Archive of thenextweb.com
Written on 30th June 2009
20 COMMENTS 
Mike Bracco,
I recently made a half serious post on FriendFeed as to whether or not you would name your child if the domain of their name wasn’t available. Perhaps I was taking it a little overboard but if you ask the same question to any company trying to come up with a name it goes well beyond making sure the domain name is available.
Locking down brand names across all social media sites is not just an issue for big companies and celebrities. Internet addicts like myself are extremely particular about having a consistent username across all sites. I can only imagine the anguish of those who were late to Twitter and don’t have their username of choice.
In order to address the mounting task of reserving your username across the (more…)
Written on 29th June 2009
10 COMMENTS
Mike Bracco,
I am calling for a group subscription framework to be developed so that with “one click” you could create a group of Twitter users in TweetDeck, Seesmic Desktop or whichever Twitter client you use.
This framework would allow companies to create a group of their employees and post the group subscription link on their homepage – just like an RSS feed. It would also give an individual user the ability to create their own ad hoc groups based on any criteria they chose. The creator of the group would maintain the master list and any changes they made to the group would be dynamically updated in the clients of those who subscribed. If this was available, creating the group in your Twitter client and following specific groups of users would be as simple as subscribing to an RSS feed.
Following specific groups of people, especially entire companies, can actually be quite a useful thing to do. ReadWriteWeb did a recent study of all Twitter employees’ Twitter accounts and was able to come up with some pretty interesting tidbits of information. I personally found the value of following an entire company on Twitter when I started following the team at Squarespace (the blog and website creation tool I use for my personal website). I started following a couple employees of the company and was constantly getting great tips that weren’t showing up on the Squarespace company blog. As a result I went through the manual process of hunting down the Twitter handles of all the Squarespace employees I could find and then added them to a group in Seesmic Desktop.
So if developers of Twitter clients are listening, please help! Until such a group subscription framework is developed you will have to do it manually. Below is a list of The Next Web Team and our Twitter handles:
Zee Kane – @zee
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten – @Boris
Ralf Rottmann – @24z
Martin Bryant – @martinsfp
Keith Tsudo – @tsudo
Joop Dorresteijn – @joop
Mike Bracco – @bracco
Written on 19th June 2009
8 COMMENTS
Mircea Goia, Next Web US Webtipr
uberVU, the conversation tracking service in the same class as Backtype or Artiklz, just launched ContextVoice, an API that tracks comments from social sites around a URL close to real-time.
ContextVoice is actually a packing of the uberVU API which was has been in use for quite sometime. Because people have increasingly begun to use the API for areas the developers hadn’t initially imagined, uberVU decided to spin it off as a separate service (”conversations as a service“, as they call it).
By tracking this whole conversation in one place using ContextVoice in close to real-time (Twitter is (more…)
Written on 19th May 2009
2 COMMENTS
Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
Peashoot is a spanking new social media app with a funny name but great ambitions.
Developed by Jon “Yongfook” Cockle, a young British/Singaporean developer/entrepreneur with an already impressive pedigree. As well as being the man behind the much publicized open source lifestreaming application Sweetcron.
Yongfook also started a recipe social network called Open Source Food in 2007, named in the top 50 best websites of 2008 by TIME magazine, it was acquired by Tsavo Media last year and renamed Nibbledish.
So what’s this Peashoot all about?
This latest venture, as part of Yongfook’s new company Egg Co., aims to make it possible to track your social media campaigns across the web. In many respects its currently similar to the offerings of URL shortening services such as bit.ly and (still in beta) awe.sm but with a much more pleasant and professional UI – as we point out later however, there is a great deal more to come.
How does it work?
To start with, enter the URL of the link/product/site/service you are looking to share and keep track of. Peashoot will then provide you with a short URL to share wherever you please.
Once you’ve begun sharing you can track exactly where and when the link have been clicked via a real time report page. Peashoot also highlights on a graph (using little flags) spikes of traffic and indicates why these occurred. The traffic spikes may be the results of a blog post of some sort, a popular twitterer’s share or a post on Friendfeed – Peashoot helps you discover which. (more…)
Written on 4th March 2009
6 COMMENTS
Ayelet Noff, Next Web WebTipr Israel
The average site for a popular consumer product is:
A. Slick with a high level of ‘production values’.
B. Made in flash.
C. About as socially engaging as a log.
Skittles changes all that in one go by essentially giving up on having a site of its own. If you go to skittles.com you see a realtime Twitter search for “skittles.” All that is left from the old corporate branded experience is a small widget-like navigator in the right hand corner.
