The Web Services Report

In an update on the issue on Twitter's status blog, the company said that they are working on restoring the correct follower/following counts. They go on to say that, "Even after this recovery is complete, your counts may appear lower than previously...The counts we display on your profile page are not always up-to-date...when we remove spammers from the system (which we've been doing a lot lately), the follower counts are not updated in real-time." Even though it's great that Twitter is trying to sort through its problems with spammers, decreasing someone's number of followers is going to cause some backlash if it is not communicated properly. The removal of followers, due to spam, may have even gone unnoticed if it wasn't for this larger issue highlighting it.

(Credit: TwitterCounter.com)

Sarah Perez, at ReadWriteWeb, speculates that the problems arose due to a malfunction of the "Twitter anti-spam bot." As you can see in the image above, I lost 13 percent of my Twitter followers in one fell swoop. Other users have reported a drop in followers still as high as 28 percent, although it appears that the problems are being fixed even as we speak.

Even if Twitter is able to fix this problem, it is clear that confidence in the company is shaken. The ever-enthusiastic Louis Gray chimed in, saying, "Every time I think they've captured the market on a single route to failure, they find another way." There is no doubt that Twitter's service is a crowd favorite and everyone is dying to see them succeed and break into the mainstream, but they just keep shooting themselves in the foot with incidents like this. Individually, these sort of problems are tolerable, but when they are all lumped together, like they have been with Twitter, people are not going to stand for it. If Twitter fails, it's not going to be because of other sites like FriendFeed. It's going to be because of themselves.

Update
We just received an update on the situation from Biz Stone, over at Twitter. He writes, "Some users lost followers as a result of an error during a database upgrade. We replaced followers last night and will be replacing followers today. This is not related to the spam initiative we blogged about the other day." At least Twitter is hard at work trying to remedy the situation.

Digg commenter Hiji writes, "This is the beginning of the end. In a few years all the major blogs and social-media sites will be owned by large corporations, putting us right back where we started."

The topic of discussion is, of course, TechCrunch's rumor that Digg will soon be acquired by Google for somewhere in the neighborhood of $200 million. Digg's users are debating what Google acquiring Digg might mean for their community in this thread on the site. The question is, would being controlled by a big company like Google ruin--or enhance--the community that Digg has worked so hard to build?

Some background on Web 2.0 acquisitions
A few of the major Web 2.0 sites that have been acquired by big companies include YouTube, Flickr, and MySpace. Each of these sites has been greatly affected by being acquired by a larger company.

Once it was acquired by Google, YouTube was forced to take down much of the copyrighted material that had helped it rise to popularity. I would argue that YouTube has benefited from the financial backing and support that Google was able to provide, so the acquisition may have been a necessity at the time.

Flickr has seen little to no improvements in the way of new features, aside from Flickr Video, since being acquired by Yahoo. Despite the lack of innovative new features at Flickr, its photo community is stronger than ever, thanks in no small part, to Yahoo's ownership.

Although MySpace is still a force to be reckoned with on the Internet, especially in the music scene, it has watched its seemingly insurmountable lead in the social-networking space slip through its fingers and into Facebook's. Whether this is due to being bought by News Corp. is purely speculation, but the influence of the big media company may not have helped.

Why does Google want Digg?
In the case of Digg, Google would clearly be buying the site to acquire Digg's community. Digg has one of the strongest communities in the social-media space. Google certainly has the engineering power to build a site similar to Digg, or Yahoo Buzz, if it wanted to. But what it is really after is the people. If we can agree that Google wants the community, it would only make logical sense that the company would do whatever it could to keep that community happy and to get it to stay, post-acquisition.

How Google would change Digg
The other side of the coin that must be considered is the volume of people who would be streaming into Digg if it is acquired by Google. The added promotion of the Internet giant would send lots of newcomers to the site, who could break the delicate dynamic that Digg has right now. Digg suddenly being flooded by gardening tips, for example, might drive away a lot of the core users. Digg would, almost certainly, survive under mainstream attention, even thrive. But it could become a very different place from what we see today. The category structure of Digg submissions was built out for this very reason. If and when the mainstream public turns its attention to Digg, the audience that it has today might be able to find refuge in its own sections of the site--if it decides to stick around.

This acquisition would be a tremendous opportunity for Kevin Rose and company to cash in on some really hard work. They have done a great job building this company and carefully crafting the Digg community into what it is today. Being taken under the wing of a company like Google may be their big shot at really breaking into the mainstream.

