SOMEWHAT FRANK

140 Conference In More Than 140 Characters

Two weeks ago I was able to take part in the 140 Conference hosted by Jeff Pulver in New York City. I was pleased to be among the characters at the event which brought together Twitter users from a number of different walks of life and geographic locations. While there were a number of highlights at the event I think my biggest takeaways were as follows:

• Twitter is about love as people share their thoughts and assemble an army of supporters online and off
• Twitter is the ultimate social recommendation feed reader and start page for many
• Twitter's text messaging capabilities make it a powerful tool for reporting and organizing groups while on the go - bypassing regular text messaging protocols
• Twitter is a connector, touching so many people in all walks of life

A number of my friends, followers and colleagues spoke at the event and while there are too many to mention in one article without vomiting the entire conference schedule. I thought I would share a few tidbits, photos and videos from the two day Twitter love fest. If you missed the event you can watch it streamed live on June 29th (Day 1) and June 30th (Day 2) starting at 11AM EST. The re-broadcast can be watched over at: http://140conf.com/watchit

Filtrbox Launches Hot Twitter Influence Tool

How important is influence on the Web? My friend Micah Baldwin recently called Influence the New Hotness. I agree, Influence is hot and it is nothing new though the currency has changed. Just a few years back the most important currency was incoming links to your website, now it is real-time re-tweets via Twitter or "likes" on Facebook's news feed. The social tools today are enabling people to influence the Web via real-time communications.

With Twitter being a hot tool that is empowering people to influence others, I was curious to see just how influential I am on Twitter. Thanks to Filtrbox you can now answer that very question by simply entering your Twitter username and clicking submit. Filtrbox just launched the Twitter Influence Checker today and I got chance to give it a try. It turns out my Twitter account @frankgruber has a Twitter Influence score of 8 out for 10.

MLB Baseball Manager Sues Twitter Over Fake Account & Fuels Online Identity Debate

The issue of online identity has been an age old issue online as some users leverage the Web to manage multiple personas and online identities. Though there are initiatives like OpenID and OAuth that look to help remedy the situation, it still is somewhat difficult to verify true online identity. This opens the door to online identity impersonation. In many cases, someone creates a fake account to playfully mock another person which could be taken as the ultimate form of flattery. But in other cases the mocking can turn downright insulting. This seems to be the case with the fake Twitter account of St. Louis Cardinals Manager Tony La Russa. He has also experienced a fake account of his own and he is not taking it lightly as he is suing Twitter over it. According to TechCrunch the suit was filed in the Superior Court of California in San Francisco seeking “unspecified damages.”

According to ESPN the following Tweet was made from a fake Tony La Russa account on April 19, 2009:

"Lost 2 out of 3, but we made it out of Chicago without one drunk driving incident or dead pitcher."

This is a pretty distasteful tweet as it references two St. Louis pitchers that tragically passed away (Darryl Kile in 2002 & Josh Hancock in 2007). Twitter reacted by taken down the fake account.

This is the second Twitter lawsuit (the first I recall was the Courtney Love Defamation Suit), but it could cause an avalanche of attention and potential copycat lawsuits. Online user generated content businesses should be ready to address such an issue as I am sure we have not seen the last of it.

Since fake accounts can be so destructive, I am wondering what Twitter or other sites should do to address things like this. I feel it is time for people to be real and even switched my twitter name to my real name as social Web has transformed into place of true identity. Should sites allow users to have multiple accounts unlinked to a true identity? By doing so this could cut down the number of fake accounts as they would need to be connected to a real identity thus adding a level of transparency. Is Twitter at fault here or should they put the blame on the user? 

Photo above by toadstool ring on Flickr

The Twitter Formerly Known As @somewhatfrank

Last week, I decided it was time to be totally Frank with people and changed my Twitter username from @somewhatfrank to my real name @frankgruber. For those of you that follow me on Twitter you probably saw the update. While some questioned me on making the change others gave it a warm welcome.

Something must be in the air because after switching my name from @somewhatfrank to @frankgruber, I realized that both Chris Messina and Matt Galligan recently switched from their online identities to their real names on Twitter. Chris posted about his name change on his blog. Maybe we should start some sort of support group or something for people teetering on going with their real-names. I just wanted to let you know why I made the change.

Tropicana Helps Track Twitter Election Tweets

Watch election 2008 related twitter activity today thanks to the Tropicana micro-site that launched just in time for the election called An Orange America. Check out the live twitter analysis of proposition related information plotted with arches (above). Oh and don't forget to vote and tweet about it today.

12Seconds Twitters Short Videos

Do you have 12 seconds? 12seconds, a Santa Cruz, California based startup, launched recently to offer users the ability to record short format video messages (12 seconds to be exact) and distributes them directly to a Twitter account. The site functions as a community destination as it also offers users the ability to follow others users on the site itself in a video stream format similar to twitter stream.

