Remember those feelings you had when you were invited to a party, but when you got there you realised that everybody seemed to know everybody, except you?

That’s probably the same feeling you had as you were staring at your blank Twitter timeline, just right after you sent your first Tweet, when it became apparent to you that basically you didn’t know anybody … anybody at all!
It’s one of those ‘Now What?’ moment.

My First Tweet - Now What

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As Twitter Team is rolling out the new Retweet functionality to a selected group, things are getting clearer everyday in terms of what the deal we are getting with this new system of Retweeting.
MediaSosial managed to be included in this beta roll-out, so I had a chance to try it early.

Retweet-Beta-Tester-Notification

After having been playing around for a day or two, I have to say that Twitter has integrated the new functionality with the rest of the user interface quite nicely.

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When I opened my inbox this morning, I was greeted with the following email from YouTube, which in short, was telling me that my video (one from the London Moonwalk Tribute) had been removed and disabled access. The reason was … Copyright Infringement !
Here is the email in full:

Dear Member:

This is to notify you that we have removed or disabled access to the following material as a result of a third-party notification by Viacom International Inc. claiming that this material is infringing:

“Last one” Moonwalk Tribute for Michael Jackson at Liverpool Street Station – London 2009: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sMS0kDegO4

Please Note: Repeated incidents of copyright infringement will result in the deletion of your account and all videos uploaded to that account. In order to prevent this from happening, please delete any videos to which you do not own the rights and refrain from uploading additional videos that infringe on the copyrights of others. For more information about YouTube’s copyright policy, please read the Copyright Tips guide.

If you elect to send us a counter notice, please go to our Help Centre to access the instructions.

Please note that under Section 512(f) of the Copyright Act, any person who knowingly materially misrepresents that material or activity was removed or disabled by mistake or misidentification may be subject to liability.

Sincerely,
YouTube, Inc.

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From what started as a joke threw casually in Twitter, this brilliant event ended up as a genius Social Media Engineering act, thanks to Milo @yiannopoulos who turned ‘dream into reality’.
I first heard about ’somebody’ was organising a Mass #Moonwalk at the Liverpool Street Station (in London) from on of my Twitter friend @icebergstorm who re-tweeted @Gailporter

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Facebook LogoFirst the ‘River of Stream‘, then the Public Username, and NOW … yes … the Public Status Update !  I don’t care what people say, but this Facebook’s Twitter Phobia, as one commenter in this ReadWriteWeb post (where I heard this news) mentioned, has finally reached its ‘climax’.  It’s really interesting to watch the mighty Walled-Garden that was once a sanctuary (or a prison) for many, bits by bits comes crumbling down with every moment passed, as if it were Berlin Wall itself.

The only problem is, who’s got the key to the gate?

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Seesmic Desktop has been my main Twitter Desktop app since it was still in beta, and it’s ‘Release Early, Release Often‘ method really struck accord with me, especially because with every release it continues to give to the customer ‘what they need‘ (and not what the money-owner wants).

This new version 0.3 is also the same.  This one is a Release Candidate version, hence it is only available for registered users and not yet downloadable from the main website.  The idea is to give the registered users a taste of what to come and at the same time to get user feedback on the new features before it goes live.  It’s a great strategy, because in this case everybody wins :)

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YouTube RealTime LogoEverybody’s familiar with Facebook’s notification/chat toolbar? That was exactly what immediately came to my mind when I saw YouTube RealTime.  Although the beta-test invitation from YouTube did mention something about ‘fancy‘ new toolbar, so it wasn’t that much of a surprise.
Seeing the latest Wave of trend in ‘Real-Time’ platform, I guess it’s just a matter of time that YouTube joined the ‘ride‘. And what YouTube came up with is what it’s called YouTube RealTime (very .. err .. ‘descriptive’ name), which they been beta-testing since April 23rd.

Here are my impressions on the new toolbar, and at the end of the post, we will also give away ‘all’ invites that we have.

