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Last Week In Tech: Twitter, Google, Facebook Make Headlines

Matt Browne — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:00:49 +0000

Last week was an exciting week in tech. The 3 bigs, Facebook, Twitter, and Google made some very relevant announcements that will have an affect on us all.

The first major announcement was Twitter Lists, which went live to all users on Friday. I agree with Scoble, Twitter Lists are the most significant upgrade to the Twitter platform since inception. Fresh on the heels of this announcement, Listorious created the first Twitter list directory site.

Twitter had a hot week. But they weren’t stopping there. Tweets from the Web 2.0 Summit were steadily quoting @Ev about the future of Twitter. My favorite quote from the show, “Twitter is an information network, not a social network.”

Another big move for Twitter last week was when they struck a deal with Bing and Google to populate relevant Tweets in search result pages. This was a clear warning shot across the bow of real time search startups like OneRiot.com.

In other big news last week, Google had their share of announcements.

Google Social Search is one of the more interesting developments from my perspective. Utilizing your Gmail contacts, Social Search finds results from your friend’s blogs, Twitter, and other social sites, and lets you filter out any results you don’t want included.

Google continued their string of announcements with the launch of Google Comparison engine which was released Thursday on the Adwords blog. This move, coupled with the Google maps redesign for Real Estate, is evidence Google is making a serious play in the Real Estate space.

And finally, Facebook:

Facebook made news with their homepage redesign last week. The move was prompted to give Facebook applications more exposure and relevancy moving forward. Users, as usual, reacted by forming groups that protested the new design.

Facebook also revamped it’s privacy policy, another move that sends shivers down the spine of their community.

Twitter made the most strides last week. Google was not far behind. And Facebook appeared to be mired by the diplomacy of their recent changes. It was a good week in tech news, with many substantial updates coming to fruition that will affect on the way we utilize these services.

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BlogWorld Takeaways 1/5: Twitter Lists

Matt Browne — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:00:02 +0000

I’ve decided to write a series of posts this week outlining some of my takeaways from Blogworld 2009. This is meant to recap my notes and document some of the conversations that I thought were most valuable at Blogworld New Media Expo in Las Vegas October 15th -17th.

While most of the sessions at Blogworld inspired me to *think*, there was one session in particular, led by Robert Scoble, that gave me a glimpse into Twitter’s crystal ball.

In the middle of a session dedicated to “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Social Media;” Scoble got sidetracked. Somehow the audience convinced him to pull up his ‘list-enabled’ Twitter account. ‘Lists’ are a new feature that Twitter is beta testing on selected accounts. I didn’t get the power of the lists feature by reading Mashable’s post; it took seeing the new feature in real life for me to clearly understand the value.

Robert was clearly excited.

He told us he spent the last 10 hours sorting the 5,000 people he follows into 20 separate lists, that people can then search and subscribe to. Moreover, lists are built right into Twitter’s platform. Users can clearly see how many lists they are included in, which acts as a credibility (or popularity) indicator for the entire community.

The theory goes, the more lists that link to you, the more credible and powerful your voice is.

One of the audience members in the session aptly pointed out in the Q&A that this new feature will completely replace groups. 3rd party apps like TweetDeck will simply support Twitter lists feature, and do away with groups altogether. This way your lists are completely in sync across mobile, web, and 3rd party apps.

Scoble predicted this will be the most significant change in Twitter since it’s inception 3 years ago. He predicts there will be a virtual land grab, and suggested user lists created by all of us will be the real estate we all get greedy for.

It’s time to start thinking about curating lists of influencers, if you haven’t already. Game on.

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App Wednesday: Tweetie 2.0

Matt Browne — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:00:01 +0000

In spirit of App Wednesday, we’d like to recognize Tweetie 2.

We were apprehensive to jump on the bandwagon last week because of all the hype. I wanted to try the app for myself and get used to some of the new idiosyncrasies. After a week of testing, I am convinced this is an app you need to buy if you Twitter.

Much like Facebook mobile was a better app than Facebook.com, Tweetie 2 is a much more usable app than twitter.com.

It won’t be long before Tweetie 2 is at the top of the app charts. They combined the best aspects of Tweetie for Mac and for iPhone. Here are some of the new features:

Improved search
Better App Integration (Favrd, Favstar.fm, TweetPhoto, Bit.ly, etc)
Multiple Drafts (autosaves where you left off)
Nested conversations
Link your address book with Twitter
Support for the new Retweet feature

Still, there are the people that feel Tweetie 2 should be an upgrade rather than a new purchase, however we feel it’s worth it.

