An Intelligent Take on the HBO Debacle and Blogging

I came across this article over at KansasCity.com’s TVbarn. Aaron takes a level-headed look at Buzz Bissinger’s unprofessional and profane tirade on HBO, and points out an important issue.

Where does the line get drawn between commentor and poster with regards to a blog’s identity? Comments or no comments? Moderated or not?

If you haven’t seen the video we’re talking about it’s here on deadspin.com. Buzz Bissinger ironically criticizes deadspin for being trash, but does so by swearing, interuption, resorting to logical fallacies (like ad homimen arguments, appeal to antiquity, hasty generalization and more) and acting extremely childish. I’m not sure how Buzz thought childish behavior would win over any supporters.

A blog can be interactive, allowing comments and can develop into an online community. All too often people associate the members of that community too closely with the founders, or the blog writers. It’s a tough balancing act, allowing the public to participate and giving your readers a voice while trying to maintain a separate voice for the writer.

I only receive a few comments here and over at http://pinstripers.blogspot.com my baseball blog but I read each and every one. I delete any obvious spam and would moderate or delete anything that was too obnoxious. I think most people who read blogs and are somewhat internet savvy understand how comments and moderation works, but a lot of people, especially an older generation (like Bob Costas in the video), don’t quite seem to have a handle on it.

Digsby Worth Checking Out

Digsby is a neat little communications program that combines IM, email and social networking websites all in one. I’ve been using Pidgin for my IM predominantly, but the addition of Twitter to Digsby makes it an attractive alternative.

For IM, Digsby handles AIM, Yahoo, Google talk, MSN, ICQ and Jabber. It seems to have most of the basic features you’d expect from an IM client and I haven’t encountered any problems yet.

You can add Gmail, Yahoo mail, Hotmail, AOL/AIM mail, POP or IMAP accounts. I’ve just used it with a Gmail account as a way to be alerted when there is incoming email, but I’m curious about the IMAP and POP functionality. One neat feature is the ability to send emails right from the IM window, without having to open another application or webpage.

For social networking, you can add your Facebook, Myspace or Twitter accounts. I currently just use Twitter, and Digsby provides me with updates to recent Twitter activity, and lets me update my status. If you use Facebook or Myspace, Digsby will alert you to new friend requests, messages and other activity.

With Twitter, the interface isn’t as customizable as Twhirl or Snitter, but so far has been more stable than either of those and doesn’t require AIR. Digsby’s Twitter pop-up notifications display all recent activity, placing @s first. There isn’t much customization available for the Twitter interface, but it handles the basics well.

For me the real strength of the program is having all these things tied together in one package. You can turn off pop up notifications and sound for any or all accounts if, for example, you only wanted to be alerted for emails and not Twitter, or you only wanted sound and no pop-ups.

Digsby is still in Beta and could use a few more features and options, but right now it behaves well and has been reliable. I’m impressed!

Second Blog Up and Running

I’ve started a second blog which is now fully operational. It’s called Pinstripers (an old team nickname) and is a blog about baseball and the New York Yankees. It’s mostly commentary rather than pure informational beat writing. I’m going to start talking a little about SABRmetrics in the future and reviewing other baseball blogs in addition to all the Yankee commentary.

The address for the blog is http://pinstripers.blogspot.com check it out!

This site will continue to be my general personal blog with stuff about computer software, the Miami Dolphins, sports in general, book and movie reviews and other random stuff.

Check out the new blog when you have a chance, and keep reading this one as well!

From IM To Microblogging - or: Twitter is the New AIM

When IM started gaining serious popularity years ago, it suffered from a problem of incompatibility with other IM services. AIM couldn’t talk to MSN, Yahoo IM, ICQ or others. Windows Messenger and Yahoo finally learned to talk to each other and now Google chat can connect to your AIM buddies in Gmail. Then came services like Trillian, Pidgin and Meebo allowing people to log into multiple services from one location, even if they didn’t talk directly to each other.

Now we’re seeing the same thing with Twitter, Pownce and other social media sites. Twitter is still ahead of Pownce with number of users and posts, but a few people have switched. A lot of people have accounts on both but only check Pownce occasionally.

For now, we have a problem. Once you add in other social networking sites like LinkedIn and Facebook, things get even more complicated. I personally don’t use Facebook and LinkedIn; I do use Twitter but don’t always check Pownce every day. The point is that each person has their own preferred sites, and it can be difficult to keep track of who’s on what.

