When clicked, it takes you to the same Twitter Search (internal) view for that keyword phrase as any other Trending Topic would, only now the top tweet is the “Sponsored Tweet”, which presumably also comes up if you were to type in the search yourself.

So far, so good, as this set-up folds in the ad as unobtrusively as possible into the user experience, a feat that Mashable’s Pete Cashmore called ingenious in a CNN.com post he wrote about the new system.

I’d point out that while it may be necessary to do things this way, there is likely a reduction in response, i.e. the click-through on the actual ad, which represents the second click already. As a rule of thumb, assume 50% drop in response for any additional step in your Web efforts).

And Twitter will likely play things close to the vest as far as additional click results from the Retweets that can happen around the Sponsored Tweet, so we won’t know whether that alone can make the considerable cost of the promoted trends/sponsored tweets worthwhile.

But the real problem is this. Look at what can show up right below the promoted tweet, based on Twitter’s own Retweet-count-based popularity surfacing:

Probably NOT the brand experience that Pixar was aiming for. The tweet by movie critic Roger Ebert might only cost some 3D revenue, but the 4th tweet is slightly reminiscent of the PR disaster (around larbor/fair trade) for Nestle on Facebook some weeks back.

As you can see, that tweet may very well have gone nearly as viral as the promoted one! Definitely food for thought as brands shift more and more advertising online and into social media.

One bonus oddity I recorded from Twitter yesterday: Due to the instability of the platform during the massive World Cup server and internal data center network loads, Twitter has shut down the Profile Cards, and Geo-Location pop-up functionality to lighten that load. As well as intermittently, the Trending Topics…so that only the “promoted trend” was left in the sidebar:

Harmless for now, but user annoyance might grow if this were to continue. Either way, we can say that Twitter’s Status Blog has been busy again…

Mind boggling, isn’t it?

So the question is, how can your message, product, or service break through the noise?

I found this great Social Media counter widget in Jim Long’s (AKA @NewMediaJim on Twitter) thoughtful post The End of Innocence – Why Social Media Is the New Corporate Media, where he writes:

As social media has matured, I get the sense that [...] now we’re back to where we once were. Brands just want access to us and the transaction remains the same.  Look, I understand that companies need to make money and that investors need to get returns [...]. But I’m struck by the rapacious speed with which social media, its adherents, and platforms are pursuing the buck. Ironic to me, considering that it was dissatisfaction with traditional media and “push” advertising that in many respects gave rise to social media.

So, what are your thoughts? Is Social Media already dying as a marketing strategy due to relentless overcrowding, in essence a form of the “Tragedy of the Commons” principle?

Are hyper-localization or micro-niches the only possible answer to this onslaught?

One of the few things that appears to still work reliably on a grander scale is deep Archetype Branding, of the kind that Apple, successful Hollywood movies, and even some New Media personalities (like Gary Vaynerchuck, Unmarketing, or iJustine) have in common.

Any other ideas?

And while everyone has predictably been falling all over themselves to get in a lot of general reporting about the debut, yours truly has been busy curating the less obvious, in order to get to the bottom of the question – to buy or not to buy…

The Form Factor Issue

After testing out the iPad at the Apple Store in Austin for about 20 minutes, and then again the following Monday at BestBuy for nearly 2 hours, I have to concur with the commentators that said it was a bit on the heavy side.

Not so much in the sense of the weight itself, but in the sense of being distributed in slightly too large of a form factor (kind of like overly large furniture making moving of it more awkward even if the item isn’t that heavy).

Not once did I think that that there wasn’t enough shown on the 9.7″ screen. Instead, it was almost too much. And watching various commentators such as Scoble et al. on the review by The Gillmor Gang wield theirs for the camera, they looked a bit too large as well. Wield is the right word for it come to think of it.

I said in January after the announcement that I had wished for the iPad to be “one size smaller”, about paperback size. Slightly smaller screen, less bezel instead, to keep it at about 4 x times iPhone size, rather than 6 x. If it had to be slightly thicker to fit batteries and other entrails, then so be it. No one seems quite as obsessed with (device) thinness as Steve Jobs come to think of it.

We’ll see if one of the other tablets planned for Android/Chrome OS or Windows will take advantage of this smaller form factor. [UPDATE: Looks like Dell is going to, with 5" and 7" screen versions of its Streak tablet. 5" seems a bit too small given that the current largest smartphones are already nearing 4.5 inch screens.]

Think about it like this: A 10″ screen held at 2 feet equates to a 50″ screen at 10 feet! (This is why no one thinks that hard about the little screens in the airplane seat backs being too small to watch many hours of movies on long flights.)

Right now I have my laptop on my lap, with the 15″ screen about 2 feet away. The iPad would have to be held with your arms fully out-stretched to create the same distance. At about 1/2 – 2/3 of that distance, the current iPad screen size will actually be the same (at 2/3) or even bigger than that (at 1/2 distance). I really think a 7-8″ diagonal screen would be completely sufficient.

And make the tablets much easier to wield…

The keyboard issue

There are several aspects to this:

1) There seems to be confirmation of what I suspected in my previous iPad post, that the keyboard dock is not as usable as it may first appear. The reason being that the whole thing is a bit unstable for switching from typing to touch-screen as Engagdet writes: “Our one complaint? It’s not that easy to interact with the touchscreen from this angle” (note that NO Bluetooth mouse is supported), and doesn’t transport well.

[While speaking of docks, an interesting fact that seems to be slipping through the cracks is that the VGA-out dock or adapter enables to output content that is DIFFERENT FROM what you see on your iPad screen for at least some applications that make use of this, e.g. Apple's Keynote presentation app.]

2) Given this reality, it is better to buy the Apple Bluetooth keyboard, IF you need a physical keyboard at times. It will work for other Bluetooth enabled computing devices in your house, etc.

Engadget in the same post shows a good quick video showing (at bottom of post) how fast it it to synch up the Bluetooth keyboard.

The question really is, is it needed at all?

The reports on on-screen virtual keyboard usability vary from good (some claim 50-words per minute, and a pre-launch reviewer from PC Mag wrote his entire detailed, multi-page review on it) to so-so, with the landscape view typing mode appearing to…ahem…win by a landslide.

