MEDIAdeluge

New York Times Launches TimesPeople

The New York Times reading faithful now have a new way to discover what other NYT readers find interesting as well as share articles, videos, slideshows, blog posts, comments on articles, and ratings and reviews of movies, restaurants and hotels with friends.

While TimesPeople is a social network of sorts, MySpace and Facebook it’s not. Safe to say, there won’t ever be embarrasing pictures of you drinking a bit too much at a friend’s picnic on TimesPeople.

MEDIAdeluge here:

• CNET, New York Times’ goes social with TimesPeople
• Social Times, New York Times Goes Social With TimesPeople
• Mashable, The New York Times (Tries) Getting More Social
• Silicon Alley Insider, NYT’s “TimesPeople” Social Network: Another Good Idea From The Times
• Boing Boing, TimesPeople, a lightweight socialnetwork for the New York Times

The NYT has done a nice job with the execution. It’s  understated and  lightweight and offers much of the functionality one would expect of a social news network, but ultimately its just a network of NYT readers.

TimesPeople is a clear step in the right direction for the Old Gray Lady, but it’s nothing more than a social bookmarking site (like Delicious, Magnolia,  StumbleUpon and scores of others) except TimesPeople is limited to readers of the Newspaper of Record.

Currently, TimesPeople is in Beta and is available as a FireFox add-on. The add-on works with Firefox 3.0 and the NYT promises the public launch  will work on all major Web browsers.

This is one worth following. It will be interesting to see how TimesPeople evolves over time and to watch and see what other big print publications do as they shift their focus away from print and more toward online.

Walt Mossberg is Influential?

Steven Baker of BusinessWeek has the inside scoop on on his blog about a soon-to-be released study by the University of Miami and USC that correlates a company’s stock performance with reviews of its products by Walt Mossberg of the WSJ.

Initial data shows on average, “firms with bad product reviews saw stock losses of $200 million, while those with positive reviews saw gains of $500 million,” proving traditional media influencers still pack a punch.

It will be interesting to see the complete study next month.

What the data seems to support is something successful consumer electronics companies have known for a long time. A strategic reviews program is critical to a successful product launch. Of course, Walt will tell you the key is having a great product.

FriendFeed as a PR / Marketing Platform

We, at MEDIAdeluge, have been vocal lately about the future of twitter as well as emerging players in the microblogging space. Now, with the wheels seeming to come off at Twitter as they struggle to scale, new players are ripe to swallow that audience. FriendFeed is one of those players. We’ve  panned FriendFeed as a broadly adopted consumer application, but think there is definite promise as hub for key influentials.

UPDATE: MEDIAdeluge here:

• FT.com, The Fuss About FriendFeed
• Mashable, FriendFeed and the Web Itself as a Blogging Platform
• ZDNet, Could life streaming make the corporate newsletter obsolete?
• New York Press-Follow The Leader Blog, FEEDING FRENZY
• Search Engine Watch, Will FriendFeed Change the Face of Search?
• Micro Persuasion, Friendfeed Can Disrupt Search and Reshape Advertising

PR and marketing pros ought to be watching FriendFeed and the microblogging sites very closely. This is especially true for companies in and around the tech/web space.

Some influetials like Steve Rubel and Jeremiah Owyang are discussing the possible future impacts on PR and marketing, which is useful to consider. For now, FriendFeed is growing into the online community destination for early adopters and influentials the way Twitter was just a few months ago.

True, those on the bleeding edge can be a fickle bunch and tend to go from one latest-and-greatest site to another and keeping up can feel like a full time job, but if you want to keep your ear to the rail and perhaps even impact conversation about your brand / industry, you’d better be where the influencers are.

Just a few short years ago, that meant reading their blogs. Today, the conversation is distributed and it is hard to keep up. FriendFeed is aggregating that conversation and growing very rapidly. Growing so rapidly, it is not out of the question to think about it replacing Digg at some point. Today, Digg has ten of millions more eyeballs than FriendFeed, but FriendFeed is building nice momentum.

Like entering the blogosphere, it is best to start by listening and reading closely. For marketers and PR folks who aggressively jump in to these new communities and begin proselytizing, you will be less than welcome.

Twitter Killer... Or, is Twitter Already Dead?

