TweetStats Upgrades Twitter Timing Graphs

TweetStats is a great graphical way to see trends in how often you're sending notes on Twitter, which days you're most often hanging out in the Twitterverse, and what hours are most likely to see you active than others. On Thursday, TweetStats reloaded with an feature which combines daily "tweets" with hourly "tweets", giving new insight into whether you blog from the office during your 9-5, or if you're more of a Twitter weekend warrior.

Taking a look at my own statistics, at http://tweetstats.com/graphs/louisgray, a few trends are noticeable:


1) I am using Twitter on an increasing basis. While I only averaged about 2.5 Twitter updates a day in February, that number increased to over 3 in March, and more than 4 in April. After 10 days in May, I've reached 50, making that new ratio 5 a day.


2) There are a few gaps in my Twittering behavior. The first is a near-consistent hole from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. every day, with the exception of Sunday, when it looks like I just might have something to say around 3 a.m. on some nights. The other gap is a near-emptiness during the workweek between 9 and 5, with occasional activity.

3) I use Twitter @replies for just over a third of my updates, with Robert Scoble getting 12, almost twice that of Cyndy of Profy and Frederic of The Last Podcast, who follow with 7 and 6, respectively.

While TweetStats is not new, the new graph of "Aggregate Hourly Tweets" is new, and interesting, updated for the user's local time zone. As my Twitter activity accumulates, mindful of avoiding an increase in my Twitter Noise ratio, I wonder if the patterns will remain the same. If you're curious as to your TweetStats, go to www.tweetstats.com. You can even put in any Twitter ID you wish and pull their data.

Web Service Notifications Outnumber Live Bodies In My E-Mail

E-mail used to be about connecting people, regardless of distance. With time, it developed new capabilities - sending attachments of ever greater size, acting as a marketing vehicle, both solicited and otherwise (see: Spam), displaying pictures and HTML, and of course, serving as a repository for status notifications for commerce, news, and social media. Now, there's no question for me that updates from online services greatly outnumber the amount of person to person communication I get each day in my personal e-mail. (Work e-mail, of course, is another story)

For me, e-mail is where I want to be updated for all things finance, be it bank statements, credit card invoices, stock trade transactions, or the electricity and cell phone bills. As I see it, every e-mail note there saves paper, and saves me digging through the mail to sign something off and send a check.

I also, despite getting them at an increasing rate over the last few months, still get notifications by e-mail when somebody chooses to follow me on FriendFeed, LinkRiver, Shyftr or Twitter, for starters. I also get notified if someone befriends me on other services, like Facebook and Digg. At times, especially when a particular topic is driving up conversation, I can hear the sounds of new e-mail hitting my computer every couple minutes, invariably drawing a sarcastic comment from my wife, who helpfully adds, "Well, aren't you popular?"


Twitter and FriendFeed follows come in pretty often these days...
While I could, of course, turn off these notifications, it helps to see if the person following is someone I'll be soon watching in turn, and it also alerts me to if I'm getting name-dropped somewhere. Usually, a quick visit to Summize or Google Blog Search can help with that.

Curious if others using Web services as I do were seeing a similar onslaught of Web notifications taking over their in box, I posted a question to Twitter, which also hit FriendFeed. So far, the response is certainly mixed.

Susan Beebe claimed 85% of her e-mail to be from "real people", but otherwise, the FriendFeed voting came out 16-2 in favor of services, while Twitter replies also came out with services ahead, 6 to 1. Bwana McCall wrote, "I get more Bacn than real email. It's sad.", while Hutch Carpenter said it simply, "Notifications by far."

While many people are fighting with the e-mail data deluge, striving for the proverbial "In Box Zero", handling online notifications is like any other system. You just need some good hierarchy. I've set up a folder called "Blog" in my e-mail for all correspondence related to the blog, from people pitching stories, to working with entrepreneurs and other bloggers. I have subfolders for some of the services where I've had the most updates, and of course, for real-world work, I have a "Commerce" folder, which surprisingly, has all my stock trade notifications from eTrade going back to the year 2000, and every Amazon.com order ever. Thank goodness for e-mail search, something Apple's Mail program does extremely well.

While robots may have taken over the inbound side of my e-mail, I still own the outbound side, and take every effort I can to keep up. But the mix has definitely changed.

Content Filters Proving Evasive for RSS, Social Media Sites

Whether it be RSS feeds, social networks, or one of the many social media aggregation sites, it's no surprise that even your closest peers are sharing data they care about that you just don't. But so far, despite many users calling for content-based filters, solutions to block keywords or topics are missing from the vast majority of information spigots. In fact, I can't think of a single one I use that's gotten the formula right.

