Archive for August, 2009

Ustream And Twitter: Closing A Real-Time Loop

Published on August 18, 2009 in Twitter, social media and video. Comments

I couldn’t go past this story about live video streaming service Ustream.tv hitting 1 million followers on Twitter without commenting. This feat is nothing new of course, as there are now more than 80 Twitter accounts with more than a million followers. However, as Paul Short points out in the post, there are still only a few internet companies with more than a million followers on Twitter.

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As mentioned, it’s no surprise that Ustream is doing well on Twitter, as the immediacy of live video streaming and Twitter compliment each other nicely. It’s very easy for Ustream broadcasters and viewers to tweet out links to interesting shows as they are happening. Live video streaming shows are able to take advantage of the real-time nature of Twitter to capture the interest of potential viewers who are online and tweeting ‘right now’. Conversations about live shows often tend to crossover to Twitter too.

The Ustream and Twitter symbiosis is a good example of how the potential of the real-time web is only just beginning to be realised. No doubt there will be many more examples of companies, organisations, communities and individuals using multiple real-time services simultaneously.

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Some Users Really Hate Facebook’s Acquisition of FriendFeed (Hitler Video)

Published on August 12, 2009 in social media and video. Comments

Speaking of FriendFeed being acquired by Facebook (see previous post), this video of Hilter reacting to the news is pretty funny, and a nice extension to the series of these “Hilter finds out…” videos. Of course, you really have to be a regular user of FriendFeed to get many of the jokes.

Here’s a comment thread on FriendFeed about this video.

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FaceFeed To Emerge After US$50 Million Deal?

Published on August 11, 2009 in social media and technology. Comments

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According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook has acquired FriendFeed for a substantial US$50 million, in a combination of cash and Facebook stock.

Regarding the acquisition, via the Friendblog, FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor states:

“Now we have the opportunity to bring many of the innovations we’ve developed at FriendFeed to Facebook’s 250 million users around the world and to work alongside Facebook’s passionate engineers”

He mentions that FriendFeed will continue to operate in the meantime, until the two parties figure out what to do over the long-term. I assume that eventually Friendfeed will cease to exist and much of the smart technology involved in FriendFeed will end up emerging as new features in Facebook. That seems to have been happening lately anyway.

Facebook’s press release about the acquisition mentions that all four founders of FriendFeed will now hold senior positions on Facebook’s engineering and product teams. This could mean that they will have quite an influence on the way Facebook develops in the future.

One question that immediately springs to my mind is: will we soon see Facebook change so that feeds update in real-time in a similar way to Friendfeed? It was only 4 months ago that Friendfeed implemented this change itself. Some people didn’t like this change, I thought it was definitely a step forward. It’ll be interesting to see how Facebook develops over the coming months.

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Pulse Of The Planet (Twitter) Flatlines Due To DOS Attack

Published on August 6, 2009 in Twitter, politics and social media. Comments

Late last night I was having flashbacks to 2007 when Twitter was down a lot and the Fail Whale was sighted all too often. Except this time Twitter was down for a long period and no fail whale was to be seen. It turns out it was not an internal problem.

Apparently Twitter experienced a DOS attack of substantial proportions. According to Mashable, attacks were also carried out against Facebook, LiveJournal, YouTube and other social media networks, although Twitter was hit the hardest. Although not confirmed, it seems the attack may have had something to do with the ongoing conflict between Georgia and Russia.

I hope attacks like this don’t become a growing trend, it’s really annoying for users, especially as more and more people are coming to rely on Twitter for their communications. It’s going to be difficult for Twitter to become “the pulse of the planet” if the pulse flatlines on an ongoing basis.

UPDATE: It seems the attack was targeted at one pro-Georgian user of Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal, Blogger (via Bronwen).

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How Social Media Can Make History (TED Talk)

Published on August 5, 2009 in Twitter, blogging, mobile, social media, technology and video. Comments

Here’s a TED Talk by Clay Shirky from June of this year. Shirky’s work focuses on “the rising usefulness of decentralized technologies such as peer-to-peer, wireless networks, social software and open-source development.”

It’s a talk well worth watching. He makes some great points about where media in general is heading and gives some good examples of the ways the media landscape is rapidly changing . One particular example illustrates how, in terms of using social media for campaigns, supporters can be convened but not controlled.

Shirky ends with a question that I think a lot about myself: how can we make best use of this medium, even though it means changing the way we’ve always done it?

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