TheWayoftheWeb

Content and Digital Marketing Specialists

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Send your Christmas greetings as videos via Skype

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If you’re looking for a more interesting way to send your Christmas greetings electronically than a standard E-Card (and you’ve just about missed the last day for postage in the UK, so you don’t have much choice for last minute greetings!), you might want to check out the Christmas video greetings from Skype.

It’s available either as a Facebook application, or as a standalone service. And if you use the standalone version you can embed your video message in your blog, as a Christmas greeting – so be very glad I don’t have a webcam with me at work!

It made me wonder how Christmas card sales will perform this year – those of those who are connecting to people online have many more contacts who we might want to send a Christmas greeting to, around the globe, and in an economical way.

Or is this an area where doing something personal by sending a physical object makes a big difference?

Definitely interesting times for a variety of companies and industries that had successful products just a few years ago. I’ve just seen the news that Polaroid has gone bankrupt – as Tomi says, instant pictures haven’t gone out of fashion, they’ve just moved to mobile phones. Personally, the last time I had a reason to think about the Polaroid brand was when I found a couple of their old cameras in the loft…

A truism from MacLeod and a quick plug…

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Hugh MacLeod at GapingVoid is rarely wrong! Incidentally, I highly recommend his writing on Social Objects, How to be Creative, and The Hughtrain.

And to balance the amount of links deservedly pointing to GapingVoid, I just thought I’d mention that there is, in fact, a TheWayoftheWeb Facebook Page, which I hope will become a place where I can chat about ideas, aggregate any questions etc in addition to my network of fantastic people on Twitter.

Interviewing the real MrTweet – Steve Ng Ming Yeow

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One of the Twitter applications which has received a lot of responses is MrTweet, billed as ‘Your Personal Networking Assistant’. Follow @MrTweet and you’ll get a direct message when he’s ready to help. And you’ll then get a list of the followers you should really have followed back, but may have missed – and a list of people outside of your network who are relevant and worth following – and you also get a character profile with information on each person to help you decide.

I got in touch with @MIngYeow – one of the duo behind MrTweet, along with @ambivalence, to find out more, particularly as the service received a lot of negative comments about some functionality which initially required submitting your Twitter username – there’s no need to submit your username for the applications now!

What inspired you to create MrTweet? Is it just one part of your social start-up?

You know you need a personal assistant when you are spending more time searching for the right people, as opposed to being able to build effective relationships through sharing and communicating.

The simplicity and openness of Twitter has become a limiting factor, as sheer information overload overwhelms users. In many cases, folks resorted to randomly surfing and adding.

Based on these needs and existing behaviors, rose the inspiration of Mr. Tweet – a personal assistant of helping users find good people to connect to easily.

Mr. Tweet is a first step of our social startup, which hopefully you will hear a lot more about in time to come.

Was it a reaction to directory-based services like Twellow, Twitterpacks or TwitDir?

Nope, we respect what they do a lot. Frankly speaking, we serve very different needs. We are focused on “personalization”. which is a completely different ball game from directories. You seemed to have been singled out from all of the applications that require a user’s Twitter login – why is that? And how did you feel about being the one service singled out for the criticism, when so many have been accepted without question? Well, we only require the user’s password if he wants to follow people through our interface, and there really is no alternative there. To answer your question, I actually feel that it is great that we are stirring up discussion on this very important topic. Twitterrank started the buzz with their demonstration app. and we followed right after them.

The open authentication (OAuth, OpenID) has been pushing Twitter to use OAuth for a while now, and it looks like it might really happen.

The About page for the company you’ve started behind MrTweet, Discover.io mentions a Facebook application, Fluidity, rather than MrTweet – did your plans change to focus on Twitter first, and was there a reason for that?

Yup, we did. Facebook is a great platform, but apps that focus on value add rather than “social for the sake of social’ do not do well there.

Twitter users have a far far higher appreciation for apps that are trying too add value.

You (Ming) have experience in Venture Capital and Product Management – does this mean you have a business strategy behind MrTweet specifically? Will it always remain a free service for users?

It will always remain a free service. We will be implementing more and more ways of delivering continuous value to users, and make it into a sustainable business at some point.

Initially there was a bug with people with over 500 followers (Or was it following over 500?). Has this now been solved?