If you click “videos” it goes to Skittles’ Youtube page, if you click “images” it directs you to a Flickr search, “products” is the Skittles Wikipedia article and clicking “friends” will take you to the skittles fan page on Facebook. This breaks with the tradition of consumer products with boring mass sites that feel like generic dance clubs -I’m looking at you Pepsi. Skittles have decided that the best online experience is one created by its own customers.
Predictably the Twitterati went wild after discovering that any tweet mentioning “skittles” would make it the new Skittles front page and it was inundated with tweets like:
mobob: #skittles is doing a very nifty thing, but i’m still not going to eat them, they always tasted way too much like rocks.
shehulk123: All the skittles talk on twitter today makes me want to go out and taste the rainbow.
brianboyko: @poneal - so… skittles gets people to talk about skittles on twitter by showing people talking about skittles on twitter. I don’t get it.
mpk: @obra you are way out of date on today’s fast-moving Internet. That Skittlesthing is *so* six hours ago.
Many have said that Skittles is making a mistake opening itself up to the worst impulses of the Web. They should ask themselves if any other consumer product has managed to get this level of attention online, ever.
Kudos to Skittles for leading the way!
Update:
So Skittles now defaults to the Wikipedia page for Skittles (yesterday it was their Facebook fan page). It seems to me that they are rotating through their different profiles, either as part of a strategy or just trying to see what achieves better customer interaction. To see the Twitter live search now click “chatter”. But the question remains; when will we see some Digg love?
Written on 22nd January 2009
38 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
There’s this growing sentiment emerging against “social media experts” and their Twitter bots. Some even call it the “cancer of Twitter“. The Hubspot marketing blog doesn’t need any comparisons with awfull diseases, and uses a funny cartoon instead.
![Making Friends: LinkedIn vs. Facebook vs. Twitter [cartoon]](http://img.skitch.com/20090122-bkgn6q32n64kftmamt1pwydjrd.jpg "A cartoon about why you should ditch your auto follow Twitter bot Photo")
Written on 8th January 2009
2 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Atherton Bartelby, a Brooklyn-based graphic designer, art director, writer, blogger, and photographer, wrote an interesting blog post on Mashable. He compares his Twitter experience with a party where everybody has a great time – which is in the end spoiled by a person that “doesn’t fit”. So he publishes an article on one of the world’s largest blogs to tell you when he won’t follow you. Ok, this kind of behavior is accepted in 2.0 land and if you ignore his initial concept, “FOLLOW FAIL: The Top 10 Reasons I Will Not Follow You in Return on Twitter” is actually a very valuable post.
Atherton Bartelby
Here are the ten reasons why Mr. Bartleby from Brooklyn, New York won’t follow you on Twitter:
- You have no user avatar
- You list no location, no website, or no bio
- Your “website” listed is a MySpace profile
- You’re following over 1,000 users, have 20 followers, and no updates
- Your profile features any variation of “Internet expert”
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Your updates clearly indicate that your Twitter activity is always, only, about pushing your own service/product
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Your following and my return follow result in a poorly-constructed auto-DM reading, “Thx for the follow! How can I help you get to a 4-Hour Work Week?”
- Your most recent updates make references to any need to achieve “more Twitter followers”
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Your Twitter stream indicates a propensity for consistent arguing
- You do not engage your Twitter followers
Refer to the Mashable post to see Bartleby’s motivations. You can ignore a couple, like “Your profile features any variation of “Internet expert” – since that one comes from a man who calls himself a “social media connoisseur” (it’s always the social media experts who are truing to critize other social media experts of being one). The first two are pretty obvious and the third really matter of taste. But the ones about pushing, auto-DM’s, “more Twittter followers”, arguing, and engaging are pure gold.
Written on 6th December 2008
13 COMMENTS
Guest blogger, sharing views on The Next Web
Written by Tyson Crosbie
The truth just sounds different. I heard that saying once when in grade school, I don’t know why but it always stuck with me.
The social game on Twitter
Lately on twitter I am starting to get a lot of noise from social gamers. These are the people who think that having the most followers is the key to online fame and or fortune. They probably read Chris Brogan’s blog religiously and implement every strategy that can be automated, duplicated or easily implemented. Unfortunately by doing this they are missing the entire point.
The noise I am talking about specifically in this blog post are the automated responses to new follows. They usually read something like: “Thanks for the follow! I look forward to your tweets! Check out my URL.” Besides being generic and lazy these automatic messages just wreak of the old school advertising numbers game. It rings false to me and I usually choose not to follow or unfollow the owners of this noise.
Demand truth in advertising
I believe we are selling ourselves all the time, and we are buying with our time from those who demand it. Getting what we want when we want is the key to all the things we talk about in Social Media. Relevancy, authenticity, accountability.
