Archive for February, 2009
Not to gloat in any way, but did we not see this coming? Following the worst month in TechCrunch history, Michael (Founder, editor) is backtracking a little. Do you remember when he scheduled the TC50 at the same time as DemoFall last year? Not anymore.
“I’ll certainly go to (DemoFall),” Arrington said Thursday. “I think we’re on different weeks this year.”
Oh really? Backing off from that frontal confrontation? Offering to go to their conference? Come now, does this sound like the Arrington we remember? The man who left us this gem of a blog post before he took off for a month?
“I hope that some of my peers will realize that competitive pressures do not give them carte blanche to accuse us and others of literally anything that pops into their head and repeat it publicly or privately.” [Source]
Either his time in Hawaii has brought his ego into check, or he is worried about the brand suicide that has been going on around the TechCrunch headquarters. Either way, one thing to be sure of is that this is a new tone. Before he left, Michael actually called for professional fair play. He was being sincere. Sadly, Erick Schonfeld did not get the memo, as we all saw [fair and balanced my ass, that post gave Fox News a competitor for sleaze].
I hope that Arrington is going to come back, and clean the house. Perhaps what we are seeing here is the beginning of a move away from the current mode of operation at TC. It seems that whenever Michael loosens the reins on the main blog, it gets worse. Take it as a complement Arrington, you make that blog. TechCrunchIT and CrunchGear run well by themselves, but TechCrunch is your deal. We all go there to read what you write.
Erick, we have had words in the past. But, I want to move past it. I enjoyed watching the TechCrunch Cloud event, and I think that you have a great future ahead at TC. I hope we can move forward not as adversaries, but peers. There is no need to divide up the internet along the CenterNetworks editorial line.
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*update*
Hello TechMeme friends! Thanks for dropping by, feel free to read around.
- Alex
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I henceforth declare every Saturday on Twitter to be the day when you connect with your new Twitter friends on other networks. I personally today am connecting with people on Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. We can all enjoy our new connections more, if they are accessible in more places. So, in the spirit of it all, connect with me here:
Email (personal): alexkaiserwilhelm@gmail.com
Email (work): alex@midventures.com
Phone (make it important!): 541 231 7371
Send me an email or an invite, and I will add you right away. (Make sure to tell me what your Twitter username is though, or I may be lost).
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This is just sad: via The New York Times:
“
Amazon Backs Off Text-to-Speech Feature in Kindle
By BRAD STONE
Amazon announced today it will let publishers decide whether they want the new Kindle e-book device to read their books aloud.
The text-to-speech feature allows Kindle owners to have books read to them in a male or female computerized voice. The president of the Author
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Jason Calacanis called this one a while back with his heatedly debated “Startup Depression,” startups are in trouble these days. Adding more weight to his predictions, we are now coming to a shakeout in the online video startup sector. According to the NewTeeVee blog, we should be looking for 60Frames and ManiaTV to be purchased/disappear in the near future.
This is not even the first time we have been seeing frantic activity in the video sector. There were rumors of Revver
kicking the bucket, it is still alive somehow, but its poor health is well known. What can we expect from any of these startups? We need to remember that they are all in one way or anothing chasing YouTube, which is not profitable.
So what happens when you have a whole funded wave of startups chasing a profitless ideal? It is not a shock at all that skittish investors are pulling away from this sector. Ad revenues and rates are plummeting across the internet. Revver even pays out a large chunk its small revenues to its content providers.
Past all of that, how important are these websites?
Not very. No hope of profits? Check. Running out of cash? Check. Limited audience? Check. Who in their right mind is going to buy one of these outfits?
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If you are an analytics junkie, such as myself, data is your true best friend. As we have covered before there is no end to the number of lame Twitter side-along applications out there, and we all tire of their endless coverage. I understand this, but still wanted to show you TweetStats, which is my favorite of all Twitter services [including one that I helped build].
