Word Frequency Visualization of Sarah Palin’s Resignation Speech
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Below is a visualization of the most commonly used words in Sarah Palin's resignation speech today. The full text of the speech is available online and I grabbed this image using Wordle.net - always a good thing to do when a politician gives an important speech. It's interesting. It might be good to compare this cloud of words with a similar visualization of some of the other Republican governors resigning this summer. Draw from this what you will. I've been reading coverage of the events through Memeorandum , a great source for political news, and the one thing that stands out to me in this visualization is that allegations Palin addressed the nation and not the state she was serving seem questionable given how much she talked about Alaska and Alaskans. It is also interesting to see how many times she used the word “dollars.” She used the word government far more than she did family, though when watching the video of her press conference it sounded like she was really talking about family a lot. Do you think this kind of analysis can be truly useful? I think that it's most useful when comparing multiple speeches for content, but even then I'm not sure how to read the meaning of word frequency. See also a comparison I did in January at ReadWriteWeb of President Obama's inaugural speech compared the Bushes' and other past presidents. Data analysis is fascinating and of course much larger opportunities to engage in it are becoming available every day online. I believe we're going to see a whole lot of innovation making use of the text of conversations as a foundation for analysis in the near future. Not cute little stuff like this, but big, ongoing, ambitious projects. Hopefully for more than just marketing purposes. Here's a blog post and great audio interview on that topic, if you're interested. .. read more..
I’m Starting a Podcast With Dave Winer Tonight
Friday, June 19, 2009
RSS and blogging forefather Dave Winer has asked me to co-host a weekly podcast with him and we're starting the first live episode in just a few minutes! I'm very excited about it, as I've long enjoyed Dave's other podcasts. I hope you'll give it a listen, enjoy it, take your dog for walks more regularly (that's the best time to listen to podcasts, in my experience!) and send feedback about how we can make the show even more awesome. We're going to be talking about cutting edge tech news and I'm sure Dave will be adding a lot of perspective from the early days of Web 2.o's unfolding. He was there at the start and is still breaking new ground on a regular basis. It should be a fun show. .. read more..
Why I Don’t Need a Facebook Vanity URL
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Facebook announced the imminent availability of vanity URLs today, meaning I could soon become facebook.com/marshallk or some variation. Chris Messina's take on this is a must-read. Or I'll just give you the short version: I don't need a Facebook vanity URL because I already own Marshallk.com . That's a heck of a lot better. I can be found on Facebook by searching for my name, or via the breadcrumbs of conversation that I occaisionally drop there. More importantly, you can also find me at Twitter , at FriendFeed (if you really want to find me on LinkedIn, Delicious, StumbleUpon or Flickr, it's all listed at FriendFeed too) or you can call me on the phone. My phone number is listed on the side of Marshallk.com. I spend most of my days at ReadWriteWeb . I also have a physical body that occasionally makes an appearance in public. The point is, I'm in charge here at Marshallk.com and that's the way I like it. I know who makes the rules, so there probably won't be any new ones I don't like. I cannot say the same about Twitter or Facebook, not at all. Anything could happen over there, and if that's the only connection that you and I have - it's quite possible that connection will be broken in time. I'm here at Marshallk.com to stay. That means I'm going to stop telling people about my serf's address at Twitter when I introduce myself, and I'm not going to promote my special link on Facebook (if I get one) - I'm just going to send people to this page if they want to find me, and then they can find where ever I happen to be hanging out through here. I know most people don't have their own domains registered, but for those of us who do, maybe we should reclaim some of the control that comes with ownership of digital identity. Just a thought. .. read more..
How to Create Sub-Groups to Maximize Your Online Effectiveness
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Over at ReadWriteWeb , where I spend most of my time, we write mostly news and analysis but some “how-to” type posts. Below you'll find one of my favorite how-to posts I've written lately, originally titled Groups: The Secret Weapon of the Social Web . I thought I'd repost it here in case any Marshallk.com readers missed it and because it's relevant to my consulting work as well. Clients regularly hire me to advise or assist in the creation of strategic groups of contacts on various platforms. It's super helpful. Check out this post and you'll see why (and how). Social interaction online is not very sophisticated. The news feed model of conversation has taken over the social web, from Facebook to Twitter to FriendFeed to MySpace, but by itself it doesn't serve us very well. That's where the creation of groups of sources comes in. Various services have different ways for users to separate their “friends” into different groups, viewable by topic, category or type of connection. Facebook is making changes today to make it easier to break your Facebook Newsfeed into groups. That's going to be very important. The best Twitter applications offer group functionality that the site itself doesn't. MySpace offers no such feature, yet. The Facebook news prompted us to try to articulate the value of group creation online. By better understanding the value that groups can deliver, we can better strategize our creation of groups. First we'll discuss four ways that small groups separated from a full river of news can help you use the social web more effectively. Then, for context, we'll briefly contrast this with the value of the full stream of information. Using both together is more useful than merely limiting the full stream to a manageably small group of sources on a given topic or of a certain priority. Forgive me if this is all obvious to you; I know it's not to everyone. Even if it is, I think there's value in discussing fundamental qualities of emerging methods of communicating. The assumption in discussing these values is that you're an ambitious knowledge worker. If that's not the case then this logic may or may not apply. The Value of Groups Prioritization Pulling high-priority sources out of the full stream and putting them in a special place enables you to catch more of the high-value