140Char

Want to find the wisdom of the past in a different way to searching? iWise is an interesting new venture which has launched in a pretty comprehensive way to help you connect with the wisdom of the world.

Found via Techcrunch, it looks at first glance like a ‘Twitter for dead people’, with topic lists on popular themes, and the ability to follow famous quotable characters.

You can Tweet out good quotes, see searches from the Web/Twitter, receive private DM’s in your Twitter feed, use the free iPhone app, or use the API which ties into the semantic search engine that powers the service.

Which is all pretty effective, but the use of Twitter as an entry point, while familiar, does lead to unfavourable questions.

Whereas Wolphram Alpha attempts to reorganise knowledge in the manner of the familiar search interface, or Twine appears as a semantic service in the ‘social bookmarking’ family, iWise look like a blog site front end, married to the Twitter-like ‘Wisdom Tree’.

And there is a good range of sources. For instance, alongside the expected appearance of Einstein come the likes of Bruce Sterling or Peter Doherty (Peter? When did the controversial singer become so formal?).

The problem is that by proving a microblogging platform to consume wisdom and quotes (and provide your own after checking they don’t already exist), you’re led by the Twitter-like interface to expect more social interaction.

And wondering whether it would have made more sense as a lightweight Twitter app, rather than integration as a feature of an apparently heavyweight semantic search engine.

Microblogging is eminently popular, but if the success of forums, blogs, social networks and now microblogging shows us, the usability experience of functionality tends to evolve into a common approach which leads to certain expectations. And if you’re going to play around with that, it’s going to have to be something pretty radical and shocking.

If you’ve got exclusive content, the main way to get value from Twitter followers has been to lead them to your own website – but Super Chirp! aims to change that by monetizing your Direct Messages within Twitter itself.

It’s best suited to celebrities, news outlets or possibly charities, but any publisher can sign up. You set a monthly price between $0.99 and $9.99, and you get to keep a healthy 70% of the cash.  Super Chirp! takes 30%, which includes Paypal fees.

As a user, you subscribe for Direct Message feeds via the Super Chirp! site, with Paypal payments, and you can then visit Super Chirp! to see all the messages and sort by publisher.

It’s an interesting concept, and one that’s covered in quite a lot of detail by Michael Arrington over at Techcrunch.  In fact, Narendra Rocherolle, CEO of 83 Degrees, which has also launched Power Twitter Firefox Add-On, initially wrote about the idea in a guest post on Techcrunch discussing the Britney Spears Twitter account.

As Arrington hypothesises – this could be one route to cash for Twitter itself, and Super Chirp! could find itself either contending against an official version (perhaps linked in to the new officially verified Twitter accounts), or acquired.

The trickiest bit will be deciding the split between content for building up a network, and content that will be valuable enough to be worth charging for – particularly when it will need to be chunked into 140 character messages. The nature of short messages lends itself to quick links and newsflashes – which is the kind of content which rapidly finds a way around paywalls – possibly leading to a lot of disgruntled ex-followers.

And longer form content will feel immensely disjointed – although there might be some promise in the Twitter novels which have risen up recently, or for some type of Twitter-based soap opera, for example.

But the main way I would imagine most people utilising this tool will be simply to privately broadcast links to exclusive content behind a paywall – which would be an email alert/RSS alternative.

As someone who has experimented with, and witnessed the backlash against, the likes of Magpie adverts being included in streams, and Twitad sponsored backgrounds, it seems slightly ironic that the main 3rd party applications to make money on Twitter appear to be short form versions of traditional display advertising and paywalls – the very things which newspapers are maligned for seeing as the sole revenue options.

Are there better ways to directly generate cash from Twitter when it comes to content? Or is it always going to be a publicity/network tool to drive revenue from elsehwere?

Tweeght is a new site described by it’s creator as offering Digg-like voting for ‘thoughtful tweets’ – although the voting is actual more like Reddit with a simple up or down arrow.

Tweeght - new ranking site for Twitter

It was built by Aditya Kothadiya in under a week, and is pretty simple to use. You can either post a tweet by submitting it on the site, which requires your Twitter username and password, tag Tweets with #tweeght, #thought, or #quote, or send the Tweet to @tweeght.

From the site, you can vote individual messages up or down, Retweet them, or reply – and there’s a Leaderboard of the most popular users.

Aditya says “The goal was to launch something quickly but it should be valuable, usable, beautiful and dead simple.” And you can follow Aditya at @adityakothadiya.

It’s definitely a nicely designed site, but is the timing right?

Previous attempts at social ranking sites for Twitter I previously covered, included Microblogging.com and Dwigger. Both have closed, with Dwigger shut for good, and Microblogging hinting that a new service will appear in the future.