Like I already said, the move would absolutely change the dynamic of the site. Some would like it and stay, some would hate it and leave, and many more would discover Digg for the first time. So, what do you think? Would Google destroy Digg or take it to the next level?

Facebook's iPhone app gives you access to Facebook Chat.

Viewing Facebook photos is really great in this app. They have implemented the same "flick" style of navigation that the iPhone uses and photos flip over to reveal comments. Overall, the UI is pretty intuitive and uses a lot of the same conventions that Apple does. Taking photos and uploading them to Facebook could not be simpler. Just tap the camera icon, take the picture, and tap to upload.

The installed application is a great improvement over the previously released web based version, which does not offer as high a level of functionality or as fluid of an interface. While I was initially skeptical as to the benefits to a standalone Facebook application, as opposed to just using the web based one, features like photo uploading and chat justify its existence.

Facebook has built an extremely slick iPhone application. My first impressions are extremely positive and Facebook has definitely earned a spot on my first page of icons. Its navigation is very fluid and the feature set is complete and easy to use. It was important for Facebook to have an application at launch for the iPhone App Store, with competition coming from a variety of other social networks, MySpace included, so it's good to see them bring such a solid offering to the table.

Digg's upcoming section, where stories wait for enough diggs in order to get promoted, has been very intimidating for users to jump head first into, given the volume of stories being submitted. It was fairly hard to sift through all of the crap in order to get to the real gems. Hopefully the introduction of a recommendation engine will make it a lot easier for users to find the quality submissions.

I believe that the addition of a recommendation to Digg is going to significantly help with the usability of the site and direct people towards the long tail of submissions. By adding a lot of new eyes to the upcoming section, Digg's homepage will certainly get a much fresher look than we have seen recently.

Digg's new recommendation engine lets you compare your tastes with the tastes of other users.

(Credit: Digg the Blog)

The other important factor to look at here is the apparent benefit that the recommendation engine will be giving to websites. Making content more discoverable on Digg means more traffic for the sites that the content has been submitted from. I suspect that more and more sites will begin to feel the Digg effect as a direct result of the launch of this feature.

The introduction of a recommendation engine should give Digg a nice jolt. I haven't seen the feature in action yet, but if it is implemented correctly, I see Digg becoming a much more valuable resource and frequented by a lot more people. Kevin Rose posted a couple of videos on the Digg Blog which you can see embedded below. The first is an overview by Kevin of the recommendation engine, complete with graphics and the second features Anton Kast, Digg's Lead Scientist, talking about the new engine. You can read his whitepaper on the subject here.

NBC will not be offering live online feeds of any events that will be broadcast on TV. The ones broadcast on TV will, of course, include the most popular events and the ones that people are most likely to tune into. The video of the events will be on NBC's site only after the events have been completed. With this in mind, it is clear that NBC views its online offering as a supplement to their TV broadcast and not as any sort of a replacement.

Many have been really quick to heavily criticize this move by NBC, but I'm not jumping on that bandwagon just yet. I am usually not one to defend old media (see my post on Why Broadcast TV Sucks), but I have some sympathy for NBC here. I applaud NBC for taking this major leap into the online distribution of this major event in the first place. It's an unfamiliar road and a departure from a model that has worked for NBC for a very long time.

Of course, we would love to see every live stream available to us, with videos and highlights that we could embed on other sites, but this may be too radical of a first step for NBC. Think of this year's Olympic webcast as testing the waters. If NBC's web offerings prove to be profitable this year, then maybe they will expand their offerings in years to come. The Olympics only happen every two years (the more popular Summer version every four) and I can understand NBC not wanting to gamble too much on this very costly venture.

An online feed of an event like the Olympics (or any sporting event for that matter) can offer all sorts of rich functionality, including realtime statistics, scores, and leaderboards. There is no doubt in my mind that rich functionality will eventually win out, whether it is viewed on your computer or through a new interface on your TV. If it doesn't look like they get it now, NBC and the other networks will eventually see the light, but these big companies may just need a little more time to make the switch at their own pace.

To view NBC's online Olympic offering, you must install Microsoft's Silverlight plug-in.

Don't believe the haters, NBC's online offering of the Olympics is a step in the right direction, just not two steps as a lot had hoped.

While it is not immediately clear whether or not YouTube will be pursuing longer subject films in addition to short subject ones, it is safe to assume that they are looking in that direction. Their blog post says that, "Today, we're pleased to announce the launch of the YouTube Screening Room, a platform for films from around the world to find the audiences they deserve." Given this statement, it does not appear that the site will be limited to short films.

