NashMash Adds Opt-Out Options

Today, the developers of NashMash over at 365 Creative have added a variety of opt-out options for people whose accounts end up on their list of Nashville area Twitter users. Among the options are: not being followed when the bulk follow is processed, not being included in the new randomizer that displays a Nashville Twitter profile at random, not being available to be the featured user of the day, and, lastly, not being included on the public list.

While this is a drastic improvement over the prior situation, I would much prefer to see this as an opt-in list rather than opt-out. This is especially true for accounts that are marked private and I hope that the developers will consider making at least this change. I do like the granularity in the opt-out choices, as they provide reasonable options for finding a comfortable level of participation.

Clearly, the developers are looking to retain as many people as possible on the list, but given the amount of ill will generated yesterday, I'm surprised that they haven't issued a more public statement. A simple post to the website explaining their intentions and apologizing for the inadvertent public launch of the service might go a long way to ensuring that people don't opt-out in droves. It might even gain them some support. Nonetheless, I do appreciate them providing information about the service to me and their willingness to post comments here.

What say you?

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NashMash Releases Frankentwitter on Unsuspecting Nashville Twitterverse

Late yesterday, local Nashville developer 365 Creative released a new Twitter mash-up that quickly generated strong reactions among Nashville users of the Twitter service. Dubbed NashMash, the service allows a Twitter user to follow all the users located in Nashville in one step. That's 1652 new contacts at last count. And countless updates added to the user's Twitter stream.

A few people who enjoy having lots of followers, or who like to follow a lot of people, have reacted positively. A large number of others have reacted with great disdain at the volume of new followers and the notices that come with them. I haven't talked with anyone who submitted their credentials to the service, but I've heard about some negative reactions to the resulting deluge of updates and text messages and frustration at not being better forewarned about what was going to happen to them. [UPDATE: Twitter user andi37206 used NashMash today and certainly had a strong reaction to the results.]

I've been told by one of the developers behind the service that they have stopped processing new requests for now. Once Twitter catches up with the follow requests in queue, we should see an end to the inundation of new followers and notices. I'm also told that the auto-follow feature was developed as a proof-of-concept for a separate commercial application that they envision for Twitter. (I should also note that this person was my source for suggesting the service be called Frankentwitter. Kudos to them for understanding that they released a monster and for having some self-deprecating humor about it.)

Before the service is restored, if it is restored, I would encourage the developers to add at least the following improvements:

1. Do NOT include protected accounts in the list of accounts that will be followed. (For the most part, these people are not interested in unknown followers, so why provoke them.)


2. Provide an easy mechanism for people to opt-out of being on the list of accounts to be followed. (Even better, make the list opt-in, as Dave Delaney has done with his Official Nashville Twitter List.)


3. Explain more clearly that by using the service you will be adding a very large number of accounts to your Twitter feed. (The current instructions aren't very clear on this point.)


4. Provide a mechanism to undo all the follow requests. (I don't know how this would even be possible, especially without un-following all of the people you were following before you bulk-added the others, but good luck to the person who wants to manually un-follow 1600 people.)


5. Do NOT initiate the follows with notifications turned on. (Oh, man, I can't imagine how many text messages are generated by 1652 Twitter users.)

Please add your suggestions and feedback in the comments.

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Hands on with Brightkite: real-world social networking

This Ars Technica article does a pretty good job of explaining BrightKite and how to use it. Essentially, BrightKite lets you answer the question, "Where are you?" and shares that location with others. It will also show you who else is at, or has been at, that same location or nearby. It's very similar to Google's Dodgeball and Yahoo's Fire Eagle, both of which are also in limited release.

I've been using the service for a few days now and am impressed with the overall design and ease-of-use. For me, the primary limiting factor right now is the rather small number of my existing friends who use the service. However, I am experimenting with BrightKite's integration with Twitter, which has the potential to expose my BK check-ins to a wider circle.

Unfortunately, there aren't separate privacy controls for the feed to Twitter—Twitter sees the same as what you have set to public—so I'm working out just how exact I want my check-in locations to be. For example, "home" is currently just the part of town where I live, but retail locations are address-specific. After all, there's not much point in checking in at the coffee shop if no one can see more than just the city and state.

If BrightKite sounds appealing to you, Ars has a limited number of invites to the private beta. Jump in. All the cool kids are doing it!

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Twitter in Plain English

Seems like just about everyone's using Twitter but you. What's all the fuss? Find out by watching this excellent 2.5 minute tutorial from the fine folks at Common Craft.

Then get off your sorry ass and start tweeting.

[via sleepydad]

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Be a Qwitter: Quit Smoking with Twitter

Well, this is about awesome. Apply a social tool to help reduce a social problem. Clever implementation, too.

