Hindsite is 2.0/2.0

April 17th, 2009 Posted in social networks, twitter
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Yes, I know how to spell! I was just trying to be cute with the title of this post. Hindsight is indeed 20/20, especially when it comes to web 2.0 startups. There’s no better example than with Twitter, the ultra hot buzzword these days. Let’s take a look back at some reviews of Twitter to see who got it early and those that didn’t.

Mis-tweeten

Leo Laporte made a bold statement 2 years ago when he decided to leave twitter for its chief rival at the time, Jaiku (since purchased by Google and hung out to die on the vine).
Goodbye Twitter, Hello Jaiku! When did you come back, Leo? heh heh

Ross Mayfield from Many 2 Many was close but no cigar in his review of Twttr in which he said “To me its reply-to-all baked in your phone.” However, he gets half credit for this, “If they support MMS and let me send a photo to twttr and CC flickr, it will be a killer app.  But for now, put my SMS’ in a sidebar widget or give me feeds I can splice.”

Tweet On the money


Almost from day one (July 2006!) Michael Arrington saw the potential of Twitter early on so kudo’s to Mr Techcrunch. It was called Twttr at the time and not even Odeo’s primary service offering. Michael astutely gave Twttr thumbs up and even predicted the failure of Odeo’s main product at the time.

Robert (@Scobleizer) Scoble compared Twitter & Pownce, the pet project from Kevin Rose of Digg in July 2007 and correctly described how and why Twitter was going to be more successful (note, he didn’t say better).

Veronica Belmont (@Veronica) from CNet TV back in May 2007 did this fun Prize Fight between Twitter and Jaiku. It was a heated battle but Twitter won in the final round!

Final Thoughts

I know it’s not easy to predict which services will make it and which ones won’t. There are many variables that go into these things. Many of the times, the best man doesn’t always win and the better technology doesn’t finish on top. A good example is the BetaMax format vs VHS. All experts will tell you that VHS was inferior but somehow it became the standard and the rest is history. Was Twitter VHS and Jaiku BetaMax? Does it even matter? :)

P.S. Twitter’s true birthdate?

Twitter wasn’t really born in 2006 as they’ll have us believe. That’s when they became available to the public. The germ of the idea (called Status) was born in July 2000.
Here’s more if you’re interested.

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TwiMailer Makes Following Back Easier on Twitter

March 5th, 2009 Posted in twitter
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twimailer1

After using twitter for a while you’ll start receiving a great deal of emails informing you that other members have begun to follow you on that service. While this is all good news, it can become quite tedious and time-consuming to go through each and every one to determine if you should follow them back. Some people setup bots that automatically follows back anyone that follows them but increasing numbers are no longer using this method because of the proliferation of spammers and other less than honorable types. Thus, we are left with the annoying manual method.

Well, in steps TwiMailer that’s an online service that wants to act as your virtual assistant for all things Twitter related. All new emails with follower information is intercepted and presented in a easy to digest view, thus improving the process a great deal. I think it’s worth a try anyway. Tell me what you think in the comments. Do you think you will use it from now on instead of the old method or not?

Here’s a quick screencast of how it works.

Twimailer demo from jon on Vimeo.

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Never Miss another Tweet

June 13th, 2008 Posted in Blogs, twitter
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One of the downsides of having a large group of friends on Twitter is the difficulty in following all of the tweets directed at you. In most cases, it’s impossible to catch all of the messages that normally would interest you.

Thus, most of us are relegated to using twitter search engines such as Summize or TweetScan. While both are fine services, they are manual processes that take time that we don’t normally have.

 

Enter TweetBeep which can send you email alerts whenever someone mentions you, your blog or any other keyword you want to track. For example, whenever someone mentions your name with or without the @ sign it will be captured and a email will be sent with all of the tweets every hour or once a day (your choice). If you want to be alerted for any mention of your websites or blogs then those alerts will take place instantly because the searches are performed live on twitter. The nice thing is that this works even when people use URL shortening services.

 

Final Thoughts

Search alert tools such as TweetBeep and SM2 (covered in “What About Me“) allow us to keep tabs on everything that’s important to us on the ever expanding information super-highway (Thank you Al Gore!). It’s like having our very own private investigators combing the web for us.

These time-savers are much appreciated as we become increasingly busy. Thanks to these types of services we never have to miss anything again.

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Twhirl's Firehose Filter

June 11th, 2008 Posted in Blogs, twitter
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firehose The new Twhirl update (0.8.2) has included a much needed new feature for everyone who has ever wanted to create groups for twitter. They now support Rooms on FriendFeed which means you can now filter your firehose of information to whatever you want according to the room you join or create.

For example, you can create a room for your favorite sports team and see only updates on that topic from the people who join that room. Likewise for any other topic such as Social Media, Stamp Collecting, or whatever the case may be. Here’s the room filter option on the bottom right of the FriendFeed client window (the pound sign #): I’ve created a room for Utterz which is selected in the following image.
rooms

The beauty is that you can quickly and easily jump from room to room without impacting your other Twhirl window which contains all of your twitter messages. Thus, the digital age’s equivalent of walking and chewing gum at the same time!

Yes, Twitter should’ve done this type of thing long ago, but that’s all right. Just be glad this is here now. We finally have a useful tool that will help us drink from that firehose without getting soaking wet!

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