Taweet is the Future of Twitter

Taweet (beta) is a unique Twitter application that adds a whole new dimension to your Twitter experience: the future. The casual format of Taweet allows users to answer one simple question: “What are you doing in the future?” …and search the future to see what others are doing.

You create posts on Taweet in the same way you would add items to a calendar or timeline. You describe a future event and add the date and time it will occur. Your post is then added to your “Future Tweets” and is visible on your Taweet profile. You can view the profile of any Twitter user on Taweet.

When a future tweet is created it also posts to Twitter, with the date included, to let your followers know you have a new event coming up. At the date and time each of your posts is scheduled they also appear on your Twitter profile. The short-URL at the end of each Twitter post links to your topic page on Taweet where others can add comments. When a comment is made it posts to the Twitter account of the commenter, again linking back to the original topic.

You can use the “Post Now” feature to override scheduling. Tweets sent with the “Post Now” feature also include a short-URL to allow all of your Twitter posts to have threaded comments.

All future tweets are visible on the Taweet search page. Taweet’s future search is novel solution for promoting future events or searching the future to see what others are doing.

Twitter Closes $100 Million Funding Round

Rumors earlier this week of Twitter negotiating a new round of funding at a valuation of $1 billion are confirmed today by co-founder Evan Williams on the Twitter Blog. TechCrunch reports this latest round of funding has closed with Twitter receiving $100 million.

Twitter’s previous round of funding raised $35 million in February of 2009 at a valuation of $250 million. The new figure of $1 billion quadruples Twitter’s valuation in just 7 months.

Keeping in the spirit that you have to spend money to make money, Twitter has yet to produce a viable revenue stream. We anticipate that this $100 million injection is contingent on Twitter rolling out a paid advertising platform in the very near future. It’s worth noting that Facebook received $716 million in funding before finally announcing, less than two weeks ago, the company is now cash flow positive.

Evan William thanks Insight Venture Partners, T. Rowe Price, Institutional Venture Partners, Spark Capital, Benchmark Capital, and Morgan Stanley as contributing investment firms. Twitter to date has received $155 million in venture funding.

Sources: Twitter Blog, TechCrunch

MySpace to Acquire iLike, Facebook noLike

Some promising news from the MySpace camp comes with the pending acquisition of the number one music application on Facebook, iLike. The deal is set to close around $20 million and puts Facebook in an uncomfortable position, with it’s number one social media competitor owning one of the top applications on the Facebook platform.

In a recent SWOT analysis MySpace recognized music and entertainment as a strength, declining market share as a weakness, iLike as an opportunity, and Facebook as it’s number one threat. Going back to business basics has allowed MySpace to make a very smart move while biting it’s thumb in the direction of Palo Alto, CA.

How Facebook plans to respond once the deal goes through is anyone’s guess. Banning the music application will probably be a bad move with over 30 million iLike users on Facebook. Allowing MySpace to have internal influence over a portion of Facebook users may not be a good option either. It will be interesting to see how this one plays out.

Mixing Business and Social Media

Does social computing really deliver significantly better business performance? Or is it merely a minor incremental improvement? While many cases have shown successful implementations of collaborative social media style applications in the workplace, the benefit of Enterprise 2.0 is still a hotly debated topic. While the core concept is the integration of Web 2.0 and social networking workflow models into business processes, there are still a wide range of interpretations and outcomes that make it difficult to hone in on measurable returns.

Here are ten issues that commonly arise when mixing business with social media…

1. Lack of social media literacy amongst workers.

2. A perception that social tools won’t work well in a particular industry.

3. Social software is still perceived as too risky to use for core business activities.

4. Can’t get enough senior executives engaged with social tools.

5. There is vapor lock between IT and the social computing initiative.

6. Need to prove ROI before there will be support for social software.

7. Security concerns are holding up pilot projects/adoption plans.

8. The needs around community management have come as a surprise.

9. Difficulties sustaining external engagement.

10. Struggling to survive due to unexpected success.

Source: Enterprise Web 2.0

Socialcast Releases Developer API

Socialcast this Wednesday released an official developer API. After weeks of beta testing with select clients the API is now available for all Socialcast members. Socialcast is a real-time collaboration platform that allows companies to communicate and collaborate via activity streams where coworkers share text, files, images and links. Socialcast also allows for users to organize groups to share information with enterprise teams.

The Socialcast API allows developers to create applications through a robust set of operations to interact with activity streams. Socialcast also offers users a desktop client built off their API.

“Socialcast Founder and CEO Timothy Young mentioned that Socialcast aims to be a platform, and not a tool like Yammer, or Twitter,” says TechCrunch reporter Daniel Brusilovsky.

When viewing the Socialcast website I see this eWeek quote featured as the latest buzz, “Socialcast is like a secure Twitter for the Enterprise.”

