Is Faster Better? Or is it Just Faster?

After last night’s news about Michael Jackson’s passing, everyone is once again praising the speed of the internet, blogs, and Twitter for trumping traditional media in delivering the news. Gossip site TMZ broke the news and it swirled around Twitter for hours before CNN would even confirm the story themselves. But was this another example of #CNNFail? I don’t think so. Here’s why:

You see, I actually watched the CNN coverage and it was good. They had the first interview with Jackson family spokesperson Brian Oxman who had just been inside UCLA Medical Center to see the family. He told the CNN reporter which family members were there, that they were crying, and who was still on their way to the hospital. In his emotional state, he railed against the people surrounding MJ during his life, calling them a bunch of enablers that supported Jackson’s prescription drug habit - even comparing Jackson’s issues to those of Anna Nicole Smith. His outrage seemed to confirm what rumor-mongers had been suspecting for years: a drug problem. Who knows what we’ll learn as this story continues to unfold.

CNN then paraded in a bunch of people whose commentary was compelling, including editors for Spin, EW, music historians, record producers, and more. Off the top of my head, I don’t remember exact names, but it sure beat my local news coverage where they were hanging around a record store, that’s for sure.

It also was a lot more interesting that watching a million “RIP MJ” tweets stream by.

Incidentally, one of the guests CNN had drop in was a news producer from TMZ who was explaining how they had reported that MJ had suffered from cardiac arrest and was given CPR on the way to the hospital but was unable to be revived. He said that Michael had no pulse and had died. (The TMZ story is here).  That seemed to conflict with other reports (including CNN’s at the time) that MJ had lapsed into a coma but wasn’t pronounced dead until arriving at the hospital. It may have been an accurate report in the end, but did TMZ really know? Apparently, physicians attempted to resuscitate MJ for an hour at the hospital before officially pronouncing his death. Had the doctors been successful, TMZ would have had some serious retractions to make. A lot of people suspected that TMZ even hedged their bets and reported MJ was dead before actually having any sources to prove it. I wouldn’t doubt this was the case. They had the news and they wanted the pageviews. (Reminds you a lot of the tech world, doesn’t it?)

I’ll give TMZ credit for breaking this story (and for their ongoing footage, to be honest) but when I was ready for some “real” news coverage, I still turned to CNN and occasionally flipped through the other cable news channels, too. There’s something to be said for the old media style, especially when you’re dealing with a situation that deserves a little respect and contemplation.

Now I don’t mind getting my news fast – I often prefer it, actually. And I’ll agree that we need fast. However, sometimes old media is just a better fit. I mean, this wasn’t just another sighting of some celebrity at a club, this was something that mattered…and TMZ’s site felt a little too sleazy for me. Yesterday, I wanted some good ol’ fashioned CNN.

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Have you heard the news? Celebrities are adopting Twitter right and left these days. And no, I’m not talking about Britney, a Twitter account managed and maintained by a team of experts - I mean real, honest-to-goodness stars maintaining and updating Twitter on their very own.

Recently, the internet-savvy Ashton Kutcher introduced wife Demi Moore to Twitter. They then caused a ruckus when they tweeted about their annoying neighbor whose loud banging was disturbing their peace and quiet. Now it looks like Ashton is berating @perezhilton for not leaving his step-kids alone. Wow, this is better than TMZ!

Meanwhile, Demi Moore was busy roping gal pal Soleil Moon Frye (who I know only as “Punky Brewster”) into joining, too. Now she’s addicted.

To welcome the newcomers, Kevin Rose has been giving them shout-outs and Ev has been giving them advice…you know, advice like how to use the “@” sign to reply to people.

Ah, newbies.

What’s great about these particular Twitter accounts is that they appear to be true attempts at joining the community; they’re not PR-approved marketing vehicles tweeting only news about upcoming films or TV shows. And unlike some celebs, it’s the stars themselves who are doing the twittering. Not to mention posting photos like this one from Demi, snapping back at a paparazzi: “Say hello to your mother for me!” Or this one from Soleil of her kids. (Celeb mommy blogger?) 

Who’s next? Ah, it’s Dwight! Err, I mean Rainn Wilson, the actor who plays Dwight. Well, at least his tweet says it’s him. We’ll see.

Still, I never would have imagined: Stars. They’re just like us. 

I just stumbled upon a new tool that maps out the re-tweets occurring on Twitter. It’s called, simply, the ReTweet Mapper. (Actually, I didn’t Stumble Upon it, I found it on FriendFeed, of course.)

