The funny thing is that I haven´t really missed it. Sure, I do miss a few blogs, but its a surprisingly few. Sure, I do miss stumbling over a great heated discussion over at Friendfeed, and sure, I do miss the platform of my blog to get something off of my chest.

But thinking of it, I am surprised of how little I have missed from my life as a social media junkie. Tonight I am having one of the rare nights where I´m home alone. Furthermore its one of the nights where I am not up for looking at work, not up for TV or DVD´s, not up for chatting away on Facebook.... And I can´t be bothered at all with even opening Twitter.

See that´s the problem. I have just been looking at my 1.000+ feeds over at Google Reader. I skimmed some headlines from a few of my favorite bloggers, and I wondered if it had been a slow news summer. Not that there weren´t any new blog posts - there were a lot actually. They just all seemed so un-interestingly boring.

So while I wondered if it was my new job which had changed my interests so much that I didn´t find any of my favorite bloggers the least interesting, I started getting annoyed with Google Reader due to the eternal slowness of my computer to open feeds in their original source view. Of course I know it has nothing to do with Google Reader, and even though the Google  Corp. can be blamed for many things, it can hardly be blamed for my lousy old desktop computer.

What I wanted was a RSS reader which can show full posts, even for limited info rss feeds such as the newspapers which only give appetizers so that readers are forced to visit their site. I wanted a filter which could scan through the 1.000+ folders and give me only what was interesting to me.

So while I was wondering if my chances of finding such a feed reader would be bigger at Twitter or in Google, and if it would even exist I realized that what I really want is value. 

I WANT VALUE!

I am fed up with getting 500 new Tweets per minute where max. 2 of them has any value what so ever. I am fed up that I never see any people on Twitter that I don´t wanna block immediately because their endless conversation with everyone is of no real value to anyone. I am fed up with entering Google Reader and seeing that even my favorite bloggers have sold out on their integrity and seem to be writing new blog posts not out of passion, but out of a belief that what matters is quantity. And I am fed up that every blogger, and their mama, seems to be publishing some kind of "This is the truth" self help/productivity book in 2009.     

Twitter and the real time web have been hot buzz words for a year or more now. People seem to be dying if they do not get their tweets and rss feeds in absolute real time.

Well, I don´t know if so many people are that busy to need info in real time. But that's beside the point anyway. What I hope for is a return to old school blogging. Of course I know this will never happen in main stream. Twitter and Facebook are here to stay.

But I hope for the return of some old school blogging, where quality and passion will again be central and celebrated values. I will much prefer a well thought through post giving a personal account or providing a new perspective. But maybe its not about either/or.

Maybe all I need is better filtering.  And a fast feed reader which can provide inline view or pull full blog post even from feeds with limited rss info posting.

I´m now on the lookout for new favorite bloggers. Bloggers who write with passion and an ideal that they should provide value, not noise.

Who are your favorite bloggers, and what are your favorite filtering methods/tools?  

Anyone following my Twitter stream will have noticed that about a month ago I was quite enthusiastic about the blog platform, Posterous.

Actually, I got so impressed with the service that I was seriously considering changing my blog from my Wordpress platform to the Posterous platform. (In the end I ended up changing to Squarespace instead, and am very happy about that, but that's another story).

A few days ago I met up with Vitus. He and a few friends, Steffen and Mille, recently opened a nice little restaurant - emporiUM Escandinavia- making delicious Danish/Scandinavian food, right here in the middle of São Paulo, Brazil (become a fan of emporiUM Escandinavia on Facebook).

Except talking about their food, which is just truly amazing, (Ever tried the Scandinavian food? Go try it out - Order online here) we talked about different ways of using social media to market start-ups.

We talked about the fragmentation of Twitter and of the pros and cons of Facebook fan pages versus Facebook group pages.

Now, what Vitus was looking for, was an ultra-simple-to-use platform, where him and his crew could easily broadcast rich media information about their restaurant and their food.

...and this is where it all ties together, and where Posterous comes back into the story...

So what is Posterous?

Basically, Posterous is a blog-broadcasting tool or blog hub, which is controled from the comfort of your email inbox. You could go to Posterous.com to sign up, but just to prove how simple Posterous is, they decided to cut out any tedious sign-up. Instead, simply email: post@posterous.com

Soon after you will receive an email from posterous with a link to your new blog post, and all your blog details, which you can now edit as you wish. 
 

Can Posterous replace your "traditional" blog?

Some use Posterous as a traditional blog, but in my opinion, the real power of the service is not to be a blog as we know them, but to be a blog hub.

What I mean is, Posterous is not about pulling people back to your site as a normal blog might be - Posterous is about pushing your content out there where your readers are.

"Posterous is following a social media trend we've seen evolve over the last couple of years, basically asking: "Why pull people from around the web back into your blog, when you can hand them your content right where they are?"".

Social media seems to have come to a cross road where we on the one side find the old school bloggers of the likes of Seth Godin. Seth's blog is his social media centre, and his presence on Twitter and Friendfeed is merely to push out blog posts and pull readers back to the blog.

