Seems I'm simply way behind the curve when it comes to following the latest trends on the most popular open-source microblogging script: Statusnet. Unfortunately, Statusnet changed from an AGPL-licensed script to an Apache 2.0 licensed script called pump.io. With that, Identi.ca changed too. The new microblogging community is located at Microca.st. Oops. It seems they dropped the microblogging platform they once had so the microblogs that this blog used to front are gone.

P.S: Statusnet's change reminds me of the Croatian company Shoutem which had a microblogging platform some few years back. Then, voila, it dropped the service and is now a mobile apps company. Is it that the microblogging concept isn't a cashcow model? May be I should leave this for the next blog post.

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I haven't posted anything for the last few months or so (my bad). So, I bet I should add one more New Year Resolution to my list and that is: "Blogging Effectively and Frequently this Year". The unfortunate thing is in the "following through" with such commitments; especially if your "sense of urgency" for matters like blogging is not quite high. So, there it is: blogging more effectively this year plus, may be, a little bit more frequently.
Here is another thought. Should we consider running a blog as more like running an open source project? I think so. Have you ever heard about the "Bus Factor"? Here is what this article on Wikipedia has to say about this (albeit it's more software engineering-centric):

In software development, a software project's bus factor (also known as truck factor, or bus/truck number) is a measurement of the concentration of information in individual team members. The bus factor is the total number of key developers who would need to be incapacitated (as by getting hit by a bus/truck) to send the project into such disarray that it would not be able to proceed; the project would retain information (such as source code) with which no remaining team member is familiar. A high bus factor means that many developers would need to be removed before the project would necessarily fail.
"Getting hit by a bus" could take many different forms. This could be a person taking a new job, having a baby, changing their lifestyle or life status, or literally getting hit by a bus: the effect would be the same.

Getting quite busy of late to post anything on this site (my bad). Now that is really being "hit by a bus". So like any open source project, starting and running a blog requires frequent updates for it to gain an audience.

Additional Resources for those who've Read this Post up to this Point

1. http://www.problogger.net/habits-of-highly-effective-bloggers-reader-submissions/ - Habits of Highly Effective Bloggers – Reader Submissions on ProBlogger
2. http://fitz.blogspot.com/2007/05/how-to-bus-proof-your-open-source.html  - How to "bus-proof" your open source project on Confessions of a Digital Packrat
3. http://www.serverwatch.com/server-news/if-linus-torvalds-got-hit-by-a-bus-would-linux-die.html  - If Linus Torvalds Got Hit By a Bus Would Linux Die? on ServerWatch

Good day, mate!

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Sometimes you have to make a switch from those #tweeps who dish out the most current news or tweets of what they are eating for supper, to #tweeps who churn out funny anecdotes. Don't they make one to forget their worries for a minute. I love that. Take the case of @DepressedDarth. The persona behind this profile spins out very funny tweets (much like this @darthvader profile too). Here are some of his tweets (courtesy of @DeppressedDarth):

After learning that Google's slogan is "Don't be evil", the Death Star was forced to switch its search engine to Bing.

 Saving a princess is a lot less cool when she's your sister, just ask my son.

 (On dating) -->

This is how dating should go --> twitter.com/DepressedDarth…
— Darth Vader (@DepressedDarth) October 6, 2012

 #WorstWayToBreakUp - Tell her you've joined the Dark Side

After destroying so planets, the Death Star has gotten a lot of negative reviews on Yelp. 

And finally, some tweets in remembrance of Steve Jobs form @DepressedDarth himself:

RIP Steve Jobs, a year ago today you joined Obi-Wan and Yoda as a force ghost.

 RIP Steve Jobs, may the Force be with you always.

LOL. For all the fans of the Star Wars movie, May the Force be with you. :-)

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 Update: 12th, October, 2012. Seems that some of the African social networking sites below are dead. I have removed some of the links pointing to Techmasai's profiles (be damned Link Rot).

