Api

Twitter Introduces Bit.ly-Baiting URL Shortener, T.co —

Say goodbye to the bit.lys that pervade your Twitter stream--along with all the other custom URL shortners from your favorite publications--Twitter is rolling out its own way to shorten those unruly post on the Twitter blog announces the change.

As early as this summer, any links shared via Twitter will be shortened and wrapped into Twitter's new t.co URL shortener, which will seem to have some smart capabilities when viewed on Twitter:

A really long link such as http://www.amazon.com/Delivering-Happiness-Profits-Passion-Purpose/dp/0446563048 might be wrapped as http://t.co/DRo0trj for display on SMS, but it could be displayed to web or application users as amazon.com/Delivering- or as the whole URL or page title. Ultimately, we want to display links in a way that removes the obscurity of shortened link and lets you know where a link will take you.

There are a couple elements of this update that push t.co into more than a bit.ly competitor that makes me subconsciously want a taco. First, Twitter will be keeping track of all these t.co links, and will use the data they've snagged to make algorithmic recommendations to users--basically, the data will be made available through API for targeted advertising.

The other element is not entirely clear right now, in what's becoming a refrain for new Twitter announcements. Twitter will be counting t.co-wrapped links differently in terms of character count. Because this URL-wrapping will be done automatically, you can actually submit updates of length longer than 140 characters--Twitter will shorten the links and then count characters afterwards. That's how many third-party apps work, but now it's built into Twitter.

This is yet another attempt for Twitter to make first-party what was formerly third-party, just like Promoted Tweets and the new mobile apps for BlackBerry, Android, and iPhone. Twitter is taking control of the ways people use their service. So what does this mean for other URL shorteners, most notably bit.ly? Will bit.ly still work? Will Twitter allow it? That remains to be seen.

Dan Nosowitz, the author of this post, can be followed on Twitter, corresponded with via email, and stalked in San Francisco (no link for that one--you'll have to do the legwork yourself).

Facebook and Twitter Visitors Shop — and Spend — More Online —

Visitors to social media networks and services such as Facebook and Twitter shop more online than those who don’t go to such sites, according to comScore’s latest quarterly overview of the online retail economy, as reported by eMarketer. And in the case of Facebook, comScore’s figures show that the more frequently a user visits the social network, the more he or she spends online — $67 on average for heavy users of Facebook vs. $50 for a “light” user of the network and just $27 on average for a non-visitor (comScore defined a heavy user as anyone in the top 20 percent of visitors to the social network, as measured by time spent on the site).

The correlation between active visitors and spending habits online wasn’t as obvious for Twitter, however. While on one hand, comScore’s numbers showed that Twitter users tended to spend more than users of Facebook, heavy visitors to Twitter’s website — also defined as the top 20 percent in terms of time on the site — spent less on average than medium users or light users: $63 vs. $75 and $73, respectively (one factor that might affect these numbers is that a majority of interaction with Twitter comes through the company’s API, via third-party services and mobile apps).

Although $60-$70 may not seem like a huge amount for retailers to base their hopes on, the fact that visitors to social networking sites and services shop and spend more online than non-visitors is likely to increase their interest in the value of social media — and it could help explain why Facebook in particular has seen a rush of interest from advertisers: The network said recently it more than quadrupled the number of advertisers since the beginning of last year.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d): Social Advertising Models Go Back to the Future

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user Olaf

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Trst.me (from Infochimps) relies on calculating user reputation instead of just seeing how many followers they have as a deciding factor.  The first thing I noticed about how they compile the information is that they have been compiling Twitter information since 2008 using the API.  This gives them a good base to begin measurement.

You enter a username into the single box on the page to have it compute a score ranking of 1-10.  Our president of the US holds the highest rating at 9.9, which is .2 higher than CNN.  But Ellen Degeneres and Shaq are not far behind.  Scary isn’t it?

They also give a good comparison of their service and other Twitter user ranking services and how they differ.

Don’t worry, you won’t rank as high as you hope.

Klout is turning Twitter into a game. As you tweet and connect with other Twitter users, you earn badges for notable achievements. For example, when you’re mentioned by 100 unique users, or have a message retweeted by 25 people, your Klout profile gets a pretty new graphic. The data behind this can be used to determine influential Twitter users.

Klout uses Twitter’s API to analyze user data. In addition to the achievements, Klout also classifies users into one of sixteen influencer types, such as curator or socializer. You can get a feel for how the site works in the screencast embedded below.

