SOMEWHAT FRANK

AllFacebook Launches Facebook Page Stats Tool

It appears that people will no longer be in the dark as to how well fan pages are doing on Facebook as AllFacebook has launched Facebook stat pages. Nick O'Neill, a DC blogger, friend and closet programmer, has been working furiously the last month or so to roll out the page tracker system that keeps track of over 620,000 Facebook Fan pages. The tracking pages offer charts like the one to the left that upon hover offers users to pinpoint specific cross sections on the chart.

Filtrbox Media Monitor Service Coming Soon

Filtrbox, a Boulder-based startup which was founded about a year ago as part of the first TechStars program, will soon be launching a self-service business-grade keyword driven alerts product. Filtrbox offers keyword driven media search which includes the blogosphere & mainstream news.

I was intrigued by the five person filtrbox team when they demoed at TECH cocktail Boulder back in March 2008. I recently got a more thoroughly overview of the private beta product as they approach a public beta launch and I wanted to share my thoughts on the product as I am excited about using this product. It is probably one I will be using a lot as I look to monitor my own online reputation as well as other online activities. I also think filtrbox could come in handy in monitoring information related to your entire investment portfolio.

Compete Cashes In, Acquired By TNS

Compete, the Boston-based web analytics and online market research firm startup founded in 2000, was just acquired by Taylor Nelson Sofres plc (TNS), a leading market information and insight company for $75 Million. Compete leverages clickstream data to determine traffic, engagement and other valuable analytics. According to the press release TNS plans to leverage this data  to provide insight based on online and offline behavior and on consumer attitudes. Congrats to Compete on the recent acquisition!

XING Reports 5 Million Members

XING, the social network for professionals which is extremely popular in Europe, has just published some numbers showing off its continued growth. According to a recent release, XING, has 5 million members registered which has contributed to reached revenues of 19.61 million euros or approximately 28.74 million U.S. dollars. XING founder and CEO, Lars Hinrichs had this to say:

"We delivered outstanding results for the 2007 fiscal year, and have already demonstrated this year that XING is not only an active consolidator in the European business networking market, but is also striding ahead with organic growth and has shown incredible innovation."

Some of this could be attributed to additional revenue streams that were created by expanding XING's e-Commerce and Advertising.

AOL Redesigns Seem To Be Paying Off

The latter part of last year, AOL redesigned a number of its channel offerings including News, Sports and Money & Finance in an effort to increase engagement and traffic starting with AOL News in June 2007. According to a recent release by AOL, it appears that these changes are paying off. The redesign offers a cleaner design and more blog-like social platform than before which might have contributed to increases in key metrics like Page Views and Unique Visitors.

TubeMogul Distributes & Tracks Online Videos

Getting your online video distributed on multiple sites on the Web can be a bit of a time consuming task but TubeMogul looks to make your life a lot easier. With Berkeley-based startup TubeMogul, you can simply upload your video once and then configure it to be sent to a number of video platforms at one time (i.e. YouTube, Blip.tv, MySpace Video, etc). TubeMogul, founded by a handful of Berkeley graduate students, also offers video metrics for all the videos that you upload through the service to help paint a more clear picture of exactly how your video is performing online. This could come in pretty handy when it comes to selling advertisements around online video. TubeMogul recently announced a series A round of funding from Knights Bridge Capital.

AideRSS Helps With RSS Information Overload

Managing information overload is not an easy task these days with all the blogs, feeds and other content options filling up my feed reader. How can a user better navigate to the items that might interest them the most? This is a tough problem to solve as every users is different. AideRSS is trying to solve this problem by helping to filter out the noise and deliver only the content the most popular content by sampling the wisdom of the crowds.

Moo Stickers Arrive (Literally)

Moo, a UK-based printing startup, puts an unique and personalized spin on traditional items like business cards and notecards. Moo loves to print as they continue to roll out additional offerings. In mid-July, Moo announced the launch of Moo StickerBooks.

Engagd Attention Platform Launches

Engagd, created by Faraday Media, has launched to offer web developers a toolkit of services for tracking attention data (the things users do on the Web).  Leveraging Attention Profiling Mark-up Language or APML, Engagd offers a few different Web services empowering users to control their own personal Attention Profiles, and developers to quickly and easily add Attention Awareness to their applications and mashups.

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.

