Here’s my first text-to-speech animation that I called “SOCIAL MISFIT”. It’s about how silly all this social media stuff can be sometimes when people take things too personally when complete strangers decide to unfollow you on a social network for no good reason.
Socialcast, the twitter-like social network for groups and organizations, has released a free iPhone app that will allow you to communicate with your group from your mobile device.
Here are some of the features:
Here’s a screenshot of the main page
Note: You access everything via the top right button that shows Home Stream. It then pops up the familiar scrollable navigation window that allows you to do other things.
The only complaint I had was the fact that this only support one account. This might not be that big a deal for most socialcast users that only belong to one company network but there are many of us that belong to several socialcast networks. It would be great if we could add multiple accounts or at the very least be allowed to logoff and log on with different credentials. I could not find a way to simply logoff so the only way I was able to jump from one network to another was to go to the settings page for the iphone and change the email address and password settings for SocialCast.
Other than that, having the ability to connect to your socialcast network via your mobile device is very useful and it works very well.
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.
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.”
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!
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? 
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.
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.
While decorating the exterior of the Casa Di Pai for Christmas I came up with this little ditty.
Hope you like it.
12 Tweets of Christmas
On the first tweet of Christmas,
my true friends sent to me
an invite to a startup.
On the second tweet of Christmas,
my true friends sent to me
Two Failin’ Whales,
And an invite to a startup.
On the third tweet of Christmas,
my true friends sent to me
Three Friendfeeds
Two Failin’ Whales,
And an invite to a startup.
On the fourth tweet of Christmas,
my true friends sent to me
Four Twitter bots,
Three Friendfeeds
Two Failin’ Whales,
And an invite to a startup.
On the fifth tweet of Christmas,
my true friends sent to me
Five Facebook Apps,
Four Twitter bots,
Three Friendfeeds
Two Failin’ Whales,
And an invite to a startup.
On the sixth tweet of Christmas,
my true friends sent to me
Six geeks a-coding,
Five Facebook Apps,
Four Twitter bots,
Three Friendfeeds
Two Failin’ Whales,
And an invite to a startup.
On the seventh tweet of Christmas,
my true friends sent to me
Seven guys a-flirting,
Six geeks a-coding,
Five Facebook Apps,
Four Twitter bots,
Three Friendfeeds
Two Failin’ Whales,
And an invite to a startup.
On the eighth tweet of Christmas,
my true friends sent to me
Eight babes a-chatting,
Seven guys a-flirting,
Six geeks a-coding,
Five Facebook Apps,
Four Twitter bots,
Three Friendfeeds
Two Failin’ Whales,
And an invite to a startup.
On the ninth tweet of Christmas,
my true friends sent to me
Nine Stalkers stalking,
Eight babes a-chatting,
Seven guys a-flirting,
Six geeks a-coding,
Five Facebook Apps,
Four Twitter bots,
Three Friendfeeds
Two Failin’ Whales,
And an invite to a startup.
On the tenth tweet of Christmas,
my true friends sent to me
tens dorks a-typing,
Nine Stalkers stalking,
Eight babes a-chatting,
Seven guys a-flirting,
Six geeks a-coding,
Five Facebook Apps,
Four Twitter bots,
Three Friendfeeds
Two Failin’ Whales,
And an invite to a startup.
On the eleventh tweet of Christmas,
my true friends sent to me
Eleven bloggers blogging,
tens dorks a-typing,
Nine Stalkers stalking,
Eight babes a-chatting,
Seven guys a-flirting,
Six geeks a-coding,
Five Facebook Apps,
Four Twitter bots,
Three Friendfeeds
Two Failin’ Whales,
And an invite to a startup.
On the twelfth tweet of Christmas,
my true friends sent to me
Twelve spammers spamming,
Eleven bloggers blogging,
tens dorks a-typing,
Nine Stalkers stalking,
Eight babes a-chatting,
Seven guys a-flirting,
Six geeks a-coding,
Five Facebook Apps,
Four Twitter bots,
Three Friendfeeds
Two Failin’ Whales,
And an invite to a startup!
Happy Holidays everybody!
Pai
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.
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.
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!
I don’t know about you but I’m tired of bashing Twitter every time they experience a problem with performance. I’m just as guilty as the next guy when it comes to bad-mouthing Twitter whenever they have a glitch. I vow right here and now to never complain about them again. Why the change of attitude all of sudden, especially after all the horrendous cache problems they’ve had recently?
I owe it all to something I read today on one of my favorite blogs, TechCrunch. It was a surprisingly offensive post called “Amateur Hour Over at Twitter?” composed even more shockingly by none other than Michael Arrington, Mr. Techcrunch himself! In the post, Arrington utterly nukes Blaine Cook, who recently parted ways with Twitter after being one of its chief architects since its inception. 
