Earlier today news leaked out that the comment management system Disqus (background here) has enabled video commenting on sites that use the service through a partnership with Seesmic. Basically this means that people can post video comments in addition to regular old text comments in response to articles, blog posts, etc. You can see it in action here. Seesmic had previously released a plugin that enables video commenting on Wordpress blogs, and plans to release a plugin for Typepad and Movable Type as well.

When I first saw video commenting on blogs “in the wild” a few months back, I thought it was a novel idea . At this point though, I find them mostly annoying for a few reasons:

• When I’m using the web, I’m not always in a position where I can watch a video.  Sometimes I’m listening to music.  Sometimes I’m in a public place.  Sometimes I’m on a mobile phone. If part of the conversation is taking place via video, I will often miss it.  Many others will as well.
• It is much quicker for me to read a comment than to watch it.
• The use of video in commenting is usually unnecessary - in most cases the same point could be made just as well through text commenting.
• Video comments disrupt the flow of text comments.

Beyond the initial gee whiz moment, I don’t see how the value video commenting provides the end user in most cases. For me, the rise of video commenting is largely a case of people using video for using video’s sake.

If video commenting takes off and becomes ubiquitous in the coming years, I think the best practice will be to separate video comments from regular text ones, as YouTube does with video responses. This will allow people to have the latest toy on their site without disrupting the experience of people just interested in text comments.

Todd gave me a beta invite to the new bookmarking site Mento this morning.  He really likes it, and thinks that it is del.icio.us on steroids.  I agree.

More or less the sites are very similar in their core functionality — to bookmark sites with the potential to categorize and share them.  However, Mento has added a few bells and whistles.

While del.icio.us is much more spartan in its design (which isn't necessarily bad –compare Google to Yahoo!), Mento has a lot more graphics and more friendly user interface.  I personally don't mind a spartan site, but Mento is refreshing.  For those who are new to the bookmarking game, they probably would find Mento easier to use.

Another cool bell and whistle that Mento has added is the ability to get a customized screen shot (whole or partial) of a web page that one is bookmarking.  I must admit that this is way cool.  A picture is worth a thousand words, and bookmarking sites aren't made for tomes about links.  Further, it is easy to do.  The tool pops up in one's browser, and the instructions are very clear what to do.

Mento is also gracious enough to understand that we weren't born for the sole purpose of using it.  That's why it allows users to export links from it to other bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, Ma.gnolia, and tumblr.  That's pretty generous.  Of course, can or will also export links to sites like Facebook, which makes perfect sense since bookmarking is a complementary activity to social networking.

If that's not good enough, Mento also enables you to filter the links that your connections can send you or that you'll see as you peruse their bookmarks.  For instance, if Todd tags something "battlestargalactica," I can choose not to see these links.  No offence meant, but I'm a Star Trek guy.  Likewise you can make sure that pages from a certain site are included in what you see.  That's pretty nifty.   

The site is still in beta — thus, a work-in-progress.  But it seems cool to me.  If you would like an invite to test the site, either leave a comment below or send us a direct message through The Bivings Group's Twitter page.

In our post announcing the launch of our Bivings Twitter account, I mentioned being inspired by the way other companies/organizations are using Twitter (what is Twitter?). The organization that I was thinking of specifically when I launched our account was Zappos.com. Lots of organizations are jumping on the Twitter bandwagon and using the tool to publish RSS feeds and have one way conversations. But very few at this point are using Twitter to actually engage with customers and stakeholders. Zappos.com is one of the few.

Zappos has set up their own Twitter micro site to highlight the company’s use of Twitter. The site features:

• A “Beginners Guide to Twitter” that does a good job of explaining what Twitter is exactly.
• A leaderboard, sorted by number of followers, that lists all Zappos.com employee Twitter accounts (252 of them). By doing this, Zappos is empowering all their employees to engage with customers through Twitter.
• A reverse chronological list of all employee tweets.
• A reverse chronological list of all Zappos.com mentions on Twitter.

Importantly, Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh is the company’s most active and followed Twitter user. Just in the last few days, he has used his account to:

• Share some details about what he’s up to personally and professionally.
• Provide some behind the scenes info regarding what its like to work at Zappos.com.
• Launch a Twitter contest asking people to help them rewrite their confirmation emails.
• Incubate an idea for polling customers on Twitter.
• Explain why he is using Twitter.

Don’t believe they are into it? Check out Tony’s business cards.

Zappos.com is successfully using Twitter to put a human face on the company and engage with customers more deeply. I’m impressed. If we do half as well with our own Twitter account, I’ll be happy.

One of my friends sent me a link to a clip from a BBC comedy show named The Wall this morning.  This Facebook in the real world clip, which is found on Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish blog on The Atlantic’s site, shows a man knocking on an old acquaintance’s door. 

The visitor then proceeds to poke the bewildered bloke, tells him that they used to know each other but didn’t get along, requests that he be his friend, etc. while someone else posts embarrassing pictures on the wall of this bloke’s house for the rest of his friends to see.

As weird as this sounds, I think it is important for us to remember what you actually do on a social networking site.  While social networks are very useful, we must remember that sometimes we behave in ways that we would not do in real life.  That’s why this video is particularly funny and helpful for use to remember what exactly we’re doing on Facebook, MySpace, and similar sites.

Fledging company UserVoice is attempting to provide focus groups to those companies that cannot afford focus groups.  The site's general idea is to moderate user ideas and complaints by means of formal comment boxes, polls, and ranking systems.  The three-person ‘Team UserVoice' is quoted as saying, "UserVoice adds structure to feedback and reduces the overhead of an honest dialog with our users - It creates a market around good ideas so we get more quality than quantity."

