marks.dk
On curating Twitter
James Shelley:
If you check your twitter feed and are confronted by a news item, a trivia fact, a magazine update, commentary on your friend’s tooth-brushing experience, and a blog update, this stream is not even remotely helpful for anything but developing an addiction to distraction.
You must curtail Twitter with purpose. To use Twitter without any intentionality is to spray yourself in the face with a high pressure blast of contextless, random information. This can serve little greater good other than sending you down countless rabbit trails.
It goes well with the previous post I just wrote. I don’t agree fully with James Shelley’s advice of making lists out of everything (especially seeing that Tweetie doesn’t support them that well — or rather, at all), but I do agree that following should be more about quality in every single tweet.
I will get better at this.
— Inventing a Planet » Blog Archive » Real Friends Follow Less: Intentionality on Twitter.
Meet the man behind @BPGlobalPR
Leroy Stick, the man behind the fantastic @BPGlobalPR:
“So what is the point of all this? The point is, FORGET YOUR BRAND. You don’t own it because it is literally nothing. You can spend all sorts of time and money trying to manufacture public opinion, but ultimately, that’s up to the public, now isn’t it?
You know the best way to get the public to respect your brand? Have a respectable brand. ”
— Street Giant » Leroy Stick – the man behind @BPGlobalPR.
Banking in the 21st century
Today, Alex Payne wrote the following:
Imagine, for a moment, a bank that doesn’t suck.
A bank that doesn’t gouge you with fees.
A bank that doesn’t treat you like crap.
A bank that cares about design, but gets out of your way.
A bank that puts your money to work automatically.
A bank that’s building a platform for the future of personal finance.
Sounds utopian, no?
I’ve imagined that bank, usually while on hold with my current bank after they’ve screwed something up. I want to be a customer of that bank. More than that, I want to make it happen.
So, I am.
Scratching the creative itch is one of the attributes I admire the most in people. And making a bank that behaves somewhat human is something I applaud wholeheartedly.
Alex Payne is joining BankSimple as a co-founder, with the role of Chief Product & Technology Officer, which is fine and dandy. I hope he’s read this post by Matt Mullenweg (of WordPress fame) about how he’d like to run a bank:
Basically, he’d make sure the bank is safe, not too big, facilitating the features in today’s smart phones and make sure they’re different than everybody else. Matt is thinking as a business owner, and therefore focus a lot on how to create PR stories, but he’s on to the notion of a bank that is setting itself apart from the others by just acting differently. Humanely. E.g. by turning away money, so every customer won’t be able to put more than $250,000 in their account, because that’s the insured limit.
A Danish bank, Danske Bank, is spending 1,000,000,000 Danish Kroner ($170,000,000) on digital services (internet banking, website etc.) over the next two years.
They say they’ll make their internet banking service hardware independent (so it can run on the iPhone, Android – yes, even the Palm Pre andwhathaveyou) and focus a lot more on not only being transaction oriented, but give opportunities in trading, advice etc.
What I fear, though, is that they’re not disruptive enough.
They are putting 400 developers on the job (Danske Bank is Denmark’s biggest IT-company measured by employers so they have this amount of people lying around, I imagine), but it’s people who come from the financial sector and are not used to being user-focused as Alex Payne has gotten used to being at Twitter. You could argue he is not used to focus on hardcore financial transactions security either, but I’m one of those internet users that go for anything that tries to rattle the cage a bit.
The only problem is that I’d probably have to move to the US if I want to have a piece of that bank…
Why am I blogging this?
I believe strongly in disruptive movements, and I think one of the untapped markets is the financial sector – especially in Europe. There’s plenty of room to be innovative and do things differently. Heck, just by being different you’re almost bound to be better than what we’re stuck with now. I’d love a bank that got the hell out of my way when I don’t need it, and once I do, don’t remind me constantly how much they think of me as just another customer.
Read a bit more about Alex Payne’s announcement.
Why Laterstars is changing the way I read tweets
I use Twitter’s “Favorite”-feature a lot.
Actually, I’ve faved almost 4000 tweets within the last 8 months or so. Almost all of them are faved while reading tweets on the iPhone, because I wanted to check out a link once I’d be back at my laptop.
In the beginning, I read the faved tweets online, but found out that it was a great idea to put a feed of favorites in Google Reader. That’s the way I have been reading faved tweets for months.
