TheWayoftheWeb

Content and Digital Marketing Specialists

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Is Open Source the new black?

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It seems as if Open Source is becoming fashionable, particularly when it comes to maps. In the last 24 hours or so, we’ve had:

  • AOL launching an open source map project
  • Adobe announcing an open-source collaboration with SourceForge
  • Vodafone makes almost all of Wayfinder open source (after paying $30 million for it)

And that’s in addition to the open source newspapers and watches I recently wrote about.

Although I believe open source is a very useful and viable way to work, I do worry about companies leaping into it without some careful planning and research. It almost feels a bit like turning ‘build it and they will come’ into ‘open source it and they will come’.

If you want a great insight into some of the complexity of open source, then Free For All by Peter Wayner is well worth reading (especially as he’s made it avaiable for free in various formats). The fact that it’s almost a decade old means it’s easier to focus on the issues than the technology involved.

Or if you want modern proof, take a look at the current disagreement between WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg and the creator of the Thesis design and framework, Chris Pearson, which may end up in legal action.

Just as Open Source is ‘free as in free speech and not as in free beer’, it also takes as much effort as anything worthwhile – it just does it in different ways…

What’s in store for microblogging in 2010?

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A guest post by Lauren Fisher, who specialises in online PR and social media at Simply Zesty – and can be found on Twitter at @laurenfisher.
As we look forward to a brand new year, I’m sure the burning question on everyone’s lips is – what’s going to happen to microblogging in 2010? In a year that saw Ashton Kutcher reach 1 million followers on Twitter and MSN launch their own microblogging service (and MSN China clone Plurk – Dan), the next year certainly has a lot to live up to. Here, I offer a few of my own predictions for microblogging in 2010, with Dan’s thoughts below.

Increased use in organisations

I’m talking here about internal use of microblogging, as a way for colleagues to collaborate and communicate with each other. We’ve seen Google Wave emerge as a tool for professional, organisational use and I think this is the path that microblogging will take in 2010. I’ve already written on here about my thoughts on Yammer (which I still stand by) and I think we will see microblogging tools play a bigger role in internal corporate communications, as an easy and efficient way to communicate with each other. The benefits of realtime will be no more paramount than for businesses.

Dan: Totally agree, although I’m not sure I’d pick Yammer out as the key product in this area – the move is towards integrating microblogging as part of a collaborative and project management toolset – e.g. Salesforce Chatter. The novelty of an ‘internal Twitter’ is fine, but doesn’t convert those who don’t like Twitter, or those happy to DM via Twitter already. Integrated tools give reasons for people to get involved.

Twitter Declining

I won’t be the first, or last, person to say this but I think Twitter may have reached its height of popularity and I think numbers will start to dwindle, albeit slowly. The love affair with Twitter has been exciting, but it might just be over. The avalanche of spam accounts has a part to play here, but I think that when Twitter reaches its highest point of saturation, is conversely when you start to lose value in the site. It has become incredibly noisy and I am beginning to question the real use of it.

Dan: I agree to some extent. I think some of the expansion already has been down to a huge number of spam accounts, and it’s something Twitter has started to tackle, but will always be a huge problem. The lesson here is to learn from the most popular 3rd party apps – Tweetdeck and Seesmic for example, which allow far better filtering than Twitter itself. The noise levels don’t bother me too much because I’m fairly selective about who I follow (Hard to believe when I’m following almost 2k people!)

Microblogging as customer service

I think that more and more companies will embrace microblogging in 2010, beyond the extent we’re seeing now. Businesses will realise the potential of microblogging as a customer service platform though, rather than a place for sexy social media campaigns. I don’t think there will be many more hashtag competitions, we’ve had pretty much every variation of these! I hope that more companies will realise the value of microblogging to source and, most importantly, solve issues for customers. As consumers, we are expecting everything to be solved in real-time and this is what we’ll expect businesses to cater to. The power of crowdsourcing will also be recognised more and we’ll see more companies opening up product development to the masses.

Dan: Totally agree that almost every company should be using Twitter as an integral part of overall improvements to customer service. I expect to reach any tech company via Twitter, and those that do have an active role tend to respond quickly and get my repeat business!

No to video microblogging

It’s not an area that’s really taken off and I don’t think 2010 will be the year for video microblogging. Some sites have made a good attempt, such as Vidly, but once the initial shine wears off the uptake is slow. I simply don’t think that microblogging lends itself to video. A quick text update is one thing : shooting, uploading and tagging a short video is another. We’re still not as comfortable in front of the camera as we are in front of the keyboard and I don’t think this will change any time soon.

