We asked you this question earlier today and we culled your responses from Facebook, the original post and Twitter and we used Storify to present it all back to you. If you have additional responses, please leave them in the comments.

When you view a contact in Silentale for iPhone, you see their contact details as you would within any Address Book type application, but you also see their social profiles and a complete history of your conversations - whether that included emails, Facebook messages or Twitter posts.

You can then email, reply or forward messages to a contact directly from within the app. You can send an SMS text message or call them, too. And you can view, download and forward the attachments in the messages Silentale finds. Essentially, it's a "CRM-lite" type application for the iPhone.

Silentale: Easy, Great...When it Works

In the past, we were surprised that Silentale didn't get more media coverage - the online service it offers is fairly robust... and free, at least to start. The basic version of the online service lets you import up to 3 accounts, is updated every 3 hours and imports 4 weeks of conversation history. For $49/year, you get 6 accounts, 2 years of history and hourly updates. For $99, you get 12 accounts, unlimited import and half-hour updates.

As to why Silentale seems to be somewhat ignored, our first guess was its name - "Silentale" doesn't really roll off the tongue nor does it give you an idea of what this service offers. Its competitor, "Gist," is branded better, in our opinion. Gist does a bit more, too - it provides dashboards for viewing people and companies, for example, and it incorporates RSS feeds, Web mentions, Google image results and more. It's not "CRM-lite," by any means, but its complexity may also be more than what some people have need of. For those that just want a searchable conversation archive, there's Silentale.

However, it's now starting to become clearer as to why Silentale isn't making waves the way Gist is - the service often seems to suffer from stability issues. During testing, we encountered errors and timeouts more than a few times, both with the iPhone app and when previously testing the online service. The iPhone application wouldn't allow us to authenticate upon first launch, for example. Although today's issues and the prior ones could just be chalked up to launch day jitters (and the problems were soon corrected), it's still a concern. We don't know if the company needs to throw more servers at the problem, acquire more bandwidth or just hire better network engineers, but they can't expect busy people to rely on an app that doesn't consistently work.

No matter, we suppose: it works now and works as advertised, albeit after a lengthy "import" process (and one that required closing, then relaunching the app). But given the prior issues and time-consuming set up, we can't 100% recommend this app until the company gets things straightened out. (And we do hope it does - Silentale is incredibly useful when functional!) All that being said, the app is free, so if you want to brave it, you can download a copy for yourself here on iTunes. Just don't say we didn't warn you if you hit bugs.

]]> Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/view_complete_contact_and_conversation_history_with_silentale_for_iphone.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/view_complete_contact_and_conversation_history_with_silentale_for_iphone.php Apple Wed, 21 Jul 2010 06:58:08 -0800 Sarah Perez The British novelist Ian McEwan said, "The naming of what is there is what is important." But there is a thing, or an idea, a system or network, that we live with every day, that we live in, that we, in point of fact, are, which has no name.

When apprehending and recognizing something new, we humans name it. Some say we name things in order to control them and there might be some truth to that. But who would not elect to control an earthquake than be controlled by one?

Our information gathering network has changed out of recognition, but its taxonomy has lagged behind. We need to name this new network, and we would like the readership of ReadWriteWeb to help us.

Before the media, even the new media, got it, we had read it on Twitter. ReadWriteWeb has written before on the ability of this new tool, and others like it, to gather and disseminate information.

In the course of this discussion, we came to a surprising realization. Twitter was no more the issue than the so-called mainstream media was. We were beyond all of that now. Our network was not restricted to three news channels, or the cable news networks, or a handful of social media websites or thousands of Facebook accounts, or even all of those things taken as a whole. Our access to information, our ability to exchange it, was no longer bound by anything at all, with the possible exception of time. The reason for this sea-change is that we ourselves have in part become the system formerly we only used. We have become the fulcrum of our own network. Prometheus is well and truly unbound.

This network, the one that connects us to virtually every part of the world, to every person on the globe, branches like a Mandelbrot set. It consists of computing devices from desktop computers to laptops to tablets to phones; it consists of every program written to run those devices, every website and service that helps us to process and move the truths we witness or create; it consists of cell towers and server farms; it consists of social media tools and word processing programs; but above all it consists of, it is powered by, human beings, both singularly and in aggregate, minds and mind.

Our network is alive.

But it needs a name, and we don't have one. Jokingly, one of us called it The Culture. It isn't. It isn't even a culture. Just a network. But a vast one, a possibly game-changing one and, above all, a nameless one, one which we should control rather than allow to control us.

