ReadWriteWeb: 10 Things You Need to Know about Apple’s New Social Network, Ping.

Some handy privacy tips.

CNet: How Apple’s Ping dings Twitter, Facebook.

”Ping picks at the nice parts of Facebook and Twitter — friending and following — and offers these benefits to its users without the generalists’ pains.  Unlike Twitter, for example, these are all real people. Unlike Facebook, you can just wander around and see who or what you like without having to become someone’s friend and without having to like anything at all.”

Expression Engine Blog: Twitter Timeline Plugin and (n)Oauth.

”Today, the team at Twitter is shutting down their basic authentication service. For all you active tweeters, this is a good thing. Third party services will stop asking for your login information.”

paper.li: Read Twitter as a daily newspaper.

Interesting concept.

BruceClay: The Danger of Dismissing Social Media’s Value.

”First of all, I think that Fry has forgotten that blogging is part of social media.” Many do nowadays, sadly.

Meme generation, and thoughts about the old blog.

I’ve been noticing an effect here on the blog. You all know I work hard to be ‘first’ to a particular kind of eclectic story ... and you all notice I don’t seem to get any cred for it. My dominance as a meme generator ended in 2004, but most significantly in the months after Twitter opened the floodgates. My thousands of unique visitors a day dropped to below 500 within six months. In the last few months, a pattern has been becoming all too clear to me, a pattern that has been gradually becoming more clear since that time:

There’s now a social aspect to news.

I’ve seen this effect over and over again now.  Being first to a story does not matter as much as posting a story when the social conversation is peaking. The story’s only important now when everyone else is talking about it. Even folks who I know read this blog regularly, will pick up and post a story I’ve reported days before from another source than mine - when it’s peaking in popularity. I felt it was a stab in the back, until I realized the importance of the social buzz. Folks seem to feel safer forming opinions and expressing opinions within a group environment, where the consensus can be built from multiple sources.  Most importantly, however, building consensus opinion is now entertainment.

I was discussing this with Brian Tercero (Santa Fe’s Twitter powerhouse and Wordpress MU master) at a party the other night, and he suggested watching Twitter trends and perhaps delaying posts until trends peak to maximize reach. Traffic has never really been my goal, reputation and authority are ... but Brian laid out convincing argument that popularity, social trending and authority are now inextricably linked.

My ‘00’s romanticism of how weblogs should influence people is no longer accurate, nor is this ‘old school’ romanticism effective. This has been niggling at the back of my brain for a while, but this romanticism got laid out on the road and run over a couple of times Saturday night.

It was also mentioned by party host and occasional commenter ‘Eric of Santa Fe’, that one of the main reasons he frequents my blog is for Santa Fe news ... Santa Fe ‘flavor.’ I’ve gotten away from that a bit, and it needs to be restored.

So I’m going to be doing some experimenting here, watching my stats a little closer to see what trends within the blog. This blog is really an extension of my own wide-ranging curiousity, shaded a bit by what I know certain readers enjoy reading.

I picked up “The Four Hour Workweek” the other day, and though I have doubts about the ethics behind some of it (my brain screams ‘con’ at some of the chapters), I cannot deny the author’s contention that maximizing effectiveness is the way to go. This blog is not at all effective. In fact, it’s almost a living fossil, a coelacanth. Time to change things up a bit, narrow the focus, play to my strengths. I need to take into account how you all are absorbing your information.

Should I echo posts in Twitter? Use Twitter as a sideblog of sorts?  Focus more on longer narratives? Local color? Emphasize art more than tech? More/less photography? Show you how I’m remodeling my house? Deemphasize politics? Add video? Do a podcast?  Do all these things?  None?

Let me know, if you have time in your busy days, what you come here for ... what you’d like to see here. I know what I’m planning to do (it’s a surprise), but I’d like input. I’m interested. 

Lifehacker: Top 10 Facebook Fixes.

I wasn’t aware of quite a few of these. Just FYI.

The Independent.UK: Hollywood questions ‘The Twitter Effect’.

Okay ... first, Hollywood looked at Twitter, and tried to get a direct, measurable dollar figure out of the service. That didn’t work. Next, they valued it for ‘buzz’ and assumed there would be relatively unmeasurable but obvious payoffs. Now that looks like it is a false assumption. So what *is* Twitter good for?  Seems like Hollywood thinks: ads.

copyblogger: 60 Ways to Increase Your Influence Online.

I say value-add.

CNet: Conservative groups gaming Digg.

”AlterNet’s report is keen to note that the Digg Patriots’ efforts were no small feat. Many of the group’s members had to go to great lengths to make sure their accounts were not banned or deactivated, including resetting their modems in an effort to get a new IP address, and setting up and maintaining multiple, active accounts so as not to get picked up by some of the site’s activity filters.”

CNet: How to text without a cell phone.