The ReTweet Mapper is a tool created by Dan Zarrella, who calls himself a social and viral marketing scientist. He describes his creation as a system that indexes all the “ReTweets” and maps them to each other in a visual display. Dan says the system is still pretty rough, but he gives us a good idea of what it looks like:

The tweet streams are hierarchical, collapsible structures showing how the tweets and re-tweets are related. In addition to the ReTweet mapping tools, you can also search ReTweets or view the most ReTweeted users.

Given the recent dustup over Twitter and authority, it’s worth taking a look at any system that attempts to find some sort of signal within the noise of Twitter. You may or may not agree that re-tweets are a good indication of importance, but they can certainly show you what’s hot at the moment.

Still, what I personally want is an RSS feed that shows me the top re-tweets occurring on Twitter in real-time. Does anyone have anything like that?

Update: Oh wait, found the tool, where’s the RSS?: http://www.retweetradar.com

When a friend showed me the Twitter app he was building not too long ago, I was pretty darned excited. I knew for a fact that this app would greatly appeal to Twitter users who would  like to keep track of their followers, especially in the wake of the great Twitter follower drop of 2008, courtesy of Twitter themselves.

The app is called Tweeple Twak and it lets you track your Twitter followers and keep an eye on trends. You can see when someone un-follows you and you have the option of sending a discrete message to that person to find out why they decided to do so. It may not win them back, but it certainly would provide some valuable insight into who’s unfollwing you and why. 

In addition, Tweeple Twak provides some nice charts and graphs that help you keep an eye on follower trends. Did you get a big bump in followers one month? Now you’ll be able to visualize when that spike happened. Lost a lot of folks one day? Maybe it was something you said. The service also promises other tools too, like individual reporting queues and email alert responders.

OK, now the bad news: the app is still in alpha. Private, you-can’t-get-in-yet alpha. However, there is an emailing waiting list on the homepage, so at least you can be notified when it opens up.

Update: David Risley has his review up now, too. Yep, it’s OK to blog about it. Josh tweeted it back on the 15th when I told him another site had discovered it.

For those of you who haven’t taken the plunge with Ping.fm, I just came across a cool little cross-posting tool for Twitter/Identi.ca users. The app will post Identi.ca updates to your Twitter account automatically after you fill in the necessary information. The first post will only grab your latest Identi.ca update, and then, after that, all updates will be parsed and posted to Twitter every few minutes.

Of course, before you start using an app like this, you need to think carefully as to whether what you’re posting is relevant to both communities or if you’re pushing out cross-posting spam. For a good guideline on this subject matter, check out Rahsheen’s post on cross-posting etiquette.

Other Adobe AIR clients have had trouble competing with Twhirl thanks to that app’s overwhelming popularity among Twitter users, but a little app called Posty has a shot. That’s mainly due to the fact that it offers the ability to multi-post to a number of services in a manner that’s similar to how HelloTxt or Ping.fm operate.

Today, there’s a new version of Posty that fans of this app will like even better – especially since some of the most requested features have now been added – most notably identi.ca support and a new, smaller size.

The full feature list of this version includes:

• Identi.ca support
• A new minimum size of 380 pixels
• The ability to minimize Posty to the system tray in Windows
• The ability to automatically clear the text message when posting is successful
• A notification mechanism that lets you see public tweets from the public timeline every 3 minutes. This feature is experimental so turn it off if it gets in your way.

Unfortunately, to get this version of Posty installed, you have to remove the old one (or just install it into a different folder).

I realize that I’m one of the last people that still care about anything Blackberry-related right now, but that’s because I’m having to wait for my contract to run out with T-Mobile. Believe me, when it does, I’m all over the 3G iPhone. Unfortunately, until then I’m stuck with my Blackberry Pearl. That’s why I was thrilled to discover that there’s a new version of the Blackberry Twitter client, TwitterBerry, now available. This new version adds a few more features including, at long last, the ability to view DMs. Yes!

In addition, you’re also able to view your friends list and they’ve added shortcuts to send replies and direct messages to friends – also a desperately needed feature. This news completely made my day. I’m off to download it now.

After the initial rush to try out Identi.ca, not everyone stuck around. Why? Maybe it’s because Twitter started stabilizing and no longer was Identi.ca needed as a backup to Twitter. Or maybe it was a shiny new thing for some, but after playing with it, the shininess wore off. Whatever the reason, it seemed that the land rush was over. But then, Identi.ca was integrated with Twhirl and all of a sudden, it was happening again. It’s great to see. 