TweetStats gives you extremely powerful look into your personal Twitter actions. Feed it your Twitter user name, and watch it explain your addiction to service. First, it gives you two graphs, one showing a timeline of tweets per month, and then a graphic of your time tweet density for each day of the week. Take a look at mine [it shows the blank months because I had an unused Twitter account]:
TweetStats goes even further, giving you information on how many tweets you have sent in a specific hour, what clients you use, and also what people you respond to. If you are power user as myself, the information can surprise. In all of my 3,000+ tweets, I have sent only 8 total tweets in the hours of 5 and 6 am, I am after all, not a morning person. Screenshot:
Finally, the service gives you a fun cloud of your most popular used words, and even your top 5 tweeted words. Mine are pathetically generic:
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*update*
Missed a few things:
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Mass Following On Twitter – Why It Is Your Best Move
February 26th, 2009
People use Twitter for everything under the sun, so to try and give a single strategy for all users is a little bit ridiculous. However, for this I only assume two things, you enjoy communicating, and you have Tweetdeck. That should cover most people who read this.
When I began using Twitter I had a ridiculous obsession with my follow/following ratio. I was constantly vigilant that it was very evident to everyone that more people found me important than the other way around. Even if it was not true, I tried to make that appearance. But what was the cost?
Firstly, as I was not a celebrity in any way, I had to come by followers by a) being intelligent b) waiting for some random person to follow me. As my follower growth was glacial, I will assume that option b was in effect. So I tweeted away, about 300-400 times a month, talking to a few people, just trying to build some influence. Then I said, after watching everyone else have so many damn more followers than myself, forget slow growth, I am going to follow some people.
Once you start following people, it is very hard to stop, you just keep on clicking that button. Some people prefer to follow only a handful, but, as someone who has done both, following is the better option. Let me explain. [mass following is hereafter defined as following more than 300 people.]
BENEFITS OF MASS FOLLOWING:
More Followers
This is simple, if you follow a few hundred extra people, about 40% will follow you back. Following is the single fastest way to build your follower list.
More Information
If you use Twitter as anything more than following your seven closest friends, you extract information from it. If you select the people you follow carefully, you will have an amazing data source from 300 of the worlds smartest people. Look for something, it will be there, or just read and learn something new.
Constant Flow
When you follow more people, add in some folks from the other side of the planet. I happen to be based in Chicago, US, so i make sure to follow a bunch of people in Australia, and New Zealand. Why? That way when I am still working at 3 a.m. there is alway someone to ask a question or talk to.
More Perspectives
This is just common sense, when you listen to more people, you get a wider array of opinions. This is especially fun during an election somewhere in the world. Its amazing how even on Twitter you can build a network of people who just agree with you.
Find Better People
People [I love doing this] will often recommend certain people for others to follow. This generally happens on #followfriday, but is generally continuous. I always try and take these suggestions. Some of my favorite people have been recommended to me, listen!
You Are More Interactive
Every day, I try and select at least five people or so to respond to, that I have had no previous interaction with. Following many people means that I always have someone new to yell with. This gets a new conversation started every time you sit down at TweetDeck. I use Twitter to "talk to a few thousand people at once," but sometimes one person is plenty.
People Listen To You More
People notice when you follow them, they are much more likely to care what you say, if you are following in return. Don't be afraid to reciprocate!
CONS OF MASS FOLLOWING
Noise:
If you do not build a special list of people in a separate column of TweetDeck for the 100 people from whom you cannot miss an update, you will be drowned out by the volume of your total following list. Easy solution, before you go on a following spree, stick your favorites in the other column. Then add to it all the other people that you enjoy as you meet new friends. I add a few people a day that are really just damn fun/interesting/provocative folks.
You Can Look Like A Spammer:
I am not saying that you should go out and follow 2,000 people if you only have 37 followers. I am talking about a adding a few hundred people over about a week. More, if you wish, however, people will almost certainly not follow you if you have a spammer's ratio.