Yuppy. Although significant problems remain in keeping following lists 100% synchronized.

Have there been any other issues so far which have surprised you?

I hate to say this, but I do wish that the Twitter platform can be slightly more stable. Obviously I love them, but minor glitches on their end can throw our plans off.
Oh, anything. Robert Scoble crashing us. We still cannot take him

You’ve said on the MrTweet blog there have been a lot of suggestions for more features e.g. user statistics, or UI improvements – are there any more you can reveal will be implemented in the short term?

UI and performance issues will be worked on in the short term. Also working on ranking improvements based on feedback.

You’ve also revealed on the blog that you’ve spent a week focusing on scaling the service – how effectively is word of MrTweet spreading? Have you publicised it anywhere other than within Twitter?

WOM has been extremely effective.  It is our sole form of marketing. There has been about 30 blog postings on Mr Tweet done so far, and those drove users as well.

Probably the worst article on Twitter in the world…

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Since the tragic events in Mumbai, there has been a lot of coverage of the role of Twitter in breaking news, with both advocates and critics referring to the speed of microblogging in providing updates but raising some questions about validity and honesty.

But to be fair, Mainstream Media (MSM) has been increasingly paying attention to Twitter over the last few months:

There are plenty more examples around, so it’s almost incredible that a mainstream UK publication can still create something quite so inept:

Is Twitter the new Facebook?

You can hear millions screaming in pain as they collectively answer ThisisLondon – ‘No, you buffoon’.

12 negative comments have already been posted, including mine. Sadly they edited out the link to www.140char.com, and others have had comments edited, with no public acknowledgement. Tech journalist Kate Bevan (@katebevan) has also been expressing her disapointment on Twitter, and having her comments edited. Also got negative comments from Amanda Rose (@amandita), who has researched Twitter extensively for academia (including interviewing yours truly!).

I’m not sure it’s worth the energy to deconstruct all the disasters yet again, so here’s my brief comments:

  • Badly researched, angled and written.
  • It’s 140 characters on Twitter, not 160.
  • Barack and Britney are manned by PR people, unlike real celebs ranging from Stephen Fry to Shaquille O’Neal.
  • The latest figures show about 5 million users per month.
  • The ‘brevity breeds banality’ issue has been debated, disproved and forgotten for months – brevity can lead to impact or banality depending on the person and content.
  • Twitter started becoming a news source with events like the UK, LA and Chinese earthquakes, and LA forest fires.
  • The ‘gimmick’ isn’t following people – the ‘gimmick’ is interacting with people via the reply functionality.

And there’s more. From the article:

‘after several false starts (“Error on page!”) I manage to log on to MoodyShell’s feed. “I hate it when I burn the roof of my mouth and then it starts to peel. Ew!” she says. Fascinating. Another click, and I am officially “following” her. It feels queasy and wrong.’

No wonder it feels wrong, when @nickcurtis hasn’t managed to follow anyone, and has only managed a solitary tweet. You’d also think if you’re posting something about Twitter, it might be worth popping back to check the response? Maybe it would make for a better article?

Maybe someone should point him to the appropriate Twitter search. Or just pointed him to all the similar articles from 18 months ago that were at least defensible by the fact that it was a new service with an initial familiarity hump to get other – everyone struggles with Twitter the first time they log in, and it’s only when they return and start following and using @replies it becomes an essential tool for research,interaction,news gathering, customer service and more.

Social networking will have saved a life…

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At a time when I’ve been writing about Mumbai terrorist attacks, and the way that Twitter is providing a place for updates, connections between local residents, and calls for blood donations etc, I’m particularly pleased to have seen some news on how social networking and bloggers may have helped to save the life of a young lady.

A few days back I spotted people on Twitter retweeting messages about the daughter of Twitter user and blogger @domesticdiva, whose was desperately trying to find a kidney donor for her daughter, Marielle. Turns out that after reaching out through Twitter, Facebook, websites and blogs, and ending up on TV news, a contact found via Ebay is likely to be a perfect match.

‘our transplant coordinators say we clogged the phone lines with requests for donor evaluation forms! They have received an unbelievable amount of kidney donor applications for my daughter from all over the world–Africa, Saudi Arabia and every state in the US!”

That really is the power of the network – now how do we find ways to help more people?

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