A Blog on Community, Design and Technology
From the category archives:
by Steffan Antonas on March 2, 2010
You know when the technology itself makes the most difference to how much engagement you get on the social web? In the very beginning, when it’s brand new to everyone. That’s when the alpha geeks, the 1% of the people that produce the most content online, temporarily ignore their other social networks to focus all [...]
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by Steffan Antonas on February 17, 2010
“All of our devices – our mobile phones, cameras, toys and media players – will become increasingly aware of where we are. Soon, geographical location, rather than broadcast schedules, will trigger entertainment experiences. Content will be tagged to places, and these will alert you to the proximity of your friends and people of similar interests” [...]
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by Steffan Antonas on February 17, 2010
This morning I got a pleasant surprise. The mail man dropped off a hardcover copy of Seth Godin’s new book Linchpin sent from a new friend. Totally made my day. Luke, thanks for reminding me again why I love to write this blog, and why helping others and giving generously are the best ways to [...]
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by Steffan Antonas on January 13, 2010
Foursquare’s thinking outside the box. They’ve teamed up with BART to spice up the ride for commuters. This is the first example I’ve seen of a transit agency using social media.
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by Steffan Antonas on December 7, 2009
Today there’s a big push to make Internet Access a basic human right. In the US, the majority of us take freedom of speech (online and offline) for granted and we tune out the debates on heavy censorship that is commonplace in other countries. If you’re not aware of the kind of control and manipulation [...]
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by Steffan Antonas on December 4, 2009
One of the hardest questions to answer definitively when it comes to social media is “How do we measure ROI when it comes to conversation?” Starting a blog and getting on Twitter and Facebook is a good start, but, even if you’re producing great content at a good clip, it’s hard to measure the value [...]
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by Steffan Antonas on October 19, 2009
Some fresh Hitwise data posted by Bill Tancer just a few weeks ago indicates that Twitter might have hit a wall and is now on the decline. Just as Twitter secured an additional $100 million in financing, which would place the company’s valuation in the $1 billion range, Bill dug into the data to take [...]
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by Steffan Antonas on September 15, 2009
The Facebook team put this visualization together with their internal data and posted it today. Watch how Facebook has grown to 250 million users around the world starting starting in Boston, MA. If you’re read “Accidental Billionaires: The Founding Of Facebook – A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal”, the visualization of the growth [...]
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by Steffan Antonas on September 11, 2009
Along with the shocking number of Mafia Wars invites I get on Facebook, I continue to get daily friend requests from people I have never met or had any contact with. Almost all of these invites have a similar personalized message attached…
“We’re already friends on [some other social network]“… so let’s be Facebook Friends!”
If you’ve [...]
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by Steffan Antonas on August 21, 2009
Knowing how to use Google Alerts to monitor what people are saying about you or your company online is a fundamental skill for managing reputation on the web. Setting up a host of keyword alerts for your name or company brand is a great start, but here’s the rub…what if you have a common [...]
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by Steffan Antonas on August 7, 2009
When Sysomos published its initial “Inside Twitter” report last month that looked at the people on Twitter and how it was being used, we discovered that 5% of users accounted for 75% of all activity. This finding was based on indexing 11.5 million accounts, and then looking at the top 5% users who accounted for [...]
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by Steffan Antonas on August 4, 2009
[tweetmeme]Vincenzo Cosenza has mapped the most popular social networks by country, according to traffic data gathered on Alexa & Google Trends (June 2009). While Facebook’s growing dominance over MySpace in the US and other countries comes as no surprise, it is interesting to see the few smaller networks that most of us have probably never [...]
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by Steffan Antonas on July 21, 2009
Let’s say you’ve recently moved to a new city. You’ve got a brand new apartment in an unfamiliar neighborhood and your friends and family are now hundreds of miles away.
A few weeks in, the rush of everything being new subsides and you start to feel lonely. No problem, you think. You make friends easily. It’s [...]
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by Steffan Antonas on June 29, 2009
Jesse Stay, Marshall Kirkpatrick and Dave Winer recently posted some interesting and insightful pieces on how Twitter is going after people who game Twitter to get more followers. There are some solid arguments made in each post in support of Twitter’s move, as well as on the dubious and controversial nature of Twitter’s suggested users [...]
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by Steffan Antonas on June 17, 2009
The iPhone 3.0 upgrade software was just released and, within minutes, #iPhone and #iTunes popup on the trending topics list as the iPhone community rushes to their computers to upgrade their phones. Between the time I ran the search and took this screenshot, there were over 1000 new twitter posts mentioning #iTunes – literally in [...]
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by Steffan Antonas on May 11, 2009
Today an article I wrote for ReadWriteWeb went live titled “Did Mark Zuckerberg’s Inspiration For Facebook Come Before Harvard?‘. I think it’s a great question, one worth exploring far beyond the light coverage I gave it in the article because the answer can offer us important clues into why Facebook has been so successful.
Facebook [...]
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by Steffan Antonas on May 11, 2009
Note: This article I wrote was originally published on ReadWriteWeb and syndicated to the New York Times on May 10th, 2009. I have posting it here and closed comments, but I have participated heavily in the discussions on the original ReadWriteWeb posting and posted additional thoughts and clarifications on the matter on this blog. Please [...]
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by Steffan Antonas on April 28, 2009
If you’re a heavy Twitter user like me, you may be familiar with the awkward, tense feeling that can grip you when a non-Twittering friend or co-worker decides that enough is enough and it’s time to confront you about your “habit” (Twintervention?). Regardless of the events that lead up to said awkward moment, the blank, [...]
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by Steffan Antonas on April 27, 2009
This week was my friend Angie Swartz’s first week hosting TwitterTalkRadio on WSRadio.com. I first met Angie at the Charity:Water Twestival at the beginning of this year in downtown San Diego. She’s a superstar. She’s a successful entrepreneur and currently runs several websites including SquareMartiniMedia.com, twitterattraction.com and sixfiguremomsclub.com.
On Monday she shot me a message asking [...]
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by Steffan Antonas on March 24, 2009
I recently made the decision to stop feeding my Twitter posts into Facebook. The reason is simple – I continually get negative feedback from my non-Twittering Facebook friends on how I update my status. Some hated how often I updated, some didn’t get what “@” and “RT” was, some didn’t like that they couldn’t join [...]
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