Over the past week I’ve gotten into widget development in a big way. For those of you not as geeky as me, widgets are mini-applications that you can copy and past into web pages. Widgets make all sorts of content and information portable. If this sort of thing interests you I recommend that you head over to Widgetbox and browse their gallery of widgets.

I produce a podcast about the New York Mets and also manage a companion social network. I’ve been thinking of different ways to make the content more portable and more social so I can continue to build my audience and community. I remembered Widgetbox from earlier adventures and decided to see what I could do with the platform. The short answer is this. You can do a lot with the Widgetbox platform.

Creating a customizable, embeddable widget from a blog is as simple as entering an RSS feed and filling out a few simple fields to indicate the title, description, sizing and colors. The widget below took me five minutes to create. Click here to see it if you’re reading in an RSS reader.

Cross site compatibility is one of the great features of the platform. When someone clicks that Get Widget button they can choose from embed codes that will work on Facebook, MySpace, WordPress, Netvibes, iGoogle, Ning and many other popular websites. This is in addition to being able to paste into any site that will accept javascript or flash codes.

With Widgetbox you can go beyond just adding a blog RSS feed. I host my own flash audio player for my Mets podcast and have wanted to make it available for embedding everywhere. Widgetbox lets you do that. You can pass their interface flash embed codes, html or javascript, a web page or iGoogle gadget urls to make them into widgets.

In my case I passed in the embed code for my Amazin Moments Podcast Player. The interface then allowed me to adjust a few settings and make the player available as a flash or javascript embed. See the player below or click here.

Widgetbox also offers the option to help you turn your widget into a Facebook application. I decided to take them up on the offer and try it out. Their Facebook application wizard walks you through the process step-by-step, presenting the Facebook developer pages in an iFrame on the Widgetbox website. The process requires a bit of concentration but is definitely doable if you follow directions closely.

It took me about twenty minutes to complete my Amazin Moments Podcast Player on Facebook. Now anyone on Facebook can easily add my player to one of their pages. Facebook is a new promotion platform for me and it makes it much easier to be able to have the application as a tool for that promotion. It’s also important to note that no coding was required in order to create the application.

I’ve become a fast fan of this platform and am already plotting my next few widgets. You can go here to see the widgets I’ve created so far. I think the best way to get a feel for the system is to create an account and try making a few widgets yourself. It’s easy and it’s fun. If you try it out come on back and leave a comment about your thoughts on the Widgetbox platform.

© Robert J. Safuto - visit the Awakened Voice Blog for more great content.

I recently updated the Beginner’s Guide To Podcasting that I’ve been maintaining for a couple of years now. Updates are a necessity for a document like this since the tools, services and communities related to podcasting are constantly changing.

This document is meant to help beginning podcast publishers. Feedback and suggestions on adding content are welcome from podcasting veterans. View on Scribd or download the pdf.

Beginners Guide To Podcasting - Upload a Document to Scribd Read this document on Scribd: Beginners Guide To Podcasting

© Robert J. Safuto - visit the Awakened Voice Blog for more great content.

The folks behind the WordPress iPhone app deserve to be commended. They have created a simple and elegant tool that allows for posting to WordPress.com or standalone blogs. I used the app to write this post.

The ability to include links without HTML would be a welcome addition. You can include photos from your library though.

You can see a demo of this brand new app at iphone.wordpress.org.

© Robert J. Safuto - visit the Awakened Voice Blog for more great content.

Nothing. You are required to do nothing special when you read content I’ve published or shared. You don’t have to comment but you are welcome to comment if you feel moved to do so. You don’t have to share it, although I encourage you to share if you find the content to be interesting. If someone has shared my content on another site you are welcome to comment, “like” or otherwise express your opinion if that alternate site provides the tools to do so. I may not see any of that activity on another site. That’s fine with me if it’s fine with you.

I felt compelled to state my preferences after engaging in a discussion over on FriendFeed about the etiquette of ‘liking’ items shared on that site. I understand the need for people to desire that all feedback on their content remains centralized as much as possible. Mark Krynsky, the person who originated the discussion, is using the very nice FriendFeed Comments plugin for WordPress (as I am) and would like kudos, comments, etc from FriendFeed captured back to his original post. Hence Mark’s request, which you can view on FriendFeed.

