Last year, Leo Laporte became a Twitter quitter.

The host of one of Silicon Valley’s most popular podcasts was none too excited that of all the names in the world, the burgeoning message service had picked one that hit piercingly close to home. The online broadcasting network that Laporte owns and runs out of his house in Petaluma is called TWiT.tv, after his company’s flagship show, “This Week in Tech.”

The rise of Twitter has long been a favorite topic of conversation on TWiT, and with an audience of around 150,000, Laporte found himself in a strange pickle: The more he talked about Twitter on his show, the more followers he accrued — and the more publicity he gave his brand rival.

“I thought, jeez, I’m building value in this company that is ultimately vying for my trademark,” he said recently via phone. “So I left.”

But in spite of his absence, Laporte still became the most-followed user on the service, beating out front-runners like then-Sen. Barack Obama for the top spot, with more than 30,000 followers. Walking away from a megaphone that big just didn’t seem like good business. So he came back.

“They kind of have you,” said Laporte, who now has more than 100,000 followers on the service. “The same way that Facebook has you: because you have to go where the community is.”

Still, being in thrall to Twitter hasn’t stopped Laporte from joining a conversation that’s taking hold on the service’s fringes. As this group of Web subversives sees it, the once-tiny Twitter has grown like a magic beanstalk into a full-fledged communications medium — taking its place alongside Web pages, e-mail and maybe even television. And though the 30-person, San Francisco start-up is not exactly General Electric, digital trust-busters believe the same rules apply: One company shouldn’t have a monopoly…

…on an entire medium — even if it invented it.

“Those of us who are participating are pumping value into this closed system and trusting that Twitter will do the right thing with it,” said Laporte, referring to the tweets users pour into Twitter’s databases every day by the million.

People love the convenience and reach of social media systems like Twitter, he said.  “But what they ignore is that there’s a dark side to all of that, which is that these companies have a huge amount of control over what’s going on.”

Dave Winer, a Berkeley-based entrepreneur and Web innovator, sounded a similar note on a recent podcast posted to his Scripting News blog.

“It’s a very dangerous network because it’s all centralized,” he said, “not only on a technological level, where it goes through one set of servers — but it also goes through one set of business interests that’s anything but transparent.”

Danger may sound a bit overzealous for a Web service that barely existed two years ago, but for a media landscape in the middle of a profound shift, two years can be the span between eras.

Twitter is becoming a major source for news, commerce and free expression and, as with a free press itself, defenders don’t want a few profit-motivated individuals making all the decisions about how it should evolve.

Like Facebook and YouTube before it, Twitter is now transitioning from a freely available, much-loved Web service to a well-funded business venture looking to cash in on the audience and cachet it built in its freewheeling early days.

A few weeks ago, Twitter created a page of several dozen suggested users to help newcomers decide whom to follow. If you weren’t sure how to proceed, you can follow CNN, Lance Armstrong or Britney Spears. Being recommended by Twitter, it was quickly discovered, translated into tens or hundreds of thousands of new followers, and anointed accounts have since shot to the top of the Twitter hierarchy. The giant, instant audiences Twitter bestowed on these select users are thought to be so valuable that Web businessman Jason Calacanis offered Twitter $250,000 for a two-year ride on the list.

As visibility and influence gets funneled upward to the companies, celebrities and politicians that already have plenty of both, Twitter risks inviting a comparison to the overinflated economy — it’s creating a bubble at the top, and potentially alienating regular users who labored to build their audiences over months or years.

Well-known tech figures like Laporte and Winer don’t exactly represent the voiceless online rabble, but neither are they the types of guys you want leading a charge against you.

Winer recently wrote a post called “Why it’s time to break out of Twitter,” where he said of the service’s management, “we need to get that power out of their hands.” Laporte told me, “I’m more interested in seeing if we can go beyond Twitter — a more open system would be a better system.”

