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Find the Best Content on the Web with Thoora

A few weeks ago I blasted Google +’s Sparks feature indicating that it had missed how social, semantics and aggregation could be combined in an effective way.

I’m still a Google + skeptic, despite the massive subscriber numbers, as Google recently announced they will try to continue real-time search after losing its agreement with Twitter by using Google +. The reality is that real-time search will need Twitter and a much larger user base to be truly successful.

There are other options to Google Sparks though, like Toronto-based Thoora which is a new way to discover and share the best content on the web.

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Klout adds slew of new services to its system, including Blogger, Tumblr, and Flickr

Klout, a startup that has fast become the gold standard for quantifying online social media influence (aka clout), has added a slew of new services.

What started with Twitter gradually expanded to Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube, then Foursquare, with Google+ in the works.

Now it's gone and added a bunch more at once—Tumblr and Blogger on the blog side, Flickr and Instagram on the image side, and even Last.fm.

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Google getting its Plus on: Social network could have more users than Twitter and LinkedIn in just a year

So Google+ has already signed up nearly 15 percent of U.S. adults, and a Bloomberg report suggests this climb could reach 22 percent within a year—thats more than one in five adults on a brand new social network.

If that doesn't shock you, how about the fact that this would be deeper penetration than either Twitter, 5 years old, or LinkedIn, a decade old, have right now? 

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Checking in is a big city game. But is it here to stay?

Many are skeptical of whether or not the powerful combination of social, location and mobile is just a micro-trend or something more.

On one hand, location-based marketing is so much more than just Foursquare. It includes digital signage, cell towers, geo-location, GPS, computer-driven cars, and so much more.

Matt Seamansky of Marketing Magazine reports in his Location-based Marketing for the Rest of Us article: "Sorting through the numerous geo-local options is difficult enough for big-budget advertisers. For small businesses with a fraction of the marketing bucks and resources, it can be downright paralyzing".

But many are focused on the check-in: often perceived as the golden nugget of geo-location, in large part due to the popularity of Foursquare.

For all of social location's skeptics, the Stratford Report in May reported that the National Post had accumulated over 45,000 Foursquare friends, suggesting that creating a following solely based on location is possible on a large scale.

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ING Direct Canada unveils OrangeTweets, a new way to experience Twitter

ING Direct fans on Twitter will revel in the bank's latest offering—and no, it doesn't have much to do with money.

ING has launched OrangeTweets, a website that is essentially a Twitter stream, but cooler. First, you get to listen to soft music and the hot air puffs from balloons that drift gently upward, each one containing a tweet from the bank's various Twitter accounts, including @SuperStarSaver and @CEO_INGDirect, plus their city accounts like @OrangeYVR. You can filter the balloons (AKA tweets) by account or hashtag.

Blimps even occasionally float by to remind you how awesome ING is.

The filters keep the website from being completely impractical, but even if it were, the website is nonetheless a fun break from the standard way of reading a twitter feed. 

Ka-pow! Flex your social media muscle and Klout opponents arcade-style in TweetFighter II

Klout has become the standard for quantifying social media influence.While some disagree with its accuracy, or the concept of quantifying online social fame period, its hard to argue that Klout hasn't been put to its best use ever: as a power-up in an epic throwback to the old arcade Street Fighter games.

TweetFighter II: The Social Warrior is a simple but awesome game in which you select two Twitter users and pit them in a Street Fight. The mechanics are very basic: you type in keywords and see who commands more expertise in that topic. Damage is then amplified by Klout scores.

I've got a Klout score of 61 (edit: it's apparently 62 now) and fared pretty well when blasting enemies with my signature #Techvibes punch, but I have some advice for rook shows: never type "never" against Toronto pop sensation Justin Bieber. His perfect-100 Klout Score, combined with a popular song and movie both called "Never Say Never," one-hit KO'd me. In fact, it even one-hit KO'd Oprah (whose lack of frequent tweeting places her Klout at a surprisingly low 80).

Google+'s Sparks feature disappoints: Comparing Aggregation and Semantics across Major Social Media Players

While Techvibes' Knowlton Thomas reported that Google + reached 10 million users in 16 days, let’s not jump the gun and call Google's latest foray into social media a smashing success yet.

I wasn’t impressed by Google Sparks, a feature released in Google+, which shows results based on keywords that you search, but the depth of the results are terrible, and not remotely comparable to Google News.

Matthew Ingram, beat writer at Gigaom says that one part of the future of media certainly is aggregation, but realistically, it’s already here and has been for quite some time.

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McLuhan's son Eric Headlines at CROSSMEDIATO: Insights into the Changing Media Landscape

crossmediaTO

July 21st marks the 100th birthday of Marshall McLuhan, the famous Canadian media visionary.

Last night's CROSSMEDIATO event hosted by Gavin McGarry of JumpWire Media featured McLuhan's son, Eric as a speaker. CrossmediaTO is a monthly series that focuses on motion, mobile, marketing, publishing and gaming the third Wednesday of every month. The notion of cross-media will be further explored byInteractive Ontario's X-Summit October 24-26 at The Carlu in Toronto, which has recently posted an open call for speakers. 

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