But even in landscape mode, touch-typists who are used to resting their fingers on a keyboard have a problem, because the virtual keyboard will intermittently think you have begun typing.

The portrait view mode however seems to please next to no-one as far as typing more than a few keystrokes is concerned.

Why? Too far apart for thumb-typing or one-handed “hunt & peck”, too narrow for good two-handed typing. Bummer, if there weren’t an excellent solution that I hinted at in the comments on my last post:

3) Swype. One-handed gesture-based input by “swyping” the letters of a word. The application was unveiled at TechCrunch 50 last year, and is finding its way in private (?) beta onto some Android smart phones.

Why is it not on the iPad? That’s the $64k Question. Swype would appear to be a no-brainer, something that could have really pushed the iPad over the top beyond all doubt.

Fast input, aligned with the ergonomics of the device, seamless transition from touch-based navigation to touch-based Swype “typing”, workable and fast even for those of us who happen to be slowish 2-Finger typists.

This alone may make me wait for an Android tablet with Swype on board, with a slightly smaller screen as discussed above. Yeah, it’s that important.

.

Other stuff that is actually great

Somewhat under-reported has been the fact that the battery life is truly excellent, anywhere from 8 hours (non-stop, full-blast use with only the most resource-heavy applications), up to 12 hours or more with normal usage. Very few of the reviewers appeared to be able to get below Apple’s claimed 10 hours, which is a remarkable feat. Manufacturer battery life claims used to be notoriously…how do I put this…optimistic..

Also under-reported is another near miracle that instantly should make the iPad a couch computing favorite: It emits next to no heat, and has no fan, hence no fan noise. All while keeping the screen applications and video very snappy.

This may well prove huge, for business meetings as well, where Steve Rubel has already seen a more positive acceptance than either a laptop (creates distance) or a cell phone (makes people think you’re texting/checking your email).

Despite a variety of conspiracy theories for why Apple has it in for Adobe, THAT is the real reason why Flash is not being supported. Flash is a CPU resource hog. It’s why even a pretty powerful dual-core laptop starts to spin-up mightily when viewing most flash-based video. Have the thing on your lap, and the hot “exhaust” from your CPU is warming up your pants for you.

This is a HUGE DEAL. A literally cool and quiet computer. And just as I write that, here comes news that apparently iPad has issues with sitting out/being used in the hot sun, and can shut down pre-emptively to avoid overheating. Makes sense since it’s all glass and aluminum…

Also underreported: By way of a variety of apps such as Citrix Receiver, the iPad can run any remote computer and nearly any of that computer’s applications that might be too complex or large to run on iPad natively. This could be one of the killer apps for the iPad in settings such as hospitals. Steve Rubel’s point about meetings comes to mind again: Where a laptop would be inappropriate by a patient’s bedside, a tablet can be natural form factor.

About the iPad’s Kindle-Killing…

Much attention has been paid to the iPad’s impact on publishing, especially as a new entrant in the eBook reader category vs. Amazon’s Kindle device. So this area warrants some close scrutiny.

First, let’s point out that Apple is playing it pretty safe when it comes to anything that could smack of anti-trust worthy stiff-arming: The iBooks app is NOT installed by default, even though the iTunes Store is making a pretty obvious suggestion to install it. And Apple did not attempt to block the Kindle app, so they’ve learned from the iPhone Goggle Voice app brouhaha.

Apple has a lot of clout and likes to control everything, and yet, it doesn’t want to get into it with Congress if that can be avoided.

So how should Amazon play this?

Don’t try to take a shrill stand in a battle that can’t be won. Instead of carrying on about how the Kindle is still the superior eReader (e.g. in bright sunlight, which is probably true), Amazon should

1) drop the price for the Kindle immediately to below $200,

2) applaud the iPad for running the Kindle app so well, and so beautifully, pointing out that the Kindle really is a for-the-beach/pool type device, and

3) highlight the fact that ALL of your existing Kindle books will play on the iPad AND hopefully still on your Kindle as well.

The last point will make the Kindle a great hand-me-down device for kids who you don’t quite trust with a $500-900 iPad. And likely persuade prior Kindle owners to stick with the Kindle bookstore. Which is what Amazon should care the most about. There never was much use for them to get into a hardware race against Apple.

The Kindle will eventually simply be seen as a transitional device while Apple and others were still figuring out the new form factor. And meanwhile, Amazon has learned tons of valuable things about eBook economics. The business it should be in.

Given the various issues described further up, especially about the outdoor overheating, maybe it is too early to count the Kindle out just yet, and maybe it will fare better for longer than I first thought. Especially if Amazon further lowers the price.

More details on the iBooks app

One of the big issues that appear to be surfacing in regards to the iBook app is the bookmarking. Writes Gizmodo in “Hands On: Apple iBooks”:

Apple’s Bookmarking solution is perfect for highlighting a favorite line, but pretty lousy for just keeping your page. And, yeah, for a casual reader, this is a biggie.

And I would add to that that iBooks bookmarks are missing the capability to add your own commentary, a must for those of us who are used to heavily marking up our non-fiction books.

Here is another weakness Kindle could exploit for the time being, as relayed by PC World in “iPad as E-Reader: Glaring Problems, Promising Apps”:

By and large, in my reading, iBooks offered the slickest e-book navigation experience I’ve had on any device. Regrettably, however, iBooks makes a poor choice for anyone who wants to read e-book purchases on more than one device. Unless you plan to take the iPad with you everywhere, you’ll be without an e-reader much of the time. To make its bookstore more compelling, Apple needs to make desktop and phone versions of its reader. Until that happens, I won’t be buying any more books from Apple.

That’s pretty definitive, and may be a great life-line for the Kindle.

In summary, has the game just been changed?

I think we can safely assume that the ecosystem of iPad apps, accessories, and other add-ons will be a healthy one, see this example of people’s ad-hoc ingenuity… as the iPad as a design/art object is already spurring on a lot of further, often artistic ideas.

However during my tests one thing I realized is that there clearly is a learning curve for non-iPhone users as far as the basics of the interface are concerned. While that should help to rustle up Apple’s existing customers, it may prove to be a hurdle for very broad adoption. Then again, some commentators have already pointed out that very young users between say 3 and 13, are taking to the iPad like fish to water.

