The Ongoing Mystery That is Twitter

Boy, you can’t take your eyes off Twitter for even a few hours without falling behind. I’m late on reporting on the fact that Twitter tweaked its settings yesterday so that tweets that begin with an @username (so that they address that person specifically, like this one) no longer show up in the feeds of third parties who follow the person who wrote the tweet but not the one it’s addressed to.

The weirdest thing about the change was not the tweak itself so much as how Twitter cofounder Biz Stone referred to it as a “Small Settings Update” in the blog post announcing it. Biz said that the change reflected how people use Twitter, and that it was made because many users find it disjointed and confusing to see a tweet from someone they follow that’s addressed to a random third party. I don’t presume to think I know more about what the average Twitter user wants than Biz Stone does, but I do know for sure that one of my very favorite things about Twitter is coming in in the middle of conversations between someone I know (at least as a fellow Twitter user) and someone I don’t know. It may be the single best way to find interesting new people to follow–it sure beats using Twitter’s “Suggested Users” feature to find Mariah Carey–and it was startling to hear its abupt removal described as no big deal. (Actually, Biz pretty much celebrated its death–he called it “confusing and undesirable.”)

Lots of other Twitter users were as dumbstruck as I was. They tweeted up a storm of protest, and Biz responded with a blog post this morning acknowledging their ire (and suddenly saying that Twitter made the change in part for technical reasons, a factor he didn’t mention in the first post). And in a follow-up post this afternoon, he reiterated that technical issues forced the change, and that seeing @replies to people you weren’t following was confusing. But he did say that the company is working on building better sharing options, nd he did throw a short-term bone to unhappy users:

…we’re making a change such that any updates beginning with @username (that are not explicitly created by clicking on the reply icon) will be seen by everyone following that account. This will bring back some serendipity and discovery and we can do this very soon.

The thing is, this further adjustment leaves things in a more muddled state than they were in the first place: Users will now see some @replies to third parties they aren’t following, but not all of ‘em.

As I write, this is an ongoing story–and one of interest only to Twitteraddicts, in case you couldn’t tell–but it leaves me thinking that nobody but nobody has truly figured out what makes Twitter Twitter. Including Twitter. As I said in Ten Twitter Misconceptions, it’s somehow wildly popular and profoundly misunderstood at the same time, in a way I can’t remember any other tech product or service ever matching.

Intel: Tell People What Netbooks Can’t Do

So you spent $350 on a netbook, figuring it’d be great for surfing the Internet on the road. The problem is, YouTube can be choppy and flash games grind a bit when things get too hectic. You can’t really edit your vacation videos on the fly, either. Rage consumes.

Apparently, these sorts of disappointments are happening too often, according to Intel, whose relatively weak Atom processors power most netbooks. At the company’s investor meeting (via CNet), marketing chief Sean Maloney said some retailers were seeing netbook return rates in the 30 percent range, which he described as “a disaster.”

Consumers were getting confused because netbooks are being marketed as notebooks. “So we gently went back to some of those chains and said if you segment them differently and state up front what they do and don’t do, things will be healthier,” Maloney said. “You’ve seen some of the European channels saying this (netbook) product does not do X and being very black and white and very clear.”

Here’s a slide Intel drew up to illustrate the differences:

I suspect there’s an ulterior motive here. Intel, like computer manufacturers, doesn’t want netbooks to cannibalize demand for full-featured laptops. Reminding buyers that the $350 machine won’t play video or create content as well as the $1,000-and-up machine is a simple way to pitch a bigger purchase. The sell will get easier when $700 ultrathins storm the industry in the months ahead, so its not surprising that Dell talked about marketing them distinctly from netbooks as well.

Regardless of Intel’s motivations, it will be good for buyers to understand what they’re getting. A little consumer education is always welcome.

5Words for May 13th, 2009

Sorry, Twitter, you goofed here…

Twitter tweaks @replies, dumbs down.

Firefox: beating IE in 2013?

Twitter vs. Fake Kanye West.

Google’s Japanese photos: take two!

Verizon tippytoes out of landlines.

Microsoft patches up PowerPoint holes.

Intel is out $1.45 billion.

