Pure Geekery
I have to admit it, I’m a little sad the Olympics is over – but I was curious to know how Twitter reacted to the exploits of Team GB, and wanted to try out another of the features of visual.ly.
So here we go… the life of the #teamgb hashtag. Perhaps rather unsurprisingly, Golden Saturday (4th Aug) was something of a high point!
Way back in 2010, I asked which you would rather have: Twitter or Facebook. There was quite a mix of responses at the time, and I was clearly in favour of Twitter.
I’ve changed my mind since then, though, and now spend much more time on Facebook than Twitter.
Why? Well, here are some of the reasons I like Facebook:
There is one thing I don’t think Facebook is as good for, however, and that’s interacting with large brands. Sure, O2 have a page, as do Honda, but I always have better luck getting a response from large companies such as these on Twitter than on Facebook. Not sure why that is… but them’s the facts.
What do you think? If you could only have one out of Facebook and Twitter, which would it be? I’m curious to know if the balance has shifted one way or the other since the last time I asked. Let us know your thoughts in the comments – including your reasons if you feel like sharing.
Thanks.
Twitter is great, but when you’re trying to hold a private conversation with someone it gets a little clunky. To fire direct messages back and forward, both parties have to be following each other. That’s not too bad on the face of it, except when you want to say something privately to, say, your mobile phone provider, and discover that they have a policy of not following individual accounts.
Another limitation of direct messages is that they are always one-to-one… there’s no option to send them to a wide group of people or hold a conversation that involves more than two participants.
What to do? Well, how about a chat system that integrates with Twitter and allows you to invite multiple Twitter users to talk? Enter stage left: Blether.
The word Blether is Scottish slang, and means idle chatter, or to engage in conversation. See where this is going?
Blether, the online service, is built on a platform by Zendit, who are based in Dunfermline, Scotland. To find out all about the service, I invited Kevin Bradshaw, CEO of Zendit and Blether, to chat about it in the Blether service itself. Kevin tells me that Zendit has been about two years in the making, between setting the company up and getting the basic platform built. As an indication of how powerful it is, it only took about a month to build Blether on top of Zendit.
So what does Blether actually do? It’s basically a chat room, but it’s triggered from within Twitter. By typing !b and the names of some Twitter users (e.g. “!b @cdhinton @someone_else”) a personal room is generated which only the invited Twitter users have access to. Additional people can be added from within the room, so you don’t have to panic if you forgot to invite someone, but at least you know nobody will be in there without an invite.
One downside of many chat rooms is that once you leave the room you lose any record of the conversations that took place. Some offer a mechanism to export a chat, but Blether just saves it right there. Next time you visit Blether.co your previous Blethers will still be there for you to review at your leisure.
Blether performs a simple function – enabling multi-person chat between Twitter users – but some of the best products out there are a mixture of simplicity and elegance. Blether is easy to use, and does what it does well. I would say it’s sure to be a success. And what else is coming from Zendit in future? Kevin couldn’t (or rather, wouldn’t) tell me, but did say there was more to come. Watch this space…
Have you tried Blether yet? Do you see a use for a Twitter-launched chat function? Tell us your thoughts in the comments.
Have you ever wanted to view tweets in RSS? It might seem a bit pointless at first glance, but there are a number of uses. You could import the RSS feed into a website sidebar, or there are a number of mobile web app technologies that can import RSS feeds so that people can view your tweets within your very own app.
If you have been wondering how you can get an RSS feed of a particular user’s tweets, here we go:
Each user has an RSS feed, and the URL follows this format:
http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/username.rss
So, my feed would be http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/cdhinton.rss
There we go – nice and simple. And if you’ve been fretting over how to do this, problem solved :)
Data visualisation is a hot topic these days. As individuals and companies generate and try to deal with more and more data, there is a real risk that we become data-rich, but information-poor. That is, we have loads of data at our disposal, but lack the means to interpret and understand it in a meaningful way.
There are plenty of data visualisation tools out there, and one of the newer contenders in this area is Infomous. Infomous is currently in beta, and you can request an account from the site if you like what you read here. When I requested my account, there was around a two week lead-time between request and receiving login details.
So what does Infomous actually do? Well, according to the signup message, “Infomous is an exciting new way to provide your users with a superior online exploration and navigation experience. At the same time, you can use Infomous as a revolutionary, effective way to deliver contextually relevant advertisement while gaining superior insights into the behavior of your users.”
In simple terms, point Infomous at a website, RSS feed, or Twitter search, and you will get a visual web of the information found there and the relationships between various pages or tweets. For instance, I pointed Infomous at Geek-Speak and it came up with this “map” of the most recent content:
Infomous map of Geek-Speak
It’s interesting to see that the content words are largely grouped by the post they appeared in… there isn’t much cross-posting. This is an accurate reflection of what happens on the site, but actually serves as something of a reminder that I could be referring to other posts a little more often in my writing. So the simple act of mapping the recent content on Geek-Speak has provided an interesting diagram, a map that I could embed to allow users to navigate (the words are clickable on embedded maps, which makes them function somewhat like a tag cloud) and given me some impetus to change the way I write.
Infomous for Twitter does much the same as for any website, but you can enter a Twitter search (such as the name of a celebrity or event), or follow a certain user. When I entered my own Twitter username, cdhinton, this is the map I ended up with.
