DISQUS

@Mark
Sorry to hear your take on mashable, this post and tweetdeck. Obviously you had a bad experience with Tweetdeck which is by far the most popular client for Twitter according to recent statistics. As far as questioning the honesty and integrity of anyone from Mashable, I have to disagree with you there. All of us do our best to share our most honest opinion about anything we're reviewing or recommending. This doesn't mean everyone will agree with our selections or opinions. Obviously, you disagree vehemently in this case which is fine. You have the right to do so. However, I hope you don't let these occasional differences of opinion prevent you from enjoying the useful information we feel that we provide on Mashable. Please continue to share your opinion whenever you don't agree - We want to hear the good and the bad (hopefully mostly good).


Pai

Excellent piece. I totally understand what you're talking about because I'm an I.T. professional who's also into all of this social media/social networking "stuff". That means I've been a part of that conversation from both sides. I understand the skepticism and concerns that we I.T. types must possess in order to protect the company and our sacred network but I also understand the social media is not satan's playground. Yes, there are security risks involved if a social media solution is implemented hastily, but that can be said for any king of new hardware or software. It just requires more thought, planning and work but the end results (I've found) are well worth it.

Enterprise 2.0 has been slow in evolution but it's happening. Even slow monolithic behemoths like Microsoft are accepting the role of social media and web 2.0 in the enterprise so they continue to add more of these tools to their products, including Sharepoint and now even Office. There are many other solutions too that are making their way deep into organizations such as ClearSpace from Jive Software. There are others as well.

Someday I.T. will not be as resistant to social media as they are today. The fact that there are so many more conversations is a major breakthrough when you consider that there was a time when such a discussion wasn't even a remote possibility. Progress can be a painfully slow march. Some things, especially those that are worth it, just take time.

Pai

I've been using the twitter poll a lot lately. For example, this morning I created this one. http://twitter.com/Paisano/statuses/1101877200

I think it works great.

Pai

Right on the money. What we focus on, expands and intensifies. Life's too short to waste any time on things we do not love?

It would've been ironic had your new friend worked for K-Mart instead of Walmart considering all that happened recently during the holidays. Maybe he knew who you were and all about that promotion and wondered what you'd think of Walkmart? Nah.

Pai

Excellent point. We are always labeling people and things. While the act itself isn't bad, it's when we put people or entire groups of people into boxes and store them on a shelf that it does potential harm or at the very least limits our experience.

I personally don't like filling out those online profiles like on twitter and social networks and even the about me pages on blogs. It's difficult to sum up who a person is on one page nevermind 160 characters.

Søren Kierkegaard said it best: "Once you label me you negate me."

@thom singer
Very true. SXSW08 was indeed a big story this past year for the reason you stated...it clearly demonstrated to all "outsiders" how powerful Twitter can be. It also showed that this power can be in a positive or as in this case in a negative manner. Eventually, the whole story was told but only after the Twitter maelstrom subsided.

@Sara
No way... George is there. Check again...
between Russert and Ledger

@Krista
Agree that the frozen pea fund was worth for sure but I believe that all started at the end of 2007 and carried over into 2008. Still, I love @SusanReynolds! Glad you brought it up.
Hey, I changed my Twitter avatar to a pea every Friday to become Pea-sano. :)

ChrisBrogan has been the biggest influence for me and many others. Some provide excellent information on twitter and in their blog but they don't personally interact or communicate with as many people as Chris does via direct messages, emails, chatting, phone calls and in person via meetups and such. Many preach from a mountaintop it seems while Chris is in the trenches with us all. Big difference.

Pai

<abbr>Paisano´s last blog post..7 Facts About Pai</abbr>

Seems to be a trend. I've been using something similar called TwitWall.com which serves as something between Twitter and a blog post. Too much for a 140 character tweet and not enough substance to warrant a full fledged blog post. Here's a sample of my twitwall.
http://twitwall.com/view/?who=paisano

I think Twitter just needs to buy one of these guys and add the option. We would have the option to just read the 140-character tweet or click through to the longer message like TwitWall does.

Pai

Excellent topic! However, I hate to disagree with a fellow Mashable writer but I think Brands belong on Twitter and anywhere online as long as it doesn't become just noise and spam. If you start this form of censorship then where do you draw the line in the sand? I know a ton of PR and marketing types that are extremely noisy and spammy... do you ban them too? We all have the right to follow whom or WHAT we want to follow which is the beauty of twitter. We have the choice and the power to customize our stream the way we want. Personally, I don't follow any brands except perhaps a couple of things like Boxee. But it's good to know I could if I wanted to stay on top of anything like Starbucks or Netflix or whatever.

Here's a great example of a brand that gets it. Thanks to Ted Murphy
http://www.ted.me/pancheros-twitter-kinda/

Pai

Well said. I agree totally. I love the speed and some other things like being able to type keywords for searches in the address bar...thus saving a step or too... but come on already!!! Show us the extensions!

