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I’m Starting a Podcast – Come Join Me Tomorrow!

Posted on June 8, 2009 by jessestay

I’ve finally decided to bite the bullet and go forward with a dream I’ve had for awhile. Monday (today), June 8, 2009 at 8:30PM MST I’ll be recording my first, yet-to-be-named podcast under the Stay N’ Alive Productions umbrella. We’ll broadcast the recording live on Ustream on my SocialGeek channel at http://ustream.tv/channel/thesocialgeek. You can chat during the broadcast in the StayNAlive room on FriendFeed (you are subscribed, right?), or via IRC or Twitter right on the Ustream site. I’ve set up a thread just for this show on FriendFeed, and you can begin chat below (and witness the power of FriendFeed at the same time).

I am still working out the exact focus of the show, but the general direction will be learning about and discussing new and early-adopter technologies in the tech space. Much of what you read from me here and on LouisGray.com will be similar to what you can expect to hear in the PodCast. The difference will be you get to see live examples, hear from experts other than myself, gather some great discussion, and witness the real-time web in action! This will be a true real-time web experience, and should be fun to participate.

The guests for our first show are two good friends of mine, and very smart Geeks, the esteemed Louis Gray, author and Editor of LouisGray.com, a blog for early adopters and very well known, especially in Silicon Valley. Louis advises for my company, SocialToo, amongst several other up-and-coming web ventures. He’s one of the smartest web technologists I know. I’ve also extended him an open invitation to join us on any future show he would like to be a part of, so we’ll see if we get to see more of him.

Joining Louis, local Salt Lake City Anchor and Tech Reporter of Fox’s KSTU Channel 13 here, Kirk Yunke, will be bringing his enthusiasm for new gadgets and technology to the show. Kirk is leaps and bounds ahead of many other News reporters I’ve come in contact with, and just the other day spent the night as the first in line to get a Palm Pre. He’s going to share with us his opinion of the Pre, maybe show off a little, and hopefully we can get a little insight into the pros and cons of the device.

Tomorrow is the Apple WWDC Keynote, so we’ll spend the second half of the show discussing that and the things announced there, along with any other interesting things that have come up over the last week. This should be a fun episode, and I’m very excited to get this started in what I hope to be many more fun Episodes of the future. I intend to make this a weekly Podcast, so stay tuned to the Stay N’ Alive FriendFeed room for more details on future episodes.

UPDATE: Be sure to take the SocialToo SocialSurvey to vote on a name for the podcast!

http://friendfeed.com/staynalive/b6db8a34/first-inaugural-yet-to-be-named-stay-n-alive?embed=1

Learn More About Facebook With Upcoming WebCasts

Posted on June 8, 2009 by jessestay

I’ve been invited to do 2 WebCasts in the next 2 weeks that I think you might be interested in. As always I’ll try to post my slides on SlideShare if it makes sense to do so. I really like an interactive presentation so most of the time my slides don’t make sense.

The first is for the Marketers in the Audience. It’s about gaining Business value from Facebook, and I’ll discuss how to give your business legs using the Social Network. I’ll cover how to create an effective Facebook Page for your business, when and how to use your personal Facebook Profile for networking, do’s and don’ts on the network, advertising, the tools you need, and more. That Webinar is hosted by Marketing Coalition, and is $149 per individual, and $129 per individuals in groups of at least 3. You can register here. The Webinar takes place on Thursday at 1:30PM EST.

The second WebCast is free, and hosted by Safari Books Online. It will target developers new to Facebook development, and in it I’ll cover the basics of what you need to get started in Facebook Development. We did this last year and I think everyone really enjoyed it that attended. The first people that register get a free Autographed copy of my book, FBML Essentials, and everyone else gets a free 45-day account on Safari Books Online to read FBML Essentials. Did I mention how much I love O’Reilly? You can register here. My slides from the last one of these I did are up on SlideShare.

There will be a Q&A after each session, so come with your questions and I’ll do my best to answer!

Twitter a Ubiquitous Utility? Open Up a Little!