The YouTube Screening Room could give a great break to films that were not able to find a solid audience or were not even released to the public in the first place. Other than the obvious benefit of exposure, monetary benefits to those who are making these films have not been publicly discussed by YouTube.

The videos include a "Buy Now" button, which, in some cases, directs you to the website of the filmmaker/film and in others links to a place where you can buy a DVD or digital copy. Some of the links don't exactly point to the right place yet and it's a little unclear to me why people would want to buy a short film that they just watched for free online (aside from upgraded quality), but I'm sure the kinks will get worked out. The purchasing model might work better if and when they offer feature length films.

Being a cinephile, I am excited to see the sort of films that come out of this new venture. They are off to a good start already with the four short films that they already have. YouTube Screening Room could prove to be a much needed boost to the indie film community.

This post is part of a multi-part series about tech abroad.

(Credit: Harrison Hoffman/The Web Services Report)

Everyone knows to bring power adapters to hook up their electronics, but here are some tips that you may not have considered, that I have gathered during my stay in Europe so far.

1. Free WiFi is scarce, take advantage when you can. You may luck out and land at a hotel or hostel where they provide free internet, but most of the time you are going to have to pay or go without access. Orange is a popular provider of paid WiFi in Europe, for reasonable prices (15 Euros for 10 hours). They have a lot of hotspots, but you are going to want to watch your time and not go overboard there. Some cafés will have free WiFi and usually advertise it on a sticker in their window. For a more casual setting, the McDonald's, on the Champs Elysses in Paris, has free WiFi to go with your Royale with Cheese. Some public places, such as the parks by Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower, also provide access.

If and when you find free WiFi access, jump over to Google Reader and download your RSS items with its offline Google Gears functionality. If you take the couple of seconds to do this, you can catch up on your news even when you're not basking in the glow of free WiFi.

2. With that said, bring your WiFi enabled phone. iPhone users take note, a quick download of your emails onto your phone saves you a lot of trouble of lugging a laptop around. This helps you to leverage the scarce free WiFi to the best of your ability. While you will benefit greatly from having WiFi on your phone, remember to turn off data roaming, or else you will rack up a massive bill during your trip.

Personalized recommendations are something that has been wildly successful for sites like Amazon and Netflix in the past, however their respective systems have been highly tuned to their specific markets. Baynote hopes to provide a system that can be implemented across a variety of scenarios.

Baynote's target markets are large online retailers, enterprise, and media, but I would love to see a service like this float down to small and independent businesses. Baynote's platform covers a broad range of potential points of sale and the reach of their statistics, testing, and reporting components is extensive. It is not a new idea that we can use social recommendations to leverage the revenue potential in the long tail, however it's always good to see advances in this area.

Update: Changed to more accurately reflect target markets and launch date.

MLB.tv on the iPhone

(Credit: James Martin/CNET News.com)

Baseball fans rejoice. MLB.tv has just debuted a killer iPhone application at WWDC 2008. The application provides live scoreboards, with individual box scores and pitch-by-pitch updates, along with current and constantly updated video highlights, minutes after the play happens.

This application is great for checking in on your team while you're on the go. Instead of being frustrated by not being able to see what your team is up to, MLB.tv's solution puts the whole baseball experience, not just the scores, in your pocket.

This iPhone application looks like it's the best in its class, as far as sports applications go. MLB.tv has been leading the way in streaming sporting events over the Internet. They are continuing their tradition of quality products here.

The development of rich sports applications like this one is nothing but great news for sports fans as others are likely to follow suit. This application is sure to drive more subscribers to MLB.tv's service.

The location-based social network Loopt, just announced and demoed its native iPhone application onstage at WWDC. The application, which will be free at launch, helps you connect with and find friends around you. Using the location technology built in to the iPhone, Loopt will drop pins onto a map, showing where your friends are.

Loopt also contains other social-networking features, such as calling, texting, and sending invitations to meet up. The example used was seeing if any friends are in your area for lunch. Once you have located friends, you can send them an invitation for lunch, and if they agree, you will be one touch away from directions to their location. As Sam Altman from Loopt put it, "You will never have to eat alone, or at a bad restaurant again."

This is an exciting step in bringing location-based networking into the mainstream. With native third-party applications for the iPhone and the rumored GPS feature, expect to see many applications leveraging these same sorts of capabilities in the future.