as I am not either), it turns out that Facebook's limits have something of a trickle-down effect on other networks.

Major reasons Facebook's limits have legs include:

• Fewer contacts to sync with other networks.
• Reduced exposure to evangelists.
• Reduced visibility of the friend's friends.
• A good number of people with an actual need for more friend or business connections.

This morning, we discussed the impact of the network's limits on FriendFeed, which, by the way, has no limits to how many people you can follow or who can follow you.

See: Facebook's 5,000 Friend Limit Has a Ripple Effect Across Social Networks

I Just Marked All Facebook Ads as Offensive. So Should You.

The world is still looking for a better way to target customers with ads and products they want to actually learn more about. And the world will have to continue looking, if the offerings on Facebook are any indication. On the rare time I am logging in to the site instead of setting up roost on FriendFeed, Twitter or LinkedIn, I am amused to annoyed by the stupid ads that have absolutely nothing to do with anything I would be interested in - from meeting other singles (not single) to losing weight (unless it involves bacon and donuts) and getting my share of the government's stimulus package.

Facebook, like many other sites, is desperate to bridge the gap from traffic to revenue and profits. Usually that entails filling all available non-content space with ads. And often, that means the filtering process on said ads is beyond miserable.


So today, I had enough, and marked all the ads I saw on Facebook as "offensive", as they let you do. But each time I marked one as offensive, a new one popped up. It was a virtual electronic game of whack-a-mole, only it looks like nobody won.

I'm all in favor of seeing ads for things I might be interested in - new tech, sports or political books from Amazon... CDs from artists I like. Apple or TiVo products... you name it. But the run of site crap is just that.

So if you want to send a message about how the ads offend you, if they do, then say so. Facebook will know the difference.


Oh... and I think it was probably a coincidence that Facebook started to go "on maintenance" after my ads feedback. Or was it?

There's No Way Twitter Is Worth $250 Million Today

See Also: Twitter Is Worth A Lot More Than $250 Million

In the Web 2.0 space, it would be extremely difficult to find a more-successful, faster-growing service than Twitter, who has carved out a significant niche for itself in the microupdates space, as people from around the world tell you what they're doing, right now, even if you didn't ask. The service has an estimated 6 million active users, and recently surpassed the 1 billion "Tweet" mark, if you count all updates. But the company hasn't yet made a buck in traditional revenues. (Although I can't claim to be privy to their books, and they just might have recognized something somewhere) Word comes this weekend, via TechCrunch and others, that Twitter is embarking on a new funding round that could see the company valued at $250 million. And while I already made the case that Twitter will get its funding, and could end up being worth a lot more than that number in short order, it is pretty easy to also poke holes in that analysis.

Quite simply, now is a very difficult time to attain a high valuation. Venture funding is dropping dramatically, and positive exits for companies are rare. Practically nobody is talking about going public, so to make money, you would have to do it the old fashioned way, through profits. And Twitter has grown its user base rapidly, but has done so on the backs of users who are used to getting something for nothing. We've already seen users revolt when Magpie launched with the possibility of inserting ads in one's tweets, and you could expect to see the user base shudder when being asked to shoulder any of the revenue themselves - so you can practically forget about monthly fees. Given that scenario, site ads and ads inserted in third party applications, like TweetDeck, would have to be one option, but an unattractive one, as the ad market itself is tailing downward.

Additionally, what Twitter does is incredibly basic. It's sole functionality is one that it is easily replicated. You can provide status updates on Facebook, on GMail, on FriendFeed, and the whole process rolls back to AOL instant Messenger, when you would set an "Away" status to say you were "At Lunch" or "In a Meeting". So that's not hard.

A recent post by Paul Buchheit of FriendFeed, called Communicating with Code, showcased a prototype offering of FriendFeed that borrowed heavily from the look and feel of Twitter. Given FriendFeed updates include those from Twitter, and then build on with additional services, it can be considered a superset, while Twitter is simply one service of many. So the barrier to entry to compete with Twitter is not that hard, leaving the company's major assets as the community and its developers.

But communities are incredibly fickle. None of Twitter's six million users were using the service five years ago, and maybe, five years from now, they will be doing something else. If people use Twitter for conversation, they can replace that with e-mail, with IM, with FriendFeed, Facebook or other social destinations. I've talked about the five stages of being an early adopter before. One of the final stages is when you grow tired of an environment, and leave, begging your followers to come along. It happens with news groups. It happens with e-mail lists, and it just might happen with social networking tools, including Facebook, FriendFeed, Twitter and others.

Today, Twitter is among the hottest, fastest-growing brands out there. But no matter how you multiply its current revenue to try and guess at a market capitalization, the answer is still zero. At a time when real brick and mortar businesses are seeing their own valuations decimated, how can a virtual company with a free user base and a low barrier to competition expect to be valued so richly? Whoever does invest should exercise extreme caution.

Twitter Is Worth A Lot More Than $250 Million

See Also: There's No Way Twitter Is Worth $250 Million Today

Michael Arrington of TechCrunch led the weekend news cycle Saturday evening after revealing Twitter is in the middle of a funding round that could see the still pre-revenue company valued a cool quarter-billion dollars. Not only do I believe the company will end up getting the money they are looking for, but whatever investors choose to pony up could eventually be seen as having gotten a bargain - because Twitter, with the increased investment, looks prepared to 'double down' and become a must-use utility in our increasingly realtime, increasingly connected, digital world.

Despite the company's many failings, be it with uptime, developer relations, or seemingly blaming its most active users for aggressive activity, Twitter has, over the space of 24 months, cemented itself in a position where it is a critical part of the way we share information, communicate with others, and in times of news and change, can learn from the firehose of tweets from all corners of the world.

Twitter's rise to prominence has been largely in part due to its simplicity. It does two things - let you send short updates to followers, and let you see updates from those you follow. The addition of many third party services, including the since-acquired search capabilities, and scads of desktop or Web tools, have only served to let people consume and distribute the data as they wish, as Tweets can be issued automatically from mobile phones broadcasting location info, sent from blogs using RSS, or from a host of updating services, including Ping.fm and FriendFeed.

Twitter, amid pressure from users and developers to add the ability to display photos and video, to extend the number of characters to beyond 140, to add threaded comments, and to find a business model - any business model - has simply continued doing what it does, even as competition has faltered. Pownce shut down altogether. Jaiku disappeared into the Google black hole. And FriendFeed dances to its own drummer, acting as a great complement for Twitter even as people occasionally say it could knock Twitter off its pedestal. Facebook's status updates are probably the closest thing to being a head to head fighter to Twitter out there today, and many simply pull their updates from Twitter to the social network, as I do.

Twitter will find a business model. It will very likely include some form of advertising, even in a tough economy for ads. It may also charge for premium options to users, and might find a way to break into the enterprise, eliminating the need for Yammer and other copies. And investing in Twitter today means you're buying into a company that already is #1, by a long shot, in its self-built market, before it has truly hit the mainstream, and among the Web 2.0 set, Twitter is the closest to do so - being featured frequently on CNN and used by prominent figures, including the new president's team as part of his social Web strategy.

And don't be fooled into thinking Twitter is just for consumers. Savvy business users are recognizing that Twitter is a vital audience to be communicated to and to listen to, for product mentions, feedback and competitive updates. Twitter is part of the noise, and you can either embrace it, or ignore it, to your own peril.

How can Twitter be worth 1/4 billion today without any revenue? Take a look at the market capitalizations of Web companies today, even after the stock market blowout. Yahoo! is worth nearly $16 billion. Google is worth more than $100 billion. And in traditional media, even the very damaged New York Times is worth more than $800 million at its current price. As I have mentioned many times on this blog, I find Twitter's search capability to be even more important than that of Google for breaking news. Given the company's incredible momentum, and inability to get knocked off its pedestal, we would be foolish to think Twitter can't continue to grow and increase its user base and offerings, and be worth more than $1 billion in very short order.

If I had cash sitting around to put into Twitter and they came knocking on my door, I would ask plenty of questions, but at the end of the day, I would be investing. This will be a deal to watch for sure.

419 Scammers Set Up Roost on Facebook

The art of the largely Nigerian-based '419' e-mail scam is a unique one, but a familiar one. Anybody who has had an active e-mail account for any amount of time has seen the heartfelt pleas for assistance and funding to help safeguard huge amounts of assets that need to be moved, allegedly due to a stressful situation, be it a political coup, a horrific accident or simply death, followed by inheritance. The scams themselves have migrated from snail mail to fax machines, e-mail, and most recently Facebook, as noted by Network World back in November.

Yesterday, I got a note from a Stella Moroba via Facebook. Stella and I are not friends, so far as I can tell, which makes sense, as I doubt she is connected to anyone at all. Stella, in the most ardent way she knew how, told me she has access to "the sum of Two million Five hundred thousand United State Dollars", which I could gain a portion of on two conditions: that I "serve as a guardian to me and then assist me transfer the money into your bank account" and second, "make arrangement for me to come over to your country to further my education and then settle there parmanently". (sic)


Unfortunately for Stella, what with working full time, twins and all this online nonsense, I don't have too many cycles to pass her way to ensure her financal and personal freedom. But I did have a few, so I did a quick search on Facebook and found 214 different results for Stella Moroba, including the occasional Moroba Stella. Unsurprisingly, none of the handful I checked out had any friends, or even bothered to put up a profile picture. So disappointing!


Facebook has taken aggressive measures to ban members who violate the network's terms of service. Seemingly every day we hear about new people who believe they have been unnecessarily booted - and we covered one of those issues last summer. Before any unsuspecting victims rise from Ms. Moraba and her clones, don't you think Facebook would notice the creation of more than 200 identical accounts, and the inevitable onslaught of spam within the system? I certainly didn't accept Ms. Moroba as a friend, and don't believe she should be sending me messages. Isn't that the purpose of friending in Facebook, so you can avoid getting messages from people you don't really know?

If you are interested in helping Ms. Moroba and her family with their strife, e-mail me. I can hook you up. Even if Facebook does eventually delete her account, she helpfully provided her e-mail address and phone number.

Is RockYou Trying to Commit Startup Suicide?

By Mona Nomura of Pixel Bits (FriendFeed/Twitter)

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


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


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


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

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


But where is the post on AllFacebook?

404 - hmmm.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Face It: Facebook Needs A Facelift

Guest Post By Adam Singer of The Future Buzz (FriendFeed/Twitter)


image credit: pshab
I've written previously that Facebook and MySpace are the modern AOL and Prodigy. I stick by that. The great walled gardens of the web live on more than a decade later, resurrected by Web 2.0, but just as closed off, spammy and unexciting as before.

I have been thinking about how little time I spend on Facebook and why the open Web and other social sites are far more interesting. Here are some observations:

There is no interesting content in Facebook itself

People who create great content don't do so within Facebook - they know better than to contribute their hard work to an area they don't control. The best content creators do so on the open web because they want to retain the value of their efforts. If you are a content creator (or a marketer) be careful with the amount of time you spend contributing content to a closed network.

I get it, you need to fish where the fish are - but use Facebook to draw people to a place you control, not one where you have to play by the rules of another network - that is dangerous. They could change the rules at any time, or there could be a mass exodus of users from the network as we have seen time and time again in the social areas of the Web, rendering all your hard work worthless. Use Facebook as a part of your outpost strategy, but draw visitors back to a unique spot that is yours.

Content sharing on Facebook is far behind the curve

I will see something compelling on Reddit/Digg, message boards/forums, blogs, StumbleUpon and other areas of the open web, and then days or even weeks later it ends up on Facebook. Facebook is fine at sharing friend-centric content like pictures of your last social gathering with a group, but it's simply not a place for discovering news, interesting blogs, or other valuable content. The content eventually gets into Facebook via links but by the time this happens, it is old news. In fact, just use FriendFeed and easily get everything in one place, customized exactly how you want it.

Facebook wants to keep you on Facebook

Their network is built to keep you on their site, which is something that never sat right with me about walled gardens. Google's OpenSocial platform and now Friend Connect are much nicer and I personally like their strategy more - integrating social elements with web properties that already exist and with tools that have real value. They seem more willing to let go and allow users to drive the network, not vice versa, a strategy I agree with.

No option to opt out of third party application invites

It is either all or nothing. You can use apps, but you don't get a choice to opt out of requests from others to add applications. Of course not, because Facebook wants to inspire developers to spend time developing apps purely for their system. It leads to me having to click "ignore all" when the end of every week looks like this:

Why would I want to add any of these apps? I have used Facebook since I was in college and it was a student-only network, and have watched it slowly degrade into a place equally as spam-filled as MySpace. Just because the layout is cleaner doesn't mean it isn't spam.