Not to overly repeat myself, but one of the major hopes I had for Google Reader last year was that they would add what I called "Negative Keywords", which would let me block specific posts from people I had subscribed to, be they off-topic posts on politics, family and sports, arrays of links from del.icio.us, or their latest cause du jour.

As the 2008 election season is heating up, it's no surprise that even the most geeky of tech news sources are starting to give some coverage to Obama vs. Clinton or Obama vs. McCain, and it will only increase over time. If I so chose, why couldn't I ask Twitter or Google Reader or FriendFeed to preemptively hide updates that included keywords like "Clinton", "Obama" or "McCain"? Today, I can't do that in any of those services, so far as I know.

Taking things further, I've also at times been tantalized by the idea of a "nuclear option" for the Web, where if I so chose, I could eradicate the mentioning of a keyword of any kind from all activity.

On Wednesday, Robert Scoble said “I wish when you blocked someone on Twitter they disappeared from Google Talk too.” Makes sense. But what if you had a button that not only blocked the person, but also, any mention of the person, from all social media services, by using their own name as the negative keyword? What if they were even automatically filtered out of Google searches, blocked just like profanity and pornography are from decency filters?

Google Reader hasn't yet debuted negative keywords. So Mahalo fans still get updates on Jason Calacanis' bulldogs and "fatblogging" and followers of this blog will still get summaries of Oakland A's games I attend. While I can always unsubscribe from somebody, there's got to be a safer middle ground in the social media and RSS space that lets me get the content I'm looking for, and not the content I'm not. Do you know of a service that's got negative keywords nailed?

The Social Media Feature War is the Wrong War

I've seen a lot of social media tools and aggregators. A good number of them are designed very well, and could be great tools, provided a swarm of early adopters, and then later, late adopters, showed up. Some of them trumpet just how many different services are supported, and use that as a rallying cry for why one site should be ditched for another. But it's the wrong approach. For while they may have been working on making fancier widgets and supporting yet another niche service, others have been building a foundation for community, making them the clear winners.

Examples of this are everywhere, but the most blatant examples that come to my mind are those of Twitter and FriendFeed. I could also make examples for LinkedIn and Facebook, but that's another post at another time.

Twitter has been roundly scorned for its occasional inaccessibility, costing users about 1 percent downtime over the last four months, according to Pingdom. While serviceable alternatives exist, in Pownce and Jaiku, for starters, those who have invested time in building up their Twitter community, including followers, those they follow, and an archive of "tweets" aren't going to leave, even if Jaiku and Pownce deliver 100% uptime, and manage to add features that Twitter simply doesn't match. Twitter has become more than a microblogging mechanism, but a serious community.

This was very clearly illustrated by Michael Arrington's piece on TechCrunch: "Twitter May Not Have To Care About Uptime Any Longer" last month, when he said, "after a three day weekend outage I realized that in the last two months a subtle shift occured: I now need Twitter more than Twitter needs me."

The same could be said for the lifestreaming and aggregation space.

On the Elite Tech News podcast this last week, the conversation turned to FriendFeed, and whether or not it had a GUI that would be welcomed by non early adopters. After suggesting Kevin Fox had big plans to upgrade the service, I also said it would take a lot more than a shiny new interface on another aggregator to get me to move. And it would take a lot more than bells and whistles, because in the last seven months of FriendFeed being in service, the site has developed many different sub-communities which make engaging and participating both fun and informative.

In order for me to leave FriendFeed for another service, be it Profilactic, SocialThing, Iminta or Plaxo, it would take the entire community shifting at once.

But that doesn't stop some social media sites from arguing it's all about the features. Take a blog post from Profilactic that compares its service with that of FriendFeed. The author writes, "FriendFeed supports 28 social sites. Profilactic supports 155. Not much else to say there."

And while time has passed, and both services have added more supported external sites, the author's summary, reading, "Profilactic supports 127 more sites than FriendFeed. We allow you to filter out your friends' feeds that you don't want to see. We give you features that FriendFeed doesn't offer like Clippings. And we allow you to take it all with you with badges," just doesn't give enough of a compelling argument, especially when it pertains to communities.

The gap between FriendFeed and Twitter and other sites who haven't yet gotten off the ground is going to make it incredibly difficult for alternatives to make headway, even if they do end up having more features, a prettier UI, or greater uptime. This is in part why I first highlighted the many tech bloggers flocking to FriendFeed, and why FriendFeed co-founder Paul Buchheit has on separate occasions said, “Great products are more than just a pile of features” and that “FriendFeed has personal communities”. FriendFeed gets that the site isn't about a pile of features, but it's about the users. Once a community is built, they will rally around a service, and become extremely loyal, even if another option is shinier or louder.

Participate. Participate. Participate. Repeat.

Some of the most confused buzzwords in Web 2.0 are those of aggregation and lifestreaming.