Posted on June 7, 2009 by jessestay

I’m completely stumped by the recent media blitz by Twitter co-founders, Ev Williams, Biz Stone, and Jack Dorsey. They seem to be traveling the nation like rock stars, willing to say anything and everything about whatever the media wants to hear, as their service sits broken on the sidelines and the world wonders where their much needed Twitter has gone, or why their favorite app is down. Hey, it’s not my company though, so I’m sure they have their reasons, and good for them for enjoying and celebrating their success.

But then we see statements like that of Jack Dorsey, a reputable coder like myself, and someone I highly respect, stating, “I think Twitter’s a success for us when people stop talking about it, when we stop doing these panels and people just use it as a utility, use it like electricity…It fades into the background, something that’s just a part of communication. We put it on the same level as any communication device. So, e-mail, SMS, phone. That’s where we want to be.” Of course he’s saying this while his co-founders are touring the nation, visiting Oprah and Ashton and every major News outlet on the planet trying to get people to talk about Twitter. The thing is, I don’t care how useful Twitter is or has become (Despite the negatives that I’ve written about Twitter, I’ve written just as many positives), Twitter will never become a “Utility” until they open up a little, and I don’t just mean from a PR perspective (actually, I don’t mean that at all). I mean from an architecture perspective.

My friend (and fellow LouisGray.com co-writer), Rob Diana, thinks that Twitter is on its way to becoming infrastructure. I’m not arguing that’s not possible. In fact, I really think Twitter has the masses to make that happen. However, to make it the caliber of a “Utility”, or like “Electricity”, to me seems far-fetched when in the end, there is always a Twitter brand wrapped around it and no way for the public to have any control of that data. Until they remove those chains, Twitter is and always will be just another communications Service, not a Utility. Twitter will never blend into the background until they open up some.

Let’s look at some example utilities:

Electricity

We’ll start with the most obvious. Electricity is a natural force. It can only be created by utilizing existing energy. Various “Utilities” have found ways to harness this energy to create this electricity and deliver it to your home. However no single company owns that electricity, and each company is using the existing, open, laws of physics to harness and deliver such electricity to your home. No single company controls how electricity gets created or delivered. In fact, depending on your own local laws, you could even create your own electricity, and live independent from any single “Utility” company that also provides such service.

Water

Water is very similar. Each company provides a “service” or “utility” around cleaning the water supplies and routing them to your home. However, there’s nothing stopping any individual (other than government) from collecting their own water, and purifying it themselves for consumption. It’s bound only by the laws of Physics, and lives on a completely open model.

Phone

Perhaps even closer to Twitter’s turf than Electricity, the Phone is an open communications process. A “utility” company delivers the lines to get a signal from the sender’s phone, to a routing operator, and over to the recipient. However the underlying technology sending a phone’s signal from sender to recipient and back is not proprietary to any one single company. It’s simple Electricity (there’s that word again) and open protocols, and based on completely open (the most open) standards, bound simply by the laws of Physics.

So how in the world can a company like Twitter become like “Electricity”, flowing as the infrastructure of communication with little to no knowledge of those using the service? It comes down to the laws of Physics. Twitter needs to stop making the rules. They need to open up 100%, open up their code-base, release a protocol, and start letting people run their own Federated Twitter servers that can be run in any environment, speak the same protocol, and in essence, be invisible to those using the service. Twitter’s current model will never take them there.

Google’s leading the way here with Wave. The funny thing is Google employees aren’t going around bragging that their service will become like “Electricity” (okay, well maybe their name kind of implies that). What will happen is that you’ll be familiar with the Wave Product, which will become like Gmail and many, many users will use it since Google was first-to-market. However, what most users will not be aware of is that the way they communicate elsewhere will also be powered by Google Wave technology. Google Wave is also a Protocol, and built on an Open-Source Architecture. You’ll be able to run your own Wave servers, or even write your own services that speak the Wave protocol. Your users will never even know their communication went through a Google product.

I’m afraid Twitter has some serious competition as long as they want to become a Utility and Google Wave is in open development. Because they’ve waited to enter the Open arena, Google may just beat them to the punch on the “Utility” game. Jack Dorsey’s a smart guy. Twitter’s a great and powerful platform. However, I’m afraid they’re focusing too much on the platform and the product and not enough on what should really be the “Electricity” of their system – the communication.

Twitter, it’s time to open up guys. I’m itching to use some of that “Electricity” of yours.

