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to End Poverty

Posted on January 13, 2011 by jessestay

If you’re wanting to do something good on January 21st and 22nd, save the date, book a flight and a hotel, and come to Utah for what is certain to be an unprecedented event. The lack of precedence is perhaps not just because of its potential to make a big dent in poverty and homelessness, but perhaps also that it’s being organized by a High School Senior.

The Conference, called “Hacking Poverty”, or , as Zach Stay, it’s founder calls it, is a conference whose sole intent is to gather together developers to group together, come up with ideas, and build software to fight poverty. Zach, who is also my cousin, hopes to organize groups around various software projects, create those software projects, and then release the code and technology as open source software that other Humanitarian organizations can then use freely. The format of the conference is a lot like Phil Windley’s (also from Utah) Internet Identity Workshop, where ideas will be presented, and people can choose which cause they want to participate in and discuss as a group.

Thus far, several projects have been proposed:

“Building a Fighting Poverty Apps Store”

“Twitter GPS Locator App”

“First Aid App”

“Tsunami Twitter/SMS Broadcaster”

“Medical Twitter Broadcaster”

Medical “ChaCha”

You can read more about those over on the Hacking Poverty website. You can also submit your own via their form.

In addition to the above, I plan to announce a new way I think can completely end Street Begging and truly feed and put a shelter over the heads of those that really need it around the world. I’ll be announcing that shortly on this blog, and I hope to recruit volunteers to help with it at the Conference. If you come for anything, be sure to come for that, as I’m sure it’s likely to turn heads.

Zach Stay has great blood, and it’s not from me. His Dad, Tim Stay (my Uncle), is also one of the founders of Unitus, the micro-funding group which has made significant strides in fighting poverty in Africa and other areas of the world. Zach’s got some of the best council around and its bound to show in this conference, and I can guarantee the conference will have an effect as a result.

If you get a chance, and you have any talent at all, come and offer to help. It doesn’t have to be coding either. If you can blog about the event, share it with your friends, Tweet about it, or share it on Facebook, that’s one step towards ending poverty. If you have video talents and can help broadcast the event for people that aren’t attending, let Zach know. If you have graphic design skills, or project management skills, or marketing skills, there is a place for you in these projects I feel. While this is a conference for developers, I think everyone can have a role. If you can offer something, please contact Zach and the Hacking Poverty team via info@hackingpoverty.org. Or, at a minimum, donate to the event via this Paypal link.

If you can come out to Utah, or you’re already in Utah, come on out to this event on January 21 and 22. The skiing’s great this time of year. This is going to be a groundbreaking conference, which could be the start towards the end of poverty in the world. Will you please join us?

Just go here to register. The conference is free! If you need help finding a good hotel let me know in the comments and I can make several good recommendations. If you need me to help you convince your employer to give the day off on Friday to attend, I’ll make a personal call for you – just let me know.

Thanks to Chris Pirillo and Kelly Clay for kicking this off tonight. Check out Kelly’s article over on Lockergnome for more details about the conference.

Family Village – A Facebook Game I Can Get Addicted To

Posted on January 11, 2011 by jessestay

I’ve always avoided Facebook games such as Farmville, now Cityville, and other “Virtual Worlds” that seem to suck up your time while annoying your friends via your news feed. The fact is that’s all they do – they fake a sense of accomplishment, suck up all your time, and annoy your friends, depleting your wallet as you go. I just don’t see the productive use of them. Networking? Hardly.

I just came across a new game, still in Alpha, that may change my mind on the subject. The game is called “Family Village“, and it aims to turn a thing that can often sound boring to the typical Farmville player, genealogy, all of the sudden sound fun and exciting. It’s something your Mom, and your kids, can be proud of. The game is quite addicting!

Family Village rests on the goals and integrates with Utah-based FamilyLink, previously number one application in the Facebook Application directory, which aims to introduce you to your ancestors by helping you get to know and interact with the living individuals around you. Family Village turns this premise into a game, pitting you against your friends and family on Facebook, where accomplishing simple genealogy tasks such as filling out your family tree earns you points and money in the game. You’re given a character, which represents you, and you can slowly build your family as you’re able to handle by accomplishing tasks such as “street sweeping”, “stacking books”, and even “catching dreams”. Each task earns you money and you can build houses and “build your increase” by accomplishing them.

One of the first tasks the game had me do was add myself and my wife. As I added my wife, a new character was created for her, and I could assign a job and house for her as well. Immediately, I was presented with a Newspaper front page of the day my wife was born, taken from FamilyLink’s archive of documents. (Paul Allen, founder of FamilyLink, and also one of the founders (I think) of Family Village, was also one of the founders of Ancestry.com)

At the center of your Village is a “Heritage Tree”, which grows as you add more people to your family tree. Being new to the game, I’m still unclear if there are ways of importing other trees from services such as FamilySearch.org or Ancestry.com, but at a minimum, it forces you to go into your tree and collect information about each of your ancestors and family members, learning about each along the way. I added my Mom and Dad, and it gave me the opportunity, using money I earned in the game, to “immigrate” them into the game. Again, it found a Newspaper from the day my dad was born – pretty cool!

As more data is provided and more individuals are “immigrated”, you can visit your library and access documents FamilyLink has discovered for you. You can create new homes for new families and individuals. I assigned my dad a cardboard box and moved him as far away from my own home as possible, but still far enough to visit every so often with the kids. (Love you dad!) He started out with a “Street Sweeper” job.

For those struggling to learn their heritage, Family Village may just make this process possible for the first time through a fun, enjoyable atmosphere. Family Village reunites you with your lost and deceased relatives in ways you never discovered, and it happens as you’re having fun! I can see countless hours spent in this game in my family. I normally don’t subscribe to virtual world type games, but Family Village is one I can feel proud I’m addicted to. I welcome any Family Village posts in my News Feed.

The game is currently in Alpha, and they make it clear when you start that there will be bugs, which there are. Be patient and you’ll get through though. This one’s worth any growing pains you have to go through with it.

If you’d like to try it out, give it a try at http://apps.facebook.com/myfamilyvillage?partnerid=staynalive. This is one company, and one game I’m proud to share and promote.

Disclaimer: I was not approached to promote this, but Family Village is a Utah startup I’m impressed with and thought my readers should try. FamilyLink is a former client of mine.

Miss Those Old Style Retweets on Twitter.com? Try This Kynetx Extension

Posted on January 10, 2011 by jessestay

One of my biggest annoyances with the new Twitter API has been the migration to the new “retweet” structure where clicking the retweet button pulls the person’s Tweet into your own stream, with the person’s name and profile picture attached to it. The problem with this method is that it is not near as visible, especially on many clients that do not fully support this. Using the old style, “RT @soandso such and such” is a much more effective medium in most cases, and, in my experience, results in many more people sharing and seeing your message. Evidently I’m not alone, as Mike Grace, a developer for Kynetx, wrote his own extension for Firefox and Chrome, which adds a old-style retweet link next to the new-style retweet link, giving you more options in retweeting your friends’ Tweets.

The extension, built on the Kynetx platform, is just one of many useful extensions (including my “like” button extension) intended to bring more functionality, using a single extensions (and event-driven) platform to the sites you browse on the web. According to Grace, “I got really sick of doing the copy and paste dance so I built a Kynetx app that adds the “RT” functionality that I want.”

So, if you’re looking for old-style retweets on top of Twitter.com, head on over to Mike Grace’s blog and download the extension. I think it’s a pretty nifty extension!

Disclaimer: I have no ownership or interest in Kynetx other than I think they’re a really cool, Utah-based, technology startup that gets us much closer to the web with no log in button. Oh, and they have great free lunches they offer to the public on Fridays – you should come!

How is Quora Able to Auto-Like Posts on Facebook?

Posted on January 10, 2011 by jessestay

I’ve been contemplating a way to get Facebook like buttons to work with a brand’s own look and feel, so when you like it on a 3rd party site, it automatically likes the same Page (via Open Graph Protocol) on Facebook. This would be a User Experience Designer’s dream come true, especially those that I work with in my day job trying to design stuff that works with Facebook. Today I remembered that there is a site that is doing just that: Quora. The problem is there is no API method that currently allows Facebook developers to send “likes” to URLs or Pages on Facebook.

