Archive for September, 2009

Posted on September 15, 2009 - by Wayne Sutton

5 new ways to filter, find and read blog content. Blogs are back!

It seems like innovation has hit the technology community again especially in the RSS / blogging / content aggregation sector. Just a few months ago everyone was talking about or how micro-blogging sites such as Twitter would kill blogs. People were saying RSS was too slow and everyone would be using people aggregation to find information in the terms of if something was important, people through social networks such as Facebook & Twitter would tell find information that way instead of reading blogs.

While that may stay true for some, new ways of filtering, finding and reading content have emerged helping users find relevant content to their interest. Let’s take a look.

1. YourVersion – http://www.yourversion.com

YourVersion continuously discovers new and personally relevant web content based on your interests, and lets you easily bookmark and share your discoveries with friends.
YourVersion was recently named DemoPit peoples’ choice winner at TechCrunch50

2. Google Fast Flip – http://fastflip.googlelabs.com

Google Fast Flip is a web application that lets users discover and share news articles. It combines qualities of print and the Web, with the ability to “flip” through pages online as quickly as flipping through a magazine. It also enables users to follow friends and topics, discover new content and create their own custom magazines around searches.

3. LazyFeed – http://www.lazyfeed.com

Lazyfeed is a web service that allows you to subscribe to any topics and get live updates. Just save any topic you are interested in, and forget about it. Lazyfeed will remember and let you know when there’s new content on that topic, just like an instant messenger. Lazyfeed allows you to stay on top of everything you care about, effortlessly.

4. Feedly (Firefox plug-in) – http://www.feedly.com

feedly organizes your favorite sites into a fun, magazine-like start page.

5. Alltop – http://Alltop.com

The purpose of Alltop is to help you answer the question, “What’s happening?” in “all the topics” that interest you.

While Feedly and Alltop have been online a lot longer than LazyFeed, Google Fast Flip and YourVersion, I thought they could be useful to the non-tech readers of SocialWayne.com.

Google Reader is still my preferred choice to read blogs but with features like auto discovery of new content LazyFeed and YourVersion are good tools for bloggers looking to find content or just to keep up with the latest news from the social web / blogosphere.

Out of the five tools which one do you use? What do you use to read blogs?

Posted on September 14, 2009 - by Wayne Sutton

We're having a Deep Fried Tweetup at the @NCStateFair

Triangle Twitter users will not be confined to 140-character conversations as they experience the Fair’s offerings at the first Deep Fried Triangle Tweetup at the N.C. State Fair on Thursday, Oct. 22.

The event, co-hosted by the organizers of Triangle Tweetup, will be held in the Folk Festival Tent from 7 to 9 p.m. on Food Lion Hunger Relief Day.

“We’ve built great relationships over the past year with our social media followers, and we wanted to organize an event that would help them enjoy the Fair in a new social way,” said Wesley Wyatt, fair manager.

During the Deep Fried Triangle Tweetup, attendees will be able to sample deep-fried Fair food, interact with Fair entertainers, participate in a Twitter-themed scavenger hunt and enter to win prizes throughout the night. The event is part of a growing trend of events where participants have face-to-face gatherings with people they follow on social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. It is also one of the first Tweetups hosted by a state fair.

The co-host, OurHashtag, has held 10 Triangle Tweetups during the past two years. The company’s partners Wayne Sutton, Jeff Cohen, Ryan Boyles and Kipp Bodnar are active members in the local social media community, and have planned several social media events including Ignite Raleigh and monthly Triangle Social Media Club meetings. Past Triangle Tweetups have included a charitable component to the main event.

“By holding the Tweetup on Hunger Relief Day, we are able to gather at the Fair without charging a registration fee, and can continue to help our community through charitable contributions,” Sutton said. Anyone who brings four cans of food to the Fair on Thursday, Oct. 22 will get in to the Fair for free.

The N.C. State Fair was the first fair to use Twitter, and currently connects with fairgoers on a variety of social media sites, including:

• Deep Fried @ the N.C. State Fair Blog: www.ncstatefair.org/blog
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/ncstatefair
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/ncstatefair
• MySpace: www.myspace.com/ncstatefair

The Deep Fried Triangle Tweetup is one of several new activities added this year to appeal to the state’s tech-savvy community. Other events include the TXT-O-LYMPIX texting competition and nightly video game contests.

Promotional video

More information about the Fair can be found at www.ncstatefair.org. Space is limited to the first 500 registrants.

Posted on September 13, 2009 - by Wayne Sutton

MTV's biggest dot: Could you fix Kanye West's personal brand problem? #VMA

So tonight MTV video music awards has gone all social media online and offline from iJustin pre-show hosting, a customize tweet all from Radian6, displaying both tweets and Facebook walls comments on their homepage MTV.com. But clearly the star stealer and news of the night is non other than Mr. Kanye West who embarrassed and insulted Taylor Swift after she won “Best Female Video” award.

If you’re not familar with Radian6 who’s created MTV’s tweet wall showing music artist, Radian6 provides the social media monitoring platform for marketing, communications and customer support professionals.