Dan: Damn it – this is an area that comes back to haunt me after I made a prediction on video at a conference that Seesmic’s original video blogging platform would take off in 2009. And I was wrong for exactly the reasons above. I’d say for the over 20s, audio blogging such as Audioboo is more accessible. However, I think there’s a huge group of teenagers who are very accustomed to broadcasting themselves on Justin.tv and Ustream. If someone taps into that market and can lure them away from sites which are heavily integrating with Facebook, Twitter etc, then we may see video microblogging take off in a couple of years. It’s also likely to be primarily mobile, and the odds are people will still video other people rather than themselves…

Location –based microblogging

If Twitter is to continue growing in 2010, I think the answer could be in location-based services. As mobile internet usage rapidly increases, we’re all going to be using location services more. If we can make real connections on Twitter with those that are physically close to us, as a more integrated part of the whole microblogging experience, this could prove incredibly popular. Integrating tweets at real-world events such as concerts and sport events will also become more popular, bringing people physically together.

Dan: Totally. I’m surprised there hasn’t been more integration between location, microblogging and special offers, but that’s definitely going to arrive this year – look at mobile social location games like Foursquare, or Google stepping up their location-based efforts. And events are a huge influence on bringing people together on Twitter – the FA Cup, the Superbowl, Eurovision etc as examples…

Integration with sites

As more people will be moving away from Twitter itself, I think microblogging will play a bigger part in existing sites. The new redesign of LinkedIn sees the now familiar stream of status updates with more prominence and I think this is probably the way many sites will go, including email services, encouraging even further interaction between people through short updates. As we become increasingly productive online in 2010, we’ll expect the microblogging functionality to feature more heavily in sites we’re already visiting, than having to go to a separate site.

Dan: Twitter, Facebook and Google are the three services that you should expect to seemlessly be integrated into almost every site you visit in the next 6 months. Each one is becoming very close to the single unified ID many people have talked about…

Microblogging in 2010 – what do you think?

Not long left to join twitter crowdsourcing experiment

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This Twitter crowdsourcing experiment was set up by regular 140char.com contributor Lauren Fisher over on her agency site at SimplyZesty, so here’s an explanation from Lauren herself:

Using Twitter to crowdsource the world in 72 hours.

Well not exactly the world, but England, America and Ireland at least. That’s the challenge we’ve set ourselves and we’re relying on word of mouth to make the experiment work. The project started just under 48 hours ago and was originally intended just for Ireland. It soon gained traction and buzz so we decided to roll it out to England and the US. We’ve set a limit of 72 hours on each project, to see just how quickly word can spread.

We trialled the experiment as a new way of using lists and so we could see which counties/states were the most active. We’ll be publishing links to all the lists and also producing a map showing which areas are the most active. The first results for Ireland, will be out tomorrow.

The project works through crowd-sourcing and to take part and help spread the word we’re just asking for one tweet (replacing the place name with your county/state)

Ireland “I want to get listed #TwitterCork add yourself here http://bit.ly/2C70pP

England “I want to get listed #TwitterEssex add yourself here http://bit.ly/44DRZ5

America “I want to get listed #TwitterCalifornia add yourself here http://bit.ly/40ZL4M

There’s also more info on all of the projects on our site : www.simplyzesty.com

We’re interested to see how far this project can go in 72 hours and hope that it proves the power of Twitter to any doubters out there. We also want to provide lists that will be useful to people, for example if you’ve just moved to a new area. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that the project works and we’re certainly putting the new lists through their paces!

And I’ll be asking Lauren nicely for a follow-up post to find out exactly how successful the project has been…

Chatting with the man behind Twilert – the new Twitter alert service

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Twilert is a new service which aims to bring the ease of Google alerts to the Twitter world. It’s up against Tweetbeep, which has offered alerts for a while, and both offer filtering by location. Twilert does have the edge on flexibility around the selected keywords, specifying both the username of the sender or the recipient of Tweets, and even offering some basic postive/negative attitude reporting.

So it seemed a good idea to find out more about Twilert, and especially how it might differentiate itself further in the future, by speaking to Dan Leach, who is behind the service.