Facebook advertising is broken - both for advertisers and users

Many have reported that Facebook advertising results have been lukewarm at best. The ads they serve me are pretty terrible as well. I'll give you a quick example: I am single, so Facebook tries to serve me ads for dating sites. I have no interest in using online dating services, thus the ads are irrelevant to me. Facebook has the option of giving feedback on ads, so each time a dating ad is served, I actually take the time to give them feedback that the ad is irrelevant to me and vote it as such.

Concurrently, they serve me ads about marketing and music, things that are of interest to me and actually a good fit. So not only do I click the relevant ads, I go a step further and give them feedback that these are good ads, please serve me more of them. Yet I am continually served dating ads. I have a hard time taking them seriously as a marketer when they clearly have a system in place to improve the user experience but don't bother to use it.

Here are the ads Facebook is serving me (I took a quick screengrab):

Facebook gives you the option to click the "thumbs down" where you can let them know feedback:


I have been letting them know these ads aren't relevant to me for several months and they are still serving them. But why even bother giving feedback if no one is listening? Their system just doesn't learn.

You don't hear career success stories from time spent on Facebook...

Yet we hear great stories about people building their reputations or scoring jobs through LinkedIn or a blog all the time. All we hear about Facebook (and MySpace) is people losing their jobs or not receiving jobs due to inappropriate photos/content on the profiles.

For well-connected individuals, the "people you may know" function is useless

I can't remember the last time I actually knew someone in the "people you may know" section of Facebook. Yet they show these right on the homepage daily to all their users. As an example, I was served this today:

Facebook is offering these people as connections to me merely because we both went to UF (University of Florida)? That is hardly what I would call a connection, the number of people who went to UF is staggering, and just because we both went to UF doesn't make someone relevant to me. If that is the best they can do, they shouldn't even offer this feature at all. How about instead of people I may know, what about people with similar interests? That would actually be useful.

For example, I list some relatively obscure electronic music artists in my profile under musical preferences. If they connected me with others that have similar taste in music, that would actually be interesting. Also connecting me with other public relations or marketing professionals would be interesting too.

The way they are currently trying to guide my hand in building a network isn't very useful. It just seems like they have so much meta data on all of us but aren't using it in ways that actually would build value and draw us deeper into the network.

Difficult, perhaps impossible to gain critical mass with anything directed outside the Facebook platform

Again, this is by design - Facebook seeks to keep its users on their network as long as possible so they may gain more ad impressions. Applications, pages and groups within Facebook can easily spread within the network, but I haven't seen many ways to easily direct Facebook traffic outside of Facebook. MySpace too. This is all by design of course and why I mentally file Facebook in the "closed off" section of the web. I know Facebook just launched their connect tool, but I'd be interested in seeing what the actual results of that are for site owners. I'm not talking about sites like TechCrunch that already have critical mass, I'd be interested to hear the results from sites in the long tail.

The conversations on FriendFeed, on blogs, on Reddit, Digg, Twitter, etc. are far more interesting

The conversations on Facebook are not even close to the level of the open web, or even other social sites. Do you notice the same thing? Perhaps it is the poking, the cheesy applications, or the general nature that people carry on within the network, but I see far more compelling conversations outside the walled gardens. Perhaps it is because people with deep interests seek out specific networks or build their own, and view the general networks as less specific and relevant to them.

Wrapping up...

Facebook is actually useful for things like staying updated on what you're friends from years past are doing, but this doesn't provide any real value other than fleeting entertainment. The people I am interested in staying connected with I am already connected to in more useful ways.

My use of the internet is not to develop fleeting social relationships for entertainment, but to develop more valuable relationships with people to work and collaborate with on projects and ideas we're passionate about.

As it stands right now, Facebook just isn't all that interesting a place to spend time if you are seeking compelling content or looking to build a subscriber base, it is merely an outpost. Your largest opportunity is to build an audience for your brand or yourself in a place that you control. Remember, these monolithic social networks can fall out of favor quite quickly and hemorrhage audiences.

Devoting too much effort to any one platform, especially a social network like Facebook, is far riskier than working on a place you control where you can build multiple traffic streams to. This way if one stops producing you'll still have other options.

It's not that I dislike Facebook, it is just I have found the site to offer a better user experience in years past - and that is the opposite of what I would expect for one of the leaders in social networking. The experience on Facebook should be getting better, not worse. I know from conversations with colleagues I am not the only one who feels this way - hopefully they are listening and will work to improve things in the future.

Read more by Adam Singer at The Future Buzz

Twitter: Is There Room For Anyone Else?

By Rob Diana of Regular Geek (Twitter/FriendFeed)


Recently, a question was raised to bloggers, should we shut up about Twitter? Eric Berlin responded with a simple no. He then goes on to list several reasons why Twitter may even go mainstream. Twitter actually going mainstream will be a big story as it is something different than the typical social network. However, Twitter is not the only game in town. Microblogging is quickly becoming a crowded field, even with the closing of competitor Pownce. Twitter is growing rapidly and none of the competition is anywhere close. What does the competition look like?

Twitter Alternatives
Pownce was probably the largest alternative, but they are no longer. So, what comes next? Below is a graph from Compete.com with 5 leading competitors, Jaiku, Identi.ca, Plurk, Kwippy and Yammer. Jaiku is the oldest of the group and is currently a Google property. However, since the middle of last year their traffic has trended down.


The general traffic trends in the graph above are very similar to what Alexa shows as well. Identi.ca had a big burst of traffic at their launch, but that traffic came down fairly quickly. It may be increasing again, but itis tough to tell. Kwippy had a nice boost during the summer, but their traffic has tapered off as well. TC50 darling Yammer is also trending downward, but they are the newest of the bunch and hoping to gain traction in corporate environments. The surprising statistic is the amount of traffic for Plurk. They have not lost a significant amount of traffic after gaining traffic while Twitter was having problems last May. They are also one of the few sites that is not "pure microblogging". What I mean is that they are not a Twitter clone with a different style and name. They have a different feature set and the timeline is a different way to view information. Mona Nomura stated that they have different demographics, even calling Plurk "the MySpace of Twitter". Assuming that the different demographics allow Plurk to continue to grow, what about the other alternatives? Is there room for more than just Twitter?

In its most basic form, Twitter will own the space unless Facebook status updates become more open. If this is true, then Twitter will share the masses with Facebook. Plurk would probably continue on, but its growth would likely be limited. The other question is whether there really is much more growth for microblogging.

Custom Communities and Niche Networks
I am a big believer in niche communities and networks. People gathering together with similar interests can quickly form a passionate community. Jesse Stay agrees with this sentiment and feels that niche microblogging networks will start to appear based on free and open platforms like Laconi.ca. This could become a very popular destination for a niche community. It is the equivalent of the forums and bulletin boards of past years, but with a new spin. These niche networks can also provide a way for people to find a community of "experts" for a specific topic.

On the custom community side, Yammer has a decent idea with trying to get into the corporate world. However, I think that their business model gets corporate people concerned. However, there are microblogging products that can be installed within the corporate firewall, like Laconi.ca or other commerical alternatives, in order to promote microblogging without the public consumption concerns. This could even be true for other communities like a large blog. If a blog has enough readers, they could build a community around the blog using a standalone microblogging product. It could easily sit behind some sort of registration or even become a premium feature for some sites if positioned correctly.

So, to answer my original question, is there room for more than Twitter? In the form of basic microblogging, there is little room, especially if Facebook pushes its status updates. However, if there are other features added, like what Plurk has done, the application could gain some adoption. There is likely plenty of room in the niche and custom communities precisely because Twitter is purely public. Is there some application that was missed that could gain significant marketshare?

Read more by Rob Diana at RegularGeek.com.

No, Tech Blogs Should Not Shut Up About Twitter

By Eric Berlin of Online Media Cultist (FriendFeed/Twitter)

Pete Cashmore at Mashable asks: Should Tech Blogs Shut Up About Twitter? Allow me to state for the record: no.

Cashmore, responding to some not-so-nice comments about Mashable on Digg, muses whether or not tech and online media blogs have "let our Twitter infatuation spiral out of control." However, he also notes that "Twitter, clearly, is the next big thing in social networking."

First of all, let's take a quick look at the recent history of "next big things" in social networking. MySpace absolutely dominated tech news and the blogosphere circa 2005 and 2006 (how soon we forget!), which transitioned to equally staggering coverage of "MySpace killers" and, of course, Facebook. Facebook apps and Facebook's meteoric growth are both reasons why it continues to enjoy a great deal of attention today.

Even though Twitter's audience size is relatively smaller than the MySpace/Facebook level kicking off 2009 (though its growth rate of 752% in 2008 was monumental), there's enough buzz, innovation, and compelling storylines surrounding the 140 character-based communications platform to warrant an intense level of coverage.



Are some/many blogs chasing Twitter stories just to get in on the hype and drive page views? Of course, but that's true of all big stories across any subject area.

All of that said, I relate to Cashmore in that I've thought about my own level of focus on Twitter. However, as I discussed over the new year's break, I've tried to focus on areas within the online world and social media that intrigue me without worrying about outside factors, so if I personally focus "too much" on Twitter, so be it!

Now, here are reasons why I think that Twitter deserves lots of obsessing and coverage in 2009.

It has the potential to go "mainstream"
There are pretty good arguments on both sides for whether or not Twitter has the potential to go "mainstream" (check out a great discussion of this topic here). I would argue that it does have the potential, which we can roughly define as 10 million users or so. Either way, Twitter's explosive growth and massive potential warrants ongoing coverage.

Twitter apps, plug-ins, and add-on services
Twitter's open API has opened up a flood of innovation around building tools and services that benefit the Twitter community. Much like Facebook's development platform, Twitter has smartly tapped into the resources of the "crowd," allowing its audience to become tied to and invested in the success of the underlying platform.

It's where the geeks, influencers, and increasingly the cool kids are at
Even though Twitter has been around a little while (by webby standards), it's early adopters and geek enthusiasts have not abandoned it, even though bright and shiny objects such as FriendFeed came calling… along, let's not forget, with a bunch of would-be Twitter killers such as Pownce, Identi.ca, Jaiku, and Plurk.

It's starting to spill over into mainstream media and regular (read: non-insane online addicts like us) life
CNN is promoting Twitter, comedians joke about Twitter, moms and dads and grandmas and grandpas are just starting to get into the swing of it. Quoting myself from last month's the Twitter mainstream debate: "It is intuitive enough that "civilians" can hit the homepage, register, post their first post and add a few friends within a minute. They can also quickly "get it" and see benefits." In other words, Twitter is for real."

It's an important part of the overall storyline
We're in an interesting period right now. I'm tempted to say "unique" but every phase or era is unique in its own way. What we do know is that the economy is in recession, but that the underlying issues have little to do with the tech sector. But what has happened is that the downturn has shut the door on the loosely-termed web 2.0 era, which had already been in its silly season anyway.

I like to say that we're in a post-web 2.0 era. It's not web 2.0, it's not web 3.0 (whatever that will come to mean, led by crazy semantic web or mobile technologies, or something). What we do know is that web communities, social networks, or whatever you want to call them, continue to evolve.

Think about it. Even though MySpace is still one of the most popular websites – and a social networking website at that – on the Internet, no one really talks about it anymore. MySpace is part of the past, while Twitter is right in the center of the conversation of where things are now, and where they're headed.

It's got a good beat that you can dance to
Okay, maybe it doesn't. But the point is that if you hang out on Twitter, you feel a pulse of activity that lets you know that people are meeting, engaging, and chitchatting.

People who love Twitter love it because it fits a need in their life. And as I've written about before, a key reason why its strong growth continues is because its flexibility allows it to fit different kinds of needs for different kinds of people.

Read more by Eric Berlin at Online Media Cultist

10 Ways to Maximize Your Google Reader Link Blog

I've been sharing articles I've read in Google Reader for the better part of two years. I don't know exactly when I started, but I'm fairly sure I'm nowhere near finished. And while I admittedly started sharing to a link blog without having a clear goal in mind, I'm finding that this massive shared items repository is becoming an incredibly versatile information hub that benefits me, the authors of articles I've shared, and the consumers, be they friends in Google Reader, or in many other locations.

I believe that while Google Reader has grown in visibility, arguably becoming the most popular RSS reader on the Web, the utility of shared link blogs is less known. Here are ten ways you can maximize your Google Reader link blog - most of which I'm doing, and probably didn't anticipate when I first started sharing items into the ether.