Oops. That title really gives this post an ol'-like aura. And this is not an obituary. It is just a post to remember a certain African blogger whose input into profiling the little African startups that were blooming in this continent. And his work did list some microblogging sites to it. What was his name? Munashe, if I can remember; a Zimbabwean living in Kenya then. It was through his blog that I came to know of other African microblogging sites like Twyka (currently dead. Read this post), Naijapulse and MyRadeo. At the start, he ran a really informative blog with the Techmasai name. As time went on and the tolls of covering the latest startup news  across the continent caught up with him, he opted to start a wiki. But the wiki did not take off. In the end he called it quits.
One daring (and patriotic) feat that he did was to ditch Twitter all together and run his  microblogging game on purely African initiatives. Here is his suspended Twitter account (oops, what did you just see?). If you are an African you surely should admire such resolve. Here is a list of all his profiles on some African microblogs:

1. Techmasai on Yarnable.
2. Techmasai on Naijapulse.
3. Techmasai on Gistcaster.

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This is one area that I covered in a particular post some time back. However, the post lacked the stats to back up the arguments plus some more info really. And, you know, some people can be quite skeptical of any information that lacks some backing stats to it. I do believe that anyone with a keen sense of observation could easily extract similar views I stated in that post. So who’s coming in with the stats to support these arguments?

Here comes a Thesis designer with a thorough post on what works on Twitter. FYI, Thesis is one of the most popular Wordpress themes out there. And it’s a premium theme my friend. I was quite interested in seeing this Twitter post on the developer's website (but there are so many other informative posts on the blog). Not many other developer websites post off-topic i.e. not related to the project's development on their blogs.Quite an interesting post. I could see some parallels in my post and theirs but mine lacked the stats (#fail).

BORED OF READING A LONG POST?

For the lazy bones amongst us, here is a condensation of the main points in that post:

1. Twitter users love funny tweets.
2. Witty tweets are a favorite to the Twitter crowd.
3. Create curiosity, what Derek Halpern, the post's author, calls an "information gap" in your tweets.
4. And finally, be interesting.

Well, this means there is work to do in polishing up my Twitter usage. I'm out.

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Where are the spammers on Twitter? The site seems so clean and free from any spam but is it such a clean "neighbourhood"? This wasn't so some few years back when Twitter was a mere start-up; a little site that was viewed as half-baked. As the started gaining enthusiastic users, so did it attract not a few spammers. Like every site that has been a victim of spam activity, the signal-to-noise ratio can be so low as to scare away the few genuine users of the site. So, the guys behind Twitter just got out some few strategies to drive out the spammers. One was the use of the @spam reporting service to report any spammer on the site. That was some time back (is it 2008 or 2006). Is this service still active?
Is the site really free from spammers? Or:

1. Has the growth of the site's userbase masked spam activity on the site? With the site's userbase growing past the 300 millionth mark as of 2011, have the few hundreds or thousands of spammers' activities been bogged down by the billions of "good" tweets on the site?
2. Or, have the spammers changed tact, or as we call it here, have they "styled up"? Have the spammers now acquired fuller profiles complete with a convincing avatar? Or have they simply turned to a type of "online marketing" that is now dabbed as "Twitter marketing"?

That is something to think about. ;-)

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This should really scare off any microblog admin into action. If you are running a Statusnet microblog that is using  0.9.1 or older versions of the software then read on. Just check out what this guy can do. Simply put, using his method, one can build a massive collection of backlinks right to their site and get way with some good Google pagerank. Now that is not fair. While many webmasters, bloggers and your microblog included are squeezing out every legit SEO strategy from the man hours you put into your sites, some guy can hop on and steal your pagerank. Please read the article on that site, now. If your Statusnet microblog has been listed there, upgrade it right away. Statusnet is now in 1.0.1 release version.