Help us assert control over an exciting, but daunting reality. What should this global network, this lace of machine and human, location, data and feeling, thought and thing, observer and observed, speaker and listener, be called?

Editor's note: This story is part of a series we call Redux, where we'll re-publish some of our best posts of 2009. As we look back at the year - and ahead to what next year holds - we think these are the stories that deserve a second glance. It's not just a best-of list, it's also a collection of posts that examine the fundamental issues that continue to shape the Web. We hope you enjoy reading them again and we look forward to bringing you more Web products and trends analysis in 2010. Happy holidays from Team ReadWriteWeb!

According to B&B, a magazine for marketing strategists, there are definitely some scenarios when social media should be avoided. In a recent article, they listed what these were:

1. You're in a high-ticket business:  The article recommends that businesses with only a few customers who each spend tens of millions of dollars with the company each year are better off not using social media. Instead, face-to-face interactions and phone calls will still work better.
2. You fight with your employees: In some businesses, management and employees are constantly at odds. (An example was given of a unionized workforce where management-labor strife was common). This is also not the type of company that should encourage employees to communicate directly with customers via social media.
3. Management skepticism: If management doesn't believe in social media, then employees who have been told for years that public communication needs to be filtered will be hesitant to try out a new medium which requires them to speak openly. In this scenario, management needs to encourage and reward participation to make social media work. If they don't, it will fail.
4. Strategic Vacuum: Don't do social media just to do social media. If a company doesn't know what they're trying to accomplish, then there will be nothing to measure and no way to determine success. Just as with any other initiative a company takes on, there needs to be an objective...and that objective shouldn't be to distribute a press release.
5. Privacy and regulatory concerns: If you work for a company where what you say in public could send you to jail, proceed with caution. You'll probably even need lawyers involved (sigh).

But Don't Be Afraid to Try!

All that being said, outside of a handful of scenarios, there is still plenty of room for growth when it comes to social media. For example, the results of a recent survey put out by marketing intelligence specialist WebTrends found that only 2% of businesses are using Twitter as a marketing tool. Only 2% - can you believe that?

Perhaps the problem is that businesses are hesitant to dip their toes into the water because they're unsure of how to proceed. Social media community members, such as those on Twitter, can be very critical of the companies they think are "doing it wrong." The backlash can be brutal...and not necessarily good for your brand, either. In other words, businesses thinking of getting involved with this platform should definitely think before they leap.

As it turns out, that was the exact advice Sarah Milstein gave at last week's Web 2.0 Expo out in San Francisco. At her session, "Effective Twitter," she recommended that companies consider the following questions before diving in:

• What will be different in 3, 6, 12 months as a result of our Twitter account?
• Who are we hoping to connect with?
• What kind of information is interesting to them?
• What might go wrong? What expectations might people have of us?

(Her session also had a number of other good resources - you may want to check out the PDF summary here.)

During Milstein's presentation, audience members were furiously scribbling down her every word as if this was the first time they had ever heard this information! Of course, it probably was. Although the right and wrong ways to use Twitter and the tools that can help you use it better may be old hat to some of us who live and breathe this stuff, but it's clear that to many people out there, this information is incredibly new...and intimidating.

This is unchartered territory for a lot of companies and many of them are just now beginning to think about their strategies and levels of involvement. You could literally see this trend in action at the Expo. There, some of the top sessions, the ones so jam-packed that it was standing room only, were specifically about social media and marketing. Twitter, Facebook, community building, etc...people just couldn't get enough.

This makes us wonder if 2009 be the year that social media really goes mainstream? Or, will the experimentations continue? We think it's possible that it will be both. Companies will try new things using social media. Some will succeed and some will fail, but in the end it will be these experimentations, led by the big brands, that will help push social media further out into the limelight than it is now.

Of course, having more Hollywood celebs sign up for Twitter couldn't hurt either.

The Timeline

According to details on the newly revamped Silentale web site, the startup has three main features: the "Timeline," the "People Book," and "Connectors." In the timeline, you're presented with a view of all your messages from around the web and even from your mobile phone. Silentale is able to connect to Facebook, Google Contacts, most POP3/IMAP email accounts (such as those you might access in Outlook), Gmail, AOL Mail, Yahoo! Mail, Twitter, and it can pull in your SMS messages from your mobile phone. All these are presented in the scrollable timeline view with icons indicating their source along with the date, subject, sender, recipient, and of course, the message itself.

