Interested in being a ReadWriteWeb sponsor? ReadWriteWeb is one of the most popular blogs in the world and is read by a sophisticated audience of thought leaders and decision-makers. We have several innovative new features in our sponsor packages that we'd love to tell you about. Email our COO Bernard Lunn for all the details.

Skip to info about: Mashery: API management services | Rackspace: cloud computing experts | Aplus.net: Web hosting | Crowd Science: demographic data | Hakia: semantic search | Domain.ME: .me domain registrar | Codero: Managed hosting | Groupsite: Social collaboration | NaviSite: Managed hosting | Faroo: Real-time search | Search Engine Strategies: Conference | MyDomain.com: Domain registrar | Backupify: Online backup | Media Temple and SixApart: our hosts and blogging software

Crowd Science

Crowd Science gives online publishers reports on the demographics and attitudes of their audience. We at ReadWriteWeb have signed up to this new service, because demographic data is something we've struggled to get in the past. It's important for any online business to know their audience, so Crowd Science is a welcome addition to the stats armory that most of us in the Internet biz use.

Sign up to get demographic data from Crowd Science.

Thank Crowd Science on Twitter for making ReadWriteWeb possible.

Mashery

Mashery is a platform for Web services, allowing companies to manage their APIs using Mashery's expertise. At the "Business of APIs" conference, Mashery CEO Oren Michels explained to the audience that while APIs are a technology, their use is a business decision. He went on to say that Mashery has helped customers such as WhitePages.com, Thumbplay, Compete.com, and Calais. Check out the white paper "Five steps to scaling your business development using Web services" to discover how you can use APIs for your business.

You can find out more about APIs and their business use at www.mashery.com.

Thank Mashery on Twitter for making ReadWriteWeb possible.

Rackspace

Rackspace is one of the world's largest hosting providers, but it's also competing in the cloud computing arena. Rackspace Cloud Hosting offers a suite of services which combines a scalable web and application hosting platform (Cloud Sites) with a cloud storage solution (Cloud Files) and on demand server instances (Cloud Servers). The addition of SliceHost a popular cloud computing and hosting provider and JungleDisk, a favorite online backup service that supports Cloud files, makes the Rackspace Cloud a powerful cloud hosting solution.

Explore Rackspace's hosting and cloud computing solutions.

Thank Rackspace on Twitter for making ReadWriteWeb possible.

Aplus.net

Aplus.net offers a variety of services relating to Web hosting, including shared hosting, Web design, marketing and online advertising services, search engine optimization, e-commerce solutions, and domain registration.

You can register for Aplus.net here.

Thank Aplus.net on Twitter for making ReadWriteWeb possible.

Hakia

Hakia is a semantic search engine. It delivers a new search experience based on focus, clarity, and credibility. You can compare Hakia to Google and Bing here.

Hakia currently powers the contextual advertising link engine at ReadWriteWeb with its semantic advertising module, Contexa. Contexa provides page-level contextual analysis (in this case, of blog posts) on the fly and outputs keywords that represent the meaning of the page along with their meaning score. The Contexa system then matches ReadWriteWeb sponsors' requirements with the contextual representation of the page to provide relevant ads for readers. Contexa is offered as a service and can be integrated into any ad system.

Learn more about Contexa.

Thank Hakia on Twitter for making ReadWriteWeb possible.

Domain.ME

.Me is a true phenomenon among TLDs. With its unforgettable meaning and limitless word combination possibilities, .Me gives a truly personal tone to your domain name. If you are looking for a name that speaks for itself .Me is your best choice. Let .Me speak for your online business or personal blog.

.Me potential is enormous and it simply asks for you to be creative and coin the name that suits you best. If you have a great, original idea for a domain name, register .Me before it's taken. To check out other ideas, explore the world of .Me.

Thank Domain.ME on Twitter for making ReadWriteWeb possible.

Codero

Codero is a former division of Aplus.net. Codero became a separate entity focusing on dedicated and managed hosting solutions after the acquisition of Aplus.net's shared hosting, web design, and domain registration services by Hostopia. "Codero" stands for collaboration, engagement, focus, reliability, and flexibility. It means a more secure computing experience for email, shopping, and data transfer.

Codero is a dedicated and managed hosting company focused on the real needs of today's small and mid-sized businesses. The company believes in supporting robust websites, storefronts and online communities that will grow and adapt.

Groupsite

Groupsite.com is a self-serve platform for creating social collaboration communities called Groupsites. Groupsites combine the most useful features of social networking and collaboration tools enabling groups large and small to communicate, share and network. Groupsites are currently in use by more than 30,000 groups as user communities, intranets, member communities, team workgroups and social networks. Each Groupsite can be branded and customized and includes discussion forums, calendaring, file sharing, member profiles (professional or social), activity feeds and full-featured sub-groups among other group-centric features.

Sign up and create a free Groupsite in minutes.

Thank Groupsite on Twitter for making ReadWriteWeb possible.

NaviSite

NaviSite is a leading provider of enterprise hosting and application services for a diverse client base. Leveraging a diverse network of 16 enterprise-class data centers across the US and UK, NaviSite offers a predictable technology environment and a complete suite of infrastructure and application solutions.

NaviSite's product and service offerings include:

• Vast custom application development capabilities, including SOA solutions, eCommerce, and Web 2.0 applications.
• Full stack of enterprise hosting services for mid-market companies, including shared, dedicated, and complex hosting, SaaS enablement, and colocation.
• Best in class managed hosting, such as virtualization and utility computing.

Thank NaviSite on Twitter for making ReadWriteWeb possible.

Faroo

Faroo is a peer-to-peer Web search engine that has no centralized index and crawler. Each web page visited by users is automatically included into the distributed index. Search results are ranked based on distributed usage statistics of Web pages visited by Faroo users, which leads to more democratic, user-centric ranking.

Faroo protects the privacy of users by encrypting search queries and anonymizing its distributed architecture. The decentralized peer-to-peer architecture scales with Internet growth and requires no infrastructure or operational cost.

Thank Faroo on Twitter for making ReadWriteWeb possible.

MyDomain.com

MyDomain is a leading ICANN-accredited provider of domain name registration and online business solutions. For over 10 years, MyDomain has offered low-cost domain names and free domain services including complete DNS management. Today, sub-$10 domains without the constant upsells you'll find at some competitors are the norm at MyDomain. MyDomain's complete range of solutions include Web hosting and VPS hosting, email, SSL Certificates and more.