Microsoft and Yahoo came together. Google and AIM came together. The real glue that helped connect people with each other was the third party applications like Pidgin. I don’t see Pownce and Twitter coming together any time soon, but will a decent third party app come along to bridge the gap?

There’s a problem with that solution, however. Moving people away from your sites by using third party applications cuts out a lot of site-based advertising and other gimmicks. If people aren’t going to your page to use your service, you stand to lose out on revenue (if that was a goal of yours). Twitter and Pownce don’t use ads at this time, and so this point is a bit moot, but I think there may be a lesson in there somewhere.

Updating your social networking profile isn’t an easy task considering that you probably have more accounts on more sites than you can count on one hand. Keeping up with multiple socmed sites can be tedious. If you don’t keep up on several, you could miss out on interactions with friends.

Sometimes, too many choices can hinder us, and I think that’s what we’re seeing right now. The social media scene needs to consolidate and coordinate more. Functioning as part of a group rather than individuals just might produce better results for everyone involved.

Windows Live Writer WordPress Tags

WordPress.com blog users know that WP supports both categories and tags. Windows Live Writer (a fantastic, free blogging client) also supports both of these but the interface isn’t obvious on first glance.

Categories are handled through the scroll box and entry field at the bottom of the screen (labeled “Set categories”).

Tags are hidden initially. To add tags, click on the upward pointing double arrow in the lower right corner (shown in the picture above)

This brings up a new set of options. The section marked “Keywords” is for WordPress tags. Simply type in the desired tags, separated by commas and that’s it!

It’s a straightforward setup, but isn’t always intuitive at first glance.

Good luck!

Windows Live Writer Just Got Better

WLW is my go to program for composing and publishing blog posts. I’ve written about it a few times and have been using it exclusively for posting to my blogs.

I recently switched from Blogger.com to WordPress.com and Live Writer handled the transition marvelously.

Today, thanks to a blog post over at makeuseof.com, I came across a very important link: a series of extensions for Windows Live Writer. Just visit gallery.live.com and you’ll find a whole host of awesome plugins to make WLW even better.

There are a number of extensions to integrate other web services like Flickr or Picasa into WLW, which I am taking advantage of with this post. The Picasa plugin lets you upload images to Picasa from WLW and link them in your blog post. Very cool.

There is also a “blog this” extension for Firefox that helps you blog a particular web page or article. It’s a pretty simple plugin that helps automate appropriate links when referring to a particular source.

There are currently 80 plugins available, so you’ll have to look for yourself to see them all, but if you’re a WLW user, you’re sure to find something useful.

-Jeff

The Paradox of Social Media Marketing

If you spend any time on the Internet, you’ve probably heard quite a few people bandy about the term “web 2.0″ referring to the recent wave of Internet communities and services. If you haven’t heard me say this already, it bears repeating: Web 2.0 is still in beta.

Many of the applications and online services that we are using clearly describe themselves as beta versions. Even those that consider themselves out of beta still have a long way to go. Twitter needs to incorporate some of the features popping up in third party applications, Pownce needs users, Reddit needs to be more user friendly, StumbleUpon needs to address security issues. The list goes on and on.

Many web 2.0 applications and services are still trying to invent themselves. They haven’t quite found their niche or purpose.

Twitter asks us a question that web 2.0 sites and services need to ask themselves. What am I doing?

Many web 2.0 applications and services are still trying to invent themselves. They haven’t quite found their niche or purpose.

The thrust of this blog post is divided into two main parts, the provider and the user. I’ll tackle things from the provider perspective and then the user perspective.

Developing New Social Media Outlets

From the developer and provider point of view, things look like this:

1. Start with an idea of something people will like and use.

2. Get it to work.

3. Get people to use it.

4. Figure out how to make money with it. (While maintaining users).

5. Evolve enough to keep people interested and stay ahead of the competition.

We’ve got some good ideas floating around. Many break down quickly at #2. Twitter has received quite a bit of angst because of reliability issues in the past (although things have been a little smoother during the last few days). I have given up on a number of desktop applications that tried to integrate web 2.0 because the number of bugs present made the software largely unusable.

Number 3 is a tough on for some platforms like Pownce, which still seems to be floundering in Twitter’s shadow. Right now it just doesn’t seem to be generating enough buzz for itself or delivering enough content or connectivity.

