I Am a Google Reader Shared Links Ninja

On March 3rd of 2007, I made a list of 10 suggestions to the Google Reader team on how they could make the world's most popular feed reader even better. The tenth option was a simple one, which I titled as "Customization Everywhere", where I said "there's zero options to customize a shared link blog." As of today, only 14 months later, we now have the first user customizable options to make the shared items page a little more fancy. And today, I can profess myself a ninja.

Alongside the so far much-criticized announcement that you can append notes to Google Reader shared items, you can also choose from four artistic styles on the shared items page, including the Default, as boring as it sounds, Ice Cream, Sea, and ... Ninjas.

Seeing how episode 7 of the Elite Tech News podcast was titled "Explanatory Ninjas", it makes sense that at least for today, I would use the theme of "Ninja".

(See my Ninja-Themed Shared Items Blog)

By selecting Ninja, all that's really added is a cute banner at the top of my shared items page, showing four ninjas and their various weapons. It's not necessarily a status symbol, showing my link sharing prowess or skills with the black arts. The theme is cute, but of course, non-functional. I still can't change the color of the background, or the fonts, or go "all MySpace" with the page, so I guess that's good. But it's a start.

Of note: I was lucky enough to meet and talk with Chris Wetherell of the Google Reader team last Thursday for lunch. We didn't talk about this feature, but I remain very positive on the direction and focus the Google Reader team has going forward. It's a small team, but very dedicated.

Five Social Media Bloggers to Watch This May

In March, we highlighted 5 Blog Candidates for Tomorrow's Techmeme Leaderboard. In April, I suggested Five More Blogs You Should Be Reading, But Aren't. Since then, a number of these lesser-known bloggers have seen their posts gain higher visibility, including hitting the aforementioned Techmeme, and gaining both RSS subscribers and repeat visitors. (See: SheGeeks Reaches New Heights and When Your Blog Is LouisGrayCrunched... as good examples)

With the new month upon us, I'm thinking we could make posts of this sort a regular feature. Over the last 30 days, I continue to be impressed by the solid writings of many bloggers who, to date, have been below the radar. Here are five who cover the social media space who've I've enjoyed getting to see of late:

1) Colin Walker (colinwalker.me.uk)

Focus: Social Media, Blogging and the Internet
Recent Highlight: Why do we need social media role models?
RSS Feed: Subscribe Now

2) Regular Geek (regulargeek.com)

Focus: Programming, Social Media and the Internet
Recent Highlight: Comment Where You Want, Just Let Me Know About It
RSS Feed: Subscribe Now

3) Chris Miller / The Social Networker (thesocialnetworker.com)

Focus: Virtual Gratification Syndrome, Twitter, Data Portability
Recent Highlight: Tweeting In the Bathroom - the New Social Crime
RSS Feed: Subscribe Now

4) Julian Baldwin / Notes, Thoughts, Ideas and Responses (julianbaldwin.com)

Focus: Social Media, Twitter
Recent Highlight:
Killing Many Birds With One Boulder, How and When Social Media Can Go Mainstream
RSS Feed: Subscribe Now

5) Alexander van Elsas (vanelsas.wordpress.com)

Focus: New Media, Technology, Social Behavior
Recent Highlight: The Tech Elite Creates Its Own Web 2.0 Bubble
RSS Feed: Subscribe Now

I'm always looking for more new bloggers and interesting voices to be added to my Google Reader feeds. You can get an early tip as to new bloggers I'm following and sharing by signing up for Toluu, following me on FriendFeed, or following my Google Reader shared links blog. If you think there are more I should check out, please leave them in the comments.

State of the Blog: April 2008 Recap

April 2008 In Summary (Archive Page)

Total stories published to date: 1,304

Total stories published in April: 38
(About 1.3 per day, up from 1.2 in March)

Total stories in April with comments: 34
(89% of all stories, up from 29 and 76% in March)

Total comments on April posts: 364 (95 on Disqus)
(About 9.6 per post, 10.7 per commented post)


April statistics from SiteMeter, with that service's numbers.
(Why show real data? See blog post)
Technorati Authority Ranking: 571 (up 200)
Feedburner Peak in Month: 1,637 subscribers (up 810)
Feedblitz E-mail Subscribers: 42 subscribers (up 9)
MyBlogLog Members: 203 (up 110)

Twitter Followers: 801 (Up 488)
FriendFeed Followers: 990 (Up 472)

Monthly Traffic Rank in Last 12 (via SiteMeter): 1st overall, by 25%.

Top Five Most Visited April Stories (According to Analog)

1. Should Fractured Feed Reader Comments Raise Blog Owners' Ire?
2. Most Bloggers Don't Deserve Any Ad Revenue
3. FriendFeedMachine Debuts New Approach to FriendFeed
4. What's Your Twitter Noise Ratio?
5. Five More Blogs You Should Be Reading, But Aren't

Others receiving votes: TechMeme Leaderboard's Top Ten: Six Months In, My Social Media Consumption Workflow, Shyftr Responds to Critics, Alters RSS Commenting Strategy, Fav.or.it Beta Effort is Not My Favorite. Not Even Close., FriendFeed's Increased Filtering Clears Deck of Unwanted Junk, and Alpha Twitter Ranks Most Popular Shared Links from Twitter...

Top Five Visited Archive Stories (According to Analog)

1. Elite Bloggers Joining FriendFeed In Droves
2. Toluu Offers Gateway to Friends' RSS Feeds, Recommends New Ones
3. LinkedIn Company Detail Shows Silicon Valley Carousel
4. Our Unborn Kids Will Wear Your Web 2.0 Schwag
5. ReadBurner Lights Up In Simmer Mode

While April again saw personal records fall for blog traffic, it's clear the real growth and engagement is found in Web services, external commenting and linking. Overall traffic grew 25% from March, measured in unique visitors, and individual days saw spikes that rivaled a month's traffic for me less than a year ago. Yet it's activity at FriendFeed, Twitter and Disqus that is really growing. Technorati and MyBlogLog rankings also spiked dramatically in April.