I don’t mind Mark making the request. What rubs me a bit wrong is the suggestion that the technique Mark suggests for his content is a matter of proper etiquette when using FriendFeed. That’s where we disagree. The technique for finding and clicking the appropriate link may be a simple one, but it could also be inconvenient for the reader to take the extra time to do it. So I’m not going to place any type of onus on the reader to take such an action. I’m just glad that anyone would share/like/comment on my content anywhere. It just doesn’t matter to me whether or not other people can see that information when they come to my blog.

Where, when and how the discussion around web content occurs is in the control of the community. I’m fine with that.

© Robert J. Safuto - visit the Awakened Voice Blog for more great content.

There are three questions that I ask when visiting the site of a new web-based service.

1. What service do you provide?
2. How does the service work?
3. What is going on?

How and if those questions are answered tells me a lot about the service.

The answer to question #1 should include a brief description of what problem the service solves or what makes the service unique. I prefer to be shown the answer to question #2 with either screenshots, a presentation or a video. In this day and age simply telling people what your service does is a real waste of time.

With respect to question #3, the presence and actual use of a blog tells me what kind of activity is occuring. If you’re looking for adoption and any level of trust I need to know that things are happening. Some services, like Mevio for instance, use blog technology to display press releases. That approach is a big fail. Be FUNI on your blog. Tell me what’s Fun, Unique, New or Interesting.

© Robert J. Safuto - visit the Awakened Voice Blog for more great content.

The term social media is a ubiquitous one these days. But at the same time there are still many people who know the phrase but don’t really understand the meaning. A proper definition of social media does exist on Wikipedia. I find the definition that’s located on Wikipedia to be quite convoluted. My definition of social media is uncomplicated and based on common sense. My hope is that by sharing my definition of social media I can help clear up any misconceptions about the phrase.

Social Media is:

• Media (audio, video, text, image) that is delivered via the web;
• Media that is easily shareable;
• Media that allows for feedback;
• Media that allows for discussion.

Web Based

The media should have its own unique link (also known as a permalink) that points to a specific item of content. All major blogging systems (like Blogger, Typepad and Wordpress) and media sharing sites (like YouTube and Archive.org) offer permalinks as part of their standard functionality.

Shareable

The media should be easily shareable with links ( to sites like Digg, Del.icio.us or sending via email) that are prominently displayed to facilitate such sharing. Services like Add This and Share This make adding these options very simple. A link to an RSS feed to facilitate subscription is a key component of sharing as well.

Feedback

The media may have some sort of a basic feedback mechanism that allows the visitor the opportunity to indicate whether or not (or how much) they enjoy the content. This could be a star rating system or thumbs up/thumbs down feature. A service called JS-Kit makes it very easy to add ratings to your content. While feedback is a nice to have feature, its presence is not critical in defining media as social.

Discussion

The ability for visitors to add comments is a crucial element of any media you want to call social. Many publishers include a comment area directly beneath the content. In some cases the publisher may link each post to a separate forum area where the discussion takes place. All blog publishing systems offer the ability to include discussion. Some web services like Disqus, coComment and IntenseDebate aim to enhance the discussion functions associated with your content.

© Robert J. Safuto - visit the Awakened Voice Blog for more great content.

In my previous post in this series I attempted to define the social media herd. In this post I’ll share my thoughts on the true value of the herd to web based services. I think it makes sense to assess the situation from the perspective of where certain services sit on the food chain. A simple hierarchy of web based services looks like this to me.

• Royalty - These sites have made it to the big time. They’ve been purchased for huge sums of money and enjoy tens of millions of users;
  • Superstars - These sites are established, well capitalized (double digit millions or more) and enjoy a million or more users. They aspire to either go public or be purchased for hundreds of millions of dollars.
    • Upstarts - These sites are relatively new, have comparatively little funding (like single digit millions or less) and have user numbers that are anywhere from double digit thousands into six figures. They aspire to a steady increase in user base and additional rounds of funding.

How has the social media herd helped the companies that fit into each of these categories?

