Gmail is set to become Google’s next major push into social media. According to The Wall Street Journal, the popular webmail service will soon launch a new feature for sharing content and status updates with friends. [Update: We think Google might announce these features on Tuesday]

As WSJ points out, Gmail users can already update their statuses — sort of — through Gmail’s chat feature. Currently, this feature is more akin to the traditional IM “away message.” However, with this new social push, Gmail will offer a timeline-view of your friends’ status updates, just like on Facebook and Twitter.

Those updates might come from both Gmail and third-party services. According to WSJ, Google-owned YouTube and Picasa will be integrated into the stream. The huge question then is whether or not the new feature will include updates from Twitter and Facebook.

If so, the new features could be thought of more like a TweetDeck or Seesmic, looking to provide an aggregate view of your friends’ social media activities along with the ability to push status updates to the services you use from inside of Gmail. If not, it could be thought of as a major competitor to Twitter and Facebook as Gmail looks to covert its millions of e-mail users into adherents to a whole new breed of social media service.

An issue with the latter, however, is that Gmail has historically added people to your contacts based on e-mail interactions. Hence, this contact list often varies significantly from your friends on social sites where relationships need to be made explicitly.

In other words, your Gmail contacts aren’t necessarily the same people you want to share status updates, photos and videos with. This is an issue that shouldn’t be overlooked in evaluating the new features Google is soon to unveil.

Tags: facebook, gmail, Google, trending, twitter

The 2010 Technology Entertainment Design conference will be kicking off tomorrow in Long Beach, California, bringing the leading minds of many fields together to talk shop about innovation, change, and what the future holds.

As social media has become a game changer for industries across the board, you can bet the experts at this year’s TED conference will have their sights set on peeling back the hype and getting at the core of what social technology has in store for this year and beyond.

Perhaps the best part of the TED conferences is that videos of the talks are archived and free to view right on the organization’s website. Given the wealth of insight we’re sure to see tomorrow, we thought we’d whet your appetite by highlighting a few recent and exceptional talks from TED’s past, with a focus on social media.

We’ll start things off with a real-life social media parable about how the biggest and most effective forces on the web usually take shape by accident. Alexis Ohanian of Reddit.com tells the quick and hilarious story of how the social web provided some unexpected help to Greenpeace in halting the Japanese whaling industry. Internet marketers take note: The meme is all powerful, and it cannot be controlled.

In this talk, consultant, professor and author Clay Shirky discusses the unprecedented immediacy of real-time citizen journalism made possible by social media and the nearly ubiquitous access to mobile web technologies. From the election crisis in Iran to the massive earthquake that shook China in May of 2008, Shirky discusses how media is made on the ground, as-it-happens, via the social web.

With a couple of anecdotes building the ultimate social media case study, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams discusses how a little side project called Twitter became a game-changing phenomenon with the help and input of the very users who made the service a success. From innovative marketing uses to core functionality, Williams provides the evidence for what we knew all along: Users know best.

As social media changes our social lives, speculation has abounded for years on how the web may be disconnecting us from intimate interactions in favor of meaningless quests to rack up followers and “friends.” Not so, says Stefana Broadbent, who explains that social networks function the same way online as they do in real life. While we may have lots of friends, we only really communicate regularly and meaningfully with a handful of them, and social technologies like e-mail, texting, and tweeting allow us to do so more often across time and space.

From professional sports mascots to balloon animal makers, some communities are so extremely niche that they could only properly thrive on the Internet. So argues blogger and author Seth Godin, who believes that our revolutionary new connectedness has brought human culture back to its roots, and that tribes (groups of people mobilized around a shared interest) are the present and future of all web content.

What are your favorite TED talks about social media? Which did we miss? Let us know in the comments.

Tags: future, List, Lists, social media, social networks, technology, TED, TED Talks, twitter, video

Soren Gordhamer is the organizer of the Wisdom 2.0 Conference, which brings together staff from Google, Facebook, and Twitter with others to explore living wisely in our modern age. Mashable readers can use code ‘Mashable‘ for a discount when registering.

In the era of social media, our networks are much larger than they have ever been, and we have more ways to communicate with those in them. Even if you are not very active on Facebook or Twitter, my guess is that your sphere of communication has expanded significantly in recent years. Who you communicate with and how you communicate has changed radically. This new connected era brings both opportunities and challenges.

