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The question used to be, can Cuil beat Google? Now its more like can it actually compete with Google?

Everyone was so excited about Cuil. They got a massive traffic. But, they fucked it up! To be honest, they just went public too soon. It should be more like private beta (if not alpha) right now. Having a nice design, a good privacy policy and a huge index doesn’t mean they’re going to be successful.

Its funny how people change their mind on something. People were talking good about Cuil and the next day, they start hating on it. I tried to support Cuil. I thought they would improve over the next few weeks (or maybe months). But, I’m not too sure if that’s going to happen.

Their search results are getting worse everyday. Last time, I searched for “webrampage” on Cuil I got some pretty decent results. Now I don’t even get that. All the results are completely irrelevant and they even included spam sites. They even repeated the same site five different times. Just take a look and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

You go to a new restaurant and the food there is just horrible. Do you think you’ll ever go back there? What if your friends tell you that the food has improved? Right now, Cuil is like that restaurant. Its hard to fix something when you look like an epic failure.

I’m not sure if people will ever give Cuil another shot. Some people might. But, most of them probably couldn’t care less. Well Cuil needs to work their ass off before they can think of that day. I still can’t believe that they went live so early. Where they high or something? And I thought I made bad decisions.

Oh wait. I didn’t answer the question, “Can they compete with Google?”. Do I really need to? Can they even compete with Ask.com?

Well I’ve said enough about Cuil today. Now its your turn to share what you think. Do you think Cuil can compete with the big guys? Will you ever give it another shot? Or do you think Cuil is just an epic failure?

Photo credit: Jacob Wackerhausen

People have been talking about this thing called Twitter “follow spam“. So, what is this thing? And are we defining it correctly? Today I’ll talk a bit about it.

Follow spam is the act of following mass numbers of people, not because you’re actually interested in their tweets, but simply to gain attention, get views of your profile (and possibly clicks on URLs therein), or (ideally) to get followed back.

That’s what the people at Twitter wrote on their blog. Well that explains what “follow spam” is. You just follow tons of people, so that they add you back and/or click on the link on your profile. Now I would agree that this is pretty annoying. But, not everyone is trying to “spam”.

On rare occasions we may see a person who is mass following and actually cares about every tweet.

See Twitter is also saying that. Yesterday, an old lady was bitching at me and was accusing me of spamming Twitter. Hmm how so? She said that I added a “zillion” people on Twitter, so that they click the link on my profile.

Okay I’m actually interested in people’s tweets. I reply to a lot of them and have like a small conversation. I agree that I added a bunch of people on Twitter. But, that wasn’t “follow spam”. Now of course, I wanted them to follow me back. What’s the point of tweeting if only a few people are following you?

Did I add random people? No. I added people who were interested in tech & web. Most of the people I added were TechCrunch’s followers. Did I start spamming them with links to my site? No. I made like 2 or 3 tweets about my sites. 2 or 3 out of 171 tweets? Is that really spamming (or huge self-promotion)?

Is Obama spamming Twitter? He is following 64K people and he’s got about 61K followers. I’m not sure how he managed to add 64K people, but I don’t think he wants to spam. He just wants to keep more people updated.

I don’t agree with the current definition of follow spam. It should be when you follow thousands of people (who you’re not interested in) and want them to follow you back. And you spam them with your links! Maybe this would define follow spam a bit better.

I know that there are lots of spammers on Twitter. I mean the REAL spammers. But, not everyone is a spammer! So, What do you think? Do you think my way to define it is better? And what about popular bloggers who keep posting links to every single one of their posts? What about Obama?

Rejaw is a new micro-blogging platform which launched about two months ago. Now the question is, is Rejaw just another Twitter clone or is it something really unique? Well lets find an answer.

The basics

First of all, I like their design. Its nice and simple. Maybe they could use images instead of using those big ass texts for the headers (ex: shouts, replies, etc). They could make it look a lot better by doing that. But, the colour scheme rocks.

Oh and the name, Rejaw. I’m not too sure if its a good name. I guess its a memorable name.

Profile Customization

Nothing special. Just lets you upload a profile picture, lets you write a bit about yourself and you can enter your location. Doesn’t let you edit the CSS like in Plurk or change the colours and upload a background image like in Twitter. So, that sucks.

