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Blog 3542
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Klout Tells You How Powerful You Are On Twitter
There is a strong component of personal ego on Twitter. We all love to have followers, and dream of being on the Suggested User List. But how powerful are you Twitter, right now?
And what direction are you moving in? Are you becoming more, or less relevant? Klout can tell you all that and more.
Klout gives you a single number score that aggregates your total Twitter, well, clout. This single number is built from four areas: reach, demand, engagement, and velocity. Klout spits out a graph of your score, so that you can keep an eye on yourself. Mine looks like this:
Klout scores are based from 1, to 100, with 100 being the best. You will of course note that my score is not that close to 100. Anyway.
Klout further breaks your account into the four categories, giving you very detailed information about exactly how your score was calculated.
But it gets even better. If you love Twitter, as I trust that you do, having read this far, there is even more delicious data, giving you up and down arrows for each of the four categories:
But the best part of Kout is not the graphs, or the numbers, or the data. No, the best part of Klout is the compliments. Klout has a great system of saying wonderful things to you. Click on a button about a topic, say, retweets, and message will appear: “alex gets retweeted all the time by really influential people.” I mean, c’mon!
Klout is a whole load of fun, and for the dedicated Twitter user it is nice to see how you are doing over time on Twitter.
Put your Klout score in the comments. -
Want Fast Broadband? Dig It Yourself
A group of residents in Alston in Cumbria, UK, have taken upgrading their broadband lines into their
own hands in a bid to get fibre optic 20mb speeds.
For a large majority of people that live in remote areas of the UK, getting fast or any broadband at all can be troublesome due to installation costs not being a viable business option for networks such as BT.
With BT providing mediocre speeds originally that began only 4 years ago, they switched to Cybermoor after a series of campaigns, a company that uses transmitters to deliver as much as 10mbps of broadband to remote areas.
Though even this amount of data, in particularly for businesses and even local industries that rely on the Internet may not be necessarily enough and subsequently are installing fibre optics themselves.
Jeremy Higgs, owner of Pennine Ways estate agent in Alston reiterated the importance of good internet speeds “Just last month we let a property to a lady who works from home and needs broadband. She wouldn’t be here without it.”
Although this has happened on a relatively small scale, a future where upgrading our own lines could be the norm, especially with the Government only committed to providing everyone with 2mb lines. With a potential £42 tax per phone line the cost of doing this, home owners may turn to networks like Virgin Media who can currently install a 50mb fibre optic line for free.
It’s another story that epitomises how far behind the UK is falling in terms of our communications infrastructure in that some customers are actually digging and installing the broadband lines themselves. -
Apple Back AT&T With Two New iPhone Commercials
Apple will be airing two new iPhone commercials tonight highlighting the ability to simultaneously handle voice and data connections using 3G, according to Business Week.
Aside from showing off the device the ads are boasting about AT&T’s network.
The ads are coming out just in time to assist their U.S. partner AT&T in defending their network against Verizon’s recent ads. In the ads, Verizon attempts to point out AT&T’s spotty coverage / lack of coverage.
AT&T had filed a lawsuit weeks ago claiming the Verizon ads are misleading. Unfortunately for AT&T the federal judge will not be pulling the ads temporarily. The investigation will continue in December of 2009.
AT&T recently retorted with a public video response to Verizon’s ads, providing a side by side look at the networks. Luke Wilson, the celebrity spokesperson for the AT&T video begins by asking “Who offers the best 3G experience?”.
According to tech analyst Brian Marshall, Apple currently has an exclusive deal with AT&T until June 2010. He also reported in a recent interview that Apple is getting a $450 subsidy from AT&T for each iPhone it sells.
Apple iPhone Ad – Did You See My Email? from Arik Hesseldahl on Vimeo.
Apple iPhone Ad – What Time’s The Movie? from Arik Hesseldahl on Vimeo. -
Borders.co.uk Suspends Sales
Borders.co.uk the online arm of the well known UK book store have suspended sales on the site as the company looks for buyers.