1. Act as a trusted information filter.

Regardless of how fast a reader you are, there is no possible way you can read every single news source and blog on the Web. Neither can anybody you know. And regardless of how closely your feed match percentage is on Toluu, there are feeds you read that your friends don't. By sharing the best items of what you read every day from Google Reader, you are hand-selecting the best of the Web and "endorsing" those items to your link blog subscribers.

Do so with some regularity, and you might be surprised as to how people come to rely on your manual intervention and news discovery. I first became cognizant of this in February when "SeekGround" reported "I discovered that I had shared more of louisgray's shared items than anyone else's in the last 30 days". In May, Duff's Device similarly wrote: "I saw another article that I received from Louis Gray'sGoogle Reader Shared Items again. Thanks for keeping on top of the world for me Louis. :-)"

As of tonight, ReadBurner reports I have nearly 8,500 articles shared on my Google Reader link blog. While there are others who have shared more total items, I know that I have shared those items I believe are most interesting to me, and others I believe are following along.

2. Share your items with Google Friends.

Though Google hasn't nailed the "what is a friend" issue, you can add friends through GMail and Google Talk. If they are also Google Reader users, and share items, you can opt in to seeing their Google Reader shares, and they can see yours. If they subscribe to your shared items, your shares are mixed in with all the other feeds on their list. Of course, if you don't want to see their lists, click "Hide" next to their name, or "Show" to bring them back.



3. Embed your Google Reader link blog to your own blog or Web site.

When I first started sharing to my link blog, I had this odd feeling I was sharing posts and nobody knew about it. After all, the link blog URL isn't the most intuitive on the planet. But you can embed a widget on your blog to display a subset of your recently shared items, and visitors to your blog can click out to items you've shared.

4. Add your Google Reader link blog to your Google profile

Your Google profile is a fairly blank slate, for you to add or delete as you please. While it's very common for people to add links to their Twitter page, their blog or their LinkedIn profile, I'd suggest it's just as important to add your link blog to the page. Mine is here.

5. Share items to Facebook, FriendFeed or Socialmedian.

2008 was the year of personal news aggregators, which took updates on your services from around the Web and put them all in one place. While this trends was best exemplified by FriendFeed, Facebook also offers the option to feature your Google Reader shared items, and Socialmedian will pull them in as news, going so far as to check the shares by topic to place them in the right categories.

You can see my Google Reader shares on FriendFeed here. And to avoid duplication of items, if I share items from louisgray.com, I manually delete them from FriendFeed. Takes seconds, and reduces the noise. (My Socialmedian page is here...)

6. Add your share count to ReadBurner, RSSmeme or Feedheads.

Feedheads, the pioneer in tabulating popular Google Reader share counts, was joined by ReadBurner and later RSSmeme, in early 2008. As some people are turning to ReadBurner and RSSmeme as a democratically sorted Digg or Techmeme, sharing items you like will add your vote to the list.

Be sure to add your feed to ReadBurner here.

7. Replace your bookmarks with Google Reader shared items.

At the end of the year, I said that RSS Has Practically Eliminated My Need for Browser Bookmarks. As I thought about it more, it's my Google Reader Link blog that is essentially my rolling bookmark list, highlighting those items which are the best, and which I will want to return to. While Delicious is also a good Web-based bookmarking system, the link blog is a good way to find recent items of interest.

8. Expand the visibility of lesser-known sources.

Sometimes, I get in a routine of reading my RSS feeds and then sharing, without thinking about how the shares are effecting the downstream author. But I've gotten e-mails saying the shares have generated attention beyond what I expected. Last month, one blogger wrote, "When you pop an article on (the linkblog), I'll get 60-70 hits and get pumped to the first page, that is pretty averge for the support you give me." Earlier this week I got a similar e-mail from a second author, who wrote an e-mail titled "Thanks yet again", adding "Your Google Reader share really lit up that discussion."

In a tech blogging world where there are so many different sources of news, and so many people writing about the exact same thing, you can make a difference by choosing lesser-known sources of news, and highlighting the best content, not just the loudest. I've tried to share items from those who have done original reporting or are thinking differently than the echo chamber, and it in turn can deliver greater visibility.

9. Use your linkblog as your "to comment" list.

As part of my online new year's resolution, I said I would be making more time to comment on other blogs through the year. But as you know, my full-time job doesn't work all too well with browsing the Web and making comments throughout the day. Instead, I've found I'll go back to my own Google Reader linkblog, and open the items in a new tab, and go through to add comments one by one, left to right, so I've given the authors feedback and participated.

10. Create your own leaderboard of news sources.

Google Reader tracks statistics on what your most-shared news sources are over the last 30 days, which can report on who you've found most interesting in the last month. Given each person's individual tastes, the results can be very different than more public leaderboards which tend to feature those who are most popular and have a deeper subscription base. While my own link blog does tend to feature popular sites like TechCrunch, Scobleizer and ReadWriteWeb, I can see that I've also shared a high number from lesser-known sites, including TechWag, Regular Geek, The Future Buzz, Andy DeSoto and Chuqui 3.0. And if you're stat-oriented like I am, you can check in and see how this changes over time. (See my blog leaderboard from last July)

So... are you sharing your Google Reader items? I am. You can find mine here. For the betterment of the community, it'd be great to see your shared item links in the comments.

---

DISCLOSURE: I am an advisor to ReadBurner.

---

10 Predictions for 2009 In the World of Tech

Following on to last year's 10 Predictions for 2008 In the World of Tech and the recent results: My 2008 Tech Predictions Look Bad As Year Nears a Close.

1) The Real-Time Web Will Become Critical for News and Information Discovery

Delayed news will no longer be acceptable for early adopters, who will gravitate to the quickest sources of news, wherever they may be. As tools like Twitter Search and FriendFeed real-time offer people to rapidly broadcast their updates, reactions and news with true immediacy, a segment of the population will adopt these real-time sources and favor them ahead of delayed or filtered engines, including RSS, and of course, edited mass media. At the same time, while many of us early adopters may be fairly noisy about this development, we will remain in the significant minority, even as the mainstream becomes more aware of these options.

2) Businesses Will Be Expected to Be On Social Media If They Have Web Sites

In the mid and late 1990s, there was a land rush for domain names, as every company jumped in and procured Web addresses and built out Web sites to establish their electronic home. Although many of these sites were rudimentary at best, they knew they needed to be there to participate. In 2009, it will be expected that brands and businesses will be similarly established on social media, using tools like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, FriendFeed and YouTube.

3) Apple Will Introduce A Succession Plan for Steve Jobs as CEO

While Steve Jobs is not likely in imminent danger, the continued unsettled rumors, as well as a good level of common sense will push Apple to present a succession plan for Jobs, which will not take place immediately, but over the space of a few years. One to three names of potential in-house replacements will be named, as well as a timeline, as Steve fades to the background, but continues to wield tremendous power over Apple's vision and deliverables.

4) TechCrunch Will Acquire VentureBeat or Silicon Alley Insider

Mike Arrington's tech blog continues to be the influence leader in its space. Both VentureBeat and Silicon Alley Insider have forged strong brands with a financial bent which would be good additions for the TechCrunch brand as Arrington and team look to extend their umbrella and wrap up what he considers to be the best blogs. SAI in particular would offer an East Coast/financial bent that the Silicon Valley-based TechCrunch is currently not known for.

5) Android Will Have Less than 20% the Sales of iPhone in 2009

While commoditized PCs managed to put pressure on Macintosh and relegate Apple to a small market share percentage the Cupertino company is still trying to recover from back in the 1980s, history will not repeat itself, as Google's Android partners will be unable to knock the iPhone off its perch as the must-have smart phone for power Web consumers. BlackBerry will continue having a significant share in the enterprise, but it will continue to be iPhone eroding its share, not the Android, especially given the unmatched array of applications available for the iPhone which Android will not be able to match.

6) A Major Alternative to FeedBurner Will Emerge As the Service Stagnates

Google's mismanagement of FeedBurner has many people frustrated with how the feed service has been run since its acquisition last year, as the service continues to see slowness, outages, and recently went dark, shutting down their blog and being gobbled up by the AdSense team. Competitors will emerge, enabling bloggers to move their FeedBurner subscriber base and historical statistics to their new platform.

7) FriendFeed and Twitter Will Both Be Independent Through 2009

Despite Twitter's recent dance with Facebook, it will rely on its existing venture capital funding and find revenue that enables the company to stay afloat at least through the end of the year. FriendFeed, similarly, will not be acquired or merge with any other service prior to the end of 2009. The company, if necessary, will instead do a second round of funding, with its own internal sources providing much of the capital.

8) Companies Will Continue Budget and Staff Cuts Through the Third Quarter of 2009

The layoff parade in 2009 will not be limited to unprofitable companies, small companies or practically any category of companies. The doom and gloom that have hit the financial markets, advertising, real estate and almost every sector will continue through the first half of the year, before starting to see a rebound in the third quarter. You will see strong companies like Microsoft lay off thousands, and practically everyone will not be renewing contract positions that have concluded - even Google and Apple.

9) An Extremist Group Will Manage to Take Down or Deface the White House Web Site

America's political climate is extremely polarized, following the conclusion of two extremely divisive terms. As Barack Obama moves into the White House, the very features that make him a "first" will also make him and his administration the chief target for some incredibly angry and hate-filled groups. One will somehow manage to access the WhiteHouse.gov site and manipulate it this year.

10) eTrade, Digg, StumbleUpon, Skype and Yahoo! Will All Be Sold.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. eBay will want to ditch its non-core assets like StumbleUpon and Skype (I made the sale of StumbleUpon a prediction last year too). Digg, losing momentum, will sell cheap. Yahoo! will eventually be purchased by News Corporation, AOL, or even Google, assuming it passes regulatory approval, by the end of the year. Microsoft, still insulted, won't be back to the table.

Quantcast Shows Which Services Rely Most on Their "Addicts"

If you're like me, you have a list of sites you visit just about every day, without fail, and some may even be visited multiple times a day. Whether you're a frequent visitor of Google News, CNN.com, Facebook or Twitter, site and service owners know they can count on some consistent traffic from their regular visitors, in addition to natural traffic from external links or search engines. Web traffic measurement company Quantcast tracks much of this data, and has even gone so far as to categorize the most frequent visitors to some sites as "addicts", defined as those who visit a site more than 30 times in a single month - the "hardcore segment of a site's audience". As it turns out, some popular Web services rely on these so-called "addicts" for more than a third of their total traffic, and at major social networks, that number is as high as two-thirds of all visits.


Quantcast Defines Addicts as 30 or More Visits a Month
While Quantcast isn't as well-known as its competitors, including Compete.com and Alexa, it is making an attempt to track site and service's traffic, giving significant demographic information for sites, and helping advertisers try and find a perfect match. While the service doesn't claim to have sufficient visitor detail for all sites, many of the largest are now being directly tracked, meaning the data is extremely accurate.

This means that Quantcast isn't simply returning a site's total visits in a given timeframe, as well as whether traffic is increasing or decreasing, but what its users look like, and if they're addicts, regulars, or just passing through.

Some notable data shows:


FriendFeed Trails Twitter In Less-Addicted Regular Users
Twitter.com: 1% of all users are addicts, who drive upwards of 34% of total site traffic. An additional 25% of users are regulars, who deliver 40% of site traffic, meaning that the remaining 26% of traffic comes from the 74% of users who are merely passing by.

FriendFeed.com: Less than 1% of all users are addicts, who deliver 25% of all total site traffic. An additional 4% of users are regulars, who deliver 8% of site traffic. Fully 96% of users are seen as just passing by, accounting for 67% of visits.

This data tells me that FriendFeed has a real problem in converting casual visitors and making them regulars. You are either one of the "addicted", or you're probably not using the site at all. There's practically no middle ground. Twitter also clearly has its addicts, but it also has a healthy middle base of users who check in less regularly.


Facebook and MySpace Primarily Cater to Their Addicted Base
Facebook.com: 11% of all users are addicts, who drive 62% of all site traffic. A robust 53% of users are regular visitors, who give 34% of visits, and the remaining 36% of passers-by only deliver 4% of traffic.

MySpace.com: 20% of the users are addicts, providing 74% of all site traffic. Another 58% are regulars, giving 24% of visits, while the 22% of passers-by are only giving 2% of traffic.

That "addicted" users of Facebook and MySpace provide greater than two-thirds of page views is no surprise. Instead of being engaged on the "real Internet", many users log in to their walled gardens and stay there for some time. And there's not much benefit to being a passer-by for either service, so that doesn't deliver much traffic at all.

