Posts tagged as:

briansolis

Culture Shock: BigTwin Magazine Visits Silicon Valley

by Brian Solis on March 29, 2009

Good friend Ephraim Schwartz not only writes for InfoWorld, but also moonlights for BigTwin magazine (also an IDG publication). He’s a fellow motorcycle enthusiast and he finally convinced me to participate in one of his features on custom bikes.

Believe it or not, I do ride. And, I actually spent several years transforming this 1989 Harley Davidson Softail into something truly unique. I just wish I had more time to enjoy it…

It features the original frame, tank, and engine, but everything else is either custom or sourced from Arlen Ness, Performance Machine (PM), and Jesse James.

Here are a few pictures from the magazine:

For more pictures, please visit BigTwin.

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Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Plaxo, Plurk, Identi.ca, BackType, or Facebook

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FriendFilter Improves the Signal to Noise Ratio on Twitter

by Brian Solis on March 21, 2009

by Brian Solis, via PR 2.0

Good friend and developer extraordinaire Christopher Peri and I proudly introduce FriendFilter in Beta. I’ve collaborated with Peri in the past to develop @microPR (along with Stowe Boyd), MicroJobs, and other apps soon to be released. His vision and technical prowess are ahead of many and I’m lucky to know him.

FriendFilter improves the signal to noise ratio on Twitter by providing you with the intelligence necessary to effectively curate the content and the people that appear in your Twitter timeline.

While there are many tools that facilitate the proactive discovery of individuals who share similar interests and passions such as Mr. Tweet, TweepSearch, Twellow, Twubble, and WhoShouldIFollow, none provide a matchmaking system at the point of follow. This is an important distinction as Twitter sends an auto-notifier every time someone follows you with nothing more than a link to the person’s page in the micro community.

Without meaningful guidance, you’re following people back as a generous act of reciprocity, which generates goodwill, but not necessarily because you believe their content or updates in the statusphere are relevant and worth following. It is this goodwill that is forcing many power users to create a secondary account simply to follow the voices whom they must follow to stay current and motivated.

FriendFilter complements your notification message from twitter via email with detailed information about each person following you so that you can make an informed decision on the spot as to whether or not to follow back.

The stats and data provided by FriendFilter include:
- Number of friends
- Number followers
- Average posts per day
- Friends we both follow
- Messages to tweets I know
- Average number of hours between posts
- Followers to Friends ratio
- Ranking (in Thousands)
- Average Follower growth
- Friends who follow both of you

If someone seems interesting, you can simply click on their user name to see their last 20 updates, a TweetCloud, as well as a direct link to friend that person.

You control the volume of emails you receive from FriendFilter by adjusting the threshold of inbound alerts. For example, I have set my minimum score to “3″ which qualifies followers based on a cumulative score that represents how close we align within the Twitterverse.

FriendFilter also provides you with an email update each time your username is mentioned on Twitter, which is helpful for personal and professional brand managers for up-to-the-minute online reputation management (ORM).

Of course there’s more to FriendFilter, but we’ll save those gems for later. Remember it’s a early Beta, so please be kind and let @pervision know if you have any issues or ideas.

In the meantime, please sign up for FriendFilter to increase the signal to noise ratio on Twitter and invest in a more meaningful and rewarding social graph.

For more about how Twitter is ushering in a new era of Social CRM, sCRM, please read this post…

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

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Happy 3rd Birthday Twitter

by Brian Solis on March 21, 2009

by Brian Solis

Source

Twitter turns three today and in that short amount of time, it has completely transformed the way 6 million (and growing) people communicate with each other.

Here’s a screenshot of an early tweet from Founding CEO jack Dorsey…(h/t TechCrunch)

I joined November 4th, 2006 according to Twitterholic and wrote my first in-depth post on Twitter in March 2007 (although I’m sure if I had more time, I’d find my first official post).

According Nielson, Twitter grew by 1,382% from February 2008 to February 2009.

Perhaps most interestingly, Nielson documented something that I’ve been observing for quite some time, Twitter’s largest adoption is stemming from adults, not primarily via teens or college students as you might expect. In February the largest age group on Twitter was 35-49; with nearly 3 million unique visitors, comprising almost 42 percent of the site’s audience.

For a deeper discussion on the impact of Twitter, please read, “Twitter and Social Networks Usher in a New Era of Social CRM” on PR 2.0.

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

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Diigo Acquires Furl

by Michelle Lentz on March 10, 2009

by Michelle Lentz

Diigo, a research and knowledge sharing tool (social bookmarking and annotations), has acquired Furl from LookSmart. Furl is a web page clipping and archiving service, so it seems like a good fit and, because the deal is being pitched as a partnership in exchange for equity, no one is laying out too much cash right now.

According to Ted West, chief executive officer and president of LookSmart, they are “pleased to know that Furl’s loyal user base will benefit from a reliable platform run by a team highly focused on bringing users the most advanced features and functionality in the marketplace. The combination drastically changes the social bookmarking landscape and we look forward to being a part of it.” Brian Solis has worked with Diigo to help increase awareness for the company and its array of curation tools and contextual network.

Diigo offers a popular Twitter This feature, which allows you to easily share things to Twitter while browsing and bookmarking.

Diigo's TwitterThis option

It also allows you to easily add highlights and sticky notes to any webpage, and then share the annotated page to your twitter followers. They will just see an ordinary link in the Twitter message; but when clicking on the link, they can also see your highlights and sticky notes on the webpage.

Diigo is about to launch Diigo 4.0, which, when combined with Furl, will aim to “take social bookmarking/annotation to a new height.”

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

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A Passenger’s View of the World – Part One of an Ongoing Series

by Brian Solis on February 22, 2009

by Brian Solis

I’ve been traveling quite a bit lately and will continue to do so as I hit the road in support of the new book written with Deirdre Breakenridge, Putting the Public Back in Public Relations.

The views that I’ve enjoyed are captivating and inspiring. I’ve started a new series of photographs as I travel in planes, trains, and automobiles to share those views with you. Enjoy.

A Passenger’s View of the World…