PressPass Tries To Easily Connect People And Businesses To Journalists

PressPass is in beta testing and has just launched a directory of vetted journalists with the goal of creating a platform for startups, street reporters, small businesses, and everyday people to connect with them and share stories. The database boasts over 5,000 journalists reporting for about 250 publications.

The idea is rock solid, but the functionality and effectiveness fail in my opinion. Before I get into specifics lets take a look at what it purports to do.

PressPass wants to provide a benefit to journalists by proving them with new stories to write about, and to the individual by helping them find the best reporter to get their story in front of for coverage. "I’m hoping that everyone who has a newsworthy story will be able to not only find the right reporters to get their word out, but build trustworthy relationships with them." says co-founder Valencio Cardoso.

When arriving at the website you will begin to browse through the journalists, their media outlets, beats (topics), and geographic regions with the goal of finding the best reporter(s) to contact about your story. This is where things start to go astray for me. First you must know that this is built around Twitter with heavy integration and is the primary data source and communication channel. Cardoso says the reporter's profile is there "to help you to get a more in-depth understanding of the reporter, ensuring that you’re pitching your content to the right people. It also helps journalists receive leads on stories they’d be interested in."

To the right is the PressPass profile page for Matt Brian, a writer for The Next Web (click it for a closer look).

Let's say you didn't know that his Tweets were behind this and you came to the page without reading any information about PressPass; what is your initial though about the stories listed? That Matt wrote them? If so, you are like 90% of the everyday (non-techie) people I asked. Given that misconception you may think he writes about football/soccer, used to be an alcoholic, and uses Twitter.

Even if you do know these originate from his Tweets it still does not really provide substantial information for me to base my decision on about approaching him to write an article about a new iOS app. (He writes mostly about Apple at TNW by the way.) What is mostly peculiar is that he has shared numerous stories he wrote, but they do not show here. As for these 5 items:

• Tweetbot was shared at 10:00 AM on February 13th
• The drunk one was actually something he Retweeted on February 4th
• He Tweeted The Register item at 3:21 AM on February 14th
• Striker was also a Retweet from January 31st
• I could not find the fifth one, but the article is from January 31st

The chronological order seems to be modified based on a Tweet's influence (favorites and Retweets). That still does not explain why the articles from the Tweets below are not shown.

• Google+ article written by Matt for TNW - Tweeted at 3:01 AM on February 14th
• Tweet about Angry Birds article Matt wrote at 9:32 AM on February 13th
• Sports post on TNW by another writer was Tweeted at 8:08 AM on February 13th
• Apple Tweet about a story by Matt at 8:44 AM on February 13th

It seems to me the articles a writer publishes, especially for their publication, should be given a much higher weight. Seeing articles they Tweet or Retweet may help me know more about the writer personally, but it does not provide value when looking for someone to give my story to. For many publications an author will have a page that lists all the stories they have written (here is Matt's). Tapping into that would provide a wealth of information about the journalist.

In addition to the articles on a writers profile you can see other information from the links shown on the top of the page. None are very useful for me.

• Topics - Gives the top hastags used in their Twitter stream
• Spotlights - Shows the people they mention the most
• Ranking - Simply ranks people overall and by beats based on their total follower count

When I want to contact Matt I press the "Contact this journalist!" button which initiates a Tweet box. For him it shows as "Hey @m4tt >> YOUR MESSAGE << via @presspassme"; your message total obviously can not exceed 140 characters. With Matt there may be a chance of him seeing your message, but imagine trying to get Anderson Cooper to even see your message, never mind reply to you!

I believe for a startup to succeed it needs to create something completely new, greatly improve upon a current service or product, create a new method of thinking, or make a task exponentially easier. As it stands now I can just as easily send an @mention on my own and the author pages do not offer enough insight. The idea behind PressPass is a good one, but I strongly feel they need explicit participation from the journalists and other ways to contact them to succeed. This is just the beginning and I will certainly keep an eye on their progress.