Right now on Quora when you click “up” on any answer on Quora, if you’ve associated a Facebook account with your Quora account you have the option, in your settings, to also “like” the page for the answer on Facebook. Doing so shows a post in the news feed that says something like “so and so likes such and such an answer on Quora”, linking back to the answer on Quora. The likes, via Facebook’s Graph API also go up with that click. This auto-posting is probably also helping to contribute to Quora’s massive growth in such a short period of time.

I thought I’d try to hack it to see if I could figure out what Quora is doing. I’m pretty sure they’re getting special access by Facebook to do it. Right now when I send a “POST” method call to https://graph.facebook.com/likes, with http://pathtoanyurl.com in a “url” parameter (and a working, offline_mode, access token), I get a message back from Facebook that says, “App must be on whitelist”.

I’m assuming Quora is on a special whitelist for Facebook to be able to auto-like posts via Facebook’s API, something most developers on Facebook Platform aren’t allowed to do. This would make a lot of sense, considering Quora’s own founders were also some of the original founders of Facebook and most likely have very close ties with the service and its employees.

Now I just want to know, how can I get this whitelist access?

If you have a better answer, answer here, on Quora of course!

Counting "Real" Likes on any URL – Evaluating the Salt Lake City vs. Fresno Campaign

Posted on January 3, 2011 by jessestay

In the last week I saw one of the most amazing campaigns of unity amongst 2 communities, Salt Lake City, Utah, where I live and where I asked for your help, and Fresno, California. Both cities were entered into Walmart’s “Fighting Hunger Together” campaign in a race to get the most “likes”. The prize? 1 million dollars donated to the Food Bank of the community with the most “likes”. $100,000 would be donated to each of the next 5 communities with the most “likes”. Thanks to yours, and others’ help, both Salt Lake City and Fresno seemed to take off the most. Both cities launched media blitzes, a telethon of sorts, that telethon lasting more than 3 days, begging viewers, listeners, and readers to like their communities in hopes to rally the individual community to earn their cool $1 million towards the hungry and homeless. I don’t know of a TV or Radio station in Utah that wasn’t talking about this every 15 minutes or so. Campaigns were even set up to help people set up their Facebook accounts, and then close them when the campaign was done! It was a Christmas Miracle to see both communities fighting so hard to win, Fresno outranking Salt Lake City by around 200,000 votes at one point, but Salt Lake City sprinting to the finish, obliterating the competition. In the end, Salt Lake City rallied, soliciting over 5 million votes, completely overshadowing Fresno at second place by over 1 million votes. The third place city didn’t even eclipse 500,000 likes.

The real story though is how each city grew their “likes”. Walmart was counting “likes” by the total on the like button embedded in the website. You can see that still on my previous article soliciting your help (click the link), something any website can embed using Facebook Social Plugins (I also included the HTML so others could embed it on their sites). The “like buttons” tally votes by the number of shares of the URL, followed by the total number of comments on each share. It’s hardly a count of the total number of people that actually liked the post, and some would argue, not a fair tally. Fresno was even calling foul, perhaps out of jealousy, that Salt Lake City was using tactics such as creating Fake profiles, sharing the page thousands of times, and encouraging others to click through and like each share on the Fake profile. Of course, Fresno was doing the same. It was rather ironic that in the end Salt Lake’s total “likes” exceeded the total population of Utah as a whole! I’m sure it could be possible, especially considering bloggers like myself were sharing outside of Utah to solicite votes, but hardly believable. Of course, Fresno was in the same boat.

