Getting Started With Google Friend Connect

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


Back in May, Google announced their plans to launch Friend Connect. Friend Connect allows website owners to incorporate social aspects and elements onto their sites. It's powered by OpenSocial, which was developed by Google along with MySpace and a number of other social networks. In a nutshell, OpenSocial is basically a set of common APIs used for building and distributing social applications and their data across many websites. This data includes profile information, friends information, activities and so forth. You can find more about the OpenSocial platform here.

This post is a brief tutorial on the features and the implementation of Friend Connect.

Getting started:


Installation is very easy, and takes less then 5 minutes. First head over to the Google's Friend Connect website. Click the "Set up a new site" link to begin.

Give Google some basic info:

The next step is pretty much self explanatory. Input your site name, and the url of your website.

FTP two files to your server:

This step involves downloading two html files to your desktop. FTP those two files to your web server, and make sure they are placed in the root folder of your domain. This is important if you are going to use Friend Connect on a sub directory of your site, I.E /blog.

Test your setup:

This will test to see if you uploaded the html files correctly. Now that you are almost finished, it's time to add and customize your gadgets.

Now for the social part, adding gadgets to your site:

The code you generate for the gadgets are html. It's a simple copy and paste process. There are two types of widgets available, social and members.

Members gadget: This allows visitors to join your site, sign in and out, see other members, and invite other people to join your site. A screen shot of the members gadget is shown below. You can also see and interact with the gadget live on the sidebar of my blog.

The other option is a sign in gadget pictured below. This is a lighter version of the members gadget without images. It's meant for small spaces and allows visitors to join your site, sign in and out, and invite others to become members.

Clicking a member's profile image on the member gadget will display their Google service profile. You can also add that person as a friend, and once they accept the request, you will able to see each other across all Friend Connect sites. You also have the option of blocking users.

Clicking the invite link brings up the email sharing aspect of the gadget. You can share a website with your Gmail contacts by clicking the Google tab. It's not limited to Gmail contacts, any email address will work. You can also add a quick, personalized note with the share.

The share tab takes it a step further up the social ladder by allowing you to post the website to Facebook, Myspace or Del.icio.us. You can also submit the site to Digg, Fark, Mixx, Live Spaces and StumbleUpon. In its current state it needs more social networks and services to plug into. Integrating other services, should be a top priority for Google. There are currently a dozen or so other free social sharing type services on the market that offer more of a selection than Friend Connect in its current state.

Social gadgets: This area is kind of sparse at the moment. There are only two worthy gadgets that are of any real social use and benefit. One is a wall gadget and the other is a review/rate gadget.Bwana, from bwana.org has all of these gadgets integrated live on his blog. Head over to his site to see them in action. The screen shots below were captured from his blog.

Wall gadget:This allows people to post comments, and also links to (YouTube) videos on your site. It's customizable and makes for a great shout out box.



Review/Rate gadget: This gadget can be used in a variety of ways. It lets people rate your content via a simple starring system. You can use this gadget to rate any type of content, videos, photos, etc. Comments can also be posted on it. This can also be used numerous times on a single page, or on separate pages of your site. I believe this will become widely used by bloggers, once they catch onto it. This is something I will be experimenting with on future blog postings.

Games? No just lame!

Being that the service just officially launched, it would of been nice for them to include at least a variety of already developed widgets other than the two mentioned above. All we get for now is the Lame Game. Hey, they named it that, not me, but what else could you really call it? Its only purpose is to allow your friends to go click crazy. This is done by clicking as often as they can which leads to trying to increase their score vs. their friends and other site members.

Lets touch on the admin area:

There is not a lot of back end features to report. I expected to see some type of url referral reporting function, similar to that offered by MyBlogLog. Where members came from, what they viewed, what they clicked, this is what I want to see. Google are you listening?

Clicking the reports link will show you two simple graphs. The first displays total membership over time, and the second displays new members over time.

Clicking the moderate posts will allow you to delete any obscenities. You can also choose to have all posts be approved before they are posted. Wall posts are immediately visible to anyone by default.

Clicking the manage members link allows you to do the normal friending functions. View members Google service profiles, add members, block members, and you can also view their friends as well. You also have the ability to grant administrative privileges to specific members.

Wrapping it all up, and some additional thoughts:

In regards to it being a MyBlogLog killer. I would seriously consider totally removing the MyBlogLog widget off my blog in favor of Friend Connect. Of course that's under two circumstances. The first is to show me the most recent visitors to my site, as does the MyBlogLog widget. The second is to give me url referral reporting and additional stats on where readers came from, what they viewed and so forth. For now, both of these widgets compliment each other fine, and although similar in function, in some aspects are two totally different beasts.

The product is still rough around the edges, as to be expected with any beta. It's a step in the right direction for data portability, and that's a plus in my book. I'm fascinated with the direction and possibility that this could lead to in helping us better connect with members in our social graph and abroad. The fact that Google is behind it, could be a blessing or a curse. Now of course getting the other players in the space, such as Facebook, to play nice, is a whole different ball game.

Will Google's Friend Connect and Facebook Connect initiatives be a progressive step toward evolving social networking or will it be just another passing fad? I believe the former, not the latter.

Read more by Mike Fruchter at MichaelFruchter.com.

Strands Lifestreaming Beta High On Potential and Filters

There's no question the lifestreaming space has just exploded over the last year, with services like Plaxo Pulse and FriendFeed leading the way, accompanied by MyBlogLog, SocialThing, Profilactic and others. Practically all services aggregate your social activity across networks and let you display it in one area, with the option to follow friends and interact with their activity. One of the newest in this space is Strands, which bills itself as a destination site for people to discover new recommended items around the Web from friends. The service, currently in private beta, has some very interesting features, but also has a lot of room to go to supplant one of the bigger names.


As with the many other alternatives out there, you start your activity on Strands by adding your many services around the Web, starting with the most well-known services, like Twitter, Google Reader and Delicious, but the service also supports several other sites not commonly found elsewhere, including Webshots, BlockBuster, Hype Machine and Meneame.


When you add these services, as with other competitors, Strands creates a feed for you, which can then be subscribed to by other users.

As you currently can only get into Strands by being invited, you will start out with at least one friend, but you can find more users by seeing who your friends follow, or by clicking the people button at the top of the page. Strands, as far as I know, has the best array of ways to discover new followers, showing you who is the most followed, who's new to the site, or who is the top by a specific category, like Blogs, Images, Music or Bookmarks. Each person's profile is displayed with their avatar, gender, age and location. You can also search by name or e-mail.

Once you have subscribed to a few people, you can see their activity on Strands' Home screen, which displays, chronologically, the item posted, who added it, the service it originated from. You can then take action on those items with a simple Like or Dislike, indicated by thumbs up or thumbs down, you can comment on the item, click a pushpin to indicate an item is saved, or click an arrow to forward the item to those who follow you. (The equivalent of resharing on FriendFeed)

The interface for Strands if both cluttered and spartan at the same time, if that makes any sense.

Unlike FriendFeed, which offers a clean white background, soft gray text for comments, but little else, except a top navigation bar, Strands offers a wide array of ways to sift through the noise and find specific items. You can filter your feed by people who just follow you, you can show your own feed, or show subgroups of your friends. For example, I started a group called "Digerati", that includes Chris Brogan, Marshall Kirkpatrick, Corvida and others on the site.

You can also filter by category, including Blogs & Notes, Images, Music, Movies & TV, Bookmarks and others. FriendFeed offers this functionality by service by clicking on the service icon, but it's not spelled out, nor does it group similar services (like Delicious and Magnolia for instance). On top of filters, you also have "Hot Posts" which show items popular with your friends, marked by likes and comments, and the ability to have granularity, so you don't share all services with all people. For example, you may want to share some items with friends, but not family or coworkers.

The many different options on Strands make it useful to find things fast, but it also shoehorns the Home feed into a small center position. Arguably, this is the most important part of the site, so its power is greatly diminished. Strands also doesn't auto-refresh, asking you to click a refresh icon on the page, or in your browser. This gives the site more of a static feeling than other sites which do autorefresh, where it seems new data is constantly coming in.

Also, like most good services today, Strands offers a desktop alternative to the Web site with an Adobe AIR application, which keeps you updated on your friends' activity and watches your iTunes to capture what you're listening to, as well as a bookmarklet.

Does the world need another lifestreaming service? With so many on the market, it's interesting to see what aspects one site will get right or what they'll miss. Strands doesn't have the feeling of community today that FriendFeed does, given its newness and obscurity. And like many engineering-driven services, it can be seen at times to have sacrificed the user experience for more features. I've said previously that "the feature war is the wrong war" for social media, which needs to find new ways to connect people, their likes and their activity. Strands does a good job letting me drill down into specific areas, or in helping find new folks, but I'm hoping they can reduce some of the site clutter, and make the site really come to life.

As the service is in private beta, I have a very small number of invites, so leave your e-mail in the comments if you are interested, and I'll see what I can do.

DISCLOSURE: I was introduced to Strands by Drew Olanoff, the Community Manager at Strands, who started there in July. Drew is also the CTO of ReadBurner, where I am an advisor, and hold a small equity position. While Drew gave me an account to test Strands, he did not request an article, nor review this in any way.

MyBlogLog/FriendFeed Integration Fouling Up Google Vanity Searches

Practically every blogger performs regular "vanity searches" to see if they were mentioned on the Web. Some use Technorati, others, Google Blog Search, or Twitter Search. And Google has made it very easy to get alerted via e-mail if your name has been mentioned out in the blogosphere. But recent efforts by MyBlogLog's "New With Me" feature, integrated with FriendFeed, have resulted in an overflow of useless updates, whether you're searching for yourself, or anybody else active on both sites, adding a flood of noise to what used to be actionable search results.


My pre-saved Google Blog Search watches the Web for me.
In February, MyBlogLog made a big move into the lifestreaming space, by doing more than tabulating fans of your content and tagging your blog with keywords, but letting you see your friends' activity around the Web, including their participation on Twitter, Last.fm, Digg and other social sites.

In May, no doubt in response to users' requests, MyBlogLog added the ability to show FriendFeed comments and likes in their lifestream, adding the popular social aggregator as a supported service.

That sounded good on the surface. Now, by going to my MyBlogLog page, I can see activity from my "friends" on FriendFeed, as well as the other previously-supported services.


My Google Blog Search Alerts Stopped Being Useful
But then, Google Blog Search started indexing MyBlogLog's updates as equal to actual individual blog entries. This meant I started to get results in vanity searches, and those sent by e-mail for things as mundane as "Louis Gray commented" or "Louis Gray listened to a track". And it wasn't just my activity, but others. Every few hours, I would get e-mail reporting, "Spullara commented", or "Corvida shared an item", for example. If they were commenting on my items or sharing my items on FriendFeed, MyBlogLog heard about it, and told Google, who then told me.


MyBlogLog Delivers FriendFeed Activity to Google Blog Search.
Clearly, this isn't the end of the world. But it's messy, and it's taken what used to be a fairly rock-solid service, in Google Blog Search and Alerts and made it a lot less useable. While I have no doubts that I'm overweighted with this problem, thanks to being more active and visible on FriendFeed, others I tested showed the same issues, including the aforementioned Corvida, Chris Pirillo, Duncan Riley, and Sarah Perez, for example.

Some people have openly expressed concern about how services are auto-populating and aggregating outside activity, creating an echo effect. This is one of the clearest examples of unintended consequences. So what should happen? Should Google Blog Search remove MyBlogLog results, or should MyBlogLog remove FriendFeed entries? Which service should make the first move if any move is needed?

Hitting Last.fm's 'Love' Button Is Getting Me Back In Tune

I'm an unrepentant music-ophile. Through a combination of CD purchases and burns and iTunes downloads, my music library is a swollen 35 Gigabytes, featuring almost 6,000 songs, which would take more than three weeks to listen to straight through. As a result, it's no surprise there are a ton of great tunes that I haven't gotten to in a while, as I'm not constantly listening, as unfortunate as that is. But recently, I've been using Last.fm a lot more frequently, letting me broadcast my playlist to friends who follow me, and letting them know what I'm listening to, making it a more social, and fun, experience.


A Pet Shop Boys discussion from Thursday on FriendFeed
I have been a longtime Last.fm user, having first sent my data to the service back in 2005. Prior to that, I was also a happy user of MusicMobs, starting in 2004, which merged into Last.fm in November of last year. Both sites collectively offered a great way for me to catalog my listening history, find out which artists and songs I hit up most frequently, and discover new, similar, artists.


Another discussion on FriendFeed re: DJ Tiesto
But as fun as statistics are, it's just a new form of navel gazing, and I never really delved into finding "friends" and seeing who my "neighbors" were on the site. But now that Last.fm is integrated into the various lifestreaming applications out there, like MyBlogLog, and especially FriendFeed, I'm having a good time going through artists I've neglected, and hitting the "Love" button on Last.fm's desktop application, which tells people which songs I'm particularly enjoying.

What I've found is that you never know just who might share the same interests. For some reason, I've had people say they're surprised I listen to such electronic music and techno as DJ Tiesto, Underworld, Depeche Mode, Paul Van Dyk and Armin Van Buuren. I've also taken people back a decade or two by listening to classics from the Pet Shop Boys, and Information Society.


Last.fm tells me my top artists
Through Last.fm, I've found that Jeremiah Owyang is a Tiesto fan, that Steven Hodson has fantastic musical tastes, introducing me to Mind In a Box, which led me to Edge of Dawn, and that Kevin Fox likes Pet Shop Boys. Although I have to admit that in the last few months, I haven't had the laptop pumping out iTunes as much as it used to, largely due to not wanting to unnecessarily wake up the twins, sharing my tastes via Last.fm is getting me back into the music in a big way.

You can find me on Last.fm here:
http://www.last.fm/user/louismg

You can see my "Loved" tracks on FriendFeed here:
http://friendfeed.com/louisgray?service=lastfm

FriendBinder Throws Hat In LifeStreaming Ring

Back in March, I bumped into rumors of FriendBinder, which, like other lifestreaming offerings including MyBlogLog, Plaxo Pulse, Profilactic, LetsProve and FriendFeed, claimed to offer a single destination to keep track of what your friends are doing on many different social networks. At the time, the author, Richard Cunningham, let me know the service was more than a year into development and would be coming soon. The service debuted in beta in the last week, and while it works, it reminds me more of Spokeo than the aforementioned apps, pulling contacts I have at different networks and displaying them in one unified stream.

Getting started with FriendBinder is relatively easy. The first step is to register which social networks you currently use, by entering your ID. Options supported at beta launch include YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Del.icio.us, Flickr, Last.FM and the more generic News/Blog subscriptions, which asks for an RSS feed.

The second step is to add your friends into FriendBinder, by clicking the "Add All Friends" option next to each network. FriendBinder will then login to your external accounts, find your friends, and troll for updates.

When complete, you have what's called your "FriendStream", which, as anticipated, shows the latest updates in chronological order, the top item being the most recent.


As once was said about FriendFeed, if you don't make any changes to your preferences, FriendBinder is dominated by Twitter. The sheer volume of updates by friends in Twitter had me looking around to see just what other updates were contributing to the stream. I did find the occasional Digg or Del.icio.us update, but they were the exception rather than the rule.


Interestingly, one wrinkle offered by FriendBinder is the ability to rate the importance of one network's updates above another, from 1 star to 5, with 3 being the default. This is called the "interest level". I can also, by network, tag one friend's updates as more important than those from somebody else, by manually clicking the number of stars. (Frederic of The Last Podcast noted this in his review as well)


This lets you sort your best friends from lesser contacts by filtering your stream by 5 stars, 4 stars, and so on.

You can also parse the FriendBinder stream by service, showing only Del.icio.us updates, only Digg updates, etc. Given the overwhelming noise coming via Twitter, first clicking Networks and then picking a single service just might be the best way to cut through the noise.

FriendBinder does exactly what it promised to do - give one place to find all updates from friends. But that opens up more questions. Then what? The Web already has quite a few sites that serve to aggregate all friends' activities, and the ones that are gaining traction are those (read: FriendFeed) which enable a follow-on action. FriendBinder data streams are siloed, such that I won't ever interact with another FriendBinder user. I can't respond via Twitter from within the site. I can't add comments to Facebook or Flickr photos within the site. I can't post directly to the site, and wouldn't need to, considering nobody else will see it.

By registering with FriendBinder, and entering my network details, I know what I've done is set off yet another farm of servers to continue slaving away, and requesting my contacts' information, even if I never login again, just like when I registered for Iminta, Profilactic, Spokeo, Mergelab, Assetbar, Shyftr, Plaxo and any other site aiming to do the hard work for me when I'm away. As discussed last week, this strain on the infrastructure can eventually force sites to reduce features or even close, so I'm already feeling a bit guilty for making FriendBinder work on my behalf. Hopefully, FriendBinder can step up to demand, should it grow, and add new interactive features that would help it bridge the gap from being yet another lifestreaming site to one who can innovate and differentiate to make it a destination site.

TiVo Is a Zero On the Social Web. It's Time They Fast Forward.

Despite continued issues around the company's business model, TiVo fans are among the most loyal. As with Apple, I, and many others like me, believe that TiVo offers a superior user experience that has changed my life for the good. I can't imagine being forced to watch TV without a TiVo, finding myself tied down to the scheduling whims of network executives, and seeing commercial after commercial on products I'll never buy. But while some offline products have found a voice on the Web, TiVo is conspicuously absent.

With the right amount of focus, TiVo could leverage their fan base and deliver a TV-centric social network and social networking features, where you could compare season passes, engage with fellow TV watchers, display when you had added a show to your season pass, or one-time recording, and even show if you hadn't yet watched an episode, warning your friends not to spill the beans on a season finale, if you hadn't caught up.

Today, TiVo's Web site lets you manage your TiVo(s) online, letting you remotely add shows, should the need hit you. TiVo Central online also shows aggregate statistics, including Most-Recorded Shows, and WishList rankings for Directors and Actors. It's nice, but it's not nearly enough.

What I would like is:

1. To create a TiVo-centric social network that lets me synchronize my profile with my TiVo units and find similar users.

My profile would, by default, import all season passes and wishlists on my claimed TiVo units, but allow me to "hide" specific items from public view. (Not necessarily for content, mind you, but because my wife doesn't 100% share my interests)

Using technology TiVo already has, I would gain recommendations for new TV shows and actors, based on my selections. Not only would I be able to see previews of the TV shows from within the social network, but I would also be able to find a compatibility rating between my preferences and other TiVo social network users.

Given TiVo's popularity, I would be able to search the social network not just for TV show compatibility, but also by distance from me, or other characteristics, as broad or as narrow as the other profiles would be willing to share. Does this sound a little too much like a dating service? I'm sure there's a little less harm in getting together with a person of the opposite gender to catch a So You Think You Can Dance marathon than most things, so sure, have at it. But more usefully, the social network would also have:

Central bulletin boards for each network television show and the most popular cable channels, as well as, by default, the top 100 most popular actors or directors, with social network users having the option to create new topics.

During the "live" showings of each show, the bulletin boards would have a "live" chat room features as well, so if you were daring enough to watch the show live, you could communicate with other viewers in real time, from anywhere.

2. To create customizable Tivo-centric RSS feeds to populate other social media sites.

Today, I have the ability to show you when I add items to my Amazon.com Wish List. I even have the option to show you when I purchase items from Apple's iTunes Music Store (See: Webomatica). But I can't use RSS to tell you when I add a new show to my Season Pass, or find a new actor or director interesting. Today, that data is siloed.


How My Tivo RSS Feed Would Add to My Lifestream
For many people, what you watch on television is just as definitive for who you are as the Web sites you visit, the sports teams you root for, and the restaurants you like. If I like CSI and Law and Order: SVU, as do you, but I also happen to watch Bones, but you hadn't heard of it, maybe thanks to my watching it, you would check it out.

I want to add TiVo updates I make on the unit or via the Web available as an option to my FriendFeed, MyBlogLog, on Plaxo Pulse or other services. I want the ability to make the details as narrow or as broad as possible, showing either that I've added a show, or, for some, that I've watched a show.

3. To have the option to access and export all my statistics.

Some people may be up in arms about TiVo aggregating user data, but not me. I want to know if I'm watching more TV this year than I did last year. I want to know the percentage of shows I watch live or those I watch on the DVR. I want to know if I wait longer to watch some shows than others, or if I watch more TiVo recordings in aggregate on Thursday than I did on Tuesday. I want to see, in total, how much time I've saved by fast-forwarding through commercials. (I first wrote about this last February: Dear Tivo, Please Track and Report My Data)

What if you could show how many hours you spend per year watching shows that start with "Law and Order"? What if you could then use all these statistics to compare with friends within your social network (See: #1)? TiVo could, with the viewers' permission, make a "couch potato" leaderboard for those who watched the most TV, the most from a single network, the most comedies or the most episodes of a specific show. I could find out if I'm the most reliable viewer of ER in Sunnyvale, California, or within 50 miles from my house.

I should be able to export my statistics in aggregate, to my blog, or any site.

4. To have widgets to display on my blog.

Like those from Last.fm, I want to have a widget that shows the top shows I watched in the last 7 or 30 days. I want to have a widget that shows my status, including what I might be currently watching, or if my TiVo is idle, like widgets for AOL instant messenger do.

To date, TiVo has not leveraged the power of their brand or their community on the Web. While there are sites out there dedicated to TiVo, like TiVoCommunity.com, they are unofficial, and they don't use the immense amount of data that TiVo has at its remote control to connect viewers and fans. I am more than ready to connect my online activity with my TiVo activity, and it is astounding to me that TiVo hasn't made an attempt to take on the new world of the Web the way they once aggressively took on the old world of stuffy network TV executives.

With social networks being so easy to create, and with RSS and XML being extremely customizable, the talent behind the world's best DVR should be able to unpause and get this started.

MyBlogLog's Blog Stats Offer Good Insight to Readers' Destinations

Last year, after publicly wondering about the future of MyBlogLog, and saying I felt the Yahoo-owned friends tracker and blog community site should focus more on tracking blog details than personal details, I was offered a premium account, gaining me insight into daily statistics, and full reports, showing where visitors were coming from, what they were reviewing, and interestingly, where they were headed.

While MyBlogLog is best known for their "Recent Visitors" widget, and has made waves of late with their lifestreaming service, it's now the stats I find myself taking a look at, just about on par with my standard SiteMeter details.

Out of curiosity, yesterday, I ran a report that showed what louisgray.com viewers were most likely to click on, over the last seventeen months, all the way back to January 1st of 2007. While some of the most popular items are recurring links to my RSS feed, MyBlogLog and LinkedIn, it's clear that some of the most-prominent posts I made in the last few months have had significant impact, not the least of which was the Elite Bloggers joining FriendFeed post back in March.


An example of MyBlogLog's Out Clicks Report (Click for More)
It's also clear that unless most people are clicking to new destinations from my RSS feed, and not via the site, I don't have enough traffic to make or break anyone, despite premature talk of a "Louis Gray effect".

Below are the Top 25 "Out Clicks", according to MyBlogLog. I hand-scrubbed a few, as I don't want to further encourage the porn-seekers who think Google Video can get them a quick fix, or take people off-topic.

1. http://feeds.feedburner.com/LouisgraycomLive 1,491 Clicks.
2. http://friendfeed.com/louisgray 1,171 Clicks.
3. http://www.friendfeed.com/ 805 Clicks.
4. http://www.mybloglog.com/buzz/members/louismg 674 Clicks.
5. http://www.readburner.com/ 417 Clicks.

6. http://www.assetbar.com/ 292 Clicks.
7. http://blog.linkedin.com/blog/2008/03/company-profile.html 286 Clicks.
8. http://twitter.com/louisgray 274 Clicks.
9. http://www.linkedin.com/in/louisgray 274 Clicks.
10. http://www.ratingburner.com/ 251 Clicks.

11. http://anzman.blogspot.com/ 248 Clicks.
12. http://friendfeed.com/kevinrose 244 Clicks.
13. http://www.friendfeedmachine.com/ 244 Clicks.
14. http://www.rssmeme.com/ 238 Clicks.
15. http://www.linkedin.com/profile?viewProfile=&key=4420 237 Clicks.

