THE Tech Scoop » Twitter

Buffer, Inc officially releases Buffer for iPhone

Lance — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:06:55 +0000

With today’s updated iPhone app, the team at Buffer has officially announced their support for the iPhone device. This helps round out platforms that support the service. Buffer’s blog states “The great thing is that we have completed our full range of mobile products with the iPhone App. Our Android App, that has been out for a few months, has received some great responses, sending close to 15,000 updates every day.” (source)

Buffer allows you to schedule tweets for release at certain times of the day so you don’t flood your followers at any point. It was great if you were browsing the web and working at a computer. However, if you were working or reading on your iphone or ipad, it was not as easy to schedule and manage your buffered tweets from those devices.

Where to get it - App Store.

Do you use buffer or any similar tweet scheduling service? Please share in the comments.

Lance

If the computer breaks, the network won’t connect or a cell phone is acting funny, the family calls me. I’ve worked in and around technology development for nearly 20 years. I’m a tech, information and football fanatic with a short attention span who is always trying out new things and sharing information about them with others. In my “free” time, I enjoy drawing, photography, writing, watching anime and spending time with my family. Follow me on Twitter | Facebook

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Who’s Hiring: Twitter

James Hicks — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 04:17:14 +0000

That does it – I’m officially announcing the #ASOA hashtag which stands for All Sorts of Awesome

As part of a recent #hackweek project participants were asked to make the best/worst recruiting video of all time. I thinking this one tops the list.

With mayhem like this happening on a daily basis who wouldn’t want to work at Twitter?!

Hack Week @ Twitter (twitter.com)
Who’s the one person you’ve never thought to hire, but could change your business when you do? (marketing.yell.com)

James Hicks

James is the Founder and Chief Technologist of HicksNewMedia, a technology consulting and digital publishing firm providing effective and relevant solutions to individuals and businesses looking to utilize all things on the interweb. Follow him on Twitter | about.me | Facebook | Google+

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Litigation Over a Twitter Account

James Hicks — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 05:48:02 +0000

My man Noah Kravitz, the Editor at Large for Technobuffalo.com has over 17,000 followers in his Twitter account. That’s pretty good, but what’s at question currently in the legal system is do those 17,000 followers actually belong to him or to a previous employer that he used to manage the account for?

Recently he appeared on a segment on CNN talking about his current legal woes and how he is being sued for $340,000 for not relinquishing the Twitter account when leaving the company.

So who owns a Twitter account when you tweet for an organization? Is it the individual or the organization? I think this is going to be a tough one for Noah only for the reason that typically any collateral created at an employer, for an employer is typically going to end up being the property of that employer. California especially is tough like that.

Now is $340,000 a valid number? That’s questionable. What’s the dollar value of a follower?

I wish Noah the best, hope this all works out smoothly for him. Hey man if you read this – I hope to catch up with you next month at CES to get your take on this whole thing.

Be cool.

James Hicks

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Share Your Story With Twitter Stories

James Hicks — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 05:37:08 +0000

140 characters can seem impersonal, but you can really get a lot of information out in a single tweet.

When you combine your 140 characters with other like-minded individuals you get a story. In that story, you start to unveil the humanity in these seemingly impersonal messages and actually see that people are having real dialogues, real interactions, and making more positive change than negative.

Today Twitter introduced Twitter Stories to highlight just that – the evolving humanity and story in our online interactions.

The team at Twitter is reaching out to everyone on the platform to submit their story by mentioning @twitterstories or by using the hashtag #twitterstories. Include a link to a photo or video that helps illustrate your story to the world.

Each month they’ll curate a selection of profiles to share.

From the initial look of things – I liken it to Storify, however it’s only focused on Twitter traffic (obviously). That being said – I still love it.

Follow @twitterstories to get the latest stories or check the site every month for a new collection.

James Hicks

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Size Does Matter When It Comes to Klout

James Hicks — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 05:42:58 +0000

Social media influence – that’s about as vague for a description that I can give you.

Klout has been around for 3 years, if you’re on Twitter more than likely it’s safe to assume that you know who the company is and what they look to measure through their Klout Score metric.

Tomorrow morning I get the distinct privilege to sit on a conference call, as part of the Klout Squad, and get first hand insight to the new scoring algorithm, and other various enhancements and usability improvements to Klout.

Joe Fernandez and his team have a good thing going with Klout – advertisers, brands, and businesses small and large are paying attention to what is perceived as an individuals capability to influence behavior through social media platforms.

Watch this quick video that was recently released and posted on WSJ where Joe and some influencers speak about the what and why of Klout and about the ever-important WIFM (what’s in it for me) as they discuss the Klout Perks that individuals can receive for being influential in a given topic.

I’ll update this post after the 8am PST call with all the updates. Until then, I’ll give the nod to a TheNextWeb and the great article written by Drew Olanoff tonight after he had a chance to speak directly with Joe Fernandez.

Update: So the preview call is done, and we got to see some of the new goodness ahead of time – the tech team at Klout was still coding away so there were still a few issues showing us detailed score insights.

That being said the focus of the conversation was to let us know that the focus of Klout really is taking a dynamic shift. More focus on what they’re call a PeopleRank algorithm.

From the Klout Blog,

…Since influence is the ability to drive action and is based on quality, not quantity. When someone engages with your content, we assess that action in the context of the person’s own activity. These principles form the basis of our PeopleRank algorithm which determines your Score based on:

how many people you influence,
how much you influence them and
how influential they are.

