Disqus - Latest Comments for Sameer

Re: The New Outside.in

Sameer — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 12:03:34 -0000

Brilliant.

I can't help but think of Hoboken411.com, a site that in my opinion has discovered the secret sauce when it comes to creating the definitive community forum for its town. If you live in Hoboken, that's who you rely on to get a heads up about that pothole or broken fire hydrant, the new steak house in town or how your local politicians are performing (or not). Comments on stories have gone as high as 2000 in some cases.

Granted, Outside.in is looking to build a scalable model and these new developments definitely help build a platform that can be replicated but there are some sobering lessons to be learnt from how Hoboken411 has connected with its community so darn well. And we are thrilled to be powering notifications for the site. :)

Re: http://www.rev2.org/2006/09/04/track-and-monitor-feeds-with-zaptxt/

Sameer — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 18:39:25 -0000

Thanks Sid.
Appreciate the review very much.

Regards
Sameer

Re: A back fence around a ghost town

Sameer — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 19:26:58 -0000

Hi Matthew,
Check out www.Hoboken411.com for another example of a vibrant micro community.

Re: A back fence around a ghost town

Sameer — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 21:17:49 -0000

Hey Matthew. Hoboken411 is not my site but ZapTXT (our service) powers the notifications for new posts and new comments. Yes, there's a lot of commenting that happens given that local news, events, accidents, incidents are covered blow by blow.

Re: Can a newspaper be a social network?

Sameer — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 01:44:46 -0000

I think the comments feature will definitely help drive traffic here given the demographic.

Say there’s a modest adoption of comments, you have to consider the significant multiple of repeat and new visitors that don't comment but come back to read comments. I reckon that the ratio of 'comentors' to those on the sidelines just reading is at least 1:50 at the minimum.

Not sure if a social network is a practical goal for a newspaper such as USAT but if you evaluate social features on a piecemeal basis, some are total winners for this demographic. Comments being most lucrative.

Re: All’s fair in love, war and journalism

Sameer — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 14:31:05 -0000

You have this amazing writing talent that makes your summary and interpretation of a news story, all that's necessary to know.

For me there's no need to scour associated links and track backs to get the background on a story you decide to break down.

This is another one of those examples.

Re: All’s fair in love, war and journalism

Sameer — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 20:31:49 -0000

Pleasure.

BTW, just a heads up - sometimes when you click submit on a new comment here, you don't see anything thats in moderation so not sure if the comment was commited or if it was eaten up by the site

Re: Google and the wires torpedo newspapers

Sameer — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 12:46:49 -0000

This does make me re-think CNN's stated reasons for not renewing its contract with Reuters. They say its related to cost cutting (which I'm sure has some truth to it) but it may also have something to do with too much reliance on an outside agency for what might be considered a core competency - reporting.

With Google paving the way for aggregators/distributors to source content directly from newswires, CNN would have less to worry about since more and more of it's content will now be original reporting.

Re: Andrew Baron has a hate-on for Mahalo

Sameer — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 23:31:44 -0000

"He effectively accuses Jason of perpetrating a gigantic con, in which he pretends to set up a site to help people find search results, but in reality just wants to get them to click on his ads."

Let's give users and Mahalo some credit here. "Fool me once, shame on you...".

Re: Buzzlogic shows which bloggers have power, and where

Sameer — Tue, 08 May 2007 21:00:45 -0000

I love it. The price point seems reasonable. 12K for a corporate marketing department to see how the blogosphere is reacting to, say its earnings announcement or a PR crisis is justifiable.

Well done, Sameer

Re: Three Tools For Mobile Data Alerts

Sameer — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 12:51:03 -0000

Thanks very much, James!

Re: You Don’t Have to Use an Aggregator to Keep Track of Your Favorite Topic

Sameer — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 10:56:18 -0000

Thanks for the write up Eddie. Appreciate it. ;)

APC/Roel
Thanks for the comments. ZapTXT is really meant to be a monitor and push mechanism for content based on keywords or phrases across headlines of your trusted sources. Unlike Google Alerts, we don't monitor the entire web or blogosphere. Rather you pick your trusted sources for a given topic and we'll make sure to deliver a notification to you, at the place of your choosing.

Compare this to a traditional Feed Reader where you receive every post from every feed that you in one static place. ZapTXT lets choose IM and SMS for 'perishable' or time sensitive information and Email or RSS for content that can wait for you until you have time.

Re: ZapTXT is a Handy RSS Reader

Sameer — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 20:46:42 -0000

Thanks Arnold!

Re: Mobinode

Sameer — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 20:52:15 -0000

I agree. I have been keeping up wth Mobinode for a while and its a must read for anyone interested in China.

Re: 2007/03/21/mashtracker/

Sameer — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 11:28:14 -0000

I love it. I really think more bloggers should look at this - its a great way to let your trusted readers come to you first to decipher if and how they want to dive into a given story. It could based on the traffic that a conversation is generating or to find opposing/supporting arguements.
I'm sure you guys will find an elegant way to integrate this into Mashable.
A very refreshing version 2 of the trackback concept!

