3G smart phone options abound, as Apple gets set to unveil its 3G solution at its Worldwide Developers Conference June 9, according to analysts. But with all the pub the iPhone gets, you’d think it was the only game in town. Not so.

There are some excellent alternatives to the iPhone, led by mobile phone giant Nokia. After considerable deliberation, I went with the Nokia N95 8GB, which has been available for some time. It doesn’t match the 16 GB of space the next iPhone will have, but if you want 3G and you want it now, this is a viable option. The N95 was first with built-in GPS navigation, and the 5 megapixel digital camera is a major advantage over the iPhone’s 2 megapixels . My digital camera hasn’t left the house since I bought this phone. I also love the option of listening to the built-in FM radio, a feature Apple – widely known for its musical prowess – inexplicably left out. And when my battery eventually goes bad, I can simply get a new one. Not so with the sleeker iPhone… as you may already know, the fact that its lithium ion battery is built in and not removable has caused quite a stir with consumers. (more…)

Let's face it; China needs to bolster its reputation before the Summer Olympics begin.  Otherwise, the several countries that are already considering boycotting may, in fact, do so.  In my opinion, it would be a shame if a past representation of political and economical unity were to be halted.  After all, if this one year is a bust, future Olympic games may follow in failure.

PRWeek recently ran an article in their online resource that the Chinese government was interviewing potential US and UK-based PR firms in the hopes to gain some positive pre-game press, prior to the events.  However, no PR firm has admitted to being in the bid war for this lucrative account.

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At the New Communications Forum conference I attended last week, Twitter was the topic of a great deal of discussion.  During panels and hallway chats, three things became really clear to me:

(1) There are a lot of smart people who have no idea what Twitter is, or who only know about it in the vaguest sense.

(2) Hard core Twitter users assume that everyone knows about it in the same way that everyone knows about YouTube or Facebook.  They don’t.   Twitter hasn’t hit the mainstream yet, although it is knocking on the door.   Check out this Compete graph:

(3) Twitter is really hard to explain to people.  You pretty much have to just break out the laptop and show the thing. 

We’ve been writing a great deal about Twitter here on our blog, and I fear that we have done so in a way that is inaccessible to folks that haven’t checked out the tool yet.  So below is some background info that hopefully helps out newbies and also Twitter vets trying to explain it to folks.

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Recently, I was considering trading in my broken iPod for another type of MP3 player…that is; until I ran across an article from Wired stating that I'd better hold on to at least one Apple product.

According to InStat, by 2012, 40% of all music purchased is going to come from digital music downloads.  Most impressively, the vast majority of those downloads come from Apple iTunes.  Almost 30% of the computers in the world have the download software, according to Digital Music News.

I personally buy nearly all of my music through iTunes.  For me, it seems easy, safe, and quick.  I like the fact that I can purchase a single song from an album, and the fact that an entire album on iTunes is typically less expensive than a CD.  Do I hate the fact that Apple controls yet another aspect of the computer market? Yes.  Will that hatred stop me from downloading the latest free single of the week? No.

It will be interesting to see if these predictions from InStat and Wired are correct.  I would like to also predict that by 2012, Apple will have released another five ‘upgrades' to the design of the iPod.

I gave a presentation earlier today at the New Communications Forum conference in Santa Rosa, CA on how well traditional media (newspapers and magazines) are adapting their Internet programs based on the challenges presented by the web and social media.

During my talk, I reviewed the results of our newspaper and magazine studies that examined the Web 2.0 features these media properties include on their websites.  I also reviewed examples of some of the cooler things media organizations are doing on the web. 

When giving these presentations, you try to force yourself to reach some sort of coherent conclusion.  In the case of my presentation, I have to try to answer this question: “What will newspaper and magazine websites look like in five  years?”  The truth is that I don’t know and I don’t really think anyone does. 

Our studies tell the story of an industry in transition.   

Some bigger properties, like the Washington Post and New York Times, have the budgets and commitment from management to experiment.  They launch new web programs and cut the ones that don’t work and keep the ones that do.  Some smaller papers, presumably unencumbered by layers of bureaucracy, are also experimenting and doing great things.   Other publications are suffering from institutional inertia and not doing much of anything.  Web-based companies like Digg and Techmeme are breaking their own ground.

