Is Retweet The Next Digg This?

Twitter has taken on a life of its own. in the early days, their was no way to respond to other people until users came up with the idea to use the @ symbol to designate a reply. Now adays, the sharing of information on Twitter has created what is known as a Retweet. This is when someone republishes a message someone else wrote and is used as a means of sharing useful information. Depending on who picks up the message and retweets it, the information can be viewed by thousands of people.

This is where a site like TweetMeme comes into play. Tweetmeme contains a listing of the hottest stories on twitter based on the number of times they have been retweeted. The site features an area for the top tweets, sponsored tweets, a mobile version of the site but perhaps most importantly, an easy way to place a Retweet button on your website with every article to make sharing that content easier.

If you couldn’t tell by now, the whole thing works much in the same was as Digg with a few notable exceptions. First, there are no comments for the stories on the Tweetmeme website. There is also no way to bury a story because if it’s not popular, it won’t show up on the front page anyways. There are no categories so the front page has a higher chance of maintaining a diverse round of stories. The democracy of getting stories to the top is still there but for now, there is not a large majority of people dictating what makes it to the top and what doesn’t.

Overall, if you’re a Twitter user or looking at another way to get traffic to your blog, adding this Tweetmeme button is a 5 minute or less step that could equal major benefits if the right people pick up on your story. Besides, having the Tweetmeme button on your site is a good way to see how many times people have retweeted your blog post.

Social Networks Of The Future

Daniel Scocco of Daily Blog Tips posed an interesting question today. Will Websites be the Social Networks of the Future? Daniel makes three assumptions. The first is that most people will need or want an online presence in the future. I believe this to be a no brainer. At some point, people will NEED to be on the web in order to move up in the world.

His second assumption is that people like to own their own stuff. Now this is an interesting point in and of itself because currently, we’re seeing a ton of people producing content and hanging out on sites/profiles they do not own. Most of which could be deleted from the net at any time the company seemed fit to do so. When will the revolution take place where people end up going back to doing things they can control and own versus giving the breadbasket away. Or is this not an issue?

Assumption number three is that technology will evolve, bringing social features to any website. Here is where I see WordPress and MovableType setting the stage for this to occur sooner rather than later. It wasn’t long ago before Six Apart purchased the social networking service Pownce. Now, the software is already starting to show up in recent versions of MT to allow the software to be more socially oriented. On the other side of the aisle, it has been confirmed that at some point in the near future, BuddyPress will contain a bundle of plugins for the stand alone version of the WordPress software essentially allowing people to easily self-host their own WordPress powered social network.

All in all, Daniel is on to something. One of his assumptions is already coming true and I think one and two are the ones we have to wait for. I also believe it’s a matter of when, not if, these things occur. How about you though? Do you think that websites will serve as the social networks of the future?

Is This BlogRush All Over Again?

The Blog Traffic Exchange website released a WordPress plugin back on March 15th called Related Websites. The plugin taps into membership sites, that is those who have signed up to the Related Websites service who have been approved and uses a specially crafted algorithm to display links from those member sites to articles deemed to be related. It didn’t take long for me to think of BlogRush when reading the description of how this plugin/service works. However, unlike BlogRush, their are no credits and it seems like everyone has an equal shot at having their links displayed as long as you play by the rules.

BlogTrafficExchange explains how the plugin works here:

Links are randomly rotated both locally per page load and globally every 24 hours. A proprietary traffic balancing algorithm rewards blogs that send diverse traffic into the exchange more frequent placement. Relevancy is never compromised.

While a lot of people are raving about how well the plugin is working for them so far, I hate the fact that I have no control over who shows up in my related content box. I love the idea on how Related Websites work, I said the same thing when BlogRush was launched, but instead of showing websites from across your internal database of URLs, I’d rather be the one adding specific URL’s to my own internal database. Then, through a contextual algorithm, it determines from those URL’s to show related content. I believe this would make the related websites 10 times more relevant than what BlogTrafficExchange or any other traffic exchange system does. You know, algorithms can’t solve every problem and this is one of them. I as a human being know which specific sites are most related/relevant to the content I publish, I only need the algorithm to scan the content of those sites.

