Google+ Follower Model

To be honest, I haven't quite come to terms with the Google+ follower model. I am of course familiar with it from Twitter (i.e. anyone can simply follow you, ...). But Twitter is public. As public as can be. So on Twitter I don't really mind or care who's following me. It simply is their problem, not mine, if my chit-chat clutters up their Twitter stream.

I know that I should have the same approach to this on Google+, but somehow I don't. It definitely is a bit more personal that Twitter, that's probably why I do care a bit more who's following me. Still not as much as on Facebook.

But it does not mean, that I have to follow them. And I don't.

So thanks Google, for implementing this here the other day:

Really helpful.

Google+

I've been using Google+ now for a couple of days, and I have to admit I like it.
Currently it suffers from being almost 100% self-referential... everyone on G+ only talks about G+.
Apart from that it reminds me a lot of friendfeed. (Odd, since FF was bought by Facebook - of all).

I wonder why they did not implement hash-tags (like twitter). They'd link individual posts to topics, so they provide additional (and in many cases) valuable information - or meta information.

G+'s most important task is to get additional signals to improve Google search/index, so hash-tags should serve well there. Wouldn't they?

Or does Google consider hash-tags as "messing with the algorithm" because they are being entered by humans... and not derived from their algorithms?

Platformness, part two

I recently claimed that a true platform has to protect it's developers from (ridiculous) claims of third parties (indemnification), the same is of course try in the opposite direction:

When an ecosystem around this platform evolves that adds new and important features to this platform, the platform itself should not step in and re-create those add-ons.

Current (counter-) example: Twitter just added their own photo sharing service, thus rendering e Twitpics and Yfrogs obsolete... who were instrumental in Twitter's success during the last years.

In other words: a platform shall not compete with (or against) its developers.
I'd like to call this quality trust.

Firefox 3.5 - finally

So, on Tuesday I upgraded all my machines to FireFox 3.5...
without any problems.

It really is a lot faster (still in the final, not only in the betas).
And finally also my twitter performance (as ranted about here) works smoothly again...

Go and upgrade.

Facebook, Friendfeed, Xing and Twitter

Since Facebook became more stream-oriented there is an ongoing discussion (or rather a fight, it sometimes seems) on whether Facebook is better then Twitter or the other way round? If geeks are present then FriendFeed also comes into the discussion. So I'd like to share my thoughts on those tools, and I'll include Xing for completeness and to have a rather different platform here as well. [1]

1. Noise
One way to differentiate those platforms is noise or the concept of the signal-to-noise-ratio (for the engineers amongst us), short SNR.
As Wikipedia puts it quite well:

"In less technical terms, signal-to-noise ratio compares the level of a
desired signal (such as music) to the level of background noise. The
higher the ratio, the less obtrusive the background noise is."

In yet other terms for social network streams: "How much crap is there on a stream/feed in relation to the interesting stuff."

It of course depends on you and the platform (Facebook, Twitter, ...) what to consider noise and what to consider the signal.
Lets take the "status updates".

• On Twitter the status updates *are* the signal... so the signal-to-noise is 1:1 or 0 dB :-)
• On Facebook the status update are part of the whole point of Facebook, but not the only one... they are not strictly noise, but also not the only signal... SNR > 0 dB, but not too high either.
• Xing does have status updates, but - fortunately - they are rarely used. The stream on Xing that I'm interested in is "Who changed job?" "Who got connected to whom?"... Compared to this signal, the status-update-noise is fairly low... excellent SNR there.
• Friendfeed to me is somewhere between Twitter and Facebook.

2. Persistance

• Twitter is only a stream. What you don't see when it floats by, you'll miss. Yes, you can search (thanks to the acquisition and integration of summize into twitter), but that's it. And as far as I saw, only a couple of weeks of history.
  So Twitter only consists of triggers, and does not really have a state.
• Facebook has both, the stream of status updates and more static content like Group memberships, Fan-ness, etc.
• Xing is totally static and is actually designed to keep historical data (if you wish so). On Xing I can look up which companies a person worked for in the past years. I don't have to search through status updates to find that out, it's just there on one neat little page.
• Friendfeed like Twitter, does not really have a state, but is more browseable, again somewhere between Twitter and Facebook.