One word of caution, lest it be believed I've started this series to highlight the higher awareness achieved in recent months, be assured that's not the case. I started doing monthly summaries after August of 2007, when I had 103 RSS subscribers, and 40 comments in the month. Hopefully you find these interesting or useful.

To keep on top of things, subscribe via RSS, via e-mail, follow me on Friendfeed or Twitter, or keep watch on our shared link blog!

More Noise About Twitter Noise

My Friday post on trying to determine a way to measure Twitter users, by using available metrics, including total updates and total followers, turned out to be a more visible and conversational than I had anticipated. While some objected to the ratio, and others objected to the analysis, it has been interesting to watch the continued discussion in recent days, as additional metrics for measurement have debuted, with the same objective in mind, essentially trying to find if you're using Twitter in the way your audience wants you to.

Some highlights from around the Web, which I tracked on Del.icio.us:

BroadStuff: Aspects of Ratios - Noises, Signals and Friendliness

"...I'm not sure it measures signal to noise per se as it has no time basis inbuilt, and looks at relatives output rather than the relative input I experience..."

Sweet!: Talking loudly on Twitter

"...I guess I take offense (in a very lightly term) to the statement that there are more “noisy” people who have “… a lot more ‘updates’ than actual ‘followers."

Stowe Boyd: The Twitter Conversational Index And The Twitter Noise Ratio

"Boyd's Twitter Conversational Index = (number of tweets / number of replies made by followers)"

Dave Winer: Twitter Spewage among Dave Winer's contacts

"... these numbers give me new respect for Twitter. Each twit you post has to be delivered in some fashion to everyone who follows you. That's a lot of delivering!"

Stephanie Booth: Twitter Metrics: Let’s Remain Scientific, Please!

DCortesi: Twitter Reputation Statistics

"... people are trying to figure out how best to use Twitter given its recent surge in popularity and accompanying spaminess."

Commetrics: SocioTwitting - developing metrics for Twitter volume vs. Twitter influence

"... what is needed is a set of statistical indicators that give us a better approximation of reality."

Sarah In Tampa: Another Way to Classify Twitter Users

"... this represents a completely different way to categorize users - some of our megaphones become healthy and some of our listeners become twittercasters."

Interestingly enough, as casually as I put together the "Twitter Noise" ratio, many people on Twitter went out and measured their number, even if they felt the methodology was flawed. And amazingly to me, Twitter Portugal, a Twitter-related site for Portuguese users, even embedded both the "Twitter Noise" ratio and Dave Winer's "Spewage" ratio into user profiles, to give potential followers an expectation for what they were getting into. You can see some of those profiles here: BrunoFigueiredo, Publico, and Phantas. I don't know if that's a statistic I would want sitting on my profile, but the site's already jumped ahead and done it.

Also very interesting is a site called Twitter Quotient, which has multiple measurements, with even harsher descriptions than I had intended. Pretty wild. Who knew the landmine I was stepping on Friday?

And in case you were curious, my Twitter Noise ratio dropped from .49 on Friday to .45 today. Sounds like I need to Tweet more!

Alpha Twitter Ranks Most Popular Shared Links from Twitter

Much like ReadBurner, Feedheads and RSSMeme have set about tabulating the most popular shared items in Google Reader, and letting users know who shared what, a new service called Alpha Twitter is aiming to offer the same service to Twitter users, showing what the most popular "Tweeted" items are today, yesterday, this week, or even all time.

The developer, Luis Figueiredo, (LouMcAfee on Twitter), inspired by a number of other social link sharing services to gain the Web by storm this year, is aiming to fill a hole, helping us gain insight into the thoughts of Twitter Nation.


Today's top shared links on Twitter (Alpha Twitter)
As he wrote me in an e-mail today:

"Services like FriendFeed are indeed very useful and i've always would like to see a service that would display the popular links that are being shared by Twitter users. Such a service didn't exist and there was nothing like it out there, so I've decided to create my own."

The service, Alpha Twitter, is drop-dead simple to use, and to view. But what it lacks in style, it makes up for in simplicity. As with ReadBurner and other sites, it simply adds up how often URLs are shared, and aggregates the data over a 24-hour period. Those with the most shares go to the top. You can even click through the number of shares and see just who "tweeted" the item, and when they did it, which gives you an idea who has the fastest thumbs out there. And just a few days in, the service has already indexed more than a quarter-million Twitter links. It even got a quick mention from Michael Arrington on TechCrunch in a story about TwitLinks.

Figueiredo said Alpha Twitter simply parses all Twitter messages in the public time line, so pages are updated in real-time. The engine parses all Twitter messages in the timeline, searching for the string of "http://" and qualifying messages as containing links. And the service is even smart enough to decipher URL shortening services, including TinyURL. All the URLs and user names of who shared the links are then stored in a database.

The service, which is extremely new, is in the late alpha stage now, and is entering beta this week, Figueiredo says. But it already works now. And we can avoid any concerns about yet another service trying to make money off your content. Luis isn't in it for a buck, but instead says he is providing the site as a service to the community. You can check it out at www.alphatwitter.com or check out his blog at alphatwitter.com/blog.

Analyzing LouisGray.com's Links, Topics, Timing and Comments

This special feature comes courtesy of Yuvi Panda, a 17-year-old stats whiz, who has made a real name for himself by taking a look at some of the biggest sites around the Web, and seeing their patterns or statistics. He did me a great favor by seeing if I follow my own guidance as to linking externally, helped show what times of day I post, and which days, what are my most common topics, or which ones gain traction with readers of louisgray.com.

You should also check out his previous coverage of Engadget, Digg, and Scoble's Link Blog.