Search Engine Strategies

From social media to local search to video SEO, Search Engine Strategies Chicago puts you in front of the experts who will help you sort which technologies and channel will take you to the next level and which are just hype.

Search Engine Strategies is the pioneer of educational conference series in search engine marketing. It's the venue where the industry visionaries and thought leaders gather each year to discuss the newest trends, share insights and present the strategic action plans you need to grow your business.

Thank Search Engine Strategies on Twitter for making ReadWriteWeb possible.

Backupify

Backupify provides reliable online backup services for a range of products, including Twitter, WordPress, Facebook, Delicious, Basecamp, Google Docs, Gmail, Zoho, Flickr and Photobucket. Backups are secure, automatic and easy to set up.

Thank Backupify on Twitter for making ReadWriteWeb possible.

Our Gracious Hosts and Blogging Software

ReadWriteWeb is hosted by Media Temple and is published using SixApart's Movable Type.

If you've ever wondered what ReadWriteWeb looks like behind the scenes, or if you've never seen the Movable Type publishing interface - that's it on the left. We recently upgraded to MT 4.23, which is the latest version. We got onto this release as soon as it was available - in fact our contacts at Six Apart emailed the actual code to us before it was up on their website. That's customer service for you!

Thank Media Temple and SixApart on Twitter for making ReadWriteWeb possible.

The companies above pay our rents or mortgages and we appreciate it. We hope you'll stop by their sites and see what they've got to offer.

Have you got a smart company that could use some more visits by the sophisticated readers of a blog like ReadWriteWeb's? Drop us a line and let's talk.

Thanks to all our sponsors and our readers for your support!

Know of an event taking place that should appear here? Let us know in the comments below or contact us.

Under the Radar

Featuring the most cutting-edge mobile startups from around the globe, Under the Radar will get you dialed in to what the 2010 mobile innovation marketplace will look like. It's a must-attend event for dealmakers from global carriers, brands, media companies, and handset manufacturers responsible for helping their companies leverage new mobile technology and innovation in the fast-evolving digital landscape.

Save $200: book by 2 October 2009, and get the early-bird rate.

30 November 2009

New Way to Work

Do you have a great story about your work environment? Job marketplace Elance and Vator.tv have partnered to host the "New Way to Work" competition, with a grand prize of $10,000 in cash or health insurance for the most compelling story. You can tell your story on Vator.tv, the premier platform for entrepreneurs to broadcast their voice, by uploading a video, posting an update, linking to a blog entry, or sharing a photo. Hurry, the competition ends on 30 November 2009.

1 – 3 December 2009: London, England

Online Information & IMS 2009

Online Information and IMS together create the largest event dedicated to the information industry. Consisting of an exhibition delivering over 9,000 visitors from 70 countries, a conference and a show-floor seminar program, the event provides an annual meeting place for the global information industry.

Online Information is once again set to play host to thousands of information professionals, information end-users and publishers from around the globe, meeting suppliers of online content, e-publishing, and library management solutions. IMS provides a forum for IT, business, and information management professionals to find unlimited, relevant advice, educational content and compare solutions under one roof. Attend IMS and meet suppliers of content management, search solutions, and Web 2.0 technologies.

1 – 3 December 2009: Boston, Massachusetts

Gilbane Conference Boston

Join us at the sixth annual "Gilbane Conference Boston: Content, Collaboration and Customers."

Your content is your business, and you need to make your Web content part of an integrated platform for customers. You need to know solutions and technologies that are ready to be implemented today. Gilbane Conference Boston is built around the four major areas of how enterprises use Web and content technologies:

• Web business and engagement;
• Managing collaboration and social media: internal and external;
• Enterprise content: searching, integrating and publishing;
• Content infrastructure.

Visit www.gilbaneboston.com for conference details. ReadWriteWeb readers, use the discount code "GILBANE" to save an additional $200. Register today!

1 – 3 December 2009: San Francisco

Supernova

7 December 2009: San Francisco

SF MusicTech Summit

The SF MusicTech Summit brings together 600+ visionaries in the music/technology space, along with the best and brightest developers, entrepreneurs, investors, service providers, journalists, musicians and organizations who work with them at the convergence of culture and commerce. We meet to discuss the evolving music/business/technology eco-system in a proactive environment, highly conducive to deal making. Register with a great ReadWriteWeb 15% discount.

7 – 11 December 2009: Chicago, Illinois

Search Engine Strategies 2009

From social media to local search to video SEO, Search Engine Strategies Chicago puts you in front of the experts who will help you sort which technologies and channel will take you to the next level and which are just hype.

Search Engine Strategies is the pioneer of educational conference series in search engine marketing. It's the venue where the industry visionaries and thought leaders gather each year to discuss the newest trends, share insights and present the strategic action plans you need to grow your business. Sessions include:

• SEO Through Blogs and Feeds
• Duplicate Content and Multiple Site Issues
• What's the Link Between Search and Social?
• Online PR: Where to Next?
• Search Analytics

See more at www.SearchEngineStrategies.com/chicago. ReadWriteWeb readers receive a 15% discount when registering here using RWW15 code.

11 December 2009: Mountain View, California

Add-on-Con

Add-on-Con is a single-day conference focused on the future of the browser and its emergence as a platform.

Developer sessions will cover best practices, cross-browser development and mash-ups. Marketing sessions will focus on monetization opportunities, distribution strategies and stats. Join 200+ individuals involved in add-on development to help define an emerging new market in the Web's eco-system.

ReadWriteWeb readers save $50 by using the discount code "addoncon09RRW."

11 January 2010: Nashville, Tennessee

Social Fresh Nashville

This is the social media conference that comes to you. Social Fresh is a one-day, case-study-rich conference targeted for marketers. Social Fresh Nashville will have 30+ speakers, including Jason Falls of Social Media Explorer, Gavin Baker of Ruby Tuesday and John Andrews of Collective Bias (formerly of Walmart).

ReadWriteWeb readers get a 15% discount with the code "RWW15".

27 – 28 January 2010: Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Enterprise Social 2.0: Rip or ROI?

This senior executive event will bring together decision makers from the Top Fortune companies to discuss innovative strategies on how to maximise business performance through social media engagement. The event will include keynote speeches, best-practice presentations as well as interactive discussion sessions.

