According to this LA Times article, “before Insight, success on Google’s YouTube was measured primarily in one way: by the sheer number of “views,” or times a video was watched. The data available through Insight include age, gender and geographic location as well as the identities of the Internet sites that viewers came from and where they went after watching a clip.”

Nice video overview of the service (1:20 long).

This principle demonstrates the need for businesses and content producers to focus on finding the right audience (typically a small niche) and engage them, vs. drawing huge numbers of mostly disinterested people.
 
 
Twitter Charts by Xefer
Xefer offers this elegant method of tracking the posting habits of various Twitter users. Here is the chart for my personal Twitter account:

While it doesn’t yet offer a broad overview of all Twitter activity, this could be a great method of getting into contact with content-leaders, who often must deal with so much noise coming at them that it’s close to impossible to get something through. (For example, serial-adder Robert Scoble had to tone down his Twitter usage when he began to receive an average of one Tweet per second.) It also offers valuable insight into the way Web 2.0 early adopters (the “canaries in the coalmine”) are utilizing services.

A lot of my blogging process so far has been a process of discovery, as I try to find my voice and narrow my focus - it’s an ongoing process, so tips and methods like this, or anything else that helps me along the way, are welcome. My next step is to develop a lengthy list of topics to address on this blog in the future.

In this episode of Heads Up!, Laura discusses Twitter’s trends, interesting feeds, and the top 10 applications for the service.

Our Top 10 Twitter Applications:

1. Twistori
Twistori scans Twitter and anonymously displays users’ dreams and desires.

2. Twappi
Twappi show’s twitter’s mood status based on the day’s messages.

3. Hashtags
Using tags, this service is a great way to track group content.

4. Twhirl
Twhirl is a popular Twitter client that runs off your computer’s desktop.

5. Twitterholic
Twitterholic displays the top 100 twitter addicts based on number of followers, friends or updates.

6. Tweet Scan
Tweet Scan lets you search Twitter content, billing itself as the most complete Twitter index outside of Twitter itself.

7. Picobuzz
Picobuzz shows the most popular daily topics and displays what people are saying about them.

8. Trackthis
Track this does what it says on the tin. You can use twitter to get information on package movements from FedEx, UPS, USPS and DHL.

9. Twitter Blacklist
Twitter Blacklist collects IDs of spammer accounts.

10. Strawpoll
Strawpoll organizes and displays short daily polls.

Additional links from the show are included behind the jump:

April statistics from Hitwise

Global distribution of Twitter users

Lee LeFever’s Commoncraft show about Twitter

Twitter users’ feeds:
JetBlue
Zappos
Barack Obama
Hillary Clinton
No. 10 Downing Street
Doorbell, living room temperature, house
Tower Bridge in London
Mars Phoenix lander

Welcome to the developer preview of the Yahoo! Internet Location Platform. The Yahoo! Internet Location Platform provides a resource for managing all geo-permanent named places on Earth. Our purpose in creating the Internet Location Platform is to provide the Yahoo! Geographic Developer Community with the vocabulary and grammar to describe the world’s geography in an unequivocal, permanent, and language-neutral manner.

The Internet Location Platform is designed to facilitate spatial interoperability and geographic discovery; users can traverse the spatial hierarchy, identify the geography relevant to their users and their business, and in turn, unambiguously geotag, geotarget, and geolocate data across the Web.

(via Waxy.org)

The main question that drove this movement, “How can I take this data and share it with other people?” Since this question was asked, sites have popped up all over the internet trying to answer this question with different approaches.

Pope Benedict XVI will send religious text messages to thousands of young Catholics when he attends World Youth Day in Australia, organisers say.

The move aims to help the Pope connect with his technology-loving audience.

Digital prayer walls will also be set up and a web-based social networking site established, organisers say.

Re: the World Youth Day event - I applaud their effort to connect with “today’s tech-savvy youth” but I wonder if they will address actual social and cultural needs of the community, and if so, what those are (and why they’re not being addressed by local, physical groups or institutions).

It looks like someone within Sony reads the page, because by May 12 Dustin received a personal phone call offering to replace (instead of just repair) his machine.

Appeasing the single consumer who speaks out in public is such a simple thing, and it provides evidence and positive associations for the unknown number of lurkers with the same problem. Nicely done, Sony!

(via WOMMA)