Tag: microblogging

EdmontonTweetup3 – October 30th

EdmontonTweetup

The Twitter community here in Edmonton continues to amaze me. New users sign up every day, and existing users do a good job of following one another. As a result, there are really interesting discussions taking place all the time. Quite a few people have adopted the #yeg hashtag too, making it even easier to find Edmonton-related items on Twitter.

A tweetup is an opportunity to strengthen those online relationships and perhaps forge new ones offline. Or if you’re new to Twitter, it’s a great way to come and find out what all the fuss is about. Some people will undoubtedly talk about tech at the event, but for the most part it’s a non-geeky get-together. Join us for some food, drinks, and good discussion. Here are the details on EdmontonTweetup3:

WHO: Twitterers and the Twitter-curious in Edmonton and area!
WHAT: An event to meet one another in person.
WHERE: Devlin’s Cocktail Lounge on Whyte Avenue (map)
WHEN: Thursday, October 30th, 2008 at 6:00pm
WHY: Because you need to get off the computer once in a while!

I hope you can make it out! If you’re planning to attend, please add your name to the wiki page so that we have an idea of how many people to expect. Follow edmontontweetup and/or myself on Twitter for updates.

See you there!

What's trending right now?

twitter It’s been nearly three months since Twitter purchased Summize and renamed it Twitter Search. They still haven’t integrated Twitter Search into the main site, but they have made a number of other improvements:

Those last two points are the most important, I think. When you visit the Twitter home page, it asks you a simple question: “What are you doing?” Until now, that question has been Twitter in a nutshell. Moving forward though, I think a new question becomes equally as important: “What’s trending right now?”

I’ve said for a long time (with regards to Twitter) that there’s value in noise. It might seem dumb or trivial for me to post a tweet that says I am sleeping, but what if everyone did? Heck, we don’t even need everyone, just a sizable percentage. Then we could ask the question “how many people are sleeping right now?” and have real numbers to answer it with.

Twitter seems to have two sides now – gathering the noise, and filtering it.

Lots of people already contribute to the noise on Twitter, and I think their user base will only continue to grow. So they’ve got that covered. Increasingly it seems that Twitter is working to extract value from that noise. That’s the area they need to focus on most. I’m not sure how they plan to monetize their creation, but I suspect this is a big part of it.

The Election 2008 site seems like an experiment. If it goes well, I’d expect them to launch a number of other mini-sites in the future. I wouldn’t be surprised if they somehow expanded on the trending entries on the blog too.

For me, Twitter Search is already the #1 stop for news. It’s where I learned that O.J. Simpson was found guilty, and that the bailout plan had passed. I think others will increasingly turn to Twitter Search first also.

You tell Twitter what you’re doing, and they’ll tell you what’s trending. I can’t wait to see where this leads!

Canadian Politicians on Twitter

twitter Canadians will be heading to the polls on October 14th to elect the 40th Canadian Parliament. That means it is officially election season here in Canada! For those of us fascinated with the American election however, it has been election season for months already. It kind of feels like Canada is playing catch-up to the US.

Similarly, our political leaders are playing catch-up to their counterparts south of the border – at least on Twitter. Barack Obama has amassed 75,000 followers on Twitter, and Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden also have accounts. John McCain doesn’t use a computer of course, so he doesn’t have an official Twitter account, though his followers have set this one up. There are dozens of members of Congress on Twitter.

Here in Canada, we now have two well-known politicians using Twitter:

  • Prime Minister Stephen Harper (English & French)
  • NDP Leader Jack Layton (English & French)
  • Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe (French) – official?
  • Green Party Leader Elizabeth May (English) – official?
  • National Director of the Liberal Party of Canada, Greg Fergus (English)

No sign of Stephane Dion, Gilles Duceppe, or Elizabeth May just yet (I’ll update the post if I find they have created accounts).

The Globe and Mail on Friday wrote about the Prime Minister getting his microblog on:

Like rats scurrying up the ropes before an ocean liner departs, politicians have sharp noses for knowing when to hop aboard a trend. It’s not just Harper. Barack Obama Twitters. All told, the Twitter population has passed the two-million mark.

So far @pmharper has 333 followers, while @jacklayton has 286. Though both probably have staff members updating for them, the style of posts on Jack Layton’s account make it seem as though it could be him.

Have you come across any other Canadian politicians on Twitter?

