Do You Follow Too Many People On Twitter? Use ManageTwitter.

via techcrunch.com

This is an awesome tool. Very helpful, especially the "who is quiet, who is talkative" filter set.

The Challenge of Social Media

I may strike a chord when I say I have had enough. Don't get me wrong, I am addicted to my networks. But I really can't say that if you took one of them away, I would be devastated. The reason is probably because there is so much darn overlap. Facebook is for my real world friends (the people I know face to face and who have an important meaning in my personal life). Recently, Facebook has added features that make it a news hub, a customer to business and business to business communication tool, and a chat client. It's added real time, filtering and search. Ugh. No more, stop. I don't want Facebook to be the social hub - my friends aren't all techies and the last thing they want to see or hear is this post. There are enough negatives with Facebook to make it feel like the butter knife in the toolbox - sure I can use it to screw flat head screws, but I have a really nice screwdriver for that, so why bother?

Then there is LinkedIn, the step child of social networks. My contacts there started out as business contacts - people I worked with and worked for, who could share a recommendation or job idea. People I could turn to for business advice, problem solving help, and the like. LinkedIn gets this and has not tried to be the next Twitter or Facebook. My LinkedIn connections are just over a hundred of some the brightest people I have worked with. And that is perfect. I don't feel pressured or annoyed by the feature-creep. Because there is none.

Then of course there is Twitter. Not really a network. More like a big Ham Radio. When I was a kid, I used to have a shortwave radio from Radio Shack that was as big as a desktop PC. It was amazing. I had this single wire antenna that I would run from corner to corner of my room to boost reception. As a young person, there was limited listening time due to time zone, bedtime and sunspot issues. But occasionally I would get the BBC or a broadcast in another language, like German or Arabic. Sometime I would pick up a time signal, which dutifully announced the exact time from an atomic clock somewhere in Colorado with magical precision. The whole experience was amazing. Fast forward 30 years. Now my radio is Twitter. With it,  I have lots of channels I listen to when I happen to be near the "radio" - people who broadcast a link to a site they found (or article they wrote), a funny quote or thought provoking idea, or just a hello. Even some foreign language tweets from my European friends. If I don't tune in, I don't hear the message. But this doesn't bother me, because most of the people I tune into are on during "prime time" or before my bedtime if I am lucky (a lot of us are past 40 so bedtime is getting earlier and earlier), so as long as I check in now and then during those time slots, I get enough good stuff to keep coming back. Twitter is used for much more than that, but the founders are not pushing that down my throat. They keep their site simple and the toolset equally simple. Its a perfect tool in this regard. And its comfortable.

Now, Buzz and Friendfeed are fighting for my attention. These networks had the potential to be aggregators for lots of services, but what is happening with Buzz (and what already happened with Friendfeed) is that people are choosing sides and in the process creating more parallel networks instead of one connected one. Like Facebook, the original mission is lost. In its place is the attempt to create a holy grail of networks. I really don't understand this. It's counter productive and a waste of everyone's time. Tools are tools, and unfortunately we are now stuck in an internet "virtual garage" with a toolbox half full of metric and half full of American socket wrenches. And nothing fits together on the first try.

What we need right now is for someone (Google?) to step up, hand over an open platform (the actual square toolbox, not the tools inside of it) and let us bring the tools (all of which can be compatible if they follow the standard). Then and only then will the promise of social networking become reality and we can finally stop discussing social media ON social media and use it for the real work of talking to each other.

Has Google Reader Just Gone Real Time?

via thenextweb.com

Pubsubhubbub is something I have been playing with the last few weeks and excited to see this announcement. I have been using Feedburner to accelerate my feeds but the results have been spotty. I originally attributed this to a configuration error on my part, but I after some testing, I think it has more to do with the hubs I am pushing to/pulling from than the config itself. This is a good article from my friends at The Next Web.

Making Buzz Better at Chris Tech Blog

via cjsparno.com

Wrote up some comments on Buzz and how to make it better. There are a couple of things Google can do to improve the Buzz experience exponentially. Let me know what you're thinking.

Dear Google...

