Online Media Cultist

Yesterday, I wrote about how Twitter and FriendFeed – two lifestreaming or mini-blogging or what I like “smart people network” platforms – are adding elements of smart content aggregation to their core services to provide further value for their audiences. Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion, one of FriendFeed’s well known and outspoken proponents, mused during a piece called “Friendfeed will Change Journalsim, PR and Marketing”:

People are increasingly turning to their peers for news, information and recommendations. And Friendfeed is more than an aggregation site or a community that’s layered on top of others. It’s a recommendation engine that surfaces content (both pro and amateur) via your peers - and that’s huge. Sure there are things wrong with it, but I believe Friendfeed is incredibly disruptive. It’s the next big thing online for consumers. It may even become the next Google.

While that might be a bit far fetched at this point, I noted on Mike Fruchter’s blog that “FriendFeed is just starting to scratch the surface of its full capabilities.” Mike had written a piece that discussed setting up a “private online digital archive” on FriendFeed to allow friends and family to access images of his newborn child.

The point is that FriendFeed is a remarkably flexible and powerful platform, and its steady addition of useful yet non-obtrusive features (like Rooms and “show best of” day/week/month) coupled with a highly enthused early adopter member base means that its future is very bright indeed. Rooms in particular give the ability to allow private access to data streams, which could well open up huge new avenues of use, such as for people like Mike, and workgroups who want to share information and communicate without being exposed to the public.

Google-bright though? We’ll have to wait and see.

A good start, I would think (and the same advice goes to Twitter two or three times over): why not put up some banner ads?

Far and away the twitter of the day from yesterday, and a welcome break from the Virginia Tech shootings:

Overheard: ‘it’s like dogster for babies’ - preppypunk

Such a statement puts you in the mind of the late 1990s, when it seemed as though not just any but every dot com dream was getting funded. FrozenBeerSticks.net, delivered fresh and cold to your door within 30 minutes, you say? Sign me UP!

To be fair, Dogster does a really nice job of creating a “dog lovers community to share pictures, stories, and information.” But such an overheard statement does make you realize that at some point the inevitable social networking start-up shakeout will happen. Nonetheless, I think that Mashable will never be hurting for stories to cover in this new “social media” age.

It’s interesting that this twitter “tweet” came at nearly the same time as Steve Rubel’s musings about an Irrational Exuberance 2.0.

And speaking of Steve Rubel’s musings – and tying things back around to Twitter – Mr. Rubel seems to have gotten himself in a little bit of professional hot water for tweeting that he throws his free print edition of PC Magazine in the trash. In an open letter to the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Steve explains his thinking process.

Irrational exuberance can all too easily be expressed, it seems, in this era of transparent and instantaneous communication!

I continue to be fascinated by Twitter. While I understand why people don’t get the hoopla (I was in that camp at first), I really think that it has staying power. My own use of Twitter has evolved over the last few weeks, for instance. For a spell I enjoyed “listening in” on short thoughts – there’s a kind of beauty and cleanness to seeing ideas and grand notions boiled down to 140 character max messages – from such blogging luminaries as Robert Scoble, Dave Winer, Steve Rubel, and Jason Calacanis.

More recently though I’ve enjoyed taking an active part in “twittering” as a “mini-blogging” outlet of sorts of my own. Twitter is a great place to get outside the “formal” bounds of blogging to just kind of let your hair down to let thoughts fly in short bursts (you can do this via web, SMS, or IM). I can watch the season premiere of The Shield, for instance, as I did tonight and emit such bits of exuberance into the digital void as: The Shield is as great as ever, getting darker and morally fuzzier all the time. Amazing performances, great cast.

While I have neither the time nor the inclination these days to write full length TV reviews, Twitter lets the wannabe TV critic in me shout out in digital delight, giving me instant gratification while tying in to my everyday activities.

I save some of my favorite Twitter “twits” in my Favorites folder. Here are some fun recent ones:

* Steve Rubel offers a stream of great links throughout the day and bits of web pontification such as: Further, I think Twitter has better monetization options than digg. Most of the digg loyal run ad blockers.

* ray (as literate and funny and interesting a twitterer as they come): Music expresses things about the human experience that cannot be expressed in any other way.

* laughingsquid gets the funny-because-it’s-true-award (I lived in the Bay Area for five years): Fuck North Beach in San Francisco. We made the mistake of parking on the street after 8pm and got towed.

