Archive for September, 2008
This post highlights 10 tools for discovery and managing url and brand chatter. If you’re doing business online or offline, these tools are essential. As the saying goes, “keeping your ear to the street.”
Google web search should be your obvious first choice for listening. Web search will sometimes drown you in thousands of pages of results, most of which is often not relevant or current to your search query. Web search is great for research and historical purposes. When you are listening for real time chatter about your brand, Google blog search is the tool you need to be using. Most chatter either positive or negative can track back to the source, bloggers, blog postings, and comments left on blogs.
Google Custom Search allows you to create a custom search engine that only searches the keywords and sites you specify. It’s basically a filtering layer over the main search engine. Custom Search can be used for an endless amount of purposes. It can be a very effective and a productive tool in your arsenal, and it just takes a few minutes to set up.
3) Google Alerts:
Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic. Creating an alert is as simple as the screen shot above shows. Input the keyword, sources to search, or leave it set at the default of comprehensive, this will search everything. Lastly set your email alert frequency.
4) Google Reader:
It’s simply not feasible to visit hundreds of websites/blogs a day looking for brand mentions, chatter. Google Reader makes it possible to stay on top of several hundred websites in one place.This is as close to real time as you will get courtesy of RSS feeds. As I mentioned earlier, there is a good chance that you will find chatter on blog postings and comments. Compile a relevant list of these blog RSS feeds and if possible their comment RSS feed as well. As you come across them, input them into Google Reader. If a source does not have RSS implemented, a custom search filter will do the trick. Google Reader should be your central hub for content discovery, digestion, redistribution and monitoring.
5) Twitter:
Twitter can be, if not as equally important as Google Blog search for discovery of mentions regarding your brand. Twitter needs to be paid special attention to. It’s no longer the shiny toy for early adopters, it’s gone mainstream. Consumers are voicing their frustrations in growing numbers on Twitter, and corporations are listening. If something is being mentioned on Twitter, it should be relativity easy to track it down using a basic Twitter search. You can also narrow your results down further using search operators or advanced search. Twitter search pages also gives you an RSS feed for the search term. You can add the RSS feeds to your watch lists in Google Reader.
6) Technorati:
Technorati is a good tool for searching a url or brand mentions. It searches a broad base of content sources. It’s built on blogs, so it’s a safe bet any mention of your brand on a blog will usually be picked up by Technorati. Use this in combination with Google Reader.
7) Yacktrack:
Yacktrack is a tool for anyone who wants to search for comments on the content they produce. It searches various sources such as Twitter and other blogs for chatter about your content. Yacktrack does a nice job of searching for those distributed comments and pooling them into one place. You can additionally search for comments by either url or keyword. Yacktrack search page results also gives you an RSS feed for the search term. I would recommend adding that to your Google Reader watch lists.
8 ) Filtrbox:
Filtrbox is for professional, persistent media monitoring. Filtrbox makes it easy to mashup all your content sources into one monitoring service. It offers a plethora of features and options. It’s “FiltrRank” technology scores content based on three dimensions: contextual relevance, popularity and feedback. In testing I was extremely impressed with the accuracy and relevancy of the test filters I set up. Some of the various added features are, email alerts, the ability to share articles found by Filtrbox via email, or post them to Facebook, Digg and del.icio.us. Filtrbox offers a free, and a pay to play membership offering.
9) Social Mention:
Social mention is a social media search engine. It searches various sources such as Google blog search, Twitter, Delicious, FriendFeed, Digg etc. The data looks to be very fresh, and as close to real time as possible. In addition, they state that they offer email alerts and personalized RSS feeds. I was unable to locate these features on the site.
10) FriendFeed Search:
FriendFeed search deserves a notable mention. FriendFeed, at its core is a social content aggregator, but it’s also a very powerful social media search engine. FriendFeed gives you the ability to search its entire user base for content that is being imported in from over 43 different social media sites and applications. FriendFeed also has a highly active and vocal community. Rest assured if it’s on a blog, it’s being posted, shared or commented on FriendFeed. FriendFeed recently also implemented the capability to search rooms.