Despite the game-like achievements, the service isn’t just for fun. Over 250 companies are using Klout to find influential users, according to TechCrunch. Most aren’t using Klout via its website, but instead its own Klout API, which provides influence scores and classifications. For example, CoTweet shows the influence rating to its users, who may be performing customer support. A complaint might be more likely to be elevated if the customer has a higher Klout rank.

At first blush, Klout may seem like the PageRank for Twitter service we wrote about. While both mine data for meaning, Klout looks for influence, while Trst.me aims to emulate the algorithm Google may use to rank users.

Sponsored by

The Twitter of News? — Liz Gannes has written an intriguing story about the new version of Digg coming soon, saying it aspires to be "The Twitter of News." This is very interesting.

Think of Twitter as "at least a dress rehearsal for the news system of the future." They gave it a diminutive name, easy to dismiss, but Twitter does something important. It makes composing and reading news easier than it's ever been.

But Twitter has been standing in the same place for a long long time. Why shouldn't Digg be able to catch up and pass them in a meaningful way? If they're motivated enough and good enough the answer is they should.

What's wrong with the tech industry that it lets Twitter stagnate so long without raising a serious challenge. Google didn't do it with Buzz or Wave. Yahoo could have done something with Flickr, but they're too disorganized. Even Facebook has failed to mount a realistic challenge to Twitter.

So why not Digg? Let's hope they have something good. Let's also hope they have innovated with their API, kept it simple, and perhaps offer developers a little more to play with than Twitter has.

It's time for some rock and roll.

Update: Zee sees it too.

Last week was intense, and I'm just now coming up from air from the backlog.  We launched a huge expansion to the Buzz API at Google I/O.  My contribution was to ensure that PubSubHubbub real time updates flow for the new feed URLs as well as the older ones; as part of this, we also enabled "fat pings" to the hub from Buzz.  "Fat pings" in this case means that we're doing an active push of each full update from our back end systems through to the hub, so the hub never needs to call back to the feeds to retrieve updates.  This is a more complicated approach, but reduces the overall server load and makes consistency guarantees easier for globally distributed systems.

Just before Google I/O, I went to IIW10 and talked about Salmon, LRDD, Webfinger, and OpenID Connect.  The air at IIW was thick with new specifications and updates.  I would've liked to have participated more, but I was helping to roll out PubSubHubbub for Buzz and getting ready for the "Bridging the Islands" Google I/O talk I was to give with Joseph Smarr the next day.

And then, my laptop crashed.  I blame Chris Messina -- Joseph and I were stealing some of his slides, and I was editing his slide deck when the system froze up and refused to boot.  Turned out later that accessing that file somehow corrupted the disk encryption driver.  That's right, Chris Messina's slide decks are powerful enough to destroy laptops.

Fortunately, we recovered and had a great session (some audience notes here).  Here's a screencast of the cross site Salmon mention demonstrated in the session.  This shows a user on Cliqset mentioning a couple of buddies using other services (StatusNet and a scrappy startup called Atollia), having information flow between the sites, and having mentions be pushed the other services.  The big take-away here is that these services don't need to pre-register or federate with each other any more than they need to federate to send email back and forth; it all Just Works.

At the Gluecon just now, Twitter’s Ryan Sarver announced that since their Chirp conference in mid April, the number of Twitter apps has increased from 100,000 to 140,000.

So since it’s been roughly 8 weeks since Chirp, that means that the Twitter app ecosystem is growing at about 5,000 apps per week. So much for the idea that developers might be getting turned off by Twitter’s acquisition of Tweetie and other moves.

Sarver made a few other interesting announcements, including that Twitter now has over 200 employees, and that “they don’t have any plans on making an app directory,” while specifically mentioning the third-party Twitter app store oneforty.

He also said that,”we hope that promoted tweets and other advertising models can help developers get paid too.” On search, he said, “discovery and search are big and complex enough that many companies can compete there, even if twitter works on it.” Regarding Twitter’s API, Sarver said, “”the APIs used to be very simple; now they are getting more complicated and we need to support them better.”

Regarding privacy, he said,”we were lucky; we stumbled onto ‘public be default’” and that Twitter has “a no resyndication” policy that supports privacy.

Image

h/t Kevin Marks for his live tweeting at Gluecon.

Today, Facebook is releasing its first official SDK for Android, offering developers on Google’s mobile OS an easy way to tie their Android native apps to Facebook Platform. As AllFacebook noted last week, this SDK is actually more advanced than the iPhone SDK because it features Facebook’s Graph API, which was unveiled at its f8 developer conference last month.