Why Kara Swisher is More Wrong About Wronger

Posted on June 2, 2009 by jessestay

nails-on-chalkboard1-7468757 Slow news day? Let’s let aside the whole “Web 3.0” vs. “2010 Web” Debate. They’re all just terms after all, right? Let’s focus on something a little more important, like the fact that an established journalist like Kara Swisher can’t use correct grammar in her titles. Let’s look at the definition of “Wronger”:

“One who wrongs someone; One who commits a wrong; Comparative form of wrong: more wrong”

Keep in mind that the only definition of “wronger” provided by Google was that one, by Wiktionary.com, something many would hardly consider a credible dictionary. However in this case, even their definition states Kara is completely wrong on this matter.

What’s the deal with bloggers, journalists, and marketers feeling it’s okay all-of-the-sudden to relax their use of grammar? These guys all have editors that check their work, and I wouldn’t hesitate to think they have all had much more English training than I have. I mean, even Apple’s doing it – what’s with the whole “Funner” theme? Does that terminology make it sound “more fun”? To me, it just makes them look stupid.

I hope Kara’s use was just tongue-in-cheek, but let’s stop this practice. It’s simply wrong.

Twitter Needs to Buy TweetDeck

Posted on June 2, 2009 by jessestay

WSJ today reported that China has blocked Twitter.com, preventing its 1.3 billion citizens from potentially accessing the site. Iain Dodsworth, developer of TweetDeck, was quick to point out however (which I noticed on FriendFeed ironically) that his service is still reportedly accessible in the Mainland. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – Twitter, you need your own desktop client!

With everyone up in arms over how Twitter will monetize and when it will happen, there has been one obvious missing link from the start. Twitter has never had control over how Tweets get to the users. They themselves have admitted the API gets used much more than their own Twitter.com site gets used, showing, to me, that there is a way, currently, Twitter could be monetizing. Twitter has made it clear they do not intend to advertise through Tweets, which would almost certainly be rejected by their current user-base, already annoyed by the abundance of spam on the site. What Twitter could do however, that is assuming they have control over the main methods users receive Tweets, aka their desktop clients, is insert ads into such a desktop client and their own website, unobtrusive to users. Users will probably not even care at such ad placement, considering Google gets away with it, Yahoo and Microsoft do within their own search products.

Other Monetization Strategies

According to a recent TechCrunch article, Iain Dodsworth himself is already looking to monetize via this method. His method doesn’t even involve advertising, and maybe, in a world where advertising is beginning to prove ineffective, his method has even more potentially lucrative than the one I mention. His method is, according to TechCrunch, to charge developers looking for integration into TweetDeck for integration into the product. I think this is a great idea, and something that, with the popularity of TweetDeck, will prove quite profitable for him in the end.

Twitter could be doing this as well and perhaps even more effectively with the strong developer platform they have built. Add to that ability to integrate directories of applications into such an application enable featured app listings, along with perhaps an advertisement here or there Twitter could very quickly become profitable just by having control of such an application.

Why TweetDeck is a Good Choice

This isn’t meant to begrudge any of the other apps I enjoy and use. The fact is that TweetDeck is the most popular and most used Desktop app for Twitter right now (even though we can’t prove that at the moment thanks to Twitter API issues). It has the most users and most adoption – it would be the quickest barrier to entry, and clearly has features their users like, as they seem to continue using the app.

Considering deals are already being made to monetize the application, and considering, based on the recent investment of $500,000 into the company, comparatively speaking to the amount of money Twitter claims to have, TweetDeck shouldn’t be that expensive for Twitter to buy at the moment. Now’s the time Twitter. I wouldn’t wait much longer, as TweetDeck is about to become a whole lot more valuable.

More Distribution Options

Considering the recent issues in China, were Twitter to own the distribution channel, let’s imagine it’s TweetDeck, they would still have control of what goes out to China, and how to monetize off of those users. Currently, TweetDeck, and any client for that matter, have no devotion to Twitter – it’s just the first service they’re servicing in a long line of other services they’re also adding to their clients. Twitter should own this opportunity, and where they are claiming to be the next “AP”, if they’ve learned anything from the News organizations (I’ve worked in this industry), they need to control the distribution and not just the content.