In July I wrote a blog post titled 10 people you should follow on Friendfeed. The list detailed the top 10 people I find the most interesting, according to Friendfeed’s statistics. This time around I’m highlighting 20 more people that I find interesting, and I think that you will too. The post in July was mainly social media/tech people on FriendFeed. This list gives you the best of both worlds on FriendFeed, techie/non techie, and a little something for everyone.
Short Bio: Robert is a husband, father, blogger, technical evangelist and author. Scoble is best known for his popular blog, Scobleizer, which came to prominence during his tenure as a technical evangelist at Microsoft. He currently works for Fast Company as a video blogger. There is a reason why Robert is the most followed person in social media.
Topics: Technology, Social Media, Social Applications, Software, Startups
Web: http://scobleizer.com/
2) Mona N
Short Bio: Mona in her own words, “I’m just a regular girl addicted to: Social Media, the Internet, Star Wars, LEGO, and anything with a power switch + USB.” Mona is considered the Queen of FriendFeed, and I happen to agree. Mona is one of the main reasons why FriendFeed is fun, and will achieve mainstream success. Mona posts funny, weird and creative things.You will never find a dull moment when surfing her feed. Subscribing to Mona is a requirement.
Topics: Social Media, Technology, Legos, Toys, Twitter, Bacon, Food, Odd, Funny, Applications, Interesting. A little of everything.
Web: http://pixelbits.wordpress.com/
3) Mark Wilson
Short Bio: Mark has been coined the male version of Mona. Like Mona he posts entertaining, odd, funny and interesting content. Mark like the rest of us, is a die hard FriendFeeder. He loves FriendFeed so much that he ” want’s to take it behind a middle school and get it pregnant.”
Topics: Music, Odd, Funny, Interesting. His interests run the gamut.
Web: http://markwilson.wordpress.com/
4) Mark Dykeman
Short Bio: Mark is a married IT professional with two children from New Brunswick, Canada. Mark is a very articulate deep thinker who writes extensively about social media and technology. Mark also guest posts often on Louisgray.com and Mashable.com
Topics: Social Media, Social Applications, Communication, Technology
Web: http://broadcasting-brain.com/
5) Rob Diana
Short Bio: Rob is a software engineer, a husband and a father. Rob writes about social media, technology and general programming. Rob created and developed Yacktrack.com. He also guest posts on Mashable.com and Louisgray.com
Topics: Social Applications, Social Media, Technology, Software, Programming
Web: http://regulargeek.com/
6) Kyle Lacy
Short Bio: Kyle is an energetic graphic designer who hails from Indiana. Kyle writes about social media and branding. Kyle breeds life on FriendFeed at night. Paired with Mona he is one of the driving forces of the FriendFeed night crew.
Topics: Social Media, Branding, Marketing
Web: http://www.kylelacy.com/
7) Carlos Ayala
Short Bio: Carlos is a technology and multimedia expert from New York, currently residing in Florida. Carlos posts entertaining, odd and interesting things. He also has great taste for Hip Hop and Classic Rock.
Topics: Technology, Random, Funny, Interesting. A little of everything.
Web: http://friendfeed.com/cma3
8 ) Edythe
Short Bio: Edythe Aka Polly R, resides in California. Last I checked she held the record on FriendFeed for most likes. If Edythe likes it, you know it must be good! She posts entertaining, and interesting things
Topics: Funny, Interesting. A little of everything.
Web: http://friendfeed.com/furry
9) Michael J. Cohen
Short Bio: Michael is an active FriendFeeder and technology buff who resides in Florida. Michael posts a good mixture of entertaining and interesting content.
Topics: Social Media, Technology, Interesting. A little of everything.
