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Posts Tagged ‘tweetdeck’

There remains an ongoing desktop Twitter application war. Traditionally Tweetdeck and Seesmic have been at loggerheads for the lion share, although Tweetdeck has remained in the lead so far. Increasingly it appears that Seesmic is heading towards trying to be a much more mainstream application, for anyone on any platform, from celebs to your non-tech friends. But for power Twitter users, Tweetdeck seems to be go-to app so far. Of course, all that can change, but that seems to be the landscape at the moment.

Just now Tweetdeck has released the latest version of its desktop Air application, this one is v0.33. It’s available right now as a manual download here. Existing Tweedeck users will get an auto upgrade in the next few days.

For uber-Tweetdeck users (like social media experts, as we know) Tweetdeck can get pretty long as they plug in every search term they can think of to avert that client disaster (Eurostar, we’re looking at you). So there are a bunch of new features which extend the app quite a bit and greatly enhance its speed of access to the Twitter firehouse.

The Realtime Web is a hard thing to measure because it doesn’t exist only on traditional Web pages. It also exists in stream readers and desktop clients and mobile phones. And it is not just Twitter and Facebook. It is also bit.ly and TweetDeck and Seesmic and Tweeite and realtime search on Google and Bing, and the list goes on and on. So while we can look at comScore and see that Twitter.com in the U.S. was still flat in December, 2009 with 20 million unique visitors (up slightly from 19.4 million in November), that doesn’t account for the overall Twitter ecosystem or the larger Realtime Web beyond it.

All we have is Twitter CEO Evan Williams’ word that usage hit an all-time high a week ago. There is no comprehensive data, only proxies like comScore. But in a post yesterday, betaworks (and bit.ly) CEO John Borthwick added some more data points to help paint a picture of the Realtime Web and how fast it is growing. Borthwick is one of the leading investors in the Realtime Web and he has access to a lot of data, including from bit.ly (the leading link shortener), TweetDeck (the largest Twitter client), and Twitterfeed (the main way to publish RSS feeds to Twitter).  The data Borthwick presents is also directional and a proxy, but it is illuminating nonetheless.

Let’s start with the Twitter data.  He notes that about 50 percent of Twitter API calls are outside Twitter.com.  This number represnets data going back and forth, not people, and includes data from bots and machine clicks.  In order to get a better estimate of the size of the overall reach of Twitter, Borthwick took Google Trends data for Twitter and “key clients” and “scaled that chart” over what appears to be comScore data for Twitter.com.  The result is the chart above (click for a larger view), which shows the Twitter ecosystem reaching about 60 million people, with 20 million coming from Twitter.com and 40 million coming from elsewhere. By this analysis, the ecosystem is twice as large as Twitter.com itself.  And it is growing, as opposed to the flat trend Twitter.com by itself is showing in the U.S.  Again, as Borthwick points out, this data is nothing more than a proxy.

However, he does offer some data which is more precise.  For example, the rate at which bit.ly links are being clicked on is growing at a steep ramp, with more than 500 million clicks (or bit.ly “decodes”) per week. He writes that “last week was the largest week ever for clicks on bit.ly links. 564m were clicked on in total. On the Jan 6th there were a record of 98m decodes.” On January 8, 2009, TweetDeck surpassed 4 million updates in a single day. And Twitterfeed now supports more than 800,000 feeds from more than 400,000 publishers (see chart above).

Finally, he pulls together a lot of different data points into a single chart to show the relative growth of the Realtime Web compared to the established Web as represented by Google and Amazon (the dotted lines in the chart below).  In addition to the Twitter ecosystem (red dotted line), he also plotted Facebook (blue) and Meebo (green), both of which are growing even faster.  Then he overlaid the bit.ly data on top of it all, which is based on a different scale.  It’s a messy chart, but the one takeaway is that the Realtime Web is represented by the various colored lines and is growing at a healthy clip.

Back in November of last year, President Obama admitted that he had never actually used Twitter despite having one of the most popular accounts. The @barackobama account has over 2 million followers and has tweeted things such as “Humbled” after it was announced that he had won the Nobel Peace Prize, but that was actually just one of his staffers tweeting from the account, apparently. To plenty of people that wasn’t a huge surprise, but it was still a bit disappointing to destroy at least the illusion that it was him sending these messages. Today, President Obama finally tweeted.

