SOMEWHAT FRANK

Use twitterfeed.com To Aggregate Your Facebook Status Updates On Twitter

Though an early Twitter adopter, I found that when Facebook came out with its open application platform which included mobile and web status updates I stopped updating my twitter page as frequently. I just couldn't keep up with updating two places with my status updates. When you also factor in Flickr photo uploads, myAOL 'Mix & Share' Favorites and regular blog posts (on Somewhat Frank, TECH cocktail and myAOL Blog) I had to start to looking for a way to cut corners. I recently found twitterfeed.com, thanks to my good friend Eric Olson. Twitterfeed.com turns twitter into a status feed aggregator as you can pull all your status updates together to be published on twitter.

PMOGs Turn The Web Into A Game

Are you looking for a little more out of the time and energy you spend on the Web?  If so, you might want to check out a Passively Multiplayer Online Game or PMOG. A proposal created by Justin Hall, Passively Multiplayer Online Games look to create a game around your Web attention data. Justin Hall has been referred to by the NYTimes as the "the founding father of personal bloggers" and decided to create a game out of the Web with PMOGs as part of his Masters project at the USC Annenberg Center.

HeyCosmo Launches Free Interactive WebCam Collaboration Service

HeyCosmo, a product of Arsenal Interactive a Mountain View, California-based startup founded by Jason Im, launched into external beta yesterday to offer an interactive webcam platform with a host of collaboration tools.

I first met, HeyCosmo founder and CEO, Jason Im at Community Next in February and then hung out with him at the W Hotel in SF and got a preview of the product after the Web 2.0 Expo. In seeing the demo I could see HeyCosmo becoming extremely popular as it adds a "real" element to normal online interaction. It blends a Meeting Place or WebEx type application with the visual interactivity via a web cam. However, HeyCosmo does not appear to be positioning itself as a business application but more a fun way to sync up and have fun with friends online. With HeyCosmo you can have up to 10 live web-cam video participants and up to 50 people can listen, watch, and chat during a session. So imagine leveraging HeyCosmo to play a crazy game of poker online. You don't have to imagine too hard because HeyCosmo is already helping you to do it - check out the screen-shot below.

Since HeyCosmo is in beta it is only currently offered for use with Internet Explorer but I would expect that to change with time as HeyCosmo works out all the beta kinks. TechCrunch offers additional perspective on HeyCosmo.

UStream.tv To Broadcast Yourself Live

While online video upload sites have become extremely popular in the web 2.0 movement, it appears that live streaming video seems to be catching on fast. UStream.tv offers users the ability to create their own live web channel with live chat functionality.  Streaming video is by no means a new concept but the UStream.tv platform does make it easy for anyone with a web camera to become a real-life Truman Show like Justin.tv.

When I asked UStream.tv CEO Chris Yeh about their product he had this to offer:

“Our story is simple. We're bringing live internet video to everyone.  By removing the barriers to broadcasting, we allow the creativity of our users to flourish.  While many experiments will fail, UStream.tv is the test tube that will help build the future of media.”

Over the past week I have experienced the trend first hand as several people I encountered were using UStream.tv to bring streaming reality broadcasts to the web. At the Web 2.0 Expo I was interviewed by Jeremiah Oywang live via UStream, I also ran into Justin.tv at a couple of different events and Sarah Meyers, Lindsay Docherty and Brian Solis even got into the Justin.tv act. Blog veterans Robert Scoble and Chris Pirrillo are also getting into the act and leveraging UStream.tv to produce live broadcasts.

In attempting to watch UStream.tv I have experienced some poor video quality issues but I figure they will subside with time. I think that we are only at the beginning of what streaming web tv has to offer and UStream.tv is a vaulable part of the evolution process. Check out the end of my chat with Jeremiah Oywang in the hallway of the Web 2.0 Expo below to see the video quality I was referring to - it is a little choppy but still could be effective. 

List Of The Best Web 2.0 Startups

With the web 2.0 movement a flood of startup companies have innovated in the new web world. Today Real World Software Development has posted a large categorized list of web 2.0 startups. The list breaks down the startups into the following categories:

Aggregators - Blummy
Blog Filters - technorati
Business Software - ThinkFree
Calenders - HipCal
Classified & Business Directories - craigslist
Content Filtering - Filangy
Command Line - Ambedo
Education / School Life - mynoteIT
Email and Communication - GMail
Events - eventful
File Storage - Allmydata
Image Storing and Sharing - riya
Jobs and Work - Voices
Mapping - Google Maps
Mash-Ups - Ning
Music - Jamendo
News Sites - touchstonelive
Online Dating - YesNomayB
Parts - RSS2PDF
People News Production - diggdot
Project Management and Team Collaboration - Basecamp
Quotes - Quotiki
Real Estate - zillow
Shopping - etsy
Social Bookmarking Sites - StumbleUpon
Social Communities - facebook
Start Pages - PageFlakes
To Do Lists - Remember The Milk
Travel - dohop
Trusted Search - Rollyo.com
Validator - Web 2.0 Validator
Video Storage - YouTube
Web Site Analytics - Measure Map
Wiki - Wetpaint
Word Processing - Google Docs & Spreadsheets
World Improvement - 43things

I cannot say I agree with all of these picks as some products might be missing. However, if you are looking for a more visual and comprehensive representation of the startups of web 2.0 visit Orli Yakuel's Go2Web2.net.