Web: http://325i.org/
Short Bio: Dobromir is a web designer and marketing consultant from Bulgaria. Dobromir is one of my human news filters. He constantly shares, stumbles, diggs, and discovers great technology and social media related content.
Topics: Technology, Social Applications, Social Media, Design
Web: http://friendfeed.com/dobata
11) Tamar Weinberg
Short Bio: Tamar is a freelance writer and internet marketing consultant, specializing in viral marketing, and social media. She is a Florida native currently residing in New York. Tamar has written for numerous blogs, including Lifehacker.com and Mashable.com on a variety of subjects, from tech to travel.
Topics: Social Media, Viral Marketing, Technology, SEO. A little of everything.
Web: http://www.techipedia.com/
12) Susan Beebe
Short Bio: Susan is an IT professional from California, currently residing in Rochester, New York. Susan shares a good mixture of technology and social media content. Susan knows a thing or two about IT!
Topics: Social Media, IT, Technology. A little of everything.
Web: http://friendfeed.com/susanbeebe
13) Justin Korn
Short Bio: Justin Korn is a 30 year old web developer, blogger and photographer from Pennsylvania, currently residing in San Francisco, California. Justin’s core passion is photography. I would consider his photography far from amateur. He closely follows in the footsteps of the legend, Thomas Hawk.
Topics: Social Media, Technology, Web Development, Photography
Web: http://blog.justinkorn.com/
14) Erhan Erdogan
Short Bio: Erhan is a blogger residing in Turkey. Erhan blogs about technology and emerging web 2.0 start ups. He shares a good mixture of social media and technology related content.
Topics: Social Media, Social Applications, Technology
Web: http://friendfeed.com/erhan
15) Rahsheen
Short Bio: Rahsheen is a father,blogger, bodybuilder, singer/songwriter/rapper. You can’t label Rahsheen. The only label Rahsheen needs to see is a record label contract. You can expect an assortment of material on his feed. He blogs about technology, social media, applications, and his personal views on a just about anything.
Topics: Social Media, Social Applications, Technology, A little of everything.
Web: http://sheenonline.biz/
16) Shey Smith
Short Bio: Shey is a graphic designer who was born in Kingston, Jamaica. He currently resides in Toronto, Canada. Shey blogs about design, social media, social issues and technology.
Topics: Social Media, Technology, Design, Sports
Web:http://www.sheysmith.com/
17) Nice Fish Films
Short Bio: Michael Wright is a film producer from California. Michael is an active FriendFeeder who’s feed always has something worthy of looking into. Topics: Interesting. A little of everything.Web: http://nicefishfilms.com/blog/
18) Chris Baskind
Short Bio: Chris lives in Florida and is an environmental writer and the Publisher of Vida Verde Media, a green lifestyle company. He’s also a regular contributor to EcoTech Daily. If you want to go green, then I suggest subscribing to Chris.
Topics: Environmental
Web: http://chrisbaskind.com/
19) (Jeff)isageek
Short Bio: Jeff is a married blogger from Kansas. Jeff blogs about social media, software, social applications, and gaming, just to name a few.
Topics: Social Media, Social Applications, Gaming, Technology, Humor,
Web: http://www.jeffisageek.net/blog
20) Duncan Riley
Short Bio: Duncan Riley is a married, father, blogger and technologist from Australia. Duncan wrote for techcrunch.com for a period of time. Duncan currently owns and operates inquisitr.com, a blog that provides a relevant mix of tech, pop culture and odd/ funny news.
Topics: Social Media, Technology, Humor. A little of everything
Web: http://www.inquisitr.com/
Now that I have my established lists, the task of organizing begins. With several hundred subscriptions, the keyword is bulk management. FriendFeed allows you to bulk add friends to a desired list. However, it does not allow you to bulk remove friends off your primary home feed. This task is taking a considerable amount of time due to the removal of all my subscribers off my home feed, and into their appropriate lists. Currently this has to be done manually, as there is no bulk removal option in place for taking everyone off your home feed. Overall you will need to spend a decent amount of time organizing your lists to get the most efficiency out of them.
