Filed under: Utilities, Web services, Social Software, Web

We first covered Twerp Scan back in April of last year. At the time we commended it as a useful way to scan your list of followers for accounts that are simply following you as a way to get onto your list and hopefully be noticed - in other words, Twitter spam followers. Since then, Twerp Scan has gone through a rather dramatic redesign, and has added the ability not only to scan the accounts that are following you, but also to scan the accounts you are following.

Twerp Scan then gives you a very nicely laid-out grid of those you are following or your followers depending on what you chose. You can sort on any of the column headers, including number of followers, number following, ratio of followers to following, number of tweets, and time of last tweet. For your followers, for example, very low ratios (anything under about 1:5) typically indicates a spam account - these are people that nobody wants to follow, but follow others very indiscriminately.

Even if you don’t want to use Twerp Scan to eliminate spam followers because you want to hold onto all of the followers you’ve got to boost your follower numbers, it is also a useful tool for viewing and managing the Twitter accounts that you are following. You get all the same column headers, and the ability to sort the list any way you like, including sorting on multiple headings. You can also click on any row in the grid to get additional details about that Twitter account.

Twitter Twerp Scan relaunches, now better than ever originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 30 Jul 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Internet, Social Software, web 2.0, Microblogging

The Obama administration has taken a fresh, new approach to lobbying federal legislators about health insurance laws, and it comes in the form of the Twitter hashtag #hc09.

Obama’s new Tweet your Senator page provides a pre-built health insurance-related tweet directed toward one of your Senators, based on your ZIP code. Each time you hit the big blue Tweet button, a Senator will be randomly selected, as will a message telling them to help pass the health insurance laws being pushed by the President.

These items, along with a link to the Tweet your Senator page and the aforementioned hashtags, will be provided for you in a brand new Twitter window, ready for you to tweet on the spot. Also, if your randomly-selected Senator is a Twitterer themselves, their Twitter handle will be used instead of their full name in your tweet.

The White House wants you to tweet health insurance reform into law originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 28 Jul 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google’s AdWords system is a great way to get more website visitors. However, Google is also a business that needs to make money. That’s why most people pay much more for their AdWords ads than they have to.

Filed under: Internet, Photo, Social Software, web 2.0

Like a desperate boyfriend who’s just been given a one-way ticket to Splitsville by his girfriend, Facebook is going to do its best to win you back. Before you push the big red button and vaporize your account (but not your content, since Facebook can keep it locked up in the basement ’till the sun doesn’t shine) they’re giving your heartstrings a good, hard tug.

Yes, they’ve found another great way to put your friend’s photos to good (and acceptable) use. They’re going to guilt you into staying a member of the social networking goliath when you visit the deletion page. I enjoy the zinger Facebook includes, which reads: “Your [number] friends will no longer be able to keep in touch with you.” [sad trombone] Yet further down the page, there’s a great big list of opt-outs for you to peruse.

Why? “Even after you deactivate, your friends can still invite you to events, tag you in photos, or ask you to join groups.” So wait…They can’t keep in touch, but they can invite me to parties, post and tag pictures of those parties, and ask me to join groups that plan upcoming parties?

Continue reading “Baby, please don’t go!” Facebook laying it on thick when you deactivate

“Baby, please don’t go!” Facebook laying it on thick when you deactivate originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 27 Jul 2009 09:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Web services, Google, Social Software, iPhone, Mobile

Google Latitude is a great tool for sharing your location with your friends, and it works on a number of different mobile devices. Until recently, though, the iPhone was left out of the Latitude loop. Because of Apple’s restrictions on iPhone apps running in the background, iPhone users didn’t have access to Latitude’s full set of features. Google and Apple have worked around that problem now, and Latitude options on Google’s mobile site are rolling out now.

The iPhone Latitude experience is pretty smooth. Adding friends, approving requests, and changing privacy settings were all extremely easy. Privacy is adjustable for each contact you add: you can show your specific location, just your city, or nothing at all. Latitude can also update your location automatically or manually, depending on your preference.

