While I was whooping and hollering over the final touch down by the Giants on Super Bowl Sunday I got a twitter from Chiropractic, a fellow Twitterer obviously as ecstatic as I was. It was quite cool to connect with someone in another part of the continent excited over an event we were both watching… it was kind of surreal.

Apparently getting a Twitter or two was a very common occurence during the Super Bowl. In fact, Twitter decided to plot the spikes in Twitter traffic during the Super Bowl with some cool results. As it turned out there was a spike in traffic during every critical point within the game. Click on the chart to see the larger more revealing version. Read more…

Here are some of the interesting articles and posts I came across today… it is a bit of a content spread

• If you use Twitter and you like it tell Shoemoney why!
  Popular blogger Shoemoney is just not that sure why anyone wants to use Twitter. I put my two cents in, why not you?
• Yahoo soft-launches lifecasting service
  The scivvy on a new service leaked from Yahoo that will be based on personal live broadcasting of video.
• 2007 US Internet Year Stats Released by comScore
• Weekly Digest of the Social Networking Space: Jan 30, 2008
  Jeremiah Owyang creates this nice overview of the social media landscape on a weekly basis.
• Middle East and Asia Lose Internet Access After Cable Fails
  Oh my… need I say more?

On the always helpful advice of Michael Dorausch (a fellow Twitter user) I submitted my Twitter profile to the Twitter Pack Project. The Twitter Pack Project is a wiki where anyone can catalogue their Twitter address under a variety of categories:

• Packs by Topic
• Packs by Location
• Packs by Company
• Packs by Events or Meet-ups
• Packs by Identity

So what is the point? To gain more followers and network more with people of like minds. It is a great idea and I am happy that I took the time to publish my Twitter profile (www.twitter.com/rossdunn).

If you have a profile be sure to post it on the Twitter Pack Project. If you don’t have a Twitter account give Twitter a try, I have not regretted it one bit. In fact it has taken me by surprise just how good a networking tool it is and how interesting it is to follow people’s everyday discoveries as they Twitter them.

Related articles/posts:

• Twitter’s Usefulness Underscored During San Francisco Storm
• Twitter Get’s a Guide

Expect QDOS (taken from ‘kudos’) to be on the lips of many over the next year. QDOS is a method to monitor and measure your own Internet popularity and, in the longer run, help you secure your online persona from identity theft.

Currently running in Beta in the UK, QDOS is planning to launch in North America in this first quarter of 2008. So how does QDOS calculate Internet status?

Read more…

Since I signed up with Twitter I have experienced a wide array of emotion while experiencing the lives of the people I follow; sad because someone I follow was struggling with depression, frustrated due to repetitive useless tweets, and amazed and excited by the timely news I am often privy too. Obviously I prefer to be excited and amazed and today happens to be one of those days.

In this case, San Francisco and much of California is currently being rocked by a highly irregular storm that has raised severe weather alerts such as flash floods, and high surf/coastal floods. Well it just so happens that a few of the people I follow on Twitter are from this area and their tweets provide proof that Twitter (the community-based text messaging platform) has a value above my expectation. Read more…

If you have ever used Facebook then this video by the geniuses over at Train of Thought (a comedy sketch group) will surely give you a chuckle:

Today I have been busy polishing off a feature article for tomorrow’s SEO newsletter but in the midst of that I came across a few articles and posts that caught my eye:

• My Twitter friend and social networker extroardinaire Tamar Weinberg wrote a great article that shows which social media networks she networks across different social sites:
  “How Do You Network On Social Sites?“
• ResourceShelf has links to recently posted research papers by Google employees. These papers can be gems for foretelling the future of search: Recently Posted Research Papers and Biblographic Info by Googlers. Special thanks to Barry Schwartz and his helpful Tweet that brought me to this info.
• The unofficial Facebook blog (“AF”) discusses the incredible potential of social shopping heralded by Facebook’s recent Beta test of a payment system. You will be hearing a LOT more about this very soon.
• Did you know that Democrats “participate more fully in social technologies”? This is just one of the interesting nuggets found in this fascinating post by Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research: Social Profiles of Political Candidates. The posting has excellent information sourced from a Forrester research document.

In an effort to compete with Google Maps and Google Earth, and to capture the traffic of one of the UK’s most visited websites, Microsoft has purchased online mapping service Multimap for an undisclosed sum.

According to a press release issued by Multimap on Dec 12, “Multimap will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft as part of the Visual Earth and Search teams in the Online Services Group.”

“The addition of Multimap enhances Microsoft’s position as a leading provider of mapping and location platform services,” said Sharon Baylay, general manager of the Online Services Group at Microsoft. “This acquisition will play a significant role in the future growth of our search business and presents a huge opportunity to expand our platform business beyond the U.K. and globally. We are thrilled to welcome Multimap onboard.”

Multimap is among of the UK’s top 100 tech companies, and is one of the leading online mapping services. Their services include street-level maps, road maps, door-to-door travel directions, aerial photos, and links to location information and services.

My original article on Wikipedia’s history of controversial editing was labelled “Is Wikipedia Corrupt?” At the time the title was meant to only raise awareness, however, coincidentally since that article premiered the popular online encyclopedia has been thrashed by mainstream media for some highly suspect behaviour.

Case-in-point, the Register published an article noting how Wikipedia outright banned over 1000 homes in Traverse Mountain, Utah, and an entire company (Overstock.com) in an effort to quash a Mr. Judd Bagley who had recently stated on his own blog that Wikipedia editors were “using their powers to hijack reality.” The Register article (which I sourced that quote from) goes into 5 detailed pages of description on how this went down and I must say, I was very unimpressed with Wikipedia by the end of it all. For more information and background on this case please give it a read – it is well worth it. Read more…

Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim has a great article today by Janet Meiners that discussed a couple of winning sales approaches that are definitely worth sharing:

1. An offline social shopping experience at Bloomingdales that was chosen by Time Magazine as one of 2007′s best inventions. Created by IconNicholson this innovative concept highlights the use of text messaging, shared video, and virtually trying on clothes to aid shopping in the real world. This concept is extremely very interesting and I imagine there are ways to apply this concept to many different offline marketplaces. If you think of a way to adapt it to yours please keep me (ross at stepforth dot com) informed; I would love to see how it turns out for you.
2. The article also noted some recent research from SellPoint that suggests audio/video tours of products can increase time spent on site and ultimately translate into more sales. SellPoint happens to sell services offering audio/video tours so I would take this info with a grain of salt, however, as a consumer I have to admit I am a huge proponent of these types of interactive product tours so I feel this data is worth passing on.

So there you are… just a couple of notes I thought I would share before I account for a couple of great seminars I attended at PubCon Las Vegas last week. Have an excellent evening!