I’ve come to the conclusion that Sphere, or any other related content network which displays ‘relevant‘ content from across a wide spectrum of sites is useless. But, if you’re looking to really open the flood gates in terms of coverage or visibility, only then do I see these types of systems being valuable to a blogger. While you could make the argument that being part of a related content network which is used by big name sites such as CNN provides the opportunity for a link from your blog to show up on their site, don’t kid yourself. It’s happened to a few people but it’s not an everyday occurrence. Just about anytime I’ve read the CNN tech section and reviewed the related content section, a little blog called TechCrunch always seems to be featured their.

If a traffic exchange network works for you, great. It’s just my opinion that you represent the minority.

Two Teen Blogging Networks Merge Into One

The Teens In Tech blogging network which is operated by CEO Daniel Brusilovsky who only happens to be 16 years of age has merged with the Youth Bloggers Network. According to a post written on the Teens In Tech blog the two networks should compliment each other nicely:

We figured that YBN and TinT complement each other very nicely. TinT offers a place where teens can get set up with a free blog, while YBN offers a community for young bloggers to collaborate, communicate, and grow their blogs and projects.

Teens In Tech is currently still in private beta while Youth Bloggers has over 150 members. YBN looks like it will be used as a means of turning the entire company into a center point for teen bloggers to use not only for publishing content, but for establishing the site as their social network. I’m impressed by what Daniel has been able to accomplish with regards to running a company at just 16 years old. It wasn’t too long ago when Daniel was on stage at his own Teens In Tech conference discussing teen trends and basically, all things teen. This kid has a bright future ahead of him.

Research: Twitter to Blame for Economic Woes

According to deathbyemail.com, research by a Harvard economist indicates that Twitter may be to blame for the recent economic woes being experienced worldwide.

Professor Martin Schmeldon of Harvard Business School recently released research findings that suggest excessive Twitter use may have caused the current economic downturn.

“We see the rapid rise of Twitter usage in 2008 correlating very strongly with a tremendous decrease in American productivity,” said Schmeldon. “Our regression analysis on the data suggests a causal relationship that may actually be larger than the impact of the much-touted subprime collateral debt refinancing triggers.”

We here at Performancing believe otherwise. Twitter definitely helps increase productivity. Where else do we get story leads? And Twitter is part of our social media marketing. (And guess where I found this nifty little piece of economic analysis).

And besides, my econometrics professor back in my undergraduate days had always stressed the point that correlation does not mean causality. This makes me think: it’s also possible that the supposed correlation also goes the other way around. Maybe with the Dow going down, people are flocking more and more to Twitter (to find other sources of income, perhaps?).

Is it April 1st yet?

Perfcast Episode 29 – Our Last Hoorah

Episode 29 marks the last episode of Perfcast that I produce. In this episode, David and I as well as special guest Brad LeClerc discussed the news of the week while also giving props and thanks to all who have downloaded and listened to the show since it rebounded back on August 28th, 2008. If you were one of these people, David and I sincerely thank you for sticking through the thick and thin and hope you’ll follow us on our future endeavors. What will become of Perfcast? I’m not sure, but I won’t be steering the boat.

AD COPY: This episode of Perfcast is brought to you by, the Performancing Copyright Management Service. Our copyright experts will track down websites, blogs, forums and other sites that infringe on your rights as a publisher. We will then give you a comprehensive report with suggested courses of action. Prices start at $300 and for more information please visit services.performancing.com/blog

STORIES DISCUSSED:
The most reliable blog service
How to conduct a great interview
EarnersTalk.com Launches
Is Dad Blogs The Next Best Thing?
Twitter Paid Accounts On The Way?
When do you stop commenting on blogs?

LAST WEEKS POLL QUESTION: Is Social Media An Overused Buzzword?

Out of a total of 51 votes, 33 of you said Yes, 13 of you said No while 5 of you don’t even know what the term really means.

PICKS OF THE WEEK
Jeff – DeviantArt.com – Simply the best site on the web dedicated to awesome art of all flavors. Also, a great site to browse when looking for a new desktop wallpaper.

David – IO9.com – My favorite science fiction/fantasy related blog, run by Gawker media. The blog I’d buy/run if I could afford it.

JOB OF THE WEEK Duncan Riley’s Inqusitr looking for a few more bloggers.

