TweetDeck Marks One Year Anniversary: The Journey and What's Next
Editor's Note: On July 4, 2008, TweetDeck, a new Adobe AIR application for Twitter, was introduced to the world, on this blog. Twelve months later, it is unquestionably one of the most popular microblogging clients in the world. I had the opportunity to trade e-mails with its developer, Iain Dodsworth, to learn more about his journey, and what's next. -- Louis
Louis: Iain, first, thanks for the opportunity to talk to you about TweetDeck on the one year anniversary of the product's unveiling to the public. I was happy to play a small role in its debut, and having gotten the opportunity to watch as its visibility and influence has grown dramatically, not only becoming arguably the most popular third party Twitter application, but becoming the gold standard by which all competitive offerings are compared, and setting a new bar for Adobe AIR as a development platform.
Now twelve months into TweetDeck's life, your world has to have changed significantly. First, Twitter has exploded - from a time waster and communications tool for early adopter tech snobs to a household buzzword being featured on television and media practically around the clock. Second, you've grown up as a business, having taken on venture funding, and employing a team of developers to improve your product - having recently introduced an iPhone application. Meanwhile, Seesmic Desktop has emerged as a real competitor, PeopleBrowsr has managed to take the top space for most chaotic Web experience, and Tweetie has a popular niche on both Mac and iPhone.
When I first stumbled upon TweetDeck in July of 2008, I was curious, finding what could be a great product, but nobody had heard of it before. Going back to the e-mail archives, I remember your saying, "I am furiously coding away getting the next version out there," and adding, "Since you are the highest profile person who has seen TweetDeck it would be great to capitalize on your visibility."
I don't usually consider myself high profile, and there are many elite names out there with well known brands who could have made a bigger splash with TweetDeck than I did. When you were ready to launch the product, did you do any outreach to other sites? Did they respond or offer to test it? And if you did not reach out to other sites, how did you expect to spread the word? Did you think the product was strong enough that users would tell friends and it would go viral?
Iain: It's important to note that I originally built TweetDeck to solve my problem of being overwhelmed with Twitter. I gave it out to a few friends and was pleasantly surprised by the response. I then set up a private beta and became inundated with requests from complete strangers. It was because of this virality I didn't reach out to anyone to push it out further and then I received your email. The blog post you wrote on July 4th and the resulting mayhem essentially forced the private beta wide open and TweetDeck went public.
Iain: BTW do you remember how you first came across TweetDeck?
Louis: I stumbled upon TweetDeck practically by accident. I happened to look at my Twitter stream and I saw "from TweetDeck" in an update. I then clicked through, and searched the Web to see if I had found something new. Louis: What made you decide to develop TweetDeck? You certainly went a different way with your product than others did, using the multi-column format, integrating Summize, groups, etc? What drove its initial feature set and had you choose the AIR platform?
Iain: In March 2008 I revisited Twitter having found little value on it a year or so earlier. Now there were so many more people using it there was real value for me but I quickly become a bit overwhelmed after following around 50 people. Most importantly I started to miss when certain less-chatty real life friends tweeted and I realised if I segmented the stream I would be able to concentrate on these valuable parts of the stream and dip in and out of the rest. The dominant apps at the time (twitter.com, twitterrific, twhirl) were, and still are, superb at what they did but they did not help me with segmentation so I decided to write my own client.
Segmenting my friends out to a separate area was the catalyst for the creation of groups (a first for twitter applications afaik) and required a new approach to the UI. I wanted to see my twitter stream alongside numerous groups and searches updating in real-time (hence the multi column approach - another first) and this would never fit efficiently into an unobtrusive single column interface so I took great delight in building a large obtrusive interface which really demanded the users full attention - not unlike the financial dashboards I'd been involved in building and evolving before TweetDeck.
AIR was an easy decision at the time - I had already been developing applications in Flex for financial institutions in London and there was no quicker way for a one man team to develop an application cross-platform. Louis: What was your initial reaction to how quickly word spread around TweetDeck? Did you feel prepared for the amount of traffic, support requests, or feature enhancements users were looking for?
Iain: Quite honestly my initial reaction was one of shock and extreme excitement. I was in no way prepared for the response TweetDeck got and then the subsequent demands the userbase, quite rightly, put upon me to keep improving it. Whilst I was unprepared I like to think I did show I have the ability to be very agile and step up to the challenge which the following months presented i.e. working 16+ hours a day, 7 days a week and knowing which elements of functionality to integrate to provide most value for the users. Louis: By September of 2008, you sent me an e-mail titled "TweetDeck - the future". You said, "with the integration of numerous other social messages services we have the form factor, momentum and enthusiasm to make TweetDeck something quite spectacular." But you added you needed revenue or money to get there, leaving you with the options to attract angel investment, or make a pro version.
At the time, I remember saying it might be easier to go pro than to get funding, unless you had other products lined up. But as often happens, I was wrong, because in January, you closed a round with Betaworks for seed funding. Did you initially think of making a pro version of TweetDeck, and what changed your mind, if anything? How did you find Betaworks, and was that fundraising process intimidating or easy? What kind of requirements did they put on you in order to be funded?
Iain: A TweetDeck Pro version was certainly on the cards a few months after the initial launch but more as a response to the need to generate some revenue to enable me to continue working on it full time rather than fulfilling a specific vision or demand from the userbase. When Betaworks approached me with the proposal of leading a seed round it made perfect sense to use the funding to fund my continued full time development and work towards a real vision (which by this time had already fully crystallised) rather than fragmenting the product just to generate revenue.
I wouldn't say the fund raising process was particularly intimidating - although I'm very aware I had the distinct advantage of Betaworks leading the round and introducing me to potential investors along with legal representation which made the somewhat complex process of setting up TweetDeck Inc and closing the round rather smooth. Louis: Betaworks has some very visible investments in other Twitter-related properties, including bit.ly and Twitter itself. Some are saying the firm is helping each of these small companies get connected, and asserting itself in their development. How has Betaworks' enthusiasm for Twitter helped? How involved are they in your product's continued development?
Iain: Betaworks' enthusiasm for twitter, TweetDeck and the concept of real-time data streams has been invaluable to TweetDeck and to me personally. I talk with John and Andy practically every day and consider them part of the core team rather than just as investors. The same goes for Saul and Robin Klein (TAG) who I work very closely with "on the ground" in London. Each of the investors in TweetDeck bring a distinct level of expertise and experience to TweetDeck and I have been leveraging this as much as possible. Louis: Recently, one visible move for TweetDeck has been the customization of the application, first by Blink 182, and now you can see dedicated installs for popular blogs including TechCrunch and Mashable. While this is clearly one way to start monetization, it cannot be the only plan, especially as you have taken on additional developers and the funding from Betaworks won't last forever. As Twitter has also not publicly announced its plans for monetization, does operating in a field where many users demand free software have you worried? How do you think you can create premium value? And in the converse, you opted to make the recent TweetDeck iPhone application free, but I know some users, including me, would have been more than happy to pay. Can you share the thought process there?
Iain: Co-branded TweetDecks could be a viable revenue stream in the future and are definitely not the only monetisation plan. Essentially with the size of our user base we are able to test a number of small revenue streams in an effort to see which ones can scale with the user base. I am extremely comfortable with offering free software but this does not mean that every subsequent value-add service and element of functionality have to also be free.
The decision to make the iPhone application free was not a desperately easy one but, fundamentally, the potential future value of having a larger userbase far outweighs the short term spike we'd get in iPhone revenue. Louis: TweetDeck, while popular, has also highlighted issues on Twitter's end, especially around the service's API limits. Also, the product has been a notorious memory hog and can take a good share of processing power. How are you working to reduce the demands taken on power users' desktops, and how have you found working with Twitter and their API team, as they recently upped the API accesses users could hit per hour from 100 to 150?
Iain: I have worked very closely with Adobe to make improvements to the TweetDeck codebase and to work around various AIR/Flex issues. CPU & memory usage is an ongoing area for improvement and can sometimes be a bit of an art-form but we are getting there and the current version is a marked improvement over previous versions.
To be fair we haven't had a huge amount of involvement with twitter or it's API team. The API is very simple to work with and there hasn't been the need to be in continual dialogue with twitter. It's also worth pointing out (to those that have accused TweetDeck in the past) the twitter developer ecosystem is, from our experience, a very level playing field and being the number one method of twittering outside twitter.com has afforded us no special attention or API abilities. Louis: There is a natural inclination for users to want TweetDeck to be the catch-all for Twitter-related services. As you have added on services like 12 Seconds, StockTwits and others, there is no doubt a list a mile long, of everything from short URL services to survey tools that are begging to be included. How do you choose what gets in and what doesn't? Is it a factor of money now, where those who play have to pay?
