The blogsphere has more killers than American Maximux Secutiry prison.

Twitter would kill Facebook. Facebook would kill Google. Friendfeed would kill Twitter. And now, the latest addition to the new-product-that-only-geeks-use-and-bloggers-shout-that-it-would-kill-the-frigging-internet - Google Buzz. Last week the blogsphere was plastered with those statements, as if Facebook's millions of users, Twitter's proven power to create addiction with hyper connected individuals, and the need for many just to write emails, without sharing their photos all over the place, doesn't exist.

It seems that there is a routine in our world:

1. A new hyper-connected-social-network-that-sends- your-pictures-and-status-all-over-the-place-but-is-not-exactly-Twitter-or-Facebook is launched

2. The echo chamber rejoices, and writing zillion posts, all quoting the same Techcrunch/GigaOm/Financial Times/Fox News article - competing with hysterical headlines.

2. Tons of users logging in. Scoble's among them.

3. The homepage is filled with Scoble's remarks about how great the tool is, and changing the way we think about communication.

4. All the cool kids logging in and saying - hey it is like Twitter. Err Facebook. Err something. But with pictures. Myself included.

5. Slowly people see that it is another network they need to maintain, another profile, and another level of noise.

6. Porn starts, Viagra merchants, and so called "power networkers" that are spending most of their days in friending total strangers, are taking control of the platform and start spamming everyone. And Kevin Smith.

7. Privacy/usability/stability are not what they seem, and users are starting to realize that it might not be the best thing since sliced bread

8. Scoble leaves the platform, saying it is useless.

9. A new hyper-connected-social-network-that-sends- your-pictures-and-status-all-over-the-place-but-is-not-exactly-Twitter-or-Facebook is launched

Yes, Buzz is awesome, but I left it after couple of days. I am still on Twitter and Facebook, cause they provide me enough value - and my friends are there.

Let's stop diminishing user base, and actual usability of platforms, and wait a second before we hail a new online platform as the new king. Life is way more complicated than a headline in a  blog post.

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• How I Became the Robert Scoble of Buzz (readwriteweb.com)
• Which Social Network Is Right For You? (lifehacker.com)
• Google Buzz from a medical blogger's perspective (casesblog.blogspot.com)

I have a confession. I'm an information junkie. I am subscribed to 500 RSS feeds, two newspapers (yes, the actual physical paper thing), dozens of podcasts, and occasionally watch TV via Livestation. If you are like me, you need to:

1. Quickly going through this massive amount of information

2. Identify new valuable resources

And, as a true believer in the phrase sharing is caring, I always look for easy ways to share my favorite posts.

Techmeme and Feedly are godsend for me.

Techmeme is the best content discovery site today. The site, which uses both algorithms and human screening, displays the most important stories in the web. It also gathers the discussion around key items, helping the reader to get a full view of the conversation around it.

But it's the new kid in town, Feedly, that made me drop my jaw. In the past I was using Netvibes as my online RSS aggregator. When I moved to Google Reader, I enjoyed the sharing function, but not the interface.

Feedly is the best of both world - with tons of additional features.

Feedly is a Firefox extension that extracts Google Reader's OPML and organize it in a magazine style interface

Feedly supports tabs, where one can divide his or hers sources to contextual or thematic groups, and adds a "front page" called Digest, which includes the top news. Most of my feeds deliver full enclosures, so I can read all my feeds without leaving Feedly.

But what makes it such an amazing tool is its social aspects: users can twit, share, email, bookmark it with delicious and see FriendFeed discussions, directly from Feedly, without leaving the post. This one-click sharing feature is just begging you to use it - for your, and your followers benefit. This functionality is available also when browsing other sites, though it is not consistent - in some cases, a small toolbar appear in the lower right side of the browser, allowing you to directly twit the article you are reading.

Users can also annotate posts, and receive recommendations for additional resources, based on their RSS feeds.

Feedly and Techmeme are must haves for any information junkie.

Image by via CrunchBase

Israel Hyman, from IzzyVideo fame, and myself, found ourselves answering and asking a lot of Final Cut Pro questions on Twitter recently. I am also asking a lot of questions and feedback from followers, and found Twitter a very good tool for interaction around common interest. However there is a hidden potential in Twitter that is not being utilized - the need for Twitter Groups.

