Real Time

"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

We can’t entrust Twitter with the future of the real-time web

Twitter is an important development. The ability of individual users to pool their efforts to essentially document, minute by minute, every day on an Internet-connected planet Earth, is an amazing gift...... a snapshot of humanity on a speed and scale that we’ve never known in the past. .... It is either a broadcast network for brands, which happens to host conversations of individuals, or it’s a platform for discussion in which brands can take part, just like the rest of us

Trees were still falling fine before Twitter came along.

I am not at all opposed to Twitter monetizing. Twitter should make money so it can keep the service free and improve on it.

There was not only one email service. There was not only one Instant Messenger. But there is only one Twitter. I find that amazing. How do you explain that?

The Twitter Book By OReilly, Tim/ Milstein, Sarah

The Twitter Workbook

Twitter Power 2.0 By Comm, Joel

Twitter

Twitter Tree iPhone 4 Slider Case by CafePress

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Apple And Twitter

Image via CrunchBase

Steve Jobs tried to cut a deal with Facebook. It did not quite pan out. So he threw in his lot with Twitter. That gave Twitter a tremendous boost in the Apple ecosystem. And now looks like the relationship is about to get deeper.

Apple may invest "hundreds of millions" in Twitter

Apple investing hundreds of millions in Twitter would be like when Microsoft invested hundreds of millions in Facebook. That was a smart move. That money grew. This money will also grow.

And I am glad Apple is also coming around to Facebook integration.

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Twitter Tweet Sink

Image via CrunchBase

Twitter Is Working on a Way to Retrieve Your Old Tweets

Twitter gives users access only to the last few thousand posts made to the site.... “We’re working on a tool to let users export all of their tweets,” Mr. Costolo said ..... “You’ll be able to download a file of them.”

Costolo is not getting it, is he? Who wants to download those tweets? I just want to access them. Don't cut me off at a few thousand. They are my tweets after all.

Twitter fundamentally misunderstands real time. Real time is real time also the way it was when it was. In the past.

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Asana Just Like Facebook

SAN FRANCISCO - NOVEMBER 15: Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks during a special event announcing a new Facebook email messaging system at the St. Regis Hotel on November 15, 2010 in San Francisco, California. Facebook will launch a new messaging system aimed at enhancing it's social media product to its 500 million users. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

Asana and Facebook have a few similarities.

For one, they share founders. Some of the early Facebook people are the top people at Asana. That's there.

And both seem to tackle similar problems. Facebook tackled one aspect of our inboxes. Asana is trying to tackle another aspect of our inboxes.

But the most glaring similarity to me is that both missed out on the mobile paradigm, and both will struggle with it.

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So Facebook Went IPO

Big deal. And I don't mean that in a sarcastic way. It really is a big deal.

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Dick Costolo Of Twitter

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PlanCast's Facebook, Twitter, EventBrite, MeetUp Integrations

Image via CrunchBaseI have stayed on a lookout for Holiday parties and today I was looking around PlanCast and I just so happened by the Settings page. And I got impressed. This might not be a new thing, but it is new to me. Now my MeetUp RSVPs and EventBrite RSVPs and my Facebook Events automatically show up in my PlanCast timeline. I dig that. PlanCast is now going to be more useful to me.

The page now also lets me automatically follow my Twitter and Facebook friends who might also be on PlanCast, and when I saw that I was a little hesitant because I have lots of Twitter friends. But then I decided to go for it. Because if you are on Twitter, and if you either follow me or are followed by me, and if you are also signed up for PlanCast, that is a lot of filters. That is like saying if you are at a tech event and you come across someone who does not have a Twitter handle that person is probably not worth networking with.

And my connections on PlanCast ballooned by about 700 people right away. And that's okay. Now I might have more events to choose from. And it's nice to show up at some event and know that there are at least five people there you already know or can quickly know ("Hey, I think you follow me on Twitter!"). You are more likely to pounce on the 200 in the room you don't know that way.

Right now I almost feel about PlanCast the way I felt about Twitter when I first heard of the embed tweet option. Although it is fair to say the two are in two very different leagues. Like Dick Costolo once said of Eric Schmidt: "We are not on the same plane, and I mean in the Gulfstream sense."

But then my blog itself is not a bad place to look to find events: December Events.

A Facebook For Strangers

Image via WikipediaFred Wilson: Turntable
The Color Social Graph Might Work Better For Books, Movies, Music

My current Facebook is my second Facebook account. They booted me out the first time because I was oh so busy saying hello to strangers.

