BBC Backstage’s Ian Forrester has been blogging about the attention that Twitter has been getting from the BBC and some experiments they’ve done with using the open source microblogging platform Laconi.ca:

“I think as the BBC gets its heads around microblogging it will quickly notice that not only is it somewhat promoting a single startup through its wording but that Microblogging is much bigger and like how we don’t host our blogs on wordpress.com, we will want to host it ourselves. There’s all type of things we could do with our microblogging system, things which are forbidden on Twitter or even not possible because of the way Twitter is setup. The obvious example is a children’s microblogging service. This will resolve its self and it will be the geeks who had a hand in the new bright future of the BBC.”

This is a typically difficult – and foggy – area for the BBC. On the one hand is the recurring paranoia of being seen to unduly influence the market; on the other, there is the concern of spending public funds on adapting an open source platform like Jaiku for something that no one will likely use because everyone is already somewhere else: Twitter.

Ultimately it comes down to which road gets the core job done best, and that’s clearly the Twitter route.

In some ways it reflects a general perception of Twitter being a publishing medium – when it is more about communication. Imagine the BBC not using telephones for fear they were artificially inflating the value of telephone companies.

But a key problem is that Twitter has no business model yet, which makes it unpredictable – a fact that became particularly apparent when many publishers had the rug pulled from under their feet when Twitter withdrew SMS updates overnight. By making users increasingly dependent on the service Twitter gain power and it’s harder for news organisations to make concrete plans.

There’s another side to this: in the next few years the likes of Open Social and other Identity 2.0 technologies are likely to make it easier for users to export their identities across services – meaning you don’t need to re-invite all your friends/followers. In other words, that power of Twitter is significantly lessened.

But not so much that a BBC microblogging service makes any sense whatsoever if it can be done more effectively with Twitter.

And if it can’t be done with Twitter, there are dozens of startups who could probably do it better as part of a partnership (perhaps through Backstage itself), than the BBC could alone.

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To mark 1000 posts on this blog, I thought I’d reflect on what I’ve learned since post #1.

UPDATE: Now available in German, Spanish, Hebrew, and Portuguese.

UPDATE 2: I’ll be posting further ’1000 things’ via Twitter – you can find them with this search or this RSS feed.

1. Blogging is not ‘writing a blog’. Blogging is linking and commenting. Any writing is a bonus.
2. Regular posting is important…
3. But quality posting is even more important. Spending a week or more on a single post can be one of the most important things you ever do.
4. First knowledge, then analysis, then ideas.
5. A picture is worth a thousand words. More importantly, a picture is worth a thousand words in two hundred countries. The fact that readers don’t need to speak English to understand what you’re communicating can make a word-free post – or at least one with a good image – your most successful one.
6. For similar reasons, video works. It may not be search engine-friendly, but if people can embed it the word is more likely to spread.
7. When video meets conversation, good stuff can happen.
8. Everyone looks ugly on video. Get over it.
9. Online video is not online TV
10. Podcasts work better when there’s more than one of you
11. It takes time. Sometimes years. Persistence counts.
12. Being early matters
13. A big idea travels far
14. Pingback/trackback is a wonderful thing, a form of distribution news websites are still struggling to match. What can be more interesting than someone who is interested in you?
15. Cliques and old boys’ networks exist in the blogosphere too
16. We are too fucking Anglo-American
17. Language is a massive barrier (but having multilingual friends helps – see updates at top of post)
    
