I've Taken a New Advisory Role With SocialToo

One of the most fun and rewarding byproducts of operating this blog has been to connect with entrepreneurs looking to improve their product and gain early feedback. Sometimes, I can help by doing more than just spreading the word about services I like, but get the opportunity to take time to suggest new product features, point out what I consider to be flaws, and suggest how they can better adjust to address competitors. In the majority of cases, this takes place ad hoc via e-mail or phone. In rarer cases still, I find a working relationship with an individual and the product such that we both find our cooperation mutually beneficial and have taken the next step to make it formal.

As I discussed and disclosed back In August, one of those roles was when I became an advisor to ReadBurner. Tonight, I wanted to update you and let you know I have also taken a similar role with SocialToo, which Jesse Stay, a contributor to this site, and the service's CEO, calls "your companion to the Social Web."

Since first learning of SocialToo this summer, and using it for several months, I have become very interested not just in what the product does today - primarily helping to quietly manage your Twitter account in the background, and to deliver social surveys to friends on multiple social networks, but also in a few potential directions I saw as next steps for the product.

Without Jesse's prompting, in November, I sent him a detailed outline of a new product derivative of SocialToo, which I would believe will fulfill a still-unanswered gap in the social networking space. Jesse, having significant experience coding programs for not just Twitter, but Identica and Facebook as well, seemed like the logical partner for some of my ideas. Jesse and I have since talked many times in regards to how I think his service can take the leap from obscurity to being more robust and visible, as it grows in capability and users.

As with the ReadBurner relationship, I aim to continue being transparent with you and other developers who believe they might be competitors to or partners with SocialToo in some way. And while I may be more closely tied with Jesse and the service going forward, helping to impact and review the product's roadmap, I expect to be even more critical than before, sometimes behind the scenes, and sometimes publicly, as I have with ReadBurner. I will also update my about page to reflect the relationship.

As a side note, do I expect to quit my day job and fill my LinkedIn profile with scads of advisory roles, although some of you noted the addition of SocialToo to the list over the weekend? No. But when opportunities arise to help build new companies and services that will help the Web and sound like something I want in a big way, I am more than eager to make my time available. Additionally, the relationship with SocialToo should not have any impact on Jesse's postings here. Jesse for the better part of four months has covered those topics he finds interesting, and will continue to do so. And when it makes sense that he disclose his SocialToo position, he will do so.

To learn more about SocialToo as it stands today, go to www.socialtoo.com. Jesse Stay's personal blog can be found at: www.staynalive.com.

Arrington? Le Meur? Scoble? Everybody's Right About "Authority".

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

This weekend's blog flareup on whether Twitter should track the "authority" of a user, based primarily on the number of followers, has a number of people up in arms. One side says it makes sense. After all, Technorati and Google have always tracked influence. Others say the following number can be easily manipulated, and has no weight. First of all, before we address the issues, why am I writing this on LouisGray.com and not my own blog, StayNAlive.com?  It largely comes down to numbers.  LouisGray.com has near 4,000 RSS subscribers, while my blog only has 500.  Aside from the fact that I enjoy the team of great writers I work with on this blog, I have a much louder, and because of that, more authoritative, voice here.  More people listen with a larger audience than those with a small audience.  And like it or not, all bloggers trying to compete play the numbers game - that's simple marketing.

Background

Recently Loic Le Meur wrote a post, suggesting that Twitter Search sort their results by most popular on Twitter.  So, for example, if Robert Scoble has more followers than Michael Arrington, Scoble's posts will appear higher than Arrington's in the search results.  Scoble responded with a blog post suggesting Lemeur was wrong, saying that the number of people you follow is more important than those who follow you.  Today, Arrington reignited the flames with another follow-on post, supporting Le Meur, effectively saying the controversy was much ado about little, that it wasn't a separation from the haves and have nots, but instead, a simple recommendation to add to Twitter search.