In the past we had a set of contacts, all of whom generally knew how to reach us — via phone, e-mail, or regular mail. Today, thanks in large part to social media, we have many different levels of communication, each with a specific purpose and etiquette. When we do not understand the role of these levels, they can become huge time wasters. When we do understand them however, they can help us more effectively engage and navigate these new waters.

Just about everyone, including Bill Gates (who if you have not heard, recently joined Twitter), has learned the importance of having both a means to communicate with people, and a channel where people can respond. Though you can do this on Facebook through comments on Fan pages and in groups, this seems most applicable to Twitter, where people use @replies to send and receive short, publicly viewable messages.

The public reply provides an open and transparent channel for people to interact with public figures, brands, and each other, without the pressure of response that comes with e-mail. Public interactions are a great starting point for engagement that never existed before social media, and if done correctly, can often lead to more fruitful direct communication.

Once a relationship is established through public communication, the next step is often a direct message within a social network. A direct message creates a private connection without opening the floodgates of e-mail. In fact, in may even be preferable to e-mail in the long term.

Why? Especially with Twitter, a DM has a character limit, and can only come from people you follow. If you have ten e-mails (of unlimited length and possibly unknown sources) and ten Twitter DMs, which are you likely to open first? For an increasing number of people, the answer is DM.

Once you make a connection through DM and get permission to follow-up via e-mail, the e-mail is often better received. Facebook, where most people allow private messages, can also be a means to take communication to the next level.

E-mail still has its place in this new era. It allows for more in-depth communication, can be easily forwarded, and sent to numerous people at once. When e-mail is used skillfully, it enables deeper communication. When not used effectively, it can become a huge time drain, as people write lengthy messages without much thought of the time and attention they are asking of recipients.

This fine line makes e-mail tough to master in the social media age. If you’re looking to advance to the next communication level with someone, respect this direct and private channel, and be sure to keep your e-mails succinct and meaningful.

Hearing someone’s voice allows people to get a better sense of one another. While communicating via text, a person can take time to carefully craft his or her words, potentially presenting an image that may not be true or is harder to trust. A phone call allows for more immediate back-and-forth, and can be particularly helpful if a subject matter is delicate or people are considering a more in-depth relationship.

Some time back I was communicating with an editor about an issue that we had bounced back and forth several times. Finally she said, “Let’s chat about it on the phone.” This furthered the dialogue significantly and bypassed what may have taken weeks to sort out via e-mail.

I have met numerous people in person that I first communicated with via social networks. All of these meetings were enhanced by the natural progression of our first digital communication. While at one time face-to-face interactions were the entry point, today, in-person meetings often come at later stages.

Particularly if people are considering working on a project together, an in-person meeting allows for the most in-depth connection. For some people Skype or other video chat may be enough to experience this.

Too often people think communication is only through words, but our bodies communicate as well. They communicate how comfortable or uncomfortable we are discussing a matter, our level of passion for a subject, and our hopes and fears. Meeting with someone in person allows for communication to occur on multiple levels, and people often come away with a much better sense of each other.

In this era of social media when we are reaching out and engaging more and more people, the question is not just “Should I communicate with someone?” but “How should I communicate with someone? How can I build engagement one step at a time?” The more we allow for and understand the importance of all the various levels of communication, the more we can skillfully and effectively use each one.

- Zen and the Art of Twitter: 4 Tips for Productive Tweeting
- The Tao of Tweeting
- How Social Media Has Changed Us
- 5 Tips for Building Lasting Online Friendships
- 4 Steps for Effective Online Networking

Images courtesy of iStockphoto, TommL, PaulPaladin, Kohlerphoto, sandoclr

Tags: communication, e-mail, email, facebook, List, Lists, meeting, social media, social networking, social networks, twitter

If you were to look at Social Media the United States and many other parts of the world, you would believe that the world of Social Media was flat, dominated by social continents including Facebook, Twitter, blogs, YouTube, and Flickr. As we zoom in, we visualize other established and emerging social services that depict provinces and outlying settlements of our social atlas.

Upon publishing the original Conversation Prism, which was the culmination of a year’s work documenting and organizing the social web by usage and conversational patterns, the world responded by creating Conversation Prisms specific to each country. I shared several new social maps in “The Landscape for International Social Networking.”