* There are a bunch of fake profiles on Twitter. I haven’t bothered with them for the most part, but I’m fascinated by the one for Xander of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame. I’m a huge Buffy fan, so it’s kind of bizarre and funny to read about “Xander’s” trials and tribulations throughout the day at Sunnydale High: I wonder who is playing at the Bronze next weekend. I sure hope Cibo Matto plays there soon.

Man, just mentioning the Bronze gets huge points in my book.

Recent OMC coverage of Twitter:

* Starbucks Takes Over Twittervision? It Must Be April First
* Twitter as Communications Platform
* The Power of Twitter Compels You
* This is the End of the Twitter as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

After a brief and fleeting spell of ambivalence, I was sucked straight into the depths of the Twitter vortex, the finger-snapping, trigger-happy, easy-to-use “mini-blogging” application that lets you send short messages to your group of “followers” via web, IM, or SMS. At its essence – I’ve spent some time thinking about this – I think that Twitter is yet another shortcut to meeting the compelling need for people to express themselves and partake in the ever quickening Internet conversation.

It’s really simple and really easy too, which always helps and usually is at the heart of great and powerful tools and products. Sign up, add a friend or two, compel one or two people to “follow” your words of infinite wisdom (say whatever you want in answer to the question “What are you doing now?” just making sure it’s under the 140 character limit) and you are on your way.

The more I play with Twitter, I think it’s a keeper.

Another theory: Twitter may be a tool that particularly attracts those who already blog and are therefore already used to publishing online and interested in both attracting and audience and entering the Internet conversation. While I spend a lot of time looking at social networks such as MySpace, I never find a great and compelling reason to stick around. I particularly like MyBlogLog because it’s a great networking tool for bloggers (and an experience that lives outside the site through the use of its great blog log widget), but it’s simply not fun in the way that Twitter can be.

Other Twitter thoughts, culled over the weekend:

* Twitter has the potential to replace your RSS reader. It’s fun to get Mashable and Wired and Techmeme updates via Twitter, and lots of people simply send links around, which becomes a hyperkinetic and viral method of information sharing.

* I’m apt to add twitter friends that I wouldn’t add to my rss reader. Twitter’s an outstanding way to get the shorthand thoughts and tid bits from blogging luminaries (or whomever, it’s up to you!) that you don’t have time to read on a regular basis. For example, I don’t read Dave Winer’s or Robert Scoble’s respective blogs, but I’ve enjoyed following their Twitter conversations thus far.

* Twitter has fake profiles. These include Borat, Darth Vader, Bill Clinton, and fake Jason Calacanis and Nick Denton profiles. I take this is yet another sign that the Twitter aquiver with buzz. Take note that the John Edwards page is real!

* Lots of Twitter supporting sites/tools popping up. I’ll just mention one here, because it deserves some attention. Twittervision is a mesmerizing Google Maps mashup that lets you watch Twitter messages emerge all across the globe in real time. If you like Digg Spy, you’ll like Twittervision.

* Bold proclamations. Jason Calacanis declares that 90% of his blogging will now be delivered via Twitter. Personally, I love Twitter for its capacity for “casual” blogging, which gives you the ability to loosen up and say whatever you want without worrying overly much about spelling, grammar, or coherence. Blogging is a place to be a bit more structured and meaningful. Of course Twitter and blogs are merely platforms and the great thing is that everybody can help define them.

* Great quotes. I’ve seen some great quotes just over the last few days.

From Steve Rubel:
* JCal [Jason Calacanis] will become the first blogger to turn a full-time Twitterer
* Great businesses and greater ideas will begin as conversations on Twitter.

From Jason Calacanis:
* Who’s building a twitter/google adsense widget? I need to monetize this medium before [Nick] Denton.
* Twitter is like cb radio without the static

* Are people talking about Twitter? That would be a 10-4, as this chart displaying the “twitterfication of the blogosphere” shows.

Growing up on Long Island, it was my daily ritual to grab whatever part of Newsday I could get my hands on to read during breakfast. These days, I have my laptop and while I do a cursory scan of the news headlines (and typically get a shot of politics via ABC.com’s The Note), it’s the online media blogs that have emerged as the places I spend most of my reading time.