Iain: Yes the list of potential services that could be integrated into TweetDeck is very long but there's no way we would want to integrate them all - obviously this would result in TweetDeck becoming a complete mess. In deciding whether to include a service we primarily look at how it fits in with the overall vision for TweetDeck (the browser for the real-time web) and what value it offers the userbase. Executing the TweetDeck vision and providing first-class functionality is everything and comes before charging companies for inclusion. As has been reported elsewhere, we have charged for inclusion in a few instances, where appropriate, and I see nothing wrong with that. Louis: During Twitter's darkest times last year, you saw the rise of other microblogging services, like Identica, Plurk, Rejaw and others, who tried to provide a fallback for users tired of fail whales. Did you at any point wonder what the future held for your product, built on Twitter's fragile backbone? And did you feel pressured to find ways to publish to these other networks, much like Ping.fm and Posty have done?
Iain: Absolutely I wondered what the future would hold. The fragility of being a layer on top of twitter back then was a real concern but I also knew the flip side of this was the potential to ride the twitter wave of momentum and get TweetDeck a much bigger push than was previously possible. It is this momentum, listening to our userbase and continued execution and improvement of TweetDeck that has put us and kept us in our current position. Louis: Based in the UK, you're stationed quite far from Silicon Valley. Can you give us an understanding of how being remote from this tech center has either helped you or hurt you? Did it impact your ability to reach press and influencers, to raise capital, or hire talented employees?
Iain: Being based outside Silicon Valley has not specifically hurt in terms of funding (we've raised capital) or hiring talented employees (we now have a fantastic 5 strong core team). It's difficult to quantify but I'd imagine our ability to reach press and influencers has been somewhat hindered by not being in the eye of the twitter storm and, it's with this in mind, I will be embarking on a "tour of silicon valley" this summer to really get to know the area and it's inhabitants and to get a presence on the ground. (So to anyone reading this - please do get in touch if you want to meetup in the valley over the summer twitter:http://twitter.com/iaindodsworth or email:bizdev@tweetdeck.com) Louis: TweetDeck's rise to popularity was stunning for me to watch, and exciting to be a part of, even if just cheering from the sidelines. What kind of advice can you give developers who want to put their product on the map in terms of finding a way to reach users and create a memorable experience?
Iain: Even though the twitter ecosystem has grown considerably over the past year, I think there is plenty of scope and success for applications and services which really fill a gap. Developing something that is revolutionary rather than evolutionary will get you attention and lots of it. There are an incredible number of blogs and individuals looking to shine a light on innovative products in the now crowded twitter/facebook/real-time space - if your product is more than just an upgrade on an existing idea then this is a great time to grab some of that attention. Obviously that's only half the battle, you'll then have to continually improve, execute and listen to your userbase to keep pace - something we're trying to get better and better at. One year can go quickly on the Web, and in the last twelve months, TweetDeck has gone from zero to a leadership position today. If you haven't yet downloaded, you can find the application at http://tweetdeck.com/beta/. I appreciate Iain taking time from his busy coding schedule to answer my litany of questions. I personally found it valuable and hope it provides value to you as a TweetDeck user, technology fan, or fellow developer.
As Retweeting Rises, Linking Continues to Decline
Operating a blog focused on early adopters means being willing to adapt as technology and the world around us evolves. One of the more-recent additions to the blog was my embedding of buttons from TweetMeme, to show how often my posts were being linked to on Twitter, and making it easier for others to retweet these items, even thought I've already gone on record as not being a big fan of retweeting myself.
I made the change not because of a change in my own practices, but due to recognition that many people are turning to Twitter to share links and find new links from peers. While most of my posts only get a few dozen tweets, some have numbered over a hundred. And as this occurs, in parallel, the total number of links back to the Web site from other blogs is decreasing.
Not too long ago, one of the most common items to see featured on a blog was one's Technorati Authority, showing the number of unique blogs that linked back to you in the previous six months. Looking back at some of my "State of the Blog" entries I used to post monthly, I can see that approximately one year ago, that number stood at nearly 1,000. (See: here) Now, that same measure is only slightly above 500, a decrease of nearly half, despite my posting schedule being fairly regular, and the site's visibility rising over the same period.
TweetMeme, which started out as a secondary project by Nick Halstead and his team at Favorit, now looks like a real winner, having gained significant visibility after rebooting last July after Twitter API issues had killed the service following initial launch. The company just announced new ways to display statistics by domain, and it will now enable the ability to retweet items no matter where they are found, including on RSS feeds. Once that gets posted, you can be sure I will find a way to get that button in my RSS feed, and if done well, I will post the chicklet of domain activity alongside my FeedBurner number in the blog's sidebar.
I may still prefer to write long blog posts and link out, but I can't force everyone else to swim upstream. Retweet away.
Arrington Betting Big On the CrunchPad Mobile Device
While many things have been written and said about TechCrunch's Michael Arrington since he debuted his technology blog network four years ago, he is without a doubt a risk taker. The pending launch of the eagerly awaited CrunchPad device could possibly do more to define his legacy than almost any other challenge he has taken on. Not content to having one of the most visible and influential technology sites on the Web, Arrington looks to be charging head-first into an extremely competitive field of consumer electronics, an area that will cost considerable investment of both time and money. If the CrunchPad is a success, the way we consume the Internet on the go could be forever changed. And if it is not, the device will join the ranks of many that have charged up the hill before it and fallen short.
Arrington's trait of a risk taker is one that has helped make him very successful, pushing his blog to near mainstream acceptance, competing against publications with history marked in centuries. And now, the story of the CrunchPad, so far, is one of his trying to develop a product that was a solution to a problem no consumer electronics hardware developer has yet done well - introducing a device whose sole purpose is to help browse the Web on the go. No hard drive. No phone calls. No keyboard. As he told the New York Times yesterday, the device's focus will help it avoid the slowness of other netbooks that are often impacted by other applications. And he doesn't see the device being eclipsed by the long-rumored tablet that Apple may or may not ever introduce.
Early photos and short video clips of CrunchPad prototypes have not only made the device look real, but extremely inviting. On my first visit to TechCrunch's new headquarters in Palo Alto in April (See: Super Geek Spotted at TechCrunch HQ On a Segway), I saw the CrunchPad being worked on, but at Mike's request, did not take pictures of it or blog about it myself. As he was host, I obliged, of course.
But my interaction with the CrunchPad prototype was strictly visual. I didn't pick it up. I didn't turn it on. And I certainly didn't get to compare it to my laptop or my iPhone to see how it fared. And therein lies the real question of whether the CrunchPad has a home in my fast-growing gadget pile. I love the idea, but wonder just when would I need to have a CrunchPad along with me, either instead of the laptop or instead of the iPhone. The MacBook Pro is clearly my workhorse, and the iPhone is great for browsing quick clips on the go. The CrunchPad, a 3rd device, sits in between - a great looking device that I might pick up when I don't need to use any Office applications, but to instead just take in the Web.
The pricing of the CrunchPad, at a rumored $300, is about the same for an iPod or iPhone, and at the low end for some of today's underfeatured, ugly, netbooks. $300 is an aggressive price point that would make it practically impossible for me to make good excuses not to buy one, even if just to hit those "in between" scenarios where my laptop or iPhone would not fit the bill.
Coverage of the CrunchPad's continued development states that news will arrive by the beginning of August, and that the tablet will soon be available for purchase, giving Mike back the hours he would otherwise be spending blogging, as he looks to turn over day to day management of the product.
FriendFeed Debuts Real-Time Search Spanning 50+ Social Sites
More than a simple aggregation tool and social network, FriendFeed has grown to be one of the deepest social databases on the Web, taking in information from more than 50 different social sites, including blogs, status updates, photos, presentations and video, and making it searchable. The service moved its core product to real-time a few months ago, and has now taken a big leap forward in also making its search results real-time, letting you see how people from around the Web are engaging and talking about topics, covering much more than "just Twitter", which so far has been the go-to destination for real-time response.
Best of all, the service isn't asking you to change the way you do searches, and all saved searches on FriendFeed work, but they now execute in real-time and continue live updating as new entries are added to the service.
For example, I could now embed a vanity search in my blog and see it in real time, thanks to FriendFeed.
As you can no doubt guess, popular discussions that have dominated Trending Topics on Twitter would also see rapid updates on Friendfeed - as FriendFeed acts as the superset for social activity. See for instance: Obama, TweetDeck or Michael Jackson.
FriendFeed's user base is still smaller than the most popular Web services, including Twitter and Facebook, but they are executing on making a feature-rich alternative. Moves like today's addition will continue to separate the innovative team from others who are still putting their full efforts into maintaining stability.