UPDATE: Track Canadian political conversations on Twitter using govtweets.
UPDATE2: Also check out electopinion.ca which tracks Twitter.
UPDATE (12/2/2008) The Liberals have launched a new account, @LiberalHQ.
UPDATE (12/12/2008) I should mention @M_Ignatieff, the new Liberal Party Leader.

Talking Twitter & Social Media on SmibsTV

smibstv A few weeks ago, local entrepreneur Peter Urban invited me to take part in one of his newest projects – an Internet TV show for small businesses called SmibsTV. Specifically he wanted to explore how small businesses can use Twitter to help themselves grow. I thought it was a great idea and jumped at the opportunity! The episode went live today.

Here’s what Cam wrote about Smibs on Techvibes a couple months ago:

Peter Urban, the company’s founder and President, said that Smibs was conceived out of years of consulting SMBs and finding a common small business frustration: the difficult balancing act of staying in touch with your network and on top of your sales activities, while working on projects that pay the bills. Urban’s solution to that challenge is Smibs and their first extension: Doorbell, a web-based sales software application for “non-sales people”.

You might recall that I gave Smibs my “demo of the evening” at the first Edmonton DemoCamp. It was my first exposure to the company, and I’ve been continually impressed ever since. Peter and his team use social media very effectively, so it was a treat to talk to him about it.

Check out the episode at SmibsTV and let me know what you think!

EdmontonTweetup2 – August 14th

Next week we’ll be having our second tweetup here in Edmonton. It’s a great way to meet other Twitter users from Edmonton and area – there’s quite a few of us already and the number keeps growing! The event is fairly informal and relaxed, the goal is just to have some fun meeting new people! You can read about our first tweetup here. Hard to believe it’s been three months already!

It’s always a challenge to find a date and time and venue that everyone can make it out to, so we’re trying something different this time. Here are the details:

WHO: Twitter users in Edmonton!
WHAT: An event to meet one another in meatspace.
WHERE: The Billiard Club on Whyte Avenue (map)
WHEN: Thursday, August 14th, 2008 at 6:00pm
WHY: To chat about anything with other Twitter users!

If you’re planning to come out on Thursday, add your name to the list on our wiki. You may also want to follow edmontontweetup and/or myself on Twitter for updates.

See you there!

Twitter officially acquires and rebrands Summize

twitter When I wrote about Summize last week, I mentioned the rumor that the search engine was being acquired by Twitter. Today the deal was formally announced, though no financial details were shared:

We’re excited to announce that Twitter has acquired Summize—an extraordinary search tool and an amazing group of engineers. All five Summize engineers will move to San Francisco, CA and take jobs at Twitter, Inc. This is an important step forward in the evolution of Twitter as a service and as a company.

The old Summize site started redirecting to http://search.twitter.com earlier this morning, and the colorful Summize logo has been replaced with the blue Twitter one. Sadly, they’ve also shut down the Summize Labs section of the site, with a loose promise to bring the prototypes back in some form down the road.

According to TechCrunch, the deal was mostly stock. They have a video up with Twitter co-founder Evan Williams and will be posting a transcript of the interview later today.

For a much more interesting take on the deal, check out the Summize blog post:

It’s with great pride that I officially confirm Twitter’s acquisition of Summize. The rationale for this transaction from Twitter can be found here. I’ll outline my motivation to sell our beloved Summize, talk about our experience soup to nuts, and recognize the players who made this deal possible.

They provide an excellent overview of how they got to today, and they specifically cite Fred Wilson‘s help in getting the deal done.

Congrats to everyone involved!

UPDATE: Here’s the interview (with transcript and analysis) that Michael Arrington did with Evan Williams. They talk about Summize, the API, and Twitter’s revenue model.

Summize Conversational Search

Summize If you haven’t checked out Summize yet, you should. Summize is a conversational search engine. Their mission is to “search & discover the topics and attitudes expressed within online conversations.” I think Summize is a decent preview of what search engines of the future will look like, even though it only works with content from Twitter at the moment.

I got started with Summize for a very specific, practical reason. When Twitter took the instant messaging interface down (and track along with it) I lost my primary method of watching for replies. I turned to Summize for help, searching for my username so that I’d see when someone replied to me (turns out you can craft more specific searches using the Advanced Search). I continue to use this method today.