Early Windows Mobile 7 details?

Kanye Divas Out Over Fake Twitter Account

Kanye West is too busy to Twitter, but apparently not busy enough to take to his blog to write a post taking the service to the mat over a fake Kanye account. In a 160+ word profanity-laden (and caps lock stuck) rant on his blog, the rapper said in no uncertain terms that he doesn’t twitter, and never plans to.

I DON’T HAVE A [expletive removed] TWITTER… WHY WOULD I USE TWITTER??? I ONLY BLOG 5 PERCENT OF WHAT I’M UP TO IN THE FIRST PLACE. I’M ACTUALLY SLOW DELIVERING CONTENT BECAUSE I’M TOO BUSY ACTUALLY BUSY BEING CREATIVE MOST OF THE TIME AND IF I’M NOT AND I’M JUST LAYING ON A BEACH I WOULDN’T TELL THE WORLD.

Forgive me if I’m wrong, but didn’t it just take you, what, 10 minutes to write this post, when 140 characters would have taken you 10 seconds?

IT’S A [expletive removed] FARCE AND IT MAKES ME QUESTION WHAT OTHER SO CALLED CELEBRITY TWITTERS ARE ACTUALLY REAL OR FAKE. HEY TWITTER, TAKE THE SO CALLED KANYE WEST TWITTER DOWN NOW …. WHY? … BECAUSE MY CAPS LOCK KEY IS LOUD!!!!!!!!!

Better run quick, Twitter! Kanye will sick his caps lock on you! Wow. Obviously, Twitter didn’t know this was fake. I highly doubt the company would have left the account up for so long. In other cases, they’ve been extrordinarily fast in removing accounts.

30 people work for Twitter. Just remember that — they don’t have time right now to cater to everyone’s needs, or even be proactive. They need our help.

Calm down, dude. Diva-ing out on a blog post doesn’t look to professional. Oh wait, you’re Kanye West — this kind of behavior is kind of expected. By the way, you might be interested in knowing that most of your fans are twittering these days, but I do digress…

This Laptop Hunter Isn’t a PC

There’s a new Apple “Get a Mac” ad out–and this one is the first one that would seem to respond directly to Microsoft’s “Laptop Hunters” ads and their snarky put-downs of Macs, since it involves a woman shopping for a computer and addresses the fact that there are gazillions of PCs out there:

The ultimate gist of the commercial–Windows PCs involve hassles that Macs don’t–is the same as that of many previous “Get a Mac” ads. But it’s interesting to see Apple acknowledge the fact that Macs don’t offer the variety that PCs do, and to say that choice is less exciting if all the computers you can choose from are flawed.

I’m burned out on the Windows-Mac commercial wars (I didn’t even bother to mention Sheila, the star of Microsoft’s most recent ad). But choosing a computer is as much or more about the experience you hope to get from the machine on a day-to-day basis as it is about raw specs. And I continue to be surprised that the Microsoft ads don’t address living with an operating system at all, and to think that it makes sense that that the Apple ones do.

Anyhow, I don’t know if anyone involved with Apple’s advertising thinks that the Laptop Hunters spots are having an impact and needed a response, or whether the company just thought it would be fun to parody the Microsoft commercials. Either way, Microsoft’s surprising decision to embrace Apple’s “I’m a PC” and to compare PCs and Macs in its ads is having an impact. Even if its ads’ comparisons are pretty specious.

Jobs Still Absent for WWDC

Even though Apple says that Steve Jobs will return to Apple in June, the company said on Wednesday that a “team of executives” led by marketing head Phil Schiller would give the keynote on June 8th at its Worldwide Developers Conference. While it does not directly say Jobs won’t be there, it seems to suggest that its unlikely he will play a major role.

Jobs or not, WWDC looks to be exciting. Officially, the company will be delivering a final developer release of Mac OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard,” as well as focusing heavily on iPhone OS 3.0, set to release during the summer.

Several Mac rumor sites have also pointed to the conference keynote as an opportunity to debut a refresh to the company’s desktop and laptop lines, but of course Apple is providing no details there.

