Topsy's Social Search Will Benefit Big Blogs, Influential Tweeters

Combining the world of search and the world of microblogging, including Twitter, is a popular thing to do these days. With Twitter Search having its hiccups, entrants like Twazzup, OneRiot and TweetMeme have all joined the game of trying to find the best content on Twitter, or finding the most influential users. In the last few days, Topsy, which bills itself as a "new kind of search engine" powered by the social Web, has gotten a good amount of visibility, especially due in part to an aggressive recommendation from Michael Arrington at TechCrunch - who is a big fan.

Topsy is interesting in that rather than finding the best result due to external hyperlinks or having "one right answer", as Google and most other search engines do, Topsy instead relies largely on the number of times a URL is shared (or tweeted) around that specific keyword.

For example, while searching Apple on Google sends you to Apple.com, Searching for Apple on Topsy instead sends you to watch Apple's TV Ads for the "Get a Mac" campaign. You can guess that when the new ads debut, they are frequently sent around Twitter, pushing that link to #1.

Similarly, Topsy is influenced by recency, which explains why a similar search for Microsoft has articles on their Bing search product competing with Google rather than the vanilla Microsoft homepage you would get with Google.

But, as with Google, not all things are equal in the world of microblogging. If you have an account with hundreds of thousands of followers, thanks to a position on the site's Suggested Users List, you will no doubt have much more influence on how many times items are retweeted, and therefore, a much higher impact on Topsy. That means then that accounts like TechCrunch and Mashable, who are in the SUL, are highly featured, and other competitors, like VentureBeat and ReadWriteWeb, do not fare as well.

The impact of a big account can be seen both on individuals and topics.

Stories on TechCrunch.com are #1 on Topsy when searching for individuals like Eric Schmidt, Dave Sifry and Reid Hoffman, each a leader in tech, covered by the network. In parallel, Mashable holds the #1 overall position for individuals including Mark Zuckerberg., while ReadWriteWeb finishes #1 for Paul Buchheit.


Top Topsy Results for Eric Schmidt


Top Topsy Results for Mark Zuckerberg


Top Topsy Results for Reid Hoffman


Top Topsy Results for Dave Sifry
Essentially, Topsy is the delivery of "authority-based search" that Loic Le Meur was asking for at the end of 2008, but done so in a way that doesn't explicitly say so.


Top Topsy Results for Tesla Motors
On topics, you can see TechCrunch holds the top position on Topsy for Tesla Motors, as well as the #1 position for LinkedIn, #2 for Socialmedian and Google News as well as #3 for FriendFeed, with Mashable finishing #4 on that search. In each case the coverage of the company trumps the company's site or official comments.


Top Topsy Results for Apple's iPhone
In turn, Mashable holds the #1 Topsy result for iPhone, and the #3 spot for MySpace.

That's not to say there is anything inherently "wrong" with these results, but they are definitely different, and if Topsy should take off, the influence of larger blog networks and the Suggested User List on Twitter will expand further. Should search results lead you to the one true answer that delivers you a bland corporate page, or should they instead lead you to social news impacted by a large community?

Qajack Presents Fun Videocentric Social Q&A Service

Advice and answer sites like Yahoo! Answers, and the long-since defunct pioneers such as ExpertCity and EXP.com have served the Web by providing a hub to ask challenging questions and getting answers from the registered community. But they haven't really found a great way to make the process social, with friends you know. Trying to capture that element, and splashing on the fun requirement of video, as well as credits on the service, a new product called Qajack looks like a lot of fun - and might even be useful.

Video plays a crucial role at Qajack. Not only do the questions get presented using your webcam, but so do the answers!


I Post a New Video Question on Qajack
If you have a question you want answered, post where it says, "What do you want to know?" and hit return. Once you've posted your question, you make a short video of less than a minute, summarize it in 140 characters or less, and add tags.

Since you want good answers, and not just any answer, you can post a "prize" of JK dollars to be won by the answer that's most appropriate. And it even costs a fraction of those dollars to answer a question, so you won't get any junk.

For example, I asked: "What are the advantages to living in Britain over the US? If I were to leave the US, why would I go there?"


Top Qajackers (as of today's standings)
You can see the first response from two of the site's three cofounders below it. Since I am offering 25 JK$, it cost him 6.25 JK$ to post his response. If he wins? Good deal, a 4 to 1 return. But if I get 5 responses, I'll actually have made a profit off my question. That in itself makes it fun, and of course, there is even a leaderboard on the site for what it calls "Top Qajackers".


Top Questions on Qajack
Qajack is very, very new, and only has 11 total users (myself included), but it has already seen comments on politics, technology, and even advice for what to do if you're only getting five hours of sleep a night, and need to focus on work. (I dared to answer that one)


My Updated Activity On Qajack
As always, you can find me at my ID of "louisgray". As cofounder Adam Martin said, "If Twitter is about brevity and inanity, Qajack is about authenticity and rich relevance." Looking forward to seeing you answer some of my questions, and don't you worry about how you look on video. I promise not to wear makeup.