Sure, you can be sour that Latitude is web app and not a native iPhone app, but it’s a really well-done web app. Besides, a Latitude iPhone app would likely have been rejected by Apple for overlapping functionality with Apple’s built-in Maps app (which happens to serve Google’s maps).

[via CNET]

Google Latitude looks great on the iPhone originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 27 Jul 2009 08:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: News, Social Software

When Facebook first announced it would be allowing users to pick vanity URLs, a lot of people rushed to claim some version of their real names, but others just picked something they thought would be funny or clever. Now that some time has passed, I’m sure some people feel like they picked a username that doesn’t sound so great anymore. To address the problem, Facebook is letting users correct their mistakes with one name change per person.

Why did Facebook wait until now to allow name changes? Perhaps the announcement that names would be permanent was a way to deter people from choose stupid names, celebrity names, or trademarked brands. The one-time change serves the same purpose. After the big Facebook land grab when usernames were first introduced, though, users switching now might find their top choices unavailable.

Facebook allows one-time username changes originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 23 Jul 2009 18:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Internet, Windows, Microsoft, Social Software, Windows x64

Live Messenger has now been around for ten years and is being used by more than 330 million people worldwide. Well done, Live Messenger team!

To celebrate, Microsoft has put together a free download containing emoticons, winks, backgrounds, and other Messenger extras. To see whether or not this was postable, I downloaded both Live Messenger and the pack and installed them.

When you click the download button for the “FREE Gift Pack,” you’ll not only get the extras, you’ll also get a pop-up advertisement pushing IE8. When you start installing the pack, you’ll get another poke in the ribs asking you to download the new browser.

And you’ll also be prompted to change your homepage to MSN and your default search provider to Bing. Unlike the recent IE8 installer change, this time the options are checked by default. Maybe you really can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

On top of all this, there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of content in the pack. So what’s the real goal here? To say “thank you” to 10 years of use and 330 million users, or to capitalize on the opportunity to wrangle some more browser and search share?

Live Messenger turns 10, MS uses extras download to pimp IE8 and Bing originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 23 Jul 2009 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Utilities, Social Software

There are a lot of pointless apps on Facebook, but occasionally some useful information turns up on the site. WeatherPoke is one app that might actually tell you something you want to know, instead of more quizzes and top five lists. You can use it to display a local weather forecast on your page, publish the weather to your profile, or get alerts when the weather in your area turns bad. If you’re a Facebook junkie, it’ll save you a trip to a separate weather site every morning.

WeatherPoke gets its info from The Weather Channel’s Weather.com, and constantly polls the weather, even when you aren’t logged in. It’s a useful app, but it’s got a couple of bad habits that disappoint me in a Facebook app. The button to invite your friends is much, much larger than the tiny “skip” link underneath it, and there are a couple of Facebook dialog boxes trying to get you to publish weather info to your profile. These aren’t dealbreakers, though, and WeatherPoke is a very usable, perfectly decent app that adds something constructive to the Facebook experience.

WeatherPoke gives you weather alerts via Facebook originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 23 Jul 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Business, Web services, Social Software, Analysis, Web

Twitter, when used correctly, is the ultimate meritocracy. You can freely follow anyone you want, and just as freely unfollow them. For most users this means following people whose tweets they perceive they are gaining value from, and not following people who waste their time. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule, particularly when it comes to so many of the self-professed “Social Media Consultants” that seem to pollute my inbox when they meaninglessly follow me. But for the most part, the average Twitter user wants to get value out of what they read using the service, and provide value to their followers.

I’m puzzled then when services like Pay Me Tweets pop up, wanting you to trade your hard-earned credibility with your followers for a few measly (or should I call them weasly?) bucks. Basically, you’re trading your followers’ attention for money, something they will likely not appreciate. And what do users do on Twitter when they are not getting value any longer? They unfollow, of course!