Friends & Fans

It’s like Twitter. They have followers and following. Nothing to explain here.

Shouts

The shouts are a bit like Plurk. You get like a page with all the replies. So, that’s good. And it updates real-time. That’s a really good feature. They also have this thing called “whispers” which is like private messages.

The community

The people over there looks pretty active. I made my first shout and I got a few replies within seconds. I was pretty surprised. I guess its because they display all the latest shouts on the front page. Now that’s a good way to keep the level of activity up.

How popular is it?

Its not really popular. I would say its just hyped. So, that means there isn’t a lot of users or at least, active users. People signup for new stuff, they use it a bit and then they leave. I found a lot of users like this on Plurk, so you should be expecting the same from Rejaw too.

Is it just another clone?

No, its not just another Twitter clone. Its more like a clone of Twitter and Plurk. They took the basic idea from Twitter, copied the reply page idea from Plurk and added their own unique feature which is the real-time updates.

Would I use it?

Well I’m not too sure. I mean I’m already using Twitter and Plurk. And now, Rejaw? Plus its not even that cool, to be honest. I might try it out for a bit if I get a few followers there. Right now its 50/50.

Would YOU use it?

Are you going to try it out? Or are you already using it? What do you think of it? Do you think it can compete with the big guys, Twitter and Plurk? Please share your thoughts with us.

So, I’ve recently turned into a social media junkie. I signed up for Twitter, Plurk, FriendFeed, etc. A lot of sites. Takes a lot of precious time to check out each one of them (for updates). Oh crap! But don’t worry Socialthing! is here to make life a bit easier for us.

So, what is Socialthing! going to do for us? Well its like FriendFeed. You open an account, connect to the sites you use and your friends see the updates on Socialthing!. And you can see theirs. Sweet, huh?

Now this could save a hell of lot of time. I’ve been using Socialthing! for a few days now and I like it. Right now, you can only connect to a handful of sites, but they’re working on it. Oh you wanna know which sites you can use with Socailthing!:

• Brightkite
• Delicious
• Digg
• Facebook
• Flickr
• Guitar Hero (WTF? Why this?)
• Last.fm
• Ping.fm
• Plurk
• Pownce
• Seesmic
• Twitter
• Vimeo
• YouTube

Pretty good, right? They also let us vote on which site we want to see next. I voted for SU and Technorati. SU is the more important one though. Oh did I mention that Socialthing! was bought by AOL like yesterday?

Its in private beta right now. But, I got only 2 invites for you guys. The first 2 commenters gets them. Have fun!

Why am I saying that StumbleUpon’s (SU) traffic is better than Digg’s? Am I joking? Of course not. Let me explain this to you today.

Okay before you start thinking that I’m high or something. Let me tell you that I’m not trying to convince you to use SU more often than Digg. Digg is great. Use them both. But, these 2 bookmarking sites are really different. I’m taking about the traffic patterns.

Over at Digg, once you hit the (holy) front page you’ll get the biggest traffic wave ever. And when you’re on the first page on upcoming with the most diggs, you get a pretty good amount of visitors too. Overall you get a decent traffic from Digg on average. But, this traffic wave only lasts a few hours. You get off the front page, remember?

What about SU? Well at SU, the traffic wave is a bit smaller than Digg’s, but you get that with a lot less effort and time. My post about Twitter vs Plurk got 17 reviews and I got about 300 visitors from SU. And the visitors from SU came at the same time (causing my VPS to crash). That day I got about 500 visitors from SU, in total.

The best thing is the traffic from SU is long-term. I’m still getting a bunch of people from SU to my Twitter vs Plurk post. SU traffic lasts a few months. Yes that’s right, a few months. The traffic might get smaller as the weeks pass, but still, I would rather have a (semi) big traffic wave at first and then smaller ones later.

So, should you concentrate more on SU? Well it’s up to you. I would say you try to get on Digg’s front page and also get a buch of stumbles and reviews. More traffic that way, huh? First a server crash then a bunch of little traffic over the weeks.

Okay what about you? Are going to stick to SU or Digg? Or use both? Which one would you concentrate more on?