But plenty of adults are also ecstatic. Writes Michael Arrington in his “Unauthorized TechCrunch iPad Review”:

…the iPad beats even my most optimistic expectations. This is a new category of device. But it also will replace laptops for many people. It does basic computer stuff, like email and web surfing, very well. Applications load quickly and are very responsive – think iPhone 3GS with a 50% speed boost.

That’s what surprised me the most. The iPad isn’t just for couch computing…It’s a perfectly usable business device. And the form factor just happens to work far better for cramped places like airplanes than a normal laptop. I doubt I’ll ever open a laptop on a plane again after tomorrow…

The iPad will put significant pressure on laptop sales, particularly second device laptops.

Of course, here is the guy that was so desperate for the tablet form factor that last year he had his own tech blog delve into the device manufacturing business for a bit, and created his own Linux-based tablet prototype, dubbed “The CrunchPad”. (That project ended rather abruptly due to his overseas partners running away with the device under rather dubious circumstances.)

So, do we have a winner?

Someone on Gillmor Gang (see link above) intoned: “April 3 2010, the day the laptop died – or at least became the walking dead.”

I would concur that sub-12-13″ laptops and netbooks have just been dealt a considerable blow.

And Windows 7 based tablet PCs are just not really very far beyond a basic Windows PC with some touch features enabled, it’s as of yet not an end-to-end offering. Microsoft appears to indirectly be acknowledging this by basically ditching Windows Mobile 6.5, and going back to the drawing board:

The (still) unfortunately named (and just “renamed”) Windows 7 Series Phone is pointing in the right direction, but Microsoft won’t have it ready until the fall/X-mas, which means a tablet offering based on it is unlikely to be forthcoming until some time next year at the earliest.

That leaves many as of yet un-announced Android/Chrome OS based tablets, we will have to see if any of those materialize before the X-mas shopping season. Either way, that leaves a lot of room for Apple to run away with the entire category.

If everyone who can afford one and wants this class of device is buying an iPad now, then category leadership kicks in, and could well keep Apple in cruise-control and above 50% market-share from here. Until an entirely new category of device makes the iPad obsolete. Maybe it will be something like this Sixth Sense Technology TED Talk, for example.

Despite my overall positive views of the iPad and relative excitement about the tablet form factor, I for one decided to hold off for a bit longer due to the detail issues described above, which as you can tell are quite different from the ubiquitous and nearly reflexive complaints of “no multitasking, no Adobe Flash, no camera”.

None of those weighed very heavily for me. We will see if maybe Dell’s Streak in a 7″ version running Android and allowing the use of Swype for text input will end up being everything I ever wanted in a tablet. That such an Android device very likely would also support multitasking, Flash, and a camera (the “Big 3 Complaints” about the iPad) would only fall under the rubric “bonus” for me.

Please add your own iPad usage experiences and research in the comments below. Did you get one? Will you? How about an Android based tablet?

Predictably orchestrated with Apple’s ingenious Archetype Branding, the secrecy has continued unabated, with iPad app developers with actual units in hand apparently having to guard them in a set-up that sounds like something out of a Tom Clancy spy novel:

Blacked out windows, iPads chained to physical desks, no-one-leaks-nothing (unless we want them to), etc.

Yet the pre-sales that started a few weeks ago have been going briskly, with up to 240,000 devices pre-sold for pick-up at Apple stores come Saturday. The remainder (rumors around supply problems continue, but are they put out there by Apple deliberately?) is held back for live store sales, which Apple needs in order to generate the by now pre-requisite Apple Store “I’m getting my iXYZ” camp-out scenes.

Social proof you couldn’t buy with all of the ad money in the world…

Much of the immediate knee-jerk criticism, which was almost inevitable due to the massive pre-announcement hype, seems to have dissipated. Not too many left in the Beavis-and-Butthead gallery left to snicker…”it’s called iPad…hehe” either (no one ever complained about “notepads” or similar before).

Daniel Lyons of Newsweek, one of the early critics, even had a massive change of heart recently as he explains in the digital pre-release of his upcoming news-stand article “Why the iPad Will Change Everything”:

Jobs calls it “a truly magical and revolutionary device,” and supposedly has told people close to him that the iPad is the most important thing he’s ever done.

Which is why so many of us raced to San Francisco in January to get an up-close view of the miraculous tablet. Yet my first thought, as I watched Jobs run through his demo, was that it seemed like no big deal. It’s a bigger version of the iPod Touch, right? Then I got a chance to use an iPad, and it hit me: I want one. Like the best Apple products, the user interface is so natural it disappears.

Elsewhere, the discussion is raging as to if, and if so how much, the iPad will change the fortunes of the deeply troubled publishing industry, especially for magazines, but for e/Books as well. After all, among many other things, the iPad is being positioned, or at least talked up as, a “Kindle Killer” (referring to Amazon’s efficient, yet somewhat ungainly and black-and-white-only eBook reader device).

The opinions range from “god-sent”, to “it won’t do much”. Scott Rosenberg argues: “For The Media Business, The iPad In 2010 Is The Same As The CD-ROM In 1994“, i.e. a relative dud.

Do I want one?

So, with all of that said, here are some of my own thoughts on use cases for the iPad, and why I’ve come around to wanting one myself before long:

Having recently made a number of trips to my local Fry’s store for sound equipment related purchases, I couldn’t help but look around the laptop and netbook section each time, including both Windows and Mac devices. And what I found is that the iPad makes more and more sense to me as a transitional device.

Netbooks simply appear as clunky little things, even with Windows 7 installed. And the manufacturing is pretty poor on all but the priciest of them, at which point they get near the iPad $499 mark.

Keep in mind that no netbook has 3G connectivity unless you buy one with a carrier contract attached to it. So to compare apples to apples (no pun intended), the price comparison should be with the WiFi only iPad for $499 (the one about to ship, the 3G version will ship a month from now).

Typing on them is OK but far from great. And for slow typists like myself, the iPad may actually become a god-sent, especially if we soon see add-on apps that leverage multi-touch for custom gestures autocomplete, and even possibly handwriting recognition.