What I’m going to take away from these contradicting statements is that Socialcast is working on developing and enhancing features to break away from the “enterprise Twitter” mold, however bases the platform on similar functionality.

Facebook Acquires FriendFeed

The top story on the social Web this week is Facebook’s acquisition of social media aggregator FriendFeed. The transaction is reported around $50 million. FriendFeed’s traffic is an estimated 1 million visitors per month which is minute compared to Facebook’s 250 million. With a recent Facebook valuation of $10 billion though, the numbers make sense.

Forrester Research analyst Jeremiah Owyang says it was “a good move for Facebook,” but it may have been a little premature for FriendFeed. “They could have given it a couple more years. With some marketing, they could have developed into a viable social media competitor,” says Owyang.

Others seem to have a difference of opinion. PC World reporter David Coursey states, “Purchasing FriendFeed, which seemed to be going nowhere, seems like an enlightened act of charity. The four … former Google stars that founded the company get a graceful exit from FriendFeed and an excuse when the service eventually shuts down.”

In my opinion this was a win-win situation for FriendFeed and Facebook; a lucrative deal for FriendFeed’s former Google engineer founders; and Facebook scoops up a so-far proven service that contains valuable insight into social media features that Facebook has yet to explore on it’s own platform.

Twitter Under Attack

If you are having trouble accessing Twitter today the service is apparently under heavy denial-of-service (DoS) attacks since around 9am EST. Twitter co-founder Biz Stone states, “We are defending against this attack now and will continue to update our status blog as we continue to … investigate.”

A denial-of-service attack is characterized by an explicit attempt by attackers to prevent legitimate users of a service from accessing that service, commonly carried out by groups within the hacking community. The basic idea is to cripple servers by flooding them with more requests then they can handle.

Twitter Gets Down to Business

New research shows that Twitter is gaining recognition as a useful business resource among younger demographics. A survey conducted by AIIM shows that 27% of 18-30 year olds see the value in Twitter as a crowdsourcing and feedback tool, compared to just 7% of participants over the age of 45. Twitter has become popular for young professionals as a way to find answers from experts, poll their followers, share opinions, and communicate during conferences and while traveling.

Business users tend to be more engaged on Twitter than personal users. Of those surveyed, half of business users actively post and contribute to conversations rather than just following.

“We’ve been tracking the rapid growth of Enterprise 2.0 – the business use of social media – for a couple of years,” says Atle Skjekkeland, VP of AIIM, “but Twitter has grown much faster than anything we’ve seen before. It seems to me that Twitter brings back such quick answers from any expert community that it cannot fail to have a lasting place within the general business toolbox.”

Of the 788 respondents to the AIIM survey, 34% had a Twitter account.

Source: AIIM

MySpace Charity Week Begins!

By the powers vested in me by the blogosphere I hereby declare this MySpace Charity Week! I urge everyone (who still has an active MySpace account) to login for a few minutes and post a bulletin, a few recent pictures or say hello to a friend you haven’t spoken to in a while. The “Forgot your password?” link may come in handy.
 
MySpace has seen some tough times lately. This May Facebook trumped MySpace as the number one social network in the U.S. and shortly after MySpace laid off 400 employees in an effort to stay afloat.
 
To pay tribute to MySpace as one of the driving forces of the social media revolution I think this movement is well worth five minutes of our time this week. MySpace is also still a great place to hear a plethora of new music from your favorite bands and artists.
 
Here is a 140 character friendly message you can send out on Twitter and Facebook…
 
MySpace Charity Week! Give MySpace a helping hand in slow times by making a few posts this week. Pass the word on!

I give credit to newly appointed CEO Owen Van Natta for captain-ing a sinking ship so let’s toss him a lifeline and maybe keep MySpace above water while they compose a strategy to turn things around.

Pentagon Pondering Web 2.0 Ban

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is considering blocking all access to social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace from military computers. The concern is that these platforms “make it way too easy for people with bad intentions to push malicious code to unsuspecting users,” says a U.S. Strategic Command (Stratcom) source.

Price Floyd, the new Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs social media czar for the Pentagon, states that embracing these technologies is the reason Secretary of Defense Robert Gates hired him. The goal is to “enable [Gates] to engage and hear from people in a way and manner that wasn’t possible before,” says Floyd.

Despite concerns, Floyd is moving forward with several Web 2.0 projects. You can find the Pentagon Channel on Twitter @pentagonchannel and you can also become a fan of the Pentagon Channel on Facebook. Other initiatives include involving blogs in the military’s “Early Bird” clipping service and a new Department of Defense website launching this month that will include links to Facebook and Twitter accounts along with a section that will allow visitors to propose questions for the Secretary of Defense.

Source: Wired