I’m been looking over a new media aggregation site called Mediagazer.  My initial thought was, “great…another aggregator that will simply clutter up a lot of content and put it in a needle-in-the-haystack format”, but those thoughts were dismissed as soon as I really started looking at it closely.

Mediagazer is a new effort from the uber-popular tech sharing community Techmeme, and is their first news vertical in almost four years. It bills itself as a site, “which will focus on the content production and distribution business, organizing topics as wide as journalism, blogging, video production, e-books, and digital distribution technologies”, and sure enough it does all of that.  There are a lot of good content assimilation sites, but I think Mediagazer will stand out as a leader if it can get enough good press early to build momentum.

I really like it’s easy-to-share buttons, with the ability to send information linked to either Mediagazer directly, or the original source of the story.  I think that is a brave and noble feature, most aggregators are trying their very best to drive as much traffic as possible directly to their own site (increase in traffic = increase in ad revenue), so the ability to link directly out is a fairly cool and risky idea. They do have sponsored news aggregation prominently displayed in the right column and halfway down the main page with no signs of traditional banner and display ads…yet. I also like the sharing simplicity, obviously aimed at social networks as the only two options are Twitter and Facebook.  Honestly, those are the only two places I ever share news anyway. Naturally, Mediagazer is also on Twitter, although thus far it appears to simply be a feed from their headlines as opposed to an interactive, engaging account.

I like the navigation and sharing potential from this site, so I’ll give it a try as a news source for a couple of weeks to see if it makes it into my regular lineup.  If you try it out, let me know what you think: is Mediagazer just another news aggregator, or a useful service for finding and sharing information?

Tweetdeck, the Adobe Air desktop app that I use for the majority of my online communication,published an update to version 0.33.00 today. They have included a lot of media previewing in the new release including media support for platforms like Flickr, Twitgoo and mobypicture.  My favorite new feature? Without a doubt a new way to delegate API calls.  Instead of being limited to 150/hour the new rate (thanks to OAuth authentication) is 350 calls per hour! In plain speak, this means that it is far more likely that you can make it through the day without seeing the dreaded “rate limit exceeded” error message.

Other nice tweaks include a fullscreen mode (PC only), the ability to record, share and watch videos clips integrated with YouTube and editable, real-time searches.

If you want a quick look at everything you are missing by not upgrading, the fine folks over at Tweetdeck were kind enough to make a 1:58 video detailing everything (embeded below).  Does anybody else find the name of the test account name they used in the video a little…odd?

If you are a Twitter user but haven’t jumped into the Tweetdeck arena, I urge you to try it out.  It’s free, runs on most platforms without issues, and makes sorting and organizing information pretty simple.

Phishing spam on Twitter

Dear Twitter,

You have done an incredible job of responding to a massive influx of new users, especially over the last 8 months.  With growth reaching 1400% month over month, the need to react and support quickly has been critical, and for the most part I would say you have done so better than just about anybody else has that has seen such rapid growth on their platforms.   With the recent roll out of Twitter lists you have also added value to the community by providing a tool that people can use to pull some signal out of all of the noise.  Many are finding the lists as the place to discover and follow new people.  Thank you for all of your work.

A new phenomenon has bubbled up from the user community, and it’s something that I would like you to take quick and decisive action on.  Phishing scams have torn through Twitter on an almost daily basis for the last several weeks, with unsuspecting users clicking links and turning over their credentials.  The results have been painful to deal with…I’m receiving dozens, and sometimes hundreds,of direct messages from real people (not bots) every single day with messages like, “hey. do this iq quiz for me http://quiz6545.info” and “i found y0u http://videos.twitter.shjjiwe.com/?vpgdzxiaq”. This is phishing that is perpetuating too rapidly and it’s starting to ruin the communication platform for me. Here is what needs to happen to fix this…

Those of you that have been following my adventures for a while know that I put my heart, soul and mind into social media.  Since writing my own blogging platform a decade ago (the billion dollar idea that I never capitalized on…) to my almost-obsessive fascination with brand interaction on channels like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, I am constantly observing and strategizing ways to make the interaction and engagement between companies and customers better through social media. I have spent quite a bit of time over the last couple of years consulting businesses of all types and sizes regarding their engagement (or lack thereof) within these online communities.  From Fortune 100 companies that distribute hardware all around the world to non-profit agencies that are doing their best to make a difference in the world, I have worked with groups to lend insight, support, ideas and action to social media programs. Given all of that, I’m quite pleased to announce that I have taken a new role within the industry.