A decent sized keyboard can always be added via Bluetooth, or the iPad keyboard dock. Personally, for on the go I would much prefer the idea of using the iPad protective case that doubles as a stand, and then using one of the nice Apple Bluetooth keyboards. The dock just seems fragile somehow, and the docking cradle sticks out enough to make you wonder about damaging it in your backpack.

Which brings me to the second class of devices I was perusing at Fry’s, compact 12-13″ laptops. There are some decent devices available starting at around $500-600.

But here’s the deal: the lower end one’s truly lack in manufacturing quality, such as the otherwise pretty handy HP Pavilion DM3. I really wanted to like it, but especially the silver plastic rim appears rickety, as does the largish black bezel around the slightly oddly-sized screen.

And unlike the iPad, there really is no excuse for the bezel as you’re not meant to hold the screen with your hands. I also briefly looked at Tablet PCs, and none had the kind of responsiveness of the screen that inspired much confidence. Windows 7 STILL doesn’t really seem to be optimized for the tablet form factor.

Now the HP Envy 13″ is a major step up in manufacturing quality, really HP’s first attempt at getting to parity with Apple Macbooks. And they did a really nice job.

It’s just that those start at around $1,500. Which puts them in in a totally different league than even the priciest 3G iPads. Same is true for Apple’s Macbook 13 and Air by the way ($1,200-1,500 and up), which I also looked at.

The thing is, as a long-time Windows user, it feels like the adjustment to the Mac OS idiosyncrasies isn’t worth my effort at this point. And that is where the genius of the iPad comes into play: It’s a totally new class of device, with the multi-touch interface already proven on the iPhone. Not an iPhone user myself (yet), I’ve been playing around with plenty of them from my friends and family.

And it all works well, except that the screen size really wasn’t to my taste for Web surfing, or for entering stuff through the mini on-screen keyboard. Presumably the iPad fixes both issues.

While it likely won’t be used much for writing full-length blog posts, it can definitely serve as a great Web and RSS reader, or to curate web snippets in ways better than can now be done laying on the couch with a 15″ full-size laptop (I am hoping Amplify’s great clipping bookmarklet and similar tools will work in Safari out of the box).

Really if you think about it, despite all of the “Apple Walled Garden” talk, the Safari browser is the application that opens up the iPad to anything on the Internet, including, yes, Gmail and all of the other Google products. No Flash, yes, but I have to admit that I’m with Steve on this one: Flash video tends to slow down even pretty powerful full-sized laptops.

Typing a few words for Search, Facebook, Twitter, it should all work. The more auto-completions, pre-populating boxes, and buttons the better.

And of course all of the apps instantly available through the iPhone app store, plus any newly designed specifically for the iPad, are not to be underestimated. Already TechCrunch is crowing that “Instapaper For The iPad May Be [Its] First Killer App. And It Will Be Universal.” And by all accounts, gaming apps will be big, even though I am personally not particularly interested.

And who knows, with Skype or similar add-ons, even your WiFi-only iPad may soon double up as a phone!? Presumably a Bluetooth headset should do the trick.

By the way, for all those that thought the (current) lack of a camera in the iPad body was a major disappointment, there are of course Bluetooth video cameras available. And it would seem to be only a matter of time until someone comes up with a Video-conferencing dock or cheaper clip-on camera as well.

And of course, Apple may yet ship iPad 2.0 with built-in camera, the software does already have all of the necessary hooks. Speaking of which, wouldn’t it be right in line with Apple’s secrecy and techno triumphalism, if it turned out that your iPad will have a built-in camera on April 3 after all?

OK, maybe that one is too much to hope for.

I for one will be sorely tempted to go for iPad 1.0, even though we pretty much know that 2.0 will be improved, and likely cheaper. I think playing with one from your early adopter friends or at the store will be the deciding factor.

If the thing works well enough even now, and there aren’t any major blow-up stories coming out in the first 1-2 months, just having the first-mover advantage may be worth getting it soon.

Still working on modifying that habit to posting here instead… :)

Since we wouldn’t want you to miss anything important, these were the most recent offerings:

• Key excerpt: More proof that (c) copyrights are mostly only killing your ideas – these stats are shocking, the question is, will you heed their message and Move The Freeline?
• Excerpt: Smart take from Scoble on the coming #geo-location service wars – (Geo)-Location was all the rage at SXSWi this year, and will be for the rest of the year into the future. Are you staying on top of this?
• Key excerpt from: “Dear Google Buzz team..” + my footnotes – Google Buzz made a lot of mistakes on launch, so many that it may yet damn Buzz to obscurity. Here are some thoughts on what needs fixing YESTERDAY.
• Key excerpt from: “Twitter Ad Platform Imminent” – We didn’t get the much inticipated news on this from SXSWi, so the question of what it will look like is still the Elephant in the Room…
• My comment on: “15 Features Apple Must Build Into iPhone OS 4 -> An Amazing Mobile Ad System” – Everyone thinks a sort of gimmick will fix digital advertising (whether mobile or regular internet doesn’t really matter). The only thing that can work is…

Read and profit. Feel free to share.

THE MOST PRODUCTIVE thing I’ve done this week is to use Gmail’s “More Actions/Filter items like these” to rid my inbox of spam and bacon emails, which makes my inbox much more useable.[...] I so want this same feature for Google Buzz. Imagine if you could say “get rid of Scoble anytime he talks about Twitter.” Or, if you could filter out something like any message that includes the words “Tiger Woods.”

Wouldn’t you want this too?

I’ve been thinking about filtering a lot since I became a regular user of Twitter and Friendfeed in 2008/2009. Here is my riff on this question, expanded from my initial comments over on Buzz:

Yes, intelligent filtering is the future. If Google Buzz can pull off per keyword, per user (or per group) filtering, they will win. It is a huge flaw in Twitter that I basically still have to view all (follow) or nothing (unfollow or block) from a given user, and if I choose “all”, then everything arrives with the same priority.

This is simply not how we’re going to overcome information overload. Remember that in an information economy, attention becomes the only scarce resource. So it is worth saving and protecting your attention. On Twitter or any other social media or wider “information stream”-type of service.

