"Patriot" or "wing nut?" Thanks to Twitter Lists, Internet users have a whole new way of defining how they see others, from Sarah Palin to even you. Al Grillo / AP

By Andy Carvin

In the last few weeks, a new feature available on Twitter has taken its users by storm. It's known as Twitter Lists, and it lets you group Twitter users by any category you wish to create for them. Lists are a handy way to sort the people you follow on Twitter, but perhaps they're more than that. Maybe they can also tell you a bit about how people actually perceive who you are.

The idea behind lists is simple: you choose a word or phrase that relates to various people you know on Twitter, such as "friends," "journalists," "Floridians," etc, and assign those people to it. For example, I've created a list called tote-baggers, for people I know who work in public radio and public TV. (Get it? Tote bags? Never mind.) Anyone on Twitter can choose to subscribe to it, which means they can easily follow the tweets from all the people I've added to the list.

So what can you learn about yourself from looking at the lists you're on? For one thing, being added to a list suggests that you're potentially interesting enough to share your tweets with other Twitter users -- or at least have your tweets categorized in a way that's helpful to someone. But for me, the most intriguing thing about lists is the variety of names of the lists themselves, because they can give you a sense of how other people define you.

Take me for example. As I'm writing this, I'm on just over 300 lists. More than half of the lists that include me define me as being affiliated with the news media, including 108 lists with the word "media" in it, 38 with either "journalism" or "journalists" and an additional 33 lists with the word "news" in it. Just over 10% of the lists I'm on define me as being involved in social media, with words such as "social," "social media," "social web," etc. And then there are all those random ways of categorizing me, such as by geography ("DC"), my profession as they perceive it ("pubmedia," "journos-politicos-wonks," "academics") or specific perceptions about me ("nerdery," "famous-in-certain-circles," "idtakeabullet4", "loud").

Continue reading "What Twitter Lists Say About President Obama, Sarah Palin And You" >

By Laura Sydell

Do you have clout on Twitter? Check out Klout and find out. Klout is a company that measures influence on the social network Twitter and sells that information to advertisers. Advertisers might then decide to give you special treatment so that you spread the word about their product to your followers. The only problem is you might not know they are treating you better than everyone else.

The service tracks stats on tweeters such as the number of followers, the type of followers (for example, being followed by a company isn't as important as being followed by actual people), and the content of the tweets. It determines how much influence someone has on the folks who follow them.

Take a tweeter like MNeylon. This tweeter lives in Ireland and only has a few thousand followers. But on various tech topics this Tweeter has authority so MNeylon gets a score of 54 out of 100.

This kind of information could be really helpful to a local tech retail shop. If they know MNeylon has influence over where people go to buy new computers they can give him extra goodies when he comes to their store. But, if MNeylon doesn't know what they are doing couldn't his tweets be deceiving to other potential customers? After all, they aren't likely to get the red carpet when they come in to shop.

I talked to co-founder Joe Fernandez about this in an email and he thinks that Klout is actually a democratizing force that allows ordinary people to get special treatment. Fernandez said he would have to think further about the fact that influencers might not know they are getting special treatment.

I fear that in the new world of social media many people are still naive. On television almost everyone knows an ad from a program, but in this new media world it may be much harder for people to discern the difference.

In the above video, comedian Ben Stiller explains Twitter to a befuddled Mickey Rooney. While this may not have the laugh-per-minutes you'd expect from Stiller, there's a refreshing lack of easy jokes and genuine bafflement from both stars about the social network's popularity.

Enjoy the late-Friday afternoon diversion.

By Laura Sydell

The romantic idea of the lonely writer has been taking hits from the Internet for a while. I've already been hearing about the authors who post their manuscripts online to get reader feedback before they publish it. Now, FastPencil, a Silicon Valley start up for writers who want to self-publish, has added a feature that sends out status updates on Twitter and Facebook whenever you revise your manuscript. The idea here seems to be that you can get feedback on changes you make while you are writing.