What was the main inspiration for Twilert? Was it something you personally needed for monitoring Twitter in your day job?
The inspiration came about a month ago when I was looking through the Google Alerts I have setup for my various clients (I work in PR and marketing). A lot of the information was dated and I wanted to find a way of seeing what people were really saying and thinking about the brands and products I represent. As an obsessed Twitter fan I wanted to find a way of tracking conversation and opinion on the site without having to sit in front of a Twitter Search page all day. And so, Twilert was born.

What’s the main advantage over other monitoring services?

There are limited options available to people if they want to monitor “tweets”. Aside from the aesthetic differences between Twilerts and its competitors, the two main advantages include:

  • Full customisation of alerts: Twilerts options reflect exactly that of Twitter’s Search service which mean alerts can be tailored by keywords, author, recipient, location, link-location, and attitude (positive, negative, neutral). This means you can filter out irrelevant tweets from your alerts.
  • Ease of use: Twilert doesn’t require you to have a Twitter account, nor does it require any technical knowledge of Twitter or search. True story: to ensure the site was as user-friendly as possible, the test subject I used throughout development was my Mum. If she can use it then anyone can!

You’ve obviously built in some quite specific ways to filter messages: by location proximity, whether they include links, and by positive or negative attitude. How are you calculating the attitude of Tweets?

The attitudes of tweets is calculated by Twitter’s emotion algorithm (created first by Summize) which uses certain phrases and words that suggest a positive, negative or neutral phrase and maps them against keywords in the tweet.
It is by no means 100% accurate and will continue to evolve, however it will provide a decent enough snapshot of whether people are speaking positively or negatively about whatever you are tracking.

With such a comprehensive attempt at filtering is there anything you haven’t been able to include?

We have included everything that Twitters allows through its API. With the limited information that is provided with each tweet (author, recipient, location, content) it is difficult to filter them anymore than is already possible on Twilert.

The site was built by Codegent – if you funded the build, does this mean you have plans to recoup your money by monetising Twilert? Or by utilising the data on popular terms etc?

Monetising the service is a long way in the future – Twilert is less than a week old so our focus is 100% on providing a high quality service to our users. However, we will be exploring extended functionality that could be implemented for enterprise users. It is worth stressing though that the basic alert service will always remain free to users.

Twilert is definitely the weapon of choice for anyone looking for regular automated emails which compile your reports within potentially pretty specific criteria. It’s also one of the better looking 3rd party applications for Twitter, and being designed by someone working in PR and Media, it should be well placed to capitalise on the influx of brands and agencies looking to

Is it location, location, location for Web 2.0?

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NB: The following post assumes that you don’t mind anyone with a web browser being able to track your every move…

Now that social networking has reached everyone, there are plenty of people banking on the next way to improve on online networks

And it seems the next step is to further integrate your online persona with your real-life location. It’s fine hooking up with a new friend on the other side of the planet due to your shared love of Japanese animation or vintage cars, but it’s also handy to find someone with the same interest that lives in the next street and comes round for an evening of DVD watching, or can help you change your rear axle.

There’s a whole range of location services springing up. But some have better value than others.

For instance, I’ve been playing with radiusIM today. It’s a social Instant Messaging service, which combines an MSN Messenger like function (And interacts with AOL, MSN, Yahoo and GTalk messaging), with a map displaying the whereabouts of your friends, and the nearest people to you on the service.

The problem with radiusIM is that is doesn’t really have a clear function. There’s not enough detail to initiate flirting with strangers of the opposite sex, there’s no way to build groups around a local area, and the one other function, the ability to track where your friends are currently located, falls down due to the fact the locations have to be defined manually by a user. So for my friends to spot me walking to the pub, I’ve got to log in and move my location every few minutes…

A fat better idea is the mobile application Oops I’m Late! I’ve yet to test it thoroughly, but it’s got a winning idea. Set an appointment in your mobile calendar, and if you’re running late, it automatically notifies the contacts you’ve selected, and gives an estimated time of arrival etc… So you can let your colleagues know to delay their meeting, and save your family from wondering if you’ve forgotten the shopping etc, without having to remember to text every single one of them. Perfect for people who travel a lot and can’t use a mobile while they drive or ride their motorcycle…Or to put it another way “Revolutionary, disruptive technology that is designed to keep your common courtesy quota up”

As with anything it’s those ideas which can be explained in a single sentence which work. And with location tracking, it’s those services which don’t involve manual input, and can utilise mobile phones which will show the great benefits.

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