My question is, why and what do I need a home feed for?
Lists help tremendously, but still it is not the end all solution. You can’t truly use lists for topical breakdown because most people talk about multiple topics. This is an observation Mark Trapp voiced in this thread. I absolutely agree with Mark. I’m running into duplication issues now with lists. This is something I am trying to avoid with the elimination of my home feed as a starting point. Keywords would be a perfect solution for this problem. My ideal home feed would and should be based off keyword selection. I suspect we will see this implemented in the future on FriendFeed.
My List Management:
Page A: This is my FriendFeed all star page. Highly active members who I have established connections with and interact with daily. I often network with them on other social networks and platforms. This is my core inner network.
Page B: Members with moderate activity. Moderate for me is not also your posting frequency, but the content you post as well. I usually have a good tolerance level for topics such as politics and religion. However, when it overwhelms my feed, you will have then made it to the b-list.
Page C: Members with low activity. This also serves as a holding tank for members I have yet to classify, and who are newly subscribed to me and vice versa.
My other two categories are Social Media/Tech and Photography. These are self explanatory.
Duplicate detection:
Now when multiple friends share the same link, the set of duplicate entries will only show up once in your feed. There is an added bonus too, as quoted by Brett Taylor.
My favorite part of the dup detection is that it understands URL shorteners, so Tweets about blog posts will dup with the blog post itself. - Bret Taylor
Mitch Joel from Six Pixels of Separation, started a project for anyone to participate in, to write about one of your best practices in Social Media Marketing.
Here are my thoughts on two practices:
Consistency:
I would like to echo Mitch’s best practice, consistency. Staying consistent is necessary for maintaining your brand’s online presence. Your brand, whether it be personal or professional, should be able to be recognized on most, if not all social media networks and platforms. Keep your profiles and user name selections the same if possible. It’s also good practice to use the same profile image and email address. Establish as many passport accounts as possible. One primary reason for this is for search engine traffic. It will help you to establish dominance for your brand in the search results. You want as many links pointing to your site as possible. Links with authority and relevance weigh more with search results, and help with pagerank as well. Consistency needs to be applied to every facet of your social media consumption and digestion process.
- Be consistent with blog posts. Try to establish and maintain a schedule for posts and stick with it.
- Be consistent with updates and replies on your micro blogging platforms, primarily Twitter.
- Be consistent with commenting on other blogs, as well as with comments left on your own blog.
- Be consistent with recognition of your peers content. Some forms of recognition are StumbleUpon, Digg, and social bookmarking. For instance the liking system on FriendFeed serves as a recognition system.
- Be consistent with tagging your images, bookmarks and blog postings.
- Be consistent with sharing and what you are sharing. Think how it will reflect on your brand, good or bad.
Sharing:
If I had to pick what I feel my best practice in social media is, I would say it’s sharing. Sharing for me is the most powerful outlet to get a message out there quickly. Think about how we come to comment, discover, and recognize in the social media platform. The foundation starts with the content we create and then share. Most of my time is spent in heavy digest mode, and in the phase of discovery, courtesy of RSS and Google Reader. Once you discover great content that is relevant to whatever your interests are, you must share it. I can’t stress enough how important sharing is, on so many levels. Sharing is one of the core foundations of social networking and social media. Google Reader is a good instrument for this task. Reward authors by sharing their content and feeding it into your Strands, FriendFeed or FaceBook account for example. The point is, content can be shared anywhere, and anytime on the social web, using any site, tool, or platform. Social bookmarking is also a great tool for sharing. Don’t forget you can also StumbleUpon or Digg a new find as well.
- Sharing is caring
- Sharing is contributing
- Sharing creates conversations
- Sharing is learning
- Sharing creates and builds communities
- Sharing is networking
- Sharing is Social Media!