Complete article @

There’s Twitter the company, and twitter the medium | Technology | Los Angeles Times.

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Skyfire is a mobile web browser that seems like it’s been in beta forever.  That feeling won’t go away soon as the latest beta version has just been released, 0.9.  This new version of Skyfire adds support for new screen sizes on the Windows Mobile platform, WVGA and WQVGA, which means it will now work on the Samsung Omnia and the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1.

Skyfire is the server-based browser that can handle virtually any video streaming and that sets it apart from just about every other mobile browser out there. This new version is also adding social networking with the ability to aggregate your Twitter, Facebook and other network updates right on a convenient page.  From the press release:

The most noticeable change in the new version of Skyfire is a real-time activity wall which aggregates customized feeds from news, media, Facebook and Twitter. Skyfire is preconfigured with feeds from Digg, ESPN, Google News, Hulu, YouTube and Yahoo! News that display real-time updates on the start page. It is easy to customize your experience and add new feeds from your favorite websites.  Skyfire now always keeps you connected with the newest content that is relevant to you.

Windows Mobile is not the only platform to get this new beta as a new Symbian beta is going live too.  Owners of Nokia E or N series phones will be able to give Skyfire a good workout too.  Owners of phones on either platform can get Skyfire Beta 0.9 from the web site.  I have been running this new beta on the HTC Advantage for a few days and it works pretty well, although I am running RealVGA and it sometimes creates display problems.

Last year we interviewed the CEO of Skyfire, who gave us a glimpse of what this new version brings to the small screen and also where the browser is headed.

Gadget Gurus – GigaOM – Salon.com.

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The bulk of the book, titled “140 Characters, A Style Guide for the Short Form,” will revolve around eight key lessons from the Twitter universe, such as the importance of simplicity, honesty and humor. The project will also highlight notable figures worth following on Twitter, anecdotes from the community and even examples of the few occasions Twitterers have gone overboard: For example, Mr. Sagolla points to “bathroom tweets,” or messages about bodily functions, as falling into the category of things not to post to Twitter.

“This is a new genre of writing,” said Mr. Sagolla. “A new form of literature, in some ways.”

A portion of the book will also double as a memoir from the perspective of Mr. Sagolla, who was involved in the early stages of development for the tool. Mr. Sagolla, who now works at Adobe Systems as an engineer, is also planning on including a mini-dictionary of Twitter lingo, like “retweet,” the reposting of another Twitterer’s message, or “twoosh,” a message that is exactly 140 characters.

The book came about after Mr. Jackson and Mr. Sagolla met after an informal gathering of iPhone developers and began chatting about Twitter. Mr. Sagolla decided to bring Mr. Jackson, who he said updates his Twitter feed as many as 10 times an hour, into the fold.

The two expect the book to be available for download on Apple’s iPhone by the end of the month. Although the plan is to eventually get a version of “140 Characters” in print, Mr. Sagolla said releasing the book through iTunes first would be a good way to reduce the need for a major investment upfront, as well as a springboard to attract interested publishing houses.

“140 Characters” isn’t the first book written about the popular San Francisco, Calif., micro-blogging company. There’s also “Twitter Revolution,” “Twitter Means Business” and “Twitter for Dummies,” for starters. But Mr. Sagolla says that while the previous publications tended to home in more on the business and money-making potential aspect of the tool, “140 Characters” is an attempt to create easy rules for all sorts of social networking sites, including Facebook.

“Our goal is to make Twitter applicable to any kind of user,” said Mr. Sagolla.

The Anatomy of a Tweet: Twitter Gets a Style Guide – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com.

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This past weekend’s announcement by Facebook that the company would be opening up its APIs to allow for posting of notes, videos and more has left some companies scrambling to add new functionality to existing applications. Below we’ve highlighted a handful of the ones that let you post to Facebook from a desktop client, be it standalone or something that plugs into your browser.