Royalty

MySpace - Not helped by the herd. MySpace got big and was purchased by News Corp. for $500 million dollars at a time when the herd’s leaders were completely focused on their own blogs.

YouTube - Not helped by the herd. Most only began to use YouTube in earnest after the billion dollar acquisition by Google in late 2006. Web movers and shakers still tend to prefer publishing on niche sites like Blip.tv, Viddler and Vimeo.

Flickr - Positive effect on the back end. The Flickr acquistion by Yahoo in 2005 occured before the herd had much effect anywhere. In the years since Flickr has remained the photo sharing service of choice by hardcore web enthusiasts. This loyalty has almost certainly kept wannabes like Zooomr and Google’s Picasa on the fringes of the space.

Superstars

Facebook - Not helped by the herd. Facebook would be considered royalty if the company wasn’t so incredibly leveraged. The herd moved to Facebook in earnest in early 2007 at a time when they already had millions of users. The myriad of discussion about Facebook certainly doesn’t hurt, but the distractions of newer services serve to mute the herd’s effectiveness when it comes to this social networking giant.

Digg - A very positive initial effect. The early adopter social media crowd (aka The Herd) jumped on board early, quickly turning the word Digg from a noun into a verb. The early support and enthusiasm helped Digg get the funding required to expand to appeal to a mass audience.

Twitter - A very positive effect. The herd lives and breathes Twitter. And although their level of funding (compared to Facebook) and user base (compared to both Digg and Facebook) is small, Twitter has benefitted (as indicated by healthy funding) from a tornado of conversation around their service. It appears that users of Twitter are much more active then users of similar services like Jaiku and Pownce. Twitter is a bottom rung superstar and their is no doubt that they would fall if they lost the loyalty of the herd.

Upstarts

The herd’s true effect on all of the upstarts is to be determined.

FriendFeed - The core herd has noticed FriendFeed and appears to be staying for awhile. Whether or not masses will follow remains to be seen. Their user numbers are well below Twitter. And their funding is only in the single digit millions. This is a real test to see if the herd can help deliver a big payday for a service they are passionate about.

Seesmic - A handful of leaders, Mike Arrington and Loic LeMeur (also the founder) among them, have waxed enthusiastically about this video “conversation” service.  The user base is in the double digit thousands, reflecting the portion of the herd with a passion for video, but they’ve also attracted funding in the double digit millions. This company will test the ability of the herd’s leaders to effect the adoption of their favorite services on the core group.

Disqus - Dave Winer uses it. Fred Wilson invested in it. And Louis Gray thinks Disqus is winning. This blog comment service continues to grow its user base via support from some of the more well known movers and shakers in social media.  The herd proper hasn’t arrived yet, but the leaders are certainly crowing about and raising the profile of this service.

The Verdict

My experience and analysis tells me that the herd provides three types of benefits to web services.

1. Conversation - If they like a service then they will talk about that service. Such talk may attract the attention of journalists (which can lead to wider exposure) and potential investors.
2. Feedback - The herd is not shy about telling a service what they want. And they always want something. This is a double edge sword. Placating Scoble, Winer or Arrington will gain a service their affection. But features that hardcore enthusiasts want may not help a service achieve mass appeal.
3. Funding - While a funded service may not attract the herd, the herd can help a service attract funding. I liken it to a beauty contest. Investors are overwhelmed with web services that can use their help. But the ones that the enthusiasts are using and talking about are likely to attract the eyes of the judges.

Conversation, feedback and funding are not the only ingredients of a successful online venture. Mass adoption is necessary for web based services to reach a secure level of maturity and attain royalty status. Many try but very few succeed. And if there was a formula then everyone would certainly use it.

Catering to social media enthusiasts is one way to develop a niche which can help get a web startup off the ground. This approach provides very little in the way of a guarantee for success. The chance for long term success can be just as good if  the service adopts a strategy that helps it to cater to the average web user.

© Robert J. Safuto - visit the Awakened Voice Blog for more great content.

Apple has just tossed a huge bone to high traffic social media sites. But will they pick it up?

Sites like Twitter, FriendFeed and yes even the mighty Facebook are grappling with the issue of exactly how they can earn enough revenue to continue to support their services without the need for future rounds of funding. They should look no further than the iPhone App Store for their first big opportunity.