Online Forums

Online forums are a huge source of information for professional information. In the Final Cut Pro area, there are several great forums such as Creative Cow and Apple's official forums. However they all suffer from the same issues:

1. Fragmentation - there are several forums on the same topic, and one needs to post his/her question in multiple forums.

2. Some forums are not active on a daily basis.

The Twitter Advantage

Twitter has several advantages on forums for issues that require quick resolution:

1. It is almost immediate (well when Twitter is not down)...

2. Answers are short and to the point

3. One can follow experts and develop relationship with them over time.

A Possible Business Model

Such groups could provide new channels for businesses and experts. While it is not worthwhile for anyone to have a phone based helpdesk for creative applications, Twitter can be a great tool to develop strong customer relationships, by answering questions and helping the community in a less time consuming manner. It could also be an extension of forums and other online or offline activities. Think event based Twitter Groups. Think product based groups. Think political groups. Cool, isn't it?

What We Have Now is Not Enough

Today, the only option that is open to every user is to use # tag in tweets. By doing so, the adjunct word becomes a search phrase in Twitter search. Though it could create an ad-hock interaction, it doesn't create an ongoing interaction between group members, therefore doesn't help create a community. Also, the UI is not that simple to use. At SXSW, Twitter opened a channel for all related Tweets. This is what needed feature wise, but it is not possible, to my knowledge, to create such channels without support from Twitter HQ.

Friendfeed rooms are a great solution - but Friendfeed is not as used as Twitter, and we don't want group members to use another application.

What Is needed?

A possible solution could be the following:

1. A single entity that we can tweet for questions

2. The tweets sent to that entity are distributed to all the followers.

3. Answers to the tweets can be sent either by moderator or by group members

4. Every group member can tweet the entity, or the person who asked the question directly, but the answer should be sent to all group members.

5. All tweets should be archived for future reference

What's Next

Well, if you know about a possible solution - please leave a comment, email me or contact me via Twitter. And if Evan Williams, Jack Dorsey or any of their employees are reading this (could you try harder to get into their Google Alerts than that?), we would love to learn more about your plans in this area...

It started with the definition of pathetic:

People Waiting in line a week before iPhone Release

And continued in a PR and operational disaster.

Last weekend Apple released two important updates:  iPhone 3G hit the stores, and iPhone 2.0 version software update was released. In a futile effort to limit iPhone grey market, iPhone 3G activation process was changed to include in store activation by AT&T or Apple representatives. As everyone (besides Apple apparently) feared, that process didn't work that well. Some early shoppers had to wait for couple of hours before in-store activation succeeded, some were sent home to continue activation through iTunes, just to find the activation server down. Twitter and FriendFeed were full of horror stories about this process.

However, this is not the whole, or even the important story. The important story is the unfulfilled promise of MobileMe, the new .mac service from Apple. The service, dubbed by Apple as "Exchange for the rest of us", supposed to automatically and instantly synchonize contacts and calendar entries between laptops, iPhones, iPod Touch and the web. Guess what? This insanely expensive service just doesn't fulfill it promise. While web and mobile device sync works like a charm, desktop applications are synched between once to four times an hour. That means that if you add a meeting to your laptop calendar, and then close it, it won't be synched with either web or iPhone/iPod. This point made some of MacRomurs readers pretty angry. These discrepancies are major enough to challenge even the most devoted Macheads.

So what did we learn today? First we learned that Apple, with all its glory, screws up once in a while. The shining armor just got a dent. Not clear if it will become a hole, but it is certainly a dent. Second, it is a reminder that at the end of the day, Apple makes software and hardware, not divine entities. Yes, they are much better than Microsoft's product, in design, look and feel and overall user experience, but they are still, you know, computer stuff, that don't always work.

As for me - I just hope that this is a mishap from Apple direction, and not a slippery slop towards Microsoft's product's level...

Image via Wikipedia

- Apple got a new VP of Product Design - Doug Field from Segway. Tim O'Reilly has an interesting observation about this move.

- Friendfeed is under fire:

• Om calls it FakeFeed
• CenterNetworks Shows that the guys who are followed most are not necessarily the ones who contribute to the conversation.
• Scoble believes that conversation really matters there.
• My view - Friendfeed is a hyped application. It has novelty by showing which topics are the most discussed among my friends, but it is nothing more than that. Maybe after the hype, now comes the phase of sad realization...

