What a bumpy road Twitter has had these last few months.

You’ve had your fair share of downtime
You’ve had to turn off feature after feature
You’ve fired your chief architect
You raised cash fast and hired an outside firm to fix the architecture.
You’ve been pummeled by your users.
You’ve been pummeled by the blogosphere.
You’ve been utterly incinerated by the blogosphere.
Your downtime woes even have a Wikipedia article.

During this time, my Twitter use has dropped dramatically. Yes, I still have TwitterFox installed (I can’t install Twhirl due to some damn problem with my laptop), and yes, I do occasionally tweet. But I’m not actively trying to add more followers and I’m not actively checking my tweets. I’ve moved on. In fact, I’ve moved on from Microblogging.

But it seems that many Twitter early adopters have not. Every week a new service appears that is herald as the “Twitter Killer.” Plurk one week, Utterz the next, and now Identi.ca this week.

I have a harsh reality for you, though - The peak of the Microblogging era has passed. The Conversation era has come.

Seriously, what use does the average person have for Twitter? I had a harshly negative reaction from a friend of mine to the service - why does she want to be telling people online what she’s doing at any given moment? What purpose is there to it? Why should anyone care what she’s doing and why should she WANT anyone to care? She doesn’t want to text status updates from the airport - she just wants to keep in touch with friends.

To the average person, Twitter is a useless distraction. But with the Conversation era, you get something more.

FriendFeed is central the Conversation era. And it’s actually useful to the average person. Not only are you kept abreast of what your friends are doing, but you’re actually having conversations about it (Twitter @replies don’t count - it was always about what you sent out to the world rather than the fragmented conversation you never could see anyway). You can ask questions and get answers, you can create quasi-message boards, and you can import your microblogging services into FriendFeed. The Microblogging era is literally being fed into the new Conversation era.

Don’t expect Twitter to recapture the magic of torrents of tweets, of trying to get more followers, of waiting for @replies. It’s nearly over and it was never meant to last.

So Ends the Microblogging Era.

- Ben

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What a bumpy road Twitter has had these last few months.

You’ve had your fair share of downtime
You’ve had to turn off feature after feature
You’ve fired your chief architect
You raised cash fast and hired an outside firm to fix the architecture.
You’ve been pummeled by your users.
You’ve been pummeled by the blogosphere.
You’ve been utterly incinerated by the blogosphere.
Your downtime woes even have a Wikipedia article.

During this time, my Twitter use has dropped dramatically. Yes, I still have TwitterFox installed (I can’t install Twhirl due to some damn problem with my laptop), and yes, I do occasionally tweet. But I’m not actively trying to add more followers and I’m not actively checking my tweets. I’ve moved on. In fact, I’ve moved on from Microblogging.

But it seems that many Twitter early adopters have not. Every week a new service appears that is herald as the “Twitter Killer.” Plurk one week, Utterz the next, and now Identi.ca this week.

I have a harsh reality for you, though - The peak of the Microblogging era has passed. The Conversation era has come.

Seriously, what use does the average person have for Twitter? I had a harshly negative reaction from a friend of mine to the service - why does she want to be telling people online what she’s doing at any given moment? What purpose is there to it? Why should anyone care what she’s doing and why should she WANT anyone to care? She doesn’t want to text status updates from the airport - she just wants to keep in touch with friends.

To the average person, Twitter is a useless distraction. But with the Conversation era, you get something more.

FriendFeed is central the Conversation era. And it’s actually useful to the average person. Not only are you kept abreast of what your friends are doing, but you’re actually having conversations about it (Twitter @replies don’t count - it was always about what you sent out to the world rather than the fragmented conversation you never could see anyway). You can ask questions and get answers, you can create quasi-message boards, and you can import your microblogging services into FriendFeed. The Microblogging era is literally being fed into the new Conversation era.

Don’t expect Twitter to recapture the magic of torrents of tweets, of trying to get more followers, of waiting for @replies. It’s nearly over and it was never meant to last.

So Ends the Microblogging Era.

- Ben

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The Hacker News community is a gem among the vast Internet sea. You will always find interesting companies and interesting stories at the YCombinator-owned website. A few days ago, a member asked the community to rate his start up. That start-up is AtomKeep, a very intriguing service that you should be aware of.

AtomKeep has a very simple function - allow you to update your online profiles all at one place. Your Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook profiles can all be adjusted from this website. Your work history, your personal info, your favorite movies, all of it.

I immediately had to try it out.

