Post to 12 link-sharing sites at once with Mahalo Follow

Posted Saturday, March 29th, 2008 8:40 am by Dave Moyer

Mahalo Follow As you probably already know, I’m quite the social network-er. I sign up as soon as something new comes up, and use tons of services. When I see a site or webpage I like, I tag it on del.icio.us, Digg it, recommend it on StumbleUpon from my Firefox, then sometimes post to Twitter or even one of my blogs! At least, that’s what I used to do, until a Tweet from Jason Calacanis pointed me to an awesome timesaving tool: Mahalo Follow.

Mahalo Follow is designed to work with the “human-powered” search startup Jason founded last year. The point is to recommend links for Mahalo to add to their growing index of pages. I think the concept behind Mahalo is awesome, and I’ve been using their search and writing search results pages since. Though I still go to Google to find a webpage (I don’t think I’ll ever leave), I don’t think there’s anything that can beat Mahalo for human-powered information. It’s a great site, and I’ll recommend it to anyone that I see.

What makes Mahalo Follow this amazing time saving tool is its’ ability to post to 12 social bookmarking and link sharing sites at once, including:

Mahalo (of course!)
del.icio.us
StumbleUpon
Ma.gnolia
Facebook
Twitter
Myspace
Google Bookmarks
Tumblr
Jaiku
Pownce
Faves

It formats everything just as you’d want it to, and makes things SO much faster. A must-have productivity tool for anyone who uses any of these sites, and a great way to help out a great site. (They’ve got dolphins. How can it not be great when they have dolphins?)

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The New Net: Engaging vs. Passive Media

Posted Friday, March 28th, 2008 12:59 pm by Dave Moyer

In the world of media, everything is about content. Take whatever you want to send to the listener, viewer or reader, and send it out to them. Whether you’re talking about newer or more traditional media, the entire point of content production is to get that content out to the people you want to get it to. True, methods have changed drastically, but that is, and will always be, the main point of media. As The New Net changes our society, two distinct types of content have emerged. Traditional TV, radio and newspapers are in the format of what I like to call “passive” media, and podcasts, blogs and web video are turning out to be something that I like to call “engaging” media.

When I say “passive” I mean that a lot of the content goes right by the audience, and they aren’t as into it as you’ll see people being into newer styles of media. Chances are, you or someone you know has (or used to have, in many cases) the TV or the radio on while working in the kitchen, working on the computer, or doing something else that is also using their attention. This is “passive”; it’s not grasping your attention, and lots of content is going right by you all the time, unless something jumps out at you that captures your interest, whether it be someone solving the puzzle on “Wheel of Fortune”, a funny column in the newspaper, or your favorite song on the radio. And, because of the small amount of attention that people often have, and small amount of input that producers get on what engages people and what doesn’t, “passive media” producers tend to produce a very wide spectrum of content in very large amounts.

Enter “engaging” media, the kind of content that is found through something like the internet. With audio podcasts, video podcasts, streaming video, video sharing sites and blogs, people choose what they want to see. All sorts of things are presented to the audience, and the audience picks what they want to see. Look at your favorite podcast, for example. (If you don’t listen to podcasts, check out some of mine. I’m sure you’ll find them excellent. ) The subscriber picked that show from the masses that are there, because it had what they want to see. The producer doesn’t have to make hours of broad content, because they know that they’re already sending listeners what they want– they subscribed to it, for Pete’s sake! Think of the success of YouTube! People liked it because they could watch what they wanted to watch when they wanted to watch it!

It’s those choices that makes this kind of content engaging. Because the audience gets what they want on their terms, they pay a lot more attention to it then they would to the TV when they’re cooking dinner. You’ll often see someone playing a podcast while running! Many of my listeners tell me that they listen while commuting to work, school, or whatever their destination many be. Some say that they listen in bed! They choose to consume that content when there’s nothing else to distract them! They know they’re getting what they want because they picked it themselves, and they don’t want to be distracted. That is the difference between new media and old media; engaging media and passive media. And it’s another revolution that’s taking place from The New Net.

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That Thingie’s Jacked!

Posted Saturday, March 15th, 2008 9:54 am by Dave Moyer

For those of you who don’t listen to the Gadgettes podcast at CNET, you should! Hosted by Molly Wood, Kelly Morrison and producer Jason Howell, they tackle the latest in gadget news each week.

In episode 80, after the end of the theme song, Jason included a blooper from the show in which all the hosts were laughing and discussing a new phrase that had come up: “Jack My Thingie”. They were shocked to find out that jackmythingie.com wasn’t registered yet, and I was shocked as well, as it was almost a week since the show was released, and usually things like these are snapped up by fans! Needless to say, I took care of that problem.

I sent them a voicemail notifying them that I had put jackmythingie.com on the web. Everyone loved it! Molly twittered: “Dude. Dave from Denver. You are my hero.”, and Jason went crazy! Molly said, “YOU HAVE TO GO THERE!” Jason called it the “best thing in the whole wide world”. I must admit I was very shocked and happily surprised to find that the most recent Gadgettes show, the “I Love You” episode, was “dedicated to Dave from Denver”. For about 2 minutes of the show, all three hosts went crazy about the site, commenting on how there was “nowhere to go but down from Dave from Denver”. I seriously love those guys. Go listen to the show (or at least the beginning) and you’ll know why.

What’s the point? Not only is it super cool, but one of the things that Molly mentioned was, “I want this to become a thing, like the biggest thing there ever was! A thingie!”. Throughout the segment, they encouraged listeners to Digg and StumbleUpon Jack My Thingie, and expressed how far they wanted it to go. After thinking about this for a while, I realized that this fit right in to one of my biggest theories about the internet and where it’s going. Jack My Thingie received nine Diggs within 8 hours, and got over 250 visitors in the first three hours since the podcast was released. JMT was also added to Reddit, StumbleUpon, and del.icio.us multiple times, all within 12 hours of the podcast’s posting.

This is a prime example of the transformation that media has when it comes to the web. You’ll never find anything quite like this happening on TV or the radio. Not only would the blooper that inspired jackmythingie.com never reach the public, but the website wouldn’t even exist, the people on the show wouldn’t have loved it, and it wouldn’t have received the welcome it did in that small amount of time. We’re in a new age of media, and this is a perfect example. Look forward to my first post in “The New Net” coming today, focusing on what I call passive vs. engaging media. And seriously- make Jack My Thingie a really big thingie.

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The New Net: Introduction

Posted Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 9:25 am by Dave Moyer

Starting today, and continuing till… (who knows when?) I’ll be writing about “The New Net” and how the internet has been, and is, evolving. I’ll also be talking about people, (very broad, I know) and how they are reacting to these changes. Here’s a little FAQ:

Q. What IS “The New Net?
A. “The New Net” is the term I’ve decided to use for the new internet in this series. This is very different from “Web 2.0″ and similar terms, as those are, in essence, buzz words that are now used as an adjective to describe sites, services, and companies. “So and so is a new Web 2.0 site that does such and such.” Phrases like this are very common today, but I’m writing on a much broader topic.

Q. What, specifically, are you going to be covering?
A. Here’s a little sample of the topics I’ll be writing about. This is just a small list, and topics are in no way limited to the following: