Craig Bailey on Microsoft

I find it interesting that the more time I spend on Twitter, the less time I spend directly reading and writing blogs. The reason for this (besides the obvious time factor) is that I am finding more and more that most things I need to know are alerted to me via Twitter. This isn't to say I won't be reading and writing blogs anymore, but I'm noticing a marked decrease.

Joining the conversation on Twitter I am alerted to all kinds of blogs but also news stories, technical posts, Microsoft happenings and more... with the advantage of immediacy.

Will this phase pass in time? Probably.

There's a lot of noise about OpenID (it's great, we can't live without it, it's safer, it's the future, etc, etc) but very little actually happening (in terms of real adoption). TechCrunch has had a few thought provoking posts on the matter - decide for yourself whether OpenID has become little more than a marketing tool.

But if you're interested in playing with OpenID in your .NET code base then have a peek at this project. (I'm not quite sure how long this has been going, but I think it might a bit over a year ago that it started.)

(via Andrew Arnott)

I'm only a Twitter newbie (ie less than 1000 tweets), so I haven't yet tried to convert anyone over to it... but that said, I'll happily point you to a post like this one from TechCrunch. The value in Twitter for me is simply this: immediacy of information. In a few months I'll elaborate a little more (when I perhaps have some credibility in the Tweetosphere).

These days it seems the best indication of when a particular social media source has reached it's used by date is when recruiters are using it more than your 'real' connections :-)

Take LinkedIn for example. A year ago, this was a valuable tool, allowing us all to connect to business associates. These days, all I seem to get is requests to connect with recruiters, and poorly targeted job offers. Facebook isn't so bad, but that's more likely to be because I don't have technology related keywords against my profile.

So, I'm wondering how long before the recruiters start swarming over Twitter? How long before we get shotgun broadcast @replies to everyone about new jobs?

My guess, the wonderful Twitter landscape we enjoy today will be polluted within 6 months. The Block button will be a regular in our daily use, and the 'continual conversation' we enjoy now will regularly be little more than a prelude to a job offer...

But hey, on the flip side, maybe there's an opening for someone to develop a Twitter app for recruiters...

Here's what RecruiTwit could do:

1. You seed it with a few people to follow (eg Scobleizer). Then it goes along following the followers of the seed people (all automatically of course)

2. Then, when you are ready with your job ad, you type in the description and click Send. RecruiTwit creates individual @replies to everyone you follow, spamming them with a 'personal' job ad tweet

3. In the Premium edition it'd allow you to use multiple Twitter accounts so you can avoid the Twitter API limitations (60 an hour currently I think)

4. In the Platinum edition it automatically creates new Twitter accounts for you every 7 days, since everyone will have blocked your existing ones by then

Am I being too cynical? You can reply to me on Twitter here if you like.

For all those people using OutTwit as your Twitter client (it basically brings Twitter into Outlook), you'll be interested I'm sure to get the latest version (released yesterday).

The best things about this release (0.4.2.22) is that it pulls in all your replies. So, even if you're offline for a few hours, once you reconnect it pulls in the replies that you would have otherwise missed and had to use another client to go and check.

Download OutTwit here

Yes, there are dangers to social networking, and this report outlining how gangs are targeting kids via social networking platforms is another to add to the list.

(via the Freakonomics blog)

Last year the wonderful Laurel Papworth blew us away at SBTUG with a presentation on Social networking.

In the course of her presentation she mentioned the whole mesh network concept (eg Meraki). I truly had tingles down my spine when I heard about the concept.

Thanks to Laurel for this post in which she highlights the news of mesh networks coming to Sydney real soon. See http://blog.freesydneywireless.com/

Perhaps you're like me and find all these interesting things and then forget to investigate further. They get tucked into a Favourites Tab Group folder and forgotten about until a rainy Sunday afternoon (literally).

In my next few posts I'm go to clear out my 'must check that out later favourites folders' and link to stuff that was interesting (some date back to Sep 07 - ye gads!).

Flock - The Social Web Browser - see also a Newbie's Guide to Flock

There's No Money In The Long Tail of the Blogosphere

Interesting post - summary: you can't make money from a blog unless a LOT of people read it. My question: Did anyone ever think otherwise?

Newbie's guide to Twitter

I wish I'd read this 6 months ago. See also Catherine Eibner's excellent post on Twitter from last week.

Here's an idea... if you have a Social Networking site, why not build an API that allows developers to build applications for it? Brilliant. MySpace certainly is leading the field with this revolutionary idea. Oh hang on, that's right, Facebook did that 8 months ago and now has over 15,000 apps built by devs. Hmmmm, 8 months is an eternity in social networking time-frames, I wonder if it will take off for MySpace, being so late to the party. Probably, their user base is huge after all. Beat the rush - Sign up now.

Next year they'll come up with something even more brilliant, such as allowing their apps to be shown on any web site :-)

Laurel Papworth alerted me to this little nasty. Beware of any Facebook apps claiming to inform you of users that have a crush on you... yeah right, as if you'd fall for anything like that :-)