April 2009
Tag Synonyms
Today, on Twitter, I introduced a simple mechanism for asserting equivalence between tags — making them explicitly synonyms — using the equal sign ‘=’.
For example:
#web2expo = #w2e
This has the immediate impact of informing people following one tag that there is another they might want to follow too. And it shows up in searchs for any of the tags.
Here’s...
Twindling Users At Twitter?
Nielsen reports that Twitter users drop out in high numbers:
[from Twitter users not sticking around: Nielsen by AFP: Yahoo! Tech]
More than 60 percent of Twitter users have stopped using the micro-blogging service a month after joining, according to Nielsen Online research released on Tuesday.
“Twitter has enjoyed a nice ride over the last few months, but it will not be able to...
Nick Carr and The Magic Of Mediation
[via Rough Type: Nicholas Carr’s Blog: Google in the middle]
Nick Carr strays in his analysis of how Google is supposedly screwing the news business over:
[via Google in the middle]
Three truths:
1. Google is a middleman made of software. It’s a very, very large middleman made of software. Think of what Goliath or the Cyclops or Godzilla would look like if they were made of...
2 tags
Steve Rubel on The Twitpitch
About a year after I wrote about trying to convince PR professionals to pitch me on Twitter instead of email (see Twitpitch Is The Future, Twitpitch Me, and related posts), Steve Rubel reports on a trend where PR people are pitching via Twitter. I call this Twitpitching, but Steve steers away from that terminology, or any mention that the practice has been going on at least for a year or...
Dave Winer Thinks Twitter Is Just Another App, But...
I think Dave is wrong in his premises about an explosion of Twitter clones:
[via Why there will be many Twitters (Scripting News)]
There’s a lot of money to be made in these networks and it costs so little to start one. An average Hollywood film costs two or three times as much as all the money Twitter, Inc. has raised so far. Spiderman 3 cost $258 million. That’s just one...
Unmarketing Backlash
Two of the authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto responded to the Unmarketing piece I posted yesterday (see Unmarketing and the Webful Brand).
Doc Searls seems to be saying that I misunderstood the meaning of “markets are conversations”, generally understood to be one of the core messages of the work:
[from Doc Searls Weblog · Moving past marketing]
Says Stowe Boyd (in a post...
4 tags
Unmarketing And The Webful Brand
These are notes for a talk I am preparing for a 15 May talk in London, at the Somesso conference. I was asked to think about how business should think about their outreach to markets in the context of the social web.
My talk is going to be called ‘UnMarketing and The Webful Brand’.
We need to move past the Cluetrain Manifesto, and acknowledge that what people are doing on the...
Microstructure: Stepwise versus Headfirst
I have been working on a new startup called Edglings (see www.edglings.com). It’s a product company, building applications that dovetail with Twitter, trying to make the experience of Twitter richer, deeper, and more social.
How do I and my partners intend to do that?
First of all, by exploiting the microstructure that is starting to spontaneously emerge in Twitter.
Innovations like...
Linkbaiting Science: Twitter and Fast-Twitch...
I love it. Just as Twitter’s Ev Williams appears on Oprah and flow apps seem positioned to become as ubiquitous as cell phones, researcher Mary Helen Immordino-Yang extrapolates from a brain study to suggest apps like Twitter can confuse our moral compass:
[Tweet this: Rapid-fire media may confuse your moral compass]
The study’s authors used compelling, real-life stories to...
What Twitshirt Says About How We Live Now
So, another pass at printing tshirts based on Twitter utterances emerges, called Twitshirt.
The idea has some coolness, but is old ground. Remember @choicetweets? or EatSleepTweet? Or Reactee?
what am I doing, originally uploaded by Stowe Boyd.
But the tumult about Twitshirt is about the use of other people’s tweets. Copyright law states that anything published is copyrighted by...
Seesmic Desktop: The Sincerest Form Of Flattery
I was a guest at Seesmic’s launch of a new desktop clients for Twitter (and other streaming social tools) last night. There is a lot to like about the new Seesmic Desktop (the old Twhirl name is being deadended along with that product), but the most lasting impression is that the new mode of use is largely based on the very successful competitor, Tweetdeck.
Seesmic Desktop, originally...
Open Enterprise 2009: Niall Kennedy and Tweets...
New posts about the Open Enterprise 2009 Study on the Enterpries 2.0 blog today.
Last week OLiver Marks and I led a session at the Web 2.0 conference on the Open Enterprise project. I have posted a torrent of tweets we received during the session (we were using the Empressr presentation tool which has a cool Twitter integration. Check out the post: Open Enterprise 2009: Some Tweets From Web...
3 tags
Social Tools, Defined
Since I have been digging up old definitions, I thought I would post the definition I came up with for social tools, way back at the dawn of time, in 1999. This was published in the last issue of my electronic newsletter, Message. I then slipped into blogging.
[from Message, August 1999]
A new category of software is emerging, software intended to augment social systems. Not to change the...
Social Media, Defined
[I am reprinting this from Get Real — originally published 6 December 2005 — since a number of folks (@socialtechno, and others) were discussing the earlier post and my definition of social media, which I think holds up pretty well today, although I would enlarge it beyond blog posts and the blogosphere to include a greater range of social tools, now.]
I was having coffee with...
37 Signals On Get Satisfaction
I have to agree with 37 Signals that Get Satisfaction is over the top with its assertion that those companies that have not claimed their accounts there are not committed to an open interaction with clients:
Get Satisfaction, Or Else… - (37signals)
We shouldn’t be forced to scour the internet finding sites that claim they are doing support for us when they’re not. It’s not fair to...
Web 2.0 Expo: #awesome!
I was captured at the after-after-after party on Wednesday night, at the W.
[via Los Angeles - Web 2.0 Expo Parties: #awesome #nom - Style Council - LA Weekly]
The after-after-after party took place at the W Hotel where we met blogger Stowe Boyd whose hash tagged #awesome shirt was the very model of truth in advertising.
Yes, it’s true. My shirt is #awesome.
