Twitter – Page 2 – Stay N Alive

Category: Twitter

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

Posted on 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):

Digitalsurgeons Inaccurate Stats

Now You Can "Like" Any Tweet on Twitter.com

Posted on by jessestay

As part of Kynetx’s Facebook App contest I wrote a simple browser extension that you can install on Chrome, Internet Explorer, or Firefox, which allows you to, in addition to the “retweet”, “favorite”, and “reply” links you see when you mouse over a Tweet, you can also now “like” the Tweet as well.  What does this do?  It puts it on Facebook, of course!  Here’s me liking one of Jolie O’Dell’s Tweets (she had the most like-worthy Tweet in my stream at the time):

The plugin was very simple to write on Kynetx’s platform – Brad Hintze explains it well over here, but to put it simple, all I had to do is distinguish through a selector where to put the like buttons and put Facebook’s default like button iframe code in where each Tweet is.  With some simple jQuery I could identify the permalink for the Tweet, insert that as the href for the like button, and voila, each like links right back to the Tweet on Twitter.com.  The like shows up in my profile like this:

Of course, there is much more I can do with this – at the moment I’m using Kynetx’s Facebook API to greet you by name and tell you how to use the plugin.  I anticipate also enabling a “post to facebook” checkbox below the status update box in Twitter, and because you’ve authorized your Facebook account through Kynetx you can now cross-post to Facebook, straight from Twitter.com.  Or, what if I wanted to, in my Twitter settings, pull my profile pic from my Facebook profile and upload that to Twitter as my profile pic?  I could use Kynetx’s Facebook API to access the profile picture, then use Kynetx’s Twitter API to upload that pic up to Twitter.  Not just that, but all the changes, written in one single language and written only once, get compiled into Chrome plugins, Firefox plugins, Internet Explorer plugins, as well as Information Cards and bookmarklets anyone can install to completely customize the Twitter.com experience to work with Facebook.  What are some other ways you can see this extended?

If you haven’t tried out Kynetx yet go check it out.  This was very simple to write – you can see the source code I used over on the Kynetx blog.  Feel free to add to it and make your own creations – I’ll just release this all under the GPL, so change away.  Oh, and if you’re not a developer go install the extension and like your favorite Twitter posts!

I’ve uploaded the extensions for IE, Firefox, and Chrome all to this zip file – feel free to download and enjoy!  It’s a work in progress (and mostly a hobby), so please send me your ideas and feedback.

Disclosure: I won a $200 Amazon Gift Certificate for entering this app into Kynetx’s Facebook app contest

Are Toll Roads Open?

Posted on by jessestay

Twitter proved me wrong. Well, sorta.

After my last article I had a whole slurry of rebuttals by Twitter employees suggesting my last article had “serious factual errors” and that the move by Twitter to charge $360,000 a year for 50% access to their full firehose through Gnip actually made Twitter “more accessible” and “open”, and not more closed as I was claiming.  Before I start I want to make sure it’s clear to those Twitter employees – what’s business is business – I have made no personal attacks here guys.  Please take this constructively.  I’m only stating my viewpoint as one of your developers, and, I think if you look at the replies to my post and retweets (and the comments of that post), you’ll see many other devs that agree with me.

I’ll give Twitter that credit, and I applaud them for it.  Compared to yesterday, even with a Paywall, Twitter’s firehose is “more accessible”.  In addition, Twitter is one of the only content sites out there that even provides an API to their full firehose of data, and, for that, they should be applauded.  It doesn’t matter if 2 years ago all this data was available for free via an XMPP feed and that really isn’t correct – Twitter is still one of the only sites at least giving an option to scan their massive database.  I think that’s a powerful thing and I’m definitely not discouraging that.  I want to make sure we’re absolutely clear on that – what Twitter did today was a good thing.