Now I’m not the biggest fan of Digg, but I do see the value on social ranking/aggregation sites. I’m a reasonably frequent user of Stumbleupon, and I do use Delicious (although I’m taking a break until I can sort out my messy tagging!).

But I can see two major problems for this approach to filtering Twitter -

1. The scale of Twitter is hard to accurately judge, but the most generous estimates would put Twitter as a whole under the size of Digg’s monthly active users.

2. Social aggregation sites are useful for filtering the entire internet – over 133 million blogs monitored by Technorati, for example, plus mainstream media sites, video, images etc, etc. Has Twitter reached the point where it needs filtering in this way?

3. The ranking approach always involves viewing messages via an external site, taking you out of Twitter or your client. When you’re using Digg, Delicious or SU, you’re inside that community, whereas with Tweeght you need to have a seperate browser tab or window taking you out of the community stream to see what’s being rated.

4. Twitter is built on personal relevance and connections. I can’t help feeling that external ranking systems are a little web 1.0 for adding value. Would I rather see thoughtful tweets from people I’ve never contacted or followed, or would I rather see what my friends and contacts are saying, and have them highlighting anything they see which is thoughtful or brilliant.

That all said, Tweeght might have come along at the right time, with the recent huge rise in users driven by mainstream media coverage of Twitter – and some of those new users could be the Digg-type audience Tweeght needs. After all, Malcolm Gladwell makes a great case for success being hugely dictated by factors such as timing his recent book Outliers.

I’ve just signed up for a new site offering micro-recommendations via web and mobile, Goodrec, after picking up on it via Scobleizer (Who has a great video interview with the CEO, Mihar Shah)

It looks like a good service, although as you can see I’ve just started playing with it.

But what’s interesting to me is that 50% of their traffic comes from mobile, and mobile is a big part of their offering, with recommendations around your location, for example.

The reason I’m so interested in the mobile aspect is that it’s the main difference (along with restaurant and nightlife reviews) from Blippr, a micro-recommendation service whose creators I interviewed back in September.

• Both focus on allowing short form reviews.
• Both include categories for Entertainment.
• Both have a pretty simple rating option, with up to 160 characters for the actual review.

But the big difference is that Goodrec appears to have had mobile in mind from the start, especially with location-based services. Blippr, meanwhile, had a user suggest an iPhone app seven months ago on it’s Get Satisfaction page, and a lot of postive feedback from other users, but the staff replies explain that with one developer, the decision was to focus more on the site. Blippr has exposed it’s API in case a third-party wished to create something, but the most recent work has been a host of improvements to the site itself (details are on the Blippr blog)

Choosing between the two is a tough call – from emailing and Tweeting with the guys behind Blippr, I can appreciate what they’re doing immensely – but without having the resources to develop mobile-based recommendations they’ve left themselves widely open. After all, mobile integration is a major adoption attraction of Twitter.

So combine Mobile with location-based recommendations, and I think Goodrec has launched with a sizeable advantage.

It will be interesting to see if Blippr respond, if anyone else joins the space, and in particular, whether Twitter itself has any plans in the area linked to monetising.

(I’m also on Blippr, although not particularly active).

It occurred to me the other day that i tend to read the blog posts from those i follow on twitter – who ‘tweet’ new articles via twitterfeed or suchlike – more often than the others in my google reader (which i check once or twice a week at the most).

Wouldn’t be good if there was a twitterfeed – that i can control – that tweets me selected blogs – from my reader – as they happen?
This would save a lot of dicking about between twitter desktop client and browser/feed widget.
Yeah, this kinda happens with friendfeed but I don’t control that – I’m not necessarily friends with most of the authors in my rss reader , whereas with a custom google reader feed into twitter, spec’d by me… is that bit more personal.

Or maybe this functionality already exists? Any thoughts?

UPDATE: I also posted this over at never get out of the boat theres been a couple of comments if you prefer to chime in over there.

There’s a new service, Twitblogs, which allows you to post without being limited to 140 characters, include image tags, embed videos, and include urls of images and audio files – and it also updates Twitter for you.  (There’s a write-up on Mashable with some very interesting comments around the legalities of the appearance etc).

But the flipside is that the founder Sam Sethi, has some previous noteriety, after previous startup Blognation closed.  Michael Arrington writes about both Twitblogs, and links to his own experience with Sethi, who is a former editor of Techcrunch UK.

While I wouldn’t take anyone’s view on what happened as unbiased, and don’t know the details to comment, Arrington does make a couple of very good points about Twitblogs:

• You need to disclose your Twitter username – and importantly your password (something that’s been raised as an issue with other applications)
• Although a privacy policy page has been added, the site still hasn’t got any Terms and Conditions listed – the Terms at the bottom of the page isn’t linked. And although most of us may be less than thorough when looking at the Ts and Cs, there are times when they become vitally important.