MicroBlink Releases Feedstats.info for FriendFeed Stat Fanatics

In technology, if you can measure an activity and compare it with that of other users, it's likely somebody is working on a service to crunch the numbers. Twitter has TweetStats and following counts. FeedBurner shows RSS subscribers. LinkedIn displays the number of connections. And FriendFeed displays following counts, as well as likes and comments activity, on your profile. But the service, in its latest upgrade, removed the ability to analyze your own feed and see which friends were most active on your thread. Into that void walks a new service from the team at Microblink, called Feedstats.info.

Feedstats.info essentially provides the same information that previously was available to all FriendFeed users, but not just for your own account - opening up the ability to analyze anybody's activity, so long as you know their user name.


Entering the ID into Feedstats.info

The data says I use Google Reader, Twitter and FriendFeed most often.
If you enter a FriendFeed user's ID into Feedstats.info, you can see how often they post per day (in the last 1,000 items), what services contributed to that feed (both in bar chart and pie chart form). You can see what days and what times of day the user most frequently uses FriendFeed, and also, who provides the most likes and comments on their items.


FeedStats Shows I Use FriendFeed Least On Weekends, and from 1 to 7 a.m.

FeedStats Also Shows Who Has Activity On My Items
Using this service, you can see which users log in to FriendFeed at specific intervals during the day, and those who are pretty much on the service around the clock, stopping only to sleep (I assume). You can also, if you check enough accounts, get a good idea as to who the most prolific people are in terms of "liking" activity, especially if they lead many different accounts.


FeedStats Takes A Look at Rochelle

Hutch Carpenter Under the Microscope
As with most stat sites, it's easy to start playing with the charts, and equally as easy to ask, "what's the point?" At what point does knowing the data is there start to impact user behavior? Should Rob Diana stop sharing so frequently on Google Reader if he finds out that it's nearly 90 percent of his feed? Should I be using Twitter more or FriendFeed less? Or the other way around?


Rob Diana: Google Reader Expert

Jesse Stay Uses Google Reader, Twitter and FriendFeed.
One of the assumed corollaries offered by Feedstats.info is a guess that those who like your items have a high compatibility with you, making them most "like" you. But what I found is that there is a small subset of users with a tremendous number of likes and comments, far outstripping mine, and they may lead my account as well as others, making our correlation a false one. But other than that, it's still an interesting set of data to play with. You can sign in with your FriendFeed API key, and can check any account, as I have.

Amplifeeder to Soon Release Open Source Lifestream Platform

A Screen Capture from My Amplifeeder
Lifestreaming fans over the last few years have found newer and more fully-featured options to aggregate all their online activity. In addition to social networks like Facebook, FriendFeed and other external sites, there are products that let you pull the data into your blog, and there are others that let you host the application on your own server with your own domain name. And each has its own wrinkle - be it a larger array of supported data sources, the ability to post comments, or colorful templates to make the result more inviting.

A new entrant called Amplifeeder is currently available for testing, but won't be available to the general public until it is added to Microsoft's new application store (some time next month). The product is an open source solution that runs on Microsoft's IIS server and requires SQL, but delivers a flexible solution with many preinstalled templates, a wide number of supported social sites, and yes, the opportunity for comments.

While many lifestreaming solutions essentially post all your updates, in chronological order in one section, no matter the source, Amplifeeder's templates can break out the information into different sections, such as "videos" from YouTube, "photos" from Flickr, "favorites" from Digg and Delicious, "writings" from Google Reader shares, and the core "lifestream" of Last.fm updates, Twitter postings and the blog.


Different Channels Pulled Into Amplifeeder
The author, Jon Paul Davies, enabled me to have an account, which you can find at http://louis.amplifeeder.com/.

If you're one of those people who has signed up to many of these similar sites, you probably do get tired of entering your profile information each time. Amplifeeder actually made the process very easy. In fact, if you provide a FriendFeed user name, Amplifeeder will check your profile and match up the services, making the process automatic. You can also make posts directly to your Amplifeeder through what it calls its own "Microblog".

You Can Post Directly To Amplifeeder


Post your FriendFeed profile and pull it into Amplifeeder
There are 14 different templates that come with the Amplifeeder platform, all named after Joy Division songs, from "Disorder" to "Irresistible" and "Transmission". Some are the basic white background with links, and others offer more color.


You Can Choose What to Show or Not Show in Amplifeeder
In addition to setting up your Amplifeeder, the product lets you check each specific update and remove posts you might not want displayed, or even view stats to see what sites are most frequently updated. The result is a preconfigured lifestream you can host on your own site and modify to meet your expectations.


Amplifeeder Shows Statistics In What You Pull to the Lifestream
Once Amplifeeder is out early next month, it should be a good option for those people who want to take all their activity and put it in one place, without sending visitors somewhere else. In addition to my own Amplifeeder, you can check out their demos on the Web site: http://www.amplifeeder.com/demo.html