As evidenced by the many different sites that have debuted offering a single location for differing online activities, harnessing together RSS feeds from Web services and presenting them as one, delivering a base foundation for aggregation is not all that hard.

Plaxo did it. Profilactic did it. Iminta did it. Socialthing did it. FriendFeed did it. Facebook is starting to do it.

But simple aggregation is not enough. What FriendFeed got right very early on in the game is that it's one thing to get all the services in one page, and quite another to make them interactive, so friends can talk to friends and peers can show peers what they like. Back in November, I wrote, "I first became interested in FriendFeed as the service could aggregate friends' Web activity in a single place. But in recent weeks, it's grown to be much more."

FriendFeed became more because of two things: participation and discovery.

FriendFeed let me respond and interact with the services my friends were sharing. It also allowed me to discover new services, new friends and new sources for information. Through FriendFeed, I've found new blogs to read, found new online social circles, and engaged in real-time with people who are completely unreachable, even by e-mail or Twitter.

Now, as the early adopter crowd has found the FriendFeed religion, despite the occasional grumpy holdout, they're now finding that the real potential in FriendFeed, as with other Web services, comes through participation. It's one thing to passively aggregate your online activity in a single place, and quite another to thoughtfully add comments and like items you find interesting, and think your friends will. Robert Scoble, now as prominent a FriendFeed advocate as I ever have been, has highlighted this factor in The really interesting FriendFeed page to watch tonight, where he notes FriendFeed has set up separate "discussion" pages that aggregate comments and likes. (His | Mine)

Google Reader became the leading RSS feed reader for me not just because it was a strong, quick, offering, but because of the shared link items blog. Twitter is actually useful due to tracking of @Replies and the ability to see others streams intermingled. But to sign up to any of these services to broadcast, and not to participate, shortchanges the process.

There's a reason I've made more than 1,200 comments in FriendFeed since signing up in October, and why I've "Liked" almost 700 different items. It's not because I have a bot set up to do my dirty work. It's because it helps both those I follow, and those who follow me. Take away that participation, and FriendFeed becomes as quiet as a library, and just about as exciting.

So if you're not quite sure where to start with FriendFeed, with Google Reader, with Twitter or any other social network, get started and participate. That'll make all the difference.

The StatBot Launches to Analyze Blog and Web Trends, Statistics

Yuvi Panda, a 17-year-old technology whiz kid from India, has been behind detailed analysis of many high-profile blogs, including Engadget, Robert Scoble, Raymond Chen, Techmeme, Digg, TechCrunch and Matt Cutts. Last month, we connected, and he did me the great favor of looking at louisgray.com, helping me gain more insight into my links, trends and topics.

Now, Yuvi is ready to take what's been a hobby and open it up as a service, for those looking to get custom analysis of their site or other social communities, including Twitter, Flickr, or FriendFeed. Today, "The StatBot" launches, promising a new, statistical look at Web communities including Slashdot, Fark, Engadget, Wikipedia and Firefox. As Yuvi promises on the StatBot site, "The list is endless. Wherever there is a community, I’ll measure it."

First to debut under The StatBot microscope is Robert Scoble's Twitter account.


TheStatBot shows Robert's Tweet Pace Is Increasing
Through April 27th of 2008, The StatBot looked at 10,598 tweets from http://twitter.com/scobleizer, spanning 523 days, and comprising 175,543 words, with more than a million characters.

The StatBot shows Robert has already posted almost 5,000 Tweets in 2008, double his historical average. And he's erratic - at times posting hundreds of individual messages a day, and then during lulls, posting less than 10. Robert uses @Replies from Twitter for nearly two out of every three messages, and has sent @replies to more than 2,200 Twitterers, lending more support for my hypothesis last week that a great deal of Scoble's activity was borne due to the high number of people he is following.

This type of fun and interesting analysis is now no longer at his whim, for us to wonder about how reports could look if we just had the time. With the launch of The StatBot, you can now work directly with Yuvi to have him analyze your blog, and your online activity, or to drop a note into his suggestion box.

And with today's note, Yuvi does more than pick apart the world's most well-known Tweeter. He hints at greater things to come. He expects to debut new reports every two days for the next few weeks, and adds a teaser at the end of his first post.

When Yuvi picked apart my site last month, Eric Berlin wrote, "What a great analysis. An automated service that produced this level of detail would go like hotcakes round the blogosphere." Well, it's here, and it has a name: The StatBot. Check out The StatBot at www.thestatbot.com or follow it on Twitter here: twitter.com/thestatbot.