To me this raises some really interesting questions about what it means to be a writer or an artist. Certainly, collaboration has always been part of the process. Every story I write for NPR passes through an editor first, and the same is true of every book published. But, how many editors do we need? Is there going to be anything left of a singular artistic vision? What would have happened if Samuel Beckett had Twittered the the latest updates for "Waiting For Godot"? The play was a flop initially. Maybe he would have had an immediate hit if he'd brought in a whole group of his friends and associates every time he made a revision. No doubt he did some of that, but his friendship group was likely more limited by the technology of the time. I can't help but wonder if we would have lost out on the singularity of a vision that sprung from Beckett's mind or if it would have been very different if he'd run it by 1000 of his dearest friends first.

I suppose we've been focus grouping movies for years and maybe this is going to be focusing grouping for books.

FastPencil was founded to give writers a way to publish books without going through a traditional publisher. FastPencil will publish an actual bound book for as little as $5.00 dollars and they offer services to help you through the publishing process.

According to Venture Beat the company has raised under a million in angel funding and has six employees.

I don't know if this company will make it but I suspect this is just the beginning of using social networks for immediate feedback on a manuscript.

You couldn't even post about wanting to get a burrito while Twitter was out of commission on Thursday, says Woot.com. (Clipart.com)

By Omar L. Gallaga

A denial-of-service attack hit Twitter and Facebook Thursday morning, causing frequent status updaters and Twitterers to keep it to themselves for a while.

While most people just grumbled about it and went to check if MySpace still exists, the creative folks at Internet fire-sale emporium Woot.com shared on their site the ways they were killing time while Twitter was down. Among the gems were, "Yelling I'M THINKING ABOUT GETTING A BURRITO as loudly as we can," and "Going to the bathroom without telling anyone."

Did the Great Thursday Morning Twitter and Facebook Outage of Mid-'09 affect you personally? I wonder sometimes if we'll one day see a baby boom caused not by power outages or natural disasters but by social networking downtime. Guess we'll find out in about nine months.

ESPN's Ric Bucher gets the word out. (Ric Bucher / via Twitter)

By Omar L. Gallaga

Ric Bucher, who covers the NBA for ESPN and ESPN.com, said in a Twitter post today that the sports giant is prohibiting Twitter posts that don't serve the network. Bucher has more than 18,000 followers on the site.

If true, this would seem to suggest that while ESPN may understand the difference between a fade-away and a cross-over dribble, it absolutely doesn't get Twitter. In fact, the network that built itself on not just flashy graphics, but also goofy nicknames for sports figures, is acting like a teacher trying to keep students from passing notes in class.

Idle chit-chat and non-promotional conversation is kind of the point of Twitter, not whatever branding and synergistic strategy might be laid out in such an (alleged) memo.

Sure, we kind of expect that from the Marine Corps (Tweet bad info and someone could die) or from the generally clueless NFL, but ESPN?

If you're in sports journalism and you can't have a regular, non-ESPN-serving conversation with the brilliant Twitter personality Shaquille O'Neal over the social network, you probably aren't doing your job anyway. Now we'll just wait and see if the memo pops up on a sports blog.

Edited to add: The Big Lead, among other blogs, has posted the ESPN Twitter memo. It was said to have come directly from ESPN's PR reps.

Many mom bloggers are juggling their home life and the challenges of online success. (Illustration by Don Tate II / Austin American-Statesman © 2009)

By Omar L. Gallaga

In this week's All Tech Considered segment, we take you to the annual, just-concluded BlogHer '09 conference in Chicago, where many mom bloggers gathered to discuss the momblogosphere and to connect with other online writers. One hot topic was the recent talk by the Federal Trade Commission on whether blogs that review products should offer a disclaimer stating whether they are posting paid reviews or are receiving free products in exchange for positive posts.

I wrote about the state of mom bloggers last month for the Austin American-Statesman. In that story, I wrote about the shift toward more profitable niches or writing and the growing influence mom blogs have in the online world. You can find that story here.

(More links and information after the jump.)

Continue reading "Mom Bloggers Are Spreading Influence, But Facing New Problems" >

My nascent Farm Town ranch is big on potatoes, short on farm animals and cash. Screenshot from Farm Town on Facebook.