What newspapers websites look like in five years will be the story of these various experiments.

For those of you that are gluttons for punishment, my presentation is embedded below.  As you’ll see, in the future I should probably take help from our design team.  Notes regarding some of the slides are embedded beneath the slide deck.

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[This is cross-posted at The ImpactWatch blog.]

J.W.'s American Idol Twitter prediction about which contestant would end their run last night was wrong.  Brooke White did not go home despite having a disastrous restart during her song while Carly Smithson performed well this week — even garnering praise from Simon Cowell.

I think that J.W. had a novel idea, but why was his prediction wrong? 

There's an excellent chance that those who use Twitter aren't representative of the ardent American Idol voter.  While I don't know the demographics of the voting population, Twitter is new and geeky enough that it wouldn't surprise me if this was the case.

Here's an anecdote about why I know Twitter isn't that widespread yet. Twitter inputs my tweets into Facebook and lists them in my status updates.  My friends see: "Steve Petersen is twitter: …"  Although my friends do show social media tendencies by using the site, some of them have no idea of what Twitter is.  One asked me, "What's with all this twittering?''  While another wondered if I was constantly nervous.

Now, I'm not saying that my friends accurately represent the American Idol voter, but they probably are more like the voter than a group of people who use a geeky (I use that with pride) site.  If some of my friends understand and enjoy social media enough to use a social network but are not aware of Twitter, then tweeters are in a smaller subset of the population than my friends who use social networks.  Needless to say, I have many friends who either don't want a Facebook account or lack the desire to social media (let alone Twitter) on-line.

Further, I doubt that everyone who positively tweets about a contestant votes for that person.  Also, I know people who vote multiple times for the same person each week, and even if a Twitter user voted for the contestant whom they wrote about, how are we sure that they voted once, twice, or nine times?

My predictions were absolute rubbish, it seems.  Apparently, tweets cannot be used to accurately predict who is going home from American Idol.  In fact, two of the top three positive tweet-getters were the ones that were unceremoniously in the Bottom Two.  Syesha Mercado and Carly Smithson had the least votes after their performances on Tuesday night, despite having the most positive tweets found during my Tweet Scan.

Interestingly, Mercado and Smithson were the two contestants with the fewest positive tweets BEFORE their performances of this week.  This may indicate that overall twittering can predict the voting habits of America better than spur of the moment written notions.

Will we ever find a way to predict American Idol?  I researched some of the other methods previously mentioned in this post, and none of them predicted a Carly elimination.  With that, Fox Television continues to remain a mystery.

For the second part of my study concerning whether tweets from Twitter could be used to predict the losing contestants of American Idol, I decided to wait until noon to make sure that there were enough new tweets to equal the amount used in the analysis last week.  Fortunately, there were more than enough fresh, unique tweets discussing last night's episode.

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Once again, the Internet is abuzz with predictions and theories about who is going to win American Idol.  In the early days of the competition (back when Kelly Clarkson was still a nobody singing karaoke and we only hypothesized that we hated the British without actually knowing it through Simon Cowell), there was much less web traffic about the show.  This season and the previous one, however, it's all the Internet can talk about.

This leads people in finding numerous ways to predict who of the now-6 remaining contestants will be voted off each week.  After all, this is a show that purports that the American public gets to decide who is going to stay and who is going to go.  Polls, blogs, and fansites may all play an important role in deciding the overall victor, much like a modern day political campaign. 

TV Squad, a popular television site, uses polls from various sources as well as their own intuition to predict the next bootee.  Most of the polls incorrectly predicted Syesha Mercado's demise, while the real loser was Kristy Lee Cook.  Obviously, this is not an accurate way to predict the contestant with the lowest votes.  The polls are simply too specific in the sense that only those Internet snoopers that come across them will actually get a chance to vote in the poll.  This does not represent an accurate view of the American public.