Number 4 is a big sticking point for almost everyone, especially the caveat at the end about maintaining users while making money. Therein lies the rub. The two main modalities for income at this point are charging for use and advertising. Yahoo has some premium services and some ad driven services. Google is entirely ad driven. Pownce has an optional yearly subscription. For the most part, advertisement revenue remains the most widely used approach to bringing in money.

On the development side of things the paradox is this: The more you advertise or charge, the fewer users you will have. For many consumers free is better than a monthly subscription, and charging from the outset will keep people away. Charging for additional or premium services will most likely bring in only a small amount, as the vast majority will opt for the free services, however meager. If advertising becomes too prominent with popups, animations, sound, overbearing banners and email/IM/txt spam, the audience will get annoyed and look for less intrusive alternatives.

Google seems to have found a decent balance, with their text adds off in the margins, which aren’t overly intrusive. Gmail does read your mail and tries to match relevant adds to you which can be good because you’re getting personalized content, or bad because they are reading your mail. The image below indicates they scanned my message, picked up on the key word air, and provided me with links to airfare sites. Unfortunately Google wasn’t sophisticated enough to realized I was talking about a software platform and not flying.

Facebook has landed themselves in quite a bit of hot water with their beacon directed advertising. The number of complaints about privacy and intrusiveness of facebook as a whole has started turning users off. In facebook’s defense, they’re just trying to figure out a way to make a buck and I can’t really blame them for that, but their methods have been flawed. While I don’t use them personally, they provide an excellent example of the paradox and the delicate balance required to maintain revenue streams and a userbase.

Effective Use of Social Media

There is a lot of buzz in the Twitterverse and other online communication centers about marketers trying to get their clients to embrace web 2.0 and take advantage of the opportunities that are present. I’ve seen lots of statistics floated about number of users/viewers and amounts of advertising dollars spent in various outlets, mostly geared toward getting clients to invest time and money in web 2.0 discourse and advertising.

The basic process as I see it is thus:

1. Join the web 2.0 world.

2. Draw attention to yourself.

3. Maintain people’s interest in you.

4. Leverage the interest into revenue.

I personally haven’t seen very much effective use of web 2.0 sites and services as a marketing tool yet. I have seen quite a few instances of web 2.0 as a tool for excessive announcements and blatant advertising to the point where it borders on spam. I’ve “unfriended” and “unfollowed” several people on sites like Twitter and Pownce because I was getting overwhelmed with their constant streams of self promotion, business announcements and useless links.

Again we approach the paradox, but from a slightly different angle. A presence on the Internet is beneficial, but too much of a presence can steer people away. We end up with a dilemma that requires a very delicate balance. You need to get out there and be seen by people, but must be careful not to obstruct their vision.

If there is a company, website or online service I’m interested in, I’ll check out their blog or sometimes follow them on Twitter. I’ll gladly provide feedback, advice or constructive criticism if it seems that they will listen. If my email inbox starts getting flooded with their announcements or my Pownce page is nothing but links they’ve sent, I’ll quickly shy away and you won’t hear from me again. If we can have an actual two way conversation and develop even a brief personal dialog, I’ll feel a sense of rapport and a sense of investment. I might support your advertisers or think about paying for a subscription or recommend you to my other friends.

In the basic outline above, #1 or joining up is easy. It helps if you spend a little time figuring out where in the web 2.0 world you would best fit in, but a shotgun approach can work. The last step is often very easy. If people know about you and are interested, they’ll naturally visit your web site, store or check out your product. The difficult parts are #2 and 3. Getting noticed and maintaining interest can be very tricky and as I’ve explained before, overdoing it can be counterproductive.

Solutions for Providers

For providers and developers, current models are fragile machines that will require a lot of fine tuning to achieve the perfect balance. Subscriptions can be particularly tricky because if you are taking money directly from people, you are definitely more beholden to their needs on an individual level. Customer service can be a nightmare. The ad driven approach is less of a hassle, but user privacy issues, the presence of ad blocking software and the paradox of too much advertising can be tricky.

In my opinion, the real solution hasn’t been found yet. I think in the future we’ll see more of a direct tie in between social networks and traditional business. Businesses will hire social networks to perform various functions for them, and will likewise provide services to web 2.0 developers (which will in turn send web 2.0 users back to the business). I don’t have specific examples or concrete ideas of how this will work, but I believe the future lies beyond simple banner ads.

