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Friday Tech Roundup, June 21

Jeromey Balderrama

I’m going to try something new here, and do a little recap of tech news, developments and my take on various tech news stories for the week.

Facebook announces video for Instagram

Normally I detest Facebook’s propensity to blatantly copy features from their competitors, but in the case of of InstaVine and in the interests of having a good video sharing product on Android: good on them!   I may hold a lot of unfair hostility towards Vine, but I can’t get past the terrible first impression they made upon Android users. If you’re going to make users wait for months later than your iOS users, you better make a pretty good first impression – but between the very limited functionality (like not being able to search), the problems with capturing and playing video (audio out of synch) and the lack of worthwhile options (like muting your videos by default): all you did was give me all the more incentive to look forward to something else.

If Twitter seems unwilling or unable to quickly improve their app, I’m more than happy to spend time with an app that can.  Instagram is giving me most of what I’m looking for, with a bigger user base. I’m more than happy to put my video eggs in that basket.  That said, I hope this is a wake up call for Vine and Twitter, as great products come from competition.

 

Feedly updated with Cloud sync and app support ahead of Google Reader shutdown

When Google announced they were shuttering Reader, I remember freaking out as I drove home.  In terms of getting my information: Reader was where I got the majority of my news.  Given that I consume it on multiple computers, my phone and tablet, I was concerned about how I was going to be able to sync my feeds.  I began my quest looking for the replacement, and am happy to be living in the Feedly space.  They’ve really stepped up and have done a great job welcoming Google Reader refugees, and have been very open about their roadmap and where they want their product to go.  They don’t deliver the exact same functionality of Reader (yet), but they are a great alternative that will soon get there.  I previously thought I was going to be counting down the days until Reader was shutdown, but I’ve been so happy with Feedly that I’ve all but forgotten.

 

Falcon Pro removed from Google Play Store

I don’t use Falcon Pro (I’m more of a Twicca man), but this news is distressing nonetheless.  The way Twitter has turned the table against the developers – on whose backs they built their service on – irritates me to no end.  While Twitter’s app has greatly improved, it still lacks a ton of features that their advanced users – who also have used Twitter the longest – count on every day.  By relying on these apps early on, people like me learned how to use Twitter reading from oldest-to-newest, and have come to rely on Twicca for this continued experience.  This back & forth between developers and their apps need to stop. Just be satisfied that 80% of your mobile users are using your app, you don’t want to piss off the other 20% with stupid stuff like this.

Enough with the tape delay, CBS!

Jeromey Balderrama

For someone who loves technology, especially the convenience that the DVR brings, I definitely watch a lot of live television.  An addict of Twitter, I love watching events and watching my stream light up with comments, jokes and discussion around what we just saw.  Broncos games in particular have me hitting “refresh” on my laptop frantically during the whole game.

On last week’s Vergecast, they had a fascinating discussion on this very topic: the relationship between social networks (particularly Twitter) and TV.  They both need each other: Twitter needs to be validated by other businesses, while TV Networks need to give viewers an incentive for people to watch live and immediately participate in the conversation.  It seems that every TV program (or commercial for that matter) is flashing a hashtag or a Twitter name of a personality.

So why the hell does CBS still insist to tape delay live broadcasts?  Two nights ago they aired the Grammys, and while I was watching 60 MInutes my Twitter stream started blowing up with reactions from those watching it in the Eastern and Central time zones.  When the Grammys finally started at 7pm in Mountain Time, my stream became a complete mess, with people reacting to stuff taking place live, now with us in Mountain time reacting to our events.  By the time our friends in the west join in, Twitter is just a cluster at this point.

This wouldn’t bother me so much, except for the fact that CBS and the Grammys disingenuously feature Tweets as a part of their show. Every time LL Cool J came back from a commercial he would read some random (and often crappy) Tweets, with the half the country being denied the opportunity to participate.

