Editor’s note: Today, being a news junkie requires not just the ability to keep up with hundreds of breaking stories a day, but the ability to redistribute those stories to your followers and news sites. To get some insight into the modern news junkie, we asked Mrinal Desai to share with us how he screens the news in the guest post below. Desai is the co-founder of CrossLoop, but some of you may recognize him more from Twitter or Techmeme, where he tips stories every day—580 of those tips have appeared as headlines since the beginning of this year. You can read his last guest post here.

Like many out there, I have been, am and always will be a news addict. For many news junkies, it is the fleeting, current fix of information about a breaking topic that interests them, only to be replaced by the next headline. They jump from headline to headline, forgetting the one they just read as they move on to the next one.

For me personally, news is not only timely information on the current state of affairs but also a way to take a deep dive, to connect analysis and information together and learn through application.  I am looking for insight.  It could be patterns, it could be knowledge about an industry or it could be an opportunity to become introspective and ask questions.

Keeping this in mind, here is a snapshot of my consumption and distribution of news both offline and online.  I’ll divide the way I screen the news by the screens on which it comes to me.

No Screen:

• I don’t start a day without reading The Wall Street Journal in print
• Currently, I get 4 magazines and I go through them on the weekend: The Economist, The Atlantic, Wired and Fortune. Before they stopped, I used to also get Business 2.0 and MIT’s Technology Review.

Screen 1 – MacBook Pro:

Apps: Twitter, Google Reader, Techmeme and a little bit of Facebook

Twitter: I’ve been a user since January 2007.  Its always on for me. I invest a significant amount of time in figuring out who/what to follow based on my interests.  Today this ‘list’ stands at 489. Building this list is a continuous process and it typically consists of people who can teach or inform me of something, news sources and people I respect and with whom I want to build a long term relationship with independent of business. Of this, I have a column/list/group called “Pigeons” (birdie, early days of communication—you get it, right?).  I read each and every tweet of this group. I have about 75 in this group. 15 of my personal favorites, apart from @techcrunch and all those who write for it @techcrunch/team, are:

@bxchen – Technology Reporter, Wired
@148apps – iPhone App Reviews
@msuster – General Partner, GRP Partners
@jennydeluxe – Technology Reporter, The New York Times
@scobleizer – everything social media
@Learmonth – Reporter at Adage
@jasonhiner – Executive Editor at TechRepublic (CBS Interactive)
@leplaporte – Technology Journalist and Broadcaster
@appadvice – Editor, Webware (CBS Interactive)
@taylorbuley – Technology Reporter, Forbes
@sarahintampa – Writer, ReadWriteWeb
@reckless – Nilay Patel, Engadget
@gizmodo – Everything gadgets blog
@dmac1 – Technology reporter, Business Week
@joshk – General Partner, First Round Capital

You can follow them all in one click on the Twitter List I created called “Fifteen”

Screen 2 – iPhone: I have played with a few iPhone news apps, both paid and free.  These include the mobile apps from the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times , Byline, Fluent News, News Fuse, BBCReader, NPR News, ReadItLater, ZenNews, and News Pro. I also visit mobile news sites. Being a little glued to Techmeme, I was very excited to see its new mobile version for smartphones—the icon took a spot right away on my home screen:

After experimenting and trying them all out, though, my current favorite native iPhone app is Newsstand (iTunes Link) which stays on my dock. Its a $4.99 app but it does the following extremely well for me:

1. Synchs beautifully with Google Reader and is fast.  It allows me to organize my folders, move them up and down and importantly very easily “Mark all as Read”

Below is a snapshot of my Feeds and a folder creatively named ‘Top News” that I keep a close watch on every day.

2) Newsstand has a lot of social goodness to share through Twitter, Delicious, ReadItLater and Instapaper

What’s Missing:
—bit.ly so that I can track data on the links I share as I do on Tweetie 2 with my API key.
—Sharing on Facebook
—Ability to RT or @respond to my twitter stream that I subscribe to as an RSS feed from within Google Reader.

Before social media, I always shared news via email to specific people. Now I have replaced email with these easy tools:
—Twitthat bookmarklet. One click.
—Twitterbar a Firefox Add-on customized with a prefix. One click.

—Google Reader’s Share is connected to my Twitter account. One click.
—Facebook Share bookmarklet or if I want it all on one place, I recommend Shareaholic.

Screen 3 – TV. I do not get my news here since I watch very little TV.

Screen 4 – eReader
I have a Kindle that I use to read books and have not switched from print to this one yet for news. As you can imagine, I get enough news on my other screens all day and like some time away from it.

Below is a visual of how I personally share news and the tools I use. Everything goes through Twitterfeed as my central hub for news going in and out.  Note that lately I stand undecided between Seesmic and Tweetdeck. (Image courtesy: Zurb, click to enlarge).

I spend a significant amount of money on news—4 print magazines, 2 newspapers with one online and iPhone apps.

The only screen I care about:

• well written analysis
• Unique and timely content/information
• Thought provoking story telling
• “Connection” with the writer—literally or figuratively from a style perspective
• Delivery channel. Find me—the “paperboy route” has changed

How do you screen the news?

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The BlackBerry App

The BlackBerry app, which works with the devices running OS 4.6 or higher, has a extremely sleek nice interface, which is optimized for BlackBerry users with all sorts of efficiencies. You can quickly change from different timelines, easily switching from your inbox, to mentions, to direct messages. Plus, you can monitor various Twitter accounts within one appp. When you send a Tweet, you can shorten a link via Bit.ly, and upload pictures or videos via yFrog. One compelling feature is the ability to email a Tweet to a contact directly from the Tweet.

The app also includes search (Seesmic stores all the info in cache) and will also feature notifications of new Tweets and DMs while you are scrolling through email (a little raccoon will pop up with a number of new Tweets, says Le Meur). And hands down the two best features of the Blackberry app is the ability to see your Twitter lists directly from the app and geolocation, so you’ll be able to tweet your location directly from the app. Seesmic just added geolocation, as the API was released yesterday. Facebook integration will be added in the near future.

The Android App

The Android App also features a very sleek design and a user-friendly UI. The most noticeable advantage is how fast the app is. Le Meir says the app is native to the Android and claims its the “Tweetie for the Android.” Via a touch interface, you can easily navigate though threaded timelines, direct messages, different accounts, and @replies. And you can email Tweets as well as easily switch to landscape mode.