However, let me explain what I was getting at in my previous article.  Even though Twitter is one of the only sites allowing this data, there is a dangerous precedent they’re setting towards “open data”.  In essence, they’re saying, “You can have access to an individual’s Tweet stream. (with limits)  You can have access to the Tweet stream of your site’s users (with limits).  But to access all our data, you have to pay us.”  Now, let’s go back to my “Pulse of the Planet” reference and compare it to a highway system.  If Twitter was a Highway, anyone could have access and go where they want, as they please, all for free.  All destinations are possible as a result.  However, by closing their firehose to only those that pay, they are offering only one road, to one destination.  The problem is that anyone else can still get to that destination for free via other Highway systems – it’s just more difficult to do so.  By creating a “Toll Road”, Twitter is, in essence, creating a single way that guarantees direct access to the full data that Twitter provides. Everyone else is stuck finding their own way, and what happens is a result is they plan new destinations that are cheaper to get to.  Which route is more open?  The Toll Road, or the free Highway system?  This is actually a big debate in many cities – it’s not an easy question to answer, so you may decide for yourself what that means and maybe I was wrong in calling it closed earlier.  However, I will argue that the “open” web is a Highway.  Twitter, at the moment, along with Facebook, Google’s Search Index, Google Buzz, MySpace, and many others’ data are toll roads.  Which is more open?  I’m not even saying it’s wrong to be a toll road.  Maybe you guys can debate in the comments.

What I’m getting at is now that Twitter is charging for the full firehose, your data has a specific value to them.  Their bottom line now relies on them charging for access to half of their users’ data.  My concern is that now that Twitter is profiting off the full firehose, what happens when they realize this is making them money and they start charging for other pieces of their data?  Money is tempting, and my concern is that this is a path that is leading them towards more paywalls and more areas that just aren’t open to the general public or normal developers.  Call that “open” or not, as a developer, I’m very worried about that.  I’d almost rather Twitter keep their firehose closed than charge exorbitant fees for it.  Or, just charge for the whole thing already and put us all out of our misery.  On a site where it’s very unclear how they’re making or going to make money, this is a very scary thought to a developer that has been relying on a free API.

I’d like some comfort in this matter.  Can Twitter guarantee they won’t charge for any more of their data?  Or is this the path they are moving towards?  What’s the roadmap so we, as developers, can prepare for it?

I hope Twitter employees that disagree can do so in the comments this time – it’s much easier to have a sane conversation when your limit isn’t 140 characters.  Let’s keep this conversation going.  I hope there is some clarification on the matter.

Image courtesy http://www.carandhomeinsurance.co.za/home-insurance/articles/open-road-tolls-will-change-driver-habits_319

Twitter’s Gnip Deal Ensures a Closed Ecosystem

Posted on by jessestay

Today, at Defrag conference, Twitter announced a new deal with the Real-Time stream proxy Gnip, where for $360,000 per year they will search 50% of all content posted to Twitter.  This move follows the move, as I mentioned earlier, of Twitter moving further and further away from an open platform, and more towards one they fully control, which, as I’m sure is their opinion, will hopefully bring them more revenue in the future.  The problem with this move is that rather than open up the data of users on Twitter by embracing a real-time standard such as PubsubHubbub or RSS Cloud where middleware Proxies can filter the traffic coming through which anyone can set up, they’ve entirely blocked the potential for such by ensuring their revenue source instead comes from what should be open data.

This move is troubling.  This move means Twitter’s revenue is entirely reliant on them being a closed ecosystem.  The more they block data from the open web, the more they profit.  This sets a very bad precedence that could very well seep into other systems of theirs in the future.  In fact I bet it will.

Twitter has every right to protect their main firehose – they have pretty much done so already.  The Gnip deal seals that direction even further though, and builds Twitter’s entire business model around content that should be free in the first place.  To be “the pulse of the planet” you cannot be a toll road.

Twitter has made similar moves recently, with their move towards their own user interface that only “preferred partners” can interface with (meaning you have to pay to provide an interface to users on Twitter.com that might have an interest in your product), and also removing the obvious RSS feed links to users that are logged into Twitter that made it easier for users to retrieve and parse content of those they want to follow on the service.  This move also comes after Twitter reduced rate limits and removed capabilities for applications to do popular features on the site.

If one thing is obvious, it’s that Twitter wants more control over its ecosystem.  Unfortunately, control means a more closed environment.  Unfortunately, the deal with Gnip seals that closed environment in stone for some time to come.  I think we can pretty much count on Twitter being a closed, walled garden in the years to come.

I hope they prove me wrong.

UPDATE: Twitter did prove me wrong, sorta – read how here.

How do I get People to Interact and Build Lasting Relationships?

Posted on by jessestay

Today I received 2 similar requests, so I thought I’d share the answer here so others could learn as well.  The question was, “How do I get people to interact and build lasting relationships?”  Other forms of the question previously have been, “how do I build my followers?” or, “how do I create traffic?”  There’s even a book about it called, “How to win Friends and Influence People.”