I’m tagging Kyle Lacy, Louis Gray and Alexander van Elsas.
Lately, I have been reading quite a few posts on the importance of owning your name in search. For whatever the reason may be, personal or financial, getting your name out there on the web is the most important factor that decides if you will sink or swim. The first thing you must realize on the web, is the if you build it, they will come mentality will not get you very far, and will seal your fate rather quickly. Unless you have a premium dot com domain with type in traffic, or you are a corporation with money budgeted to engage in online ad campaigns, your only alternative is to start creating organic link relationships and opportunities with search engines, more specifically Google. Search engines are still the number one destination consumers go to for their search and discovery.
I find that in terms of traffic, Google is more social media friendly and relevant in search results compared to other search engines. This brings us to my favorite two words, social media. Social media provides us a multitude of tools to help us achieve search engine ranking zen.
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Consider your personal brand an empty baseball field. You should be focused and dedicated into making it a field of dreams. The fans, your audience is the dream.
I’m focusing on personal branding. These tools and methods can be applied to any type of branding or promoting on the web. Results are easier to obtain because your brand or keyword is your name, rather than a consumer brand or product such as Apple, or iPod. Your only competition in search is with people that share the same name as you. If you have a real common name such as John Smith, obviously it will be a little harder, but still very achievable. Consider a study that was just released using Eye Tracking technology to determine search pattern behavior. It reveals that:
Fixations are studded around the top 5 results and the majority of clicks are upon the top 3 results (discounting the sponsored link).
Now more importantly then ever, you must be in the top five search results. It’s no longer good enough just being listed anywhere on page one of the search results. Personally, I give more weight to the top results, because usually they are the most relevant sources of information for the desired topic. I will scroll through at least 4-5 pages of results, if I am not satisfied with results from page one. But does your average non informed, non tech savvy surfer scroll past page one? The answer most likely is no.
Chris Brogan touches on the subject of personal branding extensively in a free eBook he just recently compiled and released. This is your starting point, and a required read. Now let’s talk about the easiest way to achieve search engine zen with social media.
Passports:
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Passports are simply accounts or profiles on other social networking sites and platforms. Passports gives us shiny badges for our blogs, more importantly they are a key traffic source. Establishing profiles is important because it promotes your brand’s url. Almost all social networking sites and tools allow for links to your various social networking profiles.
Considering myself to be an early adopter, I’m often very quick to establish multiple passports on and across the social media platforms. The core objective with all shiny toys, new and old is to establish presence. Profiles all have one thing in common, they link back to that empty baseball field, your brand.
I ran a search query on Google for the keyword Mike Fruchter, and realized I now own the search term. There are 79,800 results for the keyword Mike Fruchter, albeit my last name is not as common as Smith. I can rest assured anyone typing in those keywords will find a link back to michaelfruchter.com, and/or a new point of engagement if need be.
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Start with some of the basics first:
- Buy your domain name
- Install a blogging platform such as Wordpress
- Establish a FaceBook account
- Establish a FriendFeed account
- Establish a Google Profile
- Establish a photo sharing account, ideally Flickr or Picasa
- Establish a Twitter account
- Tag when applicable
- Establish multiple social bookmarking accounts
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Establishing accounts is the easy part. Sure this will get you some search engine exposure, but not nearly the amount you would get from using these services on a daily basis. The minimum upkeep of your profiles can take 5-10 mins of your day. By continually updating your statuses on your services, you are increasing your search rankings and branding relevance. Remember a Twitter profile is indexed by Google, but so are those precious tweets. Same goes with those blog posts, FriendFeed comments, Disqus comments etc. Update a minimum of 3-5 times a week if need be. Tags are powerful for search engine traffic as well. Make sure you tag as much as possible when applicable. While I am on the subject of tagging, it’s good practice to tag your blog postings with the subjects name. This is a great way of two way personal branding. I am seeing this used more frequently on blog postings. Here is an example of myself being tagged by Svetlana Gladkova on a posting she wrote titled No Data Portablity? Ok, We’ll Use FriendFeed. The positive from this is the obvious search engine listing.
