Facebook Opens Up Its Stream API To Developers. Let The Conversation Wars Begin!

Facebook has opened up its activity stream through a new API for developers. Now any developer can create new applications incorporating the real-time stream. One of the first apps to take advantage of this new API is Seesmic Desktop , A Twitter client which is now adding your Facebook feed through this API (something Tweetdeck already did in the past through other more restrictive means). Facebook has also created its own desktop notification client to demonstrate what can be built with the API.

Facebook copies Twitter again, Facebook is doing everything wrong

Last month, Jason Calacanis wrote he’d pay $250,000 to be listed as a Twitter “Suggested Follow ” for two years. Getting on Twitter’s “suggested” list can drive hundred of thousands of people to follow a Twitter feed. Facebook has taken notice, and this weekend has started recommending Facebook fan pages of some public personas and brand on its own site. (Sarah Lacy, Julia Allison, and Mark Cuban have all already made Facebook’s list.

Twitter is no more, Flutter / Nanoblogging is here

If you don’t have time to microblog, nanoblog! – interactive marketing blog special.

Twitter Seek Profit and Confirms Paid Pro Accounts On The Way

As Twitter’s growth explodes, speculation has intensified about whether the service can be profitable. Twitter’s online traffic, excluding cellphones, surged to nearly 9.8 million unique visitors in February from 6.1 million in January, according to comScore. In pursuit of revenue, Twitter faces the same challenge that has dogged social-networking platforms like Facebook. If advertisers can tap into its network free of charge, why would they pay the company to do so?

Free Social Media Monitoring Tools

Part 1 / 2 of free social media monitoring and measuring tools list: list of tools to be used in techniques described on Part 2 / 2 - Free Social Media Monitoring Techniques – interactive marketing blog special.

Free Social Network

• Facebook Insights - free social network Insights Tool

Brand Overviews

• HowSociable? - A simple, free, tool that can measure the visibility of your brand on the web across 22 metrics
• Addict-o-matic - A nice search engine that aggregates rss feeds, allowing you to quickly see the areas where a brand is lacking in presence
• socialmention - A social media search engine offering searches across individual platforms (eg blogs, microblogs) or all, together with a ‘social rank’ score. Whether or not the score is transparent enough to be meaningful is open to debate.

Blog Search Tools

• TECHNORATI Search - Technorati’s new search interface. Use it to find top blogs based upon inbound links only.
• TECHNORATI Advanced - Technorati’s advanced search page allows you to search for blogs (rather than posts) based on tags.
• Google Blog Search - Google’s index of blog posts. The advanced search tab allows you to search based on additional criteria. Very good for searching between specific dates.
• IceRocket - Blog search tool that also graph-ifies!
• BlogPulse - Search for blog posts by keyword. Developed by Nielsen BuzzMetrics.

Free Social Media Monitoring Techniques

Part 2 / 2 of free social media monitoring and measurement: techniques to be used with tools on this page or any tool on Part 1 / 2 - Free Social Media Monitoring Tools – interactive marketing blog special.

We’ve previously posted why social media analysis tools are important , and ever since I’ve been trying a bunch on them and our shortlist includes Visible Technologies, Techrigy SM2, Converseon, and Collective Intellect on the high end, and trackur and BrandsEye on the mid/low end ..  I will post a nice comparisson later this week.

However, those are very expensive tools for personal use and small businesses, so what I usually do as a free easy to use solution is set up a bunch of free services and aggregate them using Google Reader.