The summit will provide excellent opportunities for you to hear international experts discuss best practices on how to drive business performance using Web 2.0 and social media. Key issues to be discussed include:

• How to integrate social media programs successfully into business strategies?
• Building business momentum, visibility and market growth through social media
• Measuring success and influence using metrics and analytics: what are the tools and techniques
• Integrating viral marketing and social media into traditional marketing mix
• Developing and activating audiences using social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs

8 February 2010: Tampa, Florida

Social Fresh Tampa

This is the social media conference that comes to you. Social Fresh is a one-day, case-study-rich conference targeted for marketers. Social Fresh Tampa will have 30+ speakers, including Chris Barger of GM, Maggie Fox of Social Media Group and John Andrews of Collective Bias (formerly of Walmart).

ReadWriteWeb readers get a 15% discount with the code "RWW15".

18 February 2010: Silicon Valley, California

Future of Funding

Active limited partners, top rated venture capitalists, and successful entrepreneurs are invited to Silicon Valley on February 18, 2010 to discuss the Future of Funding. The venture capital bubble has burst, and change is coming. Now is the time to have a constructive dialog about the future with all of the stakeholders at the table.

Don't miss the opportunity to partake in this exclusive event hosted by TheFunded. Please visit www.futureoffunding.com to see speaker and event details.

ReadWriteWeb readers use the code "RWW" and get 10% off.

15 – 16 March 2010: London, England

2nd Annual Social Networking World Forum — London

The 2nd Annual Social Networking World Forum takes place at the Olympia Conference Centre in London. The two-day event features four dedicated conference streams:

1. Social Networking World Forum
2. Enterprise social media
3. Social TV World Forum
4. Mobile Social Networking Forum

The event features key speakers from global brands, organizations, social networking publishers and developers, pioneering social media leaders, top agencies, content producers, and more.

• Full workshop program within exhibition area
• Evening networking reception
• Pre-show online meeting planner for delegates
• Free pass for exhibition only

Download this entire events calendar in iCal format.

You can subscribe to the Weekly Wrapup by RSS or by email (form below).

RWW Weekly Wrap-up Email Subscription form:

Web Trends

Obama: "I Have Never Used Twitter"

Barack Obama spoke to a group of Chinese students this week at a town hall in Shanghai. The meeting was streamed live, worldwide on the Whitehouse website and on the Whitehouse's Facebook page. He was asked a limited number of questions by the audience and one was about Twitter, which has been blocked in China since July. President Obama has never used Twitter, despite his account being the most followed there.

Top Internet Trends of 2000-2009: Democratization of News Media

It's November 2009 and we're nearing the end of a decade. It's been a tumultuous time of change for many industries, much of it driven by the Internet. The newspaper industry has been particularly affected by the Web. Over the past 10 years, news media has undergone a seachange akin to the invention of the printing press in 1440.

How Blogging Has Changed Over The Last 3 Years (Stats)

Reader engagement with blogs has changed dramatically over the last three years, primarily because of the rise of online social networks, according to new numbers released by analytics firm Postrank. Postrank published an analysis based on metrics for signals like comments, trackbacks, shared links and online bookmarks for the top 1000 most-engaging feeds online and for 100,000 randomly selected blog posts in each year since 2007.

Unfriending: Are People Online Shedding Friends? (Debate)

The New Oxford American Dictionary announced its Word of the Year this week. Its selection? unfriend - verb - To remove someone as a 'friend' on a social networking site such as Facebook. Has Oxford Dictionary made the right selection? ReadWriteWeb's Founder Richard MacManus thinks not. Marshall Kirkpatrick disagrees with him. Both make their cases in this post and invite you to cast your vote in a poll.

The Top 10 Mobile Applications of 2012

SEE MORE WEB TRENDS COVERAGE IN OUR TRENDS CATEGORY

ReadWriteEnterprise

Our channel ReadWriteEnterprise, devoted to 'enterprise 2.0' and using social software inside organizations.

Google Sites Offers Templates; Claims It's Easier Than Sharepoint

Google Sites is getting an upgrade. Starting this week, Google will provide templates that make it possible for users with no technical background to create web sites with a degree of functionality that includes page layouts, adding links for navigation and embedded gadgets. Templates are available for intranets, project sites, team sites, employee profile pages and other sites that people would use within the enterprise.

ReadWriteStart

Our channel ReadWriteStart, sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark, is dedicated to profiling startups and entrepreneurs.

Future of Music Coalition's Brian Zisk: The Do's of Streaming Music

In 2008 the idea of another subscription-only music service was enough to get your knickers in a torrent. Sure Rhapsody was doing well, but they'd been around for forever and in 2008, freemium was the music model du jour. With a year to reflect, co-founder of the Future of Music Coalition and longtime San Fran Music Tech Summit organizer Brian Zisk tells us what it takes to survive in today's music environment.

SEE MORE STARTUPS COVERAGE IN OUR READWRITESTART CHANNEL

Web Products

The Google Chrome OS Press Event

Google held a press event this week outlining more details about its Google Chrome OS. Google plans to launch Chrome OS next year. Google is positioning Chrome OS as "just a browser" - that is, all of your data is in the cloud. Chrome OS will be focused on speed, simplicity, security; every application on Chrome OS will be a web application. Google sees Chrome OS as targeting 3 trends: netbooks, cloud (everything is a web app today), phones getting computing capabilities.

Twitter.com Is Still the Most Popular Twitter Client - TweetDeck a Distant Second

Twitter's own homepage is still the most popular tool for users to update their status on Twitter. Around 46% of all updates are made directly on the site. Social media analytics and monitoring service Sysomos analyzed 500 million tweets it collected over the past 5 months and found that TweetDeck is the most popular third-party client. TweetDeck has a comfortable lead with a 8.48% share of the market, followed by Tweetie, Twitterific and Seesmic.

A Central Nervous System for Earth: HP's Ambitious Sensor Network

HP Labs has joined the race to build an infrastructure for the emerging Internet of Things. The giant computing and IT services company has announced a project that aims to be a "Central Nervous System for the Earth" (CeNSE). It's a research and development program to build a planetwide sensing network, using billions of "tiny, cheap, tough and exquisitely sensitive detectors."

Microsoft Launches Pivot, A Radically New Visualization of Online Objects

Microsoft Live Labs' latest creation has just launched. Pivot is a fun, powerful discovery tool, built on Seadragon and powered by Silverlight, that runs in Vista or Windows 7 with IE8. It looks impressive and allows for truly intuitive exploration of information.