Take a lesson from Apple folks. If you make something really good then people will pay for it. The iPhone App Store offers social web services the opportunity to make applications that work really well on the iPhone and iPod Touch. Any web service that desires greater traffic and greater revenue should consider creating their own “for pay” application.

Take the MLB iPhone App as an example if you will. This thing looks great. It even includes the ability to stream in-game video updates. This application will have features that the user won’t be able to get anywhere else. And I know that MLB will have no problem with charging a fee for this application.

Social web services should consider adopting a mindset similar to that of Major League Baseball by charging for enhanced services. A sweet iPhone app could (and should) easily be the first enhanced offering that all social web services introduce to their user base.

I know that some people are thinking, “No dude! Make it free and support it with advertising!” Forget that model when it comes to the iPhone. Do you really want to put advertisements on a screen that small? I say, “No.” Ads will ruin the experience and make people less enamored of your application.

The bone is out there on the ground. From July 11th on we’ll see how many social web services pick it up and run.

© Robert J. Safuto - visit the Awakened Voice Blog for more great content.

I’ve been thinking. To some those are some pretty scary words but not necessarily as scary as me deciding to tell you what I think. In this case I’ve been thinking about what I call the social media herd.

The social media herd is a group of people who move in concert from web application to web application, vehemently discussing the merits of each while generally exaggerating the level of each service’s importance along the way.

The exact size of the herd is difficult to determine but I’ll estimate the size of the core group to be about ten thousand people who are mostly from the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom. There are people scattered within the group that are from all points on the globe though.

The dynamics of the social media herd are not unlike those of any other social group. The herd has three distinct sub-groups.

1. Leaders who set the trends and topics of discussion. Where they go, the herd follows. What they love, the herd loves.
2. The Pack follow and are fiercely loyal to the leaders. Their ideas most often mimic the ideas of the leaders. They go where the leaders go. Some aspire to be leaders and mark their turf accordingly.
3. Outsiders exist on the fringe of the herd. They actively observe the herd. Some are simply studying the behavior of the herd. Others are trying to figure out how to get inside.

In addition the the three core sub-groups the herd has a long tail of followers that possibly reaches into the low hundreds of thousands. These are people who are somehow affiliated with members of the herd but are not well defined as a group. They are aware of what is going on but aren’t studying the group closely and have no aspirations to join. The long tail moves at their own pace and sometimes arrives at a service about the time the core group is moving on.

The social media herd is very bottom heavy. There are a couple of dozen people who are recognized as the leaders. Everyone else is following them either in the pack, on the fringes or the tail. In their own way the leaders of the herd have great power over the herd and are considered valuable individuals to be aligned with. If the leaders make a move it is expected that the pack and the outsiders who follow the pack will go along for the ride.

The herd is probably about 90% male. The age of the herd ranges from early twenties to mid-fifties. The majority of the social media herd is likely between thirty and forty years of age.

In many ways the social media herd is like the cliques you knew in high school. The leaders of the herd know their position and typically flaunt their power. The pack is proud to be in the herd and suspicious of anyone new to the scene. For the most part the pack decides who enters the herd although sometimes a leader will fast track a person who they think deserves to be recognized. Fringe members who gain entry and acceptance to the herd like to shut the door behind them because it is generally perceived that increasing the size of the herd reduces the value of being a member.

The herd moves at varying rates of speed. Sometimes they linger in a place or on a topic of discussion for months at a time. At other times they make a quick stop off and keep moving. Wherever the herd treads you can bet that lots of discussion of wildly varying quality will occur and lots of bandwidth will get utilized.

The social media herd does not know loyalty. They move from service to service at the whims of the leaders. Those in the pack who fail to conform to the ideas and opinions of the leaders or the majority of the pack members face marginalization and even ejection from the group.

The social media herd is a highly sought after group of people by those who need attention on the web for their products or services. The most capitalized attention seekers woo the leaders of the herd with all sorts of goodies, including good, old-fashioned butt kissing. Those with fewer resources must stoop to vying for the attention of the members of the pack who they hope will then alert the leaders of their presence. Gaining the attention of the wider pack (and eventually the long tail) is object of the game for those seeking attention.