The interface is currently in its public beta stage, allowing (free of charge) access to its platform.  Those who sign up can create a page for their company, product, project, or even blog.  UserVoice just recently released the ability to add custom CSS to a company's page as well as c-name inclusion for a completely transparent user experience.  This means that the customer never perceives that they are on another site.  The idea is to put the UserVoice widget on the company's official site and allow users to comment on their company or specific products.  The company can then do several things:

1. Track user ideas as other users vote on them
2. Provide official responses to comments
3. Mark an idea as ‘planned'
4. Push out new features that users want
5. Collect fan mail

The new site has gained a lot of attention, but I question whether this new company can do things that are not already being done.  Sites like FeVote, Get Satisfaction, and Sales Force are already doing many of the things with which UserVoice claims to be able to help.  The only unique feature that I can discern is that UserVoice allows companies to create a specific page for themselves.  The effort seems to be made in keeping the comments more regulated and organized than the previously mentioned sites, but will that cause users to be less free with their suggestions and comments?  I applaud the company for creating a way for small to medium-sized businesses to have their own ‘focus groups' but it is going to be a couple of months before we will be able to decide if UserVoice shouts or gets silenced.

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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If you've got a computer, you know what YouTube is.  In fact, most people, including myself, have uploaded videos to YouTube at one point or another until our accounts have inevitably been suspended.  It's the circle of life on the Internet, and I am very pleased with it.  Without YouTube after all, I would be unable to watch my guilty pleasure, America's Next Top Model.

What's the bad news about YouTube?  Well, the videos that are uploaded are typically of lesser quality.  In fact, the most common complaint that you will see on the video comment sections is about the quality.  In reply, most users will explain that "something" happened to their video during the upload process.  There is a hack to be able to view high quality version of videos, but soon, that hack will hopefully be rendered useless.

YouTube has finally announced all users have the option of watching some videos in higher quality. A blog post on their site claims they're slowly integrating this new feature, and videos uploaded in the proper format will be the first to be available in high quality. The rest of the library will soon follow, with any luck.

Simply go into your user account and select the option: "always show me higher quality when available." High speed Internet is going to work best, because otherwise the videos may suffer from lag time.  Nobody likes lag time.

I have been waiting for this feature for a long time.  Finally, my prayers have been answered, and I will soon be able to watch YouTubeHD.  There are enough capital letters in that word to make anyone excited.

A little over a year ago I wrote a post that guessed which emerging technologies would have an impact on the 2008 election cycle. I figured I’d take a quick look back and grade my predictions, as well as list a few new technologies that have emerged since I last covered this ground.

Here are the grades I would give my predictions (original post is here for background):

(1) Ning (Niche Social Networks)

I’d give myself a C on this one. Many of the major Presidential candidates launched niche social networks on their campaign sites, hoping to encourage connections among volunteers. However, none of these niche networks really got that much traction except for Barack Obama’s. And no campaign used the specific service I recommended, Ning (which I think is still worth trying). Ron Paul supporters took the novel approach of trying to turn the entire Internet into a niche social network about Ron Paul, which is another thing entirely. I think there is still something to the idea of niche social networks around campaigns, but most of the action has been taking place on the more established networks (Facebook, MySpace, etc.).

(2) Mozes (Broadcast Text Messaging)

I’d go with a B for this one. The Obama campaign launched a quite aggressive text messaging effort where users are encouraged to text the message “Hope” to 62262 to subscribe to text alerts alerts. Other campaigns have experimented with similar programs. The Obama campaign program works pretty much the exact same way as I described in my post, but no one is using Mozes specifically. It is also really hard to measure the impact of these programs without getting access to subscriber figures.

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Social networking giant Facebook is teaming up with Paramount Pictures to let users download thousand of clips from the filmmaker’s archives.

The VooZoo application, which launched Monday, was developed by FanRocket. The idea is to let individuals re-live some of their favorite scenes and moments from any Paramount film. Clips last anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes.

Viacom, Paramount Pictures’ parent company, plans to market DVDs through the new tool.

Though FanRocket aims to garner a few hundred thousand users within the first few months, Paramount hasn’t set any revenue goals to its end.

The application features a double-pane window on top – the left side shows the clips you’ve added yourself. On the right, you’ll find a display of your history, with ‘Featured VooHoos,’ or featured clips, just underneath.

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Want further proof of Barack Obama’s popularity online? According to the site Twitterholic, Obama has more followers than any other Twitter user (followers are people who sign up to receive a user’s Twitter updates through the service). Here is a chart showing the top 10 users:

Despite this popularity, Obama’s team doesn’t use the service that aggressively. They have only posted 78 updates. The second most popular user, Robert Scoble, has posted 7,499 updates.

You can visit Obama’s Twitter page here and Twitterholic here.

Update: Twitdir is another great resource for looking at data on top Twitter users.

My friend David Cohn has written an excellent post about social bookmarking sites.  His aim is to coax journalists into using these sites to better research, report, and reach out to their audience.  Although the post has a journalistic focus, it does an excellent job of explaining the differences between the user bases of several major sites that virtually anyone interested in social media will learn from.

As someone who has spent some time on sites like digg, reddit, and Newsvine, I know how different these sites — and perhaps more importantly, their users — are.  That’s why reading David’s post can help the uninitiated since he explains the specific appeal, audiences, and objectives of the sites he spotlights.  The fact that he explains the objective and niche of these sites is really valuable since this helps the uninitiated more efficiently select a site that best meets their needs.

Although I’ll admit that at times I feel overwhelmed by the seemingly endless list of bookmarking sites that pop up, I do see utility in the major ones that David features.