According to Seth, he does not want to use tools, if he cannot use them really well - nothing is worth doing if its done half-way. I would guess the reasoning is the same for why Seth does not enable comments on his blog, though from my perspective this seems to be supporting a monologue instead of a dialog. Then again, the beauty of social media is that everyone can use it exactly as they wish.

On the other side we have bloggers who tend to spend more and most of their time over on Twitter and/or Friendfeed, and who might even be wondering if their old blog is still relevant in today's social media world. Robert Scoble and his "Web 2010" has been a recent sign of this trend, and to a more extreme part so has Steve Rubel, by completely giving up his "traditional" blog and moving to Posterous.

Posterous Special Features

Posterous - The Blog Hub

The number one feature on the Posterous cool features list is the blog hub broadcasting tool. In effect, according to what email address you send your Posterous blog post to, you can decide to where Posterous forwards it. This might sound complicated, but it is really simple. An example will illustrate my point. Lets say you want to create a new blog post, and only want it on your blog (like in the old days). What you would do is, go to your email inbox, write your blog post, and send it to blog@yourdomain.posterous.com. If you want to send a Tweet, but not have it appear on your Facebook, you email it to twitter@yourdomain.posterous.com. Now, if you want to broadcast your new blog post to Twitter, Youtube, Flickr, Friendfeed, Facebook etc. you simply email post@yourdomain.posterous.com  - Easy!

Email-to-blog feature

As mentioned, Posterous is easily controlled from within your email inbox.
There is a "write new post" function on your Posterous dahsboard, but there is no advantage of using it.
If you can insert rich media in your emails (as for example inline pictures, font and colors) then you have more styling options from your email inbox than you do from the Posterous dashboard.

Posterous bookmarklet

Posterous features a very useful bookmarklet. When you find things from around the web which you want to import into your blog, (such as videos or quotes) you simply highlight what you want to import, and press the bookmarklet. It's as easy as it can be!

Overall ease of use

Someone once said that a tool which is fun to use gets used more.
Posterous is one of these tools. It simply lets you do all the essential stuff and leaves out the rest. It could not be easier to create a new post, or to add tags to your posts.

And that is really all you need. Sure, it would be nice to have the option to set up several pages and categories, and to use blog widgets etc. But most bloggers don't really need all that. A lot of users like Posterous for its simplicity, and if you can live without the advanced features, then you will love Posterous.

Groups

The group feature on Posterous lets your blog have several authors (Posterous currently let you have 3 blog groups per account). Creating groups is also a way to enable group members/readers to receive updates from your blog by email.

By enabling "post by moderation" everyone can email updates to your blog, which in effect allow big groups and open forums on your blog.

An example of the open forum was the recent election in Iran, which created quite a bit of attention in the international press. As the BBC and CNN were not too fast to cover the story, Iranian bloggers turned to social media to spread their protests to the world.

Several Twitter support groups (#tag groups) were created to support the Iranian people, with hundreds of updates per minute - faster than even the Iranian intelligence force could close down the IP address.

Furthermore, Iranian blogger, Faramarz Hashemi, created an open support forum on Posterous, collecting all types of social media - blog posts, poems, open letters, videos and pictures, sent via email - from all over Iran which ended up on this open forum supporting the Iran Election (Warning: The Iran Election blog is in its essence not censured, and features some very strong footage and filming).

Google Analytics

Many bloggers like to have a look at the statistics of their blog. If to see the numbers of readers/vistors to their blog, or to see which are the most visited posts, to focus future sentiment doesn't matter.
One of the greater analytics tools is Google Analytics, which is supported by Posterous.

Custom Url's & Imported blogs

Posterous makes it easy to import your existing blog into Posterous, and gives you the option of using your custom domain URL (so you avoid having to use the ".posterous" URL on your blog).

What I would like to see from Posterous

From my Posterous wish list, I would like to see the possibility to add pages. Categories I can do without, but pages would be nice. Then again, this is just me, and most people will do just fine using tags alone, instead of categories and pages.

Themes or customization is another function I would like to see soon, but I've heard that themes will indeed be roled out in the near future, so I guess it is just to have a little bit of patience.

All in all, I think Posterous is an very interesting and innovative new blog platform, which continues to add new amazing tools to its arsenal of features, at a mind blowing speed.

Go check out Posterous, and subscribe to the official Posterous blog.
You can also follow the official Posterous on Twitter, as well as its founders, Garry Tan and Sachin Agarwal.

And you...

What's your take on Posterous? Where do you think the future of social media blogging is heading?

I've been reading and writing about social media tools for a while now, and I'm an more or less active participant on many social media platforms.

As mentioned before, a recent job change introducing a focus on Climate and Energy, combined with the recent G8 meeting and the up-coming COP15 summit to be held in my home city of Copenhagen, Denmark, has really awakened my interest to the various aspects of the climate & energy discussion.

