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Socialmedian Now More Twitter-esque With "Replize"

2008-09-22T12:30:00Z

Today, socialmedian, the social news web site which we've described as a "less noisy FriendFeed" launched a new set of features called "Replize." Now socialmedian users can track conversations on the service, much in the same way that users can track responses to a question on Twitter, all it takes is the use of @username.

Socialmedian has also announced Flickr integration which allows you to include your uploaded photos on Flickr in your news stream.

]]> Socialmedian's New "Replize"

Today's launch of Replize on socialmedian allows users to write comments on the shared articles and include @username to address those comments to any specific user or users. The @username can also be located anywhere within the comment - not just the beginning. So for example, someone writing a comment to me would insert @sarahintampa in the comment, and socialmedian would be able to then direct that comment to me.

Comments are brought to your attention through a new "Replize" tab which allows you to quickly view all the discussions that include you. Your personal news feed will also highlight when someone includes you in a discussion. In case you aren't logged in to socialmedian at the time, you can choose to receive these replies via email as well.

Here's how it works.

To send a replize to any user on socialmedian, all you need to do is include @username for any username(s) anywhere in the comments field. If you click the "reply" link next to a comment the service pre-populates the other person's @username. You can include several people in a replize, e.g. @jasongoldberg @sarahintampa @joebob. The replize will be sent to all.
The service then highlights the replize to those users in their homepage News Feed. Users can also be notified by email whenever they have a replize.
Theres's also a "Replize" tab on the homepage so that users can easily view all their replize in one place, and so they can quickly see all the stories they have been included in discussions.li>

Flickr Integration

In addition to the Replize option, socialmedian has also enabled Flickr integration as of today. Any photo you upload to Flickr is now also included on socialmedian, too. To connect your Flickr to socialmedian, go to Add Something > Site > Flickr. You can choose to add all of your Flickr photos and favorites, or only those matching certain tags (keywords).

Is @username Becoming A New Standard?

The @username trend for responding to another user on a service took off with the launch of Twitter. On that microblogging, mini-conversations service, responding to another user's tweet begins with a response in the format of @username your response. The format spread to the other microblogging services and then became unofficially integrated with FriendFeed as well.

On FriendFeed, users were working around the lack of threaded discussions by using the format @username to show which user they were responding to in the comments. Eventually, the FriendFeed team picked up on the trend and allowed those comments to be piped back through Twitter. However, the users hadn't really been after Twitter integration (though we now love it), they had just adopted the format that made the most sense for responding to another user: @username.

OK, so we know that @username isn't becoming a standard in the technical sense of the word. This isn't being ratified by some organization and made official. What we're wondering is whether we'll start to see the trend take off in more services in the future now that so many people in Web 2.0 land are familiar with the format.

If so, would that a good thing? Yes, it probably would. Although initially getting people on board with this new methodology will, at first, mean a bigger learning curve for the uninitiated, having a familiar way to respond to users on social media services could make @username the next www. or username@email.com. For the new users of Web 2.0, it puts a familiar context around the unfamiliar task of interacting with others on the these "new-fangled" social services. That could then lead to easier moves to even more services in the future.

Did we just read too much into a small upgrade to socialmedian? Perhaps. But it would be great if this began the next big trend for social media sites.

Comment from chloe on 2008-10-15

2008-10-16T01:43:16Z

Oh GAWD, I'm sick of Digg and Digg rip-offs, this is lame, come up with something new already...

Comment from Andrew on 2008-09-24

2008-09-24T14:04:23Z

The @username reply format has been used since the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) days that predate twitter and blogs. I am not sure if it filtered the messages in a chatbox though.

Comment from charles on 2008-09-23

2008-09-23T18:49:19Z

I have been using social median and the website had served me well.

Comment from Steve on 2008-09-22

2008-09-22T23:39:43Z

Still looks like a Digg UI ripoff.

Comment from Kathleen McDade on 2008-09-22

2008-09-22T19:27:45Z

I've seen quite a few people using @username in responses to blog comments. It's definitely making its way through the web.

Comment from Craig on 2008-09-22

2008-09-22T14:48:50Z

Using the @ symbol has been around for some time. A lot of comment rolls offer you the option to see responses, but for the sites that don't, this is a great way to find out if someone has responded. A lot of times I'll ask a general question looking for some insight, and it would be nice to get an email alert instead of checking the site every 10 minutes, it's a huge waste of time. This will be beneficial.

Craig
www.budgetpulse.com

Comment from thorswitch on 2008-09-22

2008-09-22T14:01:12Z

Even before Twitter came along, I'd been seeing the use of @username - though without any linking, filtering, forwarding or anything of that nature - on a variety of discussion formats. In those cases, it was just plain text that had been included to indicate who the writer was responding to.

The way I've seen it as the use has been growing, it's kind of reminded me of how emoticons got started: A few people started using it as a kind of short hand to communicate something (emoticons- what mood the comment was intended to be read in / @username - who the message is replying to,) and it began to spread throughout the community from there. Once it started getting used on enough places that people generally understood what it meant, services started incorporating it into their programs (emoticons - turning the text 'smiley' and replacing it with a graphical icon / @username - filtering the messages sent to a specific user and highlighting them or copying them to a users page so that the person can find it more easily.)

In that sense, I think it is definitely becoming a standard, but one that's more organic in that it came from the users initially and the companies using it recognized it as a way they could improve their services.