Aug
16th

Oneupweb Reviews: Booshaka! Facebook Public Search

Posted by Adam D on August 16, 2010 at 3:17 pm

We all love Twitter Search because it gives users the ability to see what real people are talking about at any given moment. Twitter itself offers users the ability to set their profile to Public or Private. Public allows anyone to see your tweets, where Private only allows those who are following you to see them. This sounds a lot like Facebook to me, and Twitter has a search, so why shouldn’t Facebook? I mean, wouldn’t it be great to see what is trending on Facebook, just like Twitter? Well, we found a new Facebook public search engine that claims to do just that called booshaka!

Booshaka!.com

With booshaka! (laka)— so fun to say—you can search specific keywords. If someone’s profile is public, and they are chatting about that keyword, their conversation will show up in your search results. But if you just want to search a broader topic like news, music or sports, you can also search by category.

The biggest difference I’ve noticed between Twitter search results and booshaka! is the length of the results. With Twitter search results, it’s easier to get a snapshot of what’s going on because the results are only 140 characters in length. With booshaka! the posts are naturally longer because Facebook allows longer posts.

Twitter Search Results For Movies

booshaka! Search Results For Movies

So as you can see, there might be a little more scrolling going on while using booshaka!. Then again, who would want to scroll when Vin is the top post? He’s so… beautiful.

Another difficulty booshaka! might encounter is the privacy issues that Facebook has had to deal with. Services like booshaka! only make Facebook users more aware of how public their information is. Which, I maintain, would not be a problem if Faceabook would have operated without subterfuge concerning the Open Graph. Let people know up front that their information is public, and they won’t be so surprised when they find out it is. Seems simple enough to me.

booshaka! also offers the ability to sort search results by most popular, trending now, most buzz, and most recent—as seen below. Also seen below is Vin laughing. You’re so funny Vin, you always know how to make us smile.

booshaka! Filtering Options

The ability to search public Facebook posts for keywords that are relevant to the user is pretty cool. And I like the filtering options as well. For making it easier to stalk celebrities… I mean search Facebook for Vin Diesel related news… I mean, awe forget it. We give booshaka! a…

Oneupweb Review: Thumbs Up

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Jul
20th

Oneupweb Reviews: 4 Ways To Schedule Tweets And Facebook Updates

Posted by Adam D on July 20, 2010 at 4:04 pm

Have you ever just wanted a simple way to send your Twitter and Facebook updates at a later time? Maybe you’re going away for the weekend, or you’re at work all day but you still want to send your friends and family updates. Here are a few of our favorite ways to schedule tweets and Facebook updates.

FutureTweets:

The great thing about FutureTweets is that you can schedule tweets simply and months in advanced. For example, you can schedule all your family and friends’ birthdays, then let FutureTweets remember them for you. I’m pretty sure my grandma does this somehow with snail mail cards. She never forgets a birthday (you can’t keep this secret forever grandma!).

Twuffer:

Twuffer is another free, simple, and easy to use way to schedule your tweets. The layout is clean and professional. It also includes a calendar and lists the tweets that have already gone out.

Su.pr:

StumbleUpon is really starting to grown on me. I’ve always enjoyed using this site personally but now they are adding some nice features that help to simplify your social media world. For example, you can schedule updates through StumbleUpon using their URL shortner, Su.pr, and share it across your Twitter and Facebook profiles.

LaterBro:

The thing I really like about LaterBro is its simplicity. You login with either your Twitter or Facebook account. Next, you’re taken to an intuitive scheduling interface. You will have no problem figuring things out from there. It doesn’t get much simpler than this.

Let me give a warning to those interested in automating your updates. You don’t want to use these services too much, especially as a business. People are looking to connect with another person, not just automated news or updates. While these services can be useful and save time, they are not meant as a replacement for authentic tweets and Facebook updates.

Oneupweb Review: Thumbs Up (but use sparingly)

What’s your favorite Twitter/Facebook scheduler? Let me know in the comments below!

Read more Oneupweb reviews on other Twitter Tools.