Attention seekers seem to spend a lot of time and effort hoping to get noticed. And that leads me to an important question. Is it worth it? Does the time and effort that is required to attract the social media herd pay off in any tangible way? Are the effects of attracting the attention of the herd generally lasting or merely short term? Is there a correlation between the amount of attention from the social media herd and the long-term success of a web property?

Stay tuned. I plan to analyze the questions above in my next post.

© Robert J. Safuto - visit the Awakened Voice Blog for more great content.

My obsession with the Drupal platform has expanded from the occasional screencast to a Drupal guide for beginners and now a new website. I’ve been working on Learn By The Drop for a few weeks now. It’s a place to learn Drupal. I’m posting tidbits of information (which I’m calling drops) to help the average Drupal user get more out of the platform.

If you head over to Learn By The Drop you’ll find audio, video, images and plain old blog posts that will hopefully help to transfer my (limited to tell the truth) knowledge of Drupal to you. Hey if I can make Drupal work then so can you. That’s the point I guess. Enjoy!

© Robert J. Safuto - visit the Awakened Voice Blog for more great content.

I’ve been a DreamHost customer for a while now and although they have problems with servers failing from time to time I have generally been happy with the combination of prices, tools and performance.

The weakest point of the hosting experience with DreamHost has been the performance as major outages seems to happen a couple of days per year. Then again, some major web services (like Twitter for instance) go down more than that and seem to be growing nicely. Another consideration is the fact that I’ve never been with a host (and I’ve been with several over the last decade) who hasn’t had a few outages a year. Hence, my happiness with the DreamHost experience.

Another gripe I’ve had from time to time is the fact that my sites seem to load pretty slow at times even though there were no major issues with the DreamHost system. As the traffic on my sites grows I want a good experience for users and quick load times are a part of that equation. That said I know that there is a certain reality to understand when you’re on a shared hosting account. My sites are sitting on a server with hundreds of other sites using god knows what kind of resources. So there are always going to be performance limitations when you have a shared hosting account.

A few months back DreamHost began to offer what they call Dreamhost P.S. P.S. is short for private servers. According to the DreamHost P.S. website, “DreamHost PS uses Linux-VServer to give you your own “virtual machine”, thereby protecting your CPU and RAM from all other users on your physical machine.” It sounded like the ticket for me in wanting to improve the loading time on my sites. So a few weeks ago I got on the waiting list for my own virtual private server.

A few days ago I received a notice telling me that the service had been activated. I went to check out my sites first and noticed that the first one I went to was down. The email I received did mention that the site could be down if my level of memory and cpu on the private server was set too low. So I went to the private server control panel and adjusted the convenient slider to up the levels a little bit. Within a couple of minutes the changes took effect and I visited my sites. The performance increase was noticeable. There’s no doubt in my mind that the sites load faster now.

At the current setting level my hosting bill is going to increase by $30.00 per month. That’s a considerable bump up from $10 a month. But that increase is worth it if I continue to see improved performance. And it’s a lot cheaper and simpler than moving to a dedicated server. Another plus of the DreamHost P.S. service is the fact that the control panel includes a graph that shows resource usage over time. If usage is below the peak settings then I can use the slider to adjust my resources in real time and the billing will be adjusted accordingly.

If you’re happy with your current host then I don’t think that this service is a reason to defect to DreamHost. If you are on DreamHost and have high traffic sites that are currently on a shared plan then you might want to consider adding the private server option. Doing so will cost you more money. That money would be well spent if it means a better experience for your users.

© Robert J. Safuto - visit the Awakened Voice Blog for more great content.

Let’s continue with the subject of building brands and keeping control of your content. There’s this issue with comments. A growing number of people who write their own blogs want better control of all the comments that they leave on other sites. Comments represent ideas and opinions that can add to the value of your brand.

Services like Disqus, Intense Debate and coComment try to solve the problem by centralizing all of a user’s comments but only on sites where those services are supported. You can solve this problem yourself by adhering to a very simple comment doctrine.