In a world that is increasingly on demand and unique to each audience member, it is only relevancy that will rule the day. The days of noise inserted for the masses between the content that we want to consume are waning. Truth in advertising will happen when the advertisements are as valuable to me as the content I am watching, reading or consuming. I hope it will become indistinguishable from the content.
We will likely never get away from the numbers game, it is an important part of being human and social. We want to believe that we are connected to each other and share a common experience. Accountability however, speaks to a personal responsibility in choosing your own content. The more you choose to manage your personal experience the more you will attract a positive one. This way I think the numbers will take care of themselves.
My content filter
Personally, I prefer truth over automation, personal connections over the most connections, accountability over laziness and community over empire. These preferences just feel better than the alternative and I believe that is my truth.
What is your content filter built out of, what is true to you?
Written on 30th November 2008
2 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
In one of his latest email newsletters, Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis predicted that the economic downturn will boost social media. In an age where experiences are more important than expenses, social media advertising will flourish, Calacanis wrote.
Advertisers will start cutting print, outdoor, TV, and radio (probably in that order) in favor of the internet’s action-based offerings such as CPA (cost per acquisition), CPL (cost per lead), and CPC (cost per click).
Conversation Agent Valeria Maltoni foresees the same. Since 2006, she has been active in the social media marketing scene because she noticed “the line between marketing and public relations would be blurring considerably with greater adoption of social media”. Maltoni thinks the profession has matured and that it’s about time for an award:
It’s not all talk anymore. Social media is becoming part of our language and behavior – as customers first, as professionals a close second. The terminology may or will change, the dynamics remain. It’s extreme personalization driving it – listening, having a voice, making a difference to the final results.
With all of this in mind, if it doesn’t hurt too much, I think it would be interesting to propose how I would do a list from which to nominate the Social Media Marketer of the Year.
Maltoni isn’t thinking about just a posh show which is all about good PR – she really wants to make an effort. There must be a handpicked panel of judges who would study a collection of metrics and evaluations: “Together, we’d choose metrics that are less open to personal judgment”. Since social media is all about opinion, Maltoni doesn’t want to rule out the subjective judgments completely. She goes on by summing up some possible parameters – like RSS counts, number of blog comments, ROI, and Quantcast reach.
I think Maltoni’s idea deserves some more attention than just three comments – that’s why I wrote this post. If we could come to a solid system with which we can choose the social media marketeer, we will not only have a good party – but also an interesting way of calculating one’s success. Click here to post your selection or join the discussion in the comments.
Written on 11th November 2008
7 COMMENTS
Martin Kloos, Web Strategy Consultant
Every month, The Next Web Blog picks three relevant books for you to read. The teasers are short, the pro’s why to read are relevant. This month we’re discussing the Future of Reputation written by Danial J. Solve, Secrets of Social Media Marketing written by Paul Gillin and Click written by Bill Tancer.
The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet
Lots and lots is being written nowadays on all the positive things that are happening on the social web. Most of those books are descriptive: they describe the phenomena, throw in some cases and some best practices and that’s it. Few on the other hand, try to get to the (sometimes negative) bottom of a specific phenomenon. The future of reputation, written by Daniel J. Solve, is such a book. Solve is professor of Law at the George Washington University and has written extensively about reputation and privacy in the past. In the future of reputation, Solve thoroughly writes about the trail of information about our lives that is instantly available online and the implications of this on our personal lives. How it affects our being and how we are perceived in the information age. Well thought and well written. If you don’t want to buy the book you can always read the entire text online.
Secrets of Social Media Marketing: How to Use Online Conversations and Customer Communities to Turbo-Charge Your Business!
I’ve read “Join the Conversation” and “Marketing to the Social Web” before, which I think are both very insightful and entertaining books on marketing in the age of the social web. No wonder I got excited by Paul Gillin’s latest work Secrets of social media marketing. Known from it’s best seller “The new Influencers“, Gillin has now written a true handbook on social media marketing. The appraisals name Paul Gillin as one of the few who truly understand marketing to the social web. As you would expect, the book is chock-full of information, new cases and best practices. As The Future of Reputation, much of Secrets of Social Media Marketing can be read online so you can find out yourself whether you should by this book as well.
Click: What Millions of People Are Doing Online and Why it Matters
Bill Tancer is the leader of global research at Hitwise, so he should know a bunch about our online behaviour don’t you think? Well it seems he does and he wrote it all down in Click: What Millions of People are doing online and why it matters. Click gives a sneak peek into the works at Hitwise, a research firm with sample populations in the ten’s of millions of people. Clicks gives insights in what we search for, some cool online analysis, and what our online behaviour tells us about ourselves. One cool finding I got from Bill Tancer’s website is the following: “The combination of charting search and social network traffic to music artists’ sites provides a visual depiction of Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point.” Entertaining, but not much more to expect.
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show off, the future of the Web. (More info 