More Noise About Twitter Noise

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

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

BroadStuff: Aspects of Ratios - Noises, Signals and Friendliness

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

Sweet!: Talking loudly on Twitter

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

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

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

Dave Winer: Twitter Spewage among Dave Winer's contacts

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

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

DCortesi: Twitter Reputation Statistics

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

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

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

Sarah In Tampa: Another Way to Classify Twitter Users

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

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

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

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

My Social Media Consumption Workflow

Amidst watching some talk about how they are reducing time in Google Reader due to information overload, or switching away from one service for another, whether due to its features, the friends, the noise or the content, I've been thinking a bit about how I consume social media, and specifically, the order of how I do it, to be sure I've caught up on everything quickly.

There's no question the amount of information I consume can be daunting. Glancing quickly, as of this morning:

1) I have 270 RSS subscriptions in Google Reader, sending between 500 and 800 items a day.
2) I follow 490 Twitter users.
3) I am subscribed to 269 FriendFeed users.
4) I have 210 Facebook "friends".

On the back of all this information coming this direction, I am pushing out information:

1) Posting one or two items here daily (1,300 so far)
2) Updating people on Twitter (334 updates so far)
3) Comments and Likes on FriendFeed (1,135 and 643 respectively)

In addition, there are a number of ways to engage and act on the data.

1) Adding bookmarks to Del.icio.us (630 so far)
2) Tracking activity via Technorati and Google Blog Search
3) Tracking comments here and elsewhere via Disqus
4) Trading e-mail with readers, entrepreneurs and peers

Add the above to a way a typical non-robot views the Web, including viewing news, sports and entertainment, not to mention everything to go with work and family obligations, and it can be hard to know where to start. While there's no question I'll vary from this process from time to time, below is a good idea of how I start the day in social media.


1) It always starts with e-mail. E-mail helps me know what's actionable. From e-mail, I can find out and act on:
a) New Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook connections
b) Direct Messages from Twitter
c) New comments on the blog via Disqus
d) If Google Blog Search has uncovered references to the blog
e) If there are conversations about upcoming posts or new services to check out.

When e-mail activity is completed, I open the Web browser. While FriendFeed is my home page, I usually leave it on the first visit of the day, and head to Google Reader, to rapidly consume the Web.

2) Reading Google Reader, I can catch up on the night's blog posts, add items to my link blog, or open posts in a new tab to bookmark or comment.

3) I'll open Twitter and do a quick scan of the first few pages of "tweets" from those I'm following to see what the discussions of the day are. I'll also check the replies tab to see if anybody tried to send me a message where action is required.

4) I head to FriendFeed.

Why is FriendFeed last in this order? It's because unlike the first three, which feel like work, where there is an action that needs to take place, or a task that needs clearing, FriendFeed is more like the finish line, where I can finally relax and engage with peers. I don't necessarily want to be rushed when I'm on FriendFeed, but can take time to see what others have done throughout the Web, make comments and respond to others who have commented on my own activity.

Also, visiting FriendFeed last here means that my feed is "properly" filled, with shared items from Google Reader, bookmarked items from Del.icio.us, any updates on Twitter, etc.

5) Additional activity

All other social media activity is optional, and comes when it makes sense. That would include:
a) Submitting items to the Elite News Tech Reddit
b) Digging items from the Upcoming list of Digg's Technology section
c) Visiting Shyftr and posting comments or responding to conversations.
d) Seeing what's popular on LinkRiver, ReadBurner or RSSMeme.
e) Checking trends and news on TechMeme and the TechMeme River.

Everybody has their own route to how they consume and act upon social media. This is how I tend to do it, so I feel I'm on top of things. Am I doing it wrong? How do you go about your social media workday?

Disqus' Excellent Customer Service Enables Comments Integration

Disqus is seeing a meteoric rise as the default comments management system for the Web, enabling bloggers to deliver threaded comments, and track their own commenting activity throughout the blogosphere. Recently, Disqus has made a lot of headway through integration with popular social networking tools, including RSSMeme, ReadBurner, Fav.or.it and Plaxo.

But while I had tried earlier this month to get Disqus up and running, the way I use Blogger, with a customized template, along with FTP publishing to louisgray.com, got in my way. But overnight, with some incredible help from Disqus' Daniel Ha, the site now features Disqus comments for all posts, without losing the existing comments from previous conversations.

Disqus is designed to offer bloggers simple installation, be they on Wordpress, Blogger or TypePad. But by default, it assumes a user has upgraded to the newest edition of Blogger, featuring greater widget control, customized layouts and templates. As I have made numerous changes to my template in raw HTML, I haven't made this change, and Blogger hasn't made it easy for me to move to the new service, not making it available for FTP-hosted blogs like mine.

So essentially, I thought I would remain Disqus-free, saying so last night on Twitter. But showing incredible awareness, Daniel Ha of Disqus, said "How can we make it easier for you?"

We traded direct messages and e-mail, and he quickly understood the issue, offering to patch it manually.