While I don’t think the actual answer is very hard, the process does involve hard work.  It shouldn’t be easy.  It’s something that  involves much more than just “creating numbers.”  Actually, the question, “how do I build my followers?” or, “how do I build my traffic?” are probably the wrong questions you should be asking.  The correct question is just what another person asked me today, which you read in the title – how do we build relationships?  How do we build community?  How can you build an audience that will listen when you speak?  Even better:  How do I build an audience of people that listen that have even larger audiences of people who will listen?  I think that’s the key.

When I was asked this earlier, here is how I answered:

“What do you have to offer? Find people that are interested in what you have to offer, and offer to help – it’s pretty much Karma. The more you give, the more you will get back and the more your community will grow. Build cool stuff. Create cool content. Find people that need help and offer to help with the talents you have to offer. The most successful have mastered these things.”

To another person I suggested building a monthly consulting plan where we work gradually towards that goal.  I am worried that person is too focused on numbers though – he will not be nearly as successful.

Earlier I shared my biography of how I got to where I’m at now.  I mentioned an important piece to that puzzle to building influence (in my case, getting published, and building a reputation) was how to network.  I also mentioned to Jolie O’Dell, which she mentioned in a recent piece on Mashable that this is key to aspiring web developers looking to grow their talent (and I argue this can apply to any position out there).  What I haven’t shared is how to network to build that influence.

One of my first memories shortly before I quit my job and started working for myself was Guy Kawasaki visiting Utah to speak.  I heard great things about Guy and wanted to learn from him.  One of the most vivid things I remembered from his presentation was to always tell people after you help them with something, “I know you would do the same for me.”  You see it’s all about Karma – some call it The Golden Rule.  Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Find the needs of those that can help you, and find ways you can use your own talents to help them in their needs.  Some call this “Social Capital”, or “Whuffies“, being a form of currency for that Capital.

I actually took Guy Kawasaki up on his offer, funny enough, to Guy himself.  As a software developer working a 9-5 job as I mentioned earlier I followed Guy on Twitter – he was a guy I wanted to learn more about, someone I wanted to learn from.  My Dad always taught me to always surround myself with people smarter than me, people that I look up to and aspire to be.  Social Media: Twitter, Facebook, make this possible and the people don’t even have to know who you are.

Guy mentioned on Twitter that he was looking for a script to automatically follow the people that follow him on Twitter.  It had just so happened that I created one of those for myself, and even published the source code on my blog earlier (there’s an entirely similar story with Chris Pirillo, who I now consider a friend, who inspired me to release that due to a similar need he mentioned on Twitter earlier on – I would be wrong not to mention his influence, as well).  I decided to offer this to Guy.  To my surprise, Guy responded!

To make a long story short, I adapted my script to a format Guy could use, and I even made it so others could use it in a nice, easy to use UI.  Thus became the birth of the service I still run, SocialToo.  In a private message, Guy thanked me for setting that up for him.  He also offered to let me write a post about Facebook on his blog, since I had just published my first book with Jason Alba (which you can read here).  My response to him: “My pleasure – I know you would have done the same to me.”

Several months later Guy approached me again, this time with an idea to publish surveys targeting Twitter and other social networks on SocialToo.  We built the product, I launched it on SocialToo, and it became one of many more features we have added to the service since.  Guy at that point officially became an Advisor to SocialToo, and I consider him a good friend, mentor, and Advisor.

Networking is all about relationships.  It’s about how you can help others.  It’s about opening yourself up, saying, “here’s what I have.  How can I help you?”  It’s not about the numbers.  It’s not even about gaming people by pretending you care in order to get them to like you back.  It’s about building true friendships. It’s about building real relationships.  It’s about really caring.

As you build your strategy, are you trying to build numbers, or are you trying to build stuff that helps others?  How are you changing the world?  How are you building relationships?  How are you touching people?  Look at Gary Vaynerchuck – I believe he calls it, “Crushing it.”  He approaches people that don’t even know him and offers to help, one-by-one.  Today’s he’s a brand that even non-social media folk know and turn to for help.  He did that one-by-one, starting with the comfort of his own Wine Store in New York.  I think you’ll find similar stories for each and every successful person or business out there.