AOL Feeds Now Powered by FeedBurner

Since I was pretty tied up with TECH cocktail 4 the past couple of days, I did not get a chance to weigh in on the fact that FeedBurner, the Chicago-based feed management company, had announced the signing of a deal to manage the feeds for the AOL Network. In talking with FeedBurner CEO Dick Costolo at TECH cocktail 4, he was very pleased about the deal and mentioned the announcement forthcoming (the following morning).

Aside from my Chicago connection, I have been working with FeedBurner since coming on to work for AOL so I am happy to have the deal finalized - they have a great team and offer publishers services. AOL will now be able to leverage all of FeedBurner's metrics and FeedFlare to tie into social media services like Netscape, Digg and Facebook and feed advertising. Congrats to FeedBurner on continuing to grow an impressive publisher network from their home-base in "Sweet Home Chicago."

Trixie Tracker: Log A Baby's Every Move

Trixie Tracker offers a simple online application for parents to keep track of their baby's various activities. While this may sound a little obsessive, I would have to say it may help parents to organize their baby's lives. Trixie Tracker aims to help parents keep better tabs on the various activities surrounding a baby so that they have a record to analyze and gain a better understanding of their baby's habits.

Trixie Tracker, which logged its 100,000 nap in 2006, is organized with a number of tabs with each set up for a different tracking category. The tracking categories are sleep, diapers, bottles, solids, nursing, pumping and medicine. Trixie Tracker is currently offering a free 2 week trial and then is $14.95 for 3 months billing periods or $8 per month if you go month to month. The current logged numbers are shown in the image below.

I do not expect to use this site anytime in the near future, as I do not have a baby, but a colleague of mine is preparing for twins so this might be the web's gift to him and others expecting an arrival soon.

Me.dium For Real-time Attention-based Social Networking Interactivity

Me.dium offers an innovative and compelling application that blends real-time web attention-data with instant messenger social networking capabilities.

Similar to MyBlogLog, you can see when others are visiting a particular site you might be visiting, the major difference is that you can see what sites others around the web are visiting too. Me.dium offers social network capabilities allowing users to connect with other Me.dium users you encounter via instant messenger (shown in the left pane of the screen-shot to the left).

Me.dium requires that you download a browser extension or to be able to interact with others. Me.dium incorporates social interactivity which could act as a discovery mechanism. Me.dium also creates a browsing profile for each of its users and then acts as social matchmaker by connecting users with similar browsing profiles. Stowe Boyd made the following comparisons:

"This is very similar to the Eyebees concept that a client of mine was working on years ago, or other similar ideas, like lluna. However, the design of Me.dium -- embedding this navigator in the sidebar -- is truly great."

I first encountered Me.dium at the TechCrunch 8 event (early November 2006) as they demonstrated their latest creation and they have been busy perfecting the experience every since. At first sight I  thought Me.dium offered a unique community feel however I also instantly thought about potential invasion of web browsing privacy. However, I particularly liked the way that Me.dium handles turning on and off the tracking capabilities they refer to as "sharing" thus putting my privacy concerns at ease. The Me.dium Firefox extension places a "sharing" on/off toggle in the upper right corner of the browser (shown to the right).

The latest version was showcased at the most recent 2007 DEMO conference - watch the Me.dium demo here. Or if clicking the demo link is too much work you could just watch below as Kimbal Musk, Me.dium CEO, demos the product on the Scoble Show.

Bottom-line: Me.dium offers users a unique interactive experience while visiting any web site which could lead to discovery of new friends and web sites.

Web Influencers, Netvibes Security Issues, AIM is #1, Go2Web20.net Revamped, Attention 200 & Design Geekery

It rained quite a bit this week in Silicon Valley so I thought this photo titled rain on tuesday taken by Daisy Romwall was appropriate.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 02.11.07

The Wizards of Buzz
The Wall Street Journal took an in-depth look at some of the social bookmarking sites that help others to discover the hottest content on the web. These sites include Digg.com, Netscape, Reddit, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon and Newsvine – all of which empower users to submit content items from around the web. Items are rated and promoted via voting or other mechanisms within the site.The most popular or highest rated items bubble to the top and usually become even more popular as traffic surges towards sources of these hot content items. These social bookmarking sites are managed by a number of users but there are some key influencers that do the most consistent heavy lifting. WSJ put out a podcast to go along with the article and it can be downloaded here.