3. Relationships

• Twitter and Friendfeed are insofar unique as they support (and are actually designed for) unidirectional relationships. I can follow you, but you still don't have to follow me. Neither technically, nor is it socially mandated. If I follow you on Friendfeed, and you still choose not to follow me there, I hold no grudge against you.
  This also means I can unfollow you anytime.
  Also, this relationship does not have a quality associated with it ("Business", "Family", "Friend").
• Facebook and Xing require confirmation from both parties to start a relationship. Ignoring or even denying a friend-request or link there is visible to the requester and thus considered rather impolite. It is therefore also rare to unfollow ("unfriend", "unlink") someone, once the connection is established.

So those 4 social platforms have quite different qualities, and that's totally OK with me.
I use them for separate purposes.
I use them at different times.
I think I do have a different style on those.

However, I'm still not quite sure what to do with FriendFeed - a service that I really love... but whatever I do with it, I could also do with Twitter or Facebook. Currently, it's just the better and more complete userinterface into Twitter for me. I guess the main reason is, that more people/friends are on Facebook and Twitter than on FriendFeed.
So sign-up ... and follow me there.


[1] yes, I know there are others like LinkedIn, Plaxo, ... but I rarely use them, or not at all (like myspace)

Bloggers Anonymous

from Non Sequitur — Gocomics.com: Comics, editorial cartoons, email comics, comic strips
via M3 - thanks, Martin

Firefox 3 and Twitter

... don't work well with each other.

For some days now (I feel that it was with the 3.0.2 or 3.0.3 update from FF) whenever I type into the twitter status input field, it slows down, grabs 100% of the CPU and I can type at a rate of 1 character per 2 seconds !!!

It seems that the javascript for updating the counter for the remaining characters (just right above the input field) is doing this, but I cannot really prove this.

Strangest thing is, it does not do this with IE or with the very same FF version running in a virtual box (different profile, though). I also started FF without any extensions (firefox -safe-mode) and disabled spell-checking.
No difference.

Could not find any hint or reference to this behavior on Google.
Strange.

Dopplr and Twitter problem fixed

A couple of weeks ago, Dopplr (the social travel network) announced support for twitter (and email and sms). That is, you can send a tweet to the dopplr user on twitter with your travel details, and it will automatically get added to your Dopplr account as a new trip.

Of course you first have to register your twitter user with your Dopplr account... (why this is, and why the number of identity silos as ever increasing is a different story, and I'm sure I will rant about identity in social networks soon here).

You do so, by sending a (private/direct) message to the Dopplr account with a secret key (kind of thing) that you get from Dopplr. Once you sent this, the link between your Dopplr account and your twitter name is established, i.e. messages from this very twitter name will be associated with your Dopplr account.

From then on, you send messages like

“I'm going to munich from Sep 23rd to Sep 29th“

to Dopplr and the trip will be added automatically. Confirmation is sent both via twitter and via email.

In my case, however, the registration failed.

Dopplr just would not react to my registration message. Simply ignored it. I first thought, that I did something wrong, but today I got an email from Matt Biddulph , the CTO of Dopplr:

Subject: Apologies for a recent problem in Dopplr's Twitter support

This morning we discovered a bug that has affected about 60 Dopplr accounts, including yours. It meant that when you sent us a message to associate your account with your Twitter account so that you could send us trips, it didn't work correctly.

We've just fixed the bug and deployed new code to our servers. If you'd like to try again starting at http://www.dopplr.com/account/twitter then the process should now work.

I'm sorry for this problem, and hope you enjoy using our new Twitter feature.

Matt Biddulph,
Dopplr CTO.

I tried the registration again, this time it worked.

Dopplr replied with

Thanks, now we know who you are on Twitter. Full usage instructions are at http://dopplr.com/account/twitter

within a minute or so, and then I was able to add my sample trip to Munich (this is just an example, don't expect me in Munich at that time).