So my suggestion to you: don’t worry about numbers.  Worry about relationships.  If you have one person completely devoted to helping you because they believe in you that’s so much better than thousands of people that barely even know you’re there.  Once you have a large audience, keep in mind you have to shout really loud to get everyone to hear!

Anyway, I thought I’d share this while it was on my mind.  After all, I know you’d do the same for me. 😉 (but really, I do this because I want to help!)

With the New Design, Twitter Kills RSS, Literally

Posted on by jessestay

The blogosphere is abuzz lately about the latest trend: “RSS is Dead,” everyone says.  Other blogs say “RSS isn’t dead.” (of which side I tend to agree with).  The debate lies with the fact that more and more people are starting to use Twitter, Twitter lists, Facebook, and other social means to just get the news from the streams they follow on these sites rather than typical RSS Readers like Google Reader.  For instance, even on my own Google Reader shares, you can get them right on my @jesseslinks Twitter stream if you don’t ever want to touch Google Reader (yet I’m still using Google Reader to provide those to you).  Whatever side you agree with, I just discovered one thing we’ll all be able to agree with: at least on its own site in the new design, Twitter has quite literally killed RSS.  Into thin air it’s gone in the new UI.

I talked previously about Twitter increasingly becoming less and less open and more and more a walled garden.  Facebook itself just added RSS to its feeds for Facebook Pages and opened its database so you can reformat their content, so long as users approve, in any way you like.  It appears, as no surprise, Twitter is moving in the opposite direction.  In the new design I can’t find an RSS feed anywhere.  Previously there was a link to the lower-right allowing you to add an RSS feed.  They also had a link to the RSS in the source of the HTML so your browser would automatically recognize the feed, and just entering the URL for the user profile into Google Reader, they could automatically detect the feed for you.

Currently the only way to find an RSS feed is to log out and visit the profile of the user when you’re not logged into Twitter.  This might also be why Google Reader still recognizes feeds when you enter user profile URLs in the “Add Subscription” box.  Firefox doesn’t recognize the feed when I’m logged in – it does when I’m not.  It does make you wonder how long the RSS feed will be in the unauthenticated version.

It’s hard to tell if this is intentional or not, but we do know Twitter wants to be a source for news.  Perhaps they think this is in their best interest – the harder they make it for you to read your news elsewhere, the more likely you are to come to Twitter.com to read your news from your friends.  One thing is for sure however – the new Twitter design is certainly less open than it was before.  Twitter, especially with the new design, is now a walled garden.

I’ve contacted Twitter about this and will update here with any response.

UPDATE: For some reason Twitter’s PR never responded.  However, even better, Isaac Hepworth, a developer from Twitter, responded on Buzz, inferring some of it was a mistake, while some of it was intentional to make things simpler:

“Hey Ade, thanks for the cc and sorry for the delay jumping in. I’ve been talking to people internally to work out what happened here so that I could untangle it properly.

Here’s the scoop: the RSS itself is still there (as Jesse’s roundabout method for finding it shows). Two things were removed in #NewTwitter:
1. The hyperlink to the RSS on the profile page; and
2. The link to the RSS in the profile page metadata (ie. the element in the ).

(2) was wholly accidental, and we’ll fix that. In the meantime, Jesse’s way of finding the RSS is as good as any, and you can still subscribe to user timelines in products like Google Reader by just adding a subscription to the profile URL, eg. http://twitter.com/isaach.

(1) on the other hand was deliberate, in line with the “keep Twitter simple” principle which we used to approach the product as a whole. Identifying RSS for a page and exposing it to users per their preferences is a job which most browsers now do well on their own based on s.

Hope that helps!”

The Next "Facebook Platform" for the Modern Web, and Why Twitter’s Running the Wrong Way

Posted on by jessestay

I’ve talked previously about “the web with no login button”, a vision of the Building Block Web that follows the user where they go, knowing who they are and adapting as they move.  With the advent of mobile, entire operating systems running on the browser, cloud-based personal information stores and APIs such as Kynetx to manage both user and application data for the user, we are so close to being where we want to be!  There’s one hurdle we have to jump before we get there though, and I’m concerned Twitter just ran the wrong direction with their new UI.  The hurdle we’ve got to get around is that of allowing a user’s social connections to also follow them wherever they go, uninhibited by any single corporation.  Not a single big player seems willing to take this step yet, but when it happens, I guarantee you’ll see a revolution at the scale of when Facebook Platform launched in 2007.  The first person to do it gets the opportunity to lead the pack, and hundreds of millions will follow.