There is a way however, for anybody to get the “real” tally of votes for a URL with Facebook Graph API. It turns out with Graph API you can pass a URL to it to get the ID and additional information about that URL. So, without further adieu, here are the actual “like” counts for both Salt Lake City and Fresno:

Salt Lake City (click the link to see the Graph API response): 136,820 total likes (unique people)

Fresno (click the link to see the Graph API response): 89,578 total likes (unique people)

So, it would appear that, no matter how you “like” it, Salt Lake City still won the competition, fair and square. In one of the most amazing feats of unity around such an amazing cause, I’m proud of my city because of this. Salt Lake City gets social media. We get how to rally, and we get how to work with each other to help out the homeless. As a result, Utah’s Food Bank believes it can turn that 1 million dollars into 7 million dollars with the programs it has in place. The 4th place city, Ogden, Utah will also get $100,000 – Utah Food Bank has pledged that the $100,000 from Ogden, along with the $1 million will get shared across the entire state of Utah, multiplied by 7 in helping the poor and needy. Homeless from all over the nation actually flock to Utah because of our Homeless programs. THANK YOU for your help. I know many of you voted, and I’m sincerely appreciative for this.

If you ever need to tally the “real” likes for an Open Graph URL that uses the “like box” Social Plugin, use the technique I mentioned above – simply pass https://graph.facebook.com/http://pathtoyoursite.com to your browser and you’ll get the likes for your site.

Again, THANK YOU!

If you want tips like just like this one, be sure to pre-order my next book, “Facebook Application Development for Dummies”. Any “dummy” can understand cool stuff like this!

This Isn’t the Microsoft it Used to Be – My Full Circle Journey and Why I’m Back Again

Posted on December 29, 2010 by jessestay

: Image via CrunchBase

You may remember my scathing blog post denouncing my Xbox 360 and swearing I was leaving Microsoft. I still feel that way about my old Xbox 360. It was a piece of junk. I sold it, sold all the games, and sent my Windows 7 machine with Windows Media Center on it to the scrap pile. The fact is Microsoft used to create junky hardware and software, and being big and experiencing growing pains they got lazy and stopped competing in a lot of the consumer market. My old Xbox 360 died 4 times and they still weren’t willing to give me something better. Windows Vista still crashes all the time. The old Windows Mobile was out of its time. IE is terrible and a joke in many circles. I hate the old Microsoft. For the first time in my life, being the company that got me into programming, I didn’t want to go back. I was sick of the problems and didn’t want anyone to try and fix it for me.

All that changed when my kids convinced me to try the Kinect. Enter the new Microsoft. Everything is new now.

The Backstory

It started when I was throwing around the idea of getting a PS3 with the Move wand and camera. It just didn’t seem to interest my kids. My kids, Mario Kart junkies that could care less about graphics and more about what games they can play and challenge their friends on, are happy with just having a Wii (bless their hearts). Something was getting to them, though, as they would see commercials on TV when Microsoft’s Kinect launched of people controlling a computer screen with their hands and legs. That looked really fun to them! This was something, finally, for their generation!

It was when they started asking me about the Kinect and not the PS3 that I started to realize I was going to have to reconsider the Xbox again. So I started investigating. I also started to see a buzz that I hadn’t seen since the Wii came out. The 250 GB bundles, the most popular bundle, were near impossible to find in stores. Friends were starting to talk about getting them. My parents finally bought an Xbox just for the Kinect (something I was trying to convince them for years to do). There was something special afoot, and I needed to find out what it was.

The Purchase

So I decided to jump the gun and at least give it a try. It turns out Microsoft has a new Xbox console. One that’s less-prone to errors. So I went out, got practically the last Xbox 360 250 GB Kinect Bundle in the city (at Target), and brought it home, just in time for my family to play for Thanksgiving. You should have seen the glee on my kids’ eyes when I walked in the door with this thing they were seeing on TV and now had in their house, in real life. This was the future! In their home. For them to play with. Yeah, the thing I took away from them just a month before (that didn’t work anyway).

I hooked up the new Xbox 360 – to my surprise it was quiet! I could barely hear it across the room! “Finally, a machine I can play movies and not degrade the experience because of the sound of Xbox fans,” I thought to myself.

The Kinect

Then we hooked up the Kinect.

“Simply Amazing” are the best words I can use to describe it. I’ve never experienced anything like it. Just ask my wife – I told her I never wanted to buy another game that requires a controller again. We started by playing “Kinect Adventures”, which comes with the unit. Immediately it recognized without any tuning that my daughter was a girl, and that me and my sons were boys. It would immediately recognize when there was a second player and let them play against the current player. We were very quickly, without prompting, playing as a family, together, laughing and enjoying ourselves.