Solutions for Users

There is a lot of uncharted territory and untapped potential available. Individual users will have to figure out how to best tailor the many new resources available to suit their needs. There is one extremely important starting point here and that is the idea of a two way conversation. Announcements and updates are one thing, but true success will be found in personal dialog. This may be unfamiliar ground for many clients and companies and they will most likely need to find web 2.0 savvy individuals to help them out. To take advantage of web 2.0, you need to have a name and face behind the image. If you want to receive feedback, you need to respond to feedback. To take advantage of web 2.0 you need to be part of web 2.0, meeting and interacting with your target audience and customers on a personal level, in the places they frequent.

A developer from Microsoft stopped by this blog a few weeks back and posted a solution to a problem I was having with a piece of MS software. That was pretty darn impressive in my book. Now lets say company X comes along and engages its target audience on their blogs, says hi on Twitter, connects with them through Digg and gets to know the consumer just a little bit on a personal level. That type of relationship is pure win-win. It can be time consuming, but with a dedicated and proficient staff (for example yourself, a social media consultant, an web savvy PR employee) the sky is the limit.

That’s all I have for now. I hope reading my thoughts here has spurned some fresh ideas of your own.

Cheers!

Jeff

Twitter vs. Pownce: the Ultimate Showdown!

Apparently some people out there haven’t quite caught on to the microblogging craze, or are a bit confused about the differences between the two. Here’s a somewhat lighthearted look at the two in a no holds barred, knock down, drag out fight.

Lets get ready to rumble!

In the light blue corner, the reigning champion - Twitter.

Twitter has been around longer and has a large userbase. The number of clients, addons, extensions, related websites and methods of access is impressive. Lately though, the champ has been stumbling, suffering from extended outages and downtime.

The various clients available for Twitter, when working, are a great alternative to the web interface. My current favorites for Windows are Snitter and Twhirl, but both can be buggy at times. There are also multiple plugins for firefox available. If that’s not your cup of tea you can get at Twitter from IM or SMS. If you’re a fan of text messaging, this can be a fun way to occupy your time while riding the subway to work.

There are a large number of websites that extend Twitter’s functionality. Tweetscan lets you easily search Twitter for tweets containing certain text. Twitter Karma helps you keep track of who is following you and who you are following. Twitterpacks help you find people with the same interests as yourself. Tweetstats reports on your usages, and there are a host of other websites as well.

Reliability is an issue with Twitter, and drives people to Pownce during the downtime. Twitter officially broke up with Joyent recently, and some of the stability issues may improve. Time will tell.

In the green corner, the cagey up and comer - Pownce

Pownce has just come out of beta and has some catching up to do with regards to the number of users. A reasonable number of people have signed up, but a majority of them don’t use it much. Activity has picked up with the recent Twitter outages, but it is still far behind.

Pownce goes beyond the realm of just text and allows you to post pictures, videos, music and other files easily. Also, it’s remarkably simpler to add links just by clicking the button, compared to the usual cut and paste then tinyurl process with Twitter. Most of the videos are just youtube viral videos, but it’s a fun way to share amusing vids with friends. The ability to share photos is very cool. I threw up a picture of my dog, but there are some gifted photographers out there who frequently share some excellent material. I personally enjoy these very much. There is a lot more creative stuff being shared around on Pownce compared to the Twitter’s pure text and links.

There are a few fan created and third party applications and extensions for Pownce, but for the most part Pownce is still in the infancy stage for this category.

One cool feature in Pownce is the ability to group friends in sets. This can be useful when your friends list starts growing and you need an easy way to sort or separate them. I wish Twitter had such a feature.

Also, if you wish, Pownce has plenty of room to provide all of your other contact information like Twitter ID, Flickr, Facebook, IM, email, blog, homepage. I find this a handy way to find people on other networks. I just go to Pownce, click their profile, and presto, all the info I need. Currently Twitter just allows one link for each user.

Pownce has a nice interface for finding friends. It can easily scan your Digg, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, GMail, Hotmail, AOLmail and Yahoo mail contacts. Twitter will only search email contacts (from the same 4).

Point by Point Comparison

Number of users/activity: Advantage Twitter, by a large margin. Pownce may slowly creep up, but Twitter has a huge head start.

Third party support, addons, and extensibility: Advantage Twitter, by a lot.

Reliability: Advantage Pownce. Twitter has been having problems lately and it’s trying people’s patience.

Accessibility: Advantage Twitter. Web, IM, Txt and local clients provide many options for getting connected.

Flexibility: Advantage Pownce. Videos, pictures, music, easy linking, and text sans the 140 character limit.

Friend Finding: Advantage Pownce. Both let you search by name, but Pownce has more options for importing from other services.