According to the post on Facebook’s Developer blog, the SDK also uses OAuth 2.0 for authentication and the ability to publish stories to Facebook using Feed forms.

I spoke with Facebook’s Steven Soneff about the SDK at Google I/O last week, where Facebook was offering a developer preview. Soneff said that there have been ways to integrate Facebook into Android applications before now, but that these have really been hacked together from the iPhone SDK, and weren’t officially supported by Facebook.

Hopefully this is a sign that Facebook is taking Android a bit more seriously. Facebook’s iPhone SDK launched over a year ago. And the official Facebook application for Android has always felt inferior to the iPhone version — it has been improving, but it still has a ways to go.

MyLikes CEO Says User Plugs Don't Cross Twitter Ad Rules —

Shared by Rizzn
I'm afraid Bindu is mistaken, though this is some nice repositioning of the company. MyLikes may conform to the letter, but not the spirit of the changes, and as such, see itself on the chopping block.

Increasingly, some of the new rules issued from popular Web platforms, including Facebook and Twitter, are raising more questions than answers, with words so carefully interwoven as to be interpreted any which way. The call for clarity from Facebook around privacy and from Twitter around what is permitted in users' streams from developers and programs alike seems to be unending - and it seems at times that the companies are being obtuse so they can be selective on how they choose to endorse the rules down the line. Monday's announcement from Twitter on blocking "injected paid tweets" on any service that leverages the Twitter API had a lot of people asking what this meant for services who derive revenue from posting content to the service. MyLikes, a company I advise for, was one that received questions. I spoke with CEO Bindu Reddy (@bindureddy) that night to gain her take and get some of the answers myself.

As best as I am able to understand it, Twitter is continuing to try and improve the user experience on their service, which at times has been less than fantastic. On the back of their efforts to weed out spammers, reduce the artificially-inflated visibility of hand-selected celebrities, reduce negatively-intended automation, improving uptime, and expanding a familiar presence to onboard new users, Monday's announcement looks like they want to improve the clarity of sponsored content on the network, while also protecting their own revenue stream.

The relevant line in question from Twitter COO Dick Costolo, says: "aside from Promoted Tweets, we will not allow any third party to inject paid tweets into a timeline on any service that leverages the Twitter API." This line particularly focuses on the use of API for automation, and also the phrase "paid tweet", which is open for interpretation. What is promising in the piece is that Costolo says the company does not seek to control the content on the service, and that companies are open to sell ads, build vertical apps and analytics, and that the company does not always need to participate in revenue generated from their service. It sounds to me that Twitter is planning ahead for future battles with nefarious networks that are not in users' best interest, much more so than they are seeking to slow legitimate companies that have been built around their ecosystem.

As I mentioned when I first announced my affiliation with MyLikes, I am attracted to the company's model because the ads posted to Twitter, blogs and other networks are done by hand, by the users themselves, with the user creating the message. There is no automation on the user's behalf that they have not created themselves, and all the activity is above board.

In talking with Bindu, she agreed this sets the company apart from Twitter's foes. Also - a MyLikes generated tweet is as much of a personal endorsement as it is an ad, leaving this activity free and clear. In fact, while Costolo's post was somewhat confusing, we both agreed Twitter's move was one that continued their path toward maturation.

To hear more of Bindu's thoughts, check out the Cinchcast I recorded below:



DISCLOSURE: I am an unpaid advisor to MyLikes. I hold a small equity stake in the company. My comments on the company's product are always independent, and do not pass their way in advance.

Ad.ly, the in-stream advertising network, has just issued a response to twitter’s third party in-stream advertising ban by saying it “supports twitter’s decision to disallow any third party tweets” and it’s “business as usual”.

In an email statement and now a blog post, Ad.ly’s new CEO Arnie Gullov-Singh says that:

Ad.ly supports Twitter’s movement today to create standards around in-stream advertising.Twitter’s changes are aimed at discouraging members of the ecosystem who do not maintain the proper balance of user experience and monetization and who are not invested in building long term value on the platform…Since inception, Ad.ly has, and still is operating under Twitter’s approved guidelines and terms of service for advertising on its platform. We look forward to continuing to create long term value for our advertisers and publishers, both of whom are key constituents in
the stream ecosystem.

Ad.ly’s advertising platform enables marketers to pay influential content creators and publishers to send out targeted messages to their followers in the stream. The company employs proprietary algorithms to match advertisements to publishers based on a combination of marketer objectives, publisher content and user feedback. Ad.ly enables marketers to buy ads via its self serve platform at http://www.ad.ly, catering to local and performance advertisers, as well as via its national sales team, servicing the major digital agencies.