Any time you find a comment extending past a couple of sentences you should stop yourself and write the comment as a blog post. When you write the blog post make sure that you link directly to the post you are commenting on. If the original blogger has trackbacks enabled then the link to your post should show up in the comment section of the post you’re commenting on. Since not all blogs support trackbacks you can’t necessarily count on that, but you still retain the value of your opinion.

Everything you do online amounts to some kind of a trade off. In this case you draw a line. Short thoughts are deposited as comments. More complex thoughts get served up to your readers with a tip of the hat to the original author.

This is a situation where a common sense approach removes the need for complex technology solutions. And I believe that everyone gets what they need in this scenario. The original author either gets a comment or a link. And the would be commenter gets to choose an entry point to the discussion that meets their needs.

This approach won’t fly for some people. I know there are some people out there who would rather be represented in the comments on a hot post because they want the benefit of the visibility in a post they know will get traffic. In that case you should consider your comment a gift a be glad that you had the opportunity to have your say.

© Robert J. Safuto - visit the Awakened Voice Blog for more great content.

We are living in a world of dilution. Lots of people are creating lots of content. There are many companies that want to get a hold of that content so they can use it for their own purposes. And those companies won’t pay the original publishers a dime. That’s not a good thing.

One of my favorite books teaches some great lessons that surely apply to publishing content online. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People instructs us to begin with the end in mind. If we follow Stephen Covey’s logic then it is a very good idea to think about how and where we are publishing our content.

Your content is your currency. The content you publish will create your value in the long run. If you give up too much control of your content, spread out your primary publishing locations, then a dilution of your value is taking place. Think about this when you start publishing on the web.

This idea won’t really matter to people who are casual users of the web. And by casual I mean people who aren’t publishing content on a regular basis or aren’t publishing for business purposes. If you have a presence on a social network or two in order to connect with your friends or you upload occasional photos and videos to sites like YouTube or Flickr you are probably receiving good value in exchange for your efforts. If you publish on a regular basis this idea should mean something to you.

Sites like MySpace and Facebook have managed to command huge valuations due to the efforts of their users. The same goes for iTunes, YouTube and Flickr among others. The valuations for these properties are based on the presence and the published content of the site’s users. It can be argued that the sites I’ve mentioned here have provided value to each user in excess of the effort put forth by the user to add their content to the site. These sites have achieved critical mass and thus provide access to very large audiences. These top tier publishing sites also provide tools that simplify online publishing which have helped to create access to the masses. For the serious publisher there is definitely value in having access to a mass audience.

There are many other services that want access to your content. They want you to publish there. They want you to bring your audience to them. Some of these services include Twitter, Disqus and Seesmic about whom there has been much talk in recent months. If you invest your time in these services what will you get out of it? What will they get out of the deal as a result of your efforts there? Are the tools they offer unique? Do they provide access to a mass (and I mean in the millions) audience? These are important issues to consider.

Lately I’ve begun to recognize the importance of not only owning my content and discussions but also the ability to control my content and discussions. The important part of the control factor is the ability to shape my brand around the content I publish as well as having access to monetization options of my choosing. So nowadays when I consider how much (or even if) I should use a service I think about those things. Many of the newer services that the members of the herd are enamored with don’t meet my requirements. So I’m becoming less active on those sites and more active on my own domains.

Begin with the end in mind. Think about how and where you publish your content affects your value and your brand. Weigh the long-term costs and benefits of using third-party services. And as you weigh these issues ask yourself a question. Do you want to be in the business of building value for someone else or for yourself?

© Robert J. Safuto - visit the Awakened Voice Blog for more great content.

Take this word of friendly advice from someone who hasn’t invested money in a third-party commenting service. Maintain control of the comments on your site. Third-party commenting services like Disqus, coComment and Intense Debate always state that you retain ownership of your comments. That’s great but you really don’t retain control.

When you utilize a comment service the comments serve to build the Google juice of the sites whose services you are using. Those sites then encourage your commenters to join their services in order to get the most out of commenting. That’s annoying. You get functionality that provides a varying amount of added value depending on the blog platform you are using to publish.

The biggest value add that comment services purport to provide is threaded comments. That’s no big deal. The top three blogging platforms, WordPress, Movable Type and Drupal, all support threaded commenting either natively or via add-on modules. So you can have threaded comments without passing your comments to a third-party service.