10 People To Follow On FriendFeed For June 2009
Tenth Edition Of a Monthly Series (combined with Mike Fruchter's efforts)
New registrants of any social network can no doubt find the quest to find interesting people and friends a challenge. That's why Twitter built a manually-selected Suggested User List, and why FriendFeed prompts new signups with avatars showing the most subscribed people from across the network. But as we know, popularity doesn't always reflect quality, and often, some intriguing users are much less visible. That's part of why my tag team partner Mike Fruchter and I have taken the effort to highlight ten FriendFeed accounts every month. Even in month ten, I know the well's not dry, so if you believe you or others should be included, you know how to reach me - in the comments, via e-mail, and of course, on FriendFeed.
Short Bio: Layne Heiney has one foot in the world of education and another in the world of technology. Holding teaching credentials in both biology and chemistry, this high school teacher also started developing Web sites almost 15 years ago, expanding his "Tux Reports Network" to more than 100 domains. Layne claims to share the his FriendFeed account with his dog, Pascal, a three year old mutt, who does not like baths.
What they find interesting: Technology, Education, Politics
Short Bio: Alex Scoble is an IT security professional, video gamer and home theater enthusiast. Though not as visible as his brother Robert, Alex is just as devoted to FriendFeed, and on some days, is much more active. He is more than happy to debate with your your choices of television, and to be honest, will debate practically anything with a smile on his face.
What they find interesting: Finance, Technology, Entertainment
Short Bio: Trish, a Houston, Texas native, works in the legal profession, and is mother to her 10 year-old son, Kyle. Trish has a sharp sense of humor, and always seems to manage to find interesting news in the world of families, entertainment, and tech.
What they find interesting: Culture, Family, Politics
Short Bio: Paul is a co-founder of FriendFeed, and was an early employee at Google, coming up with the company's unofficial slogan "Don't be evil", and also making a small Web-based e-mail application, called Gmail and companion ad platform called AdSense. He also is an angel investor through YCombinator and recently started an initiative called Collaborative Charity, aiming to crowdsource donations to worthwhile causes. Paul is father of two children, Camilla and Thomas, the latter of whom celebrated his first birthday last week. His wife, April, was featured in this series in January.
What they find interesting: Entrepreneurship, VC, Programming
Short Bio: Shey is a Jamaican Web designer living in Toronto, Canada. Shey works for SweetSop Design, which creates Web sites, presentations, magazines, brochures and eBay storefronts. Shey has a degree in IT management from Ryerson University.
What they find interesting: Web design, Sports, Technology
Short Bio: Adam is the founder of the online marketing and branding firm, Secret Sushi Creative. Adam helps clients develop online marketing and social media strategies, Web design and development.
Short Bio: Mary Ann is a multimedia journalist with three decades experience, including a 13-plus year stint at the Flint Journal as an interactive media manager, as part of 30 years at the paper, starting in 1978. Since finishing her activities there in 2008, Mary Ann has been freelancing on multiple projects, including Web sites and ghost blogging. She is passionate about the news business, and helping her daughter in her fight against breast cancer.
What they find interesting: Journalism, New media, Health Care
Short Bio: Bwana McCall is a quality management technical lead at Hewlett Packard, in Jacksonville, Florida. An avid podcaster and YouTube maven, Bwana stays on top of the world of video gaming and consumer electronics as well as practically anyone.
What they find interesting: Software, Consumer Electronics, Podcasting
Short Bio: Rob is a professional musician who leads the instrumental Jazz group, Atmos Trio. He has a private teaching practice in the San Francisco Bay Area. He also works as a freelance writer for music magazines.
What they find interesting: Music, Technology, Blogging
Short Bio: A Customer Account Executive for Comcast High Speed Internet, Rasheen is a graduate of Georgia Tech University, and a part time blogger, hip hop fan and rapper. A technology enthusiast, Rahsheen is a blogger for Black Web 2.0 and is among the more physically fit members of the community, considering most of us spend more time in front of the computer than at a gym.
What they find interesting: Entertainment, Culture, Technology
Even as many people are debating the importance of blogging, the number of active bloggers is still growing. And even if we have grown comfortable with the number of people we are reading, there are voices we are no doubt missing. Each month, I try to find five new ones that you may not have heard, who are working hard in obscurity. Most are interested in a lot of the same things I am - including technology, information gathering, gadgetry and social networking,
To get on this list, bloggers need to post regularly, cover something resembling technology, and have less than 1,000 subscribers or so. We are more than happy to take nominations as well, either here, by e-mail, FriendFeed or Twitter.
Want to be on this list? You can catch my eye by posting great information in the field of technology, social media, blogging and the Web. I'll be more likely to highlight you if you blog almost every day, and bring new stories to the table that don't repeat discussions launched elsewhere. And if you have more than 1,000 subscribers, you're probably too big for this.
To see even more new blogs I'm adding to my reader, or get a sneak peek for next month's highlighted blogs, follow my activity on Toluu. If you don't have a login to Toluu, send me an e-mail to louisgray@mac.com and I'll get that set up right away.
Silicon Valley Shutdowns Mean Quieter Business This Week
The global recession has not spared Silicon Valley, or of course, the state of California, which stares in the face of bankruptcy, forced to grapple with an unprecedented budget shortfall. With a statewide unemployment rate exceeding 11 percent, the nexus for much of the world's tech innovation has been severely strained. The unemployment rate for Santa Clara County stands at 10.8 percent, with San Mateo County looking a bit healthier, at 8.1 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In an attempt to reduce fulltime job losses, companies throughout the Valley have turned to every play in the book to reduce costs - stopping and slowing projects, eliminating contractors, reducing pay for both rank and file and executives, forcing vacations, and the ever-popular move of company shutdowns (which we also saw in the 2002-03 recession following the crushing death of the first dot com era).
With Fourth of July looming, this week will see many companies in the Bay Area have their doors closed to non-essential, non-customer support facing employees. Among the known companies shutting down this week are Adobe, Autodesk, NetApp, and a number of other firms, both public and private, who are looking to draw down on company vacation during a time when some employees' thoughts are toward the beach and barbecues.
And for those companies that are staying open at a time when their counterparts are sleeping in, there's no doubt many employees are opting to take the week themselves, so you can expect fewer phone calls, reduced Web traffic, and yes, reduced real world traffic as well. So maybe that drive up the peninsula that used to take 45 minutes in morning rush hour just might take 25.
So if you drove into the office today and wondered why you didn't see the usual hustle and bustle, the shutdowns are why. It's a solution that makes the finance guys on one side of the building happy, and possibly the other side of the building isn't complaining much either, with a much-needed respite from the daily grind.
Know of any other Silicon Valley companies that are taking the week off? Let me know in the comments.
Blogging Is Still the Foundation In A World of Streams
Last week, Edelman's Steve Rubel made an aggressive jump - away from traditional blogging, turning over his site to a lifestream, which captures all of his activity from around the Web. His move, he reported, was due to a feeling that blogging "feels old" and that the new reality is about the flow of information. This followed on to a conversation he, Steve Gillmor and I had a month or so ago, which led to my post saying that RSS felt slow. But while I see some of the same issues Steve has, I haven't made a full move away from the blog, don't ever plan to do so, and for any company I give advice to, I tell them to do so would be a mistake.
The blog is the foundation and center for who you are - either as an individual, or a brand. While I believe the best bloggers in the world are participating outside of their blog, on Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook and everywhere else, to only participate in those areas leaves a gaping hole. The world of lifestreaming and real-time is fun, but it can be as deep as a soap opera in a world that still demands insightful documentaries and news reporting.
In August of 2007, I said there was a new reality and that "Your Blog Is Your Brand". Most of you weren't reading me back then, but it holds as true now as it did two years ago.
Fellow blogger Jeremiah Owyang added his thoughts on the issue last week, asking, Is Blogging Evolving Into Life Streams? Interestingly, he noticed that Robert Scoble and Shel Israel, who were the authors of Naked Conversations, were now more focused on micromedia (FriendFeed and Twitter) than they were on their own blogs. It's a big reason why Mike Arrington told Robert he needed an intervention at the end of 2008. (Amusingly, Robert is going 'blog only' this week...)
In the last two years, the rise of microblogging tools and lifestreaming services has given blogging a less-prominent role on everyone's tongues, but it, in my opinion, is as important as ever. One just needs to make a conscious decision as to what type of data is most appropriate where. Longer, more thoughtful pieces with graphics and type style should go on blogs. Maybe a few photos and text go to FriendFeed or Facebook, and short status updates go to Twitter. The addition of more options shouldn't mean the elimination of the original.
The Blog Is Still the Foundation
In a presentation I gave to one company this week, I stated the same - I said the corporate blog is the foundation of your entire social media strategy. It may make sense to have secondary and tertiary blogs, but if you tried to just use Twitter and other services and neglect the blog, you would a failure from the beginning.
