LIVEdigitally

Monthly Archives: October 2009

How-to: Figure Out What Twitter Lists You (or someone else!!!) Are In

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Twitter Lists are all the rage. The shiny new object. The hot new thing.  For at least the next day or so… They’re a practical way to manage people you follow, and, of course, yet another mechanism to drive one’s ego and other forms of self-indulgence.  Especially since they aren’t even open to all Twits Twitterers yet.  But supposedly everyone’ll have access soon enough.  So let’s assume that by reading this post, you have access to the Twitter lists feature.  Not sure?  Go to Twitter.com, log in, and look for “lists” on the right of your screen.  Can’t find it? No lists for you!

I logged in today and found I’ve been added to TEN (10) lists!  Yay for me!  Is 10 good? I have no clue.  I’ll give it a resounding maybe.  But they like me, they really really like me.

The cool thing is, lists are public and totally fair game.  So not only can you easily follow anyone’s lists of amazingly cool wonderful people who tweet better than the likes of you or I, but you can also easily find out what lists someone is on.  Why would you want to do this?  Well, other than the obvious game of figuring out who is the coolest kid in school, it could be a great way to find lists of people that are relevant to you/your industry pretty quickly.  Here’s the simple 3 step-process to find out what lists someone is on…

  1. Get the twitter name of the person you want to stalk know more about.  E.g. “jtoeman”.
  2. Cut a hole in the box.
  3. Go to the URL http://twitter.com/that twitter name you got in step 1 above/lists/memberships. For example: http://twitter.com/jtoeman/lists/memberships
  4. Read list.
  5. Think about the words you are reading.
  6. Enjoy a cup of coffee with some freshly steamed milk (organic from sustainably farmed cows if possible).
  7. Watch an episode of Glee.
  8. Try to remember why you were looking up people on Twitter in the first place.
  9. Profit.

Hope this was helpful!

The TwitterPeek is Real? Cmon! No, seriously?

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As a “connected gadget guy” I had heard a few rumors that Peek (the company blissfully unaware that people generally do like BlackBerries, and I don’t much care that it’s on Oprah’s list – the future is smartphones and it isn’t slowing down anytime soon) was coming out with a Twitter-only device. I scoffed at most of these comments, as it sounded so… odd. As I stated about the WikiReader last week, in the mobile space converged devices are hands-down beating out single purpose devices.

But I saw a tweet today claiming it’s real, and I did a quick Amazon search, and lo-and-behold – it’s real! But to think that there’s a market out there for a Twitter-only device is just plain puzzling.

Let me break it down a bit:

  1. Twitter use is, for the most part, technologists and some celebrities.  Both groups have smartphones, primarily iPhones and BlackBerries, which have fairly rich Twitter integration.  Neither will purchase a new device that does Twitter only.
  2. New-to-Twitter people are still getting warm on the concept (well actually mostly they are just dropping the service), and wouldn’t buy a new gadget.
  3. This leaves us to the “if and when Twitter gains mass acceptance” market.  Let’s discuss some more…

I’m still far from sold that Twitter hits mainstream adoption. Granted it’s being splattered across virtually every media one comes across, it’s still lacking in its ability to get widespread use by widespread users.  This is very different from “people know about this Twitter thing because of Oprah”.  Right now, most people who encounter the service do not become regular users.  It’s still quite a few steps away from the masses actually using it.

Which makes it even more steps away from the masses buying a device that does nothing but Tweet.  Sorry to poo-poo on a new gadget (again), but I can’t help but feel that this is yet another case of a lack of market definition prior to building something (costly).

By the way, on the chance/assumption that this is exactly the same Peek as before, only more Twitterized, then at least I feel a little bit better that there wasn’t a crazy amount of time investment to build this thing.  But if that’s the case I can’t understand why they’d turn off the email service?  Too much crazy going on for me here to comprehend.

As a last p.s. – whomever was supposed to launch this thing shouldn’t have let Amazon list it early… Kinda spoils the surprise.

Recovered: The long-lost TechCrunch50 Videos

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AudienceOkay, the title is completely misleading, these were never lost, I merely forgot to actually post them.  Been busy, sorry bout that.

This was my first year going to the TC40/50 event, and I had a pretty good time.  The demopit was full of a lot of interesting (some not-so-much) companies.  I watched a few of the on-stage presentations as well, and it’s clearly a “sign of the times” that there were no Earth-shattering new startups unveiled. No offense intended, there were some very good startups, but I didn’t see anything that I thought was going to change the way I think about the world or technology…

But that said, here are some of the demo’s I had a chance to record:

oDesk:

yourversion:

360desktop:

h2tran:

moonit:

ecycler:

yourtour:

sulantra:

I took a handful of pictures as well, here they are.

WikiReader sounds great. If only…

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If you didn’t hear about it, a device launched this week called the WikiReader. Appropriately named, it’s a small gadget that gives you access to Wikipedia.  It’s $99, has no WiFi (the entire Wikipedia site is effectively downloaded via SD cards), and does nothing but Wiki. Which, as I started to say, sounds great, if only…

There weren’t way too many other ways to do exactly this AND it weren’t another single purpose device! This thing seems like it was dreamed up in a lab by someone back in 2004 and brought to market 5 years later. What’s next, CitySearchEr and PocketEvite? There’s such a radical amount of momentum in favor of multi-purpose devices that I am stunned this got to market. Here’s a list of all the other devices that already do the exact same thing, and more:

  • ANY smartphone. Not just the 40 million iPod touch/iPhones, but all the BlackBerries, Windows Mobile devices, and oodles of Symbian, Android, and other phones.
  • Many dumbphones. It may be a terrible experience, but even my little Samsung Alias has a Web browser and EVDO connectivity.
  • The Kindle.
  • The Sony PSP and Nintendo DS.
  • All netbooks and laptops.