The first thing to do is to sync your other Internet profiles to AtomKeep. When you first sync accounts, you can immediately import your info from Yelp, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. to fill in your overall AtomKeep profile, another smart timesaver by its creators. Afterwards, you can simply edit your AtomKeep profile and then sync it, thus updating all of your user profiles.

Really I’ve explained everything about the service, so let me simply give you the pros and cons of the service as it stands today.

Pros

• Simple, clean, and fast-loading interface
• Easy to fill in your AtomKeep profile with your Facebook/Linkedin/Yelp Profile
• Confirms that it updated your info and gives you warnings of failures
• Very few clicks to update a profile
• A Time Saver

Cons

• Needs better instructions for new users, especially ones
• Broke my Twitter profile
• Failed to update my Yelp profile
• I’m skeptical about a business model

Overall, it’s an incredible new service that will only continue to improve. One of its founders has stated that compatibility with Digg and Google Profiles are in the works and, even more ambitious, a plan to add any site yourself. That’s a bit ambitious, though. They need to focus on getting the key services compatible before working on such a grand project.

There are many questions and issues that remain - the business model, whether this has any value to people who don’t use 20 different online services like I do, keeping up with the profile changes of these major services - but AtomKeep has certainly caught my attention.

- Ben

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The Hacker News community is a gem among the vast Internet sea. You will always find interesting companies and interesting stories at the YCombinator-owned website. A few days ago, a member asked the community to rate his start up. That start-up is AtomKeep, a very intriguing service that you should be aware of.

AtomKeep has a very simple function - allow you to update your online profiles all at one place. Your Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook profiles can all be adjusted from this website. Your work history, your personal info, your favorite movies, all of it.

I immediately had to try it out.

The first thing to do is to sync your other Internet profiles to AtomKeep. When you first sync accounts, you can immediately import your info from Yelp, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. to fill in your overall AtomKeep profile, another smart timesaver by its creators. Afterwards, you can simply edit your AtomKeep profile and then sync it, thus updating all of your user profiles.

Really I’ve explained everything about the service, so let me simply give you the pros and cons of the service as it stands today.

Pros

• Simple, clean, and fast-loading interface
• Easy to fill in your AtomKeep profile with your Facebook/Linkedin/Yelp Profile
• Confirms that it updated your info and gives you warnings of failures
• Very few clicks to update a profile
• A Time Saver

Cons

• Needs better instructions for new users, especially ones
• Broke my Twitter profile
• Failed to update my Yelp profile
• I’m skeptical about a business model

Overall, it’s an incredible new service that will only continue to improve. One of its founders has stated that compatibility with Digg and Google Profiles are in the works and, even more ambitious, a plan to add any site yourself. That’s a bit ambitious, though. They need to focus on getting the key services compatible before working on such a grand project.

There are many questions and issues that remain - the business model, whether this has any value to people who don’t use 20 different online services like I do, keeping up with the profile changes of these major services - but AtomKeep has certainly caught my attention.

- Ben

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I’m always happy when Internet and tech tools do more than help fill up a few hours of boredom (i.e. YouTube and StumbleUpon) or solve a problem that is only affecting early adopters or comfortable, Internet-saavy users (i.e. Twitter and yes, FriendFeed).

Starting at 4:00 Eastern/1:00 Pacific time today, is an 8 hour live stream called From the Front Lines with Michelle Malkin and Melanie Morgan. The goal is to raise enough money to send the largest care package ever sent to the troops.

Here is a link to the From the Front Lines show.

This is a wonderful display of how Web 2.0 technology is making a real and definite impact on the world. You can instantly reach tens of thousands of people to do something good for the world. uStream.tv is premier when it comes to live video content and you can expect them to be used for tons of major events as we move towards the net and away from TV (the big one coming up - they are the live streamers for the Republican National Convention. Don’t forget the many speeches they’ve streamed of Obama as well).

If you’re too lazy to click the link above, I’ve made it easier and embedded the event on my blog.

- Ben

Free video streaming by Ustream

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I’m always happy when Internet and tech tools do more than help fill up a few hours of boredom (i.e. YouTube and StumbleUpon) or solve a problem that is only affecting early adopters or comfortable, Internet-saavy users (i.e. Twitter and yes, FriendFeed).

Starting at 4:00 Eastern/1:00 Pacific time today, is an 8 hour live stream called From the Front Lines with Michelle Malkin and Melanie Morgan. The goal is to raise enough money to send the largest care package ever sent to the troops.