The discussions are many, the topics vary, and the same arguments are often made to prove many different points. We have countries, politicians, "media experts", "climate experts", journalists, climate sector spokes people, fossil fuel sector spokes people and the average Joe - all trying to make sense of the facts and figures and to create a sense of meaning to fit and frame their individual understanding of the world.

It is my belief that in all discussions we join, in all conversations we enter, we all have an agenda, no matter how subtle - an idea of where we come from and where we want the discussion to go.

Friendfeed Climate & Energy Room

I have earlier written about how to use tools like Twitter and Friendfeed to promote conversations (for example here and here ). It is no secret that even though I like Twitter as a platform, I feel it is much too limited and fragmented to have real conversations.

So, thinking about what I could do to better promote the conversation around Energy and Climate I decided to make a Climate & Energy room over on Friendfeed.

Here is how it works

I have imported via RSS feed, some Twitter profiles and blog posts I found relevant, both from mainstream media and individual bloggers.

I want to keep the room open, so if you have any ideas for blogs or feeds which should be included, please let me know, and I will add them.

The room can basically be used in 2 ways:

1. Passive: You can use the room as a master feed, and even grab the RSS into your feed reader. What this means is that instead of subscribing to many different blog posts, you can subscribe to this master feed and use it as a hub for all things relevant to climate and energy. For example, I have imported the twitter searches for #COP15 and for #G8 - meaning whenever anyone over at Twitter tags their tweets with these tags, they automatically appear real time in the Friendfeed Climate & Energy room, next to all the other blog feeds. 
2. Active: All the above. Plus, everyone can comment on any post. Comments appears in threaded form for all to see - in this way making conversations on Friendfeed so much more powerful than over on Twitter where it is difficult to follow discussions between people. Furthermore, conversations on Friendfeed have two interesting aspects. Participants have the choice to "like" or to "comment" on a post. When a post has been liked on commented on, it automatically re-appears in the top of the feed stream. This in effect means that the more a post gets liked or commented upon, the more it re-appears in the top, making sure other readers don't miss the most important posts. Crowd-sourcing in its finest form!

Basically this is how it works. I hope you will get some value from the room, and that you will stop by and join the conversation. If you care about the climate, you should make your voice heard.

Please let me know if you feel there is a feed which should be included in the room.

Go sign up for Friendfeed, if you haven't already. The Friendfeed Climate & Energy room can be found here.

Let me know what you think!

I have tried to continue with my old Feedburner feed from my Wordpress platform, but I am not sure if it works.  Well, if you receive this post in a RSS reader then I guess things work as I hope they will. If not, then I probably have some minor things still to work out. 

One thing I have realized is that when dealing with Squarespace, things just seem to work. 

So why move to Squarespace?

I like Wordpress a lot, its one of my favorite blogging platforms. But I just seemed to never really be happy with the presentation of my blog. I always wanted to change the layout of the site and the presentation of my posts, so I ended up moving from theme to theme. But they all seemed too rigid too limited. 

Customization

Squarespace is highly customizable. You can pretty much change any part of your site in any way you want, without any html or css skills at all. This site for example is made completely without any use of extra css. 

However, if you want to and if you got the skills, you can add extra css and ajax to the script, making it even more customizable. 

Another cool thing about the Squarespace customization is that it is highly flexible. You can easily add or remove anything from new pages to new sidebar widgets. 

Speed

I have never seen a blog platform as fast as Squarespace - its just amazing. The pages load so fast, its like working with a hyper fast internet connection.  

Feel

There's just something special about using a tool you really think is cool or fun to use. I guess that's how Mac users feel (I have still to buy my first Mac -  One day, one day!). Well, Squarespace got that coolness to it, that just makes it really cool and fun to use.

Intuitivity

Squarespace has a small learning curve, but after a few hours any first timer user will feel Squarespace to be second nature.

Analytics  

I noticed somewhere that you can set up Google Analytics with your Squarespace account (as well as Feedburner - as I have tried to do here). I haven't yet set up Squarespace with Google analytics because Squarespace comes loaded with its own analytics tool box, which not only look super cool, but also seem to give you information about all the essential stats - and leave out the rest. 

Easy Import/Export

Like anything else on Squarespace, importing or exporting blog posts from Wordpress/Blogger platforms are dead easy and straight forward. I'm sure this goes for importing/exporting from other platforms as well btw. 

What I would hope to see from Squarespace

There are a few things I have noticed in the first days of using Squarespace that I would like to see in the future.

Sidebar Widgets 

It might just be me who have had a few learning problems, but if I'm right Squarespace is not very good at working with sidebar widgets in HTML format. I tried to incorporate a Lijit search bar as well as a disqus comments widget. None of them succeeded, but I am not sure if the problem lies with Squarespace or with Lijit and Disqus. 

Disqus Comments support

I understand that Disqus does not support Squarespace as of now. I hope this will change one day soon, as I really liked the Disqus comment tool. However, I don't like it enough to move back to Wordpress, so if Disqus does not support Squarespace, I'll hope that my readers will be using the great and platform independent Backtype.