Blogging is not for everyone or every company. Blasphemy, I know. But it is work, and it can never be stopped. Once you start, there is no finish line, until you drop and become a 24 hour trending topic on Twitter. But blogs are your public whiteboard - extending your voice to your peers, your family, friends, or in the business world, your customers, prospects, partners, competition, press and analysts, and of course, your own employees. 140 characters just isn't enough.
With the proliferation of so many social media services, identity management has become a full time job. What sites do I participate in? What sites do I stake my claim so someone doesn’t swipe my name?
DandyID just announced their new automated identity mining service, ClaimMyName, allowing you to select your vanity ID and up to 3 alternates to search across all of DandyID’s listed services. Choose to purchase a Starter Pack allowing you to choose 20 services or opt for the Pro Pack with 300 services. The automated engine will run behind the scenes and send you a digest e-mail within 3 business days.
The Starter Pack starts at a robust $79.99, and may well be worth it for those seriously interested in protecting their brand across most of the major social media services. For those who live and die by use of their name, the Pro Pack has been made available at $699.99, or just over $2.00 per service.
Clearly the equation here is whether the time it would take the serious social media maven to manually and individually sign up for each service would be worth this entry fee. As the world of social media matures, more and more services will have to turn to various for-pay models. However, with so many social media services having trained their legions of users that free is the admission price, even the starter pack will seem a steep price, in my opinion.
Ken Stewart’s website, ChangeForge, focuses on the collision between the constantly changing worlds of business and technology in an information-centric world. He is always interested in connecting; To discover the many ways you may connect with him, visit him at DandyID.
Ten Year TiVo Veteran Talks History, Hacking and Partnerships
About two years ago, I had my first visit to TiVo's headquarters in Alviso, just outside of San Jose. That visit only lasted a few minutes, and gained me a new remote control, replacing an original that had passed on. But on Friday, I had the privilege to stay quite a bit longer, as a guest of Stephen Mack, Director of TiVoCast Operations, as he took me on a quick tour of the company's offices, and we caught lunch, talking about his decade at the DVR pioneer and providing insight into one of Silicon Valley's arguably most interesting companies, sporting an incredibly loyal fan base, which includes me as a member.
Mack joined TiVo from SGI in March of 1999, less than a month before the company's first digital video recorder units were scheduled to ship. As he told me, co-founder Mike Ramsay had made the promise that the units would ship by the end of the first quarter of 1999, pushing the company to practically work around the clock, including nights and weekends, to meet the aggressive goal, making their offering first to market, just ahead of then-rival ReplayTV. This episode of Silicon Valley folklore came despite the fact the company, as he put it, had no working software, no working hardware, and no way to sell the products only weeks before the impending launch. Just squeaking in under the wire, the first units shipped on March 31st of 1999, on a blue moon - which is commemorated on the last Friday of each March each year at TiVo, as "Blue Moon Day" - an official company holiday.
Stephen Mack In His Busy Cubicle at TiVo
In the ensuing decade, TiVo set the gold standard for digital video recorders in an extremely competitive market that saw the term DVR genericized by a stream of copycat providers, including the local cable companies, DISH Network, and an on-again off-again relationship with DirecTV, who helped provide the bulk of TiVo's initial subscriber base, even as the company gained more dollars per subscriber with its native sales. In the most recent year, the company turned a profit of more than $100 million, after years of red ink, that had some declaring a TiVo Deathwatch, not unlike the struggles of Apple Computer just ten years prior.
The linkage of TiVo and Apple is more than just in their role as pioneers, but the pair also feature some of the most loyal customers in technology. The pair is also known for two other facets which gain alternate praise and scorn - including its penchant for secrecy and an adherence to NIH syndrome, well known in the Valley as "Not Invented Here".
TiVo's New Facebook Application, "My TV"
In June of the last year, I openly railed on TiVo to work on creating a social network to try and take advantage of its strong brand and to connect users. (See: TiVo Is a Zero On the Social Web. It's Time They Fast Forward.) And while they still have yet to follow on to my suggestions word for word, they are making strong progress in terms of showing they are actively listening and participating in the social space. The company has launched a little-known Facebook application called "My TV", which invites you to share your favorite shows, see friends' favorites, rate shows and comment on recent episodes. So it's close.
And yes, like all other good marketing companies, they are on Twitter, here: http://twitter.com/tivo. Meanwhile, although Mack doesn't consider himself a TiVo spokesperson, he has responded to blog posts of mine in the past that mention TiVo, and he is active on FriendFeed. In fact, in light of changed television programming in the last few days following the celebrity deaths of Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett, he posted official word from the networks there, in case you needed to make edits to your recording schedule.
Working to grow TiVo is a very interesting business. Steven walked me through the company's need to colocate in highly secure data centers in multiple geographic locations - which would ensure the service's survival, even if the state of California were to off and fall into the ocean. We also talked about the struggles that are common to most OEM businesses, where large partners see every proposed change as a potential for compromise. In particular, he recounted to me the challenge of having DirecTV's huge services team trained when TiVo started to enable broadband updates to their DVRs, in addition to standard phones - and getting the staff ready for practically any kind of modem or broadband issue.
Stephen Mack Checks Potential Issues While at TiVo
The issue of DirecTV came up a few times from others on the Web who knew we were to meet today. First, it is public knowledge that the new DirecTV TiVo boxes are scheduled for the first quarter of 2010. Secondly, the hope that DirecTV units would attain feature parity with the go to market offerings from TiVo just isn't going to happen. Units sold through TiVo will always be the first to support the latest updates, especially as partners will remain conservative.
I also talked with Stephen about the visible hacking community around TiVo's units. My first box, a hand me down, had come with a larger after-market hard drive, a common upgrade. Such modifications violate the company's user agreement of course, but the company knows such activities go on, and some smaller "garage" firms have even built up side businesses to upgrade units, which TiVo has no interest in shutting down. Most of the time, the hacks are harmless, although it was not uncommon in the DVR provider's early days to see customers load Phillips software on Sony boxes and vice versa, introducing issues.
What was shut down, however, at least for now, was the company's Rewards program, that gave TiVo ambassadors points for signing up friends and family, which could be exchanged for TiVo gear and other equipment. It turned out that rather than the program's generating a waterfall of referrals from excited fans, it turned into something of a side business for a handful of individuals, who would buy used units from garage sales, sell them to new buyers and gain activation codes, exchanging them for goods through TiVo. Mack said one such entrepreneur was making enough action that they earned themselves 500 iPods in a year (which they no doubt sold).
In the fast pace of Silicon Valley, a ten year tenure at any one company, especially one that has seen such peaks and valleys as TiVo is a rarity. But Mack says as many as a quarter of the initial 80 people at the company who were there when he joined remain, acting as historians among the company's nearly 500 employees.
The company's offices, tucked away off to the side of Highway 237, neighboring Foundry Networks, Brocade and others, feature the interior bright colors of a typical Valley startup. Its meeting rooms are all named after TV shows, and Mack offered up that he had the bright idea to name one of them, optimistically, "60 Minutes". Meanwhile, outside, even in today's heat, a vigorous basketball game was being played, featuring many of the company's system engineers, who battled in a fullcourt contest of Shirts and Skins. The scene was idyllic enough to want to take out the TiVo remote and hit pause, but I'm just as eager to hit Fast Forward and see what the next several years will bring for the technology pioneer.
Ignoring Rationality, I Subscribed to Sirius Radio Yesterday
Last week, I told you that the new iPhone application from Sirius Radio solved a problem I didn't have, namely gaining access to good music - which I can get from numerous sources, including my bulging iTunes library, Last.fm, Pandora, or even streaming radio sources built into iTunes itself, like those from Digitally Imported. But despite my protests, I gave in yesterday and paid up, making Sirius' foray into iPhone applications already responsible for at least one net new customer.
As I mentioned last week, I always had hoped to have streaming high quality satellite radio in my next car, but missed the boat when I bought a used 2006 model and didn't get the chance to configure it myself.
After initial struggles getting the app to work in the car, the application has worked beautifully for the remainder of the seven day free trial that came alongside the iPhone app. I have made turning on Sirius Radio (and primarily the station Area) part of the process of my turning the car on. And if you're a diehard electronic music and techno fan, I can tell you there is just no substitute for Sirius' set of stations on any network I have ever tried.
The Sirius Lineup on Pulsar
But if I were only using Sirius in the car, I still would have passed. Instead, I have also been playing my Sirius stations on my laptop, using an application called Pulsar, from Rogue Amoeba, that makes getting the music on my desktop very easy indeed. Now, I can listen to Area, and get shows from Robbie Rivera, Bennie Benasi, Paul Van Dyk, John Digweed, Carl Cox and Paul Oakenfold any time I am near the computer or the iPhone (which as you can assume is darn near all the time).
My Favorite Sirius Stations on Pulsar
And it's not just the unmatched content on the channel that had me convert. It's also the complete lack of commercials on Sirius, and of course, elimination of static. Pure satellite sound pumping through my BMW speakers on 280 is just amazing, as you can probably imagine.