You can easily keep track of how many cigarettes you smoke each day.
You can keep a journal of your thoughts & feelings as you strive to smoke less.
You can view your progress over time.
You can share this information with others who can support you.

[via Dave Delaney]

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The Future of Social Networks

In a guest column on GigaOm, Brian McConnell writes about the past and future of social networks. I appreciated the review of previous incarnations of online social networking, but I'm finding his postulations about the future to be a bit long-winded for a rather simple idea: an open standard will be developed/adopted for social profiles (much like RSS for articles, iCal for calendars), online publishing platforms (e.g., Blogger, Yahoo!) will adopt it as a feature, and then commercial social network providers (e.g., Facebook, MySpace) will be in big trouble. There, I said it in one sentence.

However, what I find truly interesting about this subject are the implications of this likely development. And not just in terms of who wins and who loses. More like, who will be first to exploit the new standard in some innovative way (Plaxo?, Tumblr?, start-up?), what new compelling thing will commercial social networks become in order to survive, and (once all your social data is accessible) how will you be able to use this meta-data about yourself? Enter Jackson Miller's conceptualization of 3D social networking.

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Get Connected at PodCamp Nashville

Following on the success of last summer's BarCamp new media "unconference," tech-savvy musicians, marketers, bloggers and developers will gather next month in Nashville to discuss new media and podcasting. PodCamp Nashville, which is free to the public, will be held at the historic Cannery Ballroom on Saturday, February 9, and is designed for anyone interested in online media to share ideas, hear from industry experts, and participate in discussions and demos.

Just like BarCamp Nashville, PodCamp promises to bring together creative, tech and business types from across Nashville to exchange expertise and collaborate on developing new ideas and projects. It's a fantastic opportunity to meet people and get involved in local new media development. Organizer Dave Delaney recommends that interested participants register in advance to be assured admission.

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TinyURL Drops the Ball, Twitter All Aflutter

TinyURL appeared to have the hard crash today, causing significant disruption for loads of Twitter users, and untold others, who have come to rely on the service. Twitter has been experiencing issues with TinyURL lately. Today's outage prompted this message from Twitter Status:

The automatic shortening of URLs via tinyurl is removed for the time being due to problems with that service. Alternatives being looked at.

For all those Twitter/TinyURL addicts out there, here are some alternatives to TinyURL to get you by (in no particular order and with no guarantees of reliability):

http://www.dwarfurl.com/ - free click tracking
http://urltea.com/ - add optional comment/tag to the link
http://traceurl.com/ - free click tracking
http://shorl.com/ - free click tracking

UPDATE: A related story and some additional alternatives:

TinyURL Outage Illustrates the Service's Risks

http://elfurl.com/- free click tracking
http://snurl.com/ - free click tracking

Facebook Launches Social Ads

Facebook leaps forward with Social Ads, essentially allowing feed-embedded ads to target specific user behavior -- you add a band to your favorites, Facebook notes that in your feed and inserts an ad for that band. Meanwhile, MySpace is still playing catch-up, allowing ads only for big spenders and nothing by self-service.

In this announcement, Facebook also plays a little catch-up themselves, allowing advertisers to set up their own Facebook Pages (as opposed to Facebook Profiles for individuals). Facebook Pages are "distinct, customized profiles designed for businesses, bands, celebrities and more to represent themselves on Facebook." Hmm, any bands looking to migrate from MySpace?

Oh, and just for good measure, Facebook now allows you to integrate activity at third-party sites, like Blockbuster, into your feed. Nice.

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Sync up with the all-new Plaxo

Version 3 of Plaxo can sync your contacts and calendars across multiple platforms -- Mac and Windows apps (Outlook, iCal, Thunderbird, etc.) and web (Google, Yahoo!, AOL, etc.), oh, plus your mobile phone. Dang.

On top of that, it will sync changes when you or one of your contacts updates contact info. And notify you of upcoming events, like birthdays. Plus, it has a nice web interface so you can access it from other computers.

And if that's not enough, the Pulse add-on consolidates your feeds from various social networks (MySpace, Twitter, Flickr, Digg, etc.). Watch this short video for a quick demo.

Yeah, it's sick. I think I'll have to try it out.

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MySpace gets social with Google

Right on the heels of Google's OpenSocial announcement comes word that MySpace has signed on to support the new API. This nearly guarantees that OpenSocial will become a de facto standard for developing social networking plug-in applications and it means pretty much all the major (and minor) players in social networking have aligned against Facebook. Unless Facebook decides to sign on.