16. http://www.google.com/reader/shared/05763917848110205585 211 Clicks.
17. http://friendfeed.com/adamostrow 205 Clicks.
18. http://www.techmeme.com/lb 201 Clicks.
19. http://friendfeed.com/scobleizer 194 Clicks.
20. http://www.shyftr.com/ 190 Clicks.

21. http://www.linkriver.com/ 182 Clicks.
22. http://www.mashable.com/ 182 Clicks.
23. http://bhc3.wordpress.com/ 182 Clicks.
24. http://friendfeed.com/techcrunch 181 Clicks.
25. http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=589638695 175 Clicks.

There are a million blog stat engines out there, from SiteMeter to Google Analytics, SlimStat and more, but unlike SiteMeter, which limits even premium accounts to the last 4,000 visitors, MyBlogLog keeps all the data, making historical reports quite useful. While I've got quite a bit of traction checking the day to day changes, watching "Out Click" reports is very interesting, and I'll be sure to make up some new reports to see accumulative data.

Should Bloggers Open Up Their Statistics?

The Web makes it incredibly easy to be measured, and to be measured publicly. There are many metrics out there, be they Technorati Authority, based on unique external hyperlinks, total RSS subscribers (via FeedBurner), total Twitter followers, and friends of all types, from FriendFeed to Facebook and back. But while most of us are more than eager to share that data, when it comes to actually sharing the traffic we receive on our blogs, it can be a closely-guarded secret. Talking about visit counts can be seen as off-limits as one's salary.

As today is April 30th, wrapping up another month, today offers yet another opportunity to sum up the month's statistics, show trends, and compare to the past. (You'll see a "State of the Blog" post from me on this early tomorrow, as we do each month) But while, to date, I've shown graphs, I usually hide the total number of visitors, page views, etc. And now, I ask openly, why?

I think there are two major reasons that bloggers as a whole don't open up their statistics for others to view:

1) The Inferiority Complex

By sharing my statistics openly, it will now be obvious to the world how little real traffic I get, opening me to ridicule. The emperor has no clothes, it could be said. Also, maybe the traffic I receive isn't seen as "quality" traffic? I still get a lot of visitors from Google image searches looking for R-rated material in vain. Maybe I don't want everybody to see that, and, therefore, take the site less seriously?

But yet, the reverse problem also holds true.

2) The Big Head Complex

By sharing my statistics openly, it could be shown we're bragging, highlighting traffic, growth, and the trends. Smaller bloggers just getting started might see the data as unattainable and could throw potshots.

It all depends on perspective.

So why open up? We've come a long way since free hit counters were the rage back in the mid to late 1990s, and one could up the number just by refreshing a page in the browser. Now, whether your stat package of choice is SiteMeter or Google Analytics, your site traffic has likely been made invisible to your readers, making actual, true, traffic a mystery. But in the interest of openness, data sharing, and collaboration, I think it's time to consider making our blog traffic 100% available and visible.

Advantages:

1) Making traffic details public establishes a data point

Just as it makes sense to visit Salary.com and determine what other people with your title in your geography are commanding, viewing other's statistics can give you a reference point for how you are performing against your peers.

2) Making traffic sources public enables new sites' discovery

One of the most interesting things I find from my statistics are where people are coming from, in the referral logs. It's likely that those people caring enough to send a link my way might be interested in the same topics I am, and, using the transitive property, my readers would be interested in what they are as well.

3) Making content details public shows popularity of topics

Despite one's best efforts, not every single story gets the same amount of solid traffic. There are peaks and valleys. Making this data public could better give guidance to other writers as to what topics are most interesting, might get the most engagement, or views.

Disadvantages:

1) Establishing that data point puts you on a chart somewhere

Whether the total number of unique visitors, page views, referrals is in the hundreds, thousands or hundreds of thousands, by establishing that data publicly, your traffic now becomes part of the conversation, relative to yourself and relative to others, so you'll need to come to terms with this in advance.

2) Exposing traffic details could lead to others' snooping

A good blogger who knows their statistics can get used to specific readers. With a good combination of MyBlogLog, and location-based visits, I have a good idea of who the most frequent visitors are, and I think I know what stories they read, if I get the time to look it up. Maybe others could be as aggressive and figure out the same information. Some visitors might not like having this potential to be snooped expanded to the masses.

3) Your statistics could actually go down

It's one thing to post data at your peak when things are going well. But if you have a slow week or months, and your numbers collapse, there's no hiding it. You can't undo a number once it's out, so that too would be a risk.

So here's what I'm thinking. I have nothing to hide. Tomorrow, when we do our statistical summary for the prior month, I'll use the statistics I have on hand, and expose the sources of the data. We'll see what happens. And maybe, as you go about your efforts, you'll consider opening up. This isn't a question of who's bigger than anybody else or what's good traffic versus bad. I feel that as bloggers, the more data we have available, the more empowered we are. Let me know if this is something you would be eager to participate in, and what your thoughts are.

MyBlogLog LifeStream Gets On Topic

At the end of February, MyBlogLog debuted their entry into the lifestreaming market, aggregating your services from around the Web, and should you choose, showing you those activities from your MyBlogLog contacts. While I wasn't blown away with their first attempt, the Yahoo! subsidiary has come back with a new MyBlogLog-only wrinkle, dividing the lifestreaming activity by Topics, aggregated around specific tags. Now, instead of seeing the lifestream from just your contacts, you can see who the top members are by topic, and see a specific topic stream as a whole.

Early pre-launch screenshots from the new MyBlogLog Topics showing streams for "Web 2.0" and "Apple", for example, show how blog posts or del.icio.us bookmarks tagged with those terms fill the topic feed, with mugshots of "top members" and top community thumbnails also tagged on the right side. You can even subscribe to the Topics feed by RSS if you want to take the stream with you. (See: MyBlogLog: Topics: Apple)

Soon, MyBlogLog promises that over time, users can join topics just as they are able to join communities in MyBlogLog today. These new Topics tabs will eventually fall alongside the "New With Me" and "New With My Neighborhood" tabs there, called "New in My World".