Death by a thousand cuts seems to be the way Twitter will surrender its lead position in the increasingly competitive microblogging space. A strong competitor has yet to emerge and eat Twitter’s lunch, although FriendFeed and johnny-come-lately Plurk are gaining traction. Pownce and Jaiku too are waiting in the wings. Regardless, Twitter’s star seems to be waning. In fact, the exodus may already be beginning.

Powne and Jaiku are virtually carbon copies of Twitter and it is hard to overtake the leader, Twitter, from a position of at least perceived sameness. Read Marketing Truisms post to see why.

FriendFeend and Plurk are shooting for the Twitter audience by attempting to change what is of value to that audience. FriendFeed is taking more of a lifestreaming / “centralized me” tack. Plurk offers a nicer UI and the ability for users to create conversations around posts.

That said, none of these players has captured the imagination of users like Twitter and not one of them is a seriously challenging Twitter for dominance. Twitter, however, has become a victim of its own success. There has been much speculation around possible reasons for Twitter’s downtime (Ruby on Rails scalability, architecture, key staff departures, etc.) and what appears to be a serious scaling challenge.

Complaints about Twitter downtime have become so plentiful that Twitter created a blog to keep users updated on outages. While I applaud the transparency, they may be going too far.

It also looks like Twitter’s growth might be slowing. None of this is a nail in the coffin, but it points to Twitter’s growing negative momentum. Twitter may not be killed by a competitor, but it is looking more and more like Twitter may collapse under its own weight before it can correct the problems.

I, for one, hope Twitter is able to right the ship… fast. The lifeboats are starting to look pretty inviting. Some may already have left. Once they’re lowered into the water, it is tough to bring them back aboard.

Good luck Twitter.

Twitter vs Plurk

With all the downtime problems Twitter has been experiencing lately, it could be just a matter of time before there is a mass exodus to another service. My guess is it wouldn’t take much to trigger the exodus — at least among the early-adopting tech crowd.

Because the microblogging space is so nascent, a departure of even a few of the key tweeters like @leolaporte, @JasonCalacanis @kevinrose, and @Scobleizer, could be disastrous for Twitter and effective stall the rocketsled that has been twitter of late.

Some thought FriendFeed would be the Twitter killer, but FriendFeed is different from Twitter. It serves a different purpose. See my post on FriendFeed vs Twitter.

A new service called Plurk, however, could be the ship frustrated tweeters jump to — not to mention, highly followed Twitterers like Leo Laporte and Veronica Belmont invited their Twitter followers to join them on Plurk. Don’t be surprised to see a huge surge in Plurk’s traffic in the coming days.

The MEDIAdeluge is here:

• The Inquisitr, Today’s Hot Meme Comes To Us From Plurk
• ParisLemon, Plurk is Both Pretty and Pretty Cool
• The Next Web, Are you already Plurking?  — Actually that isn’t the right question.
• /Message, Plurk: Looking In All The Wrong Places
• Mark Evans, Taking the Plurk Plunge!
• Mashable, I Like Plurk Better Than Twitter, But Should I Even Bother?

Plurk is a slick new microblogging platform. VentureBeat calls it Twitter meets FriendFeed.

It does not have all the add-on services like Twitter and currently, there does not seem to be mobile Plurking, which is a severe limitation.

Here is my take on a Plurk FAQ.

What is Plurk?

A Twitter killer? I’m not sure Twitter actually needs to be killed. At this point, a reasonable alternative will do.

How does Plurk work?

Plurk works like Twitter, but with a much nicer. ajaxy UI.

There’s a safe plurking habits guide to help new users understand how to make Plurk time “more productive and secure.”

What’s my timeline?

Plurk shows posts in a horizontal time-line. Frankly, I’m shocked more sites don’t take advantage of this kind of layout. It is slick.

What’s a plurk?

a plurk = a tweet

What are qualifiers?

Plurk expands on Facebook’s “is” by adding qualifiers to posts. Qualifiers include, feels, thinks, loves, was, etc.

What is a clique?

Plurk allows for definable subgroups. A clique is a way for users to define a smaller audience of “friends” such that users can send plurks to only the friends who need to be notified. This goes a long way toward helping microbloggers post the kinds of information salient to the audience they are talking to. see more on this in my post on the conversational web.

Will Plurk be the Twitter killer? Time will tell. Plurk is getting hammered with traffic right now and while performance has slowed a bit, I have not been effected by outages. I have not seen any images of tweety birds pulling a whale out of the ocean — an all too common sight on Twitter.