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September 03 2010
Um, Where’s Twitter For Android On Twitter’s Top 10 Apps?
This evening Twitter CEO Evan Williams put up an interesting post about Twitter mobile usage. By just about every measurable metric, it seems to be skyrocketing. He also included a graph of the top 10 ways people are now using Twitter. This includes both Twitter’s own apps and third-party clients, but notably, Twitter for Android is nowhere to be seen.
I’ve confirmed with Twitter that this isn’t a mistake. It seems that Twitter for Android is in fact not in the top 10 ways people interact with the service. That’s incredible considering that Twitter for iPhone is number 4 and Twitter for Blackberry is number 5. Both of those were built by the Twitter team, just as the Android app was.
Even crazier, it’s behind third party clients TwitPic, TweetDeck, Echofon, UberTwitter, and even Google Friend Connect!
Obviously, Twitter downplays that in the post (and by downplays, I mean, doesn’t mention it), and instead only mentions Twitter for Android in the intro to say that it “launched a new version this week.” Remember, “new” is the best tactic to get people to try something.
So why is next to no one using Twitter for Android? Twitter won’t say. But I suspect it may have to do with the awful experience of trying to find apps in Google’s Android Market. Twitter for Android is by far and away the best client for the platform — but you’ll note that none of the other popular Android Twitter clients made the cut either.
So perhaps Android users just don’t like using Twitter? That’s probably not the case. Remember too that a lot of the newer Android phones come with custom skins that often include Twitter functionality without the need for a separate app. Still, for browsing tweets, Twitter for Android is much, much better. People should be using it, but they’re apparently not.
Record Numbers Pinging Ping.fm Thanks To Apple’s Ping
An interesting beneficiary of Apple’s launch of music-oriented social network Ping—social status updater Ping.fm. According to Seesmic CEO Loic Le Meur, Ping.fm saw a record number of accounts created yesterday (Seesmic acquired Ping.fm earlier this year).
Could it be a coincidence? Definitely, not. When you Google “Ping,” Ping.fm is the second result under the golf equipment site PING (this doesn’t include News results). Apple’s Ping is actually the fourth result (not including Video results). On Bing, Ping.fm is the third result, behind the golf company and the Wikipedia page for Ping. Clearly, as people starting becoming curious about Apple’s Ping yesterday on search portals, they also found Ping.fm in results.
Le Meur declined to reveal the exact number of accounts created but he did say that the number of accounts created was three times the normal rate in a given day. Apple actually licensed the name Ping from the golf company, as PING owns the trademark.
Reddit Diggs Traffic Surge, Prepares For Expansion
It’s all hands on deck at Reddit this week.
In the wake of Digg’s bungled redesign, its rival is enjoying a surge in traffic and a jump in ad and subscription sales. Since Monday, the site has been averaging 900,000 uniques per day— a 50% increase from Reddit’s pre-”Digg 4″ average, according to senior programmer, Chris Slowe. The six-member team does not openly celebrate the technical woes of its competitor but there is a certain giddiness in the air at Reddit’s SF headquarters (a small room, tucked in the corner of Wired’s expansive office).
The Conde Nast owned startup is having a moment, and they know it.
However, there’s no time to bask in glory, as the number of page views rises and the press rolls out headlines like, “Backlash Continues For Digg as Reddit Steps in and Reaps the Benefits,” “Report: Reddit Ready To Defeat Digg,” and “New Digg Sucks? Reddit All Over Digg FrontPage Now!” No, for the four-person engineer team, it’s time to roll-up their sleeves and crank away, to keep the site afloat (no easy task) and create the next whizz-bang features to keep Reddit’s enlarged user base happy.
On Thursday, we dropped by their offices for a pulse check. While programmer David King’s eyes were glued to his monitor— tweaking a feature that will hopefully improve the site’s scalability— senior programmer Chris Slowe was available to take our questions, video above.
Highlights:
-Slowe says they first noticed a spike in traffic on Sunday night, as activity increased in Australia. By the close of Monday, Reddit saw 850,000 unique visitors, that number increased on Tuesday, with 900,000. Traffic has continued to hover around this level, with roughly 13 to 14 million total page views per day.