Netvibes module developer collects web creds, personal content
Niall Kennedy highlights how Netvibes, the personal homepage startup, recently experienced some serious security issues. Netvibes was recently praised by Wall Street Journal reporter Walt Mossberg, but it appears its open-source approach to development has left its users at the mercy of rogue developers. What does this mean? Basically, it means a rogue module developer could take advantage of Netvibes’ users to steal personal information like emails, bank information and just about anything else personal you might find in a homepage module. This is unfortunate for Netvibes as most of its quick growth and development is due to its developer network. I guess Netvibes will have to rethink its security and privacy approach if it or risk losing the trust of its users.

Wall Street Journal IM Ratings: AIM Is #1
What instant messaging product do you use? If its not AOL’s AIM 6.0 you may want to reconsider your choice as an article published this week in the WSJ titled "Rating the New Instant-Messaging Programs" compared AIM 6.0, Yahoo! Messenger 8.1, and Windows Live Messenger 8.1. AIM 6.0 was rated #1.

A Lesson in Viral Video
Inside Higher Education details the events surrounding the Web 2.0 video created by Michael Wusch which Somewhat Frank helped surface in the blogosphere. The article further emphasizes the viral power of the web and the influences of the blogosphere.

Go2web20 Relaunched!
The popular and slick web 2.0 directory created by Orli Yakuel has been revamped and relaunched with a number of improvements which should make the faster and easier to use. It should also offer more information for users. Included in the changes is the creation of a few innovative advertising options.

RocketDock: Add A Mac-like Dock To Your PC
If you are a Mac-lover stuck in a PC-user’s body then you might want give RocketDock a try. Lifehacker recently showcased it as a download of the day so I gave it a try. Upon installing the application created by Punk Software it instantly fulfilled my longing for a Mac-like dock for managing my desktop. Here is an instructional video which details the various configuration options of this nifty little add-on. Oh and buy some schwag or donate to support their development efforts.

31 Places to Monitor Your Reputation Online
If you are into tracking what people might be saying about you online you might want make sure you are checking a bunch of online sources. This article lists 31 places to keep your online reputation in check.

23 Signs That You're Becoming a Design Geek
While developing products I often find myself thinking I am a designer and I know I am not alone. I am admittedly not even close to the skill level of a full-fledged UI designer (like the designers I work with at AOL – they rock!). Nonetheless, this article will give you 23 design geek signs.

Announcing: The Compete Attention 200™
Compete recently posted a list of the top 200 online destinations based on their metrics tracking systems. Surprisingly, Somewhat Frank did not make the Attention 200 – this has to be some sort of mistake.  :-)

Widgets, Modules & Marketing, Breakthrough Ideas of 2007, Google Attention Tracking & Web 2.0 Mainstream

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 02.04.07

First things first, today is Super Bowl XLI and I am from Chicago which means I will be rooting on the Bears today. The photo above shows the Merchandise Mart in Chicago supporting the team by shining the team's orange and blue colors. Go Bears!

Desktop Modules Help To Personalize Data, Cut Through Clutter
Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal dissects the various personalized start page options. He is a Netvibes user but critiques all the other options as well and even hints at a new version of My Yahoo coming soon.

Widget Marketing
Lee Odden of Online Marketing Blog explains how widgets are a great way to help market your site or blog. He even shows off his recent Widgetbox creation.

Desktop Widgets 101
Mike Arrington takes a moment to point out the differences between desktop and web widgets. Widgets are sexy in 2007 and so I would highly recommend you know what they are.

The HBR List: Breakthrough Ideas for 2007
Harvard Business Review's annual survey of emerging ideas considers how nanotechnology will affect commerce, what role hope plays in leadership, and why, in an age that practically enshrines accountability, we need to beware of “accountabalism.”

del.icio.us: overdue new year's resolutions
del.icio.us, the social bookmarking site, has grown to 1.5 million users. This article hints at upcoming integration with Yahoo, its parent company, and user interface updates.

Is Google building the Attention Economy?
Vecosys expresses view on the attention movement and explains Google's recent launch of new products (i.e. Google Reader Trends and Google Bookmark and Search History) that have been leveraging and surfacing attention data.

Mainstream Media Usage of Web 2.0 Services is Increasing
Has mainstream media recognized 'web 2.0'? This article by Read/Write Web takes a closer look at mainstream media adoption of 'web 2.0.'

News Search + Personalization + Social Media = Wikio
Wikio blends news search and personalization in a Digg-like layout. It also offers search and customization options to make it easy to get to items you might like.

Geeks love * tshirts for Sale
I love tee shirts that offer a cool design and this one was created by Cindy Li which fits the bill.