While MyBlogLog hasn't been the loudest social network of late, they are growing. There are now nearly 300,000 MyBlogLog sites, and the service is serving up more than 20 million widget impressions per day, including a small fraction from louisgray.com. (See the right sidebar) The introduction of Topics is an interesting one, and we'll stay tuned to see if it can help the company's offering gain even more traction.

MyBlogLog LifeStream Is a Quiet Trickle

What? You thought because I wasn't the first to jump on MyBlogLog's new lifestreaming option, that somehow I had missed it? Wrong. Sometimes, life can get in the way. And the travel to and from Boston meant just about everybody's already done the usual, anticipated, immediate analysis, response and FriendFeed comparisons before me. And so far, MyBlogLog doesn't look like it's winning. By and large, most reports see it as an interesting update, but not one that puts it in a leadership position by any means. Unfortunately, I have to agree.

(See: WebWare, VentureBeat, Webomatica, bub.blicio.us, and TechCrunch)

Two weeks ago, we first got an e-mail titled "MyBlogLog Profiles Going Dynamic" from Ian Kennedy, Product Manager for MyBlogLog, who said the new feature, called "New with Me" would "aggregate your latest activity on sites such as Twitter, Last.fm, Digg and YouTube." The idea? "Transform your static profile into a dynamic one."

As one of the loudest, most well-recognized FriendFeed advocates out there, I had personally asked Ian in December to add FriendFeed as one of the supported services for the popular "About Me" MyBlogLog widget. (See: Will There be One Profile to Rule Them All?) While his first response, saying "So many social networks, so little time!" made the trivial seem difficult, on February 19th, he followed up to say FriendFeed was added, but events wouldn't be pulled from the feed, given clear issues with duplicate items. (See: Ian's comment)

It's clear MyBlogLog, whether inspired by FriendFeed or not, fell in love with the idea of making the site something more than a stale page, which it had been for some time. Interestingly, this move toward lifestreaming is just about 100% the opposite direction of what I had expected out of them from a post in September, when I asked, "What Is the Future Of MyBlogLog?" In that post, I wrote, "MyBlogLog is exactly what its name implies - it is My Blog's Log, not My Personal Log." I already have sites that cater to following me around. What I want instead, is something that more directly follows my blog around - with increased statistics, linkage and visitor details. I wanted MyBlogLog to get more in touch with what made it interesting in the first place, its communities, and networking individuals, not showing me what they are doing somewhere else. This move only makes the data found elsewhere more important, and what MyBlogLog first served to do even less important.

So why would I dump on MyBlogLog for doing what FriendFeed and others have tried? Because MyBlogLog is way behind on day one.

FriendFeed delivers significant value not just because they aggregate my Web lifestream, but because they enable interaction, through comments and discussions. MyBlogLog doesnt. FriendFeed also lets me choose my friends, and doesn't force them on me based on how many times I've visited a site in aggregate. It's enough to make me avoid sites I've visited before just to keep out of a community. As MyBlogLog preferences can be set to auto-join communities thanks to visit frequency, I may often find out I'm "friends" with popular news sites, not "friends" with my real peers, the way FriendFeed has. And making things worse, MyBlogLog is way slow. Right now, according to MyBlogLog, I haven't done anything online for the past three hours. But FriendFeed knows the truth. FriendFeed shows in those same "idle" three hours, that I added a blog post, sent one note on Twitter, and shared four items on Google Reader, for starters.

I want to root for these guys, but this time, I can't. On day one, MyBlogLog is underfeatured against FriendFeed. It has fewer services than FriendFeed. It doesn't accurately track my friends, and it doesn't enable communication. It doesn't track as quickly. And it doesn't give me more information about "My Blog", which is in the service's name, for crying out loud. While I was once worried that MyBlogLog had gotten too static and lacking in development, I now see they were just focused on the wrong things. Maybe they'll continue to update the service and surprise me with new directions, but for now, I'm all too happy to stick with their blog widgets, and dam up their lifestream.

Will There be One Profile to Rule Them All?

Recently, I updated my Blogger template to include a new feature from MyBlogLog called the "About Me Widget". Introduced two weeks ago (See the MyBlogLog blog for more), this widget aims to summarize all the different services you use, from Digg to Del.icio.us, Flickr, Last.fm, LinkedIn and more, and give you a nice-looking, customizable, tool that keeps everything in one place, rather than what you see on many blogs, where you can have any number of links or graphics combining to do the same thing.

While MyBlogLog is aiming to be "The DNS for People", and has a ways to go this is a great start. But even this widget, in its current incarnation, has holes, and others, like Google and FriendFeed, are serving up knowledgeable profiles of their own.

See the below graphic - which one knows me best?


Let's take a look:

1. Google's Profile (... More)

Positives: As seen on my Google Reader shared links page, the Google Profile is extremely flexible. I can add an infinite number of services and label them however I want, as well as add a picture. If the service is a popular one, or Google can grab the "favico" icon, you will see that next to the service.

Negatives: The downside of inifinite flexibility is that you're really working with a blank canvas, and have to put it all in yourself. Also, it's not entirely clear if this profile is portable, out of Google's apps and to your blog or anywhere else.

2. MyBlogLog's "About Me Widget" (... More)

Positives: As seen on the right side of the blog, the "About Me Widget" can be customized to fit the look and feel of my blog, is well designed, and gives a uniform view for all my services. MyBlogLog also simplifies the process by filling out the basic parts for each service, and just asking me to add my user ID to complete the URL. As with Google, it includes the "favico" icons as well. MyBlogLog also gets bonus points for automatically importing my MyBlogLog sites and community links.

Negatives: MyBlogLog's trying to do me a favor by setting up a pre-determined list of services almost had me not installing it. Where the heck is FriendFeed after all? If I could add a new service to MyBlogLog and include FriendFeed, or Ballhype, or any other service where I have an ID they haven't thought of, it would be outstanding. Also a big miss - the ability to add e-mail or cell phone information. If they got some customization, I could further clean up my sidebar.

3. FriendFeed's User Profile (... More)

Positives: FriendFeed not only tracks where you can get my services, but actually does the dirty work by finding out what I've done on each one. It shows the "favico" icons for every service I use, and is continually adding more services for me to add to my feed. It also displays to anyone interested which other users of FriendFeed I've subscribed to.