The other big argument for using a comment service involves people’s ability to find your discussions. They argue that their sites will get a lot of traffic, people will find discussions about your blog posts and those people will then find your blog. This may be true to a certain extent. I also think it’s true that you will always get more traffic from Google searches (both native and blog specific ones) if you keep all the content on your blog as part of your site.

Certain very high traffic sites may benefit from the ability to have the server load and spam protection features transferred to the service rather than their own blog server. If that’s the case then why not just use WordPress.com, which provides both bandwidth and spam protection while allowing you to utilize your own domain?

These days I think that web publishers are way to flippant about scattering their content all over the web. Discussion about the things you are publishing is a very important part of the publishing and community building process. Off loading your blog’s comment system increases fragmentation and dilutes that value of the domains that you’ve been working so hard to build.

Disqus - After 5 Days on Disqus, I’m Turning Back to Wordpress Comments | RyanSpoon.com

© Robert J. Safuto - visit the Awakened Voice Blog for more great content.

I’m really amazed at how many people are investing time and money on building tools on top of Twitter. The following links are just a few of the services that are being offered to help people get more out of Twitter’s short text messaging services.

• TwitterSnooze - Hit the snooze button on your verbose friends.
• Tweetburner - Tweetburner lets you track what happens with the links you share on Twitter.
• Twitterfone - Send messages to Twitter using voice.
• TweetWheel - Find out which of your Twitter friends know each other.
• Tweet Scan - Real-time Twitter search.
• Twhirl - Twhirl is a desktop client for twitter, based on the Adobe AIR platform.
• Hahlo - Twitter client for iPhone.
• TwitterFox - TwitterFox is a Firefox extension that notifies you of your friends’ statuses of Twitter.
• Twitterholic - Top 100 Twitterholics based on followers.

I’m pretty sure I’m missing a few important links in this list. But as you can see there are quite a few different applications whose livelihood depends on the success of Twitter. I’m also pretty sure that a few of the people who own these applications expect that they will be able to build a business on top of their Twitter application. Those people are playing a dangerous game.

I think it is very likely that the future will yield a Twitter crash. This crash could be caused by any number of factors. The Twitter infrastructure may become increasingly unreliable due to the volume of third party requests on the system. The crash could end up being a result of an altered Twitter API due to a change in architecture. Twitter might end up altering their terms of service, possibly in an attempt to make some money, thereby making some of these services unauthorized users. Twitter might be purchased by an entity that makes wholesale changes to all of the above. Or Twitter might end up failing and close down.

Many web2.0/social media people are highly enamored of Twitter. Those people will bristle at any suggestion that a Twitter crash may be coming. “Can’t happen.” they’re likely to say. Bigger and more popular services have changed in the ways I’ve mentioned above. Being a passionate supporter of a service does not shield the individual or the service from the winds of change.

I have this advice for the developers of the above services. Have your application live each day as if it was the last. Make sure you’re getting what you want out of Twitter today. You may be selling advertising via your service. You may be doing it as part of a viral marketing strategy. You may be doing it for love. Those that fall in the latter category stand to lose the least.

Heavy Twitter users should beware as well. You’ve got a lot of data floating around the web. And now that you’re into all these associated applications that data has gotten more spread out. Are you diluting your personal brand? Are you giving too many services too much information? What’s the risk of data loss or identity hijacking? These are rational things to think about.

I had a lot of fun with Twitter but I have recently become a Twitter quitter. There are no regrets on my part. But as I continue to watch the developments around Twitter I’ve come to believe that way too many people are putting way too much effort into something that they have absolutely no control over.

© Robert J. Safuto - visit the Awakened Voice Blog for more great content.

Every so often you stumble across something and think, “How is it that I didn’t know about this sooner?” ScribeFire is one of those things.

ScribeFire is a blog publishing tool that integrates with the Firefox web browser as an add on. Once you install ScribeFire you can create and edit blog posts from within the Firefox browser.

I started using the tool yesterday and I already feel like this is going to help me create higher quality blog posts. One reason the quality can improve is the fact that your blog post is created in a pane that allows you to continue to view the current web page. So while you’re writing you can review the page for information, links and images that might make your post better.