Last week, when I was first talking about possibly buying Sirius Radio, Thomas Hawk repeatedly said "music wants to be free". But I will always pay for quality - and Sirius Radio has it. I cannot wait until the next long trip when I can charge up the iPhone, hook up to the dash and hit the gas, with perfect music flowing alongside. So don't tell me it was an irrational move, one that was a waste of money, or that I had better alternatives elsewhere. Music, like art, is emotional, and I have no qualms about reversing my position.
Slow Down My E-mail and Slow Me Down Too
Even if I may like to gain access to early versions of cutting-edge Web tools and communications apps, there is simply no replacement for e-mail. It remains my starting point to my information consumption each day, and the major thoroughfare for communication, even as I pile on all sorts of social networking activity on its head. Simple access to all my e-mail accounts from any location has become expected, and when anything happens to get in the way, the results are visible right away.
Over the last few weeks, I have been getting worse about responding to e-mail quickly, not due to any lack of interest on my part, or even the result of an increasing workload. Instead, a new working environment, and new rules from IT, are turning processes which should be a snap into an obstacle course - ostensibly keeping them safer, but at a clear cost to me, and I am sure many of you see similar issues.
The first impact comes from the office's hard and fast rule against supporting POP3 activity on the company network. No doubt a preventative move to reduce potential exposure to e-mail borne viruses and malware, or even a move to reduce the export of confidential data, this move means that instead of getting all my Mobile Me mail quickly into my Mail.app, and responding rapidly, I am forced to read messages through the Webmail equivalent or on the iPhone. As we all know, Apple's Webmail for Mobile Me is substandard - with failure being more frequent than success, and the latency has me seeing red, so I tend to view my accounts on the iPhone and delete junk, before responding to a select few and hoping the Mobile Me gods are happy that moment. Usually, they aren't.
So, while my in box was once somewhat clean, it's piling up, and I'm looking less responsive. It's already led to some missed stories, and people resending messages to be sure I got them the first time.
The second impact runs in the opposite direction. Office Exchange mail is not supported on the iPhone - only on company Blackberries (or through Webmail). Now, this means that if I am away from the office, or not at the laptop, I am literally away from company mail.
I haven't seen the official rule on this one, in terms of why iPhones are not supported. Suffice it to say that "it's just the way it is", and that's probably not changing soon. It could be an issue of not wanting to field more outside requests, or a training issue, but this too slows down my responding to messages, accepting calendar invites, or generally feeling connected.
The combination of these two issues finds me doing a lot of e-mail from home, after getting appropriate network access speeds secured, responding to fewer messages or in shorter length, or generally feeling like I am running an uphill battle. It's almost like I am being penalized for going into the office, when things actually go faster from the couch.
And yes, before I hear the cries for me to move to GMail, I am aware that solves issue #1 (I assume), but it won't fix issue #2, and I don't believe I should have to swap out the address I have used for nearly a decade due to this issue.
For those of you who are under similar limits, how do you handle finding roadblocks put in your way?
The Marketing 2.0 Revolution: Who Is Driving?
This evening, the San Francisco American Marketing Association put on a panel featuring the just departed from Google Kevin Marks, Jeremiah Owyang, Mark Silva and Robert Scoble. I took notes on the panel and posted them to FriendFeed. These notes are embedded below. The topic was billed as how tech bloggers are pushing the new version of Marketing 2.0, and strayed away from the core topic, bouncing to PR, social media, and how marketers and advertisers can take advantage of these new tools.
Are Authors or Publications Impacting How You Consume the News?
Over the last few years, participating in the tech blogosphere and meeting many of the people who create and report on the tech news we read every day has made the entire process of consuming the news more than simply a passive exercise. While in 2005 or early 2006, I may have imbibed any new posts that come to my RSS reader as manna from heaven, reading every word to find out what was new and interesting, I now find that my own personal interactions with the authors, the publications, or even the story subjects themselves is impacting how I take in the news. And I know I can't get zapped with a mind-eraser like in Men In Black to have it all go away.
Many times, I have told you that Google Reader and FriendFeed are my two major tools for information discovery. On a typical day, north of 600 news items hit my reader, and I spend a few hours clicking through FriendFeed, relying on my social connections to fill the gaps. And, given my need to make a decision, in seconds, as to whether I will read the article, click through, comment or share, I am now finding that the name behind the story is as much an element of that choice as the headline or subject would be, try as I might for that not to happen.
Sometimes, if a big story hits, all the major blogs will write about it in the space of minutes. That means, as FeedBurner and Google Reader go to work, I'll see headlines from ReadWriteWeb, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, CenterNetworks, Mashable and others come in a rapid fire. Sometimes, I will just share the first relevant story I come across, only to find that the second or third version of that story from another author is just a bit better. So do I share both, or should I hit "K", go back to that first share and undo it?
And that's not even getting to the real fun part. As time has gone on, I've gotten to learn pretty much the entire matrix of who likes who in this space. Suffice it to say that not every blogger likes his or her counterpart across the aisle - and I am being watched. I get direct messages on Twitter, or separate e-mails, following my actions, whether I shared one blogger's item on Google Reader instead of another, whether I linked to one person's story and forgot somebody else, or even if I went out of my way to comment on one blog that one guy particularly might not like. Truth be told, there's no good way to come out of the mess smiling and seeing that everyone's happy - because for some, you're either with us, or you're against us, and there's no chance for middle ground.
So as those messages pile up, and my own personal interactions with many of these folks occur, by phone, by e-mail, on podcasts, or on Silicon Valley events, I start to read and share the news, not with the virgin eyes of an excited early adopter tech consumer, but more often one that has to consider the downstream response I might get if I click here, link there, or comment somewhere else. And I see the names flow through next to the headlines, reminding me of their previous stories, good and bad, their arguments, public and private, or even, who is in a relationship with who... because sometimes that news gets around as well.
I'll be honest with you - for the most part, I recognize I have been incredibly lucky in almost every case. Even though I don't have my neck out there, turning this blog into my source of revenue, I've had the chance to shake hands with most of my brand-name counterparts out there. Even those who have gained a reputation for being difficult from others have been good to me. My online interactions and my one phone conversation with Dave Winer were very good. Every single conversation, by phone or in person, I have had with Mike Arrington has been very positive. I clearly have had a solid relationship with Robert Scoble, and fellow bloggers like Jesse Stay, Rob Diana, MG Siegler, Marshall Kirkpatrick, Steve Rubel, Brian Solis, Jeremiah Owyang and others. I trade e-mail often with those who are not nearby geographically, including Steven Hodson, Allen Stern and Duncan Riley, enjoyed my one time on This Week In Tech with Leo Laporte and had a great conversation with Loren Feldman at SXSW in Austin. Largely, the tech blogosphere is a positive community, despite the occasional rumble that threatens to pit friends against friends.
And for that I am grateful. I just wonder if it would ever be possible again to go back to a time when I got really excited about seeing the news for the first time, for its sake, and could eliminate any personal impact that might overlay the story - not needing to wonder if one blog broke an embargo, or wonder why one product got sent to another blog and not me. I wonder also for those who are not as embedded in this space, how they are letting blog brands and authors impact how they take in the news. Are you choosing favorites? Do you see names and titles, and skip right by, or can you see beyond the names and learn what you came for?
10 Ways Apple's iPhone Leaves Me Wanting More
Ever since I switched from a Blackberry mobile phone to Apple's iPhone, I've never looked back. In fact, at this point, following a full year's use, I am more likely a bigger proponent of the iPhone than I am of the Macintosh itself - something I never thought I would say. While I've gone on record saying that which operating system you use is not as relevant as it once was, I have yet to be impressed by any real iPhone competitor, including the Android-powered models from T-Mobile, or the Palm Pre. For me, I still hold to my comments back in December, when I said there are two phones in this world: those that are iPhones and those that are not.
1) Application Sorting Is Practically Non-Existent
I am hardly breaking new ground here, but as somebody who downloads a lot of iPhone applications, I am well into my 7th page of 16 icons, in addition to the core four applications stored in the iPhone's faux dock. To find the latest adds, I have to finger-swipe six times until I find the right one. Even worse, I often find I don't recognize an app's icon, and will have to go back and forth until it is found. It would be significantly better if I could have some kind of categorization and navigation, almost like Windows' Start menu or the Apple Menu to navigate to games, social networking, etc., or even do something simple like sorting all applications alphabetically.
And for those who say this situation is alleviated with the introduction of search on iPhone OS 3.0, it's hardly the answer. For example, I tried to search for Sirius or XM on my iPhone and found nothing, despite having the Sirius/XM Radio application. Why did this happen? Because the app is named "Online"... I kid you not.
2) Multi-Tasking: Where Art Thou?