Daniel came back with his first solution this morning, but that solution wouldn't have displayed old comments, which would be a showstopper for me, so I balked, asked for him to keep working on it, and again, he said he'd give it a shot. He wrote, "I will take a look into how to display the comments for older articles and let you know ASAP."

Just seven minutes later, he sent me an updated template, which now lets all blog entries, such as this one, use Disqus for comments. And all previous posts will also display Disqus comments, underneath existing conversations. At the moment, this change makes it look like the posts don't have existing comments, but they do, and over time, the Disqus comments will populate the data here, instead of Blogger's comments.

If Daniel hadn't been listening, and willing to give my "corner case" some real effort on a Saturday morning, we wouldn't have been able to get Disqus up and running. This is a great example of next-generation customer service, and engaging. Of course, if you see any oddities related to the new Disqus usage on louisgray.com, please do let me know. I'm listening, and so is Daniel...

You Can Only Pitch Me In Reverse Polish Notation or Pig Latin

As the world of journalism/old media gets increasingly blurred with bloggers/new media, some of the larger news-breaking bloggers are finding themselves inundated with pitches from companies looking for additional exposure. In an effort for some top bloggers to reduce the total noise sent their way, some are spelling out the right way and the wrong way to pitch them. But for any company looking to make a name for themselves, how can they possibly remember who wants to be communicated how?

Take a look at some of the more high-profile bloggers who have, at one point or another, said there is one approved way to get their attention:

---

Stowe Boyd of /Message writes Via Twitter, "The Only Approved Way To Pitch Me" is via TwitPitch.


On his blog, he writes, in Twitpitch Is The Future, "Companies will be directed to this page to get the idea, and those that try to stick with the bulging email approach will suffer a three-strikes-and-you're-out rule: After three times of being warned, they go into the spam category."

Upside to him: Less e-mail, more clarity on whether something is being sent his way to write about.

Downside to the company: Their pitch is visible to everyone, making it clear they are shilling, and exclusivity is eliminated.

---

Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb says the site gets "piles and piles of pitches for coverage from companies all day long and they almost always come in by email." His recommendation for would-be article subjects would be not to send an e-mail, not to call, not to use Twitter (even Direct Messages), not to use Facebook or Instant Messenger. Instead, he wants you to use RSS!


His idea there is that PR folks should send RSS feeds for client blogs and news releases, so when updates are made to their blogs, he'll see it, at his leisure.

Upside to him: Less e-mail, and the ability to enjoy/actually use Facebook, IM and Twitter without getting pitched.

Downside to the company: No understanding as to whether ReadWriteWeb actually "saw" your pitch, absolutely zero pre-pitching, and zero exclusivity. This way, RWW wouldn't get the news until it was out. In fact, Marshall says this is only for things that are public with no embargo, even pushing people back to e-mail for those.

---

And last year, Robert Scoble famously said Facebook would be "a new kind of press release". In the face of a growing e-mail tsunami, he said Facebook wall messages would be passed to his Nokia phone. He says, "now we have a new way for PR people to let me know about their apps. Write it on the wall please. Facebook: the new press release."

Of course, this only works until every PR person figures it out, and Robert would end up with the same information glut, just moved somewhere else.

Upside to him: Lower e-mail flow and fewer phone calls.

Downside to the company: Not every company uses Facebook or considers it professional. Facebook pitches would get lost amidst others wishing Robert a happy birthday or any other notes, and again, they would lose any chance at exclusivity or an embargo, after pitching in public.

---

So what do we have here, just in these three examples? We have three prominent bloggers with three very highly differentiated, inefficient ways of soliciting engagement with public relations and companies. While it's extremely popular these days to dish on old media journalists and claim print is going the way of the dodo, even the biggest reporters at the high-profile media outlets can still be reached by phone or by e-mail. They're not making you jump through hoops to get their attention.

To me, while its likely bloggers are looking to make their own lives easier, and looking to utilize available technology tools to bring clarity to the process, it looks like a sign of weakness. Can't handle the data glut or the outreach coming your way? Somebody else will. Somebody else with the ability to write as quickly as you can, with the right tone and a big enough audience, who can be reached by e-mail or by cell phone, or by Twitter or Facebook or FriendFeed or anything, will write that article and get that news coverage you miss.

Do you really think companies are going to remember to pitch Marshall at ReadWriteWeb via RSS and Stowe Boyd by TwitPitch and Scoble by Facebook? Knowing PR companies, I know they won't. Most of them still believe in the spray and pray method of e-mailing all contacts under the sun. There needs to be change, but making everybody jump through hoops while losing the personal engagement, exclusivity and timing won't work.

UPDATE: Elliott Ng, in the comments, gives us some good links, including Brian Solis' article on PR 2.0: In Blogger and Media Relations, You Earn the Relationships You Deserve and Rafe Needleman of WebWare complaining on Twitter about being pitched via Plaxo.