When you Tweet you’ll see options for Tweeting publicly or via a DM and shorten links through Bitl.ly. You can easily attach a picture or video via yFrog. And here’s the kicker-you can also upload videos directly to YouTube via the app. You can also access other users profiles, see his/her Tweets, who he/she is following and then follow the users. In addition you can also block or unfollow a user.

While Twitter rolled out the geolocation API yesterday, Seesmic hasn’t integrated its API into the app. But the app still features a geolocation tool that lets you embed your location in a Tweet via the Android’s GPS, which will show your location on Google Maps.

The app works with all models of the Android and was optimized for the newly launched Verizon Droid. While the Android app doesn’t have list functionality or Facebook integration, Le Meur says these features will be added in the near future.

The iPhone App

A few months ago, Le Meur informed me of Seesmic’s iPhone app. But the app is still being tweaked. While we don’t know the in-depth details of the iPhone app, we do know that it will have functionality for both Twitter and Facebook status updates.

Seesmic’s BlackBerry app will face competition from UberTwitter, OpenBeak (formerly TwitterBerry), Tweetcaster and perhaps even a RIM-developed Twitter client. But Seesmic’s app is chock full of nifty features, such as lists and perhaps even Facebook integration in the future. It will certainly be a viable contender in the space. The Android app will face competition from a smaller group of Twitter clients for the Android, which include Twitdroid, Swift, and TwitterRide. But like the BlackBerry app, Seesmic’s Android app is fast, sleek, easy to use and will also have Facebook built in soon, making it very attractive.

As I wrote above, Seesmic is now full throttle in developing numerous offerings for the web, mobile and desktop. Le Meur says the Windows clients had 10,000 downloads within 12 hours. I fully expect the the Android and BlackBerry apps to receive the same response. As the startup continues to develop new and innovative products, it is slowly encroaching on rival Tweetdeck’s market share and attracting a whole new set of followers as well. But a little friendly competition is never a bad thing between technology companies.

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Today brings good news for PC users everywhere. Seesmic is launching a native desktop client for Windows. Seesmic’s founder and CEO Loic Le Meur made the announcement today at Microsoft’s Professional Developer Conference in Los Angeles. Le Meur says that providing a desktop client that was native for Windows was of huge importance because 80 percent of Seesmic users run their apps on a PC.

There are a few native Twitter clients out there to have been formatted for the Mac, such as Tweetie and Twitterfic. Windows users have previously limited options when it comes to native Twitter clients and are forced to either used web-based clients or use desktop clients like TweetDeck or Seesmic Desktop. These are both based Adobe’s AIR platform, which is notorious for eating up memory and CPU cycles, along with weird window placement quirks.

Seesmic’s new desktop client will feature integration with just Twitter (Facebook will be added in the next few weeks) and will have much of the same functionality as the Adobe Air-powered client such as lists and multiple accounts, but it will be built on the .NET framework. This means the client will have a faster, better UI, lower memory consumption. Plus the client can take advantage of Windows7 modules such as location sensor, letting the user to post a location directly to Twitter.

The native Windows client will feature multi-language spell check, while the Air-powered Seesmic Desktop supports basic English. Another interesting feature of the client is a a plug-in architecture pretty much like on a browser, so Tweetmeme can write, for example, a plug-in that will give you how a tweet is spreading or the influence of a Twitter user. Because the Windows ecosystem, it will be much easier for developers to build plug-ins and add-ons off of the client. Le Meur says that building on Windows lets Seesmic offer this as a secure platform to developers, which is not possible or difficult on the Adobe Air or web-based platform.

There are other Twitter clients that have been developed for Windows, such as Sobees and Blu, but Seesmic will have the advantage of integration with Facebook and much more.

Seesmic has been in the news a lot lately thanks to the emergence of Twitter lists and geolocation. Seesmic rolled out support for the new Twitter Lists for its Desktop client and its web-based client was upgraded with both Lists functionality and geolocation.

To be honest, I was surprised to hear that 80 percent of Seesmic users use a PC. I guess in the Apple-centric world of Silicon Valley, it’s hard to believe that stat. Now, I’m eagerly waiting for Seesmic to unveil a native client for the Mac. Watch out Tweetie!

Disclaimer: Michael Arrington is an investor of Seesmic; I am not.

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Earlier this week, Seesmic rolled out support for the new Twitter Lists for its Desktop client. Today, that same functionality comes to its web-based client. And with it comes a bonus: Geolocation support.

Now, to be clear, most users still won’t be able to use this geolocation support just yet, as Twitter has yet to enable it for most users. But if you do happen to have it, Seesmic supports it. As you can see in the screenshot, it looks pretty nice. If you see a little location marker on a tweet, you can hover over it to bring up a Google Map overlay showing where that tweet was sent from.

Last week, we previewed Tweetie 2.1, which will include geolocation support as well. Seesmic’s method looks like it may be a bit easier since it only requires a hover state to get to a detailed map of where the tweet was sent from, whereas Tweetie 2.1 requires two clicks (to the tweet and then on the tiny map to get a more detailed version).

Meanwhile, List support looks solid in Seesmic Web as well. As you can see in the other screenshot below, when you hover over a Twitter username, you have an option to add them to one of your Lists. Another web-based Twitter client, Brizzly, rolled out it support for Lists last night. The plan is to have all Brizzly “Groups” (a feature that worked like Lists) synced with Twitter Lists by tomorrow. Presumably, Seesmic will have its lists synced with Twitter Lists tomorrow as well.

It’s not yet clear when Twitter will do a wide roll-out of its geolocation support, but with several third-party services looking ready to go, it seems likely that it will be realatively soon. Following Lists full launch last week, Twitter has also begun testing its new Retweet funtionality to a small set of users.

Along with Lists and geolocation, Seesmic Web has a new Trending Topics area it is rolling out today as well.

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Over the past few weeks, it’s definitely been crunchtime as we’ve been putting together the panels and demos for our Realtime CrunchUp on November 20 in San Francisco. After much back and forth, and with the help of our Realtime Board, we finally have an agenda we are very excited to present (see below). Get your tickets here.

Speakers will include Twitter COO Dick Costolo, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, Facebook VP of Product Chris Cox, Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley, angel investor Ron Conway, FriendFeed co-founders (and now-Facebook VPs) Paul Buchheit and Bret Taylor. The CrunchUp will take place at the Intercontinental Hotel in San Francisco and will kick off with a big roundtable discussion and one-on-one interviews, followed by startup demos and panel discussions drilling down into geo streams, media streams, marketing, and venture capital.

