The Good NET Guide

Posts Tagged ‘twittersphere’

Bill Gates has released his second annual letter from the Bill And Melinda Gates Foundation, and he has highlighted a tech startup that he finds particularly compelling, Academic Earth. We’ve written about the online video education site, which is sort of like a Hulu For Education.The startup provides a user-friendly platform for educational video that offers courses and lectures from Yale, MIT, Harvard, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Princeton and others.

Gates believes that online learning sites like Academic Earth will revolutionize education. Gates writes that sites that can cater to individual students online, offering a personalized learning experience, are innovative and will take interactivity to a new level. Academic Earth has received considerable amount of acclaim since its launch last year, also being named one of Time Magazine’s best websites of 2009.

Gates also highlights the need for organizing online educational content in a more meaningful way. Online learning content needs to be easily accessible on the web, says Gates. But while many software companies are producing innovative products for children, there is still a cost barrier. Gates isn’t sure whether non-profits can join together with these companies to provide these sort of innovations to schools whose budgets don;t allow for the software.

According to the report, The Gates Foundation is investing in these online courses that are able to provide interactive applications for children, aiming to connect software partners with teachers and schools. The foundation is also investing in ensuring that all libraries have computers with internet access. So far, 49,000 computers have been installed.

Gates recently made waves in the Twittersphere after launching a new Twitter account (Gates Tweeted out the letter this morning). He also re-joined Facebook and launched a new blog called Gates Notes.

TwitJobSearch, a Twitter-based job search engine, has teamed up with TweetDeck to offer a desktop client dubbed JobDeck, as reported by Clickz earlier this morning.

The application indexes tweets related to recruitment from across the Twittersphere, in real-time, based on TwitJobSearch’s algorithm (our earlier coverage).

Basically, it’s just a custom branded TweetDeck client that comes with two additional default columns: ‘Job Search Experts’ and ‘TwitJobSearch’, although it can also prove helpful to add a LinkedIn column carrying the latest updates from the professional social network (and perhaps even your Facebook news feed).

Recruiters can follow a few simple steps to ensure their tweets are indexed by the TwitJobSearch service, helping them connect with potential candidates through social media more effectively, and for free. The TwitJobSearch site itself offers advertisers the ability to purchase premium, or “Tweetured” job listings, sold on a CPC basis. Current advertisers include brands such as Adidas, KFC, and Lloyds Banking Group, according to Clickz.

The JobDeck app itself will not feature any premium ad opportunities at this point.

Marketing software startup HubSpot has put together its third ‘State of the Twittersphere’ report, which is based on an analysis of more than 5 million Twitter accounts and 6 million tweets, collected by the company’s free Twitter Grader tool.

The main take-away from the report (PDF): peaking at around 13% in March 2009, growth in new Twitter users has recently slowed down significantly, dropping to a mere 3.5% in October 2009. That’s still growth, but a mind-blowing growth rate it is no longer.

And as we’ve reported before, visits to Twitter.com have declined in number too, dropping 8% in October 2009. Also, Erick yesterday posted a must-read analysis of how the realtime web (and Twitter specifically) can be measured, if you’re interested.

We should also note Twitter CEO Evan Williams recently tweeted that they had their single biggest usage day on Jan 12, and that they were expecting to break that record again the day after. That is well possible, and consistent with HubSpot’s findings:

In the seven months since HubSpot last examined the ‘twittersphere’, the average Twitter user has become less of a newbie, claims the company in the report. The average user is not only following more people, he or she also gets followed by more people and posts more updates.

To sum up:

- Today the average Twitter account has 300 followers; in July 2009, it had 70
- The average account now follows 173 accounts; in July 2009 it was only following 47
- The average account today has posted 420 updates; in July 2009 that number was 119

Also worth noting: HubSpot says the average Twitter account became better implemented during the period from July 2009 to January 2010, as more users have taken the time to complete their profiles, adding bios, locations and web addresses.

HubSpot’s report paints a picture of Twitter slowly but surely increasing its international footprint: locations listed in Twitter profiles (and thus self-reported by users) were much more spread across the globe than before:

- 15% of the top 20 Twitter locations were outside North America in July 2009
- 40% of the top 20 Twitter locations are outside North America in January 2010

Looking at user patterns, HubSpot found that Thursday and Friday are the most active days on Twitter, each accounting for 16% of total tweets in the analysis, while 10-11 pm appears to be the most active hour on Twitter, accounting for 4.8% of the tweets in an average day.

Finally, HubSpot claims the vast majority of Twitter users have networks under 100 people: 82% of users have less than 100 followers while 81% are following less than 100 people.

Does the above ring true for you?

(Via HubSpot blog)

SocialToo, a startup that lets you manage your personal connections on Twitter and Facebook, has launched an affiliate program to allow users to reap a profit from referring other users to the service. For each type of service you refer people to join on SocialToo, the startup will pay you 20 percent of the cost of that service via PayPal-powered TwitPay, right through Twitter.