I am convinced that there’s some major subtext behind this story between Arrington and the subject of his public flogging of Blaine Cook, . What else would explain the level of scrutiny that Mr. Cook endured in such a public manner? How could anyone place so much of the blame for Twitter’s woes solely upon one person’s shoulders? Was Blaine responsible for some of the problems that Twitter endured (as well as all of us)? Sure, that’s a given, but to label the work that he and his team accomplished as “amateurish” is just plain inexcusable.
The Rumpelstiltskin Effect
After doing some more research into this I came across more starling information that changed my own opinion and view of Twitter and any other web service for that matter. Apparently, one of the most successful communications successes of our time (twitter) accomplished their massive popularity with a staggering engineering staff of three (3) people, including the “incompetent” Blaine Cook. Not too shabby for rank amateurs, huh?
Look, as a member of I.T. and over a decade of experience with networking infrastructures, I will admit having a slight bias towards under-manned tech staffs. I know what it’s like to deal with the “spin gold from straw” expectations like these guys have done for the past few years. That is why it’s so disappointing to see anyone get disrespected for a job that really should’ve been praised instead. To learn more about the complexity of the Twitter infrastructure and the tremendous challenges they have dealt with, simply checkout Blaine’s presentation: Big Bird (Scaling Twitter). Most of us won’t fully understand the magnitude of their challenges but I think this presentation will give at least a glimpse at some of the reasons Twitter has experienced the problems they’ve had. As a matter of fact, I’ve come away from all of this in amazement that we haven’t had far more serious problems than we’ve all had!
I spoke to a couple of friends who are rock star Ruby on Rails developers who’ve seen Blaine’s presentation and who use Twitter on a regular basis. Our conversation was incredibly enlightening and revealing. The following image is a basic diagram of a simple Ruby on Rails web application, which is what Twitter was built upon. 
Just imagine a diagram for today’s Twitter. It would dwarf this design because they encompass countless databases and web servers that span the globe with no end in site. The more of us that sign-up and add others to our network, the larger the Twitter databases and network grows. Obviously, this also means the greater the possibility of performance problems and downtime. I’m not making excuses, just telling it like it is, folks. It’s all part of growing pains.
Final Thoughts
While writing this I just read a news flash on Techcruch about Twitter’s VP of Engineering and Operations Lee Mighdoll leaving after only three months. No one seems to know what’s going on at Twitter these days. Obviously, there is something major taking place at the corporate level. Rumors are running wild about Twitter scrambling for funding and potential sale of the service, but it’s all speculation. The lack of a visible business plan and revenue generation stream only adds more fuel to the fire of these rumors. All I know is that we shouldn’t be so quick to throw anyone under the bus without first learning more about the facts. I know I’ve been bad about that in the past and I will not repeat those mistakes ever again with Twitter. These nameless, faceless services have living breathing human beings who take pride in their work and careers. Also, there’s always more to the story than meets the eye.
At first, many of you will think Moonri.se is a silly and useless idea. Who would want a service that is basically a twitter for emotions and feelings? Can’t we just post how we feel already on Twitter, our blogs and other mediums? Sure, we can and we do, but Moonrise does it in a more powerful and compelling way. Most of all, it’s fun too.
There’ve been a couple of services that provided the ability to share your current emotional status, but none of them provided nearly as many different ways to convey your feelings as Moonrise does. It allows you to include other elements to reflect your current mood such as photographs, videos and even your favorite quote. This last option isn’t a surprise when you consider that the founder and architect behind this service is Amit Kothari, who also founded QuotationsBook, which is a social network for quotations and covered in “Quotations 2.0“.
Feelings 2.0
The most exciting part of all this is that there will be an API available soon to moonrise which means it will become a conduit for other apps and services to share feelings. They are also “developing a feature that lets you bookmark or post feelings about a URL via a small button you can put anywhere. This will be more meaningful than digg, and also a different way to bookmark links”.
Final Thoughts and feelings
I will admit that I’m a sucker for this kind of thing because I’ve always been a touchy-feely kinda guy. I believe words and emotions are powerful things. Why not use everything technology has to offer to share how we are feeling? Why not use photo’s, videos and quotes to reflect our emotions? Here’s some more information from Moonrise about why it’s a good thing to share our feelings. http://moonri.se/site/about.
DaCort has done it again. He’s taken an already cool twitter tool, TweetSTATS and made it even cooler and more useful by giving us our very own TweetCloud!
Not only can we view all kinds of cool statistics about our Twitter usage but now we can see what we and others tweets the most about! Some of this data will be surprising so be prepared.
It’s very easy to access as well. Just click the Tweet Cloud link located next to the Tweet Stats link:
The quickest way to get there is to save your personal URL: http://www.tweetstats.com/graphs/TwitterName .
***UPDATE***
More Twitter Cloud services have appeared out of the blue (ha ha):
http://www.tweetclouds.com
http://www.tagcrowd.com