In another potential victim of the recession, following in the footsteps of Woolworths and Zavvi that experienced similar downfalls last year. It’ll no doubt knock consumer confidence down another notch.
In October figures were released that stated that although online retail continued to grow by 7.6% in September year on year, it was the lowest growth recorded.
At current, a small pop up appears whenever you try to add a item to your basket stating ’sorry, title cannot be purchased’.
According to the BBC all orders placed before the suspension will be fulfilled but customers should expect to experience delays. -
This Is For The Spammers: How To Make “Money” On Twitter
You know those spammers that tell you how to get followers, and make cash on the Twitter? Just send them this:
Via Web Connoisseur. -
Web Based Twitter Clients – Which Is Right For You?
With all the news about Chrome OS, netbooks, and the move to the cloud that seems to be going on all around us, desktop applications are beginning to feel passe.
That said, without TweetDeck what would you do? If you had only a browser and a hookup to the tubes, what would you use to tweet?
Take heart, TNW has done the work for you. Below, the best web-based Twitter clients.
Seesmic Web:
Seesmic is the everywhere Twitter client. Mobile? It’s got that. Air application? Has that too. Often overlooked, is that Seesmic also has a killer web application for Twitter. No download needed.
Of course, you can login with Twitter, if you fear password theft, and then the delights begin. You are started off with a standard incoming tweets, and @ mention columns, and can with single clicks add in a stream of your updates (something that I love, given that I tweet a bit, I need to see what people are responding too), and your favorites.
Seesmic web also integrates lists, letting you open a new column for each list that you follow. I heartily recommend this list, if you get the time.
Seesmic also tracks trending topics, and with a single click you can add search columns for each trend. Seesmic is fast, accurate, full featured, and well designed. Even for the hardened TweetDeck use, such as myself, Seesmic web impresses.
Brizzly:
Brizzly takes a radical approach to Twitter: one column. If you have become used to using a number of columns to keep things straight, get over it. Brizzly does a number of things very well, including treating DM’s like conversations, and automatically making images viewable, right in your stream.
If you were, or perhaps still are (there are 7), a heavy FriendFeed users, Brizzly is for you. It mimics a number of familiar FriendFeed elements, making the switch very simple.
Brizzly recently became open for general use, after an extensive beta period. It is growing like a weed, for a reason.
CoTweet:
CoTweet is the industrial strength Twitter application, for the dead serious user. If you are managing a brand, or corporate account, CoTweet is for you.
Built into every tweet, the ability to change the time of posting. The ability to assign updates to account managers? It does that. Multiple accounts? Of course.
CoTweet is built for the corporation, and it shows. Can you use it a personal client? Sure. It is not designed for endless updating, you have to click “Post An Update” just to get a place to tweet. But, if you are mostly a listener or trend watcher, CoTweet can be very powerful.
If you are running a high volume corporate account with several managers, CoTweet is a godsend. For the average Twitter user, it is too much built for something else.
HootSuite:
HootSuite, which is tied to the ow.ly shortener, is packed with powerful, simple to understand features. It integrates lists, Facebook, LinkedIn, multiple columns, tabbed groups of columns, tweet delaying, and built-in analytics if you are an ow.ly user.
HootSuite also has the “Hootlet,” which is a browser bookmarklet, which for the avid sharer will be a god-send. HootSuite also manages multiple accounts simply, and has a system (something akin to CoTweet), allowing different users to interact over various accounts. I have not tested this.
HootSuite is a top contender for me, if I was to move to the browser full-time.
TweetVisor:
TweetVisor is something of a lovely disaster. Do you know the effect of watching your slice of apple pie ooze into a blob with ice cream on top? Still tastes lovely. That is TweetVisor, the little app that could.
TweetVisor is a multi-column application that has a boatload of capabilities. Lists, saved searches, favorites, trending topic management, even the ability to create lists inside of TweetVisor.