Outside of the social networking and lifestreaming spaces, you can look up virtually any Web site and see how much they rely on addicts, provided Quantcast has the data. Quantcast says only 9% of eBay users are addicted, giving 61% of visits. 16% of DrudgeReport visitors are addicted, providing 78% of visits. 2% of LinkedIn users are addicted, giving 36% of visits.

There's practically a catch-22 in business when it comes to appeasing your addicts. Lose your most ardent users, and you could find them to be your most vocal detractors, as they feel looked over and spurned. But if you appeal too much to your most addicted users, you could overlook some major gaps in your product that prevent it crossing over to the mainstream. How can you convert those casual passers-by into regular users or even addicts? Therein lies the struggle of growth. Quantcast gives us a glimpse into how many sites are faring in this battle. The question is, can the data change behavior?

What Happened to Facebook Connect for the iPhone?

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

Back in July, I predicted we would see a mobile platform for Facebook announced, enabling developers to integrate Facebook into their own mobile applications.  The match makes sense.  Imagine the ability to combine the users of any app with the rich power of the Facebook platform, their friends, their friends' profiles, events, photos, and more, all from the power of your phone, and the rich capabilities of platforms such as the iPhone - GPS, contacts, portable computing all in one device.  The concept is powerful, and the natural evolution of an already powerful platform that seems to have revolutionized social app development.

Facebook confirmed, and clarified my theory at their F8 conference this year, when Benjamin Ling announced that Facebook would be releasing a framework on top of the iPhone which would enable Facebook Connect for the iPhone itself.  According to Ling (who is no longer at Facebook), the framework would be Cocoa-based, and had a projected release date for this fall.  When talking with Ling in person during the press conference at F8, Ling further confirmed these claims.

Since F8 and Ling's departure at Facebook, along with the recent Facebook Connect launch, we have yet to see any details regarding Facebook Connect on the iPhone.  Facebook has made no mention of it, nor have they hinted of future plans to integrate.  Is Connect for the iPhone still in the works?

Such news would be very welcome in light of a recent presentation organized by Jesse Pickard and Razorfish (which I also contributed to), which made the rounds recently.  The presentation gives examples of potential real-life applications of Facebook Connect.

Such potential examples included Amazon.com, iTunes, and some amazing potential examples on the iPhone.  The iPhone examples included screenshots of what it would be like if games included Facebook profiles within the games.  For instance, you could play Cro-Mag Rally with your Facebook friends online if the game were to integrate the framework.  Imagine the data that applications could post to Facebook in addition to retrieving the already rich platform Facebook provides.  Now, a true location-aware social network could really be possible, because most of the apps you use could potentially share that location with Facebook (we won't go into how scary that sounds - I'll save that for another article).

Of all the announcements from back in July, I certainly hope this one hasn't been nixed.  Facebook Connect and the iPhone are two powerful technologies, that in combination, could form one powerful partnership.  Of all predictions for 2009, Facebook Connect and the iPhone are one powerful relationship I am sure will happen.

Read more by Jesse Stay at Stay N' Alive.

My 2008 Tech Predictions Look Bad As Year Nears a Close

It's a year-end tradition for many media, blogs and individuals, to predict what will happen over the next year. Some prefer to make their guesses fairly straight-forward in an effort to be right (Example: Apple will release new notebooks with a faster processor at MacWorld) and others will make their guesses seemingly outlandish, so that if they're right, they're seen as virtual psychics. Others, somewhere in between. At the conclusion of 2007, I made ten predictions that I thought would be fun, and as we're coming on the one year anniversary of that post, it's a good thing you didn't bet your home mortgage on my list. (What? You say there are other issues with your mortgage? Oh.)

See: 10 Predictions for 2008 In the World of Tech

In the spirit of reducing my ego, here are how those ten predictions in the world of tech stand:

1) Google Will Trump Both TechMeme and FeedHeads

Wrong. I expected that Google would start to tabulate its shared items and most popular feeds via Google Reader, and that using this data, Google could provide a democratic version of Techmeme, or at least pull Feedheads outside of Facebook. Instead of Google doing this however, it was ReadBurner, followed by RSSMeme and others, including Feedheads, who started a site at www.feedheads.com. Later in the year, Google Blog Search did introduce the option to show hot topics in tech, but it's largely been a stale effort. At this point, Techmeme is still more important than Google in this regard, and Google Reader has declined to show most popular feeds or shared items.

(Disclosure: I am an advisor to ReadBurner and took the position in August.)

2) Facebook Will Buy Digg in an All-Stock Transaction

Wrong. I thought Facebook would use its expensive stock and buy up some smaller companies. Digg continually sounded like it was shopping itself, but it never sold, and the company's CEO often denied talks were occuring with anyone. Also, given the stock market crash, Facebook is no doubt valued much lower these days, making a stock transaction less likely.

3) eBay Will Sell StumbleUpon to Yahoo! or News Corporation

Wrong. So Far. In September, TechCrunch and others reported that eBay planned to sell StumbleUpon, but no sale has taken place yet. At this point, also, with Yahoo! crumbling, they are less likely to take on the service.

4) Twitter Will Add Video, Photography Support

Wrong. Twitter focused on growing and not crashing this year. Still just text.

5) Apple Boot Camp Will Morph to Be Like Parallels, VMWare Fusion

Wrong. I hardly hear anything about Boot Camp these days, likely because VMWare Fusion and Parallels have become entrenched, and nobody cared about Apple's "restart" alternative. My comment that Apple would "slowly take over the market" in this space also looks quite dumb, as did the expectation that Windows applications could boot alongside Mac apps. The question is, why not?

6) At Least One Major Browser Will Embed Ad-Blocking

Wrong. And it's too bad! Sure would change things a bit if somebody could figure out how to check a box and have graphical ads or text ads disappear.

7) Assetbar and FriendFeed Will Gain Early Adopter Audiences

Wrong and Right. AssetBar, in its attempt to replace Google Reader, failed fast. FriendFeed, however, did much better than I could have guessed at the time I wrote the post. Obviously, I played a small role in evangelizing FriendFeed through it coming out of beta in early 2008, but it got bigger than even I expected. My comment saying that "neither would be acquired by the end of 2008" did manage to be true.

8) Video Blogging Will Remain Unpopular, Unprofitable

Right. While there are some bloggers who prefer video and are using it, from Robert Scoble at FastCompany TV to Loic LeMeur at Seesmic, it hasn't become as second-nature as standard blogging or mciroblogging. And so far as I know, nobody is making money on this in a consistent way.

9) iTunes Video Rentals Will Decimate Netflix, Blockbuster, Hurt Box Office

Mostly Wrong. Netflix didn't blink against iTunes' charge. They instead branched out with their "watch instantly" feature and partnered up with TiVo and others. Blockbuster is still a disaster, and I certainly am not going to the box office thanks to so many alternatives. But iTunes video rentals cannot be said to have hit Netflix and others all that much.

10) Fast Company Will be a Fast Stay for Robert Scoble

Wrong, So Far. Robert joined FastCompany at the beginning of the year, and is putting up some interesting content. That said, FastCompany has seen changes in focus and leadership, and I am curious to see how his show evolves in 2009. Scoble continues to be a mainstay on the social Web and at industry events of course, so even if 2009 sees him somewhere else, it won't be far from the limelight.

So wasn't that fun? Now you see you can largely ignore my predictions, or maybe, I should try harder to be right. Maybe, if I'm good, I can put a 2009 prediction list up by the end of the year...

10 Top New Web Services of 2008 and Their 2009 Forecast

2008 has been both an exciting year and a very trying year for the world of Web innovation.

When the year kicked off, we were still in the middle of Web 2.0 fever. We were just two months removed from Microsoft having invested $240 million in Facebook at a stratospheric $15 billion. In the first week of January, Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang made his first appearance at CES and promised the company was "ready and excited". By mid-month, Pownce launched to the public to offer an alternative to Twitter. And by the end of January, Twitter crashed hard - for the first time.

It turns out that Twitter's crash might have been the canary in the coal mine. Even looking at January 2008, and considering what has happened to Facebook's valuation, Jerry Yang's reign as CEO of Yahoo!, and the eventual extinguishing of Pownce in the ensuing months and it almost seems unbelievable. Of course, as you know, Twitter crashed again and again throughout the year, and in parallel, so did the fortunes of many Web companies, from the smallest startup looking to raise funds, to the monoliths, including Google and Yahoo!, who have had to rapidly make changes as the economy changes under their feet. Meanwhile, as business conditions deteriorated, the public markets were closed and valuations were decimated.

But before the doom and gloom hit, a good number of Web services pushed and shoved their way out the door in the first half of the year, and look to be here for at least the near term. Even as the second half of the year saw a drying up in new services and very little innovation, as we start to look toward 2009, there are new brands that many of us know were but a glimpse in an engineer's eye when 2007 finished and 2008 took over. And while no list is complete, here are some of the best that can claim 2008 as their birth date. I expect this will miss quite a few, so please make sure to nominate your favorites and tell me why I'm wrong!

1) Summize (Twitter Search)

Search is still king, and real-time search is having a huge impact on the way people find news, share ideas, and see trends. Summize built its business around being a search engine for Twitter, and soon became more stable, and theoretically, more useful, than Twitter itself. The Twitter team, in desperate need for more engineering help, acquired the company and absorbed into the microblogging service.

Expected Exit: Acquired - Already Complete

Twitter's acquisition of Summize was a smart move, considering how real-time search is becoming critical in times of breaking news. Many, including myself, are turning to Twitter search instead of Google, Yahoo! and the traditional news wires to hear reports from people on the ground, unfiltered.

2) Socialmedian

While many different sites have conquered the online activities aggregation space, Socialmedian went about the process in a different way than all the others, letting people not only follow friends and pipe in their shared content from a wide variety of 3rd party sites, but organized it in terms of categories. The category feature was so successful, CEO Jason Goldberg has been able to showcase specific events, including the 2008 election, and the financial crisis, and make Socialmedian a go to site to interact with "newsmakers". The site, starting from scratch in the Spring, has risen up to challenge FriendFeed, Digg and other sites for social news - and continues to grow at a rapid clip.

Expected Exit: Acquisition by First Quarter of 2009

With Goldberg and team having raised so little capital to get the product off the ground, and having kept costs very low, with the development team in India, the bootstrapped Socialmedian looks to be a ripe target for an acquisition, in my opinion. Without strong revenues and the public markets the way they are, Socialmedian would be smart to find a strong content or media partner, to join forces and enable the service to continue its growth.

3) BackType

Technorati and Google Blog Search, as well as many other directories and search engines have typically focused on the blog as the central nervous system for their offering. But as many would agree, it is the comments and conversation, no matter where they are, that have real meaning to blog authors and participants. While everyone was busy trying to see who could land on the Techmeme leaderboard or break new ceilings in Technorati Authority, BackType debuted a site that tracks comments by individual, lets you follow individual commenters across a wide variety of sites, be alerted when comments with keywords take place, and see charts that display keywords' momentum.

Expected Exit: Acquisition in Second Half of 2009

The BackType founders are working together on their second startup, having abandoned the first when it didn't gain traction. While BackType doesn't yet have an amazing market presence, they have forged a unique foothold that so far looks unchallenged. With any luck, I would expect the BackType team to deliver more enterprise-capable brand and identity management tools that would enable the service to gain revenue and exposure, letting the service to remain independent through the majority of 2009 before finding a place within WordPress, Six Apart, Google or Twitter.

4) TweetDeck

TweetDeck isn't a Web service, but this Adobe AIR application introduced new functions to Twitter usage that changed the game in terms of how people use the service. By introducing a multi-columned app that features groups, integrated search, direct messaging, and replies functionality, many are swearing by TweetDeck, and it looks like it may soon overtake Twhirl as the most popular Twitter application. Busy Twitter addicts including Guy Kawasaki swear by it.

Expected Exit: Remaining Independent through end of 2009

Iain Dodsworth is continuing to upgrade the product, and it's widely rumored he may soon integrate multi-account support, as well as integration with additional services, outside of Twitter. If he can get enough people to donate or pay for the application, there's no question he could make a full-time living from the resulting revenue. The question is, will people who expect a free service to have 100% uptime spring for the app that gets them there?

5) Strands

While FriendFeed, Profilactic and others were first out the gate in 2007 with their lifestreaming and social activity aggregation tools, Strands has worked on their own social news and lifestreaming site, in beta, since mid year. Focusing on delivering a clean interface for their Web, mobile and iPhone application versions, and keeping a strong emphasis on tracking musical preferences, Strands has developed a loyal following who find the site less noisy than some services and cleaner than others. Strands, instead of marketing to early adopters, like me, has given a great deal of focus to converting the more mainstream user, and acting as an evangelist for other third party applications, ranging from Pandora to Twitter.