SocialToo, which launched a universal Facebook to Twitter posting feature earlier this year, provides tools for managing your Twitter and Facebook accounts such as auto-following, auto-unfollowing, auto-messaging, along with daily stats surrounding new follows and unfollow and the ability to conduct surveys from followers. Its plethora of features are ideal for marketers and brands who want to learn the most they can from those they follow. SocialToo’s features range anywhere from $5 for following back everyone who follows you to $25 to unfollow everyone who you’ve ever followed before.

Using Twitter-based payment system, TwitPay, users can Tweet and share links with friends on Twitter, Facebook, blogs or websites. Here’s what the message and link will looks like:

Catch up following those that follow you on Twitter: click here

When someone clicks the link, they’ll be taken to SocialToo, but a special, customized overlay will pop over the main page welcoming them to SocialToo with the referring user’s Twitter profile image next to the welcome message. The will tell the visitor about the type of service the referrer has recommended and will invite them to provide their screen name and enter the purchase process. For every affiliate link where a user purchases a SocialToo service, affiliates collect 20 percent of the fee.

At the end of each month, SocialToo will send out a payment to each affiliate via Twitpay. It’s fairly easy. This is definitely an interesting idea to get viral growth but the affiliate program is sure to raise some eyebrows in the Twittersphere. Sponsored Tweets from Ad.ly, a platform that links up high-profile advertisers with Twitter users to disseminate marketing campaigns (and produce a revenue stream for Twitter users), have been criticized as a viable advertising model. Advertising in your stream and then monetizing off of other users could be construed in a negative way.

Tweetbucks and even Amazon also allow users to collect affiliate fees from their Tweet streams.

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Our earlier report about Critical Path buying mobile services startup ShoZu turns out to have been right on the money. Tomorrow morning, both companies will jointly announce that they have come to an agreement for Critical Path to acquire all of ShoZu for an undisclosed sum. We’re trying to get a hold of the price the London company, which was backed by $36 million in venture capital, sold for.

The release is below, but here are more details, including some deal terms:

(after the jump)

Bing certainly isn’t wasting any time in showing off how much it loves Twitter. The search engine has just launched BingTweets, a new site created in tandem with Federated Media that combines Twitter Search results with Bing Search. The hybrid allows users to browse through Bing while they see a stream of real-time results fly by, which could be particularly useful for researching a current event, or perhaps a new movie.

The top of the site features a listing of popular terms, grouped into a general ‘popular now’ category, and then divided by People Places, and Products. You’re also free to search for whatever term you’d like using the box in the upper right hand corner of the screen.

The resulting site could prove useful, but it’s a little cluttered, with a scrolling list of constantly updated Tweets on the left side and your standard Bing search results on the right. This would be fine, were it not for the large ‘trending topics’ section and ’sharing’ sections in the header which should probably be tucked along the side. My biggest gripe, though, is that the Bing search results are in a frame — I’d much rather just have the whole page dedicated to the results, even if I had to sacrifice the nice blue border.

This isn’t Bing’s first attempt to fuse its results with Tweets — the site began rolling out integrated results from Twitter earlier this month, but it is only using results from especially prolific and popular Tweeters, which diminishes the feature’s value. Microsoft has previously worked with Federated Media on the launch of ExecTweets, a Twitter aggregator that displays tweets from top business executives.

One side note: Microsoft actually released BingTweets around an hour ago, but it went down almost immediately afterward, and performance is still very spotty. BingTweets will still certainly be a hit in the Twittersphere, but there’s no better way to kill your virality.

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As we reported earlier today, media search engine Technorati has succumbed to the Twitter infatuation and is launching Twittorati, a site that shows what Technorati’s top 100 bloggers are tweeting about. Our earlier story indicates that the site is launching tomorrow but perhaps our post sped things up. We had a chance to demo the site with Technorati’s CEO Richard Jalichandra. The site pulls in the Tweets published by bloggers from Technorati’s list of Top 100 Blogs, which is determined by Technorati’s Authority Ranking (its equivalent to Google Page Rank). Authority Ranking is calculated via algorithm of inbound links from other blog posts, and weights those based on timing, relevancy and the inbound link’s site source Authority Ranking.

The blogs that are ranked vary by subject, with The Huffington Post taking the top spot, TechCrunch as no. 2 and Engadget in the no. 3. Twittorati pulls Tweets into a real-time stream (though not fully real-time; like Twitter, you still need to refresh the page to get real-time results) where you can organize Tweets by Authority Ranking or by latest Tweet. Because the Tweets are aggregated from blogs that cover a variety of subject relating to politics, technology, entertainment and more, the subjects of the Tweets are varied and somewhat random. But you can narrow your stream by filtering Tweets by Technorati Tags (life, news, music, politics, etc.) and the top trending Twitter hashtags. For example, some of the top Twitter hashtags that bloggers were Tweeting included #michaelphelps and #MJ. The origins of the Tweets include a blog’s Tweets and bloggers’ personal Tweets from their own accounts. Technorati says it has collected Twitter handles for most of the authors of the top 100 sites.

The site also shows the most popular links that bloggers link to as well as the most popular photos that are linked to. Both link and photo searches can be filtered by most recent links and images. And each day Twittorati pulls in a list of Tweets of featured bloggers that are profiled on the site.

