Twitter Under Assault

Image via Wikipedia

A new microblogging website, Yahoo Meme, similar in style and functionality to Twitter, was soft-launched in Portuguese in May. They have now launched a Spanish version. But what is unusual is that the word “meme” was first introduced by controversial British ethologist and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene to discuss “elements of cultural ideas, symbols or practices that are transmitted from one mind to another through speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena…” That doesn’t sound a bit like Yahoo.

Just as in the 19th century, when Thomas Huxley was known as “Darwin’s bulldog” for his tenacious defence of Darwinism, Richard Dawkins has played a similar, modern-day role when talking about evolutionary principles and explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena.

Analogous with the above, you may have noticed that Yahoo’s Meme closely follows the etymology of the Greek word “mimema” for “something imitated” and that instead of a sweet little bird tweeting, it has a dog – admittedly not quite the image of Huxley the bulldog, but a dog nevertheless – barking “wow” in Spanish. A dog? Don’t you think it would have been more appropriate to have used a cat that could have ruffled Twitter’s feathers a little, like Yahoo Sucatash?

According to Wiki, examples of memes are tunes, ideas and catch-phrases. But now, microblogging? Yes, Yahoo has introduced its own version in Spanish and Portuguese offering similar features to Twitter. At first glance it seems like another clone where users can populate with text posts, music, videos, photos and links to MP3 files, and with a repost rather than retweet button, but is it really an exact clone?

According to readwriteweb.com, “After using Meme [see http://meme.yahoo.com] for a while, it doesn’t quite seem right to call it a Twitter clone. Instead, Yahoo Meme is really more of a back-to-basics microblogging service that feels a lot more like Posterous or Tumblr than Twitter.”

It must be said that releasing the beta in Spanish was a bit odd. However, according to The Summer Institute for Linguistics Ethnologue Survey (1999), the following are the top languages by population: Chinese, Spanish, then English, so to opt for Spanish would appear quite justified. But why was it cloaked in such secrecy? Do they think they are closing in on rival Twitter? Unlikely as yet, as Yahoo’s Meme does not have an API, so third-party developers are unable to write any web tools for it.

Perhaps my adherence to the Messrs Dawkins and Huxley analogy was too abstract as Yahoo’s description of its new “meme” insists: “Today, a ‘meme’ on the internet is popularly understood as a fever and became content that is played by everyone.”

Not quite what Richard Dawkins had in mind, as in explanations about his original “memes”, were that they “propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation. If a scientist heard, or read about, a good idea, he passed it on to his colleagues and students. He mentioned it in his articles and his lectures. If the idea caught on, it can be said to propagate itself, spreading from brain to brain.” Does this mean that Yahoo’s “content that is played by everyone” is the same thing as an imitation of Twitter? One wonders.

As things go, not everything is well at Twitter. Not only has Yahoo started to imitate its service but there has been yet another DDoS attack and they are said to be in litigation for patent infringement from TechRadium, a Texas-based technology company.

Not that this should be taken as a legal precedent, but it does raise some eyebrows as to how far users can legally tweet. According to TechRadium on the National Law Journal’s website: “Alerting the public about a fire, hurricane or traffic accident on Twitter is an unlawful tweet.”

So does that mean that the use of Twitter to post hurricane updates will affect Chevron and Shell or that the Los Angeles Fire Department is in trouble for posting alerts about fires and road closures?

George Borkowski, chairman of the intellectual property practice in Los Angeles, said Twitter “is likely to challenge the validity of the patents, claiming that the technology is too generic or too obvious to warrant a patent.” Borkowski also claimed that as the technology “was already out there, so there’s nothing truly novel about the patent.”

These three major assaults on Twitter must have its board a little nervous as, yet again, and for the third day running, the formatting of Twitter was all over the place on all browsers on my Mac. During my various research forays, however, I did stumble upon Yahoo_Meme on Twitter, which is a little cheeky to say the least. It only has one tweet pointing to the Portuguese beta.

However, add to that the already competing services such as Friendfeed, a real-time feed aggregator which consolidates posts from social media/networking websites and RSS/Atom feeds; One Riot, a real-time web search engine used for locating news, videos and blogs; Tumblr, a blogging platform that allows users to post text, images, video, etc, where users are able to “follow” other users; and SPNbabble, which supports the OpenID standard for a single sign-on between many different websites using a common password for each.

Besides the problems with Twitter internally, it seems by coincidence that it is being “hunted by the pack” from all these possible angles. But is it the legal connotations that have confused us in the TechRadium case about what our understanding is regarding the law and what is permissible to microblog? That question seems to be in the lap of the courts (certainly not the gods if Richard Dawkins has anything to do with it) – and alongside it, a process that could potentially take years to settle.