Expected Exit: Remaining Independent through end of 2009.

Strands' history both bodes well and plays against them. Their VC funds offer them a strong balance sheet, but may also force the company's investors to seek a return that would be unavailable, given current market conditions. The company will need to find a better way to differentiate against FriendFeed and others, and hope that appealing to mainstream America works.

6) ReadBurner

A service that would tabulate the most frequently shared items from Google Reader was high on my list of sought-after sites in 2007. The catch is that I always thought Google would do it themselves. When ReadBurner debuted in January, it was a delight, and the simplicity of the service bred many clones, including RSSmeme. Later in 2008, its older cousin, Feedheads, broke out of the Facebook garden and entered the general Web. ReadBurner, and others like it, serve as having the potential to unseat less-democratic popular news hierarchies, such as Digg, assuming they execute well. As an advisor to the service, I'd like to say they are on the right track, or rate the service higher on this list, but development has been slow of late, and needs to get going again.

* Not Listing an Expected Exit Due to Assumed Bias *

7) Feedly

Like many other smaller services this year, especially those around the Google Reader and Twitter ecosystems, Feedly takes an existing popular product and makes it better - giving a news magazine feel to what previously had been a standard RSS reader. Feedly launched as a Firefox plugin in the middle of the year, highlighting recommended articles from friends, popular feeds, and integrating with Google Reader, so when you made changes to your Feedly, those changes tracked back to Reader.

Expected Exit: None

Feedly's founder recently noted his excitement over earning the service's first dollar, after a user Tweeted that she'd gotten distracted by an ad within Feedly and clicked through. Given most other RSS based apps haven't found any revenue yet, a single dollar is a lot more than zero, but Feedly doesn't look like it has any kind of mass that would push it to the mainstream, let alone turning into a viable business. For now, it's just an interesting twist on data consumption. The site will only go away if its developers get bored of it.

8) Gnip

With sites like Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Delicious and others getting pounded all day by third party services tapping into their API and sucking down their users' updates, Gnip recognized these external sites might soon see backlash from the data sources, as too much of their own infrastructure was being used to power other programs. In light of Twitter's up and down summer, Gnip debuted to act as the middleman, essentially making data portability easier, reducing one-offs between services.

Expected Exit: Acquisiton by end of 2009

It's hard in life to be the middleman, trying to play equal with every service. Should Gnip really start to become the Akamai of data portability, it's likely that one of the biggest data producers would want to snap up the service for themselves, and either limit competitors' access to it, or start charging fees. In a world when VC money is hard to come by, Gnip would be smart to take the offer.

9) Toluu

You'll note two major themes regarding hot services in 2008: RSS and friends. Finding out what your friends were reading and sharing were key facets of most of the new products that gained my attention this year. Toluu, developed by Caleb Elston, offers a site where you can upload the OPML file of feeds you read, mark your favorites, and see how compatible you are with other users of the site, helping find new feeds, and new people. Over time, the service enabled me to see new blogs my friends were subscribing to, and you could even notify Twitter if you had added a new blog to your reading list.

Expected Exit: None

Toluu is a geeky hobby for Caleb. He's recently also gotten behind Kallow.com, a gift recommendation service. Toluu hasn't been monetized in any way, and is unlikely to develop into an acquisition target, unless another service wants to use his recommendation engine.

10) SocialToo

Twitter and Facebook have become such a part of the blogging ecosystem, that new services have sprung up to make it more useful and intuitive. Among them is fellow louisgray.com author Jesse Stay's SocialToo. The service looks to act as a bridge between multiple social networks, including Twitter, Identica and Facebook, letting you automatically follow those users who follow you, offering a black list of people you never want to follow you, setting up an automatic message to those who choose to follow your account, and recently, the addition of surveys that can be distributed by Twitter and tabulated on the site, much like SurveyMonkey and PollDaddy.

Expected Exit: Remaining Independent through end of 2009.

SocialToo contains some advertising, and if I were to guess, it may offer premium features, as the survey functionality could be improved a great deal, possibly even going head to head with sites like SurveyMonkey. While Jesse is unlikely to get rich off SocialToo, it's smart in that it's not tied just to one service (Twitter), but has the flexibility to add on new networks as they rise in prominence.

Also on the list but outside of the Top 10:
12seconds.tv, BlogRize, Identica, LinkRiver, OneSpot, PeopleBrowsr, Plurk, Rejaw, RSSmeme, Shyftr, Yokway

Facebook and Its Partners - What Are They Up To?

By Mona Nomura of Pixel Bits (FriendFeed/Twitter)

If the Internet is like high school, Facebook is like the new kid embraced by the in crowd - just by existing. Despite no monetization track record and a no clear revenue model, Microsoft believes in them - to the tune of 240 million dollars worth of trust. They are also partnered with one of the silent giants, Salesforce.com, the CRM database software corporation behind a lot of sites we use.

Facebook has overcome controversial privacy issues, and keeps growing, despite continued complaints about annoying application invitations, an unintuitive redesign, and is still embraced by the public, even with spam issues. Most recently, Facebook made a bold move, penetrating the single log-on realm with Facebook Connect, which initiated a push for the OpenID movement (again).

So... who is Facebook? What makes them so extraordinary? And why are they so loved?

Beyond their popularity, it's the partnerships that concern me most.

Microsoft is one of Facebook's biggest investors. Salesforce and Facebook recently held a conference presenting their future plans. Just yesterday, Salesforce and Google announced they are furthering their partnership. Now I am not anal about privacy - at all. But it is no secret, Facebook is looking to venture into enterprise and I can not help but wonder: What does all this mean to us, the users? Will the partnerships effect us? If so, how?

I attempted researching to find answers, but largely came up empty. In a way, technology news (specifically Social Networking) is like American politics. Unless you know where to look, most of the information is spun, like political rhetoric. Perhaps I am not looking hard enough, but most of my questions remain unanswered.

So I am turning to you, the readers, to help answer these questions. What do you think these various partnerships mean? How do you think it effects us? When it comes to Facebook and its partners, should we be concerned about privacy issues? Or does it even matter?

Please, enlighten me.

Read more by Mona Nomura at Pixel Bits

Old Media Out Of Touch in the New World

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

In this era of high-speed Internet connections, satellites, wireless connections, cell phones, and computers, our world is increasingly becoming connected. Currently, there are enough cell phone connections to cover half the world's population, and they reach places traditional internet connections never ever could. I think it's partly this, and the massive network, that makes Twitter so popular, and an increasingly useful tool for finding news, where it happens, from the source. Nevermind Twitter though - you have Facebook, where friends and family find out news, again from the source, where it happens. You have YouTube, where people are recording and uploading video, which spreads to their friends. You now have live-streaming video, through services such as Qik and Kyte, all bringing news to you, from the source, un-edited, as it happens, in a very visual format.

I was on a panel Friday here in Salt Lake City, Utah, where I was the blogger amongst two traditional media reporters. One was Paul Foy, an AP news reporter, and the other was Fields Mosley, a broadcast journalist and anchorman of the local TV news station, KUTV.  It's no wonder, with the increasingly connected world we have, that both Fields and Paul were seemingly afraid that their jobs could very well be gone in the near future. (I can't even find a page for Fields on Google)

As the blogger of the group, I was obviously the least experienced in the field of journalism. I actually felt quite awkward at times feeling they thought I was out of place, and was that "guy who sits in his pajamas in his parents' basement". (I actually brought that up, mentioning only half of it was true - I'm actually at Jiffy Lube as I write this, awaiting my car to receive its safety and emissions certification.  And yes - I'm dressed.) However, in reality, in a room of PR and marketing professionals in the tech field, they were actually the ones out of place, and I think that became evidently clear as one of the audience members asked who in the audience had published some sort of content about the event we were in during the event. Almost all of the audience, including me, rose their hands. The traditional news reporters were the only ones without their hands raised, further showing the sad state of our news media today.

We seem to be getting to the point where most news reporters simply aren't needed these days!

The panel argued that many bloggers and online journalists are getting their news out faster because they don't edit and don't spend much time on the content they publish. That's very true, and side-by-side (for the most part), these guys' writing or reporting would be much better than ours.  I believe the two in this panel were both very respectful, smart, and reputable journalists. However, these guys seemingly don't get where media is moving. The point they're missing is that bloggers are getting the news out faster, plain and simple. People forgive the editing when they know they're getting it, as it happens, from the source. Rumors may spread quickly in social media, but the thing is - so do facts to correct those rumors. It's easy to tell what's true and what's false in social media because the majority always rules, and one or two of those majority are always the source.

The other argument they were making, which also to me reflects on why traditional journalists will be gone in a matter of years, is that they actually thought that we bloggers get our news from them. One of them hinted at the fact that we sit there watching TV, writing about the content they post. When in reality we're the ones getting the news first, before they even know about it, and because they don't look online, they never know it was reporter here first.  Not only that but we're not always reporting it - you see, we don't need to.  We can sit, and discuss with those experiencing the news first-hand, because everyone else is too.  For the first time, reporters and traditional news media seem to be the ones missing out.  

I can get news, from Twitter, as it happens, before any breaking reports come on my cell phone. I don't have a cable subscription, similar to many bloggers, and my news comes faster because of this. No longer do you need the reporter - most people can get the news, from those that are experiencing it, on their own! No intermediary is needed any more.

I've said many times before we're in an era where we all live in a small village.  We know what's happening in our village, talk about it, and get the news from those experiencing it due to many of these Social Media tools.  We don't need reporters to represent that news for us any more.  I find out about earthquakes before anyone else.  I find out about terrorist attacks before anyone else.  I find out about fires before anyone else.  That's how I'm able to report tech news, before anyone else, right here on LouisGray.com.

Read more by Jesse Stay at Stay N' Alive.

Which Photo Site Will be First to Embrace Facebook Connect?

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

The news of today has been the coming rollout of Facebook's 3rd party platform services, aka Facebook Connect, to sites like Digg and Hulu, and the opening of Facebook Connect to all. Facebook has provided its Facebook Connect services as an extension to the Facebook Platform for developers to now be able to integrate Facebook login, Feed posts, friend information, and more on their own websites. The service has already been integrated on sites such as CBSSports.com, MoveOn.org, and RedBull.com in very simple form.

One noted fact about Facebook is that they currently have the largest photo repository on the internet. I have covered this before on my personal blog, when they reached their 10 billionth photo. The service boasts over 10 billion photos now, with over 2-3 terabytes of storage space used, and near 300,000 images served per second. The social nature of Facebook just asks for social elements such as photo sharing to be very popular.

This begs the question then, now that 3rd party websites are now privy to integrate with the massive 100 million+ member network that Facebook provides, who will be the first 3rd party photo sharing site to integrate with the service? We know that Google and Facebook aren't friendly with each other - I would count on PicasaWeb to do this. However, what about Flickr, or SmugMug?

I am a firm user and fan of SmugMug.com, as is Louis. I love their beautiful interface, and especially the fact that I can automatically upload RAW photos I take and associate them with their .jpg counterparts on the site. The only reason I ever post to Flickr now is because of the social nature it brings. It also has more users. SmugMug's social features are quite simply, lacking.

However, what if SmugMug were to become the first photo sharing site to integrate Facebook Connect? What if SmugMug were to integrate the limitless potential of the Facebook network into its own site? Let's say I could log into SmugMug with my Facebook account, find all my friends on Facebook with SmugMug accounts, and immediately import them as friends into SmugMug. Then, imagine the potential of being able to now share all my SmugMug photos that I upload, directly into my Facebook news feed, for all my friends to see and comment on in Facebook, just like the Facebook Photos app is currently. What if I could also tag those Facebook friends in my SmugMug photos?

There is a huge void in the Photo sharing market right now for those that could be participating in Facebook Connect. I predict a huge boom when this happens, and they have the potential, with more features than Facebook can provide, to even overtake what Facebook's own photos app brings to the table. It's only a matter of time that we begin to see sites like SmugMug and Flickr integrate Facebook Connect. Who will be first?

Read more by Jesse Stay at Stay N' Alive.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

With Facebook Connect, Google Has Unique Integration Opportunity

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


In working with Google FriendConnect recently, I realized that Google has a unique opportunity that perhaps they did not have previously. In only the last few months, Facebook has opened up the opportunity for any 3rd party site to integrate with Facebook, all via a special login button and form Facebook provides. Such technology is enabled through a product Facebook calls Facebook Connect. In playing with Google's product, it enables one to authenticate through other services and allow porting of friend data and more through its FriendConnect interface. I believe Google now may just have the unique opportunity to finally integrate Facebook as they wanted to before.