Feedburner RSS support

Well, as of yet I am not sure if my Feedburner feed actually works here. I guess I will have to wait and see if this post appears in a RSS reader, before I can claim that Feedburner does not support Squarespace.  I will make an update saying if it does or not work.

In sum, I guess its quite obvious I'm thrilled by my move to Squarespace. If you are fed up with your old Wordpress/Blogger account, then why not spice your blog up and move into Squarespace. You know this is where the cool kids hang out. 

One important thing I just want to let you know before you run over to Squarespace and get dissapointed with me for not mentioning this: Squarespace is not completely free. There are various price packages on Squarespace according to what you're looking for.

Basically the cheapest package costs US$ 8,- per month. However, if you want a blog with your own domain (meaning without the .squarespace.com attached) then it will cost you a mothly US$ 14,- (if you use one of the promotion codes you can get a 10% discount. I suggest you support Leo Laporte and use his "Twit" affiliation code. All you gotta do is to go to squarespace.com/twit and then you'll get a 10% discount, and support Leo.

Oh, and one last thing. You can get a 14 days free trial over at Squarespace - no strings attached - so don't just take my words for it. Go on and try it out for yourself.   

Let me know in the comments what you think. I hope you will enjoy it as much as me!

What value do you really get from the people you follow on Twitter?

For me, I get pretty much zero value from my Twitter followings. And the same goes for my followers btw.

Some argue that the real value of Twitter comes not from the number of followers, but from following the right people.To some degree I will agree with this point of view, but I still think its not enough. There's missing a filter to make Twitter a valuable investment for the time spent there.

My main problem with Twitter is that it is too fragmented. There is simply too much irrelevant fluff being tweeted.Few people have something of interest to say to many people very often.

Others argue that the best way to use Twitter is to see it as a waterfall. According to this point of view, we don't have to read all tweets from all our followings all the time.We can simply log in once in a while and see if there is anything of interest going on. That too sounds quite un-productive to me.

Is there value on Twitter?

So why am I even on Twitter? Is there any value to get from using it?

I do believe Twitter can provide value if used correctly. I will argue, however, that both the numbers of your followers and your followings have no direct value. If you can't expect that most of your followers will see what you tweet, then a following of 50k becomes somewhat meaningless as a network effect.

Apart from direct up- and downstream networks (followings and followers), which I for the sake of clarity call meta-networks, most people are connected to various sub-networks. By sub-networks I mean the intangible networks of people we are following or which follow us, and with whom we have a particular interest in common, an interest which most likely aren't shared by many others in our meta-networks.

This fragmented attention network means for me that the real value of Twitter comes not from our networks, but from search and filter. Third party Twitter apps, such as Tweetdesk allows us to put people into groups. But still, it doesn't really cut it. The filter options aren't good enough. There's still too much noise and too little signal.

Enter Friendfeed.

Twitter on Friendfeed

Friendfeed is my Twitter client of choice. It is customizable, flexible, extremely powerful, and it simply lets me cut out as much noise as possible.Basically we have three tools on Friendfeed which are relevant for this purpose; Lists, Smart Filters (which now are called Saved Searches) and Imaginary Friends.

If you haven't done it already, go to one of the Twitter-to-Friendfeed apps and import your Twitter clients into Friendfeed (at least the ones who have a Friendfeed account).You can put all your Twitter friends in one list called "Twitter", or do with them whatever you want, this is just an example.

Imaginary Friends

For the people you follow on Twitter which does not have a Friendfeed account you can import them as imaginary friends. Imaginary friends are created under the "Friends" list - where in the bottom it says "Imaginary Friends". Thats it. Simple.

As Friendfeed is powered by RSS feeds, Imaginary Friends can of course also be from any where else on the web which supports RSS. This could for the purpose of Twitter, be the RSS feed output from Twitter Search. This becomes useful when we talk about lists.

Lists

If you created your Twitter list as mentioned above, then you have a few interesting options. First, you can add/remove friends, meaning you can decide which of your friends should be on this list, or another. This should be obvious.Second, you can add any of your imaginary friends into the list. This could for example be on any topic where you have made a Twitter Search.

You can choose whether you want to import a person as a Imaginary Friend from their Twitter personality or if you want to import them as a Custom RSS feed. But before you decide, please note one powerful difference. When you import a person from Twitter you get all their tweets, as you would expect. Now, if you follow a person on Twitter who belongs to a lot of sub-groups, and you don't necessarily want to listen to all the person's tweets, you can solve itby making a Twitter Search like this: "topic of interest" from:"person's twitter handle".

This is an example where I searched for tweets from me, inwhere I mention Ruby (Ruby on Rails is my newest obsession). Notice the search input.And the best thing is you don't get all my other tweets which might be endlessly uninteresting for you.