information those sources publish. Why lose valuable messages in the whole sea of marginally valuable information that we all have access to? High value sources don't always publish high value information, but the increased likelihood of their doing so warrants putting them in a special place so that the unusually high signal-to-noise ratio they offer is maintained. Below: I follow thousands of people on FriendFeed but have about 100 people who often discover or make news early in their own group. Context Different words and links have different meanings in different contexts. When subscribing to a large set of sources it's sometimes easy to forget who or what certain sources are when their content comes barreling down a full stream of information. Placing sources into contextual groups helps put messages in context, adding meaning and offering insight into the significance of some content. Right: I've got a list of 300 tech industry analysts on Twitter pulled into a separate group in Tweetdeck . It's good to know that when I read these messages, they are coming from professional analysts. Intimacy We've all got far more connections online than it's realistic to maintain closely. You may be familiar with the concept of the Dunbar number. Researcher Robin Dunbar argues that 100 to 150 is the approximate natural group size in which everyone can really know everyone else. Serious users of social media often maintain far, far more connections than that, though. What can you do? Strategic creation of groups facilitates social contact disproportionately frequently relative to contact with the entire list of our social connections. That disproportionately frequent contact lends itself well to greater intimacy. Left: The ReadWriteWeb writers' chat, an invaluable resource for us in a world swimming with social connections. Speed Some sources of information are more important to be up-to-the-minute with than others. Strategic creation of time-sensitive groups allows you to have those groups alone delivered in a way that fits their time-sensitive nature. You don't want to be interrupted by updates from every source of information you have any interest in - but some sources are worth being interrupted by. Right: High-priority RSS feeds delivered by IM. The Value of the Full Stream Many people are tempted to solve information overload by cutting back on the number of connections and subscriptions they are signed up for online. We argue that this is a mistake; group creation can help capture some of the same benefits of cut-back without incurring the loss of benefits felt by restricting a well-populated stream of information. Serendipitous Discovery Do you cancel your cable TV subscription just because you end up not watching most of the shows that are on at a given time? (Maybe with Hulu you do now.) Probably not. Channel surfing is a way to discover new things. So too with the web; it's better to have too many options than not enough. Subscribing to a source of information substantially increases the likelihood that you'll see something good from that source. Just don't worry about reading everything. Scan what you can and let fate bring you value from a bulk of undifferentiated information. Problem solved. Weak Connections All of us have some social connections that are stronger than others. There's value in those weak connections, too. Welcoming people into your full stream of social information is how weak connections are built and maintained. Reciprocity Some people say that social media makes almost everyone famous, at least to a small group of people. One definition of fame is a circumstance where the number of people who care about what you're doing is more than you are capable of paying attention to yourself. Online, though, we can all pay a little passing attention to the people who are paying attention to us. People appreciate RSS subscribers; they like friends on Facebook and Twitter. If someone follows you, it only makes sense to follow them back. (I need to follow my own advice better on Twitter .) If a person isn't terribly important to you, just don't include them in a high-priority group. Interact with them when you get the chance. They'll appreciate the reciprocal connection, though That's one take on the strategic value of groups and the full stream of information. What are your thoughts on this topic? Have you come up with any other super-useful ways to build, manage, or find value in groups online? We'd love to hear about it! Title photo: Your Days - December test Group : 31 Décembre 2006 by Nawal_ CC on Flickr .. read more..
Resources for Community Managers
Thursday, May 14, 2009
I'm excited to announce that I just published ReadWriteWeb's first premium report for businesses, the RWW Guide to Online Community Management . It's a 75 page PDF filled with the best advice we've curated and written about and a companion online site that works like a little “ Techmeme for community management articles.” It took me and a team of 4 other people more than 4 months to complete and it's getting great reviews so far. We're selling it for $299, which you'll know is a great deal if you are familiar with the world of premium reports. There's a free sample and lots more information about the report over in this post on ReadWriteWeb . I hope you'll check it out. .. read more..
www.josschuurmans.com: "Rebooting the news" | Dave Winer's and Jay Rosen's podca..
Monday, May 11, 2009
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Click This Button To See Into A Twitter User’s Soul
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Twitter isn't just a short messaging service - it's a major communication platform that can be sliced and diced for all kinds of competitive and market intelligence research. And news writing. And who nows what else. Last month I wrote a post at ReadWriteWeb titled “ The Inner Circles of 10 Geek Heroes on Twitter .” It was all about a service called Mailana where you can plug in any Twitter user name and get a chart and graph of the other Twitter users that the user in question has had the greatest number of reciprocal public @ conversations with. It's a way to systematically identify the influencers of the influencers in any field (on Twitter). Just to prove to myself that it works in any field, I did a search of user descriptions in Twellow for the words “veterinary medicine” and found one of the top Twitter users in that field. I then ran her username through Mailana and was able to discover 20 people that she speaks publicly with most regularly on Twitter. It was pretty cool. Tonight Tantek Çelik helped me figure out how to make a bookmarklet that you can push while on any Twitter user's page to view their Mailana graph of closest connections. It's awesome. And so I present for your drag-to-toolbar pleasure… Mailana - The Twitter Social Network Analyzer. Please use it for good and not evil. And don't let anyone tell you that there aren't serious use cases for Twitter. .. read more..