Let me say it - hallelujah - the fact that Klout is now consciously rewarding quality instead of spammy quantity blind RTs and links. Now we’re getting somewhere…

The mention that “all platforms are viewed equally” is also a great achievement. Even though I logged into my new-and-improved more accurate Klout score moments ago and saw that it dipped by a whopping 8 points, it’s good to see that more folks outside of just Twitter show up in my influence network.

Major step forward team – great to see the refinements. Keep ‘em coming

The Standard Measurement For Influence – Klout (thetechscoop.net)
New Services Coming To Klout (thetechscoop.net)

James Hicks

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Kred: It’s All About Influence, Outreach and Community

James Hicks — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 15:50:31 +0000

To date there are two dominant players in the social influence/measurement game. One is Klout and the other is PeerIndex.

There are some other, boutique services that have great potential and also provide some incredible value, but are still very early in terms of gaining widespread adoption and traction (more on those great tools in a later post…)

I, being someone who follows this social/new media industry strive to understand and ultimately use each of these tools so as to share experiences and consumer value with you, our readership.

Recently I had the distinct pleasure of having a conference call with Andrew Grill, CEO of PeopleBrowsr UK. PeopleBrowsr is responsible for a new entrant within the social measurement landscape – Kred. By the way, this post is a timely exclusive since Andrew is on stage RIGHT NOW in New York at PivotCon launching Kred to the public.

What is Kred?

From a company perspective, according to Grill, Kred is “…an analytics company building an influence measure.”

The idea is to achieve synergy amongst like-minded individuals and foster that inherent communication.

From a practical, user perspective think of it as this – everyone on Twitter has a Kred score, which is made up of two parts: the influence score and the outreach score.

Your influence score is a measure of your ability to inspire others. It is a number on a scale from 1 to 1000, and is based on how often your tweets are retweeted, how many new followers you are gaining, and how many replies you generate. Familiar model right?

Here’s where Kred outshines anything else on the market today - the Outreach score is measured in levels and is a reflection of how generous you are with retweeting and replying to others. Get that, how “generous” you are. Fascinating concept.

But there’s more…common sense would seem to imply that each of us is influential even when we’re not online. We don’t share and contribute to society 100% of our efforts through social media channels. Again, here is where Kred has taken a quantum leap above the other measurement platforms by representing each of our offline activities as well by allowing users the ability integrate their “real-life” awards and recognition — anything from frequent-flier status to academic honors to club memberships — into their score. One word – BRILLIANT!

Andrew was saying all the right things, we were having an great dialogue and then he mentioned something that took the conversation to a whole new level. He made clear the fact that all of this analysis, reporting, and measurement is done in an atmosphere of complete transparency. Meaning, people can access activity statements that show every action that increased their Kred. They can also view their Friends’ Activity Statements so they can understand the sources of their Kred as well.

Very soon there will also be privacy settings so people can select how much they want to share or participate in Kred. According to Grill, the privacy controls will be available late October and will have options such as public, private, anonymous and invisible. This transparency and privacy control mechanism in itself is something that many users of social metric/measurement tools have been demanding from the other scoring providers.

Chalk yet another win up for Kred, and they haven’t even fully launched yet.

Along with the influence and outreach components of your Kred, there is also a third component of the measurement. That is the concept of Community.

Based on the information in your Twitter bio, Kred attempts to determine which of approximately 200 communities you belong to. It can show you the influence of your whole community and how you rank in that community.

This is great for individuals, but this is going to be critical for agencies and social platform integrators. And it is going to be through THIS value-added service that Kred is going to make their money. Yes there will be a free model with all the tools, reporting and analytics, but the paid version will be focused primarily at the agency and those looking to further integrate into other platforms and those looking to setup custom communities.

Browse through the slide deck below to see the strategy pitch used to explain Kred.

Kred – Measurable influence. We all have Influence Somewhere

Here are some specifics on my Kred score that Andrew was thoughtful enough to generate during our call.

Obviously, stay tuned, much more coming from Kred in the near future. Sign up for the service now on their main site here. Follow Andrew Grill on Twitter and also keep a good watch out for other great measurement tools coming out of PeopleBrowsr.

James Hicks

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A Look at the Twitterpalooza [infographic]

James Hicks — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 04:20:37 +0000

No that’s not a real word, but it works – hence that’s why they named this data visualization the Twitter Twitterpalooza – taking a 50,000 foot-level view of this entire Twittervers (now that’s a real word)!!

Via: Buy Twitter Followers

James Hicks

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Ev and Biz Announce New Project: Lift

James Hicks — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 07:39:07 +0000

Twitter co-founders Ev Williams and Biz Stone have announced the first project out of their incubator/investment vehicle Obvious Corp, and it’s called “Lift.”

According to the Obvious.com site, the over-arching goal of the organization is to foster systems that help people work together to improve the world.

Wow that’s a lofty statement, but a fantastic goal…

Our approach is threefold: Build, partner, and invest. We’ve started working on some ideas ourselves, we’re researching how best to create an investment vehicle, and today we’re thrilled to announce our first official partnership.

The Lift project, created by Tony Stubblebine and Jon Crosby, is described as “an interesting new application for unlocking human potential through positive reinforcement.”

Per Biz Stone’s statement, “…We love this software for what it does, and because we’ve tried it and it works. Our plan is to build something extraordinary together. The Obvious Corporation will assist the talented Lift team with strategy, design, funding, recruiting—in general, we’ll be helpful wherever possible. In exchange, Obvious will own some equity in Lift.”

THAT there is exciting enough – Biz Stone and Ev Williams KNOW how to build a company, so when we eventually figure out what Lift is and does, I’m certain we’ll all be extremely receptive.

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