Over the years, other maps emerged that documented leading social networks around the world as well as the social behavior associated within each country. As Social Media is truly global and relationships are truly without borders, I too have spent a great deal of time researching the networks that host conversations relevant to my projects regardless of geographic location.

Italian blogger Vincenzo Cosenza has for the second time, published a visual map that portrays the most popular social networks around the world based on the most recent traffic data (December 2009) as measured by Alexa & Google Trends for Websites.

Upon review, it’s clear that Facebook, at 350 million (mostly likely closer to 400 million) is truly earning a global audience, which naturally burrows its social roots with every new connection and the connections of connections forged within the network. According to research, Facebook dominates in 100 out of 127 countries measured.

If we were to analyze the top three social networks by what many argue are the top 10 markets for social networking, our view comes into focus and allows us to see where our attention and participation is required in our global efforts.

Australia

1. Facebook
2. MySpace
3. Twitter

Canada

1. Facebook
2. MySpace
3. Flickr

China

1. QQ – 300 million active accounts
2. Xiaonei
3. 51

France

1. Facebook
2. Skyrock
3. MySpace

Germany

1. Facebook
2. StudiVZ
3. MySpace

Italy

1. Facebook
2. Netlog
3. Badoo

Russia

1. V Kontakte
2. Odnoklassniki
3. LiveJournal

Spain

1. Facebook
2. Tuenti
3. Fotolog

United Kingdom

1. Facebook
2. Bebo
3. MySpace

United States

1. Facebook
2. MySpace
3. Twitter

In other parts of the world, social networks that might not have registered previously among leading experts, emerge as candidates when location and society prove paramount in highly targeted, culturally-aware programs.

For example, Google’s Orkut is Brazil’s top social network.

Hi5 is leading in Mexico, Peru, Portugal, Romania, Thailand and Mongolia.

In the Czech Republic, Lide is the network of choice.

Maktoob is the social hub in Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Yemen.

South Korea is focusing its dialogue and connections in Cyworld.

Social networking in Guadeloupe and Martinque is concentrated at Skyrock.

Mixi is the leading central station for social activity in Japan.

The leaderboard of those countries not yet friended by or fans of Facebook include:

Hungary – Iwiw

Poland – Nasza-klasa

Philippines – Friendster

Netherlands – Hyves

Lithuania – One

Latvia – Draugiem

Taiwan – Wretch

Zing – Vietnam

The race for supremacy in social networking is only part of the story.  As in any race, we typically expect a winner to reach an end. However, this competition is absent of finish line and as a result, a true overall winner is beside the point. Many networks will enjoy time in the spotlight until their luster ages and a new framework for engagement lures our friends of friends, our friends, and finally our attention and participation. As consumers, we go where we are not only wanted, but also where we can make an impact.

While we’ve reviewed the top social networks across the social Web, ranked by countries spanning the globe, the balance of the story is represented in the actions that define social media engagement within each network and influenced by the culture of each country of prevalence.

TrendStream analyzed social media activity around the world and captured the results in a stunning infographic.

This graph essentially unravels the ties that bind us and peels back the layers of social networking technologies and platforms to reveal how real people are adopting and engaging in the social web.

The map demystifies how social media is embraced around the world, demonstrating that social computing and collaboration is far from ubiquitous. And, in many countries, how we use social media is much different than how we will use it over time. We’re still in the very early stages of the social (r)evolution..

TrendStream in partnership with Lightspeed Research interviewed 32,000 Web users in 16 countries. As such, the Global Web Index analyzes active social web involvement and then organizes and presents behavior by volume (in millions). Reviewing the Global Web Index and fusing the information with the data included in the World Map of Social Networks, we can get a clear indication of how social behavior defines social networks and to what extent. It’s a goldmine of data for any brand or government agency seeking a more influential form of propaganda (2.0).