Add One Line To Your Blog or Twitter Could Become Your Primary Identity
Monday, March 30, 2009
OpenID community leader Scott Kveton noticed this morning that his Twitter profile page is now the #1 search result in Google for his last name, not his blog . This is something TechCrunch reported on earlier this month , but people are just starting to wrap their heads around it. I know I want this blog to remain the #1 search result for my name, not my Twitter profile . In a conversation on FriendFeed , Ben Hedrington pointed out that in addition to the page title change that TechCrunch reported on - Twitter also uses the rel=”me” markup and Kveton's blog does not. I looked and realized that my blog here doesn't either! So the long and short of this story is that if you want to make sure that Google understands your blog to be your primary beacon on the web, then you should add the words rel=”me” to a relevant link on your blog. I've added that tag to the link on my sidebar that goes to my feedback page , because that's a good page for me. It's as simple as making the link text read a href=”http://marshallk.com/feedback” rel=”me” . That may not solve the entire problem but it should help and it's good form. Machine readable microformats like rel=”me” are likely to be an increasingly important part of the web in the future. Would readers here suggest otherwise? If I'm reading too much into this, let me know. .. read more..
My 500th Headline on Techmeme
Friday, March 20, 2009
Pride is rarely something appropriate to show in public, but tonight in particular and here on my personal blog - I think it's ok. Yesterday I wrote a blog post that became the 500th story I've written over the last 3 years to be featured as a headline on Techmeme . I'm quite proud of that. If you're unfamiliar with Techmeme, it's a mostly-automated “meme tracker” that captures the most discussed blog posts in the tech blogosphere. More than 8,000 authors have made an appearance on Techmeme, but only 4 have made more appearances than I have. Headline #500 was Sunlight Foundation Receives $4m For Obama Era Data Visualization . I'm glad that was the topic. The Techmeme leader-board is maintained by robots on Crunchbase . Henry Work and Mark McGranaghan of TechCrunch gave birth to those robots. Thanks guys. You can click on the image to see the full list, in context. .. read more..
Responses to an Email Interview
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
I'm speaking to a Mensa gathering this Spring about the internet and was just sent some interview questions for the local chapter's newsletter. Pretty strange, huh? After I took the time to reply to the questions, I thought I'd take a page from Dave Winer and post my replies here. Perhaps you, dear readers, can let me know if you think I am wrong, too obnoxious, or otherwise in need of different replies to such questions. > 1. What does it mean to be the “lead writer” at ReadWriteWeb.com? Who > is your primary audience? I'm the senior daily writer for the company and was hired in that capacity by founding editor Richard MacManus, a Kiwi. We get about 2 million readers per month from around the world, a mix of “early adopter” web users and some programmers. I describe our site as by and for people who admire what cutting edge web programmers do. > > 2. How did you get into this line of work and what did you do before? I came from the nonprofit world, writing online and in print about politics. I got a political science degree but have always been primarily self-educated. I happened across this new class of tools online and immediately realized tits research and communication potential for nonprofit organizations. I ended up working with the tools themselves, writing about them, more than helping nonprofits adopt them, unfortunately. I was writing about what I was learning, as a way to generate work teaching and consulting, and ended up getting hired to write instead. > > 3. What is Web 2.0 and what are your favorite tools and techniques in > it (maybe your top five)? Web 2.0 is the second generation of the web, a class of applications that are best known for enabling everyone to produce content - not just consume it. That's the simplest explanation but as my list of favorite tools demonstrates, it's a lot more complex than that. My favorite tools are probably RSS (Really Simple Syndication), Twitter, Custom Search Engines and Greasemonkey. If you search online for any of those terms and the word “explanation” you should be able to find a good one. The common thread with all of them is that they allow me, as a relatively non-technical person, to manipulate the web in order to increase my information absorption capabilities by orders of magnitude. > > 4. What are some of the “out there” technologies on the horizon that > you think might be popular someday? The Semantic Web and artificial intelligence, personalized recommendation technologies and what's called “lifestreaming” (activity aggregation) are some of my favorite things to keep an eye on. > > 5. If someone is just getting plugged in, where should they start? Twitter is a great place to start. Twitter is small, there's only about 6 million people using it right now, but there's a very good reason that every journalist and many politicians, scientists, computer programmers and others in the country won't shut up about it. It's as much a paradigm shift as blogging was, maybe more so, and it was invented by the same man who sold the first major blogging software to Google. It's really, really easy to use. Go watch a video called “Twitter in Plain English” and then find some people with work interests like your own via the search engine Twellow.com. Spend a little time engaging with people that way and you'll have your head spinning with Web 2.0 in no time. It's just a matter of diving in. > > 6. If someone is already plugged in, what are some new things to try? If someone is already plugged in enough to have tried the above list of some of my favorite things, then they should try thinking about new non-human publishing agents of RSS feeds. That would be cool. I'm going to bet though that none of your readers have explored things like RSS, Twitter, Custom Search and Lifestreaming to a fraction of their potential. I know I haven't, and I make my living writing about how crazy things you can do with those technologies. > > 7. How do you think Web 2.0 has changed the world so far, and what > changes do you expect in the near future? SEED Magazine said in its 2008 year in review that humanity created more “data” last year than in all the previous history of humanity, combined. That's pretty hard to wrap your head around, but a whole lot of that data was produced on MySpace, Facebook, Orkut and big Chinese online social networks that I can't remember the names of. Of course big science produced a whole lot of it as well, but don't neglect how many more data producers there are around the world today - just by way of mobile phones. That's in terms of data production; our capacity as individuals to consume data is as changed today compared to what it was 10 years ago as it was on one hand from the time that people had to ride a horse miles into a town with a library to the day when a daily newspaper was being delivered to their door. The change may be bigger, actually; go search for an esoteric hobby on YouTube. Web 2.0 has changed the world in a lot of ways but those who have truly taken the plunge into leveraging it will probably not be capable of reproducing children with people who don't understand it at all, at least not for much longer. That's a joke, sort of. > > 8. For the (many) paranoid amongst us, what suggestions do you have > for preserving personal privacy? Say no to the implant. It will probably come from Google first and it will come in my lifetime (I'm 32). Learn about open data standards. There's not much hope for privacy, really. Follow the debates about it and you'll see what of it will be preserved and what of it won't. The whole paradigm is shifting. Don't use debit cards if you're that concerned. > > 9. If someone is looking for a new career (perhaps they have some > unexpected free time due to a layoff), what areas might be good to become an > expert in? Effective use of new technologies on the internet; many self-professed experts are frauds and marketing shills. A person can benefit in any job, in any field, if they have faster access to more and better information than other people. A great place to start would be learning how to use an RSS Reader. Then learning how to use it better. > > 10. What Web 2.0 tools do you personally find to be indispensible? For > example, would your day be as adversely affected by Twitter ceasing to work > as if your car stopped working? Could you imagine living an ‘unplugged’ > life? Well, I've never had a driver's license (neither has my wife, believe it or not) but yes, when Twitter stops working it really messes up my day. Yes I can imagine living an unplugged life, but given the state of the world I have a strong inclination to remain plugged in for now. > > 11. If someone wanted to read something you’ve written, where would they > go? (Maybe a few specific URL’s or general directions to find some of your > articles). > You can find all my articles at ReadWriteWeb on this page http://www.readwriteweb.com/about_marshall.php (number of comments is in parentheses). .. read more..