I think Twitter is giving up an important opportunity by not having control of the desktop. I could probably say the same for the mobile phone (especially the iPhone). Perhaps their fear is that it would introduce unfair competition for the other desktop clients out there, but I don’t see any reason the other clients can’t compete as well, if not more than Twitter would provide anyway. This simply provides an important distribution platform where they would be provided many more monetization opportunities. I think it’s win-win.

Now, to get the guys at Twitter to start reading my blog…

Where is Twitter’s Emergency Response System?

Posted on May 31, 2009 by jessestay

The buzz has been swirling around the Twitter developer-sphere about a bug that has been going on for almost a full day now. Louis Gray reported it first at around 12am MST last night, and the first post to the Twitter development mailing list went up at around 2am MST last night. But Twitter is no where to be found, and it’s really starting to hurt some developers. So much that the very popular TweetStats, by Damon Cortesi has completely had to shut down until the service is re-enabled.

The bug is surrounding the display of the source app via both the API and in the Web UI showing which application a Tweet has come from on Twitter. Currently, according to TweetStats, 100% of the messages on Twitter are displaying they are coming from the Web. Developers and bloggers are complaining but no one is being heard.

In fact, according to Twitter, both Evan Williams (founder of Twitter), and Alex Payne (Twitter’s API Lead) are both in Maui on unrelated trips (Alex’s is for vacation – it’s unclear why Ev is there), posting pictures of the frozen drinks they are having and talking about the massages they are getting. Alex even stated he doesn’t have his laptop with him. Of course I don’t expect him to be reading this, and I congratulate him for being able to have some very deserved time-off–but what do we do when the API goes down?

Twitter developers have asked repeatedly for a paid API service which they can be guaranteed more up-time and more API access, along with a higher tier of support. Even Iain Dodsworth, the developer behind TweetDeck has mentioned in conversations on FriendFeed that, with unlimited API access, they would be able to deliver some of their “dream functionality”, and would “pay a lot” for such. As the developer behind SocialToo, I firmly agree with his statement – it would be a cost-savings for me. Regardless, there is still no good way to get Twitter support when their API goes down. Developers need some sort of Emergency Response System, and I think Twitter should charge for this level of service.

In times where developers’ apps go down many livelihoods are at stake. Money is not being made, and with a very poor support system by Twitter as is, and no way to guarantee support during such circumstances, developers are putting a lot on the line writing for such a service. Currently, the only means is via the Developer mailing list, and as we can see there is yet to be a response from Twitter via that means, and at least one entire application has been put out of business because of the issue.

Will there be a time we can see a prioritized service from Twitter that developers can pay for and guarantee service? I think with today’s example this option has just become a lot more important. The free service simply isn’t cutting it any more.

What do you think Twitter should do?

Gmail is My FriendFeed Client

Posted on May 27, 2009 by jessestay

A couple days ago I showed you my own unique way of managing Twitter. This method utilizes my e-mail client, Gmail, to track and force Twitter messages to come to me instead of myself needing to constantly check the site or my preferred Twitter client for new messages about me, my brand, or other topics I like to monitor. I’ve also spoken recently about my hiatus from RSS and how I’ve significantly reduced the number of feeds I monitor and instead I “media-snack” (as Robert Scoble calls it) on FriendFeed where I am still able to get as much, if not more information about the latest and greatest tech news as I have always done before. But how do I manage FriendFeed? You may be surprised to hear that I do it in almost the exact same way I do Twitter – I use Gmail. Here’s how I do it:

Native FriendFeed Notifications

Let’s start with the fact that FriendFeed actually provides its own useful ways of monitoring your conversations so you don’t have to keep coming back to the site, something Twitter and various Twitter clients have not been very good at doing (PeopleBrowsr seems closest to providing the ideal solution to this). On any page (except saved searches – we’ll get to that later), you’ll notice a new feature in the upper-right that says “E-mail/IM”. If you click on that it will drop down some more options. You can select it to deliver just new posts on the given page, new posts and just your friends’ comments, or new posts and all comments. You can then select any option to deliver those to either your e-mail, IM client, or FriendFeed’s own native desktop popup client (which you can download and install here). FriendFeed then uses the e-mail and IM settings you have set in your settings to deliver this information to your desired location. The great thing about this is that you can use it for any of your friend lists, any room on FriendFeed, or even your own discussions page (“My Discussions” on the right).

