Jump Into The Stream

Cheers TechCrunch and Erick Schonfeld for this post on something i'm very passionate about: THE STREAM! Let's go swimming!

Once again, the Internet is shifting before our eyes. Information is increasingly being distributed and presented in real-time streams instead of dedicated Web pages. The shift is palpable, even if it is only in its early stages. Web companies large and small are embracing this stream. It is not just Twitter. It is Facebook and Friendfeed and AOL and Digg and Tweetdeck and Seesmic Desktop and Techmeme and Tweetmeme and Ustream and Qik and Kyte and blogs and Google Reader. The stream is winding its way throughout the Web and organizing it by nowness.

This real-time stream has been building for a while. It began with RSS, but is now so much stronger and swifter, encompassing not just periodic news and musings but constant communication, status updates, instantly shared thoughts, photos, and videos.

What does this mean for how we will come to consume information? John Borthwick from Betaworks has identified the real-time Web as a key investment opportunity (Betaworks portfolio companies include Twitter, bit.ly, Tweetdeck, Chartbeat, and Tumblr). He admits he and other investors are still feeling in the dark, but he describes the shift he is trying to capitalize on this way in a post titled “Distribution . . . now”:

First and foremost what emerges out of this is a new metaphor — think streams vs. pages.

In the initial design of the web reading and writing (editing) were given equal consideration - yet for fifteen years the primary metaphor of the web has been pages and reading. The metaphors we used to circumscribe this possibility set were mostly drawn from books and architecture (pages, browser, sites etc.). Most of these metaphors were static and one way. The steam metaphor is fundamentally different. It’s dynamic, it doesn’t live very well within a page and still very much evolving.

A stream. A real time, flowing, dynamic stream of information — that we as users and participants can dip in and out of and whether we participate in them or simply observe we are a part of this flow.

In a sense, he is trying to rationalize his investment strategy. But if he is correct, the shift from pages to ever-widening eddies of information will have a dramatic downstream impact on many Web businesses, especially media businesses. This rising stream has the potential to fundamentally change the contours of media distribution on the Web. Large destination sites like Yahoo and AOL, already weakened as distribution hubs by search and social networks, now face the prospect of becoming completely bypassed. No wonder AOL is sticking the stream in every part of its service, from its homepage to Bebo to AIM. (Yahoo is grappling with the emergence of the stream as well, but so far still thinks it can hold onto its place as a central traffic and distribution hub).

The stream does not replace Web pages or search, for that matter, but it has the potential to completely transform them. Already, we are seeing Web pages adopt the stream as a new user-interface. Web pages are increasingly being designed as places to present the most relevant streams of information. And with streams of data spreading everywhere, search actually becomes more important than ever as a navigation tool. As Borthwick points out:

Traffic isn’t distributed evenly in this new world. All of a sudden crowds can show up on your site.

Traffic occurs in bursts, depending on what people are paying attention to at that second across a variety of services. Someone might notice an obscure blog post on Twitter, where it starts spreading, then it moves to FriendFeed and Facebook and desktop stream readers such as Tweetdeck or Seesmic desktop and before you know it, a hundred thousand people are reading that article. The stream creates a different form of syndication which cannot be licensed and cannot be controlled.

The problem, more than ever before, becomes one of information overload. How do you keep from drowning in the deluge? Borthwick suggests letting go of teh notion that you can ever master the stream, even just your own personal data stream of friend’s Tweets, updates, blog posts, Flickr photos, YouTube video finds and so on:

This isn’t an inbox we have to empty, or a page we have to get to the bottom of — its a flow of data that we can dip into at will but we can’t attempt to gain an all encompassing view of it.

So jump into the stream and let it carry you away. Or you can stand timidly on the banks until everyone else around you has already taken the plunge.

(Photo credit: Flickr/Justin Lowery)

Tarpipe begins to tackle personal content overload

Thanks Mr. Cracknell at LittleLucifer for this post from cnet

Posted by Rafe Needleman

Tarpipe is one of the most curious experiments in social media that I've seen lately. It takes personal content (e-mail messages, primarily) as input, and can shunt it to one or more desinations, transforming it in the process. For example, I created a Tarpipe e-mail address that will take a pictures I send it and posts it to Flickr, update Twitter with a link to the Flickr page, and put the picture and the Twitter URL in an Evernote record for me. All I have to do is send the e-mail.

Tarpipe looks a lot like Yahoo Pipes. They work in similar ways: Users drag service and function boxes around on the workspace and connect them with blue tubes to control the flow of data. But Yahoo is about taking inputs from several sources and then creating a universal RSS output. Tarpipe is more about directly updating personal content services like Twitter, Flickr, Friendfeed, Delicious, and Evernote, which Yahoo Pipes doesn't do. The service has the potential to be the answer to the lament I first talked about in The looming crisis: Personal syndication overload.

This workflow takes an e-mailed photo attachment, sends it to Flickr, posts a TinyURL link to it on Twitter, and archives the photo and the Twitter link in my Evernote account.

The app will currently update several personal services: The ones I mentioned, plus a few others like Tumblr, Plurk, and Jaiku. But one problem with the system right now is that, unless you are a programmer, it's inflexible as to inputs. You can e-mail Tarpipe items, and manipulate that data. You can also use an online form for input, but you cannot create complex workflows around form data, other than to direct it to the services you've connected to your account. (The developer interface is apparently quite robust, though.)

Twitterpipe: Coming
One thing end users can't do, at least not yet, is ask Tarpipe to monitor a personal RSS feed (like a Twitter account) and then process that for further transmission to other services. RSS "slurping" is coming, Tarpipe creator Bruno Pedro told me.