One of the bigger selling points for the Palm Pre is its ability to multi-task. Just like I can swipe my finger right to left to flip pages in the Safari Web browser, why couldn't I also do the same to flip between open applications on the iPhone? On the Mac (or any computer) it's assumed that you would have a Web browser an e-mail client, and an office application open practically at all times. But with the iPhone, I have to exit out of the app, go to the home screen and launch something new each time. That's silly.
3) There's No Way to Set Preferences On App Music
The crux of Tamar's complaints today... While some applications let you still listen to the music you are hearing on the iPod when you open them up, the vast majority do not, deciding that whatever music background they have provided, or whatever sound effects they have embedded in their game or other application have precedence. It would be great to set up a way to either mute all background music on all applications from the preferences app, or have them all prompt you upon loading. The worst thing is when you're grooving to a great iTunes track and have it fade down to pick up some ditty on a miniature golf app. (Hat tip to Tamar)
4) Rented Films Still Hog Space After They Expire
When I flew to and from Philadelphia to visit Drew Olanoff, I "overpacked" on rented films from iTunes, grabbing three. I managed to watch two, and still have one left to make time for. But while that one film takes just over 1 gigabyte of space, and I can no longer see the expired rentals (having passed the 24 hour period), I saw even this morning that they were taking 4 gigabytes in total of my available data. I had to go to iTunes and manually manage the films, deleting them myself instead of them just going poof and releasing the space for other music or data.
5) The 3G Toggle Switch Is Buried
Everybody knows that 3G is faster than Edge. But it can suck down battery power like nothing else. As such, I often find myself toggling back and forth between 3G and Edge. But to do so is a dumb process. I have to go to the Settings application, select "General", then "Network", and then choose whether or not to enable 3G.
In contrast, "Airplane Mode" sits atop the Settings app, with a simple on/off switch. Why not put 3G in the same space, or let me toggle it in hardware, like I can with the volume or the on/off power switch? I know I move between 3G and Edge a lot more than I ever find myself switching in and out of Airplane Mode.
6) You Can Only Configure One Exchange Account
Need to manage more than one Exchange account? Well, sorry, you're out of luck. Pick one. While we should in theory be grateful that Apple gave us the option to check our work mail on the go, there are a number of scenarios that can see people needing access to more than one Exchange account. For example, if you are a consultant, and you have access to the Exchange server on your company network, but also for the client address you've been given, you can't run both Exchange accounts on the iPhone - period. It won't even let you try.
7) You Can't Customize Alert Sounds
Apple wants so much control over the way your iPhone looks and sounds, they don't even let you choose what your "New Mail" or "Calendar Alert" sounds are. They are either on, or they are off, period. While I don't expect the iPhone to get to the fun heady times of the mid-1990s, when we could customize our Macs to run all number of soundsets, one would think there would be some alternative ways to hear your alerts.
8) Phone Calls Can Interrupt Applications Altogether
We've all seen how cool it can be if you're listening to music and a call comes in. The music fades down, the call takes place, and then it comes back up. Awesome. But for some applications, the phone call can stop it in its tracks, including the aforementioned Sirius/XM app. Streaming music just isn't treated the same way as iPod music, so it doesn't come back when the call is done.
9) AT&T Exclusivity
As if I even need to bring this one up. AT&T is dead weight holding back Apple's ability to grow. One is a flexible, creative, innovative company. The other is a recovered monopolist who trails the rest of the industry in rolling out cutting-edge features, and expecting you to pay a premium for it. Opening up the iPhone in a legal way to additional carriers could spur a feature race that would accelerate the iPhone's capabilities even further, while possibly lowering prices for customers everywhere.
10) Four Icons In the Dock - Period
Adding on to the pain around not being able to do jack with the way my app icons are displayed on the iPhone, it would be nice to see the iPhone dock work a lot more like that on the Mac. My dock on the Mac features 28 total icons, including the system trash. The iPhone offers 4 and 4 period. I don't expect I should be able to post the two dozen I do on a full size laptop, but why not five or six in smaller icon mode? Why should I have to make the tough call of adding the iPod or the Address Book over Safari?
Don't get me wrong - I am a happy iPhone user. But in the face of additional competition from the Android platform, Palm and others, Apple should be trying to plug any and all holes to try and maintain its product leadership. Targeting some of these issues, and those that you've come across in your use of the iPhone would no doubt go a long way. What else do you think Apple should be doing?
Matthew and Sarah Turn One Year Old! (12 Months of Photos)
Exactly one year ago at this moment, my wife and I were at the Stanford University hospital in Palo Alto. She was in labor, and the two of us were eagerly awaiting the arrival of our twin boy and girl. We didn't know what they looked like. We didn't even know what we were to name them, and we didn't really know how much our lives would change. We didn't have a crystal ball into their budding personalities, and we never imagined how much fun we would have once they joined our family.
On June 20th of 2008, Matthew David Gray and Sarah Elizabeth Gray joined our family. We share with you some of the highlights in pictures. Even for those of you who follow us closely on other networks, some of these photos are new - having never been posted to the Web. Scroll down just to watch the kids grow before your eyes. You can catch more on Matthew and Sarah by following our Smugmug account or The Gray Effect.
Thank you for being part of our extended family and community.
Matthew and Sarah debuted on June 20th, but were quite small. Sarah stayed at the hospital another week, as she worked hard to grow.
July 2008 Once we got the twins home, it was remarkable how small they were.
August 2008 By August, they grew used to being part of our family.
September 2008 In September, many evenings were spent with me, as my wife attended her masters' program.
October 2008
By October, though still small, the kids' facial expressions became very clear.
November 2008
By November, the two were playing along with our Schwag Magnets routine, sporting Web 2.0 logos which previously couldn't fit at all.
December 2008
December saw Matthew and Sarah grow more curious about the world around them.
January 2009
The two spend practically every waking (and sleeping) moment together.
February 2009
As the twins grow, they present quite an armful.
March 2009
One thing we never expected was how happy and upbeat Matthew and Sarah both are. The times they cry or get frustrated are far outweighed by their smiles and shouts of glee.
April 2009 The two tag along with my wife to CostCo.
Sarah exults at a friend's party. (Photo by Rachel Fox)
May 2009 Matching clothes are too tempting for the boy/girl twin set.
June 2009 As the twins grow, they get more inventive about boundaries.
The pair relax together on Robert Scoble's recliner.
Yesterday Flying down to San Diego for a cousin's wedding, the two prepare in the airport.
Anybody who has ever been a parent knows the perfect bond that can exist with children. That we were so blessed to get two amazing children at once is something that is indescribable. We are ecstatic every day, even during tough times. But there aren't that many, and we are looking forward to year number two!
The Changing Subscriber Definition Points to Potential Over Actual
The dust has not yet fully settled on yesterday's news that RSS feed circulation numbers around the Web spiked, thanks to a new tie-up between FeedBurner and FriendFeed that essentially counted social networking subscriptions as equal to those who signed up for your RSS feed directly. But while more and more people find their statistics up by thousands, and in some cases, orders of magnitude, the discussion has led away from what is "right" or "wrong", but instead, investigating what a real subscriber was anyway, and if we should stop thinking the way we always did.
The worlds of blogging and social networking are numbers-obsessed, and the statistics are so full of holes, most aren't even worth repeating. I may be "following" 10,000+ people on Twitter, but I rely largely on the search tool, or browse individuals' updates in Friendfeed. On FriendFeed, the story is much the same. I heavily utilize lists to categorize people I follow and make sure I don't miss the best content, but I absolutely see a small fraction of items. And don't even get me started on Facebook. Given I practically only go there to accept friend requests, play games against my family, or respond to wall comments, I certainly didn't see the photos you just posted.
The "fake follow" is absolutely in effect - even with best efforts.
But not everybody treats RSS and RSS subscriber counts with such velvet gloves as I do - which means two major things. First, total RSS subscriber counts usually far exceed total page views on most blogs, as RSS items pile up in readers around the world and go unread. Second, the religious adherence to a subscription number in RSS that I tried to have, in the face of bundling and statistics that led me astray, is easily shouted down by reason.
I used to look at subscriber counts as a good benchmark for how much influence a blog might have. A blog with 2,000 subscribers typically reaches more people than one with 200, and less than 20,000. With the addition of more horizontal social networking "followers" or "friends" in the mix, I have to look at the number as potential. For example, the new number of about 14,000 listed on my blog (up from 8,000 earlier this week and 5,000 in April) represents the maximum potential people who would see my content if everybody who subscribed to my content on RSS or FriendFeed actually kept their subscription going and active.
And it is this "potential" that is the new reality, more so than a hard and fast number you can set your watch to. But it's also a slippery slope. If we all start signing up to RSS feeds but we don't read the blogs, and we all fake follow on Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook and every other network out there, there's not really a whole lot of social going on - just blasting out data, friending and hoping that you're the exception rather than the rule.
