“View favorites, follows, retweets and more by people you follow”

I see this as a direct comparison to the Ticker that Facebook launched and has driven many people crazy.  Here is a screenshot of the location if it has not appeared for you yet by some chance:

I can see value in the idea, but this makes keeping up even more overwhelming for many.  Being able to see those I follow who then follow could lead me to a new person of interest, but who has time to click and hover each time with the volume of changes going on.  Favorites are of limited value as I presume I will see the person retweet it and if it has a link, something like Flipboard will catch it.

Gina Trapani made a great suggestion while I was writing this post:

I really want to see the people my friends UNfollow in the Activity tab.

Humorously this adds value, mainly if multiple of your friends have even unfollowed this same account.  One other side note as I scrolled though the new interface was seeing exactly the types of accounts people do add.  From tv and movie stars, to wrestlers and even a few funny yet sketchy accounts does bring light to a bit more of the individual personalities across Twitter.

So are you using the feature with success?  Activity streams are a whole other post coming and the ability to filter them will be key.

This small, yet incredibly useful, book covers 21 tips and accompanying code for mining Twitter data.  There is no fluff in this 60 page book with page 1 diving right into OAuth access.

Each of the tips (recipes) start with the problem , a brief solution and then the lengthy solution and code samples to bring the two together.  Everything in the book is written in Python with much of it being made accessible via easy_install.

While the majority of this book is code, it is an incredible companion to get you moving in pulling data, trends or just about anything from Twitter.  Creating and analyzing graphs becomes easier, discovering friendships and cliques, pulling geo-data and even finding a retweet’s source.

Much of the metadata we produce via Twitter gets lost instantly, since no one digs and mines the underlying data. This book can help you build some product or service you want around Twitter and hands you basic code to get you started. The book  21 Recipes for Mining Twitter is a great resource.

Disclosure: The links above are Amazon affiliate.

You can also watch this in HD and all the network videos on the Spiked Studio Productions channel on YouTube

Greplin was brought to me as a review site with the added question of data security.  Using oAuth, the service pulls your data from a list of public services (see the screencast) and immediately begins to index the data found.  So the initial steps do not disclose your login information, with the flexibility of oAuth.  However, you are exposing personal data across as many networks you connect.

All of the site access is done via SSL, a great first step. However, once you trust your data, you must make the login into Greplin as secure in password quality and strength as you would use for your Google email, apps and even LinkedIn.

How the data is stored by Greplin is not covered in their FAQ, nor was found anywhere else on the site. I would like to see this added in to provide a better sense of comfort.

Outside of that, the service itself was very fast and responsive.  New search abilities are being added.  The prebuilt features did give some immediate benefit of things or associations I may have missed previously.  My test search for iPad in the screencast even turned up come results I missed over time.

The goal of the site is to provide a single search source, fully indexed and finely tunable.  I would hope that eventually they bring the ability to act on something found in search. For example, if I find a Twitter posting result, I could click and retweet, reply or star. The same for email, LinkedIn data and even items I bookmarked into Evernote.

This is a promising service I intend to use as service is expanded, search capability is extended and data storage privacy policies are listed.  Go visit Greplin today.

This was a nice one I captured

I went ahead and grabbed one of the nicer ones.  Filtering is a key component.  You could set it to only approved people and remove the worries.  Making it easy to hold someone accountable and remove them.  This might eliminate someone from participating.

You could have a protected and filtered stream with someone watching a public stream and moving tweets in.  Some Twitter services do this.  We have profiled them on EverythingTwitter.

Either way, if you are investing in an upcoming event and wish to utilize Twitter to collect and show off the chatter, look into strong filtering.

• 39% block access to Facebook
• 30% block access to Twitter
• 27% block video sharing sites
  

  Image courtesy: Geek.com

Amazingly 21% give employees the right to view such sites before work and during their lunch hour.  Let’s be honest.  With the amount of third party tools, websitesand options for Twitter (see EverythingTwitter), you aren’t stopping employees.  Blocking access via a string on the URL or even traffic isn’t the solution.  Implementing the proper policies and controls around usage and expectations goes much further.

Most companies have an Internet usage policy, but rarely list individual sites, tools or social networks.  With the mass amounts of mobile devices in play, bothy personal and business, the tools and hooks to the sites are built in.  Native clients from Twitter for Android, Blackberry and iPhone permeate all the devices.  Facebook interfacing blurs the lines between business and personal contacts.  Heck, many have coworkers and bosses as friends on Facebook.  They are whom you spend much of your time with in the first place.

The study goes on with the concerns over data leakage, malware infections and more.  This is inherent to email and every other tool you have.  So is the site the issue and problem or is it the way the sites are used?  Have you implemented a social network usage policy?  Are there strict guidelines and governance in place?  Do employees sign off and get training on how they will represent themselves and/or company on these networks?

My guess is the companies in the survey missed the point but creates the fear.

Courtesy of: Business Insider

clients such as Tweetdeck, Seesmic, Mixero and more write code to remove these from paid versions of the apps to make themselves money?  All while satisfying users of Twitter at the same time?

Third party client developers are already under fire (see previous posting on the ecosystem) with Twitter now running their own clients across mobile platforms, with the web as the preferred desktop interface.  Even with Twitter as a free product, are the consumers and users of it prepared for advertising in what was once a clean stream of information?