Recently, however, people have started tweeting about a service called “Laterstars“. It’s built for people like me who don’t fave because it’s just a great tweet (like this), but because the link in the tweet seems interesting and I want to read it later (like this).
The main advantage in Laterstars is that it strips away the content and present you with easy access to the link in the tweet. You can use the keyboard shortcuts you know from Gmail on the website. It works with Fluid as well, so you get badges, nice favicon etc.
If you subscribe to the atom-feed connected to your profile (here’s mine), you can add it to Google Reader and the title of the item will link to the url found in the faved tweet. Clever!
And it gets even better. Yesterday, the developer, Toby Sterrett, agreed to hear me out about a feature I’d love to see; a bookmarklet that lets you cycle through the links from your faved tweets. And lo and behold; it took him five minutes to make it.
Adding “http://laterstars.com/faved_links/oldest” to your bookmark bar will give you easy access to the links you saved for later, without even visiting laterstars.com. Once you’ve visited a site, it’ll automatically archive the link as well so you don’t visit the same link twice.
If you want to try out Laterstars, here’s a code for the fastest 25 people: MARKS
Fluid displays
Besides the fact that this is very well made, it’s mostly useless; not sure I’d like my tv to dissolve and float around the room like this. However, getting more information on the elements of my room (“here’s your lost keys”, “water your dying plant”) are definitely something I’d like to see at some point soon.
And no, making a Twitterbot with an Arduino-board doesn’t count as being easy enough for me to have at go at.
Curious Displays from Julia Tsao on Vimeo.
/via Timo Arnall
Pinboard.in as alternative to Delicious.com
I’ve recently started using the bookmarking service “Pinboard” more actively as an alternative to Delicious. It seems as if Yahoo! really doesn’t care about Delicious all that much, and I want to be more in control of my data. Therefore I signed up for Pinboard and the developer keeps adding amazing features I’d wish others would take note of.
First off, it’ll cost you money (MONEY!) to sign up. I don’t remember how much I paid, but currently the price is $6.13 (the price is calculated as number of users * $0.001). This is to discourage spammers and support the costs of running the site, which are both valid arguments for such a nice service.
Another impressive feature set is the ability to auto-add shared items from Google Reader (mine), Twitter favorites (mine), Delicious bookmarks (mine) as well as toread items from Instapaper (mine as RSS). Essentially it saves stuff I mark as great from around the web. Very clever.
The last feature I want to highlight is two bookmarklets that was added yesterday: oldest and random. You can set Pinboard to tag some of your imported bookmarks with “toread” and when clicking either oldest or random, you’re taken to the oldest bookmark you need to read, or a random one.
I hope the features that are added in the future are of equal quality, and that the design gets a bit of an overhaul at some point…
Notable tweets on the iPad
As with the previous post, I’m collecting opinions and blurbs on the iPad. This post is tweets of notable quality in one way or the other, and I’ve divided them into tweets about the platform, user experience and humor (Twitter being the way it is, there will certainly be many more tweets and I’ll update this post accordingly).
A personal note on 2009 and what 2010 will – hopefully – be like
Ever since the Christmas holiday I’ve wanted to make a post on what a crazy year 2009 was, as well as what I expect of 2010. Now I finally have the time to do so, and it’s personal so feel free to skip it.
2009:
On New Years Eve 2008/2009, I had just arrived back in Copenhagen from a semester abroad in Boston that was far from perfect. I had a nice time now and then, but I felt that the daily life on a campus 12 miles from Boston is too unlike my way of living that it became unbearable as the months went by.
I missed Copenhagen, I missed my girlfriend, friends and family and I just wanted it to be over.
I came back, and I got a new job at zyb/Vodafone that I was very happy about. I enjoyed working there until this fall when budget-related issues popped up, and I was relieved from my consultancy contract. Now I work at 23 which is something completely different, yet somehow very related. I don’t get these jobs because I apply for them, but because I spend crazy amounts of time on Twitter and at events around Copenhagen, talking to people that share my interests. This is something I want to continue doing, and especially Copenhagen Twestival has established some relationships that I value a lot, and hope to nurture more in the future.