-Self-serve ads are up 30% since Digg 4′s launch. Overall ad sales have been growing roughly 5% per month, Slowe expects monthly sales to increase 5 to 10% for the remainder of this year. Subscriptions are also up, currently Reddit has 10,000 subscribers.
-Their prayer for more resources is finally being answered. They are currently in the process of hiring one new employee, but hope to have enough cash on hand to hire two full-time employees by year’s end.
-On Digg’s fumble, Slowe says: “I think the biggest complaint from their community has been that they feel marginalized…The only advice I would really give them…they haven’t been as communicative as they could be…Our only currency really is trust and candor and so if you treat your community like adults they’ll behave like adults.”
-On that whole Proposition 19 debacle: “Once the dust settled everything was just fine nobody’s been fired, everyone is perfectly happy. The main problem was that it was all happening very fast. It went from a blog post from the Prop 19 guys to a full blown community revolt on Reddit in about an hour… One of the problems with trying to be candid at all times, is that sometimes private political arguments end up public…we could have been a little bit more graceful in the handling of that.
-On the next feature for Reddit: “Our UI is not particularly friendly…we’d like to work on some tools to make it more friendly…another thing that’s been big is that its not necessarily clear off the bat that Reddit is customizable we have a whole bunch of communities and they all have different bends and you can subscribe to different communities…I think that’s not necessarily clear from a first look.”
The Evolving Ecosystem - Just over four months ago, at Chirp ... (Evan Williams/Twitter Blog)
Evan Williams / Twitter Blog:
The Evolving Ecosystem — Just over four months ago, at Chirp, our Twitter developer conference, I talked about how “Twitter is too hard” and what we're doing to address that. — One major area of difficulty I highlighted was getting Twitter on your phone.
Ustream Snags Former Palm PR VP Lynn Fox
We hear that former Palm Vice President of Public Relations Lynn Fox has given up on her “Consult Until-I-Find-Another-Job Consulting” plans and landed a permanent gig at video streaming service Ustream. Her formal title will be VP of Corporate Communications and she will be reporting to Ustream CEO John Ham.
Sources say that Fox is the first in a series of new hires at Ustream, hires which should be announced formally in the next couple of weeks. Fox’s first day will be Tuesday, Sept. 7 and her primary duties will be leading all things related to PR, Events and Social Media.
It looks like Ustream is taking advantage of its $75m round of funding from Softbank and other investors earlier this year in order to ramp up their recruiting efforts and attract major talent like Fox.
Prior to Ustream, Fox had to honor of working in the upper echleons of communications departments at both Google and Apple. She left Palm shortly before the HP acquisition in June.
Facebook Wants To Be In A Relationship With The Big Boys — They Want To Be Just Friends
Yesterday, Apple launched iTunes Ping, their new music social network. Part of that launch was a very basic implementation of Facebook Connect, simply to hook in and find out which of your Facebook friends were also using Ping. I tried it yesterday and it worked fine. But this morning the option vanished and everyone was left wondering what happened?
Well, it vanished because Facebook started blocking iTunes Ping from accessing their API, we’ve heard (just as AllThingsD and New York Times have as well). Obviously, there’s no point in having a feature that doesn’t work — so Apple simply removed it.
Apple won’t respond to requests for comment and Facebook will only give the vague canned response, “We’re working with Apple to resolve this issue. We’ve worked together successfully in the past, and we look forward to doing so in the future” But yes, Facebook blocked access and so Apple removed Connect.
But wait, I’ve heard that canned statement before. When was it? Oh, that’s right, just about two months ago, when Facebook blocked Twitter from accessing the same API. “We are working with Twitter resolve the issue,” we were told at the time. Deja vu.
So what’s Facebook’s problem? Well, from what we’re hearing, size matters. Facebook is happy to let big companies like Apple and Twitter access their Connect API, but they want a structured, formal agreement in place so they have some control over it. That’s understandable given how large those sites are and how much strain they likely put on the API.
In both cases, from what we’ve heard, Twitter and Apple simply hooked up Connect without giving Facebook much (if any) of a warning. They were able to do this because they were using the same public APIs that anyone else who wants to hook into Connect uses. Of course, most of those other companies don’t have hundreds of millions — or even millions — of users. So Facebook feels there should be different rules in place for those companies.