His first tweet wasn’t from the @barackobama account, but rather it was from the @redcross account. Even stranger was the actual tweet: “President Obama and the First Lady are here visiting our disaster operation center right now.” Yes, he tweeted in third person. The next tweet on the Red Cross account confirmed that it was the President who sent that tweet: “President Obama pushed the button on the last tweet. It was his first ever tweet!”

Obviously, this tweet was a way of showing his support for what the Red Cross is doing to help people in Haiti following the devastating earthquakes there last week. Though it might have been better for him to tweet from his account with over 2 million followers about the relief rather than the Red Cross’ which has a “mere” 50,000 followers.

Mobile donations to the Red Cross alone have already surpassed $10 million, with overall mobile donations now past $20 million.

This guest post was written by Erik Fikkert, Lead Reviewer, AppVee. Also check out AppVee’s previous picks of the best apps in the App store

The iPhone and iPod touch have become immediately recognizable names around the world. Apple recently announced that the iPhone is the most popular mobile phone in the US. In addition, the iPod touch is generally regarded as the media player of choice, offering much more than just music. Perhaps the key to their success is the ever-growing app store which currently boasts over 100,000 apps. For those of you not crazy about math, that’s a huge number—you would have to purchase and download over 11 apps an hour, every single day for a year to test them all. While it is safe to say the majority of apps available are less than appealing, there are a few gems that stand out from the rest. We took a look and compiled a list of the best apps 2009 had to offer.

2009 brought some of the best apps to the iPhone and iPod touch to date. Gaming has now advanced to a point that rivals the Sony PSP or Nintendo DS. As the mobile market grows and hardware continues to improve, we are going to see some amazing things come our way. If 2008 was about experimentation, 2009 was about innovation. In 2010, developers will push this innovation to enhance our mobile experience—whether through augmented reality, cloud-based computing, or something completely new.

Below you will find our top 10 overall apps, our top 15 games, and top 5 innovations. Tell us which apps are on your top 10 list in comments.

TOP 10 APPS

Facebook 3.0
Access your friends, notes, pictures, and events using almost every feature the actual site offers. This app, based on the enormous social networking site, has seen many changes and just keeps getting better with time.
LINK: AppVee’s Facebook 3.0 Review

Fandango
View trailers, see showtimes, purchase tickets and read reviews using this free movie app. This is a must have for any moviegoer, giving you all you need to know about movies in your area at your fingertips.
LINK: AppVee’s Fandango Review

Beejive 3.0
One of the first applications to take advantage of push notifications, this multi-client instant messaging app is in a class of it’s own. Using its push features, iPhone and iPod touch users can easily hold IM conversations with their friends anywhere.
LINK: AppVee’s Beejive 3.0 Review

LogMeIn
Brings your desktop to your iPhone or iPod touch. Link up with your computer and access your computer screen from afar. The interface is easy and feature-filled, delivering the best VNC experience to your device.
LINK: AppVee’s LogMeIn Review

Mobile Navigator
Filling the void left by the default maps application, this app offers turn-by-turn directions from your device just like any dedicated GPS would. It provides a landscape GPS with plenty of features and a user interface that makes sense.
LINK: AppVee’s Mobile Navigator Review

Dropbox
Sync up with your Dropbox account and have access to all of your files right from your device. You can download files, upload photos, and maintain control of your folders.
LINK: AppVee’s Dropbox Review

Textfree Unlimited
No one likes paying to text. This app offers free texting via push notifications. The interface is similar to the default SMS app and is a great alternative to paying your phone company.
LINK: AppVee’s Textfree Unlimited Review

Google Mobile App
This app has revolutionized search on the iPhone with its voice search and in-app browsing. Speak a search query and the app will accurately recognize it and do a Google search. Not a Google fan? Check out the Bing app.
LINK: AppVee’s Google Mobile App Review

TweetDeck
All the wonderful features that can be found in the TweetDeck desktop app are packed into this iPhone version. With a sleek interface and great features, this app is one of the best of the many Twitter apps out there.
LINK: AppVee’s TweetDeck Review