The Kinect comes with a camera. During the games, the camera takes pictures of you, just like those little photos amusement park rides take of you at your most embarrassing moments. The cool part is you can share these to Facebook and Twitter though. The games also replay the pictures at the end so you get to re-live the fun you just had during the game you just played. Simply amazing.

The Experience

But the coolest part is not the games – it’s the overall experience the Kinect gives you on the Xbox. By just waving my hand when I turn on my Xbox 360, it immediately recognizes me, identifies me through facial recognition, and logs me in. No longer do I need to search for the controller to log into games – Kinect does this for you on compatible titles. In addition, because the new Xbox 360 comes with ESPN 360, I get to watch all my favorite football games (especially cool since BYU Football, one of my favorites, will have an exclusive partnership with ESPN next year), pick the winning team and get Xbox points if they win, but challenge my friends as well and see how many of them voted for which teams. Even cooler though, with the wave of a hand and some Jedi mind tricks (Jedi mind tricks unnecessary) I can pause, rewind, and fast forward my games, or choose a new game. No remote necessary.

The new Xbox comes with all the old stuff – Facebook, Twitter, Last.fm integration, and integrates really well with Windows Media Center on any Windows 7 machine. Of course, this got me to kill my cable and turn on my Windows 7 Media Center box again. Add to that services like Hulu integration into services like PlayOn, I’ve got everything I need for the full entertainment experience. Microsoft has me in their clutches.

Because of Microsoft (with some help from my Apple and Google TV devices, which I’ll talk about another time), I disconnected my Blu-Ray player, and took back my Comcast Cable boxes. Microsoft is back in the game!

The Change

Microsoft has changed my mind with the new Xbox so completely, that they are now one company, as Holden Page said earlier today, that I’m investing in for the year 2011. In fact I predict their stock price will hit $100 per share in 2011. I’m confident in that. With the advent of the Windows Phone 7 (which I have many “normal world” friends looking already to convert), integration with the Xbox and games for the Xbox, with them showing they “get” the living room experience, Microsoft is finally about to hit a Nirvana stage where they have full control of the living room experience.

I’m a Linux geek. I’m not supposed to like Microsoft. But I like this Microsoft. It’s a new Microsoft with a new attitude towards competition, and a new wave of modern technology, standards compatibility, and willingness to listen. It brings me back to the Microsoft I loved when I started programming – one that was on the cusp of new technology, a leader, not a follower, and one that developers could feel comfortable innovating under.

I hope Microsoft can convince others that they’ve disappointed in the past as I’ve accidentally been able to discover that they’re a new company now – it’s a new brand. Microsoft has some wounds they need to heal with their loyal customers first. Assuming they’re able to do so, if I were Google I wouldn’t be looking at Apple as my primary competition – I’d be looking at Microsoft. In my opinion, Microsoft is the biggest threat to Google in 2011. They owe that to the living room experience of which they have already begun to take ownership, and to being the only other major vendor to be focusing on software, not hardware for phones and succeeding at being innovative in doing so. Google – don’t get distracted. This is your real competition. If you’re a blogger – don’t get distracted. Microsoft is the real deal this year. Let Apples be Apples (har har).

Microsoft, I don’t know how you did it, but your technology alone has completely turned me around and made me a fan again. I can’t wait to see what 2011 holds.

Hey Zuck, You’re Not Making My "Answer" an Easy One

Posted on December 28, 2010 by jessestay

I’ve been going back and forth with Robert Scoble and others today on why I should use the emerging Question and Answer service, Quora, when Facebook Questions is already pretty effective for me. I often post a Facebook Question and get answers very shortly after, often from very smart people already knowledgeable about the topics I’m asking about. I find it especially good if the questions are personal, and related to every day life questions. That’s why I found it surprising after looking at Mark Zuckerberg’s own Facebook profile, that he’s only asked 2 questions there, where he’s asked 5 questions on Quora. Are Facebook Questions just not that important to Mark? How about question sites in general? Quora certainly doesn’t have much use by the CEO either.