50 most influential Twitter users in India " Gautam's Net
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
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A Look Behind the Curtain at Techmeme
Sunday, February 22, 2009
In late 2005 former Intel developer Gabe Rivera launched what is now TechMeme , a powerful semi-automated “meme tracker” that discovers the hottest conversations in the tech blogosphere every 5 minutes. It's an incredible resource and has become a financial success for Rivera as well. Earlier this month I interviewed Techmeme's first hired human editor, Megan McCarthy, over on ReadWriteWeb . I think McCarthy's job is a fascinating one and a good indicator of some future trends on the internet. For whatever reason the interview didn't get as much traction as I hoped it would upon first publication, so I've decided to republish it here to make sure readers of Marshallk.com get a chance to see it as well. One of the issues we didn't discuss in the interview was the intersection of gender and technology. That's one I try to think about a lot though, and if it's of interest to you too then I'd suggest you check out this two year old article I wrote about women on Techmeme and the new ReadWriteWeb Custom Search Engine of Tech Blogs Written by Women . And now our interview reprinted… Techmeme is a semi-automated site that tracks the hottest conversations among tech blogs each day, with updates every five minutes. It's one of the most innovative efforts in news gathering today. In December, Techmeme hired its first human editor , freelance writer Megan McCarthy. McCarthy tends the gears of Techmeme, makes sure the content on the site remains of high quality and helps ensure the inclusion of new and important voices. It sounds like an awesome job and one that has probably never existed before - a half woman, half robot, news gathering machine. How can you get your blog on Techmeme? What's in the future for the site? We asked Megan in the following interview. The Techmeme Editor's Job Each Day Marshall Kirkpatrick: What do you do all day? I imagine you standing next to one of the most awesome news discovery machines available, tending it, making sure it keeps running smoothly, and looking out beyond its reaches to feed it things it hasn't gotten to yet itself. Is that an accurate picture? Megan McCarthy: That is fairly accurate, actually. I make sure that the news on Techmeme represents an accurate, current, and full overview of what's happening in technology right now. So, that's trimming back stories that aren't relevant, adding in viewpoints that ought to be heard, etc. Marshall: Can you tell us a little bit about your personal background? Megan: My personal background is a little varied. Prior to [writing for] Valleywag, I bounced around a few different jobs and places and never really found a niche. I lived in Hawaii for a few years, had various office drone jobs and other gigs to pay the bills (Nanny, bartender, coffee server). But I loved following technology and reading about what was happening in silicon valley - and I've been a news junkie since I was young. News Selection and Twitter Tips on Techmeme Marshall: So, did your coming on board “break” the “objectivity” of the site? Megan: Techmeme is biased and has been so for a while. If you read Gabe's post announcing the addition of an editor , he makes that point. What do you think, though? What changes have you noticed since I joined? Marshall: I have noticed no changes to story selection, perhaps less wonky stuff. I've always considered Techmeme a very reliable source of news and I think you're doing a good job continuing that tradition - but there were certainly some people who grumbled about the human touch being formally introduced, an editor. Megan: I think some of those people might grumble about anything. Marshall: How can new bloggers get indexed on Techmeme? Megan: We just introduced a program where people can tip relevant posts to us through Twitter. Anyone can tip any post they think is relevant to us. Marshall: How is the new Twitter tips program working out? I see a lot of stories go up with thanks to Twitter, quite a lot - is it changing the face of the site substantially? Changing the content? I see a handful of people getting thanks over and again, I imagine there's limited participation so far but how does the algorithm determine whose tips to accept and whose not to? Also, a lot of people are sending tips regarding their own stories - is that ok? Even mainstream media outlets. Megan: I don't think it's changing the content overall. Many of the stories that are tipped are ones which are worthy of a Techmeme headline. Not everything that gets tipped to us gets on the site. There are two situations that I can think of where the tip program does affect the content: It can help surface breaking stories faster, and if there are two similar stories from different outlets and someone cares