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iPhone Apps I that I think are cool, useful, and worth the $$

Matt Browne — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 16:00:10 +0000

Occasionally people ask me what apps I am using, or what is worth $$$. I have put together a list of some of my favorite apps for those that are interested:

New Kids On The Block

Tweetie 2.0 – Best Twitter App available – $2.99
Photoshop – Adobe Photoshop for the iPhone – Free
GoDaddy – Search Domains Easily – Free
Vongage – VOIP is now mobile – cost of service
CNN Mobile – News, Video, iReport – $1.99 (with Ads)
RedLaser – Real time bar code scanning – $1.99

Oldies But Goodies

Evernote – The ultimate document management – Freemium
MotionX GPS Drive – The best value GPS for your iPhone – $2.99
(30 day trial for Live Voice directions, and then $24.99/year)
Shazzam – Find that song you just heard, and share it – Free
Livestrong – Lifestyle and calorie tracker that is really well done – $2.99

Down Right Silly, But Worth It:

“I am TPain” – You can make yourself sound like TPain, you gotta try this. $2.99
SitOrSquat – Always know where the cleanliness toilets are – Free

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Twitter’s Billion Dollar Valuation Brings Out Mixed Emotions

Matt Browne — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 16:00:08 +0000

News started breaking last week that Twitter have 50MM committed in the recent round of funding. It wasn’t until the dust settled and hype peaked that we found out they raised over 100MM on a billion dollar +++ valuation. Whoa!

Now, wherever you stand on this, you can’t deny it’s big news.

Jason Fried, of 37 Signals, reacted by mocking Twitter with his own inflated valuation.

Other influencers felt as if this deal is resurrecting everything wrong with Silicon Valley pre-bubble.

I say it’s good news for this economy. With that kind of fundraising power, and Twitter’s not-so-secret desire to become the pulse of the planet, the race between Facebook and Twitter is going to get very interesting.

Some people aren’t comfortable with the growing comparisons of Twitter and Facebook despite their very similar traffic growth. Facebook has established revenues (and glimmers of profitability) where Twitter has experimental ideas on how to make money.

Either way, it is exciting to see and experience Twitter’s growth first hand. If you are not taking part in this media revolution, what are you doing???

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OneForty, The (unofficial, but very awesome) Twitter App Store is Here

Matt Browne — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 15:30:33 +0000

Unofficial app stores have been a venture all their own. A crowded space, but whitehot if you can command the attention and respect of the community.

@Pistachio is someone the Twitter community has been quietly routing for, for a while now. It is widely known that she introduced the uber-influential Guy Kawasaki to twitter, among her many other accolades.

Laura Fitton is one of the few that could really get a project like this off the ground, and it looks like she’s timed it perfectly. She got the virtual full Ginsburg from the top media blogs at TC140, which was very well executed.

Our quick and dirty review of the site is 4 out of 5 stars. We love the signup process, naturally built on Twitter’s Oauth ID system, which makes the initial experience very smooth. The oneforty inc., will bring a Yelp-like experience and organization to a very fragmented space. It appears, from early reaction, to be the solution the community has been looking for.

These things has a tendency to get huge spikes initially, especially with the kind of free press oneforty got this week, but also have a habit of fizzling out 90 days later. Lets hope oneforty.com can turn this early momentum into sustainable traffic and more importantly, revenues that exceed their expenses.

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Twitter Belly Flops – We’re Long Passed #FailWhale

admin — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 15:54:31 +0000

Twitter Belly Flops on OAuth support and gives new meaning to the term Fail Whale. In fact, they didn’t even bother to do a snazzy ‘we suck’ graphic that the community can banter about. WTF?

I wouldn’t bring attention to this normally, but Twitter OAuth was being heralded as a popular alternative Facebook Connect despite the fact it was in ‘public beta.’

The Twitter Blog was rather defensive about the outage, blaming it on OAuth and pointing out that Yahoo had problems too.

Passing the buck doesn’t fly with me. Admitting that you flopped, taking some responsibility, is a start. Shit happens. But, in my experience, it seems a lot shit happens at Twitter. Bits and pieces of their service are constantly offline or don’t work, despite what their Status blog says.