I have gone from love to hate to love again with Buzz. At first, I was giddy to have something new to organize and publish my thoughts, view and absorb the collective knowledge of those I already follow on other social sites, and to finally bring some order to the chaos I seem to have created with Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, Posterous and Chris' Tech Blog. My initial impressions were negative once I got my hands on the tools. This was just another silo of information, and could quickly become a dead end of comments and posts, more noise and less signal for my writing and learning. Then I forced myself (yes, forced) to really use Buzz for a day and a night, and nothing else. No Twitter posts, no blog entries, no FriendFeed and no Facebook. It was then that I saw something interesting. Quality.

When I post to Twitter, since I am no Scoble, I guarantee my thoughts are lost immediately among the noise. Sure, there are a handful (and I mean handful) of folks that actually read every Tweet I transmit, but for the most part, it might as well be a grain of sand at the bottom of the ocean. I think that is the inherent problem with Twitter - unless you are already known, you remain unknown. Friendfeed started the democratization process of Twitter by adding the ability to start a conversation around a Tweet. A good start. And since the celebs were not gumming up the works, it was easier to be signal versus noise. But like all good things, FriendFeed got absorbed by a competitor and started to die on the vine. The relevancy and quality started to drop for small guys, as the big guys ate up most of the bandwidth and mindshare. Quality waned.

Posterous is a good example of a service with quality. Compared to Tumblr, at least in my experience, getting followers is not a result of popularity (or as they call it, Tumblarity). It's the result of quality posts being observed by quality people enjoying what you have to say and adding to it with comments. I am always surprised that when I hit a chord with readers on a particular topic how many actually view a post. In some cases, thousands of readers. I never see that type of activity in Tumblr, or even on Chris' Tech Blog. This is an example of a great community and one where you can give to and take from with every interaction. Quality.

My current impression of Buzz is that it is that type of community - more Posterous and less Tumblr. Sure, some of the mega stars are already doing their expected "land grabs" and hogging huge chunks of my inbox, but in most cases, they are listening too. In the past if one of these prolific posters sent out a tweet, good luck getting their attention with a reply. But with Buzz, there seems to be a layer of trust that makes the conversation more two-way. And this is a great thing. Sure, ego will definitely rear its ugly head at some point, but I agree with a poster I read this morning on a Buzz thread who said that maybe, because our real names are known, it will make the conversation more sincere, more real. I absolutely believe that. I see that already. And this to me is what quality is all about.

So Google, here is my request for Buzz. Keep innovating and pushing this tool on a weekly basis. Don't let it stagnate. Keep it safe and don't let it turn into a playground for trolls and haters. And one last thing, please don't turn it into another "island of misfit toys" that does not play well with the rest of the social ecosphere. You have the power to organize and make sense of all the streams we wrestle with just like you made sense out of search and the internet in general. We are watching and hoping. Don't let us down.

Google Buzz

via googlesystem.blogspot.com

Great comprehensive article on Buzz along with the full press event/rollout from Tuesday. There are still holes in the documentation of this service (such as what certain graphic elements in the interface actually do), but hopefully those holes will be filled soon. Posting this to Buzz too.

Why Web Developers Should Switch to Google Chrome - Nettuts+

via net.tutsplus.com

Solid article on Google Chrome as your primary development browser. Good stuff from a good source.

Google Buzz

via google.com

Watched the release event live today. Pretty awesome looking product. Waiting for my Gmail to get the service (could take a day or two to populate to all users). Most of the buzz talking about it being a Facebook killer - really it just killed FriendFeed today for sure. It was like watching the launch of FF all over again. Weird. And it's interesting how Facebook is the one social platform that matters that was absent from the "feeds" that Buzz can grab in this release.

Also nice to hear that Apps support is coming in next rev. This will be huge for Google Apps clients as it is a way to implement a "wave"-like experience today without hosting your own Wave server.

Guy Kawasaki on The Art of the Start

I came across this video of Guy Kawasaki speaking about entrepreneurship and really found the speech inspirational. I consider myself lucky to have had the opportunity to work with people like Guy (including Guy) when I was at Apple. His books, especially The Macintosh Way have provided me with many guiding principles and motivation over the years. Enjoy this 39 minute presentation.