If there is anything that is capturing the attention and excitement of the technology community right now, it is realtime streams. Twitter, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and startups galore are all active in the realtime Web and will be at the event. Nearly 40 startups applied to fill ten demo slots for new realtime product launches.

But as more of us immerse ourselves in our Twitter and Facebook streams, and Foursquare check-ins, the need to filter out the noise is becoming acute. That will be a big theme, and we’ll hear about different approaches to do that ranging from better user interfaces to better realtime search. We are also seeing the emergence of new types of streams, particularly geo streams that tell everyone where you are at any given moment, and media streams that inject photos, videos, and other content beyond text into the the realtime conversation.

The CrunchUp will explore both the technological side of the phenomenon and the business side. These streams represent a new communications layer across the Web, as well as a platform for building products and startups. Come join us to find out where the stream is going next.

If you feel like your company can add to the few holes left in the agenda, please contact us at realtime [at] techcrunch [dot] com. Bloggers and journalists can request a press pass by contacting Daniel Brusilovsky.

The CrunchUp also provides an amazing sponsorship platform for start-ups and brands to reach both conference and networking attendees. Please contact Heather Harde or Jeanne Logozo to learn more about sponsorship packages and custom opportunities.

CRUNCHUP AGENDA

9:00 – 9:30 AM From RSS To Realtime: A Conversation With Twitter COO Dick Costolo

9:30 – 11:00 AM Roundtable: Filtering The Stream. Getting Rid of the Noise.

Facebook, VP of Product Chris Cox
Google, Google Fellow, Amit Singhal
Seesmic, CEO Loic Le Meur
Futurity Ventures, investor/entrepreneur Edo Segal
CrowdEye, CEO Ken Moss
Microsoft, GM of FUSE Labs, Lili Cheng
Facebook, VP of Platform, Bret Taylor
Thing Labs/Brizzly, CEO Jason Shellen
Angel Investor Ron Conway
MySpace, Chief Product Officer Jason Hirschhorn

11:00 – 11:15 AM Break

11:15 – 11:45 AM The Social Enterprise: A Conversation With Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff

11:45 – 12:30 PM Where Is The Stream Going? Tomorrow’s Killer Apps (Demos)

Hot Potato (event streams, launch)
Seesmic (a special surprise)
StatusNet (DIY microblogging, launch)
Stealth Startup (RT social address book)
Realtime Pitch From The Audience*

12:30 – 2:00 PM Lunch

2:00 – 2:45 PM Where Is The Stream Going? Tomorrow’s Killer Apps (Demos)

PlyMedia (new product launch)
Stealth Startup (live video streams)
Stealth Startup (RT news streams)
Tweetmeme (new product launch)
Rippol (video streams, public launch)
Stealth Startup (mobile noise assassin)
Realtime Pitch From the Audience*

2:45 – 3:30 PM Media Streams: Are These The Ultimate Marketing Vehicles?
DailyBooth, co-founder Ryan Amos
Ad.ly, CEO Sean Rad
Hollywood agent, Robin Bechtel (digital strategist for Britney Spears, Warner Bros. Records)
more
NewTek, SVP strategic development Philip Nelson

3:30 – 3:45 Break

3:45 – 4:30 Geo Streams: We Know Where You Are, Right Now
Foursquare, VP business development Tristan Walker
Twitter, director of platform Ryan Sarver
Google, Steve Lee, Group Product Manager Google Maps for Mobile and Google Latitude
SimpleGeo, founder Matt Galligan
Hot Potato, founder Justin Shaffer
Mixer Labs, CEO Elad Gil

4:30 – 5:00 Can We Kill Email Already? All Aboard The Micro-Message Bus
A discussion with Paul Buchheit (Facebook/Friendfeed/Gmail) and Rob Goldman, CEO Threadsy

5:00 – 5:45 PM Where The Realtime Rubber Meets The Road: When Does The Serious Money Come In?

Angel investor, Ron Conway
Microsoft, corporate VP for Strategic and Emerging Business Development, Dan’l Lewin
Charles River Ventures, VC George Zachary
Accel Partners, VC Andrew Braccia
Facebook/Friendfeed, Paul Buchheit

5:45 – 7:30 PM Realtime After Party

Tickets are on sale now. You can still get them for $395. Prices go up to $495 the week before the event.

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Now that Twitter has officially unveiled its Lists feature to all users, the frenzy has started. But while Lists are available via Twitter’s site, the feature has been slower to come to Twitter clients. Today, Seesmic is announcing the availability of Lists on its desktop client, Seesmic Desktop.

The new, downloadable version of Seesmic Desktop will display your Twitter lists in the left sidebar from any Twitter account you have (Seesmic lets you use one client for multiple accounts). The new feature also lets you add any Twitter user to any user list from any of your account. Right now, list functionality is limited. You cannot see lists that list you, only lists that you follow. And you cannot create lists from the client; this must be done within Twitter’s site. But, Seesmic’s founder and CEO Loic Le Meur told me that both the ability to create lists and see lists that follow you will soon come to Seesmic Desktop in the next few weeks.

The list feature will also come to Seesmic Web shortly, says Le Meur. He also said that lists took so long to incorporate into the clients because the updated, comprehensive API wasn’t available until a few days ago. Le Meur and his team have scrambled to launch a new version of the desktop client over the weekend and will unveil it to Seesmic members today, and to the general public within the next few days. Other third party sites have also tapped into the Lists API, Listorious, a Lists directory.

List descriptions, which will be coming in the next week or so according to Twitter’s Vitor Lourenco confirms, would also be a valuable addition to clients like Seesmic.

TweetDeck, one of Seesmic’s main competitors, is also adding list functionality very soon, according to TweetDeck’s founder and CEO Iain Dodsworth. While the nature of TweetDeck’s lists feature is still a secret, he told me that “integration will be extensive and offer complete flexibility to TD users with particular emphasis on curation, consumption and portability of lists and existing TD groups.”

Seesmic Desktop, which integrated with both Facebook and Twitter, has also hit 3 million downloads, with the last 500,000 downloads taking place within the past month and a half. The client was recently upgraded to add Facebook fan pages, yFrog integration, a “reply to all” button for messages and a favorites timeline. Earlier this summer, Seesmic recently launched its browser-based Twitter client at TechCrunch’s Real-Time Stream CrunchUp. Seesmic Web will also be integrated with Facebook within the next month as developers are currently tweaking the application’s functionality on different browsers.

