Search Results for: friendfeed

Google Buzz had a few issues to work out when first launching earlier this year, namely the apparent violation of privacy with automated following of contacts already added through your Gmail account. A few changes have already been made to the mutual sharing process on Google Buzz, with another recent tweak. Suggested Users to Follow is now a part of the Google Buzz experience, making the sharing process more clear, and beneficial to users looking to protect their account settings.

With the Suggested Users, Google Buzz takes things a step further than just showing you the users that are following or seek to connect with you on Google Buzz. Similar to what Facebook and other networks have done towards encouraging user interaction, Google Buzz is hoping to stimulate activity in a semi-direct manner.

No surprise, seeing as Google Buzz’s traffic has decreased significantly since launch. It’s speculated that the correlation between Google Buzz’s privacy changes and trailing traffic is also causation–TechCrunch reports that Google Buzz is even losing out to FriendFeed, nearly a forgotten service having been acquired and back-burnered by Facebook.

It seems that Google may have tried too hard to be social with this one. It’s certainly an easy task to make a new service immediately popular when you have an existing user base. But when you make that user base socially interactive by default, individual users have a tendency to get peeved.

And while I haven’t been using Google Buzz nearly as much as I thought, I have been noticing changes here and there to its service. A lot of people I’ve rarely or never actually communicated with via Gmail (or Reader, for that matter) have begun to follow me on Google Buzz. I see alerts for when I receive new followers, with another option for finding even more people to follow. Combined with the constant overflow of information streaming through my Google Buzz front page, I find the whole thing utterly disturbing.

I would rather Google Buzz not become another Twitter or Facebook, merely leveraged by social media “gurus” for the purpose of marketing to people they have little direct connection to. While those social media outlets serve their purpose, I don’t need it so far integrated with the contacts in my Gmail account. Finding a way to make it more personal and relevant to me is step one for Google Buzz’s long list of improvements to make. Till then, I’ll settle for the Suggested Users feature, only because it demonstrates Google’s ongoing desire to improve the service overall.

Six months ago, Ford launched the Fiesta Movement, an ambitious social media program designed to bridge online and real world communities in support of its 2011 Fiesta.

The Ford Fiesta has come to play on the American roads.  In the ultimate foreign exchange program, our 100 agents will spend 6 months behind the wheel of their own Fiesta, lifestreaming their experiences, and completing monthly missions to show you what the Fiesta is all about.

Now, as the Fiesta Movement draws to an end and Ford prepares to preview the 2011 Fiesta at the L.A. Auto Show starting December 4th, a celebration is in order.

To commemorate the movement, Ford is aiming to organize the largest corporate-hosted Tweetup on record and you’re invited.

On December 1st, Ford, CEO Alan Mulally, Head of Social Media Scott Monty, and its Fiesta agents will take over the Hollywood Palladium. Not only will you see a preview of the 2011 Fiesta before everyone attending the auto show, Ford is also treating its guests to a special live performance by Parachute – featuring their hits “She Is Love” and “Under Control” from their debut album Losing Sleep.

The event is free, all you have to do to attend, is RSVP here.

See you in Hollywood!

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Via TechCrunch and PR 2.0…

Measuring individual influence in Social Media is as coveted as it is elusive. While many tools claim to calculate authority, it is the definition of influence that requires clarification in order to grasp the relevance and differences of existing tools and services.

For the sake keeping this discussion on track, let’s define influence. According to Merriam-Webster, influence is having the power or capacity to cause an effect.

San Francisco-based Klout is no stranger to measuring influence on the Social Web. The company launched at SXSW Interactive 2009 to help Twitter users discover the voices that the world listens to (on Twitter anyway). Essentially, Klout measures influence at the topical level, sorting individuals who demonstrate the ability to drive action within respective social graphs when discussing particular subjects.

Today, Klout is announcing its most significant release to date. In addition to measuring authority on Twitter, the company is releasing a new, intelligent Twitter List engine that identifies and ranks the top 25 influencers for any topic of interest and produces a new, qualified, and ranked list as a result.

For example, here’s list of the most influential people on the topic of technology:

And, according to Klout, Public Relations:

Prior to the official release of Lists, Twitter provided Klout with early access to its List APIs. As such, Klout was able to immediately address one of the early frustrations with Lists – the ability to modify a list started by someone else without having to recreate it. The new system now adds the means to introduce any list into Klout’s analysis engine and instantly view the analytics of each person on each list. Users can then either follow that list as is or customize it using Klout’s topical search and ranking feature to ensure that the list is inclusive of all necessary authorities.

Klout’s ability to add context to a person’s influence is critical for businesses that want to leverage influencers in spreading the word about their companies or products.

Klout’s algorithm involves three sophisticated stages of semantic calculation. The first, described as “True Reach,” measures influence between each and every relationship, evaluating the engaged audience versus total audience.

The service also employs a secondary metric known as “Amplification Probability,” which documents the likelihood of a specific tweet spreading beyond the primary network through retweets as well as generating a response from the immediate audience. The service then examines the percentage of actual mentions or retweets shared by a particular audience as well as the percentage of the originating messages generated a user’s actions.

