How did Ping.FM blow by Utterz?

Looking from the outside, Utterz looks like it has a superset of the features offered on Ping.fm.  Both sites claim to allow you to update multiple social networks from a single log-in. 

Here is what they list on the respective pages...

Ping.FM updates: 

Utterz shows these networks available for cross-posting:

While there are differences, the lists are roughly equivalent.  When you compare feature sets, however, Utterz appears to offer more.  Ping.FM bills itself as "a simple service that makes updating your social networks a snap."  In addition to this Ping.FM's cross-posting feature, Utterz shows itself as a destination for discussions from "any mobile phone or computer." It goes on to say that "Utters are cool because they can be audio, video, pictures and text, and it's really easy to post to your other online profile pages." So in addition to cross-posting, Utterz is it's own network and that is the problem.

In my Twitter stream tonight, someone suggested we all jump over and check out Utterz.  I have previously ignored the same requests for Ping.FM. I decided that I might like the idea of cross-posting some time and wanted to know where to start. That got me to pull up the following graph on Compete:





Do you see what I see?  Utterz is first to market and with more features. After giving a six month head start to Utterz, Ping.FM arrives and then proceeds to blow by Utterz in four months.

Why? How does that happen?

Well, I may find out more on this story in the next few days or weeks, but my guess is this:  Ping.FM is a specific solution to a specific problem and has a low resistance for adoption.  It's easy to say "yes" to Ping because it doesn't attempt to displace anything you are currently doing. Ping.FM enhances your existing relationship with Twitter and other social sites. It doesn't attempt to replace it.

The Utterz home page, however, suggests that in addition to it's cross-posting feature, it is a community. That may be the rub. I suspect that some people take a look at the time requirements of being involved in one more community and say "No thanks."

The Hidden Cost of Ownership for free on-online services like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Plaxo can be heavy time requirements. To create, grow, and then benefit from an online network requires a lot of activity.

Twitter reduces the cost of saying "Hi" to a friend from ten minutes to 2 seconds. This reduction in time allows us to stay connected to dozens of friends and hundreds or thousands, or yipes! tens of thousands of followers.  When the cost of staung connected to a single conneciton drops so close to zero, we find ourselves filling that time by adding more messages and connections into the queue.  We go from the extreme of rarely calling our friends on the phone to maintaining casual relationships with hordes of people. Maintaining connections with lots of people, can take lots of time, even of it's only a few seconds here and there.

Having built our network of contacts and messages once, presumably on Twitter, we are unlikely to want to begin that process anew on another network. The cost of rebuilding that network is too great and we are unlikely to do it just because the new one has a couple of cool, new features.

What does Utterz do about this problem?  Probably nothing.  There is no reason at all they can't grow and fill a niche of people who simply love their service and have managed to build a significant network of friends there. Why not? One day the crowd may grow tired of Twitter's free but flaky service and finally fly off to something new.

Flickr has the hiccups, but Twitter is working...

Flickr has the hiccups and I think I may have been the one who gave it to him. I wanted to upload just one more picture and post it to my kid's blog before going to bed for the evening. Sorry folks!

Your Mangatar probably doesn't look like you

In just a few days, FaceYourManga has given hordes of the Twitterati a new look. Gone are many dimly lit camera phone snapshots, all replaced by a wide-eyed avatar created at the FaceYourManga website. It is a step up for some, and a simple diversion for others. The site makes it easy to create a manga, it's much like creating a Mii on your Nintendo Wii. The problem is that it isn't quite flexible enough and everyone starts looking the same. Scanning through my twitter friends online, it looks like quite a number have gone the manga route, especially the west coast crowd. I suspect this fad doesn't last very long. Twitter is about sharing experiences, and once we've all shared this one, we'll realize it wasn't interesting enough to captivate.

Get yours at Face Your Manga.

Give your Blog a "Lived in" look, add the secret Friendfeed Widget

Your blog not getting updated as much as you used to, because you spend all your time on Twitter and Friendfeed? Don't let your readers, viewers, or occasional family members wonder if you have moved out of your old URL, add a more frequently update lifestream through the secret Friendfeed widget.

It's a Secret? Sort of. If you don't know the URL, you won't find it on the the Friendfeed menus.

You can find your widget in Friendfeed, by typing in the following URL "http://friendfeed.com/embed?user=yourname" (Don't forget that you should replace "yourname" with your friendfeed username.) (e.g. http://friendfeed.com/embed?user=yanov)

Sure, you could grab the RSS feed from Twitter or Friendfeed and dress it up yourself, but this link is the easy way to get your blog or personal web page looking like you are still hanging around.