It seems that 2009 was all about breaking down and establishing. In the summer I became a bachelor in more than one way, and I like the diploma I got from CBS, but not the feeling of being all alone that the breakup created. It’s over now and I learned a lot from it. “Taking less for granted” is sure as hell one of the lessons I took with me on that account.
2010:
I normally don’t do New Year’s resolutions, and I don’t plan on starting now, but there are still some things I’d like to focus more on in the coming year.
Listen:
Listening isn’t always my best skill, but I need to listen a lot more than I speak. I want to read more, and have removed a bunch of the shitty feeds clogging up my feed reader (Mashable, TechCrunch, TUAW etc. are all gone – it’s too much fast noise). I’m looking for good writers (hopefully making me a better one as well) that don’t publish often, but publish something worthwhile. I’ll share what I’ve found soon.
Act slow:
Again, this relates to the fast news being thrown out from Google Reader. More slow, less fast. Hopefully that affects how I work and think as well – it’s been too much fast stuff blazing past and too little of the meaty blogging/article-writing that really matters, and gives a worthwhile perspective on things.
Build more and learn new stuff:
I really really want to learn how to write better html(5) and css(3), as well as starting from scratch on how to do jQuery. I don’t know shit about programming in Python, Ruby on Rails, Javascript and what else is there, but jQuery seems like a nice place to start doing a bit of web app-stuff. This will in turn, hopefully, do wonders to what I can share and ship, and I already have a couple of ideas laid out that I would love to work on (a local version of Internet Garage Sale is one of them).
Be happier:
I’ll stop bitching about shit on Twitter. No more tweeting from the queue in the supermarket, no more whining about this and that, and hopefully I’ll start noticing the good stuff more.
For instance, I bought two lovely sweaters today. It’s really cold in Copenhagen these days and I’m cold all the time. What to do? Buy nice sweaters. So I did. And now I’m warm. I like that.
Consume less but better:
I already have too much shit, and I really don’t need anymore. Everything I buy in 2010 will be thought through, and either replace something of lesser value, or fill a gap that is justified in making me do my work, or everyday chores, better. This means getting rid of my CD and DVD-collection (I don’t listen to music or watch movies one physical media anymore), and a bunch of electronics that lie around but are never used (thus making the Internet Garage Sale-clone).
This a bunch of introvert self-praising, but it helps me write what I want to do in the coming year, if I want to complete it. Last year I wrote I wanted to take a photo and blog every day. That didn’t happen. Hopefully I can write one blog post every week; if I stop bitching about shit on Twitter, I should save right about the same amount of time every week it takes for me to write a blog post.
Åbent brev til Ulla Snetoft Ødum
Kære Ulla.
Det er en sjov kommentar du har lagt på K-forum hvor du kommer med en stribe udmeldinger jeg synes fortjener at blive fulgt op på i samme gode tone som du selv lagde for dagen overfor Twitter:
“Twitter fejler totalt på det sociale plan”
Hvordan fejler det? Kan du ikke følge dine venner og veninder på Twitter som du gør på Facebook? Er det fordi du aldrig har fået en relation via Twitter som udmøntede sig til noget du kunne bruge i din hverdag – privat og arbejdsmæssigt? Eller noget helt tredje?
“Ingen bruger det!”
“Alle bruger det!” kunne man også sige. Sandheden ligger vel midt imellem – de har en del brugere og en del sidevisninger, men mange dropper det hurtigt igen (kender du det?): A collection of Social Network Stats for 2009.
“Det har overhovedet ikke fanget an i Danmark.”
Du har så evigt ret. Enhver ved at alle på Tweetr.dk er bots der taler dansk. Og man kan i øvrigt heller ikke samle 150 Twitter-brugere en almindelig torsdag aften og skrabe 30.000,- ind til et godt formål. Så lidt har det fænget an!
“Det er bare en tom skal og et mediehype.”
Det er hypet, ja. Men en tom skal? Nej. Jeg tvivler på jeg ville have lært så mange fantastiske mennesker at kende på samme tid ved at banke på døre som jeg har gjort ved at engagere mig i Twitter (og til dels Jaiku i sin tid).
“Det har verdens dårlige brugerflade.”
Nej, det har Jakob.
“Fyldt med latterligheder og fejl.”
Den må du gerne lige uddybe?
“Der er [...] intet netværk.”