The identi.ca community is active, friendly, and fun. They’re quick to answer each other’s questions and they enjoy tech-related conversations. And don’t worry, identi.ca is still far from the mainstream if that’s what you’re looking for - you won’t see Obama posting “dents” here anytime soon. (Well, there is a user, but he’s not active). 

But why identi.ca and not Twitter? When I asked identi.ca users why they were here, for a lot of them it was about supporting the fact that identi.ca is open source (and federated):

(Of course, Evan said it’s because I’m there, but I’m pretty sure he was just sucking up.)

David asked why even bother with Identi.ca earlier today, so I guess that’s your answer.

Also, for me personally, I have to add that the Twitter community has gotten so large that being on Identi.ca just feels smaller and more intimate. I’m sure this is partly my fault for following so many people on Twitter, but there you have it. 

What’s New

A lot of people were discussing the recent changes on Identi.ca today. It goes without saying that the community is thrilled for the Identi.ca/Twhirl integration, but there were a few other updates too, including:

• Auto-follow your followers: a checkbox in your settings –> profile tab lets you automatically follow those that follow you. It’s recommended for “non-humans,” but I’m giving it a go.
• SMS: Another tab in your settings lets you get your dents via SMS. Just enter your phone number and carrier.
• IM Replies Update: Although you could get IM updates via Jabber/GTalk before, there appears to be a new checkbox that lets you select whether or not you want replies from those you aren’t subscribed to. (Is that new? Or did I miss that before?)
• Greasemonkey Fun: If you haven’t already added “Identica Reply” to give each dent a reply option, do so now. Next, add “Identi.send” which lets you send a message by pressing <enter>. For FriendFeed users, “FriendFeed Identi.ca” lets you add a tab to FriendFeed for Identi.ca.

Spaz & Posty

Two other AIR clients besides Twhirl now also support identi.ca. Spaz, the open-source client is one. The other is Posty, whose identi.ca support is still in beta. (You can download the Posty beta from here.) I hear Twitterfox might be next.

Have I missed anything? Help me fill in the blanks, if so.

Update: I have just been pointed to Identifox, a modified version of TwitterFox which works with Identi.ca!

Yesterday, I asked the question “Who do you follow on Twitter?” This all started because @chrissieb was looking for recommendations – from @corvida, who is definitely the Twiter maven. (She’s actually the queen of all social media, but you knew that already). Well, I made it on @corvida’s list, so I responded to both of them. One thing led to another and next thing you know, I was blogging it.  

Anyway, her tweet reminded me of an older post I did on RWW called 5 Ways to Find More Friends on Twitter. One of the ways I recommended was the website at Twitter Local. The service helps you find people using Twitter in or around a certain area. You can enter a city, state, or zip, and the range of miles around the area to search, and Twitter Local will display the rests generated as an RSS or XML feed or you can click to see the latest tweets coming from that area and just subscribe to people from there.

What I completely forgot about until now was that Twitter Local had an Adobe AIR app available. I discovered that when writing the post, but it slipped my mind and I never went back to download it. Well, now I have. And guess what? The app is broken. I’m so disappointed. Actually, it sort of works – I mean, I do have a stream of local tweets – but it keeps popping up this authentication box:

No matter how many times I enter my info (and check “remember my password”), the box reappears. Can someone fix this please? I would really like to use it.

Chrissie Brodigan (@chrissieb) was looking for recommendations about who to follow on Twitter. It’s sort of a hard thing to say because determining who’s “best” is so subjective. If you’re a web designer, you’ll want to follow other designers; if you’re a tech geek, you’ll want to follow other tech geeks; etc. etc. There are so many micro-communities on Twitter, a definitive “best of” list is difficult. I started to do this, but I’ll admit – I got tired. Here’s what I said so far. I already see people I missed – friends of mine! So please, help me finish this list:

Also, I decided to go through everyone on MyTweeple – which is handy, but not entirely accurate. It will say that I’m not following people that I know for a fact that I am- like @corvida! (Update: got to the E’s…taking a break).

Oh, and by the way, @corvida started the list by listing these folks, which is why they weren’t on mine. I agree with her choices, but of course!

UPDATE: Who else has posted a list?

Here is @chrissieb’s list:

 http://chrissiebrodigan.wordpress.com/2008/07/18/who-do-you-follow/

Here is @IslandDog’s list:

http://www.theislanddog.com/2008/07/who-do-you-follow-islanddog/

Here is Shey’s list:

20 Obscure People You Can Follow on Twitter and FriendFeed and Not Get Bored