Ten, twenty – Maybe a hundred?

OK, what if you were Leo Laporte, one of the best known and most respected people in your field with hundreds of thousands of followers and fans?

The answer might surprise you!

Leo Laporte & Google Buzz: It’s complicated

Yesterday, Leo Laporte was checking his Google Buzz account when he noticed that a recent post had not been published.  He looked again and saw that in fact, not one of his posts for the past 2 weeks had been published.  Moreover, according to Leo, no one even noticed he wasn’t posting to Buzz!

Now, Leo has hundreds of thousands of listeners and viewers to his various Internet TV shows and his nationwide radio show.  He also has a following on Twitter (at time of writing), of almost a quarter of a million people (including me.)  Ironically, he is also one of the most followed people on Google Buzz, with over 17,000 followers there.

Leo’s missing.  Why didn’t anyone notice?

The general belief is that Leo primarily uses social media to broadcast, so there was a complete communication breakdown.  The suggestion seems to be that he either wasn’t listening or when people saw he wasn’t posting, they assumed there was no point telling him, as he’d be highly unlikely to respond to them.  This, by the way, is based on an incorrect assumption – Leo DOES connect (more on that in a moment.)

However, I can understand where this suggestion comes from.

It did, after all, take Leo 2 weeks before he realised that 50% of his “communication” stream was broken (the broadcast part).  Had he been listening, he would have heard the defining silence and immediately noticed the drop in conversations with him on Buzz.  Ironically, Leo does communicate a great deal with his followers.  His challenge is that he is active on a number of social networks and between them all, he has hundreds of thousands of people sending messages to him, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  In other words, I believe his error was that he spread himself too thinly, across too many networks, to effectively communicate.

Is it even possible to communicate with that many followers?

I only have 16,000 followers on Twitter, but hundreds of thousands of followers must make 2-way communication almost impossible.  I have personally “chatted” many times with Leo on Friendfeed and equally, I have also had many messages ignored!  However, the same can be said of any “tech celeb” with a large following.  I’m guessing Leo’s Twitter stream looks like The Matrix, because HE IS seen by his followers as approachable and interested.

Clearly, if you follow someone with a massive following like Leo (or Veronica Belmont, Pete Cashmore etc), you need to accept that the way they connect via social networks will be very different from the average user, with a more manageable network of contacts.

Further reading

I found 2 really good posts on this subject:

• This post by Brad McCarty on The Next Web makes some excellent points about social media’s strengths and weaknesses.
• This post on Techcrunch, by Paul Parr is also well worth a read.  It widens the discussion to look at where to, and not to, post our content.

Photo Credit: Leo Laporte

So, why did Google announce yesterday that they were ceasing development of Google Wave?

The simple answer from Google, was that “we have not seen the level of adoption we would have liked.”  In other words, it attracted very few regular users.

The bigger question, and one that I believe a lesson can be gained from, is why did so few people use such a powerful, free service?

The Google Wave demo video was over an hour long!

Google Wave, like Google Buzz, came out of the blocks with a problem, which lost it a huge amount of early traction.  The initial Google Wave demo video, ran for over an hour – which was stupid.  People wanted to see something that showed them how to get started with Wave quickly, yet they had to wade through a shockingly poor, over long presentation instead.

By the time the problem was fixed, and the dumb-ass video replaced with something more appropriate, Wave had already lost millions of early adopters.

These early adopters (people like you and me) are the one’s who typically open new online services up to the non-geeks.

Google Wave User Interface was poor

The initial user interface was also far from instinctive, making it a lot harder to get things done, than needed to be the case.  In fact, lifehacker co-founder Gina Trapani was so frustrated by the lack of user information available, that she wrote a very useful book; The Complete Google Wave Guide – Which I’m guessing you will be able to get at a very reduced rate soon!

The worst part about the demise of Google Wave, is that it genuinely was a very good tool, which failed largely because of piss-poor launch marketing and a badly designed user interface.

So, a legal and easy way to reliably jailbreak your devices and free them from the bullshit DRM that has driven users nuts for years – right?

Err, no, not exactly!

Jailbreaking your iPhone or iPad with jailbreakme 2.0

A new app called jailbreakme 2.0 has just been released, promising users of iOS4 devices the chance to easily jailbreak them.  Easily?  Yep, unlike previous jailbreak apps, which required you to hook your device up to a computer, jailbreakme runs from mobile Safari.  At the time of writing this, their servers are down due to high traffic, hardly surprising with all the coverage jailbreakme is getting right now.