Disclosure: TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington is an investor in Seesmic. I am not.

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A few days ago, Seesmic CEO Loic Le Meur (@Loic) sent out a retweet with a link to a screenshot of his CTO’s Seesmic Web client showing 1,200 Tweets across nearly 20 columns. The joke was that his CTO was trying to achieve a “world record” for how many Tweets could be loaded up into a Twitter client at one time. (It’s not a world record.  Competitor TweetDeck can display an unlimited number of Tweets and columns as well). If you click on the screenshot and pan across the enlarged version of it, there you’ll find a dialog box with Loic’s old avatar doing a hang-10 while kite surfing. The juxtaposition is comical, if a little sad—poor @Loic lost in the overflowing stream of Tweets his company is trying to tame.

The image reminded me of another screenshot (see below, click to enlarge) that I once took of an earlier Twitter client called Twhirl, which Seesmic bought before developing its current product. About a year and a half ago, I complained that Twhirl took over my desktop when I first installed it with a constant stream of pop-up messages. I wrote in that post:

This highlights a bigger problem with the Web today. There is too much to pay attention to and not enough ways to reduce the noise.

It’s 18 months later and the problem hasn’t been solved.  The screenshot I took back then still resonates because the noise is worse than ever. Indeed, it is being magnified every day as more people pile onto Twitter and Facebook and new apps yet to crest like Google Wave. The data stream is growing stronger, but so too is the danger of drowning in all that information.

This is not to say that there hasn’t been considerable progress in stream readers since that time. Containing 1,200 Tweets within neatly defined columns is definitely better than 1,200 separate dialog boxes taking over my screen, and these apps today are much more able to handle massive amount of messages. But the fact that Seesmic or TweetDeck or any of these apps can display 1,200 Tweets at once is not a feature, it’s a bug.  Again, what I said 18 months ago is just as true today:

I need less data, not more data. I need to know what is important, and I don’t have time to sift through thousands of Tweets and Friendfeed messages and blog posts and emails and IMs a day to find the five things that I really need to know.

One the main methods emerging to cut down noise in your personal stream is to set up different groups of people or keywords (via search) to follow.  Twitter is going to tackle this problem with its new “lists” feature. Seesmic and TweetDeck already address this problem by creating a new column for every group or category you want to follow.

But as the image above makes clear, that strategy breaks down fairly quickly.  I have ten columns in my TweetDeck, for instance—one for my personal Twitter account, one for the TechCrunch account, one for my Facebook stream, one for mentions of “techcrunch”, another for mentions of my name (so I can respond to people trying to talk to me whom I don’t follow), another two columns for direct messages, and so on.  I rarely look at more than two columns.  It’s just not an efficient way keep track of all my different interests in the stream.

And if you think Twitter is noisy, wait until you see Google Wave, which doesn’t hide anything at all.  Imagine that Twhirl image below with a million dialog boxes on your screen, except you see as other people type in their messages and add new files and images to the conversation, all at once as it is happening.  It’s enough to make your brain explode.

What these services should strive to do instead is hide the noise, keep it simple.  Letting me sort through the stream by creating different groups and lists and columns of things and people I want to pay attention to is great, but it hardly solves the problem.  Finding that one great Tweet from @Loic or anyone else I follow shouldn’t be a game of Where’s Waldo?

Really, all I need is two columns: the most recent Tweets from everyone I follow (the standard) and the the most interesting tweets I need to pay attention to.  Recent and Interesting.  This second column is the tricky one.  It needs to be automatically generated and personalized to my interests at that moment.

It would definitely include the most retweeted messages from people I follow over the past 24 to 48 hours because I miss these things during those hours when I am not staring at the stream.  (And I stare at my stream more than most people).  It would also prioritize tweets from people I follow based on who I pay attention to the most, based on my past history of retweeting, replying to people, or simply lingering over a Tweet while I’m reading.  Look at my behavior, and then create a favorites list of sorts out of that.

And if those two columns aren’t enough, then there’s always search.  Except search is broken on Twitter.  Unless you know the exact word you are looking for, Tweets with related terms won’t show up.  And there is no way to sort searches by relevance, it is just sorted by chronology.  Maybe Twitter can use some of its $100 million in new funding to fix that, and solve the noise problem while it’s at it.

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In light of the FTC’s recent scrutiny of Social Media practices and the activity that connects brands to influencers and ultimately consumers, we will soon see guidelines and corresponding penalties to serve as governance for future engagement.

In the realm of sponsored posts or tweets, the FTC simply cannot delineate the differences between earned and paid postings and therefore assumes that most consumers are equally oblivious.

With Izea’s impending announcement of a new pay-per-tweet network, combined with existing ad networks and services such as TweetROI, Twittad, and Magpie, the FTC will be forced to pay attention to the paid endorsements in one of Social Media’s most promising and also elusive networks.

As you could possibly imagine, the reality of mass-sponsored tweets will raise a Tweetstorm that will immediately trigger a blogstorm, which will ultimately escalate into a full-blown Category 5 media hurricane. But the reality is, whether you agree with them or not, sponsored conversations and paid tweets are already here.  The question is how to use them correctly and responsibly.

Their appeal to marketers is obvious.  They increase awareness, expand networks, drive sales, build communities, promote causes, raise money and awareness, and push traffic.

So, before the chaos and confusion ensues, I wanted to take a proactive role in steering a productive conversation to explore and introduce solutions, ethics, standards, and also reduce the possibility for consumer confusion and potential backlash.

I hosted a virtual summit on the topic via Facebook and invited pundits and industry leaders to discuss:

1. The issues and options for meeting FTC guidelines
2. The responsibility of brands and participants to provide consumers with information, context and intent
3. The inevitable need for guidelines and standardization in disclosure practices
4. The impact on the image of the sponsoring brand as well as the brands of the influential voices who lease their stature and social graph and how it ultimately affects the dynamic, trust, and vibrancy of their community

Disclosure certainly is a first step, but it can also steer perception, which is why this discussion is so critical to the evolution of sponsored conversations. The debate however, centralizes on the mechanisms and terminology for disclosure and whether or not they are effective when either explicit or implicit in nature.