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This is one classic usability (or is it accessibility? Nope.) failure: Broken Links. The links to the microblogs on the "Join the Networks" block were all pointing to the registration form on the sites. These weren't broken per se but, I mean, whenever a surfer hits an "Error" wall on any website, they will simply go away. Actually, the "Bad Request" error is due to the changes that StatusNet introduced sometime back. Initially, public microblogging communities allowed registrations. But not any more. So the link to the registration form is redirected to an error page. Ouch! I should blame myself too. How can a webmaster leave broken links on such a nice online resource. Slap my wrist.

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The template I have been using on this blog for the last 3 months or so closely resembles the classic Twitter look (see the image below).

Nice, isn't it? Well, I just love its look; it just gives (may be) not a little credence to the main topic of this blog: Microblogging. With that cartoonish, blue sky background, it is less harsh on your eyes when you are reading this from a computer. You can actually get this cool theme from this site. However, there are few things you have to check out for before applying any third-party Blogger template. If you hate to read source code you'll end up agonizing why your templates do not show properly at all.  So it is better to get your hands dirty if you would like to get the results that you desire.

How to choose a good, Third-party Blogger Template

I'll not delve into the choice of colors  to choose for your site. That is best left to you, the site owner. However, the most important factor that influences the look of a website's template are images mostly the embedded ones and the background images. Without this, many templates would be wholly made of CSS color schemes that mostly have a matt look.
If you are about to apply that glossy, third-party Blogger template to your site first analyse the template using this simple checklist (be ready to immerse yourself into CSS, Blogger XML format: source code):

1. Where are the template's embedded and background images hosted? This is very important. I once had the misfortune of running one third party template that had some images hosted on ImageShack. At the start it was alright. A few months down the line, the blog had error messages all over in place of the colorful images. . I just had to apply another template. One way to know where the template's images are hosted is to read the template's source code. Wherever there is an image URL, pick the URL and run a search for the image online. The best free, third-party Blogger templates usually have all their images hosted on Blogger but this is not a guarantee that the image cannot be deleted. Steer clear of templates that have images hosted on the developer's website.
2. Are you allergic to sponsored links on website templates? If you are, then it's best you choose some premium templates for your site.

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Visualize this incident: a driver reaches a junction and is about to move into the main "road". A motorcycle rider is coming up the main road while cruising at roughly 20-30km/h. His bike is heavily loaded. The motorcycle rider then punches his horn on which lets out a blaring noise (most motorcycles nowadays have got very loud electric horns) which kind of shakes the car driver. The car driver halts thus letting the motorcycle rider to pass first before he joins into the main road. Does that seem funny? One by-stander was so amused by this spectacle that he had to ask this question: Since when did motorcycle riders start hooting to vehicle owners so as to get their way? OK, this is Kenya. Many vehicle owners consider motorcycle riders as those pesky road users on two wheels.
Back to some serious stuff now. Many microblogging sites have hashtags as one of their features. By simply appending a hash, "#", to a word, the word becomes a link. Clicking on this link will bring up all posts with that hashtag. Hashtagging, if I can call it that, is just one of the ways of effecting categorization.
Here is a little history of where this concept came from. Joshua Schaster, the guy who started the social bookmarking site Delicio.us, had a file of 20000 links. As a way of trying to quickly access some link from the file, he started appending hashes to some little information he added to each link. With this system, he could easily grep any word with a hash thus easily bringing up the particular link he was searching for. From this we can see that hashtags are quite beneficial when it comes to doing searches for particular posts/tweets/notices in any microblogging site.
How are they mostly used then? There is no any hard rule of how one should use them; that's left to the user. Mainly, if you would want to prominently show a particular word on the post, you mostly hashtag that word. But there are 2 ways in which hashtags are mostly used:

1.  Do you remember this post that I had posted some time back: the line between spamming and promoting in microblogs?. Yup. That's just one of the ways hashtags are used.
2. To create Trending Topics: This is Twitter-specific. If a group of users are using a particular hashtag continuously in their posts, that hashtag may turn out to be a trending topic on Twitter that day. For example, some of the hashtags by #KenyansonTwitter that have turned out to be trending topics are: #rutoplaylist and #KCPEresults. And I thought that we weren't a crowd on the site!