The perfect way to jailbreak your iPhone?

Unfortunately, there are widespread media reports today, saying that users are reporting various faults after liberating their iPhones and iPads with jailbreakme.  FaceTime problems and faults to MMS services seem to be the most common issues.  That said, I would be extremely surprised if a fix was not in the mix very soon.

I fully expect we shall see a surge in apps like jailbreakme, over the coming weeks/months.  Maybe, just maybe, this will see enough users running non-DRM’ed iOS4 devices that Apple will reconsider their approach to DRM?

OK, OK – I only said MAYBE!

Photo: Myuibe

Android users can relax again, in the knowledge that the Android OS is just as safe today as ever; despite yesterday’s incorrect reports of a malicious app that was on millions of Android users devices!

Yesterday, the blogosphere was full of stories about an Android wallpaper app, which was reportedly collecting sensitive user data and sending it off to a server in China.  LookOut (the firm who reported this supposed security problem) has since issued a statement saying that in fact, the app was NOT showing any malicious behaviour.

The problem here is that those stories are all still out there, indexed and searchable – Just waiting for potential, new Android users to find them and be wrongly alarmed.

Unbelievably, Venturebeat, The Wall Street Journal, CNET, Yahoo News, Fast Company and scores of other BIG outlets carried this story, even though it was based on the findings of a single security company.  In fact, such was the traction generated by this story, that The Inquirer is still reporting it as news today!

Of course, anything related to Android is big news, so there was a rush to get that story out there.  As a result, the news went viral and the toothpaste was well and truly out of the tube, by the time it became obvious there was nothing malicious to report.

If I were Jackeey Wu (the app developer) or Google, I’d be REALLY pissed right now.

Natali is host of Loaded; CNET’s popular daily tectnology newscast.  The former techcrunch journalist and regular contributor to the CBS Early Show, made her announcement in true geek fashion, via Twitter.

Everyone here would like to wish Natali and her little boy all the very best!

Photo credit: Natali Del Conte

Windows Phone 7: Not the game-changer we were promised?

Just a few weeks ago, the tech news jungle was buzzing with reports of a new “game-changing” phone OS.  Then, suddenly, reports started to come out slamming it!  Maybe the strongest post came from InfoWorld, with Windows Phone 7 – Don’t bother with this disaster.  This is to be expected, right?  Even the original iPhone drew some negatives for lack of certain features, like cut-n-paste (remember?).

But now it seems that even the most vocal supporters of Microsoft, like respected Microsoft blogger Paul Thurrott, have started preparing us for a far less game-changing OS than we were originally promised.  When people like Thurrott start preparing us to be underwhelmed, I take notice.  He is extremely well connected with Microsoft and is currently writing “Windows Phone Secrets” having been given a device by Microsoft for the book.

I’m guessing here, but I believe Microsoft’s PR people (the worst in the industry) saw all the buzz about how revolutionary the Windows 7 Phone OS would be, and knew they needed to crank it down a bit.  If I am correct, (1st time for everything) this is not a good scenario for any of us!

Why?

Because you don’t have to be a Microsoft fan to want this device to be a success.  When a new OS comes out, which raises the bar, it causes everyone else to up their game.  Look at the speed of the developments to the iPhone OS, since Android started being taken seriously.  Equally, iPhone 4 is causing Android developers to up their game too.  With a new, truly revolutionary OS in the game, iPhone and Android would benefit (as well as Windows users, of course.)

What do you think?  Will Windows Phone 7 fly or flop?

So, smart idea, right?

Well, maybe not!

Google announced last month that sites that load slowly will be penalised with a lower search ranking.  Twitter is known for poor reliability (fail whales) and slow load times. See where I’m going here? So, by pasting code on your site which is having to wait for twitter to get moving, you may be slowing your overall load speed and thus, get penalised by Google.

Whilst it’s a pain in the ass to manually do a screen-grab of a tweet and then upload it to a post, at least there’s nothing in that process to slow your load time down; especially if you compress the image and are hosted on a nice, quick server.  It will be interesting to see what the feedback is once people have been using the new embeded tweet feature for a while.

Thoughts?