Personally I’ll wait and see what other responses there are, until I get a chance to use the 140char test account – but in the meantime, you can always see the latest thoughts, as ever, via Twitter Search.

New site Twingr offers the chance to set up your own microblogging community on a hosted platform – unlike previous options like Laconi.ca, which required you to install the service on your own server.

It seems like a no brainer, but I think there’s one major flaw in the service – critical mass.

One of the successful implentations of Laconica, is Leo Laporte’s TWiT Army, fed from the TWiT Netcast Network, and therefore having enough of a community and interaction to ensure a reasonably constant flow of updates. Meanwhile, there are several options for corporate enterprise solutions, notably Yammer, as a hosted microblogging platform.

But Twingr is external facing, and relies on people wanting to create a group fo sufficient interactivity to seperate itself from the crowd – yet not wanting to host the service, and therefore removing any options to monetise it.

For those small groups, a more general service like Ning would probably offer more scope for interaction, allowing you to upload images and files etc, as well as messaging and forums, meaning a stronger community from a smaller number of participants.

And there’s also no scope to check out and join existing groups, meaning that duplication and confusion may lead to ever smaller splinter groups – is there a need for microblogging for a group of 5 friends who already communicate via IM, Twitter, Facebook etc?

Having said that, if you’re interested, here’s the introductory video – and if you do use it, I’d be really interested in hearing how you get on:

I’ve been watching the developments in online video from the sidelines, as somone who is still embarrassed by his time hosting a semi-professional daily webcast, and who has managed to avoid owning a webcam.

I can see why there’s an initial curiosity around lifecasting, but the reality is generally somewhat duller. I do get the idea of Seesmic, but I think to get the most out of it requires a commitment similar to starting out on Twitter, and I haven’t quite yet convinced myself it’s an additional output I need to find time for. I occasionally enjoy 12seconds.tv, but although the short clips are quite punchy and to the point, it always feels like I’m skimming over people’s ideas. (Although I do think @Documentally has really transcended the medium)

But I’m being totally honest when I say Mobatalk has convinced me that video has now arrived for microblogging – and for quick, easy broadcasting to friends and contacts.

Put simply, you go to the site, record a video clip (which plays back at a reall high quality in comparison to other services), and type a Twitter message into the site, along with a hashtag, which then posts it to Twitter with a link to the video.

Not only is it stunningly simple, but the navigation is really nice to use, with a really simple, intuitive and attractive display.

And then you discover you can subscribe via iTunes and Google Reader to an individual – or a hashtag – perfect for videos of live events etc. And did I mention you can also access videos via your iPhone?

I’m not the only one impressed by Mobatalk , but considering my natural cynicism, and the fact I’m in the middle of quitting cigarettes after 13 years, and I’m pretty surprised I can’t find any obvious faults.

It’ll be interesting to see how Michael Bailey – @mobasoft – develops the site, but there are advertising options already available, the video upload is quick and amazingly good quality, and it integrates well with Twitter.

It might even be enough to get me in front of a camera again – 140char weekly vidcast, anyone?

Not the catchiest title for a genre of sites, but it works! I’ve posted before on my other blog about why I’m not a huge fan of Digg, (and alternatives to it) but it’s silly to deny the fact it’s a hugely popular site and format, and that some of the issues I have are Digg specific.

And there are two sites offering microblogging aggregation. I found Microblogging.com via founder @ShaunMorton on Twitter.  It’s essentially a niche social news gathering site for microblogging, and there’s nothing wrong with that! One of my remarks about Digg was that it increasingly faces a challenge from niche focussed rivals. It’ll be interesting to see if microblogging has enough interest to build a critical mass.

Dwigger has been covered elsewhere, but in the spirit of retweeting it’s an aggregator of tweets themselves, and it also creates threaded conversations with images and even video. Which is an interesting idea, but I suspect slightly flawed. The reasoning behind Twitter is that my contacts will be the filter of relevancy and interest, so it seems counterintuitive to go and seek out what complete strangers are judging to be relevant or important except as an object of curiousity. And Twitter Search allows me to see if terms are popular by volume across the whole of Twitter, rather than the microcosm of Twitterati who also use Dwigger.

Dwigger is by Sift Partners, so I’ll try and drop them a line shortly and get a detailed explanation of what I might be missing, and I’ll keep the jurt out until then, but I’m not sure there’s enough of a mass of microbloggers for these types of service quite yet. Considering Digg runs on around 20 million+ users a month, Stumbleupon is hitting around 6 million registered, and Twitter is around the 2-3 million mark, Microblogging.com and Dwigger might need a fair bit of patience to capitalise on the new communication medium.