Monthly Archives: May 2009

by Brian Solis

Jeff Pulver’s 140 Character Conference (#140conf) will be taking place at New World Stages in New York City on June 16/17.

While the original scope of the event was to explore “the effects of twitter on: Celebrity, “The Media”, Advertising and (maybe) Politics”, the scope of the event has expanded and we will be covering these topics and a lot more. #140conf will be taking a look at twitter as a platform and will be taking a look at some of the industries which have been disrupted by the advent of twitter.

The schedule reflects the great variety of the subject areas we will be exploring and discussing at #140conf. The speakers represent a “cast of characters” whose presence will help define this event. I’m joining Tony Hsieh of Zappos on stage.

You can save $195 by using code “SOLIS” before midnight Tuesday. Register here.

Follow @140conf on twitter for updates.

Connect with me on:
Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Plaxo, Plurk, Identi.ca, BackType, or Facebook

Read more from Brian Solis:

Blog: PR 2.0
Book: Putting the Public Back in Public Relations
Social Map: The Conversation Prism

TwitterBackgrounds.com is the largest free Twitter backgrounds site. They have a slew of free backgrounds available for your Twitter accounts, or you can purchase a custom Twitter background.

A custom background is a background that brands your site with your personal or professional brands. You can include a featured image, your contact and business information, your logo or brand, and customized colors.

I know, you could do this yourself in Photoshop, but wouldn’t it be so much better ( and more perfectly sized) if a graphic design team did it for you?

Customized Twitter backgrounds are generally $79 but with code Bubblicious, you’ll receive $10 off the cost.

Not up for a fee? They’ve got some gorgeous – and free – backgrounds available as soon as you open their site.

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Contact Michelle with news, stories, events, and more.
Email: michelle[at]writetech[dot]net
Twitter: @writetechnology, Friendfeed: michellel
Sites: Write Technology, Wine-Girl.net

Mogulus is changing its name, but not its dedication to live-streaming video services The re-branding of the Mogulus site emphasizes a renewed focus on its core competency–live video streaming. And the company’s new name says it all. Mogulus has been renamed Livestream. Simple enough to remember, easy to pronounce, and readily explains just about everything the company has to offer. Looks like an improvement to me.

After launching its video services about two years ago, Mogulus has established itself as a useful video tool for self-broadcasters and live-streamers. The first thing I noticed about the now renamed service was its ease of use and collection of helpful features, simplifying the process of creating a cohesive video program to run live on the web.

Designed for anyone to use, the finished product of a Livestream video is a professional-looking program. From multi-user support to integrated, cross-network video search, Livestream has a great combination of features witihn an easy-to-use interface. Livestream has since layered in more helpful features, along with integration with several third party social media sites, making it easier to truly broadcast yourself across the social web.

For both casual and professional users, Livestream has two options for users–a free, ad-supported option and a premium option. Livestream is reporting that its premium service has gained over 1,000 live video producers, proving its concept and business model as a live video streaming service.

As a live streaming service, Livestream still competes with other estabished companies such as Justin.tv and Ustream. And the live-streaming industry overall hasn’t seen the type of growth many expected, given the success of other video-sharing sites like YouTube, and our inherent need to become lifestyle voyeurs and “reality tv” stars. But as services like Livestream continue to innovate their products in terms of simplifying the overall process of creating live-streaming video, and we see more technological leaps on the implementation side for mobile devices, potential users will have a lower barrier to consider and will become more likely to sign up for Livestream and similar services.

by Brian Solis

Thank you Louis Gray for the invitation to the FriendFeed event tonight. Every so often, FriendFeed hosts its TGIFF (Thank Goodness It’s FriendFeed) where they invite FF enthusiasts to the company’s HQ to eat, drink and discuss everything from the state of FriendFeed and its next iterations to Silicon Valley and the future of the Web.

Tonight, I spent time with the FriendFeed team as well as with good friends Louis Gray, Steve Gillmor, Jeremiah Owyang, and Steve Rubel.

Perhaps the event was best immortalized with this picture of the FriendFeed team:

Dan Hsiao, Casey Muller, Ana Yang, Jim Norris, Tudor Bosman, Bret Taylor, Paul Buchheit (with Camilla), Sanjeev Singh, Kevin Fox

I’ll let the pictures tell the rest of the story…

Louis Gray, Steve Rubel, Brian Solis, Jeremiah Owyang

Steve Gillmor and Jeremiah Owyang

Steve Rubel with a Kindle version my new book with Deirdre Breakenridge, “Putting the Public Back in Public Relations”

For more pictures from TGIFF, please visit my album on Flickr.

Connect with me on:
Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Plaxo, Plurk, Identi.ca, BackType, or Facebook

Read more from Brian Solis:

Blog: PR 2.0
Book: Putting the Public Back in Public Relations
Social Map: The Conversation Prism

Fotolia has launched a new product called PhotoXpress, which is a free image bank for creatives to access for personal or professional use. Upon launch PhotoXpress has more than 350,000 images as well as vector illustrations, spanning 22 categories.

So how does this work if its all free? The activity on this site is somewhat limited for members, as they are only able to license up to 10 RF images for free on a daily basis. The images themselves come through several partnerships from image libraries.

PhotoXpress isn’t the only free image catalog out there, but it is being launched by a company that’s well-versed in building image databases and is rumored to have recently raised a major round of funding. Fotolia, the company behind PhotoXpress, charges for the images in its catalog, utilizing a credit system in order to support a marketplace for artists to receive royalties.
Is Fotolia launching a competing service with PhotoXpress, and could it have anything to do with the rumored round of funding?

The company says that PhotoXpress is in fact a vertical for Fotolia, and will merely expand the feature offerings of the Fotolia umbrella. In this way, Fotolia has an inside track and established network for providing a free database of images and vector illustrations, while growing its own offerings in order to reach more clients and users. Whether or not the launch of PhotoXpress had anything to do with Fotolia’s rumored funding is unconfirmed, but I imagine that funding for Fotolia would serve its purpose in launching a free image catalog.
The plans for PhotoXpress are to expand its database and continue to bulk out its offerings as a legal image library for both personal and professional use.