enough to tip a certain one, that will probably effect which one ends up as a headline on Techmeme. As for people tipping their own stories… personally I'm not completely opposed to it. If a writer has a breaking story that he or she wants to let us know right away, that's a good way to do it. But, they should keep in mind that their twitter handle will be credited with tipping us to the story. If “Thanks: Marshall” showed up next to every Techmeme headline you get, people might put two and two together and think that you really like your work. To my knowledge, the identity of the person tipping the story has no effect on whether or not it will show up on the page. It's about the post itself. Marshall: Well, if shame and loads of people saying “you're an f*ing jackass” was sufficient deterrent to anti-social behavior in social media, then…[indecipherable, record of this part of the conversation lost forever.] Megan: Ha. Is he though? Marshall: Oh I'm sure he is. ANYWAY. Is accuracy taken into account on Techmeme? Megan: Accuracy is absolutely taken into account on Techmeme. That's one of my goals, anyway. If there's a post which has a lot of buzz around it, which turns out not to be true… Marshall: What does that look like? Are you like “Steve Jobs is NOT out at Apple, I don't believe those reports! Story…gone!” Megan: Or, a story that says “Steve Jobs NOT out at Apple” gets published next to the earlier, erroneous rumor. Marshall: Then you yank the false story? Megan: Either yank it or surround it with stories pointing out *why* it's false. Sometimes the false rumor becomes a story itself and yanking it can be jarring. We want our readers to be able to visit the site and know what's going on in technology - to know what people are talking about. The earlier rumor would probably be replaced as the top story by one with the correct information, but yanking it without giving our readers full context of the overall arc might be a bit jarring. Marshall: You have to be reading a lot of these stories in great detail. What time does your work day start and end? Megan: I start around 7:30ish and end later than that. News never stops! The Future of Techmeme and Other Aggregators Marshall: So, everyone wants to be an aggregator these days. All the young kids are like “mommy, I'm going to grow up to find recommended stories for an online news publisher.” What kinds of things do you foresee becoming points of leverage for content aggregators and news discovers in the future? Megan: I think a reliable real-time web is going to have the greatest impact on aggregation services. I'd love to be able to see stories from sites as they're published, without a lag. I hope that quality, accurate, and speedy stories get rewarded by receiving more attention - and that new voices are discovered and make the media chorus sound fuller and stronger. You were asking me about my electric sheep dreams. Marshall: Are you a cyborg? Megan: Depends on my mood. Marshall: At least between 7am and 7pm? Megan: That sounds about right. This is super-nerdy, but reading an overwhelming amount of news is something that I rather enjoy doing. Thanks to Megan McCarthy and Techmeme for doing this interview and doing the things they do each day - help us find the hottest conversation in technology. We appreciate it. You can find Megan on Twitter as well. Photo at top by Scott Beale .. read more..
Have a Startup? You Should Consider Applying for the Web 2.0 Expo Launchpad
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
I am proud to have been selected as one of 3 judges for the next Web 2.0 Expo Launchpad contest. Matt Marshall of Venturebeat , someone from Microsoft and myself will make Kings for At Least A Day of the crew of one lucky startup. Whether you get in to the Launchpad or not, the Web 2.0 events are a great thing to attend, a terrific place to meet people in the industry. .. read more..
My Talk to the Portland Data Plumbing User Group
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
How cool is Portland, Oregon? So cool that you can put out a call for fans of tools like Yahoo Pipes , Dapper and other far-out feed manipulation services and get almost 40 people to show up! More than once! So goes the newly revived Portland Data Plumbing Users Group , originally birthed by Justin Kistner , and now revived by Dawn Foster and Bill Jackson . What a crazy town we live in! I spoke for an hour and a half tonight about RSS magic. Lots of jokes, some things I have discussed elsewhere publicly before and a fair amount of philosophical rumination on what it all means. Bill Jackson graciously streamed it live and recorded it, and I've embedded it below. Here's the link to the slide show of links I went through. The night starts with a round of introductions and I get into the meat of my talk a few minutes in. I hope you enjoy it and find it useful. Thanks to everyone who showed up and helped out. .. read more..