The site offers a simple layout and appears to be built on a drupal content management system framework. It also offers users simple recording and email video uploading features to enable users to input content. Videos can be embedded in other sites though a custom 12seconds player. Currently the player does not offer snaggable code.

Twitter Acquires Summize Real-Time Search

Yesterday Twitter casually announced on its blog the acquisition of Summize, a Virginia-based real-time search startup calling it "A Perfect Match." I could not agree with them more as they wasted little time and have launched a new search Twitter Search tool at search.twitter.com. If you are a heavy Twitter user then you have encountered problems using Twitter as they at times have had to turn off certain features leaving many to find other means, like Summize as shown in this recent tweet.

The deal is said to be worth $15M stock and cash and depending upon how long the team stays at Twitter they could benefit from Twitter eventually getting acquired too. Congrats to the Virginia/DC-based Summize team who are also DC TECH cocktailers as it does look to be an ideal exit and integration into Twitter.

Twitter Man Hooks Up With AIM Status

Setting  your status message on a social networking application has become fairly standard but keeping all of your status updates flowing through all your social networks can be somewhat tricky and time consuming. I previously wrote about twitterfeed which I use to send some of my updates from Flickr and SOMEWHAT FRANK directly to Twitter. I also wrote about Matt which helps to post single status updates to multiple twitter accounts. But I just found out about a new way to leverage AIM instant messenger to set my status on Twitter.

Matt: Twitter From Multiple Accounts

Do you have multiple twitter accounts that you are constantly flipping between to post messages? I do. It is pretty annoying to keep having to logout and then log back in. The Carsonified team made it a challenge to help remedy this problem with their four day development sprint which is similar to the hugs they created last year. With the creation of Matt, which stands for Multiple account twitter tweeter, you can now post to multiple accounts from one place. Simple but brilliant - thank you Carsonified. Personally, I love the design - lots of fun! :)

The Carsonified team created the application in just four days and for around $10,000. They also blogged and captured the creation process on video, including a time lapse video of Day One.

Read Books In Small Doses On Twitter

DailyLit, a creative daily book delivery offering, has just added another means for users to consume book contents in small digestible increments by enabling a Twitter groups with daily updates. If you are interested in reading your books in short, serialized installments via Twitter, DailyLit is offering the following three titles available for free:

• TwitterID: DailyLitMagicK
  Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
  128 readers (followers)
  
• TwitterID: DailyLitPride
  Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice
  68 readers (followers)
  
• TwitterID: DailyLitSucceed
  Tom Peters's 100 Ways to Success/Make Money
  60 readers (followers)

Twitter users will be able to follow the selected title each day with Twitter updates providing a link to that day's installment. This release further shows DailyLit's devotion to making book reading more manageable in our everyday busy lives.

Plurk: Twitter With Vertical Timeline & Karma

Last week, I looked at Plurk, a new lifestreaming startup based in Toronto, Canada. Aside from its creative name, Plurk leverages concepts from Twitter to offer an unique timeline based lifestreaming product worth taking a look at.

Plurk takes on status messaging with a little more structure than Twitter by offering up a set of verbs to construct a status message. It also enables users to share videos and photos from a host of popular video and image hosting sites from YouTube to Flickr. Plurk status messages can also include emoticons for some added flair.

CNet and Ars Technica Acquired, Life Streaming Architecture, Crowdsourcing Workflow, Ad Design Tactics & A Flickr Case Study

Photo of the Week: This is a photo of the TECH cocktail RACING Pine Wood Derby car which took 6th place out of 41 at this years Threadless.com Threadle Manss this past weekend.

SOMEWHAT FRANK Weekly Tidbits: 05.18.2008

NIN Challenges Music Business Model, Biofuels Compared, Widget Format, Google Reader Sharing Notes, Twitter Tools & Avatars

Photo of the Week: This photo of tulips taken by Melissa Goodman would somewhat frankly make a nice gift for mom as I wish all the moms out there Happy Mother's Day.

SOMEWHAT FRANK Weekly Tidbits: 5.11.2008

How Bad Is Your Twitter Addiction?

Twitter, like anything, can be a little addictive as we look to reach out and communicate with all our friends and followers. Xefer has pulled together an interesting mashup which leverages Yahoo Pipes and Google Chart API to plot the usage of twitter of a specific user. So of course, I had to plug the somewhatfrank twitter id in and chart it.

Give it a try here for your twitter username.

Microsoft Pulls Back Yahoo Offer, False Alarm Fuels PHP vs. Rails Debate, Online Personas, Social Wedding Planning & iVentures Launches

Photo of the Week: The new Nationals Park in Washington, D.C. hosted the Chicago Cubs last weekend I got a chance to see the "big headed" Presidents Race up close and took this shot.

SOMEWHAT FRANK Weekly Tidbits: 5.4.2008