Essentially, it’s a flat our refusal that twitter’s decision to ban in stream advertising has any bearing whatsoever on the company as a business.

The first paragraph says twitter aims to “create standards”, which is not the case, twitter’s statement says “aside from Promoted Tweets, we will not allow any third party to inject paid tweets into a timeline on any service that leverages the Twitter API” – which is a flat out ban.

The question it comes down to, at least from my perspective, is how hell bent twitter is about ensuring the only advertising flowing through its customers, sorry users, timelines is its own.

Ad.ly recently raised $5 million in funding, a total of $10 million including a previous $5 million round. Along with the funding, the company hired Arnie Gullov-Singh as its CEO. Talk about bad timing.

After seven years at Google, including the last two and a half as a product manager on the company's Blogger platform, Siobhan Quinn handed in her badge yesterday, and will start on June 7th as the second product manager at the fast-growing, location obsessed, Foursquare, in New York City, joining Alex Rainert. Siobhan is the second of Blogger's three product managers to have recently made a move, following Rick Klau's move to manage Google Profiles last month. I talked with Siobhan today to find out her thoughts on Foursquare's potential, and how the company can transition from one beloved by "Silicon Valley nerds" to a more mainstream audience, delivering real value.

Siobhan initially joined Google in 2003 as part of the Google Accounts team before Accounts had launched, predating even the launch of GMail (in April of '04). She says she worked on the front-end to Accounts, the sign-in system, and new account flow, helping to connect accounts to many of Google's other properties, including Adwords, personalized search, Google Checkout and, of course, Blogger. But she admitted she hasn't written code in a few years, and has been working to push Blogger from its relatively slower pace of updates to one that has seen increased activity, including the recent launch of the Blogger Template Designer and last week's launch of new Webfonts, with a corresponding API.

"That's why I am excited to leave now," she said. "I made an impact on Blogger, and I've been at Google for 7 years. It is time to do something much different."

How different? Siobhan is leaving a company of 20,000 employees to one of just a hair over 20. Foursquare has gained a lion's share of attention in the tech blogosphere for its checkin application, but in reality, the team remains extremely small. And while many of us have blended our interest in Foursquare with a mixture of curiosity and skepticism, she makes a compelling case for the future of the product - as the platform morphs from one focused on badges and gaming to one more centered on reviews and tips from your social graph.

Siobhan postulates that Foursquare tips can become a lot more useful as more people use the service, and start to fill in the system's data, even with what I've always thought were the mundane check-ins as gas stations, fast food restaurants, office buildings, or parks.

"We can make tips a lot more useful," she said. "For example, if you are looking for a dentist in your town, and people in your social graph have reviewed a dentist near you and checked in three times this year, that's powerful for me. That's the dentist I would want to go to. Combining checkins and reviews and your social graph would be a powerful demand generation tool."

For many Foursquare users, the fun in using the application has come from gaining mayorships and accumulation of brightly colored badges. As I joked maybe Foursquare would be moving to offer vice mayorships, deputy mayorships and other titles, she agreed that "there need to be more opportunities for users to win", adding "the mayor should be able to set some laws. Maybe the mayor can design the drink special."

Beyond the recommendation and tip aspect from connected friends within the Foursquare social graph, businesses have many opportunities to leverage checkin activity that hasn't yet been tapped, she said. While Starbucks gained good visibility for offering $1 off Frappuccinos for the store's mayors nationwide, their efforts are the exception and not the rule today.

"If you're at Wendy's and you get three other people to check in with you, maybe you get a free meal," Siobhan suggested. "And then, maybe that makes the restaurant trend and become the hotspot to be. For users who are not in the geeky, trendy, Silicon Valley area, and are offered incentives to add reviews and checkins, they could be included to do that."

Her last role at Blogger centered around many people bringing their offline lives online, and sharing their stories. But Foursquare has the power to impact offline behavior, as friends seek out friends and experiment with new venues - practically a 180 degree turn.

"Foursquare is making people explore a little more and step outside their comfort zone," she said. "I like any product that makes people's lives more meaningful offline. It encourages you to explore and try new things away from your computer."

Siobhan doesn't have much time between now and her first day at Foursquare HQ - giving her just over a week to pack, sell her car and furniture, and head to New York with her dog in tow. Siobhan (according to her Foursquare profile) is mayor of ME Cabo in Cabo San Lucas, but hasn't claimed any Bay Area properties. Maybe New York will bring her more luck. Until she starts logging checkins on the East Coast, you can find her on Twitter at @siobhanquinn.