- HeySpread provides cool service for multisite video distribution and encoding. Business model is similar to wordpress.com - users buy credits for encoding, watermarking etc. Read more at their blog

Have a great day!

Stay tuned! subscribe to my RSS feed or email list

Many people don't have time to use social networks. They are too busy with emails, phone calls and face to face meetings, in order to get engaged - whether it's work or fun. This is a major issue for most people who are trying to use social media tools as part of their business tool box.

I've went through several phases in my social media activities, starting with first limited steps in social networks such as LinkedIn, moving to the interactive Facebook, and using the hyper-interactive Twitter. Over time I found that I am investing a lot in communicating, on the expense of being the most effective and efficient in my communication and work. One of the causes of this phenomena is the overload social networks and tools are putting on all of us, with multiple updates and feeds.

Also, the amount of my connections affects my communication pattern as I wrote in the past. Therefore, in the recent months I've changed my communication pattern to better fit my needs, and support my other activities.

However, social networks and social media in general provide great business benefits if handled correctly.

In a business, I don't believe that conversation is the most important thing. Efficiency and effectiveness are the goals of every business, in order to successfully compete in the market.

How can you balance between the social media noise, and the hidden value in its tools?

Here are my tips on how to do that. Would love to hear on how you are doing it:

If you are the ADD type, already involved in more networks then you can handle:

1. Separate leisure and work - you know that time in day when you are not focused? Sometimes you'll go to Facebook and check what's going on there, get into a conversation, read some notes, and just go around the network. It is ok - if you decided that you are willing to invest your free time in having fun in Facebook. Would you do something else that is fun right now, not online, if you had the chance? If the answer is yes, then everything is ok. If the answer is no - read a blog or a newspaper to relax your brain. Social networks, especially Facebook and Twitter, can suck you in and make you loose sense of time. And you don't want that in on working hours.
2. Aggregate feeds from various social networks using Friendfeed or Spokeo - these tools aggregate activities of your connections from different networks in one page. It is very useful, and helps you not only keep in touch with your friends and business contacts, but also find new ones.
3. Kick out spammers from your network - yes, sounds logical, but it is not necessarily done in a consistent manner. When someone sends me 6 useless Facebook apps - it is time to say goodbye. After that, there is less communication overload with stupid interactions.
4. Understand when you want to communicate and when you want to do something else - A good friend of mine told me once, when I was all over Facebook, that there is a limit to the amount of interaction one wants to be involved in. At the time I thought he was dead wrong, but now I see that it is true. I'd like to interact only part of my day, and in many cases I need the ability to concentrate and reach a goal. Twitter, IM, and Facebook should be closed at these times unless they are used for the same task.

If you are not hooked yet, but understand there is a value in social networks for your work, and you want to be effective and efficient in using them:

1. Maintain your social network periodically - once a month, upload your contacts to Linkedin or Facebook and invite relevant people to your circle of contacts. discipline is the secret. You can reduce the effort required by uploading all your contacts to gmail or yahoo mail, and let the networks retrieve the information from there. It takes less time than uploading your address book to each platform separately.
2. Embed social networks activity in your work day:
   • Update your online address back immediately after you return from a conference. Connect to the guys you met as soon as you can. Size and quality of your networks correlates with the value you will drive from it. Foster it.
   • Add your social networks to your bookmarks toolbar so they will be easily accessible. The more you use them, the more they value you get from it.
   • Use social networks as source of information - whenever you have a question, don't just ask google. Ask your network as well. You will be amazed how much high quality information lies in Linkedin and Facebook.
   • Spend 10-20 minutes of your work day for social networks updates. Go through Linkedin, Facebook, and Twitter every morning to see what's new and who is talking about what. I am doing it with my morning coffee. Friendfeed and Spokeo can also come handy, but go through the sites themselves once in a while.
3. Increase your networks' value - connect to key people in the industry, thought leaders, experts, key decision makers and so on. The value of network is driven from the aggregated quality of its members, and not only by its size. Invest 30 minutes a week in looking for key people in your network and connect with them. It is worth it.

All those tips are completely irrelevant if you just want to chat with friends. But if you are business oriented user, I hope it would help you to get more value from time spent these social networks.

Thinking About Social Networks Taken by Jeff Pulver