Droid Becomes Fastest-Selling Android Phone to Date

The Motorola Droid is the newest smartphone on the market to compete for the iPhone's crown. Released by Verizon Wireless on November 6th, the Droid's advertising campaign has been a full-frontal attack on the popular Apple smartphone with a heavy focus on what the iPhone doesn't do. "iDon't run simultaneous apps, iDon't have a real keyboard, iDon't take 5-megapixel pictures," taunts Verizon's Droid ad.

SEE MORE WEB PRODUCTS COVERAGE IN OUR PRODUCTS CATEGORY

That's a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.

"You take this data, mash it up with any other very large corpus of data with timestamps," Flip Kromer of data marketplace Infochimps told us, "and you've got a web app." Today's announcement of the availability of location data means the same thing: you take this data, mash it up with any other data with location information and you've got an app. From Digg or StumbleUpon for your favorite coffee shop to political and disease tracking - there's a whole lot that's possible.

Users will have to be both prompted and incentivized. Fortunately, a location-aware Twitter experience is something that will enable developers to deliver value to individual users immediately and in isolation - it doesn't have to be one of those situations where "this will be cool once other people I know are using it."

With the announcement today of Twitter search results being added to Yahoo News searches, Twitter data is now being used by all three of the major search engines. (Google's implementation is still forthcoming, but the deal is done.) It might be one of the big players, but it's more likely to be small innovators that make creative use of the new location data.

These are possible Twitter use cases, but the standardized Activity Streams spec that Facebook, MySpace, Netflix and others now support also includes a geolocation field - so if the walls around Twitter ever fall to interoperability then we could be seeing innovations like these across all kinds of networks.

Here are some of the kinds of things we expect, or would like, to see.

"Party Over Here" Bot: Automated Geo-Replies

Want to know when you're near a certain type of public event, great wine shops or deals at Macy's? How about when friends, close friends or friends-of-friends are near? It's not hard to imagine a bot that you subscribe to on Twitter, that then auto-subscribes to you, notices when you "check in" at a new location and automatically sends you a reply when whatever or whomever you're interested in is near that location.

There are all kinds of bots built on Twitter already, but one that can mash-up your physical location with its data store is going to be a lot more useful than a bot that tells you when a sensor noticed your plants need to be watered.

These are the kinds of services that will incentivize Twitter users to expose their location data. Assuming a substantial number of people make that choice, here are a few other examples that come to mind.

Articles Being Shared From This Coffee Shop Today Include...

Think people just stare at their computers in public these days? A service like this could shake that up. How about a StumbleUpon implementation that lets you stumble and read articles from people who've Tweeted from the same place you're in. Imagine walking down the street and considering two competing coffee shops; what's been on the reading list of each today?

News at 11: Local Interest Survey Tool

Think local TV news and newspaper companies would be interested in a stream of hot topics in their local area? They'd be foolish not to; what a great way to discover breaking local news to report on.

Does your local newspaper print a selection of letters mailed-in each week, but list the number of total letters received on the hottest topics? Imagine capturing that local chatter from a much larger sampling of people. Local tweets plus an entity extraction algorithm.

Cop Watcher

Imagine taking a map of tweets discussing criminal activity, or police misconduct, in a city and comparing it with a map of the same from local police agencies. Some places that warrant more official attention could be exposed.

Inventory Forecast

If people in a certain city are twittering like fiends about a new product hitting the market, store orders, marketing and other parts of the supply chain could benefit from an earlier warning about it.

Politics & Marketing

People in Oregon are sharing a Huffington Post article about today's health care reform announcement a lot? In Seattle, Washington perhaps not so much? Political organizers of a certain persuasion could find that information actionable.

How about unearthing Twitter users posting about environmental issues who also live in areas with environmental issues that an organization is working on.

Want to measure local effectiveness of marketing campaigns? Imagine Radian6 or ScoutLabs using the location API. That's only a mater of time.

Flu Trends+

Think Google's use of search data to map out global disease trends is cool? Why stop there? How about pro-active messages (via Twitter) when there's an increase in messages about being sick in your area?

Of course all of this will work better if more people are using Twitter and if people expose their location data, but that may very well happen. Prompting and individual incentives could be big drivers. The degree to which Twitter data is open for analysis by outside parties is a huge asset.

What would you like to see cross-referenced with Twitter location data?

Thanks for visiting ReadWriteWeb - we want to thank P2P-powered real-time search engine Faroo for making it possible for us to bring this site to you. Faroo is an innovative way to find out the hottest, freshest content on the web. Like SETI-at-home, Faroo's distributed architecture is indexing the real-time web while ensuring user privacy by avoiding centralized storage of data. The company says it can do things with Chinese-language content that no other real-time search engine can, too. Check it out at Faroo.com.

Typical of what we like to think of as the company's "mysterious charm," the feature has been unveiled six months later with a brief post on the Twitter blog. The new geotagging capabilities can already be seen in certain third-party apps and might even come to the web interface sometime soon.

Apps such as Birdfeed, Seesmic Web, Foursquare, Gowalla, Twidroid, Twittelator Pro, and many others are already supporting location-based data for tweets.

"The added information provides valuable context when reading your friends tweets and allows you to better focus in on local conversations," writes Twitter platform/API man Ryan Sarver in the blog post.

"Now you can find out what live music is playing right now in your neighborhood or what people visiting Checkpoint Charlie are saying today about the anniversary of the Berlin Wall. These are only the beginning and we are really looking forward to seeing the creative uses emerge from the developer community."

As are we! But we might hold out on enabling the geo-tastic feature just yet. We've still got a few stalkers to shake, and we're waiting for the inevitable bugs to surface before we trust our favorite microblog with our favorite haunts, too.

Read on for our live updates from the event, which will start at 10:00 am PST.

9:55am: Ahead of the event, Google has already made the Chrome OS source code available.

10:00am: Still waiting for the event to begin. "Some of our attendees are unavoidably delayed in traffic."

10:05am: Event gets started. No beta, no devices today. But they will give a demo and focus on technical demo.

10:06am: Google Chrome has been open-sourced.

10:07am: Why did we do Chrome? We wanted to push the Web forward. It has over 40 million users.

Focus on speed. Mostly on the JavaScript engine, but also on other parts of the browser.

Updated Chrome over 20 times in the last year, but users didn't notice this because it happens in the background. User experience should be seamless.

Coming soon for Chrome: Chrome for Mac will be ready this year. Chrome for Linux is coming along "very well." Extensions are coming soon as well (with automatic updates).