Re: 2007/04/10/knover-pundits-2008/

Sameer — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 14:45:18 -0000

some RSS love would have been nice.

Re: 2007/04/11/photobucket-myspace/

Sameer — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 22:12:19 -0000

Hey Pete,
re: "MySpace should charge widget developers based either on the number of embeds, or create an ad revenue sharing system for the bigger providers"

Im willing to bet that charging smaller widget providers will drastically reduce the number of MySpace widgets developers that can afford to play. You might have given them the silver bullet ;)

Rev share for widget providers seems like a better way to let the developers keep building cool stuff that keeps the community glued to MySpace.

Re: 2007/04/13/feedburner-aol/

Sameer — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 19:07:39 -0000

This is pretty spectacular. Feedburner has been on a tear recently with some honkin' names showing up on their client roster.

Re: 2007/04/27/live-spaces-api/

Sameer — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 21:00:53 -0000

The flexibility in pricing models is nice to see. As is the reasonable cost. Very refreshing to see this coming from MS.

Re: 2007/06/11/rss-toolbox/

Sameer — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 11:19:48 -0000

Hi Stan
Thanks for the ZapTXT mention. ZapTXT lets you combine feeds and monitor for keywords. You can receive alerts via Email, IM, Skype, SMS or as an RSS Feed.

Cheers, Sameer

Re: 2007/06/30/pownce-invites/

Sameer — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 09:34:40 -0000

p_sameer@hotmail.com

thanks Pete,
Sameer

Re: 2007/06/30/pownce-invites/

Sameer — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 23:07:11 -0000

thanks Foof!

Re: 2007/06/30/pownce-invites/

Sameer — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 11:43:41 -0000

Sent!

Re: 2007/07/07/navel-gaze-sunday/

Sameer — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 11:09:36 -0000

So true...That said, this looks like a quiet weekend so far.

Re: 2007/10/14/adam-hirsch-joins-as-mashable-community-director/

Sameer — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 23:58:36 -0000

Congrats Adam. Mashable just keeps getting better and better.

Re: 2008/06/19/zaptxt-version-two-im-sms/

Sameer — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 18:21:56 -0000

Thanks a lot Kristen :)

Re: 2008/08/22/magnolia-open-source/

Sameer — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 13:15:06 -0000

re: "In a sense, Ma.gnolia is looking to be a WordPress for social bookmarking, offering both a hosted and installable version of the service."

Assuming you can disable sharing on Ma.gnolia.com, there could be corporate interest for this as well, especially with the Bascamp type buyer.

Re: 10 of the Best Social Media Tools for PR Professionals and Journalists

Sameer — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 17:59:22 -0000

Super post.
This was written by Marshall Kirkpatrick in his role as a blogger but everything here applies to PR professionals who need to be on top of the news and frame the discussion: http://marshallk.com/open-sourcing-my-techcrunc...

(Disclaimer: ZapTXT, our company is listed as one of the services in Marshall's post)

Re: 2008/10/31/google-alerts-via-rss/

Sameer — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 18:31:06 -0000

Or to supercharge this, throw the feed into ZapTXT and we'll IM or Skype you when there's a match. If we see that you are offline, we'll even bounce it to your email or phone.

Re: The Ultimate Blogger’s Toolbox - More than 80 links to tools and resources to help improve your blogging experience

Sameer — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 14:28:00 -0000

Thanks for mentioning ZapTXT Lincoln! And for using the publisher button as well. Cheers, Sameer

Re: Is RSS Simply Marketing Plumbing?

Sameer — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 10:30:28 -0000

I'd prefer to skin this a different way. I think RSS should not try and fight for the limelight in the media - infact just the opposite. Web servces/applications need to use RSS in the most transparent way to deliver services (calender, weather, news what ever) to users without them even knowing what RSS is or that the RSS feed was even used.
The 'weakest' link' in this path to adoption is the tradtional RSS reader. The RSS button looks overwhelming enough to the average user and even if/when one has the courage to click on it, then they need to learn how to use yet another application to comsume the feed.
MyYahoo on the other had has been relatively successful becasue they sheild the user from the mumbo jumbo by simply saying "add content'.

Re: South Africans get insured by text

Sameer — Tue, 08 May 2007 09:50:22 -0000

Wow! Nice find Ewan!
Nice examples too. How about cover from pigeon droppings at Trafalgar Square? :)

Re: Happy Iranian New Year!

Sameer — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 18:56:33 -0000

And to you too and yours as well. My wife is Zoroastrian (actually Parsi - Zoroastrians that left Iran many moons ago for India) so we have a feast as well ;)

Re: Mirror mirror on the wall, which blog search is best of them all?