Several months back, Google attempted to launch FriendConnect with Facebook as one of the launch partners. Facebook quickly pulled Google's app from the Facebook App Store because they claimed it breached the Facebook Terms of Service. Google denied they were doing such, but Facebook insisted, keeping Google from being able to integrate with Facebook. It's unclear what exactly Facebook was claiming Google had done wrong, but it appeared to be some sort of backdoor technique to obtain user information.

Enter Facebook Connect

Several months later, Facebook launched their somewhat competing product, Facebook Connect. Facebook Connect does not integrate with other sites, but does integrate with OpenID similar to the way Google FriendConnect does, and enables you to through simple javascript, allow others to login and integrate their Facebook friends right on their own website.

Because FriendConnect is specific to Facebook, Google could now have just the opportunity to integrate Facebook the way they wanted to. Now, Google simply, and legally, should be able to implement a simple Facebook Connect login button into their user settings interface, let the user log into Facebook, and automatically Google would now have full access to the Facebook API from a third party site as they were trying to do before. Google can now enter in through the front door.

Not only that, but Facebook now allows site owners to identify existing accounts with existing Facebook accounts that have the same e-mail address. If Google were to collect the user's Facebook e-mail, or use their existing assuming it's the same as their Gmail address, they could then identify existing Friends on Google that also have Facebook accounts, allow you to link into them, invite them to begin using your FriendConnect-enabled site, and more.

Why Google has not yet implemented this is beyond me. Perhaps they already have and we are just waiting for Facebook to fully lift the Sandbox they have in place for developers right now. Regardless, I am willing to bet that Facebook integration into Google FriendConnect is coming very soon because of these features. Expect it to come in the form of Facebook Connect.

Read more by Jesse Stay at Stay N' Alive.

Web 2.0 and Democratization of Data - Say What?

By Mona Nomura of Pixel Bits (FriendFeed/Twitter)

If George W. Bush and John Kerry campaigned for the presidency on the Internet four years ago, I wouldn't have seen the point and likely would have laughed in their faces. Who would have heard and listened to them? Fast forward to today, and the joke is on me.

In case you haven't noticed, both of the presidential hopefuls have a presence on the web. John McCain and Barack Obama have accounts on the major social networks, including MySpace, Facebook, YouTube channels, and even Twitter accounts. Social networking is no longer just for geeks. Web 2.0 is going mainstream and everyone (that means you, reader!) has opportunity to be more than an audience. Data is democratizing and everyone's voice can be heard.

Need more proof everyone has a voice that's heard? Take the Steve Job's false report of a heart attack debacle. A simple post on CNN's affiliate citizen journalism site, iReport, generated a massive ripple effect. Within minutes, the unconfirmed "news" spread like wild fire. CNN and Apple quickly issued official statements that report was false, major blogs picked up the story of falsified reports, but Apple's stock still dropped 10%. All from one silly rumor, started by a Joe Schmoe from who knows where. Everyone has opportunity to be heard. Hence, democratization of data.

So what does that mean?

Well, stay with me, as I take this a step further. Most of you probably know me through FriendFeed, where I spend almost 90% of my days posting random pictures and or links. Now FriendFeed was once dominated by veteran bloggers, Internet personalities, - basically folks who have been around for some time, and put years of efforts into their well deserved titles by their names - or the tech 'elite'. It's now been a little over three months since I signed up, and still can't believe I interact with the information sources where tech-news (data) start and circulate around. But honestly? The 'elite' in my eyes, are regular people who are a part of the FriendFeed I love so much. And it's not constrained to FriendFeed. Whether you or anyone else for that matter, likes it or not, there are so many people from all walks of life, from all over the world sharing and discussing information on all social networks across the board. How can every single voice not be heard? Again, democratization of data. And this is only the beginning.

Think about it.

New sites and services are popping up every month. Established, major Social Networks such as MySpace and or Facebook are adding features, functions, and tools encouraging users to share data. The way Social Networks will be used are changing. There are millions of active users like us, sharing our personal stories, the latest news, information pertaining to our professional life, or even stupid cat photos since we - the users, have the choice and control to share whatever we feel is important to share. The bottomline: Information is no longer consolidated, centralized, or coming from a few selected sources. Data is now and will only continue to be democratized.

The path is now paved, so the choice is yours. How will you exercise these options?

Read more by Mona Nomura at Pixel Bits.

After Monkeying Around, I'm Not Going Bananas for Chi.mp

Personal feed aggregators with social elements have been one of the more popular services to gain traction in 2008. With services like FriendFeed, Social Median, Strands, SocialThing, Profilactic and others all finding a niche, some larger than others, it's clear that people are looking to consolidate their online activities, and share the results with friends. One of the more odd attempts is that of chi.mp, which lets you have your own .mp "domain", and helps you build a personal page, connect with friends and add services. While it can be fun to think of interesting names that end with .mp (du.mp, clu.mp, pi.mp, ru.mp, bu.mp, bli.mp, stu.mp, thu.mp, ca.mp, sta.mp, pu.mp and forrestgu.mp all come to mind), the end result isn't all that compelling. Unless we are being measured by the sheer quantity of online services we register for, and by how many places we can connect to the same people, I don't really see the point.

Chi.mp calls itself a content hub and identity management platform. While its site is clean and its marketing well-intended, offering a "dashboard for your digital life", the end result turns out to be much less. While its user profiles look like they borrowed a page from Facebook, and the idea of aggregating feeds sounds like FriendFeed, it ends up instead being a cartoony version of an online business card that calls out only the most basic social services.


Adding Services Via Chi.mp Is Easy, But Limited
From the chi.mp dashboard, you can add some of the standard services, but not a huge number. And just because you add a service doesn't mean it's pulling in your data. I added Twitter when I signed up, and despite posting a few tweets, my new chi.mp site, hiding at techpu.mp, hasn't figured that out.

Looking at the chi.mp sites built by others shows pictures from Flickr and Facebook, and headlines of their RSS feeds. But there's no question that the service isn't going to take on the larger players. The pages are static and don't enable discussion. And no matter how many friends you discover on the site, you don't get alerts if you visit their pages. So now, I find myself getting hit with invitation requests from folks to become contacts on the site. It's clear I don't know why I would do it, and just maybe, they don't know either.

No wonder CNET quoted one observer back in April as saying, ""I'll tell you what Chi.mp is. It's venture money getting set on fire." Now, I'm usually happy to give new Web services a chance and see potential, but unless there is a major overhaul here to chi.mp, which would deliver greater service support, faster RSS pulls, and real social interaction, there's just no point. Now I feel like a monkey for even signing up.

Increased Activity Streams Boost Social Median's Chances

By Rob Diana of Regular Geek (Twitter/FriendFeed)

The one problem I had been having with SocialMedian was the need to manually "clip" stories that I find interesting on the internet. Many social news sites, i.e. Digg, Mixx, etc., use this model with great results. SocialMedian has been trying to focus on getting relevant information in front of their users, while maintaining the voting and commenting mainstays of social news. By allowing users to create news networks, and making the follower/submitter model a little more influential, they tried to create automated content filters. With the early addition of user-configurable "volume for noise levels", they also tried to avoid the spamming of stories to several networks.

These were fantastic additions, but as anyone who has used social news sites, adding stories manually to a site is a lot of work. In this past week, SocialMedian dropped more barriers to using their service. They had a big week implementing blog and Google Reader automated integration into a user's clipped stories. This makes the service significantly easier for many people to use. The Google Reader integration will also take your shared notes and include them as a comment on a clipped story.

See Also:

• Social Median Integrates With Google Reader for News Discovery
• Social Median Revamps and Introduces "News Streaming"

To give you an idea of what this means for user adoption, I will give you an example. I used to visit the site every few days and browse around. When the announcements were made this past week, I again browsed around but my activity had not been imported yet. On the second day, I visited a few times to reply to comments and review new subscribers. The third day, I again visited a few times for comments and I started looking at the stories that other people had clipped in my news networks. I am now trying to work the site into my daily routine because the Google Reader shares and the blog importing has added to the quality and timeliness of the stories clipped on the site. These fairly simple ideas could be a major boon to SocialMedian.

This also got me thinking. SocialMedian allows you to link several services to your profile, like Twitter and FriendFeed. I believe more is coming as well in the form of FriendFeed and Digg integration. By doing this type of integration, they are not really just a social news site. It is a combination of social news and aggregation or lifestreaming. So, is SocialMedian trying to compete with FriendFeed? I do not think so as they are mostly complementary services at this point. However, by dabbling in lifestreaming and aggregation, the number of their competitors easily doubles.

This brings me to another point. John McCrea of Plaxo had a really interesting point on the lifestreaming and aggregation applications:

"Can the pure-play Social Web Aggregators grow fast and long enough to achieve escape velocity before the big former walled garden services, like Facebook and MySpace, re-invent themselves into true Social Web Aggregators?"

Facebook has their news feeds, but they seem minimally useful right now. FriendFeed has a very good lead on Facebook, but they are still an aggregration service. They really need to start adding functionality to stay ahead. The beta is excellent so far, but is it enough to keep Facebook far behind?

With SocialMedian adding various activity streams, they become a very interesting property. Social news sites do not import activity streams in any way. FriendFeed does not have the voting that social news sites use. SocialMedian has both and they have interesting filtering. I do not see Facebook overtaking FriendFeed any time soon, but there is that possibility. There is no chance that Facebook can move fast enough to catch SocialMedian within the next year.

In the past week, SocialMedian has changed the core of what they are and it is a good thing. Are they a prime target for a buyout, or will they be the next Web darling? I think they would be an interesting purchase for someone looking to get into the news and aggregation space, Google perhaps? I have no power to make them a Web darling, but they are making it hard for people to not notice them.

Read more by Rob Diana at RegularGeek.com.

The iPhone's Missing Link: User Profiles

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

The iPhone has quickly become one of the most popular and sophisticated devices on Earth. With a very unique and natural interface, quality camera, GPS, tilt controls, and a full developers API and App marketplace, it's no wonder it's quickly approaching to be one of the most widely used phone platforms on the planet. With 3.3 billion people having a cell phone subscription, and cell phone coverage to cover over 90% of the earth by 2010, there's no arguing that we are approaching one of the most powerful platforms known to man.

The Need for a User Profile

I mentioned back in July that Facebook is missing some serious features to make it a serious platform itself, including privacy controls. It's clear that the iPhone has the potential to actually form one of the world's largest Social Networks, with GPS support, a contacts list (which are your real life friends), and applications that can access that data and communicate back and forth. With such a network monetization potential goes through the roof! However, there is one thing missing that I think would complete the mix - profiles.

Turning Customers Into People

Right now, Apple and AT&T know you have a phone. They know your name from your billing information and where you are from GPS information they gather as you talk on your phone. However, that's about all they know - to them, your phone is a phone, and you're just another customer.

What would turn each of their customers into actual people would be to build actual profiles, on the phone, for each person that owns the phone. This could be done either locally on the phone, or perhaps via account settings at either AT&T or Apple that sync with the phone. They could collect such information such as gender, marital status, religion, interests, favorite media, favorite books, education, work, and other information about you to identify who you actually are, in addition to your location. This information would follow the phone and be made available (with Privacy controls, of course) via an API, and then, any service that would like this information about the user could retrieve this information and bring actual people into their services.

The iPhone Could Prove Identity

Imagine the identity implications here. The iPhone follows you, where you go. In essence, it in many ways is a part of you, and your identity. What if Apple were to require identification to authenticate you as a real person, then store that information, encrypted, to share with others to prove who you are. I imagine some better authentication and security would be needed on the iPhone to keep this safe. However, with such identity possibilities, we could very well see our paper licenses and passports and identification be a thing of the past!

As a disclaimer, I've just started serving as the Chief Community Officer for a startup writing a new iPhone Entertainment application (we have a launch coming soon!), but I can tell you, if the iPhone were to already collect this information from the user for us, we'd have quite a useful app on our hands! Having a real identity to associate with each user, where they are at any moment is very powerful. Relationships are important, but before relationship can happen, each part of that relationship must have identity. That's why the iPhone needs to have a Profile.

Read more by Jesse Stay at Stay N' Alive.

The Following/Listening Ratio - Are Your Followers Actually Listening?

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



Let's face it. One of the main reasons you and I, and almost anyone, are on social services is that you want to interact with new people and expand your current network of connections. There's no doubt about it that there's power in this concept - as you grow your network with quality people, you will meet others that could potentially help grow your brand, share your product, or build your audience. A large audience is valuable.