PressPass is based in Dubai and was founded by Valencio Cardoso and David Haddad. You can keep up with them on their blog, Facebook, and Twitter.

Listen To Your Tweets With The Social Radio For Twitter

The Social Radio is a new app on the Android Market that mixes your tweets and music together. The company is a winner of Start-Up Chile, and now that they have released the Android application, they are continuing work on versions for iOS, BlackBerry, and web. The team is made up of Roberto Gluck, Alejandra Negrete, Demian Renzulli, and Facundo Arena.

After installing it you quickly link your Twitter account via OAuth and you are off and running. It starts up by reading some of your recent tweets then sits in idle waiting for new ones (you can adjust the checking interval in the settings). The app runs in the background so that you can continue doing other things. Male and female voices alternate the reading, which isn't bad; there are a some words and phrases that get jumbled up, but you can usually figure out what they are saying. It accurately lets you know when there is a hashtag and links are interpreted by reading you the non-shortened domain name only (nothing after the first forward slash).

Oh yea; the music. You can play music that is on your SD card and it will automatically cut in with a nice news-like intro when you have new tweets to listen to. The music part is completely optional and I found it nice to just let my phone sit on the table and listen to my timeline as it came in with silence in between. If I heard something of interest I would go out to Twitter to click on the link. This can also be used while running or driving, but since you are not able to act on the tweet it works best for news, weather, and other informational (non-actionable) tweets.

A nice feature to add would be a way to save a tweet. Maybe by clicking a button to have the tweet being read emailed to yourself or saved in the app somehow. Otherwise, I can envision people writing down things to check or trying to remember what they heard when they get home.

I am really looking forward to the web version. Watching your Twitter timeline is one of the most time consuming activities if you are a heavy social media user or publisher. By listening to it you are freeing up your eyes to monitor other networks or complete other activities. Keep up with them on Twitter, Facebook, or their blog.

Twitter Adds Two New Tabs For More Information

Today Twitter is rolling out two new tabs to help you interact, explore, and see activity on your tweets better. They are having a busy week with the having launched their new image uploader yesterday.

From their blog:

Today, we’re rolling out two new features on Twitter.com that help you discover more on Twitter. You can now see when someone favorites or retweets one of your Tweets. You can also learn which Tweets are most interesting and inspiring to the people you follow. 

The first new feature offers a simple way to see what's happening on Twitter in relation to you. Just click on the new tab with your @username, and you’ll be able to see which of your Tweets are Favorites, plus the latest Retweets (of your Tweets), Tweets directed to you, and your new Followers. 

The other new feature is the Activity tab. It provides a rich new source of discovery by highlighting the latest Favorites, Retweets, and Follows from the people you follow on Twitter – all in one place. It’s easier than ever to explore Twitter, connect with people, and discover what’s happening around the world.

My Twitter Infographic

My Twitter infographic from Visual.ly is spot on!

Your New Social Hub

Google+ is not only a new social network, it can also be turned in to your main social destination. With two new Chrome extensions you can access your Twitter stream with full functionality and your Facebook news feed with the ability to update your status. Both feeds are inserted in the page to allow seamless switching between all three.

EDIT: Some questions over the security of these extensions have emerged; proceed at own risk.

This format will come in real handy for people that are looking to transition away from Facebook and/or Twitter. There will be a transition period until most of your friends, family, and contacts make their way to G+. On the other hand, if you intend to maintain a presence on all three networks you can do that with ease using these extensions.

They are Google+Facebook and Google+Tweet. I have found it is best to install the Facebook one first and set it up, then install Twitter. (The Facebook extension is not an approved Chrome app; proceed with caution.)

How To Follow News And Stories Online Without The Overload

With everything I read being online I have had to become very efficient in the way I manage and interact with news and articles. When you replace your local TV news, the national news, magazines, newspapers, trade publications and everything else with the digital world you can quickly become buried in a mountain of unread stories. The number of applications and website claiming to organize all this can add to your anxiety. News is generated from hundreds of sources around the web and going to each one is impossible.