All that and you get to pick what the application looks like, myself opting for the familiar TweetDeck feeling “Deck” theme. Tweetvisor also keeps a running tab of your follower/following and update counts at the top of the application, letting you track your success in, well, real-time.
TweetVisor does not feel as polished as the other applications, but it gets the job done in a major way. Some people are going to love it.
TwitHive:
The Linux of Twitter apps. You start with, well, nothing, and build “channels” for the incoming streams that you want. If you are tired of catered solutions, this might be for you. Updating requires opening a box, making power-tweeting difficult. If you built your last computer and are running Ubuntu, this might be just the thing for you.
Twitter.com:
An incomplete version of Twitter, that lacks the standard features that we are all accustomed to. Twitter.com only has three things going for it: access to full following/followers lists, the horrible new retweet function, and the ability to leave it be. -
Twitter sure is a rollercoaster, but going up or down?
The last 10 days have been pretty interesting to follow in the fast moving world of Twitter. They showed a contrasting (or seemingly so) picture of where the super-hyped company is heading. Let us rewind the last few events.
The Retweet Button
The now infamous retweet button was introduced, then was removed, then was added back short after. But it is not so much the shakiness of the release that made the headlines as the disappointment felt by many users. From where I stand, the retweet button is a case-study of “how to botch a user-driven feature”. Retweets are part of the Twitter culture and serve to spread and reinforce information, but with a twist: the retweeter can put her own spin on the tweet. Not allowing editing the tweet removes half of the value of the feature.
Twitter’s usage (and value) decreased in October –or so it is claimed
Reports of Twitter’s usage dropping in October gave the doomsayers the opportunity to start the obituary of the service. Depending on the research firm, the number of unique US visitors from September to October dropped from 2.1% to a staggering 27.8% –the latest figure meaning that the number of unique US visitors dropped from 26.2 to 18.9 million unique visitors in October.
However the same report also mentioned an August 2009 study stating that 43% of Twitter users accessed the service through 3rd-party applications, and 19% through SMS. Thus a large chunk of the traffic is not accounted for. August is 3 months ago, which is about an eternity in Twitter’s world. Seesmic claims a 30%/month increase of its web traffic, which must translate into more users accessing tweets via their apps. Indeed, TweetStats reports that the twitter.com website, as of Nov 24th 2009, is responsible for only 19.09% of the tweets, via 20.51% of the Twitter users. Given the steady rise of Twitter 3rd-party applications from August to November, numbers based on Twitter.com traffic cannot be seriously interpreted. If anything, these numbers show that most of the people use Twitter clients other that the web site, and that the overall number of users did increase in October (about 19% of US Internet users in October 2009). By 2010 it is estimated that 26 millions people in the US will use Twitter.
In the same vein, NeXt Up Research calculated the value of Twitter to be between $526 million and $674 million –half of the $1 billion valuation the company got from its Sept 25 funding. The flaw though is that even if the study acknowledges that only 21% of the users access the service via the website, it fails to recognize that the value of the company comes from providing the tweets, regardless of the clients used to consume them.
Twitter goes all mobile: SMS and geolocation
The Nielsen Company reported that in Q3 2009, more than half of mobile Internet users accessed the Web via smartphones. This suggests that more and more people access Twitter via their phones, justifying using a 3rd party application to read tweets –there are plenty of well designed Twitter apps for iPhone, BlackBerry, and other smartphone owners.
Twitter continues its strategy towards substituting itself to SMS. After the agreement with Bharti Airtel in India, Twitter stroke a deal with Orange in UK, virtually replacing SMS for its users, for free. Increased traffic and more opportunities for future ads revenue and marketing research will be the payoff.
And finally, Twitter released its geolocation API, opening the door to recommendations from locals, targeted marketing and promotional sales, and (real-time) search in your neighborhood. With Twitter data now being used by the three major search engines (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo), this promises a very valuable slice of a fast-growing market –look at Foursquare as an example to follow. Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said it all: “When we look at where we can grow we look to the more than 4 billion active mobile phone accounts in the world, opposed to the 1.65 million active web accounts.”