Social Web Involvement is categorized as:

Pink – Uploading photos online

Purple – Uploading videos

Blue – Managing a social network profile

Orange – Blogging

Pink – Micro-blogging

Grey – Percentage of population with access to social tools

Australia

Leading Network: Facebook

Social Network Profiles: Access= 40% | Users = 5m
Photos: Access = 39.1% | Users = 4.9m
Videos: Access  = 11.9% | Users = 1.5m
Blogging: Access = 11.4% | Users = 1.4m
Micro Blogging: Access = 5.6% | Users = .7m

Brazil

Leading Network: Orkut

Social Network Profiles: Access= 59.6% | Users = 17.9m
Photos: Access = 54.9% | Users = 16.2m
Videos: Access  = 34% | Users = 10.2m
Blogging: Access = 20.7% | Users = 6.2m
Micro Blogging: Access = 14.2% | Users = 4.3m

Canada

Leading Network: Facebook

Social Network Profiles: Access = 46.2% | Users = 10.2m
Photos: Access = 40.9% | Users = 9m
Videos:  Access = 14.9% | Users = 3.3m
Blogging: Access = 10.6% | Users = 2.3m
Micro Blogging: Access = 5.1% | Users = 1.1m

China

Leading Network: QQ

Photos: Access = 60.3% | Users = 117.7m
Blogging: Access = 46% | Users = 89.7m
Videos:  Access = 28.7% | Users = 55.9m
Social Network Profiles: Access = 27.3% | Users = 53.2m
Micro Blogging: Access = 21.3% | Users = 41.5m

France

Leading Network: Facebook

Social Network Profiles: Access = 29.3% | Users = 11.2m
Photos: Access = 27.5% | Users = 10.5m
Blogging: Access = 9.5% | Users = 3.6m
Videos: Access = 9.5% | Users = 3.6m
Micro Blogging: Access = 3.8% | Users = 1.4m

Germany

Leading Network: Facebook

Social Network Profiles: Access = 32.7% | Users = 13.9m
Photos: Access = 31.6% | Users = 13.4m
Blogging: Access = 10% | Users = 4.3m
Videos: Access = 8.5% | Users = 3.6m
Micro Blogging: Access = 5.7% | Users = 2.4m

India

Leading Network: Facebook

Photos: Access = 63.9% | Users = 22.4m
Social Network Profiles: Access = 57.5% | Users = 20.1m
Videos: Access = 36.2% | Users = 12.7m
Blogging: Access = 34% | Users = 11.9m
Micro Blogging: Access = 24% | Users = 8.4m

Italy

Leading Network: Facebook

Photos: Access = 43.3% | Users = 9.1m
Social Network Profiles: Access = 35.8% | Users = 7.6m
Videos: Access = 20.9% | Users = 4.4m
Blogging: Access = 19.4% | Users = 4.1m
Micro Blogging: Access = 12.3% | Users = 2.6m

Japan

Leading Network: Mixi

Blogging: Access = 24.5% | Users = 15.9m
Photos: Access = 19.5% | Users = 12.7m
Social Network Profiles: Access = 14.9% | Users = 9.7m
Micro Blogging: Access = 8% | Users = 5.2m
Videos: Access = 5.7% | Users = 3.7m

Mexico

Leading Network: Facebook

Photos: Access = 52.9% | Users = 6.4m
Social Network Profiles: Access = 40.2% | Users = 4.8m
Blogging: Access = 25.6% | Users = 3.1m
Videos: Access = 22.1% | Users = 2.7m
Micro Blogging: Access = 13.7% | Users = 1.6m

The Netherlands

Leading Network: Hyves

Photos: Access = 37% | Users = 4.8m
Social Network Profiles: Access = 36.2% | Users = 4.7m
Blogging: Access = 10.1% | Users = 1.3m
Videos: Access = 10% | Users = 1.3m
Micro Blogging: Access = 3.5% | Users = .45m

Russia

Leading Network: V Kontakte

Photos: Access = 59.9% | Users = 18.8m
Social Network Profiles: Access = 48% | Users = 15.3m
Videos: Access = 39.6% | Users = 12.6m
Blogging: Access = 18.3% | Users = 5.8m
Micro Blogging: Access = 12% | Users = 3.8m

South Korea

Leading Network: Facebook

Photos: Access = 53.1% | Users = 14.9m
Blogging: Access = 39.9% | Users = 11.2m
Videos: Access = 19.5% | Users = 5.5m
Social Network Profiles: Access = 15.6% | Users = 4.4m
Micro Blogging: Access = 14% | Users = 4m