Three Useful Research Tactics I Learned Last Week
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
I'm always trying to figure out how to get more out of the tools I find online. I spend a lot of time figuring out new ways to discover good sources of information on a wide variety of topics; setting up systems for our writing staff at ReadWriteWeb and for consulting clients through my personal blog . Some of the things I've discovered lately I can't disclose publicly, but here are three I can share. I hope you find them useful. Use other peoples' lists before building your own. A few weeks ago I wrote a giant post titled How to Build a Social Media Cheat Sheet on Any Topic . It was a big hit and if you haven't seen it yet, I'd recommend checking it out. It's all about how to discover the top online blogs writing about any topic, how to find their most popular posts (according to their readers), how to search against their archives as a reference source and how to connect with the authors elsewhere around the web, on Twitter for example. Jason Falls wrote a similar post a few days later that offered some more good advice, though. One of the biggest things I took from Jason's post was that there's no reason to start building a list from scratch, as I showed readers how to do in my post, when you can find existing lists of resources already created. Jason used Alltop as one of his sources of sources, and though the interface there is not good for regular use, someone has done a whole lot of work finding good blogs on a variety of topics. There's no need to reproduce that work if you're interested in one of those topics. Additionally, Googling for the terms list of blogs about topic X will often lead you to existing lists. I've also begun exploring Delicious pages like http://delicious.com/tag/list+blogs+eco , where you'll find links people have tagged with the words list, blogs and eco. Shazam! You don't have to search against static lists Google Custom Search engines are really simple but are one of the most powerful tools I started working with last year. I've got probably 30 of them that let me search top blogs on a wide variety of different topics. Whenever I find or make a list, I always consider turning it into a CSE. Did you know, though, that you can make a CSE that's automatically populated using an OPML URL? Check out http://www.google.com/cse?cref=http://www.google.com/cse/tools/makecse%3Furl%3Dwww.readwriteweb.com/topeducationblogsgreatposts.opml&loading=1 . You can switch out the OPML URL in that link and search against any OPML file you've posted or found online. That way if you update the OPML file, you'll automatically update the sources included in your Custom Search Engine. Big thanks is due to Marjolein Hoekstra of Clever Clogs for teaching me that, as she has so many things about RSS. Finding industry people on Twitter is easy. I'm hesitant to share this one publicly, but what the heck. Have you looked at Twellow ? It's a search engine that searches the user bio fields of peoples' Twitter profiles. That's cool, but there's an advanced search feature that's even cooler. Let's say I want to find people who work at any of the Semantic Web companies listed in RWW's Top Semantic Web Companies to Watch lists of 2007 or 2008. I just opened my browser to those posts, drug the company names off onto a text editor and then did a little find and replace to create this search query: http://www.twellow.com/search?q=(Freebase)|(Powerset)|(Twine)|(AdaptiveBlue)|(Hakia)|(Talis)|(TrueKnowledge)|(TripIt)|(Calais)|(Spock)|(collexis)|(Irion)|(Knowledge+Concepts)|(Garlik)|(Zotero)|(Celtx)|(Reveltyix)|(ZoomInfo)|(Kirix)|(Rearden+Commerce)|(OpenQabal)|(ThoughtExpress)|(Lifestrea.ms)|(Ontos)|(BooRah)|(Swotti)|(Inform.com)|(Siri)|(Evri)|(UpTake)|(Imindi)|(Faviki)|(Zemanta)|(HeadUp)|(Daylife)|(SemantiNet)|+(ThoughtExpress)”>http://www.twellow.com/search?q=(Freebase)+|(Powerset)|(Twine)|(AdaptiveBlue)|(Hakia)|(Talis)|(TrueKnowledge)|(TripIt)|(Calais)|(Spock)|(collexis)|(Irion)|(Knowledge+Concepts)|(Garlik)|(Zotero)|(Celtx)|(Reveltyix)|(ZoomInfo)|(Kirix)|(Rearden+Commerce)|(OpenQabal)|(ThoughtExpress)|(Lifestrea.ms)|(Ontos)|(BooRah)|(Swotti)|(Inform.com)|(Siri)|(Evri)|(UpTake)|(Imindi)|(Faviki)|(Zemanta)|(HeadUp)|(Daylife)|(SemantiNet)|(ThoughtExpress”) I then scanned through those search results for people who appear to work at those companies, opened their Twitter profiles up in new tabs, added them as friends, then captured all the tabs as a slideshow I could share with the rest of the team. Just like that we were all following a bunch of people who worked at top semweb companies. You could do the same thing to jump in quickly to any industry's community on Twitter. Those are some of the most useful research tactics I've discovered lately - how about you? Feel free to post useful stuff right below in comments! Lego maze photo CC from Flickr user Anvilon .. read more..
Online Marketing in 2009 - Thought Leaders Make Their Predictions
Monday, January 5, 2009
Many readers here are interested in promoting their work online using new social media. Last month I put up a post on ReadWriteWeb titled Top Marketing Geeks Make Their Predictions for 2009 . I thought I'd post it here as well for readers who may have missed it. Check out the 25 comments on the original post as well for some interesting discussion. Some readers were very critical and I've tried to offer some critical thoughts as well, but it's clear that marking on the web is here to stay. Hopefully it will be based on a greater degree of authenticity, usefulness and innovation than marketing generally is known for. For more personal thoughts on new media marketing, check out two of my old posts here Social Media for Marketing and Thoughts on Product Launch Promotion . Both are a touch out of date but should be a good source of some still-valuable resources and advice. Speaking of resources, if you're interested in new media marketing you may appreciate this OPML file of Chris Brogan's favorite marketing bloggers to watch in 2009 . It's a special file of all their feeds filtered to deliver just their unusually popular posts (filtering performed by Postrank ). You can download that file, then import it into your RSS reader and you'll be kept super smart all year long. If you'd like a short, concentrated injection of smarts along similar lines, check out my consulting services , just like these happy people have. And now the blog post I promised… Will 2009 be the big year for corporate transparency, for a global conversation - perhaps for bargain basement online marketing tactics instead of old-school huge commercial campaigns? Peter Kim , a former Forrester analyst now working on stealth enterprise software company, recently polled 14 of the most high-profile thinkers about social media marketing and asked them what they expected to see 2009 bring. The end product was an attractive 