Negatives: FriendFeed isn't trying to tell people who I am, so there's no summary or "about me", no room for e-mail, cell phone data, etc. It also, like MyBlogLog, is working in a set structure, so I couldn't add a profile for Ballhype there, until they set it up. It too isn't intended to be portable, although a Web widget for your entire feed is available.

So who wins?

Well, right now, as far as presenting on my blog, MyBlogLog is winning, though I'll still be miffed if they don't make it easy for me to add FriendFeed to my list of services pretty soon. I've already asked.

FriendFeed is a must-have service I'm checking multiple times a day, and if you need an invite, let me know in the comments. I feel FriendFeed knows me the best, as it knows all my activity, although the profile is light today. As for Google, again, they're building apps that are for engineers, and not real people. There has got to be some structure, and just maybe, over time, they'll get some.

Tech Blog Link Power: Spiky Visitors or Sticky Visitors?

Download the Full-Size Image

While many tech bloggers live for the instant, drug-like satisfaction of hitting the Digg front page, or getting picked up by StumbleUpon or Slashdot, that rush of one-time visitors doesn't last long, and they won't come back again. A Digg visitor is usually one that won't comment, won't bookmark, and won't remember your URL.

Repeat visitors to tech blogs usually aren't forged by traffic spikes from well-known news hubs. Nor are they from search engines. It's a rare blog or Web site that can drive both high levels of both one-time visitors and repeat visitors. In fact, in my experience over the last two years of technology blogging, the very best sources for repeat, engaged visitors are:

1. Robert Scoble / Scobleizer
2. TechMeme
3. My own comments on similarly-focused blogs
4. Links from other B-List Bloggers
5. Shared Link Blogs (such as those from Scoble, Webomatica and others)

In fact, while I don't want to give Robert all the credit here, I have seen his hand in some of my highest-traffic posts. Often, his addition of my posts to his shared link blog or his own blog later leads to other bloggers linking, which pushes my post to TechMeme, in turn, leading to more follow-on posts and residual traffic.

But I can't just sit around and "write for Scoble", hoping he'll throw pixie dust my way. In order to engage with the crowd and encourage return visits, I need to link to others, make comments on other similar blogs, and make tools for engagement, like my RSS feed and MyBlogLog, easily accessible.

Thus, I've broken the Link Power Index into four sections:

1. High spikiness, low stickiness (Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Megite, Slashdot)
2. Low spikiness, low stickiness (Google, Facebook, Technorati, Yahoo!)
3. Low spikiness, high stickiness (RSS, word of mouth, comments, LinkedIn, B-List linking)
4. High spikiness, high stickiness (Scobleizer, TechMeme, Shared Link Blogs, MacSurfer)

Last month, "BeachBum" asked, in regards to some of my less-desirable visitors from Google Images, "Do you find that the porn traffic converts or do they just come and go?". The answer is no. None of them convert. Unless I start writing about porn full-time, they're not coming back, and that's okay. While a one-time visitor may have found a keyword sequence on Google that had your blog listed #1 overall, it's unlikely they're your demographic.

In fact, surprisingly, links from B-List and A-List bloggers have been more useful to me than links from more mainstream media. While I was flattered to see coverage of one of September's posts on MSNBC.com and the Houston Chronicle, they didn't drive the traffic of a strong link aggregator, and their visitors, as far as I could tell, were one-offs.

If you want a one-time spike of traffic, go ahead and write to make the front page of Digg (Yuvi Panda's Round 2 analysis of Digg's front page shows how...) or get a group of friends to Stumble your content. But to cultivate readers and engage with the blogging community, you should comment often, share ideas with your peers, and hope somebody with real pull, like Scoble, or MacSurfer, notices your effort.

The above image is how I've interpreted sticky traffic vs. spiky traffic to louisgray.com in the last year-plus. Do you have any comments or insight? Am I off the mark, or have you seen similar behavior? Please let me know, and feel free to use the image yourself. Links back are always appreciated.

Also on this topic: Chris Brogan: Scoble Effect Better Than Digg and Search Engine Land: December 2006 Statistics Review

Use Your Blog To Talk To Companies

Most companies would prefer that if you have questions or comments regarding their service, you would send them a nice e-mail to their support staff, or post it to a company-sanctioned, moderated forum. But as we all know, sending e-mail to busy support people can be a guessing game as to how long you'll wait to get a response, if you hit the right person, or if they will answer your question at all. I've found the absolute fastest, sure-fire way to talk directly with people at Web-aware services is through the blog.

Blogs are the future of company to customer communications. Those companies that allow the highest transparency to customers to management or rank and file employees will win the much sought after "hearts and minds of the people." It's already worked on me a number of times in the last few months, with small companies like Technorati and LinkedIn to larger companies like Google and Yahoo! subsidiary MyBlogLog, as you might have seen over the last few days.

Google Reader Example:

In March of 2007, I listed ten improvements I hoped to see from my RSS go-to destination, Google Reader.

A little more than a day later, Google responded, with Mihai Parparita, an Engineer working on Google Reader, writing in the coments, "Funnily enough, the Reader team just had a big all-day brainstorming session about where to go next, and ideas similar to many of your suggestions were discussed."

I've since been told that the post is occasionally referenced within Google and helps add signal to the noise of user feature demands. Though I was initially nervous they would take my suggestions the wrong way, I am glad they recognized I was and remain quite positive on the service.

LinkedIn Example:

Later that month, I offered similar suggestions for LinkedIn, the leading business-focused social network. Steve Ganz, of LinkedIn, later wrote to let me know that some of the suggestions had just been implemented, and more were to come! As he kindly wrote, "These are all great ideas. Thanks so much for the great feedback, Louis! Stay tuned."

Technorati Examples:

Despite Technorati's occasional issues and recent management changes, I enjoy the service. But the downtime can make users weary. In June, I noted another outage, and not too much longer after my post, Ian Kallen wrote to say "We're bringing our systems back online now".