Another (somewhat related) frustration- 3rd party apps don’t get enough live interaction from Twitter because they have limited intervals in which they can poll Twitter, instead of getting push updates (like Text messages).

For all these failures, ‘Twitter’ is pure genius. Their execution however, has been abysmal; given they are the darling of the tech community.

Public beta means different things to different developers. Google and Facebook have done a commendably good job about launching public beta’s that are ready for public consumption. When Twitter launches something in ‘beta’ again, I don’t doubt it will send shivers up the spines of developers. I don’t think that’s the vibe they wanted to create in their community.

Maybe this post should be directed at all the blogs that overhyped the service, or developers that rolled it out too quickly.

I’ve seen seen Twitter 404 pages turn into the Fail Whale, and the Fail Whale turn into a pop culture phenomenon. It seems like tolerance to these failures is not only accepted, but embraced by the community. How? I don’t know. But it is truly one of the 7 Wonders of Social Media.

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Spring Cleaning: Feeds, Followers, and Favorites

admin — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 23:38:37 +0000

Okay, many of you know that I started a new gig over the last 3 weeks. Life as I know it, has been turned upside down, sideways, shaken up, and splattered everywhere. To say I’ve been befuddled is an understatement.

How am I coping with all the activity? I’m not. I am beyond email bankruptcy, Twitter overload, and ready to abandon my feed reader.

Not good.

Where do I go from here? Two words: ‘Spring Cleaning’.

I blocked off my schedule and took about 2-3 hours going through all my feeds, followers, and friends and applying Occam’s razor. Here is the result:

Twitter:
I manage 8 different Twitter accounts which all had the same strategy, follow and be followed. I was a big fan of Scoble’s secret to Twitter, but I am afraid I need to detract.

Twitter doesn’t have enough native features to sort and manage your lists. Sure, you can manage a list of tweeps via TweetDeck or Seesmic Desktop, but I find it rather inefficient to create and manage the same favorite list across web and mobile platforms. After much consideration, I decided to unfollow a good number of people I don’t have a personal relationship with.

The noise was filtering out the people I wanted to hear from the most.

As a repercussion of this new thinking, I took my follower count down to the people I maintain personal relationships with. I went from following nearly 1,000 people, down to about 200 and the result has been wonderful. My Twitter apps have been giving me more value than ever before. I find that my lists are much more manageable, the noise isn’t as deafening anymore.

I’ve done the same thing with Facebook. I’ve set up lists and limited the people that hit my primary news feed. Similarly, I reduced the number of feeds I subscribe to in Google reader from 300 to less than 100 feeds.

It was really challenging to limit my input streams to a couple hundred friends and influencers.

Less IS more. And that cliche is proving to be true once again.

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I am now @sdMatt on Twitter- update your bookmarks

Matt Browne — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 12:21:23 +0000

I have changed my name on Twitter to @SDmatt. I have been thinking about doing this for the better part of a year, but I didn’t know if I could actually pull the trigger.

I might completely regret this decision, but my frustration with the ‘mattsurfs’ moniker outgrew my desire to keep it.

I grew frustrated for two reasons:

* As much as I surf (which is occasionally), I don’t want to brand myself on Twitter as a surfer.
* The jokes got old… ‘oh, matt surfs the web’

I am ok with changing my name right now for another two reasons:

* I like that it associates me with San Diego (ie @SDBloggers by @SDmatt)
* It is slightly shorter, and potentially more memorable

I know changing humane behavior isn’t easy. I expect it to be an uphill battle.

My guess is that I will need to setup an rss feed for ‘mattsurfs’ and just @reply to anyone that uses the wrong account. We’ll see.

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OC TweetUp – Twitter Meetup in Orange County

Matt Browne — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 17:45:06 +0000

At the same time most of my San Diego colleagues were schmoozin’ and boozin’, Angela and I were in Orange County for the inaugural OC Tweet Up.

The first OC TweetUp was hosted by @rockstarpr, aka Jonathan Good of Greenwala. 12 of us gathered to talk face to face about ‘What are you doing?’ I had a really good time at the event and met some savvy business and marketing individuals.

The tweetup was very reminiscent of where the social media events were in San Diego one year ago today. I remember when the social community hadn’t quite aligned in SD. It is great to see Orange County breaking out of its shell.

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