While I think that users who choose to sell their credibility to Pay Me Tweets are making a big mistake, the people that choose to buy tweets through this service are making an even bigger one.

Continue reading Pay Me Tweets helps you ruin any credibility you have on Twitter

Pay Me Tweets helps you ruin any credibility you have on Twitter originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 21 Jul 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This week, we’re taking a look at PageRank sculpting with the rel=nofollow attribute. Does it still work and can it help you to get better rankings on Google? What do you have to change on your own website?

Filed under: Social Software, web 2.0

Digg users recently noticed some interesting new behavior related to Digg’s shortURL service, the Diggbar: instead of shortlinks going directly to their destinations, logged-out users who click them will now land on the corresponding Digg.com page. Sure, that’s a lot of new traffic for Digg, but it’s problematic because the change was never announced, and users who generate Digg links might not know where they’re pointing.

Some folks are reasonably upset about the change, including Mashable’s Pete Cashmore, who posted the headline, “Digg Just Hijacked Your Twitter Links.” Mashable got confirmation from a Digg representative that the change wasn’t a glitch, but was working as intended. After the Mashable post went up, though, Digg’s Kevin Rose posted on Twitter that he had been on vacation and was not aware of the change. This story is still developing, but I suspect it will end with Digg going back to its old way of handling short links.

Diggbar links now land on Digg instead of original sources originally appeared on Download Squad on Sun, 19 Jul 2009 21:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Security, Social Software

If you’ve ever had your Facebook account taken over and used to spam your friends, or if you’ve ever been on the receiving end of that spam, you might be happy to hear that Facebook is actually doing something about it. In a blog post on Friday, the social network announced the rollout out of new verification procedures for logging into an account that appears to be compromised. When Facebook thinks an account is being used to send spam, the owner will get an email directing him or her to a new verification page to confirm ownership of the account and log in.

The verification page serves the dual purpose of letting the user know how the account was taken over - likely through a phishing attack using a fake site that looks just like Facebook, according to the message. Moving the verification process to the Facebook site and automating it should streamline the process of getting your account back, and hopefully give you some tips to keep you from exposing it again in the future. It’s a good new feature, but I can’t help wondering about the extent of the increase in spam that probably prompted it.

Facebook adds verification procedure for compromised accounts originally appeared on Download Squad on Sat, 18 Jul 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Internet, Social Software, Ask DLS

Late last night I posted about the infamous “hey that’s my wife advertising a singles site” screenshot that Cheryl Smith blog shared on her blog.

Hold the phone, says Facebook. That was an embedded ad in a third-party application. As AllAboutFacebook rightly points out, I got that part wrong:

The information used for the photos were scraped while accessing Facebook applications by a third-party ad network that most likely violated Facebook’s terms of service. It’s a serious problem and one that I’ve highlighted many times.

Facebook’s David Swain has informed me that the uproar has led Facebook to disable two ad networks. He also took the time to offer some clarification:

These ads are not from Facebook but we are concerned about any potential threat to our users’ experience. We recently had deceptive ads removed from a number of apps and prohibited two entire advertising networks from providing services to applications on Facebook Platform because they were not compliant with our policies and failed to correct their advertising practices.

We are continuing to investigate to make sure ads that violate our policies stay off Facebook and may take further action against developers who host the ads.[…]Any ads you currently see doing this are coming from third-party ad networks and are only running within the canvas page of an application, which is controlled by third party developers rather than Facebook.

Ok, so Facebook isn’t directly responsible. However, it’s still their platform that allows the third party app developers to access your photos.

While it might lessen the sting, I still find it a little offputting that a developer would be allowed to access content I upload in this way. It’s clearly a situation that Facebook needs to sort out once and for all, or it’s just going to cause more controversy later.

What do you think? Sound off in the comments!