So I wind up flipping back and forth between the two and even i.e. for some stuff...
sometimes Flock too... and Maxthon... but not safari or Opera anymore at all.

@Geneviere
I understand what you're saying. The realistic sound of the voice has improved drastically over the years but it still has a way to go, I agree. Still, the feedback I've gotten from those that really want/need this feature has been extremely positive. I think it's because they're used to the older technologies that sounded much more like robots than this one. Obviously, nothing beats the quality of real human voices. For that, you'll have to do a real podcast or use tools like Utterli.com which can publish your audio posts via cell phone automatically.

Pai

Wonderful topic. Ironic to see Seth nailing it in the comments when he doesn't even allow his readers to do the same on his blog. Not complaining, just saying it's funny. I kinda like the idea too but I personally enjoy some of the golden nuggets that readers leave in the comments, not just on my blog but in every blog. This blog has an extremely high rate of gold in the comments as Chris points out every time the comments provide better content than the original post.

As for picking and choosing which platform to select? I agree that it's a personal decision that each of us has the right to make. Some services rub me the wrong way but strokes others right in the sweet spot. and so it goes.

Personally, I love twitter but lately I've been drifting towards Friendfeed for several reasons. First, the realtime feature rocks (www.friendfeed.com/realtime). Second, they now allow you to pust any post in FF to Twitter so you can now have your cake and eat it too. You can still communicate with everyone on Twitter as well as every other network you belong to. It's the best of both worlds.

OK, some of you will say "I tried FF but it's like drinking from a firehose....it's too noisy....blah blah blah". Well, they've added more features that help you filter all of that data so you can control the flow any way you want. You can create lists to show the streams of anyone you want as well as rooms for groups or topics. Look here. http://screencast.com/t/2PzhDufH

So, for me, this works out great. I can keep in touch with many more friends and receive far more info with just ONE tool...one login. I also like the ability to post images and videos in the Friendfeed stream unlike the text only Twitter stream.

Good stuff once again in the comments.

Pai
http://friendfeed.com/paisano

@Tim
What an interesting idea. Hmmm. So you're proposing that Aviary could add some kind of freelancer integration service that connects members and their work with professional designers that could take their work and enhance it or complete it. Perhaps they can partner with guru.com or elance.com.
I do see that trend evolving though.

Pai

@Brett
Hi. I toyed with the idea of including Flock (which I like by the way) but most of the things you can do to FireFox will work with Flock because it's built on FireFox. Perhaps someday we can focus on Flock and other socially aware browsers.
There are many other browsers we didn't include because they aren't used by that many folks.
I still use Maxthon on ocassion which Google purchased years ago but never did much with.

Pai

@skeptic
Guess your name says it all. No they didn't write it, wiseguy.
Sorry you didn't like it.

pai

@Jeff
I've been rethinking my stance on any desktop app these days. You're right about browsers being no big deal anymore to open. I think the only advantage that these desktop apps have over the browser is the ability to let you use a service offline in cache mode which then syncs whatever you've done once you're connected again. But let's be honest, with the proliferation of WIFI hotspots and AirCards how often are we actually "offline"? On a plane? In the desert?

Still, I guess we all like new toys. As I mentioned in the review, this is extremely new and raw so we need to cut them some slack. It's all part of the process of e-volution. First crawl, then baby steps, walk then run....then IPO....rince, lather, repeat... as the saying goes down the valley.

Pai

Thanks for the kind replies. So glad you both enjoyed the post and the movie.
I can't believe it's been 20 years since that came out. Yikes.

Pai

@Saha
Yea that was eerie. We were just talking about Al Gore and the history of the internet.

It's a funny running joke that Al Gore invented the internet but it is true that he was the first big time politician to talk openly about the value of the "Information Super Highway" as he called it back then.

Also, little known fact, Gore almost purchased DIGG a couple years ago. Ask Kevin Rose and he'll admit it.
Al's been making serious money online for years.

Too bad he couldn't get someone to perfect an online voting booth in time. That would've taken care of all those hanging chads.

Good job Stan. I've been torn about which one to get but I think you've helped me make up my mind.
Thanks!

Pai

Excellent wakeup call for everyone about being careful with their activities online. Remember what happened to that blogger who was testing grouptweets and unknowingly expose all of her direct messages on twitter? She had to delete her account until the problem was figured out.

Also, will Friendfeed face the same pressure to clean up their act that Yahoo did for the amount of filthy groups that proliferated that service? Ning has also been slammed because of their vast amount of adult-related social networks on their service.

In any event, that's more about censorship and appeasing the moral majority without aggravating the general public who wants the freedom to express themselves. The original point of this post is about self-policing and watching what you share with the world, even when you think it's private.
Just assume nothing is ever private.

@Dane
lol I knew someone would bring up Microsoft's OneNote. Personally, I like it a lot but I keep hoping it will become more web friendly like Zoho and Google notebooks. Here's a free online test drive. It's a unique product that's for sure.
http://www.runaware.com/microsoft/en-us/2007off...

@Barbara
Thanks for that share. Looks good.