Twitter struggles with new features

The new Twitter features mentioned by Techcrunch seems to be live. However with some problems.

When I access the main Twitter site I get the user interface version that is tailored for mobile devices. Is it only me?

And the new Blocks navigation at http://explore.twitter.com looks nice. But is it really adding value to the navigation?

I found how to view a specific user in Blocks. I am at http://explore.twitter.com/blocks/#johan

Oh well. It's Friday. It's late. I'm going to bed. My guess is that the Twitter team will have stuff to work with :-) I will check back and see if it looks better tomorrow. I do like Twitter, but right now they need to improve the latest release.

Plaxo moving ahead. But where?

I just noticed two new features from Plaxo (since the Pulse and OpenID ones I mentioned here).

First, they have launced an Online Identity Consolidator. This has been mentioned by Robert Scoble and Kristen Nicole at Mashable.

Here I learned something new. The use of rel='me' linktag. [Note to self: a) read more on this b) add to my sites]. The source code is provided as open source.

This is one step towards how my multiple online identitiers can be easily tied together.

Second, Plaxo have enabled the use of yourname.myplaxo.com (I am at http://myrberger.myplaxo.com/). A way for you to make some parts of your Plaxo profile available on a web page. This also ties into the first feature, as the myplaxo.com page adds rel='me'-tags to sites you have specified.

I am a bit concerned over this second one, as it seems to publish information I specified to be available to people who already know my work email address (and keep it in Plaxo). Will this mean that this information can be collected by spiders and bots? I have not found a way to specify what shall be published on the myplaxo.com page versus what information is "public" to Plaxo users who know my email address. Any comments from Plaxo?

Still I see Plaxo as very much targetting advanced business users and social media early movers. Still missing a really good consumer (mass market) proposition.

It is however interesting to see Plaxo move ahead in this space. I already like the address book synchronization features (but when do we get Gmail sync..?). The recent additions takes Plaxo further into the social networking aspects. Where will they go from here? And where are the other players heading?

Twitter stuff

I like Twitter. It might be such a rare thing as a combination of both a killer app and a killer attitude.

A killer app, since I believe it really has opened up a completly new way of interaction (micro blogging or mood blogging). It's a natural combination of two mainstream behaviours (blogging and SMS), but still it took until last year until someone created such a service. Still some time before we can call Twitter mainstream, but I am convinced Twitter (or some other brand with the same service) will become mainstream over time.

A killer attitude, since the SMS generated are "free of charge" for you as a user (see eg this post). The SMS costs are seen as OPEX by Twitter. The business model is not obvious either, as stated by some recent investors.

Oh well, two reasons I posted this today:

1. I just answered a question on LinkedIn Answers around Twitter.
2. Yesterday I found evidence that I am a Twitter pebble (see my previous post), at least in Sweden. According to this post I was the fifth person in Sweden to start Twittering. I am also on the top 5 lists for number of 'followers' and 'following' in Sweden (and not for number of tweets, trying to keep down on them :-)

And find me at http://twitter.com/johan to follow my tweets. Or tweet 'follow johan' if you're already on Twitter.

I'm a pebble with Twitter, but mainstream with this blog

Today I spotted two nice blog posts on how how new services are adapted by the market.

The first one by Alex Iskold covers the well known (?) Chrossing the chasm-thingie. But with a new take, which relates to the accelerating speed of which new service are introduced. The focus of the important early adopters may be lost prior to the chasm being crossed.

The second one by Jeremiah Owyang details the personas of early adopters, and group them into five segments.

Both are recommended reading. What an incident both where posted the same day.

And yes, I view myself as a pebble with regards to Twitter. My first tweet dates back to September last year.
On the other hand I have been late with blogging. Blogging is mainstream by now. I am not even sure if I am among the early or late majority. Probably towards the late...

Split personality and Social networking for the crowd

Not sure what to call this post...

I finally got around to create and update my personal web site (www.myrberger.se/johan). Yes, despite the abundance of blog tool, networking sites and all the "2.0" stuff there's still room for a more traditional homepage. I think.

In my case it was partly due to that I own the family name domain, but hadn't put anything there. Of course I could have hosted one of my blogs there, but for a number of reasons I didn't want to do that.

Instead I wanted to create a hub for people looking for me (it's all about maximizing the contact area, right?)

Even if the number of people that starts to use some kind of social network tool grows fast, there's still two problems.

1. Split personality: There's no or limited interaction between all social networks. You need to be in multiple places (and keep them updated) to reach as many as possible. (I see some initial attemps to address this)
2. Social networks for the crowd: But more important - plenty of people still are not actively using any online social network. And never will.

This is closely related to what some sites do (like http://www.onxiam.com/, and there's plenty more). Creating a single point where all my online presence can be found (at least those I want to expose :-)

So far I have not found a really good service for this (I keep on looking). One thing I miss so far is the possibility to add notes to each persona, as well as the ability to indicate to what extent I am active on each of them.

I ended up creating a Google Spreadsheet which I published in my homepage. Works quite good for me in most aspects. Especially since I use iGoogle daily - I get a natural reach to keep the spreadsheet updated.

The only drawback I noticed so far is that the links inside the published spreadsheet will open inside the embedded frame. Hence you need to right click and "open in new window". Seems to be a known limitation, if you have any suggestion please let me know.

[FM855-98]

What's this?

Well, I just found and now trying feedM8, and in order to verify my feed I needed to include the code in the title above in my blog post.

Not the neatest way to do the verification, but it works I guess...

Jailhouse Rock

Just had a look at one of the YouTube videos that got some attention the last week:


Apperantly a prison in the Phillipines is using show dance as a way of prisoner rehab.

To use this type of activities with inmates is not new. This old article is one other source I found. And I especially liked the quote "There are some talented people in there. They've failed as criminals, so they'd better find another line of work."

Just make sure you do not run into the same situation as happened a number of year ago in Sweden, when a theatre play was staged. It ended up with some of the actors escaping. This even turned into a movie as it seems.

Well, back to the Phillipines. This video seems to summarize the overall approach to prisoner rehab.

And by the way, out of all the dances from the prison published by bryonfgarcia I noticed the "Algorithm march". It seems to be a Japanese popular line dance (see here for full instructions) related to "Fågeldansen"... The Algorithm march have even reached Stockholm (wonder how I missed this craze...)