An If-Then Statement

I do enough stuff around the web that some of it has to be automated. If it wasn't automated, it just wouldn't get done.

For example, maintaining the Facebook page and Twitter stream for Rational Review News Digest. We average about 50 posts per day, and as publisher I'm responsible not only for my own posts but for proofing and scheduling the other three editors' contributions. If I had to individually tweet and facething each post as it came out, there wouldn't be time in the day for anything else.

And while it wouldn't kill me to manually get the material here at KN@PPSTER out to the social networks, if I automate it I don't have to remember to do that every time.

And there's other stuff even more boring than the stuff I've already mentioned. So: Automation.

My two previous mainstays for getting that stuff done have been Networked Blogs and Twitterfeed.

They're both actually great services, but they also have various problems (Networked Blogs sometimes runs into problems "syndicating" my stuff; my Twitterfeed feeds seem to sometimes just go down without explanation for weeks at a time then suddenly start working again -- and to top it off, for a long time I couldn't figure out how to get into my account there because like an idiot I tied it to an "OpenID" sign-in powered by a site that then disappeared; finally figured out a workaround this morning).

So this morning I decided to just switch it all over to a newer service called IFTTT. The acronym stands for "if this, then that," and that's exactly how it works.

The user creates a "recipe" by choosing an "if this" and a "then that."

For example, "if I post something at my Blogger blog, then post a tweet on my Twitter account."

It's even simpler than it sounds.

Looks like about 110 different things on the web that you can do this with -- everything from Gmail to Blogger to Twitter to Facebook to YouTube to Dropbox to a gazillion things you may or may not have heard of or use.

You click on an "if then" icon (e.g. "Wordpress" -- it takes you through an authorization dialog for your Wordpress blog and what you want to trigger the if, e.g. "I post anything," "I post something with a particular tag," etc.).

Then you click on a "then that" (e.g. "Facebook Pages" -- it takes you through an authorization dialog for your Facebook page and what you want it to do (post the link/title/whatever from that Wordpress post to your Facebook page).

When you're happy you say so, and your "recipe" is active (unless you turn it off). Every 15 minutes from then on IFTTT checks to see if the "if this" has happened, and if so it automagically does the "then that" for you.

I've already got the RRND stuff working (it took about two minutes) ... this here blog post will tell me if I've got everything set up for KN@PPSTER automation (I don't doubt it -- like I said, IFTTT is easy as pie and hard to mess up -- but I still check, see?).

So anyway, if you're looking for easy, simple, reliable automation of Internet stuff, check out IFTTT. It rocks.

A New Commenting Conundrum

I had a note from a KN@PPSTER reader (and frequent commenter) this morning. She's attempting to escape the long arm of Google, and is now finding it difficult or impossible to comment on blogs.

Right now I'm using Disqus here, LiveFyre  at another blog (not yet ready for prime time, really), and IntenseDebate at RRND.

The would-be commenter informs me that both Disqus and LiveFyre (I don't know about IntenseDebate yet) require the user to "allow" Google, even if the user isn't attempting to sign in using a Google account -- or, for that matter, sign in at all.

Yes, that's right -- even if you comment as "guest," or use your Facebook, Twitter, etc. logins to connect, it still insists on pinging Google for some reason.

Does anyone know of a comment system (a "universal" one, not one internal to a specific site or site software type) that doesn't require you to slave your identity to Google? Personally, I don't mind affiliating with one of the Big Guys for ID purposes around the web, but some people do and I prefer to keep my blog accessible to them if I can.

Why Hasn't Universal Commenting/Discussion Caught On?

It really does seem like the next leap in social networking: Instead of (or in addition to) each site maintaining its own comment or forum setup, you could comment at or on any URL, and have your comments aggregated and threaded with everyone else's, all through the same service.

But no: We've got competing commenting systems (IntenseDebate, Disqus, et. al), in-house systems for WordPress and Blogger and so forth, all fighting for market share from the site operator side instead of the user side, and "universal commenting/discussion" doesn't seem to catch on.

A couple of years ago, I came across a site called Buzzbot. It appears to be defunct now -- not surprising since it was set up as a multi-level-marketing opportunity. It was one of those "operating system in your browser" projects, among other things.  The only thing special about it was its "browser within your browser." You could point that browser at any URL, and there would be a sidebar tab for discussion and commenting.