Spain

Leading Network: Facebook

Photos: Access = 39.4% | Users = 7.4m
Social Network Profiles: Access = 35.8% | Users = 6.7m
Blogging: Access = 17.2% | Users = 3.2m
Videos: Access = 16.2% | Users = 3.1m
Micro Blogging: Access = 7.5% | Users = 1.4m

UK

Leading Network: Facebook

Social Network Profiles: Access = 42.6% | Users = 15.9m
Photos: Access = 38.2% | Users = 15.7m
Videos: Access = 11.5% | Users = 2.4m
Blogging: Access = 8.4% | Users = 5.5m
Micro Blogging: Access = 5.3% | Users = 4.6m

USA

Leading Network: Facebook

Social Network Profiles: Access = 44.2% | Users = 92.1m
Photos: Access = 42.6% | Users = 79.2m
Videos: Access = 15.3% | Users = 23.5m
Blogging: Access = 12.8% | Users = 17.6m
Micro Blogging: Access = 7% | Users = 10.7m

In 50% of the countries included in this study, online photo sharing dominated the list of social media applications. It is also among the oldest of social services within the included mix.

44% of the countries in this survey embrace online profiles in social networks suggesting that their personal brand, whether for engaging in personal or professional interactions, is becoming increasingly important.

81% shared photos and online profiles as the top 1 and 2 activities with the exception of Japan, China, and South Korea where blogging displaced social profiles as a top application.

94% of countries reported that micro-blogging (think Twitter) were among the least pervasive with the exception of Japan, where it ranked fourth – just below social network profiles and above video.

China’s digital footprint is massive, defined by the incredible volume of content creators and the contribution of their social objects. As the study reports, “due to the inward looking nature of China’s internet economy combined with the language mean that this volume of content does not impact the broader Internet.”

TechCrunch also observed a tremendous opportunity for Facebook in Russia. Leading network Vkontakte.ru is in many regards, a Facebook clone. However, its facsimile of a growing global network is also indicative of a potential deal. Vkontakte is owned in large part by Digital Sky Technologies, a company which also owns a noteworthy stake in Facebook. A deal of this magnitude would further socialize Russian and other worldwide users under one truly global social network.

As we examine opportunities for global social networking, we are reminded that anthropology and sociology play critical roles in observing and documenting behavior, supporting cultures, and established governances for dictating how content, information, and relationships forge and flourish. In order to ensure relevance and earn significance within networks, we must think locally when examining opportunities globally. In addition, as culture and behavior shifts across countries, they also establish a new dynamic within each Social Networks creating a universal population that adapts what they know to what they learn and experience.

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Magazine newsstand sales plummeted 9% in the second half of the year compared to last year. Certain popular titles like Newsweek, Time, and W took it particularly hard, losing more than 30% of newsstand sales.

While these sales aren't make-or-break for magazines, they contribute a fatter profit than subscriptions, since most subscriptions are sold at a discount to the cover price.

This decline in sales explains, in part, why media companies are praying at the altar of the iPad and other tablets. The market for applications is gaining steam at the same time the market for physical magazines is dying. If publishers can get into the biggest online newsstands in the world, the theory goes, they can regain some of the vanishing sales.

Read the rest of this story »

See Also:

• CHART OF THE DAY: Facebook Catching Up To Google And Yahoo As Your Home On The Web
• CHART OF THE DAY: Apple Dominates Smartphone Growth In Q4
• CHART OF THE DAY: Apple's Giant Pile Of Cash In Context

A writing habit is cultivated by two things:

1. Writing a lot.
2. Reading even more.

The more you write, the more you get to practice flexing vocabulary and voice as well as how to put your ideas into clear thoughts. The more you read, the more you capture lessons about tone, sentence structure, cadence, and idea flow.  And the more you do both, the more everything you touch, see, hear, and read becomes the seed of something else to write about.

There are some great posts out there about cultivating a writing habit, like these:

• Cultivate a Writing Habit: Chris Brogan
• 10 Steps to Create the Habit of Writing: Write to Done
• Seven Bad Writing Habits You Learned in School: Copyblogger
• Posts on Better Writing: Men with Pens
• Complete Your First Book with These 9 Simple Writing Habits: Dumb Little Man

These practices apply whether you’re blogging or penning a novel. Writing is an active discipline. You have to do it. Often.