Nej, der er ingen der kender hinanden – fx er det kun 60% af mine tweets der er rettet til andre. Det er jo småting.
“Den nyhedsopdaterende del [er jeg] skeptisk overfor – der findes vel andre kanaler til den slags.”
Kildekritik er altid godt, og ja, der findes andre kanaler. Der er bare lige det problem at de har det med at manipulere og fortælle løgne samtidig med at de er langsommere. Men hver sin smag åbenbart.
“Somehow [sic] så kan danskeren ikke håndtere mere end 1 medie.”
Den der er for tosset at kommentere på. Det burde du også vide. Hvis du mener de ikke kan holde til at opdatere både Facebook, blogs og Twitter, så har det vel mere at gøre med at mediet ikke passer dem? Det er masser af danskere der blogger, opdaterer Facebook og på anden måde bruger online medier til at udtrykke deres meninger – formentlig ofte mens de ser tv og måske endda i ny og næ mens de taler med de andre medlemmer af husstanden.
“Det korte og det lange er, at det duer ikke. Twitter har tabt.”
Ethvert firma der rejser $50 mio. har vel ikke rigtig tabt endnu. Ellers ville jeg gerne være en taber. Hellere det end en vinder uden penge.
“Jeg giver det max max [sic] 6 mdr, så er den fugl død [...]. Og jeg kan sige det med god samvittighed, for jeg har set tendensen.”
“Det der internet er sgu overvurderet – jeg gi’r det max seks måneder” er måske den joke der har kørt i længst tid blandt mine studiekammerater. Undskyld jeg grinte af dig – det var udelukkende fordi jeg troede det du skrev ovenfor var en joke. Og fedt du i øvrigt er helt foran på beatet og har set tendensen. Er videoblogging så det næste store?
“Jeg har selv ihærdigt prøvet i et godt stykke tid, twittet løs og lokket venner ind på uanstændige måder.”
Jeg ved ikke hvilke uanstændige måder du har lokket dine venner på (kan du evt. lige dele nogle tips og tricks fra den boldgade?), men du har i hvert fald ikke været særligt aktiv: twitter.com/ullasne. 13 followers og 15 following lyder ikke af meget, men du kan jo have skrevet 10000 tweets uden vi aner noget om det. Sådan går det når man af uransagelige årsager vælger at lukke sit feed.
“Man kan ikke finde sine venner.”
Måske er dine venner der ikke? Kan det tænkes du er… gisp… nej… frontløber? Nej da – du er jo videre og har “set tendensen“.
“Søgefunktionen på venner via Hotmail har ikke fungeret i laaang tid.”
Det har du sikkert ret i. Jeg har ikke brugt Hotmail i 5-6 år, så jeg ved det ikke. Prøv Gmail – det er skidegodt.
Nu skal det hele jo ikke være negativt, og du har bestemt nogle gode pointer. Det vælter ikke ligefrem med dem, men nogle få er der dog:
Brugerloyalitet
21% af brugerne har aldrig skrevet en update og over 50% har ikke skrevet en update i mere end 70 dage (“Twitter Contribution Studies“). Det kan umiddelbart læses som en kæmpe skuffelse (og med god ret langt hen af vejen), men samtidig står de mest loyale 10% af brugerne for 90% af al aktivitet og lur mig om det ikke er sådan på de fleste services af denne art (hvilket Facebook ikke er).
“Hvis man så oven i det tillægger, at det er en utrolig dårlig platform, som hele tiden går ned og har haft så mange børnesygdomme, at man skulle tro intet var tilbage.”
Igen har du ret. I 2008 synes jeg også jeg fik hilst lige rigeligt på Fail Whale’n (“Social network downtime in 2008“).
“Så altså en platform der ikke fungerer efter hensigten.”
Nok engang rammer du hovedet på sømmet, men anderledes end du tror. Facebook har altid været et sted at følge med i de aktiviteter din omgangskreds er involveret i, og bliver altid ved med at være det. MySpace derimod startede ikke som et sted hvor indie musikere kunne sprede deres musik, men det er det blevet. Det samme med Twitter; det var en gruppe-SMS service i starten, og har rykket sig til en near real-time microblogging platform. Hvad det så end betyder.
“[...] intet forum er bedre end sine brugere.”
Sandt. Derfor er det måske fint nok du ikke er at finde på Twitter mere?