This summary was completed by Yuvi in late-March, and any edits here on my end are only grammatical in nature, or for layout. Enjoy!
-- Louis Gray

---

Size

LouisGray.com is not exactly small nor new, running for 802 days or approximately 2 years and 2 months (9 Jan 06 to 21 Mar 08), producing a total of 1,256 posts at an average of 1.5 posts a day. The posts too, were not exactly small, averaging 337 words per post (compared to Scoble’s 192 words a post). So Louis Gray is more words and less linkouts (i.e. posting just for the sake of linking).

Growth
Looking at the posting rate per day graph:


No post binges, no long breaks: Just consistent posting, with consistent short breaks between posts. The trendline is almost flat.

Now looking at the growth of the length of posts:

The only-slightly-sloping-upwards trend line shows that the average post’s length is slightly increasing, up from 200 words per post when the blog was started to 337 per post now. Also, the increase in the number of skyscrapers from October 2007 suggests increase in “binges”, i.e. Posts which are much longer than average.

Conclusion: Blog is neither growing too fast, nor slowing down: Just as steady as it was in the beginning, and perhaps just a tad longer.

Links
There were a total of 6,629 links in the 1,256 posts, at an average of 5.2 links per post. At face value, that is a lot of linking: Engadget averaged only 4 links per post. But, digging deeper, there is only one link per 63 words, so LouisGray.com is more content and less linkouts (i.e. More like Wikipedia (content) than Digg (links)).

Diversity
The 6,629 links are distributed among 892 different sites, at an average of 7.4 links per site (note that all of wordpress.com and blogspot.com is included as a single site). Here’s the list of the top ten most linked to domains:

Apple isn’t a surprise, since the Blog’s subtitle mentions that, among others, the Blog is for Mac Freaks :) Links to FeedBurner.com are almost exclusively from the “State of the Blog” type posts that seem to be posted every month(automated, I guess). Athleticsnation.com is natural, since Louis Gray also contributes some stories there. Scoble and TechCrunch seem to feature in almost every blogger’s top 10 list, for obvious reasons (A Listers, Newsmongers, widely popular, etc). Amazon.com’s 98 links contain mostly of book referrals :) Blogspot.com here is the aggregate of all links to all blogger blogs (mainly Google Blogs, and “Change Microsoft” Blogs like minimsft and msftextrememakeover). Louis’s interest in FriendFeed is extremely apparent here, as the comparatively newer service finds it’s way into the Top 10 (while the list of A Listers on FriendFeed might be a cause for this spike, it still does show that he’s extremely interested in FriendFeed). Google.com links are mostly to Google Reader (shared items dominate), along with some to Google Finance and Searches using the Market Symbols (That too, primarily for AAPL)

FriendFeed
FriendFeed is a peculiar case. Here’s the chart showing outgoing links to FriendFeed:


That large skyscraper there is the “List of Celebs on FriendFeed post”. Here’s another chart comparing FriendFeed vs Twitter:


You have more posts linking to Twitter, but that single, post skewed it towards FriendFeed.

Self-Linking:
I started the above list at Rank 1. I lied, because I wanted to point out the Amazon Book referrals :) In reality, the most linked to site is LouisGray.com itself, accounting for 1,053 of the 6,629 links, or 16% of all links!

Here’s a comparative chart:


One site has 16% of the links, 8 sites have 23% of the links, 81 sites have 39% of the links, and 792 sites have 22% of the links. Does this say anything at all? This says that there’s a focus to the blog. Can you think of Scobleizer.com’s focus? I certainly can’t. But, with LouisGray.com, I can say with some amount of confidence that the focus is on Apple, Google and of-late FriendFeed.

Conclusion: Focused Linking. More Content than Links.

Linking
Here’s the chart showing the number of links going out from your site per day:


Again, from the trendline, you are linking more now than you were previously.

Tags
Blogger calls Tags Labels. Here is a chart showing the top 20 labels used:


So, I’ll call LouisGray a Technology-Sports-Apple-Blogging-Google-ANticsComics-Baseball-Finance-TV freak :)

A total of 262 tags were used, at an average of almost 5 tags a post.

Here’s a chart showing number of Comments to the posts which carried that Tag. Note that this might be a bit skewed since Comments were on only after Feb 2007

You write the most about Technology, and that gets the largest amount of comments. But, Sports is the second most applied Tag, but it doesn’t even feature in the Top 20 here! Also, Apple and Google have kinda switched places between the two stats, with Google getting considerably more comments than Apple. FriendFeed does great here too :)

In short, one thing that you seem to like writing about but people don’t really pay too much attention to is sports.

Posting Habits
I have three graphs, and a conclusion here:





You don’t have any specific posting habits (besides the regularity pointed out earlier): You just post whenever you want to. The third chart has an interesting bit of information: All your posts have a very consistent size, regardless of the day on which they were posted. So, you are pretty consistent in your post size as well, and not just on your posting frequency. And, no out-of-the-ordinary, specific habits (Like Engadget’s less-posts-on-Friday thing).

Hourly

Posting by the Hour



From the first graph: You post more in the evenings, after 6, and in the morning, at 7. Also, the spikes in the second graph at the “even minutes” (i.e. 00, 15, 30, 45) show that most, if not all of your posts have a preset time at which you tell blogger to publish them. So, your workflow is more like write-save-set-time-for-publish than write-save-publish. Even the smaller spikes come at “even minutes”(i.e. 10, 20, 25, 35, 40, 50, 55).

Comments
Comments were on only from Feb 2007, so the usefulness of Comment data is a bit limited.

Here’s the Charts Showing Comments per day from Feb 07:



As you can see from the black trendline, yes, the number of comments is increasing, and you do get some days with way higher than normal comment counts (those few skyscrapers), but overall, you don’t really get a huge amount of comments (a la Scoble or TechCrunch).