10:10am: HTML5: we want Web application to get more access to the hardware. Example: graphics, multiple threads, real-time communication

10:12am: Three trends in the industry: netbooks, cloud (everything is a Web application today), phones getting computing capabilities

Phones are becoming more like laptops and laptops are becoming more like phones.

Chrome OS

10:15am: Chrome OS will be focused on speed, simplicity, security.

Every application on Chrome OS will be a Web application.

Simplicity: Chrome OS is just a browser - all your data is in the cloud. Users should be able to log into any Chrome OS machine and be up and running with their apps and data in seconds.

Security: users don't install binaries on the OS. Keeps the system safe. Everything runs in the browser.

10:18am: Demo time. Booting up on laptop takes seconds.

"Everybody knows how to use a browser, and we want Chrome OS to feel that way.

UI will continue to change until release.

Application tabs: just like tabs in Chrome, you will be able to set persistent tabs for apps (Gmail, etc.).

App menu in the top left to access apps as well (see first screenshot above). These apps will be little widgets that appear in a panel, just like Google Chat in Gmail.

10:23am: As netbooks get better, we expect them to become entertainment devices. Shows chess game.

Shows Google Books in full-screen mode.

Chrome OS will feature multiple windows. You can drag and drop tabs from one window to another.

Even the file browser is a Chrome tab. Shows what happens when you click on an Excel file. Actually launches Windows Live Office apps to show them.

"Every app you write for the Web is a Google Chrome OS app."

10:29am: Every file opens in the browser: PDF, Microsoft Office, etc.

Under the Hood

10:30am: Matthew Papakipos, Engineering Director for Google Chrome OS on stage now.

"We want Chrome OS to feel more like a television." Instant on - all flash memory.

How to make the boot-up faster?

Right now, operating systems still spend a lot of time on unnecessary boot steps (looking for floppy drives, etc.)

10:34am: Verified boot: makes sure all the components are working and haven't been modified by malware.

System automatically fixes itself and re-images the computer with the last working version; saves all system settings and cache data.

Security: all apps are Web apps. The OS does not trust any app.

Other security steps: files system is licked down; every tab runs in a secure sandbox. There is only a small list of known programs (verified and signed).

User data on a Chrome OS machine is always encrypted.

All the data is synced to the cloud (on the Google Drive?) - user partition on the machine is basically just a local cache.

10:41am: Back to Sundar Pichai, Vice President of Product Management.

Going to market: Chrome OS - but also working with hardware manufacturers.

Will only support flash drives - not traditional hard drives!

Google will specify reference hardware (specific Wi-Fi cards, etc.).

Google wants netbooks to have full-size keyboard, larger resolution, better trackpad.

Launch: Google wants devices to be out by next holiday season.

Chrome OS Open-Sourced

Google wants to work with open-source community. Will give all of its contributions back to the community.

10:45am: Shows marketing video.

Q&A

Question: What is the target group for a Chrome OS device? Will there be Chrome server solutions? Chrome as a server?

Answer: First we want to get netbooks out - no servers. But this is a paradigm shift in computer. Other questions: time will tell.

Question: Cost of Chrome OS netbooks?>

Answer: We will see larger netbooks - no price point - no price target. Demo ran on Asus EEE PC.

Question: How can manufacturers join the program?

Answer: Documentation is on website. Reaching out aggressively to hardware partners. For software developers, there will be a page that shows which devices are compatible already.

Question: Will there be an app store? Will Google certify drivers from OEMs? What about applications to edit photos?

Answer: App store: the Web is our app store, and we will work hard to make those discoverable. Drivers: working with hardware partners. Want devices to be built on reference devices and with open-source drivers. Editing: some apps are not available on the Web. Most people who will buy this machine will have another machine in their home. This is not meant to be a primary OS - just a "delightful experience to be on the Web." This is a companion device

Question: What about video codecs?

Answer: working on that. Trying to use hardware acceleration where possible. Everything that's available in Chrome will be available in Chrome OS - including the technology.

Sidenote: a lot of what you will see in Chrome OS will also flow back into the Chrome browser.

Question: Silverlight support?

Answer: No comment.

Question: Plugins? Other browsers?

Answer: code is available, but we won't support other browsers to run on Chrome OS.

Question: Do you expect to see this running only on netbooks or other devices as well?

Answer: more info about devices will come next year. Google is currently focused on delivering compelling devices: netbook-like form factors.

Question: How big is the OS?

Answer: nothing specific.

Question: Offline access? Google Gears support?

Answer: you can play media - but device is mainly meant to run online, though it will make use of HTML5 local storage.

Question: can you run it in a virtual machine?

Answer: yes.

Question: are you working with partners? Can Android apps run on Chrome OS?

Answer: we focus on making Web apps better. Mission of Chrome is to push Web apps forward. About Android apps: no.

Question: will there be third-party apps?

Answer: no. On phones you need native apps, but not on laptops.

Question: Native Client needs Intel - will you still support ARM?

Answer: we will support X86 and ARM - working on Native Client for ARM.

Question: What's the business model? Advertising in the browser?

Answer: Right now, we are focused on getting the OS and devices out. Chrome OS is free and open source. As people use the Web more, it benefits Google. No specific real estate in Chrome OS will be devoted to ads.

Question: What does Chrome do that I can't do in Firefox with plugins?

Answer: most of what we do is available in other browsers. But not the application tabs, etc. We are offering a fundamentally different model of computing (fast, simple, secure). In Chrome OS, Google can offer things others can't: fast boot, security.

Question: How do you get people to trust the cloud? How do you assure people that their data is secure?

Answer: most of what you are doing is already in the cloud - so problem is not specific to Chrome OS. Google thinks the cloud is just as secure as local storage. Users have a choice and are always in control.

Question: data syncing: will this be open or will data be controlled only by Google?

Answer: none

Sergey Brin drops in and joins the Q&A.

Question: Support for Java?

Answer: nothing to announce right now - hopefully we can do something interesting with this in the future.

Question: What about instant-on OS'es in Dell machines, etc.? Does Google want to do this?

Answer: No - we just want it to start up super-fast. A lean and mean netbook.

Question: Will a Chrome OS machine be able to run printers? Other devices?

Answer: we will support storage devices. Printers: we are taking an innovative approach and will share more about that next year.

Question: Open Source.

Answer: we want to upstream what we do and help the community.

Question: Real-time notifications.

Answer (Sergey Brin): We need better real-time notifications in the browser. Chrome will use the W3C Notifications API.

Question (for Sergey): How does Chrome OS fit into Google's strategy.