Here is a link to the From the Front Lines show.

This is a wonderful display of how Web 2.0 technology is making a real and definite impact on the world. You can instantly reach tens of thousands of people to do something good for the world. uStream.tv is premier when it comes to live video content and you can expect them to be used for tons of major events as we move towards the net and away from TV (the big one coming up - they are the live streamers for the Republican National Convention. Don’t forget the many speeches they’ve streamed of Obama as well).

If you’re too lazy to click the link above, I’ve made it easier and embedded the event on my blog.

- Ben

Free video streaming by Ustream

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Through FriendFeed, I found out about Social Poster, a tool that allows you to send a web page to 80+ social media websites. Thanks to SocialWebTools too for informing me about this. Note: It’s a tool that’s been around for a while. I’m a bit shocked that I hadn’t heard about it before, though I have heard of others (including $150+ software) that does this sort of thing.

Basically, with one or two clicks and some typing, you can send a link to Digg, StumbleUpon, Mixx, Blogger, Technorati, and all of the other social media websites (including several I have NEVER heard of) in one swift motion.

After finding this, I had two immediate thoughts -

• 1) Does this actually work at spreading a webpage?
• 2) This is a new era in social media spam.

80 sites at once? Damn that saves a lot of time, but there’s also insanity involved in it. D I had a few questions when I tried it out - Does it actually get people to visit a webpage, or does it just die like most submissions on social media websites?What accounts do they use at these social website to submit articles? Do they have multiple ones? Are those accounts marked as spam?

The bigger thought, though, was the effect of this tool on social media spam. Spam is relatively quiet on most social services - Twitter has spammers, but you have to subscribe to them to get most of the spam. FriendFeed also has great spam controls and now has the ability to block users. Even MySpace is fighting back with some recent success against spammers.

But this could create a flood of crap submissions everywhere. Maybe they won’t ever get to the front page of Digg, but they’ll clog up tons of services with Viagra ads if the spammers get social media-saavy.

Here’s another possibility - Your detractors could submit EVERYTHING on your site and make people simply hate it because of how far it gets spammed.

I had a friend submit something of mine (I’m not saying whether it’s an article or even if it’s on this site) to test this internet tool for two reasons.

• I can actually track the results and statistics of the effectiveness of this tool.
• It brings more traffic.

Yes, a bit low, but for the purposes of this research project, I needed to be able to track the traffic and referral links and see whether it was actually effective, so I had to own the content

Immediately though, we realized that this tool isn’t effective, because it only creates the text and information for you. It does not create the accounts and it does not automatically submit, it just makes it easier. Apparently, you need to pay for their related $150 software to do that. And I’m not about to give them any kind of money.
When I do find a tool that does that that’s free, I’ll test it out and tell you about it.
- Ben

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Through FriendFeed, I found out about Social Poster, a tool that allows you to send a web page to 80+ social media websites. Thanks to SocialWebTools too for informing me about this. Note: It’s a tool that’s been around for a while. I’m a bit shocked that I hadn’t heard about it before, though I have heard of others (including $150+ software) that does this sort of thing.

Basically, with one or two clicks and some typing, you can send a link to Digg, StumbleUpon, Mixx, Blogger, Technorati, and all of the other social media websites (including several I have NEVER heard of) in one swift motion.

After finding this, I had two immediate thoughts -

• 1) Does this actually work at spreading a webpage?
• 2) This is a new era in social media spam.

80 sites at once? Damn that saves a lot of time, but there’s also insanity involved in it. D I had a few questions when I tried it out - Does it actually get people to visit a webpage, or does it just die like most submissions on social media websites?What accounts do they use at these social website to submit articles? Do they have multiple ones? Are those accounts marked as spam?

The bigger thought, though, was the effect of this tool on social media spam. Spam is relatively quiet on most social services - Twitter has spammers, but you have to subscribe to them to get most of the spam. FriendFeed also has great spam controls and now has the ability to block users. Even MySpace is fighting back with some recent success against spammers.

But this could create a flood of crap submissions everywhere. Maybe they won’t ever get to the front page of Digg, but they’ll clog up tons of services with Viagra ads if the spammers get social media-saavy.

Here’s another possibility - Your detractors could submit EVERYTHING on your site and make people simply hate it because of how far it gets spammed.

I had a friend submit something of mine (I’m not saying whether it’s an article or even if it’s on this site) to test this internet tool for two reasons.

• I can actually track the results and statistics of the effectiveness of this tool.
• It brings more traffic.