Connectors

The "Connectors" page is where you set up the various connections to the platforms whose messages you want archived. The list of connectors (see above) is short right now, but they promise more will be added in the future. These connectors crawl through your messages and contacts and archive them on the service once you've authorized Silentale to access those accounts. Not only will the service pull in the messages from that point forward, it will also work backwards in time to retrieve older messages too. Attached documents, including Office documents, photos, videos, and links will also be archived. Although at first you won't be able to search within these documents, that functionality will be "introduced shortly," reads the Silentale FAQ.

As for the SMS messages, they'll be archived using special mobile applications. At the moment, the company has developed an iPhone app and an Android app which both use your data connection to archive each text received to the Silentale service. Our only concern with this feature is in regards to those of us who choose to receive either Facebook or Twitter messages via SMS. Since that would be a large number of updates, it would be nice to exclude certain SMS short codes from the archiving process in order to save our precious battery life, which no doubt, the SMS archiving apps would eat up. Besides, since both Facebook and Twitter are available "connectors" on the Silentale service, those particular SMS texts would be redundant.

The People Book

Finally, there is the "People Book" view which is essentially an aggregated address book. Silentale finds the duplicate contacts from across your networks and combines their information together, merging their email, phone numbers, addresses, profiles, etc. into one single contact. This list, like the other views, is searchable, but it can be filtered by network as well to help you find your contacts with ease.

When you click on one of these contacts, all your conversations from across the various supported platforms are displayed. A message timeline at the top of the page lets you hop around from month to month and year to year, too.

Get Your Invite Now!

Of course, since Silentale hasn't launched yet, it's too soon to praise the service. We have no idea how well it will work. For all we know, it could be buggy and slow. But on paper, the service looks useful, promising, and - dare we say it? - exciting. How incredible would it be to have a master copy of all your communication from everywhere in one searchable resource in the cloud? We think it would be great. It's especially exciting since there aren't good ways to archive and search through your communications yet on some of these supported platforms - like Facebook and Twitter, for example.

Still, there may be some concerns about security when it comes to this service. How will Silentale access these networks? Hopefully they'll tap into Twitter via OAuth and into Facebook using Facebook Connect, but will they ask for our email passwords? That always makes people a little uneasy.

During the beta period, Silentale will be free, but when they publicly launch, it will be offered as a "freemium" type service. The basic (free) plan will allow 5 connections, unlimited contacts, but only 8 weeks of message history and a total storage space of 2 GB. The unlimited plan, which looks to be $50/year, will offer unlimited everything.

As we mentioned earlier, Silentale isn't open for business yet, but you can go ahead and sign up for your beta invite right here on the Silentale homepage. Just click the link on the upper-right.

Perhaps test anxiety doesn't come from the actual questions sitting in front of us, but rather the fact that these standardized test scores can be life altering. These scores affect our admittance to the right schools, our ability to gain scholarships and our ability to qualify for certain types of aid. The weight of these tests had many of us prematurely self-destructing, and honestly, it doesn't get any easier as we get older.

Want to do an MBA or law degree? Your qualifying test scores could mean the difference between a great life transition and a mediocre one. Below is a list of test prep resources. If you're spending your summer prepping, these might just help you gain the confidence you need to come out on top.

2. Grockit: Grockit prepares students for the SAT, ACT, GMAT, LSAT, MCAT and GRE. This service emphasizes the group learning experience and students invite friends from Yahoo, Gmail and Plaxo to join in the site's games. This is particularly useful for the SATs when large groups of peers are likely to be studying together. The service offers a point system for tests and games, and displays student scoring in terms of community testing percentiles. Additional features include real time chat and the ability to find online tutors. Tutorial rates range from zero to $20 per hour. Grockit is free for the first 35 questions or $40 per year for unlimited access to questions, diagnostic tests and scheduled group games.

3. Brightstorm: Brightstorm focuses on preparing teens for the SAT, ACT and AP-level high school courses. This tool is particularly useful for visual learners because programs offer hours of video courses, strategies and practice exams. What's interesting about this preparation tool is that while it provides knowledge-based tests and quizzes, it also teaches students strategies to make educated guesses. For example, in one video the instructor says, "On the ACT English, the shortest answer is correct a third of the time." Brightstorm packages are priced at $99 per test and a 1-800 line is available for questions.