“Google is going to have a problem because Google is only known for search.” “…It is only half our business; it’s 99.9% of their business. They’ve got to find other things to do.”

Yahoo has often been accused of over diversifying and acquiring dozens of great websites, which often fade into nothing after the acquisition.  This prompted Mike Arrington’s techcrunch to famously proclaim that Yahoo is; “where start-up’s go to die!  Those sites that have managed to survive, like photo sharing site Flickr, have been called out for Yahoo’s failure to brand them as part of Yahoo.

Google: Only known for search?

Carol Bartz’s claims that Google is only known for search, will come as a bit of a surprise to hundreds of millions of Gmail and Google Docs users – As well as those of us using the Google Chrome browser or the Android phone OS, and the dozen or so Google Buzz users (just kidding.)  In fact, Google is more used to being attacked by its rivals for being too diverse!

Yahoo is very successful in some areas, with yahoo.com usually ranked in the top 4 most visited sites in the world.  However, this  latest blast at Google’s business model seems odd to say the very least.  Maybe next time she will be teaching ‘Zuck how to grow Facebook’s user base?

TWiT Grows in size and credibility

Established in 2005, Laporte’s TWiT network is rapidly becoming one of the most popular providers of technology related content online, with figures of 175,000 for their flagship show; This Week In Tech.  That’s a very large audience.  When you then look at the dozen or so other shows produced by the TWiT network and do some math, it’s easy to see why Merritt, one of Cnet’s most popular content producers / broadcasters, would join his long time friend at TWiT.

As a follower of TWiT since its very first show, I am confident that Tom Merrit’s arrival will be followed in due course, by other leading names in tech broadcasting. Leo’s approach to content provision is far more open and social, than that offered by the traditional networks.  This is enormously more attractive to people like Merritt, who are known for having genuinely strong opinions on topics.

I see this as a very wise move for both Merritt, who brings a loyal following with him and for TWiT, who now have one of the best broadcasters in the space.  I also believe this is an indicator of the growing importance of the TWiT network.

Are Molly Wood & Natali Del Conte next?

Oh, and this may just be a very good time for Natali Del Conte and Molly Wood to have a chat with their Cnet / CBS bosses about a pay raise?  If Leo is as smart a guy as I think he is, these 2 super-smart ladies could be next to join Leo’s impressive TWiT network!

As Maggie explained:

“All over the UK, teenagers are sitting in classrooms convinced there’s no need to make an effort with Science and Maths because they’re going to be famous.

They dream about owning the latest gadgets but few consider they could shaping the future themselves. There’s a real need to make them aware of the rich opportunities that exist in these areas.”

TeenTech 2010

This year, TeenTech will see 300 kids from over 20 schools trying their hand at experiments, designing prototypes for the year 2050 and finding out about jobs that they never dreamt existed.  This lively, noisy and interactive event is being supported by a wide range of companies related to science, technology and/or engineering, including; Verizon, BT, IBM, JVC, 3M, Sky, AWE, Scottish and Southern Energy, Thames Water and True Snowboards.

TeenTech was co-organised with Chris Dodson, Chairman of the Institute of Directors (South Region) and supported by the Institute of Engineering and Technology and the Education Business Partnerships; has been short-listed for one of the British Science Association’s prestigious awards.  It’s down to the final three for the best Engineering event in National Science and Engineering Week!

Professor Averil Macdonald from The University of Reading is delighted there’s so much enthusiasm for TeenTech 2010:

”There’s no doubt that the UK will rely heavily on its scientifically trained workforce in the next few decades to solve the problems of energy supply, food supply and water supply as well as contributing to improved medical care – and creating all the gadgets we love to buy from mobile phones to wiis”

TeenTech will show young teenagers that their love for the by-products of science and tech (their phones, computer games, etc)  could act as a gateway, to a rewarding career developing the next generation of must-have gadgets.  Even more important, this age group are extremely environmentally aware and Teentech shows them the role science plays in helping the environment.

Here at The Tech News Blog we fully endorse and support Teentech and what Maggie and Chris are doing, to raise the profile of science and technology, as a genuine, interesting career path.

TeenTech 2010 will be held at the Berkshire Conference Centre, Madejski Stadium, Reading on 19th March.  For more information, you can contact Maggie Philbin on Twitter @MaggiePhilbin