Craigsphone
Offers the entire Craigslist experience in one easy package. Buy, sell, and save more by searching through posts and bookmarking ones for later use.
LINK: AppVee’s Craigsphone Review

Ustream
One of the first apps to bring live television to the iPhone, Ustream gives you the ability to see many live streams of all types of content on your mobile device.
LINK: AppVee’s Ustream Review

TOP 15 GAMES

Flight Control
The line drawing game that started it all, this app is very simple but insanely addicting. Each level gets harder as you play and keeps you coming back for more.
LINK: AppVee’s Flight Control Review

Peggle
Combining awesome graphics, addictive gameplay and a little bit of randomness, Peggle is an exciting mix. This game brings a casual experience to the iPhone that has yet to be rivaled.
LINK: AppVee’s Peggle Review

Rolando 2
The sequel to the hit game, this app takes the Rolando tilt formula and cranks it up. This game is an improvement in almost every way to the original and really shows what iPhone-specific gaming can provide.
LINK: AppVee’s Rolando 2 Review

Pocket God
The king of all time-wasting games, this app puts you in charge of some prehistoric pygmies who are completely at your mercy. Regular updates and features make it a pleasure to continue feeding them to the fishes.
LINK: AppVee’s Pocket God Review

Enigmo 2
Taking the puzzle genre to new heights, this app gives players everything they loved in the first game and puts it all in three dimensions. And you thought the first one was hard…
LINK: AppVee’s Enigmo 2 Review

N.O.V.A.
One of the best first person shooters that can be found in the app store, N.O.V.A. puts the Halo formula into your pocket with a complete single-player and four-player multiplayer experience.
LINK: AppVee’s N.O.V.A. Review

Labyrinth 2
Building on the app that started it all, this version gives you more than just holes to worry about as you will have to solve puzzles and dodge all sorts of objects. The game also offers the option to create your own boards and share them with the world.
LINK: AppVee’s Labyrinth 2 Review

Skeeball
Everyone loves skeeball. Now it has been brought to the iPhone in a fun way. One of the most recognizable arcade games, this app is simple and addictive.
LINK: AppVee’s Skeeball Review

Zenonia
As a full-fledged action RPG, this app brings the complete role-playing experience to the iPhone. Zenonia features attractive graphics and rewarding gameplay.
LINK: AppVee’s Zenonia Review

Real Racing
Arguably one of the best racing games for the iPhone, this app has great graphics, tight controls and immersive sound, making it one of the coolest racing experiences ever on a handheld.
LINK: AppVee’s Real Racing Review

Sims 3
Start a family and watch them interact in this full-featured Sims experience tailored specifically for the iPhone.
LINK: AppVee’s Sims 3 Review

Rock Band
EA’s answer to the popular Guitar Hero franchise, this app employs some big names in the music industry and lets you tap your way to fame.
LINK: AppVee’s Rock Band Review

Super Monkey Ball 2
This exciting balance game gets a small overhaul and some great new maps making it the king of its kind.
LINK: AppVee’s Super Monkey Ball 2 Review

Doodle Jump
Another highly addictive game that sells for cheap but never grows old. The game is casual and simple, a perfect addition to any iPhone.
LINK: AppVee’s Doodle Jump Review

Words With Friends
A Scrabble clone with a great interface, this app allows you to play multiple games against players all over the world by alerting you via push.
LINK: AppVee’s Words With Friends Review

TOP 5 INNOVATIONS

Red Laser 2.2
A step forward in innovation, this app scans barcodes using the iPhone camera and then returns pricing from various online sites. While still in its infancy, this app could revolutionize the way we shop.
LINK: AppVee’s Red Laser 2.2 Review

Hitchcock
Storyboarding in your pocket. Hitchcock allows aspiring cinematographers to create movie layouts while on the go.
LINK: AppVee’s Hitchcock Review

I Am T-Pain
Impress your friends by altering your voice with autotune. This app was an instant hit and gives you the ability to be a star the next time you are ‘on a boat.’
LINK: AppVee’s I Am T-Pain Review

Mailtones
Ringtones for email. Mailtones allows you to identify who just emailed you by their individual sound tone. Offers a new level of customization for your inbox.
LINK: AppVee’s Mailtones Review

Leaf Trombone
Leaf Trombone is a fun app that lets you play a slide instrument on your iPhone. Create your own songs and share them with the world.
LINK: AppVee’s Leaf Trombone Review

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

The latest version of TweetDeck, the popular Twitter client, is List-crazy: you can add lists on the fly, edit them, create new lists based on existing lists, and it even suggests people you may want to add to a list. Now TweetDeck is launching a List directory and putting it front and center on its homepage. Previously, the homepage was not much more than a place to download the Tweetdeck client, but with the new Lists directory TweetDeck wants to make its Website more of a destination site in its own right where people go to discover new people and lists to follow on Twitter.

