Tumblr: more than a Tweet, less than a blog post

February 12th, 2009 •
Tags: Blog, microblogging, sharing, Social Web, Tumblelog, tumblr, twitter

Occasionally, I would like to post a quick thought or idea, but I can’t really fit it into Twitter’s 140 characters. It also doesn’t justify the trouble of making a blog post or it otherwise doesn’t really fit there. Tumblr is a microblogging service that may fill the gap between a tweet and a full-fledged blog post.

The service has been around for a while, and I have heard of it before. It just didn’t entice me to try it. Now that I’m signed up and have my tumblelog setup, I’m really liking it’s unique featureset. It has support for a number of different post types which will embed content directly into your posts. Instead of having to link to every piece of media you’d like to share, you can embed them directly into your tumblelog.

E-mail posting is supported. Once you register at Tumblr, you are given a unique e-mail address for posting directly to your tumblelog. This e-mail address can even be used to post media including photos, MP3s, and videos. Add this e-mail to your mobile device to allow for posting on the go.

Users have a lot of flexibility in the design of their tumblelogs. There are a number of themes provided, and users may also write custom HTML and CSS to style the blog themselves.

The service is very accessible. It’s easy for users to get up and running with a quick blog, and this may be a viable platform for your blog if you don’t need a robust blogging engine. It also offers a few power features like the aforementioned custom CSS, the ability to import your own blog and/or RSS feeds, and the ability to embed the tumblelog elsewhere on the web.

For someone like me who already blogs, tumblr might be a good place for posting unrelated things or stuff that doesn’t warrant a full post, but only time will tell if it will become a part of my daily workflow. I plan to give this and another similar service, Posterous, some airtime to see if they are services I want to use regularly. Check back tomorrow for a quick overview of Posterous. After I have had an opportunity to try both of the services a bit, I will post a comparison of the two services.

If you are on tumblr, please follow me. I would also love to see comments from anyone who has used both of the services on which they prefer and why. If you use only tumblr, post a comment telling how you use it and how it fits in with the rest of the social web services you use on a regular basis.

Receive all your Twitter @replies via SMS

February 3rd, 2009 • 5 comments
Tags: @replies, @reply, iPhone, Short message service, sms, text message, Text messaging, tweets, twitter

Twitter‘s mobile updates text message you with tweets for your selected followers. It will also text message you with any direct messages you receive. Unfortunately, @replies are left out in the cold. Using the magic of Twitter Search, Yahoo Pipes, and Yahoo Alerts, you can begin to receive all @replies directed to you on your cell phone!

Enter your Twitter username into my Twitter @replies pipe

Right-click “Get as RSS” and click “Copy Link Location”

Go to Yahoo Alerts. If you haven’t already setup the service, you will need to configure it now. Be sure you setup your mobile phone to receive alerts.

In the “Create an Alert” tab, click “Feed/Blog”

Paste the URL we copied earlier into the box labeled ‘A’

Check the box for mobile alerts at the bottom and be sure your phone is selected

Click “Save Alert”

You will now receive all your @replies via text message on your phone. Enjoy!

SocialWhois gives a deeper look at Twitterers/FriendFeeders

February 3rd, 2009 •
Tags: friendfeed, Online Communities, profiles, Social network, social networking, Social Web, SocialWhois, twitter

Mashable pointed out this new site with a great concept. Both FriendFeed and Twitter have incredibly minimalistic profiles—FriendFeed having none to speak of and Twitter offering only a short bio. SocialWhois allows users to look up potential follows to learn more about them. This information depends partly on the user having created a profile with the service, but, for FriendFeed users, SocialWhois will “guess” at a profile by pulling in all the services a user has linked from the FriendFeed account. This still gives you quite a lot of information but no more than you might get looking at the user’s FriendFeed profile yourself.

This is another one of those services that will depend on having a critical mass of users before it actually becomes useful. It definitely fills a need in the social web space—one that some social networks do a better job of recognizing than others. It is really difficult to get a feel for a person by looking only at their Twitter bio and latest tweets, and FriendFeed could use a brief bio for each user. SocialWhois provides all that, but its utility is currently hampered by a small userbase. If it is able to expand that userbase significantly, it will be very helpful in determining whether or not to follow back that latest follower.