 

By Omar L. Gallaga

My portion of this week's All Tech Considered was a mix of bits on some interesting things happening around the Web. Here's some of what we covered:

• Facebook farming (as pictured above) with games like Farm Town and Farmville is indeed a hit. I was surprised to find that even the farming and ranching online publication Agweek has taken note.
• One Web site does a big browser comparison. Meanwhile, Opera releases Unite in its latest browser version 10, which turns the browser itself into a kind of Web server to share documents or even conduct live chats without extra software.
• 13-year-old Scott Campbell tries out the Sony Walkman upon the occasion of its 30th anniversary on July 1. Hilarity ensues!
• As we mentioned in a previous post, here's the glorious Web Site Story! And here's a little background on the video, which was written and directed by College Humor's Sam Reich.

by Sara Sarasohn

People die in threes. At least, that's the legend and that's the way it played out this week. I've worked on obits for Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson this week and I feel like I've hit my limit. I suspect Aaron Barnhart, tv critic for the Kansas City paper, is feeling something similar.

He posted about a tweet he got that seemed to encapsulate the week:

... On 09/18/1979, Farrah Fawcett & Michael Jackson were both guests on the Tonight Show w/Johnny Carson, co-hosted by Ed McMahon.

Barnhart thought this was so great he immediately retweeted it. Then he checked the facts ... which were not true. Barnhart knows better than to spread rumors under his professional imprimatur - he says as much in his blog post about the whole thing - but he whipped out the "RT @" immediately to repeat the rumor.

I am right there with Aaron Barnhart in wishing there was some truth to that tweet. I feel like it would make my whole week make sense. However, I'm really glad he fact-checked it. Even more, I'm impressed that he posted about being wrong instead of just letting it slide. It's hard to look dumb, and even harder to tell other people that you were wrong.

Magazine editor Arjun Basu writes short stories on Twitter. Courtesy Arjun Basu

 

By Krishnadev Calamur

Arjun Basu writes short stories --- extremely short stories; short stories that are exactly 140 characters.

Here's a typical post from his Twitter feed:

The talk had been open, with hurt feelings. Shouting. They knew the relationship was done. She would never put ketchup on her hot dogs again.

I found the magazine editor from Montreal on, where else, Twitter (@arjunbasu), and in an e-mail asked him how he got the idea for writing short fiction on the popular site.

Continue reading "Short Stories One Tweet At A Time" >

That's not the Elizabeth I remember from high school! iStockPhoto.com

 

By Andy Carvin

Earlier this week, I was logged into Facebook and received a chat message from Elizabeth Collins, an attorney in Gainesville, Florida, who attended high school with my brother. Though we're friends on Facebook, we hadn't really interacted much since graduation. So I was somewhat surprised that she was now asking me for emergency financial assistance.

Screenshot: Andy Carvin/NPR

"i am really freaked out right now and i need your urgent help," she wrote. "i was mugged at a gun point in london last night cash,credit cards and cell phone was stolen. it was a brutal experience but i am ok and i still have my passport."

But it didn't really add up. Of all the people she could contact on Facebook, why me? And it certainly seemed a little strange that her Facebook status updates said nothing about a trip to London.

It was at this point, though, I remembered a blog post from TechCrunch earlier this year about people gaining access to Facebook users' accounts and then hitting them up for emergency cash via wire transfer. Of course, it was entirely possible that Elizabeth was really in trouble, so I was placed in the awkward position of probing her for more information.

"I hate to do this, but there have been people hacking FB accounts and asking for financial assistance," I wrote. "Can you tell me how we know each other?"

Continue reading "Facebook Scam Exploits Friendship For Money" >

Liz and Tim Young with turkeys on their farm. Courtesy Tim Young

 

By Krishnadev Calamur

In my moments of grandeur, I wish I had my own farm where I could connect with Mother Nature. I suspect many people feel the same way, but few have the courage to do it.

Two people who did are Tim and Liz Young, who run Nature's Harmony , a pasture-based, local-market sustainable farm, in Georgia.

After reading about them in The New York Times, I wondered how a farm in rural Georgia connects with a customer base. Sure, Michael Pollan has made farmers markets and community-supported agriculture popular, but what does a business -- and a farm is a business, after all -- do to keep it customers coming back.