But absorbing the written word in lots of different forms makes you a better writer. Period. Read blogs, articles, business books, biographies, fiction, whatever suits your fancy right now.

Not sure what to read? I piled a bunch of recommendations for books in my Twitter favorites. Scroll through them and you’ll find lots that have been tossed to me by my Twitter friends.  And I keep an Evernote file called “Book List” where I capture all the titles I haven’t read, but want to, so I’m always prepared at the bookstore or the library.

Reading more helps you identify good writing AND bad writing, and how to tell the difference between the two. You’ll start learning to spot words that are smooth to read versus overly dense, the pace of delivering ideas and organizing them in a flow, length of sentences that are easy or hard to read, vocabulary that’s too high brow or not nuanced enough.

Julien Smith tells you how to read a book a week in 2010. I probably average that if not more, in addition to all the blogs I read and online articles, news, whitepapers, etc. I read a ton, and I write every day. If you hate to read, that’s going to be harder for you, but it’s important nonetheless.

If delivering content on the web in written form is something you seriously aspire to – for the sake of contribution of ideas or to make money or both – you’ d better learn what it takes to write well, and reading is an important step to doing just that.

There is no shortcut.

Are you a writer? Reader? Both? Do you agree? What are you reading right now?

Wanna Write? Read Voraciously.

This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.

Name: Bandize

Quick Pitch: Online DIY organization and management business tools for musicians, bands, band managers and record labels.

Genius Idea: Bandize, which will be unveiled at South By Southwest, is an idea so sharp that you’re likely to wonder why it hasn’t already been done. And to some extent, it has; many of its features have appeared in web or desktop apps before, but not in such a complete and cohesive package.

Managing an independent music act (like, say, a punk rock band) is like owning a small business. Bandize helps managers and band members collaborate on all the critical data related to their work, from merchandise sales to event schedules to important contact information.

If you already know the world of online workplace collaboration tools, think of it as a Basecamp or Backpack for bands. Tasks can be assigned to band members and you can track their productivity to make sure every one is pulling his or her weight. And if someone pitches in a little extra — like if he or she lends the band some money for gas — you can keep track of that and make sure that person is compensated.

The obvious features are all here, of course. You can schedule tour dates and track how much money you’ve made with merchandise sales. But one feature that sets Bandize apart is the ability to track how well each piece of merchandise is selling at each venue. You can see if one T-shirt tends to be more popular than another when your band plays in Austin so you can plan to bring more of that same merch the next time you have a date there.

You can also use Bandize to manage your contacts. If someone is associated with a particular venue, you can tag him or her with that venue, and when you print out day sheets at each venue, his or her contact info will be included. If you already have a lot of contacts, you can import them from various sources like Outlook, Google Contacts or a vcard. There are a bunch of other smaller features like poster printing, file storage, and more accounting and contact management tools.

Bandize is currently in beta testing, and you can get a 30-day trial for your band right now. After the trial, it will cost $15 each month.

BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

Entrepreneurs can take advantage of the Azure Services platform for their website hosting and storage needs. Microsoft recently announced the “new CloudApp()” contest – use the Azure Services Platform for hosting your .NET or PHP app, and you could be the lucky winner of a USD 5000* (please see website for official rules and guidelines).”

Tags: bandize, bizspark, music, startups

Broadcasting live every Monday night from 9pm GMT (that’s 4pm New York time and 1pm LA/San Francisco time.) I will be inviting a different guest from the European tech scene each week to talk about tech, social media, entrepreneurship and news and events from the European tech scene.

The broadcast will last for around half an hour (less if we run out of things to say and more if we are having fun!)

Tonight my co-presenter and guest will be Anti Apple,  freelance developer Dave Nattriss who is the only non-Apple fan boy I know- and I want to know why! (plus he has a Nexus One I wanna get my hands on:)

Live Broadcast by Ustream.TV

Here’s kind of a loose schedule around what we’re going to talk about:

General Tech/social media/Internet news

European Tech

Top startup

Tech events

Announcements

Fluff

Week’s best viral and top three websites

Tweet me if you’ve got something  you want to broadcast and we will announce it!

Why have we decided to do a live show?

People keep asking me what happened to the weekly Techfluff show -well there’s such a high turnover of news in tech- by the time we filmed, edited and published it it was old news!