Another day, another phishing or malware scam on Twitter. It seems like these are happening entirely too often, and the reason is that people continue to ignore common sense. Very, very rarely will a site hijack an account of some type without getting input from the account holder. The scam du jour is a Twitter hijack attempt that asks for a username and password, and once received will not only DM your followers with a message, but will also post it publicly on your account. The message will appear as one of the following, or a close variant:

• hah, i think i seen u on here http://videos.dskjkiuw.com/
• this you? http://videos.dskjkiuw.com/
• lol this vid is funny. http://videos.dskjkiuw.com/
• haha check out this vid http://videos.dskjkiuw.com/

DO NOT FOLLOW THESE LINKS AND GIVE YOUR LOGIN INFORMATION!!! This page will take your Twitter login credentials and hijack your account.  As of right now it appears to only try to propagate itself by getting others to log in, but it could use your account for other reasons.  If you did receive this and you did “log in”, you must CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD IMMEDIATELY!!!

I think social media is amazing for many reasons, at the top of the list is the ability to turn online connections into real life relationships. I’ve experienced this many times, from tweetups to business meetings, and I marvel at how far we have come with technology over the last decade. Recently I wrote a post asking if there was a photographer in the San Francisco area that would be available to join me for an afternoon at Alcatraz Island with my kids, and advertised it only via my blog, Facebook and Twitter. I wasn’t sure what kind of a response I would get, and was surprised that I actually received over a dozen serious inquiries! Photographers from the very new to the very experienced got in touch with me, and all of them sounded great. I ended up picking Matthias Giezendanner from Matthias Photography, he sounded like he would really fit in well with me and the four kids, the pictures on his site looked great, and his bio really made the decision for me.

Somebody asked me today about how to get a Twitter feed emailed to them.  This isn’t technically getting it in email format (although there are ways to do that), but I think it’s a great solution for anybody using Outlook 2007.  In this video I explain how to grab a feed and put it into Outlook, and then some of the things you can do with it including:

• Keep an archive of all tweets
• Search tweets for keywords
• Forward tweets (great for monitoring competition and circulating to your team)
• View original tweet

If you have any questions, tips or tricks, add them in the comments on @ me on Twitter.

Spam on Twitter has been on my mind a lot lately.  It could be the influx of unwanted replies that I talked about earlier, or the very positive actions by the Twitter team yesterday to purge known accounts, or the constant stream of “get more followers today” that I see. No matter, spam on Twitter is only going to get worse before it (hopefully) gets better.  Anywhere people gather electronically, unscrupulous marketers will find a way to put get rich schemes or magic blue pills that promise a lifetime of pleasure information in front of us against our will.  Spam isn’t just for email anymore.

We can work as a community to help slow its advance however, and I want to tell you the very simple way I do my part and ask you to do the same with just a couple of easy steps.

Public Unfollows: The New Twitter Spam

I’ve seen some interesting things pop up in my “mentions” on Twitter recently...public declarations of people that I stopped following or blocked.  Unlike Qwitter that sent you emails when somebody stopped following you (that is, when the service worked…which it stopped long ago as far as I know), and SocialToo emails you a daily list of those that no longer subscribe to your updates, this new public method seems to be picking up steam and bots like Follower Monitor are popping up everywhere.

Personally I don’t care.  The people that I unfollow or block are by and large spammers.  Usually the accounts that I part ways with are telling me how to “get 400 new followers on Twitter every day!” or “make money online with this sure-fire, turn key system!”.  Very rarely do I unfollow somebody because I don’t like what they are saying or doing, I’m pretty open to conversations that differ from my own views.

I’m not the only one noticing this, people like Jeremy Isaac see this too and call it like it is: spam.  It’s spam because it shows up in my replies stream because my name is mentioned, and it annoys me because it’s the result of somebody that I’ve blocked or unfollowed.  It kind of feels like they are saying to me, “oh yeah, you’re going to block me? Well then I’m going to show up in one last message of yours and there is nothing that I can do about it!”  I think there is something we can do about it, let me detail it for you.

One unhappy customer has created a PR disaster for United Airlines

Have you seen the uber-popular YouTube video “United Breaks Guitars”?  I’ve embedded it at the bottom of this post so you can, it’s well worth 4:36 of your time to see this creative and funny look at poor customer service.  Seems Dave Carroll from the band Sons of Maxwell had his guitar broken while flying on United Airlines, and just a handful of days ago released a music video detailing his complaint. If we take what he says as truth, he spent a year trying to get some resolve and was repeatedly told “no”.  Personally I believe him because I’ve dealt with similar issues while traveling, and the corporate “no” is just too common.

If you run a business, big or small, you need to pay attention to what is happening in the world. The days of burying customer complaints are over, you need to develop a social media strategy to handle social media issues.