In the early days of Social Networking (hmm...that would be what, 1 year ago?), growing your network and having the majority of those following you also listening to you was very easy to achieve. It was simple - if you followed someone, you were making a commitment to also listen to their updates. I'm seeing a trend amongst my followers, however, which I think is changing the effectiveness of this technique. Where just one year ago, I was usually one of among 20 or 30 people my followers were following, quite a large part of my followers today are following 200 people or more.

I'm noticing on the larger networks like Twitter that the conversation is starting to fizzle. I may post something, but I don't always get the responses I used to. My followers are simply following more people now and I'm one of hundreds they have to pay attention to. I don't take offense to this - on Twitter I too follow over 1,200 people. I have my own strategy for listening to the most important posts using track and RSS and other techniques, but I'll be first to admit I don't catch every single update like I used to. Twitter has now become an aggregation and information tool for me for learning about people and events - it has lost much of its "conversation" nature that it used to have. This is the case for many other people, and not just the big bloggers and early-adopters any more.

The Follower/Listening Ratio

This begs the question, at what time does a social service lose its effectiveness in building relationships through communication, and at what time does it become purely a "data gathering and sharing" tool? Ideally, if all your social services, networks, and tools had the perfect ratio enabling all who follow you actually listen to you, your potential for a successful network of followers/following would be much more effective. This is the problem when social services like Twitter get too big - they foster the lack of good relationships the bigger they get, especially if they don't build the tools to foster this. Limiting the number of people you can follow doesn't necessary solve the issue though, as there is still power in also being able to aggregate and track information about lots of people.

I'm currently posting most of my updates via Identi.ca. They will have this problem as well if they grow too big, but one solution for me is to ensure I'm always on the new, upcoming networks so that the number of those people listening to me are following remains small, and more people are paying attention to my updates that way. Not everyone can do this though, and I'll admit this isn't the ideal situation and will not last for long.

Sites That Do it Right

There are a few sites that seem to be doing this right (to an extent), and frankly, I'm seeing much better communication and relationships fostered via those services vs. the other services like Twitter that seem to be getting bigger without the proper tools to foster such relationships. Two of those stand out with some great features to foster this ratio and keep it strong that I'd like to share.

Facebook

Facebook, the big monolith that hit 100,000,000 users today, seems to have grown well with tools to enable users to foster their relationships. Facebook is supposed to be about people, after all. First of all, Facebook allows categorization of friends into "lists" which you can arrange privacy settings around and allows for easy sending of mail to groups of people. Setting privacy settings allows each user to ensure only certain groups can see certain pieces of information about them. This helps reduce the unneeded information your followers see, and ensures they only see the most important information that they would be interested in about you.

In addition to that, with the new Facebook design, you can now filter out what you want to see about people. So, if I no longer want to see information about Joe I can hide that in my news feed and his updates will never appear again. I'm still friends with Joe, I can still contact him and interact with him, but this way I'm truly paying attention to those I'm truly interested in. In addition to that I can do things such as filter so I only see photos, or only updates from a certain application. My capability to listen is better on Facebook, and the ratio I mention is much better. The discussions are better and happen more often on Facebook because of this.

FriendFeed

FriendFeed has some similar filtering functions to Facebook. Let's start with the current features, and the ability the FriendFeed gives you to "hide" updates by a particular individual. If you don't want to see updates by someone, just "hide" their updates and only the updates from those you're interested in will show.

Yesterday, FriendFeed also announced some brand new features that make building and fostering relationships and discussion much better. For instance, I can add particular individuals to a "favorites" list. This means I can now follow all the updates of my favorite "followees" and just skim the rest. This ensures that more people are listening to what they want, and not ignoring the things they might not want to ignore.

With these tools, Facebook and FriendFeed become much more effective tools for growing and fostering your network. It's important that as you grow your network that you ensure that not only are you building the network, but that those following you are actually listening to you. Choosing the right network and strategy to do this is important. Having 1,000 followers on Twitter may not be the best thing for you if not all of them have a way to pay attention to your updates. Pick the networks (and the two I mention aren't the only ones - they are just the two I use) that work best for you at fostering conversation and relationships, and it may just be okay to ignore the others, or at least focus a little less on them as you build your relationships through the more effective methods.

What are some better ways you would recommend to strengthen the followers/listeners ratio of your network?

There is No Social Media Overload

Every day, there are more and more great services to investigate in the world of social media. Each one breaks new ground in terms of features, focus or user interface. There are many different sites that target general social networking, some are for business, some are for dating, some are for microblogging, and others for service aggregation. And there will be many more. While some are calling for a pause in the innovation, somewhat fatigued by the implied redundancy or overwhelmed by chasing down comments and conversations in new places, it's worth noting there's time in the day to manage a good number of sites, and not all the winners have yet been crowned.

To have a full deck of social media tools, you essentially need the following:

• 1 or more blogs that you manage.
• 1 or more accounts on an RSS feed reader.
• 1 or more microblogging identities.
• 1 or more accounts on a business networking tool.
• 1 or more accounts on a social network.
• 1 or more accounts on a service aggregator or lifestream.
  

(Also helpful: A social bookmarking site, online photo site, music recommendation service, etc.)

For me, this means I blog here, use Google Reader, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and FriendFeed as my core applications for each category. But below these headliners are others.

For RSS, I also use Shyftr and liked AssetBar before it went away. I've tried Bloglines, FeedEachOther and NewsGator as well. There are also tools that interact with RSS, like Toluu, which helps you find feeds your friends like and integrates with Google Reader, and the sites dedicated to finding the most shared items in Google Reader, like ReadBurner, RSSMeme and Feedheads. (Disclosure: I am an advisor to ReadBurner)

For microblogging, beyond Twitter, you have Identi.ca, Plurk, and now, Rejaw. I'm signed up at each, but use Twitter primarily, copying posts to Identi.ca, via Posty. I need to check out Rejaw more, but am no expert.

For business networking, there's also Plaxo, which has morphed into a lifestreaming application.

For social networking, many still use MySpace, or Friendster, but Facebook has the momentum and the development on its side. Orkut never got the traction expected.

As for lifestreaming and aggregation, I am absolutely overweighted here, and I enjoy it. Justin Korn referred to it as "Super Kickass Social Network Following Power", but if you're interested, it's fairly easy to be engaged on sites like FriendFeed, Social Median and Strands all at once, like I'm trying to do.

I like FriendFeed because it easily pulls in my activity from around the Web and has a sharp community with good conversations and hiding. I like Social Median because it lets me just see news and posts on topics I pick or from people I follow. I like Strands because it has similar elements to FriendFeed, but more filtering and some good potential. I also know it can continue to improve because it’s early. Just in the last 36 hours, I've gone from being a nothing on Strands to having more than 100 people whom I can interact with.

Below this crust of leaders, you also have smaller sites like Yokway and LetsProve, where I'm registered, but haven't done much of late. FriendBinder doesn't seem to have taken off either, and BlogRize, though interesting, got quiet fast, and seems to have gone away, as did Mergelab. The truth is that we don't know which sites are going to win, and it makes sense to be registered everywhere and active on those places where you find the best community and the best content.

Of course, just because I sign up for something, or find something, doesn't mean that you're obligated to try it out. Not all sites are for everyone. But I'm far from being overloaded with Social Media. You just have to find balance, time, and keep remembering there is no quota and you don't have to read everything. Contrary to some belief, I'm not constantly on each site. I just read quickly, decide quickly and respond quickly. None of these sites is a real big time sink, unless you force yourself to read everything. It's easier to let your friends decide the best pieces, and for you to rely on search tools to get the rest, whether it be through Twitter Search, or pre-determined Google blog searches.

The only way you get social media overload is if you don't manage it well, just like you can get RSS overload or e-mail overload, or so I've heard. Even as there are more services to engage with, the number of hours you have to work with them is still the same. So do check out as many as you think have potential, and stick with the ones that offer you the community you're looking for, the engagement you need, and the best feature set. You'll find your niche.

See Also:

• Relax, Bloggers: Nobody Is Keeping Score, and There's No Quota.
• My Social Media Consumption Workflow
• Continuous Parallel Attention: My New Reality

The LDS/Facebook Rumor Didn't Pass the Common Sense Test

In the absence of news, there's nothing the blogosphere loves more than an unfounded, nonsensical rumor, especially if two visible, but often misunderstood, parties are involved. I was amusingly dumbfounded this afternoon to find that today's rumor du jour settled on the idea that the LDS (or Mormon) Church had made an offer to acquire the hot social networking site, Facebook. While some, knowing only a mote of data about the church, suggested Facebook's strong database of familial interconnects would fall in line with the Mormon's well-known efforts in family history, the rumor was laughable on its face, which had me going from blog to blog saying it was complete bunk - which it of course, turned out to be.

See the nonsense here:

The Industry Standard:
LDS church rumored to have offered for Facebook
Venture Beat:
Rumor from the news doldrums of August: Mormon church trying to buy Facebook
WinExtra: The Mormon Church Looking To Buy Facebook?

As a life-long Mormon, I've grown used to people coming to conclusions about what the church does, stands for, or how its members behave. And despite the church being more open and active on the Web than almost any other faith out there, that I can think of, there are still pieces that remain mysterious, leading people to speculate well beyond reality. And today's rumor was just too juicy for people to pass up - and was more reminiscent of the Twitter-fed rumor that Subway's Jared had died than anything smacking of real journalism.

Whether it's a religious group, a person's country of origin, their race, their age or their gender, people have a tendency to make generalizations based on what they've seen through interacting with others, through what they've learned through the media and books, or been told about from friends or family.

When I tell people I'm Mormon, I'm often assumed to have a short haircut, wear a white shirt and tie, avoid cigarettes, coffee, tea, alcohol, drugs, and caffeine. Taking it a step further, people guess I probably spent good time in Utah, that I probably have 8 to 12 brothers and sisters, that I served a two year mission, that I likely graduated from BYU, married early and would have more than one wife if the laws were just a little more flexible.

At other times, I'll get the "You're Mormon? Really? But you're so normal!", which both gives me a sense of relief, but makes me feel somewhat guilty that I wasn't so exemplary a church member that it would have been obvious.

But while I can take the one by one issues with people who are ignorant, or just curious, today's rumor that the church would use a good portion of its estimated $30 billion cash horde to acquire a social networking site best known for poking and sending zombies to bite you was completely off the wall, and anybody who had any real knowledge about the church's mission had to have been giggling, knowing it had no basis whatsoever.

As a tithe-paying member, 10% of my total take-home income is donated to the church. While I don't dictate how the church uses my money, any more than I tell the government how to spend my tax dollars, I know that the funds are used to build new chapels and temples worldwide, to support the church's extensive welfare program that helps families in need, and to provide service in times of disaster. The church was extremely visible in aiding victims of the 2001 terrorist attacks, in responding to the South Pacific tsunami, and was instrumental in responding to Hurricane Katrina. In fact, the church's well-orchestrated service arm is so strong, that other faiths will often work with the LDS church while encouraging their own members to provide donations in times of strife.

And this has nothing to do with buying any social network.

In regards to the intimations by some that this was some scheme to lop a massive database into the church's genealogical archives, that too made no sense. As members, we are encouraged to pursue our family history and look backward to our ancestors, but we can only submit names of those with whom we are relatives. We don't submit friends' or celebrities' data, and we're certainly not out there buying lists to do a mass import.

But, clearly, not everybody knows this, and that can only be due to a lack of trying to understand.

The LDS church, whether you believe their doctrine or not, has done an amazing job at providing materials for visitors to understand their goals, their current events and their curriculum. Not only do they provide every word of their scriptures, including Book of Mormon, the Bible and all cross-references and footnotes online, and make them searchable, but they stream their semi-annual meetings online, they provide all church magazines going back to 1971, in full text, online, and all curriculum materials. This means any Web surfer can know this week's Sunday School lessons or see the church leadership's comments on world events. And all texts available to rank and file church members are visible to any site visitor.

Yet somehow, the church is seen as mysterious. Even though the church is among the fastest growing worldwide, and all these resources are available, the fact there are denominational differences and behavioral differences between the church and its members, makes people wonder if there's more to the story. That's partly why today's rumor took off like it did. Eric Eldon of VentureBeat wrote, "It got legs because it was so ridiculous, yet intriguing."

It was at least ridiculous. The good news is that, as church members, we've seen this kind of annoying misunderstanding before. It's the same kind of herd mentality that associates the church with the HBO series "Big Love", the same ignorance that linked the church with the odd polygamist sect in Texas earlier this year, or those who forced Mitt Romney's hand, making him do a pronouncement on religion earlier this year. It seems that no matter how many questions we answer, or how open we are, people would prefer not to understand and recognize that the church and its members are not secretly plotting to buy out the Web, and we aren't trying to take over the world. While Duncan Riley of the Inquisitr was good enough to have a little fun with it, many of his sources were of course from anti-Mormon sites or incorrect material, which he's not faulted for finding. And others didn't even do the basics of a simple Web search to understand how to contact church authorities and find the truth.