By John Sylvester in Featured

Twitter Hack Sparking Security and Ethical Concerns

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

If you haven’t yet heard, the popular microblogging service Twitter was hacked. The hacker obtained access to the password of Twitter Co-founder Evan Williams’ email account, his wife’s email account, as well as the email accounts of other Twitter employees. From there, the hacker, who calls himself, “Hacker Croll,” also accessed other accounts including PayPal and Amazon. As a result, the hacker stole confidential documents from Twitter, which include business ideas, financial projections, executive notes, and more. To make matters even worse, “Hacker Croll” then sent this information to TechCrunch, Mashable, and a French technology blog called Korben. Mashable said it will not publish any of the documents, but despite the loud opposition from the online community, both TechCrunch and Korben have. Yesterday, TechCrunch published a series of executive meeting notes and promises to publish even more of the documents. This incident has raised both security and ethical alarms. Are you now questioning if your private and corporate information is safe and secure? Should TechCrunch and Korben have published these documents? Do physical and digital ethics differ? How will this event impact Twitter going forward?

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Gabor Keller - DandyID

Image via Wikipedia

DandyID provides a set of tools that help you to collect, manage, and own your online identity.

Just like what defines you in the offline world is a collection of the things you do, the people you interact with, and the places you go, your online self is a collection of the things you do and the people you meet across the web. Unfortunately because the web is so big, that identity is usually scattered around a bunch of different sites that don't always communicate with one another. DandyID helps you bring together all the pieces that make up the real you, and share the bits you want to share.

DandyID launched publicly in April of 2008 by co-founders Sara Czyzewicz, Arron Kallenberg and Anthony Dimitre (read more about our team here).

This is Me on Dandy: Gabor Keller - DandyID

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What is EasyTweets?

EasyTweets is a web-based marketing tool that lets you take complete control of Twitter to promote your business and monitor your brands.

How can You sign up?

Sign up now.

How Can Facebook Crack its Advertising Problem?

Image by israelavila via Flickr
Why can’t Facebook monetize those users? New York Times writer Randall Stross recently wrote a piece about Proctor & Gamble’s foray into social networking advertising. The thrust of the story can be found in a quote from Seth Goldstein of SocialMedia Networks:

“Advertisers distract users; users ignore advertisers; advertisers distract better; users ignore better.”

Few people take the number of fans a company has on Facebook to be a serious indicator of social media advertising success. And as 24/7 Wall Street notes, advertising on social networks is simply not as relevant as search engine advertisements. Couple this with user blindness and you understand why click through rates are, well, abysmal.
So what are Facebook and the other social networks to do? How do you monetize those 130 million pairs of eyeballs in a consistent and long-term way?

Why consumers click

First, we have to understand that there are two major reasons consumers click on online ads:
Either consumers knows it is an ad and see it’s what they want, so they click - OR -
consumers don’t know it’s an ad and see it’s relevant, so they click.
The first scenario is targeted and relevant advertising. The second scenario is what I call “Internet Ignorant.” Essentially people don’t realize that when they search for Ford Ranger, the top link in the cake yellow box is an ad. Those of us who are technologically adept deal with this every day and are blind to the ads, but millions of people who use the Internet less frequently click on these types of ads, especially on well designed websites where content surrounds the ads.
Of course, this isn’t exactly why we want people to click on online ads. You’ll get conversions, but not as many as from the first scenario. And the “Internet Ignorant” scenario doesn’t work for Facebook anyway - its user base is Internet savvy, blind to ads, and Facebook isn’t about to throw some floating ads in the middle of our profiles.

What can we learn from Harry Potter?

So how does Facebook get people interested in its advertising? We have to look towards two of the most successful types of advertising around:

• Search Advertising
• Movie Trailers

As discussed earlier, search advertising is lucrative because it’s targeted and relevant to exactly what a person is looking for at the exact right time. So precision targeting is part of the equation.
But what about movie trailers? Why are they part of this puzzle? It’s simple: no other type of advertising is consistently sought after and watched over and over again like a movie trailer. Half the fun of a movie is the trailers themselves. Come on - how many times did you watch the trailer for The Dark Knight? And are you seriously not going to watch the next trailer for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince? Movie trailers are extraordinarily interesting, visually appealing, and are often advertising a product that has already sold us, especially as it approaches the launch date.

Translating this into something that works

So am I suggesting that Facebook throw up video ads for The Day the Earth Stood Still? No, though they might actually get a lot of views with some sort of relevant video ad. No, here’s what I’m saying:

1) Relevancy is not enough in advertising. It’s about relevancy and timing. You must catch a person at the moment he or she most desires a product. Lucky for Facebook, they have status updates, which is a close approximation to what people are thinking about at a given moment. Advertising on social networks should focus on time-based actions and then factor in relevant interests (i.e. favorite music), based on when the consumer last added it to his or her profile. This is part of why I believe Twitter could be lucrative - it is nothing but time-based updates. Plus SMS advertising does pretty well, if Twitter so chooses to include it.
2) Facebook must find ways to convince users to seek advertising. Damn, I must be nuts, especially with the advertising blindness of the Facebook generation, but the best advertisements are simple in message, easy to remember, and desired by consumers. Almost all movie trailers and some select TV ads continue to rack up YouTube views. This only helps to enforce branding and slowly change the mindset of the consumer.