Answer: we want users to be able to use netbooks easily, and make it easy to manage software on these devices. The Web is the right platform for this. We're trying to fulfill this need.

When thinking as to how the new uploader should function, Facebook had a few goals, most of them technical in nature. They wanted the new tool to no longer depend on Java, be compatible with future versions of Facebook's chrome, be easy to update and more. However, to the end user, the best part about the new uploader is that it allows you to start a photo upload and then leave the page to browse around elsewhere on Facebook (or even the web!) while the upload is underway.

To meet their goals, Facebook went with a browser plug-in that uses JavaScript APIs and a front-end created with HTML and CSS. The end result is a much improved experience. But like the Facebook blog post says, "while it looks like magic, it's really just a bunch of cool hacks." Hacks or not, regular Facebook users will greatly appreciate the upgrade.

Install the New Photo Uploader Tool

To install the new uploader, you must first visit the Prototypes page for the tool and activate it for your profile. Then, the next time you go to create a new album, you'll be prompted to install the Facebook plug-in. Once complete, you'll be presented with the new user interface which lets you browse through your computer's photo library and select the images you want to upload. This new interface is much easier to navigate - and more attractive, too - than the old Facebook uploader from days past.

Facebook says the new tool has several additional security mechanisms built in as well, one of the more interesting being a "kill switch" that can remotely deactivate the tool in the event that a security hole is discovered. While confident that the new uploader is already securely designed and architected from the start, the company has released it as a prototype first so people can report any security issues they may find.

Less technically-minded folks can simply activate the tool and use it, reporting any problems they find as well as far as user experience issues, crashes or other bugs. Depending on the results of the tests, Facebook will be able to correct any problems prior to rolling it out to all users. If you want to give the new uploader a shot yourself, you can do so by visiting its page here.

Just for fun we did a search across Craigslist job postings in some cities around the US to see how many listings mentioned Twitter in each location. The top city this month? New York City, with 196 jobs welcoming Twitter use. If you live in Bismarck, North Dakota though - no one on Craigslist is looking for Twitter users on the clock.

1. New York City, NY: 196
2. San Francisco, CA: 159
3. Boston, MA: 115
4. Seattle, WA: 50
5. Chicago, IL: 50
6. Portland, OR: 41
7. LA, CA: 40
8. Austin, TX: 26
9. Dallas, TX: 17
10. Phoenix, AZ: 11

• Houston, TX: 11
• Denver, CO: 6
• Philadelphia, PA: 4
• Boulder, CO: 2
• Zero in Bismarck, ND

None the less, it's a fun list and may say a rough something about social media adoption by businesses in different places. Businesses that are down with the internet are generally down with the Twitter, it's emblematic of adult social media use these days. Most of the jobs listed were for marketers who would broadcast over Twitter, but customer service jobs were well represented too. There's a whole world of business opportunity on Twitter that's based on listening, but that will take a while to catch on.

Of course not all of these are good jobs - would you want to be "a full-time, experienced social media expert" working for $10 an hour? How would you like to be a community manager for a company that's raised $6 million in high-profile venture capital? "This is a part time unpaid job for 3-4 months that could lead to a full time position. Around 20hrs per week, but must come every day to the office." Times are tough, but those positions are a far cry from what some top bloggers and social media consultants are making. There could be some real gems hidden in these listings, though, and it would be interesting to study rates of pay in social media by location.

Are there any secret enclaves we didn't think to look in? Let us know if your town is unlisted but has a substantial number of search results in the jobs section for Twitter this month.

In the mean-time, see you in Boston!

See Also:
Reading Blogs at Work: Why You Should Do It & How You Can Make it Worthwhile

Working bird illustration by Pasquale D'Silva.

Le Meur told us that a native Windows client was something that Seesmic's users had been requesting for quite a while. The Seesmic team worked on this new client for the last few months, though the company managed to keep this development under wraps and today's release comes as a surprise. While there are quite a few good native Twitter clients for OSX, the most popular Twitter clients on Windows are currently AIR apps.

Features

Being a native client, Seesmic can now also make use of some of Windows' built-in features like a system-wide spellchecker or Windows 7's location services. While Twitter hasn't launched it's location API yet, Seesmic will now be able to tab into this data quickly.

The new client will also allow users to drag and drop their friends' avatars into user lists.

Just like the current beta version of its AIR app, Seesmic for Windows will support Twitter's userlists and while the look and feel is similar to the AIR app, the Windows client also features vertical tabs in the sidebar that allow users to quickly switch between different views (all, accounts, userlists and searches).

Plugins for Seesmic

For developers, of course, the new plugin infrastructure also means that they can now offer their services directly in a Twitter client. The current version already showcases plugins from TweetMeme and MrTweet. According to Le Meur, this will also allow other Twitter-like services to build their own plugins and build their own columns in Seesmic without having to establish a formal relationship with the company. In a few weeks, Seesmic will launch a plugin gallery to showcase these extensions.

What About the AIR App?

Seesmic will continue to develop its Adobe AIR client for the time being, though chances are that the company is also looking at developing a native Mac client.

However, out of the two updates, it's Adobe AIR 2 that received the biggest overhaul. The new runtime allows developers to create entirely new types of applications that simply weren't possible using AIR 1. What sort of apps are those? Adobe's gallery of sample apps should give you some ideas of what's to come.

In Adobe AIR 2, apps can now detect when a mass storage device has been inserted into the computer. That means the app can "see" your USB flash drives, external drives, and even some digital cameras. For example, developers could build an app that recognizes when your Flip camera is plugged in and lets you automatically upload videos to YouTube.

To demo this capability, Adobe has released FileTile, a sample app that does just this (minus the video uploading). FileTile recognizes external devices and lets you see the files and open them with their default application.

Download Installer | Source

2. Native Process API

The native process API allows developers to better integrate their AIR apps with existing code libraries or extend their apps using native code. With the new native process API, this can now be done without compromising the cross-platform capabilities of AIR which allows it to run on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Developers using this new functionality can now deploy their apps with operating-specific installers like .exe, .dmg, .rpm, and .deb instead of an .air installer file.

To demonstrate the native process API, Adobe released SearchCentral, an application that taps into Mac OS X's Spotlight feature for desktop searches. It also lets you do web searches on Google and Wikipedia.

Installer | Source | How to

Here's a video explaining in more detail how the native API works:

3. Microphone Data Access

Like it sounds, the microphone data access feature lets you acquire the sound data from a computer's microphone without the need of a server. For example, a developer could build a note-taking application that lets users record audio clips even when they're offline.