4. EPrep: EPrep also prepares students for the SAT, ACT, PSAT and high school subjects using video instructions. Students complete practice tests in a timed environment, receive grades and review test answers via video tutorials. EPrep offers a free 7 day trial period and packages generally range in price between $69-$249. This service takes a more conventional classroom-style approach to teaching so it's better for those that excel in this type of environment. For those that prefer a more interactive experience, Watermelon Express and Grockit might be a better fit.

5. Prep Me: Prep Me is a learning environment for students interested in taking the PSAT, ACT and SAT. This service offers an initial diagnostic test and then builds a personalized study schedule for students. Similar to other programs, students can chat with tutors, take practice quizzes and analyze their strengths and weaknesses. The service is currently expanding to offer GMAT, MCAT and LSAT testing and is priced between $300-$700. That being said, the company boasts an average 305 point increase on the SAT for grade 11 students. The company is currently offering premium services for free to students in the state of Maine.

6. Knewton: Knewton is another program that adapts a study plan for students. The company specializes in GMAT, GRE, SAT and LSAT testing and matches videos and lessons to a students "learning arc". Students can interact via a live on-demand video classroom and the company offers results or a money back guarantee. Courses are priced at $890 for 15 teaching sessions and more than 45 classroom hours. While this is a particularly high price tag for testing services, if a couple hundred dollars is the cost of qualifying for a scholarship, perhaps the service is worth it.

12seconds.tv, a video messaging service that lets users record quick videos only 12 seconds in length, has been popular among Twitter users since its launch in summer of 2008. With the service, you can send out a tweet to your Twitter friends once you've posted a video on the site. That's precisely the functionality which appealed to marketers looking for an entry point into Twitter. The only question was how do you get 12seconds users to tweet out videos about the brand?

The solution that 12seconds.tv is introducing today is called the "12omercial." And yes, like it sounds, it's a Twitter commercial made using the 12seconds service. Here's how it's going to work: brands and companies will sponsor 12seconds users to create 12omercials on their behalf. The videos created by the users will be a response to a question asked by the brand. Once recorded, the 12omercials are automatically posted to the Twitter streams of the users involved. Those tweets will include a link back to their video.

The first brand to participate is LG who will begin using the platform to promote their new phone, the Versa. The question they're asking is "what's your Versa vice?" Or, in other words, what's that thing you do with your mobile phone that you know you shouldn't? Is it text-messaging while driving? Checking Facebook while in a meeting? The answers to this question will be varied and perhaps even humorous (or so the company hopes, that is).

Play Along, Win Fabulous Prizes

You may wonder what incentive 12seconds users have for creating these user-generated commercials for these companies. Fortunately, they won't be paid to do this. We say fortunately because once cold, hard cash becomes involved, too many people looking to earn a quick buck would end up creating these "12omericials" and then would clutter up our Twitter streams with their spam. 

However, users will be encouraged to participate - they just won't earn actual money by doing so. Instead, the creation of a video will equate to a sweepstakes entry where they have the chance to win some sort of prize, as determined by the brand. What the prize will be will change with each promotion, but with LG, it's a trip to Las Vegas.

Another reason users may participate is because there's also the possibility of having their video seen by a far larger audience than just their Twitter friends. It's up to the brand how the content will be used, but there are a number of possibilities. Some companies will be selecting the best videos for use on their own web sites, others may use them in online ads, and there's even a chance that videos could find their way to a TV commercial. (In LG's case, there will be a dedicated mini-site set up for the promotion.)

But What If People Say Bad Things?

As we recently saw with the Skittles social media campaign, when people realized they could get their tweets on the Skittles homepage just by using a particular keyword in their posts, they started to abuse the system. Some people posted really (and we mean really) offensive messages to Twitter just to see those messages on Skittles.com...and perhaps to prove to Skittles that their campaign was a terrible idea.

But 12seconds co-founder, Sol Lipman, doesn't think the Skittles campaign was a bad idea at all. He thinks it was an ingenious experiment and perhaps even representative of the future of advertising. According to Lipman, we're moving past the point when brands want to communicate with customers through press releases and banner ads. It's user-generated content that is the future. And what better way to learn about a brand than through a trusted friend's tweet?

Of course, when you put the power of brand advertising in the hands of the people, bad things can happen. That was certainly true in the case of Skittles, but even so, Lipman argues that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Sure, some people got out of hand, but at the end of the day, people were talking about Skittles. Just because some people did terrible things, it probably didn't mean you started hating the candy or boycotting it. Instead, you just had it a bit closer to the forefront of your mind the next time your sweet tooth kicked in.

