y 9216's List: IT

• Tweetie: Not to be confused with impostors, Tweetie combines beauty, speed, and function in an impressive option that will only set you back $2.99. The app supports multiple accounts, search, saved searches, retweets, user profiles, follow options, a landscape keyboard, Instapaper () integration, conversation views, and flashy UI elements. It’s the Twitterati’s app of choice, and ours too.

   

  iTunes rating: 4 stars
   Mashable rating: 5 stars

• Pay to Play: Tweetie

   

  Freebies: Twitterfon

   

  Search and Trends: ReTweet

   

  One Hit Wonders: Twitterlink

   

  Multi-Purpose: Nambu

• Fellow Plurkers, we have some very troubling news to report to our beloved community today. Like many other prominent sites such as Google, Youtube and Wikipedia before it, Plurk has now joined the ranks of sites that have been officially banned in China.
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• Finally, we ask Plurkers to please help spread the word about Plurk’s ban in China. Tell your friends, tell local newspapers and media websites and help China reconsider its actions. We are confident that with enough support and awareness, China will lift this ban and Plurk will again be well on its way to becoming the worlds most beloved communication platform!

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• Douglas Bowman, Google's visual design leader, is leaving the company after finding the company's reliance on detailed Web page performance data too confining.
• Yes, it's true that a team at Google couldn't decide between two blues, so they're testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4, or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can't operate in an environment like that. I've grown tired of debating such minuscule design decisions...
• I'll miss working with the incredibly smart and talented people I got to know there. But I won't miss a design philosophy that lives or dies strictly by the sword of data.
• , I find Google's approach to design refreshing and radical in its own way. Choosing color shades and pixel widths on the basis of the behavior of millions of Web page users is a fascinating development to the form-follows-function school of design.

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• • Story Highlights
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  • Unofficial online map to track swine flu has gained thousands of page views
    
  • Devised and updated by biochemists Henry Niman using Google Maps maker
    
  • Sating public desire to "see" spread of swine flu not met by WHO
    
  • Reflects the growing popularity of online maps
• Created as a side project by Henry Niman, a Pittsburgh-based biochemist, it's attracting considerable attention despite being imperfect and not being backed by an official agency.

• To create the map, Niman says he primarily used media articles from around the world, often supplied by map visitors posting comments.

  For foreign language articles, he used Google's translation site to try to ferret out details, especially precise geographic location. He tried get more detailed, for instance, than maps that show only cases by state, going instead down to a town or even building level if possible.
• The WHO doesn't make a map like Niman's partly for technical reasons. It needs to communicate effectively around the world, and online interactive maps are difficult to use in developing countries without high-speed Internet connections, notes WHO spokesperson Lina Tucker Reinders.

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• HealthMap
  

• Facebook isn’t just a place to maintain communication anymore; it’s become a place to grieve, to pay final respects to someone, and connect with his/his friends. With every new memorialized profile page or group dedicated to a deceased user, Facebook is changing not only the way we hear about deaths, but the way we mourn them as well.
• Death on Facebook’s Terms
• Now, once Facebook finds out that a user has died, that person’s profile is automatically memorialized. What this means is that for thirty days, sensitive information (status updates and contact information, for example) is taken off the page, the profile can only be looked at by friends (the friend list is also locked), and people are able to post messages and photos on the person’s Wall.
• Another popular option that Facebook offers is for friends and family members to start group pages dedicated to the deceased, such as “Tribute to ____” or “In Memory of ____,” where people can share memories and cherished pictures online. And for those who want the profile eliminated completely, Facebook will only honor the request if you’re a close relative and can prove the relation.

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• Social media company Twitter is struggling to craft a profitable business model, but the Web-based service has helped Dell Inc chalk up millions of dollars in sales.
• Dell said on Thursday it has raked in more than $3 million from Twitter followers who clicked through its posts to its Web sites to make purchases.
• Three million in sales over two years is a pittance for Dell, ranked by IDC as the world's second-largest PC maker in the first quarter of 2009. Dell posted $12.3 billion of revenue in the first quarter of this year, alone.
• Twitter does not charge companies for such benefits, but does not rule out doing so in the future.
• Gartner analyst Allen Weiner said such financial success could provide a model for Twitter, itself, to make money.
• Dell said it posts 6 to 10 times a week to its DellOutlet account, which is where the majority of Twitter-based sales have come from. Stephanie Nelson, who manages the account, said almost every post includes a coupon or a link to a sale, and about half of the posts are Twitter-exclusive deals.
• Other non-media companies ranked in the Top 100 include Whole Foods Market Inc, Woot.com, Zappos.com, JetBlue Airways Corp.

