Robert Scoble

Musings on the future of Microsoft, Windows — Former Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble and Microsoftie-turned-Googler Don Dodge talk about the future of Redmond with CNET's Ina Fried and Rafe Needleman. Also, Technologizer has other thoughts on what Microsoft needs to do with Windows.

Musings on the future of Microsoft, Windows — Former Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble and Microsoftie-turned-Googler Don Dodge talk about the future of Redmond with CNET's Ina Fried and Rafe Needleman. Also, Technologizer has others thoughts on what Microsoft needs to do with Windows.

Foursquare Checks Out Of The iTunes App Store —

Foursquare’s iPhone app has been withdrawn from iTunes app store.

Foursquare, the mobile service which brings together social city-guides and location-based gaming is normally available for iPhone, Blackberry, PalmPre and Android devices.  However, its iPhone app, originally launched in 2009, has disappeared from iTunes store, leaving many users unable to access the service.

Foursquare, along with many other mobile app startups, is rushing to release a new version of its application ahead of next week’s SXSW Festival in Austin, Texas, as reported by TechCrunch.  It even put a new version (1.6) live a couple of days ago, featuring a number of significant improvements to the overall ‘look and feel’ in a move to compete with the less popular but slicker-looking Gowalla app.

However, all traces of the Foursquare app have now disappeared from the iTunes app store – not even the previous releases are available to fill the gap.  The latest Android app, also released on 5th March, remains available as does the Blackberry beta, but the app for the iPhone, by far the most popular Foursquare platform, is no longer on the market.

This is likely to be a temporary blip, whilst glitches in what seems to be a fairly extensive revamp are ironed out.  However, those who managed to update their software to version 1.6 whilst it was briefly available can no longer use the app, instead when they try to sign in they are redirected to the iTunes app store to get ‘the latest version of the app, which is not available.

The app’s disappearance couldn’t come at a worse time for Foursquare, which has just announced its new Restaurant Dashboard trial.

What’s more, over on Google Buzz, influential tech blogger Robert Scoble is busy promoting Foursquare to over 8,000 of his Buzz followers in what he describes as a Location-Based Services Shoot-Out, many of who are now trying to locate the app on iTunes and coming away disappointed.

Several of Scoble’s European followers are assuming that the Foursquare app is simply not available outside the USA.  However, the app appears to be unavailable across all iTunes stores.

A statement on Foursquare’s Twitter-feed puts the disappearance down to “a slight hiccup” with the latest iPhone app submission, adding “We’ll be back in a day or 2! Sorry!”

Is MySpace Going To Buy Playdom? [Rumormonger] —

After asking for information on Chris DeWolfe's rumored impending purchase of an unidentified gaming platform, we've heard from multiple tipsters claiming well-capitalized Playdom is in play. Less clear is who would buy: DeWolfe or MySpace, the social network he co-created.

DeWolfe stepped down as CEO of MySpace last year but remained an adviser to the company and retained a seat on the board of MySpace China. Given that Mountain View-based Playdom was recently valued at $260 million as part of a $43 million venture capital round, it's hard to imagine DeWolfe buying the company on his own. It's a better fit for News Corp.'s MySpace; the also-ran social network is where Playdom's games like MobWars have taken off. Still, that's a pretty penny for Rupert "Paid Content Forever" Murdoch to spill on giveaway games; we'll believe there's a deal if and when it actually closes. In the meantime, if you know anything, we're all ears.

(Pic: DeWolfe, by Robert Scoble)

Is MySpace Going To Buy Playdom? —

After asking for information on Chris DeWolfe's rumored impending purchase of an unidentified gaming platform, we've heard from multiple tipsters claiming well-capitalized Playdom is in play. Less clear is who would buy: DeWolfe or MySpace, the social network he co-created.

DeWolfe stepped down as CEO of MySpace last year but remained an adviser to the company and retained a seat on the board of MySpace China. Given that Mountain View-based Playdom was recently valued at $260 million as part of a $43 million venture capital round, it's hard to imagine DeWolfe buying the company on his own. It's a better fit for News Corp.'s MySpace; the also-ran social network is where Playdom's games like MobWars have taken off. Still, that's a pretty penny for Rupert "Paid Content Forever" Murdoch to spill on giveaway games; we'll believe there's a deal if and when it actually closes. In the meantime, if you know anything, we're all ears.

(Pic: DeWolfe, by Robert Scoble)

The recent launch of Google Buzz has once again surfaced an undercurrent in the social Web - where a small number of active accounts can gain the lion's share of activity, either through their own interactions, or those of an active follower base. Whether earned through years of consistent activity on their blogs or parallel networks, or having volume thrust upon them through celebrity or suggested user lists and bundling, there are brand name individuals who command a greater share no matter where they go, and if you choose to follow them, your stream runs the chance of being overwhelmed.

Buzz, evolutionary but not revolutionary, has not yet made it simple to follow very active accounts, such as those from Robert Scoble, Jason Calacanis, Pete Cashmore or me, as updates on our threads bounce to the in box by default - almost as a penalty for anybody who has chosen to engage, or who may have seen their ID added to a thread through the service's @Reply feature.


Busy accounts can be a nuisance on practically any network, whether that's Facebook, FriendFeed, Twitter, Buzz or any other. But in services where active feeds are resurfaced or pushed to the top, such as FriendFeed and Buzz, the impact is not actually from the originator of the content, but from their community. Comments on active feeds push the items back to the in box, or back to the top of the feed, and if you are following some of the more prominent accounts, you'll no doubt see the same names at the top.


That said, if this is getting in your way, and you are seething with rage at these social media power users, you're not using the tools well. Practically every network gives you tools to solve the problem.