Sign up for any new social media service that comes along. Take your profile and “set it and forget it.” Repeat the process several hundred times and you are on the right track to reap the benefits.
I was thinking about all the data we lifestream. What does this data say about us? How valuable is this data in the right corporation’s hands? Bookmarks are very telling of a individuals mindset, habits, and interests. The same interpretations can be made about the data we lifestream. A person’s digital fingerprint is a potential gold mine of data for various industries.
Upon analyzing my own lifestream on FriendFeed, you could tell the following things about me:
My digital music fingerprint shows that I stream classic rock and hip hop. While I like many types of music, I tend to listen to these two genres the most, at least when I’m online. Music industries are you listening?
Tweets show that I’m a father. It also shows that there is at least one child in my household. Babies R Us are you listening?
These pictures show my beautiful daughter Kaylee. It pretty much echos the tweet. The visual just completes a potential new customer profile. What’s the latest and greatest in baby products for a now almost four month old infant?
RSS:
My profile reveals that I read and follow quite a few bloggers in the tech and social media space. Technology and social media are the dominating factors on my lifestream.
Read my feeds. That should give you a good idea of the products I might be interested in. If you dug into my digital fingerprint further, you would easily find your hook.
My bookmarks are always a good primary indicator of my mindset at the moment. They chronicle my current interests, and also serve for future reading and exploration. As a side note, bookmarking can also be misleading.
My blog is titled “My Thoughts On Social Media”. This is my main focus of interest.
Behavioral targeted advertising is nothing new in social media. Tracking and targeting can easily be done now with lifestreaming and rss, as opposed to traditional cookies.
What does your digital fingerprint say about you. More importantly, what information are you broadcasting to corporations?
Kyle Lacy recently wrote a posting asking, when does a subscription turn into a relationship?
While I don’t think there is a simple answer for this question, relationships offline should be formed and encouraged. People that I follow through online social media, I follow because our interests are pretty much similar. There are at least several dozen or so people I network with online, that given the chance, I would network with offline. Communication online using tools such as IM, FriendFeed, Twitter is good for maintaining what’s going on or what is missed, but nothing beats talking shop in person.
The Internet is what connects us all, but it’s also the same thing that divides us all. Most relationships formed online probably never make it to the offline stage. I have not seen any data on this, it just seems logical. We are all bound by our geographical and financial limitations.
Friends that I have been developing and have a repore with online, I have been making an effort to network with offline. While I look forward to these opportunities, I am bound by my geographical and financial constraints. Most of the people I network with online, do not live in the state of Florida, much less the United States. In my circle of networking, there are about 3-5 individuals within a 60 mile radius. Granted if the economy was in better shape, it might kick start people driving more and flying. With the rising costs of air travel and gas, online relationships for the most part will remain online unless local, if there is a will.
I look forward to the opportunity to network offline if it’s within an hours driving distance. Kyle Lacy recently informed me he is coming to the state of Florida. Kyle is becoming very popular on FriendFeed, and overall seems to be a stand up guy. Like myself, he shares the sames interests and passion about social media. Kyle is definitely someone I would network with offline. Threfore, we came up with the idea of a West Palm Beach/Miami FriendFeed Meetup. This will be a great opportunity to meet and network offline with FriendFeed members. This of course is all geographically dependent. I will post more in detail about the meet up in the next week or two. Anyone who lives in Florida is welcome to attend. Venue is yet to be determined at this point.
Moral of the story, if you see an opportunity to network offline, seize it. Social media should brings us together online and off.
Today, Toluu launched the long awaited feature that its members have been patiently waiting for. The new feature is the ability to label and discover new feeds using tags. Just as you would use Diigo for labeling, sorting and discovery of new bookmarks, you can now do the same with your rss feeds on Toluu.
