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Last week, we took a look at FileTwt, a file-sharing service for Twitter. After publishing that post, we heard from Bob Brinker, founder of TwitDoc, another Twitter file-sharing app. We did a couple cursory tests of his site, but were disappointed that sent files couldn't be downloaded.
We wrote Brinker with these concerns, and his response was an interesting commentary on how folks use Twitter and how apps should adapt to those user habits and patterns. "Our experience is that Twitter is for fast, real-time consumption of content, not collaboration and file sharing in the editing mode," he wrote. "We find most of our users are focused on display-only content." And for display-only files, you could hardly find a simpler solution.
Over the past week or so, we've encountered several sites that offer file-sharing services via Twitter. Though some of our commenters are dubious about the userfulness, legality, and peer-to-peer nature of the services, we generally like the idea of using Twitter to send documents, presentations, and...
Oh, let's be honest. Each for our own reasons, we want to send one another songs online, usually as illegally downloaded and shared MP3s; and Twitter seems like a more interesting way of doing that than email. We've discovered a new site that lets us send songs as MP3s on our hard drives, as MP3s hosted on a website, or even as YouTube videos or imeem audio clips plucked from the app's library. Ladies and gentlemen, we give you SongTwit!
In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup, our newsletter summarizing the top stories of the week, we report on Google's announcement of a new communications and collaboration platform called Google Wave, look at Microsoft's latest challenger in the search market with Bing, analyze the current trends we're seeing on the Web, look at the latest smartphone statistics, and more. We also update you with the latest from our new channel ReadWriteStart, dedicated to profiling startups and entrepreneurs.
With the launch of MySears and MyKmart, it seems like the thing to do this week is to give your customers their very own social network.
Can something like this be far behind?
Time once again for the ReadWriteWeb Events Guide, our weekly roundup of upcoming social Web events. We publish it every weekend, as good a time as any to review your conference plans.
Know of an event taking place that should appear here? Let us know in the comments below or contact us.
A month-long poll conducted on business social network LinkedIn has uncovered some fascinating numbers concerning social media platforms and brand presence. The biggest surprise was that Twitter was deemed more important to brands than LinkedIn, and the poll was performed on LinkedIn. With more than 3,600 respondents so far, each well understood in terms of job titles, company size, age and gender - this is a high-quality data set worth paying attention to. The question asked was simply: "What is the most important new platform for brands to master?" Options were Twitter, Facebook, the iPhone, Digg and LinkedIn.
Some of the conclusions were a real surprise. Others confirmed our suspicions. Read on for charts, bullet points and a few thoughts.
Yoelle Maarek, the woman credited with the creation of Google Suggest and a variety of other innovative features, has left the company and will now lead Yahoo's research efforts in the tech hot-bed of Israel. It's an interesting move, to go from the clear market leader to a company widely criticized for its flaccid search and monetization.
When it comes to innovation, though, Yahoo is no slouch - and a new day may be dawning there with the arrival of new CEO Carol Bartz. Bartz seems to have a good sense of humor and as the creator of the often-wacky Google Suggest product, we assume Maarek does too. Where would you rather work, at Google or at Yahoo, if you had the choice?
ITV, the oldest commercial television network in the UK, just announced that it will use Twitter as a backchannel for its coverage of the FA Cup final between Chelsea and Everton tomorrow afternoon. The ITV Twitter app was built by thruSITES using Twitterfall, and the ITV team will use Audioboo Pro for moderating the Twitter stream. Given how popular Twitter has become in the U.K., this is definitely a smart move by ITV to use it as a backchannel.
While soccer (or football, for our European readers) might not be your thing, it is interesting to see how many TV networks have now made Twitter a part of their daily routine.
Love bookmarklets? You know, those small bits of code that you add to your web browser's Favorites menu? With bookmarklets, you can reduce browser bloat by replacing a number of your add-ons with bookmarklets that perform the same actions, yet without the need for extra software installed. And if your default browser is Google Chrome, bookmarklets are even more essential to getting things done since you can't use extensions at all unless you run a developer build.
If you've been looking for a great resource for finding bookmarklets, you're going to love the new site at bmlet.com, an online directory and search engine just for bookmarklets.