1. On Twitter, you only have to see the updates from those you follow - with the exception of items retweeted by those you follow, from their connections, which you can opt out of on an individual basis. If an individual is too noisy, you can unfollow them at any time. Some innovative applications, including Brizzly, let you even "mute" a user for a short time so you can have them disappear during particularly busy times.

2. On Facebook, you can hide an individual's updates from your News Feed if they are too talkative. You can also hide all updates from specific applications (like Farmville or Mafia Wars) if you never want to see those updates. And yes, de-friending or blocking is available.

3. On FriendFeed, you can hide individual posts, block individual services (like Twitter or Disqus), block specific service updates by user, or, most successfully, you can put noisy people in their own lists, to sequester them from the rest of your feed. If worse comes to worse, again, you can always unfollow them, or block them outright.

4. With Buzz, you don't yet have the option to hide specific service updates or updates by user. But you can mute any thread just my using the "m" key, and as Buzz is integrated with GMail, you can use the same kind of filters available to any other e-mail. For example, I have set up a rule to move all Buzz entries into a mail box I call "social", taking them out of the in box.


If you want to quiet the impact of busy users, like Tom Foremski did by unfollowing Robert Scoble and me in Buzz, you can use GMail filters to your advantage - taking them to a dedicated folder and out of your in box.

For example, set up a filter where the Subject is "Buzz from Louis Gray", "Skip the Inbox (Archive It)" and "Apply the Label" of "Noisy", or whatever you like.. Then do the same for Robert and Pete and Chris Pirillo, Jason Calacanis, or anybody else who is swamping your Buzz experience.

Should we be blaming the noisy folks?

Like I mentioned last night, in sharing my social media data flow, I know there are people who have chosen to stop seeing my updates because of their frequency. But I don't plan to change my activity because of a new way it is interpreted and displayed by a new social network.

Part of the reason I am among the more active and visible people on Buzz is because over the last few years, I have promoted and cultivated the use of Google Reader and having active conversations there. I took the time to connect to and talk with more than 1,000 people in my shared items, and Buzz has taken advantage of that social network, moving it to a new place. Where others have not optimized for sharing, they are starting with less of a community.


But because of this, the community is also very comfortable talking on my feeds, as they are with other engaged folks. It is the ensuing conversations that bump them to the top, not the frequency that I share. I have been sharing 20-30 items a day in Google Reader every day for years, and it is filling Buzz the same way it has filled Reader and Facebook and FriendFeed.

If it's too much for you, use the tools that are there. Mute. Filter. Unfollow. Block. But there will always be discrepancies between the average users and those most active. Go ahead and make mine more active.

“boring” is underrated —

["George", which I sent out in the newsletter recently. You can get the signed print here etc.]

I was thinking back to “The Golden Age of Blogging”, whenever that was. Say, six or seven years ago… when it hit that sweet spot between still feeling like virgin territory, yet just on the verge of reaching critical mass.

Back then the Blogosphere was TINY. We blog nerds were a minority. We were cultural weirdos. But we knew we were on to something, even if the rest of the world didn’t see it yet.

And we were looking VERY HARD for business models to support our new, beloved medium…

I remember when a guy landing a well-paying job just on the merits of his blog, was considered big news.

I remember when a girl landing a book deal just from her blog, was considered big news.

I remember when Robert Scoble blogging on behalf of Microsoft was considered big news.

I remember when Gawker or Techcrunch making $10K a month on advertising, was considered big news.

A blogger making good money selling art- Well, that’s what I do now for a living- back then that would have been considered HUGE. Now we take that kind of thing for granted. Book deals, $10K monthly advertising revenues, dream jobs, celebrity Microsoft bloggers, that’s no big deal nowadays, either.

I remember when blogs first became “News”, when that Businessweek story hit in early 2005. It was a very exciting, validating, heady time for us early-adaptors.

Eventually the buzz and the hype died down, of course. Along came Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and whatever; the story moved on. “Blogging” got boring….

But to paraphrase Clay Shirky, a technology doesn’t become truly useful until it becomes boring, until it’s no longer “News”.

We may miss those early days, when blogging was new, exciting and “Hot”.

But for me and a lot of my early-adaptor friends, our blogs are making us A LOT more money now, than they ever did then.

“Boring” is underrated…

Well folks it looks like the days of advertising free tweeting may finally be coming to an end. The rumors are flying around regarding the ad platform that Twitter has in the works and is testing. Everyone is “atwitter” with this change and for good reason. Of course, until there is more than what has already been released by Twitter itself any ideas / thoughts about what Twitter ads might look like are for the imagination.

MediaPost reports on how this whole thing really started to bubble to the surface.

Twitter plans to launch an advertising platform in about a month, according to Seth Goldstein. The chief executive officer and co-founder of socialmedia.com led a panel Monday focused on the next wave of interactive advertising at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting 2010 in Carlsbad, Calif., that shed light on Twitter’s strategy.

Declining to confirm exactly when Twitter would release the platform, Anamitra Banerji, head of product management and monetization at Twitter, told MediaPost following the panel that “we are working on an ad platform, but it’s only in the test phase.”

So while Seth Goldstein picked up some pub for being the “unofficial” press release of sorts for this next phase of Twitter it is probably too early to speculate on when this will be less talk and more reality. In the meantime let’s see what people are or have been putting out there. The Washington Post reminded us of Robert Scoble’s idea of the SuperTweet he introduced back in November

Robert Scoble, for instance, suggests the idea of a SuperTweet with all sorts of metadata that pops up when part of the message is rolled over with your mouse. This data could include things such as the location of the Tweet and how many times it’s been retweeted, but it could also trigger a contextual ad triggered by certain keywords.

Other questions that need to be considered on how will these ads be paid for. Will there be an AdSense type platform for Twitter users to share in the wealth? Where will the ads appear if they are not in the stream? The list goes on and on.