Conclusion
Analysis of LouisGray is complete here. It’s not as complete as I would have liked it to be: The absence of comments early on was a major factor, since comments are a good indicator of attention paid to that post.

I appreciate Yuvi's taking the time to go through my blog and teach me a few things about how often I link out, where I'm linking, and what topics are gaining your interest. So... given the above, are we on the right track? What should we be talking more about or less about? Sounds like you don't like sports!
- Louis

Shyftr Puts Favorite Blog Posts "In Your Pocket"

Social RSS feed reader Shyftr added an interesting feature this week, which, like Google Reader's shared items, lets you choose your favorite posts from your subscribed feeds, and create a mini link blog of sorts.

Shyftr calls their version a "Pocket Blog", and like Google Reader, you can take the new RSS feed from your Pocket Blog and invite others to subscribe, making you a human blog filter, featuring not just the posts you put in your pocket, but taking steps beyond Google Reader, featuring other friends' Pocket Blogs, and customization of the look and feel, something Google's refused to do, even though I asked (politely) way back in March of 2007.


You can find my Shyftr Pocket Blog here


As mentioned in my initial coverage of Shyftr two weeks ago, the new service enables friends and peers to make comments on RSS feeds, highlighting both the most commented items, and the most popular subscribed feeds. As with other online feed readers, you can add new feeds and view stories within your Web browser.

Now, with this new addition, not only do you see how many comments are on a story, but there are buttons for "Quick Pocket", adding a story to your pocket, and also "Suggest to a Friend", which lets you forward a feed to another user or any e-mail address. You can see my Pocket Blog in the above screenshot. Interestingly, you aren't bound to an item's title as the author intended, but can title it as you wish.


By hitting "Quick Pocket", you are prompted to title the article, and then are notified, via an alert, that this has completed. It's not as quick as Google Reader's one-click option, but just as effective. You're also not bound by only the items in your own feeds. If you look at a friend's feed list, you can even "Pick Pocket" and add one of their items to your Pocket Blog. (See the Shyftr blog for more.)

The advent of Shyftr's Pocket Blog again brings up the issue of link blog portability I raised in January. While today, Google Reader's shared items are the most popular link blogs, no doubt spurred on by Feedheads, RSSMeme and ReadBurner, those who want to switch RSS readers may have to abandon their shared feeds. In a perfect world, I would be able to pick up from one service, move to another and share to a common space. Whether intentional or not, Google Reader's shared link blogs have become a key asset keeping users on board. Maybe Shyftr's Pocket Blog can do the same for them.

UPDATED: Elite Bloggers Joining FriendFeed In Droves

Update 2: Given how this is now seen as a reference point for the hot bloggers on FriendFeed, we're going to try and keep it updated. Added in this round includes folks like Allen Stern of CenterNetworks, Tris Hussey, Chris Pirillo and others...

Also See: Stephanie Booth of Climb to the Stars: FriendFeed Appeals to Women, Too!.

New adds are marked as *NEW*.

Update 1: Welcome visitors from TechMeme, Susan Mernit's Blog, Mark Evans, Scobleizer and The Last Podcast! I've added links for Jeremy Toeman, Susan Mernit, and Jeremiah Owyang.

---

Although it hasn't even been a month since FriendFeed opened up to the masses, and announced Series A financing of $5 million, momentum is definitely on the company's side. Garnering incredible media and blog coverage, FriendFeed has also been a magnet for a significant number of top tier "name brand" bloggers. And while not every one of these A-Listers is using the site to its fullest, their information is there for subscribing, letting you follow their daily Web activity.

I've taken the first step in capturing some of the most recognizable names out there in the blogosphere who have joined FriendFeed. Is it complete? By no means, and of course, making this "elite" list is subjective. So please, if you should be included here, or you know somebody on FriendFeed who should be here, please let me know, and I can update this list. Of course, while I'm not elite in any way, you can always find me on FriendFeed at http://friendfeed.com/louisgray.

Adam Ostrow / Mashable
http://friendfeed.com/adamostrow

Allen Stern / Center Networks *NEW*
http://friendfeed.com/allenstern

Andrew Chen / Futuristic Play
http://friendfeed.com/andrewc

Andy Beard / Niche Marketing
http://friendfeed.com/andybeard

Ben MetCalfe / Dot Ben
http://friendfeed.com/dotben

Brian Solis / Bub.blicio.us
http://friendfeed.com/briansolis

Chris Brogan / ChrisBrogan.com
http://friendfeed.com/chrisbrogan

Chris Pirillo / Chris.Pirillo.com *NEW*
http://friendfeed.com/l0ckergn0me

Corvida / SheGeeks
http://friendfeed.com/corvida

Dan Farber / ZDNet Between The Lines
http://friendfeed.com/dbfarber

Dave Winer / Scripting.com
http://friendfeed.com/davew

David Sifry / Sifry's Alerts
http://friendfeed.com/dsifry

Don MacAskill / SmugBlog *NEW*
http://friendfeed.com/donmacaskill

Dosh Dosh (Maki) / DoshDosh.com *NEW*
http://friendfeed.com/doshdosh

EngTech / Internet Duct Tape
http://friendfeed.com/engtech

Eric Eldon / VentureBeat
http://friendfeed.com/eldon

Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch
http://friendfeed.com/erick