Tarpipe keeps a log of all the data it's handled for you.

That's one of the things I'm waiting for. I would like to continue to use the input methods I'm comfortable with (for Twitter, that means Twhirl) and have Tarpipe selectively send my output to other sources based on content (perhaps using hashtags).

The other thing I'm waiting for, which Pedro is working on, is community aggregation. When this is running, you'll be able to monitor and reply to your audience as they comment on your posts. This solves the issue of fractured community for people who contribute their work or thoughts to multiple sources. The concept is this: Tarpipe will track all the items it posts on your behalf. It will monitor those posts at their new homes for replies from other users. It will be able to notify you of those replies so you can participate in discussions that spring up. (Related: MyBlogLog; Typepad Comments.)

The system may also help you connect conversations together that are on different services. For example, if I use Tarpipe to post a photo to Flickr and a link to the photo on Twitter, and then the conversation picks up Twitter, Tarpipe may be able to attach that discussion to the Flickr page.

Pedro told me that Tarpipe may also get features to help its users meld their social networks together on the various services they are signed up for. He calls this the "unified social graph," and says, "You'll be able to follow your social network, invite your contacts to Tarpipe and send messages to specific people."

And finally, he's working on adding new content destinations to Tarpipe, like Facebook, Myspace, Hi5, Picasa, and video sharing services. Richer programmatic access (more APIs) is in the works, too.

An interesting effort
Tarpipe is not done. It's too hard to use, and key parts of its feature set have yet to be built. It is, though, an extremely interesting middleman service for handling what is becoming a real problem for a lot of people: Personal content management not just for what we read, but for what we create.

See also: Ping.fm, Pixelpipe, and Friendfeed.

Using Outposts in Your Media Strategy

Thanks Chris Brogan for this post on how to spread your word

September 29, 2008

Social networks are great places to meet new people, to build new business relationships, and to learn about information from non-traditional sources. But another great way to use social networking sites is as an outpost. What do I mean by this? It turns out that people getting to know you on social networks might also find your content for the first time, and/or something you post to those networks might bring you an opportunity that wouldn’t immediately come to you in other ways.

Building Outposts

Before we go too deep, as I’m talking about RSS and some of you might not be fully aware, here’s a great video by Common Craft about RSS in Plain English:

Here’s what I’m talking about:

1. Find your RSS feed URL for your blog. (If you’re not 100% sure how, right click the big orange button somewhere on your site and right-click. Select “copy link location.”)
2. Add your RSS feed to FaceBook. I also recommend Simplaris Blogcast (formerly “Flog Blog”). It’s a great app for adding blog posts into your personal news feed.
3. Add your RSS feed to LinkedIn, but go further. There’s a “what are you doing?” line in LinkedIn. Three times, I’ve had business opportunities come from someone catching something in their LinkedIn feed. (No offense to Mario Sundar, but I didn’t realize people watched that as closely.)
4. Post the occasional tweet about a particularly good blog post to Twitter. Do this at a rate of about 1:12, meaning one post about your stuff to any 12 tweets about other people’s stuff. This will keep people a bit more interested in your stream as something of value, versus a “mememememe” type of Twitter user.
5. Repeat this in any “very specific to your industry” social networks that matter to you, and/or on emails to your specific potential customer base. Do this such that you entice people to read your latest article, instead of just putting something that says “subscribe to my blog.”

Technically, it’s a simple tactic used in a strategy of awareness and / or community building. And yet, it’s one that you might not be doing yet for your media.

Any other recommendations you want to add to the process? Any questions?

Photo credit, Jule Berlin

RSSMixer Makes Mashups Easier

Thanks Mashable for this mashup link. Great tool!

September 8, 2008 - 3:00 am PDT - by Doriano "Paisano" Carta 3 Comments

Recently launched RSS Mixer wants to make mixing and mashing up all of your RSS feeds as easy as possible. They’ve spent the last year developing a service that they hope will allow even the least technically savvy user to be able to create their own mashups without the complexity of Drupal, Microsoft Popfly or even Yahoo Pipes.

After experimenting with RSSMixer and creating several new mashups in a matter of minutes the verdict is that they have accomplished their goal. It is extremely easy to mix and mashup many RSS Feeds in no time at all. The interface is well-designed and helps make the process very simple.

If you build it they will come
Not only is it easy to create as many mixes as you want, you can also share the RSS feed that’s created for every mix that you create. People can subscribe to your mixes just as they do for other sites in their RSS reader of choice.

Getting jiggy widget
There’s also a widget feature that will allow anyone to add your mix as a gadget or widget. The four most popular types are supported: Apple Dashboard widgets, Yahoo Widgets, Vista Widgets and Google Gadgets.

Rinse, lather and repeat!

One of the nice things about RSSMixer is that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. If you see a mix that someone else has created that you like then you can actually add that mix to one of your mixes and change it up to make it your own. Within every mix you can see which RSS feeds were used by its creator.

Add-on tools
There’s a Firefox add-on tool for your toolbar that will make it easy to add any RSS feed you want to your RSSMixer account. You can also import all of your RSS feeds from your RSS reader of choice by using the OPML format.

Conclusion
If you don’t have the time or interest to learn how to use some of the more complex mashup services like Yahoo Pipes or Microsoft Popfly then RSSMixer is a no-brainer. Just copy and paste RSS Feeds and you’ll create new mixes on a single webpage with all of the information that you want to track or share with others.

Tags

mashups, News, rss, RSS Mixer