What are your thoughts on Twitter ads? Are you looking forward to seeing them? Will they impact your Twitter experience? Do you have a particular format that might or might not work for you? Why not join in on the speculation and guessing. Your guess is as valid as the next guy’s right now.

What Should Twitter Ads Look Like? And Will You Really Love Them? —

Twitter is getting closer to launching its own advertising on the micro-messaging service. Speaking on an advertising industry panel yesterday, the company’s head of monetization, Anamitra Banerji, confirmed that Twitter would launch its own advertising platform within a month or so, at least in a beta test. Twitter has been planning to launch an advertising product for a long time. Last November, COO Dick Costolo told us at our Realtime Crunchup that ads were coming. He promised the new ads “will be fascinating. Non-traditional. And people will love it.” And a year ago, Twitter execs discussed different advertising revenue models in a strategy meeting, including realtime search ads, sponsored Tweets, and AdSense-like widgets that could appear on other sites.

Of course, other startups are already experimenting with their own Twitter ads ranging from in-stream sponsored Tweets (Ad.ly) to placing retweet buttons on display ads themselves (Tweetmeme). But what will an official Twitter ad look like? And will people really love it?

There are lots of options for different ad units on Twitter.  Seth Goldstein, the CEO of SocialMedia, was on the same panel and is the one who grilled Banerji about Twitter’s ad plans.  He presented the slide above, which gives some flavor the types of ads which could appear in a social stream like Twitter.  Ads could range from straight endorsements (“This is my favorite salsa”, “My favorite car is a Jetta”) to more subtle local business ads (“I am at Starbucks,” “I am the Mayor of Superdive”).

Other people think the Tweets themselves should be sacrosanct.  Robert Scoble, for instance, suggests the idea of a SuperTweet with all sorts of metadata that pops up when part of the message is rolled over with your mouse.  This data could include things such as the location of the Tweet and how many times it’s been retweeted, but it could also trigger a contextual ad triggered by certain keywords.

Most likely, the ads will start out simple.  If they are in-stream ads, they will be clearly labeled as such, perhaps by highlighting the Tweet with a different background color or otherwise clearly marking it as “Sponsored.” Right now, the only way you know something is a sponsored Tweet is if it is disclosed in the text of the Tweet itself, like in this Ad.ly example:

Twitter could make them stand out more and really distinguish them as ads.  But that in itself would find little love from most Twitter users.  For ads to work on Twitter, or anywhere else on the Web for that matter, they need to be authentic and useful. Contextual ads related to keywords in specific Tweets or shown only to people who are known to be interested in related topics is a better approach.  It is fairly simple to analyze people’s Tweet streams and cull the main topics they either talk about or the topics of the Tweets the people they follow talk about.  Semantically targeted ads should perform better than random ones.  But it’s still not clear what there would be to love there.

It also is not clear what the rules will be for Twitter ads. Will they just start appearing in everyone’s stream, or do you have to allow ads into your stream?  And if you allow the ads, do you get a cut of the ad revenues since they are being shown to your followers?  I’d be very surprised if there is a user opt-out for ads, and even if Twitter starts the ads on its own site it would make sense if it could syndicate them out to third-party Twitter clients.  Eventually, if a Twitter client takes the stream, it will have to take the ads as well.  Presumably, Twitter would offer them a cut of any ad revenues much like Google does with AdSense.

Finally, there is the question of how the ads will be paid for. It makes little sense to charge on a per follower or per impression basis because people tend to read their Twitter streams sporadically.  A cost-per-click model would work much better. Twitter could create a keyword auction to trigger the insertion of the ads and advertisers would only pay for actual clicks like they do with search ads.  That way the entire message of the ad would not have to be contained in the Tweet itself.

With 1.5 billion Tweets a month and growing, advertisers will certainly love any opportunity to insert themselves into the conversations occurring on Twitter. But users generally don’t love ads, they hate them. And it is hard to believe that Twitter is somehow going to magically change that basic fact of life. You tell me: What would Twitter have to do to make you love its ads?

Zoetica’s Charity Challenge —

Tomorrow I am giving a talk at Stanford University with Robert Scoble and MC Hammer on how social software changes marketing so I thought like sharing a few points here and had to chose a title inspired from Scoble's Corporate Weblog Manifesto in 2003, just for fun. The talk should be online on YouTube next week watch this space or my Twitter I will post it. I also have a simpler version in French. 

jump on the social networking bandwagon! pic shamelessly stolen from this post 

1. Listen

Use Twitter, Google blog and Google Realtime search and see what people are saying about your brand. They say nothing or not much? Your brand is dead online or not born yet, work on it. They say negative things? Great, it means people care. Too much to read it all? Fantastic, just find tools to filter. 

2. Answer

Many brands only listen and never participate because they have old style push marketing habits and scared to engage users. It's the best thing you can do, engage in a conversation.

3. Focus on the negative and thank people for the compliments

Negative remarks, criticism and even insults are marks of attention. Answer those first and understand what the problem is. Follow up when it's solved, explain when you are working on it.

4. Engage 24h a day

Social software never sleeps. Hire a team (which can be a team of 2!) in two opposite timezones. It is the best investment you can make and similar to a PR agency budget. We have at Seesmic two community evangelists in the US and one in Europe so that we can cover questions non stop. Have the management participate as well, you will find me answer tweets about my products often at 1 am :)

5. Be as transparent as possible

Don't cheat. If your products have a problem or lack a feature, recognize it and explain what you are doing about it. Don't use old "put it under the carpet nobody will notice" methods, with everyone talking in public on Twitter and Google Buzz there is no chance it won't go out, in fact it's already out. Go ahead and acknowledge issues and engage with the users.