Fred Oliveira / WeBreakStuff *NEW*
http://friendfeed.com/fredoliveira

Fred Wilson / A VC
http://friendfeed.com/fredwilson

Frederic Lardinois / The Last Podcast
http://friendfeed.com/frederic

Gabe Rivera / TechMeme
http://friendfeed.com/gaberivera

Ian Kennedy / MyBlogLog
http://friendfeed.com/iankennedy

Ionut / Google Operating System
http://friendfeed.com/onu

Jason Kaneshiro / Webomatica
http://friendfeed.com/webomatica

Jeff Jarvis / BuzzMachine *NEW*
http://friendfeed.com/jeffjarvis

Jeremiah Owyang / Web Strategist
http://friendfeed.com/jowyang

Jeremy Toeman / Live Digitally
http://friendfeed.com/bigtoe

Jeremy Zawodny / JeremyZawodny.com
http://friendfeed.com/jzawodn

Josh Quittner / Fortune Magazine
http://friendfeed.com/jquit

Kent Newsome / Newsome.org
http://friendfeed.com/kent

Kevin Rose / Digg
http://friendfeed.com/kevinrose

Kristen Nicole / Mashable *NEW*
http://friendfeed.com/kristennicole

Leo Laporte / Twit.TV *NEW*
http://friendfeed.com/leolaporte

Liz Gannes / GigaOm
http://friendfeed.com/lizgannes

Loic LeMeur / LoicLemeur.com
http://friendfeed.com/loic

Mark Hopkins / Mashable
http://friendfeed.com/rizzn

Mark Krynsky / Lifestream Blog *NEW*
http://friendfeed.com/krynsky

Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb
http://friendfeed.com/marshallk

Mathew Ingram / Mathew Ingram.com
http://friendfeed.com/mathewingram

MG Siegler / ParisLemon
http://friendfeed.com/parislemon

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch
http://friendfeed.com/techcrunch

Muhammad Saleem / muhammadsaleem.com
http://friendfeed.com/msaleem

Nicole Simon / Cruel to be Kind *NEW*
http://friendfeed.com/nicolesimon

Paul Kedrosky / Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed *NEW*
http://friendfeed.com/pkedrosky

Pete Cashmore / Mashable
http://friendfeed.com/petecashmore

Philipp Lenssen / Google Blogoscoped
http://friendfeed.com/philipp

Rafe Needleman / WebWare
http://friendfeed.com/rafe

Rex Hammock / RexBlog.com
http://friendfeed.com/rexhammock

Richard MacManus / ReadWriteWeb
http://friendfeed.com/ricmac

Robert Scoble / Scobleizer.com
http://friendfeed.com/scobleizer

Scott Beale / The Laughing Squid
http://friendfeed.com/laughingsquid

Stephanie Booth / Climb to the Stars *NEW*
http://friendfeed.com/sbooth

Steve Rubel / MicroPersuasion
http://friendfeed.com/steverubel

Steven Hodson / WinExtra
http://friendfeed.com/stevenhodson

Susan Mernit / Susan Mernit's Blog
http://friendfeed.com/smernit

Tamar Weinberg / Techipedia *NEW*
http://friendfeed.com/tamar

Thomas Hawk / Thomas Hawk's Digital Collection *NEW*
http://friendfeed.com/thomashawk

Tom Foremski / Silicon Valley Watcher
http://friendfeed.com/tomforemski

Tony Hung / Deep Jive Interests
http://friendfeed.com/tonyhung

Tris Hussey / Maple Leaf 2.0 *NEW*
http://friendfeed.com/trishussey

I keep hearing how FriendFeed might be under attack from new services like SocialThing, or that there are too many lifestreaming options out there. But if the above list is any indication, FriendFeed doesn't just have the very best feature set out there, but it also has the very best people out there, as those bloggers who know good Web services when they see them come in droves. If you're not on FriendFeed yet, you should be. And if you're on FriendFeed, be sure you add a good number of these folks.

5 Blog Candidates for Tomorrow's TechMeme Leaderboard

We all know today's A-List by heart: TechCrunch, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, GigaOM, Scoble, blah blah blah... but there are many other bloggers I've found who are either delivering consistent strong stories with real focus, or have the occasional gem, who I believe with time, should be the leaders of tomorrow. Below are five who come to mind, who I think could be major players in future iterations of the TechMeme Leaderboard. If you have some you think I'm missing, and I know there's no way I have them all nailed, please let me know in the comments.

1. SheGeeks (shegeeks.net)

Corvida has until lately been a more prolific Twitterer than a blogger. But she's got a great writing style, enthusiasm and energy, not to mention a fantastic site name and look. In the last week alone, Corvida has touched on the debut of Socialthing!, reviewed FriendFeed, provided her view on Twitter projects and Google2Go. I hope she chooses to keep up the pace, and with some momentum behind her, I swear we'll be seeing a lot of Corvida in the future.

Subscribe to SheGeeks using RSS

2. Futuristic Play by Andrew Chen (andrewchen.typepad.com)

Andrew to date has been extremely focused on Facebook applications and trends, and the nuances of social network or social media. Having already attracted a few thousand RSS subscribers, largely on on the back of a major endorsement by Robert Scoble in January, which sent his subscription base from the 1,000 range to around 2,500. Sticking with development in this new age of application platforms will show Andrew's success to not be a fluke. Andrew can also be lauded for not spitting out a multitude of short posts. Nearly every item is well researched and full of detail.

Subscribe to Andrew Chen using RSS

3. Charles Hudson (www.charleshudson.net)

Blogging since 2003, Charles is no newcomer to the world of tech blogging. But Charles, like Corvida and Andrew, isn't in the race for quantity - instead focused on being clear direct, with comments on FriendFeed's similarities with the Facebook news feed, how Microsoft is missing the boat in competing with Google Apps, and adding his two cents on this weekend's meme around what it takes to be a technology workaholic trying to make headway at a startup.

Subscribe to Charles Hudson using RSS

4. Seek Ground (seeknock.blogs.com/seek)

Though relatively anonymous, "Seek" offers a strong signal to noise ratio, and the author is among the most intriguing in terms of how they opt to consume and report news. While today, Seek argues many folks are trying to make content to gain ad revenue, without thinking of consumers, it was just Saturday when Seek caught my attention for deleting all their Google Reader feeds and starting over - just like when they erased their blog and restarted about a year ago. Regardless of the change, SeekGround is an avid consumer of link blogs, and link aggregators, including Feedheads, LinkRiver and Twitter.