In April, I was eagerly awaiting the new issue of Technorati's popular state of the Web and openly speculated it was imminent. Then-CEO David Sifry took time from his busy schedule to say "LOL, keep your eyes on the blog.", and later returned, after 2:30 a.m. to say "The new State of the Live Web is now up!", which was very cool.

And that leaves one more, for now:

MyBlogLog Example:

On Monday, I discussed what the future of MyBlogLog would be after their acquisition by Yahoo!. While I wasn't overly glowing in my comments, two MyBlogLog employees offered their comments, with Ian Kennedy first saying "We're alive and well thanks and have been busy...", and later, Robyn Tippins coming back, offering thanks for the comments, and unexpectedly, a free Pro account! Of course, I recognize I'm being wooed, but I can take it. Now I'll have an even better chance to look into MyBlogLog's services and can speak more directly to what they're doing well and how they could continue to improve.

Not every company comes by when I make comments. Apple doesn't, and likely won't. Microsoft hasn't yet, and neither has TiVo. That could be due to internal policies on communication, PR, customer service and blogging, or they aren't as in tune to the Web's power to connect customers with companies. I appreciate the extra effort taken from Google Reader, LinkedIn, MyBlogLog, and Technorati to talk to me directly and openly as individuals, and outside of the corporate firewall. I look forward to more, and encourage the rest of you bloggers to be comfortable in analyzing what you use every day and thinking aloud about how you could make change and make a difference.

Who Me? Featured in a Podcast?

In a world where total page views don't amount for much, and spikes of unique visitors from Digg, StumbleUpon or Slashdot can be gone in an instant, there's something to be said for the more "squishy" metrics, like how many comments a post received, or whether bloggers found your work interesting enough to link to. Out of the ashes of Web 1.0's eyeball-oriented metrics came the rise of Google's PageRank, and Technorati Authority, as well as other, rarely useful sites, like Alexa.

If a comment to a post carries a certain amount of weight, it's safely assumed that a link carries more weight, as it potentially drives new visitors your way. With that said, how many links does a podcast count as? That's the amusing conundrum I've hit after hearing WinExtra's Steven Hodson's soliloquy on Web services Last.fm and MyBlogLog, in large part spurred by discussions here over the last week or so. It's odd enough finally putting a voice to a person whom I've traded comments and e-mails with over the last few months, and even odder still to hear my name mentioned as provoking thoughts on where these services are headed.

(Download the Podcast Here)

Steven wasn't the only one who sent links this way today. The MyBlogLog story was captured in Robert Scoble's Link Blog, which always leads to a short-term spurt in visitors from Twitter, and these days, Facebook. Later, the surprisingly popular blog "Grow a Brain" caught up to a post on how your blog is your brand, from earlier this month.

Meanwhile, Kent Newsome rounded up his ninth edition of the Swivel Feeds, in his one-man battle to test the limits of his RSS feed reader. This week's additions included names I had provided, from the aforementioned WinExtra, to ParisLemon, Ken Jennings, Yuvi Panda and Ben Rockwood.

We'll have our peaks and valleys in this whole blogging exercise, but it's nice to be noticed.

What Is the Future Of MyBlogLog?

MyBlogLog offers an interesting service for bloggers aiming to find out who visits their pages, who is part of their blog's community, and also offers a directory service aimed to finding you new blogs to add to your own reading list.

In January, Yahoo! purchased MyBlogLog for $10 million, after months of speculation the site was for sale. Since that time, we haven't heard much. The company's blog shows the development team moved to Yahoo! in the middle of this year, despite some defections, and is looking to expand.

(Oddly enough, the site's e-mail listed for new target hires was the same gentleman who shortly thereafter wrote he was "pulling up stakes" and leaving, which doesn't bode well. But as we know, luckily, a service usually isn't one person deep.)

The biggest innovations from MyBlogLog this summer were the introduction of "Community Messaging", where a site owner could "blast" community members with a message directly to their own MyBlogLog pages, to alert them of news, poll them or simply gain feedback; the introduction of extensive tagging, and continued to work on efforts to weed out spam across the service.

I use MyBlogLog as a widget on this blog to see faces of visitors I know well, and I use my own MyBlogLog page to track site visit statistics, and to watch any day to day additions to the louisgray.com community, a small, but loyal, group. While I enjoy the service, I believe I'm either not using MyBlogLog to its fullest potential, or hope the service has many more updates to soon debut to keep it on the cutting edge.

First, I hope the service can recognize what it is not. It is not a social network, like Facebook. While they've erred on that side before, with the addition of Twitter status updates, for example, MyBlogLog is exactly what its name implies - it is My Blog's Log, not My Personal Log. As a result, the site should focus on information relevant to the blog as an entity - including statistics of visitors, and individuals, as well as most frequently read pages, most common incoming and outgoing links, as it does today.

Second, I hope it can focus. If it's to become one of my go-to site statistics hubs, it should have more than just one day's data available at one time, but should instead show trends for daily visits, pages, and even visitors. If it can track an individual in my community came to my page, there's no reason it can't flip on the Big Brother switch and show me how many times that one individual visited my site in the last 7, 30 or 90 days. In theory, MyBlogLog is tracking more data than does SiteMeter and even Google Analytics, and is sitting on a gold mine for individual bloggers here.

Third, as MyBlogLog shows me who is a member of my community, and has the option to show me what additional communities those members are part of, in theory, MyBlogLog could say, for instance, "You and Geekwhat have three communities in common," or taking it a step further, the site could show me who else out there shares many of my own communities. If I am a member of 34 communities, and ParisLemon is a member of 27 of those (I made that up), then those communities we don't share just might be of interest to the other. Using this theoretical search tool, I could also be able to find new people who just might be interested in louisgray.com and have the option to leave them a private message invitation.

MyBlogLog is an interesting service today. It could become a great service tomorrow, with just a few tweaks. Right now, given the site's gaining a bad name for spammers and faux IDs, combined with its low profile after the Yahoo! acquisition, I get the feeling they've stalled momentum. Is the service planning to expand to the fore, as it could, or instead, will it be folded into the Yahoo! behemoth, never to escape? Many bloggers await the answer.

(This post also will be sent to the louisgray.com community as a trial run of that service)

To join the louisgray.com community, click here. To join MyBlogLog, visit their site.