Final Thought:
Spread some love, follow some interesting people, trust me. After all, if you really do hate it, you can just unfollow them and head back to TwitterFox.
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Apologies in advance if no new posts go up, I had minor surgery today, and so things are a little fogged by pain killers. Back soon.
- Alex
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I have been using Chrome since day one, but am truly a browser agnostic. With the launch of Safari 4 I could not help but give it a run for its money. Here is what I found:New Tab Screen:
This has several things that I love:
Top Sites:
One of my favorite things about Chrome is now baked right into Safari, with some added eye candy to make your roommate wonder what the hell you are using. Looks great, works great, comes preloaded with handy websites (unlike Chrome).
However, unlike Chrome, you can pin sites there that you want to keep. In Chrome, Gmail always almost slips out of my list (I never close it, so I never open it). Also, you can delete sites from this list if it becomes a little NSFW.
Search History:
Right beneath the pantheon of websites, there is a search bar for your history. Forget remember which command opens your history, its right there with every tab.
Damn Fast:
In fact, it is so fast, that it actually beat Chrome in a
speed test. Not surprisingly, that means that it killed IE7 and FireFox in the process. Not sure how it stacks up the Chrome Alpha build that I am running, but great news nonetheless. Google can no longer sit back and claim the speed crown. Major points to Safari here, this is a great improvement for them.
Visual Search of History:
I have a very hard time remembering the name of sites, I visit so many. Images are much simpler for me, so enter visual search of history. Blows Chrome away here. A picture does this justice:
Memory Hog:
This might be a problem for some people. With five tabs open: gmail, a blog, two regular sites, and one heavy flash website, I am burning through over 400 megabytes. I have four gigs, so this is not a problem for me, but perhaps the casual user would be constricted.
Rendering:
Being a webkit browser (like Chrome) rendering was great all around the net. I did not use the browser exhaustively for this test, but I had no problems, which is a very good indicator.
Overall:
A great upgrade to a browser that I had written off nearly completely. Apple is not giving up without a fight. I still prefer Chrome, but my eye will be fixed on future releases of this browser. A little bit more and they may have a convert.
—
Update:
Check
this out, some extra cool advanced preference features.
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The company I am working for/with, midVentures, had a fun party last Friday. I thought I would share a few pics:
Attendance was great!
People seemed to enjoy the open bar:
During the Presentations: [I am the guy in the dark blazer next to the woman in red]
Cool shot:
It was a great event, if you would like come to next one, I'll let you all know in advance.
-Alex
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I do not want to be major passing outage this past night, and the world went to pieces. Right? But it didn't, see? Everyone acted like it did, take a look at a Twitter search for #gfail. People need to relax.
Listen, what percentage of us actually pay for GMail? Its microscopic compared to the total user base. So, Google builds a free, amazing service, and on the rare occasion it blinks for a few hours. Data loss? Not that I heard of. How long? A fraction of a day. People need to relax.
When I was just getting into Twitter, GMail went out for a bit, I remember listening to and joining in the collective bitching process over the outage. Now, after working for a variety of tech companies, I have a new outage philosophy:
If you do not pay, then be quiet.
I am dead serious about this. I know that that the internet is all about free for the moment, but you need to realize, that if you do not pay for a service, then you do not get to complain when it goes out for a bit. Your only voice is to switch services. That is your complaint. Don't like it? Move. There are plenty of other email options. Just don't sit there and blow tweet smoke, speak with your feet.
If you are willing to do that, then by all means, complain. "GMail crashes too much! I'm moving to Yahoo mail!" That is a fair complaint. But no one is going to make it, because GMail is by far the best email service on the internet. So, take the lumps, it's a free service. Enjoy it, outages and all.
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Other Note:
If you pay for a webservice, you have the right to be unhappy over outages. You are paying for the servers, so they should always be up.
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