5. Group the feedback on a site such as user voice (see ours http://feedback.seesmic.com)

We're getting about a mention of Seesmic every minute, many brands get much more. Difficult to read it all and all the suggestions, using a feedback site "Digg like" where users can submit their own ideas and vote on the ones they want the most will help you and make them happy as they feel they can influence your product roadmap. I call it our public roadmap. Make sure you close the most requested features often.

6. Be agile as you create the products

Of course it's easier if you are a software editor than a car manufacturer when time to market takes years. Your users will notice if you listen to them and adapt your roadmap to what they request the most and if you release as fast and as often as possible. It is a good way to create traction around your products (or lose it if you don't update and listen often enough). It's not taking off? Don't hesitate and move on, create something else. I changed my entire company mission and vision from a video conversation product to helping you manage social software after I saw the video conversation wasn't taking off as expected (it will eventually, we were too early).

7. Change priorities often in your roadmap with the most requested features 

To a certain extent of course, look at what is the most popular and deliver just that, your users will thank you.

8. Don't forget to innovate

"if Porsche had listened to its users their cars would look like a Volvo" said once Robert Scoble. Think Steve Jobs too, Apple does not engage much but innovate and create game changer and genius products like the iPhone. If you only listen to users suggestions you might not innovate enough and your competition could take you by surprise.

8. Create a presence on most popular social software 

You would be surprised by how users are not the same from one network to another. Create a profile on all of them: Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz, LinkedIn, Ning, MySpace... 

9. Create content and share on all of them 

You can either create different content for every network but it's very difficult, I have chosen to update them all with the same content except specific interactions to one (exemple @replies or RT should only go to Twitter) seesmic and ping.fm can help you share on all of them by just emailing, texting or using an app.

10. Identify your best fans

Some of your community members are very active and in addition to liking your products and your company and team, they tell all their friends, convert them, help evangelizing just because they like what you do. Identify your best fans and treat them as best as you can, they are your ambassadors. Read Seth Godin's Tribes, only 1,000 fans can get the word to millions.

11. Create your own little social network for your tribe

Your inner circle deserves more attention from you and will also like talking to each other in a smaller community. Creating a dedicated group on Google Groups, Facebook Group or a dedicated network in Ning will be ideal (we created teamseesmic.com and often test our products with our most dedicated users before we launch them).

12. love your users, give them small gifts and special events or products

We send hundreds of stickers every month to anyone who asks us, we created previews "for teamseesmic" of our products and special events such as this one. Your users like to be loved.

13. help them share about your brand with share buttons 

That's an easy one we don't do enough, a simple "tell your friends" button to help them share it with their own community if they like it can help. Don't force them to do so though.

14. be everywhere and on every platform

That's a tough one but if you want to maximize reach you need to be available on Windows, Mac and have an iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Nokia and Windows Mobile app... We're getting there as it's our mission to build apps, but it's very challenging for brands, especially since you need to maintain them after... Companies such as mobileroadie can help you with customizable apps which are already built. 

15. use social networking internally

A good way for your team to familiarize with social networking and the real time web is to start internally with tools such as status.net, Yammer, salesforce.com, socialtext or bluekiwi. Risk is very limited.

16. participate or better, support by partnering with the events where the social software junkies go such as SWSW, DLD, Lift, LeWeb (Nespresso got huge coverage on Twitter for offering great coffee to all attendees), TechCrunch50 or throw dinner or parties at bigger events such as CES (Ford does it well)

17. Show us real people

Companies being just brands and products is also a thing of the past. We want human beings. We want to know who we talk to. See how @richardatdell (Dell) and @scottmonty (Ford) do it.

18. Use video, it's human and carries much more

Even Apple who does not engage that much has real employees giving product demos or tutorials in video, they are much more human and get much more across than text, they can get thousands of views even if they are not professionally produced, see how I do it from now and then. That video was shot without any editing or preparation. 

19. Be proactive and share as much as you can. Add value, not just marketing crap.

It's great to react to the conversations, but think about creating some content each time there is something important happening. Add value. Ask yourselves how you can help others. This post for example is probably helpful for some of you even if it's also an opportunity to talk about my products, helping was the goal, not the products, but no one will blame you if you help and use your products as reference from now and then. You won't create any following if you speak like a press release. Press releases are boring. Would you talk to me like a press release if we had lunch?

20. Patience!

It does not take weeks or months, it takes YEARS to establish trust and create a real community around your organization or action. Don't expect anything coming for free or shortly, it won't happen. Share, listen, reply and start all over again. Don't get upset when you get criticized and treat it as attention. Focus on the most active users who support you they will make you happy and help you continue on the long run. 

Have fun and don't treat it too seriously, be natural or let your employees be natural, it will just work. 

add your own points in comments, what did I forget?

Terrific tips about social media —

Here are three excellent new resources to add to your library of useful information to help you understand how social media fits into your overall business plans:

1. A CMO’s Guide To The Social Media Landscape

A well-designed chart (PDF download freely available) from CMO.com who say that social media marketing is expected to dominate this year with 81% of CMOs in the US planning to link their annual revenues to their social media investment.

2. The Corporate Social Networking Manifesto

Twenty-two credible suggestions from entrepreneur Loic Le Meur, one of the early-adopter pioneers of social media and an indefatigable champion of the value social media can bring to an organization, especially a start-up. Inspired, Loic says, by Robert Scoble’s Corporate Weblog Manifesto from 2003.

3. Digital Marketing Guide: Social Media

What’s the next Twitter, do I have to follow Shaq and who should tweet for my brand? Some of the questions in a credible collection of FAQ from AdAge.com that will provide you with some helpful information as you try and figure out where social media fits into your planning.

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© 2010 - visit the author for more great content, or connect with him on Twitter: @jangles.