18. BASIC principles matter
19. Social bookmarking makes researching a post much easier
20. The best reason to blog is not to show everyone else what you know, but to find out what everyone else knows
21. RSS is one of the most undervalued technologies in the world. Once you understand what to do with it, you can bring the world to your desktop, your mobile, and your blog, and vice versa.
22. A blog doesn’t open doors for you, it just gives you the idea to try knocking.
23. When people Google you, it saves a lot of time explaining things.
24. Blogs are just one part of a social media ecology. Half the stuff that used to go on this blog now goes on Twitter; more goes on Delicious; and some on Flickr and on Seesmic.
25. Don’t get me started on FriendFeed, Plurk, Jaiku, etc.
26. Humour is effective, but not everyone will get it
27. I seem to like linking on verbs
28. Streaming live video from your mobile is a pretty amazing thing when you think about it
29. Streaming live video from your mobile uses up your battery quickly
30. Web browsing on your mobile also uses up your battery quickly
31. If you’re moblogging an event, bring a power lead, an extension lead – and a spare phone
32. The N95 kicks iPhone‘s ass
33. (But I’m prepared to be persuaded otherwise)
34. WordPress plugins are addictive
35. Firefox extensions are addictive
36. Signing up for beta web services is addictive
37. I don’t really care about Twitterspam
38. A simple, fun idea can be around the world in minutes
39. If you want to campaign against something, you already have the technology
40. If you want a service, create it yourself
41. Google is the biggest popularity contest in the world
42. When you realise you don’t have a readership – you have a community – then you also realise you can mobilise, and get things done.
43. Technology is easy; community is hard
44. Meeting in person is important: I read blogs by people I’ve met much more often than those I haven’t
45. Geography still matters
46. Birmingham has a lot of bloggers
47. Liveblogging and Twitter-blogging are not the same thing
48. Privacy is a fluid concept: just because it’s in the public domain doesn’t mean it’s not private
49. WordPress.com is better than Blogger
50. WordPress.org is better than WordPress.com (see Thing 34)
51. Content is not king.
52. Conversation is king.
53. Conversation is the kingdom.
54. We shouldn’t try to be the media
55. If someone is sending you a press release about something, you shouldn’t blog about it
56. As a journalist, blogging is a good way to rediscover the joy of journalism
57. Blogging is also a great way to rediscover how great having a good editor can be
58. Do what you do best and link to the rest
59. Blogs aren’t worth dying for. That’s what family is for.
60. Setting yourself a maximum number of posts per day is a good idea
61. Setting yourself a set time to look at your RSS subs every day is also a good idea
62. If you rely on third party services, prepare for the rug to be pulled from under your feet
63. If you publish the comments widget high up on your blog, more people comment
64. A blog without a comments facility is broken
65. A site that has comments, but edits or buries them, is not just broken, it’s malevolent.
66. Leave posts open ended if you want people to comment
67. Leave a post at the top of your site for more than a day if you want people to comment
68. Being transparent about your sources is not only good journalism, it’s good distribution.
69. The search engine optimisation industry is the new snake oil. I can tell you all you need to know about SEO in five minutes
70. Although it might take me another five hours to answer the resulting questions
71. If you expect to make lots of money from blogging, you are either naive, stupid, or Robert Scoble.
72. If you expect to make lots of money from blogging, don’t expect to make it through advertising
73. Being read by a few, key, people can be worth more, professionally, than having lots of visitors
74. Being frequently linked to can be worth more, commercially, than having lots of visitors
75. Beware advertisers bearing text-based gifts, or generous offerings of ‘free’ articles. Understand linkspam
76. Be aware that you have an ego
77. Be aware that everyone else has an ego
78. Unconferences are great
79. There’s only so much talking you can do. Sometimes you have to do something.
80. There should be more money available to do something
81. Ideas aren’t a problem. Knowing which ones to pursue is
82. Only 10% of Americans read blogs
83. But 26% of Americans write blogs
84. How does that work?
85. Blogs are far more ethnically representative than mainstream media
86. People may not trust the print and broadcast media, but they trust online news even less
87. The 1-9-90 rule
88. Rushing off a blog entry just before bed is a bad idea
89. Rushing off a blog entry hours before your wife goes into labour is not a good idea either
90. Some news travels faster than an aftershock
91. People don’t need managers to organise them – just connections
92. When I can record a video comment straight from my mobile phone, I’ll be a happy man
93. Don’t underestimate the power of corporatisation
94. Don’t underestimate the power of big corporations
95. Don’t underestimate the power of governments
96. If, after all this, we have to go back to living in caves and eating rats, it’ll be a real shame
97. Lists have become the biggest cliche in blogging and the most shameless tactic for getting to the top of delicious/digg/reddit.
98. But people still read them.
99. Have you bookmarked this yet, by the way?

1000. I can’t count.

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As soon as Twitter dumped SMS alerts for most of the world, a bunch of us started trying to find workaround solutions that would allow us to still get text messages from Twitter. After much fiddling, online discussion and frustration, I’ve come up with two solutions that seem to work:

Solution #1: feed Twitter into Jaiku, then into Jaiku again

Twitter clone Jaiku is still sending SMS alerts to users. However, there doesn’t appear to be a way to select which ones you get SMS alerts from, and asking all your friends to switch to Jaiku isn’t practical for most. So…

You will need two Jaiku accounts. The first will ‘broadcast’ all of the feeds you want to subscribe to; the second will ‘receive’ those feeds from the first, and send texts to your phone.