Compiling a Top 10 list was both easier and more difficult than I thought it was going to be. My favorite of favorites were quick plucks, but near the bottom of the list it got rough going as to who would make the final few slots.

This list of course reflects my own interests and passions, which include: online media and the web 2.0 world in general, blogging-as-profession, the blogosphere, social news, social networking, the MSM-blogospheric convergence, start-up culture, and online entrepreneurship.

I’ll try to update this list over time to see what additions and changes may be warranted.

#1 - mathewingram.com/work - Mathew Ingram
Ingram, a technology writer with The Globe and Mail in Toronto, combines the best elements of journalism with the best of the blogosphere, making for a smart, interesting, and opinionated take on news related to a wide range of online media- and tech-related issues. I find I most often agree with Mathew’s takes, which occasionally are controversial, so more than anything this is the case of an online publication that perfectly suits me, the reader. That more than anything is a wonderful endorsement of the blogosphere and online media as Long Island (and, now, Pasadena) is a long way away from Toronto!

#2 - The Jason Calacanis Weblog
Jason Calacanis is fun to follow. Former CEO of Weblogs Inc. and “relauncher” of Netscape as new styled social news engine, Jason is for the moment an “Entrepreneur in Action” for Sequoia Capital. He also can’t help but write brief, passionate, and decidedly outside-the-norm opinions on a wide array of subjects. From following his blog babies from Weblogs to strategizing the LA housing market (no easy feat!) to making an impassioned blogospheric plea regarding the Genarlow Wilson case, this is a must read blog for ambitious bloggers and online media cultists.

#3 - TechCrunch - Michael Arrington
TechCrunch has become something of the daily online newspaper for all things web 2.0. This is the preeminent place to find out what start ups are up to and what moves the big guys are making in the online space. Arrington is opinionated and occasionally self-inflated, but the information that he pumps out day-after-day makes TechCrunch an absolute must to stay afloat in the 2.0-ish rapid currents.

#4 - Mashable! - Pete Cashmore
Mashable! has evolved into a TechCrunch for those interested in social networking and the massive changes going on in that space. No one else keeps up with the dizzying myriad of social networking, widgeting, and third party add-ons like Cashmore and Mashable!

#5 - ProBlogger Blog Tips - Darren Rowse
Yet another must read for bloggers, this is Blogging 101 for bloggers who are serious about increasing readership and making money from self-publishing online content (extremely difficult feats, both). It helps greatly that Darren is relentlessly positive and upbeat and provides a steady stream of tips, updates, and strategies for the blogging life. He’s also deeply enmeshed in the community side of things, which is certainly leading by example!

#6 - BC Magazine – Sci/Tech - Phillip Winn, Daniel Woolstencroft, Steve Wild, Raoul Pop, Diane Kristine, Bruce Kratofil, John Vaccaro, and many others!
I can’t leave out my brethren and sistren over at BC Magazine’s Sci/Tech section. Each day you can find a great variety and diversity of news and opinions on the tech and online media worlds.

#7 - How to Change the World - Guy Kawasaki
On his about page, Guy boils down his entire mission statement to two words: empower entrepreneurs. And that’s what each post gives you: tightly focused advice on how to reach the next level, whatever that might be. Again, I must gravitate toward positive and forward-thinking personalities, and Guy is nothing else if this. Inspirational and practical stuff both.

#8 - Publishing 2.0 - Scott Karp
Scott is unmatched in shedding “web 2.0″ and the current state of online media in a philosophical and intellectual light.

#9 - Blog Maverick - Mark Cuban
Self-made millionaire and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is delightfully blunt and compelling on a myriad of subjects, from the massive repercussions of the shift from TV to the Internet, to why men shouldn’t wear ties, to how NBA referees should do a better job, and that’s just for starters!

#10 - Deep Jive Interests - Tony Hung
I discovered Tony through a recent guest blogging stint on ProBlogger, and he’s quickly become one of my favorites. The good doctor goes deep on all aspects of blog-world, from the blogger v. journalism debate, to the use of widgets, to linkbaiting, and onward.

Honorable Mention
There are many, but I’ll hold to just two:

* Micro Persuasion – Steve Rubel
* Mapping the Web - Aidan Henry

Update: None other than Mathew Ingram was kind enough to point out to me that I mistakenly labeled the great Scott Karp of Publishing 2.0 as Steve, not Scott. Sorry Scott!