I mentioned earlier on Twitter that something about Twitter’s new UI (which I’ve actually only seen screenshots and demos of since I’m not on their Press list) really bugged me but I couldn’t put my finger on it.  Perhaps it was hearing Ev emphasize “yet” when talking about CoTweet-like functionality. Perhaps it was hearing Jason Goldman talk about improving their “following” interface to something that I think could potentially threaten some of what I’m doing with my business.  Perhaps it’s the feature they just asked me to kill on SocialToo that I haven’t announced yet.  Perhaps it’s their lack of a solid roadmap like Facebook has to warn developers of what’s ahead and who will be replaced next.  As a developer, every step like this Twitter makes is certainly a threat to my business model and anyone else like me.  It’s definitely a token to their closed nature.  However I think it’s much bigger than that.

I think Alex Payne, of whom I just became a big fan after his recent post on his perceptions of the new UI (a must read), said it perfectly, “all communications media will inevitably be decentralized, and that all businesses who build walled gardens will eventually see them torn down.”  Now, I don’t think all walled gardens will die – Ev William’s own original startup, Blogger.com, remained closed in a time where sites like LiveJournal and WordPress were going completely open source and it was still bought by Google.  In those days, going open source and giving people the opportunity to own their own data stored on each blog was the equivalent of federating social connections would be today – instead of owning content people would now have the opportunity to own their own relationships and port those from site to site if they choose, or host the relationships themselves if they also choose (I’m kind of doing that at http://community.staynalive.com/jesse).  Blogger obviously survived and is now one of the largest blogging platforms on the planet.

Twitter’s new UI, while I’m sure it will increase page views for them and bring them lots of money, is too late for Twitter to do any sort of innovation in this space.  Facebook already did this, and they were called a “walled garden” as a result and are now trying to break out of this reputation as users were getting ready to revolt.  Maybe that’s what Twitter wants, and I’m sure it will make them a lot of money.  They may even gain a large segment of the masses.  Businesses will still flock and so will the money.  I’ve mentioned Twitter’s need to own the UI before, but I argue it’s now too late to be focusing on that.

Twitter could however, have an opportunity to create a new wild west – a new playing field if they choose, a new canvas.  If they do so they need to focus not on the UI, but on the platform and decentralizing it significantly.  Then new opportunities arise such as payments, new service models, search, ad platforms and more that can still make them profitable.  The difference is they’re now spanning the entire web instead of their own walled garden.

I think Facebook started to make moves in this direction as they released Facebook Connect last year, and then Graph API this year along with no restrictions, redacted term limits on storage, and a push further and further away from building on their own UI.  They introduced a new protocol in fact that enables websites to be indexed more properly and enables those websites to more easily bring Facebook connections into the experience.  Facebook is moving from the walled garden approach out into the open web.  Twitter, it seems, is moving in the complete opposite direction, which seems perplexing.

Even Facebook hasn’t hit the nail on the head yet – maybe they’ll make the first move at the next F8 conference.  The next revolution of the web will be when one of these players that currently owns your Social Graph completely federates, creates a standard for others to follow, and then other companies are forced to follow as a result, forcing all the others to rush to find what they’re good at which wasn’t owning your data or social connections.  Then at that point you will truly be allowed to bring your social connections with you wherever you go, allowing for a web with not only no login button, but one where your family and friends follow with you along the way.  That’s a really powerful concept!

Kevin Marks (who led the OpenSocial platform at Google) mentioned the irony in a tweet earlier today of installing the open source social network Diaspora as we were discussing Twitter’s very centralized real time streaming API and federated environments.  I think that Kevin may be part of the revolution and we just don’t know it yet.  If none of these players make a move, it will be the next open source project like WordPress, or LiveJournal did in the early 00’s that will emerge from the dust, gain traction, and the landscape will naturally adapt.  It has to happen – it’s going to happen, and the first big player to do it will lead the way. I’m excited to find out who makes that move and I’m already thinking of ways I can jump on that bandwagon as a developer.