I like Twitter a lot, because on Twitter everyone has a phone number. And if someone is not on Twitter, that person is not relevant, at least not relevant to the world of tech. And the transparency and the 140 character limit makes managing communication easy. It is scalable.

The first phase of web social has been about connecting with people you already know. The far phase has to be about strangers. Utter, complete strangers, people you have absolutely no hopes of meeting in person.

Tumblr: Ease Of Use?

Image via CrunchBaseTumblr has been in the news for having surpassed Wordpress. Tumblr surpassed both Blogger and Wordpress in page hits months back. Looks like it has now surpassed Wordpress on some other metric that shall remain unnamed by me.

What is it? There is the itch to explain. The pundits are pouring in.

I have a feeling analyzing might not work. Unless you use Tumblr, you will not get it. I myself was late to the party, but now I show up every day, most every day. Tumblr completes me.



And Tumblr still is not my primary blogging platform. I am still stuck on Blogger. I do long form blogging. I pontificate. And Blogger allows me to play with a little bit of code. On Tumblr, I mostly reblog, I almost totally reblog. And yet Tumblr completes me like Blogger does not.

Social Media: Listening Tools Are The Next Frontier

(Article first published as Social Media: Listening Tools are the Next Frontier on Technorati)

Image via CrunchBaseThe terms social media and new media are makeshift. Watching TV with friends can be a perfectly social activity, but we are not thinking TV when we say social media. Radio was new at one point. But we don't think radio as new media. Social media, new media have been birthed by the internet, more specifically Web 2.0. But we don't think of email, the web's central application still, as social media, new media.

Facebook, Twitter and blogs are the most often thought of tools of social media. How are these tools so different from television, radio, books, movies, music, even a website?

No matter how many people are talking to you, you should still be able to listen, and listen well. I believe that is the next frontier of social media. Social media has so far presented itself as the antithesis of broadcast media like television and radio. They spoke to us and we listened. But so far social media has been primarily a miniature version of that same broadcast media. Some listening is possible, sure, and is done. But social media still has been primarily a broadcast mechanism.



Twitter meaningfully spitting out all the tweets it takes in would be a sign we are getting good also at listening.

The frontier after that would be to get closer and closer to realizing everyone on the planet is connected to everyone else. We will use the web to explore our interest graphs in ways that we will find ourselves interacting with people who are out there, but before new technology we just did not have the option to get to know them well. That is partly about getting everyone to come online, that is partly about getting people more bandwidth. But it goes beyond that. In 2000 we did not see Twitter coming. Today it is fair to say we don't exactly see the tools of 2015. There are Twitter size surprises ahead of us.
Image via CrunchBase
New forms of collaboration will become possible. Richer social relationships and interactions will become possible. More meaningful dialogues will become possible. Ambitious social goals will be achieved.

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Social/New Media: Blurry Lines

Image via CrunchBase(Article first published as Social and New Media: Blurry Lines on Technorati)

When we say social media, new media, we mean Facebook, we mean Twitter, we mean blogs. There are many, many other platforms, but those stand out. A lot of people don't realize this, but the blogosphere collectively is bigger than Facebook, just like the Chinese restaurants across America collectively are bigger than McDonald's.

"(W)e think as McDonald's as sort of the Microsoft of the dining experiences. We can think of Chinese restaurants perhaps as Linux: sort of an open source thing where ideas from one person can be copied and propagated across the entire system; that there can be specialized versions of Chinese food depending on the region. For example, in New Orleans we have Cajun Chinese food, where they serve Sichuan alligator and sweet and sour crawfish. And in Philadelphia, you have Philadelphia cheesesteak roll, which looks like an egg roll on the outside, but a cheesesteak on the inside. I was really surprised to discover that, not only in Philadelphia, but also in

Atlanta, because what had happened was that a Chinese family had moved from Philadelphia to Atlanta, and brought that with them. So, the thing is, our historical lore, because of the way we like narratives, are full of vast characters such as Howard Schultz of Starbucks and Ray Kroc with McDonald's and Asa Chandler with Coca-Cola. But it's very easy to overlook the smaller characters - oops - for example, like Lem Sen, who introduced chop suey, Chef Peng, who introduced General Tso Chicken, and all the Japanese bakers who introduced fortune cookies. So, the point of my presentation is to make you think twice, that those whose names are forgotten in history can often have had as much, if not more, impact on what we eat today."

- Jennifer 8 Lee of The Fortune Cookie Chronicles

Old media was about broadcasting. I had a TV station, and there were few TV stations, and I broadcasted my message to you, and you listened. With new media I broadcast at you, you broadcast right back at me. We might talk past each other, but that's okay.