Finally, Klout factors the “Network Value,” which measures the influence of those individuals who follow the original user and their propensity for sharing their content, which contributes to overall authority.

Overall, Klout’s scores place a significant emphasis on the number of clicks a person drives through the links they share on Twitter, thus truly measuring action associated with each update.

Twitter Lists impact not only influence, but also create an opportunity for a new layer of earned authority. Whether or not you inspire measurable action directly, the creation of highly accurate and meaningful lists is significant and also helpful to the Twitter community. The ability to identify and assemble proven authorities on relevant subjects allow followers to stay connected to verifiable and trustworthy sources and the voices, information and trends that in turn influence their activity. More importantly, Klout empowers followers to further modify lists to not only track activity, but also determine opportunities for future engagement and behavior tracking.

After all, influence is not in the eye of the beholder, it is the ability to inspire action and also measure its effects.

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Source: Cafe Press

According to a press release published today by the Oxford University Press, the 2009 New Oxford American Dictionary Word of the Year is “unfriend.” Yes…as in “I’m unfriending you because I can’t keep up with all of the TMI you publish online.”

Just to clarify, the official definition is as follows:
unfriend – verb – To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook

“It has both currency and potential longevity,” notes Christine Lindberg, Senior Lexicographer for Oxford’s US dictionary program. “In the online social networking context, its meaning is understood, so its adoption as a modern verb form makes this an interesting choice for Word of the Year. Most ‘un-’ prefixed words are adjectives (unacceptable, unpleasant), and there are certainly some familiar ‘un-’ verbs (uncap, unpack), but ‘unfriend’ is different from the norm. It assumes a verb sense of ‘friend’ that is really not used (at least not since maybe the 17th century!). Unfriend has real lex-appeal.”

Word of the Year Finalists:

Technology

• hashtag – a # [hash] sign added to a word or phrase that enables Twitter users to search for tweets (postings on the Twitter site) that contain similarly tagged items and view thematic sets
• intexticated – distracted because texting on a cellphone while driving a vehicle
• netbook – a small, very portable laptop computer with limited memory
• paywall – a way of blocking access to a part of a website which is only available to paying subscribers
• sexting – the sending of sexually explicit texts and pictures by cellphone

Economy

• freemium – a business model in which some basic services are provided for free, with the aim of enticing users to pay for additional, premium features or content
• funemployed – taking advantage of one’s newly unemployed status to have fun or pursue other interests
• zombie bank – a financial institution whose liabilities are greater than its assets, but which continues to operate because of government support

Politics and Current Affairs

• Ardi -(Ardipithecus ramidus) oldest known hominid, discovered in Ethiopia during the 1990s and announced to the public in 2009
• birther – a conspiracy theorist who challenges President Obama’s US birth certificate
• choice mom – a person who chooses to be a single mother
• death panel – a theoretical body that determines which patients deserve to live, when care is rationed
• teabagger – a person who protests President Obama’s tax policies and stimulus package, often through local demonstrations known as “Tea Party” protests (in allusion to the Boston Tea Party of 1773

Environment

• brown state – a US state that does not have strict environmental regulations
• green state – a US state that has strict environmental regulations
• ecotown – a town built and run on eco-friendly principles

Novelty Words

• deleb – a dead celebrity
• tramp stamp – a tattoo on the lower back, usually on a woman

Notable Word Clusters for 2009

Twitter related:

• Tweeps
• Twibe
• Tweetup
• Sweeple
• Twitt
• Tweepish
• Twitterati
• Tweetaholic
• Twitterature
• Twittermob
• Twitterverse/sphere
• Twitterhea
• Retweet

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As I covered last week at PR 2.0, Twitter is slowly rolling out its Beta feature network-wide. Seems that I was included in the next wave of account updates. Here’s a screenshot of what you’ll see…(above)

The text reads as follows:

Hi there, you’re part of a beta group receiving this feature, which means you may start seeing retweets in a new way. People who don’t have this yet will see your retweets prefaced by “RT”.

As described by @Biz, co-founder of Twitter:

Retweet is a button that makes forwarding a particularly interesting tweet to all your followers very easy. In turn, we hope interesting, newsworthy, or even just plain funny information will spread quickly through the network making its way efficiently to the people who want or need to know.

The plan is to see how it goes first with this small release. If it needs more work, then we’ll know right away. If things look good, we’ll proceed with releasing the feature in stages eventually arriving at 100%.

The new retweet feature is particularly interesting as it organizes your experience directly at Twitter.com much in the same way third-party clients such as Tweetdeck and Seesmic have offered all along. Unlike these desktop applications however, Twitter.com remains as the pervasive interface for engaging on Twitter. For example, your lists, real-time search results, DMs, Twitter stream, and now retweets are key pillars to the personal experience at Twitter.com. For most users, the new retweet functionality, combined with important, cached searches (including your username), the need to stray from Twitter’s online hub begins to dissipate. And, the timing couldn’t be better…

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