ASK DLS: ad using photo was from a third party app, is Facebook off the hook? originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 17 Jul 2009 16:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Internet, Web services, Social Software, Web

Yammer is a Twitter-for-business style application that basically lets users communicate only with other users that share the same private email domain. For example, I could setup a Yammer network where I could keep up to date with other @downloadsquad.com users.

The company recently launched an updated version of its desktop client. Like the previous client, the new application is still built on Adobe AIR, which means it can run on Windows, Mac, and Linux computers. But the new version includes a new, brighter look plus the ability to search colleagues, tags, and groups, the ability to open new threads in new windows, and the option of switching between multiple Yammer accounts.

There’s also a built-in spellchecker.

Yammer is available for free, although companies that want more control over their networks can sign up for paid accounts.

[via TechCrunch]

Yammer releases new desktop client for Twitter-like business app originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 17 Jul 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: E-mail, Web services, Google, Commercial, Social Software, Web

We all went ga-ga over Google Wave when it was announced back at Google’s I/O conference in May, but except for a very fortunate few, we really don’t know what it will be like to use. Today online productivity suite developer ZenBe released a new product called Shareflow, which has a number of similarities to Google Wave.

Shareflow is a collaboration tool that ZenBe says is not email, IM, social networking, or instant messaging, but has elements of all of them. Sound familiar? The idea is that you can organize conversations around topics by creating “flows” and inviting people to collaborate on them. This maps directly to Google’s concept of creating “waves” and inviting people to them.

Obviously Shareflow and Wave are not identical, and as with anything their respective implementations will have many differences. Beyond implementation differences, there are three fundamental differences between Shareflow and Wave that are worth noting:

1. Wave will be a free and predominantly open-source product, while Shareflow is a closed-source commercial product (albeit with a free account as one of the various plan levels)
2. Wave has the strength of Google behind it
3. You can’t use Wave today, but you can use Shareflow

You can sign up for a free account, or use the promo code FREE30 to get 30 days free of either their Basic, Plus, or Premium plan.

ZenBe releases Shareflow, seems similar to Google Wave originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 16 Jul 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Google, Social Software, web 2.0

Those of you who use Google Reader for your RSS fix may have already noticed the newly-added following and liking features.

There’s a new box in Reader’s sidebar aptly called ‘People you follow.’ Using the search feature, you can hunt for specific names or terms in Google Profiles and follow them to view news items they like. As with your subscriptions, Reader will update counts next to each user when new items are liked.

When sifting through your feeds, you’ll now see how many people liked a particular item. Click the count, and you’ll see their names. Hover over a name to view a snippet of their Google Profile or click to the full version, to view their location on a map, or to follow him or her.

Other blogs have taken issue with the like feature, saying it adds confusion. Personally, I’m not sure where the confusion comes from. I use stars in Reader to tag items I want to revisit later or blog about - not to indicate whether or not I like a piece. If I want to do that, well, I’ll click like instead. Feel free to share your thoughts on this in the comments!

Why the 66% in the title? The last of the three big additions is decidedly less social. Google has added a new option to Reader’s existing sharing features, allowing you to choose only certain groups of people (from your Google Contacts) to view and comment on your shared items.

Google Reader now 66.6% less antisocial originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 16 Jul 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Business, Internet, Productivity, Web services, Commercial, Social Software, Beta, Web

Businesses have certainly noticed that Twitter is a fantastic way to connect with their customers, but Twitter’s personal nature makes it difficult for a team to share one Twitter account. CoTweet is looking to solve that problem, by allowing up to 6 different people to share one Twitter account in a graceful manner. Tweets from different people can have a “CoTag” appended to the end of the tweet, making it clear who actually posted a given update.

CoTweet is an alternative online Twitter interface, but to call it a power interface is probably understating matters. Along with handling multiple authors for a given Twitter account, CoTweet allows you to manage multiple Twitter accounts from a unified interface. So tweets from your personal account intermingle with your business account’s tweets, but are clearly marked. You can easily monitor keywords and trends, have notifications of incoming tweets, assign tweets to others to follow up on, schedule tweets, track click-through on links you tweet, and maintain an archive of your sent tweets outside of Twitter.