Subscribe to SeekGround using RSS

5. Unraveling Obfuscation (obfuscation.wordpress.com)

Todd McKinney, the author of Unraveling Obfuscation, doesn't post as often as some of us do, especially those on the TechMeme leaderboard, but when on a roll, Todd can write with the best of them. In January and February, you could see comments on the engagement of Google Reader RSS subscribers, whether or not Network Solutions and Microsoft could be trusted, or how popular services are approaching the issues that come with spiraling user counts utilizing technology.

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10 Suggestions for Google Reader, One Year Later

On March 3rd of last year, I posted one of the more active and popular posts in louisgray.com's history, offering my thoughts on where I hoped Google Reader would take the service. In a simple "10 suggestions" format, I listed some ideas that were small enhancements, and others, more broad. Now that we've had just over a year go by, I thought it'd be interesting to check back in with Google Reader and see what's changed. How many of the 10 did they hit, and if they didn't get it, who did?

In my opinion, you'll see that due to Google Reader's not filling all the gaps I laid out a year ago, a cottage industry of RSS readers and link aggregators has emerged - great for the Web, not always so great for Google.

1. "More Like This" Suggestions

I asked Google to recommend feeds based on those I subscribed to.

Google added a broad "Suggestions" feature, based on all my feeds in aggregate. They haven't implemented this feature on a feed by feed basis, as in my example: "Others who subscribed to Jeremy Zawodny also subscribed to Don Dodge or Robert Scoble.", but they do get partial credit here.

Who did implement something like this the way I asked? Nobody, really. AssetBar claimed to have solved this in their initial product description, but I haven't yet seen it. NewsGator, Shyftr, Fav.or.it, also don't do it, as far as I can tell. Neither does RSSMeme, although the service does try to find similar posts, and FriendFeed offers recommended user subscriptions.

(Of interest, I'm beta testing one solution that does exactly this. More on that soon.)

2. Eliminate Duplicate Feed Items

Nobody likes getting the same feed item over and over. Over the year, Google has done a lot of work here to have this fixed. There are still issues with seeing duplicate items if you have subscribed to a friend's shared items feed, or if you've subscribed to keywords via Google News, but largely, this is not as big an issue in 2008 as it was in 2007.

Who else fixed the duplicate items issue? Shyftr's implementation here is flawless. AssetBar also does a fantastic job showing just one item, though if I look at an item I've already viewed, through a friend's shared link list, it doesn't always know I've already seen it. The issue of duplicate items continues to be a major point of discussion on FriendFeed and elsewhere.

3. Add Negative Keywords

For some folks, I'd like the option to get almost all their posts, except when they talk about politics (Dave Winer), fatblogging (Jason Calacanis), or if they just post a series of del.icio.us links (Steve Rubel and Chris Brogan come to mind).

Google hasn't done anything here. But Ionut at Google Operating System highlighted a new Greasemonkey script that works in FireFox to approach this by highlighting posts with keywords you select and grays out those you would like to exclude (See the post: Filters for Google Reader).

Who does do this right? AssetBar again claimed to when introducing their product, but if it's integrated, I haven't seen it.

4. Share Items Without Subscriptions

I'd like to add items to my shared link items feed without subscribing.

While Google didn't do anything about this, I discussed a work-around back in January.

Who does this right? Just about all the link aggregators, including LinkRiver, AssetBar and FriendFeed let you share items without subscriptions. ReadBurner had implemented this as well before Alexander Marktl had to take the site down.

5. Aggregate Reader Statistics

I wanted to know the most frequently read blogs, and what were the most shared items that day.

Google Reader recently added a "Details" item, showing how many Google Reader users were subscribed to a specific blog, but they're nowhere on showing rankings or seeing the most popular shared items in a single day.

Who does this now? As discussed a ton here in 2008, the shared items space took off like a rocket. FeedHeads had done a fantastic job and pioneered this space, on FaceBook, while ReadBurner, RSSMeme, Shared Reader, and LinkRiver all offer details on most popular shared items. Amusingly, in an attempt to discover the most popular items by Google Reader, everybody from Scoble to TechCrunch was fighting to add the data they did have by hand.

6. Addition of Search

At the time, Google Reader was missing core Google functionality - search!

The Google Reader team solved this one in a big way back in September. Nice job.

Who else offers search through feeds? LinkRiver, AssetBar, RSSMeme, and Shyftr all do this very well. So far, Fav.or.it does not, and FriendFeed I'm sure will, but hasn't gotten there yet.

7. Create a Link Blogs Directory

I wanted to see a directory of Google Reader link blogs both ranked by name and by interest.

Google Reader, so far, has largely neglected the power and discovery of link blogs, so this is nowhere.

Who does do this? RSSMeme offers a directory of the most active link bloggers, based on total number of shared items, as did ReadBurner. AssetBar integrates shared link blogs and shows which ones are most read by individuals, but doesn't yet have aggregate data. Nobody has mastered a directory by name, by topic, or by subscriber count yet.

8. Further Integrate "Trends"

I wanted my trends data to be easily accessible from Google Reader.

Google Reader integrated Trends relatively quickly. It was an easy fix.

Who else does this? LinkRiver, as noted last night, features a page called "Attention" on who I share more often and what are the top keywords. FriendFeed offers a "Stats" page showing who I interact with the most, and who interacts with me. RSSMeme integrated global statistics, but not by user. And AssetBar shows all my stats on my profile, in aggregate.

9. Expand Individual Feed Statistics

I'd love to see stats by feed as to their schedule, and if things have changed.

Google Reader has shown basic statistics on how often a feed publishes. (i.e. loisgray.com publishes 10.7 stories per week) But beyond this, more data is missing.