To kick things off, I introduced options for consideration such as including a symbol or term in each Tweet that conveyed sponsorship or endorsement such “$,” “spon,” “paid,” “endorsement,” “sponsored” or possibly including an is.gd or bit.ly link to a landing page that could more effectively communicate the nature of the endorsement, ad, promotion, and the intention of the relationship.

As the conversation deepened, the rationale for one standard or solution unlocked a series of challenges that necessitated further exploration and discussion. As I noted in the forum, the use of “paid” for example, precipitates psychological connotations that will evoke a completely different emotional response as compared to endorsement or sponsorship.

Anders Abrahamsson shared an interesting perspective, “Paid is coming close to that you sold out your integrity – some might call it prostitution.” Stowe Boyd, the champion for Microsyntax.org, offered a general resolution that resonated with many participants, “My recommendation would be to concoct a new indicator, perhaps ‘AD’, to place at the start of any sponsored Tweet. This has several benefits since anyone would immediately know, at the outset of reading the tweet, that it is sponsored. It stands apart from the tags, which usually appear in a cluster at the end. Also, this would make it easy for tools to build filters to block ADs or to easily find them, depending on your leanings.”

I believe there’s a difference however, between sponsored and paid tweets, one defined by purpose and objective. For example, I enjoy the tweets published by Gary Vaynerchuk and I observe that he has a tremendous following of developing wine (and marketing) enthusiasts.  A company may choose to either sponsor his Twitter wallpaper and/or his tweet stream. In this case, they don’t necessarily influence his tweets, they simply sponsor them. This introduces another alternative through the disclosure of relationships directly on Twitter backgrounds.

However, if I pay for tweets specifically, then I expect to dictate the content related to each paid tweet.  Brian Carter of TweetROI shared his perspective on sponsored conversations versus ads, “SP and AD make sense. Surprisingly, even some quality Twitterers, don’t want to change the advertiser’s text…Everyone interprets payment/ sponsorship differently….”

At this point, SP and AD become potential preambles for sponsored and paid tweets respectively.

But, Jeremiah Owyang, social analyst with Forrester Research, believes that they are not enough, “People won’t understand that ‘AD’ and ‘SP’ imply that those tweets are paid for. We need to be explicit, even if it occupies more characters in the tweet. The only solution is to specifically state, ‘sponsored’ in each…”

Again, I suggested that an included (shortened) URL that directs to a pre-defined page that explains the sponsorship and further clarifies the intentions and benefits of the program is another option to consider. While it’s implicit in nature, it communicates disclosure in a mutually beneficial way that serves the Twitterer, the brand, and the reader.

In the leaked Twitter documents, also know as Twittergate,, there is mention that Twitter is already thinking about this as a form of revenue generation.

It appears as though Twitter is considering the implementation of color coding or introduction of different fonts for sponsored and paid tweets. James Eliason of Twittad believes that Twitter should release an API to support color-coding as not only a form of disclosure, but also as a measure of preventing spam.

Eliason took the case to Twitter co-founder Evan Williams where he recommended that Twitter begin the process of selecting specific ad partner providers to prevent dilution from spam marketers and ensure that the advertising comes from the source through the API. His idea is to assign the API calls from each ad partner through Twitter.com and also third party apps such as TweetDeck, Seesmic, and PeopleBrowsr. He also believes this will introduce a new subscription model for users to pay a small fee for a non-ad model across all platforms.

Our challenge isn’t only to unite the industry of sponsored conversation providers around common standards and ethics, we must also encourage marketers to put them into practice.

Whether it’s on Twitter, in blog posts, or in television commercials, paid tweets are technically no different than the array of commercials and advertisements that are available to marketers already – except that everyday people become the spokespeople and thus become difficult for followers to discern real experiences versus influenced perspectives.

While everyone agrees on the need for standards, and it’s clear that competitors will actually collaborate to help define them, there’s merit and promise in top-down regulation from the FTC and/or Twitter itself. In the meantime, I still believe that including “sponsored” as Jeremiah suggests, providing disclosure on individual wallpaper, or including a link to a page that offers context and clarity, represent credible alternatives in the interim.

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Believe it or not, almost 50% of Twitter users, prefer to tweet directly from Twitter.com. This isn’t surprising, but most heavy Twitter users agree that Twitter.com is actually the poorest user experience among the plethora of alternative web applications to access the service. But there’s one thing Twitter.com has going for it (besides being the default way all new users access Twitter) – it’s simple and easy to use.

But after few months of using Twitter you begin to look for the retweet button, the auto-refresh updates, or a way to create groups, and moreover, you are looking for a better way to navigate through your endless list of friends and/or content. You won’t find these features on Twitter (although the Power Twitter Add-on gets you most of the way there), but here’s a list of alternative web applications that will let you monitor your Twitter account from your browser in a much richer way than the Twitter site itself.

With Web Seesmic (Disclosure: Arrington still has a small investment in Seesmic), you can monitor all of your tweet activities in one place and in real-time. Easily navigate through your list of friends, choose your favorite layout, and more – all from a very clean and clear interface. So far, I’ve found Web Seesmic to have the most potential in terms of becoming your next Twitterstream service. There is still room for improvement, of course. When it comes to usability, the design is just too minimalistic. The retweet/direct messages should be visual and accessible via one click only. The “list view” navigation is better than the column, but the font is way too small (that needs to be changed ASAP). In addition, it lacks two significant features: The trend list, which becomes very important if you want to be up-to-date with timely news and current events, as well as a twitpic/yfrog integration. Surprised, I have to ask: Where is the main thing that Seesmic does so well? Video-based comments would leverage this app at least ten times more. Have they given up on video completely?

Meanwhile PeopleBrowsr has it all. See all of your tweetstream, your mentions, DMs, search-based keywords, create groups, manage multi accounts from one dashboard, use a to-do list with quick tags, integrate with all your social networks, RSS import, map view, and tons of other features. The problem is – that it’s just too overwhelming! Even the most skilled power user on Twitter won’t need all of these advanced features. Luckily though, PeopleBrowsr has a light version that is more reasonable to use. Still, I did feel a bit lost in both the advanced and light versions.

PeopleBrowsr provides so many other services that are related to any and all of your social activities on the web. The service actually reminds me of Zoho, which turned out to be the largest office suite on the net. Maybe this is the direction PeopleBrowsr is heading towards? – Your one-stop-shop for all real time activities.

