Web 2.0

Review: How Twitter Became Addictive

All of the buzz in the social communication world these days goes to Twitter. From MacWorld to SXSWI, people have been tweeting about anything and everything going on in their lives. The main goal of Twitter is to have people share their current action or thought in a 140 character message (the specific limit is set to allow use of SMS for sending updates and receiving updates from friends). In reality, Twitter is much more: a communication platform (”@” replies and direct messages), a publishing platform (integration with Seesmic and Qik; plugin for WordPress; or simply posting links to user content), and an avenue for meeting people through (check out your friend’s replies to his/her friend’s tweets).

The Lowdown: Basics of Using Twitter

The essence of using Twitter is quite simple. Sign up, give them your phone number, IM network ID, or both, and send a message to the service that tells your friends what you are doing.

Now obviously, most tweets aren’t directly saying what a person is doing. They could describe what he is thinking, who he’s speaking to, what funny picture he took recently, what video he uploaded or just watched on YouTube (and for the latter of those, as well as links to any site, Twitter integrates the TinyURL address shortening service), or just the fact that the person is awake.

Twitter for Interactive Communication

Much of the fun in Twitter is having conversations without having to set up a new environment for the “conversation instance” – no need to set up a chat room in AIM or the like. Just preface your thought with the “@” symbol followed by the name of the person you’d like to direct your thought toward. As a result, the person you addressed will receive your tweet, regardless of whether or not he follows you on Twitter. In essence, you can start a conversation with any person or group of people who is/are member(s) of Twitter.

The Addiction to Twitter

Part of using Twitter is being constantly involved. It’s quite obvious that if you tweet once a month you will end up being immensely un-popular within the Twitterverse. What many people end up doing is tweeting about anything and everything going on in their lives, in some cases almost every few seconds. In return, that person’s followers will reply, and make their own tweets, etc. There is a certain element of fun involved with being constantly updated of what your friends are doing. For me, there is so much that I almost got my phone taken away by my principal for receiving a text message from Twitter during school hours (despite that, of course, I receive dozens of them a day from those whom I follow). No wonder they call people like me Twitterholics…

Impact of Twitter on “Traditional” Social Networking

Twitter redefines social networking as we know it, mainly because the service primarily provides us with real-time updates of the things that our friends are up to. It’s provides a somewhat more personal relationship with people who we don’t actually know personally, because, essentially, we can have a one-on-one conversation with them without actually developing a real relationship.

Also, and this is strictly IMHO, the randomness of Twitter gives us a sense of relationship building. For example, I’ve been following Daniel Brusilovsky on Twitter essentially since I met him, and through both “@” replies and direct messages (a feature available to friends who follow each other), we’ve developed a much stronger relationship with each other.

In other words, Twitter provides a platform for connecting with people, not just “meeting” them. The terse nature of tweets makes forming connections faster and easier, and the real-time functionality brings us closer to those with whom we communicate.

2008 will be the Year of the Web Worker

Now that 2007 is slowly rumbling to an end, I’ve glanced back at all of the amazing breakthroughs that have been made over the course of the year. Microsoft released Windows Vista; Apple released the iPhone, new iMac and new iPods; and many other new products and services have emerged.

Web Worker Daily would like to know why…

2008 will be the Year of the Web Worker

In response, I’d like to say that 2008 will be the Year of the Web Worker because the office will be everywhere, Continue reading »

Another Flavor of Mint

So far we have the Mint stat-tracking software, the MintPages.net designers’ community, and now the Mint finance tracking service. Although it is an invitation-only service, it looks promising. Want to help me get Minted faster? Click below:

IMified: Truly Simplistic, Undeniably Useful

Starting at registration, IMified is the easiest Web 2.0 service to use. Not many sites that cross the Educated borders are talked about like this, with good reason.

From second one, I realized that IMified is truly simplistic. In fact, the registration process is as simple as this: send an instant message to one of the services IM accounts (AIM, Yahoo, MSN, Google Talk, ICQ, and maybe one or two more), and then go to the link it sends back to tell it the absolute basic info about you (the time zone is the only necessary one). Once that’s done, you can decide what you want to be able to do with IMified.

From the IMified Web site, you can select which services you will be able to access from your Main Menu. These include Google Calendar, Twitter, and the various services that IMified provides (Reminders, Notes, Todos). It is all very simple to set up, and almost as easy to use.

