Ads and Twitter

This is a short podcast on my thoughts on ads within the Twitter flow.

Twitter and Ads

Retweet Twitter

I finally got the new retweet function today. So far I am not impress. I don't know how other use retweet, but most of the time I like to add a comment to the end. Even if it's just an amen or that stinks. The new retweet just goes out without allowing any addition. This means noone knows why I retweeted, did I like the tweet or not. Also putting the number people who retweeted the tweet seems to me a way to gurantee abuse or misuse. Besides do I really need to know that.

I would rather have them improve the list function. I would like to be able to do list within list. I also want list to update in real time in the desk application of my choice. I know this is a short post, but I wanted to put down my initial reactions on the retweet option.   If you have the retweet option, what do you think of it?

Twitter as a News Reader

I am not a patient person and with the availability of Twitter and Friendfeed. I want to see the news as soon as possible. My RSS reader of choice has been either Google Reader or Feedly. I prefer Feedly, but it is Firefox only and lately I have been using Chrome a lot, Which leaves me with Google Reader. Google Reader isn't bad, but for it to be any use I have to be on the page. I only check it about twice a day, which means a lot of old news in today's real time world. I started thinking there has to be a better way. I was reading a post by Robert Scoble and he provided the key to the problem Twitter. It is not the whole answer but it is a start. This my set up and how I did it

The first thing I did was set up a seperate private Twitter account and followed it. I did this because I did not want to spam my friends. The second thing I did was I signed up for a Twitterfeed account. Twitterfeed let's you input rss feeds into Twitter. The third thing I did was create different Yahoo pipes based on my different areas of interest. I had already created most of them so it was really a matter of mostly tweaking things. I then entered the feeds created by Yahoo Pipes and added them to Twitterfeed. Unfortunately, it didn't work, however if I took the same feeds and ran them thru Friendfeed first and then into Twitterfeed it worked fine. You can tweak Twitterfeed on how often it feeds to Twitter and how many at a time. Now when a new feed comes in I see it right away on Tweetdeck.

The biggest change that has happen since I started this process was the addition of Twitter list. If you create good list news will be even easier to follow. I have not decided if I will continue to use this method, but it is an interesting experiment.











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[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Techcrunch vs Twitter

What would you do if you owned a newspaper, magazine, or Web site and you walked in one morning and you found a large package on your desk. There was a note with the package, that stated the documents were stolen and contained the future business information for a well known Internet company along with some personal information. Would you release all the information, some of the information or none of it. That is the situation that Techcrunch found themselves in this morning. Ok the package was actually a zip file and was sent by email, but you get the picture. Techcrunch decided to publish some of the business information and none of the of the personal information, which Michael Arrington stated in his post "The vast majority of them are somewhat embarrassing to various individuals, but not otherwise interesting". This of course leads to the question if the personal information had been interesting would they still not posted it. This is a question only those involved can answer. There are those that are mad at Techcrunch, because they are only releasing part of the business information. They accuse Techcrunch of being influence by the Twitter SUL (suggested user list) issue. Whether this is an issue or not we can only speculate.

There are two questions that must be answered, first is does Tech Crunch have the right to release the documents and the second is should they. I say they do have the right to release the documents. The idea that they shouldn't release the documents because they were stolen doesn't hold water. Many documents that newspapers, magazines receive are first gotten by illegal means. I doubt that the person forwarding the documents to Woodward and Bernstein during Watergate-had the right to those document. I am certain he didn't have the right to release the information to them. Did that mean that the Washington Post should not have released the Watergate information. I don't think so. I think for many people the problem is not that the information is being release, but who is releasing it. Michael Arrington is not the most popular man on the Internet today. He is obnoxious and disliked don't you know ( to misquote a scene from the movie 1776). I wonder if the reaction would have been the same if the information had been released by some other Website . Whether they should release the information is another question I don't have an answer to for. I would have to see the information to make that decision. However, I will not condemn Techcrunch for making the decision they did.