Tiny USB monitors bring happiness, don’t use up video ports

February 2nd, 2009 • 1 comment
Tags: friendfeed, Instant messaging, monitor, touchscreen, twitter

Why would you want to hook up a tiny 7″ monitor to your computer? Twitter, FriendFeed, IM apps, and other apps that are most useful if you can have them up at all times to watch for notifications. Mimo Monitors go a step further by connecting via USB to keep all your video ports free. This means you can easily plug one in even if you already have two, three, or more monitors. The base model is priced attractively at $129.99 and offers a very basic featureset. Its only cool trick is the ability to change orientation of the monitor from landscape to portrait or vice versa. The $200 model has a touchscreen and integrated camera making it great for an app launcher or a Skype monitor. Very cool. Wired Gadget Lab had the scoop.

Mini USB Monitors Give Pleasure with Every Tiny Inch

Organizing Twitter with hashtags

January 28th, 2009 • 11 comments
Tags: hashtags, tagging, twitter

The use of hashtags is a valuable skill for serious Twitter users. They aren’t really very difficult to grasp and use, and they really pay off. The challenge is to educate as many people as possible about the use of hashtags so that their use becomes more widespread, and they will be more valuable to everyone in the community.

You may have seen a user include a number sign (#) directly followed by a word in one of their tweets. This is a hashtag in use. The user is tagging his tweet with that word. These tags are linked by most Twitter clients to the search page for that word which will find for you other tweets with the same tag. This is often used in the case of large events. Livebloggers create a hashtag, inform others, and use it on every tweet that is related to the event. For example, the hashtag for the inauguration was #inaug09. Keep in mind there is nothing magical about that particular tag except that it links to a search for other tweets with the tag included. The tag could just have easily been #inauguration; in fact, it was. Some users decided on the tag #inaug09 while others used the tag #inauguration. I would probably favor the former since it is a little shorter while still clear, but one is just as valid as the other.

There is no process associated with creating a hashtag. Just include it in a post, and it is created. It’s value will come mostly from others using it. However, even if you are the only user to ever use a hashtag, it can still have immense value. My wife (her Twitter is @tiffypooh in case you’re wondering) was recently captivated by the We Are One inaugural celebration. She could have wasted space in each tweet to specify the event she was tweeting about, or she could have left it ambiguous and just included the information she wanted to get across. Instead, she created a hashtag (#weareone) and included that in every post. Not only was this a way to organize Twitter as a whole (at least if others used her tag), but it was a short way to let her readers know what she was talking about. This eases the pain of having to duplicate so much information in each little 140-character message.

Here is my suggested use of hashtags. This is a pretty open-ended concept so there are certainly other ways to use it. Use them however you wish, but if you don’t know what to do with them, try following these steps:

1. Check to see if there is already a hashtag for your topic. Hashtags become more valuable as more people use them. Don’t create a hashtag unless there aren’t any for what you’re talking about or you really think the ones that exist are terrible. If a good one exists, simply write your post and include it somewhere. If a hashtag does not exist…
2. Come up with a good hashtag for your topic. It should be short but easily recognizable even by a user who hasn’t been told explicitly its meaning.
3. Introduce your hashtag by telling your followers what it is for and asking them to use it in their messages on the same subject. Be sure you actually include the hashtag in this message.
4. Write your tweets on the subject and include the tag. You may include it in the context of the message like this: “I’m so excited about the #weareone inaugural celebration!” Alternately, you may just want to tack it on to the end like this: “The mix of people and performers is so ecclectic. I love that so many different people are excited! #weareone”

Hashtags are incredibly useful They are currently used only by a small percentage of the Twitter community. Luckily, a small percentage of the Twitter community is quite a lot of people. This means you can still get a lot out of using tags both in your own tweets and to find topics you want to see on Twitter.

If you like this post, please follow me on Twitter @ twitter.com/raddevon. For more posts like this, subscribe to the raddevon.com RSS feed (or maybe you only want the Internet category feed).