Apple Had a Busy Tuesday

Tuesday was a busy one in Cupertino. The day saw three software updates release, including Mac OS X 10.5.7, Safari 3.2.3, and an update to the 4.0 beta. There’s nothing really ground shattering, but there are some highlights to each of the releases. As is typical

Safari 3.2.3 isn’t really much of anything other than a security update, according to the Apple website.

The Mac OS X 10.5.7 update includes your typical security fixes, plus:

• expanded RAW support
• video playback/cursor issues in recent Macs with nVidia chips
• MobileMe syncing improvements with iCal
• improved consistency with Parental Controls and application restrictions
• improved printing reliability and stability

See this post from Apple for more information.

Finally, the company updating the release of the Safari 4 beta to ensure compatibility with 10.5.7 as well as to fix several security related problems.

Real, Not Lame, Twitter Viral Marketing

Over the last few days, Twitterers — mostly writerly types, I’m guessing — were treated to the inner workings of the New Yorker thanks to Dan Baum, a one-time staff writer for the magazine who was canned in 2007.

For reasons unexplained, Baum told his story through a series of tweets, starting last Friday and concluding today (the whole thing can be read in the proper order at Baum’s Web site). Perhaps the 140-character limit is a symbol for Baum’s short career at the magazine, but I think what we’ve got here is a bona fide Twitter viral marketing campaign — intentional or not — for his latest book.

The story begins inconspicuously enough. Baum explains that he’ll be tweeting about getting fired, and immediately cuts to the juicy details. We now know how much he got paid ($90,000 per year), what benefits he received (none) and how secure the gig was (up for review annually). Later, we hear about the “creepy” atmosphere of the New Yorker office and how he butted heads with editor David Remnick.

The narrative is also sprinkled with self promotion. At every mention of an article or pitch, accepted or rejected, Baum includes a link, so it’s easy to investigate his writing beyond the boundaries of Twitter.

Baum delivers the subtle pitch towards the story’s conclusion. He talks about how the end of his New Yorker job led to his book, Nine Lives, a collection of stories about New Orleans. He mentions how his final columns allowed him to stay in New Orleans and research the book, and how the pressure of finding daily stories turned up valuable information that few locals even knew. Even though he doesn’t explicitly try to sell the book, he succeeded in getting the word out.

Viral marketing can take different forms, and Twitter marketers can be obnoxious. Baum is not. He drew in fellow Twitterers with a fascinating story, and only mentioned the book when he had everybody’s attention. In a way, it reminds me of the ilovebees campaign for Halo 2, which drummed up interest despite a merely tangential relation to the game.

At the very least, Baum’s story was better than the hostile takeover by Skittles.

Why Mandatory Wii MotionPlus is a Good Thing

When Nintendo releases the accuracy-boosting Wii MotionPlus peripheral next month, it’s possible that game developers won’t force players to use it, and those that do may consider it a gamble.

I get that impression from recent comments by Jason Vandenberghe, creative director for Red Steel 2. Speaking to Nintendo Power magazine (via Nintendo Dpad) , Vandenberghe said making MotionPlus mandatory for the hack-and-shoot game is “a huge risk,” but there’s no way around it.

“We have no idea what the penetration rate for Wii MotionPlus will be,” he said. “We assume high. We would like it to be high. I would love to say to you that it’ll be compatible with just a regular controller, but the gameplay simply isn’t there without MotionPlus.”

Given the Wii’s 45 million lifetime unit sales, I understand not every game maker wants to limit their product to a subgroup of players, but I always assumed the concept of MotionPlus would reboot the Wii and terminate the era of gimmicky gesture controls. Now, I’m not so sure.

Some game makers will try to have it both ways. Producers for EA’s Grand Slam Tennis, one of the first games to showcase MotionPlus, will also let players use a standard Wii Remote at no disadvantage against players with the peripheral. The intent is good — Wii owners won’t have to spend $20 more on each controller — but it reminds me of the way Mario Kart Wii allows you to use a thumbstick instead of steering the remote. If more accurate motion control isn’t a crucial part of the game, is it really an improvement?