We’ve talked to the people at each one to see when you should be expecting to be able to make use of the new API in each app:

“Blogo already supports Facebook status updates through its integration with Ping.fm,” says Benjamin Jackson, Blogo’s technical director. “As for more robust Facebook integration, you can be absolutely certain that we’ll be running to integrate this as quickly as possible. We’ll be shooting to send out a beta next week.”

Friendbar creator Edo Segal says “we love the fact that facebook [is] opening up more services,” and “definitely plan to include support for these API’s in upcoming versions.” Segal also says he wants a higher level of access to that data. “For example, to be able to post comments to users photos and status updates, and to directly send a Facebook message to a user via the API.”

Posting of notes through Ping.fm is up and running. “We’re still assembling some other ideas on how to use their new features,” says founder and CEO Sean McCullough. Worth a mention is that many of the services on this list go through Ping.fm to re-syndicate user messages.

“Sociagami has always been committed to deep integration with social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace and we will definitely be taking advantage of the new API features in 2.0,” says Charlie Robbins, director of social network integration for Sociagami. “Unfortunately, using an API based implementation will mean that Sociagami 2.0 will not have the messaging and wall posting features that came with 1.0.”

Working on it for an upcoming build. “The video part will be an important one!” says Loic Le Meur, CEO of Seesmic which acquired/owns Twhirl. The latest version, which was released on Monday added in Ping.fm support, letting you cross post messages to your Facebook profile.

“Yes, we are actively working on implementing the new Facebook API and rolling it out ASAP,” says Regan Fletcher, Yoono’s VP of business development. Our overall objective really is to maximize our use of the Facebook API in order to allow users who have added Facebook to Yoono to have the best possible experience and functionality.”

“It does look like some of this new functionality is available via the REST API which we use and we can run FQL queries (which we do),” says AlertThingy creator Clive Howard. “We will be revisiting this prior to the next version and if we can do then I’m sure it will make it into 3.x.” Version 3 of AlertThingy was released on Monday morning.
Apps that we pinged but have not yet responded: Flock, Feedalizr, Moodswing/blast, and Gwibber. We’ll update this post if we hear back.

Which apps are using the new Facebook APIs? | Webware – CNET.

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(Credit: Compete.com)

The blogosphere simply loves to slurp up social-networking traffic stats, and on Monday we got a nice tasty serving of them with some new numbers from Compete.com for the month of January. The results? Facebook is in the lead, with about 68 million unique visitors, well ahead of MySpace’s 58 million. (The two are pegged at 1.1 billion and 810 million page views, respectively.)

This may be the first survey we’ve seen that puts Facebook ahead of the News Corp.-owned MySpace in U.S. traffic. It also puts Twitter as the third-biggest social-media site in the country by total page views, with only about six million unique visitors but a whopping 54 million views.

Compete’s numbers are interesting, because they often are pretty different from other analytics firms’. Here are some clarifications, explained to CNET News in an e-mail sent by Compete’s Andy Kazeniac: These are numbers stemming entirely from Web browser data in the U.S. That means that you won’t be pulling in any international numbers, where most of Facebook’s users are now, or data from widgets or third-party applications, which are how many avid Twitter users access the service. That means that it’s likely that Twitter’s reach is bigger than the numbers indicate.

What’s also intriguing is that there are a few social-media sites, like Flixster and LiveJournal, with relatively low unique visitor counts but proportionally very high page view counts, indicating that they probably have smallish bases of very loyal users.

Also pulling in notable numbers are LinkedIn, with about 11 million unique users, Classmates.com, with about 17 million, and Reunion.com, with slightly under 14 million. On the other end? AOL’s Bebo, an $850 million purchase, which Compete.com clocks in as having just shy of three million unique visitors. True, its biggest user bases are in the U.K. and Ireland, but that’s not good considering the price tag.

Still, statistics are like tequila shots. Always take ‘em with a few grains of salt and a slice of lime, and be warned that they may give you headaches.