Tally

That’s 3 for Twitter and 3 for Pownce. OK, the numbers are misleading. Twitter wins, easily, if only because it’s what people are using right now.

In the end, it all boils down to what you want. If you want to share a variety of media types, you need Pownce. If you want more access options, Twitter is the way to go.

Personally, I’m still using Twitter most of the time, because that is where the action is. I also use Pownce on a daily basis and enjoy the different kinds of content that pops up there. If you into social networking and web 2.0, you should probably start using both.

Before long we’ll start seeing clients that aggregate both Pownce and Twitter, and by then there will be no reason not to enjoy the benefits of each.

-Jeff

ESPN Widgets

All you sportsfans out there who can’t get enough ESPN news and scores will be happy to learn that ESPN now has a collection of widgets available for use on your homepage or blog. There are a variety of different widgets for sports news in general as well as individual sports. They can be downloaded from widgetcenter.espn.go.com.

I don’t think I’ll be sticking them on my blog, but I will try them out on my various customizable homepages like My Yahoo and Netvibes.

Pownce Update

Over the last few days I’ve added most of my Twitter friends to Pownce and have about 25 people that I’m friends with (two way connection) and about 25 that I’m fans of (one way connection - either they haven’t bothered to log in and accept friends, or they don’t wish to follow me).

I have gotten updates from exactly 7 people. I have gotten private messages and replies to my posts. There have been a few general updates that I noticed across both Pownce and Twitter. The vast majority of the updates I’ve received have been from two “internet people”, tech news blogger and podcaster Cali and Mahalo guy Jason.

Most of the updates are small text messages (basic tweets) often with links and some but not all are shortened with TinyURL. One person posted an MP3 file and I posted an image just to try it out.

When clicking on the picture of one of your friends on the left side of the screen, you are shown their public updates, and all the public updates they receive. The most common thing I saw was this:

Which was the picture I posted over a day ago. Since I’m not the most prolific microblogger out there, this tells me that most people on my friends list aren’t exactly knocking themselves out using Pownce. Most of them have much smaller friends list than I do suggesting they haven’t imported friends from Twitter or another service.

I know it’s only been a few days, but Beta has been around for a while and Pownce certainly has been talked about for a good deal of time. I expect action to pick up slowly, but am a bit surprised that it hasn’t taken off quicker than it has.

I think the two main problems at this point are that Twitter has established the early lead as far as the messaging component goes. Where Pownce stands out it the ability to add other media such as files, MP3s, pictures etcetera. I get the impression that most users really haven’t figured out a way to productively use the added capabilities of Pownce.

One of my Twitter friends posted a link to her latest blog post, which was pretty bare bones, but at the bottom contained this image she was using for promotional purposes (there was a link provided as well).

What I’m wondering is: Why not stick this image in a Pownce post? Rather than just giving people a link to a page with the image on it, why not give them the image right up front in Pownce. I’m a very visual person and so using pictures and graphics is a good way to grab my attention.

Curiosity will still probably suck me into following your link, but placing an image up front grabs my attention and makes me take a closer look.

I think this is where the strength of Pownce will come in, but the people behind Pownce would be wise to get the word out there before other competitors start catching up. If they were able to better demonstrate how Pownce’s unique features can be better used, they might generate more of a buzz.

For straight text, quick updates, and TinyURLs, I like Twitter. I don’t see Pownce replacing Twitter, since Twitter has more experience under its belt, a much higher user base and much more more traffic.

If you would like to increase Pownce usage, and get more use out of it, start thinking outside the box a little. I know it often takes a momentous effort to get friends and clients just to warm up to new things like Twitter, and it won’t be easy, but I think there could be potential for the mutli-media microblog.

If you’re really connected to the Internet these days, you’ve probably got a Twitter account, a Flickr account and maybe you’ve even started using Seesmic or Utterz as well. Why not start putting some of that content up little by little on Pownce? Record a short MP3 message and post it. Put the latest picture of your nephew doing something silly up, whatever strikes you.

If you are promoting something, trying to get more traffic to your website, trying to get friends to join you for a night out or whatever, why not throw some multimedia advertising out there? The poster displayed above is a good example of something you could stick in a Pownce post. If you have any graphic talents, instead of just providing a link, how about a link and a logo? With a little thinking outside the box, or a slightly different approach, Pownce could be a cheap and easy way to get attention or at least add some flair to your microblogging.

Cheers,

Jeff