”Entner pointed to recent Nielsen research showing that U.S. teenagers are using 3,146 messages a month, which translates to more than 10 messages every hour of the month that they are not sleeping or in school. Even tweens under 12, he added, are sending 1,146 messages per month, which is almost four text messages per waking hour that they are not at school.” Good lord.

Twitter’s down hard.

Wonder if the fail whale swam into the Gulf of Mexico ...

Mashable: Is Social Media Costing the UK Billions in Worker Productivity?

“The MyJobGroup stats are believable, but it is more reasonable to conclude that social media usage in the workplace is on the rise and becoming commonplace. As for lost productivity, we’re pretty confident that those eating up company time on social networking sites were likely finding other ways to waste away an hour or more a day before the advent of Twitter and Facebook.” Platitude. Social media’s an additional distraction without a direct dollar value. “Additional” in that it never existed before. Companies will be casting increasingly withering looks upon the practice, I think, until value can be proven.

Studio Daily Blog: Default Preferences, Unlimited HD Come to Vimeo.

“Vimeo Plus members already get a lot for their $59.95/year or $9.95/month — a mere 16 cents/day — subscription. The fee buys, among other things, 5 GB/week of upload space (with a 1 GB-per-file limit), advanced statistics, a customizable video player, ad-free viewing and HD embedding. Now there’s no limit to and, more important, no extra charge for the HD videos you upload to Vimeo and embed at full resolution anywhere else online.”

Flipboard for iPad.

Looks rather cool. I suspect the level of cool I feel is affected by the music they chose for the intro video, however.  My friends on Facebook and Twitter tend to read and link less highbrow stuff than is displayed here.

Jezebel: Alas, The Old Spice Guy Didn’t Actually Help Old Spice. Here’s Why.

”While there is little doubt about the viral hit’s popularity - the official version has racked up 12.2 million impressions on YouTube - sales of Red Zone After Hours Body Wash have fallen by 7%.” Whoops. Stinky bodywashes don’t go over well around here. I still prefer plain old Ivory, thankyouverymuch.

BusinessWeek: Twitter, Twitter, Little Stars.

“First, they scramble to hire social media officers. Second, they figure out what it is, exactly, that social media officers do. Blending departments—promotion and marketing, customer service and support—and requiring the ability to be shameless boosters while maintaining a light, self-aware tone, the job category is experiencing a boomlet as companies try to keep up with the new media world.” Opportunities abound. Social media is going to come up hard against corporate boardroom ‘measurement-mentality’.

Macworld: Facebook user satisfaction ‘abysmal’.

“Facebook scored a 64 on a user satisfaction scale of zero to 100, according to the 2010 American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). A rating of 64 might not sound so bad, until you consider that sites for filing tax forms electronically to the IRS scored better.” Is it any wonder?  The UI is just awful.

ReadWriteWeb: Forrester: If You Think Social Media Marketing is Worthless, You’re Doing it Wrong.

“Many marketing investments are not intended to furnish immediate financial results but instead create long-term brand value. The greatest and most valueable brands weren’t created in one quarter to the next but with an eye toward building lasting relationships with customers. Smart marketers are coming to recognize the way social media marketing can deliver on those same long-term values and are building programs with strategies and metrics to suit.” Not a straight line to profits, but a benefit in ‘buzz.’

Small Business Search Marketing: Who Says Small Business Can’t Do Social Media?

”Emarketer is reporting on the survey today, a survey that shows small businesses are beating mid-sized and large companies when it comes to acquiring customers via social media.”

Wired: Self-Service: The Delicate Dance of Online Bragging.

”Perhaps oddest of all, considering its real-life parallel, is the retweet-without-comment: ‘RT: @longhornfan43: Evan Ratliff named in Bigtime magazine 100 most influential people.’ Avoid this one. Imagine using a lull in dinner party conversation to announce that ‘a man in Texas, whom none of you know, recently told his friends I was named to the Bigtime 100. Salad, anyone?’” Pushing the lines of self-reference and self-reverence.

NPR: Police: At Least 6 Killed In N.M. Office Shooting.

”A gunman opened fire at an Albuquerque fiber optics manufacturer Monday, killing five people and wounding four others before killing himself in what police said was a domestic violence dispute.” This broke on Twitter almost as-it-happened.

After a couple of months,

a little patience, a little email back-and-forth, I’ve finally gotten my Delicio.us bookmarks back. Phew. Now to export them before I try to reconcile the logins with Yahoo again.

The Atlantic: 2 Lessons from Google’s 216-Page Social Media Manifesto.

”The role of influentials is overstated. We care more about what our friends think than what ‘important’ people think.”

Mashable: Facebook “Like” Buttons Coming to E-mail Marketing.

I want “dislike” buttons on cups of coffee I buy. I get so many bad cups of coffee, it’s about time sellers got some feedback. Or even better, use augmented reality on smartphones so we can just like/dislike everything we encounter during the day, as well as record the GPS coordinates and post it to Google Maps. Face recognition and AR! Like/dislike people, without even getting to know them ...