So we have two business men, trying to find more readers and users to build revenue for their businesses (Arrington runs a content business, TechCrunch.com, while Le Meur runs a Video publishing service, Seesmic).  At the same time we have a video blogger, Robert Scoble, trying to find new content, which in turn generates revenue for the business he works for by building unique content.  He's very good at that, but They're both right.

Of course Arrington and Le Meur want more followers, and preference placed on followers - they benefit by doing so.  Their experience, as businessmen trying to generate revenue for their business, shows that more followers can both directly and indirectly translate into revenue for the businesses they own and run.  Arrington, after today's article, will generate even more readers of his blog because of the discussion going on about this on Twitter and FriendFeed.  That converts to more followers, which in turn sends them back to TechCrunch.com.

If I launch a new feature for SocialToo.com (Disclosure - I am CEO and co-founder of SocialToo.com, a service that, among many other features, enables you to auto-follow those that follow you on Twitter and other networks.), I have 4,000 followers I can now announce that to.  A year ago, when I was only at a few hundred, that announcement would not have made anywhere near an impact.  Now, with a sound business model, I have the potential to convert many more users to drive both traffic and revenue to the service.  The same goes with Arrington and TechCrunch, and Le Meur and Seesmic.  They're smart businessmen.  Notice Guy Kawasaki, another smart businessman said the same thing.

At the same time, it makes complete sense that Scoble places his value on the people he follows. Scoble's value is in the information he learns.  It's a sound strategy for a journalist, a PR professional, or a blogger.  After all, I met Scoble through following him on Twitter and FriendFeed (in person even!).  I also met Guy Kawasaki by following him on Twitter, as did I Chris Pirillo, and following the Tweets of the two of them was the premise behind me starting SocialToo.com.  There is value in that as well.  Scoble, and others can be experts, because of the people they follow - that is powerful.  It should also be noted that Scoble has a lot of followers because of this strategy.  This really is a "Chicken or the Egg" argument!

Social Networking is About the Experience for the Individual

The power of Social Networking is that it allows each individual to develop their own personalized experience on the web.  By the people they follow, they get the content they want.  By the people that follow them, they are given a voice outside of that personal world.  Scoble is right - you are defined by the people you follow.  I've talked about that here before - relationships define the individual.

However, a relationship is a two-way connection.  In the end it's those that follow you that can vouch for who you are, and what type of person they perceive you as.  If anyone were to steal my identity, I now have 4,000 people that can vouch it's the real me.  Of course there are ways around this, but it's still a form of identity, and will solidify even more as technology evolves.

I am a smarter person because of the people I follow - I've mentioned before that I separate those I pay attention to from those I follow.  That's how I follow smart people.  At the same time, I can ask any question now, and get multiple answers to that question from my 4,000+ followers.  I couldn't do that when I had only a few hundred.  I'm also smarter because of the people the follow me!  The people that follow me are very valuable, and make me a more authoritative source, just as the people I follow do.

I really don't think there is any right or wrong answer here.  I think Scoble, Arrington, and Lemeur are all right - it's important to follow smart people, yet at the same time your followers are just as important.  I don't think either one is any more valuable than the other on a general level - it varies on a person-to-person experience, and that is why you see them arguing over it.  That's the amazing thing behind Social Networking - there is no right or wrong answer because each individual can define their own!

In a perfect world, Twitter Search would provide multiple filters, some based on followers, some based on people you follow, some based on the number of people you converse with directly in your network of friends and followers.  The more personalized that search becomes, the more valuable it becomes to the individual.  "Authority" is determined by the individual.  Don't let anyone else tell you otherwise.

Read more by Jesse Stay at Stay N' Alive.

10 Top New Web Services of 2008 and Their 2009 Forecast

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

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

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

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

1) Summize (Twitter Search)

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

Expected Exit: Acquired - Already Complete

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

2) Socialmedian

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

Expected Exit: Acquisition by First Quarter of 2009

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

3) BackType

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

Expected Exit: Acquisition in Second Half of 2009

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

4) TweetDeck

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

Expected Exit: Remaining Independent through end of 2009

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

5) Strands

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

Expected Exit: Remaining Independent through end of 2009.

