‘Cross The Breeze

I know it’s a classic but when I spotted this today at Be.Interactive I just knew I had to share this here as well. Enjoy this classic cartoon.

I’m using the service for almost a year now and still this is the first post I write about it. It’s significant how my attitude about Twitter has changed over time. I was very sceptic about Twitter before I got on the service and even when I started using it sometime early April of last year, that feeling was still very strong. I need to see for myself though, before making forming an opinion so I tested it anyway. The coverage at SXSW last year made me do that, and at MIX07 I got the first signs that Twitter was more than people ‘brushing their teeth’, ‘preparing client meeting’ or ‘waiting on the train’ etc etc

Because that was what Twitter was to me in the beginning, a lot of insignificant personal messages or people bragging about stuff. Literally telling other people ‘what are you doing?’. In an interview I did with Twitterati (a blog on Twitter) back in early May 2007 I said:

“I mainly enjoy blogging because of the conversations that it allowed me to have, rather than to read about people’s personal lives in all details. Twitter offers the same but in microformat.”

And it’s just that what has changed over the course of the last few months and what made me almost a Twitter addict today. Twitter is very much a tool that enables conversation today, and does quite a bit more as well. Probably because we started ignoring to just post about what we’re doing I guess :)

So what did I get out of Twitter so far then?

• The community improves the usage of Twitter a lot more than the Twitter team does. Think of the @replies which was an idea the Twitter folks picked up since people were using it. Think of the hashtags which is an outside initiative. Think of www.twitstat.com/m which is a much better mobile web version of Twitter than the original m.twitter.com is. Think of how clients like Twhirl and many others offer a much better experience of Twitter than the web version.
• The community builds interesting stuff around Twitter as well and Tweetscan - the Twitter search engine - is a very good example of that. Or the recently launched Tweetmeme for instance. The community also builds more silly services around it like the Tweeterboard top 100 or Twittervision but it can’t all be brilliant right ;)
• The client people use can tell you more about how much conversation people are willing to get into. If people use the msn@msntwitter.com buddy to post from Live Messenger they probably aren’t up for a lot of conversation. Why? Since they unfortunately don’t see their timeline in the client so just post stuff from there.
• The client people use can tell you how fast (or not) people will see your replies, but more importantly your direct messages. In Twhirl they show up in your timeline, whereas in the webpage there’s not sign at all (almost) that you got one unless you go check your email.
• The quality of the links people share tend to be pretty good. I click a lot more on the links sent out via Twitter than anywhere else because of that. When people share a link, even to their own blog posts, they tend to have thought it through a bit more an decided to send only the best.
• Don’t put your RSS stream into your Twitter account, that is bad. It’s counter to the point I just mentioned, it is not enabling any conversation, it’s cluttering ‘my timeline’. I have a blog, so do you and we all got feed readers to read them.
• A ‘corporate’ Twitter account can work. But don’t push out your RSS stream to begin with (as in the point above) and make sure it’s personal. Why is @marketingprofs interesting? Because we know it’s Ann Handley who’s behind it and we know Ann and we like the conversation we’re having.
• Size doesn’t matter, focus on quality instead of quantity. I hear so many people talking about their 3000th, 5000th, … tweet. Who cares, if none of them were interesting that’s not really very good is it. We don’t brag about the number of blogposts we write per month or year so why would it matter for tweets? Another number that gets mentioned a lot is the number of followers. Again that number is not so significant. The ‘oh my god I have 2000 followers’ when you follow more than 6000 people yourself, what does that say to you then?
• Twitter can serve many kinds of communication purposes. One day I was asking if anyone was interested in going for a drink in the London area, the next day you’re looking for help with your blog or to find the name of a song. Or maybe you help someone else out, get people’s opinion, … etc etc whatever you can think of.
• You don’t have to follow every one back that follows you. I know this is not everyone’s opinion but that’s what I think at least. You should check out your new followers though, see what they talk about and then make the decision. I think Shel Israel (but can be wrong) once said that you can also get a good idea of what people’s interests are by looking at their Twitter favorites as well. Good idea indeed.
• But, you should make sure you keep an eye out for people talking to you though, even if you don’t follow them if answer them if needed. Maybe you’ll decide to follow them anyway because of that.
• Twitter needs to get it’s act together. How much the community loves the service, and keeps preferring it to Jaiku and Pownce (which might even be better actually to some extend) the constant breakdowns and lack of innovation of the services start to get really annoying.