Sameer — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 12:48:47 -0000

Technorati has gotten much better. even before the recent updates I got a lot less spam from Technorati when compared to Google.

Monitoring a persistent search string or keyword on the Netvibes blog search engine is a very effective way to let the blog search engines go tete-a-tete. Since our users use a host of blog search engines to monitor RSS feeds via IM/SMS/Email, this allows us to constantly monitor how well each engine is doing. IceRocket often surprises me with finds that the others haven't caught onto yet but they don't always find all the results.

On to your test: We had 3 mentions in the blogosphere in the last 12 hours. If you do a sweep across all blog search engines using Netvibes, you'll see that:
- Technorati caught 2 of 3
- Google also caught 2 of 3 (not the same 2 as Technorati)
- Sphere caught 2 of 3
- IceRocket caught 1
This could change as the indexing catches up in the next few hours but thats what it looks like right now.

Re: Mirror mirror on the wall, which blog search is best of them all?

Sameer — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 16:03:00 -0000

Dave
Its my Netvibes page that I used. If you type in ZapTXT in their blog search module, you'll see the results stack up for all default blog search engines that come with the blog search module they offer.

Re: I’m writing for Fast Company magazine

Sameer — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 14:42:58 -0000

Thats great!
re: "Fast Company has 700,000 circulation, which will bring a whole new audience to my blog."

Fast Company will also see a huge increase in circulation, no doubt. Good luck!

Re: RSS Mistakes people make

Sameer — Sat, 05 May 2007 16:43:38 -0000

Marjolein covers most of the points we see when users monitor feeds via ZapTXT.

The most glaring mistake we see is feed naming, following by pubdate. Not naming feeds is just a tragic mistake to make from a marketing stand point, especially for those sites that have multiple RSS feeds for different topics or sections of the site. We often see sites that have a host of feeds that are 'auto-discoverable' from the home page of a blog or site and all of them have the same name.

Folks also need to be pay special attention when using .rdf for a feed as Forbes has on the blog you point to, Robert. In IE 7, if I click on their XML button (rdf), I'm prompted to download/save the file. Whaaa? You just lost a huge portion of mainstream users right there. And I imagine, Forbes has quite a few of those!

Re: RSS Mistakes people make

Sameer — Sun, 06 May 2007 20:51:33 -0000

P.S to my comment above (#5), when I look at the list of feeds that I subscribe to, the best example of a meaningful feed name is Darren Rowse's Problogger blog. The feed is called: ProBlogger Blog Tips. No guessing what that blog is about and you can bet most of the readerbase is interested in better blogging and not much else.

Re: My favorite 35 feeds for the past month

Sameer — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 12:10:55 -0000

I would add DigitalInspiration by Amit Agarwal (http://labnol.blogspot.com/). It's in the same league as LifeHack and LifeHacker.

Re: Too accessible:

Sameer — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 00:08:17 -0000

I think between LinkedIn and Facebook you're pretty much covered. Particularly with Facebook - the new feature where it keeps you informed abot what applications are popular amongst your friends is genius.

Re: Reading feeds

Sameer — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 11:27:00 -0000

Your link blog absolutely rocks Robert. I've recently shaved off about 50% of my blog RSS feeds in favor of topical RSS feeds from Technorati searches and your link blog is a nice compliment to stay on top of important topics. Keep it up.

Re: Apple has a PR nightmare brewing…

Sameer — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 23:49:22 -0000

I guess I got lucky. The software would download and then say the download was unsuccessful so it could not install. Atleast my phone works and Im grateful for that. I'll just wait a few days thank you. ughh

Re: It’s your business

Sameer — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 21:05:35 -0000

All the best to you and Rocky.

BTW, it was great to meet you in person the other day during the WSJ printing press tour and I hope we meet again soon. Rgds, Sameer

Re: RSS Has No Value Without A Filter

Sameer — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 13:29:45 -0000

Makes sense. That said, I do think this video is a really good primer.

Is all content equal? If not, then an RSS reader is not the right place to consume say a new lead that showed up in your Salesforce Database, your subscribed media channels, a competitor acquisition, and a heads up about a traffic jam on your route home.

Re: RSS Has No Value Without A Filter

Sameer — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 14:21:48 -0000

Scott,
Beleive me, I'm with you - our raison d'Ãªtre' is to enable content to be filtered and consumed where it makes sense depending on the importance of each peice of content is to the consumer. Folders/catagories in a Reader can only go so far :).

That said, I still think that moving from 'visiting' web sites to consuming sections of websites in one place is step 101 for many many people. In some ways that's how many of us RSS hounds were drawn to feed reading in the first place way back when. It took some time for us to realize that our RSS readers were starting to look like that pile of unread magazines on our coffee tables.

Re: Bloggers Can Be Journalists

Sameer — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 23:23:52 -0000

Nicely done and congrats! I can't think of anyone who writes about publishing that deserves this more.

Keep up the good work!