Louis Gray just reported a new way Google is trying to control the problem of mine and Louis’s and Robert Scoble and Mashable, and more of the more active feeds and streams on Google Buzz taking over the streams of our followers.  The problem that was occuring is that for those with a lot of followers, their posts would continue to dominate the streams of those following them because every time someone commented or liked the post, it would go right back to the top of your feed.  While I understand the problem, and agree there needs to be a fix, I argue Google is trying to fix this the wrong way.

The way Google decided to fix it is now they decide, based on some sort of algorithm, how often my feeds get thrown up to the top of your stream.  This ensures no active user will ever fully dominate your stream.  However, what if we want to consume this data?  The problem is Google is the one making that choice for you, not giving you the power to make that choice yourself, and I think that’s a very wrong approach.

Rather than Google making that choice for us, they need to focus on lists, the way FriendFeed and Facebook do it, and the way over 400 million people are familiar with.  This is the natural flow – if someone is too noisy, you take them out of one list and put them in another.  Let us choose which list is the default.  Give us an easy way to assign people we follow into different lists.  This isn’t that difficult a solution for someone Google’s size, and gives the users absolute, full control, rather than taking it away from them to make the decision on how active their feeds are.  This needs to be their 100% focus right now to keep my attention.

The way Google is approaching this is wrong.  I really hope they change their focus to lists, open up the flood wall, but give us filters, privacy controls, and put the control back in the users’ hands.  Don’t take our power away from us Google.

Image courtesy http://arbroath.blogspot.com/2008/03/let-me-out.html

Being a top Google Buzz user, or even engaging with one, has come with some assumed disadvantages, as one of the product's built-in features has been to highlight activity on a feed by bumping active items to the top. For users with a few dozen followers, this is fantastic and keeps their feed moving. But for those with a few thousand, it can seem like they are "dominating" the discussion, and I've even seen people say they are unfollowing said "popular" folks for this very reason. As of this evening, that problem is being lessened.

Using the Buzz service as their blog, the official Google Buzz Team account said quickly:

"If you're following someone with a ton of followers, you're probably used to seeing their posts at the top of your stream all the time, since we've been bumping them back up with every new comment. Starting a few hours ago, we made some changes to not bump them up as often."

With about 2,200 connections, and some active participants who have been used to acting on my feeds from Google Reader and FriendFeed, I have seen the consequences of this multiple times, and it's been among the major sources of pain for the young service.

So, if you unfollowed me, it just might be safe to come back. If you were scared to make a comment, for fear your in box would be abused, don't hold back. You can get connected here: http://www.google.com/profiles/louisgray. It's probably also safe to refollow Pete Cashmore, Robert Scoble, Jason Calacanis or Kevin Rose again too, so go nuts.

While not all folks are fans of Buzz, the team has made a lot of visible changes in an action-packed two weeks. To me, that bodes well for their future development, and today's move aids the signal to noise ratio once again.

Did Google Reader Just Turn on the Firehose? —

Google’s big push recently has been on enabling open, real-time technologies to publish, read, and interact with its new service Buzz.  Reader, its RSS subscription and website reading service, is one of the biggest tools to integrate with the service.  So much that my Reader contacts are now my Buzz contacts.  Until now, Google Reader, while when it would share your posts, it would send updates to subscribing services via Pubsub Hubbub (PSHB), it did not support the reading end of it for supported blogs that publish via PSHB.

Just after my last post on Google ironically, I noticed immediately after publishing people were sharing my post, something very unusual for the service, which usually takes up to an hour for my posts to show up on the site.  Going into Reader, I noticed it had immediately recognized my post.  I quickly queried a friend of mine at Google, who stated, “They can neither confirm nor deny my suspicion” (that it was launched), but I was “observant”.  Sounds like they just launched Pubsub Hubbub support.

Wordpress-enabled Blogs that want to be seen immediately after publishing in Google Reader just need to install Josh Fraser’s Pubsub Hubbub plugin for Wordpress.  After hitting publish, your post should appear immediately afterwards in PSHB-supported clients, which, if I am correct, now includes Google Reader’s massive user base.

If this is true, you should see this post immediately after I hit publish in Google Reader.  Assuming I’m right (which it seems so), Robert Scoble’s concern of it taking too long to get news (#5) just went out the door today – he can now get this just as fast, if not faster than any service such as Twitter, FriendFeed, or Buzz, and this way, he gets to read the full content of the article.  When I hit publish on this post you will see it immediately.  You are subscribed to my feeds, right?

There’s been a lot of talk about privacy concerns when it comes to Google’s Buzz, with both the Canadian Privacy Commissioner’s office and the Federal Trade Commission looking into the service, people complaining about their contacts being exposed without their knowledge, etc. For me, that stuff isn’t really an issue — rightly or wrongly, I’m pretty much an open book on the Internet when it comes to social networks. As far as I’m concerned, the biggest issue with Buzz is just this: I’m not sure it works.

I’ve tried to like it and find ways to use it, I really have. And I’m not saying I’m giving up on it completely. But I’m skeptical about whether Buzz really fills a critical need in my life, and whether it adds enough value to keep around or devote more time to it. Could this be a result of social networking fatigue? Possibly. But to be honest, Buzz just seems too convoluted and cumbersome in so many ways, the user interface too chaotic and hard to filter, the settings difficult to understand and configure, and the potential use case too hard to figure out.

I’ve been trying to use it as an aggregator for other things — Twitter, Facebook, etc. — but that doesn’t seem all that useful. I check it from time to time because the “unread” number keeps nagging me, but then when I get into it there are just tons of comments on posts by Pete Cashmore and Matt Cutts and Robert Scoble (who I eventually had to unfollow — sorry, Robert). And each time there’s a new comment, Google puts the post back at the top. I thought Google’s mission was to help me make sense of all the information clutter out there, but Buzz really isn’t helping. And it’s not just me: Jyri Engestrom, who co-founded Jaiku and helped create Buzz, has set up a Google Moderator page for suggestions about “How To Fix Buzz,” and thousands of people have voted already.