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Jun
7th

Oneupweb Reviews: MTV Movie Awards Tweet Tracker

Posted by Adam D on June 7, 2010 at 2:50 pm

I’ll be honest, I didn’t even know the MTV Movie Awards occurred last night until I read on Digg this morning that Sandra Bullock kissed Scarlett Johansson. But like most people, I wanted to know what else happened. So I went to check out what the most talked about moments were and discovered something pretty cool: MTV Movie Award’s Tweet Tracker.

With this handy application you can visually see what the most talked about topics or people were. The bigger the picture, the more talked about the topic. In the lower-right corner, you can even view what the most popular subject was at a particular time.

If the cloud version of Tweet Tracker has you feeling dizzy, you can always view the stripped version. Here the Tweets are broken down in sequential order. It’s interesting to see certain topics gain popularity over others.

Click on any of the topics seen above and a drop down box will show you the specific tweets. You can do the same with the cloud version as well.

Oneupweb Review: Thumbs Up

I wanted to mention that this application isn’t anything new. During the Olympics I reviewed a similar app called the Olympic Tracker. What’s interesting to me is that Twitter has not created a similar application for itself. Is Twitter really that behind in innovation, or are they taking a back seat to give others a chance to create and innovate? I couldn’t tell you exactly what the man behind the curtain at Twitter is thinking. But wouldn’t it be great to have an app like this for any topic of your choosing?

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May
26th

Oneupweb Reviews: LinkedIn Twitter Upgrade

Posted by Adam D on May 26, 2010 at 2:59 pm

For a long time, LinkedIn was viewed as somewhat useless. Once you set-up a profile, what then? This lack of usefulness is illustrated in the SuperNews!: Linked In… To What? video below:

So is LinkedIn useless? Well not anymore. LinkedIn has recently added a Follow Company Feature, and announced yesterday a major upgrade to its Tweets Application.

Once logged-in, install the Tweets Application by clicking ‘Add Application.’

Next you’ll be given a couple of settings options – choose your preference, and Voila! Now you can view your Twitter account from your LinkedIn profile. Here’s what it looks like:

You can send tweets, share links, and see all the people you are following. The social networking site also recommends your LinkedIn Connections who have Twitter accounts that you might want to follow.

The Tweets Application makes LinkedIn that much more useful for people looking to network, whether that be for business or personal reasons. Now you can take care of your social networking updates under one network (minus Facebook of course.)

Oneupweb Review: Thumbs Up

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Apr
15th

Oneupweb Reviews: Google Follow Finder

Posted by Adam D on April 15, 2010 at 12:55 pm

How cool is this? Google recently updated its live search results with a new feature called Google Replay, and now you can find people to follow on Twitter through Google! Enter Google Follow Finder.

Just type a username in the search field, to find people you want to follow. Below is an example of the results you will receive using Oneupweb.

Follow Finder generates two lists based on your follower and following lists. Below Google explains the two lists:

Tweeps you might like: We start with the list of people you follow, find others with similar lists, and then identify accounts you might also want to follow. If people with similar lists tend to follow accounts that aren’t in your list, we’ll recommend those additional accounts to you. For example, if you follow CNN and the New York Times on Twitter, and most people who follow CNN and the New York Times also tend to follow TIME, we’ll suggest TIME as a user to follow.
Tweeps with similar followers: We find people with similar public lists of followers to yours. For example, if ten people are following you, and the same ten people are following a second user, we’ll include the second user in this list. You may already be following some of these people.

This all seemed great, and I couldn’t wait to start expanding my 230 closest followers. But when I clicked follow, I received this error.

NOOO! I tried this on several browsers, using different Twitter account logins, but to no avail. I received the same error for each. Google you were doing so well.

I guess they are still working out the kinks. Until this is fixed it does us no good, and for that we give Google’s Follow Finder an…

Official Oneupweb Review: Thumbs Down

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Mar
30th

Oneupweb Reviews: PLANCAST

Posted by Adam D on March 30, 2010 at 2:57 pm

PLANCAST is a service for sharing your upcoming plans with friends, and has been referred to as a social calendar.

Once you login, your Twitter or Facebook account info is imported to your PLANCAST profile. And because of this, setup time is quite short.

If you want to discover friends who may be using PLANCAST, click Discover Friends. Based on your Twitter following, friends from Facebook, or email contacts PLANCAST will show you who is using the service. From there you can subscribe to feeds, and next time plans are submitted to those feeds, you will be notified.