As indicated in this AP article (ironically hosted at Yahoo), that still leaves Yahoo!, eBay and Amazon (and my personal fav, Multiply) on the sidelines. Unless Yahoo! decides to dance with Facebook and Microsoft, they'll have a tough time launching their own API (read: attracting developers) for Yahoo! 360°. That's right, Yahoo! has a social network you've probably never heard of.

What about eBay and Amazon? I don't think anyone expects them to suddenly launch their own general purpose social networking platforms, but either of them could write apps for other social networks or find other ways of integrating their substantial memberships into other social networks. And if you don't think eBay and Amazon are themselves specialized versions of a social network, then you haven't been shopping online in a while. Imagine what happens when all sites that feature some kind of social networking integrate with each other to some degree. Talk about your deep profiles....

Best coverage I've seen (so far):
AP: MySpace gets social with Google
ZDNet: Google’s OpenSocial: What it means
TechCrunch: Details Revealed: Google OpenSocial To Launch Thursday
O'Reilly: Google Announces the OpenSocial API
GigaOM: OpenSocial, Google’s Open Answer to Facebook
Marc Andreessen: Open Social: a new universe of social applications all over the web
Google Blog: OpenSocial makes the web better
NY Times: Google and Friends to Gang Up on Facebook

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Fun hobby of the day: Twitter-tracking dirty words

Because ingenious ideas like this can't go unshared, here's what you do:

Step 1: Sign up for Twitter and link it to one of your instant messaging accounts.
Step 2: Read this.
Step 3: Set Twitter to track a dozen of the dirtiest, nastiest words you can think of.
Step 4: Soak in the glorious river of humanity.

Absolutely hilarious. And a great peek into human social discourse. This should win some kind of "Best Use of Twitter" award. (originally (?) from Marc Andreesen via Kurzy)

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Facebook Considered Harmless

Zeldman offers a nice consideration of the appeal and usefulness of Facebook by way of explaining why he joined and is now apparently addicted like the rest of us, but let's just skip to the end, shall we?

The real reason, of course, for all this stuff, is that it provides a way to blow off work you should be doing, while creating the illusion that you are achieving something. At least in most offices, you can’t masturbate at your desk. But you can Tweet.

(via Daring Fireball)

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The Facebook Fallacy

This is for the Courtster and CeeElCee:

Avoiding the Facebook because you think it's pointless? A silly waste of time? Too much like MySpace? Just for college kids?

Jenneth over at Gear Diary used to think so, too....

The way I see it, having a Facebook page will soon be just as standard as having a mobile phone or email address. Resistance is futile.

Get with it already.

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Fogeys Flock to Facebook

Lately, an influx of older users—professionals their 30s and 40s, many in high-tech—is changing the face of Facebook. Among Silicon Valley executives, journalists, and publicists, Facebook has become the place to see and be seen. And it's not just tech.

Hmmm, guilty as charged. Facebook is the new hotness, even for grown-ups, and is perhaps the first social networking site to bridge personal and professional legitimacy en masse. If you're not there, you're not connected.

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Buy.com to launch new shopping service for social networks

On Tuesday, Buy.com is officially launching its Garage Sale service on the social networking Web site Facebook. It's intended to let users post and sell items on their profile pages.

It's not free, but they do handle credit card payments so at least you know you'll get paid. This is great example of how Facebook's open API will help them pull ahead of other social networks by allowing quicker innovation.

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Web site archives the dead of MySpace

Somewhere deep in cyberspace, where reality blurs into fiction and the living greet the dead, there are ghosts. They live in a virtual graveyard without tombstones or flowers. They drift among the shadows of the people they used to be, and the pieces they left behind.

Somewhere deep in cyberspace, something very creepy is going on....

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3D Mailbox - Hang out with your mail pool-side

Can you think of anything less useful than this? If you can't, then maybe you need to Get A First Life. (via You So Gangsta)

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OMG -- My Boss Wants to Be 'Friends' with Me on Facebook

On the one hand, accepting a person's request to be friends online grants them access to the kind of intimacy never meant for office consumption, such as recent photos of keggers and jibes from friends.... But declining a "friend" request from a colleague or a boss is a slight.

Sounds like a good time to discover how the privacy settings work. MySpace provides hardly any control over who sees what, which is why smart people avoid posting anything even remotely compromising there. Facebook offers a great deal of granularity in their privacy controls, but it's hard to separate colleagues from personal friends. Multiply (yeah, I know, you've never heard of them), makes it super easy to limit access to specific items based on a family, friend, colleague or individual basis -- but good luck getting all of your friends to sign up and use it.

And don't even get me started on Twitter, which provides absolutely no privacy controls, other than total blocking of all non-friends or of specific users. It's all-in or nothing over there.

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