To get started, a simple app called Microphone is now available which does recording and playback with variable playback speeds supported.

Download Installer | Source | How to

4. Drag-and-Drop Support for Remote Files

The new "file promises" feature of AIR 2 lets you drag remote files out of an AIR application. A file promise, as described by Adobe's Christian Cantrell, is "what you put on the clipboard when you want the user to be able to drag and drop files that do not yet exist, or that exist elsewhere (not locally on your machine)." It's a promise to deliver a file at some point, but not an actual file.

For example, an app could generate a CSV file but only when a user tries to drag and drop the file. It could also refer to files on a remote server, like an FTP server. When a user grabs that remote file and pulls it into the AIR app, the app could then download the data. It even supports files accessible via a URL like those hosted on Google Sites.

Unfortunately, this feature is Windows and Mac only.

A sample app called S3E provides a graphical front-end to your Amazon S3 account to demonstrate this feature.

Download Installer | Source | How to

5. Peer-to-Peer Networking Capabilities

Adobe AIR 2 also adds support for new networking capabilities including UDP, secure sockets and peer-to-peer. To demonstrate the possibilities, Adobe released KeePIPE, a javascript app that lets users on the same network share files using peer-to-peer technology. It also lets VMWare users transfer files between a virtual machine and a host computer.

Download Installer | Source | Read me

6. Multi-Touch

Perhaps the most exciting enhancement in AIR 2 and in Flash Player 10.1 are the new multi-touch APIs. In Windows 7, AIR apps can respond to multi-touch and in both Windows 7 and Mac OS X Snow Leopard, they can respond to gestures.

In this video (below), Adobe's Kevin Lynch demos a multi-touch app on an HP TouchSmart computer:

Obviously, Adobe is excited about this new feature, too, because they've released not one but four sample applications that demonstrate multi-touch in action:

• GeoTest: Lets you move images around the screen using a built-in physics engine. Download Installer | Source
• PhotoPhysics: A multi-touch app with a built-in physics engine. Download Installer | Source
• SpriteFract: A multi-touch app with a built-in physics engine that demonstrates a mouse-compatible, direct-manipulation interface. It also uses PixelBender to asynchronously process a large amount of geometry data. Download Installer | Source
• TouchTest: Lets you drag, scale, and rotate images on the screen. Download Installer | Source

Other Features

Other features in Adobe AIR 2 include the following (courtesy of Rob Christensen):

• A new API lets you open documents with its default application
• Global error handling
• Enhanced printing support, including vector printing support on Mac and new APIs to query the local machine for a list of printers or print without a dialog box.
• WebKit in AIR 2 is now based on the version shipped with Safari 4.0.3 which includes support for JavaScript profiling, SquirrelFish Extreme JavaScript engine performs 50% faster using SunSpider tests, CSS3 Module support (2D transformations, transitions, animations, gradients, zoom and WebKit CSS selectors), styling scrollbars via CSS and Canvas enhancements.
• IPv6 format addresses can now be used with all APIs that accept an IP string as input.
• Increased maximum size of NativeWindow: AIR 2 apps can have a window size of 4095 x 4095 where before the maximum was 2880 x 2880.
• DNS lookup
• Network interface enumeration
• Database transaction savepoints
• Screen reader support in Windows
• IME API and IME text input enhancement
• Smaller runtime installer sizes
• More efficient CPU usage and reduced memory size

You give Factery a list of links and a keyword and it will build an index of all the facts asserted in those links about your topic of interest, delivered in XML or JSON format. The service can run on top of a search engine but could also be used in any number of other ways. I've been feeling unsatisfied with other search engines all day since seeing a Factery demo Monday morning.

Compare that with the Factery results page - I don't even need to click through if I don't want to, I feel like I got a great overview of the story just from my search page. Perhaps that's a problem - for a publishing industry that already says it's scared of search engines - but as a reader it sure isn't my problem, it's great. Why would I want Google News to tell me where I can go to find information if someone else will just give me the information?

The company's test demo searches Twitter and Yahoo Boss - neither search is as exciting as I'd hoped 100% of the time, but it's often remarkably good. Factery is also testing an interesting integration with Silverlight stream reader Sobees, in which linked pages from Twitter or Facebook are annotated with automatically extracted highlights via Factery.

I expect a whole lot of companies are going to at least try this API out and I'm excited to see the results.

How This is Unlike Other Real-Time Search Services

Factery is talking a lot about its ability to analyze links shared over Twitter, but that's probably just because Twitter is easy for people to understand. The fact is, the service can perform on-demand analysis of text behind any set of links. That's what differentiates it from other real-time search engines like OneRiot, which also analyzes the text of pages linked to on networks like Twitter and offers an API to display real-time search results on other sites. Competitor Collecta analyzes Twitter streams in real time and offers an XMPP API to push new search results live to any page.

Factery is a different kind of animal, though. It's more like a smart search inside any other search. It doesn't even have to be search, though. The company talks a lot about how they make mobile reading more efficient by pulling the salient information up to the surface of a page, instead of requiring mobile readers to load multiple pages.

I thought of five or six different ways I'd like to use it just while talking to the company on the phone. (I'm not going to share those here, either. I think some could offer an important competitive advantage.)

I'd Love to See This Work Everywhere

Yesterday I was testing a new Android app from the Sunlight Foundation that lets you track members of congress. One tab in the app is a search for your congressperson in the news. Unfortunately, the page excerpts give no indication why the politician you searched for appeared in that news story - just that their name did, somewhere. That search is powered by a Yahoo API, probably BOSS, but it's not any fun to use at all. How unsatisfying, I thought, when I could have a list of key facts concerning my search query in the list of links that the search brought back. But that was yesterday, and Factery is just launching today.

The possibilities are truly endless. That's probably why Ron Conway, one of the leading investors in the real-time economy, joined others in investing in the company. With $1.2 million in the bank, Factery is a modest developer play with a whole lot of potential.

Give Factery's API a try and let us know what you think. It's free to use; the company says it may start inserting "sponsored facts" (isn't that an interesting phrase) into results later but things like business model and to a lesser degree de-duplication are still works in progress. I sure do love this idea.

One great feature of this release is the fact that users can track their travels via a GPS device and save the results as a KML file to be viewed in the application at a later time. The example given is a look at the route taken to climb a mountain; however, the same tool can be used to track marathons, sailing regatas, road trips and basic travel. For information on how to convert GPS data into Google Earth, users can visit Google's KML Support Section. If you haven't already downloaded the application, you can do so here.