So I e-mailed (old-fashioned, I know) Tim Young and asked him.

"While farm life is thought of as rural, remote and antiquated, technology makes it easy to reach out and connect with like-minded people," Young replied.

He says social media makes it easy for people to find their "tribes."

Continue reading "A Farmer, His 'Tribe' And The Web That Brings Them Together" >

By Krishnadev Calamur

Companies are increasingly turning to social media to try find out what customers want. But how successful are they? In the case of Del Monte Foods, the answer may be very.

The company engaged a community of about 300 dog owners and asked them what their dogs would like for breakfast. The overwhelming answer: sausage and eggs.

Continue reading "Social Media Goes To The Dogs" >

By Omar L. Gallaga

Hardcore users of Twitter are still taking in the news that the social networking site is devoting some of its energy to getting into the TV business (instead of, say, adding nested replies or making it easier to organize friends on the service).

The TV show is being created by Amy Ephron, sister of Nora and Delia Ephron. It will be, apparently, a competitive show involving celebrities on Twitter.

But what to call such a show? We've got some ideas and you should add your own suggestions in the comments. And, Amy Ephron? No need to thank us. We're here to help.

(more after the jump)

Continue reading "Twitter TV: What Should They Call It?" >

By Laura Sydell

The best way to learn a language has always been to go there and talk. But in this era of social networking there might be a substitute that could be almost as good as going to France or Spain. This week I learned about a new Web site that gets us there, at least part of the way.

Babble.com sets up social networks of people who want to exchange language skills. So, if I want to learn Spanish someone in Spain might be able to help me with my grammar.

But, as I said, the site only gets you part of the way there. The help you get from around the globe is with the written word. The site does have recordings that enable you to learn the spoken word. But they don't yet have it set up so that you can actually communicate aurally with someone in Spain, or elsewhere, over Skype or some other online audio or video service.

Still, this might be the start of an interesting new way to study language. I'm just waiting for someone to take it all the way.

By Laura Sydell

Facebook users beware of a new scam that lures you to a fake Facebook site and prompts you to reenter your password.

The scammers lure you in by sending a link that looks like it comes from one of your friends. When you click on the link it takes you to the fake Facebook page and asks you reenter your password. Then they have you.

Continue reading "Facebook Scam Steals Passwords" >

by Andy Carvin (aka @acarvin on Twitter)

Until yesterday evening, one of the best ways of discovering new people on Twitter was to observe whom your friends talked to. For those of you who aren't familiar with Twitter, these messages typically look something like this:

acarvin: @eyderp that's an interesting point, thanks for suggesting it.

In this hypothetical example, I'm sending a tweet to my fellow All Tech blogger Eyder Peralta. Anyone who subscribed to my tweets would see this message, and some of them might click through to Eyder's tweets to see the rest of the conversation. It's your choice, of course, but when you see a reply that references someone else and it's an interesting discussion, you might end up making a new contact out of it. I'd guess I've discovered more than half the people I'm following on Twitter this way.

Unfortunately, that's no longer possible. With Twitter's update last night, you won't see any more tweets from your friends that are replies to people you don't know. So if you were following me on Twitter but not Eyder, to continue with the above example, that tweet would not even exist as far as you're concerned. You'd never see it, and you'd never get the opportunity to meet Eyder in the process.

Here's how Twitter's Biz Stone explained the change on their blog:

We've updated the Notices section of Settings to better reflect how folks are using Twitter regarding replies. Based on usage patterns and feedback, we've learned most people want to see when someone they follow replies to another person they follow--it's a good way to stay in the loop. However, receiving one-sided fragments via replies sent to folks you don't follow in your timeline is undesirable. Today's update removes this undesirable and confusing option.

The problem is that large numbers of Twitter users consider this "undesirable and confusing option" as one of the most powerful aspects of Twitter. It's all about serendipity. No two people have an exact match of friends in their individual social circles, of course. But the fact that you and someone else have something in common make it likely that there are other people they might know that you might want to know as well. And in some cases, you might realize you have a friend in common that you didn't even know was on Twitter. It's all about discovery. Or at least it was until last night.

Continue reading "Twitter Feels the Fail for Changing Its Feed " >