You will also need a tool to pull all your RSS feeds into one, because Jaiku doesn’t seem to like Twitter RSS feeds (I wonder why?).

I’ve used Yahoo! Pipes – you can find out how to aggregate feeds using Pipes here. (Note: Pipes may stop taking feeds from Twitter, so you may have to use a second-stage aggregator like xFruits then)

In the broadcasting Jaiku go to settings > web feeds and add the feed from your Yahoo! Pipe.

Now log out and log in again with your second receiving Jaiku account, and make the broadcasting Jaiku account your friend. You should now receive notifications from them whenever the aggregated RSS feeds update.

Set up your receiving Jaiku account to send you text updates. That’s it.

Unfortunately Jaiku is still in invite-only phase, so you’ll need to know someone with spare Jaiku invites. You can also request them here.

Solution #2: Redirect emails to your phone (only on Orange, O2 and T-Mobile?)

For this you will need an email account to redirect to your phone. I’m using Gmail (click settings > forwarding and POP/IMAP to access the forwarding option). You can either set it up to forward all emails or just those you know are coming from Twitter (e.g. direct messages).

The emails will need to be forwarded to one of the following addresses:

• O2: 44number@mmail.co.uk
• Orange: 0number@orange.net
• T-Mobile: 0number@t-mobile.uk.net

So if your number is 07999000000 then an email forwarded to 07999000000@orange.net should reach you by text (if you’re on Orange – 447999000000@mmail.co.uk if you’re on O2).

More email to SMS gateways can be found here and here. (thanks to Nathan Monk)

Tweet Scan and Mobifeedlive both offer email alerts from Twitter. You can also use one of the many RSS to email tools to send you email alerts when someone tweets.

Hope this is useful – if you have any more tips or refinements please let me know.

Note: also tried: Yahoo! Pipes text alert option and Pingie - both US only

PHP Freelancer

UPDATE 10: Current startups include TweetSMS, Zygotweet, Twitmobile, Twittex, HootSMS, 3jam, Tweeteroo and TwitSMS.

UPDATE 9: Two workarounds suggested

UPDATE 8: Avatar campaign now under way. Now available for  the following mobile operators: 3 (http://www.tw3t.com/f/25l); O2: http://www.tw3t.com/f/25m; Orange: http://www.tw3t.com/f/25g; T-Mobile: www.tw3t.com/f/25o; Virgin Mobile (http://www.tw3t.com/f/25n); and Vodafone: http://www.tw3t.com/f/25k. Generic image also created by dear2world

UPDATE 7: Nathan Monk is suggesting a campaign of sending ‘boo’ tweets to Twitter founder Biz Stone

UPDATE 6: Journalism.co.uk reports on the impact on many newspapers’ plans

UPDATE 5: Interview about TweetSMS at ArabCrunch.

UPDATE 4: Also filling that gap are Zygotweet.com - also recommended is Jaiku.

UPDATE 3: Also from the Facebook group wall: Some are calling for a ‘Twitter strike’ on August 18

UPDATE 2: That gap in the market has already been spotted: TweetSMS.com (also on Twitter) offers to deliver text messages “for a low price”. On the Facebook group Wall Bullying.co.uk (also on Twitter) notes of Twitter’s official statement: “the prices they are getting charged are way over the odds: on the volume they are hitting it could be as low as 0.3 – 0.5p a text.”

UPDATE: Nicolas Gosset has set up a group to campaign in France

So Twitter has cancelled SMS updates for users outside of the US, Canada and India, apparently because it has been unable to arrange decent billing deals with mobile operators outside of those countries.

So I’ve set up a Facebook group in the UK to put some pressure on mobile operators to cut a deal, fast. It’s in their interests, after all – how many of us started to use text messaging more often because of Twitter? And how many of us are now going to stop?

Hope you can join and add to the numbers (even if you’re not in the UK). Also, if you’re not in the UK, please set up a group for your own country, let me know about it, and we can build a network of these.

PHP Freelancer