To accept my new statistics, and those on other blogs impacted, the new reality requires a changed mindset. It's not saying one way is right and another is wrong, but instead, seeing the new data through the prism of our new world, where with so many information streams out there, we are all hoping that our data will catch someone's eye, not that it always will.
Sirius for iPhone Solves a Problem I Don't Have
Ever since I rented an Audi in 2007 while traveling that came with satellite radio preinstalled, I have been smitten with the idea of Sirius Radio, and specifically, the station Area, a great Dance and Electronic station featuring some of my favorite DJs, including Paul van Dyk and Paul Oakenfold. As my last car started to die, I always imagined my next upgrade would include Sirius Radio, letting me get crystal-clear music no matter where I drove.
As you already know, I got my next car after all, and it didn't come with Sirius Radio. So I've been holding out for the company's iPhone application to debut. I now had this fantasy of using the line-in feature to my car, streaming satellite radio through the iPhone and essentially reproducing the experience. That I already have thousands and thousands of songs in my iTunes library was really not an issue - for the geek in me wanted it anyway.
Browsing Sirius Radio on my iPhone
Last night, following the release of the iPhone's 3.0 software, I picked up the Sirius Radio application, registered for a seven day trial, and practically ever since, I've been hooked into the station Area. No commercials and outstanding music. I've had my headphones cranked up when at home, and I even hooked up Area when I have been at the office, preferring good music to being on the phone or engaging with co-workers.
But, surprisingly, I couldn't get Sirius to connect when I was driving, as I toggled back from Edge or 3G on AT&T's network. The one place I thought I could really use Sirius radio, so far, has been a complete zero, saying it was unable to connect.
If Only I Could Pay for Just This Station...
Given I already have days and days and days of music to catch up on, which is already at my fingertips at home or at the office, with my laptop, and also given that I can play this music in the car whenever I want, Sirius' offer fits a very small niche that I would have to work very hard to justify. And while others are complaining that Sirius has not preloaded the app with shock jock Howard Stern or some of its sports coverage, I don't care for Stern, and can get all my MLB games, in audio, using the MLB application for the iPhone.
I admit I love the station Area. Part of me wants to close my eyes and hand over the credit card, paying $12 or so a month to get that station alone - and just maybe I will, if I can get it to connect to the car consistently. But realistically, the debut of Sirius radio for a platform that already has formidable competitors in Last.fm and Pandora, not to mention my own bloated music library, is a tough one. Only if I feel a nagging itch to throw away more money on my music will this happen, and if I ever get too loopy, there's always the option provided to me by Apple of updating my entire library to iTunes Plus for about $400.
So for the next 6 or so days, I will crank up Area. And when that free trial ends, something dramatic will have to have happened to get me to do more than just uninstall. (See Also: Sirius Radio Now Looks Like an Outer Space WebVan)
FriendFeed Sneaks Into My RSS Stats And Hits The Big Red Button
It's tempting to go back the age-old line of there being lies, damn lies, and statistics. On the Web, where practically everything is measured and big numbers are almost always better, counting up one's followers, friends, subscribers or authority is practically a pasttime. But with each metric comes a question of validity - how did they approach that data, and is that process consistent with the world view of what is factual?
Today, for reasons known only to their team, FriendFeed started to display subscriber counts to those FriendFeed users who are importing blog posts alongside all other subscribers, displayed in FeedBurner or any other blog analytics tool. With this change, popular FriendFeed users have seen a dramatic jump in their feed subscriber counts, even if actual traffic or readership to their sites has not changed.
BlogPerfume Shows My Stats Spiked Today
A clear beneficiary of this move, my own statistics ballooned from a possibly accurate count of just over 8,000 subscribers on this blog to more than 13,000. And in parallel, thanks to my importing my posts on my wife's blog, her count catapulted from just over 50 to more than 9,000. (For a site that gets only dozens of visits a day)
My Wife's Blog Stats Are Through the Roof
Coincidentally, my RSS subscribers had already been jumping, starting in late April, for reasons largely unbeknownst to me. In the last two months, I organically saw the subscriber counts pass the 5,000 barrier and crest to the more than 8,000, as I poked through the stats and tried to find out why - considering both Google Reader bundles and possibly a part-time inclusion on the Techmeme leaderboard as factors. But now, pointing to that growth seems silly, given FriendFeed flipped the switch and gave me a big, albeit likely false, foundation.
FriendFeed's Impact Rivals that of Google On This Site
The company's comments on this change state that "you are putting your words in front of a lot more people", so theoretically, they should be counted. But I believe it is less-intensive to follow someone on FriendFeed than it is through standard RSS, and I have no idea how this handles duplicates, though I can guess it's somewhat controlled, given my own stats jumped by a mere 5,000 when my wife went up by more than 9,000.
So the question is - why? Did the FriendFeed team just want to extend the visibility of how much impact their service has with bloggers? This move makes them a clear rival to Google in my own statistics. Or did they really think this was a way to show, accurately, how many people you were exposed to? Either way, as I said on a thread in the site, what's done really can't be undone. I hate upward spikes as much as I hate downward spikes, as we've seen when FeedBurner and Google FeedFetcher miss each other in the night. But it's not accurate, especially when it comes to small blogs hiding on big accounts (like with my wife's blog on my ID). I just hope Twitter, Facebook and other sites don't choose to do the same thing, or we can call the whole tracking bit a wash.
eTrade Delivers Long-Awaited iPhone Application for Stock Trading
No matter how many iPhone applications I have downloaded over the last year or so, I have known there has always been a big gap - that of a dedicated eTrade application, set up to let me trade stocks, transfer funds and check balances while on the go. But eTrade, until now, has stuck with an exclusive contract with BlackBerry (which we discussed in March), leaving those of us with iPhones on the outside looking in. But in the quiet shadows of Apple's iPhone 3.0 operating system release, eTrade finally rolled out their app - and even though the markets were closed tonight, my testing of the application shows it delivers exactly what I would expect, in a clear and intuitive way.
eTrade's iPhone App Highlights the Market and My Accounts
For most traders, sites like eTrade offer an important combination of both company news and trading activity. The iPhone application is no different, featuring near real-time stock prices for the markets at large, and the top news for those stocks any time you query a specific ticker symbol.
eTrade's iPhone App Lets Me Highlight Stock Charts and Trades
eTrade's iPhone application gains me access to all of my account data, from my stock portfolio to my checking account, showing balances, gains and losses, and of course, making it very easy to make stock trades - off which eTrade makes good money.
Just like on the standard eTrade site, I was able to set up alerts that would notify me if individual stocks reached a certain milestone. I could check individual stock charts for durations of days, months and years, and I could place trades from any quote.
I Can Get Detailed Quote Data and Set Up Alerts
Placing a trade on the iPhone is very easy. Testing with Apple, Google and others, I could make a bid for a stock at a limit, and could enter the number of shares of stock, assuming I had available funs to see the trade execute. I could even set up my quote data to be streaming, which I assume will push the real time upticks and downticks straight to my iPhone.
eTrade's iPhone application is one that I've personally been calling for since the first day I got my iPhone. Now that it's here, I can be ordering stock trades from my phone as easily as sending an e-mail.
BackType Takes On TweetBeep With BackTweets Alerts
Two of the most valuable tools I have been championing over the last several months are BackType and TweetBeep. The first searches through all comments around the Web for keywords you define, while the second watches Twitter search and delivers results to your e-mail. In tandem, the pair can essentially run on auto-pilot, giving you a real-time look into what the world is saying about you, your company, or your product.
Today, BackType extended its service to let you monitor Twitter, searching for links on Twitter that contain keywords you define. Like with its core service, and with TweetBeep, the new BackTweets Alerts system will pass on mentions from within Twitter to your e-mail, as quickly as you like, from immediate, to daily or once a week.
As I told John McCrea from Plaxo when I met him for Social Web TV last week, TweetBeep has made it so I don’t have to sit in TweetDeck all day and monitor keywords. Similarly, BackType doesn’t have me chasing through comments and reading every post, but I don’t miss much because I let these strong search tools do the work. (That's also a big part of why I said there is no information overload)
Will BackTweets Alerts be so good that I can do away with TweetBeep and turn to BackType for everything? I'm going to sign up and find out.
Google’s Apps Surround Search, Pulling a Reverse Microsoft
As the discussions around Bing continue, I found myself often thinking of how the product would need to not just be marginally better than Google search for me to switch, but dramatically better - not due to an inherent bias on my part, but because of how the landscape has changed. Under our nose in the last decade, Google has grown to represent much more than just a search engine – essentially recreating the major pieces of the operating system experience around their crown jewel, with a large number of hooks that have me choosing their search over others, even if competitors are “good enough”. And the more I think about it, Google has pulled a “reverse Microsoft”, not so much in an anti-competitive sense, but in terms of how they have created customer lock-in.