What's Your Twitter Noise Ratio?

The many thousands of people who use Twitter do so in wildly different ways. Some use it to deliver minute by minute updates of their daily activity. Others use it to hold conversations with friends and peers using the service. And still, a good percentage of people use Twitter as a broadcast medium to announce items, but not necessarily to engage. Meanwhile, as Twitter has grown, its not uncommon to see people either following, or being followed, by thousands of other users. Some do so reciprocally, while others are more discerning.

I feel there are different categories of Twitter users, from those who have a listening audience, measured by a high "followers" to "updates" ratio, those who are engaging, seen with near equal "followers" and "updates", and those who are more noisy, with a lot more "updates" than actual "followers".

Taking a look at 48 Twitter users I either follow or engage with, I found the average number of "tweets" per "follower" was almost exactly 1, measuring at 1.02. But the ratio of updates to followers varied widely, from the sleepy 0.06 (@om) to the firehose-like 9.75 (@corvida). And surprisingly, those Twitterers best known for creating a lot of noise, like Robert Scoble and Jason Calacanis, were quite in line with their number of followers, measuring in with ratios of 0.50 and 0.18 respectively, making their perceived noise to be in fact, a consequence of their engagement.

Download the Microsoft Excel data file
One of the informal guidelines I've used since opening my Twitter account a little over three months ago was to maintain an updates/followers ratio of less than one. I feel if I "tweet" too often, those following will opt out or gain in annoyance. As of today, my ratio is at 0.49, with 318 updates for 644 followers, putting me on the quiet side in comparison to the others I looked at.


A Twitter "Noise" Chart for 48 Users
(Click for Larger Image)
Of note, this was done by hand, via Excel, without fancy algorithms, so it can be assumed to recognize a point in time from Friday, April 25th.

Twitter's Listeners (Ratio of Updates to Followers of Less than 1)

@om	Noise Ratio: 0.06
@erickschonfeld	Noise Ratio: 0.08
@nbradbury	Noise Ratio: 0.08
@techcrunch	Noise Ratio: 0.11
@jasoncalacanis	Noise Ratio: 0.18
@gaberivera	Noise Ratio: 0.23
@ev	Noise Ratio: 0.25
@louisgray	Noise Ratio: 0.49
@scobleizer	Noise Ratio: 0.50
@dannysullivan	Noise Ratio: 0.79
@gapingvoid	Noise Ratio: 0.90

Twitter's Middle Ground (Ratio of Updates to Followers of 1 to 2.0)

@jowyang	Noise Ratio: 1.03
@tamar	Noise Ratio: 1.14
@loiclemeur	Noise Ratio: 1.16
@adamostrow	Noise Ratio: 1.19
@iankennedy	Noise Ratio: 1.20
@mashable	Noise Ratio: 1.28
@susanmernit	Noise Ratio: 1.31
@nicolesimon	Noise Ratio: 1.52
@elliottng	Noise Ratio: 1.59
@tonyhung	Noise Ratio: 1.67
@calebelston	Noise Ratio: 1.72
@shelisrael	Noise Ratio: 1.81
@ebrage	Noise Ratio: 1.98

Twitter's Conversationalists (Ratio of Updates to Followers of 2.0 to 5.0)

@centernetworks	Noise Ratio: 2.02
@markevans	Noise Ratio: 2.15
@sarahintampa	Noise Ratio: 2.22
@marshallk	Noise Ratio: 2.26
@mariosundar	Noise Ratio: 2.26
@charlieanzman	Noise Ratio: 2.29
@chrisbrogan	Noise Ratio: 2.45
@mathewi	Noise Ratio: 2.50
@mukund	Noise Ratio: 2.77
@rizzn	Noise Ratio: 2.99
@parislemon	Noise Ratio: 3.07
@nickhalstead	Noise Ratio: 3.35
@duncanriley	Noise Ratio: 3.43
@jeffisageek	Noise Ratio: 3.67
@krynsky	Noise Ratio: 4.36
@pkedrosky	Noise Ratio: 4.68
@fredericl	Noise Ratio: 4.95

Twitter's Megaphones (Ratio of Updates to Followers of more than 5.0)

@stevenhodson	Noise Ratio: 5.12
@stephtara	Noise Ratio: 6.42
@bgolub	Noise Ratio: 6.79
@idonotes	Noise Ratio: 7.91
@solacetech	Noise Ratio: 8.50
@fourlittlebees	Noise Ratio: 9.06
@corvida	Noise Ratio: 9.75

This is, of course, a simplistic analysis of a select number of Twitter users. An argument could be made that those with thousands of updates are flat-out noisy, regardless of how many followers they have, but I also believe that being selective in one's tweeting habits can lead to an increasing audience for further conversations. If there's an imbalance between how often somebody is tweeting and how many people are choosing to follow them, it could be the noise has grown too loud.