REMEMBER: To create a hashtag, the words need to be stringed without any spaces in between; much like Camelcase wording in wikis. Hyphens break up the words which you would like to hashtag; so please leave them out.

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This blog is rolling into its second year since when I started it. That's great. I know many blogs out there which started at the same time but are practically dead right now.

Taking Stock

How has been the year really? Well, this one is the most interesting; the "How to Create a Microblog Using Buddypress" post, which I posted early this year was the most popular post on this blog for some months this year. That comes with this reality; that it is the post that brought in the most traffic to this site. The funny thing is that I had been postponing posting the entry from last year ;-|. Then the "Tweeting on the Nokia X2-01?" post overtook the Buddypress post around November in popularity (thanks to this blog's Indian audience). ;-)

The microblogging communities on the other hand, have not been inactive albeit local guys are not really into them [why?]. And they get some traffic from searches for StatusNet according to the Alexa ranking too.

Happy Holidays

To close off this year, let's get into the Christmas holiday groove. Enjoy your Christmas but be cautious. And lets not forget the religious background of this season. Merry Christmas.

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Blogging is tough, especially if you do not have the writer's streak. I am not saying that one can't learn how to be a prolific writer. I am actually pointing to to those who write occasionally or erratically. Their output is usually low. Some not only have fewer posts but heir posts may be very short. So what do we have in the long run? A neglected blog. Publishing new articles on a regular basis is almost a requirement in the blogosphere. It's a fact that a blog's homepage design - where the latest post is always at the top of the page - can expose a blogger's activity quite easily, without even the user digging into the site's archives.
On the other hand, microblogging does not require as much input from the user in terms of the time spent on thinking of what to post. You can simply post anything, even non-sensical posts such as:



ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.


Idle babble occupies a sizable proportion of all posts on Twitter. Disclaimer: Microblogging cannot replace blogging. But it does help whenever you get the writer's block. Furthermore, no single person can generate a good article every hour of their working days :-).

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I came to learn about this app from an article on The Next Web. Quite interesting. If you got one really heavy Twitter "followee" like @YESUmob, well, this is the app you need. Actually, using it does not shut out such subscriptions from your stream. What Shuush does is that it "promotes" (lacked a better word here) your least active subscriptions. You know those tweeps you follow who tweet very little. With Shuush, tweets from these tweeps get to be prominently displayed on your timeline. :-)

How do you pronounce this?

Like the typical African I am, I'll pronounce it as "SH-OO-SH" just like the literal pronunciation of "Shish" from Tahidi High. But that may be wrong really. Let us try some deduction here. Taking the English word "hush" which is clearly related to silencing someone, then we can place its pronunciation as "SH-HUSH". Right?

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UPDATE: StatusNet Cloud Service is now running on the latest release of the script, 1.0beta. One new change that they have introduced into the service is that no free, public, microblogging communities can be created. See this post on the forums. Did I just tweet about it?


This is just a continuation of the previous post on the improvements on the StatusNet microblogging script.

Themes/Templates

In so many cases be it Internetware apps or any other kind of app, form has equal importance to the substance of the program/script. A site's or an app's appearance can make or break the attraction of users.
Previous releases of the script had 7 pre-installed themes: Pigeon Thoughts, Biz, Identica, Mozillaca, default, Cloudy and hack3r themes. But starting from the 0.9.6 release, 6 more themes have added: Clean, Cleaner, Rebase, Victorian, Mnml & Shiny themes. These new themes are much more crisp and glossy than some of the older pre-installed themes. As proof of the "wow-factor" these new templates have, check out the Mannconnect microblog with the Shiny theme. Cool, isn't it?
Oops, I almost forgot this. The navigation bars have also been updated too. There are some new additions to the navigation bars: the "Home" link/tab that points to a user's private timeline and the "Private" link/tab that points to a user's profile. The "Public" link/tab points to the public timeline's page.