Whee! New numbers on social network usage | Webware – CNET.

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Thanks to its open-ended design and a thriving user community, Twitter is fast outgrowing its roots as a simple, easy-to-use messaging service. Enterprising hackers are creating apps for sharing music and videos, to help you quit smoking and lose weight — spontaneously extending the text-based service into one of the web’s most fertile (and least likely) application platforms.

Hardware hackers have set up household appliances to send status alerts over Twitter, like a washing machine that tweets when the spin cycle is through, or a home security system that tweets whenever it senses movement inside the house. Others have incorporated Twitter into their DIY home automation systems. Forgot to turn off the lights? Send a tweet to flip the switch by remote control.

“It’s so simple and easy to access, people are thinking of more and more uses for the platform,” says Dan Wasyluk, creator of the Twitter-based Snipt service. Wasyluk launched Snipt last week as a way to let programmers share short snippets of code over Twitter.

Launched in 2007, Twitter quickly became a darling of the life-and mind-casting interneterati. But some saw boundless possibilities in the 140-character limit, and what was a slow trickle of innovation is now quickly elevating what is essentially a micro-blogging service into one of the internet’s most important technologies, along with instant messaging and e-mail.

Though it’s main use — sending and receiving short messages to your social network — is often dismissed as time-wasting trivia, Twitter’s potential as a broad internet platform is just beginning to be fully realized. Twitter has grown into a ubiquitous presence — you can send tweets from your phone, your desktop and your browser — that has potential to not only facilitate communication among humans, but even to make machines do your bidding.

Businesses are starting to be built around it. Botanicalls, for example, sells a Twitter-enabled hardware kit that lets your neglected house plants alert you when they’re thirsty.

The company has developed a tiny moisture sensor attached to a circuit board with an Ethernet port. You stick it in your plant’s soil, and when the moisture levels drop below a certain level, your plant sends you a tweet begging to be watered.

Using Twitter’s application programming interface (API), a programmer with even a modest amount of experience can create a web app that gathers public data from Twitter, or uses it to send links, commands or bursts of information.

“[Twitter's] open API is a huge reason it has grown into such a platform,” says Wasyluk.

File sharers were the first to rush in. The photo-sharing service TwitPic, one of the oldest Twitter mashups, lets users send pictures to their followers by storing a photo on its servers, then passing the link around on Twitter. Now there are newer apps like Tweetcube and Twittershare, which let users share larger media like MP3s and videos.

Twitter’s limited format of short, text-based announcements are a natural match for sites like TrackThis, which you can use to get status updates on FedEx and UPS packages, and Tweetajob, which job seekers can use to get real-time updates about new job openings.

Anyone who needs help quitting smoking can use Qwitter to monitor their progress. Those looking to lose weight can turn to TweetWhatYouEat or TweetYourEats.

Hardware hackers have put a new spin on the Twitter mashup — as it turns out, just about anything that can be plugged into the internet is capable of talking to Twitter.

Programmer Ryan Rose rigged up his washing machine to send him a tweet when his clothes are done. He just follows his machine’s twitter account (it’s PiMPY3WASH) and he knows when to go downstairs and move his undies to the dryer.

Linux hacker Shantanu Goel set up a video camera and some motion-sensing software on a PC connected to the internet. If anyone breaks into his house or goes snooping through his room, the software detects the movement and sends out a tweet.

Tech-savvy environmentalists can install Tweet-a-Watt, a gadget that plugs into your wall socket and connects to your wi-fi network. Once a day, the pocket-sized device broadcasts stats of your daily energy usage to Twitter.

Whether that sort of transparency results in embarrassment or bragging rights can be determined by a system like the one created by Justin Wickett. The Duke University student wired up his home so he could turn his lights on and off remotely, just by sending a text message to Twitter from his mobile phone.

Twitter Fast Growing Beyond Its Messaging Roots | Epicenter from Wired.com.

