Life in Words

There is quite a lot of excitement about Twitter these days and rightly so. News of the recent Bombay terrorist attacks was shared via Twitter long before even the major news networks like CNN got a hold of it. It really is a revolution in news sharing, a micro-blogging platform which may not be new but which has undergone quite an epiphany lately.

Twitter is more than a way to talk to friends and family and make a few contacts. With Twitter you can literally direct thousands of visitors every day to your blog. That kind of traffic is what bloggers and internet marketers dream of. With Twitter, you get in contact with the big guys who have been in the business for years and really know what they’re doing. If they are on Twitter, you should be too! Watch and learn.

To make the most of Twitter, you need to know a few things. If you want people to take notice of you on this micro-blogging platform, you need to be a bit selective. Try to follow everyone and you end up as Billy No Mates. No, what you should concentrate on in order to be successful on Twitter is providing some service to the community. Share useful information and attempt to keep the conversations going with bloggers. Show other bloggers that they can trust you so that you build up useful relationships with other bloggers. Find a niche for yourself and focus on it. Don’t try to be all things to everyone.

Social media sites like Twitter are taking over from personal blogs and revolutionizing the way we share news. They make it a lot easier to integrate multi-media streams like video and sound, whereas traditional blogs are centred on the written word and can seem dead on the page. Twitter really lives!

Convergent media services are the very latest development in social media sites like Twitter with multimedia clips all hosted on one webspace. This does away with the need to stream media from other places. It gives you much more control to basically do life streaming. Any details you want to share, you can – quickly and easily with Twitter.

Largely because of this ease, experts are saying that Twitter could potentially have a much more significant effect on the worldwide political landscape than traditional blogging ever could. News can be broadcast literally as it happens. That is why Twitter was first to get out the news of what was happening in Bombay. The service offers real time updates which are searchable. It also has some nifty little features such as Twitter comics, where you can mash up your news into a comic strip. It certainly adds fun to blogging!

However, Twitter better watch out. Other sites like FriendFeed are catching up and even overtaking it. Technological problems with Twitter’s reply feature earlier this year (2008) created a gap which is quickly being filled by other social networking sites. Twitter is here and it’s big. Whether it is here to stay depends on Twitter sorting out its technical problems and keeping ahead of the keen competition.

People have looked for a means of getting information on all kinds of subjects for years, if not decades and centuries. There was a time when the encyclopedia, dictionary, thesaurus, and phone book were the key references materials to be used. Today, with the advent of the Internet, you can get access to all kinds of search engines to find anything you want. Well, Google is one of – if not the – most powerful of these search engines.

One of the best features of the system is that when you start to type something in, it tries to anticipate what you’re looking for. As an example: if you type in N-E-W space Y, Google will automatically give you a pull-down list of just about anything related to New York; everything from the New York Architects to the New York Yankees, and the Zoo in Central Park. Also, in the pull-down list, it’ll give you an estimate as to the number of hits you’re going to get for that particular item. This can be important if you’re trying to do research on a homework project or a job.

Then there’s the issue of subject matter. With Google, you can type in any subject, and get information on web sites that cover it. In some cases, that can mean getting sites that are adult-only, or are not the sort of sites that some social conservatives or religious leaders might approve of. The point is, Google gives you the option to examine any of these sites you want.

Now, back in 2006, the Bush Administration did try to push Google to hand over the search results of millions of customers. This was reported in various sources; among them: Slashdot.  Slashdot.org is a web site (by its own admission) for nerds to get news! The government claimed they only wanted to track how often people were looking for pornography to aid in their appeal regarding a law targeted at preventing children from getting access to porn. Google successfully fought the administration’s efforts, arguing that it would be an invasion of privacy for their clients. As a side note, the law in question had been struck down because it was felt it would restrict the lawful access to adult material by adults.

Finally, in March of 2006, a San Francisco judge ruled that Google should give the Department of Justice some details on the company’s search engine, but didn’t have to grant the government access to the records in question. Here again, this was widely reported, and can be seen on the Slashdot page:

When you consider all that Google is doing to protect client right to privacy, it’s clear that they are an outstanding company. In any instance that I’ve needed information on a subject – no matter how obscure it might be, I can find something on Google. As I am an avid information seeker, I often have to get information on everything from defibulators to the history of stamps. Google has never failed to give me good data on the subjects I need.

Just recently, it was announced that the Tribune Group, one of the largest conglomerates of newspapers in the US, was filing for bankruptcy. Among the company’s holdings are: the Chicago Tribune, the Orlando Sentinel, and the LA Times. This is no small company, its holdings encompass billions! So, why is it going belly-up, as they say?

These days, many people get all their news online. Between MSN, Google, and countless other web sites, they can learn about everything around the world, and around the corner. Now, some people complain that such things are too general, too national or even international. Well, that’s where the new hyperlocal blogs come into play, and they are far and away superior to even a newspaper or community newsletter.

Here’s how they work, at least according to Wikipedia and hyperlocalblogger.com, there are the business, news, social, community, and casual blogs. The blogger gathers all the information on the particular subject, and posts it on a daily basis. What makes these blogs different from others is that term: hyper-local. They give people all the news about their specific area, and by specific, I mean very specific – right down to your street!

Think about how many times you’ve picked up a newspaper, checked the: Local Beat, and didn’t see word one about what’s going on in your area? Or, maybe your neighborhood prints a newsletter once a month; that’s a long time between printings. With these hyperlocal blogs, you get all the news about your area, and you get it right away. Now, you are at the mercy of the blogger, so some might see that as a minus. Yet, isn’t that the case with any information provider?

I love the fact that the news is focused on my area. With print, I have to search for any items about my neighborhood, and there often aren’t any – unless it’s bad news. Isn’t that almost always the case: the only news to make the papers is the bad news? Well, I like to hear about other things. And then, from a purely eco-friendly standpoint, I love that the hyperlocal blogs let me get all this news, and no trees get killed as a result. With newspapers, I’m always finding them all over the house; I barely read half of each issue, and then I have to haul them out for the recyclers to pick up.

In the case of these hyperlocal blogs, a point, a click, and I get all the news. Plus, there’s also the issue of getting news out. If you’re starring in a local play, or you just wrote a book or something, most newspapers aren’t going to bother writing an article about you. With these blogs, you can get your story out. That, I think, is the best part of these kind of blogs: you get news you want to hear about.

Now, another negative is that, if people make use of only hyperlocal blogs, they could end up ignoring news about their country, state, or even their city. So, I think people need to strive for a balance; use the blogs, but also keep connected to news outlets about their wider community. Whether that’s a local paper or just other online information sources, it’s up to them.

I logged into Google Analytics this morning and had a pleasant surprise. The dashboard has a new look and feel. I immediately jumped to check all the tabs to see if there was any options added, especially the Adsense Click Tracking feature. So far there seems to be none.

I am positive Google has planned it all for the coming days. For now, take a look at the new design.