The TweetDeck List directory is broken up into more than 140 categories, including technology, law, architecture, healthcare, media, startups, and video games. You can browse through the different categories, or get recommendations. Since TweetDeck already creates a tag cloud based on the most common subjects Tweeted about in any given list, it matches the categories to the tag clouds. It also looks at your profile information to try to target the recommendations a little bit better. Most other list directories simply rank lists by number of followers, which TweetDeck also takes into account but does not give it as much weight. Each list can also be voted up and down within a category or commented on.

The List directory is replacing TweetDeck’s old directory of suggested users). But you can still drill down to individual users to see their follow/follower count, tweets per day, tag cloud of what they Tweet about, all the Lists they have created and all the Lists they are on. The automatically-generated tags feed into the list search as well, showing you what lists match your query even if that keyword is not on the list. (See screenshots below).

There are other Twitter List directories out there which TweetDeck wil be competing with, such as Listorious, which now has more than 10,000 curated lists. TweetDeck however gets a feed of all the Lists on Twitter and can surface those through search or recommendations. Combining Lists with search provides a powerful way to do people search as well. For instance, Listorious recently turned on people search so that when you search for “VC” or “entrepreneur” you get people who are in lists with those (human-generated) tags. TweetDeck’s search now does the same thing, surfacing Lists with “VC” or “entrepreneur” in the title, descriptions, and tags (both those generated by humans and automatically based on the dominant subjects of the Tweets). As people rate the lists and add comments, those will factor into search results and recommendations as well.

TweetDeck has one more advantage: the millions of people who use TweetDeck and the one million unique visitors per month who visit the homepage. A button that will launch the new List directory will be included in an update to the TweetDeck client going out on Monday (v0.33), which also fixes some bugs from the last update and takes up less memory (always an issue with AIR apps)

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

A few days ago, Seesmic CEO Loic Le Meur (@Loic) sent out a retweet with a link to a screenshot of his CTO’s Seesmic Web client showing 1,200 Tweets across nearly 20 columns. The joke was that his CTO was trying to achieve a “world record” for how many Tweets could be loaded up into a Twitter client at one time. (It’s not a world record.  Competitor TweetDeck can display an unlimited number of Tweets and columns as well). If you click on the screenshot and pan across the enlarged version of it, there you’ll find a dialog box with Loic’s old avatar doing a hang-10 while kite surfing. The juxtaposition is comical, if a little sad—poor @Loic lost in the overflowing stream of Tweets his company is trying to tame.

The image reminded me of another screenshot (see below, click to enlarge) that I once took of an earlier Twitter client called Twhirl, which Seesmic bought before developing its current product. About a year and a half ago, I complained that Twhirl took over my desktop when I first installed it with a constant stream of pop-up messages. I wrote in that post:

This highlights a bigger problem with the Web today. There is too much to pay attention to and not enough ways to reduce the noise.

It’s 18 months later and the problem hasn’t been solved.  The screenshot I took back then still resonates because the noise is worse than ever. Indeed, it is being magnified every day as more people pile onto Twitter and Facebook and new apps yet to crest like Google Wave. The data stream is growing stronger, but so too is the danger of drowning in all that information.

This is not to say that there hasn’t been considerable progress in stream readers since that time. Containing 1,200 Tweets within neatly defined columns is definitely better than 1,200 separate dialog boxes taking over my screen, and these apps today are much more able to handle massive amount of messages. But the fact that Seesmic or TweetDeck or any of these apps can display 1,200 Tweets at once is not a feature, it’s a bug.  Again, what I said 18 months ago is just as true today:

I need less data, not more data. I need to know what is important, and I don’t have time to sift through thousands of Tweets and Friendfeed messages and blog posts and emails and IMs a day to find the five things that I really need to know.