Smart Filters / Saved Searches

The Smart Filters, or Saved Searches as they are now called on Friendfeed have some additional interesting function. This one is just one of the obvious saved searches which will bring value for Twitterers on Friendfeed:

Include entries from:All Friendfeed users. Keyword/quality filters contains the words:service:twitter contains ...OR ...
Fill in the dots with as many words as you want to track on Twitter.

This will give you all Friendfeed users, filtered only for the Twitter service, and tracking your search topics of interest.Unfortunately it is not possible to import the RSS feed from a saved search into a list, which would otherwise have been quite powerful.

Power up your Twitter Friendfeed lists with Google

If you think Twitter isn't enough and you really wanna spice up your Friendfeed Lists, you can search for your topic of interest over at Google News and Google Blog Search. Enter your search topic and copy the resulting RSS feed into your friendfeed list as an Imaginary Friend.

Here is the result of a search for "Friendfeed" on Google News 
Here is the result of a search for "Friendfeed" on Google Blogsearch

Combine these tools and you can make some quite powerful Friendfeed lists.
Oh, and in case any one was in doubt. When you import Tweets into Friendfeed you can of course reply directly from Friendfeed into Twitter as any other Twitter app.

Manage your Twitter & Friendfeed from Gmail

Now that you have set up Friendfeed to manage your Twitter life, you can choose not to use Friendfeed. As metioned by Jesse Stay from Staynalive, Friendfeed Lists can deliver new items and comments directly to your email inbox, or via IM (if you use Gmail).

Basically this means that you can control both your Friendfeed and your Twitter accounts directly from your Gmail without leaving your inbox.
You can read here for more information on how to set up your Friendfeed account with IM Gtalk.

That's it, I hope you found it useful. You're welcome to leave a comment. And remember, now you have no excuse to waste time on Twitter no more.

Twitter - Its all about the conversation

Twitter's success often gets credited due to its simplicity of use. Yet, the same simplicity - the lack of structure - makes for a myriad of ways of using the service. We have the link-pimp's, we have the @'ers and we have the meme's. And so what? Is there anything wrong with this? Many will claim that its healthy for the various communities on the Twitter platform, to support a diversity of interesting people, where each individual can use Twitter in its own way.

But don't stand in the corner shouting - Engage! I've been on Twitter for a year or two now. And as many other people starting using Twitter, I got there, shouted a little bit, wondered why no-one thought I was extremely fascinating talking about my lunch, or hysterically funny talking about the weather. I left Twitter shortly after I arrived the first time.

Social Media is SOCIAL media - Engage!

Social Media, according to Wikipedia, is about conversation:  

"Primarily, social media depend on interactions between people as the discussion and integration of words to build shared-meaning, using technology as a conduit."

  Try to enhance the conversation. Don't just be the geek standing in the corner, shouting out at people. But how can you start a conversation on Twitter? What if none of your friends or family use Twitter?

What if you don't know anyone in your industry using Twitter? What if everyone you know use MSN, and Myspace, and maybe even Facebook - you know, just to be hip. And what if you look down at the list of people following you, and realize that you have absolutely no clue who these people are, as you have never met or talked to any of them? Here is my two cents on Twitter conversation:

• Start a conversation with a stranger: Go to your followers list. Click on the first person you see. Read the profile and click on the URL if there is one. Ask the person any question you think of as you read his profile/site. Do this with the 5 next people on your follow/following lists. Repeat. Engage!  
• Search for Friends: Your Twitter friends does not have to be friends from real life. Search for your interests on Twitter search and add people with the same interests as you. 
• Add value: Look at your last 20 tweets. How is the structure? have you had any conversations? Are 17 of your last 20 tweets about food you have eaten?Are all your tweets links to other people's blog posts? The keyword here is balance.  
• @'s: No one wants to follow a person who only has @'s - why? because they usually only provide value for the person sending and the receiver. Twitter does not have threaded conversation (unlike Friendfeed), so conversations are rarely interesting for other than the two people in it.  
• Link-pimp: are all your tweets links, then most likely your Twitter account is exactly like 2 million other Twitter accounts. Why would anyone follow a Twitter account where the tweet page have no conversation, no engagement, only links?     
• Are all your latest tweets updates about your food or the weather? Well, how often do you start a conversation with people in this way in real life? Try to balance your Tweets, add value, be interesting. Mix up your @'s with your link-pimping and your updates about what you're actually doing.

Twitter - Its not about the conversation

I have earlier written about why I think Friendfeed is better for conversation than Twitter. Twitter is great for quick status updates. Twitter is great to share a link and to send a message to many people at the same time. Twitter is even great for fast and short conversations.

But the 140 character limit which makes Twitter so good for short updates also means that Twitter is not great for social interaction at any deeper level than send-receive.

...Twitter is great for sending information, but not for having a conversation.

Is Friendfeed better? Yes it is!

On Friendfeed people can argue, debate and inform. Don't get me wrong, Friendfeed is no IM like Gtalk, Pidgin, Skype or even MSN. Friendfeed is not a chatting tool for long conversations. But on Friendfeed, a conversation can easily be had, and Friendfeed adds value as it provides for conversations with more than two participants.