TwitHive is a multi-channel web dashboard for Twitter. The service lets you create channels based on your query. You can customize each channel whichever way you please. It might sound great overall, but during actual testing the service failed to impress me. The service is somewhat annoying to use – search and also new updates opens in a different layer, and column creation takes time, while other services do that for you automatically. One thing that I did enjoy and found unique was the integration of Google News and Blog Search alongside any search you perform.

If you have several Twitter accounts that you need to monitor (personal plus brand(s)), you may consider using Splitweet. Splitweet allows you to compose a list of accounts and distribute tweets to more than just one account. You can also follow your contacts’ tweets from all of your managed accounts. OK, so here’s my problem with this service: Each account gets its own color, and Splitweet places this color coded box next to each tweet in the stream. Personally I think it’s a bit weird to have refer to various Twitter accounts by color. I rather see the username of the account, or a small icon, than to remember what color symbolizes that particular account.

TweetTabs, a Tweetmeme project, is the easiest way to track trends on Twitter. It’s so easy, you don’t really need to do anything. Just enter the site and enjoy the stream of each trend presented on Twitter right now. Additionally, you can run a keyword search and it will automatically add it as a new column. There’s no registration whatsoever, and if you want to reply or retweet someone else’s tweet, you’ll be redirect to your own Twitter profile (which I found to be very useful always). Although on TweetTabs, you can’t see your friends’ streams or manage anything else beyond what I’ve mentioned above.

Similar to TweetTabs, Monitter allows you to track what most matters to you on Twitter without the need to sign up or in. Just type three words into the three search boxes (you are free to add more boxes if needed), and within seconds you’ll start seeing relevant tweets streaming live. The one thing that Monitter gives above all the others listed here is the ability to grab a real-time twitter stream widget for your site, with the option to customise the CSS to make it look the way you want.

Kudos to Tweenky, for being the first service that enables real time tweets from the web. Unfortunately, it didn’t evolve any further. Their first version had this nifty Gmail look & feel, but for some reason, today, it just looks pretty plain and boring. Having said that, you may want to use it because of its simplicity. Tweenky is designed to be very obvious to the user. The list of activities and trends are accessible always, and the main stream is easy to adjust to. I found the larger font in the update box to be conveniently useful.

Remember all the buzz around Tweetree? I tried it again today and was surprised to see that nothing has changed (usually you get to see more useful features over time, no?). Anyway, it still a good service, if you want to see a bigger picture of your stream. Tweetree embeds external content so you get to see pictures, videos and even the text from submitted links right in your twitterstream. To be honest, I didn’t like how the service overtook the Twitter layout. If you already use Twitter in the background, go easy with your logos. In Tweetree’s case, they placed two extremely large logos on top of the twitter page, and it is just a distraction. It would have been less annoying to get all of the features without all of the noisy design around it.

TwitZap is not half bad for a layer that sits on top of Twitter site, and frankly it has great tools that the others don’t have. First of all it lets you organize your favorite channels, then it shows you how many updates you missed when you’re not on the channel, which relates to a RSS reader experience. But furthermore, it shows you who are the people that are viewing the same channel right now, and this is by far the best way to find people based on a shared activity. The page refreshes in real time (you can even choose its speed), and on its browser tab you get to see how many of new tweets you’ve missed. The bottom line, if I have to choose the best service among these 9, I think TwitZap is the winner (they should change their registration to a single sign-in though).

Frankly, I’m not completely satisfied with all of these services. I think that Twitter web clients are weak compared to the desktop ones. I wonder who will step up and take the entire experience forward. Who will integrate twitpic, blip.fm, emoticons, videos, and all that fun stuff that we found on other Twitter applications into one? One thing we know – it most likely will not be Twitter. Therefore it’s up to someone else to gather everything into a single, easy-to-use page. I’m still in searching for that one service…

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Seesmic, the Twitter and Facebook desktop client developed by Loic Le Meur, is launching its much talked about browser-based Twitter client today at TechCrunch’s Real-Time Stream CrunchUp. We first heard about the plans for the browser client at the TechFellow awards in June, but its been in stealth mode for the past few months. You can try Seesmic Web in preview here.

We got a chance to test it out and it’s pretty cool. It reminds me of a Gmail interface for Twitter. Currently, the browser client only includes support for Twitter but Le Meur says that Facebook integration will be coming soon. The client is pretty basic, simple to use and similar in some ways to the desktop client.

You can open up your timeline in a column, your mentions in another column and your direct messages in another column. You can also use the mouse to roll over a Twitter handle and will be given the option to see the user’s profile, message the user or unfollow the user. My favorite part of this interface is using the timeline in the single column mode, which makes it seem like a simple, easy to use email application. The other compelling part of the browser client is the layout of the direct messages, which makes it simple to have and see a conversation with someone.

As we reported in June, Seesmic is also launching the fourth version of its desktop client today, which will include the ability to view Seesmic in single column mode or multi-column mode, with ability to change detach and change the size of columns. You will also be able to save space on the client by collapsing and expanding the sidebar with the click of a button and will still be shown minimized buttons with shortcuts to toggle between accounts, userlists and searches. Seesmic has also updated its internal code to improve performance and now allows you to modify the timeline limits in set in Seesmic Desktop to help control performance. These limits define the maximum number of messages kept in each of your timelines from your friends; replies, private and sent; and searches.

One of the differentiating factors between Seesmic and main rivals Tweetdeck and Tweetie is that Seemsic pulls in status updates from Facebook and allows users to update their Facebook status from the desktop client itself. Le Meur tells is that Facebook status updates are becoming as common as Twitter updates from Seesmic, especially since the client enables two-way communication.

What’s missing from today’s rollout is the Seesmic iPhone app, which Le Meur says is still in the works and will be released in the near future.

Seesmic Desktop, which faces competition from popular client and rival Tweetdeck and a plethora of others, officially launched in April. Le Meur tells us that Seesmic is getting about 10,000 downloads a day. PeopleBrowsr, another social network aggregator (and presenter at the Real-Time CrunchUp), recently made the opposite switch, adding a desktop Adobe Air client to its browser product.

As TechCrunch’s Robin Wauters recently wrote, the social network aggregator market is almost fully saturated and new players are throwing their hats in the ring every day. So it makes sense that Seesmic would want to not only build up its offering with useful features, but also try to conquer all the mediums—web, desktop and mobile. Check desktop and web, now onto mobile!

Disclosure: TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington is an investor in Seesmic. I am not.