Picture courtesy http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article571291.ece

How the Little Guy Can Get Published – an Autobiography

Posted on by jessestay

As I just wrote, we live in an era where having a voice is much easier than it used to be.  Getting published is actually quite simple if you’re willing to work for it.  In fact, I’m living proof.  Just 3 years ago I was working a 9-5 job as my sole source of income as a programmer for a major health company, doing nothing but that.  I was a nobody.  No one knew me.  In very short time I was approached by my 3 publishers, amassed thousands of readers on this blog, and many more on Twitter and Facebook, and built a reputation for myself.  I truly believe this is something anyone can do.   Here’s what I did (this is still tough to write, as I still don’t believe I’m anywhere near my potential – to me, I’m still a nobody):

I Started a Blog

I actually did this a long time before I wrote my first book with HappyAbout.  I was trying to build an open source pseudo blogging/CMS platform, which actually powered this blog at one point.  In a sense, the goal was to eventually create a social network, something we tried to do at a previous job I was at and never completed.  This was before Facebook or Twitter or even Digg or anything like it.  In a sense, it was the next dimension of a GeoCities, or FreeServers.com (where I worked on the founding team doing Support in 1999).

I noticed a few friends blogging at the time to share tricks they had used to fix coding problems, or ways they got their various computer problems working.  I knew I had done a few things that I needed to write down for memory and others to benefit, so I started using the blog to share these things.  Soon that turned into me just sharing thoughts to what was mostly a non-existent audience, but I didn’t care – I was doing it for myself mostly.

Then I really started subscribing to other bloggers, especially around Utah and elsewhere.  I think Google Reader probably played a big role in this.  I subscribed to Phil Windley, and Janet Meiners (NewspaperGrl), Jason Alba, Phil Burns, Thom Allen, and others.  Utah actually had a bustling tech blogging scene back then (many of those I mention are still active bloggers and great blogs to follow).  As these guys blogged, it inspired me to join their conversation and post my own thoughts on the topics they were writing about.  I’d link to theirs, and others’ articles, and my links would appear in their trackbacks and they would notice.

I began to make a name for myself by just sharing what I knew, and writing about it.  There is no better way to share knowledge and show others you have that knowledge than through a blog.  This blog eventually grew and grew as I did this, eventually getting recognition by sites like TechMeme, featured on TechCrunch, mentions on Mashable, and many others (I keep a log of coverage for my record at http://www.delicious.com/jessestay/coverage).  I say this not to brag, but to show you that by simply posting a blog, and sharing your knowledge, while at the same time truly participating in the conversation in the blogosphere (aka “the memes”), you’ll grow your blog as well and quickly gain a voice.

Now when I write, people listen – in some ways, it doesn’t matter if I have a publisher, and that gets more and more possible the more my audience grows.

I Became a Pioneer

It wasn’t until the launch of Facebook Platform at the very first F8 that I really started making a name for myself.  I decided at that point my idea for a Social Network wasn’t needed any more because now I could just build niche ideas on top of Facebook.  Facebook grew, and grew, and grew, and I was with them from day one, building apps for their platform.  I saw this niche, and I saw the value in it, so I took it and ran.  I became an expert in that niche and made it mine.  Not just that, but I stuck to it. (Interesting note – I’ve actually been building on Facebook Platform longer than many Facebook employees have.)  That eventually branched out and I took on Social Media and APIs in general, and now I’m even embracing much of the world of Marketing as we know it (even though I’m technically just a Developer by trade).  I learned everything I could about this stuff, and actually applied it, creating application after application both on my own and for others to prove myself in this area.  It was partly from this that SocialToo was born.

In many ways I was inventing an industry.  I was with many others, but because I took it on early I was still one of the few “pioneers”.  Becoming a Pioneer is so important.  If everyone else is doing it, and you’re not the first, you’re not going to be recognized.  You’ve got to pick a skill, perhaps find a new movement of many, and jump on that one.  Even if you are one of many, if you’re one of the many firsts, you can now be taken seriously.  I suggest taking it even further and finding a niche amongst those firsts (mine was the brand of “Social Media Developer” rather than just “Social Media Expert”) and embracing that.

How do you pick the right niche to be a “pioneer”?  I think more than anything it has to feel right to you – make sure you have a clear vision of the future of that industry.  For me I saw a new, social world where social was tightly integrated into every piece of the web.  I saw a Building Block Web, where social pieces were tightly coupled together in an experience the user wasn’t even aware the social elements existed.  I saw the power of bringing power to developers.  I also followed bloggers, like Paul Allen and Robert Scoble, who really caught onto this vision (although I admit I met Scoble later in the game).  Note that this niche also solved some of my own needs, which also contributed to my desire to learn more about it, and I discovered along the way how powerful this stuff actually was.  Vision is key.