Again, that’s an understandable position. But the problem is that in Twitter’s case, after months of talking, the two sides got absolutely nowhere. A week ago, Twitter simply removed the Connect feature altogether from their Facebook app.
I suspect things might be a bit different with Apple, as it would be beneficial branding, if nothing else, to have the Facebook Connect button inside of iTunes. But if Apple won’t agree to some sort of formal agreement, it will still likely be a no-go.
Of course, given some of the identity issues Ping is already facing, Apple may soon be happy to work with Facebook on the “issue” Facebook says they’re working on.
[image: New Line Cinemas]
Apple-Facebook Friction Erupts Over Ping (Miguel Helft/Bits)
Miguel Helft / Bits:
Apple-Facebook Friction Erupts Over Ping — If it is true that the enemy of your enemy is your friend, then Apple and Facebook ought to be friends. Their common enemy, of course, is Google. — But Apple's entry into social networking with the iTunes music social network Ping on Wednesday, has made them frenemies.
“ 回想吴仪当年，英姿勃发废wifi，何曾想wapi今日成蹉跎。 RT @ChinaWebNews: 图书限折令半年即夭折“无厘头”规定成一纸空文 http://sns.ly/lQg46 ”— free_all_POC
September 02 2010
This Spam Infographic About Spam Infographics Makes My Head Hurt
Buzzfeed, the Huffington Post of Internet memes, wins the “more meta than thou” award for making “An Infographic Backlash Infographic” inspired by the tragic tale of a guy whose job it was to game Digg back when Digg had enough traffic to make it worth gaming.
Okay Buzzfeed, just because you understand recursion, doesn’t mean you have to rub it in our face all the time. Aside from the Greyhat SEO tricks, your anti-infographic infographic and the post that inspired it are actually just describing successful web-writing and content creation. It’s like…there’s a reason people are clicking on it.
From the Digg gamer’s playbook, which is really interesting if you care at all about how people used to build website traffic.
“Spam other sites with it too for bonus points. Email large blogs, etc. to try to get them to run with it too.”
From the Buzzfeed “community manager,” in our Tips inbox today:
Thought this might be up your alley -
a couple of days ago someone posted on Reddit about how he been paid to game Digg and other influential sites by creating infographics (those goofy, badly designed images with stats and pie charts called “everything you ever wanted to know about boobs” that keep turning up on content-sharing sites) and then loading them with keyword-spam embed tags once they start spreading.
today, we posted an infographic about how the system works: http://www.buzzfeed.com/awesomer/the-truth-about-infographics
and within a few minutes, dozens of new fake accounts were created on our site to defend the practice.
the whole thing is pretty fascinating!
Well I do find it fascinating … But wait, didn’t you guys just tell me I shouldn’t link to infographics? Fortunately the spam infographic has some helpful suggestions for what to do when you’re in this kind of a situation. “If you do include a link to a spam infographic include a no follow tag in the html.”
Which is exactly what we did. Thanks guys! Hi Jonah ;)
HUGE: Facebook Testing New "Subscribe To" User Feature (Nick O'Neill/All Facebook)
Nick O'Neill / All Facebook:
HUGE: Facebook Testing New “Subscribe To” User Feature — Facebook is in the process of testing a new feature which lets you subscribe to all the actions of a specific user. In other words, you can receive notifications anytime a specific user takes an action on Facebook.
Mark Zuckerberg Is On iTunes Ping — But Only One Is Real
Perhaps you’ve heard that Apple and Facebook are having a little bit of an issue at the moment. Despite launching with Facebook Connect integration yesterday, it’s now nowhere to be seen on Apple’s new music social network, Ping. And that’s too bad because even Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg signed up to try out Ping yesterday, we hear.
While Facebook Connect will no longer help you find Zuckerberg there, if you do a simple name search, there he is. Well actually, there he is twice. Hmm. Which one to choose?
One has 46 followers, says he’s into “Dance, Hip-hop/Rap”, and has no picture. The other has 74 followers, doesn’t list musical preferences, but has a picture. So it’s gotta be the second one, right?
Nope. As tempting as it is to think that Zuckerberg actually filled in his profile to say “It’s true, I invented Facebook,” this is a fake account. The one with no picture and less followers? That’s the real Zuck. He follows two people, Katy Perry and Bret Taylor. One of those is a famous pop singer, the other is Facebook’s CTO. I’ll let you sort that out.