Here’s the video of Le Meur’s demo of the new version of Seesmic Desktop and the browser-based client:

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I had an informative chat with Seesmic founder Loic Le Meur at the TechFellow Awards Friday night, where he revealed to me the future plans for Seesmic Desktop, a desktop Twitter and Facebook client that’s built on Adobe Air. Seesmic will launch a new version of the desktop client next week that will let users compress their stream of Facebook updates and Twitter messages into one column. Currently, the client divides streams from different accounts and social networks into several columns.

The new version also features a new button that will let you post a Tweet to multiple Twitter accounts at the same time. And Seesmic will also let you see tracking stats from links sent out with url shortening service bit.ly. Seesmic’s current version lets you use a variety of other url shorteners, including tr.im and Snurl, but doesn’t let you see stats within the client itself.

According to Le Meur, Seesmic will soon be offering a browser based client. This offering is actually appealing, considering that Adobe’s AIR platform has some strange UI bugs and quirks and tends to use a good amount of resources on computers. And Seesmic will also launch an iPhone app, which is currently under wraps along with the web-based product. Details about the features of the browser client and iPhone app will be officially unveiled at TechCrunch’s Real Time Stream CrunchUp on July 10.

Seesmic Desktop, which faces competition from popular client and rival Tweetdeck and a plethora of others, officially launched in April. Le Meur tells us that Seesmic is getting about 10,000 downloads a day. PeopleBrowsr, another social network aggregator, recently made the opposite switch, adding a desktop Adobe Air client to its browser product.

As TechCrunch’s Robin Wauters recently wrote, the social network aggregator market is almost fully saturated. It seems like every day there are new startups that are trying to venture into the already competitive landscape. So it makes sense that Seesmic would want to not only build up its offering with useful features, but also try to conquer all the mediums—web, desktop and mobile.

Disclosure: TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington is an investor in Seesmic. I am not.

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Here’s a question that’s been running through my head ever since Michael posted about FriendFeed being in danger of becoming the coolest app no one uses: exactly how many startups out there are trying to be the one social networking service aggregator to rule them all, and how many is enough?

It seems like every day startups come up with new applications, be it for desktop, Web and/or mobile phone, that essentially want to be the gateway to our online lives. In reality though, there are not that many people who want – let alone need – continuous access to multiple social networking services, and even if they do, how many people (outside of the tech industry) do you know who are genuinely waiting for a extra third-party that helps them manage all their online personas?

Is this a sucker’s game? Is it a battle worth fighting?

For example: how many clients exist that basically aim to lure you away from using Twitter’s standard web interface by adding more features to the core micro-sharing functionality and throwing in more eye candy? And yet, the Twitter website remains, by far, the most popular way for users to update their message streams, with dozens of apps like TweetDeck, Twhirl / Seesmic Desktop, PeopleBrowsr, AlertThingy, Sobees, Streamy, Tweetie, Nambu, TwitterBerry, and HootSuite trailing in its path (and there are many more where that came from).

Don’t even get me started on the plethora of apps that syndicate FriendFeed feeds alongside Facebook and Twitter to deliver the best-user-experience-known-to-mankind when it comes to updating your social graph on your current status. It’s the ultimate social networking service aggregator update management tool, baby!

All these applications appeal to only a fraction of the users of the more popular social services, many of which are still trying to figure out how to turn all that attention into cold hard cash themselves. I’m not necessarily saying that that’s a reason not do get into that business, I’m just saying chances are little that they’re ever going to be able to turn it into something even remotely profitable.

I sincerely think we’ve seen enough of these social network aggregators, and while I’m sure one or two will live on, get acquired or turn out to be a successful venture in another way, most are destined for failure like most startups in any other market, especially if they’re as saturated as this one has quickly proven to be.

I’ll sure be pointing back to this post when the next contestants in this particular arena find their way to our inboxes.

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Another horse in this race that barely gets a mention is Sobees, probably in big part because of the fact it’s only available for Windows users (with the latest .NET framework, moreover), although it doesn’t really deserve to be below the radar this much at all.

We covered the company’s social network aggregator when it entered public beta, and wrote that they were aiming to attract a mainstream audience for their software, which enables users to manage a fairly wide variety of web apps and social networking services from their desktops. It’s a nifty companion that plugs into Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Flickr, YouTube and many more web services, but I’ve always felt it was far too overloaded with features for me to use it on a daily basis.

So I was interested when the company set out to build a stand-alone client for Twitter, Facebook and Twitter Search. And just as they were working on that, Facebook launched its Open Stream API so they made thankful use of it quite rapidly and converted the API to .NET and integrated the stream into the new client. The software is now in alpha and publicly available under the name bDule, and it’s definitely worth checking out even if you only use one of the two services it supports.

Soon, we’ll do a feature-by-feature comparison for all the existing social desktop applications, but for now let me just say Sobees is very much worthy of being included whenever someone talks about Facebook / Twitter clients. As mostly all of the apps mentioned on top bDule is a bit of a memory drain, and at times renders a bit slow, but the UI is really well thought-out (love the different templates you can switch to in just one mouse-click) and it does what it’s supposed to do really well.

Too bad it’s Windows / .NET only, because I’m sure there’s an audience out there that’s looking for just this type of app.

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As we speculated this weekend, 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.

I just got off the phone with Ethan Beard, Facebook’s director of platform marketing, who tells me that the entire feed will be available through a single API call. A developer could recreate the entire Facebook home page if he wanted to or take parts of the feed and remix it to make something more interesting. For starters, I’d expect most Twitter clients to add the Facebook stream as an additional option. On Tweetdeck, for instance, you can read your activity stream, but you cannot respond in-line. The new Facebook Open Stream API is two-way, so it would allow developers to build apps which allow for that two-way communication inside the app.

This is a big deal. It potentially puts Facebook side by side with Twitter in all of these desktop and mobile client applications where a lot of the real-time conversation is happening and lets it compete head-to-head with Twitter. Whichever conversation stream is more interesting will prevail.

But beyond the arms race with Twitter, the stream API will open up the possibility for many new applications both within Facebook and outside its walls. An obvious one would be better filtering options for your activity stream. It would be simple to create an app that shows you the most liked or most commented on items in your stream, for example. Or now that stream can be plugged into various social search engines to give you socialized real-time results. Hell, if I could just search my own activity stream, I’d consider that a giant leap forward. But Facebook still only allows developers to cache data for 24 hours, so you wouldn’t be able to build a very powerful search engine or return results from more than a day ago.