Red Steel 2, meanwhile, will reportedly feature “more comprehensive tracking of a player’s arm position and orientation, providing players with an unmatched level of precision and immersion,” CVG reports. That sounds a lot more interesting than merely replacing static crosshairs with a moving pointer, as previous shooters have done, or relying on a limited set of pre-determined gestures to simulate swordplay.

I’m glad the producers of Red Steel are taking the leap. I hope it works out, and that other game developers follow suit, wholeheartedly.

More New Google Stuff: Google Squared, Rich Snippets, Sky Map for Android

Here at Searchology, Google just announced something that will be available in Google Labs later this month. It’s called Google Squared, and I can’t quite tell if it’s going to be amazingly useful or just quirky and clever. It’s a search feature that returns results in a spreadsheet view, with information sorted into columns and rows. The demo involved doing a search on dog breeds (I’ll post images soon), with pictures of the breeds and information on factors like their size and energy level broken into fields.

Google is saying that the idea is a work in progress, and won’t always do what it’s supposed to–the demo also included a search for vegetables in which the search engine got confused and started populating the row for “squash” with information on the sport. But users can edit the results and save them–the notion is that a Google Squared result can be the starting point for big research jobs like choosing a dog.

It’ll be impossible to judge just how practical Google Squared is without doing a bunch of searches once it’s available, but the fact that Google is launching it at all is evidence of the semantic understanding of Web results that it’s gaining–the whole feature is dependent on the ability to turn unstructured text into highly regimented, database-like fields.

Also new today is a feature called Rich Snippets, which makes the little bits of text in results more useful–by identifying that a result is a review by a particular person, for instance, or extracting the location and profession of a person in a result so you can tell if it’s the person you’re looking for. And the last demo of the morning was for Google Sky Map, a virtual planetarium program for the Android platform that uses a phone’s accelerometer to let  you look in the sky and get a map of what you’re looking at.

Okay, some appallingly bad images of Google Squared in action (I shot these off a display at the Googleplex during a demo). Here’s a search for roller coasters, with a name column, one with an image, one with a description, one with the height and more:

Here’s a look at how Squared lets you see multiple items that might be appropriate for a cell in a square (which is what the spreadsheet-like views are called) and pick the best one. Note also that it shows where the data came from–and that Squared’s understanding of the data goes only so far (it has trouble distinguishing between a coaster’s height and the minimum height required to ride it):

Here’s a square of information about digital cameras (if Squared works well, it could be a potent research tool when you’re shopping for big-ticket items):

And here’s a square that a Google employee showed us when TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington asked to see results that didn’t work well (it’s for pizza, and shows restaurants in New York, Oakland, and Las Vegas):

Google Introduces Search Options

Google’s Searchology event is in a sort of “Just one more thing” format this year: So far, we’ve seen some quick demos of worthwhile tweaks the company has made to Web and mobile search in recent months–good stuff, but not breaking news. Now Google’s Marissa Mayer is talking about Google Universal Search, the technology launched at Searchology two years ago that blends traditional search results, maps, images, videos, products, blog posts, news, and other types of content on one page. Today, more than one in four queries triggers Universal Search results, she’s saying.

Figuring out how to present multiple types of stuff on one results page is a challenge, she’s saying–Google uses what it calls a “bento box” approach, organizing results into boxes based on the type of content.

In November, Mayer reminds us, Google launched SearchWiki–a feature which lets you make notes and knock results up and down on the results page based on whether you like them. It allows users to “keep their train of thought” as they search, and hundreds of thousands of annotations are created each day.

Mayer’s saying that the classic unsolved prooblems in search include finding the most recent information (rather than all information regardless of timeframe), exressing the type of information you want (like reviews), and assessing which results are best for your query. And there are two amorphous pieces: knowing what you’re looking for, and expressing searches as keywords.