“Danskerne er nogle sløve padder.”
Ja. Men de er søde alligevel.
“Klart at det ikke fanger an, hvis man [...] snakker med sig selv.”
Hvorfor gjorde du det så?
Mange hilsner,
Mark.
Ps. Dette indlæg er bevidst skrevet i samme stil som din kommentar på K-Forum. Du påstår en forfærdelig masse, og det er ikke godt at gøre det. Især når man kan finde statistikker der modsiger “argumenterne” du fik præsteret at fyre af. Jeg har det helt fint m
ed at Twitter ikke er noget for dig – jeg synes det er den mest fantastiske platform der nogensinde er bygget, og sådan er vi så forskellige. Det du bare overser i din kritik af Twitter er at du ikke har sat dig ordentligt ind i hvordan platformen fungerer og derfor generaliserer; det var dejligt følelsesladet, men det skal man holde sig fra at lave generelle antagelser ud fra.
Pps. Jeg håber du kan se igennem sarkasmen og grine lidt af det hele – måske endda vil give Twitter et ekstra forsøg? Jeg hjælper dig gerne ordentligt i gang, hvis du synes er for uoverskueligt (det har du ikke været ene om at synes).
[dk] Hvorfor AidOnline har fat i den helt forkerte ende
Der er skrevet meget om AidOnline i dag, og jeg skal blot henvise til Lars K. Jensens glimrende indlæg for en kort opsummering: Skørt AidOnline-annoncekoncept nasser på netmediernes trafik
Det jeg studsede mest over er det her statement fra deres FAQ-side:
De velgørende organisationer har hårdt brug for hjælp og lige nu henter de ingen penge på internettet. AidOnline er en utrolig billig form for fundraising, hvorfor vi håber at de kan slå igennem, ikke blot i Danmark, men i hele verden.
Sikke dog en gang forbandet vrøvl! Jeg var sammen med min gode ven Kristoffer arrangører af den københavnske del af et globalt event, Twestival (sammentrækning af Twitter + Festival). Arrangementet gik kort fortalt ud på at afholde et event for københavnske Twitter-brugere 12. februar (samme dag var der over 200 lignende arrangementer verden over) hvor vi havde en god aften med masser af glade mennesker.
Overskuddet fra de 200+ arrangementer gik til charity:water – en organisation der kæmper for rent drikkevand til de milliarder af mennesker der står uden det til dagligt.
I København var folk endog meget generøse, og vi fik samlet 15.000,- ind (selvom det ikke var alle tal der blev rapporteret korrekt og vi kun står for 1900 USD, så er det stadig langt over byer som Barcelona, Cleveland, Dublin, Philadelphia og mange mange andre).
Og hvor vil jeg hen med det?
Jo, Twestival blev stablet på benene på omkring tre uger (i København – andre lidt længere) og alt promotion blev gjort igennem Twitter. Ikke plakater, flyers, tv-reklamer, bannere og hvad man ellers kan finde på – kun Twitter, og vores blog på copenhagen.twestival.com.
I alt blev der skrabet 250.000 USD ind til charity:water, og det udelukkende vha. mund-til-mund, eller tweet-til-tweet om man vil. Altså var det et arrangement der er blevet til udelukkende fordi internettet gav muligheden for det.
De velgørende organisationer skal få hovedet ud af bagenden og tænke ud af boksen i stedet for at snylte som en anden parasit på annoncer (som jeg også finder irriterende, jovist) andre har betalt for. AidOnline burde skamme sig over at have sat sådan et projekt i verden og tage 20% for det (de er ikke en NGO, men et ApS), og jeg gider ikke give penge til nogle af de 11 organisationer der er med i projektet, hvis jeg kan undgå det.
Brug i stedet pengene på charity:water hvor du ved hvad pengene går til (100% af donationerne fra alm. velgørende mennesker går til at bygge brønde mens administration, rejser etc. er betalt af sponsorer). Jeg har selv lige smidt 10 dollars i boksen fordi jeg er så skuffet over de danske nødhjælpsorganisationer.
Ps. Lidt til at kaste op i munden over:
Din surfing på internettet kan betyde forskellen på liv og død for mennesker i nød
- Anders Ladekarl, Generalsekretær i Dansk Røde Kors