Meanwhile, Blogger remains in the hands of Chang Kim, who joined the team after Google acquired his company, TNC, in September of 2008.

Twitter have announced that they are banning third party companies from injecting “paid tweets into a timeline on any service that leverages the Twitter API” in order to protect “the long-term health and value of the network”. As has been evidenced up to now the primary focus has indeed been the twitter platform itself – the longevity of the network rather than short term monetisation.

Twitter argue that a third party ad network may put impressions ahead of the host service itself, thus diminishing the experience and, potentially, leading to a smaller audience as users stop visiting the site.

I am reminded of the argument given by Apple to justify why all iPhone applications must be approved and supplied via the app store: to ensure that the iPhone platform remains stable and free from potentially exploitable flaws.

But how similar are they really?

At first glance there seems a huge gulf between the two philosophies but there is the potential for Twitter to become a much stricter task master, especially when Fred Wilson – a major investor in Twitter – remarked that third party applications are filling gaps in the Twitter ecosystem that Twitter should have filled from the beginning or should be looking to build into the experience.

Twitter are not currently making money from the service but are looking to protect the future; the long tail is where they see the money being recouped but it will be a long hard slog. Reading Dick Costolo’s post on the Twitter blog it would seem that they are just looking to maintain the integrity of the part of the service that they truly control: the timeline, beyond that is pretty much fair game. They are committed to the APIand want to encourage developers to build ‘around’ the timeline but, if we listen to Wilson, for what roles?

Control

Apple, it could be argued, are just looking to control the ecosystem in order to ensure they get a cut of everything. Is it ‘really’ about stability of the platform or just having the power to exert total control? The iPhone world is very much a siloed operation with Apple having the final say and the ability to block anything that threatens their dominance or revenue. Business is business so you can understand that to a point but how far is too far? How many potential customers are put off by the closed system?

At present, the key difference is that advertising comprises only a small part of the Twitter ecosystem and they are NOT looking to prevent ads _outside_ of the timeline, only reserving their right to control what occurs within it. They are not stopping developers making applications and they are expanding the API all the time. On top of all this Annotations are arguably the biggest invitation to third parties you could currently wish for so, the garden looks rosy.

The thing we have to consider, however, is once Twitter start realising an income from promoted tweets will the money start painting a different picture with regards to openness? Are Fred Wilson’s comments an indication of direction or just shooting off at the mouth? When a means to recoup your investment is shown to be working will there be a push to build on it?

As has already been pointed out, Twitter are to introduce their own native link shortener and drop bit.ly as the default option. Twitter has also bought the Tweetie client for iPhone and rebranded it as the official iPhone Twitter application. The interesting point here is that both of these areas were highlighted by Wilson as areas that Twitter should not be leaving up to third parties. What else could be on the hit list, a photo upload service?

On the face of it, if you are looking to provide extended value from your system then do you leave core functionality in the hands of others? Do you risk third parties folding and instantly knocking out part of the ecosystem? Common sense would dictate otherwise but, with a history of unreliability when things get busy, has Twitter learnt from the issues of scale in the past? Could they reliably provide a photo upload service or would we again get a fail whale?

The user

Twitter must, obviously, ask what impact would taking functionality in-house and ‘killing off’ third parties have on the end user? There will always be a high proportion who wouldn’t care as long a they can tweet their friends – just like with the facebook privacy issues. Joe public often doesn’t look beyond the basics. They won’t be concerned with the technology (especially if it is good enough and functional enough) – people adapt.

There would no doubt be a backlash from developers and some of the tech elite; you can picture the #imleavingtwitter hashtag already – but the numbers here, just like with Facebook, are insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Twitter will not go to the wall over a small developer rebellion should it decide to exert a greater degree of authority.

Best intentions

Looking in from the outside, Twitter seems to have always been operated with the best of intentions. There are numerous ways that the service could have made a quick buck but opted to retain the integrity with which it was founded. Best intentions can sometimes only go so far and you have to question whether, with investors exerting pressure, whether those intentions could ultimately conflict with the need for the service to survive. It can be a bad sign when the money men start dictating policy and control the direction – let’s hope we never reach that point.

Image by Bala

Did Twitter Just Kill TweetUp Minutes After Its Launch? —

Twitterjust put up a blog post talking up its platform approach and long-term strategy. Surprisingly, the company has made some decision that are sure to irk a bunch of third-party developers and startups.