Have any better examples of odd ratios between total number of Twitter updates and total Twitter followers? With thousands and thousands of users, there's no way this 48-person list gets everybody. What's your Twitter noise ratio?

Facebook Chat Is A Great Addition, Implemented Well

When Facebook's chat functionality debuted at the beginning of the month, I wasn't immediately interested. After all, adding a chatroom-like function to a social network largely comprised of students, family and casual friends isn't exactly a world premiere of revolutionary innovation. But, this evening, it wasn't Twitter or FriendFeed that helped me directly connect to a colleague, but Facebook's chat to the rescue. Its simple design, offering basic functionality, is, in my opinion, a real win for the site.

Now, when logging in to Facebook, a small horizontal bar fills the bottom of the browser window, showing Online Friends and a (#) showing the number who are online at the same time as you and are ready for chat. To start a chat is simple, by clicking the Online Friends tab, click a friend and a small mini-window extends from the chat bar.

This evening, a colleague and I walked through the demo of a new site, traded ideas, and quickly accomplished what usually would have taken a phone call, or a series of e-mails. Facebook's ability to know that I was logged in, and cross-reference my status with those of my Facebook friends, made the conversation possible, and has me thinking other sites, like Twitter or FriendFeed, would be wise to consider adding similar functionality that displays what other friends are online and ready to strike up conversation.

I'm still not a huge Facebook fan, and probably use about 5% of the network's features, but now, when logging in, one of the first things I'll be doing is checking the "Online Friends" tab and seeing who would be interesting to talk to. It just works, simply and cleanly, the way it should.

3 Months Into Being a Twitter "Nice Guy"

This coming Sunday, it will have been three months since I did what I once said I would never do, when I signed up for Twitter, enabling me to send short messages out to the world in 140 characters or less. And while I still haven't immersed myself as part of Twitter Nation, preferring not to bore friends and strangers with my most minor thoughts and activities, I have found it a useful tool to keep updated and interact with others quickly, if not always efficiently.

As with any communications tool, Twitter can be abused or used well. There have been recent discussions of spam accounts increasingly signing up and "following" everyone on the planet. Elsewhere, aggressive social media leaders like Robert Scoble and Jason Calacanis alternately complain and embrace the tens of thousands they've added to their Twitter stream. Some post song lyrics they're hearing on the radio. Others ask questions to their followers. Some use profanity for emphasis. Most do not.


My note from this morning... (link)
At its base, Twitter is a tool much like instant messaging, but permanent, and searchable. In the space of 140 characters, I can share URLs I've found on the Web, highlight my own recent blog posts, or talk publicly to people from around the world. I largely use my Twitter account to alert followers to blog posts ahead of the RSS feed (if they are subscribers), or adding comments to conversations that have developed, whether they started in Twitter, on FriendFeed, or in our blogs. Less frequently, I'll say if I'll be traveling, or if I've achieved a new milestone, like 500 Twitter followers or 1,000 RSS subscribers.


A favorite comment from Shyftr's Matt Shaulis (link)
Not exactly the most exciting of all streams, if you ask me. But what I have tried to do is not flood the system. I don't want to be the guy who "tweets" too much, or becomes uninteresting, so when I do comment, I want it to have substance, or call attention to something that does. On Wednesday, I was impressed by a well-written piece from Dan Blows on his blog called Twitter: The Web’s Playground, where he noted people can adopt different personalities on Twitter. Some are nice guys. Some are bullies. Some are seniors, and others, fashionistas. I was included, in addition to Mathew Ingram, and Scoble, as one of the "nice guys", and that's a great crowd to be part of.

Over the 90 or so days I've been a Twitter user, I've, so far, sent fewer than 300 updates, about 3-4 a day. And while I started out being very selective as to who I chose to follow, I've updated my stance, now reviewing each new "follower" and seeing what they have to add. Now, by default, I follow them as well, and can always unfollow them if they get too off-topic, too noisy, or just aren't my type. As Scoble has mentioned a few times, some of the real power in Twitter can be how many you follow, even more so than how many follow you - so long as it doesn't become too overwhelming.

I've even started using some tools to help make sense of the Twitter kingdom:
1. Tweetscan: louisgray or "Louis Gray"
2. Tweetclouds: louisgray
3. Alpha Twitter: www.alphatwitter.com
4. Twitter Karma: http://www.dossy.org/twitter/karma/


A fun find through Tweetscan. (link)
Responding to Twitter via FriendFeed has also added to my using Twitter. From FriendFeed, I can post both on that site, and have it act as an @reply on Twitter. The only downside so far is that FriendFeed doesn't yet make sure I stay within Twitter's 140-character limit, so when I mess that up, I look pretty silly. But I'll live, and expect they'll fix it soon, just like they have with so many other small issues in the last six months.