One the main methods emerging to cut down noise in your personal stream is to set up different groups of people or keywords (via search) to follow.  Twitter is going to tackle this problem with its new “lists” feature. Seesmic and TweetDeck already address this problem by creating a new column for every group or category you want to follow.

But as the image above makes clear, that strategy breaks down fairly quickly.  I have ten columns in my TweetDeck, for instance—one for my personal Twitter account, one for the TechCrunch account, one for my Facebook stream, one for mentions of “techcrunch”, another for mentions of my name (so I can respond to people trying to talk to me whom I don’t follow), another two columns for direct messages, and so on.  I rarely look at more than two columns.  It’s just not an efficient way keep track of all my different interests in the stream.

And if you think Twitter is noisy, wait until you see Google Wave, which doesn’t hide anything at all.  Imagine that Twhirl image below with a million dialog boxes on your screen, except you see as other people type in their messages and add new files and images to the conversation, all at once as it is happening.  It’s enough to make your brain explode.

What these services should strive to do instead is hide the noise, keep it simple.  Letting me sort through the stream by creating different groups and lists and columns of things and people I want to pay attention to is great, but it hardly solves the problem.  Finding that one great Tweet from @Loic or anyone else I follow shouldn’t be a game of Where’s Waldo?

Really, all I need is two columns: the most recent Tweets from everyone I follow (the standard) and the the most interesting tweets I need to pay attention to.  Recent and Interesting.  This second column is the tricky one.  It needs to be automatically generated and personalized to my interests at that moment.

It would definitely include the most retweeted messages from people I follow over the past 24 to 48 hours because I miss these things during those hours when I am not staring at the stream.  (And I stare at my stream more than most people).  It would also prioritize tweets from people I follow based on who I pay attention to the most, based on my past history of retweeting, replying to people, or simply lingering over a Tweet while I’m reading.  Look at my behavior, and then create a favorites list of sorts out of that.

And if those two columns aren’t enough, then there’s always search.  Except search is broken on Twitter.  Unless you know the exact word you are looking for, Tweets with related terms won’t show up.  And there is no way to sort searches by relevance, it is just sorted by chronology.  Maybe Twitter can use some of its $100 million in new funding to fix that, and solve the noise problem while it’s at it.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

I was on a panel a few weeks ago with Rob Enderle and he was asked by an international journalist what he expected in terms of financial news in the next few months. He made a very interesting point that, being an Apple fanboy, I ignored at the time. He said that Windows 7 would drive a whole new wave of hardware buying and inflate (in a good way) IT spending.

I filed this tidbit away next to my thoughts of maybe one day buying a Zune, but then I cracked open the HP Envy 13 and thought back on my own recent experience with Windows 7— and what he’s saying makes sense.

A few calls later and I found that a number of IT guys I know are genuinely excited about installing Windows 7 in their shops, guys for whom Vista didn’t even register. We’re about see an IT renaissance, and it will be driven by Microsoft.

Remember: Apple may change the way we think, but Microsoft changes the way we spend. Windows 7 is a solid operating system with lots of great IT-oriented features, including an XP emulation mode, an imperative for skittish IT guys. It also runs fairly well on smaller notebooks (although Envy wasn’t technically a netbook, at least by HP’s emphatic definition, it’s still thin and light) and it has most of Vista’s eye-candy with none of the distrust most users had when they saw Vista’s eye-candy when it first came out.

Harbinger of things to come.

There are three forces at work here. First, there is the IT shop. They haven’t upgraded their machines since XP. XP was, at best, 2001 technology and by 2006 over 400 million desktops running the OS. Assuming that even half of those were paid XP seats at major corporations, and you understand that this monster would not just roll over and die. It costs money to upgrade — money companies did not have in late 2007 through all of 2008. Now, with a bit of a loosening in the credit markets, IT departments are going to be upgrading en masse, causing a surge in PC sales and sales of attendant products like drives, memory, and monitors.