Nuff said, I’m hooked. If you think of other things you have learned from Twitter that you don’t see in my list, or when you just agree (or don’t agree), drop a note in the comments.

Oh yeah, and you can follow me at http://twitter.com/crossthebreeze. And if you don’t use Twhirl yet, download it right now, you won’t regret.

Has it been a year already? Blimey! I mentioned before how The Age of Conversation was one of the more fascinating projects to be involved in last year so reading Drew’s announcement on AOC 2 there wasn’t the slightest bit of doubt, want to be part of this again. And so I am :) Thanks Drew, thanks Gavin!

That dates from a few days ago already and I didn’t have time yet to extend the call out for authors on this new AOC project, but here it is. I think it’s not too late yet, but I you want in then be quick about it. Trust me, you won’t regret, The Age of Conversation is one of these experiences you won’t likely forget. Full details to be found on Drew’s blog, get over there now!

Even my kids liked it ;)

• How to Change the World: Forget the A-List After All
  “The gist of Thompson’s piece, based on the work of Duncan Watts of Yahoo Research, is that the theory that a select few “key influencers” matter more than “the rest of us” when it comes to viral and word-of-mouth marketing campaigns is flawed.”
  (tags: blogging marketing influence a-list influencers)

Sometimes I think I live on mobile. If there’s a device I really couldn’t miss it’s my mobile phone. Ask my wife, if on occasion I don’t take my mobile phone with me, she’ll wonder how it’s possible I forgot it. It’s just too odd for me to be without. According to my mom, it’ll grow on my ears one day. Whatever ;)

Anyway, it’s true that mobile is important for me, ever since I got my first mobile phone some 10 years ago. Every year I hope that mobile will really breakthrough, but unfortunately also this year won’t be the year of mobile, just like 2007, 2006 nor 2005 were the year of mobile. It’s that one prediction that I wish it were through, but you know it won’t be.

It’s not even in our hands. I think the devices are there, thinking of the N95, the iPhone and some Windows Mobile devices that are all capable of doing amazing things for such a small device. The iPhone has the interface to love, my HTC is less slick but comes with 3G, built in GPS and all the power of Office and Exchange on mobile. Or the N95 with it’s superb camera. And now I’m not mentioning a ton of other great features these phones have.

Apart from all that greatness, I’ve been a very active user of the mobile web for the last 6 years or so as well. First on WAP on my old Nokia 6310i for instance, later on Vodafone Live with a Sharp GX30. Back then I was still working on Kinepolis‘ new media strategy and we invested in this back then already. Today Kinepolis is still one of the very few Belgian companies with a decent mobile site, for which you got to give them credit. But even outside Belgium, there aren’t many mobile specific sites, which already resulted in a shout-out more than a year ago.

The mobile sites I currently use are: BBC, Bloglines, Gmail, Hotmail, Messenger, Dopplr, Facebook, Google Reader, Live Search, Kinepolis, MSN, Twitter, Technorati, Wapedia, Flickr, Yahoo and WordPress. I don’t really know many more that are of use to me, or that aren’t in a walled garden like Vodafone Live.

I also use client versions like Live Messenger (which you can download for all kinds of devices), the Live Search client as well as the Google Maps client, Yahoo!Go, … as well as apps that run in the Java environment on mobile like Gmail and Opera Mini. On the N95 I also tried the Widsets, but whatever the phone, the browse services still top them all.

Today, with the iPhone’s browsing capabilities, or other mobile browsers that enable better viewing of ‘normal websites’ on mobile we will probably skip the further development of mobile specific sites. With Skyfire for instance (see announcement) or Deepfish I expect to see more ‘regular’ browsing in the future.

Still, the problem remains, now even more than ever I guess. We will have access to every site we want, with great browsers but at what cost? There’s a good explanation why I use so much mobile: I can use it obviously but more important is that I don’t have to pay for it. The day I have to pay for it, I’ll cut back for sure, need or no need. How much I love the Wifi on these phones, that’s not truly mobile for me. It’s when in a taxi, or before checking in a plane, while waiting on someone, … that I love to use all my catching up. Not only in my sofa at home for instance.