Twitter to launch premium accounts
As expected, Twitter will start charging companies for premium access to the service in December 2009 or January 2010. These corporate accounts will provide thorough analytics to be used for customer prospecting, marketing campaign, customer service, and corporate image. More than half (56.3%) of marketers “realistically” plan to use social media (second only to email) in their 2010 campaigns, and 75% of them plan to increase social media tactics in their marketing strategy. Corporations are increasingly aware of the benefit of a good social media footprint. The top social networks proven to add marketing value are LinkedIn (26%), Facebook (23%), and Twitter (17%). Given the relatively small size of Twitter (LinkedIn has 50 millions users, and Facebook over 325 millions), it shows that the microblogging service provides a higher marketing and communication value per user. Thus it is clear that premium accounts will generate substantial revenues in the year to come.
Super tweet
There have been a lot of discussions about how to monetize tweets, but not as much about how to enhance the quality of a tweet. The idea of a super tweet, carrying meta information, is coming along the needs for real-time search, categorization, and relevance. An application like speedi.ly allows fast, automated, classification of the URL carried with a tweet, which can be used to generate high-quality meta information that is easily searchable. A super tweet could also carry a payload that can be directly monetized, like promotional offers and coupons. As long as the scope of meta information is kept small and manageable, the applications for quality real-time search and push sales/marketing campaigns are immense.
So what’s the verdict?
Twitter relies more and more on 3rd party apps to make its content available. There is nothing wrong with this, and some would argue it is a smart strategy –do not invest directly in how to distribute content, instead let the many startups compete for the price. However Twitter should make sure it can provide the content in a reliable manner. Also it should listen more to user requirements. Lists were a good addition, despite the lack of an efficient web interface to build them, but the retweet button limiting the user interaction is more than questionable. The idea of a super tweet, carrying meta information for accurate search and highly specialized promotional messages, will likely take root. The question is how fast Twitter will deliver on this.
Twitter is continuing its fast expansion in mobiles. Its support for geolocation will bring new targeted promotion tools, and all signs point to marketers and local businesses to use these features very soon. Twitter has proven to be a very efficient way of marketing a product or a brand, and it will keep developing new ways of refining target audience via search and push technology. The naysayers will quickly be shown that Twitter evolves faster than they expect, and the company will certainly capitalize on the economic recovery. Last but not least, Twitter is still being shaped by users as well as the profusion of innovative startups –the hottest Twitter service may still to be created.
Tell us what you think. Did Twitter reach a plateau, and is it just another fad that will eventually meet its fate? Or is it just the beginning, and it will be soon a must-have on any smartphone to communicate, share, promote, shop, and entertain? -
Joost Virtually Dead. Assets get acquired.
We’re Updating, Bear with us.
If there were ever a surer sign that Joost has shut up shop, this is it.
Despite the site still being available online, Adconion Media Group the largest independent global audience and content network, announced today that it has acquired certain assets from privately-held Joost, the online video service. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Janus Friis, co-founder of Joost (and Kazaa), said, “Over the past few months we have been actively exploring strategic options for Joost, and have concluded that the sale of certain of its assets to Adconion is in the best interests of Joost. Adconion has a strong technological platform and a compelling business model, and we believe that both businesses will benefit as a result of this acquisition.”
Through the Joost acquisition, Adconion.TV will add to its library of professionally-produced video content available for targeted pre-roll advertisements across 2,000 premium publishers.
Joost began development in 2006 as an Internet TV service created by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis (founders of Skype and Kazaa). The product was developed by some 150 software developers in about six cities around the world and launched in 2007.