The site itself can be useful when trying to peer into the professional and personal lives of bloggers. I think something that’s missing a breakdown of Tweets from blogs by topic. So for example, if you only wanted to see Tweets from bloggers at technology blogs, there’s no easy way to filter Tweets and blogs by subject. Jalichandra says Twittorati plans to add this functionality in the near future. The site is similar in theory to Federated Media’s ExecTweets, which is focused more on aggregating Tweets from execs in various industries vs. the blogger-focus on Twtterati. WeFollow is also similar, but isn’t limited to just blogs. Missing from the Twittorati are bloggers whose blogs may not make Technorati’s top 100 list, but whose Tweets are relevant and entertaining. Jalichandra says that the site will expand to include other prolific bloggers down the line.

Twittorati is being produced in partnership with Sawhorse Media, publisher of fellow Twitter aggregatorsMuckrack.com and VentureMaven. Luxury car manufacturer Infinity is sponsoring Twittorati. Technorati Media has been through a roller coaster of highs and lows over the past year. Last June, the company launched Technorati Media, a blog advertising network. Prior to launching the ad network, Technorati raised $7.3 million in a fourth round of financing through Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Mobius Venture Capital and FG Incubation. And last fall, Technorati acquired AdEngage to join the company’s newly formed blog advertising network. And most recently, Technorati launched a new directory of ‘tag’ pages, offering brief overviews of a variety of tech-related topics and redesigned BlogCritics, a blog network the company acquired.

Unfortunately, Technorati hasn’t been immune to layoffs during the current economic climate. In April, the company let go 10 percent of its staff, or 4 employees, and also suffered through an earlier round of layoffs last September and implemented pay cuts for remaining staff. Despite these setbacks, Jalichandra remains optimistic about the future of Technorati and the potential of Twitterati to be a popular destination to peek into the Twittersphere of the blogosphere.

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Tweetmeme is on a tear. According to Compete, the Twitter-centric link tracker went from nowhere in February, 2009 (with 26,000 unique visitors) to more than tenfold increase in March (to 385,000 uniques). Nick Halstead, The CEO of UK-based Fav.or.it, the company behind Tweetmeme, tells me he is tracking closer to 200,000 uniques a month based on yesterday’s visitors, but that he is adding 50 percent a week. Tweetmeme seems to be pulling way ahead of the other Twitter link sites such as Twitturly or Twit Links. Any way you slice it, Tweetmeme is doing something right.

The site shows the most popular links on Twitter ranked by a combination of the number times the link has been Tweeted (shown as a big number beside each headline), recentness, and momentum of Tweets. It also categorizes different news stories based on the title of the post or article, the underlying domain, and hash tags within the Tweets. You can sort by Comedy, Entertainment, Gaming, Lifestyle, Science, Sports, Technology, or World & Business. You can also sort by news, Images, or videos. It pulls together 200,000 links, images, and videos every day now. And you can follow what is makes it on Tweetmeme’s homepage via Twitter itself by following the @Tweetmeme account or sub-accounts for each channel such as @tm-technology or @tm_comedy.

Today, it added OAuth, which lets you sign in with your Twitter account and retweet headlines without leaving the page. It also launched a toolbar, which will be controversial because it opens up the underlying link within a Tweetmeme URL and frame much like the Diggbar does. Instead of showing how many times the story has been Dugg, the frame shows a count of how many times the story has been Tweeted along with a “Shuffle” button (equivalent to the Diggbar’s “Random” button) that will take you to another highly Tweeted story.

I am not a big fan of the toolbar in principle, but I can see why Halstead added it. It keeps people on Tweetmeme and drives more activity. At least, it can be easily closed. But with every site adding its own frames these days, pretty soon there won’t be any room left for the actual destination site you are trying to look at.

What I am a big fan of, though, is that after a recent relaunch, it just keeps adding features. A few weeks ago it added a”live” tab which shows the most Tweeted links stream onto the page much like FreindFeed now handles your personal activity stream. Thankfully, you can set it to stream only stories that have been Tweeted at least 5, 10, or 20 times. Even setting it to 5 links is unreadable because the stream moves down too fast, but at 10 or 20 its becomes more manageable and addictive in that you can watch the most popular links in the Twittersphere stream by in real time.

This live stream of relevant headlines is much more immediate even than what you find on Techmeme, which can take hours to change meaningfully. With so many sites gunning for Techmeme’s crown as the ultimate arbiter of what news is being talked about the most on the Web (I wrote about one such attempt earlier today), the real threat is going to come from somebody like Tweetmeme, which plays to different strengths. The question is whether Twitter will be a better place to mine for buzz than blogs, news sites, or the rest of the Web.

Right now, I’d say the answer is no. Not because Tweetmeme doesn’t surface the most Tweeted stories, but because everyone on Twitter seems to be obsessed with linking to stories about Twitter! For instance, right now 6 of the top ten headlines on Tweetmeme are about Twitter acquisition rumors. To be fair, that was also the top story on Tehmeme for most of the day. But at least Techmeme has moved on (to Kindle rumors!). Will the stories on Tweetmeme ever become more relevant and timely than on Techmeme? If I were Gabe Rivera, I’d start worrying now.

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