(Yes, that includes Email as well. Your email is simply yet another inbound information stream you consume. Sometimes you reply to something, sometimes you forward something.)

Whoever does the best job in helping you to do this has a true business proposition, and will be rewarded by the marketplace. (Here is a nice summation of the problem by Louis Gray in slide deck format.)

Now the reverse case is also important: Per user (or per group) surfacing (“track”) of keywords, that pops items of key interest to you to the top of the heap of your inbound stream, past all others.

E.g. when Scoble talks about “Twitter Lists”, on ANY service I am aggregating, I want to know.

(For the purposes of this discussion, I am assuming for this to happen on Buzz. But it could be anywhere else as well. Buzz just happens to be in a position of being able to 1) be relatively unencumbered by ingrained user habits, since it is so new. And 2) have the assembled computing and engineering power of Google behind it.)

Now Friendfeed was getting close, but never put all of the pieces of the puzzle that they had together in a truly usable form. Specifically, it was (really is, as it’s still running, yet not being developed anymore) not letting saved searches be piped back into its “Friend Lists” (their name for their grouping of users).

And the saved searches (“filters” really if you think about it) themselves were stripping too much usable meta-information from the results items, as to then still be as useful in a “high priority inbound” stream. E.g. no Twitter avatars imported from Twitter Search keyword feeds, asf.

There is much heated discussion on Buzz right now on whether people’s Twitter streams imported into Buzz are polluting Buzz with noise. But this discussion is really missing the point, as information overload is never a failure of the sources, only of the FILTERING!

Because there are likely to be important items coming from Twitter that I absolutely do want to see right away, only on Twitter it’s still near impossible to manage that.

(Twitter has shown little interest in providing a more granular search experience, e.g. search on your friends only, or per List only. A current workaround is ListiMonkey.com Alerts, but that goes to your email inbox, hardly a real-time environment. And desktop clients like Tweetdeck are also of limited help, because their search/filter function for groups/Lists requires that you have those opened up as a column.)

Have you yourself experienced instances where you saw a link to a story days or even weeks after it was first published, and felt that you really would have wanted to see this information right as it became available? Tons of really useful stuff is floating by us, as we simultaneously complain about too much noise in our inbound social media.

EVERYTHING is potentially polluting your Buzz inbound stream, IF it has you miss some key item you really did want to see right away.

I am currently only following a little less than 200 users or so on Buzz, and there is already way too much to scroll through (even without Twitter items) to not waste a lot of time, and keep me from seeing the things I could/should be seeing instead.

Robert Scoble deserves thanks for tirelessly bringing this stuff up, he was already at the forefront of the discussion over on Friendfeed, back before that service was bought out by Facebook and for all intensive purposes “mothballed”.

I believe that Buzz itself will thrive or wither based on whether they can outdo the baseline that Friendfeed set with their attempts at filtering. And on how quickly they can move to iron out the considerable feature lag and mistakes before people lose interest.

Again, one would think Google could pull it off on the engineering side of things, as long as they listen to and learn on the social, user centric side as well.

While on the subject of filtering, productivity, and Email (since Buzz is – sort of – integrated with Google’s Gmail) that Robert raised, how would it be if key inbound emails on a per user basis would pop into your Buzz stream (e.g. your direct reports, bosses, key clients, spouse, etc.)?

It would really just be another surfacing filter as described above. Who cares that the text/images/content was sent to you via email/SMTP protocol. It could be just another Buzz source (like your Twitter, flickr image, and Google Reader RSS streams right now), only these email “posts” would have to be private.

You can already create Buzz posts by emailing them to buzz@gmail.com from your attached Gmail account, which is a standard that started with the mini-blogging services like Tumblr and Posterous. You can also click “email [this]” on any Buzz post, and while the interface is still a little clunky, your a Gmail message write box will insert itself under the post for you to send the message:

You can see that it is not very far from there to place your key emails (by surfacing filter) into your Buzz stream. The key to making things really usable is that Buzz would need to offer handling options intelligently based on what the inbound source is.

For email, show reply/forward/etc. but also maybe a “Rebuzz” (with caution, assuming it’s appropriate), asf. The latter could speed up the current lag of moving stuff from email systems back onto the Web.

That’s where Friendfeed was failing, because it didn’t have a Retweet button on Twitter items, etc. If Buzz were to become a better Twitter client than Tweetdeck or Seesmic, WITH good persistence, archiving, detailed discussions beyond 140 characters, WHITESPACE in comments (thank you Google!), and powerful search of everything you aggregate into it, then who’s going to stop them? They could run the table.

For right now, one has to improvise, e.g. with a little application called BuzzCanTweet.com to send one’s Buzz posts back over to Twitter. This kind of thing had really already become fundamental, and yet Buzz doesn’t have any outbound forwarding besides email to start. Instead, a young guy from Sweden had to set up this work-around.

OK, back to the integration issue: While we’re at it, why not have your Google Alerts pop into your Buzz stream, instead of emailing you as it does right now? (Or have a filter set to pop those Alert emails into your stream as described above.) The possibilities for integration of various Google services appear wide open.

If Buzz can keep driving deep integration with other Google services, and thereby out-innovate the competition, it will go far. Filtering and the email integration could make Buzz the near undisputed inbound stream to manage your social media attention, and really possibly most of your online attention.

For that to happen however, the Buzz team will have to put on the afterburners. Google should be able to pull it off engineering-talent-wise. The question is, will they have finely enough tuned social sensors & vision to do this?

The opening salvo of misjudged privacy issues, urgently missing features, or unthinking adoption of some of the most problematic features from Friendfeed, certainly made one wonder if Google can ever get social right. Is there a social tone-deafness that jinxed all of its previous attempts besides the YouTube purchase (Jaiku, Dodgeball, Orkut, Wave, etc.)?

Let’s hope for our scarce attention’s sake that Google can get it right this time, and apply its unquestioned engineering talent in ways that actually become truly useful to social media. Filtering will be the key.

Stop Whining About How Elitist And Expensive TED Is [Just Because] You Didn’t Get Invited
Feb. 15, 2010, 9:17 AM

>> Too bad you missed it! Larry Page gave everyone a free Nexus One.