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In New York Magazine this week, both Stone and Williams said that charging companies for brand verification is something that the company was looking into. This makes a lot of sense, especially given the rise of fake profiles, like the one that was recently taken down for the Dalai Lama. They note that a paid corporate account could have features like a prompt when a new user joins a company’s feed.

Then today, Stone made similar comments to the UK-based Marketing Magazine. “We are noticing more companies using Twitter and individuals following them. We can identify ways to make this experience even more valuable and charge for commercial accounts,” Stone told the publication. He went on to note that other ideas of charging companies to use Twitter to market products and/or provide customer service were on the table.

The latter part is something which companies like Zappos and Comcast have been doing for a while. They have employees that scan Twitter (something much easier now with Twitter Search) to see who is saying something about their company. If it’s something negative, or there is some kind of problem mentioned, these Zappos or Comcast Twitter users send messages to the user having the problem. I’ve experience this first hand with Comcast’s Twitter rep, Frank Eliason, who tweets from the account ComcastCares.

Marketing products on Twitter is a potentially more interesting idea from a revenue perspective. Late last year, Dell reported that it had made over $1 million in revenue thanks to Twitter. More recently, Dell announced that it would start offering deals exclusively to users who follow its accounts on Twitter. With Dell using Twitter to spur sales and clearly making money off of it, it makes sense that Twitter should be getting some of that. But the question of how much, is a tricky one.

“If it becomes complicated and costly, our instinct would be to move elsewhere,” Bob Pearson, vice-president of communities and conversations at Dell told Marketing Magazine. Other companies Marketing Magazine asked about the idea of Twitter charging businesses to market on its service, said similar things.

This idea of charging for corporate accounts, has been around since at least October, when CNET reported it was hearing whispers about such a plan. Since then, we’ve heard the exact same thing from a few other sources. In November, Williams started to float that idea out there publicly. But now, with talk about this plan clearly picking up, I think it’s a safe bet that it’s coming sooner rather than later.

Twitter has raised over $20 million in funding. Recent reports suggest that it’s looking for another $20 or so million, which could push its valuation close to a quarter of a billion dollars.

Twitter starts to talk up the charging companies plan » VentureBeat.

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You’ve come to terms with the reality of the current job market. There are jobs available; but, it will take focus, dedication, and a bit of savvy to land one. No problem.

You’re ready to take a no-excuses approach to your job hunt and you’ve diagnosed any underlying job search issues. You’ve spotted a few areas where you need to improve your job search skills. Working with a career professional isn’t an option for you right now. So, what other options are available?

Here are seven, no-cost resources to help you become a more savvy job hunter that has the skills to compete in the current job market:

1. LinkedIn.com – LinkedIn is a social network for business professionals. An updated LinkedIn profile is practically a must-have for every job hunter. However, LinkedIn isn’t just for job hunters. It’s an essential tool for anyone who understands the importance of networking as a career management tool. You can connect with current or former colleagues and alumni and request recommendations (a professional endorsement) from people you’ve worked with in the past. LinkedIn also offers a great opportunity to connect with people within organizations you are targeting during your job search.
2. O*NET Online – A full-access version of the occupational network database. This is an invaluable tool for researching industries and discovering occupations that you might not have previously considered, but closely match your skills.
3. JibberJobber.com – This career management tool works seamlessly with LinkedIn or any spreadsheets that you might already be using. This tool will enable you to keep track of all of your job search and networking contacts and any correspondence or follow-up.  Best of all, if you need to resume your job search in three years, the information you collected this go-round will still be there waiting for you.
4. VisualCV.com – This online tool truly allows you to bring your resume to life – complete with presentations, documents, video, and a photo, if you so desire. It is especially useful for creatives with large portfolios. However, it can be a great way for any job hunter to stand out. Rather than just reading about your accomplishments, an employer can view a presentation you gave, see certificates you’ve received, and go through your portfolio. Note: The VisualCV does not replace your traditional resume. Rather, it should be used in conjunction with it.
5. JobRadio.fm – Up late worrying about tomorrow’s interview or wondering whether you should have listed every job you’ve ever had on your resume? JobRadio.fm – available online 24/7 – will keep you company and keep you informed about the latest job search strategy news. Listen to career and job search-related podcasts anytime or download a show and listen to it on your computer or MP3-player at your convenience. JobRadio.fm features content from Secrets of the Job Hunt, Career Communique, Jobacle, Jobs in Pods, Total Picture Radio, and the SavvyJobseeker Podcast – hosted by yours truly.
6. TheJobLab.com – Get 24/7 access to article, video, and audio libraries; online forums; and a number of other tools and resources for job hunters. Need more support at a minimal price? A low-cost upgrade gives you access to live workshops and bi-weekly Q&A sessions.
7. Free community resources – CareerOneStop is a great online and local resource for job hunters. Many local employment networks, libraries, and churches are now offering job search training or hosting job search support groups or networking groups. Do your homework and find out what is available in your community.