Don’t get me wrong — it’s great to read through a discussion with Matt Cutts about domain registrars because his wife is looking to buy a domain name. And now and then I come across something interesting that is worth reading or commenting on, like a conversation started by Google engineer DeWitt Clinton or David Cohn. But there’s still just a ton of noise, and I can’t figure out whether that’s my fault or Google’s. Is it the way I’m adding people, or the way Google is filtering (or not)?

A lot of people make the same complaints about Twitter — a high noise ratio, a lack of interesting posts, difficulty figuring out who to follow, etc. But I’ve managed to get Twitter to the point where it works for me, where I’m following a combination of people who provide interesting links and commentary on a fairly consistent basis. Could I get to the point where Buzz works like that, too? I thought it would be fairly simple, since I could just add people I also follow on Twitter through Gmail and the Buzz interface, but it’s still not there yet, and I’m not convinced it will be any time soon.

I’ve tried using Buzz on my phone as well, and as a standalone app (on a Mac, you can turn any URL into a standalone app using Fluid) and that gets closer to being useful. The geolocation for the mobile version — which has suffered its own problems, with a bug that could allow your account to be hacked — is an interesting feature, and I could see how viewing Buzz posts related to a venue would be useful, in the same way “tips” on Foursquare can be. And it’s easier to browse through a standalone desktop app (Google is apparently thinking about offering a standalone version at some point), but then I always get the feeling I’m missing something, due to Google’s obscure sorting algorithms.

In many ways, as David Pogue points out in a recent column, Buzz suffers from a bewildering oversupply of features. It’s a little like its lesser-known cousin, Google Wave — it’s chaotic, hard to filter, and more or less overwhelming. For example, there’s no easy way to collapse comments on posts in Buzz, to get to the new and/or good stuff — but then some conversations collapse by themselves, and I’m not sure why. Other conversations disappear altogether into a window-shade style format (although they can be expanded), and I don’t know why that happens, either. Google’s algorithms at work again, no doubt.

As for disconnecting from Buzz, give this a read and see if you can figure out how it works, because it isn’t straightforward or intuitive by any stretch of the imagination. So I guess I’m stuck with it, whether I use it or not.

Related content from GigaOm Pro: Google’s Social Scheme Hinges on Fears Not Fortunes

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user Doug88888

How To Make Storytelling With Prezi Even More Social —

It’s striking how fast one has come to experience search, distribution and measurability of ones content across different social platforms as a commodity, no matter how great or disruptive the service itself might be. Since all objects are social, we also have a need to share and know what’s going on with our content to better interact around it.

Good example of a great and disruptive service is Prezi, an online visualization and storytelling tool that aims to change the way people present information and tell their stories. To me Prezi was love at first beta invite, resulting it to become one of the very few software products that I’m actually, and happily, paying for. And I’m not the only one who’s been dazzled by how it inspires and challenges, both its user and audience, at the same time. In just within a year Prezi has become the darling of the innovative minds in tech, design and educational institutions. It’s often seen on stage in places like Davos, TED conferences, who also has invested in Prezi, and LeWeb. Robert Scoble is in love with it, and it’s certainly not every day Umair Haque describes a product as “total awesomeness”.

Thus, it’s no surprise that education, social media and technology are the most common words used in the public prezis.

The Hungarian startup with its Swedish CEO Peter Arvai and Jack Dorsey, Co-founder of Twitter and CEO of Square, on the advisory board, seems to have chosen the right path by being obsessive about the product development to create great user experience and an awesome product. As Jason Calacanis keeps reminding the startups on TWiST: “Create great user experience and an awesome product, and the business will follow.” Having both dedicated fans and paying customers with a great product is a good space for Prezi to be in, but to stay competitive I think it’s important they gear up its social sharing and discovery of content a notch.

Prezi was early to embrace social media by including basic social sharing options, as well as using blogging, Twitter and Facebook for customer feedback and service.

If that’s not enough for being social as a service, what am I still missing?

User profile and improved search: To be able to share and socialize around content it needs to be found. There’s no public user profile page, and since the search function only includes the titles of the content, it’s nearly impossible to search and find single users. (I’ve tested to add my name in the description field without any luck). For example: A search for Sean Percival results to a copy of his presentation saved by someone else only because his name is found in the title. On the positive note, Prezi has become more search engine optimized after changing its URL structure to more readable ones.

Tags and categories: Adding possibility to tag and categorize content will also facilitate and improve the search and user experience.

Statistics: A standard and important feature in so many levels, both to the user and the service itself. Prezi does have a page for popular prezis, which I believe would better serve its purpose if including metrics about number of viewings and sharings.

Notifications: Since it’s possible to “pad”, i.e. like, a presentation, as well as to comment on it, it’s necessary to receive a notification of some sort to be able to act upon it. This would also help to increase the conversation and engagement level of the Prezi community.

Slideshare: All the functionality mentioned is found on the largest document sharing service Slideshare, yet a closed door for prezis. As Slideshare doesn’t support Prezi’s file format and Prezi doesn’t offer any conversion functionality, this has become a slight inconvenience to, and a request from, its users, who now have to use manual workarounds.

Whereas Prezi’s claimed to be the Powerpoint killer, it’s actually pretty funny to find over 200 Powerpoint or Keynote presentations on Slideshare about Prezi, or actual prezis converted to ones. Think if they were all prezis.

Prezi recently released an improved editor, to my liking, and is now also offering reuse of all the public prezis. There’s a free public license option so you can easily let yourself get inspired by the works of both Joi Ito, CEO of Creative Commons, and Sean Percival of MySpace, to get started with your own storytelling.

To quote Joi Ito: “All of our talks are inspired by others and using and reusing material should significantly improve the quality of all of our talk.”