Which is then confirmed by an email:

Subject: Re: Your twitter message to Dopplr

Thanks for sending us a message by twitter.
We automatically created a trip to Munich, Germany (from Vienna,
Austria) between September 23rd and September 29th

We won't share coincidences from this newly-created trip with your
fellow travellers until August 13th. This is to give you a chance
to check and correct any problems in interpretation.

If you'd like to check, go to
personal link deleted

Yours sincerely,
The Dopplr Team.

I love the idea to put the new trip into a kind of quarantine for 10 days, but still publish it then by default.

So it works great now.

I was so surprised by Matt's email, that (I guess for the first time ever) I replied to him thanking him for the service.

Unusual... even for cool startups.

(email published with Matt's consent)

Cool gmaps // twitter mashup

Walterra has hacked a cool mash up with twitter "weather data" for select Austrian cities and google maps to present a twitter weather map for Austria.

Most probably technically not really challenging ("Done in three hours" in his own words), but the idea (to get the data from twitter) is just great.

This is just a simple example to illustrate the hidden power and possible emergence that lies within social media, presence services and livestreams.
This is a quick hack inspired by metaroll.de. Using summize I fetch messages from twitter which contain words about the weather in Austria's federal capitals. A simple algorithm measures what people are talking about and renders a KML file which gets displayed above

Thanks to phreak20 for the hint.

Twitter vs WWDC 2008

So, expectations are quite high at the crossroads of twitter and the iPhone.
Not only does eveyone (kind of) expect twitter to go down during the announcement, the twitter teams seem to be prepared for it as well.
See e.g. here amongst others.

Maybe expectations are a bit too high for both of them ... the (supposedly all new and now even more exciting ) iPhone, and the twitter coverage of it.

Thank you, twitter

Another reason to like twitter ... or the guys behind twitter: in their announcement/warning of the upcoming downtime, they linked the time to timeanddate.com, so everyone can see it in their own timezone.



Since I receive a lot of event invitations from the US I know that his is quite unusual... totally the exception.
So, thank you, twitter.

Dezentralized Twitter

A couple of recent Gillmor Gang episodes were dedicated to the concept (and necessity) of a decentralized twitter, and/or opening up twitter...

At one point, Marc Canter says:

"But there could be technically 100 Twitters, each controlled by different vendors, and we could have a backend kind of DNS thing to federate users. So if I registered with Pownce or Jaiku, my handle would work on Twitter, or vice-versa. And that’s what I’ve been saying."

More of Marc's reasoning on his blog here.
I don't think this can ever happen - as a DNS like infrastructure.

DNS might be a nice model of decentralization (in probably most ways), but to me it is a very one-way model of propagating data ...
You don't have to push data through DNS... it get's pulled by a host lookup... that's why I say "propagate".

But you have to push tweets. You cannot have every possible Twitter-Clone instance (and there would be hundreds, if you really open it up) pull data from every other clone... no way. And DNS is not a model for pushing data...

To make one thing clear: I agree with Marc that twitter needs to be decentralized in some way... I just don't feel that DNS can be the model for it.

If only I had ...

(today's episode) ... known twitter 6 years ago.

At that time I was working for a mobile operator in Austria, and my department (SW development) was separated from the rest of the company (that included being separated from the IT operations group) into a building 5-10 minutes away - by car!

We had to commute with taxi about 2-3 times a day from our office to the main campus and back again.
More often then not two or more people would not know about each other taking the same trip and therefore take 2-3 cars at the very same time for the very same trip ... instead of just one.

So I came up with the idea for a little SMS application, where I'd advertise my planned from from our building to the main office by sending a text message to this service.
Everyone in my group who - here location comes in - is currently in the off-site building would get this notification and could reply with e.g. "join" or some other keyword, and I'd then get the summary who would like to join me.

We never created this application, although it would have been quite simple and fast to develop.

Should've built it.

Today, I'd probably do this with twitter.

Now on Twitter

Just signed up for Twitter.

If you haven't yet heard of twitter, it is probably best described with their own words:

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

I'd say, it's very related to IM, but more broad-casting then the 1:1 dialog you usually see on IM. Also it is a bit less about conversation.

But then again, how should I know, I just started...
Follow me here .

(Of course I added a twitter gadget/widget/thingy to this blog over there ->)