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My favorite Twitter Desktop App just released a new version.  The new version has a few additional features, mainly integration with 3rd party app, some enhancement with the Profile, and for Mac OS X users (that’s me), a welcome improvement on idle CPU usage (Awesome!).

You can grab the new version directly here.

Below is a screenshot of some of the new enhancements to the profile.  Noticed the ‘Report Spam’ and ‘Block User’ menu items, and the four buttons on the profile (reply, DM, follow, and unfollow).  These were not in v2.0.

Some enhancements on Seesmic Desktop v0.2.1

Here are the change list from the release email:

Improvements since Ver 0.2

* Ability to view and enter comments into Facebook
* Added spellcheck feature with the ability to enable and disable
* Now supporting pikchur and yfrog to share images on Twitter
* Added spam reporting feature to help send spam warnings to Twitter’s @spam account
* Ability to block users who are following you on Twitter
* Ability to use Tweetshrink before sending messages (see http://tweetshrink.com/about)
* Access to view favorites within your Twitter account timeline
* Improved profile enhancements (added follow/unfollow within a profile along with the ability to reply and direct message)
* Option to start Seesmic Desktop at login
* Verification dialog box upon deletions of Userlists, Searches
* For OSX: Added standard buttons for OSX and improved idle CPU usage
* Displayed version information in update tab

Bug fixes

* Fix posting to Facebook with non-US characters
* Issues with same usernames showing multiple times – solved
* Issues with not removing messages when account is removed – solved

And on these notes, I would like to thank Team Seesmic for their hard-work to keep improving our Twitter experience.

Keep up the good work guys!

Technorati Profile

twitter-follow-meNow that we can’t randomly meet new people, I thought I’d share my collection of recommendation lists that people often put up on their blog.

I have to warn you, these lists are HUGE, so use it responsibly.  Remember that Twitter only allow you to follow 1000 people per day.  And even then, I suggest you do it slowly to avoid to be seen as spammer.

If you find that I haven’t included any list that you know of, please let me know on the comment, and I will include it in the list.

Finally, this list is a live list, I will add more as and when I see new ones, so make sure to come back and check it from time to time.  Or even better, follow our twitter account to get notified when the list is updated.

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This week the weather at Twitterverse has been clouded by the sudden decision from Twitter to scrap one of the settings option, which enabled users to see in their timeline replies from one user that they followed to other user that they didn’t follow.
Initially, Twitter argued that because only a small percentage (3% apparently) of Twitter users who were using this option, it was logical for them to get rid off this setting (though I argued that this is not the users’ fault).
What Twitter didn’t realize was that this 3% were passionate with this setting and as a matter of fact relying on it to find new people to follow.
After some intensive campaign from a many users which even had it’s own hastag #fixreplies, Twitter Co-founder Biz Stone (@biz) quickly wrote a new post explaining that in fact there was another reason for the setting to be changed, and that the reason was a technical one.
Today I’ve read in Twitter’s blog, that Biz Stone wrote another post, first apologizing to the users on the fact that basically they screwed-up in communicating the change; that they should’ve explained the reason of the change much better; and that they were and always be listening to what the users have to say.
The most important thing for me from this post though, is what he wrote and I quote:

For the 3% who wanted to see replies to people they don’t follow, we cannot turn this setting back on in its original form for technical reasons and we won’t rebuild it exactly the same for product design reasons.

Bummer! You see, I am one of this 3% of users who were using the option extensively to find new people to follow.  25% of my new following came from these Serendipitous Encounter that I had when one of the people I followed was having conversation with other user I had not followed.

To be fair, Stone then followed this statement with a long technical explanation on why they were forced to do this.  As a programmer myself, I can understand their stand-point, they needed to sacrifice the few to satisfied the many.

I really hope that Twitter will find an alternative way that has similar effect to this, without sacrificing the stability of their application.

But for now … so long for Serendipitous Encounters, I’m going to miss you very much!

#Mass Moonwalk – The Story

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