Paula is online strategist and startup evangelist. She blogs at paulamarttila.com and here at Bub.blicio.us.
Follow her on Twitter: @paulamarttila
Drop her email at paula.marttila[at]gmail[dot]com

The Most Stalker-Friendly People On Gowalla. Scoble Not Included. —

Back in December, we ran a post about the “most stalker friendly people on the web.” The main point of reference for it was a leaderboard made by Osnapz, which showed the Foursquare users with the most followers. Now, with Gowalla’s API officially launched, they’ve done the same for that service.

These numbers are interesting because unlike a service like Twitter, both Foursquare and Gowalla make you explicitly accept new followers that you will broadcast your location to. While back in December, it was Robert Scoble who was the most stalker-friendly person on Foursquare, he’s only the 210th most stalker-friendly on Gowalla, with only 54 friends. The most stalker-friendly person on Gowalla is entrepreneur and blogger Wayne Sutton, with 724 friends, according to Osnapz data.

Judging from this data, Gowalla is clearly less social than Foursquare from from a friending-perspective. But that’s hardly surprising given that the emphasis on Foursquare is your friend timeline, while on Gowalla, that’s the fourth tab. And whereas “mayorships” are an important factor on Foursquare, “stamps” (sort of like badges) are a key to Gowalla, which the Osnapz data reflects.

Meanwhile, looking at the Foursquare leaderboard, it’s clear just how fast that service is growing. Back in December, Scoble led the way with 1,768 stalkers (I mean, friends). Today, a user named @elarov is in the lead with over 5,800 friends. Leo Laporte is close behind with just over 5,000, while Scoble is now in third with just over 4,600. Just looking at Scoble’s numbers, he has nearly tripled his followers in just two months.

I’m sure the Please Rob Me guys will have a field day with this data.

[photo: flickr/heyjoewhereyougoinwiththatguninyourhand]

David Pogue of the New York Times is out with a lukewarm review on Google’s latest entry into the socialmedialand Google Buzz. Pogue calls Buzz a “Twitter wannabe,” and chalks the product up to being too confusing for the average user. In the end Pogue says that Buzz isn’t much of a threat to Facebook or Twitter or even FriendFeed, but that it will have it’s own following.

Meanwhile, over at TechCrunch, Mike Arrington takes Google to task for “force feeding” Buzz to Google’s 175 million Gmail users. He says his post is not about the backlash and privacy issues, but those feature prominently in his critique.

And top PR Blogger Steve Rubel says he’s thinking about checking out of Buzz.

I think they’re all wrong and here’s why.

As my friend Robert Scoble has said in the past, you want to go where the ball is going, not where it’s at today.

Once upon a time people used to share photos on sites like Shutterfly, Snapfish and Ofoto. These sites were mostly concerned with printing photos for people and sharing with a very tight group of private friends. Who would have ever thought people would want to *gasp* let the whole world see their private digital photos?

And then Flickr came along and said, you know, why don’t we just make photos public by default. Maybe all these concerns about people not wanting other people to see their photos are overblown. And it worked. And you know what? I’m sure more than one person has accidentally uploaded a photo to Flickr that they wouldn’t want the rest of the world to see. That person probably quickly figured out the problem, made the image private and life goes on.

So while there are likely stories out there about how people accidentally uploaded private oriented photos to Flickr, in the end, using public photos as a default showed that the vast majority of people simply are not that concerned with people seeing photos of their dogs or their house or their friends or heck, even their kids.

Similarly a very small, but vocal, group of individuals are shrieking from the mountain top about the fact that Google Buzz might have allowed people to see who you email alot. Big deal. The story came out quickly. Those privacy zealots could quickly correct this by making their contact list private if they wanted to, while the vast majority of us don’t really care that Buzz lets people know who we follow. Want to know who I follow? It’s right here for the whole world to see, go for it. The whining about these privacy issues (which have now been fixed by the way) is getting old.

But here’s what Google did right. They took a risk in turning this product loose on the world *in the name of innovation.* They said hey let’s do this now and course correct later. The perpetual beta even without the silly meaningless beta label. Google Buzz has bugs and flaws right now. You’d better believe it. And even as I whine about them myself on Buzz, I *love* the fact that they are there. I love the fact that Google is willing to push an exciting, innovative new social network out there warts and all. I love that they are taking risk in the name of innovation.

You know what I love even more than Buzz as a perpetual beta? I love the passion of the people building Buzz. I love that they have a war room where people hunker down and work all weekend long on fixing Buzz. I love that passion. I love that Google Buzz engineers like DeWitt Clinton are actively engaging the user base of Buzz and giving real time feedback and answers to questions. I love that the Google VP of Product Management Bradley Horowitz himself is writing posts like this on Buzz and that he’s actively engaged with the early Buzz community. Todd Jackson, Buzz’s product manager is also very active as well.

And Google is using Buzz to promote open non-proprietary standards. This is hugely positive. Read Dewitt’s post on that here. Hopefully Buzz will be able to put pressure on companies like Twitter and Flickr to support things like PubHubSubbub. Standards that get our data out of the silos that so many companies like Flickr have become.

It is so, so, so early in the social networking game. And Google has passionate engineers and resources that they clearly are dedicating to this product. Buzz will get better and better in the days ahead. Google will use it as a major tool to help refine their more general search algorithm. Smart photographers who have buzz worthy posts and photos would be wise to embrace Buzz and build a presence there now. A lot of the photos that I sell today are found by people on Google. Having your photos prominently indexed in Buzz will help promote them on the web more broadly speaking. And Buzz is doing a really good job at showing our photos off elegantly.

Already all kinds of interesting conversations are popping up all over Buzz. Last week I used Buzz to announce a photowalk a bunch of us went on last night. Earlier today I posted about Obama’s flip flop on the gay marriage issue and look at the engagement that these sorts of posts are seeing.