Approaching all these issues as one big problem, Mayer says, Google needs to let users slice and dice their searches. It’s launching a new feature called Google Search Options today. Unlike traditional Universal Search, which tried to piece together disparate types of results automatically, Search Options lets you choose various views of results via an left-hand menu you can choose  to display by clicking a “Show Options” link:

The options along the left-hand side of the page let you restrict results by timeframe. Or you can show images along with text results:

Or results of a particular type, like videos:

Or reviews–and Google will even attempt to figure out whether the review is mostly pro or mostly con, and extract representative snippets of opinion:

There’s also a timeline view, showing the number of results  for different periods in time:

And something called the Wonder Wheel which uses hubs and spokes to let you navigate between related ideas:

In some ways, Search Options reminds me of a traditional search-engine advanced search feature–except you do it after you search. At first blush, it looks pretty darn useful…

Live From Google’s Searchology Event

I write to you this morning from the Googleplex in Mountain View, where I’m one of a few dozen reporters attending Searchology,  an annual Google event about its search efforts. Google’s good about springing interesting news at these sessions, so I expect to have something to report on–and will do so as intereresting stuff is revealed. (Google’s also streaming the event on the Web, although it looks like you need the Real or Windows Media player to watch.)

5Words for May 12th, 2009

I’m about to visit Google…

ViewSonic: from displays to smartphones.

Unhappy laptop owners sue Nvidia.

Adobe helps media player builders.

A Moto G1 from T-Mobile?

Twitter: bigger than NYT, WSJ.

Help! My iPhone is overheating.

Intel’s laptop and netbook roadmap.

Why is Microsoft raising money?

Microsoft tweets about Zune phone?

Apple nixes religious humor app.

Sorry you got a Kindle?

Microsoft Tries to Make Subscription Music Sound Sexy. Or at Least Smart.

I feel really sorry for the companies, such as Real (with its Rhapsody service), Best Buy (with Napster), and Microsoft (with Zune Pass) that sell subscription music services. Rationally, subscription music makes perfect sense: You pay one monthly rate and get access to the service’s entire library. You can gorge all you want, and if you download an album that turns out not to tickle your fancy, you’ve only wasted a little time.

But none of these services have caught on with the American public on an emotional level–certainly not enough to make them into viable threats to the dominance of Apple’s iPod and iTunes. Apple’s sold billions of songs through iTunes, even though the price of a single album can be the same as other services’ monthly all-you-can-eat flat fee. Every time a consumer downloads a song, it’s a vote in favor of owning music rather than renting it.

Every once in awhile, an Apple competitor tries to make subscriptions sound sexy–or at least smart–via advertising. The latest example is this new Microsoft ad for Zune Pass:

Of course, as Ars Technica notes, Wes Moss–who’s a real guy–does blithely ignore the crucial distinction between digital music’s subscription and buy-to-own variants. Stop paying Microsoft your $14.99 a month, and all your music goes away, but the 99 cents you blow on an iTunes track makes it yours to keep. On the other hand, Moss also doesn’t mention a notable virtue of Zune Pass: the monthly fee lets you keep ten songs. So at least he’s glossing over important facts in a balanced fashion.

An odder thing about the ad: While it shows an iPod, It doesn’t even mention the Zune explicitly. Unless you’re paying reasonably close attention to the digital music wars, it might be unclear to you that what Microsoft is suggesting is that you go out and buy a hardware device called a Zune. I’m not sure if this is intentional on the company’s part–it may be sick of people making fun of its poor little audio player–or what.

Despite everything, Microsoft has a point here: Anyone who’s considering buying a music player should at least consider whether buying one that supports subscriptions is a smarter move than springing for an iPod. (I suspect I’m in the same camp as a lotta folks, though–I’d switch from buying music to subscribing it in a heartbeat…if you could do so and still own an iPod or iPhone.)

I have my doubts, though, whether Microsoft’s subscription salesmanship will find much more success than that of this old Napster ad, which makes the same point in a radically different fashion, stylewise:

Times Reader 2.0: Beautiful, and Beautifully Done. But is It a Dead End?

Having begun my day by sniping at the New York Times, I wanted to end it by complimenting it: The company released version 2.0 of its Times Reader application today. The new version–which dumps Microsoft’s Silverlight platform for Adobe’s AIR–runs on Windows, OS X, and Linux, and in many ways it’s an impressive piece of work.