.

via Silicon Alley Insider.

(Minor edit for colorful language.)

What is amazing about this (the subhead sentence after the headline), is not what it says about TED, but what it says about the future of content creation, and the question of charging for it.

Yes, Larry Page is a multi-billionaire who gave away free Nexus Ones created by his Fortune 500 (currently ranked #150) company, Google, to other well-to-do folks who were able to afford to pay $6,000 for the exclusive TED Talks experience. In doing so, he is following word of mouth (WOM) marketing model 101, of getting your product into the hands of key influencers, and hopefully winning them over, and getting them to evangelize your product.

But aside from all of that, he is showing what the future really holds: With ever cheaper reading & communication devices such as the Nexus One, it will become increasingly common to give those away to users, JUST to have SOME influence over what content (and thereby advertisements) they consume.

In essence, such a give-away represents A PAYMENT of the consumer for consuming content on the “gifters” platform. That is how important it is to get some, any slice of the attention pie. The getting of some of which implies that you will have opportunities down the road to do business with the “giftee” in the form of offers (ads or otherwise) that can be embedded with the content.

Note that it is taking for granted that a lot of content itself cannot be charged for. Why? …

…Because just like the devices it is shown on, much of that content is becoming commoditized.

There is an over-abundance of it, and certainly no scarcity at all. If the supply is going to infinity, and the demand is finite due to people’s limited amounts of attention, then the price is by necessity going toward Zero.

Now contrast this with the way that Old Media publishers have been trying to put the genie back in the bottle, and start charging for their content again, with so-called Pay Walls and other ill-conceived schemes.

Contrast it with Microsoft, which, when announcing the finally updated version of its mobile OS, made it clear that it intends to charge a licensing fee to handset makers, even though its market share in mobile has been languishing around 10%, and Google is giving away its Android mobile OS for free. All while Apple has built up a huge lead with its iPhone in the smart phone segment.

Silicon Alley Insider correctly points out that Microsoft’s stubbornness on this point is illogical, because even under the most optimistic scenarios, Windows Phone 7 won’t hardly be noticeable on their bottom line. It is however setting it up for failure in the race for market share and resulting mind share.

Microsoft’s question should be: How can we maximize our share of the attention pie for our mobile OS ecosystem? How can we catch, or better yet outflank, the iPhone?

Similarly, Old Media companies should be asking: How can we maximize our share of the attention pie for our news, opinion, and other content ecosystem?

Anything else is folly at this point. Once you have the attention, there WILL be opportunities to monetize, simply by virtue of people being in your ecosystem. Compare how street vendors benefit from people simply being at an event.

But you cannot choke off the oxygen and lifeblood of your ecosystem with Pay Walls, and other walls and barriers of any kind at the ENTRY point. If next to no one lives in your ecosystem, you won’t be selling very much to anyone.

And remember: The first sale is always the hardest. Why not make it much easier, and make the first sale…well…FREE. Someone taking your free offer still constitutes a sale, because they paid you with their valuable attention (time and energy).

Even better, PAY THEM to “buy” from you in the first transaction, as Larry Page has demonstrated with the Nexus One give-aways. Those cost real money, and yet it is still in Googles interest to be giving many more away.

Notice what Google has been doing all along, they have been giving away free copies of a lot more than just digital content (actually Google doesn’t create content at all): Google applications of all stripes and colors, including Gmail, Google “office” apps, Google Maps, Google RSS Reader, etc. etc.

Why? Because it keeps you on Google’s platform for a little longer, so that they might have SOME influence over what you are shown in terms of advertisements, and other offers that go along with the ecosystem.

Notice the deep misunderstanding by the parade of other companies, especially news and other Old Media companies, that have recently been trying to crucify Google over spreading their content through their search engine without reimbursement, not understanding that that content is typically lowest on the totem pole of usefulness:

The New York Times for example is still dreaming about charging for their news content, when it has about a 6 hour half-life (that’s why it’s called “old news”). Compare that to Google giving away productivity apps that can be useful to you for months and years.

What’s  your take away: Massively Move The Freeline, so that you may even have an ecosystem in which to sell anything.

Still working on modifying that habit to posting here instead… :)

Since we wouldn’t want you to miss anything important, these were the most recent offerings:

• Key excerpt on Google’s non-social DNA from: “Why Google won’t give Twitter or Facebook a buzz cut tomorrow” Google has been struggling with creating their own successful Social Media, and there is a reason…
• Scott Stratten demonstrates a potential Geo-Location Mishap in: “@Unmarketing’s 4 Point Social Media Future” Geo is only gaining in importance, but the potential pitfalls and even outright dangers should keep those companies on their toes.
• Key Twitter-relevant excerpt from Scoble’s: “Google’s two-front war with Apple and Facebook”
• Steve Moses..I mean Jobs..comes down from the mountain, and..the Tablet is busted?! Did Steve Jobs finally reach the limits of his presentation magic? Is the iPad “a bridge too far”?
• Key Moving The Freeline excerpt from: “5 Essential Blogging Tips from Confucius | Copyblogger” More validation for a concept that is the key to winning in the Attention Economy.

Read and profit. Feel free to share.

As I laid out a few weeks ago, it seems pretty likely that it was Apple that leaked much of the information to The Wall Street Journal about the tablet device prior to its launch — including the bogus $1,000 price from “analysts.” Later, a former Apple employee corroborated this.

Why would they do this? It’s simple. As I said at the time, if they plant the idea in peoples’ minds that a product will be $1,000, then release it for significantly cheaper, it’s a huge win for Apple. So when Jobs announced the entry-level iPad would be $499 yesterday, it was an absolute home run.

I have said for a good while that Apple is purposefully leaking "information" (mixed with misinformation) in just the right doses and intervals to keep the launch mania pot stewing, ending in a rolling boil crescendo right at launch.

(See: The Apple Tablet And Planned Insanity and as early as 8/08: Apple’s "Magician" Archetype Branding Revisited: Good News – Bad News .)

Now when it comes to seeding these price point speculations, they added yet another twist I’ve previously reported on: Decoy Offers or Decoy Pricing.