You’ve got to figure this out yourself, and perhaps that’s the hardest part.  If I were you I’d be looking in the mobile space, and at what companies like Kynetx are doing, though. (and at a minimum, more than anything, consider and understand the concepts and visions these companies have)  Read my article on the Future with no login button for my own personal vision, but you have to come up with your own.

I Promoted the Need, and Networked Like Crazy

Once I had discovered a need and tried to establish my skills surrounding that need, I began blogging about it.  I realized this was a new market, and one that had the potential to be very powerful.  It was one with very few blog posts on the topic, yet.  I began to write posts making it known that I knew Facebook, and in particular Facebook development.  I was actually at one point the number one search result on Google for “Facebook Developer” because of this.  That wasn’t on accident.

I became one of the only people on LinkedIn with “Facebook Developer” in my title, and soon I began getting calls asking for help in this emerging industry.  I made it easy for people to find me by publishing my e-mail address and even my phone number on my blog and working to make it as easy as possible for people to contact me on LinkedIn.

More than anything though, it was this blog that made a name for myself.  Well, this, and following other bloggers through Google Reader at the time.  I started to learn of local “Blogger Dinners” here in the Salt Lake City area where local bloggers were getting together to just meet and network.  I decided to attend one or two, and it was there I met who would soon become my co-author on my first book, Jason Alba.  Jason had previously written, “I’m on LinkedIn–Now What???” and I had followed him on his blog.  I can’t remember exactly how (I think it was a Seth Godin talk, ironically), but he had heard I was the local “Facebook guy”, and was looking to do a book similar to his first on Facebook.

He had already established a relationship with his publisher through his first book, and approached me, asking me to help him with his second book, giving me half of his royalties in the process.  We went forward with the book.  At that point because I had established a reputation, and was already a published author, that lead to O’Reilly contacting me (through my good friend, Joseph Scott), and now I’m writing my third book with Wiley in a Dummies series.

Networking is so critical – it is truly who you know that matters.  It has been through Social Media and networking that I met Jason and that lead to my first book.  It was through meeting a need of Guy Kawasaki’s and Chris Pirillo’s that lead to creating the first script on SocialToo and I feel I can now call them good friends.  It was through answering a FriendFeed post that I met Robert Scoble and I can now call him a good friend.  That meeting lead to me meeting my great friend Louis Gray.  We’re all normal people, and it’s social media that makes us normal.  It’s through this technology – Twitter, Facebook, and especially blogs, that we’re able to connect with people we were never able to meet before.  Embrace that!

I Believed in Myself!

More than anything, I think it was when I realized I could actually do this stuff, that I started to do it.  There is something to be said for the law of attraction – be it faith, God-driven, or Universal laws, it’s real.  When you truly believe you can accomplish something, it will happen.  I grew up not believing this.  I grew up thinking I’d never write a book.  I grew up thinking I’d never start my own business.  I grew up thinking I was a nobody.

It wasn’t until I caught a glimpse that this was possible that I started to think I was truly capable of anything.  And it was when that happened that I started seeing incredible success as a result, and I’m still seeing that to this day.  Anyone can accomplish what I’ve done – I’m the little guy.  I’m a nobody, but I can be anybody I want to.

I hope this blog post doesn’t come off as a “I’m better than you” story to anyone – it was intended to be the exact opposite.  You see, Social Media and the web as we know it today makes it possible for any of us to gain a voice.  The Book Publisher, the Sports Conference, the Music Label, or even the VC or major Tech Blog are all much less relevant than they used to be.  Your potential is greater than it ever has been, and while you can still use these tools as launching platforms, you get to own the process along the way.  Anyone can do this, and I think we need to break away from “the man” at least a little bit to have full flexibility in doing so.  This is why you see Seth Godin leaving his publishers.  This is why you see BYU leaving its Conference.  This is why you see many musicians leaving their labels.

The little guy is much more relevant than he used to be.  Social Media is about empowering and bringing a voice to the individual.  Embrace that.  Accept it.  You too can have a voice.

