farner(in)

…it had Google Reader.  Why not just a feed reader?  I’ll explain.

If I had to estimate, I’d say that about two-thirds of the reading I do takes place inside Google Reader.  And not just my own subscriptions, but also the content shared by others.  I get a lot of value from those shared posts because, let’s face it – I don’t have time to sift through thousands of blog posts a day.  This is why a plain feed reader just wouldn’t do.  Sure, I’d be able to subscribe to and read blogs, but I’d be missing all the shared content and the sense of community I get inside Google Reader.

The Kindle isn’t built for that, at least not yet.  Is it great with books?  Absolutely.  But the blog reading situation needs to be vastly improved for me to even consider buying one and, unless that happens before April 3, I’ll be purchasing a different product instead.

Before the Abuzz iPhone app, there was another Abuzz – a community site run by The New York Times.  You can check out a snapshot of the old site here, courtesy of the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.

Two things come to mind:

1. I will never get to own the Abuzz domain – The New York Times still has it on lockdown until 2012 and I doubt they’ll be surrendering it after that.
2. How ahead of its time was this site?

Launched in 1999, the NYT Abuzz site was “social networking” before sites like Myspace and Facebook took center stage.  There was a question/answer format (similar to Yahoo! Answers or Mahalo Answers), a discussion section (which isn’t that original – forums and USENET were around for years) and section for publishing commentary, such as book reviews, reactions to news stories, and so on.

On top of that, the site attempted what many sites are still trying to do today – filter information and deliver only what it thinks will be relevant to you.  Pretty amazing stuff.

As you can see here, the site shut down on September 2, 2004, citing limited resources.  The fact that the NYT has held on to the domain name long afterwards means they think the domain is a valuable asset (I agree).  Do they have plans to utilize it in the future?  Who knows.  If not, and if anyone at the Times is reading this, I’ll gladly take it off your hands. ;)

I launched Abuzz last Thursday and heard lots of nice things from those who downloaded it.  From the bottom of my heart, I thank each and every one of you. :)  The app was born out of my own need for it.  I actually went into the App Store one day looking for something like it and was astonished that it didn’t exist.  So I got to work – mapping out the app and its various features.  I brought someone in to put it together and, in three months, I had a finished product.

But I failed to get Abuzz significant coverage, and that is my fault and my fault alone.

Other than Louis Gray’s great write-up, I couldn’t get a single other blog to run with it.  That tells me more than anything that the app isn’t as polished as it should be.  I had considered pushing out incremental updates, adding features every few weeks, but it’s clear to me now that those would only be bandages on a much bigger wound.  So the next iteration of Abuzz to see the light of day will be 2.0 (it will, of course, be released as an update, not as a separate app – I’m not pulling any Tweetie stuff, here).

I’ve listened to feedback and had a lot of great ideas come my way.  The interface will get an enormous facelift.  The user experience will be vastly improved.  The app will stand on its own both as a social media search tool and as a Twitter client.  I don’t want to let too much slip, but I’ll say this – I’m going to make sure the app is everything it should be.

Be sure to follow @abuzzapp for updates.

This post takes a look back at my 5 ballsy social media predictions for 2009 post, written on December 20, 2008.

Needless to say, there will not be a predictions post written for 2010.  I am clearly not Desmond Hume (come on, LOST nerds).

1. Twitter will be bought. Nope.  They did, however, get a huge boost from Oprah.  Oh yeah, they also negotiated a few search deals and started *gasp* making some money. (0 for 1)
2. Plurk will disappear. Ahh, Plurk – the little microblogging service that should have quit a long time ago.  Instead, they persist.  I logged into the site for the first time in a year only to find that it looks exactly the same.  And by the same, I mean creepy. (0 for 2)
3. Louis Gray will surpass Robert Scoble in blog traffic. I thought this one was a slam dunk.  Robert thought it could happen.  Where did it all go wrong?  The two were separated by as few as 16,110 uniques in May 2009.  But in June 2009, Building 43 was launched and Robert blogged a bit more often.  When FriendFeed sold to Facebook in August, it was game over.  Scoble returned to his blog fortress and made me wrong yet again.  (0 for 3)
4. Pandora will all but kill Last.FM. Bzzzzt, incorrect.  Last.FM lives on due to the fact that, well, it works outside the United States.  Pandora does not.  In my own life, Slacker Radio has taken the lead – I suggest you give it a try.  And if you haven’t Groovesharked yet, please do it right now. (0 for 4)
5. The labels will introduce a mixtape service. Can you say “oh-for-five”?  I could have cheated right here and counted Apple’s “compile a bunch of songs in a mix and buy them for a friend” feature as a mixtape service but the labels had little to do with that.  (0 for 5, in case you forgot)