Yes, a bit low, but for the purposes of this research project, I needed to be able to track the traffic and referral links and see whether it was actually effective, so I had to own the content

Immediately though, we realized that this tool isn’t effective, because it only creates the text and information for you. It does not create the accounts and it does not automatically submit, it just makes it easier. Apparently, you need to pay for their related $150 software to do that. And I’m not about to give them any kind of money.
When I do find a tool that does that that’s free, I’ll test it out and tell you about it.
- Ben

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I’ve begun to dig through the net as part of my Internet Tools Wiki project for the most useful articles on specific Internet Tools. Every once in a while, I will post collection updates on the blog.

And you guessed it, today’s tool is LinkedIn, the business social network service.

The collection includes recent and older articles that are directly relevant to helping you better utilize LinkedIn as a networking and business tool. You can find the latest article collection and community advice for LinkedIn on the Internet Tools Wiki.

• Can LinkedIn Increase your Sales? (Jill Konrath) - A free 14 page ebook detailing, yes, how to use LinkedIn to increase your sales. If you’re in sales or promoting a product as a startup, this is absolutely worth a read.
• Getting Started Building Your LinkedIn Network - A step-by-step guide if you’re completely new to LinkedIn on getting yourself set up for networking through the service.
• LinkedIn Best Practices (Mark Davis) - Six quick tweaks to improve your visibility on and browsing of LinkedIn.
• 5 Step Guide to Using LinkedIn and Facebook (Anshu Sharma) - Focused on when to accept contacts and when LinkedIn is needed for business. I’m advocate a more liberal approach to accepting business contacts on LinkedIn, but useful regardless.
• LinkedIn as Headhunting Tool (Bernard Lunn) - A favorite article of mine.
• How to use LinkedIn for Job Searching (Laura Schneider) - Title explains it all
• LinkedIn Tips and Tweaks: Do More with your LinkedIn Account (Amit Agarwal) - 7 Simple Tips
• Gigantic Tips Guide for Finding Jobs With LinkedIn - There’s at least 50 tips in this article.
• Etiquette for LinkedIn (Penelope Trunk) - 7 Etiquette tips
• Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn (Guy Kawasaki) - An older article by respected Entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki.

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I’ve begun to dig through the net as part of my Internet Tools Wiki project for the most useful articles on specific Internet Tools. Every once in a while, I will post collection updates on the blog.

And you guessed it, today’s tool is LinkedIn, the business social network service.

The collection includes recent and older articles that are directly relevant to helping you better utilize LinkedIn as a networking and business tool. You can find the latest article collection and community advice for LinkedIn on the Internet Tools Wiki.

• Can LinkedIn Increase your Sales? (Jill Konrath) - A free 14 page ebook detailing, yes, how to use LinkedIn to increase your sales. If you’re in sales or promoting a product as a startup, this is absolutely worth a read.
• Getting Started Building Your LinkedIn Network - A step-by-step guide if you’re completely new to LinkedIn on getting yourself set up for networking through the service.
• LinkedIn Best Practices (Mark Davis) - Six quick tweaks to improve your visibility on and browsing of LinkedIn.
• 5 Step Guide to Using LinkedIn and Facebook (Anshu Sharma) - Focused on when to accept contacts and when LinkedIn is needed for business. I’m advocate a more liberal approach to accepting business contacts on LinkedIn, but useful regardless.
• LinkedIn as Headhunting Tool (Bernard Lunn) - A favorite article of mine.
• How to use LinkedIn for Job Searching (Laura Schneider) - Title explains it all
• LinkedIn Tips and Tweaks: Do More with your LinkedIn Account (Amit Agarwal) - 7 Simple Tips
• Gigantic Tips Guide for Finding Jobs With LinkedIn - There’s at least 50 tips in this article.
• Etiquette for LinkedIn (Penelope Trunk) - 7 Etiquette tips
• Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn (Guy Kawasaki) - An older article by respected Entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki.

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What service are you anxiously awaiting FriendFeed to add? Well, let’s see if we can’t find out. Vote on any of the options in this poll or add your own option. Hopefully this poll will give us a better gauge of what users want.

For those of you who don’t know about FriendFeed, see the Internet Tools Wiki description.

Yes, I did not include a fill-in option in order to combat spam and false answers. These options were taken from a previous FriendFeed conversation.

This poll will close on Sunday, June 22nd at 11:59 PM.

If you want to put this poll on your website, this link contains the raw javascript code. Help get as many votes as possible for this poll - That way everyone has a better idea of what users want.