Microsoft is in an unenviable position many times when it comes to the Web. Nearly two decades of underperformance on search, portals and Internet access have the Redmond giant constantly changing its approach as it tries to fend off more nimble competitors. But as we all know, it ripped its way into the Web discussion in the mid to late 1990s through leveraging its operating system monopoly to push Internet Explorer to the #1 position against Netscape, adding onto its leading position in office productivity suites, and yes, the OS.
Microsoft customers could be seen climbing the ladder of Microsoft lock-in from the bottom up – starting with the operating system, adding the office suite, the e-mail application, the Web browser, and sometimes, the MSN portal or search engine.
In contrast, Google started with its search engine and has worked the other direction – adding a formidable e-mail option in Gmail, an office suite with Google Docs, a Web browser with Chrome, a portal with iGoogle, and many utilities designed to make us come to Google as our information engine – from Google Maps and Earth to Google Reader.
Meanwhile, as Microsoft came under fire for bundling its browser as part of the operating system and forcing OEMs to preload it and not its competition, Google went out and signed deals making its engine the predetermined default in practically all non Internet Explorer browsers – including Mozilla’s Firefox and Apple’s Safari browser, making it a formidable barrier for other engines, Microsoft's included, to gain share. And as we discussed previously, late last year, in the debate on mobile phones and Web browsers, where I argued that the new tactics will be “all about the hooks”, there’s no question that Apple’s iPhone, combined with Google’s Android platform, will extend the share of Google’s engine even further on the mobile Web.
So far, Google has escaped serious drama in the world of anti-trust, a benefit its competitor from Redmond does not enjoy. As Microsoft is forced to contend with pulling its browser from the operating system in Europe, or seeing flack for Bing taking over as the default search engine in Internet Explorer 6, Google continues to make deals that make its kingpin position even more secure, and add new applications that make me even less likely to leave the site. After all, if I switched to Bing, I would still have no intent to ditch Google Reader. Microsoft has never really competed with Google Maps, making that a no brainer, and though Google’s office suite online isn’t the best or biggest, arguably, at least when I am using Microsoft’s office suite, I am doing it offline, away from the real battlefield of tomorrow.
When Google first debuted and we were measuring its success in the speed of response, or simply by the number of pages in its index, I don’t think we foresaw how it would turn one of the most aggressive tech monolith’s advantages on its head. While I recognize Google Search might not be dramatically better than Bing or even Yahoo! Search at this point, once you take the brand names away, it’s the hooks that have got me.
Die? Thrive? Are You Conflicted On What You Want from Old Media?
If you’re one of the millions who saw the Daily Show last week, you probably saw a clip where Jason Jones took apart the New York Times, asking a staffer to find any news that happened “today”. The paper, exemplifying the “yesterday’s news” mentality that has a rapidly-increasing chasm between it and today’s real-time world, is bleeding red ink as news consumers turn elsewhere for their updates – including many of us to the Web and to blogs. But over the weekend, as the situation in Iran unfolded, and old media, including CNN, was famously slow to respond, there were practically digital pitchforks out – highlighting what was characterized as a massive failure, compared to the personal 1-1 immediate reports we got from Twitter and elsewhere.
So help me understand… Many of us are flat-out refusing to be consumers of the world’s news media, from newspapers like the New York Times and news channels like CNN, chewing away at their ad revenue. Some exult in the bad news as it streams forth – as newspapers close and journalists are sent packing. Others revel when old media makes stupid mistakes in the new world, like the AP demanding you not excerpt their stories, or other sites threatening to sue when linked to. But when a real newsworthy event hits, we hold them accountable for not being there, first to respond.
Journalism is not a charity event. Its reporters cost money, as do papers and stations’ branch offices, travel expenses, and equipment, yet many of us on the bleeding edge are all too excited to mention how we’re not paying them a dime.
There are really two ways I can look at this. One is that CNN and others are being ripped on as a way to further show how out of touch and useless they are compared with first-person reports. The second is that we want to bash the old media when we don’t need them, but flock to them when we do.
So which is it? The New York Times, Newsweek and other print publications made a name for themselves often not because of the speed of their reporting, but because of their access and their willingness to go into harms way, delivering the news in detail, often with many different reporters contributing to the story. Are individual bloggers, stationed around the world, going to pick up the slack? Can the top blogs like a Huffington Post or a TechCrunch replace the type of detailed reporting and unfettered access the mainstream old media has historically enjoyed?
That CNN did not lead the way in covering the Iran conflict this week, after decades of our relying on them to be there, as they were in Desert Storm, Operation: Iraqi Freedom, Somalia, Bosnia and others, is not up for debate. But the question is – did we really not want them to fail, or are you happy that they did?
Facebook Parks Some Vanity URL Seekers in Purgatory
Tonight's tech event that saw Facebook unleash millions of vanity URLs to its fanatic user base has to be considered an unqualified success. It raised significant awareness for the social network, and managed to deliver hundreds of thousands of new IDs every few minutes, without showing any signs of system failure. But while some elite hand-selected users were given their names in advance, another, likely small, group, is in an odd in-between land where the user names were shown as unavailable, but didn't look like they were owned by anyone.
Visible social networking folks, including myself, Jesse Stay and TechCrunch's Michael Arrington were among those remaining somewhat befuddled at our situation - unclear if we were singled out for user name reservations by a well-meaning Facebook employee (who will tell us eventually?), or if instead, we're just in line to be completely out of luck.
This is the URL that makes the most sense.
Like most good digerati, at midnight Eastern, I logged in to grab my username - aiming to get "louisgray" there, just like everywhere else. Fail. It said it wasn't available (at 12:01 a.m.). Neither was "louis" or even "louis.gray". In parallel, Jesse found that "jessestay" and "jesse.stay" were blocked, and on Twitter, Arrington reported "arrington, michaelarrington and michael.arrington were all not available."
This would be a fallback choice, and much less preferred.
While oddly, each of us individuals probably shouldn't care so much about a simple user name we've locked down everywhere else, the uncertainty has us a little befuddled. I want to take the optimistic approach and expect that this will be resolved in a matter of hours, but remain curious as to just how many hours, or if there is a problem with the database that has prevented folks like ourselves from getting the desired names - for whatever reason.
So, for now, while many in the social networking space exult in their being recognized for the names they got at birth, we'll still hold on to our number right now. I'm not compromising on a non-standard ID just for the sake of having one.
Podcast: TheSocialGeeks: I Want the Post, Not the Pre
Thanks to bumps in my schedule, including work, and of course, the twins, combined with the complexities of trying to get seven people in three time zones to get synched up, it has been some time since we got to participate in TheSocialGeeks podcast, chaired by Chris Miller (otherwise known as IdoNotes).
But on Wednesday, we made it, and got the chance to record. In addition to Chris and me, were Sarah Perez and Wayne Sutton.
In the podcast, which I have made available for download below, we discuss:
Louis: Iain, first, thanks for the opportunity to talk to you about TweetDeck on the one year anniversary of the product's unveiling to the public. I was happy to play a small role in its debut, and having gotten the opportunity to watch as its visibility and influence has grown dramatically, not only becoming arguably the most popular third party Twitter application, but becoming the gold standard by which all competitive offerings are compared, and setting a new bar for Adobe AIR as a development platform.
While many things have been written and said about TechCrunch's Michael Arrington since he debuted 
More than a simple aggregation tool and social network, 
Even as many people are debating the importance of blogging, the number of active bloggers is still growing. And even if we have grown comfortable with the number of people we are reading, there are voices we are no doubt missing. Each month, I try to find five new ones that you may not have heard, who are working hard in obscurity. Most are interested in a lot of the same things I am - including technology, information gathering, gadgetry and social networking,
About two years ago, I had 
Even if I may like to gain access to early versions of cutting-edge Web tools and communications apps, there is simply no replacement for e-mail. It remains 
Over the last few years, participating in the tech blogosphere and meeting many of the people who create and report on the tech news we read every day has made the entire process of consuming the news more than simply a passive exercise. While in 2005 or early 2006, I may have imbibed any new posts that come to my RSS reader as manna from heaven, reading every word to find out what was new and interesting, I now find that my own personal interactions with the authors, the publications, or even the story subjects themselves is impacting how I take in the news. And I know I can't get zapped with a mind-eraser like in Men In Black to have it all go away.
Ever since I switched from a 
No matter how many iPhone applications I have downloaded over the last year or so, I have known there has always been a big gap - that of a dedicated 
Two of the most valuable tools I have been championing over the last several months are 
As the discussions around 
Tonight's tech event that saw 
Thanks to bumps in my schedule, including work, and of course, the twins, combined with the complexities of trying to get seven people in three time zones to get synched up, it has been some time since we got to participate in TheSocialGeeks podcast, 