TinyChat.tv's interface will feel very familiar if you used the regular TinyChat before.

Room owners can customize the look and feel of their rooms and decide if they want to force users to sign in with their Twitter or Facebook accounts. One feature we really liked on TinyChat was that users could type a random URL (tinychat.com/12345) and the service would automatically create a room with this URL. This feature hasn't been enabled on TinyChat.tv yet, but TinyChat's co-founder Dan Blake tells us that it will come back soon.

For $9.95 per month, users can also buy a pro membership that allows them to set passwords for rooms and stream higher quality video.

For Developers: Free Streaming with TinyChat API

For developers, TinyChat now offers a comprehensive free application programming interface (API) that makes it easy for developers to create their own Ustream clones. Indeed, TinyChat.tv itself was built on top of this API. Earlier today, Dan Blake told us that TinyChat will not charge developers for bandwidth. Stickam currently charges $0.45 per gigabyte for its streamAPI white label service.

Overall, this is a nice upgrade to the regular TinyChat experience. The old TinyChat, where users don't need to sign up will continue to operate. The big development is the API, however, and we are looking forward to seeing what developers will do with it.

But did the message get through to potential phone buyers? It appears that it did...at least according to mobile analytics firm Flurry. In their latest report, the company found that the Droid is now the fastest-selling Android phone to date, beating the sales of the myTouch 3G by more than four times.

Flurry's analytics service monitors over 10,000 mobile applications on both the iPhone and Android, or approximately two out of every three iPhone and Android handsets on the market. While obviously this isn't a look at the mobile ecosystem as a whole, it's a big enough slice to form some initial conclusions about the popularity of the latest mobile device to run Android, Google's mobile operating system.

By monitoring the new Android devices on Flurry's system, the company estimated the first-week sales for the Droid handsets as compared with both the myTouch 3G and Apple's iPhone 3GS. Although the iPhone still outsold the Droid within its first week, Flurry notes that the iPhone simultaneously launched in 8 countries worldwide while the Droid only launched in the U.S.

It's also important to note that the iPhone 3GS was just the latest model of the iPhone to arrive on the market, it is not the original device. Prior to the 3GS, the iPhone had two previous versions, the second which finally allowed for 3G cellular access and GPS capabilities. This update made the iPhone 3G a hugely popular upgrade and the company sold 1 million or so units on their opening weekend. Comparing the third generation iPhone to the first version of the Droid isn't a true "apples to apples" comparison, but on the other hand, the comparison of the T-Mobile myTouch 3G and the Droid is.

According to Flurry, Droid is dramatically outselling the myTouch 3G based on first week sales. That may say something about the quality of the Droid's hardware, the impact of a good marketing campaign or perhaps even people's frustrations with the iPhone's limitations. Or maybe a little of each. Then again, Verizon has nearly triple the number of subscribers as T-Mobile, so they already have a head start.

The Growing Power of Android

In the end, while we can't take any of these numbers to the bank, what we can learn is that the Android OS is making serious headway in the smartphone market. Although no one Android phone on its own may beat the iPhone, as more and more "worthy competitors" launch on numerous hardware platforms, the Android OS's install base may eventually catch up to that of the iPhone's. 

In any event, that's what Google believes. In a recent earnings call, Google CEO Eric Schmidt proclaimed that "Android adoption is about to explode," citing 12 Android phones on 32 carriers in 26 countries. Research firm Gartner predicts that the Android OS may end up ranking second worldwide by 2012. However, if more of the Android launches prove to be as successful as it appears the Droid's may be, Android may move up the charts even faster than predicted. Of course, who ends up on top all depends on Apple's next move. If the company decides to launch their phone on more carriers, all bets are off. If that's the case, Apple's market share could double, says Morgan Stanley's Kathryn Huberty. But that doesn't necessarily mean that Android would be left far behind. "Android is "backed by the power of Google's search engine," said Huberty. "Google's other up-and-coming consumer and enterprise products should make [Android] a dominant platform."

The Suggested Users List, commonly abbreviated "SUL," has long been a source of controversy for the company. Meant to offer a helpful introduction to Twitter novices about what sort of interesting people, companies, and services can be found on Twitter, the list has angered many who felt it was a way Twitter could show favoritism towards some accounts while ignoring others potentially more worthy of inclusion.

Noted tech legend Dave Winer argued that Twitter was taking an editorial interest in their service, and one that rapidly inflated the follower counts of those blessed with Twitter's "gift." Meanwhile, Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis offered the company half a million dollars for three years on the list. (Twitter didn't take him up on the offer.)

The benefits to getting on the list are great indeed. Users added to the SUL, gained on average of 53,000 new followers after being on the list for a week and 170,000 within the first month. Some users even gained as many as 370,000 in the first 30 days.

For a service favored by marketers, businesses, and other self-promoters, placement on the SUL was a surefire ticket to Twitter stardom. New followers meant more traffic to the websites linked in the Twitter updates and more traffic meant more money could be made through on-site advertising. It was almost as if Twitter itself was writing you a check.

Thankfully, in this case, Twitter has listened to their community and is planning on a more egalitarian system. The only question now is how will they know which accounts to suggest? Of course, there is still the old stand-by method of importing your email address book to suggest users you already know who are on the service. But what Twitter plans on offering sounds a little more robust. Perhaps they will introduce an algorithm that takes into account a Twitter user's "authority?"

If that's the case, Twitter may be jumping out of the proverbial frying pan and into the fire. This is because there isn't solid agreement as to how "authority" should be calculated. Late last year, Twitter app Seesmic creator's Loic Le Meur started a heated back-and-forth on the matter when he wrote a blog post which said that Twitter should rank search results by the number of followers you have. More followers meant more authority, he said. Social media guru and blogger Robert Scoble quickly countered saying that the number of people you follow was actually a more important number as is the number of retweets, the number of favorited tweets, the number of inbound links to a tweet and the number of clickthroughs on an item in Twitter search. Soon, the entire tech blogosphere was engaged in the discussion with seemingly every blog weighing in with their opinion.

And this was only a casual discussion among Twitter users based on one person's suggestion. Imagine what an official policy change by Twitter will lead to! Clearly, no matter what the company comes up with, it's bound to be heavily debated and discussed. In any event, it will definitely be worth the wait to find out what that is.