Infomous map for Twitter: @cdhinton
Again, much like a tag cloud, the things I write about most are the most prominent. By hovering over any term, a list of relevant tweets is displayed so you can see the context that led to that particular word being included in the map. If you want a quick overview of what another user talks about, stick their name in the generator and see what you end up with – it can be quite interesting.
So, is Infomous any good? It’s not a full-blown Business Intelligence tool, but it does what it does well. It’s great for creating quick maps of online information, and provides a novel method of navigation and advertising delivery (advertisements are appended to the content lists when you hover over a word). It can help you get an overview of a site, twitter search, news subject, or what a twitter user writes about and, best of all, it’s free while in beta.
Let me take you on an imaginary journey to my secret laboratory. There I would show you my (sadly) imaginary time machine that looks suspiciously like a piece of street furniture designed to function as a temporary prison and communication system for the local police. Don’t worry, though – it really is a time machine.
We’ll hop back to 1845 and pick up one Samuel Morse who, for the purposes of a shorter story, will conveniently fail to question both the science of time travel and the fact that this particular blue box appears to be larger on the inside than the outside. On our arrival back in 2010 we will explain to Mr Morse how people communicate these days, perhaps even showing him the wonders of the telephone, e-mail, and Twitter.
What do you think he’d say? Apparently he was inspired to work on long-distance communication methods by the unhappy situation of not knowing his wife was ill until it was too late, but I still think he would be overwhelmed with your ability to sit down at this glowing box of tricks you call a computer and find out what the weather is like on the other side of the planet in an instant.
How about the ability to ask for a photo of a particular restaurant in New York and, assuming somebody is feeling particularly helpful, get said image via TwitPic?
Mankind has taken the art and science of communication to new, previously unimaginable levels. I mean, I still remember when I first heard about BroadBand and thinking, “No way… it’ll always be dialup”. Our means of communicating, socialising, and news-gathering are nothing short of revolutionary. It kind of makes you wonder how we manage to take it all for granted.
But there’s one important thing we must remember:
No matter how you communicate, that initial impression imprints your image on the minds and attitudes of the people around you. If you answer the phone with, “Yeh, whaddya want?” you’ll give a different impression to if you used a simple, “Hello”. Turn up to an important meeting looking (and smelling) like you’ve just been dragged through a field and you might not get the outcome you wanted. If your blog or website is ugly and difficult to use, your visitors won’t stick around long.
But the real spark for this post is Twitter. Now, I love Twitter, but I started to notice something recently. Whenever someone follows me I check out their profile. It’s partly because I’m curious about who’s found me interesting, but also because I want to know whether I should follow them back. I’ve been deciding “no” more and more because when I visit people’s profiles they don’t look like people.
A particularly bad case would be someone with no bio, no avatar, no website, and a timeline full of ReTweets or (horror of horrors) the same message sent to loads of different people. That just screams “robot” to me. But even if the timeline looks like a person, I still want to know more about you before I follow you. A biography doesn’t take much work. I’d love to see, if not a picture of you, something that shows a bit of your personality. And I’m always curious to know about your website… if you have one (and I’m aware not everyone does).
I know this might come across as picky but it all comes back to that first impression. That impression is formed in just a few seconds, so why not take every opportunity to make a good one? Tell your potential followers a little about yourself. Show them your face and/or something relevant to your personality. And, for goodness, sake, don’t let your timeline fill up with messages that make you look like a robot and/or spammer.
I didn’t intend this to be an advertisement, so let me wrap up a few things here. Just remember that the first impression counts and, if you want to make a good one, you can take the few steps I’ve mentioned above to show you’re a honest to goodness human being who would be well worth following and conversing with. If that’s enough for you, have a quick look around Geek-Speak and see if there’s anything else that might interest you. How about playing a game?
But if you want to know more, can I recommend an ebook by my friend Mike? It’s a great starting guide to Twitter and will surely help you in your quest to set up an effective Twitter presence. There’s even a 30 day money back guarantee if you do buy it and decide it wasn’t right for you.
Now go, make good impressions, and try not to look like a robot :)
Twitter’s a great thing, isn’t it? It was through Twitter that I got my first car to review, and I’ve made some brilliant contacts (and friends) there. Well today Barry Snedden, one of the DJs at our local radio station, tweeted that he’d just had a go of an iPad. I replied telling him I was jealous, and tried to blag a review from him.
Here’s his reply:
@cdhinton In 140 or less? I took to it like the proverbial duck! It was a little smaller (but heavier) than I thought it would be! Amazing!
Barry Snedden
barrysnedden
OK, so I admit this might be an excuse to try out embedding a tweet, but I also want to take the opportunity to ask anyone else who might have had a go of the iPad, “What do you think of it?”
I haven’t tried one yet, and I’ve read many mixed reviews but I think my mind is made up: I want one :)
I am also on Twitter at, as you might have guessed from Barry’s tweet, @cdhinton – feel free to follow me and drop me a line to say hello!
Let’s try something new today, a quick and easy question for you. If you had to choose between Facebook or Twitter, which would you have?
Would you miss the ease of tweeting? The games and applications of Facebook? Is there a killer feature of one of this pair that you just couldn’t live without?
Tell us in the comments! And ask as many of your friends to chip in with their opinion too (if you’re on Twitter you can use the re-tweet button below). I’d be really interested to see which one, Twitter or Facebook, comes out top.
Recent Comments