Above is an example of what your own PLANCAST home page could look like. And of course once you create your plan, you can choose to share it across other social networks.

I think PLANCAST can be utilized in many ways for personal or businesses use. For personal use users could let their friends know what they’re up to, find out what their friends are doing, or plan a big event or party. Businesses could promote their own events through the user base already on PLANCAST. Or they could even track popular trends in local areas or abroad.

PLANCAST is a great way to keep track of your plans and share them with friends. For that we give it an…

Official Oneupweb Review: Thumbs Up

But the future of PLANCAST is unsure. With juggernauts like Facebook and Twitter casting a shadow on the social landscape, the question is, will people use PLANCAST? Especially when most of their friends are using other, more well known, social networks. What do you think? Does PLANCAST have a place in the social landscape?

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Mar
29th

Oneupweb Reviews: Tweetshare

Posted by Adam D on March 29, 2010 at 4:03 pm

Twitter has filled the gap between blogs like this one and static web pages; giving consumers and brands the ability to update the world about all the details of their lives.

And while Twitter serves its purpose well, there have been times when I’ve found Twitter lacking certain features. Today, let’s take a look at a service that attempts to remedy some of Twitters shortcomings – Tweetshare.

Tweetshare, created by Fuzebox, is a third party app that takes some of the best features of Twitter, such as, real-time updates, and allows you to create your own custom microsite. There you can showcase presentations, videos, product shots, whitepapers, and webinars. These microsites are referred to as Fan Pages.

Similar to Facebook Fan Pages, Tweetshare’s Fan Pages give users options for customizing their profile. Below you can see some of the options given during setup.

Take note of step #4 Contributors. This is an interesting feature where multiple users can manage and contribute to a single account. This could be a nice feature if a team of people are looking to contribute to a single Twitter account.

Tweetshare includes analytics and measurement tools as well, a feature that has been missing from Twitter’s arsenal since its inception.

If you like Twitter but find yourself wanting more customization abilities, Tweetshare might be just the app you’ve been looking for. Of course there are other services similar to Tweetshare like TweetMixx and Tweetmeme that you might also want to investigate.

Official Oneupweb Review: Thumbs Up

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Mar
23rd

Oneupweb Reviews: Themeleon, Twitter’s New Design App

Posted by Adam D on March 23, 2010 at 10:44 am

Today is a big day in the history of our nation. What, haven’t you heard? It’s free cone day at Ben & Jerry’s! I found this out because it was a trending topic on Twitter today. But Twitter wasn’t completely trending with ice cream cone discounts. I also noticed a #hcr (Health Care Reform) hash tag, but I couldn’t decide which one I was more excited about.

While I was on Twitter checking out the trends, I thought I would make some design changes to my profile. Then Twitter suggested I Check out Themeleon, and check it out I did.

Themeleon gives users the ability to customize the way their profile looks. You can use any of the 700,000 background patterns or color palettes. You can even design your own backgrounds or patterns. On colourlovers.com (the website for the Themeleon), they say you can create a beautiful Twitter profile using these three simple steps.

Themeleon makes profile design for Twitter much more intuitive than before. Much like MySpace’s customization feature, this app brings Twitter design to the masses.

My question is not about the app itself—the app is fun and easy to use, allowing even the most inexperienced designer the ability to create a colorful Twitter profile—but rather about the idea behind the app. Is Twitter profile design necessary anymore?

From my experience, most people access Twitter from an app on their mobile phone or computer. Even when they are on a computer, they’re using third party applications like Tweetdeck or Hootsuite. I don’t know how many people use Twitter profiles to interact anymore.

But perhaps that’s the idea here. With Twitter rumored to be releasing their advertising platform soon, maybe they are trying to direct people back to the site itself (rather than using third party apps).

But for now, and those rare times that we do check out a profile, this app will help you create a profile that you can be proud of.

Oneupweb Official Review: Thumbs Up

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Mar
22nd

Oneupweb Reviews: Gowalla

Posted by Adam D on March 22, 2010 at 12:08 pm

Oneupweb has been following location based services Foursquare and Gowalla closely, and it’s hard to say which one we prefer. However, we’ve recently discovered a Gowalla feature that might just push it over the edge; and with Foursquare lacking this feature, it could become a deal breaker.