Who else does this? RSSMeme offers the ability to see what the most popular shared items were, by source, which is very interesting, considering individual post popularity, but nobody that I'm aware of has tackled the expanded feed statistics set.

10. Customization Everywhere

Google Reader, unlike iGoogle or other portals, comes in one flavor. So does their link blog.

In the year since my initial post, Google added the ability to customize a small profile to include in my link blog, with links out to other sites, but with that exception, there remains no customization for my application interface or the shared items blog.

Who does do this? Not really anybody comes to mind. iGoogle, My Yahoo! and portal sites that have integrated RSS feeds enable a great deal of customization, but as far as the main application's interface is concerned, it's usually a take it or leave it strategy.

It can be seen that Google has made some strides toward my 10 suggestions. They integrated trends. They nailed Search. They added suggestions. They improved by reducing duplicates. But they dramatically fell short when it came to harnessing the power of link blogs, and this gap enabled more focused services to emerge to fill the hole - services which are now growing and becoming very interesting. The Reader team has also largely stayed quiet, making it uncertain as to whether we should look to them for innovation, or elsewhere. There's no question Google Reader is a fantastic application, one I use multiple times a day, and one I haven't yet seen eclipsed, even by the next generation readers, enough so to get me to switch. But if they get out-innovated, that time may eventually pass.

LinkRiver Enters Life Streaming Fray, Focused on Link Blogs

If 2007 was all about Facebook and Twitter, 2008 is shaping up to be all about link blogs, and sharing what you're consuming on the Web with friends. The newest service to enter the picture is an intriguing entry, LinkRiver, which harnesses your RSS streams from multiple services, including Google Reader shared items, Twitter, del.icio.us, Yahoo! Bookmarks and others, and posts them to a single "Stream". As your friends join the service, or you choose to subscribed to other LinkRiver users, these small streams become a "River" of shared links, hence the name.

Seeded with a number of high profile "who's who" members of the blogosphere, from Marc Andreessen, Mathew Ingram and Robert Scoble to Andrew Chen, Nick Bradbury and Jeremy Zawodny, the site's early beta stage gives an excellent window into a simplified river of links from you and your peers. And as the service is all about sharing what you're doing and what you're interested in, you can "share" any item that flows through your river, or even use a handy Javascript tool to share any page on the Web directly to your own stream.

The brains behind the new service is Adam Stiles, who first gained a following on the Web due to his work on NetCaptor from 1999 to 2004, where among many other innovations, he developed an alternative, tabbed, browser interface for Internet Explorer, well before Microsoft adopted them. Since then, Adam developed an anti-phishing solution, licensed to AOL, and sold to MarkMonitor in 2006, where he remains today.

The focus for LinkRiver, as he wrote me in an e-mail on Tuesday, is "to be laser-focused on links and link blogs, breaking down the many silos (del.icio.us, Google Reader, Ma.gnolia) to let anyone share anything with anyone regardless of which services they use."

LinkRiver users, after being granted beta access (sign up here), can add any number of services to their stream, so long as the services support RSS. In my trying out the service, I added my Google Reader shared items, my Del.icio.us bookmarks, the blog's RSS feed, StumbleUpon activity and Twitter. While LinkRiver so far doesn't offer the ease of adding differing services as FriendFeed does today, copying and pasting a URL from any feed you generate really isn't all that difficult.


Not only can you generate your own stream, but LinkRiver enables you to follow anybody you want to, like Twitter for link blogs. Your river will get more busy with the more active people you follow, just like it does if you add more friends to your FriendFeed. In my last few weeks of trying out LinkRiver, not only have I added on Silicon Valley notables like Steve Rubel, Jason Calacanis, and FriendFeed founders Bret Taylor and Paul Buchheit, but fellow B-Listers MG Siegler and Frederic Lardinois. In fact, Adam was all too happy to show off the flexibility of his service by developing a "L33T Tech News River", highlighting all the shares from those authoring the "Elite Tech News" Reddit, which just crossed the 400 subscriber mark.

LinkRiver, at first glance, offers a clean, simple interface to sharing all relevant items in one place, and getting connected or following friends. The ability to "share" other shared items and calculate the total number of shares is unique to LinkRiver among life streaming sites, borrowing a page from other intriguing new services like ReadBurner. Also, with the ability to follow friends in this simple, river-like format, it trumps the folder-driven concept of Spokeo.


LinkRiver is launching without a vast array of interactive features, as FriendFeed has developed in its months of availability, but we can expect the service to continue to innovate. Comments to shared items are expected to be rolled out, dependent on user feedback, and you can already see the most popular items shared in the last day, week, month, or all-time.

If you would like to gain early access to LinkRiver, sign up to their beta program. If you were one of the link bloggers Adam first started with, you'll no doubt get near-instant access. If you would like to see my stream, you can start here: http://linkriver.com/louis.

Monday Mayhem and Linking Back

Real quick... it's likely posting will be erratic this week. Despite best intentions, sometimes real life gets in the way. But we'll be dropping in from time to time to catch up. In the event of low posting, the best way to follow what I'm doing, as always, is on FriendFeed.

Of interest, since I've been using Del.icio.us to track links back to louisgray.com, using the "coverage" tag, it's been fun to see the total number of individual links grow, sometimes from big sites, like TechCrunch and Mashable, to middle-sized sites, including Maple Leaf 2.0 and Internet Duct Tape and small ones, like MrOnTemp and Akkam’s Razor.

Some recent highlights with the tag of "coverage" in Del.icio.us:

MapleLeaf 2.0:
Twitter as the new email and killer app. Now is the time to grow it.
Akkam's Razor:
My Linkblog…
MrOnTemp:
Starling and AssetBar - comparative views on Twitter performance
Rojo Blog:
Free the Music; Demo 2008; Political Foreclosures
Madan's Blog:
Super Tuesday in Silicon Valley

We'll be back with more original content soon, but enjoy the links. I'm sure many of these sites have some great discussions on the world of tech you might find useful.

