With news today of Twitter’s first organized stream - “Election08” - I’m willing to bet we’re witnessing the first instance of a plan to bring Twitter into main stream usage.  When I blogged about this a couple of weeks back, I suggested the current geek user ecosystems needs to give way to pop culture streams like sports for Twitter to reach its scale potential.

Well, the pop culture icons of today are vying for Washington - the Elections.  The Elections08 stream is pretty interesting and entertaining - people are tweeting voraciously. I am betting this model will really propel the usage upward.

Smart move, look for a whole new series of channels to form - ad hoc and organized. Make sure you catch the #mccainshot thread, it’s suggesting a drinking game from the election debates - such as: take a swig every time John McCain says “my friends”, and so on…

So, here it comes - a whole new stream of feeds that form tributaries into an ocean of conversations!

social | No Comments »

Cisco today announced the acquisition of Jabber.

A smart move, Cisco is a very good home for Jabber (why the heck they passed on this years ago still fails me).   Jabber/XMPP should become further entrenched in a leadership position in real-time communications infrastructure.  Personally, I’m intrigued with XMPP providing a better foundation for the scale-challenged world of Twitter and the like.

Note to Jabber developers in Denver, we’re hiring, and here’s what life is like here ;)

IM, Jabber | No Comments »

I’ve speculated a couple of times in the past that Google’s entry into the “free DA” space had little to do with a business intention to compete with free 411 services, but rather a strategic development initiative that aims to construct a voice vocabulary.

There are many reasons for Google to be in the forefront of a voice-based interface. Nuance’s technology domination (via voracious acquisition) and Microsoft’s capture of TellMe “forced” Google to do what they love to do - build it from scratch.  In order to succeed in voice technology, however, you need a huge base of data (voice utterances) to mine into search ontologies.  While Google clearly have this in text-entered search, it had no source in voice.  Enter GOOG-411. A consumer service on one side, but a massive pipe for capturing large volumes of voice search terms on the other.

As further evidence of this being a means-to-an-end, Silicon Alley Insider reports on the new audio indexing feature announced by Google for Video Search. Cutely/annoyingly named Gaudi, this gives us a more clear sense of Google’s intentions for voice search, and their ambitions in indexing spoken words in video (presumably, podcasts and perhaps music lyrics can’t be too far behind!)

search, 411, Free DA | No Comments »

For fun, I put up a straw poll on the site before the Kelsey Conference asking the question “If the Yellow Pages print business were an animal, on which one would you put the lipstick”. The choices were the two obvious politically inspired images of lipstick on pitbulls and pigs, but I added a third the chameleon!

Notionally, I was asking people to comment on the print business as being “on its way down, “capable of fighting back hard” or “adaptable to the future”.

The results (very unscientific!):

• swine 53%
• pit bull 23%
• chameleon 23%

Put another way, almost a 50-50 vote between print being on an irreversible downward trajectory down versus having more life than you’d think.

To me, that sums up the sentiment in the Kelsey Group Conference.

publishing, YP | No Comments »

Adding on to my recent post about Twitter, check out the NY Times excellent article which puts Twitter into the context of the social media landscape, and relative to Facebook in particular.  When you get a chance, do take a full read - it’s one of the best pieces I’ve seen for a layman understanding the consumer shift towards a world of “ambient awareness”.

In my Twitter post, I intentionally left out two things which the NYT pulls together well: One, the context of Twitter versus Facebook (who really pioneered the concept, and continues to consider the status update central to their evolution).  Two, it explains the side of Twitter which is “sideline” to my current usage - the emerging world increasingly referred to as “lifestreaming”. Read Write Web did a great primer on Lifestreaming a few months back, also worthwhile reading if you’re interested.

local social, IM, OpenSocial | No Comments »

Back in April, 2007, I first blogged about the early emergence of Twitter.  It’s since become a fundamental “must have” tool to the media and silicon valley crowd.  Not using Twitter is akin to carrying a Motorola Razr phone at Web 2.0!

Following my innate tendency to pick up shiny new objects, I joined Twitter a few months ago.  I was a reluctant laggard by silicon valley standards - the advertised premise of telling everyone “what are you doing?” didn’t sit well with me. Broadcasting to the world where I stop for a drink, or when I’m waiting for a plane seemed to be on the time-wasting side of social media, not to mention feeling a tad narcissistic.

And now I’m hooked.

(more…)

social, IM, Jabber | 1 Comment »