While clearly CoTweet is aiming itself at business users, it’s easy to see that it would be of value to any organization that is attempting to maintain an online presence.

A glance at CoTweet’s homepage is enough to show that they are really on to something. The list of companies that are currently using their service is impressive. Twitter themselves are listed as using CoTweet, and my personal bet is that they will quickly realize the value CoTweet brings to the the Twitter platform, and acquire CoTweet.

CoTweet is currently free while in beta, and they have committed to give their user-base plenty of notice before beginning to charge for the service.

CoTweet allows teams to share a Twitter account and more originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 15 Jul 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Business, Office, Productivity, Social Software

Open Atrium is a new open-source “team portal” that looks like it’s going to be running a lot of intranets in the near future. It comes with six basic features: a blog, a wiki, a calendar, a to do list, a shoutbox, and a dashboard. You can also create smaller groups within your team, and they’ll each have members-only versions of those features. That’s pretty useful, but where Atrium separates itself from the pack of other offerings out there is in the ability to build your own features.

It looks like the folks behind Open Atrium are pushing to create a feature-developer community, where people can build and share features for everyone to take advantage of. If you’ve always felt like every collaboration option out there was missing one feature or another, Atrium might be able to scratch that itch. My favorite basic feature is the iGoogle-like dashboard, which looks like the glue that holds all the other parts together. On the technical side of things, the core of Atrium is Drupal, and also uses PHP, Apache and MySQL.

Open Atrium: customizable, open-source team portal originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 15 Jul 2009 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Utilities, Social Software, web 2.0

Pinboard is a simple, functional bookmarking site, reminiscent of Delicious in its pre-Yahoo! prime, but it comes with a small catch. To join Pinboard, there’s a one-time fee based on the number of users who have signed up so far. The fee is $0.001 times the number of users already signed up. As of a moment ago, it’s a little over $4.50 to get an account. Instead of “social bookmarking,” pinboard is “antisocial bookmarking,” designed not too get too big and too diluted with spam as quickly as Delicious did.

You get some pretty good features in exchange for your fee. Pinboard includes a separate, lightweight “to read” option, for stuff you want to come back to, but don’t want to share or put in your main list. You can import or export Delicious bookmarks, and, as Pinboard’s developer notes in a little dig at Ma.gnolia, there are nightly backups, so the risk of data loss is minimal. If a better, more streamlined Delicious is your cup of tea, you should join Pinboard now, before it gets too expensive.

Any thoughts on the price at which new memberships start to level off?

Pinboard brings back the glory days of bookmarking, for a fee originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 15 Jul 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Web services, Social Software

Most people’s Facebook and Twitter contact lists differ drastically from one another, but occasionally, you’ll have a reason to get those Facebook and Twitter friends together. Savor Chat is a way to do that, allowing Twitter friends to sign in with OAuth, and Facebook friends to use Facebook Connect. Either way, you’re all chatting, and nobody needs to create a new account.

It’s nice to see an array of privacy settings when an app requests access to accounts on two major social networks, and Savor Chat delivers. Stealth mode” hides the room on your Facebook feed and keeps it from being indexed by search engines. You can also set a duration to keep the room open, or just open it indefinitely. Rooms can also be turned on or off, or password protected.

My biggest concern about Savor Chat was that chat messages would be posted to Twitter users’ accounts to annoy people who aren’t in the chat and don’t care. You can post your chat messages to Twitter, and even have Savor Chat automatically add a hashtag for your room, but it’s not the default option. Savor Chat isn’t something I expect to use every day, but when you have a meeting and you don’t have time to get everyone on the same network, it could be very handy.

Savor Chat creates chat rooms for Facebook and Twitter contacts originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 14 Jul 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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