I know I tolerate some ads with Ubertwitter on the Blackberry for all of the advanced functionality.  I could buy a paid version to remove the ads, but they are far and few between.  But with Twitter now inputting their own, will I want to see a percentage of the stream in that format?  My guess is no and I will invest a few dollars.  I only hope that when I pay to have the ads removed from those products they can filter Twitter sponsored tweets as well.  Or will that invalidate some license agreement?

Courtesy of Sean Rasmussen

Twitter has made some major changes that have taken a huge bite out of the third party developer ecosystem for tools, add-ons and clients.

1. Twitter started (rightfully) buying/building their own official Twitter clients for multiple platforms.  This was needed as no one knew quite where to turn outside of the web interface (that had clients built to make that better) and SMS via a cellphone.  Any other application written to interact was from third parties hoping to capitalize and productize a consumers interaction with Twitter.  Guess what?  If it isn’t free they were really buying.  Sure, some of them made sales, but in the grand scheme of how may users there are, you would think someone could emerge as a winner.  No one could when the service itself is free and companies developed for the fun of it.
2. Twitter forced all the tools to begin using oAuth, or get off the network, in the last 10 days.  As some of you may know, if you not you now will, I am one of the founders of EverythingTwitter.  The largest review catalog of tool, add-ons, sites, and whatever else we found that revolved around Twitter.  It is all categorized and searchable, which made finding point #2 easier.  Approximately 15% of the tools listed had oAuth implemented at the time we wrote the review and cataloged the tool/site.  This means that many of these tools just got knocked off the network and unusable until updates are done to their authentication.

So what does this mean to the average user?  Nothing.  They use the web, SMS and some built in clients that come with phones.  Some go on a search for the best tool for their particular device and stop there.  The masses?  Nothing.  Effectively burying the usage of these alternate tools.

Building a business around a social media site that is free is tough work.  Building a business that has consumers wanting to pay for a tool to interact with a tool they use free is even tougher.

Our daily hits on EverythingTwitter remain about the same, even with the fewer tools we list each week.  People are searching but seem to be coming back to the same results.  Twitter has official clients for two of the top mobile operating systems that their users utilize, iPhone and Android.

I wish much luck to those still building new tools and clients around Twitter that do not have an established name already.  (I can see the stats that show what names get the most traffic with us).  I also hope those tools we highlighted over time reconfigure to enable oAuth as soon as they can before they are forgotten.

• Does anyone care if I was in a swarm, visited Mount Rushmore or can administer CPR?
• Do we have to get jackets or sashes that we attach these digital badges to?
• Do you visit the pages of your friends to see what badges they have, or do you use some client just to see where they check in and have no clue what they earned?
• Can I get free services, coupons or discounts for having specific badges?  This isn’t mayorship, just an icon.

I begin to feel we reached a peak in the desire to achieve such things and are looking for true value in the services we are using.  Badges inherently were built for kids as a sign of learning and have now turned into a game with no winner.  Each time you get close to having all of the possible badges, new ones are announced.  The game never ends.

It becomes like a RPG that adds levels every time someone conquers all there is.  I have a badge for all of the sites giving out badges.  But it wouldn’t be appropriate.

The problem is, this is only seen when you log in via the web interface.  For new users, this is a common occurrence.  For power users and more, there are a slew of mobile and desktop clients in use that will never show this change.

How many of you use the phone number that might be known or an email address commonly known?  Most of you do and would say that it shouldn’t make a difference in any case.  But that shouldn’t be true.

I should have to opt in to have this information shared and the boxes themselves should not be checked automatically when I log in.  The default setting should be to disallow this type of search with explanation of what enabling these could expose.

The second portion was the ability to leave the selection to later.  Are these email addresses and phone numbers being exposed anywhere outside of the ability to find and add friends?    I didn’t see anything in the online help system for Twitter and only a few scattered articles.

Either way, get in there and establish your settings by logging in via the web interface.

With any current reader, you are able to control subscriptions, read and unread marks, better sharing integration across networks and exploring and finding of other feeds through services like Toluu.  Twitter is a force feed of data from anyone that passes a link along to you.

While you build your own community of people you wish to follow, actually parsing the content is another thing, mainly when you follow ~16k people like he does.  This would be incomprehensible even in a feed reader to keep up with the sheer volume.

Twitter is about getting in and out of the stream.  Taking a dip in the information flow.  You only drown if you choose.  RSS readers store the data for retrieval when you are ready and are sorted nicely into tags and groups.  Twitter is not close to this with lists yet and has quite a way to go, as I have noted.

With such add-on tools as the Feedly extenson for Firefox, your RSS feeds turn into a newspaper, list or magazine covers with incredible amounts of sharing integration.

Twitter works in the reverse since people need to be present and watching the stream to catch what you send out.  Not many are able to watch ~16k feeds and have the time to see each and every one.  Now imagine them in real-time scrolling by.  You would not be able to click to read links by the time a slew of others roled across.

I think he is right in that is is a great news source, that I use as well, and has immediate impact on trends and breaking stories.  But for real commentary, RSS is here to stay.

P.S. yes I follow Robert and I think he follows me as well (if I go use the tools on EverythingTwitter to verify).  But I still don’t expect him to see my content scroll by.  So I tossed an @ symbol in the title instead.  Get it?  My content will scroll by quick, but a conversation marker can be seen across his Twitter client.