So, with three months of Twittering under my belt, it's not been the evil I once thought it was, and yet it hasn't been this panacea that changes my life for the better either. It's a tool for quickly sending updates and talking with people. And in the end, there's nothing wrong with that. You can find me at http://www.twitter.com/louisgray.

Alpha Twitter Ranks Most Popular Shared Links from Twitter

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

Getting the Word Out in 2008

A few years ago, reaching the greatest number of people with news, in the quickest amount of time, would seemingly be an easy task. Get a list of people to call, prioritize, and then start dialing, starting with the most important, and eventually, reaching the last person on the list, before going back to the top of the list and calling those who didn't pick up. And if you didn't want to talk to the person face to face, you could type out a letter and send it out, leaving the time between sending and receiving it in the hands of the postal service.

For news like that we posted last night, announcing a near-term addition to the family, this pre-2008 process could take hours, and eventually seep into days.

Thank goodness those times are behind us. Last night, I essentially took 4 ways to get the news out. I first posted it here, on louisgray.com, then followed on by posting the news to FriendFeed and Twitter. When I'd hit all the instant routes, I then crawled through my address book, and sent out an e-mail to those who likely wouldn't be at any of the online media. Sure enough, even as I was creating the e-mail, I started to get comments flowing into my in box, as those RSS-enabled subscribers wished us well.

All told, I sent the e-mail to 57 people, and got 22 replies, for about a 40% hit rate. The blog did just as well, with 24 comments (so far), and FriendFeed surprised me, with a solid 15 responses. Twitter was the lagger, with 8 replies. In aggregate, we got about 70 friendly notes of congratulations, and after a few quick calls to my grandparents, who aren't as Web connected, I think we got just about everybody, and it was a lot easier than getting a crick in my neck after a telephone marathon.

As for why I sent the notes out in so many places to so many folks, as I reminded my wife, I majored in "Mass" Communications, not "Minor" Communications, so that's the way we do things around here.

LinkRiver Enters Life Streaming Fray, Focused on Link Blogs

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

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

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

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

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


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

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


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

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

Dear LazyWeb, Won't Somebody Notice RSSMeme's Updates?

When RSSMeme debuted on February 6th, I took a look at developer Benjamin Golub's ReadBurner competitor, and believed that while it had done a great job scraping ReadBurner's features, there were a number of ways the fledgling service had come up short. Listening to my feedback, and that of others, Golub has continued to make updates, often multiple times a day, in a race to catch up, and in some way surpass, the efforts of ReadBurner.

In the ensuing week or so, RSSMeme has seen the debut of overall statistics, the ability to search by user name or source (See: search for author: "louis"), and added filters by how long it has been since the story was published, how many total shares it received, and highlighting the fact that every feed has its own dedicated page.

Not so bad for a week's work.

Responding to my original story, Golub also was quick to highlight that the service offers pages for individual authors, pages for tags, etc. Essentially, every single page on the site has its own custom feed, an amazing level of flexibility.

Cooler still, RSSMeme debuted an option to find similar users, based on stories you share, and the ability to view all the shares for a specific site.

See that for louisgray.com here:
http://www.rssmeme.com/source/134/

If that weren't enough development to keep him busy, Golub has also been working on a service that interacts with Twitter whereby you can ask questions to Twitter users en masse, by using the username @dearlazyweb. If you tweet to @dearlazyweb and ask a question, that question will be posted to dearlazy.com, showing the person's icon who asked the question, and displaying any answers. In fact, Dear LazyWeb got some love today from the official Twitter Blog. (See: Lazy Much? and Golub's note, dearlazyweb Made the Twitter Blog!)

If you use Twitter and have a question for the field, it's certainly one option. I gave it a shot a few days ago, and while it wasn't the LazyWeb that gave me a response, I did get noticed and got my question answered.

Not so bad for one guy who looks like he's innovating for the sheer fun of it, seeing what kind of services he can offer through attacking technology head-on. We'll keep watching both services, and see if ReadBurner will feel compelled to respond to the moves made by RSSMeme in the last week.

Warning: Google Reader Congestion of Up to Five Hours

Recently, Google's gained a lot of good feeling in the blogosphere for how rapidly they are indexing blog posts as part of their universal search. But while their search side is getting quicker and quicker, it can sometimes be several hours before some posts make their way from being published to hitting Google Reader, with no apparent cause.

It's enough to make me think we need heavy traffic advisories, or warnings that show when a specific hub is congested, the way we now can with airports or freeways.

Not too long ago, Google Reader added a seemingly-small feature that showed when an item was published,