The integration with WordPress is very good. Once you set up a connection (which is very easy) your categories, posts and pages are imported to the interface. You can also add categories and edit previous entries or pages. ScribeFire supports tags for WordPress as well so you get just about all of the features you need to write a complete post.

If you’re a Firefox user who wants a more convenient way to create blog posts on the fly then you should definitely give ScribeFire a try.

© Robert J. Safuto - visit the Awakened Voice Blog for more great content.

A number of thoughts on why Podshow, who recently changed their name to Mevio, is failing. They have a number of problems that have nothing to do with audio-based media, the name “Podcasting”, or user generated content.

Post on Utterz.

© Robert J. Safuto - visit the Awakened Voice Blog for more great content.

The Associated Press has launched a new mobile news website optimized for the iPhone. I’ve been trying it out this morning and I’m finding the experience to be a good one.

The site integrates photo galleries and videos optimized for viewing in the iPhone. Users can set local news options and send stories via email or text message.

I think one way that traditional news organizations can stay relevant and regain market share is to support hot new portable devices like the iPhone. This launch by AP shows that they’ve put a lot of time and effort into making their iPhone mobile news site a top notch destination.

Apple - Web apps - AP Mobile News Network

Technorati Tags: news, mobile, iphone

© Robert J. Safuto - visit the Awakened Voice Blog for more great content.

I received an email a couple of days ago informing me that the Awakened Voice Learning Center will soon be featured on the Miro Guide. The Miro Guide is a web-based video directory that is also built in to the Miro desktop based video player.

It’s always nice to be recognized. So thanks to the people at Miro. I don’t see the Learning Center featured yet but it will probably show up in the next couple of days. When it is featured you should be able to find it at https://miroguide.com/categories/Technology. You can find the dedicated Miro channel for the learning center here.

Being featured aside, I do think that video podcast producers should have a listing on Miro for a number of reasons. Miro gives producers good control over their channels. You can choose your promotional photo and change it when you want to. You can also add and edit a description and tags for your show. The Miro guide also shows you subscriber information. You don’t get that kind of control and information when you get listed in the iTunes podcast directory. Click the images below to see an example of the interface.

The Miro software is very good as well. I produced a video tour of the player last summer and blogged about the launch of Miro too. I’ve been using it for a while to manage video podcast subscriptions. Two features that I really like are the ability to search a number of popular video sites (including YouTube) from within the player and ability to download YouTube videos. Another good feature of Miro is the ability to play FLV files on your desktop.

© Robert J. Safuto - visit the Awakened Voice Blog for more great content.

I’ve decided to join the slowing growing ranks of people who are extricating themselves from the ranks of the Twitterati. I’ve come to feel that while Twitter is a lot of fun at times, it’s also not adding any real value to my life.

Participation in Twitter has revealed a couple of telling things to me. The information people are sharing there is not particularly deep or important. You pick up these little tidbits of info from people but none of it is especially critical to my life. The updates range from mildly amusing to ridiculously narcissistic. I’ve also found that using twitter contributes to the dilution of a person’s content and brand. If I want to publish and share things I can do that via my blog. If I want to chat with people I can do that by using Meebo, Google Talk or any number of instant messaging applications. I don’t need those chats to be saved and distributed via RSS as Twitter does. That stuff adds to the noise and it’s not very important.

If something is important to me in the future I will post it to my blog or share via a social bookmarking service. These methods worked fine prior to the existence of Twitter and I now have new appreciation for them. If someone wants to follow me then they always have the option of subscribing to the RSS feed on this blog or my lifestream. If I want to follow someone I’ll look for the RSS feed from their main publishing source.

I’m also evaluating the use of other services that I am currently involved with, especially FriendFeed. FriendFeed is a bit more useful than Twitter. But then again most of the posts I’m seeing from my contacts on FriendFeed are just being passed along from Twitter. I’ve got some other reservations about FriendFeed but I will save them for a later post.

Unlike some others who have left the fold I’m going to continue to leave my Twitter account in place for a while. Eventually I will delete it altogether. Somehow I think it will all be just fine.

© Robert J. Safuto - visit the Awakened Voice Blog for more great content.