DialIdol.com has found a more inventive way to predict the successful contestants.  Their software measures the busy signal of each phone line to determine who is getting the most votes.  They started the program during the previous season, but achieved only moderate success in the predictions.  The company also sells software to enable one person to vote many times for a contestant.  Many sites have reported that the software is now known by the American Idol producers and rarely works anymore.

Tivo also found a creative way to measure the votes.  The company claims that they can predict who is going to be voted off by which minutes of the recorded programs are re-watched.  The theory is that Idol favorites will have their performances re-watched by their adoring public, while soon-to-be eliminees will have fewer views.  Unfortunately, the system seems to not be altogether accurate, since Tivo has incorrectly predicted Mercado two weeks in a row.

Another social media company, BuzzLogic, uses their "influencer blog" ratings to follow the entire competition via their blog.  I was impressed by the fledgling company's efforts at first glance, but upon closer inspection realized that few, if any, of their predictions have been true.  In addition, BuzzLogic gives very little explanation when they are incorrect.  This does, however, bolster my recent opinion that Katie Paine's connection between online activity and offline activity is flawed.  Many ‘influential' bloggers may be writing about certain candidates for American Idol, but that does not necessarily mean that they are voting for them, or voting at all.

I decided to tackle the task of predicting American Idol, ImpactWatch style.  Instead of using news articles, I used Tweet Scan to analyze 90 tweets per remaining contestant, using two separate searches for each.  I searched for each contestant's full name as well as their first name and the phrase "American Idol".  I read and ranked each tweet post as positive, negative, or neutral.

There are two reasons why I believe this method to be more valid than the other ways that were described above.  First, tweets represent impulses and first impressions, which I assume mirrors the mindset of actual voters.  Secondly, this is the only method that ascribes a positive or negative take on the information.  Polls just rank the favorite, while the Tivo system lacks any real information about why certain parts of the show are re-watched.  BuzzLogic's system has merit, but suffers from the need of personal input by its bloggers to explain anomalies in the amounts of influencer blogs.

Using my ImpactWatch inspired protocol, I found that David Cook and Jason Castro have the highest amount of positive tweets.  Sure enough, after doing some extended research, I found that the two received much praise for their performances last week.  All three females had an identical number of negative tweets (45), but Mercado has the lowest amount of positive tweets at a scant 30.  This is preliminary, but on Wednesday morning, I will post an updated tweet analysis (since Tuesday is when the contestants will perform their new songs).  Voters will most likely be tweeting away while they are waiting to vote.  Let's see if I can accurately predict which Idol will fall.

My current results are summarized below, using a graph created using ImpactWatch.

This is a going back to the basics post, but the private data you allow your Internet browser to save is an important topic.

Today my browser was acting up.  So, I decided to completely uninstall it and start from scratch.  I knew that one of the things that I would have to tackle is remembering passwords and usernames for several sites that I have registered for that I allowed my browser to simply remember for me so that I didn't have to enter this information in every time I visited the sites.  Fortunately, either I remembered this information or could find it in e-mails.

However, I've been thinking about what kind of price I pay for this convenience.  First, since browsers take care of the usernames and passwords, I don't have to think about them that much, and on occasions like these that leaves me scratching my head as I remember or dig for that information.  Second, sometimes browsers will incorrectly try to place a username and password from one site — or older ones — into another when you login, and that's annoying since you have to wrestle with your browser to not make things so convenient for you. 

I think that it is important every once in a while to do things the hard way and not allow the browser to take care of usernames and passwords for you so that you can remember them better.  Also, at times like these, it is worth questioning if you want your browser to remember such information for every site that you use. 

Does anyone refuse to allow browsers to store such information?  If so, why?

This is the final part of my four-part analysis of Facebook applications.  (For the preceding part, click here.)  In this section, I will attempt to make some conclusions and predictions from all of the data that I collected.  For a complete list of every single one of the Facebook pages that I analyzed, check at the bottom of the page for an Excel spreadsheet link.  The names of the users have been deleted, but originally I used them to avoid accidental repetition during my research.