Today lets take a deeper look at Gowalla, and see how it compares to its (currently) more popular counterpart, Foursquare.

I think for the most part we all know how location based services work. You install an app on your mobile phone, so when you are physically at a particular location you check-in, which enables you to share the places that you’ve been with your friends. It can be a lot of fun sharing where you have been with friends, which is why these services have become so popular. Check out video below to see Gowalla in action.

In the Gowalla navigation you can choose from Spots, Trips, or Friends. Spots allow you to see the places that people have checked-in in your area.

Trips are adventures, created by users, that you can participate in. You can also create your own trips.

With the trip above you can take a stroll across Harvard Yard, and check-in at some of the historical spots.

I can see local businesses really benefiting from the abilities that location based services offer. There is one small problem that we have noticed with Foursquare, and that is, you can check into a location without actually being there. With businesses looking to offer rewards to users for check-ins, you can see this (lack of accountability) poses a problem. If someone wanted to take advantage of this loophole they could with Foursquare, but not Gowalla.

According to Gowalla investor Chris Sacca, Foursquare has a spam problem. Which leads people to believe that Foursquare is more popular than Gowalla. He argues that it’s not that more people are using Foursquare, but that people are able to take advantage of the loophole.

• “Publishing to Twitter is the default behavior in Foursquare…So counting 4sq’s pushes to Twitter only really measures the aggressiveness of their app, not its true reach.”
• “Spam, and their write API definitely skew their overall checkin count”
• “This is compounded by Foursquare’s refusal to build any true accountability into their checkin system. You can essentially check yourself in wherever you’d like, regardless of where you actually happen to be.”

Foursquare’s founder Dennis Crowley immediately rebutted these spam assertions and defended the user-driven check-ins:

“what spamming problem? there’s a few fake checkins here and there but that doesn’t change the fact that there’s constantly 5-6 venues with 100+ checkins. people down here [SXSW] chosing where to go not based on party schedule but venues are trending on 4sq….we ll always let people checkin wherever they want… people are often more accurate than gps ”

I like the idea of having some accountability to people’s actions, and was shocked when I first found out that Foursquare was that easy to cheat. When I realized that the check-ins I had been seeing in my area might have been fake, it just wasn’t the same after that.

I think in the future we might see more people using Gowalla for this very reason. For many, the realization that there is no accountability with Foursquare check-ins, will lead them to the same conclusion I came to. But I like where Gowalla is going with their service. Offering people the same abilities as Foursquare but with the added accountability, and for that I give Gowalla…

Oneupweb Official Review: Thumbs Up!

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Mar
15th

Oneupweb Reviews: Twitter Geolocation

Posted by Adam D on March 15, 2010 at 3:25 pm

Geolocation-based services have been dubbed as the web’s next big thing. There has been a proverbial war going on between location-based services like Gowalla and Foursquare. Facebook is even adding integration with these services to its platform. So it comes as no surprise that Twitter has expanded its geolocation feature to stay competitive.

You may have noticed on your Twitter home page that there is a new feature – Add a location to your tweets. If you want to add this feature – Turn it on. Don’t worry, you can choose individually whether or not your tweets will include a location (we’ll cover that later).

From there, you will be prompted to turn on the feature once again.

After following the above instructions, the location feature is now enabled. Now your tweets will include your location like the image below.

While the Twitter geolocation feature has been live through its API since last November, this is the first we’ve seen on the site itself. Also, the location is no longer by your coordinates (longitude and latitude) alone, but includes your town or neighborhood.

One of the features I appreciate is the ability to choose how specific you want to be when it comes to your location. Tweets can display the ‘place’, exact coordinates, or both. The default display is ‘place’ (like a neighborhood or a town). So instead of saying exactly where you are at, by default, Twitter will add your location as a city or neighborhood, keeping your location fairly general.

Although (so far) Twitter’s location feature lacks checking-in as an incentive like Foursquare, in general, it is a welcomed add-on. I also appreciate Twitter giving users so much control over the feature. If you don’t like it you don’t even have to use it. But they don’t stop there. Once you opt-in, you can also control how specific you want your location to be. And if that wasn’t enough, before you send out each tweet you can decide whether or not you want that particular tweet to include your location.

Official Oneupweb Review: Thumbs Up

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