I don’t understand why the Grammys and CBS don’t get it.  The Oscars are broadcast live and everyone manages to watch it.  Aside from the Olympics (which still don’t get it), sports are always carried live and people manage to watch them.  Don’t sit there and pretend you’re inviting us to be part of the social media conversation, then turn around and slam the door on half of your viewers.  CBS: why don’t you join us in the 21st century and get with the program?

Hate the BCS? Take out your frustrations on Twitter

Jeromey Balderrama

Social media tools are changing the way that we communicate and interact.  Unfortunately for a much-despised BCS (College Football Bowl Championship Series), it makes it all the more easy of playoff fans to take swipes at their enemy.

If you don’t follow college football, here summary: The BCS is a computer-based system that creates the official college football rankings based on a complex set of stats (# of wins, conference position, strength of schedule, etc).  The results are used to determine who will play in the national championship game.  The problem with this is that many times teams with 1 losses have been placed in the championship game, while undefeated teams get shut out.  This year is especially contentious, as there are 6 undefeated teams, but the BCS has pretty much come out and told TCU, Boise State and Cincinnati that they have no shot for the championship game.

With the success of March Madness in College Basketball, combined with the fact that Division 2 & 3 football have a playoff, it’s puzzling why College Football hasn’t adopted a playoff system. One of the popular playoff alternatives is "the Wetzel plan", which puts together a criteria for a 16-team playoff.

Earlier this week, I saw the story in Deadspin how the BCS has employed a new PR firm, whose first actions was to establish a Twitter and Facebook presence in this Social Web World.  This makes enough sense, but they’ve committed two serious errors in judgment: 1) Forgetting that they’re a controversial and much-despised, and would likely have more critics than fans; 2) Actually engaging their critics by baiting them into debate, without fully participating in the conversation.

Hilarity ensues: For the past few days, it’s been a fun game to do a search by the BCS’s username: @InsideTheBCS and see them make a straw man claim, then watch their critics go to town on them without any response.  Check it out below:

bcs

What’s been great is that the critics have actually been presenting good arguments.  There are a few personal attacks here and there, but for the most part the responses have been well-reasoned (for as much as you can be in 140 characters or less).  The problem is that @InsideTheBCS doesn’t really respond to any of the valid points, it pretty much continues to make their contentious, canned responses that they’re given phrased differently.  They do respond to some users, but mainly when they have the canned answer in their wheelhouse.

Let this be a social media lesson to brands/organizations, especially unpopular ones: Unless you’re willing to engage in an authentic conversation with your critics, then controversial groups should probably stay away from social media.  Having your PR Firm running this interference is only hurting you in the court of public opinion.  Worse yet, it’s banding your enemies together.  While I’ve always hated the BCS, I really didn’t care much about this issue until three days ago – when it became entertaining to have this conversation.  Something tells me that the people doing PR for the BCS are having a very lousy week.

Reasons to for Bands to Quit MySpace

Jeromey Balderrama

I ran across this great post a few days ago that I found to be very relevant as my band evaluates where devote on-line energy.  This brings up the elephant in the room that all bands need to discuss sooner or later.

>> 5 Reasons for Bands & Musicians to Quit MySpace

GFMySpace

It’s no secret that MySpace is on it’s way out.  The prominent rise of Facebook, coupled with our pain threshold for spam, flashing graphics and blaring noise has worn out MySpace’s welcome.  Long ago have I abandoned any meaningful time spent at the spent for my personal profile.  For my band’s profile, I still log into MySpace a few times per week, but the ROI has continued to decrease for our band and MySpace.

The biggest thing you can take away from the article is Reason #3:

Other bands are not your primary source of attendance

According to the statistics I’ve heard, there are roughly 8 million bands on MySpace, and you have 15,000 of them as friends! Unfortunately, those people are probably not buying your albums or attending your shows. While they may be good to do a show swap with, or bro down with for a tour some day-they’re not helping you pay the bills and put butts in your seats.