What it boils down to is that since all price perceptions are relative to a given context (ALL meaning arises in context by the way), if you can create a context where the price point at which you eventually offer something appears low, you will sell a lot more.

To quote my prior post:

Dan Ariely’s excellent "Predictably Irrational" talks about such contextual "decoy offers" that can boost sales for the item the seller really wants people to buy. As an example he uses a past offer by british business magazine The Economist:

It had listed $59 for on-line access only, $125 for print-only, and $125 for print & Web combo subscriptions, and had thereby significantly boosted the number of the expensive combo subscriptions sold (vs. test offers that omitted the seemingly non-sensical $125 print-only option)!

Obviously Apple just took things a step further: Since the Decoy Offer is not expected to be taken by anyone, it really doesn’t matter if you ever really formally write it up anywhere. Just introduce a high price point via a leak and nurture it (by not disputing the rumors) for a while, then triumphantly announce that the thing is actually going to cost HALF that.

If there had been no context of the prior (seeded) expectations, then the announcement of the entry-level iPad costing $499 would have been only referenced against other things in the consumer’s/prospect’s (that includes you!) mind:

Prices for other electronics items, other computers, other Apple products, asf. And the comparison may not have been favorable, or, a wash (no signal one way or the other).

Instead it was compared to a price point that for many months had already been talked about by all and sundry as reasonable, maybe high, yes, but definitely in the realm of the possible.

The expectation that the iPad was going to be a rather expensive and substantive device became more and more firmly established in people’s minds everyday this way. Now if you announce it at HALF, everybody’s knee-jerk reaction becomes: "This is a bargain!"

One more thing that Apple pulled off here is to establish the low $499 entry-level price as an ANCHOR price to pull this stunt off. Even though most people will spend substantially more for the iPad they really want, with 3G wireless and not just Wifi, and with more memory storage.

I doubt apple expects to ship too many of the $499 iPads. In essence, they created yet another decoy offer!

Writes TheNextWeb in I Call It The iLetdown – Why The iPad Missed The Mark And Blew Its Big Day:

Getting right into it, the lowest price for the iPad point is a mirage. A non-expandable device that has a total of 16 gigabytes of storage? Assuming a usable 15 gigabytes of space, I can fit less than a third of my music onto the device. Excellent. And zero percent of my photos. And videos. And apps, of course. So to say that Apple has created a mass market tablet for $500 is a little disingenuous.

So really what we have here is a Double Decoy, so to speak…

iPad/iSlate/iTablet/etc., heir to the iPhone, destroyer of lesser technology gadgets?!

The name is not the only thing that has been a closely, and purposefully guarded secret:

The blogosphere and assorted Old Media outlets have over the last few months progressively worked themselves into a tizzy over the key questions surrounding Steve Job’s next mysterious, almost Grail-like product.

Like, how big will it be? How much will it cost? How many men died during its construction?

Kidding on that last one, though not by much…

All of this is of course utterly predictable in light of Apple’s tightly constructed Archetype Branding strategy that I’ve been writing about since the iPhone wave. Secrecy is such that the Tablet so far as only appeared indirectly, as a quasi digital ghost.

Pairing Steve Job’s “Wizard of Oz” character (The Wizard archetype, coming out from behind the curtains – i.e. secrecy – with the newest technological marvel), with The Enigma archetype inherent in this elaborate charade, is creating a launch atmosphere unlike just about anything else in current business, or show business for that matter.

Of Wizards, Grails, And Zeigarnik Effects?!

Not only does mystery draw on this powerful archetype, but, just in case you prefer more scientific approaches, the so-called Zeigarnik Effect also explains the draw of an unresolved, “open” loop that has entered your consciousness. Somewhat dependent upon personality, you are likely to feel a strong urge of just having to know.

This explains why even many months ago, bloggers and journalists alike could seemingly not help themselves but to write about the mystical Tablet. And of course from the very beginning, that is just how Apple wanted it.

Even now, well after midnight in the U.S., there are thousands of tweets on Twitter every few minutes expounding one rumored aspect or the next:

Some have even argued that Apple will deliberately sprinkle out little bits of information mixed with misinformation to stoke the fire.

Whatever Jobs will be presenting on Wednesday, and by whatever name it will be called, all eyes will be simultaneously oriented toward “The Great Unveiling”. Compare this natural feeding frenzy to the rather humdrum affairs that Google or Microsoft had given us of late.

Google’s Nexus One Android smartphone launch a few weeks ago was hardly the stuff of legend with its persistent minimalism. And by the time Windows 7 was finally officially launched, so many public Alpha, Beta, and minor tech celebrity testers had already rummaged through every nook and cranny of the operating system AND written about their findings, that it was hardly news anymore.

Now, a sheer endless parade of blog posts and articles has already been written about the Apple Tablet. But those have all been speculation, rumor, and innuendo! (“Will it be a Kindle killer?” “Will it be a Play Station Portable (PSP) killer?” etc. etc.)

The open loop was NEVER closed!

As if any more titillation were necessary, the issue of Jobs’ ongoing illness/recovery and speculation that this may well be his last new product launch as Master of Ceremonies… I mean CEO. And that he therefore will have brought all of his human and, some would speculate, super-human powers of invention, design obsession, and stage craft to bear in this his final Magnum Opus.

Even now we hear whispers: Did he really say that this Tablet “will Be The Most Important Thing I’ve Ever Done.” Did he? Would he? Can the poor computer thing possibly live up to this level of hype?

Robert Scoble indeed asks if the event can even still be covered in ways that news media, journalists, and bloggers have become accustomed to over the years. Or if we need an entirely new, “curated”, meta-experience to fully appreciate the unfolding of this new reality.

And therein lies the only drawback and potential danger of such a tightly choreographed affair:

All of the pieces have to be in place (when Jobs got sick and was absent from one of these launches, the magic was clearly lacking). And when they are, a deep connection and expectation is formed in people’s psyches that may prove difficult, if not impossible, to live up to.

Beware the pitfalls of this form of powerful Archetype Branding!

