25
YouTube RealTime Invites.
I have 23 17 remaining YouTube RealTime invites. What is that? You can read about it here: link
It basically makes YouTube finally move more into the realm of social networking. You can see which of your friends are online, what they are watching, when they have faved something, etc. From what I can tell these invites are still pretty exclusive so if you are as addicted to TheTube as I am all you have to do is comment here, add me as a friend on YouTube (YouTube only allows friends to be given invites) and I’ll get you the invite.
Hope you all are having a great weekend! 
3
Itty Bitty bit.ly
So I mention various bits of geekery on different websites like twitter and then end up having to explain it and often times I think, “HEY YOU! YOU SHOULD BlOG THAT!” So I’m going to start tying to be better about letting you all know about cool things as I come across them
First up: bit.ly
Bit.ly is a great little web app similar to tinyurl. Only on steroids. When you create an account and log in, it does cool stuff like keep track of your most recent shortened urls so that you can go back and easily find them to post other places.
That’s not really what I’m wanting to tell you about. I know that a lot of my readers are really into twitter and THANK GOD because how else am I supposed to stalk you all?! Well, bit.ly had this awesome FireFox plugin that makes surfing twitter so much more fantastic.
Here are three of the many reasons it rocks hardcore.
#1 – Follow conversations! It makes following conversation much easier. When you see that somebody has “in reply to *username*” at the bottom of their tweet you can mouse over it and it will pop up a little box that shows you the tweet it’s in reply to. See the screenshot below:
#2 – Picture preview! If you upload a picture to any of the most popular twitter image apps, like twitpic then then when you mouse over the link it pops up a thumbnail preview of the image before you click on it. This is especially great if NSFW images are a problem. Not that they necessarily would be since SURELY you wouldn’t follow anybody that would do that! 
#3 – Information overload! This is actually a pretty dang cool feature. When you mouseover any bit.ly link (and some other tiny links) then the box pops up and gives you some pretty cool information. Mainly, it shows the number of time that the link has been clicked. But it goes further! If you click the more information button it redirects you to a page on the bit.ly site that has a wealth of information about your link including where the clicks are happening, the country and if it’s a blog post, it will even list comment responses to the blog and any other backlinks to the post. Here is an example from a tweet I made earlier today about a techcrunch article.
By clicking the “more information” link I can see that it’s been clicked 55 times, 3 other people on twitter tweeted the same link, 0 people posted it on friendfeed and a short preview of all the comments on the techcruch article.
Here is an example of a tweet that ijustine made earlier today:
So, if you use Firefox (YOU SHOULD) and twitter (YOU BETTER*) then bit.ly is just something you are going to have to have. So go get it now!
*And also, if I’m not following you already, leave me your username so I can.
7
Tweet or Feed?
Okay, so there has been this debate of sorts going around the tech/geek community for the last week or more basically paring twitter vs FriendFeed. And like I said on iJustine’s blog about it, I think the entire debate is null because it’s like comparing apples to an entire fruit salad. Twitter is micro blogging and FriendFeed is an aggregate for 41 different applications, including Twitter, with other features like commenting. You really just can’t compare them other than to say that they are both social networking sites but so are MySpace and Facebook and look how different they are. (In case you don’t get how they are different: MySpace sucks balls and Facebook doesn’t. IF YOU LEARN NOTHING ELSE FROM THIS BLOG POST, LEARN THAT!)
The debate is also questioning which one will become mainstream first, if either ever will. My opinion? I don’t really see it happening. When I try and explain the concept of twitter to non-geek folk, they just look at me with a blank stare and inevitably the same response: But, why? They just don’t get the micro blogging community as a whole. Now, compare it to a MySpace bulletin and eyes light up and lights come on and angels sing and THERE IT IS! There’s UNDERSTANDING in the eyes, they get it! Then you say, well just cut out all the spammy shit and do it in less then 140 characters. And THERE IT IS AGAIN, the blank stare.
I think that realistically, twitter stands more of a chance to become mainstream just because FriendFeed has SO MUCH of Teh Geek linked to it. Walk up to your mom, aunt or dentist and ask them what Vimeo is. Or brightkite. Or del.icio.us. Or hell, even Digg. Chance are if you are reading this blog you’ve heard of all or most of those but I bet you that your “mainstream” friends have NO CLUE. So how are they supposed to ever really grasp FriendFeed, which is just an aggregate of all those services?
Anyway, this post was originally going somewhere else and ended up here. So with that I’ll ask your opinion! What are your favorite Social Networking tools? I updated my FriendFeed accout today to include most of them that I use and there are SEVENTEEN accounts.
My FriendFeed account links to:
- brightkite
- del.icio.us
- Digg
- Flickr
- GoogleReader shared items
- GoogleTalk status changes
- Intense Debate
- Pownce
- StumbleUpon
- Tumblr
- Vimeo
- YouTube
- Zooomr
- Aflux’s RSS feed
And that’s just where I got to before I got tired of adding them to FriendFeed. Add me to any or all or none. I’m just kind of interested to see how many of these ACTUALLY get used because on some of them I’ve signed up to secure the name, played with them a bit, then completely forgotten about them. I’m going to pay attention to FriendFeed for the next few days and see how much any of them actually get used and based on your answers to which you use more, see if maybe twitter isn’t as popular as some of these debates would have you think… but I’m skeptical. I get a lot of twitter traffic.