Other than the downtime of their bots upon occasion, I have no gripes towards IMified. It’s all very simple and uncomplicated. Perhaps this could be a true Web 2.0 service.

Visit IMified

What Is Wrong With Me?

People do make stupid mistakes. That doesn’t mean they aren’t stupid. It means that they either don’t pay attention before they perform the mistake, or ignore the after-effects. I chose the former, by deleting my Technorati claim on Educated.

I thought I was deleting the claim on (one of) my other, totally untouched blogs. But at this point I’d like to thank Technorati for not providing those WordPress-like confirmations that are shown in another page (they use simpler JavaScript popups, which I’ve seen so many of that I could click OK to one thousand of them while in a coma). By the time the claim deleted screen came around, it was too late to realize that I had deleted the actual Educated claim.

The only positive note here is that it doesn’t take too long to get everything (except the blog description) back in order. Just make sure you put in the exact URL to the blog as you had before, or else Technorati will treat the blog as a totally new one.

Remember this, and you’ll save your bottom dozens of times: Look before you click.

Trackbacks Explained: Networking With Your Blog

Trackbacks are one of those blogging features that some beginners just don’t get (I was there – trackbacks have only made sense to me recently). The truth is that they are very simple to understand.

Think of trackbacks as comments that are posted by your blogging tool, rather than your own self-determination. To use a rather crude comparison, they are similar to video responses on YouTube. Someone makes a video. You think that you can add to that video. you make a video, and it shows up under the existing video.

Same concept with trackbacks. You find a blog post on someone’s blog that you think is interesting. You write about it on your blog, and leave a trackback in the process. The whole nine yards:

1. You read a blog post, and you like it.
2. You write a post on your blog about it. This could possibly be an “Aside” post.
3. While posting, you paste the address of the post you are commenting on in a special field on your post editing screen. With WordPress-powered blogs, the trackback address of posts will be the post address, followed by “trackback/” (ex. http://www.mysite.com/blog/2007/01/02/my-first-post/trackback/).
4. Upon the publishing of your post from your blog, their blog is notified by your blog, and a link to your new blog post is made on their blog.

To make this all fair, you should remember to include a link to their post in your post if your post is not specifically about their post, in which case you may not remember to leave a link. That way, the network between you and them is built, and you two have formed a “micro-relationship” of sorts.

You should also leave comments on blogs regularly, but that’s another topic. Following these tips will help you build your blogging future, giving your blog increased exposure. But remember the main rule for any Web site: Content is king.

Beta Syndrome Hits Gravatar 2.0

A few days ago, I gained interest in Gravatar, which I had come across before in my early blogging career. At first I didn’t really understand what it was all about, and to this day, some of its features are still unclear to me. I understood the basic concept – showing a single avatar next to your comments on any site set up to display Gravatar avatars (the name explains it: Globally Recognized Avatars.

So anyway, back to my original topic. For some time, Gravatar was closed. They recently re-opened up their service on a public basis. Of course, I registered. But after trying to upload my favorite avatar (featuring a picture of the front of an Orion VII Hybrid bus), I got a very generic looking error from the site saying that something went wrond, and that it has been logged for further investigation.

Sounds like beta to me!

While on the topic, I have recently put Educated into beta. I think it’s the way to go, because I don’t need to worry if my site suddenly fails, do I? (I am pretty confident it won’t go downhill anytime soon – ComputingHost is doing a very nice job so far).

Changes Are Good, But Somethings Don’t Change

My experimenting with my site(s) has brought thousands of changes to it (them). I’ve played with templates and themes, modules, and hundreds of other features and tweaks. But there is one thing I’ve learned (not the hard way, yet): Leave URLs alone. Search engines need URLs to work with your site. If they all suddenly change, they may be looking at nothing, or your site will get lost forever.

It’s very tempting to all of a sudden change your permalink structure, or suddenly switch to them. Unless you have absolutely no choice in the matter, either take ‘em or leave ‘em at the beginning. One change in the middle will disturb the SEO status’s equilibrium (that a new one), with potentially lethal effects on the site’s ranking. Jonathan agrees with me.

I haven’t documented this, but it may be something that you would want to keep in mind. Some things are better off “like old times,” and left undisturbed. Perhaps I will report on this again in the future and see if my theory has proven itself.