Here’s the big news: aside from Promoted Tweets, Twitter said it will not allow any third party to inject paid tweets into a timeline on any service that leverages the Twitter API.

That’s awful news for TweetUp (and other Twitter-focused advertising startups like Ad.ly and Twad.ly), but particularly the former which just launched its live beta at TechCrunch Disrupt half an hour ago.

(Post is being updated, keep hitting refresh for more info)

Twitter said today that it will no longer allow third-party ads to be injected into users’ Twitter timelines. The ban is particularly interesting given it’s almost exactly what the company’s own recently announced advertising platform, Promoted Tweets, does — insert paid and relevant tweets into timelines (as well as search results pages). Fresh off the heels of developer anger and confusion over Twitter’s unexpected efforts to launch and acquire mobile clients last months, the news was carefully laid out in a long blog post by Twitter COO Dick Costolo.

To be clear, Twitter will continue to allow developers to display ads around user timelines. And further, many developers already don’t include ads within streams, knowing that Twitter monetization is a touchy and evolving topic, even if the company had not previously formally clarified its stance. Costolo said he expected today’s API terms of service changes to negatively impact “a few” companies. One seeming target: Ad.ly, which bills itself as “an in-stream advertising platform that matches top-tier Twitter publishers with top-tier brands.”

Costolo explained in the blog post that Twitter’s decision hinges on the concept of near-term vs. long-term monetization opportunities (he used some variation of those terms at least nine times). Costolo said Twitter wants to protect user value and the health of its platform, while “Third party ad networks may be optimized for near-term monetization at the expense of innovating or creating the best user experience.”

Twitter’s Promoted Tweets, meanwhile, are displayed “in a manner that preserves the integrity and relevance of the timeline,” Costolo said.

Twitter shares half of the revenue collected for Promoted Tweets with developers who display them. Costolo justified that share by saying Twitter pays for maintaining its network, fighting spam, scaling the service, supporting users and paying its staff of 200 (and growing). He said there continue to be opportunities to build on top of Twitter, including “third-party monetization engines,” as well as metadata around tweets, vertical clients, and analytics.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

Social Advertising Models Go Back to the Future

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I’m looking for concrete examples of businesses, large and small, that have seen firm success by integrating Facebook either as an application, a Page, or on their own website via Facebook Connect or Facebook Graph API.  If you have analytics and statistics to back up your claim, I’d like to get quotes from you on how Facebook’s API has helped your business.  The best ones I’ll be including in Facebook Application Development for Dummies.

This is a great opportunity for your business or website, as your brand will be promoted, pushed, and shared with an audience of thousands (wouldn’t it be cool if it were millions?) of readers worldwide, in a brand that is recognized in bookstores everywhere.  So if you, or someone you know has a great story to tell about how the Facebook API has helped your business, I’d like to share those case studies with my readers.  The best ones I’d like to also try and share on this blog if you’re okay with it.  Feel free to share them in the comments if you want everyone to see, or send them to jesse@staynalive.com.

Oh, and and not to show preference, but if anyone has any good contacts at Digg – I really want to see if their integration of Facebook Connect has helped.  I think that would be a great example to share – send them my way if you think they might be interested.

This book is a group effort – I hope to include you in many more opportunities like this, so keep reading and subscribing!

Foursquare Columns Bring Location Streams Front & Center —

One of the major new features included in Tweetdeck’s desktop update today was Foursquare integration. Seesmic and Hootsuite also have Foursquare functionality in their web browser based clients. Not only do these integrations work great, but they do something that the Foursquare API was meant for in our opinion: they make location streams come alive.

Foursquare only

First of all, if you use Tweetdeck desktop or Seesmic or Hootsuite web and are not on Foursquare, or prefer another location/check-in app, you now in our opinion have two options: either join Foursquare, or send Tweetdeck/Seesmic/Hootsuite emails begging them to include your service’s API (assuming they have an API – Gowalla, for one has half an API, but Brightkite and now Latitude have full read-write APIs). We’re not judging  any of these services here, we’re only saying that Foursquare’s API is currently the only one that is getting this treatment, which is a shame, but until the others get the same treatment, Foursquare rules the hill.

One caveat for this post: we use location services a lot, and on Foursquare, like other services, we have a fair number of friends (or whatever they’re called) so our streams refresh often. Just like any social media service, if you follow too many or too few people, your stream isn’t nearly as interesting, and location services are no different.