Friis and Zennström used part of a $2.6 billion cash payment when eBay acquired Skype in 2005, to develop and market cost Joost. Just a week after launching the service, the founders announced that they had raised an additional $45 million. Sequoia Capital, an early investor in Skype; Li Ka-shing, the Hong Kong tycoon; and CBS who all took minority stakes in the start-up.
Upon launch Joost begun as a desktop based application but after failing to compete with the likes of YouTube who merely needed users to visit a URL, on December 17, 2008, Joost sent an email to its customers explaining that the project was moving to a website-only model, and that the Joost application would stop working Friday, December 19.
via Techcrunch -
If Twitter would do audio, Grapevine could be the role model
Every now and then comes a really cool service that takes more to explain with words than to just try it out yourself.
A while ago we’ve discussed 6rounds, a collaborative video platform. Today we’d like to point you to Grapevine.
Grapevine can be summarized as a collaborative voice communications tool.
Once signed up you can start a discussion by creating a new Vine. A Vine in Grapevine parlance groups together multiple audio messages from various participants that belong to a specific topic.
Vines can be private, which means that only those Grapevine users you directly add can listen and record. Open vines allow everybody to tune in and contribute. Finally there’s an option to make a Vine public, which sets it sort of between private and open Vines: Everybody can listen but only selected users can add audio recordings. Public Vines could be an interesting candidate to broadcast your next panel discussion.
Initially Grapevine started as a browser based service but switched to an Adobe AIR client recently.
In terms of its look & fell the desktop application pretty much fits into the category of timeline based real-time clients like Tweetie for the Mac, Socialcast or Skype. Likewise it allows you to follow Vines, search for specific topics or just tune into the most popular ones.
The screenshot to the left shows The Next Web staff test driving Grapevine from three different countries.
While we ultimately managed to get it working and actually had much fun using it, we recommended to the Grapevine team to do another round of usability enhancements.
Unfortunately many aspects of what really turned out to be a cool service where somewhat buried deep inside the far too complex application.
As an example we were seeking quite a while for the live broadcast feature, that would allow us to do real-time conversations as opposed to recording messages and playing them back time shifted.
It turned out that the service automagically switches to broadcast for all participants that have tuned into a Vine at the same time. Part of our confusion might have been caused by the not-so-common terminology used everywhere. When did you “tune into a Vine” the last time?
Clearly needs some rework before it can go mainstream!
Besides enhancing the Adobe AIR application the Grapevine team is working on a web based version that let’s you at least link and listen to messages and the obligatory iPhone app.
We were intrigued to learn about plans to open up the service for third party enhancement through a Developer API.
While the current feature set is already pretty useful for distributed teams of all sorts, a Developer API would allow everybody to embed Vines into their web sites, blogs, you-name-it and let visitors leave audio commentaries. This could be a fascinating addition to today’s mostly written conversations.
If you’d like to try Grapevine yourself, drop me a message on Twitter, we’ve got some invites left. -
LinkedIn is opening up for Business
While many consumer oriented social networks opened up their platforms long time ago – at least in tech time – the more business oriented ones have been holding back slightly.
Yesterday, LinkedIn, one of the most successful business networks, announced the immediate availability of its Developer API.
Many other services have extended their reach either directly by letting third party developers create fantastic tools or indirectly by allowing others to integrate.
Think about how Tweetie helped taking Twitter mobile, how Seesmic makes it simple and straightforward process to keep your status updates in sync across multiple services. All of this without any investment of the platform operators into these third party solutions.
The unparalleled success of the iPhone raised the bar for taking personal and professional communication services mobile. A task which can be left for experts once you’ve created a working developer ecosystem and infrastructure.
The LinkedIn Developer Network offers Widgets to embed LinkedIn content into your own website the copy & paste style. The more advanced API level interface provides programatic access to user profiles and connections. LinkedIn leverages OAuth to authenticate API calls, so users do not have to give away their login credentials to third party services.
A very first integration based on the new interfaces has been announced by the makers of TweetDeck, which is already integrated into Twitter and Facebook.
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