Robert Scoble insists that what makes Quora more powerful than Facebook Questions is the quality of people answering questions there. While I don’t doubt that CEOs are using it and often answering questions on the service (it started exclusively with invites to bloggers and influentials), who are those CEOs? Mark Zuckerberg has only answered 5 questions on the service, and even fewer on his own site. Is Bill Gates answering questions? How about Michael Dell, or Steve Jobs, or even Bill Clinton? It seems to me that smart and perhaps even successful entrepreneurs are using the service – I’m not sure either services have hit full potential yet with use by real legends like those above. That still doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be using it though. Quora does have an excellent search, and seems easier to find interesting questions as a whole.

At the same time I’m seeing great results from Facebook in the questions I ask there, and it’s already a part of my existing workflow. For example, check out this question on my Ford F-150 truck’s lock problems, where with one answer I had a Ford certified technician providing me detailed howtos on how I could fix the problem I was having. Or, check out this question on what speakers I should choose, and the audiophiles all giving me great feedback on my question.

I’d love to see Mark Zuckerberg show off how useful these questions services can actually be. I’m having a really hard time deciding if I really need to add another service to my already busy and often distracting workflow when services I already use like Facebook provide a tool I can use and potentially (assuming they eventually launch it to everyone, which they haven’t yet) have hundreds of millions see it, or if I should start another tool and have “smart people” and “CEOs” see it as Scoble implies he’s seeing on Quora. Of course, the fact that Mark Zuckerberg himself is using Quora more than he is using Facebook Questions isn’t helping my quest either.

So Zuck, how about giving me some hints here – which one should I use, Quora or Facebook Questions? In fact, I’ve created a Facebook Question on the topic – please vote and leave your own reasons why there: http://www.facebook.com/q/Which-Question-and-Answer-service-should-I-use-Facebook-Questions-or-Quora-Why/10150360664665113?t=2&hid=20531316728&keep_objects=1 (only available to those with Facebook Questions enabled)

I’d love to see Mark Zuckerberg use his own service a little more to help convince me to stay with my current decision on Facebook Questions. Or maybe it’s just an experiment at the moment and I need to be trying other services? I can’t decide!

Howto: Getting the Logitech Revue (Google TV) to Work With Comcast Cable Boxes

Posted on December 28, 2010 by jessestay

As I’ve Tweeted, Facebooked, and Buzzed about recently, Google sent me a Logitech Revue Google TV unit shortly before Christmas which I will probably be using to write apps for. There are many things I like about it, many I don’t, but I’ll save that review (no pun intended) for another date. I did want to post briefly on an issue I came across that had me really frustrated, as there were no answers on the web.

The issue stems with Comcast Cable Boxes (mine was the HD PVR unit with HDMI out) not working well in receivers that have more than one HDMI cable input connected at a time. I have the Harman Kardon AVR-247 and when I would connect the Comcast Cable box to my Logitech Revue unit, I would get Content Protection errors each time (HDCP – Google it, with “Logitech Revue”). I tried every means of connecting, and no matter what I tried I couldn’t get it to display TV without the HDCP error, a big green message on top of the screen from the Comcast digital cable box.

I Googled it, and came across issue after issue of Comcast customers having similar problems with the Comcast Cable boxes, with no answers, and no response from Comcast (Many were complaining that Comcast was sending them back to Motorola, some saying Comcast was blaming Google, etc.). The only answer I came up with was that the AVR (your receiver) did not work well when it had more than one input in the box, something that was necessary in my situation because I also have an Xbox, an Apple TV, along with a Blu Ray DVD player. The Apple TV and Logitech Revue only have HDMI ports, while the others I prefer to connect via HDMI where possible. The only solution I found was to connect the output of the Logitech Revue unit out to the TV’s HDMI input port, and the Comcast Box into the Logitech Revue, then using the Optical out port of the Revue to connect to the Optical input of the receiver, giving me the sound I need (you may have to read that a few times to get it). My problem was that my TV is still pretty old (but can you argue with 65 inches???), and only has one input HDMI port, which is already being used by the receiver.

So I thought about it, and realized the problem was because I had 2 HDMI cables connected to the receiver. I also happened to have an HDMI hub, which I purchased from Best Buy for about $100, but is also available in various forms starting at around $30 or so on Amazon and elsewhere. I was using this already to power some of the other HDMI devices I was using. So I disconnected the second port completely, and put everything into the HDMI hub. Voila! It worked! No more content protection errors!