These lessons are not just for Facebook or social networks, but for all websites struggling to monetize their users (i.e. YouTube). It’s time to dramatically rethink how we serve and interact with our online advertising. Facebook and other social media websites need to be proactive in shaping the campaigns of their advertisers. Banner ads aren’t engaging or relevant. Text ads are only sometimes relevant and rarely engaging, so how do you target them better? Video ads can be both, but how do you serve them unobtrusively but still get enough views to be profitable? And how do you get enough inventory?
Relevancy, timing, and desire must all be present if social media advertising is to ever succeed. As I’m sure Goldstein already knows, you can’t distract users online and expect to make revenue. You have to make them want it.
Now while I rack my brain some more on this puzzle, I hope you’ll post some of your theories in the comments.
December 15, 2008 - 4:07 pm PDT - by Ben Parr

Twitter + Blogs = TwitBlogs!

You love Twitter, but you find its short form messages a little restricting? Or perhaps you want to add images and videos to your Tweets? TwitBlogs, which just went live in alpha, could solve all your problems.
What you’ll notice about Twitblogs versus other simple blog platforms like Tumblr and Posterous: it looks exactly like Twitter, simply without the 140 character limitation. There’s also support for image tags, embed tags (for videos) and the option to simply enter the URL of an image or audio file from anywhere on the web and have that included in your post. Obviously your headlines are syndicated to your Twitter feed, and you can Tweet from a tab on the posting screen, too.
TwitBlogs is simple, efficient, and solves a real problem: we like it. The question is: would you choose the familiarity of a Twitter-like interface over Tumblr, which provides more advanced features and theming, among other goodies?
Mashable’s Twitter account is at twitter.com/mashable

 December 13, 2008 - 4:11 pm PDT - by Pete Cashmore

Thanks For WordPress 2.7

Image by via CrunchBase

November 27, 2008 · Written by Kris Themstrup
Happy Thanksgiving from iePlexus! In the spirit of giving thanks, and as a bit of an early Christmas present, I thought I’d give a little sneak peek into something that’s been a long time coming. Our favorite blog development platform, WordPress, is on the verge of releasing the most recent upgrade, WordPress 2.7. This version includes some serious improvements to the open-source application that has quickly dominated the blog development community and continues to grow its market share. More than ever, WordPress has transformed from a simple publishing platform into a dynamic, powerful content management system.
Some highlights of WordPress 2.7:

• Complete user customization of the dashboard by removing, adding, or positioning elements of the interface to your liking.
• A comprehensive design overhaul built from user feedback and usability studies.
• Added functionality for streamlined management and creation, including the ability to post, manage comments, and receive updates right from the dashboard.

Currently, WordPress is in official release of version 2.6.5, and the 3rd beta release of 2.7 is availble for testing. Expect 2.7 to officially rock your world in the next few weeks. Stay tuned for more info as it’s available. In the meantime, start nibbling on the 2.7 turkey with this teaser video:

Flickr

Image via WikipediaThis is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Thinking of Launching a Negative Keyword Campaign?

Before launching a negative keyword campaign, let’s make sure everyone understands what it is. First of all, here’s a little background information on keywords. Keywords are words that search engines use to search for relevant Web pages.
Negative keywords are used in keyword advertising to hinder ads from being shown when a search term contains the negative keywords.
As Google clarifies, negative keywords aren’t for everyone. People are accustomed to using keywords to drive traffic to their site, but as everyone knows, not all traffic is good traffic. This is where negative keywords come into the game.
If you are a retail company and want specific, targeted traffic, a negative keyword ad campaign is something you might want to consider. For instance, if you’re a company that only sells women’s clothing, you could put “men’s clothing” as a negative keyword.
Each of the search engines are different when it comes to their allotment of negative keywords. Google allows a maximum of 10,000 terms or phrases. Yahoo! allows 250 maximum terms or phrases. The total character count for all negative keywords for Microsoft cannot surpass 1,022 and no single keyword can go beyond 100 characters.
Being very specific and targeted is key to a successful negative keyword ad campaign. There are several tools available to help you in this effort. Google offers several tools such as Google Keyword Tool, Google Suggest, and Google Product Search. WordTracker is another tool that helps you to filter that unwanted traffic. Ken Jurina (as seen in the above WPN video from PubCon 2008) and the Epiar crew recently announced a new negative keyword service that uses their proprietary keyword research application to generate a prioritized negative keyword list.