So here’s what I do: I simply went to my “My Discussions” page, selected the option to deliver all new posts and all comments to my e-mail client, and now anything I comment on, or like, or any likes or comments on the posts that I import into FriendFeed now get delivered to my e-mail account. I don’t miss any of the conversation this way . I think everyone should do this, even if you don’t participate on FriendFeed because it ensures you know, immediately, when anyone comments on one of the things you’re already importing into FriendFeed. If you’re not actively using FriendFeed, you should do this out of respect to those that are.

Now here’s where Gmail is important: if you actively like or comment on other members’ posts, you’ll then get every single comment on that post afterwards. Usually, that’s not so bad, if you’ve ever participated in one of Robert Scoble’s threads, or any other hot topic on FriendFeed, you’ll quickly notice that the number of comments can go into the hundreds at times. This will very quickly fill up your inbox!

Gmail solves this problem easily. On the thread in Gmail you’re tired of hearing from, simply click the “m” button on your keyboard. Instantly, the thread gets moved to your Archive folder and you’ll never see it again unless you click your “All Messages” folder. You’ll notice in that folder it now has a “muted” label next to it. Go to the thread and click “m” again and it will un-mute itself. There’s no better client for managing this. And if you know me, I’m religious about reading all my e-mail. Gmail makes this possible.

In addition, FriendFeed also enables users to respond to the conversation, right in their e-mail client. I simply hit “reply” on any conversation I want to add to right in Gmail, and my comment immediately (yes, in real-time) gets added to the conversation. Not only that, but you can easily DM me on FriendFeed, yes, via your e-mail client. Simply send any message, including photos (works great from my iphone!) to jessestay@friendfeed.com (my username@friendfeed.com – works the same for your username) and your message will go straight to my FriendFeed DM box. Or, send any message, or photos (again, works great from my iPhone!) to share@friendfeed.com and your message and/or photos will go straight to your public stream on FriendFeed. You never have to leave your e-mail client.

Now, what if you want to track what others are saying about your brand, and don’t want to have to keep checking back in your saved searches links on the right in FriendFeed? (you are using saved-searches, aren’t you?) Yes, there’s an app for that.

Introducing BackType

We’ll cover this in the next post in this series more thoroughly, but BackType is a service that tracks and reports comments around the web. FriendFeed is one of the sites it tracks comments for. To get notifications when your name is mentioned on FriendFeed, simply go to BackType, set up a saved search for your name, brand, or whatever other terms you want to track, enable e-mail alerts for those saved searches, and now you’ll get mention of everything anyone says about you on FriendFeed. I don’t miss a thing anyone says about me – try and mention my name somewhere and see!

By enabling users to manage their brand and conversation via e-mail, FriendFeed has just become the most manageable micro-blogging client and service on the internet. Now I get to treat my news like a newspaper – pick it up at my own leisure, “media-snack”, read what I like, and put it down. I don’t have to worry about missing anything, and most importantly, I don’t waste time needing to constantly check the site to see if someone has said something I need to know about.

So thus far I’ve managed my online identity through:

Significantly reducing my Google Reader and RSS subscriptions by unsubscribing and “media snacking” on FriendFeed subscriptions

Managing my Twitter brand through TweetBeep and my e-mail client

Managing my FriendFeed brand through IM/E-mail notifications, BackType, and Gmail

My next installment of this series will be about how I subscribe to your blogs through Gmail. Sure, I’ve talked about how I use Google Reader to manage the subscriptions I absolutely can’t miss, but what about the stuff that slips through the cracks? I’ll show you how to use BackType, Google Alerts, and other tools to ensure this doesn’t happen.

Facebook’s Deployment Record is Spinning but Seems Broken – Does it Need a Poke?

Posted on May 25, 2009 by jessestay

Facebook lately has been very good at providing regular and frequent updates to its service. So much that it has often come under the gun for updating too much to the detriment of its user experience. I have been last to critique them on this however, as I think it’s a good thing to be listening to your users like they have, releasing early, and releasing often as users give feedback towards the experience. I think it’s a major reason Facebook is still growing and still surviving despite Social Network users being the type to easily get bored of new technology. There have been several launches recently which, IMO have been very loud and powerful in the way they were announced and the affect they would have on users. You probably read about them because they were talked about on almost every major Tech blog when they were announced. There’s still one major problem though – myself and numerous other users still haven’t received these features.