Sample below:

Twitter v. Jaiku - a conversation on Friendfeed

I really like the interface and even the promise of Jaiku, but it seems to be getting no traction at all. Twitter, and now Friendfeed, are sucking all of the air out of the room. This week, Robert Scoble asked Why Jaiku is not more popular. The conversation is on Friendfeed.


On Friendfeed, via Scoble: Jaiku v. Twitter Smackdown

Explaining Twitter? Let these guys do it for you...

I never thought I had trouble explaining Twitter to someone. It's a low barrier to entry microblogging system that lets you easily share the therbligs of your life with your friends, family, and followers. No... I don't say it quite that way. I am the kind of guy who would use the word therblig in a sentence, but only if I were there to explain it. Only those of us tortured with the concepts of time and motion studies in college industrial management classes have probably ever seen the word. The point is that Twitter lets you easily share the little stuff in your life. The sphere of those around you can decide what they want to do with it.

Should all of this seem a bit dense, may I point you to the very clear description of Twitter found below:



On Twitter, I am Thinkhammer

Look up: therblig

Twitter + Spamtachments = Pownce

To: Pownce
From: Web 2.0 Users

It Would Be So Nice If You Weren't Here...(thanks Charles Grodin)

The irreverent uncov reminds us that Pownce is still alive, even if only barely. I might not have bothered mentioning the rather mundane continued existence of this particular Twitter clone, but Pownce isn't just a Twitter clone. It's an annoying Twitter clone. Think of Danny DeVito v. Arnold Schwarzenegger in the movie Twins.

While I might Twitter or even Jaiku to my pals, I swore off Pownce because I kept getting useless links to attachments, pictures, videos, and other unwanted interruptions. Since they were unwanted, I deemed them spam. (Even my friends can spam me.) I thought that I might be outside of their target demographic and too remote from the "in crowd" to understand why some people might want this. It appears that I wasn't the only one who didn't get Pownce. At TechCrunch, Arrington muses that Pownce may be a dead pool candidate.

uncov's clever chart says that Pownce is beyond even the resuscitory powers of power blogger Arrington. The compete chart below suggests nothing different. I tossed in Jaiku's traffic for comparison. Even though Jaiku's traffic may be in the dumpster with Pownce, they can never die as the eternally revitalizing blood of Google now runs in their veins.

OBVIOUSLY: Where do you lose the most productivity?

From the department of the patently OBVIOUS:

The maker of TWITTER wants to know where you lose the most productivity during the day. Shouldn't TWITTER be one of the choices?

Take Ev's survey.

Whoops! It looks like someone else is fed up with Twitter

Twitter not tweeting you like it should? You aren't the only one.
Snipperoo has had enough...

qv: Twitter: Whoops! indeed

The quickest way to achieve Twitter saturation

Just in case you are not getting enough Twitter in your diet, you can now tell Twitter to track a certain word and then send you a copy of any tweet coming in that contains the word. Yikes!

Biz says:

We're really excited about this new feature which allows anyone to
track concepts in real time over SMS or IM. Tell Twitter what words
or phrases you're interested in and you'll receive updates
containing those words the instant anyone Twitters them. One of
the most popular words being tracked by people right now is
"overheard." Send "track overheard" to Twitter to find out why.
(Send "untrack" if you change your mind and "stats" to get a list
of words you track.)

Learn more: http://tinyurl.com/2a4ggh

Sure, ThinkHammer Twitters.

Google buys Jaiku -- you can stop Twittering now.

Jaiku has been snapped up by Google. Here is what Jaiku has to day about it:

Exciting news: Google has bought Jaiku today.

What does that mean? First and foremost, we’re of course continuing to support our existing users. So fear not: your Jaiku phone, the Web site, IM, SMS, and API will continue to work normally.

That said, new user sign-ups have been limited for the time being. The idea here is to enable our team to get right to work with Google’s engineers on delivering a new, better service to you as quickly as we can instead of spending our efforts on optimizing the current back-end. Existing users will still be able to invite their friends, and those who are not yet on Jaiku can send us a request for an invitation to join.

Jaiku is a presence sharing service that shares activity information via the web and mobile phones. I can, for example using SMS, a web app on my Blackberry, or the Jaiku website.

What I have liked about Jaiku is that they expanded the platform with features like replies pretty early on. They also allow you to dress up your messages with icons, and have allowed you to aggregate other feeds so people could basically stay in touch with you. Jaiku is flexible and offers more features for more types of users without actually cluttering up the interface or impeding usability. That's a bit of elegance that seems to have eluded Twitter. Just this week I was enjoying Jaiku and at the same time wondering how they intended to make money with it. My curiosity was borne out of the fact that I like the service and was afraid it might go away if they didn't come up with a revenue stream. The Google purchase lets me know that they figured out how to make money and that both parties intend for the service to last longer than a fad.