Second, consumers are just about done with netbooks. This is an unpopular opinion, I know, but as evidenced by the Envy, the underpowered netbook will be replaced by a more powerful, slightly more expensive mid-tier model that will appeal to everyone, businesses included. Instead of a 15-inch Dell monster, road warriors will carry lighter Windows 7 machines with low-voltage but highly optimized components. Netbook advocates cite cloud storage and a lightweight OS, but when Internet Explorer takes forty seconds to load GMail because you’re running a single core Atom, you’re going to have upset customers. It’s getting harder and harder to go from a peppy computer to a slow one simply because the difference in speed is so staggering. The netbook will remain but it won’t be anybody’s every day computer.

Finally, it’s time for an gamer upgrade. The holidays are upon us, there are no new consoles to buy, and a new cohort of PC gamers is appearing: kids who grew up on powerful consoles like the XBox 360 and the PS2/PS3 family, kids who started gaming perhaps at age 10 and are now 16 or so, who are looking for a bit more power. Windows 7 will give them that slight perceived boost and, since it will come with new machines, it will increase the install base by accretion.

As much as we slobber all over Apple, Microsoft makes the world go around. Google or no Google, the desktop belongs to Redmond and Windows 7 is one of the building blocks of a strong future economy. Here’s hoping they can maintain their Office hegemony but even if they don’t, there’s always Google Wave.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

I’m a fan of USB mini-monitors.

See the rest here: 
DoubleSight outs three new USB mini-monitors

Seesmic, the startup behind the Twitter and Facebook desktop and web clients, is launching a new version of Seesmic Desktop that adds Facebook fan pages, yFrog integration, a “reply to all” button for messages and a favorites timeline. Developed by French entrepreneur Loic Le Meur, Seesmic recently launched its browser-based Twitter client at TechCrunch’s Real-Time Stream CrunchUp in July. You can download the new version of Seesmic Desktop here.

Seesmic Desktop, which launched in April and has reached 2.5 million downloads, is an Adobe Air-powered client that has pulls in status updates from Facebook and Tweets from Twitter in a real-time feed. Today, Seesmic Desktop is furthering its integration with Facebook by allowing users to access and manage Facebook Pages. Users can view and post to activity feeds from any Facebook page they are fans of and can also manage their own fan pages. Each Facebook Page will show up as a column, where you can post messages, and respond to comments and express likes, just as you would in a Facebook feed. If you’re an administrator of fan pages, you can post messages as the administrator.

I think the compelling part of this feature is Seesmic’s play in the enterprise space. It’s no secret that businesses are actively suing both Twitter and Facebook as marketing tools and there have been a plethora of enterprise-friendly clients that help companies and brands manage social networking initiatives. Seesmic’s existing multi-Twitter user functionality and now the Facebook Fan Pages integration is definitely establishing the desktop client as a viable business application (as well as a useful consumer app).

Seesmic is launching a reply-all feature that lets users reply to all of the usernames listed in a message. This is useful when re-tweeting a message because the Reply-all function will simply Retweet the exact text of a message. Additionally, you can now add a “favorites” column to your interface that lets you mark and aggregate your favorite Tweets and messages.

Le Meur also says that TwitPic-rival Yfrog has been growing fast and when Seesmic was looking to partner with a Twitter picture posting service, Yfrog was the most attractive default picture posting service. Yfrog will now be implemented on all Seesmic products, including the browser version.

Speaking of Seesmic Products, I spoke to Le Meur about his much hyped iPhone app, which is scheduled to launch in October. Le Meur was tight lipped about details on the iPhone app’s features, but he did say that the experience on the desktop, browser and mobile versions of Seesmic will be the same. That means that the app will probably be integrated with both Facebook and Twitter. He did mention that the browser version of Seesmic will be integrated with Facebook within the next month as developers are currently tweaking the application’s functionality on different browsers. I’m a big fan of Seesmic’s web-based client, particularly because of its Gmail-like interface and the avoidance of using a desktop app built off of Adobe Air, which is buggy.

Seesmic faces competition from PeopleBrowser and rival Tweetdeck, which recently added MySpace functionality and a number of other features.

Disclosure: TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington is an investor in Seesmic. I am not.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

So, hotshot, you think just because you follow 300+ people on Twitter, thanks to Tweetdeck, that you’re some sort of super-duper Information Age sage?

Here is the original: 
Study: Multitaskers actually worse at processing information than non-multitaskers