Let’s start with the launch of one, as a heavy FriendFeed user and strong advocate of real-time updates, hits near and dear to my heart. The Facebook stream live updates were announced over 3 weeks ago, claiming to provide you with a live update of new posts in your stream when they appeared. A simple click on the link should make those messages appear. While not completely real-time, it’s a step forward, and something I’ve been really looking forward to for over 3 weeks. You can see my profile, after over an hour of not refreshing on Safari here – note there is no link with new updates:

Here’s how it should look, according to Facebook:

It should also be noted this looks the same if leaving Firefox stagnant, or running on Windows, or any other machine or browser. This isn’t an OS or browser issue it would appear – it looks as though Facebook’s deployment routines simply haven’t gotten to my user account. It would appear I’m not alone in this either. Asking about this on Twitter about a week ago I got numerous responses from other Twitter and Facebook users who also were not yet seeing this in their stream. A Facebook employee even kindly suggested I was supposed to be receiving this. I responded saying I wasn’t, but still have not received any feedback in return from Facebook.

It would appear that’s not the only thing that is having trouble rolling out lately though. Over a week ago, Luke Shepard, a developer at Facebook, announced a very welcome feature launching Facebook into a much more open era. The feature enables users to link their Facebook accounts to their Gmail accounts and other OpenID providers, making Facebook an official OpenID provider. Also, according to Shepard, users would be able to register for Facebook by simply entering their Gmail credentials. “Now, users can register for Facebook using their Gmail accounts. This is a quicker, more streamlined way for new users to register for the site, find their friends, and start exploring,” he said.

The problem is that I still don’t see a way to do this on Facebook. I can link my Facebook account with various OpenID providers and even Gmail, but that’s only if I have an existing account. However, there is no option when I log into Facebook, or when I try to register with Facebook to login or register with my Gmail credentials or other OpenID credentials as he says. Am I just the last person on their deployment list? I know I’m not the only one because this was pointed out by someone else with the same question. If I can link my OpenID profile with my Facebook profile, but can’t login or register with it, what good is this announcement?

Note there is no option to log in with Gmail or OpenID

Note there is no option to register with Gmail or OpenID

It would appear something seems broken in the Facebook deployment process. Either it’s just really slow, or not all users are getting the updates they’re supposed to be getting. Or are we getting these announcements just to get the marketing spin machine going? It would appear that this blogger is not on that list if it is the case! Regardless, I’d really love to have the updates we were promised!

If you’re seeing the same issues, let it be known in the comments. You can follow me on Facebook at http://jessestay.socialtoo.com.

GMail is My Twitter Client

Posted on May 22, 2009 by jessestay

I’ve mentioned multiple times I’m a fan of multiple Twitter clients. I’m a big fan of TweetDeck due to its Twitter and Facebook support, the TwitScoop support, and groups and saved searches support. It’s also pretty stable and doesn’t kill my computer when I use it. I’m a big fan of Seesmic Desktop because it has group support and multiple Twitter account support (along with Facebook support). I love Tweetie because of its simplicity, lack of memory usage, native support for the Mac, and the iPhone version I like for the same reason. I also love CoTweet for its easy management of Twitter from a business perspective. However, I think you’ll be surprised to learn that I rarely use any of them any more. My new preferred Twitter (and even FriendFeed) client: Gmail.

Let’s face it, whether I follow all those that follow me and segment out my favorites into groups (in a client like TweetDeck or Seesmic), or if I only follow a select few, my responsibility is still the same. I need to know what is said about me, my brand(s), and any other interesting things people are saying that I need to know about. Frankly, I can’t do this effectively while only tracking the small numbers of people I follow using one of the traditional Twitter clients. There would still be people talking about me, or the topics I’m interested in elsewhere, whether I follow them or not. The whole follow/friend game is incredibly ineffective for this reason, regardless of the method you use – it’s one of the reasons I just auto-follow. At least you can DM me if I let those that follow me do so by following them back. I decided I needed a better solution.