Do you have the results of your own predictions?  I’d love to see them.  You could not have done worse than me. ;)

Well, it’s an iPhone app. :)

Abuzz lets you search Twitter, the blogosphere, the forumsphere (or whatever it’s called) and Digg.  It lets you organize your keyword searches into campaigns so that you can keep your related searches together.  You can search all the supported services at once or customize your search to include results from just one or two.

What’s really cool about Abuzz is the built-in Twitter client.  It’s lightweight (just like the rest of the app) but gives you everything you need – you can tweet out, send replies, send direct messages, view profiles, follow/unfollow and so on.  You can interact with the tweets in your own timeline and your searches, which frees you from having to open another app if you want to take action on a tweet you’ve found in a search.

Let’s say you work for Apple and want to set up searches for the iPhone and Macbook.  You could open the Abuzz app, create a new campaign called “Apple” and add keyword searches for “iPhone” and “Macbook”.  It’s that easy.  You won’t waste a lot of time navigating through a dedicated Twitter app to set up searches or browsing through Safari trying to search blogs, forums and Digg.  Abuzz is social media search, plain and simple.

So where’s Abuzz?  We’re squashing our last round of bugs at the moment and we’ll probably have an App Store-ready app in three or four days. Keep your eyes peeled two or three weeks into January!  And if you have some search services you’d like to see available inside Abuzz, let me know!  Shoot an email to features@abuzzapp.com.

First things first – read this post.  Go ahead.  I’ll wait for you.

…

Now, let me try to figure out where you stand.  You could be in one of three camps:

1. You respect Chris Brogan and you’re put off by that post,
2. You think the blogger is raising some valid points, or
3. You just don’t care

If you’re in Camp #1, you’re thinking and feeling the same way that I do.  If you sifted through the comments, you probably saw a lot of other people feeling the same way.  You might have even seen my comment.

I thought long and hard about what I wanted to say.  I was definitely going to say something – there’s no question about that.  I thought about the various avenues I could take.  Most social media types would tell us to be courteous, right?  Maybe I could leave a comment that politely acknowledged something in the post that had validity and then calmly make my case against the rest.  Yeah, that’s what I could do!

Nah.  I’d rather call him a tool.  That’s being real.

While we’re building all these relationships, we need to remember to maintain them, too.  That means having that person’s back.  If someone were to talk down one of my close friends, I would not let that fly.  When someone launches an unwarranted attack on a respectable guy like Chris, I won’t let that fly, either.

The same goes for my tweeps, my FriendFeeders, my PodCampers, BarCampers, blog readers and anyone else I like and respect.  If we’re going to push for authenticity and trumpet for more emotion by means of social media, then we need to start being more human.  I’m a pretty considerate guy and I try to be as nice as possible as much as possible.

But sometimes, you can’t be.  Sometimes you need to fight back.

T-shirts are fun little conversation starters.  If I’m not wearing something utterly ridiculous (my “I <3 Hot Moms” shirt, for instance… that photo isn’t me, by the way), I’m probably wearing a shirt from a Podcamp or one with a Web 2.0 company’s logo.  When it’s the latter, I’m essentially a walking billboard for that particular company.  I don’t mind though – hell, I got a free shirt.

You wouldn’t believe how many people have asked, “What’s socialmedian?” or “What’s Strands?”  A guy behind the counter at a gas station in Hershey once asked me what BarCamp Harrisburg was.  And because I love this stuff, I don’t mind talking a bit about it.  Have I sent potential users to any of these sites?  I really have no idea.  There’s no Google Analytics for real life.  The potential is there, though.

So send more shirts out to more people.  Don’t just give them away in the Bay Area – send them everywhere.  You’ll generate some good will and possibly create an evangelist for your product.  If you want an example, look at this post.  I was more than happy to link to a few companies and I’ll be more than happy to talk about them in the future to anyone who asks.

