Alert Blog Reviews

At the LeWeb conference in Paris Twitter is busy making sure that all the developments in the real-time search and social media world aren’t just coming from the Googleplex. Maybe it’s the end of the year rush or it’s the need to create excitement going into 2010 since 2009 was a rough year for many. Whatever the reason the news is fast and furious inthe space in general. Twitter’s busy letting the world in on the sheer volume of apps that have been developed for the service and how they are going to help foster more growth in the near future. TechCrunch is convering the event and tells us Twitter’s Director of Platform Ryan Sarver just took the stage at LeWeb a couple of minutes ago, and shared some announcements with the audience about the future of the platform and the effect this will have on the ecosystem. He also shared a milestone for the company: Sarver said 50,000 registered applications to date have been built using Twitter APIs. The roadmap ahead: Transparency : “we need to be more public about our policy and intentions” Communication : “we need to be out there and let our developers know what’s going on” Utility : “we need to keep providing our robust APIs and enable third-party developers to thrive” Profitability : “when our partners succeed, we succeed” (more details coming early 2010) Of course, since this is Twitter most people will laser in on the P word (profitability). Some of the significant ‘details’ around these areas is that everyone will have full access to the data stream in 2010 (what that actually means is TBD). Look for a new website for developers with dashboards and the like for the development community. Also, as a sign that the development of apps is truly a big deal there will be a Twitter developer conference in 2010 called Chirp in San Francisco next year The conference, which will be geared towards developers, is likely to be similar in some ways to Facebook’s F8 conference that is held each year in San Francisco. Not too many details were given but there is a landing page up already for the event (which is scheduled to take place sometime in 2010). So Twitter continues to flourish and develop to try to handle the continued growth despite some concern about visitor fall off recently. I suspect that some of the developers are the very reason for this ‘concern’ as many people access Twitter through third party apps to begin with and those growing numbers are not tracked by these number crunching entities. Looks like 2010 is going to be another big year for Twitter.

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Twitter’s App Nest Is Big and Growing

In case you’ve been . . . I don’t know, asleep for the last two years, you probably realize that the Internet is changing the way people get their news. Newspapers are having a notoriously hard time adapting . But Google, in partnership with the New York Times and the Washington Post, is trying to change that—and change the way we use news on the Internet (and, from the sounds of it, possibly the Internet altogether). The result is a more dynamic news page called a “ Living Story .” At the top of the page, there’s a short summary of the whole story to date. Below that, they have a timeline of headlines, then all individual stories on a given topic on one page, sorting them in reverse chronological order (or filtered as you choose from the left-hand pane). To indicate individual stories’ importance, the summary of the story is longer or shorter (or omitted). The full text of the story is accessible on the page. The page “remembers” what stories you’ve visited and whether you’ve been there before, and hides or grays out things you’ve already read. And naturally, email and RSS updates are available. Of course, Living Stories only work for stories that . . . you know, “live.” In their video, Google uses the war in Afghanistan page and the health care reform page as examples—stories that have some new related headline every day. (Note that both the Post and the Times each have a page for each story, so there are two health care reform living stories, etc.) The left-hand navigation allows you to filter stories by location/subtopic (preselected), story/data type, importance and chronological order. Although I do like the format, I’m not as impressed as I wanted to be with the implementation. (Probably has to do with the fact that the first coverage I saw led with a quote about how “pages” are a false paradigm for the web and we should be so over them by now.) The reality is that it’s just AJAX. The organization is better for learning about the long-term view of a story. And it’s nice to know when checking up on a familiar story that you won’t reread something accidentally. For day-to-day news, though, unless you only want to track every story on a certain topic, it’s probably not the best way to remain informed about world affairs. What do you think? Are Living Stories a revolution to online news? Will they be the wave of the future?

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Google Changing Online News with “Living Stories”