Now taking a look at the dot you can clearly see there have been a lot of tweets about Kanye’s rude behavor tonight at the VMA’s and I’m sure they are a lot of blog post about the situation too. If you’re using a social media monitoring platform such as Radian6 you would see a lot of negative content online right about now and the upcoming days. Kanye’s behavior isn’t new, from the President Bush remarks to previous MTV awards outburst but tonights incident clearly takes the cake and could be career threatening to such an artist the relies on the public to make money by selling music and performing.

So now what? Can Kanye’s personal brand overcome his latest outburst? If you were in charge of Kanye’s marketing what woud you do? Here’s a start list of a few options.

Fixing Kanye West

• A public apology to Taylor Swift online via YouTube
• Enforce a no drinking before attending an awards show rule
• Sit Kanye at least 5 rows back from the stage
• Create a song called I’m sorry Taylor
• Make video with Taylor Swift
• Take a 3 year break form the public spotlight.
• Stick to producing music
• Or you just wouldn’t was your time

Could you fix Kanye West personal brand problem? Is this the beginning of the downfall of Kanye West? Should MTV invite Kanye West ever again?

PS. Taylor Swift stay positive and continue to make great music.

Posted on September 13, 2009 - by Wayne Sutton

The psychology behind social engagement: What does it mean when you click the "Like" button?

Photo via Jeffisageek flickr
It’s Sunday afternoon and I’m thinking about the psychology of social engagement. Why do people “Like” comments / post and what does it mean, when they “Like” something. If you look a lot of popular social media sites such as Facebook, friendfeed and even video social networking sites like Vimeo all have a like button or link. Also with social commenting platforms such as Disqus, you can now even hit the “Like” button on comments. Even url shortener services have a “Like” button such as StumbleUpon’s su.pr

But what does it mean when you hit the “Like” button and why don’t we see a “Dislike” button. Twitter doesn’t even have a “Like” button or feature but when you ReTweet a tweet does that mean you actually saying that you “Like” it?  The “Like” feature comes in various formats too. A lot of times you’ll see it as a “Thumbs up” or a “Heart” or just a text link saying “Like”. Some sites/blogs use stars for rating post or videos such as YouTube but they also use “Thumbs” for voting comments. Does stars mean you “Like” it and when you give a video 5 stars means you just “Like” it a lot?

Two services that really push the mentality of “Liking” a post are Slashdot and Digg. Slashdot uses the plus/minus feature if a reader “Likes” a post and Digg users created their own lingo so to speak as to when “Digg” something you “Like” it. Or are you saying I’m endorsing it when I “Digg” a post.

Sorry that I have more questions than answers but I’m sticking to my saying that “I don’t have all the answers but my social network does”. So with that being said here are a few more questions:

• When you click on a “Like” link do you feel ad though as you are endorsing the content?
• Do we really need a “Dislike” link?
• Should Twitter add a “Like” feature?
• Should Brightkite add a “Like” feature?
• Should Facebook and Friendfeed add a “Dislike” link next to the “Like” button?
• Why do you “Like” a post but won’t leave a comment”?
• Do you “Like” this post? (he he)
• Do you know the first site to add a “Like” button?

Here’s a look at various “Like” buttons from the web.

StumbleUpon with Like feature

Vimeo with Like feature (heart)

Facebook with Like feature

Friendfeed with Like feature

Digg’s Thumbs Up/Down in comments

Disqus Comments with Like feature

I’m not sure who started the “Like” social phenomenon of giving users a quick way of expression their stamp of approval for online content but it has been adopted by the social web community. Your thoughts?

Posted on September 12, 2009 - by Wayne Sutton

Tweet & you shall receive: Real-Time iPhone RSS push notifications. Superfeedr FTW! ->

Just the other day September 8, to be excat I was thinking that “I want real-time iPhone RSS reader app with push notifications to alert me when a blog updates on the second along with sms notifications” Well guess what, you know the saying “there’s an app for that” well now there is via an app called Notification [iTunes link $1.99] .

The Pitch
App Notifications is an iPhone app that acts as a client for the Apple Push Notification Service.
Use our ready-made Twitter, Gmail, and RSS notification services to instantly receive new tweets, search results, emails, RSS feeds, or create your own custom notifications with our simple REST API.

You may be thinking why do I need Notifications app. We’ll it depends on your industry, but here are a few examples how I would use it.

• I want push notifications when a blog updates in real-time
• I’m tracking an event, person, or tag and want to know when someone mentions them on Twitter
• I want push notifications for emails sent you to me by certain people
• If you’re a media company you could use push notifications for all of the above reasons.

So why is this special? Well, if you have read the RSS news lately, then you’re aware of the PubSubHubbub and RSSCloud technology that is turning RSS from a pull technology to a push technology. The Notifications app uses Superfeedr @superfeedr that uses a group of “helper” services to push RSS updates to the iPhone. Basically RSS is growing up in 2009. Why did it take so long RSS?

A big thanks to Julien @julien51 and the team. For more information on Notifications and how to configure it read the original blog announcement: Real-time RSS notifications on your iPhone

Now I’m making a list of RSS feeds that I want to be notified of instantly when they are updated. Any suggestions?