One of the most notable aspects when you take a look at the graphs (a PDF of all the graphs from the previous posts is included at the bottom of the post) is that not a single user had recently deleted an application.  After looking at many users, I decided to check a few extended histories, but alas, I still found no deletions.  Personally, I have deleted applications in the past, so I am aware that it happens.  My theory is that users have begun to recognize when they want to add an application or not, and as such, are becoming more ‘picky' when they are presented with a new one.  This would explain why there are still several additions present within the data.  With so many applications now available, newer ones have to be worthwhile in order to garner interest from users.  This is still possible, as Bumper Sticker proves, being a fairly recent application itself and already in the Top Ten.

Speaking of the Top Ten, my inner predictions were accurate.  According to Adonomics.com, approximately 5%-10% of users have each of the individual applications installed, so if I am ranking ten of them, my statistics professor from college would be thrilled to know that I realized about half of the total users would have at least one of them.

It is also interesting to note that users that only have 1 to 2 applications typically had one of the Top Ten as that lone application.  This makes perfect sense, since many of these are Hug Applications.  Any user wanting to receive these pokes and hugs from other users must have the application installed; so many users probably have it simply to receive and not to give.  It's total Christmas Stocking Syndrome.

I was pleased to find that a clear majority of users (of those who actually had applications) have 5 or less applications in their profiles.  When I began this research study, I had a gut feeling that I would find more 9+ entries than any other kind of profile.  Perhaps it is that those profiles simply stand out more.  In my personal opinion, given that some of the user-created applications are fun, and dare I say, ‘useful,' it is perfectly reasonable to have five or fewer.

I was also not surprised to find that the majority of typical usage was for Extended Use.  Some of the notable Extended Use applications–other than the ones already explicitly mentioned in the study–were ones that allowed users to post bigger pictures and give extra information about themselves.  It's somewhat of an old Internet cliché: people do not want to be limited in anything that they are doing, no matter what it is.  I was a tad surprised that Online Games were the least used category, but then again, users of Facebook can find free online games in other avenues.  Why use Facebook when there are better games out there?

As I was researching prior to the study, I saw many web postings comparing Facebook to its main rival, MySpace.  One of the main advantages to Facebook, according to those writings, was that it was not cluttered like MySpace profiles.  I find it ironic that people add applications when this is the popular opinion.  Many of the applications take up much space on a profile, adding a cluttered feeling to the overall page.  Forget Christmas Stocking Syndrome, Facebook users suffer from wanting to have their cake and eat it too.

Excel Spreadsheet of Facebook Data Collected

All Pie Charts PDF

[This post is cross posted at our ImpactWatch site] 

Continuing the study (see the preceding part of the analysis here), I analyzed if there had been recent activity by users regarding the addition of new applications.  Facebook applications can be added or deleted from profiles at any time, and there is a specific tab on the left-hand side of user profiles designated to the addition or removal of applications.

I used the mini-feeds (which show recent user input) to analyze if there had been recent application-related activity.  35 users had made recent additions, while not a single user had recently deleted an application.  An overwhelming majority of users had done neither in the last week.  Below is a graph showing this data, made using ImpactWatch features.

The final area of study concerned the ‘Top Ten' applications as elected by Adonomics.com.  These are Super Wall, Top Friends, Hug Me, Super Poke, Bumper Sticker, iLike, Graffiti, Zombies, Scrabulous, and Quizzes.  These were the top ten applications at the time of the research.  With the addition and removal of applications, the top ten applications could change periodically.  More information on these applications can be found in the background post about the study.

Of the 300 users, 146 had at least one of the Top Ten applications, while 154 did not.  Below is the graphical representation of this data, made using ImpactWatch features.

The final part of the study will be posted soon.  It will include an Excel spreadsheet of all the data, as well as some conclusions drawn from the data.

Last week, Hugh MacLead of Gaping Void (his cartoon above) announced that he was leaving the micro-blogging platform Twitter because he found it was distracting him from what he really wanted to be doing: writing books and drawing cartoons.

Rex Hammock responded with a sensible post calling for moderation:

I like Twitter and have written on this blog about how I believe it can serve many positive purposes. But yes, it can be a time-waste. That’s why I try to keep my Twittering in the background and turned off while working. I’ve found the program Twirhl, a desktop Twitter (and other services) client is helping me filter out lots of Twitter noise and have a better framework and context for the use of Twitter.