What If You Only Subscribed to Shared Item Feeds?

Last night, we discussed the importance of a well-kept shared link blog in Google Reader. Humans can still play an important role in filtering out the best of feeds from the rest, as smart folks can trump even the best written code in terms of determining humor, originality and insight.

The ease of creating and subscribing to link blogs in Google Reader has led to some actively searching out these link blogs, and instead of subscribing feed by feed, instead preferring to rely on the selections of others.

One blogger, with the nickname of "SeekGround", says he has subscribed to more than 300 individual shared item feeds, which he displays on his blog - an amazing number. I have to assume there are a number of commonly-subscribed feeds that would result in duplication, but SeekGround says he goes through them, primarily on his mobile phone, and shares those items he finds most useful.

Shockingly, despite having more than 300 individual feeds, it looks like his interests most overlap with me, of all people. In an insightful post, "Google Reader, Shared Items and Mobility", the blogger reveals that over the last 30 days, he's also shared 35 items from me, 19 from Frederic Lardinois of the Last Podcast, and 17 from Mike Reynolds, taking first, second and third, respectively.

Kindly, he writes, "I think that Louis Gray is making waves in the community lately and he may soon find himself considered part of the A-List rather than his self-stated position as a B-Lister."

I don't know about that... but it's fun to see SeekGround taking a new approach to consuming feeds, and finding so many shared items in common. While his blog is a relative unknown, with a Technorati Authority of "Zero", before tonight, I have to expect that would change. While some entrepreneurs are setting new bars in content creation, others are changing the world of content consumption.

Maybe, over time, there will be a big shift from those who are the content creators and filters, and those who are the consumers and readers. With Feedheads, Shared Reader, ReadBurner and RSSMeme out there now, Link Blogs are becoming a very big deal.

Also see:
Last Podcast: Shared Feeds, RSSmeme and Ecosystems
louisgray.com: How Soon Until People Demand Link Blog Portability?
louisgray.com: What I'm Reading and Sharing on Google Reader

My shared items link blog is here: http://www.google.com/reader/shared/05763917848110205585

Scoble's Link Blog Slows to a Crawl

For the better part of 2007, Robert Scoble trumpeted his Google Reader shared items link blog as a potential alternative to TechMeme. As a subscriber to his link blog in my Google Reader, I could typically look forward to a dozen or more new stories each day from blogs I'd never heard of - leading me to a lot of great new sources, many of whom I added to my subscription list.

But then, almost coinciding with his leaving PodTech in mid-January, with sporadic interruptions just prior, the link blogging slowed to a mere crawl, in comparison to his previous activity. Scoble, a busy man, was not only working on starting up FastCompany TV, but was flying all over the world, to the World Economic Forum in Davos, back to the West Coast, and off again to Switzerland this week. And while he found time to stream video on Qik, post to Twitter, and occasionally blog, his link blog was comparatively a low priority.

On January 29th, via Twitter, I asked him about this:
He responded in kind:


My question to him had come after an 8-day gap in the link blog. On January 29th, he shared one item. On January 30, one more. On January 31st, he seemed to approach regular form, with eight links. February started off with a little rhythm as well, six on February 2nd, ten more on the 3rd, and four more on Monday. And again, a return to silence (just two days so far). You can also see Scoble's link blog is not among the leaders in shared items according to ReadBurner's rankings, where it no doubt once would have been.

How does that compare to previous months? Well, on January 15th, Scoble shared 21 items and 17 on the 14th. December 30th was 16 items. December 28th was 15 items. December 27th was 26 items.... and you get the idea. In fact, AideRSS reports Scoble shared 455 posts per month on average, with a total of 2,279 posts since Jul 24 of last year, when the service started counting. (You too can use AideRSS to count these up.)

Did the blogosphere all of a sudden get less interesting? Did Robert stop reading feeds altogether? Has Robert raised the standard for sharing items? Did subscribers complain about the frequency? Maybe it's a mixture of all these things. Maybe he's just reached a point where he's gotten too busy, or the new post-PodTech world keeps him further away from Google Reader than when he was at PodTech.

Regardless of the answer, I hope he soon finds the time to get back to his link blog. I know I've found it a very good resource, just as nearly 300 others have liked the Elite Reddit which some of us B-Listers are working on. There's something to be said about the world of tech news being filtered with real eyes instead of a machine.

Also see: Scoble's Link Blog Delivers An Influential 1 Percent

Kudos to Mashable, and Three Links Their Way

Some companies will talk about change, and not follow through. Mashable is not one of them. After promising to offer an improved level of transparency and attribution, the popular social networking news site has done exactly that, revamping they way they report news, share linkage and introduce original sourcing. Over the last few weeks, Mashable has managed to seamlessly keep reporting the news while adapting to the new guidelines... and that's hard to do.

With that said, I wanted to draw your attention to three great stories Mashable is running right now.

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Podcast: A Conversation with MG Siegler
http://mashable.com/2008/01/31/l33t-reddit/

Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins sat down with MG Siegler of ParisLemon to talk about our new joint venture of delivering an "elite" Reddit, aimed at offering the best in tech news, free of the usual nonsense.

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Readburner’s Unofficial API
http://mashable.com/2008/01/31/readburner-api/

Hardly a day goes by without Alexander Marktl's pet project, ReadBurner, making the news. Yesterday, as noted in my link blog, David Rothman posted a piece on Hacking ReadBurner URLs, which can deliver unique, and often unexpected, results. URL hacking is among my favorite past-times. Combine it with ReadBurner, and you've got some good fun ahead.

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RatingBurner Ranks Blogs According To RSS Numbers
http://mashable.com/2008/01/31/ratingburner-ranks-blogs-according-to-rss-numbers/

Mashable's Stan Schroeder also followed up on our piece on