Twitter's greatness is also its weakness.

Bonus Round - Twitter Guides

Many great guides for how to use Twitter has been written. Of my person favorites, I found great value in a strategic article on how-to use Twitter, written by uber-tweeter, Darren Rowse of Problogger. Jeniffer Van Grove, wrote a great article on the use of Twitter strategies to transform your brand.  Not that its particular for Twitter, but Vincent Hunt has written my favorite social media intro of all times, a must read.

And you...

... How do you use Twitter? How do you add value? and how do you use Twitter as a SOCIAL media tool?

Following is a featured 'virtual interview' with Ginx.com

What is Ginx?

Ginx is a web based Twitter client, currently in pre-alpha version.

What can Ginx do that the Twitter browser client cannot do?

Well, a number of things really. First of all, many Twitter users are concerned, and rightly so, when they click on links on Twitter. There is currently no way to know beforehand whereto the link will take the user. Obviously, clicking random links on Twitter can be a huge risk, if you end up on some spammer page.

With Twitter growing mainstream, users need to have a lot of trust clicking links they don’t know where lead. Ginx show you where all links lead before you click them.

Secondly, at Ginx we also show you a list of all links you have clicked while using the Ginx service.

Furthermore, Ginx use an automatic built-in URL shortener, and we have developed a mobile version of Ginx 

In which other ways does Ginx differ from the Twitter browser client?

At Ginx we are trying to improve your Twitter experience.

One way we do this is that if you click a friend’s timeline then you will get a view of the timeline exactly as your friend will see it. We have done this for you to learn more about and connect better with your Twitter friends.

Another way we try to develop how Twitterers relate to their friends is that we have introduced a new way of using groups on Twitter.

With Ginx everyone can start their own Twitter group with any specific area of interest. If other Twitter users find your group interesting they can subscribe to your group. Basically we have just expanded how you can already sign up to another user, but now you can sign up to a group of users as well.

See here for more information and an overview of all Ginx Twitter groups. 

Will Ginx take on desktop clients like Tweetdeck and Twhirl?

Tweetdeck and Twhirl are very powerful Twitter clients, and they can do many things that Ginx cannot do. However, Ginx should be seen as an alternative to the current Twitter browser client, not as a competitor to the desktop clients.   

Ginx is currently in pre-alpha. How can people sign up for Ginx?

If you’re interested in giving Ginx a try, follow Ginx on Twitter. We update our sign-up codes on Twitter from time to time.

 Fore more information about Ginx, please see the Ginx FAQ and follow Ginx on Twitter.

Disclaimer:

This is a “virtual interview”. It is 100% manufactured by Peter Efland, and does not represent the opinions or the policies of Ginx.com. 

While hanging out over at Twitter the other day, I was eavesdropping on one of the many Twitter vs. Friendfeed conversations. This particular conversation was between @maydbs and @raiha. They were talking about the hype of Friendfeed and how they didn't really get what the Friendfeed fuss was all about.

Getting a great deal of value from Friendfeed, I couldn't keep my mouth shut. I busted in on the conversation stating that Friendfeed was the better tool, hands down. After a bit of talk forth and back, all I got out of that statement was a "Prove it!".

However, since I have no intend of being #47643789 to write yet another "How-to Friendfeed" blog post (Louis Gray, Michael Fruchter and Daniel J. Pritchett, among others, have already written better posts than I could, fx. here, here and here and even here.

On Friendfeed I searched a bit around for conversations on the topics of Twitter vs. Friendfeed, when I realized that for me, the one thing which makes Friendfeed so much better than Twitter is its ability for crowdsourcing. According to Wikipedia, crowdsourcing can be defined as:

"Crowdsourcing is a neologism for the act of taking a task traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people or community in the form of an open call."

Why Twitter?

It is often said that the great thing about Twitter is its simplicity. The simple question of "What are you doing?" Twitter lets you easy connect with lots of people around the world, with whom you share an interest. Robert Scoble, being a uber-tweeter, has a great video tutorial on how he uses Twitter, and how it relates to his use of Friendfeed.   

Twitter & Crowdsourcing

Twitter is a great tool for having a quick 140 characters conversation one-on-one. While Twitter is also a good tool for crowdsourcing, it is however not an optimal tool.

It is true that Twitter is good and greatly used for shouting out one-to-many, and as Robert Scoble pointed out, Chris Pirillo's new tool, Twickie, is great for crowdsourcing many-to-one.

So why is Twitter not an optimal solution for crowdsourcing?

Friendfeed & Crowdsourcing

In my opinion, Friendfeed is a better solution for crowdsourcing because it uses threaded conversations, and everyone can see what everyone else has been commenting.

In effect this means that you can get a many-to-many conversation, and often find much richer results that the one-to-many or many-to-one conversations over at Twitter.

