ambient

Back in business.

As a result, Gridjit is not able to pull data from the API. When Twitter is up, Gridjit should be back to normal.

As someone who just spent the last two years building technology to help large advertisers optimize their search campaigns, I’ve been eager to get a better handle on social media, what works, and what the best tools are. In the last week since launching Gridjit, a social portal for Twitter, I’ve learned quite a bit.

Here’s a quick list:

• Bloglines seems to be more comprehensive than Google Blog Search in what it finds.
• Twitter is heavily indexed by Google and Bloglines. Surprisingly, Ask.com does not seem to make use of Bloglines for its own search results. Seems like a natural use and could start to differentiate them from the other engines. Too bad.
• Ask.com does do something very interesting with Bloglines. If you want to be indexed by Ask, they recommend that you create a Bloglines account and register your site in your Bloglines profile. It’s their take on Sitemaps, and I think it’s a great idea. It’s slow though (Gridjit is still not indexed).
• If you’re into web analytics (who isn’t?), GetClicky should be your new friend. I find it much faster than Google Analytics, its results are truly real time, the interface is beautiful, and its availability in iGoogle (Google, duh.) makes it a killer app. It’s not suited, it seems, for sites with tons of traffic, so I’ll let you know what I do when I get there.
• Yahoo, in terms of search results, is actually doing a very nice job. I found their results to be much more accurate, IMO, than even Google’s for Gridjit related sites.
• Twitter is even better than I thought. I don’t know of a better way online right now to meet new people, create friendships with people around the world, and share ideas about what works.
• I am seeing a crazy amount of innovation coming from Europe and Asia. I received quite a bit of email from people in those regions and, as a result, was introduced to some of the projects going on outside the US.
• In short, SMO is most definitely the new SEO. For some background information, I designed, developed, and helped launch a product called Organic Insight at Covario (formerly SEMDirector). I learned a lot about SEO, and I’m seeing that I have to relearn almost everything. Amazing what just a year or two does.

Last Monday, I announced Gridjit via Twitter and this blog. For those who don’t know, Gridjit is an easy way to turn your list of Twitter friends into a grid view. To be honest, I was surprised at the positive response.

Gridjit, initially, was for me. My brain is just wired in a way that prefers to see things arranged along both x- and y- dimensions — in a grid, as opposed to a list. The default Twitter view and the majority, if not all, Twitter clients out there use a list view to visualize conversations and relationships (using the y-axis only).

I built the initial version in a few days, started using it myself, and made it public last week. My goals for Gridjit are equally simple. I want to continue to make it useful for navigating networks and relationships. More than a few people have told me that I’m on to something here, and I plan to see where it goes.

The response, given my efforts at marketing it, was fantastic. Within a few days, @gridjit had dozens of followers on Twitter, was mentioned in hundreds of places around the blogosphere, was tagged rather well on del.icio.us, and was even Dugg (lightly, of course - more Diggs welcome :)). Traffic numbers are very comfortable. People seemed to love the simple utility of Gridjit: an easier way (for some) to scan Twitter conversations, discover new people to follow, and navigate relationships.

One of the responses that was most exciting was the email I received from Nik Guinta. Nik is an artist and designer, and she does great work. She sent me a CSS file that she had created to customize the Gridjit view to her own liking.

The design (screenshot below) is clean and really helps to bring out individual Twitterers. I had been planning to build in a themes system, and Nik’s email validated to me that this was a good idea. I plan to have her CSS available as an option, as well as the ability for people to create their own, in the near future. Thanks, Nik!

Where is Gridjit going next?

That depends on what people want to see. Yes, I have a vision for the application but I believe that the best products (even Apple’s) are created with a clear understanding of what people want. The only way I know what people want is if they tell me, so feel free to talk to me on Twitter, email support at gridjit dot com, or comment on this blog. I can, however, provide some hints at where Gridjit is going:

• Additional networks and content types
• The ability to update status and follow people from Gridjit
• Insight into hits to your Twitter profile

What else can I say? I love social media for one reason: It brings all of us back to what makes the internet great to begin with. For me, it’s not about making a lot of money. Sure, I need to eat, but I believe that sustenance follows value, and social media is just a fancy word for the relationships we have the opportunity to create through our communications. Gridjit has allowed me to do that, and I’m grateful for all of the people who have supported it this week.

Please continue to use it and let me know what you would like to see next.

My new tumblelog, the ambient tumble, hosted by Tumblr, my other microblog.

Two good posts I came across today:

• Five Whys - Joel on Software
• (85) Operations Rules to Live By

Gridjit is a brand new web app (social portal) designed to reduce information overload and make navigating through social profiles easier.

Because I’m such a fan of Twitter, I started with Twitter.

Basically, you put in your Twitter screen name (if you don’t have one, you can try it with mine) and Gridjit will create a grid or portal view of the latest Twitter posts from the people you are following. You can drill through the profiles of the people you are following to see who they are following, allowing discovery of new people to follow.

My ultimate goal is to provide easy tools to help people connect better.

There is a lot more planned for this little app, so stay tuned. In the meantime, I’d love to get any feedback / feature requests.

Ways to get updates / provide feedback:

• Email: support at gridjit dot com
• Follow and message the Gridjit bot on Twitter: @gridjit
• Follow and message me on Twitter: @raygrieselhuber
• Comment on this blog

Gridjit is a brand new social portal. We built it because we wanted a cleaner way to visualize our Twitter relationships. More features are coming soon!

Highly recommended read at the O’Reilly Radar blog on technocratic elitism and the failure of the privileged to care for those marginalized by our economy and society.

We spend a lot of time thinking up new ways to talk to each other and connect with one another, but we don’t spend much time on thinking up new ways (maybe we don’t need “new ways”) to connect with people who are underprivileged.

Also, great article from the Economist on the philanthropy of ICQ founder Yossi Vardi.

Kevin Heisler of Search Engine Watch wrote a brief catalog of the developing SEO / SEM / SMO market and the major players in the analytics / optimization space. SEMDirector, where I served as Director of Product Development, is among them.