Now You Can Check in on Twitter Through Facebook Places

Posted on by jessestay

This post is syndicated from the SocialToo Blog – please check it out! I think this feature’s pretty cool:

Recently Facebook launched the ability for users to checkin to any place with their mobile phone, sharing with their Facebook friends where they are and what they’re doing, but what about their Twitter friends?  Services like FourSquare and Gowalla offer the ability for users to share their checkins to Twitter as well as Facebook (or just leave them on Gowalla or Foursquare).  Facebook, with the exception of Pages, has seemed reluctant to include Twitter syncing for Facebook status updates.  That is where SocialToo comes in.  Starting today, you can now sync your Facebook checkins automatically from Facebook to Twitter using SocialToo.

The feature is completely free for anyone on Twitter and Facebook. To enable the feature, just log in to SocialToo through your Twitter account, click “Settings”, and click “Associate a Facebook Account”. Once you have both a Twitter and Facebook account linked in SocialToo, go back to the “Inbox” tab, and check the box next to “Facebook to Twitter” in the upper-right. You can now check the boxes next to the things you want to share, including, “Autopost Places” to automatically post checkins from Facebook. Once checked, any new checkin you post on Facebook will now go to Twitter.

In addition to checkins, you can also automatically post links and status updates. Any checkin with a note attached will show the note as the text of the Tweet and a link back to the checkin on Facebook. To exclude the checkin from Twitter, just add a “-” after a space at the end of your note and it won’t go to Twitter. The same goes for status updates and links that you post to Facebook.  We are also considering the potential for an opt-in “+” in the future (let us know in the comments if this is interesting to you).

Hopefully some of you find this feature useful.  We think it’s a powerful way to let others know, now on both Twitter and Facebook, where you are and what you’re doing, and has the potential to generate some interesting conversation.  Let us know how you plan to use it!

More about SocialToo:

SocialToo provides features to complement the experience people, businesses, and brands, have on the social networks they participate on. We’re a utility providing tools to help automate the process of managing a brand image, while at the same time enabling users to clean up spammy messaging, track followers and friends, and manage those friends and followers in the process. Here are some of the features we provide:

  • Auto Follow – follow back the people that follow you or your brand, providing potential discovery and networking opportunities, opening up communication channels, and giving those that follow you a sense of belonging in your community

    • Auto Follow is a one-time $10 fee.

  • Automatic DM and Stream filtering – do you get spammy DMs on Twitter? We’ll delete them automatically for you. Set up simple filters with keywords in DMs you don’t want to receive, then set rules, such as “unfollow”, “delete”, or “ignore” to get rid of them. Turn off Twitter’s DM e-mails and turn on ours, and we’ll also respect your rules with the DM e-mails we send, meaning if you say “ignore”, we won’t send you the DMs that match your rules. In addition, you can filter out people that say certain things in your stream, or that Tweet from specific (and some times spammy) applications.

    • DM filtering is free up to 4 filters. Stream and Application filtering comes with the monthly SocialToo Premium plan. The monthly SocialToo Premium plan is $29.95/mo, and includes every feature we offer, including support for unlimited Twitter accounts (and all features for each). There is a 7-day free trial.

  • Bulk Unfollow – need to start over on Twitter? Unfollow all the people you’ve ever followed at once. Set a whitelist under “Friends” and you can exclude specific people as you do so.

    • Bulk Unfollow on Twitter is a one-time $35 fee.

  • SocialToo Stats – one of our most popular features, you get a daily e-mail with all the people that followed you and stopped following you the previous day on Twitter. We try to organize them by the Tweets we detected at the time of the unfollow or follow. We also provide additional information about each person and the ability to unfollow or follow them straight from the e-mail. In addition, for our monthly Premium users we provide an organized interface, showing a timeline of all your new follows and unfollows in a graph, your number of Tweets, and if you click through to any day it will show you the new followers and unfollowers for that day at any point we’ve tracked, along with your Tweets for that day.

    • The daily stats e-mail is a one-time $20 fee. The monthly SocialToo Premium plan is $29.95/mo, and includes every feature we offer, including support for unlimited Twitter accounts (and all features for each). There is a 7-day free trial.

  • SocialToo Surveys – a “Social” way of posting quick polls to your friends on Twitter and Facebook. Create a quick poll, and share it with your friends on multiple networks. Your friends can take the poll, share it with their friends, comment on it, or create their own!