Tailrank 2.0 Aggregator Rolled Out

Tailrank, the blog post aggregator, has launched a slick new interface redesign and a few additional features. According to the Tailrank blog:

"The majority of the work on this release has been on our ranking algorithms. Tailrank now breaks stories faster, cluster them better, and generally does a better job at finding the hottest news in the blogosphere."

The new Tailrank also enables a user to track each story via RSS or by AOL Instant Messenger. This could be a helpful feature with stories that get a lot of coverage and are worth tracking via IM alerts. Tailrank also introduced archives for the most popular stories of the week which could come in very handy if you miss a day or two of news. In addition to the algorithmic changes and story tracking features Tailrank is looking to expand to add new categories, like entertainment, with more to come soon. Finally, Tailrank hints at a number of new features within the next couple of weeks. It will be interesting to see what Tailrank 2.1 will bring.

Bottom-line: The new Tailrank looks much improved and will probably give Gabe Rivera's Techmeme some solid competition.

Related Link: Aggregators: Multiplying Like Rabbits

IceRocket Resurfaces with Blogger Stats

IceRocket, a blog search engine that gets mentioned less and less in the blog search discussions, has begun to offer a new blog metrics feature which might attract bloggers back. Similar to BlogBeat, which was acquired by FeedBurner, IceRocket is offering blog metrics.

Offering bloggers metrics might help IceRocket to reverse the downward decline in traffic over the past year (shown below). I recall almost two years ago IceRocket was a rising star along side Technorati in a very open blog search race. Technorati has continued to grow and companies like Sphere have been created and stolen some of the spotlight. I remember getting lots of referals from people finding my content via IceRocket blog search and have mentioned IceRocket a number of times on Somewhat Frank. What happened to IceRocket?

It will be interesting to see if IceRocket can use the metrics feature to delieve blogosphere reporting on the state of the IceRocket tracked blogosphere. Or is too late to stop IceRocket's downward traffic spiral?

Feed Alerts Over Instant Messenger & SMS

Do you want to stay connected with latest news updates from your favorite sources? Would you like to receive feed alerts and updates via instant messenger or over SMS? If the answer is yes to either of those questions you might want to read further as a few new services have popped up recently that might make it possible to get feed alerts anywhere.

FeedCrier is a new service created by Adam Kalsey, founder and former CTO of Pheedo. FeedCrier offers the ability to deliver feed alerts or updates via AOL Instant Messenger. Rick Klau of FeedBurner was the first to draw my attention to FeedCrier. Interestingly, Rick created a piece of FeedFlare to be added to the bottom of a feed. In case you do not recall what FeedFlare is, check here for refresher. The FeedFlare places a link at the bottom of your feed which offers you the ability to opt-in to FeedCrier instant messenger alerts. Rick has placed the FeedCrier FeedFlare here if you are interested in giving it a try.

TechCrunch also recently published a piece on FeedCrier which highlighted a few other similar services which included ZapTXT and Rasasa. TechCrunch had this to say about them:

"These other services are not limited to AIM, they offer autodiscovery bookmarklets and both ZapTXT and Rasasa incorporate SMS and email alerts as well. Rasasa’s push technology is the smartest, but isn’t supported by all US mobile vendors."

Read/Write Web wrote a piece on ZapTXT, sizing it up as a possible replacement for the keyword search product PubSub which recently folded.

While all products mentioned are innovative and pushing RSS feeds and syndication to new limits, the ability to not only instant messaging updates but also SMS alerts for on the go updates positions ZapTXT and Rasasa as slightly more appealing options.

Socialmeter: Do a Quick Link Count

Socialmeter aggregates how many links are being counted in several of the social search web sites. Currently, Socialmeter is tracking del.icio.us, Digg, furl, Google, Jots, Linkroll, Reddit, Shadows, Spurl, Technorati and Yahoo MyWeb.

Socialmeter could be a decent tool to get a quick idea of how many people are linking to a site. The number that is returned could be considered a measure of the popularity of a site. However, a link count as a measure of popularity can be slightly misleading since newer sites may be very popular but since they are new may not have as many links as older sites.