You can watch it over on UStream or here:

And just in case you forgot how epic our old show was:

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In October 2009, after 2.5 years of using Twitter every day, I wrote a piece that explained the limits of Twitter that we’ll have to look past Twitter to see solved, because Twitter doesn’t seem to be trying to solve them.

Tomorrow, we hear, Google will announce a product that aims to take on Twitter. If so, here’s a list of features to look for. Any of these features would give Google a serious edge over Twitter. Maybe they thought of some things I don’t have on my list. It’s always nice to put your stake in the ground. I did it with the iPad with some hilarious results.

So here’s the list of must-have features:

1. Reliability. Twitter still has trouble dealing with high-flow events like last night’s SuperBowl. Lots of Fail Whales. So if Google is able to offer reliability, no matter how much of an advantage Twitter’s installed base is, it won’t matter. When Twitter goes down everyone will reassemble on Glitter.

2. Enclosures. Can you imagine if you couldn’t enclose a picture or an MP3 with an email message? Why do we jump through so many hoops just to tweet a picture?

3. Open architecture metadata. Let developers throw any data onto a status message, giving it a name and a type, and let everyone else sort it out. It would result in an explosion of creativity.

4. Relationships with hardware vendors. I still want a one-click Twitter camera. If I can’t have it from Twitter, I’ll take it from Google.

5. No 140-character limit. I debated this one with myself. At first I compromised and said okay let’s have a 250-character limit, or a 500-character limit. But I really don’t want a limit. If I want to write short status messages, no problemmo. We’ve already made the cultural transition. We know how to do it. But sometimes a thought just can’t be expressed in 140 characters. No one is wise enough to know what the limit is, so let’s just not have one.

6. No URL-shorteners. I’ve explained this so many times. They’re stupid and ugly and they hurt the web. I like it when developers take the time to craft their URLs so they make sense to users. That’s all the shortening we really need and all we should have.

Those are some of my wish-list items. It seems likely Google will offer #1 and #2. Very unlikely they’ll do #3 (they don’t trust developers any more than Apple does). Probably not #4, though it would be easy to get some people from Kodak and Sony to come on stage with them. #5 would take a teeny bit of guts. It’s a perfect way to throw some serious confusion at Twitter. I’d recommend going all the way, but if they can’t go to 500-characters. Get some editors and authors on stage to say how nice it would be. Because they’re making a commitment to their own URL-shortener it seems unlikely they would outlaw them on their status network, but one can hope.

I usually don’t subscribe to the idea that new products aimed at the user base of an established product are “killers” — but it’s been a long time since we’ve seen a product as ripe for killing as Twitter. (Lotus 1-2-3 was probably the last great example.)

The hubris of Twitter is the assumption that the product is unassailable because of the features they leave out. Sooner or later one of their competitors is going to test that theory, and I’m pretty sure it’ll prove incorrect. And where they include horrendous features that a competitor might leave out (I’m thinking of URL-shortening) they don’t seem to feel any pressure to take it out. Yet almost every user would enjoy a Twitter with real full URLs that didn’t take up any of the 140-character space. Hard to imagine anyone objecting.

OTOH, Google is a big clunky Microsoft-like company with strategy taxes, and they don’t trust the web or developers, or each other, and their internal politics drive most of the decisions they make. To compete with Twitter is an easy sell inside Google, but to actually have the will to be cut-throat about it, that’s another thing. It’ll probably have to pay homage to Google Wave (remember that?) and therefore will have some elements that are completely incomprehensible. Twitter likely won’t get killed, because Google’s product will likely fall far-short of what’s needed to get us all to think they can be trusted.

The usual disclaimers apply. This is all tea-leave-reading, I have no actual information, and I’m usually way wrong with these prognostications, but it’s still good to share the thought process.

Google could launch a Twitter-killer as soon as this week, the Wall Street Journal reports.

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The latest research from Websense Security Labs paints a dreary but familiar picture of the state of online security threats. Echoing the bad news of other such recent reports, it seems the vast majority of the Web consists of malware and spam. Worse yet, even legitimate, well-known sites are being used to pump malware, SEO poisoning, or phishing attacks.