Be Brave, Companies - Engage! (It's Your Only Hope)

This radical repositioning about what it means to advertise may actually be a bit too scary for some companies and some will be hesitant to get involved. User-generated content has been known to backfire before. For example, in 2006, Chevy let YouTube users make commercials for the 2007 Tahoe, but what they got were videos about how bad the truck was for the environment. Still, that's not stopping other companies from attempting nearly the same thing. Case in point: Ford. This month, the company will launch their "Fiesta Experiment," a marketing effort that puts promoting the new car into the hands of 100 twenty-somethings who will blog, record video, and post to social media about the their experiences.

In a similar vein, the 12seconds.tv Twitter commercials will offer brands an opportunity to start conversations while abandoning their control over the exact messaging. They may have to take the good with the bad. But in the end, only genuine conversations will convince the jaded, over-saturated customers of today...and especially those known as "Generation Y." As we noted before, that generation especially tends to rely on a network of friends for product recommendations, not traditional advertising.

Check It Out

In addition to being used for branded campaigns, these 12omercials can be created for any promotional purpose. Users can include a URL in the video that links to anything they want - their blog, something they're selling, a charity event, or whatever. A back-end analytics package will help them track the campaign, too.

As far as the sponsored promotions go, each will run for a week. This may change as more brands get on board. LG is up first, followed by Xobni, the social inbox plugin.

1. You're in a high-ticket business:  The article recommends that businesses with only a few customers who each spend tens of millions of dollars with the company each year are better off not using social media. Instead, face-to-face interactions and phone calls will still work better.
2. You fight with your employees: In some businesses, management and employees are constantly at odds. (An example was given of a unionized workforce where management-labor strife was common). This is also not the type of company that should encourage employees to communicate directly with customers via social media.
3. Management skepticism: If management doesn't believe in social media, then employees who have been told for years that public communication needs to be filtered will be hesitant to try out a new medium which requires them to speak openly. In this scenario, management needs to encourage and reward participation to make social media work. If they don't, it will fail.
4. Strategic Vacuum: Don't do social media just to do social media. If a company doesn't know what they're trying to accomplish, then there will be nothing to measure and no way to determine success. Just as with any other initiative a company takes on, there needs to be an objective...and that objective shouldn't be to distribute a press release.
5. Privacy and regulatory concerns: If you work for a company where what you say in public could send you to jail, proceed with caution. You'll probably even need lawyers involved (sigh).

But Don't Be Afraid to Try!

All that being said, outside of a handful of scenarios, there is still plenty of room for growth when it comes to social media. For example, the results of a recent survey put out by marketing intelligence specialist WebTrends found that only 2% of businesses are using Twitter as a marketing tool. Only 2% - can you believe that?

Perhaps the problem is that businesses are hesitant to dip their toes into the water because they're unsure of how to proceed. Social media community members, such as those on Twitter, can be very critical of the companies they think are "doing it wrong." The backlash can be brutal...and not necessarily good for your brand, either. In other words, businesses thinking of getting involved with this platform should definitely think before they leap.

As it turns out, that was the exact advice Sarah Milstein gave at last week's Web 2.0 Expo out in San Francisco. At her session, "Effective Twitter," she recommended that companies consider the following questions before diving in:

• What will be different in 3, 6, 12 months as a result of our Twitter account?
• Who are we hoping to connect with?
• What kind of information is interesting to them?
• What might go wrong? What expectations might people have of us?

(Her session also had a number of other good resources - you may want to check out the PDF summary here.)

During Milstein's presentation, audience members were furiously scribbling down her every word as if this was the first time they had ever heard this information! Of course, it probably was. Although the right and wrong ways to use Twitter and the tools that can help you use it better may be old hat to some of us who live and breathe this stuff, but it's clear that to many people out there, this information is incredibly new...and intimidating.

This is unchartered territory for a lot of companies and many of them are just now beginning to think about their strategies and levels of involvement. You could literally see this trend in action at the Expo. There, some of the top sessions, the ones so jam-packed that it was standing room only, were specifically about social media and marketing. Twitter, Facebook, community building, etc...people just couldn't get enough.

This makes us wonder if 2009 be the year that social media really goes mainstream? Or, will the experimentations continue? We think it's possible that it will be both. Companies will try new things using social media. Some will succeed and some will fail, but in the end it will be these experimentations, led by the big brands, that will help push social media further out into the limelight than it is now.

Of course, having more Hollywood celebs sign up for Twitter couldn't hurt either.