So if you’re seeing the HDCP Content Protection errors with your Cable box on the Logitech Revue, you may want to consider going out and purchasing an HDMI hub, get rid of all but one HDMI input into your receiver, and connect everything to your hub. I’m pretty sure this method will work for almost everyone. In the meantime, Comcast told me on Twitter that they are aware of the issue, and they’re working on a firmware fix to hopefully fix the issue on their Cable boxes. It’s good to know they are now recognizing the problem, although they can’t give any ETA on a fix.

It was actually this problem that convinced me to just go get rabbit ears – with a Google TV, an Xbox and Windows Media Center, and an Apple TV, do I really need cable TV any more? Assuming you do, well, here’s the answer.

Twitter Misleads. Bloggers Take the Bait. About that Facebook vs. Twitter Infographic…

Posted on December 22, 2010 by jessestay

Back in April I shared how Twitter was misleading the media and its users into thinking the numbers it was reporting were comparable to Facebook’s. The deception stems from a report by Biz Stone at Twitter’s Chirp conference that Twitter has 105 million users. It appears that in the last day or two many of the most popular tech blogs on the internet are taking the bait, including at least one blog that focuses specifically on Facebook, reporting an entirely inaccurate infographic, with absolutely no clarification in the matter.

The Infographic, created by Digital Surgeons, which is supposed to be a “Digital Marketing Agency”, boasts a whole bunch of figures based on a total user base of 500 million for Facebook, and 106 million for Twitter. The problem is that Facebook doesn’t have 500 million total users. According to Facebook’s own statistics, Facebook has “more than 500 million active users.” For any agency in the know about Facebook (I argue if they’re making Infographics like this on such a huge statistic they aren’t), Facebook’s stats are a reflection of the total active user base and not total user base. In fact, I was discussing with a (recently) former Facebook employee at one time how The LDS Church‘s FamilySearch.org has the largest database of online profile data in the world at 1 billion, and they suggested if Facebook counted their total user base (rather than active), Facebook’s number would be at closer to a billion users or more, not 500 million like Facebook is honestly sharing.

In SocialToo’s database I keep an ongoing cache of users based on the users we have and their friends. That number, as of a few months ago, was a sample of about 5 million users. Of those 5 million users on Twitter, only 30% of them had more than 20 status updates over the life of their account. Assuming that statistic scales, that would mean Twitter’s number, as comparative in this diagram, should be closer to 30 million, not 100 million, making the entire premise of the graphic inaccurate. Now, of course, I don’t have Twitter’s own numbers on me so I may be completely off, but I think it gives us an idea. If Twitter’s numbers are bigger than mine, why not share them?

I sincerely hope this agency updates their infographic to a more correct number base – for something that is usually generated for mostly SEO purposes, it’s a pretty crummy thing to allow inaccurate numbers float around the web. Hopefully others can see through that (and bloggers do their own research), but mostly, I hope this agency notifies bloggers of their serious inaccuracy. And lastly, I sincerely hope Twitter can be a little more honest with their numbers. Listing “total users” when all your competitors are listing “active users” is a deceptive practice, and if you don’t have anything to hide, why not report the full number? As long as Twitter isn’t you’re going to continue to see misleading infographics like this. Then again, I’m sure that’s exactly what Twitter wants.

Here’s the infographic (note that I’m changing the title and file name to accurately report for SEO):

Help Me Pick the Picture for My Next Book

Posted on December 15, 2010 by jessestay

My sister-in-law, a few months back, took these amazing pictures of me to use on Facebook, Twitter, and also for my next book, Facebook Application Development for Dummies. Her name is Megan Stay, and she’s really good if you want some great portraits or headshot photos taken. She travels as well. Be sure to check out her site at MegRuth.com.

I need to pick one of these for my next book. I’m a horrible judge of how I look – I figure I’d let you be the judge. Which picture should I use in my next book? Please post your favorite in the comments and I’ll choose the one that has the most comments. Oh, and don’t forget to check out my Sis-in-law’s site!:

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