Websense uses a global network of systems to scan and analyze over 40 billion websites every hour, tracking malware and other unwanted content. The results for the latter half of 2009 show a 225 percent increase in malicious websites. Worse, 71 percent of websites found to contain some malicious code were in fact legitimate websites that had been compromised in some way.

iPhone repair shop iResQ claims that it has the front panel component of the next iteration of Apple’s iPhone, and it has posted a few photos to demonstrate a couple of ways the handset will differ from its predecessor.

If these pics are legit, then the new iPhone will actually be one-fourth of an inch taller than all of the previous three models. Presumably this is to make room for a new component — or more than one new component.

iResQ also observes that the front panel has a “reflective, mirror-like surface” near the top of the phone, and speculates that this is a relocated proximity sensor. The current iPhone’s proximity sensor is used to detect when you’re holding the phone up to your ear. If you are, it shuts off the screen to save battery life and to avoid blinding you with light.

If the reflective surface is the proximity sensor, then Apple might be planning to use the sensor for other functions as well.

If Apple is planning to launch a new iPhone this year, it will likely be announced at WWDC this June. We’ll have to wait until then to see if these photos are real. Take a look at the photos below, but remember that it’s best to pile this in with the rest of the rumors for now.

[via MacRumors]

Tags: apple, iphone

Are you a budding Web entrepreneur who would like some pointers or advice from seasoned company founders? MayField Fund and First Round Capital are sponsoring a raffle to give away mentoring sessions with the founders of Digg (Jay Adelson), Flickr (Caterina Fake), Mint (Aaron Patzer), Ning (Gina Bianchini), Slide (Max Levchin), and Zynga (Mark Pincus).

The raffle will take place at a private event in Silicon Valley with space for 100 attendees on March 1. But you can win a ticket for the event by applying here. The event and raffle are free, but the 100 attendees in the running will be selected beforehand by partners at Mayfield and First Round.

Winners of the raffle do not get to become Best Friends Forever with the founders. But they will get one intense mentoring session each.

Time travel is always fun, and Google Earth now makes it easy to do. The newest version includes a button that allows users to to view historical imagery to see how a place has changed through the decades.

I tried it out with San Francisco, where Google Earth offers views of the city dating back to 1946. Sometimes the changes are subtle, but at other times they are very stark.

The image at top, for example, shows SOMA and the original Bay Bridge approach on Fifth Street. Notice all the ships tied up at San Francisco’s then-active wharves.

Here’s the site of the former Seals Stadium, at 16th Street and Bryant, as it looked in 1946, before the elevated 101 freeway went in, and before it became today’s Potrero Safeway:

Here’s the Panhandle, with extensive redevelopment happening in Laurel Heights and the neighborhood just east of the University of San Francisco campus:

And here’s the former Southern Pacific rail yards, now home to AT&T Park and the emerging UCSF biomedical campus:

Have fun procrastinating.

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Sunday's Dave-Jay-Oprah Super Bowl ad might have been a foursome -- but an early notion to include Conan O'Brien in the spot didn't work out.

Rob Burnett, executive producer of David Letterman's "Late Show," said he approached Team Coco about O'Brien appearing in the promo.

"There was an initial thought of having Dave, Jay and Conan together in the spot," Burnett told TheWrap. "I did call Jeff Ross ...

RIM's BlackBerry platform is still the most popular mobile smartphone platform in the U.S., but Google's Android was the big winner in the last quarter of 2009. According to comScore, Android's share of the U.S. mobile market more than doubled from 2.5% in September 2009 to 5.2% in December. While the Nexus One might not be a bestseller just yet, it's clear that the Android platform is poised for rapid growth in the next few months, as more and more manufactures continue to release Android-based phones.

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Among the top 5 mobile platforms (RIM, Apple, Microsoft, Palm and Google), Palm lost the largest amount of market share in the last few months. Palm, the current number four, now owns 6.1% of the U.S. mobile market (down from 8.3% in September). With Google's Android rapidly growing in popularity, it's only a matter of time before Google will overtake Palm in the United States.

As we reported in January, according to ChangeWave Research, a growing number of U.S. consumers plans to buy an Android device in the next few months. In September, Android was still tied with Palm as the least-preferred mobile platform. Today, Palm remains in last place, with Android now being the second-most preferred platform (right behind Apple).