How much did it cost them?  One t-shirt.

These posts trouble me.

Why?  Because social media is not an exact science.  Have you read any peer-edited journals on the subject, lately?  I haven’t.  What I have read, though, are books, blog posts and white papers that make pretty compelling arguments.  But I don’t take them for gospel and neither should you.  After all, you have a brain – right?  No one has a monopoly on ideas.

It bothers me that there has to be a certain method.  It bothers me that there are prerequisites being thrown out there.  ”Well, if so and so isn’t doing this, they’re probably not the real deal.”  Spend less time talking about your competition and more time making your work better. I have to applaud GM for doing this – their “May The Best Car Win” campaign is great.  They’re saying, “Hey, we think we have a pretty good car, here.  So try ours, try our competition’s and may the best car win.”  That is confidence.

I will credit Advertising Age with producing the only true “snake oil” post worth its salt.  They don’t create a ridiculous list to celebrate themselves and disqualify everyone else.  In a nutshell, they say use common sense.

I won’t bag on those who are doing what I do.  I like you people.  I won’t claim to be a know-it-all because that’s impossible.  But I’m always learning and always trying to get better.  Call me crazy, but I think karma is a real thing – I’d rather help you than tear you down.

I wish everyone else shared that philosophy. :)

I have to say that I’m really liking the new features Google has tossed into Reader.  It’s always been a great RSS reader in my mind but the social features have added a whole new dimension.  On top of sharing (which we’ve had for awhile), we can now follow other users, like items and comment in a way similar to how we’ve done on the lifestream service I will not mention.  It seems like Google is trying to fill a void that hasn’t quite opened yet but could sometime in the future.  Kudos to them.

A few gripes though.  Why is the following/commenting system so borked?  If someone is following me, I want them to be able to comment on my stuff.  End of story.  If we’re following each other then I’d really expect them to be able to comment on my stuff.  But they can’t.  I have to put them into a group in order for them to comment and vice versa.  That just seems odd to me.

Another thing – refresh rate.  Can we get a faster refresh time?  Or how about real-time?  I’ve been spoiled, Google.  I’m sorry.

One more thing – notifications.  I would love to be notified somehow if someone has commented or liked an item I’ve shared.  There’s no easy way to figure this out at the moment – you just scroll, click and pray.  FriendFeed (oops, I mentioned them) puts your liked/commented-on items at the top of your feed.  Facebook pops up a little red alert at the bottom of the screen when someone interacts with your content.  Can we have this Google?  Please?

My wish list aside, I’m liking the attention that Reader is getting lately and plan to start spending a lot more time in it.  I don’t see it as just a feed reader anymore but as social discovery tool.  This was a major draw for FriendFeed and I’m glad that another option is shaping up.

Want to follow me in Google Reader?  Please do.  http://www.google.com/reader/shared/shawnfarner

Now that I’m one day out from Facebook’s acquisition of FriendFeed, I’m starting to see the move through a less emotional lens.  Do I still feel like the FriendFeed team sold us out?  Absolutely.  Is it their fault, though, that all the work we’ve put into our FriendFeed accounts might vanish one day?  I’m afraid not.

The fact is, nothing lasts forever, and the FriendFeed sale has made that more apparent to me than ever.  Money talks, and not just for small startups but bigger companies, as well.  If a product or venture isn’t making money, it either needs to start or it needs to disappear – that is what is in the best interest of the investors or shareholders.  And unfortunately, while we the customers help these companies grow, they don’t answer to us.

I fear for the future, now.  FriendFeed is not the only service I use on a regular basis and it certainly isn’t the only free service I use.  What if AOL decides one day that the AIM servers aren’t worth keeping on?  What if Twitter can’t monetize, its investors become impatient and it sells in a way similar to FriendFeed?  The only platform I can truly depend on to stick around is my blog, which is why I’m going to bring it back into the fold again.  The blogosphere needs to become a bigger piece of my conversation pie because, honestly, my trust in microblogging has been shaken.

If you’re a FriendFeeder with a blog, I would love to connect with you and toss your feed into my Google Reader list.  Leave me a comment and maybe some other visitors will subscribe to you, too.

Remember again – nothing lasts forever.  Especially things that are being given to you for free.  Choose the place you converse and make connections wisely, because it might not be around tomorrow.