This struck a chord with me, as I am finding my current Twitter use unsustainable and have more or less abandoned the tool over the last week.

I find Twitter most useful when I read most of the updates of the people I am following. That way, you truly get to know the people you are following and can participate in the conversation that is taking place on Twitter. If I don’t read most of the updates, I find Twitter disorienting - it is like picking up a book and trying to read it backwards.

I’m currently following around a hundred people, and I would guess that I would have to be on Twitter an hour a day cumulatively to truly keep track. I’m not willing to make that kind of time investment. Given that, I’m left with a few choices:

1. Abandon Twitter altogether like Hugh.
2. Trim my list of people I’m following to a more manageable level.
3. Abandon the conversation aspect of Twitter and use it as a glorified listserv, a la Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Seth Godin. Basically stop listening, or drop in and out of the conversation at best.

I’m not sure what I’ll end up doing. I suspect other people are facing the same dilemma, as with many Twitter users you see periodic fits of activity followed by long periods of silence. I would guess these people are like me - they stop seeing the value because they don’t have time to follow the conversation.

Note: I just read an anecdote that pretty well sums up the Twitter time dilemma. Blogger Ryan Kruder recently called out Seth Godin for using Twitter as a one way communication vehicle (Godin never participates in conversations on Twitter and nearly all his posts are automatically imported via Twitterfeed). Godin responds:

If I twit, and do it well, as Garret seems to say, then what shall I give up? I already don’t sleep or comb my hair…

That pretty well sums up how I feel about Twitter right now.

If you have not read the background to this study, please read this post before going any further.

The first aspect that I wanted to analyze was the sheer amount of applications contained within profiles.  To make the count simpler, I narrowed the selections down to five categories: 0, 1-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9+.  Only 3^rd-party (i.e. not official) applications were counted.  Of the 300 profiles researched, 64 contained 0 applications, 84 contained 1 or 2 applications, and 84 contained 3, 4, or 5 applications.  On the higher side, 41 profiles contained 6, 7, or 8 applications, and 27 contained 9 or more.  Below is a pie chart with a summary of the collected information.

The application interfaces appear within the profile itself, based on where the user would like them to appear, and also as a small icon directly under the profile picture.  Below is an example of what could be found under profile picture, if the user had many many many applications.

The second usage category that I analyzed concerned the type of applications that each user employed.  Of the applications used, which type was most prevalent in their profile?  I divided the types of applications into four categories, based on my own observations.  The categories under which the applications could fall were Extended Use, Online Games, Hug Applications, and Outside Applications.  Applications under Extended Use expand the usability of the standard applications, like the Super Wall.  Online Games, such as Scrabulous, give users the ability to play turn-based games with other users.  Hug Applications grant the user the ability to send more personal messages and ‘gifts' to other users.  Finally, Outside Applications promote an outside media, such as a charity, television show, or computer program like Skype. 

124 users had applications for Extended Use, a clear majority over the other categories separately.  21 users had applications mostly for Online Games, with these mostly being very popular ones like Scrabulous and Jet Man.  59 users mostly have Hug Applications; 32 mostly have Outside Applications; and 64 have no applications whatsoever.  It's worth noting that eight of the ‘Top Ten' applications fall under the category of either Extended Use or Hug Applications.  Not a single one of the Top Ten is an Outside Application.  Below is a graphical interpretation of this data.

Part 3 of the study to come shortly.  Check back soon.

[This is cross-posted at our ImpactWatch site]

The overly popular Facebook social network has recently seen a surge of ‘applications' added to its roster.  Users hoping to enhance the experience of the social platform create these applications.  As of January 2008, there are over 14,000 applications in circulation among users.  The uses of these applications range widely; in July 2007, the first Facebook-only venture capital firm (Altura 1 Facebook Investment Fund) was released to the public.  They have gotten so popular that Stanford University recently debuted a class where the end product is Facebook application.  The great success of this class most likely means that many more schools will soon follow suit, offering more classes on social network metrics and creation.

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