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• Small companies are also finding financial success on Twitter. New Orleans-based Naked Pizza, which turns $1 million in sales annually, is "betting the farm" on its Twitter presence according to co-founder Jeff Leach.

      
• The company, which created a Twitter presence about two and a half months ago and has about 4,300 followers, last week said nearly 69 percent of sales generated during a one-day Twitter advertising blitz came from customers drawn in from the site.

• BusinessWeek and market researcher YouNoodle have teamed up to identify 50 tech startups flying under the radar.
• Ning  Palo Alto, Calif.  96 104.0 2004 Gina Bianchini
• Scribd  San Francisco  91 12.8 2007 Trip Adler
• Slide  San Francisco  91 58.0 2005 Max Levchin
• Evernote  Mountain View, Calif.  60 13.5 2005 Phil Libin
• Fon  Madrid  44 48.0 2005 Martin Varsavsky

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• One of the hottest areas of search right now is real time search, which attempts to find results based on what is happening right now
• There is something about human nature which makes us want to prioritize information by how recent it is, and that is the fundamental appeal of real time search.
• The default, or at least the starting point, for most real time search engines is simply to put the most recent results up top and then keep pushing then down in a free-flowing river of information as new results which match the query come in.
• maybe real time search is more like an alert system.
• But it is clear that in order to make sense of the stream, it needs to be ranked by order of importance as well as by time.

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• 21% (One Fifth) of Twitter accounts are empty placeholders.
• Nearly 94% of all Twitter accounts have less than 100 followers.
• March and April of 2009 were the tipping point for Twitter.
• 150 followers is the magic numbe
• A small minority creates most of the activity

  • 5% of users account for 75%
    of all activity, and 10% of users account for 86%. This seems to
    suggest that the site has managed to engage a mass audience beyond
    those who typically engage with social media.
• Half of all Twitter users are not "active."

  • his leaves about 30% of users who
    have an account and have tweeted before, but happen to be inactive now.
• Tuesday is the most active Twitter day
• APIs have been the key to Twitter's growth & utility.
• English still dominates Twitter
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• Twitter is being led by the social media geeks.

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• Solution 101: Rank by Friends and People You Follow

  • This is not possible on Twitter today, but it already works great on FriendFeed.

  • Here is an idea so obvious that it is surprising Twitter has not implemented it already: front-load search results with people you follow.
• Small Worlds and Taste Neighbors

  • As a next step, search results could rank people you may not be directly following but who are being followed by people you follow.
• The Influencers and the Crowd

  • Using number of followers as a weight might be a good way to order the rest of the activity stream.

  • someone who is followed by hundreds of thousands of users is likely more relevant to you than someone you don't know at all.
• The Quest for the Perfect Filter

  • And now, as always, please tell us what you think? What would you expect from a search engine with Social Relevancy Rank built in?

  • Social Relevancy Rank will evolve over time to help us make sense of endless streams of activity. This ranking will have a profound impact on how we tap into our friends' opinions.
    

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• Using number of followers as a weight might be a good way to order the rest of the activity stream. - Is it really so? - y 9216 on 2009-07-20
• Similar topic : http://www.diigo.com/06mp8 - y 9216 on 2009-07-20

• 17 percent of the global online population in China

  • until 2012
  Add Sticky Note
• • North America. Online penetration in the US is set to rise from 73 percent to 82 percent over the next five years, representing about a 3 percent annual growth rate. By 2013, US online penetration will be on par with the most highly penetrated markets of Europe and Asia, such as the Netherlands, the UK, Japan, and South Korea.
    
  • Europe. Europe's Internet growth will be fueled by the continent's emerging markets. Internet usage in Russia and Turkey will grow by almost 8 percent annually, while growth in Spain's online population will increase by an average of more than 5 percent each year.
    
  • Asia. China's online population (already the largest in the world) will rise by nearly 11 percent each year over the next half decade. Other Asian countries with substantial online growth rates include India, Indonesia, Pakistan, and the Philippines. By contrast, growth rates in some of the more mature markets such as Japan and South Korea will rise by less than 2 percent each year.
    
  • Latin America. Brazil is currently the fourth largest market in the world in terms of number of Internet users, but despite a 7 percent annual growth rate over the next five years, it will drop to the No. 5 position in 2010 when it is surpassed by India.
    
  • Africa and the Middle East. The countries of the Middle East and Africa currently represent just 8 percent of the global online population but over the next five years will see some of the highest growth rates in the world, around 13 percent. Egypt, Iran, and Nigeria are among the countries with the highest growth rates in the region.

• Will a similar trend such as Automotive industry in Japan be observed? - y 9216 on 2009-07-28