Social Search Web 2.0 Sites Categorized

With the evolution of social media, social search has been taking a shape of its own. There are a number of social search products that have emerged and become very powerful in a very short period of time. Search Engine Watch recently published a two part series written by Chris Sherman which first describes social search and its history and then introduces all the various types of social search products currently available. The second article breaks the social search products into six categories:

Shared bookmarks & web pages
        Del.icio.us, Shadows, Yahoo's MyWeb, Furl and Diigo

Collaborative directories
        Prefound, Zimbio and Wikipedia

Taggregators
        Technorati, Rojo and Bloglines

Personalized verticals
        Eurekster, Rollyo and Yahoo! Search Builder

Social Q & A sites
        Yahoo Answers, Google Answers, Answerbag, Wondir, Yedda
        and Live QnA

Collaborative harvesters
        Digg, Netscape, Reddit and Tailrank

I would highly recommend checking this article out for more detailed analysis of each of the six categories. 

Swicki & Rollyo Here Comes Yahoo! Search

Yahoo released a new search builder tool today which could directly compete with the Eurekster Swicki community search product (shown in the right rail) and Rollyo which allows you to roll your own search. The Yahoo Search Builder product will enable the production of a customized search results.

The release falls in line with the social or community direction that Yahoo! has been moving and makes sense. With Eureskster Swicki and Rollyo as the most direct competitors to the new Yahoo Search Builder, I find it ironic that Swicki uses the Yahoo search API on the back-end. So would Yahoo! consider gobbling up Swicki to gain some of Swicki's technological advantage over the past year? Eurekster was named one of the hottest startups! Rollyo recently launched a blog search feature which further differentiates itself from the field. I wonder what Jennifer Allen at Eurekster thinks of the release of Yahoo! Search Builder?

Topix Unveils New Design, Search Feature

Topix.net, the news and blog content aggregator, has launched a new fresh design for the layout of its homepage. The design includes a new logo as well as a new layout for the page. The old design is shown below on the left and the new design is shown further below.

In addition to a layout upgrade Topix.net has also released a very interesting historic search sliders that can be accessed by doing a search in the top search box. It appears Topix has been in contact with search guru, Danny Sullivan about the updates and wanted to get them out in time for the Search Engine Strategies show in San Jose. The new slider presents the live web search results for over 1 year. It reminds me of the slider that blog search engine Sphere currently uses to sift through blog search result by date.

These changes come on the heels of the Inform.com deal I highlighted last week. Bottomline: Topix.net offers a more esthetically pleasing product than Inform.com and the redesign amplifies that point.

The Hurricane Blog Debacle

The Slidell Hurricane Damage Blog, a blog which was created by the Weblogs Works team, recently was temporarily shut down by Weblogs Works. Just to bring you up to speed:

"Brian Oberkirch became a national figure last year when he covered the Hurricane Katrina disasater real time on his blog, slidell.weblogswork.com. The blog was linked to heavily by bloggers and news sites looking for the latest news on what was happening. Doc Searls linked over and over, and  Jeff Jarvis, Fred Wilson, Tom Evslin, Business Week, The Washington Post and others also linked."

The site was taken down which caused many blogs and mainstream media articles to have broken links and in essence break the "live web." Brian recently parted ways with Weblogs Work and Alex Muse and the company shut down the hurricane blog due to an apparent spam comment problem. Thankfully, after a blogosphere debated the masses appeared to prevail and Weblogs Work brought the site back up. Ah, another conversation filled day in the blogosphere showing us once again the power of the online community.  The moral of the story: don't break the web!

The Blogosphere Underground Exposed

Steve Rubel recently posted an interesting piece about the sea of emails, instant messages and bookmarks that are circulated behind the scenes by bloggers, reports and companies calling it the "Blogosphere Underground." The underground conversations are ongoing and sometimes can be overwhelming. Any blogger should be able to relate.

The blogosphere is the ultimate social network. It is a place for exchanging ideas and has connected me with some of the sharpest and most interesting people in the world - many are the thoughtleaders and influencers of the web 2.0 movement. To be quite honest, I cannot keep up with all the conversations behind the scenes all the time as my email fills up like a dirty martini glass at happy hour. Nonetheless, I love the community and interaction the blogosphere provides. Blog on!

Study Reveals Shift in How We Interact with the Web

A new browser study performed by University of Hamburg researchers found a shift in how we interact with the Web - moving from static hypertext information to dynamic interactive services. The report examining navigation by tracking page reloads, web site viewing patterns and screen size dimensions. According to the report:

"With the increase in new windows and use of AJAX, the back button has dropped from over 35% to less than 15% of all page transitions. Overall the trend reflects an increase in interactivity and form submission, with a corresponding 50% drop in the use of the back button for web navigation."

The complete rather lengthy but very interesting report can be found on WebsiteOptimization.com.