Eventually though, I started to use Summize for other things. Occasionally I’d see a tweet about something, such as the Los Angeles airport being shut down, but there was nothing in the news yet. A quick search on Summize for LAX gave me the answers from people on the ground. I remember “watching” Tiger Woods win the US Open on Summize (everything is in real-time…I just followed the commentary). And lately I use it to see what people are saying about Edmonton with the #yeg hashtag.

summize search

Another thing I’ve used Summize for is movie reviews from real people. Let’s say I want to go see Hancock. Of course I’d check a site like Rotten Tomatoes, but what I really want to know is what people thought as soon as they left the theatre – did it suck or not? They can share that via Twitter, simply by sending a text message, and thousands do. Summize allows me to focus on those tweets by searching for Hancock. For common searches like new movies, Summize highlights them as a “trending topic”, visible in the sidebar of the site.

It’s this last kind of search that gets me particularly excited about Summize (and intrigued by the possible Twitter acquisition of Summize). Summize Labs have taken things a step further with Realtime Twitter Sentiment. Now I don’t even have to look through results, I just enter “Hancock” and Summize tells me that the “overall sentiment on this topic is so-so.” Wonder how well it works? A search for Rogers Canada currently says the sentiment is bad (people are upset about the iPhone rate plans). Summize is like a dream come true for marketers – they can find out what people are saying about their product or service in realtime. Very cool stuff.

I think Summize rocks. It has a great interface, powerful features, and it’s fast. Summize makes it possible to find value in the noise created on Twitter.

Ping.fm helps you post to many sites at once

ping.fm I’ve been using a new web application called Ping.fm for the last couple weeks. It’s a really simple service that helps you post to multiple social networking sites at the same time. Instead of updating Twitter, Facebook, Jaiku, Tumblr, etc. separately, you can do it all at once with Ping.fm.

The best part about Ping.fm is that they expose a number of different interfaces for updating. That means you don’t need to have a browser window open in order to post! In addition to the website, there’s a mobile web app, an iPhone web app, a Facebook application, an iGoogle gadget, an API for developers, and IM support for AOL, Yahoo, and Google Talk. I find that I use the Google Talk and iPhone interfaces most often.

When you setup your services, you can assign them to three categories: Statuses, Micro-Blogs, and Blogs (for example, I have Twitter in Statuses and Micro-Blogs). Then when you post a message to Ping.fm, you choose which of these categories to update. Additionally, you can setup “custom triggers”. For example, I have #t setup. If I post something that starts with #t it will update Twitter, Tumblr, and Identi.ca. Finally, you can update specific services with “service triggers”, like @fb for Facebook.

The current list of supported services is: Bebo, Blogger, Brightkite, Custom URL, Facebook, FriendFeed, hi5, Identi.ca, Jaiku, LinkedIn, LiveJournal, Mashable, MySpace, Plaxo Pulse, Plurk, Pownce, Tumblr, Twitter, and Xanga. Three of these (Custom URL, FriendFeed, and Identi.ca) have been added in just the last ten days or so. The Ping.fm team is obviously very actively adding functionality based on user feedback.

Another thing I like about Ping.fm is the API. I recently requested an application key, and while I haven’t really played with it yet, I intend to replace some existing update code I have with calls to Ping.fm. I suspect there will be quite a few third party tools and services that make use of Ping.fm’s API. Having an API is key for a service like this.

I’m really happy with Ping.fm, but it’s not perfect. Here are a few wishes and things I’d like to see improved:

  • None of the checkboxes work in Opera. I’ve never seen this before on any other website, and it’s really annoying.
  • I’d like to be able to set a “prefix” for Facebook. By default, my updates are just mashed together, as in “Mack Tempted to take a nap :)” but I’d like to specify a prefix of ” – ” to get “Mack – Tempted to take a nap :)”. Same goes for LinkedIn.
  • I really wish Ping.fm had an SMS gateway. Then I could update via text message. I wrote my own code with Twitter’s API to accomplish this for now.
  • Would be cool to have a setting to turn off URL shortening by default.
  • I’d love to see OpenID support too.
  • Support for IM statuses as services would be wicked – Google Talk, Windows Live Messenger, and Skype would be at the top of my list.

I’ve seen a few people write about Ping.fm, wishing that it had a way to aggregate your friends messages at all of the supported services. I hope they don’t go down that route – that’s what I use FriendFeed for. I’d rather Ping.fm stay focused on posting, not reading.