Clicking the tags tab on any feed will reveal the top tags in the Toluu system for that particular feed. If there is no tag in the system for a specific feed, you can easily assign one.
Occasionally you will find a particular feed on the system with no tag. Toluu makes it easy to add the corresponding tag for that feed into the system. Toluu’s tag matching technology will match the keyword you assign to any other feeds across the Toluu system with similar tags. Toluu also added an auto-suggest feature which pulls from the tags you have used in the past. This makes it easier to tag feeds even faster using tags you previously have used.
I added the tag startup for the feed Startup Mentality. The system accurately found five matching feeds based on that keyword. The tagging results will strengthen in time as members start to tag feeds in the system. This will help strengthen the results to ensure even better accuracy of matching.
You can quickly drill down on tags to find related feeds in the Toluu system. The tag ‘technology’ yielded an impressive 692 related feeds.
Member profiles now display your five most used Top Tags. This is another quick way to discover what’s peeking your friends interests.
Feed pages now have new sort options. Now recent, subscribers, a-z, have been added as sort options. This now gives you a new way to look at the tags other members use and the feeds associated with them. This also makes it easier when exploring a member’s feeds because you can quickly get a feel for their interests based on the tags they may use. You will also now notice total feed counts is displayed on feed pages.
Toluu has done an excellent job with the well needed features and functionality improvements. What all this means to you is, better functionality makes for more better exploration and easier discovery.
Toluu is still in private beta. If you would like an invite to test the service out, please post your email address in the comments. You can also follow me on Toluu and discover the feeds I read.
Toluu just got a lot better & now a lot more social!
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Sweetcron is the latest new shiny toy in self-hosted lifestreaming. Sweetcrons main selling point is the ability to store your lifestreaming data on your own server,and on your own domain. There was much awaited anticipation of this application. It has garnered lots of publicity for the past few months. I finally installed Sweetcron and took it for a test drive..
I was extremely unimpressed. The hype sold me, but that’s about the only thing that I can say will sell me about this application, or at least in its current stages.
Most of us who attempt to set up self-hosted lifestreams must be comfortable with php, and for the most part, rely on plugins in conjuncture with some type of blogging platform, usually wordpress. While I expected Sweetcron to be so much more, it’s pretty much a stripped down wordpress blog with tags and the capability of importing rss. In it’s current state it does not look very secure. The php scripts running it, look off the shelf and possibly highly exploitable.
It’s in pretty rough shape: nowhere near a 1.0 release. The architecture and design decisions come off as amateurish as well. I wouldn’t trust it with my data. - Mark Trapp
I agree with Mark Trapp’s comment quoted above, from this FriendFeed thread. I also would be very cautious of the data you input into Sweetcron at its present stages. This application needs some serious development. It could be your own personal FriendFeed, without the friends, but it’s simply not.
What Sweetcron does have going for them is the fact it’s open source and easily customizable. At least now, others can improve on this application where Sweetcron seems to have failed.
Under the hood, it runs on php and mysql. Setting it up was relatively easy. Create your database, modify your php files and it’s installed. The control panel is so bare-bones it could not be any more basic.
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The dashboard is minimal. It’s pretty self explanatory from the screen shot. You can do 3 things here.
- Write: Post directly to your lifestream
- View Items: Delete, edit, unpublish/publish.
- Feeds: Add or delete rss feeds.
You can also post directly to your lifestream. I guess this could be useful if you were extremely bored. This is what Twitter is for. This sort of defeats the purpose since you more then likely would have tweets imported in via rss.
This is your options page, or should I say lack of options page.
Last but not least, Smartcron has a link for comments, but failed to implement a commenting system. It’s great they suggest using Disqus for comments, but after all this application is built on mysql and php! Commenting could have been easily implemented.
At this stage in the game, there is nothing to see here folks. My advice is if your looking for a service like this, set up a self-hosted wordpress blog, and customize it.