Mobile Layout

The mobile Web is the in thing nowadays.Websites, more so social networking sites, that cannot be viewed from mobile devices are losing a critical portion of Internet users. The StatusNet devs have now included an option to convert a microblog's layout to a layout that is "mobile-friendly" - if I can say that. With a simple click on a link, you can change a StatusNet microblog's layout to its mobile layout. Just click on the "Switch to Mobile Layout" link that is right at the footer section of the site and you'll have your site on every iPod, mobile phone.... Good day!

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StatusNet, the open source microblogging script is rolling on and every release some tweaks that are worth a mention. Hopefully, if the devs behind the script continue with this trend , who knows, may be the script would be the WordPress.com of the microblogging world. Since the 0.9.2 release (that is when I started using the script), some changes have been made to the script: the current release is 0.9.9. These changes are noticeable even on the cloud service offered by the StatusNet company. Each release is quietly slipped into the service and only a regular user of the service can and will notice these changes.
The technical discussions of the changes that have been implemented can really put off the less technical persons amongst us. Additionally, some of the changes may be passed off in one general statement under such subjects as "New Themes Introduced!" and this may not help to bring them into light. I'll only focus on the most notable changes here without getting into the technicalities of the changes in the code running under the hood. You can get the latest updates on the script's development on the StatusNet blog.

Private Timelines

If you have ever used a StatusNet-powered site like Nairobi-stique, you must be aware of the feed of all posts of you (the user), and your subscriptions on the site. If you are a member of a group, you'll also see the stream of messages/notices by other group members in this timeline. This is your private timeline. The Public Timeline, on the other hand, streams all the posts of all the users on the site. This feature is similar to the "Home" page once you log into Twitter.
In the older releases, you could access this timeline right from your profile even without logging into the site. But with the current release, you can only view this stream when you log into the site. This is via the link, "Home", that has been added to the navigation bar. In the previous releases, you could access this timeline through the "You and Friends" tab/link on the navigation bar. You can also access this timeline by clicking on the site's log when you log into the site: in previous releases clicking on the site logo pointed to site's homepage only, so, this is one little change too!.

Groups Management

This is one area where important improvements have been made especially when it comes to administration. Groups are the major feature that distinguish StatusNet sites from Twitter. In the older releases, the super-admin had to dig in right into the site's structure just to delete a group, but with the latest release, starting from 0.9.6 , the super-admin can easily delete any group by clicking the "Delete" button right next to the group's name.

Accounts Settings

This is one change that can go unnoticed really, since it is very rare that any user ever changes their account information (an exception: if you always change your avatar, this may not be the case).If you go to your account's settings page (click on the "Settings" link on the navigation bar), you'll actually see 3 little buttons with the options for deleting, deactivating and recovering your account. These buttons were not there in the older releases of the script.