The basic idea remains the same. Reader is a piece of software optimized for one task: Reading the New York Times. It downloads fresh content silently in the background every five minutes (which, unlike NYTimes.com, remains available even if you’re disconnected). The typography is beautiful, and beautifully Times-like; everything’s divided into newspaper-like section; there’s some use of video, as well as lots of photoraphs; and there’s an interactive crossword. You can search, rummage through sections, read each story one by one, or use a Browse feature that looks a bit like a less visually splendiferous version of Apple’s Cover Flow.

You don’t have to hit the Web to read each story, so content loads briskly, and pages lack the NASCAR-like clutter of ads and gegaws all over the place. (There are some ads, but they don’t overwhelm the experience.) If you want to read an electronic version of the Times when Internet access is unavailable or unreliable, this is the way to go, and I could certainly imagine folks preferring it to the Times Web site even if bandwidth is plentiful.

In short, Times Reader 2.0 does a terrific job of accomplishing what it sets out to do: create an experience that feels like it’s somewhere between a paper newspaper and the Web. The Times is asking $3.45 a week for the paper in this format–it’s free if you subscribe to the dead-tree incarnation–and on a theoretical, abstract plane it’s a perfectly reasonable sum to pay. (Which doesn’t mean that enough people will do so in an an era when the Internet conditions us all to assume that any content that’s digital should be gratis; some stories, including the front page ones, are readable even if you don’t subscribe.)

But as good as Times Reader is, I wonder if it’s ultimately a dead end. It’s the very definition of a walled garden–an application that provides access to one and only one information source. (Article do have hyperlinks to other sources, but when you click on them, Times Reader launches your Web browser.) You don’t even get all of the Times in its online glory–David Pogue’s weekly State of the Art column is present, for instance, but not his Pogue’s Posts blog, with its higher frequency and reader comments. I like the Reader, but if the Times could bring some of its design philosophy to its Web site–and maybe use something like Google Gears to enable offline reading–I’d be even more enthusiastic.

Or here’s an idea I can’t imagine the Times embracing, though it’s surely come up as a pie-in-the-sky notion: What if it licensed the Reader technology to any newspaper that wanted to use it? If Times Reader turned into Times, Post, Tribune, Herald, and Chronicle Reader, it wouldn’t feel quite so much like a proprietary island with little connecting it to the rest of the world.

Side note: The Times also makes itself available as a free iPhone app that feels a bit like a shrunken version of Times Reader. It, too, is a class act–although I’d love it even more if it could download the whole day’s paper for offline reading. (It does cache individual articles once you’ve tappd on them.)

After the jump, some images from Times Reader 2.0. Pretty, no?

Continue reading this story…

Dell’s the First With A Sub-$300 10-Inch Netbook

Dell doesn’t make the cheapest of netbooks, so I never guessed it would first to make a 10-inch model for under $300, but the proof is in the company’s May 2009 PDF catalog, hawking the Mini 10v for $299.

Apparently the news was leaked earlier than Dell anticipated, but it’s real. One user in Denmark has already pre-ordered the new model. The 10v uses an Intel Atom N70 processor, standard for netbooks, instead of the Z520 and Z530 processors used in the original Mini 10. As a result, it’s $100 cheaper.

You can find smaller netbooks, such as Dell’s Mini 9 and Asus’ 8.9-inch Eee PC, for under $300, but from what I can tell by looking at all the major netbook makers, Dell is the first to offer a 10-inch screen at this price. ZDNet, which sees the move as the beginning of a trend, believes cheaper, full-fledged ultrathin laptops from HP, Acer and MSI are the motivation.

I’ve got my own theory: Netbooks were an underdog to begin with, selling at rock-bottom prices because of their small screens and meager specs. It follows that most of their expansion has been upwards towards standard laptops, with bigger screens, better batteries and more powerful processors. Dell’s development moves in the opposite direction, using decidedly average technology to create a netbook that’s dirt-cheap, but far from cutting-edge.

In a sense, Dell’s mimicking the typical PC growth cycle. As new models hit the market, the old technology sticks around in cheaper models. It’s just fascinating with netbooks because the prices are so low to begin with.

This is a trend that I’d like to continue. Having more options at the high-end is great, but netbooks’ real appeal remains in ever more capable PCs at the floor of the price spectrum.