LENGTH OF EPISODE – 1 Hour 6 Minutes

DOWNLOAD THE SHOW: PerfcastEpisode29.mp3

LISTEN TO EPISODE 29 OF PERFCAST:

MarsEdit Now Supports Tumblr

Those who use Windows based PCs have a ton of options as their disposal when it comes to third party blog editors. For example, Scribefire, Windows Live Writer, etc. If you’re on a Mac however, there is an interesting application which is proving to be a powerhouse for third party blog editing called MarsEdit.

MarsEdit which is developed and maintained by Red Sweater Software recently released version 2.3 of the software. The latest release now contains support for Tumblr.com which is another microblogging type service. Also new in this release is an overhauled media manager that opens much faster when using lots of photos. Technorati tags editing has been revised, and MarsEdit 2.3 sports improved weblog Favicon detection.

I don’t own a Mac so I can’t give this piece of software a trial run but based on everything I’ve read, it’s worth the $30.00.

New ShareThis Widget On The Way

I know many of you in the Performancing crowd utilize the Sharethis widget on your blog to make it as easy as 1,2,3 to share content across a wide spectrum of sites and services. Starting later this week, you should notice a new sleek design to the widget as well as a slew of new features such as:

No tabs! – The widget will be tab-free. They have merged the Social Web and Post tabs into one section, making the experience more intuitive and manageable for the user.

Smarter Widget – Whenever registered ShareThis users share content to their contacts, they will display the last three addresses used. Reducing time searching for most used contacts encourages users to share more frequently.

ShareBox v2.0 – Users can now save content directly to their ShareBox through a link in the widget.

Contact Manager – ShareThis users will now be able to access and import their contacts from within the widget. This allows your users to gain access to their address books without leaving your site.

According to the recent newsletter that was released, you will not need to make any changes to the existing widget code. Your current customization such as links, colors, order/selection will remain in tact. The new release will be pushed out across all publishers later this week and all data will also remain in tact through the ShareThis Reporting Dashboard. Once the new design is in place and you don’t like it, you’ll be able to use a new ShareThis Widget Configurator to use when the new widget is on your site. Last but not least, if you use offset settings, those will also migrate over to the new widget.

Who Is The Most Reliable Blogging Service?

Royal Pingdom which is a site that specializes in covering the internet, technology, or anything uptime related has released their report on who the most reliable and unreliable blog hosting services are. The report was based on a period of four months between November 10th 2008 to March 10th 2009, so keep that in mind when reviewing the numbers. The services monitored were as follows:

• Typepad
• Blogger
• WordPress.com
• Blogster
• Blog.com
• Vox
• Squarespace
• Windows Live Spaces
• LiveJournal

Here are the results:

As expected, WordPress.com, TypePad and Blogger were the three dominant hosting services although TypePad beat out the other two by six minutes more uptime. Considering the size and scope of both WordPress.com and TypePad with Blogger having Google powering its service, it’s no wonder these top three providers are able to stand above the crowd. However, Microsoft is a big behemoth in and of itself yet their Windows Live Spaces had 4 hours and 10 minutes of downtime.

So what do you make of these results?

Say What You Want in Three Sentences

How long should email responses be? How long should blog posts be? With some microblogging services, we already have a pre-defined length by which we must subscribe to. Twitter, for instance, gives you a space of only 140 characters. SMS messages, of course, are limited to 160 characters (not counting concatenated or “multi-part” messages).

What about email, then? With todays diminishing attention spans–not to mention those of us who have attention disorders, like myself at times–it probably pays to keep it short and simple when communicating. Be direct to the point, but without losing the essence of your message, and without discarding important details.

If Sentenc.es would have it their way, emails should be three sentences long.

Treat all email responses like SMS text messages, using a set number of letters per response. Since it’s too hard to count letters, we count sentences instead.

three.sentenc.es is a personal policy that all email responses regardless of recipient or subject will be three sentences or less. It’s that simple.

Or two. Or four. Or five. I guess it depends on your preference, but I think the point is that it involves much discipline to keep messages concise, and to the point. Otherwise, rambling on and on might cause your reader to lose focus himself, and lose track of the important things you are bringing forth in that piece of communication.

But do you stand to lose details if your emails are too short? How about blog posts? Will a two-paragraph, 100-word blog post be more effective than a 250-word one with bullet points and headings? I guess it depends on how you write it.

This blog post comes to a grand total of 20 sentences, excluding the block-quoted text. Have I made my point?