Toluu

Regular Geek

Where programming, the internet and social media collide.

What is The Right Price For Twitter?November 24

Image by via CrunchBase

Well, at least we know what the topic of conversation will be on many major sites today. Kara Swisher reported that Twitter and Facebook have had acquisition talks, but they have failed. The price is said to be $500 million in Facebook stock, with no cash changing hands. Personally, I was surprised at this price but given that Mark Zuckerberg seems to really like what they have done, it is not as surprising:

At the Web 2.0 interview, Zuckerberg called Twitter an “elegant model” and that he was “really impressed by what they’ve done.”

Obviously, there are stumbling blocks on both sides. First, Twitter has no revenue and there is little to suggest that a revenue plan has actually been created as opposed to just talked about. Buying Twitter without any expected revenue means that any purchase would largely be a bet that they could make money with the service. However, monetizatio

FriendFeed Power TipsNovember 20

Image via CrunchBase

There has been much discussion lately about how easy Twitter is and FriendFeed is harder to get into. I completely understand this, but I have also noticed that people mentioned they want to know how “power users” use FriendFeed. First, let me state that FriendFeed is a tool, and you can use it however you want. I wrote recently that the early adopters should be guides for when the mainstream starts to use these tools. Daniel Pritchett wrote about some “secrets” of FriendFeed power users with the idea of helping people tap into the power of FriendFeed. Since the question has been asked and I have stated that we should be guides, here are some of the tips that I have used or come across for using FriendFeed effectively.

You will miss stuff. You have to acknowledge the fact that you will miss comments

Be Prepared, the Mainstream is ComingNovember 16

As is typical on the weekends I talked to my oldest brother. We are very different people with very different interests. I am a fairly liberal democrat and he is slowly becoming more of a conservative republican. I am a software developer and he is in sales and marketing. I am mostly an introvert, and as a salesman, he tends to be highly extroverted.

Why do I tell you this? Well, today our conversation converged on technology and he is not really tech savvy. He uses email and surfs the web a little bit, but not much more than that. Specifically, we talked about social networking and other social tools like Twitter and FriendFeed. My brother joined LinkedIn this summer as he had heard some things about it. Being in sales and marketing, he figured it would be a decent tool to use. Of course he asked me how to use it, and I forwarded an appropriate post from Chris Brogan. We had more talk about LinkedIn, as he was not sure how he should be using it. I am a big believer that there is no “right” way to use tools. If the tool exist

Who Woke The Sleeping Giant?November 7

Image via CrunchBase

People who know me know that I am not a Microsoft lover. I am more on the “hater” side of that argument, but I have always felt that they do some things very well. They always targeted developers and tried to get adoption of their platform. This gave them the monopoly on the desktop operating system that they maintained for years. However, this success did not translate well to the internet. They have tried various things with a search engine, Hotmail never did very well under their stewardship and they could not get into the content production space. This is mainly because Microsoft is a platform company and they make applications and tools that support that platform.

They have been getting attacked on various fronts on the internet. GMail and Yahoo Mail are what many

For Marketing, Social Media is Budget Friendly and PowerfulNovember 4

Everyone knows we are in a bad economy. Many companies are cutting staff and costs. This is all due to the typical budget season known as the fourth quarter. For most companies, the fourth quarter of the calendar year is when budgets get approved for the next year. This is probably a very likely reason why there have been so many layoffs recently, obviously in addition to the economy. Marketing is part of the budget that is considered highly volatile. In good financial times, marketing budgets increase, while in our current situation, the marketing budgets have likely diminished. This is just basic logic. However, there is a very simple way to get some “free marketing” or at least very cheap marketing.

Enter social media. A lot of companies have started using Twitter for some level of community interaction. Zappos has an army of Twitterers, Comcast has the comcastcares account, and others are following. Pepsi recently opened a FriendFeed room. Why is this even remotely important? Aren’t these sites strictly used by early adopters? Not really. CNN has recently started using Twitter during its broadcasts, so it is well on its way