As one fellow member wrote me on e-mail today, "These guys are not drunk, they are smoking something really strong. It may be a slow day, but that does not mean they need to break the word of wisdom. If they are not smoking it they should at least not inhale."

See Also:
Being Mac. Being Mormon. It's Quite Similar.
Mormon. Liberal. Not Conflicted.

How One Would-be Web Friend Turned Into a Stalker In Months

In advance, my use of the word "stalker" is not intended to belittle any real-life stalking issues that are much more serious.

I tend to view the Web and the interactions I have with people online optimistically, trusting first and dismissing only after repeat offenses through odd comments or bad behavior. As Cyndy's article from Sunday mentioned, there are bad people out there who have troll-like behavior, whose aim it is to disrupt your life, add frustration and intimidate, but those can usually be tossed out like rubbish. But I've had the most odd experience with one individual this year, who would contact me almost every single day, by e-mail, by social networks and by phone, and couldn't be shooed away by any normal social standards. This individual, despite being told I had no interest in their venture, and that I was uncomfortable with their continued outreach, followed me from Facebook to FriendFeed to Twitter to GMail to my cell phone and back, and has been a bizarre thorn in my side for about four months. I thought I'd show you some of their handiwork without giving away who they are, and so you can see how my attempts to be civil gave the individual the wrong idea.

The individual's art of being a borderline Web stalker in this case was to at first appear friendly, and interested in me as an individual or as a future colleague. What started out as a respectful exchange then saw odd cracks in their mental togetherness as I would get one liners that dismissed me and then came crawling back in days, and each time I'd try to end the conversation, one more would come in its place.

This person first started making comments on my blog back in March, and added me as someone to follow on FriendFeed and Twitter soon after. Their comments, at the time, seemed upbeat and usually thoughtful. By May, they reached out on Facebook, trying to start a more direct relationship:

On May 13, I got a note:

"What is a good time for me to call you (or you call me)?"

No big deal, or so I thought. We talked, and they sent follow-on e-mails by Facebook on May 15, 16, 17 (twice). By the 19th, they were probably 80% of the total messages I got on Facebook, since I rarely use the service. The fact I'd given them any attention made them think I was clearly looking to join their team, leading to the following note:

"When we close the initial round of financing, I am interested in interviewing you, if you wish, for our Director of Websites Experience and Operations/SVP position. It pays well into six figures and includes stock options."

I communicated I was flattered, but not interested. On the 20th, I got four more e-mails via Facebook, and on the 21st, I got the same message again. Then, on May 22nd, as one of four more messages that day, a quick note: "I hope all is well."

This was typical, and while not negative, a ploy to get me engaged again.

As I was now in the habit of ignoring most of their Facebook notes, by May 30, I got a message: "Interview is cancelled due to lack of your response." and the next day, a spiteful barb: "I have high standards. I have tried to be helpful to you as well."

So I thought we were done. Guess not. Because the next day, June 1st, I got a note:

"Together we would be stronger."

Ooh. Just past the creep-o-meter. And the next day, regarding my not joining his team and staying solo:

"Do you feel that your go it alone tendency is holding you back (I do, but what you think is what matters)."

The next day:

"I want to work with you because I believe that you are very talented."

And by June 4:

"I hope that all is well. Sometimes I think that you are wrong, and sometimes I think that I am. I can be impatient and a little demanding."

Stupid me, trying to be nice, I responded and offered to help with a side project. My mistake. When I didn't follow up after another e-mail in 24 hours, as I was busy with my real-world job, I got another note...

"I changed my mind about including you."

At this point, I was elated. So I removed them as a friend in Facebook, hoping the email flow would stop. Wrong.

On June 10, they noticed.

"If you apparently, it seems, took me off as a Facebook friend. I only work with very successful people!"

And on the 17th, a cryptic:

"Louis - I was wrong before."

At this point, realizing they weren't going away, I wrote back:

"On what part? Wrong on reaching out, or wrong on turning away. You keep going back and forth, and this constant stream of Facebook items got to be too much. More than 80% of my Facebook e-mail is from you. :-) I want (and wanted) to be supportive for sure, but I wanted to reduce the every day pinging. I thought pulling your Friend status on Facebook would do that, but it didn't. What's happened is that this stopped being collaborative and started looking more like stalking."

A sampling of the Facebook notes from my Mail from this person.
This, in turn, led to more daily e-mails, almost all one-sided. Some were positive, congratulating us on the arrival of twins, or responding to blog posts. And at that point, at the end of June, things seemed to dry up, as they were kicked off Facebook, for adding too many friends. You'd think that'd be the end, but they they turned to GMail, and calling my cell phone (the one on this blog), again, every day.

On July 3 via GMail:

"Louis - We're close to our financing so I may be able to bring you on full time shortly."

On July 4:

"Louis - What will help you reach the next level of course you're doing well already."

And then later that day:

"Louis - I'm not interested in working together anymore."

I said, simply, "Alright - appreciate the update.", hoping that was the end of it.

But two weeks later:

"It was a lack of communication on your part that made me determine that we could not work together. Sometimes, as individuals, we feel that we do not wish to communicate. And there is a place for that. But we need to overcome that also, if you agree, to form higher and more successful connections."

You'd think the continued notes about being done and not working together would be the end, but I started getting phone calls every day.

My cell phone history shows calls on:

• July 23rd at 12:48 p.m.
  
• July 25th at 11:32 a.m.
  
• July 26th at 10:25 a.m.
  
• July 29th at 10:53 a.m.
  
• July 30th at 9:53 a.m.
  
• July 31st at 9:40 a.m.

In between the daily calls, on the 28th, I got a note on GMail again:

"Louis - I hope all is well. Busy, I am sure!"

And again, I said I was uncomfortable with the pursuit:

"Busy for sure. I get your daily phone calls. Appreciate the attention, but I'm still feeling stalked."

But then, Friday, August 1:

"Do you want to join us?"

Followed by another note later that day, from them, no less:

"Are you stalking me? Please do not contact me anymore."

Outstanding, I guess. In the space of about three months, this person sent at least 49 messages on Facebook, and about 20 more on GMail, and called several dozen times. Yet, somehow, despite all the clues that they were no longer interested in communicating, and the other comments complaining that I hadn't responded or responded quickly enough, that I somehow was the stalker and I was the one being asked not contact them any more. And while I could be optimistic and say that this last note means I'll never hear from them again, I have no confidence in that, as every other note saying they were done was followed by more nonsense. And if it hadn't already, I'm sure this post will fire them up again, lucky me.

I made a few mistakes in this process. First, I was open to talking, being friendly with a person who I barely knew. The world of online social networks makes this commonplace. Later, feeling bad for ignoring all their messages, and wanting to not sound like a jerk, I had offered to help on a side-project, when I should have just blocked them outright on Facebook. I should have tried to be less nice from the very beginning and made it clear that under no circumstances was I interested in their project, or joining them. But at this point, I tend to believe any rational decision I would have made would be overrun by their instability, which was made clear by the complete 180s you can see above from message to message. This wasn't an aggressive entrepreneur looking to get a strong staff. It was a individual with borderline obsessive behavior who for whatever reason thought I was a must-recruit.

I've been lucky enough that the overwhelming majority of communications and relationships I've built online have been positive, and I've met some great people. But this months-long incident and the potential for more like it have me hesitant about being too friendly too fast. I'm lucky that I haven't seen the hatred and negativity that some have encountered, and I've not been in fear of any physical harm, but this has gone on too long. Have you ever run into something like this, and how do you get out of it?

Matthew's Story: From CenterNetworks' Future to Fired In A Month

Finding a writing position at a brand-name blog is hard to do, especially without having a significant resume, not to mention any references. So when Allen Stern of CenterNetworks offered my newborn son, Matthew, a position on his excellent blog, we of course struck at the deal. But in just a month, what at first seemed like a dream come true turned out to be a sordid tale of broken promises, unsafe working conditions and tears. A week after Stern publicly announced Matthew's firing, as a family, we've decided to tell our side of the story.

The fierce competition between East Coast and West Coast blogs these days is rivaling the old time feuds between East Coast and West Coast rappers. Based in New York, Stern has long been seeking the opportunity to open a Silicon Valley bureau, so this spring, when he learned we were expecting twins, he struck early, asking to sign up "whichever of the two kids was bigger". I naively accepted, not knowing that his request was due to the incredible stress that blogging and filing stories can be for a newborn.


Matthew Signed On to CenterNetworks In Days
Matthew and Sarah arrived on June 20th, he weighing a robust 5 pounds, and she, trailing at 4 pounds, 3 ounces. That made Matthew the candidate of record. The next four days were a whirlwind of deal-making, contracts being faxed from coast to coast, with little being given up on either side. Finally, the agreement completed, Matthew announced his signing, and was photographed with the world-famous CN sticker. The next day, Stern announced it to the world, and while he said "Of all the people I've hired over the years, this negotiation was the toughest," his listed demands were later proven to be a slap in the face.


Stern's Initial Set of Promises Included a New iPhone

But Stern Later Went Back On His Word

Over the next two weeks, Matthew made significant headway with CN, reaching out to Bay Area startups, reviewing alpha versions of Mac software and Web services, and even, somehow, transcribing quarterly conference calls. But while Stern publicly lauded his efforts in an update, the long hours, fatigue and strain were already becoming quite clear. As you can see from the follow-on post, Stern had openly reneged on the promised iPhone 3G, saying Matthew would get it "under no circumstances", despite it being promised in the initial agreement. Similarly, the promised crib with LCD panel and Wii Fit never materialized, which Stern attributed to "inventory shortages". Making matters worse, Stern would frequently call Matthew's home number at the start of East Coast business hours to talk strategy, despite it being only 5 a.m. Pacific.

The long hours and stress saw Matthew often falling asleep in front of his keyboard after filing a news story. He soon began to complain that he was unable to relax and casually visit his favorite sites, fearing an irate Stern would notice the gap in submissions and send yet another series of e-mails with even more assignments. And with every "like" or comment he placed on FriendFeed, Stern would just lose it - saying he was slacking off, or even worse, claiming he was manipulating activity on the site through creating hundreds of fake accounts. But it wasn't true, and try as Matthew would to explain he was just trying to catch up on the world outside of CenterNetworks, Stern wouldn't listen, ranting about how Mashable had scooped him on some new Facebook widget, or how ReadWriteWeb had gotten an exclusive look into a new AIR application that sent updates to Flickr and Twitter simultaneously, on Matthew's watch. The once promising job with significant career potential had spiraled into despair of inter-office politics and accusations that left Matthew depressed and unwilling to spend time with his sister or peers.


Matthew's Long Hours At CN Took Their Toll
It all came crashing down early last week, on July 21st. The first sign was when Matthew's CenterNetworks e-mail stopped working, and the daily shipment of Barnum and Bailey animal crackers didn't arrive. Then, two of the stories Matthew had filed were printed under Stern's byline, without his being mentioned as a contributing reporter. But Stern wouldn't take phone calls and Matthew was left to fend for himself. The next day, we realized what had happened. Stern, in a public missive, fired Matthew, without contacting him or myself, and continuing his rant about how Matthew was slacking off and creating FriendFeed accounts, accusations later proven untrue by FriendFeed interns Dan Hsaio and Ross Miller, who looked into the the service's logs following the allegations.


Stern's Hallucinations Fueled the Firing
Over the last eight days, as a family we've had to do a lot of soul-searching. Matthew, for one, swears he's had it with the blogging business, though it's not clear what line of profession he intends to take next. And if that weren't enough, on Monday, the long-promised Barney poster finally arrived, a stark reminder of one of the many unfulfilled promises by Stern and his crew. What should have been a case of spotting talent early, and helping to guide a young prodigy through the ranks instead was one that smacked of servitude, double-speaking and unhappiness. While we know we have a legal case against Stern and CenterNetworks proper over the unfulfilled iPhone, lack of proper advance notice of contract termination, and unfair child labor practices, we're going to swallow our pride and move on as a family. It's been hard, but we felt the right thing was to leave with our heads held high, without dragging this out through the morass that is the American judicial system.

So Pete "Peanut" Carreira, Stern may be whispering sweet nothings to you now and calling you a serious Seesmic star, but watch your back and protect yourself before what happened to Matthew happens to you as well.

New Facebook Design Confuses Many, Obscures Features

By Jesse Stay of