Crowdsourcing on Friendfeed - Examples

How-to Friendfeed Crowdsourcing Guides

• Sarah Perez, one of the star writers of ReadWriteWeb, asked a question on Friendfeed about where to guide her Twitter friends who wanted to know more about Friendfeed for Dummies. 
• B-2-B Marketing Specialist, Chris Herbert asked for pros and cons of using Friendfeed. 
• Photographer Thomas Hawk, wrote a post on his blog on 10 reasons why you should sign up for Friendfeed. 
• Uber blogger, Robert Scoble, has been very good at utilizing his huge following to create some great crowdsourced conversations. He for example asked: “If you want more followers on Twitter and friendfeed here's what to do:”

Great tools-for-Friendfeed Guides

• When Friendfeed in the beginning of February improved its Friendfeed search function to a degree that it is now better than Twitter search, Robert Scoble started a couple of interesting conversations regarding the new search feature, here and here. 
• As mentioned by Friendfeed co-founder, Brett Taylor, Friendfeed has made a tool which will import your Twitter friends to Friendfeed. 
• Robert Scoble started a great conversation on the value of Friendfeed rooms.

The Bonus Round

- Louis Gray - King of Friendfeed

Friendfeed super-user, Louis Gray, has written a series of posts on how to use the full strength of Friendfeed, for example:

• Louis has written about how to use Friendfeed as a productivity tool. 
• During the summer of 2005 Louis wrote a series of Friday tips for using Friendfeed. He covered how to use the hide button, how to use the Friendfeed bookmarklet, how to take advantage of advanced search (note that Friendfeed as mentioned above, later radically improved its advanced search function), How and why to import Gtalk status, and lastly, how to bring Friendfeed comments back to your blog.    

And you...

...Do you prefer Twitter or Friendfeed? How do you use them? Do you make use of crowdsourcing?   If you liked this post, please consider to leave a comment and/or to subscribe to my feed.

A growing number of social media consultants offer services to monitor and even influence the conversation of brands in the world of social media. Many of these consultants provide extensive and valuable services. It is, however, fairly simple and often sufficient to make your own image monitoring of your brand/company around the world of social media.

Here are five tools to track what is being said about your brand:

Google Search

Everyone obviously know about a Google Search, so why even mention it?

Well, a Google search is quite powerful, and as the most used search engine on the web, it will provide you with a lot of information. The problem with Google search is that it also usually provides a lot of non-relevant information. 

The relevant information results found in a Google search can however be drastically improved with a few pointers to advanced Google searches, see for example here and here for an overview of Google smart search queries.  

The obvious searched would be to something like: 

Your Company +Your Brand but you could also try something like: Your Company +your community or Your company +your targeted consumer group. 

Yet other searches will be your company name or brand name + a number of adjectives, like "suck", "hate", "fan" etc.

A Google Search will give you an updated overview of what is out there on the web, mentioning your product or brand name, or that of your main competitors.  

Google Blog Search

In addition to a standard Google search, it is also recommended to make a Google Blog Search on your corporate and product brand.

The Google Blog Search will show you all the times your specific search query has been mentioned in a blog or a blog comment.

Some will argue that a Google Blog Search is not necessary as it gets covered within the standard Google search.

I often find, however, that the standard search is cluttered with a lot of non-relevant information, and therefore I feel the Google Blog Search adds value.  

Google Alerts

Once you have an updated overview of what is being said about your product or brand name on the web, the next will be to make a Google Alerts search.  

Google Alerts differs form a general Google Search in that it alerts whenever a user defined search query is being used somewhere on the net. Basically, what this means is that if you decide to put your corporate and your product brand name to be tracked by Google Alerts, you will receive notifications whenever these search queries pops up around the net.  

Google Alerts provides notifications either through email or through updates in an RSS reader of choice. Google Alerts currently offers 6 variations of alerts - 'Google News', 'Web', 'Blogs', 'Comprehensive' (News, Web and Blogs combined), 'Video' and 'Groups'.  

Twitter Search

Twitter Search is a specific search engine for the social communications platform, Twitter.

Twitter is not nearly as big as social media communities like Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn or the Brazilian favorite, Orkut. 

The difference, in my opinion, is that these networks works more like a series of communities, where people mainly communicate with contacts they have from the real life. Contacts on these pages are mutual, meaning that when one person befriend another, both have to agree to be "friends". 

Twitter differs, as it is more of a platform than a community. On Twitter anyone can follow anyone else, without being followed back. Conversations on Twitter is therefore not so much with existing family and friends, but more with other users with whom some topic are of common interest.

Communities on Twitter happens in two ways. One is through the "follower/following" feature, where people naturally follow other users of same interest. 

The other type of community is through Twitter "hash tags" where users do not have to follow each other. Instead, they see all comments on a certain topic, made by anyone on the Twitter platform.

A Twitter search is a search query made on the twitter search database, including all comments on a certain topic, and will provide an automatically updating RSS feed. Due to the nature of Twitter, many coporate and product brands are being discussed there.  

Friendfeed Search

Friendfeed Search is a search engine for the online platform  Friendfeed.