In fact, the only two categories of devices I can even think of that do NOT have Wikipedia access (the real kind, through the Internet) are most GPS units and the misbegotten Peek. Neither of which are exactly the industries I’d be betting on either.

So how about analysis from another perspective – potential market. By the way, since I managed to anger the entire tablet community with a recent post (all dozen of you! hah, i kid, i kid!!), please note that when I say “no market potential” what I *actually* mean is “extremely slim” but that just sounds silly if you repeat it often enough..

  • College Students – nope. They all have or want iPhones and/or laptops. At any time when they’d need such a device, they have another device that will do the same thing. And it’s just not sexy enough to win for materialistic/emotional appeal.
  • High school students – nope, see above.
  • Travelers – nope. They rent GPS devices and have phones.
  • Businessmen – what? come on.
  • Mommies – per the wife: “and why do i need that??”
  • Reality show contestants, zookeepers, and carnies – hmmm

For my final point on this topic, if i consider the $99 for a WikiReader vs $199 for the “small” iPod Touch, it’s basically a no-brainer.  While one could argue the Touch is 2x the price, the reality is those who are dealing with the discretionary income to buy an portable Wikipedia device are barely, if at all, impacted by its price point.

I’m sorry to be such “a hater” on the product, and recognize that there are a bunch of people out there who put a crazy amount of effort in making this happen. I just wish organizations like yours would seek external product marketing counsel before bringing something like this to the market.  Someone, somewhere should have been making a go-nogo decision once you had the concept figured out, but before investing the actual energy in finalizing things.

Our new Disclosures policy (plus some commentary)

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In an interesting move, the FTC has created a seemingly arbitrary set of guidelines that apply to “the bloggers” and “facebooking” and how they disclose paid-for-posts (PDF file with the actual guidelines are here).  I call it arbitrary because, well, it is, but I actually applaud the concept – just not the execution.  I agree with the overall philosophy that there are too many undisclosed “paid-for” content spots happening in the new media landscape. But it’s not just the bloggers. In fact, I’d further state that blogs should be pretty low on the target list.

For example, products are being placed in video games, movies, TV shows, magazines, etc, with little-to-no disclosure to consumers.  When I see a character in a movie using a Dell laptop (or MacBook, etc), I wonder how it got there. I wonder how much screen time it’s “supposed” to have.  I wonder if the camera pauses on the Dell logo if that was in a contract, or an artistic decision.  I shouldn’t have to wonder.  Paid placements should be disclosed somewhere (hint: end credits), for all media, not just blogs, facebook and inevitably tweets. By the way, here’s a handy-dandy guide to paying for placements in a movie.

I think it’s even more relevant for mainstream media than for new/personal media.  In the personal media landscape, say this blog for example, it is the individual’s burden to build trust.  We have to earn it by our content, thoughtfulness, tone, frequency of writing (oops), etc.  The moment we break trust, it becomes hard to rebuild it.  So if a new mommy blog comes into the public eye, then it turns out the whole thing is a paid advertisement by a big brand, with no disclosure, odds are there will be a significant drop/plummet in readership.  This, in turn, will cause the brand to end their association with the blogger (no traffic = no ad spend), thus ending the cycle.

Further, to what end must we carry disclosure? Does a film critic need to state they were given free tickets to the movie?  If so, why? Do people out there really think a free movie ticket is going to change the tone of the review?? Of course not. But what if that critic works for a TV network who carries advertising by a studio (or magazine, etc), when those huge ad dollars are at stake? Maybe it’s more important to disclose the blatant paid relationship and clear conflict of interest there, as opposed to the remote possibility that some movie blogger  got a free bag of popcorn.

I’m much less concerned about pay-to-post/tweet than virtually any other medium. Which is why I really call foul on the FTC policies.  It seems to me like yet another example of the government creating watchdog efforts on individuals and small businesses, but letting the huge players continue to get away with shenanigans. I highly recommend reading Jeff Jarvis’ commentary here (disclosure: I was not paid to include the link to his website. ah, now didn’t that just help make the post flow so much better?).

Accordingly, here are the official LIVEdigitally disclosure policies:

Disclosure Policies

  • At no time in the past, nor at any time in the future will LIVEdigitally accept payment to write a blog post. Unless said payment is sufficient to cover the outstanding balance of Jeremy’s mortgage, in which case we will take the check (and disclose it). Please, big brands, send this check!
  • Due to deep industry connections, it is safe to assume that many of the products reviewed or discussed were given to us for free. That said, at no point in the past nor future is there an exchange of “product for post”.
  • At some times LIVEdigitally will write about clients of Stage Two Consulting, however this is not a part of any business relationship, it is entirely at the discretion of the individual writer. NO incentives whatsoever are associated with these blog posts.  These relationships are always disclosed in the post.
  • At all times we attempt to identify 100% of disclosures where any potential relationship or perceived conflict of interest would arise.  Failing to do so should be considered an oversight, not deliberate, and you are welcome to leave a comment on any post if you’d like clarification.