Why it’s important

This kind of visualization has the power to change how location is consumed (and to a lesser extent created as users can check-in from their laptops, but compared to mobile check-ins, laptop check-ins are few and far between). Here’s how it will change: instead of wading through your Twitter stream to find or catch Foursquare updates of where people are and what they are doing, with the dedicated column, these updates are pushed to you all in one place. Simply put, these streams can offer a lot of information in a condensed format. The new version also supports a map mode of all of your friends’ recent check-ins, as well as geotagged tweets (which again, are few and far between).

The whole experience is a very visual one and somewhat hard to translate here into the written word – but trust us, if you haven’t tried it before, its compelling. One thing that we would like to see, however, is an emphasis (another column option perhaps) on trending/hot places that people are checking into. While not too useful late at night when you’re out and about (again, this is only available on the desktop), for daytime events or say breaking news, this kind of a column would be invaluable, especially if it went beyond your current friends list to the public stream (and especially if Foursquare opens up its home stream firehose).

Expect a lot of innovation with these streams moving forward, especially as the APIs mature and developers begin to integrate multiple location services.

Five Services That Leverage Google Wave —

Google Wave went public yesterday and became a part of the Google Apps ecosystem. With the news comes a number of companies that are using the API to develop integrations that bring new scope and capabilities for enterprise grade collaboration.

Salesforce.com and SAP are the latest companies to integrate Google Wave. But there are many more organizations using Google Wave as a platform shows that the real-time co-editing service has a recognized value to the enterprise world. Real-time is the name of the game these days. Google Wave provides a new window for companies looking to capitalize on the Google Apps platform.

Here are five services that we think are of interest.

Unawave

Unawave builds task management and project management into Google Wave, providing a level of functionality to manage work and project teams. It has crowdsourcing elements that allows people to add videos or images, for instance, to give projects and tasks more context. A real-time dashboards gives insights into how work is progressing.

Process Wave

Process Wave comes out of the research done at the Hasso Plattner Institute. Plattner is the chairman of SAP and so it's of interest to see the institute develop a business process service that leverages Google Wave's co-editing capabilities. Process Wave is a collaborative diagram editor for Google Wave. It is designed to make the creation of diagrams a collaborative process.

Caseish

Caseish is a Wave organizer, the premise being that with multiple Waves, people need a gadget to keep track of managing multiple business processes. This one also has ties to SAP. The developer created the service in light of the complexities in integrating SAP applications to monitor business processes. The result is a tool that uses a form to assign business value and other criteria. The gadget tracks the Waves so bug reports, for instance, can be monitored.

Process One

Process One has developed a server called WaveOne. The server sits on top of the the Process One instant messaging service. It is designed as a servive that allows people to collaborate in real-time on email or documents. It is an extension to the Proces One XMPP server.

Twilio

Twilio uses the Google Wave API to build a robot extension called twiliobot that enables users to make and receive phone calls from inside Google Wave. Calls are recorded, transcribed, and posted back to the wave. Twilio is one of the veterans of the Google Wave platform, launching the service last year.

Sponsor

No huge surprises here, but Google just announced Android 2.2 "Froyo" at I/O, and the big addition is a just-in-time compiler, which brings a 2-5x speed boost to the system. There are also 20 new enterprise features, including better Exchange integration and device administration APIs, as well as a new device backup app that'll let you transfer personal data to a new device. Android 2.2 also features a new cloud-to-device messaging API that Google called "much more than a push notification service designed to make up for a lack of basic features like multitasking," and of course, WiFi tethering -- which was used to get a WiFi iPad online during the demo to great cheers. Google also demoed a new JavaScript engine in the Android browser, which is billed as "the world's fastest web browser," and a Chrome browser plugin that allows you to send directions from Maps on your desktop directly to your phone.

It's all going on live right now, so make sure to go hit our I/O liveblog!

Android 2.2 Froyo officially announced originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 20 May 2010 11:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Guardian Newspaper Commercializes its API —

First Look at TweetDeck's New Foursquare and Buzz Integration [SCREENSHOTS] —

Popular cross-platform social app TweetDeck is announcing an update to its desktop client this morning which will add Foursquare and Google Buzz to its arsenal of supported streams which already includes Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace and Facebook. In addition, the version 0.34 update will allow for the addition of any Twitter-compatible APIs, including WordPress, StatusNet and Tumblr, as well as a slew of other features such as global filters and scheduled posts. The company will also announce financial news this morning, confirming that it has raised an undisclosed amount of Series B funding.