There was also a service call coComment -- also defunct, but from what I can tell it appeared to be a similar idea, implemented as a Firefox extension.

I think the idea is sound. In fact, I think it could be the next Twitter in terms of adoption.  If I were rolling it out (and no, I won't -- I've got neither the capital nor the technical ability), it would look something like this:

• A web site, a Firefox add-on, a Chrome extension, etc.
  
• Multiple account setup/login options ("connect with Facebook," "log in with Twitter," "use your Google account," "set up an account with us").
  
• When you go to a web page -- any web page -- with the add-on or extension running, or in an iframe or whatever from the service's site, you have a little tab on the side of your browser (for extra credit, let the user decide where the tab appears, maybe make it on of those that pops up when you move your mouse to the lower right of the screen, etc.).
  
• Click on the tab, a comment window opens. Bam, threaded discussion, and it's not dependent on, or controlled by, the site you're commenting on ... or is it?

That last question leaves open the possibility of a "premium" service that site operators can buy, which lets them exercise various sorts of moderation and control over the service as it's used vis a vis their sites. Or maybe not even premium. Maybe there's a default service, but any site creator can create a file along the lines of robots.txt that specifies certain parameters like excluded words, bans, moderation, etc.

Ad revenue seems like the obvious profit center.

What's the fly in the ointment? What am I missing? Too much overhead required to moderate from the commenting provider's side or something?

To me, this seems like exactly the direction I'd take Disqus if I ran that service. Why compete for site owners to implement your service when you could just offer it directly to users?

Twitter: What's It Good For?

Since I'm on the subject of Twitter anyway, might as well riff on it a little. And I see that Carl Bussjaeger poses the question (in non-question form):

@CarlBussjaeger
Carl BussjaegerOK, I've tried Twitter. Still don't see point. Boring, limited. Sticking to my blog & website:
http://t.co/O3abV6hP
http://t.co/iQNiDf8P 12 days ago via web · powered by @socialditto

The short answer to the title question is "it depends."

First, a bit of heresy: Twitter is good for attracting an audience to content. That's not what it was supposed to be about, and quite a few people complain about it, but hey ... it does work. A link to every post here at KN@PPSTER gets tweeted to my nearly 2,000 "followers," and any given post will get a few visits from that tweet, and perhaps from "retweets." Over at RRND, same thing -- if my analytics are correct, our Twitter feed brings about 100 visitors a day to the site.

As an information consumer, I find Twitter extremely useful, too. I see content every day that I'd never have known about if someone hadn't tweeted a link.

Using Twitter that way does have its down sides, of course. It limits the utility of Twitter for other things.

Things like conducting a continuous, short-burst, informal conversation with a group of friends. Since I follow those who follow me, I'm following close to 2k people as well, which means that unless (or even if) I do nothing all day but watch Twitter, I'm probably only going to catch the high points.

And things like using Twitter in an office setting. A few years back, Tamara worked in a (very computerized) office where it was important to know where everyone was at all times (and where any given person might be as far afield as, say, Nepal). I suggested (the suggestion was not adopted) that the office personnel set up Twitter accounts linked to their work emails, keep their statuses updated on said accounts, and follow each other. That way, when X needed to know where Y was, it would be as easy as looking at Y's latest tweet ("gone to lunch, be back about 1;" "back from lunch, at my desk;" "gone home for the day;" etc.). And as a bonus, since most people in the office carried cell phones, they could update even while out of the office ("stranded in Nepal; someone get a sherpa out here, stat").

As the political establishment worldwide is learning (and responding to), Twitter's also a good way to coordinate protests and other actions, or even just to get a large conversation going on a topic of shared interest. Just set up a hashtag, and everyone who wants to be involved keeps an eye on it (of course, those who want to surveil you can too, which is why some new and different tools are coming into use).

You can set up multiple Twitter accounts to do different things, and there are apps that handle those multiple accounts for you. And there are other tools that can do some of the same things, perhaps better for your purposes.

But, overall, Twitter can be useful for any purpose that requires (or just benefits from) the ability to quickly and easily communicate with multiple people in short text message format across multiple device types (desktop computer, cell phone, Blackberry, what have you).