So unless operators change their models on data costs, mobile will never really breakthrough and that’s sad. And yes you can discuss devices etc aren’t ready yet either, allow me to say they’re well ahead of the game when you compare them to operator attitudes. And I’m afraid they won’t change that soon either. There’s too much money to be made with TXT messages to allow you to use IM on mobile instead for instance. What’s your take?

PS: Also check out the upcoming FF for Mobile now we’re at it ;)

PPS: And Twitter, for god’s sake, at least add a replies tab to m.twitter.com will ya!

• The Life Cycle of a Blog Post, From Servers to Spiders to Suits — to You
  “You have a blog. You compose a new post. You click Publish and lean back to admire your work. Imperceptibly and all but instantaneously, your post slips into …”
  (tags: aggregation blog blogging diagram map internet socialmedia technology visualization infographics wired blogs)
• Facebook Apps On Any Website: Clever Move
  “Facebook announced Friday a new JavaScript client library that will allow Facebook apps to be displayed on any website.”
  (tags: api facebook widgets application web2.0 mashup technology socialnetworks)
• Amazon MP3 store to spread DRM-free love global in 2008 - Engadget
  “In perhaps the biggest threat to Apple’s global dominance of digital music, Amazon just announced the international rollout of Amazon MP3. Right, the on-line storefront offering DRM-free music from all four major labels. That’s 3.3 million songs (priced
  (tags: amazon mp3 majors labels music online store itunes)
• Windows Live Dev : Microsoft Joins DataPortability.org
  “I’m pretty excited about the news that Microsoft is joining Dataportability.org. A lot of the work we’ve been doing at dev.live.com over the last year has focused on opening up data stored in Windows Live in secure and user-friendly ways. The Windows
  (tags: windowslive microsoft dataportability org data portability live)

I noticed this a couple of days ago through an article on Techcrunch. Yahoo! started doing some testing on integrating the Delicious results into their search results, and I like it. It seems like for now the Delicious rank has no impact on the search results (although that might obviously be next), but still this shows some extra value to the search results.

Here’s an example of a Yahoo! search on the query Windows Live. That way I still got Windows Live in here somehow ;) Anyway, I like it Yahoo!

In 2-3 weeks you’ll find me in Geneva for LIFT08. Check out this video if you didn’t know about LIFT yet or if you where still in doubt on going.

See you there?

I find myself slowly getting tired of my actual blog design these days. Looking back at when I actually changed to the current theme it seems to be almost a year ago, so I guess this is a yearly recurring thought. The biggest difference between now and then is that back then I really had it with the design, today that’s not the case yet. I just notice I’m getting ready for a change.

Together with this yearly design question, the self-hosting question pops up as well. I’m not a techie so I like the fact that I don’t need to care about any updates or hosting issues. That said, there are only that many themes you can choose from on WordPress.com and the limitations on adding code for widgets and tracking can be annoying from time to time as well. I understand the balance between the 2 current options you have with WordPress, it’s just that I’m not sure where I should go for today.

What do you think? I could use a bit of help on this one. Should I just leave all as is? Should I stay on WordPress.com and just get a new theme (like I did with my other blog a few weeks ago)? Or have someone do my own design and host the whole thing myself as well? I don’t know, you?

• BBC NEWS | Technology | Home is where the hard drive is
  “Home media centres are finally arriving, says Bill Thompson. We just called them games consoles until now”
  (tags: BBC digital xbox xbox360 Microsoft Sony media home)
• A Flash Guru Talks about Silverlight | Joshua | MIX Online
  “Jesse Warden (dot Kizz-ohm) was recently in town to meet with Bill Gates and the Silverlight team. Jesse is well-known for helping people fuse hardcore coding and Flash design. Between the lively and top-secret internal meetings, Nishant grabbed a came
  (tags: flash silverlight guru microsoft)
• The Danger of Free - ReadWriteWeb
  “Everyone loves to get stuff for free. We line up to get a free drink, we sign up for free checking accounts, and we’re happy to get a free gift with the purchase of our next car. We love free stuff, even though we all know and understand that free is an
  (tags: evil free future internet microsoft startup trends web web2.0 Marketing Google economy Business)
• Battlemodo: Is MacBook Air Worth the Money? Five Slim Laptops Face Off
  “We can all agree that the MacBook Air is a slick-looking little laptop. It’s so thin! You can’t argue with that! But if you’re in the market for a small, high-performance laptop, is it the best option?”
  (tags: apple dell hardware laptop mac technology gadgets air thin)