Since we wouldn’t want you to miss anything important, these were the most recent offerings:

• Key excerpt on Hyperlocal Advertising from: "2010 Predictions – ReadWriteWeb" Yet more reasons for Rupert Murdoch to shake in his boots…
• Key excerpt from: "What Matters Now" – Gary Vaynerchuck validates Moving the Freeline I preach the concept, nice to see it validated by a social media "big deal".
• Pretty Funny From A Frank Kern Email – FTC Christmas Cards… Half in jest, fully in earnest as they say… this topic will occupy us in 2010 more and for longer than a lot of people are realizing.
• Key excerpt from: "FTC trains government focus on..bloggers – HotAir.com" – gov’t overreach in action More on the FTC’s overreach. A whole new class of complaint will likely get added to our already over-developed litigation menu.
• Why would Twitter lie this blatantly about its broken "Retweets by others" UI? Strong words, but this post struck a nerve. Twitter has been acting a bit too Orwellian of late. The issue has been fixed since then, the PR black-eye remains…

Read and profit. Feel free to share.

We get into the subjectives of what makes natural-born blogger [NBB]. Here are some of the ideas.

1. An natural-born blogger doesn’t wait for permission.

2. A NBB explains things, even when they don’t understand. An NBB is often proved wrong, to which the NBB shrugs his or her shoulders and says something like ["So what"].

3. NBBs go first. If there’s an NBB around you don’t have to wait for a volunteer.

4. NBBs err on the side of saying too much. If you find yourself wishing someone would just [shut up already] you’re very likely looking at an NBB.

Note: Small edits for colorful language… :)

At first sight, it would appear that these points, while well taken, apply only to blogging. And almost in a too-obvious fashion at that.

Unless you have concerned yourself with all manner of business building and entrepreneurship mindset issues, like I tend to do, and take a second look.

Then it becomes clear to you that these are among the most important guide posts for all entrepreneurial activity, and by extension for success in life in a more general sense:

1. Successful people don’t wait for permission

They don’t wait for someone to appoint them to something important (which almost never happens anyway). They give themselves permission to go ahead, they self-appoint.

If you’re uncomfortable with that idea, then you have just identified an important mindset block that is very likely massively holding you back in your business building efforts or aspirations.

I guarantee that almost no one will ever appoint you the expert of your market niche, you have to give yourself permission to be that expert. Of course, you have to make sure you can back it up, else a self-proclamation will ring hollow over time. But the initial catalyst lies within you alone.

2. Successful people shrug off failure

Successful people shrug off failure as if it means nothing, because… well… it doesn’t. All you ever get is a result, all subsequent meaning of that result exists almost entirely in your head.

Any misstep means only that you must be getting closer to your goal than you were before (when you didn’t take any action at all). And of course hopefully you learned something in the process.

The only thing that truly IS tragic is not failure, but being caught in paralysis due to fear of failure. It keeps you suspended in an infinite "possibility loop", never wanting to find out the truth by either getting proof-of-concept, or not, and moving on to the next concept. It’s a form of addiction to and idea or ideas we have come to hold dear.

Best to find out this week, this month if that idea is only robbing you of precious psychic and other energy…

3. Successful people are ahead of the curve

In branding/positioning there is the well-proven concept of "first mover advantage", which tends to bestow disproportionate rewards on those that "show up early to the party".

While the inventor doesn’t always get financial rewards, the Category Leader, the person or business that can install themselves as first for that category in the minds of the consumer (to be taken in the broadest possible sense of a marketplace here), almost always does.

Hence we get Microsoft being more or less unassailable in the business and consumer desktop computing space, while Apple became nearly as dominant in new categories that it either early and decisively jumped on (the iPod), or more or less created (the iPhone).

Anyone else piling into those categories is fighting an uphill, near impossible battle.

And all of this applies to your small business, or solopreneurship as well: Be first, or at least VERY early in something. Ideally by creating a whole new category, which is otherwise known as innovating.

4. Successful People Move The Freeline

While Dave Winer does not explicitly state it here, the idea of erring on the side of saying too much implies the principle I like to call "Moving the Freeline":

You have to say AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE about what you are trying to get across to people, which means that you have to, in a sense, give your best ideas away!

You can’t hide them behind a Pay-Wall (and even $1 may be too much for people to begin to listen to what you have to say, what you have to offer).

You can’t operate in a way that says: "Once you pay, I’ll tell you something useful or important".

You can’t drop mere hints about what you have to offer, you have to give away A LOT of the real thing.

Most marketing copy gets this wrong when it merely focuses on trying to persuade, rather than just showing a lot of the goods.

You have to give every possible reason for the other party to do business with you by telling them (nearly) everything you know that could apply to them, free of the irrational fear of being ripped off or plagiarized somehow.

Only then do you have a real chance.

And in order to be able to do this, you have to apply a mindset that most successful people have, what Eben Pagan would call "feeling wealthy right now".

You see, unless you get to that point of feeling abundant in your ideas right now, you will hold yourself back from getting the business you deserve, because the other party cannot ascertain whether a transaction would be worth their risk.

Does Moving The Freeline Make You Nervous?

In case this kind of openness makes you nervous, you can calm yourself by understanding a few key truths:

The fear that someone wants to rip off your ideas is nearly always an illusion, usually you have the exact opposite problem, that of getting ANYONE to give a dear about you, your business, and your ideas.

Also, the so-called "Curse Of Knowledge" has you systematically underestimate how far you are leaving the non-expert audience behind as an expert in a given arena (see Heath & Heath, Made To Stick).

Even if they wanted to, almost no one would be in a position to replicate your deeper ideas from scratch, without incurring a very significant learning curve.

Of course, if they REALLY wanted to (which is a big if), they could catch up eventually. Which is where the "show up early" principle comes in.

But in the interim, you can, as a consultant say, tell a prospective business EVERYTHING you might do for them in great detail. And it still would be much more likely that they would hire you to work with them, rather than trying to turn around and execute all of these details themselves, cold, from scratch.

To finish up with an example, a prolific tech blogger like Robert Scoble is constantly giving his best ideas away. And certainly a lot of people would say that he can err on the side of saying too much. But that is also how he creates massive value up front, and keeps people engaged with his idea process.

Money and profit become side-effects of his massively "Moving The Freeline" in this way day in and day out. Do thou likewise…