Once You Start, You Can Never Stop

Ever run into friends who tell you they want to start a blog, or are thinking of signing up for LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook or some other network, and you just know it's doomed to failure, because they won't commit to it? Starting is easy, but maintaining a pace can be hard. Whether for business or for pleasure, the number one thing I tell people about blogging is that once you start, you can never stop. Blogging is not something you do on a whim, or start and then abandon for the search engines of tomorrow. You must find a pace and always keep going - so if you start, be sure you've got a topic or ideas that are sustainable.

This week, thanks to work, family and other items hitting my schedule, I went a little light, not just here on the blog but on most of the networks - after a strong Monday. And while previously, I've told bloggers to "relax" as "nobody is keeping score", once you have established a pace, absence gets noticed. Today, while still at the office, I got a call from Robert Scoble, just checking in to see if all was well. And yes, it is. Just working and making sure everything is done before being out of the area all next week thanks to an upcoming tradeshow.

That Robert noticed shows how in tune he is on all the networks. I hadn't gone completely silent, but I did slow down my pace for a few days, and he caught me.

But while this was a mere blip in my usually regular posting schedule, it's one that happened well into my fourth year of blogging on this site, after nearly 2,000 posts, added on to tens of thousands of actions on FriendFeed, Twitter, Facebook and everywhere else. I'm not stopping. I'm not anywhere near done. But if you know folks who you think would walk away, see if you can stop them before they start, especially if how they present themselves has a chance to impact how your company or your project are perceived.

100 Interviews Posts Video on Aggregation, Info Overload from SXSW

Though SXSW might seem like last month's news, some of the videos and interviews we completed at the event are still rolling in. One of the more fun discussions was with Morgan Brown of 100 Interviews, immediately following the "Beyond Aggregation" panel I participated in at the conference. During the five minute interview, you can see some of our thoughts on how to find content, how to overcome the commonly-discussed "information overload", and what tools I use.

If you don't mind seeing what it looks like when I nod my head approvingly at a Flip handheld video camera, check out my comments from last month in the below video:



Of course, if you've been reading this site for some time, consider this review...

Twazzup Takes On Twitter Search to Make Sense of Real-Time Web

Twitter's acquisition of Summize in 2008 gained the red-hot status update service arguably the most impactful new entrant into the Web 2.0 space last year, as the company looked to harness the millions of daily tweets flowing through its system and make sense of it all. Now rebranded as Twitter Search, the former Summize product is being relied upon for breaking news, trends, and acting as the pulse of the always-connected community, staying well ahead of Google and other traditional search leaders. Today, a new entrant, Twazzup, is looking to extend the Twitter Search platform, by not only providing real-time updates to the search results, but also highlighting popular users, links and tweets relevant to searched keywords.


The New Twazzup: for Searching Twitter
If you're familiar with the Twitter Search interface, it's well defined by its highlighting of hot topics that are rising on Twitter, being discussed by the masses, as well as its tendency to pile up queued tweets that have not been displayed. To get the new tweets, you need to refresh. But not with Twazzup, who rolls in the new results in real time, much like FriendFeed's new beta interface. Also similar to that interface, Twazzup features a user-friendly pause button in the top right to slow things down a bit.


Twazzup Results for Obama

Twazzup Results for Baseball
Today, Twitter Search is all about getting you the results, period. Its options are very spartan. For example, if you search for Facebook, you see the results and can either reply to the author, or view the specific tweet. But there's no data about the authors or the topics.

On Twazzup, the same query for Facebook shows search results, and a helpful kind of subset of results that displays related topics. For Facebook, I could also click the word social, and see when both Facebook and Social are in the same tweet. (that result is here) Other topics, like networks, linkedin and strategy also pop up when both Facebook and social are combined.

But beyond combining search terms, Twazzup's right side column does more than just show hot topics, like Twitter Search does. It also shows a popular tweet that contained the search terms, top "trendmakers", who talk about those terms and drive retweets or click-throughs, and popular links that are spawned from those keywords on Twitter.


Twazzup Trendmakers and Popular Tweets for Obama
For me, searching Twitter is practically as useful as messaging via Twitter, as it offers a lens into not just what people "are doing", but what they are thinking, observing or talking about. Given Twitter's driving an ever-closer integration with its acquired Summize product, I expect more users to flock toward the standard Twitter Search than to new products that arrive, like Twazzup, but as Twitter thus far has done very little to expand the Summize product beyond its initial feature set, there is significant room for third party services to improve the status quo.

Twazzup can be found at http://www.twazzup.com, and on Twitter, of course, at http://twitter.com/twazzup. The company's CEO and Co-Founder is Cyril Moutran, who launched Yokway last year. (See our initial coverage)

Likaholix Rewards Early Active Users With Kindles, Adds Moderators

About a month ago, Likaholix debuted as a site to share interests with friends, similar to aspects of both Facebook and FriendFeed. As part of their strategy to promote activity among early users, the site's developers debuted a promotion that rewarded five beta users with Amazon Kindles, provided they were among the top 30 users in terms of activity, being rated as "most interesting" or "popular". Well-known Silicon Valley entrepreneurs Paul Buchheit of FriendFeed and Jason Shellen of Plinky assisted in the selections, which were revealed today.

The five winners include:

• Mindy
• Justine Ezarik
• Chris Pirillo
• Chris Bellevie
• Katrina Schmidt

iJustine and Chris you probably know. The other three are more obscure, and rose to the top of Likaholix' lists due to their participation. Chris Bellevie was listed as the most active user, the 3rd highest in finding items first, and 8th most popular, while Katrina was the 4th most active, the 2nd highest in terms of finding new items to "like" on the service, and 9th most popular. Mindy is listed as the 8th most active, 7th fastest to find new items, and 10th most popular on the site. (For comparative ego purposes, I was 17th most popular...)

While the giveaway is fun, Likaholix isn't just bribing its users to stick around. The service is now launching a new Wikipedia-like moderation service that asks active users to take a more active role in the community, being able to add, edit or delete topics on other users' activity, and helping to "police the topic pages", according to Bindu Reddy, the company's founder.

Likaholix is also starting a new promotion pushing friends to get more users to the site - so if you find Likaholix likeable, you can spread the news and maybe even get rewarded. Check this link for more.

You can see my account at: http://likaholix.com/louisgray and can sign up here.