I admit, I am coming at this one a little uneducated. You see I never used the Twitter mobile site until today when I even considered that it existed. With the third party apps available I just don’t think about Twitter as the place to ‘micro-blog’ but rather the act of ‘micro-blogging’. I suspect that will make sense to some and for those who get it maybe you should be just a little worried. Back to the important news at hand. The new Twitter mobile site preview was touted today on the Twitter blog . Leland of Twitter tells us Our new mobile web site is previewing today, just point your phone’s browser to http://mobile.twitter.com. Its got a great new look, and has some great new touches that will make your mobile experience on Twitter a bit more fun and a lot more helpful. Let us know if you agree and especially tell us how we can make it better. Here’s a look see. For someone like myself who is pretty committed to Tweet Deck as my third party Twittercation of choice this redesign will have little impact. I suppose it would be good to ask how many readers use the mobile Twitter site regularly. Is there anybody out there? Leland talks about the soon to be replaced version of the mobile Twitter experience as ‘m’ and seems to be trying to break the news to ‘it’ as nicely as possible. What may be a less known fact is: Lots of people access Twitter on their phones via our good ol’ mobile website, and trusty ‘m’ has been delivering tweets faithfully. However, ‘m’ doesn’t fully feel like Twitter, and could probably do a bit more things for you. ‘M’ should also be fantastically innovative — naturally the best way to do that is use our own APIs. So, the mobile team here built a brand new mobile web client from scratch, using only Twitter APIs, and we’d like to share the results with you. So it looks like ‘m’ is going to be kicked to the curb. Tossed away like so much rubbish despite the loyal and faithful work it has done in the past. So ‘m’. when your days are over I shall remember you fondly which mean much more if I had ever used you before writing this post. Anyway, good luck ol’ boy. You’re not the only one being put out of work these days.

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Twitter Mobile Gets a New Look

I have spent a considerable amount of time in the past year watching the decline and fall of the newspaper empire. At times I have had a ‘you get what you pay for’ take on the situation while at others I find it sad that an important industry is in a rapid downward spiral. Now add to the mix the musings / rantings of Rupert Murdoch and his thought that he can revive his industry through his proposed tactics and you are close to a three ring circus with all clowns and no ringmaster. You see, when I get the most value out of a newspaper it really has nothing to do with the hard news. In fact, I have already heard most of the news that I care about before a newspaper gets my fingers dirty (which I think is one of the cool things about newspapers because there are fewer tactile experiences in the online world). What I devour though in the newspaper is any investigative reporting. Anything that took time to compile and either promotes someone doing good or exposes someone doing bad. That’s one place where the printed ‘news’ works well. There could be others as well. I would like to propose some possible solutions / options for newspapers to consider. Let hard news ‘reporting’ be online and embrace it. The Internet is becoming a more real time medium and the printed word will not be able to compete. As a result, I would love to see in a newspaper a 4-6 page section that is just chock full of snip-its about news items. Just the facts. No opinions. Just a strong aggregation of the high points and no one’s opinion attached. Let me decide what to do next after you have gathered it up for me. Stop telling me what to think. Tell me what you think but don’t force me to think it. Now I am not suggesting that you go the Newsweek route and just have all op-eds all the time because quite frankly I hate that format. It’s arrogant and it is designed to divide and conquer. We have enough divisiveness in this world. What if you just had a strong stable of consistent op-ed type players who clearly identify where there allegiance is and then provide that content for their audience as the other side of the ‘news’. If I don’t like one or the other then I either don’t read it or, even better, I read it to be better informed. Present both sides of arguments REGULARLY as part of your format rather than trying to look balanced by occasionally bringing in someone from the other side as a sacrificial lamb for your readers to offer up to their ideological god. Be truly balanced. Stop taking sides for goodness sake. This Washington Post v Washington Times, right v. left crap is just that. Crap. I would LOVE to see a newspaper talk evenly about both sides of the same coin. That would take guts but I think there is a real market for it. I would read that one for sure. Recognize the real audience. The printed word is more for the thinker, the ponderer (I made that word up so sue me) and the person who wants to digest the news. Online is for the ADHD world we live in of ‘read and reject’ and ‘consume and dsipose’. The quick hit. The surface player. Let the online world serve the ‘real-timers’ and you serve the thinkers. Since an investigative technique takes time to put together there won’t be the ‘it’s old news before the ink hits the paper’ issue. Make a difference. As I stated earlier I think that a newspaper that was out there uncovering the good, the bad and the ugly of the world with long-term investigative pieces that dig deep and create change and impact would be awesome. You would have less staff because you were not concentrating on the minutiae of each insignificant story. Leave that to the online quick hit environment. Be a true change agent. I would pay for that and I think advertisers would to. Embrace bloggers and tweeters. Rather than view the real time nature of the web as a threat and somehow ‘beneath your standards’ embrace it for your readers and help them sift through it. What if you put yourself in the position of telling your dedicated readers that “we trust this or that blog” because of the following reasons. That would be cool. Bloggers would then be a much different animal if your could have a frienemy or co-opetition like relationship rather than a completely adversarial one. Let the engines index your content. This one’s easy. Don’t be an idiot. Stop playing political games. You report news not set public opinion. When you choose sides you actually lose credibility. That’s not reporting that is campaigning. As always there is more and I would love to hear your thoughts. If there is a paper that is doing some or all of these please let me know. Where else could newspapers evolve and take full advantage of the new world media order rather than act like there is a way to preserve their no longer relevant status quo? Thanks for reading and have a Happy Thanksgiving.