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Another digression from all the blogging on microblogging! But still this article has some sprinkling of social media trends here and there. Read on, buddy. Christian radio seems to be one tough business. Even though 80% of Kenyans say that they are Christians, very few ever follow up on issues to do with their faith. Now, what proportion of these group can be said to be loyal fans of Christian radio stations? I believe it is just a very small group. I know many do not even know any of the popular Christian radio presenters. More so, do they care a hoot about what is aired on the stations really?
I am one big fan of a particular Christian station that is really into CCM bandwagon. I was getting a little bit concerned of the high turnover of presenters on the station. Why were many of the presenters not staying for longer periods there? Presently, stations alone do not hog the limelight alone because of the coverage or their enticing programs. Presenters too, are working on their fame/careers. Check this out. Even as media houses have Facebook pages and Twitter profiles, their presenters have these social media accounts too. Christian radio stations have not been left behind in this. So, our presenters can get their fans/followers aside from their employer(s). Now just imagine if the presenter leaves one media house for another. I believe there is a slight negative impact on the stations audience. May be some of the station's fans would switch to the other station. Assuming Christian radio stations have very small audiences , then if a presenter leaves such a station the number of fans might decline.
And where do these stations get their financial support from? If they are affiliated to a particular denomination or church, they can easily get support through monies from tithes and offerings. OK, some churches do have some commercial interests that can bring in some revenue, so, well, it might not be solely through the 10 percent or the 20 bob coins we place in the offering baskets every Sunday. But if you look around you'll notice that some of the stations depend on donations from well wishers. And what about their workforce- read presenters? May be some employ members of their church or members of the clergy to play these roles so as to cut costs(?). Since media houses, like web publishers, earn their money from advertising, you wonder how much do Christian radio stations earn from the few adverts they run.
In short, Christian radio seems it ain't a cash-minting business in any way. If you want to start one, you'll have to get into it to further the Lord's Kingdom rather than to make money. I hope you remember that gospel station that was converted by its owners into a reggae station after only being on air for a few months.
P.S: I wonder what Christians would think if @SafaricomLtd were to run a Kenya Live (Kenya Live's Facebook Page) advert on any of the local Christian radio stations here yet it has some secular catz on its lineup. :-|

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Who is using this? Its adverts are everywhere. The "hook" of the adverts is in the part where they stress on the updating of Twitter and Facebook using it. And its price is quite good. The adverts actually show a phone with a red exterior but who cares about the outer color. Additionally, the phone has Email (OVI mail to be specific), FM radio, Camera, Music Player and Memory Card support. And this reminds me of the C3 that was being advertised some time early this year. The C3 is a bit dearer than the X201. Sounds sweet, hmmmm.

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It's now around 2 weeks after this incident. Old news is still news, aye. A tragic end to one illustrious tack career. A record-breaker, a famous runner with riches to boot. That was Samuel Wanjiru Kamau. If we were to adopt a moral standpoint and analyse his life, well, he could as well have to make bones for all his deeds. But there is one thing we can't deny: he was extraordinary. At 24, he was way ahead of his age-mates. The assault charges that were brought on him early this year gave the BBC something to report about. That was proof enough that he wasn't just another runner from Kenya. And after his death, #SamuelWanjiru became the trending topic on Twitter. R.I.P.

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Starting from the 3.0.0 release, Wordpress MU and the single-blog variants have now been merged. Remember the post on how to create a BuddyPress site? I did the installation on a single-user blog then. One reason why I did not try it on the MU variant required some modifications to the server's configuration. It was something on the lines of editing the .htaccess file (can anyone remind me?). I hope this technical requirement is now done with. With its famous five-minute install process, you can create your own microblog quite easily. Try it (and may be inform about it, ;-)).
Check out the Wordpress MU site. Things have changed now.

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Who cares about retweetability? I do. What about you? Can retweetability be a measure of one's influence on any microblogging site?  Anyway. What's retweeting in the first place? Retweeting is just a way of repeating another microblogger's post on Twitter. With a simple "RT @username message" syntax or a simple click on the RT "button" you can repeat anyone's post; and that message will appear on your personal timeline. Twitip does give a a formula (?) for retweeting in a way.
So what makes a post retweetable? Here are some 3 observations that I have made:

1. Post quality. How informative is the post? Does it help in starting or even building an online conversation in that microblogging site? I can only link to the article on the the effect of informative posts here.
2. Reputation. A good name is better than riches really. If it's not Solomon who said that then you have every right to correct me. Popular persons, bloggers, celebrities have great influence on their followers. And many of their tweets end up being retweeted by their followers.
3. @Replies. I've noticed that mentions of another person in a post can cause them to retweet such a post. Is it the "mention" psychology at work here??? May be.

P.S: And what's this info about the Retweetability Index. :-|

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