When Facebook Hands You Lemons ...

... HootSuite makes for pretty good lemonade (yes, that is an affiliate link -- I get a commission if you decide to go with their "pro" options, which may be the case if you're all about analytics and such, or use your social networks in a team setting; I'm using the free version and it does what I need it to do).

So, have you been caught in Facebook's "Timeline" hell yet? I got sucked into it myself. Don't like it much. Prettier in some ways than the last iteration of Facebook, but also more complicated and apparently it zapped my existing display/privacy settings in favor of some random hash. And while I've found some theoretical ways of backing out and getting back to "Old Facebook," they're complicated and I can't seem to find the stuff they tell me to look for.

That's what pushed me to take a second look at HootSuite. I registered there awhile back and it looked pretty cool, but I usually don't adopt multi-tool "dashboards" without some kind of compelling reason. My Facebook profile suddenly and irreversibly looking like MySpace on a bad day is a compelling reason.

HootSuite lets you put all your social media streams on one page (and in one browser tab), organized the way you like, with internal (and very arrangeable/configurable) tabbing to keep things straight. You can post to any or all of those streams, and even schedule posts in advance.

Right now I've got Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn plugged into the dashboard. Very nice. I haven't used LinkedIn much before; maybe I will now that it's sort of in my face a bit. Everything's neat, organized, accessible. I can tell what's on my damn Facebook wall, which is nice. The main network that's missing (from my perspective) is Diaspora. A little Googling tells me that they're working on that.

Anyway, give it a try. If you use social networks very much, this will probably make it easier. If nothing else, you're not running three or more apps or browser tabs to keep up with the various sites.

[Update: Ooh, I just noticed another cool thing in Hootsuite. I can turn any Facebook thread into its own stream/tab, so that I don't have to hunt for it when I want to catch up with it a little later. That's nice - TLK]

The latest in incredibly stupid

PC Magazine:

Twitter on Friday issued a clear statement to developers that placed a moratorium on third-party apps.

Why? When you have to ask "why," the answer is usually "money." But here's the official line from Ryan Sarver, Twitter's "director of platform":

We need to ensure that tweets and tweet actions, are rendered in a consistent way so that people have the same experience with tweets no matter what they are ...

There's a time and place for uniformity of experience. It's called McDonald's.

Twitter's revenue model, if it ever gets its act together, will be the sale of advertising. So yes, I can see why they might API-block apps that don't run the ads they sell.

Beyond that, denying users the ability to tailor their Twitter experience to their own preferences (by denying developers the ability to offer other options) can only hurt, not help, Twitter.

Some people like Twitter's in-house experience (I'm one of them, although I've been flirting with Seesmic lately).

Others want to use Tweetie, Tweetdeck, whatever.

Unless Twitter is playing some deep game in which mass migration to some other API -- StatusNet, for example -- followed by fiery corporate death is part of the plan, it needs to extract cranium from rectum ASAP.

Why they have to make everything so complicated?

Twitter, that is.

Great service, and capitalized to the tune of something like $20 [update: Er, million] last time I heard. But they still apparently don't have a revenue plan, and the ideas being thrown around (premium paid services for corporate customers, etc.) don't make that much sense.

Here's what DOES make sense:

A lot, maybe even most tweets include links. People see something interesting, they tweet it to their followers with link. People blog something, they tweet it to their followers with link. People arranging a meetup, they tweet their followers with a link to a map. Looking at my Twitterfox feed just now, every other tweet or so has a link.

Some of the links are pre-shortened by the users using TinyURL or Snipr or whatever. The long ones are automatically truncated by Twitter itself.

So, since their design already allows them to modify links, why not modify EVERY link Adjix-style, so that those clicking thru on it see an ad in a small strip at the top of the site they're going to? Then sell the advertising space on a CPM or PPC basis, of course. They could probably even make the advertising contextual based on the link destination or on information they've teased out of the tweeting and clicking users' relationships and behaviors.

For that matter, they could also override into the individual's tweetstream themselves -- every 5th tweet you send, every tenth you receive, you receive an "ad by tweet."

Doesn't seem like rocket science.