Who cares? Well, it’s sort of interesting that anyone can create a fake account of someone else on Ping. Sure, you need an iTunes account, but there are undoubtedly many people who have no interest in using Ping and are happy to create fake accounts aplenty. As another example, here’s The Beatles. No, it’s not the group (iTunes doesn’t play nicely with them, remember?) — it’s someone who made their name “The” and “Beatles” and put an album cover picture in there.
These fake account could potentially lead to users who believe them getting tricked into making purchases that they think their idols recommend. Zuckerberg didn’t actually recommend Those Darlins, for example — Fake Zuckerberg did.
Seems like there’s an identification system that could potentially help with this. Oh yeah, Facebook Connect.
In The Coming HTML5 Browser Wars, The Markup Should Remain The Same
On Monday, Google made a big splash with a customized Arcade Fire video page that showed off all the cool things HTML5 can do, from video, animations and 3D rendering to gorgeous fonts and choreographed windows. It’s all cutting edge stuff as far as what is possible with a Web browser goes, but there is one very big problem. It doesn’t work so great in all browsers, even browsers that supposedly support HTML5. If you go to the landing page that launches the video in Firefox or even the forthcoming IE9 (which isn’t out yet, but is very HTML5-friendly), it detects your browser and suggests you use Chrome instead. I received the following message on Firefox:
This site was designed with Google Chrome in mind and is unable to render properly in your browser. For the best viewing experience, we recommend downloading Google Chrome and trying this site again.
But wait, isn’t Firefox one of those “modern browsers” that supports HTML5? This isn’t the first time there have been issues with HTML5 compatibility. The problem is that HTML5 is so young that the standards have not been hammered out yet across all browsers. The markup language required to produce the same effect is different for different browsers.
“The Arcade Fire thing . . . they are writing to the browser,” points out Dean Hachamovitch, the Microsoft general manager in charge of Internet Explorer. “They use proprietary Javascript.” HTML5 “done right,” he contends, would be using the same markup language across browsers. Seems reasonable. That is what the open Web is all about. It is why we have standards. But HTML5 is so new that we are getting flashbacks to the late 1990s with sites refusing to accept certain browsers.
To illustrate this point, Microsoft has an HTML5 test page set up that changes the border around a block of text. Inside the block of text, it shows the markup code required to create different effects such as animating it or creating dots instead of a solid line. Here is what the code looks like in Chrome:
And here is what it looks like in Firefox
What’s wrong with these pictures? One takes 16 lines of code, the other takes four, and they are completely different. Even the dots that are created don’t match (Chrome’s dots are square). A different set of HTML5 code is required for IE9. ”We want to make the same markup work everywhere,” says Hachamovitch. ”If you have to write that differently for every browser it is kind of missing the point.”
Microsoft is working with the standards bodies, as are all the other browser makers, but what is really needed is better definitions and a thorough set of reference examples for every possible HTML5 feature. It’s a lot of work. Eventually, we will get there. But until then, expect to see grandstanding about which browser does HTML5 better. When you hear that, just ask yourself, which version of HTML5 are they talking about.
Ping Averts Its Gaze: Apple's New Social Network Doesn't Really ... (Peter Kafka/MediaMemo)
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Ping Averts Its Gaze: Apple's New Social Network Doesn't Really Want to Know Much About You — Steve Jobs says Ping is supposed to be a “social music discovery” service: You share your musical taste with friends and vice versa. But if you really want to share, you're going to find it harder than you think.
Make group video calls with up to 10 people with the new beta version ... (Peter Parkes/The Big Blog)
Peter Parkes / The Big Blog:
Make group video calls with up to 10 people with the new beta version of Skype for Windows — Today we've released an update to Skype for Windows. The second beta of Skype 5.0 brings a number of changes both outside and in - most importantly, you can now make group video calls with up to 10 people.
It's officially over. After Dell pulled out of the running this morning, HP has announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire data storage company 3PAR, for $33 per share in cash, or a value of $2.35 billion. The transaction has been approved by the boards of directors of both companies. This morning, HP upped the ante with an offer worth $33 per share or $2.4 billion. 3PAR accepted HP's bid and Dell withdrew.
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