23 page PDF that we've embedded below, but we thought we'd pull out some of the thoughts we found most interesting for all you skimmers out there. Social shopping “Now with connective technologies like Facebook Connect, Google FriendConnect, and OpenID, consumers will now be able to see reviews, experiences, and critiques from people they actually know and trust.” - Jeremiah Owyang , Forrester Research Our take: Much as we are concerned about the proprietary nature of Facebook Connect in particular, the ease with which people are able to see feedback left by people they know, with confirmed identities, really could be a game changer. Access “Twitter will continue to achieve legitimacy. But more than any push-channel, Twitter will give customers, advocates and critics unprecedented access to corporate personnel and vice versa.” - Scott Monty , Ford Motor Company (Photo, right, by Wendy Piersall) Our take: This makes sense, and it's pretty funny to think about. Even the biggest cynics often have a dramatic turn around about Twitter once they start using it, and the intimacy that develops is remarkable. We agree with Monty that this will become increasingly difficult to resist. Measuring the success of social networks “Implement listening programs through social media to get real time authentic knowledge that is actionable… Measure with customer service metrics like retention/ satisfaction & social metrics like engagement.” - Rohit Bhargava , Ogilvy (Photo by Shashi Bellamkonda) “Slowly but surely, we're going to develop a set of better metrics to help guide, direct and validate ‘commitment'-based marketing and yes, Mr Kim….they will extend beyond the rather short term, blunt metric called ROI”. - Joseph Jaffe , Crayon Our take: Good luck with that, we're not optimistic. This is soft stuff and though clear success speaks for itself, all the gradations between success and failure are going to be very hard to quantify. Quality vs Quantity in Social Media “I believe we'll have more focused velvet-rope social networks in 2009 where the tools and the goals match verticals of interest instead of the general commons of Facebook.” - Chris Brogan , New Marketing Labs “Exclusivity trumps accessibility. Having thousands of friends becomes 'so 2008′ and defriending becomes the hot new trend, driven by overwhelming rivers of newsfeeds.” - Charlene Li , Altimeter Group (Photo by deneyterrio on Flickr) Our take: Maybe, for some people and in some circumstances this will be the case. We expect most people to find a middle ground between the whole sale slow-down that some seem to expect and an evolutionary adjustment to vastly increased data input. Making the most of limited budgets “Dwindling budgets suddenly make low-cost social media look like the pretty girl at the ball. ” - Ann Handley , Marketing Profs “Companies will struggle with how to control who says what — but will increasingly realize that in an economic downturn, they need all the marketing muscle and leverage they can get and actively encourage.” - Charlene Li Our take: This makes a lot of sense to us, but we expect that it will be tempered by the fear of totally blowing it. Getting into the social media space and doing it wrong is something that a lot of companies fear getting blown apart for. We expect that to change slowly and only for a limited number of companies. Here's the full document embedded below - what do you think of these predictions? Social Media 2009 Publish at Scribd or explore others: Management Business social media 2009 .. read more..
Adobe PDF Guide: How to Do Everything with PDF Files
Sunday, January 4, 2009
A great collection of Amit's best advice regarding PDF hacks. If you're not reading Digital Inspiration, you're missing out! .. read more..
GovTwit Directory « New Thinking
Monday, November 24, 2008
A directory of US Government types on Twitter. A great little resource. Saved By: Marshall Kirkpatrick | View Details | Give Thanks Tags: twitter , directories , toshare .. read more..
TaoSecurity: Don't Fight the Future
Monday, November 24, 2008
One security pro's predictions for 2009, though he says that's not what this list is. An interesting read. End of VPNs, clouds, centralized reporting for enterprise devices that are all on the open web, etc. Saved By: Marshall Kirkpatrick | View Details | Give Thanks Tags: toshare , security .. read more..
louisgray.com: 15 Secrets of FriendFeed's Power Users
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Guest poster Daniel P. offers some truly useful tips on building your rep on FriendFeed. Even more in comments. Saved By: Marshall Kirkpatrick | View Details | Give Thanks Tags: toshare , FriendFeed , marketing , promotion .. read more..
Add Rev3 to the Deadpool « Kent's Official Blog
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Ask A Ninja dude tells it like it is in the video content world. Worth a read, whether he's correct or not we'll see but a very informed post. Saved By: Marshall Kirkpatrick | View Details | Give Thanks Tags: toshare , video .. read more..
Hire The Best People: 10 Easy Steps
Thursday, October 16, 2008
A smart little article on Vitamin from someone at Freshbooks about how to hire the best. Some good insights like: resumes from Joel on Software posts are good, resumes from 37Signals job board postings are not. Saved By: Marshall Kirkpatrick | View Details | Give Thanks Tags: toshare , hiring , jobs .. read more..
Google Code Blog: Usability Research on Federated Login
Monday, September 22, 2008
Saved By: Marshall Kirkpatrick | View Details | Give Thanks Tags: toread , toshare , data portability , login , usability .. read more..
» What the F$!K is Social Media Presentation Public Sector Marketing 2.0 - ..
Monday, September 15, 2008
Saved By: Marshall Kirkpatrick | View Details | Give Thanks Tags: toshare , toread , social media , consulting .. read more..
Fidelity's Fresh Approach to Retirement Marketing
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Great case studying showing the click through rates on advertising content focused on delivering value to readers. Saved By: Marshall Kirkpatrick | View Details | Give Thanks Tags: toshare , advertising , content .. read more..
What Is Newsmastering And What Are Newsradars? RSS News Aggregation And Re-Publi..
Friday, August 15, 2008
What Is Newsmastering And What Are Newsradars? RSS News Aggregation And Re-Publishing For Beginners Saved By: Marshall Kirkpatrick | View Details | Give Thanks Tags: toshare , toread , RSS .. read more..
Rightmedia hurts sites.. « The Paradigm Shift
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Dating mega-site is critical of complex ad network's load time and its impact on pageviews. Short, interesting read. Saved By: Marshall Kirkpatrick | View Details | Give Thanks Tags: toshare , advertising .. read more..
Twelve best practices for online customer communities | Enterprise Web 2.0 | ZDN..