Friendfeed is a social media aggregator currently tracking 59 services. At such, Friendfeed is a far more fragmented tool than Twitter which has a larger user base and which is most likely used by more companies. 

The reason why I want to include Friendfeed on this search, is that it has one important thing, which I miss over at Twitter.

Friendfeed has threaded conversation, meaning that you can easily get a clear overview of any discussion, making the content very nuanced.  Friendfeed has recently updated its search function, making is a far better tool to track conversations about any topic.

See this post for a introduction to the new Friendfeed search function.  

Does your organization listen to social media? If so, then why and how? And if not, then what are the reasons behind your decision?  

Photo Credits: Norwegian School of Management

If a tree falls in a forest, but no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?  If consumers talk about a company, but the company doesn't listen, does it make a sound?

Should a company have a Social Media Strategy?

Should a company listen to what consumers have to say? What happens if the company doesn’t listen? Is it the responsibility of the company to enter into a dialog with their consumers?

(Note: In this post I use the words 'consumer' and 'stakeholder' interchangeably)

For years corporate communication has been seen as a monolog. Companies have grown accustomed to the one-way channel of TV, Radio and Magazines etc. talking to consumers. If sales went up, it was seen as consumer approval. If sales fell, it was a sign that consumers probably couldn’t hear, so corporate communication had to shout louder and louder.

But is that wrong? And is there any alternative? The main problem with such an approach is that it assumes that corporate monolog is the best and/or the only way of corporate communication.

I have earlier written about the importance for corporations to have a dialog with their consumers, here.

With the rise of social media it has become possible for corporations to leave the monolog behind and enter into a dialog with their consumers and other stakeholders. But should a company really have a social media strategy just because it makes it possible to enter into a dialog?

Is it even desirable to start a dialog? To open up for a corporate dialog is to promote transparency and to give voice to the wider stakeholders of any corporation. We are living in times where consumers are getting increasingly skeptical regarding corporate communication and marketing. Giving your consumers a voice is to show them that you care and that you are interested in what they have to say.

Join the conversation, or pretend it doesn't happen

But can consumers even be given a voice? No, not really!

Companies need to realize that their consumers are most likely already talking about them. And what they are saying cannot be controlled and it cannot be changed. A corporation then has two options. It can either turn its back pretending that consumers are not talking - Or it can choose to join the conversation.

But what can companies hope to gain from joining the conversation?

By engaging in a dialog companies demonstrate openness, transparency and interest in their consumers. This is especially powerful, as consumer influencers echo their perception of a company's image through social media.

But as important as what consumer watchdogs and influencers say about a corporate or product brand, as important is the direct return on investment that companies can benefit from a social media presence. 

Listening & Talking - Central social media strategies

Central to any social media strategy is the two cores of a dialog: "Listening" and "Talking".

For the sake of keeping the post manageable, I will cover ideas for "Listening" strategies in this post, and continue with ideas for "Talking" strategies in a future post.

The companies which realize that consumers do have a voice, and that consumers do insist on being heard, they can benefit from a social media strategy in several ways.

1) How is your brand being perceived - what is your image?

Companies who are willing to listen to what is being said about them, can get a detailed and up-to date view of how present and potential consumers view their brand.  

Many vision statements will testify that top management often has a completely different perception of their own brand than what is being perceived by the consumers.

Brand mis-alignment happens when a company visions its brand value differently from how the consumers see the brand image.

By making use of social media, companies can get a cheap, current and precise evaluation of its brand image.  

2) Collaborate with consumers in real time - save money on research

What happens when  sales in any organization suddenly start to drop?

If it is company specific, and not industry wide, then we are looking at a image crisis. Faced with falling sales and a image crisis, companies often gather groups of consumers to make 'focus groups'.

The point of 'focus groups' is to find out how a corporate or product brand is being perceived, what might possibly be wrong, and how it can be fixed. The result from the' focus groups' are then analyzed, and a strategy is put in place to alter the perceived image of the brand.

The problem with this strategy obviously is that it is re-active instead of pro-active. Consumer 'focus groups' are only called in after a crisis is being perceived. Furthermore, before a new strategy is identified and implemented, even more time passes by, deepening the crisis.

Alternatively, by engaging in an on-going dialog with consumers, companies can identify image threats before they become crisis, and they can continuously monitor the health of their brand as well as get feed back and ideas for new implementations and new product ideas.     

3) Identify the super-influencers in your target market

the McCann Worldwide study "When did we start trusting strangers?" identified the consumer as the new super-influencer.

We now listen and trust other consumers more than we trust any type of corporate information. It is therefore vital for companies to identify and enter into a dialog with the super-influencers in their market. The super-influencers will be able to give invaluable feed-back regarding the company brand.

Furthermore, by identifying the influencers and listen to what they have to say, a company will often learn that super-influencers turn into brand evangelists, promoting the brand far and wide.  

How can a company "listen" to social media in practice?  Does your company "Listen"? How do you implement "Listening" as a corporate communications strategy?