Macmillan, Twitter and ‘Controlled Serendipity’ on the Semantic Web

Last week, NYT “Bits Blogger” Nick Bilton (@nickbilton) wrote a piece in response to The New Yorker’s George Packer, who published a criticism of Twitter on the NYer website. In this piece, Bilton used a phrase coined in an earlier piece to describe the power of the the popular web service: “controlled serendipity,” i.e.: Twitter’s power to deliver users unexpected news and information related to their personal interests via a self-selected cohort of ‘followees’ with parallel interests.

I was put in mind of this phrase again this afternoon after stumbling upon a post from HarperStudio (@harperstudio), one of the many publishers, agents, authors, and writers I follow on Twitter. The post, entitled “Gen Y Asks Why Not,” is about responses received by a member of HarperStudio, Debbie Stier (@debbiestier), after she reblogged a piece entitled, “A Gen Y Reaction to Macmillan’s Piracy Plan,” on her tumblr. The item — which concerns publisher Macmillan’s controversial plan to fight electronic book piracy by ramping up legal action against illegal downloaders — raises some great points, but what interested me the most about it was the author: Marian Schembari (@marianschembari), whose name I first encountered about a year ago, after she got significant press for her decision to pursue a job in publishing via an ad on facebook. A year later, I now discover that she has gone into business for herself as a freelance writer and social media consultant, as well as a contributing editor to Digital Book World (@DigiBookWorld).

Without Twitter, I probably wouldn’t have ever heard about Schembari again, nor would I have had the opportunity to discovered her website or add her RSS feed to my Google Reader, where I hope to gain further insight into the world of publishing and social media from a seasoned newcomer. In addition, I’ve gained an even deeper appreciate for the conversational nature of ‘Web. 2.0.’ My opening comment about “controlled serendipity” was informed by an online debate between two well-known reporters/bloggers — In fact, Packer went on to continue the conversation earlier this week — and my rediscovery of Schembari’s presence in the social media sphere came out of a chain reaction of links on tumblr, twitter and several websites from HarperStudio, Stier, Digital Book World and Schembari herself. Long live the semantic web!

In Praise of HootSuite

There are a lot of interesting people on Twitter. Too many, perhaps. Or at least so many that after a while, you need some help keeping track of everyone. Twitter lists were a great start. Now, I’ve discovered an even better option – a free service that lets you slice and dice your Twitter streams into a personalized information dashboard, all online; no software downloads required.

I speak, of course, of HootSuite.

It seems that everyday some new website, software program, mobile app, or Firefox plugin crops up that promise to revolutionize your Twitter experience (e.g.: TweetDeck, Tweetie, Brizzly, Twitbin, etc.); however, HootSuite is by far the most effective solution to information overload I’ve ever used. Some key features include:

Organization: Organization is the greatest strength of HootSuite. After the introduction of Twitter lists, I spent an obsessive weekend afternoon parsing each person I follow into one of 20 categories: bloggers, brands, class clowns, celebs, comedians, creatives, critics, do-gooders, freelancers, friends (private), gurus, insiders, jobbers, journos, literati, mediaites, newsies, smarties, techies, and tweeple. But even after this feat of organization, I almost never took the time to filter streams from the main twitter page, as this involved the tedious task of scrolling down a long column of lists on the right-hand side of the page.

In HootSuite, however, it’s simple to create multiple tabs, each containing streams from several lists. For example, I’ve created seven tabs: “news,” “entertainment,” “arts & lit,” “media & tech,” information,” humor,” and “personal.” Click on “news” and three separate columns appear, in which loads content from everyone in the groups “newsies,” “journos,” and “bloggers”:

As you can tell from this screenshot (click image to enlarge), HootSuite can create a powerful real-time snapshot of what’s happening in the world. The first column contains major headlines from various news organizations and breaking news services; the second a scroll of real-time comments from White House correspondents and other prominent news journalists; and the last a mix of online news providers and individual bloggers to provide comment and context. The same process creates similar depth for entertainment, tech news, and other topics. Essentially, HootSuite empowers you to transform your twitter stream into a personalized, real-time information dashboard.

Statistics: HootSuite provides a robust collection of statistical analysis tools, if you’re curious about your page views or who’s clicking your links. The system’s main weakness is that you must post links using HootSuite’s in-house URL shorter, Ow.ly. Other links will not register visitor information. But the information available is thorough and well-presented. Imagine Google Analytics for your twitter stream.

URL Shortening: These days, most Twitter clients provide a built-in URL shortener. HootSuite is among them. No more popping open a new browser window to paste in a link for shortening.

Scheduled Tweets: Until now, if I wanted to schedule a tweet – perhaps the impulse to post a #FF recommendation arises two days too soon – I jumped over to FutureTweets. HootSuite is the first application I’ve found to include built-in scheduling.

Multiple-Account Integration: HootSuite is similar to another social networking platform – Brizzly – in that you can use it to manage multiple accounts, including multiple Twitter and Facebook profiles.

RSS Feeds: Are you a blogger as well as a Twitter user? Enter your RSS feed into HootSuite’s RSS/Atom tab (under Settings) and the site will shoot out an automatic tweet each time your update your site. Personally, I use a similar service built into Tumblr, but it’s a nice feature.

Mobile App: If I had one complaint about HootSuite, it would be its mobile application isn’t up to its own high standards, or those of its competitors in the mobile marketplace. The app does a decent job at replicating the “personalized dashboard” experience in a mobile environment – and other unique features such as statistics and scheduled tweets are also present – but it falls short when it comes to features offered in other apps. You can’t open links in Safari, for example. Nor can you import links to other applications, such as Instapaper, a revolutionary service whose virtues I’ve previously extolled. For these features, and more, I’ll stick to the excellent Tweetie. But for a superb web-based Twitter experience, I can’t recommend HootSuite enough.