If you’d like to give Ping.fm a shot, use the beta code “pingyoulater”. I think these codes change from time to time, so if that doesn’t work, search Summize for a new one.

My love-hate relationship with Connect2Edmonton: Twitter & FriendFeed to the rescue?

connect2edmonton Connect2Edmonton (C2E for short) is a community website serving Edmontonians that launched on March 30th, 2006. On March 4th of this year it surpassed 3000 registrations, and announced that it receives 45,000 unique visitors per month. Those are pretty good numbers for a website all about Alberta’s capital city!

You can find all sorts of great stuff on the forums at C2E. Users post about construction projects, sports, new restaurants, you name it. Sometimes they simply post links to articles from the Journal or the Sun, other times users are breaking news at C2E. The wealth of frequently updated information on Edmonton is the main reason I love C2E.

Here’s what I hate about it: C2E looks and feels and smells like it was built in 1996. There are quite a few “Web 1.0” aspects to the site, such as the old school message boards, the lack of permalinks, and the horribly ugly URLs for the pages that do have permalinks. Instead of blogs, they have “columns”. Thank goodness the site has RSS, or I’d probably never use it.

For the moment, C2E seems to have an edge in that it has the community. I wonder how long that will last though? There are so many other up-and-coming services that could easily make C2E nothing more than a fond memory. Here’s a couple of examples that I’m involved with:

Edmonton’s Twitter Community
I still think that Twitter is changing the world, one tweet at a time. It’s transforming the way news breaks, and is making real-time conversations extremely public. Here in Edmonton we have a really strong Twitter community. We’ve had a Tweetup – follow us here – and we’ve loosely organized ourselves with things like the #yeg hashtag. Imagine if C2E users posted to Twitter with the #yeg hashtag instead of to the C2E forums! Others could reply without needing an account, they could get notifications to their mobile devices, through the API to other applications, etc.

The Edmonton Room at FriendFeed
Another thing I’ve created recently is the Edmonton room at FriendFeed. Anyone can join and start sharing messages, links, and of course comments and likes. And thanks to a recently added feature, I can add RSS feeds to the room so that entries automatically appear. So far I’ve added the Edmonton Journal and a couple of filtered blog feeds (such as the Edmonton tag on my blog). Again, this goes beyond C2E – instead of finding the Journal article and posting it to the forums, they automatically appear in the Edmonton room, ready for commenting and sharing. (I suppose I could add the C2E feed, but that’s beside the point.)

What both of these examples highlight, more than the “Web 1.0” look of C2E, is that it’s still a relatively closed system. Twitter and even FriendFeed are both much more open systems. They encourage data to be shared freely, and as a result, they are the platforms on which the news engines of the future are being built. Want an example? Check out NewsJunk.

I’m not saying that we need to abandon Connect2Edmonton. Instead, C2E should embrace Twitter, FriendFeed, and other services to make itself more open. C2E is a great service for the Edmonton community, but I know it could be so much better.

UPDATE (6/27/2008): I just tried to add the C2E RSS feed for Columns to the Edmonton FriendFeed room, only to find that the feed lacks datestamps, lacks authors, includes entries in a random order, and is otherwise useless. EPIC FAIL.

Talking Twitter at BarCampCalgary2

twitter I decided to fully embrace the idea of BarCamp on Saturday, and put my name down to do a presentation. I hadn’t planned to do one, and I certainly didn’t have anything prepared, so it was a “game-time decision” as I like to say. I figured I’d talk about Twitter, since I talked about it all the time anyway. I titled my talk:

Why Twitter Will Rule The World

Catchy right? Must have worked, because there were a lot of people in the room. I started with a brief overview and introduction, and then started showing some third party tools that make Twitter really useful, such as Summize and TwitterLocal. I also spent a little bit of time extolling the virtues of FriendFeed.

The best part of the presentation was the discussion. We talked about the signal-noise ratio of Twitter, and decided that there’s value in noise. We talked about spam, how Twitter breaks news, the scalability issues, and where we see Twitter going in the future. It was great, and the questions people asked definitely gave me something to think about.

Maybe I’ll lead a Twitter discussion at BarCampEdmonton in July. Definitely seems as though there’s interest.

Thanks to John Bristowe for letting me use his laptop (mine wouldn’t output to the projector for some reason). You can follow me on Twitter here.