What can you do? The most important things are organization and non-duplication. You do not need to see the same story in three different locations just because the source publishes to all of them. If you follow my blog you should pick the one source that works for you; not all five.

Lets run through the primary tools I use to consume the news:

1) Twitter - This should be used for your breaking news and important resources that are time sensitive. It is best to keep the number of accounts your follow to under 100. Anymore than that you will be missing news because you can not keep up. Don't forget; just because you are not following them on here does not mean you can not follow them somewhere else. If you are following over 100, try to find some of your less urgent sources and track them another way.

2) RSS Feed Reader) - RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and the feed is usually designated by an icon like this . I have found it to be the number one way to read and organize my information intake. You are able to follow major news websites, blogs, and pretty much any website that posts stories and updates. You can even follow news aggregators like Google News so that you do not have to go to the site directly. Just look for the RSS icon at the bottom of the page you are on to find the feed (this is the one for Top Stories). Keep in mind not to subscribe to any sources you already follow on Twitter. Within any reader you can organize your feeds and I suggest you do so to group subjects and interests. Don't be afraid of clicking the "mark all as read" button; if you have over 500 items to read click the button to get a fresh start. The sooner you realize that you can not read everything the happier and less stressed you will be.

3) Facebook - My news here is my friends and family only. If I like pages I hide them from my news feed to avoid information overload as things I like I already read on Twitter or in Google Reader. If you like getting your news here that is fine of course, but don't also follow it on Twitter or subscribe by RSS. If I find a compelling post or article I want to comment on from another source I can go to that page on Facebook to find the story.

4) Email - It can't be beat for daily digest emails and is an excellent way to control what information you get. You can even have some websites email you the stories instead of subscribing via RSS. Depending on the sources email frequency you can use email for urgent or low priority news like opinion articles. One thing I like to do is to get an email every eight hours from Summify. Summify scans my Twitter, RSS, and Facebook accounts to find the most important stories and is a easy way for me to ensure I do not miss important stories.

5) Buzz - I check it once or twice a day for the comments. The Buzz crowd is a insightful and thorough group of commenters. Most of the stories I would have already seen because 99% of the post are imports from Twitter and blog RSS feeds.

Happy reading! Do you consume news and information in a different way? Let everyone know what works for you in the comments section below. I am always trying new applications, extensions, and websites that claim to be able to organize the information better, but I have not been able to find one that improves on what I do above. Have you?

Twitter by the Numbers

Twitter just blogged some recent, and impressive, stats.

Tweets

• 3 years, 2 months and 1 day. The time it took from the first Tweet to the billionth Tweet.
• 1 week. The time it now takes for users to send a billion Tweets.
• 50 million. The average number of Tweets people sent per day, one year ago.
• 140 million. The average number of Tweets people sent per day, in the last month.
• 177 million. Tweets sent on March 11, 2011.
• 456. Tweets per second (TPS) when Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009 (a record at that time).
• 6,939. Current TPS record, set 4 seconds after midnight in Japan on New Year’s Day.

Accounts

• 572,000. Number of new accounts created on March 12, 2011.
• 460,000. Average number of new accounts per day over the last month.
• 182%. Increase in number of mobile users over the past year.

Employees

• 8. 29. 130. 350. 400. Number of Twitter employees in Jan 2008, Jan 2009, Jan 2010, Jan 2011 and today.

Twitter for Android updated (Version 2.0.0)

Android's Twitter application has been updated to version 2.0.0 today. In this update:

• Easier navigation and layout (a re-designed UI)
• Scan your contacts to find friends that are already on Twitter
• Universal search (you do not need to indicate if you are searching for a tweet or a user anymore)
• Autocomplete @usernames while tweeting (like on the web)
• Easier uploading of photos
• Performance increases for faster replying, retweeting, and following
• Bug fixes, many of them

Twitter's blog update