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Also marked "to read," but anything Dion Hinchcliffe writes like this should be worth a look. Saved By: Marshall Kirkpatrick | View Details | Give Thanks Tags: toread , toshare , communities , enterprise .. read more..
A Small Study Of Big Blogs: Further Findings | How-To | Smashing Magazine
Thursday, July 31, 2008
A study of the Technorati top 50 for design. Pretty interesting. Saved By: Marshall Kirkpatrick | View Details | Give Thanks Tags: toshare , toread , blogs , design .. read more..
Linden Scripting For Noobs: MIT Media Lab Makes Intuitive LSL Script Builder
Thursday, July 31, 2008
A great example of programming made easy with the use of a Graphic User Interface, in this case for adding interactivity to SecondLife objects. This is the kind of thing we'll see more and more of on all kinds of platforms. Saved By: Marshall Kirkpatrick | View Details | Give Thanks Tags: toshare , gaming , SecondLife , programming , GUI .. read more..
Social Networks: To My Future Self...
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
An hour long video from the maker of The Machine is Using Us, about the anthropology of YouTube, presented to the Library of Congress. Saved By: Marshall Kirkpatrick | View Details | Give Thanks Tags: toread , toshare , youtube , video .. read more..
Live Mesh Scenarios Directory (Tutorials)
Friday, July 18, 2008
Curious about what Live Mesh lets users do? Here are 4 tutorials to start off, more apparently on the way. Saved By: Marshall Kirkpatrick | View Details | Give Thanks Tags: toshare , mesh , microsoft , tutorials .. read more..
Globalizatoin at AboutUs: It's Cooler Than You Might Think
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Interesting discussion of AboutUs and their office in Pakistan. AboutUs is a past consulting client of mine and this situation is one worth reading about. Saved By: Marshall Kirkpatrick | View Details | Give Thanks Tags: toshare , globalization , wikis .. read more..
NPR cancel Bryant Park Project - Can a hybrid work?: Enterprise 2.0 Blog: News,..
Monday, July 14, 2008
A good discussion of the now late NPR show that mixed radio and social media. I was a guest on this show once. Saved By: Marshall Kirkpatrick | View Details | Give Thanks Tags: toshare , radio , social media , mixed models .. read more..
Female CEOs at top Silicon Valley tech firms down to zero - San Jose Mercury New..
Friday, July 11, 2008
Just one more data point concerning gender and tech. Saved By: Marshall Kirkpatrick | View Details | Give Thanks Tags: toshare , gender , tech , women .. read more..
NxE's Fifty Most Influential ‘Female' Bloggers
Friday, July 11, 2008
Interesting list of women power-bloggers. Do you know these writers? You should. There were several here that I had never heard of or didn't know much about. Worth a look. Saved By: Marshall Kirkpatrick | View Details | Give Thanks Tags: toshare , women , bloggers , blogher .. read more..
Thursday, January 1, 1970
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Mobile 2.0 Tagcloud at mTrends - mobile media lifestyle trends - m-trends.org
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Interesting visual representation of the concepts in the mobile 2.0 space. Saved By: Marshall Kirkpatrick | View Details | Give Thanks Tags: mobile , toshare .. read more..
Thursday, January 1, 1970
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Top Spots in Organic & Paid Search = Branding
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Great write up of an interesting study on the perceptual impact of good search placement. This one's a keeper. .. read more..
A hunger for books | Review | Guardian Unlimited Books
Monday, December 10, 2007
Dorris Lessing's Nobel acceptance speech where she brings up critiques of the web's cultural impacts, among other things. An important read. .. read more..
The significance of Google's Android
Friday, December 7, 2007
Looks like a good article on Android, 33 comments, consultancy blog. Marked toread. .. read more..
Massive Internet Identity Workshop (IIW) Video Recap
Friday, December 7, 2007
Can't wait to spend some time with this one. .. read more..
Thoughts on Seth Godin's keynote at SES [SearchEngineWatch]
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Seth Godin is probably someone I should read a lot more of. He's a marketer, but interesting. .. read more..
Media Bullseye
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Interesting new site for PR and marketing news regarding social media. Chris Brogan an early contributor. .. read more..
The Identity Corner " The problem(s) with OpenID
Monday, December 3, 2007
A long collection of links to critiques of OpenID. Looks real good. .. read more..
AOL, Netflix and the end of open access to research data | Surveillance State - ..
Friday, November 30, 2007
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Nick Carr on Google as Anomaly
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Paul Miller excerpts and links to what's being talked about as one of Nick Carr's most interesting writings in a long time. That's saying a lot, because the iconoclast Carr is very, very smart. .. read more..
Who is afraid of the GGG?
Monday, November 26, 2007
Giant Global Graph? This ZDNet post is a great overview of the recent discussion kicked off by Tim Berners Lee. .. read more..
Help needed: A review of Google-funded 23andMe
Friday, November 23, 2007
Google-backed genetics startup; this blog seeks donations to pay for the $1k fee for the product. Sounds like a great idea to me, I'm real curious about this company. .. read more..
Teaching Online Journalism " Connecting people to people
Thursday, November 22, 2007
A good post about the value of identity on websites. Quotes my post about social network functionality but a plainly valuable collection of thoughts regardless. .. read more..
1. Individual videos I've found to share
Friday, July 6, 2007
1. Individual videos I've found to share by marshallkirkpatrick ( watch show ) 1. Video: Dramatic Chipmunk (marshallkirkpatrick) 2. Video: google final (beth) 3. Video: Video: RSS in Plain English (marshallkirkpatrick) .. read more..