The current job market certainly requires a savvier jobseeker. However, there are lots of resources and sources of support available to job hunters – regardless of budget. Take advantage of any available resource that will help you to improve your job search skills and your job search fortune.

Cleveland Job Search Examiner: Seven no-cost solutions for the savvy job hunter.

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SAN FRANCISCO – With an upgrade to its mobile maps, Google Inc. hopes to prove it can track people on the go as effectively as it searches for information on the Internet.

The new software to be released Wednesday will enable people with mobile phones and other wireless devices to automatically share their whereabouts with family and friends.

The feature, dubbed “Latitude,” expands upon a tool introduced in 2007 to allow mobile phone users to check their own location on a Google map with the press of a button.

“This adds a social flavor to Google maps and makes it more fun,” said Steve Lee, a Google product manager.

It could also raise privacy concerns, but Google is doing its best to avoid a backlash by requiring each user to manually turn on the tracking software and making it easy to turn off or limit access to the service.

Google also is promising not to retain any information about its users’ movements. Only the last location picked up by the tracking service will be stored on Google’s computers, Lee said.

The software plots a user’s location — marked by a personal picture on Google’s map — by relying on cell phone towers, global positioning systems or a Wi-Fi connection to deduce their location. The system can follow people’s travels in the United States and 26 other countries.

Read Full Article…

Know where your kids are? Check Google maps – Tech and gadgets- msnbc.com.

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It’s especially good news for Sentinel, the security company that MySpace used to track down the accounts. And now Sentinel appears to be trying to take advantage of its success with MySpace into a PR campaign partly aimed at getting Facebook into signing a contract as well.

John Cardillo, the CEO of Sentinel, gave an interview to TechCrunch in which he said thousands of those who were banned from MySpace can now be found on Facebook–not yet one of Sentinel’s clients.

“As the first and only social-networking site to use state-of-the-art technology to identify and remove registered sex offenders from its site, MySpace is proud of its leadership position and hopes that Facebook follows our lead in providing their members with the same protections,” a statement from MySpace read. “As part of our long-standing partnership with law enforcement and state attorneys general, we will continue to readily provide information on these removed offenders for their investigations.”

Unfairly accused? With the headline of the TechCrunch post referring to sex offenders on Facebook as “refugees,” and Cardillo calling the Palo Alto-based social network a “safe haven” for them, you’d think that there was some kind of mass creation of Facebook profiles on the part of sex offenders who had seen their MySpace profiles axed. There is, however, no evidence of that. Millions of people have profiles on both social networks, so it’s safe to assume that sex offenders probably do as well.

Facebook’s representatives weren’t thrilled by the “safe haven” allegation, to say the least.

Read More…

MySpace, Facebook, spar over family safety | Webware – CNET.

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