Sponsor

TweetDeck, which was invited to test the Google Buzz API announced Wednesday, is wasting no time in integrating the service into its desktop client. Users will be able to send updates to Buzz, as well as view, like and comment on their friends' posts directly from a stand-alone Buzz column in the app. TweetDeck maintains most of the Buzz experience within its column system, letting users collapse and expand comments for a streamlined experience.

The app has also added support for location, including geotagged Tweets, Buzz entries and Foursquare updates. By adding their Foursquare account to a column within TweetDeck, users will be able to view their friends' location-based updates, as well as visualize their locations with an embedded Google Map within the column. Additionally, Twitter-compatible APIs may also be added, allowing the client to interact with services like Tumblr, WordPress and StatusNet.

Rich media will also be given a front-row seat in the latest release, as uploading and recording videos to 12seconds or TwitVid is integrated into the client. Updates can also be scheduled for a later date and time, and global filters will let users automatically remove feed entries across all columns based on any terms. This latest release will also provide users with the ability to incorporate their own custom URL shortening service.

After a quick test of a pre-release of the latest version of the app, I found that the Buzz and Foursquare integration worked smoothly. When trying to add a Twitter-compatible API, WordPress failed to sync up but Tumblr was successful. I was able to publish text entries on Tumblr, but adding photos or videos did not seem to transfer the way I had hoped they would.

With this update TweetDeck is taking enormous steps toward becoming a complete social dashboard - at least on the desktop. To be honest, I had largely given up on the app because of the sluggish feel of Adobe Air applications, but the integration of Foursquare, Buzz and other services may just draw me back to it. The securing of additional funding means we can expect only bigger and better things from the company in the near future.

Discuss

Almost exactly one year ago, we first wrote about former Digg lead architect, Joe Stump, and former Social Thing founder, Matt Galligan, teaming up to form Crash Corp., an “alternate reality mobile gaming” startup. A lot can change in a year.

Today, Stump and Galligan are well into building out SimpleGeo, the location platform company that Crash Corp. turned into. That transformation started only a little over 6 months ago — and it may turn out to be one of the smartest pivots for a startup in years. SimpleGeo has just closed a new $8.14 million round of funding. And they’re announcing five new hires to go along with it.

The company’s Series A round pushes their total funding to just about $10 million (their $1.5 million seed round happened at the end of last November). This round was led by former backer Redpoint Ventures, with previous investors First Round Capital, Lowercase Capital (Chris Sacca’s fund), and Ravi Narasimhan also participating. SimpleGeo also picked up new backer, Foundry Group, in the latest round.

The money will be used to build out datasets, improve the API, and continue work on a new product they’re working on (for the API), Galligan tells us. The funds will also give the fast-growing company two years of burn — and that’s factoring in significant headcount increases, Galligan says. That’s good planning, considering how quickly the startup is adding new team members.

The immediate thing that sticks out about the five new hires announced today is that four of them come from the same place: Digg. As we mentioned, Stump used to work at Digg, but there was no funny business going on here, as these four were a part of Digg’s layoffs earlier this month. Included in this group is well-known designer Jeffrey Kalmikoff, who will now be heading up product development and design for SimpleGeo.

The others coming over from Digg include engineer Ian Eure, who will be working on Python infrastructure. Paul Lathrop, who will be a part of the Systems team. And Nicole Williams who will serve as the “Ambassador” of SimpleGeo — basically, taking care of all the logistics, facilities, and office management of the company.

SimpleGeo’s other big hire is Rob Bailey, who will be joining as the Vice President of Business Development. No, Bailey didn’t work at Digg, he comes from a company he co-founded called Delicious Brands. Alongside BD, Bailey will be in charge of sales as well, we’re told.

Two months ago, SimpleGeo hired 5 people to bring their total headcount to 13. Now, as they’re pushing 20, it’s time for another office. The startup has just signed a lease for a second office that will open in mid-June in San Francisco to go along with their headquarters in Boulder, CO. The team will be evenly split between the two cities for now, but Galligan foresees the San Francisco office quickly becoming the larger one.

With seemingly everyone in the technology space interested in location-based services right now, SimpleGeo finds itself in a very good position. Ever since Twitter acquired Mixer Labs (makers of GeoAPI) back in December, SimpleGeo hasn’t had a lot of competition in its space. They now have over a terabyte of geodata at their disposal to serve up to other startups who wish to use their plug-and-play packages.

“The new version of the API will scale better, work faster, and include more redundancy and servers around the world,” Galligan says. There will also be a new pricing model with this new API to fit different business models. This should make the service cheaper as well, Galligan says.

Not bad for what should have been an alternate reality gaming startup celebrating its first birthday.