Buzz will get less complex. Buzz will get better and faster. Bugs will be fixed. The right features will be rolled out. Too many smart passionate people are working on it for this not to happen. It’s the first inning in a long, long game. Buzz will take market share, significant market share from Facebook, and Twitter and Flickr and definitely FriendFeed, which now feels like an old mare that Facebook’s put out to pasture. And this is a good thing.

To those of you that tried Buzz and found it too complex. Stick with it. It’s going to change quickly and dramatically.

I hope Buzz doesn’t lose that spirit of innovation that I see there today. Too often super innovative companies end up complacent and stop innovating. Because if they keep going in the direction that they are, the internet will in the long run be a better place.

If you want to follow me on Buzz you can find me here, I’ll be spending a lot of time on Buzz in the days and weeks ahead.

Google Buzz, PleaseRobMe, and Privacy Scare Tactics —

With Google Buzz recently launching inside of your Gmail, many people immediately became concerned about their privacy. The primary reason being that there was a social component inside their email inbox, a place normally reserved for private discussion.

The other concern that arose was the way Google built your network. Most social networks are built, brick-by-brick, by the user. This is a huge pain to repeat every time you join something new. What Google did was use the wealth of information it already has on your to build your network for you and get you started. What they also did was make this new friend’s list visible to the public on your Google Profile page, just like any other social network.

Buzz also has location sharing available, which is a whole other can of worms when it comes to privacy concerns. Which brings us to the website PleaseRobMe.com. It’s a website that monitors location-based checkins and lets the world know when you are not home. Does that scare you?

Regardless of the various arguments, anecdotes, and opinions that can be expressed by these privacy “issues,” there is one thread that remains constant and true:

These so-called privacy concerns are just scare tactics to boost traffic

Think about this logically for a moment. Do your contacts on any social network immediately imply any connection between you and another individual besides the fact that you interact with them on that social network? If my Buzz contacts include Robert Scoble, Louis Gray, P. Diddy, and Barrack Obama, does that mean anything? The answer to both of these questions is Absolutely Not. In order to be afraid (and yes, it is only fear that motivates privacy concerns) of my contacts being made public, I have to make the assumption that someone besides me can make sense of that data. My contacts alone mean nothing to an outside observer.

The same goes for PleaseRobMe. I check in at the grocery store. Suddenly, the world knows I’m not at home. Oh no! Now I’m gonna get robbed because I’m not home. Nevermind the fact that I have a family, a security system, several dogs, a platoon of security ninjas, and nosy neighbors. Regardless of whether the world knows I’m home or not, a potential robber still has to go through the same procedure of casing the house and whatnot before they can actually rob me successfully. Again, in order to be worried about this data being public, I have to make assumptions.

I do not mean to imply that location sharing has never led to a robbery. I also don’t mean to imply that having a public contact list has ever resulted in some other type of misfortune, but these are edge cases. These situations are not the norm. Also, people were being robbed way before location sharing existed.

So, before you go getting excited about the latest privacy scare as it relates to technology, take a moment and think about it. Is it a legit privacy concern, or is it just something being drummed up by the media or the blogosphere to boost their traffic?

h/t Hutch Carpenter

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Warning: Twitter-specific post I told my gang over on Twitter that they should follow the legendary Tom Peters, author of several books that impacted my life. Some of them wrote back, “why should I? He doesn’t follow many people back.” The logic is this: if you want my attention, you have to make it a two way street. Only, there’s a flaw.

Following doesn’t equal engagement.

If you follow someone on Twitter, it simply means that the person has the permission/right to direct message you. It doesn’t mean necessarily that you’ll see every tweet the person sends.

I’ve been on both sides of the auto-follow fence. Do I follow everyone back because it’s polite? Do I not follow everyone back because then I get lots of DM spam? Currently (Feb 2010), I’m auto-following people back, because I got a wave of people saying, “I’m so glad you followed me. I appreciate the two-way street.”

But there’s the rub, isn’t it?

How I View Following Back

When I choose to follow, it’s because I grant you the permission to send me a direct message. I will not likely see your standard every day tweets. At over 110,000 followed, it’s a technical and mathematical impossibility.

So, when I follow you back, it means that I’ve given you one step up on the hurdle. But that’s not the whole game.

Engagement is what Many Seem to Value

When people said they wanted Tom Peters to follow them back, they were saying (most likely) that they wanted to know that Tom would engage with them. Know what the measure of engagement is?

@

That’s it. If your stream is full of @replies, then you’re more of the engaging type. Check out my twitter stream. It’s about 80% @replies on any given day. (Mind you, Robert Scoble says I’m doing Twitter wrong.).

However, Is ENGAGEMENT the Big Value?

Engagement, talking back and forth to you, is maybe what YOU value, because you want social media to be a place where you feel seen. And that’s the absolute beauty of social media tools, especially Twitter: they let us jump gates and connect to people who matter.

But what if Tom Peters’ Twitter stream is full of useful nuggets and links to really useful stuff. Is it any less valuable?

I visited CNN headquarters a few months ago and saw what they followed in their news streams. Believe me, they don’t care who follows them back on their news-only accounts. They valued the information they could use. The story’s a bit different if you ask Rick Sanchez, who is using Twitter amazingly.

But my point is: the information is more important in many cases.

So Ask Yourself the Goal

Ask yourself what you’re seeking in the people you follow. If it’s conversations, ask whether it’s the follow, or just the realization that if you’ve got something worth talking about that the person will reply back to you. It’s not like everyone can reply back all the time, but if we do it more than we don’t, that’s probably good, right?

Ask yourself what you value in your use of the tools, but then realize that you’re working from what YOU value, and it might not be the same for everyone. ( Guy Kawasaki reminds me of this every time he talks about Twitter.)

What say you?