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

6) ReadBurner

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

* Not Listing an Expected Exit Due to Assumed Bias *

7) Feedly

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

Expected Exit: None

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

8) Gnip

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

Expected Exit: Acquisiton by end of 2009

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

9) Toluu

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

Expected Exit: None

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

10) SocialToo

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

Expected Exit: Remaining Independent through end of 2009.

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

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

Survey Says: Twitter is About Relationships

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

In a post by Guy Kawasaki recently, he suggested that most Twitter users wanted more followers, and if they weren't, they were lying.  The concept is simple - the more people following you, the more people you have in your network, and the more powerful Twitter becomes for each individual.  I wanted to dive deeper into this so I posted a SocialSurvey on SocialToo.com (my startup), asking why users use Twitter, forcing them to pick just one reason.  The results were interesting.  Here's what I found.  

In answer to the question, "Why do you use Twitter?"

• 5 said they use it to communicate with friends
• 19 said they use it as a networking tool
• 2 said they use it to know what others are doing
• 1 said he/she was addicted (Admittance is the first step, isn't it?)
• 4 said it was part of their job
• 11 said it was to know what others are saying
• 3 use it as a journal
• 4 use it to post announcements
• Only 1 uses it primarily to promote their brand

So, out of a sample of 50 people, over half of them use it either to network (aka get to know new people), or to know what others are saying.  Based on this survey, most people are on Twitter to follow or be followed.  They're in it to meet people.  It's about the relationships and building relationships between people.  Amazingly, business was not near the top of people's minds when it comes to Twitter.

Per the survey, only 1 person uses Twitter to promote their brand as their primary means of being on Twitter.  To me this presents an opportunity.  If such a minority are on Twitter focusing on promoting brands, and there are so many linked relationships, why not figure out how to utilize the existing relationships on Twitter to promote your brand?  Why not be one of the first doing this?

Guy Kawasaki is a genius at this - with his AllTop brand he is getting those fans of AllTop to be the promoters to their own followers.  The old saying goes, "Give a man a fish, feed him for a day", "Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime", but "Teach a man to teach others how to fish, and you'll feed a multitude".  Guy is doing exactly that, by enabling others to do the spreading of the word for him - therefore they are going to be more than willing to take one relationship (them and Guy or them and AllTop), and introduce it to the other relationships they have already established in a respectful way.  Guy isn't forcing this on anyone.  Instead, he's enabling his followers to find ways to present it to their own network of friends.  He's even built out an e-mail list around this cause.

As a business, you have a unique opportunity with Twitter.  There are so many relationships out there - your task is to now figure out how you can get your brand between those relationships.  Social media is about connections - it's about the relationships, no longer just the individuals, and your brand needs to be on the link between those individuals to have the most powerful influence.

Read more by Jesse Stay at Stay N' Alive.

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

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

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

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

It's About Relationships

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

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

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

You can have the best of both worlds!

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

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

Here's how you can do it:

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

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

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

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

Read more by Jesse Stay at Stay N' Alive.

15 Tools for Your Twitter Toolbox

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

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

1) Twuffer



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

2) Twistory


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


3) Tweetake


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


4) TweetStats


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


5) TwitterCounter


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

6) TweetCloud


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


7) TwitterLocal


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


8) Tweetburner


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


9) TwitStamp


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


10) Qwitter


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

11) Twinfluence

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

12) Less Friends


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

13) Twitturls

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

14) iTweet


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

15) Twidroid


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

Read more by Mike Fruchter at MichaelFruchter.com.

SocialToo Launches SocialSurveys for Polling Via Twitter

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

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

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

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

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


How SocialSurveys Appear to Visitors

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

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