The 10% of users that are real people more than likely COMPLETELY ignore the “bulletins” that you can blast out to everyone. When was the last time you went to a show based on a bulletin you saw on MySpace? [Assault Blog]

I can’t tell you the last time I’ve interacted with an actual fan on MySpace.  Almost every interaction I have is with other bands, and the ones that aren’t bands are booking agents/venues – which is really only the valid communication that goes on for us on MySpace.  The collaboration is on MySpace is also a downside, because typically when these venues list you on their promotion, they link our MySpace, which isn’t our best web presence out there.

The article lists some great resources & alternatives to using MySpace.  We use some of them including Twitter and Last.Fm.  There was one omission which I think is starting to become unavoidable: Facebook.  While I agree that it’s always best to own your own content and presentation, along with the concession that Facebook is a little harder for brand outreach – but you need to be where people are at – which right now is Facebook.

Until then, I think we’re going to start to wean ourselves off of MySpace.  I don’t think we’ll ever stop posting music, pictures and show schedules there, but only because it doesn’t hurt to keep things updated for booking agents.  However, I think it’s time for bands to focus their energies elsewhere.

Not Twitterpated huh?

Jeromey Balderrama

Over breakfast I came across an editorial in Fort Collins Now, called “Not twitterpated over Twitter” where Rebecca Boyle poked holes in the hype about Twitter, specifically about Twitter becoming an outlet for information. The leading quote: “Why would you need to read a Jurassic-era newspaper article about politics when you can follow the politicians themselves, who will tell you everything you need to know in 140 characters or less?”

I would suggest reading the article to get the context of my response.

What I find funny about the article is that Boyle insists that “newspapers provide context and meaning, both essential to our democracy”, yet in her own article she hypocritically takes the tweets of politicians out of context. By doing that, it’s easy to think that all these guys post about is what they’re having for lunch and who they’re with.  Part of exercising democracy is having transparency in your public figures. While traditional media has enjoyed being that gatekeeper, the pervasiveness of Twitter now gives constituents the opportunity to get a glimpse of their representatives, see what they’re working on (answering that question, “What do you even do in these sessions?”), but also understanding that our elected officials are people too – with families, friends and activities they love.

“Politicos can rip their opponents and highlight the work they’re doing without relying on the media to spread those messages.”

So instead of trying to decipher the media’s interpretation (complete with bias and possible agenda) of an official’s words, I can get the information directly from the source, where at least I have a sense of their own agenda.

Boyle brought up the report of the low Twitter site retention rate (estimated 40%), a stat offered by Nielsen, which doesn’t take into account that much of Twitter’s interaction is not based on the web site (the same way that MySpace and Facebook requires).  People access it through various tools and clients, as well as texting on their cell phone.  That said, the retention rate is a stat measured when growth happens.  The last time I checked, newspapers haven’t enjoyed any recent growth.

The most asinine quote of the article has to be this one:

“And many people who have been on the Twitter bandwagon promptly hopped off last week in the midst of the swine flu outbreak, when the site helped fuel a panic most public health officials have said is unwarranted.”

Unwarranted panic, as opposed to the tempered coverage offered by traditional media?  Give me a break! Every news program had this as their leading story every night! This was on the front page of every newspaper all week long!  This is the pot calling the kettle black!  If media was able to offer that context – which they supposedly have an abundance of – then why wasn’t this offered with all of the Swine Flu coverage?

Here’s the bottom line on Twitter: Twitter is what you make of it.  Some people will go and simply look to consume tweets from their favorite celebrity, but there are a degree of Twitter users that follow people who share their same interests and commonalities.  I follow people who live in my community, share my passions (drumming, technology, sports), and offer great insight in the things that I care about.  I don’t stop with simply consuming, I also offer my own insight.  Twitter is meant to facilitate conversation, and that’s probably the toughest thing for newspaper “dinosaurs” to grasp: a two-way media street.  Instead of relying on someone to ask questions for me, I can ask the questions of my figures myself.

And yes, you can also use Twitter to find out that LeVar Buron likes the new Star Trek movie.