As it turns out, Twitter search (when it works) is fairly effective at catching what I want to hear on Twitter. I can search for @mentions of my name, my old Twitter account, misspellings of my name, my company, topics I’m interested in hearing about, and more. It returns the data I want. The problem with that is that I have to keep checking back for it, and there’s no really good way to save searches. I could do it in TweetDeck or Seesmic Desktop, but even with those I need to continue checking to be effective. I think that’s a waste of time. Why not make the Tweets come to me?

Yes, there’s an App for that. Michael Jensen (@mdjensen on Twitter), a Twitter, FriendFeed, and iPhone developer (and Perl developer!) is the author of a site called TweetBeep. Louis Gray turned me onto it, as this is also one of the ways he tracks mentions of his name. All that needs to be done is to sign up for an account on TweetBeep, provide your Twitter credentials, and specify search criteria you want it to search for on your behalf. You can create as many alerts as you like, and it’s 100% free! Specify the frequency of the alert (hourly or daily), and now all mentions of the terms you want it to track, including mentions of your Twitter username, brand(s), name, and more will all be delivered to your e-mail inbox. It will also track domains, and automatically un-shorten various URL-shortening services so you can also track mentions of your domain name.

So now, with TweetBeep I am no longer regularly checking my Twitter client of choice to see if anyone else has said something I might be interested in. I have those delivered to me, in batch, via e-mail, and I have saved myself a ton of time doing so! Because of my use of Gmail and TweetBeep to manage Twitter for me I am very rarely needing to check Twitter any more. Now, if I could just break the habit of checking it anyway! I guess you could say I now truly follow, and listen, to millions of people – I just now have a way to sift through the noise.

Tomorrow I’ll be sharing how Gmail is also my FriendFeed Client – you’ll like this one so stay tuned…

Universal Media Group Just Doesn’t Get It

Posted on May 20, 2009 by jessestay

This is a guest-post by my brother, Luke Stay. Follow him on Twitter / FriendFeed.

I do a semi-regular segment on LukeStay.com called Favorite Video Friday in which I showcase 3 innovative or otherwise interesting music videos bound by a common theme. They’re my favorite posts to do and also my most well received. I’ve done 43 of them so far, all but a few of them containing 3 videos each, but every time I think I’ve run out of good videos, I stumble on a few more.

YouTube is my source of choice, mostly because of its popularity and massive database of artists both popular and obscure, but in my never-ending search for quality music videos I often come upon one with “embedding disabled by request.” Nine times out of ten, that video is claimed by Universal Media Group. This always puts me in a difficult position. Do I scrap the video that fits so perfectly with the weeks theme, or do I go elsewhere and find the video on a site not as regulated as YouTube?

Universal Media Group has completely missed the point of YouTube. YouTube is a social network. It is a place to discover interesting videos and discuss them. I’ve found that my meager number of regular readers are a lazy bunch. They don’t click on links to watch videos elsewhere. They want to watch the video then and there, embedded right within the site. If they like it, then they’ll seek out ways to share it with others, usually through YouTube. On the internet, you only have seconds to grab a reader’s attention, and external links do nothing to help you. I have to embed my videos.

I don’t know why they do it. They can’t claim they lose ad revenue when their videos are embedded externally. YouTube now allows embedded ads and most of Universal’s artists already have pop-ups to buy the track on Amazon or ITunes. Embedding does nothing to stop this. I’m not going to claim this practice hurts their business, Universal’s artists are mostly well known, but it certainly doesn’t help them. I don’t know how many times I’ve gotten comments on a post I’ve done telling me that a person had never heard of a band or a song and they were going to go buy the track. After the recent suggestion of Marina Martin, I even added links to buy the featured tracks on ITunes (If anyone knows an easy way to add graphical buttons, I’m listening). Allowing videos to be embedded only increases the scope of your visibility. How can that possibly hurt your business? I don’t get it.

I wish I could boycott Universal Music Group altogether, but they just represent too many artists. If I want to keep up 3 videos a post, I need as many videos to choose from as I can get. Instead, I’ll just be forced to keep finding their videos elsewhere, often bringing them no ad revenue whatsoever. It’s a mild pain in my butt, but (I just said butt but, hehe) I’m sure Universal spends massive amounts of money searching for copyright infringements that could be avoided by simply enabling embedding on YouTube. Get with the program, Universal!

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