Originally posted here:
Options for Newspapers in the New Media World Order

A confession. Sometimes I use Bing.com. Stop looking at me that way. I said I “use” Bing.com. I didn’t say I enjoy it! In fact, I “use” Bing.com when I’m shopping online and want to get the best price. Bing has a pretty cool shopping engine and I can get up to 10% cashback with its cashback program . See? I use Bing.com. The problem is, that use does not result in me using the search engine for any other task. And that is the issue I see with rumors that Bing is willing to pay News Corp and other news organizations to provide their content exclusively to the Microsoft search engine. The FT reports : Microsoft has had discussions with News Corp over a plan that would involve the media company being paid to “de-index” its news websites from Google, setting the scene for a search engine battle that could offer a ray of light to the newspaper industry. OK, so let’s say this deal comes together–which I really doubt–but let’s say it does. What will happen? I, and many others, will know that in order to read an article on the Wall Street Journal, we have to go to Bing.com and not Google. We conduct our search, read the article, then decide to keep Bing as our default search engine …go right back to using Google! While Bing does need to get some exclusives like this, I just don’t see them being enough to fully switch the masses away from Google. If I know that my favorite bread is only available at Trader Joe’s, I’ll occasionally buy my bread there. The rest of the grocery shopping will be done at Harris Teeter…technically by my wife, but you get the idea. What do you think? Will deals like this convince you to switch to Bing? Forget you–you’re smart–will it convince the average search user to switch? Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

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Why a Deal With News Corp Would Make Bing the Trader Joe’s of Search

Search Engine Land talks to Marissa Mayer about Google testing a new search interface among a select few users. The new interface uses a left-hand pane to display search options—but instead of being off by default, with a link to turn on the pane, the new search options will be on permanently, and Google will lose the top blue bar over its results. Other options, including results from other Google properties (Images, News, Maps, Books) will join the left-hand panel. Search Engine Land has screenshots of the news options test: Meanwhile, as a refresher, here’s the present Search Options (first tested a year ago , added to the SERP in May ): In the new screenshot, sitelinks are also homogenized—rather than appearing inconsistently (at any position, indented or on a single line, or possibly not at all), they appear in this test on the first two results as a single line. So the new layout is pretty cool—it standardizes many things that weren’t, it puts many popular options all together, and it predicts what category of results you want (images, video, etc., though that may or not work out for you). But is it just me (no, because Matt McGee said this , too) or does this look a little familiar? Mayer suggests that not only is a three-column layout becoming a default in search engine results pages, but it’s also a “universal truth.” (Kind of like using the magical 28 words on the home page ?) In other news: Mayer says the fading homepage has slowed users down.

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Google Testing Permanent Sidebar

While I just read this over at All Things Digital I am still scratching my head (which means I am typing with just one hand, so if this reads slow you’ll know why). AOL tends to be in the news in the past year or so more about whether the business will survive and how will it look when it is pushed out of the Time Warner nest officially in December. Why today would be any different I don’t know but the news from AOL is how they are asking for 2,500, or one third of their work force, to volunteer for a layoff. AOL, which has already told investors that it will spend up to $200 million firing a good chunk of its staff, has now told its employees. It is looking for “up to 2,500 volunteers,” CEO Tim Armstrong told his staff today. That’s a third of the company’s payroll. The voluntary layoff program begins on December 4, a few days before the company spins off from Time Warner (TWX). If the company doesn’t get enough volunteers, it will axe people on its own. Ok, so in this crappy job market you are asking someone to either volunteer to move on or just wait and see if they will be told to move on. What I didn’t see was what would make that kind of move better than rolling the dice and hoping that you don’t get axed? In other words, if there is any doubt in an AOL employee’s mind as to whether they would survive this what is the advantage of volunteering. Is there monetary incentive? I’m a little baffled. Of course, if you look at it from the business side this is the kind of news investors like to hear. In a gesture of “I’m suffering too” Tim Armstrong is not taking his bonus in the neighborhood of $1.5 million due him this year. All of the cynics in the crowd can chime in on that one I am sure. I have no comment but here is Armstrong’s take. “As a member of our team and the person who takes accountability for the results of the company, I am making the decision to forego my 2009 bonus. That decision is a personal one and is not a sign for the future payout of the overall bonus plan for employees.” So what about AOL as an Internet business? What about what this will look like moving forward? With ICQ on the block and MapQuest as well what is AOL going to be offering the market place when it is asked to stand alone other than 2,500 more folks with AOL on their resume when looking for work? It might be interesting to hear from the MP crowd as to what their view of AOL is in the Internet marketing space as we approach this new phase in the company’s history. Let’s hear it.

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AOL Asking 2,500 Employees to Fall on Their Sword