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What service are you anxiously awaiting FriendFeed to add? Well, let’s see if we can’t find out. Vote on any of the options in this poll or add your own option. Hopefully this poll will give us a better gauge of what users want.

For those of you who don’t know about FriendFeed, see the Internet Tools Wiki description.

Yes, I did not include a fill-in option in order to combat spam and false answers. These options were taken from a previous FriendFeed conversation.

This poll will close on Sunday, June 22nd at 11:59 PM.

If you want to put this poll on your website, this link contains the raw javascript code. Help get as many votes as possible for this poll - That way everyone has a better idea of what users want.

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I love synergies in my products. I like it that I can take dates sent to my Gmail and copy them into my Google Calendar. This time, I want to tell you about a few of my favorite synergies with Remember the Milk, perhaps my favorite of all Internet Tools.

If you’re unfamiliar with Remember the Milk, check out the Internet Tools Wiki article on it. Or just know that it’s an online to-do and task management system.

Here’s a few of the many ways to improve your use of Remember the Milk via synergies:

• Gmail: Via a Firefox extension, you can install Remember the Milk into your Gmail. You visit your Gmail all the time, so it makes sense to put your calendar and to-do list system on the same platform. You can copy links from your Gmail into RtM, update tasks, or connect with your mail contacts.
• Jott: By far my favorite synergy with Remember the Milk. Call Jott, tell them you want to Jott to Remember the Milk, and then add a task by voice to your to-do list. You can even specify the time and date, and thus get a reminder without ever looking on a computer. A lifesaver, especially when you’re on the road.
• Twitter: If you are a big Twitter user, then this is for you. Send Twitter a direct message with your task and the time/date and it’ll appear in your RtM task list.
• Google Maps: It’s long been integrated with Remember the Milk. Add a location to your Remember the Milk and then you can use RtM to map out where you have to go during the day.
• Google Gears: Going to be in a place without Internet? Want to use Remember the Milk offline? Then just install Google Gears and you’ll be set!
• Google Calendar: Google Calendar and Remember the Milk have a lot of similarities, so it makes sense that they can work together. Send your RtM tasks into your Google Calendar so you can see everything in one interface.
• iPhone/iPod Touch: Warning: this service costs a little money, but is well worth it if you’re an iPhone user. You gain a very clean interface for adding and managing tasks while on-the-go
• Blackberry: Again, it costs money, but MilkSync is the Blackberry version of Remember the Milk and is worth every cent. Plus the people at RtM are awesome, and why wouldn’t you want to support them?

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I love synergies in my products. I like it that I can take dates sent to my Gmail and copy them into my Google Calendar. This time, I want to tell you about a few of my favorite synergies with Remember the Milk, perhaps my favorite of all Internet Tools.

If you’re unfamiliar with Remember the Milk, check out the Internet Tools Wiki article on it. Or just know that it’s an online to-do and task management system.

Here’s a few of the many ways to improve your use of Remember the Milk via synergies:

• Gmail: Via a Firefox extension, you can install Remember the Milk into your Gmail. You visit your Gmail all the time, so it makes sense to put your calendar and to-do list system on the same platform. You can copy links from your Gmail into RtM, update tasks, or connect with your mail contacts.
• Jott: By far my favorite synergy with Remember the Milk. Call Jott, tell them you want to Jott to Remember the Milk, and then add a task by voice to your to-do list. You can even specify the time and date, and thus get a reminder without ever looking on a computer. A lifesaver, especially when you’re on the road.
• Twitter: If you are a big Twitter user, then this is for you. Send Twitter a direct message with your task and the time/date and it’ll appear in your RtM task list.
• Google Maps: It’s long been integrated with Remember the Milk. Add a location to your Remember the Milk and then you can use RtM to map out where you have to go during the day.
• Google Gears: Going to be in a place without Internet? Want to use Remember the Milk offline? Then just install Google Gears and you’ll be set!
• Google Calendar: Google Calendar and Remember the Milk have a lot of similarities, so it makes sense that they can work together. Send your RtM tasks into your Google Calendar so you can see everything in one interface.
• iPhone/iPod Touch: Warning: this service costs a little money, but is well worth it if you’re an iPhone user. You gain a very clean interface for adding and managing tasks while on-the-go
• Blackberry: Again, it costs money, but MilkSync is the Blackberry version of Remember the Milk and is worth every cent. Plus the people at RtM are awesome, and why wouldn’t you want to support them?

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