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A spam-less Twitter feed might just be too good to be true. Spam is becoming an increasing problem on Twitter and something has to be done to separate the wheat from the chaff. Spammers are using Twitter as a tool by replying to your @username, which then causes the Tweets to show up in your timeline. There isn’t really a way to filter Twitter spam directly from a Twitter client. But there may be soon.

Loic Le Meur has proposed to add a “report as spam” button to the Twitter desktop clients his company has created, Twhirl and Seesmic Desktop. This button would flag the spammer to Twitter (or to a separate database of users) and Seesmic or Twhirl could then exclude the spammer from its client apps after a sufficient number of users report them as spam. Le Meur also says that the clients would manually check the potential spammers to ensure that they are actually spammers.

After the clients are established as spammers, Twitter could then delete or block the user accounts. Le Meur says that his Twitter clients will soon include a “report as spam” button and is calling on fellow popular Twitter clients, Tweetdeck and Tweetie, to follow suit. The one potential issue with the flag button, says Le Meur, is that Twitter prefers spam to be reported by a direct message to its spam account “@spam.” But you need have @spam to follow you first (it seems to be autofollowing) before hitting the flag button on a Twitter client. It’s an extra step the user would have to take to make the button usable, says Le Meur.

Flagging is a good idea and a great first step to battling spam but what Twitter really needs is an Akismet-like plug-in. Akismet, created by Wordpress developers, filters link spam from blog comments and trackback pings for blogs. When a new comment, trackback, or pingback comes to a blog site, it is submitted to Akismet, which runs hundreds of tests on the comment and returns a thumbs up or thumbs down on whether it is spam. Akismet says that its plug-in has caught 10.7 billion spam comments from blogs since its launch in 2005.

There are a few Twitter applications that let you flag possible spam, but none are tied to the Twitter desktop clients, like Seesmic Desktop or Tweetie. Topify, a nifty service we reviewed recently, gives you a more comprehensive version of the standard New Follower email offered by Twitter, by providing the user’s Bio, Follower/Following numbers, the user’s most recent tweets and the ability to block and unfollow potential spammers directly from the New Follower email. Twerp Scan scans through your followers and flags Twitter users who could be potential spammers. You can control the filtering options that determine who is a spammer (i.e. number of followers vs. following). But Twitter may have to develop or license its own spam blocking software if the problem becomes more prevalent.

>Information provided by CrunchBase

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The Twitter desktop client wars are on.

Yesterday, Loïc Le Meur announced a TweetDeck rival dubbed Seesmic Desktop that not only looks a lot like the popular AIR application (more popular than any other desktop client according to statistics) but also heavily competes with it on a feature level. TweetDeck founder Iain Dodsworth, not to be outdone by the announcements, sent an e-mail out to his contacts just now about an upgraded version of the software which should be available for download real soon (update: should be automatically pushed from now on – or get it here).

According to the e-mail, this is an unscheduled update, but it tackles one of the major issues users have been struggling with and complaining about: memory leakage. In the message, Dodsworth says he has been working closely with Adobe for a fix, but stresses that this doesn’t completely solve the problem of the app being quite the memory drain (he says this is still being worked on), only that memory usage will be capped so you can keep it turned on “day and night’” (do you?).

The new version of TweetDeck (v0.25) will also include a number of bug fixes and new features, including a Digg URL shortener, support for Spotify URLs (so you can play a song from a tweeted link directly in the Spotify player), previewing of TwitPic images inside the desktop app and preview of information about short URLs within the application before opening the link.

The biggest new feature being rolled out to everyone today is Facebook integration, so you’ll be able to view your Facebook friends’ status updates in a new column alongside your TWitter updates. You can also see when your Facebook friends are online and start a chat with them from within TweetDeck, simply by clicking their name. However, you cannot comment on their status message from within the client. This is of course making TweetDeck more a lifestreaming service than a Twitter client, so it might have to change its name if it keeps on adding integrations with other services.

Finally, you can now record and share short videos directly from TweetDeck thanks to an integration with 12seconds (a Seesmic competitor). Both the Facebook and the 12seconds integration were already included in test releases, but as of today they’ll be included in the full beta version of the app.

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I’m live blogging from video conversation platform Seesmic’s headquarters, where Seesmic’s founder Loic Le Meur, is previewing a new Twitter client. We reported earlier about the unveiling of the site. Le Meur says that this is still a work in progress and ongoing changes will made to the product.

Seesmic, who also owns popular Twitter app Twhirl, has launched a new Twitter client, Seesmic Desktop. Like Twhirl, Seesmic Desktop is a desktop app, operated by Adobe Air. Seesmic Desktop allows you to view multiple accounts in one window, unlike Twhirl, where you have to view multiple accounts in different windows. It looks like it was designed to rival competitor TweetDeck, which is the most popular desktop client for Twitter. Le Meur says that Seesmic will discontinue adding features to Twhirl (he jokes that it has a difficult name) and will primarily focus on building out Seesmic Desktop.

Here are a few of the nifty features Seesmic Desktop will have:

Multiple Accounts
Not only will you be able to see multiple Twitter accounts in one place, but you will be able to view the window in columns (similar to Tweetdeck). With this timeline, users can easily see Tweets and messages from multiple accounts and easily organize different applications. Le Meur says the interface is as simple as a Gmail interface.

Lists
You will be able to group your social contacts into lists like family, co-workers and friends.

Photos and Video
Like Twhirl, you will be able to share photos (integrated with TwitPic) and record and share video via Seesmic (that feature will be coming soon, Le Meur says). You can also drag and drop an image into messages. You can import video via your web cam as well.

Support for Social Networks
Currently the client only serves Twitter but Le Meur says that eventually Seesmic Desktop will have integrate with Facebook, Digg, Identica, Ping.FM and FriendFeed. Twhirl currently has support for these networks.

Stability
Because Seesmic Desktop is built on the stability of company Seesmic’s platform and Adobe Air, Le Meur says that his new client will be much more stable than competitor Tweetdeck.

Shorten Urls
Also like Twhirl, you will be able to shorten URLs to share via Twitter

Search
Search queries of messages opens in different columns and are saved.

This new client is like an upgraded, stronger Twhirl with even more powerful capabilities. According to LeMeur, Twhirl has been downloaded 1.2 million times and is the leading Twitter client on the web. Twitstat says that Twhirl is the 4th most popular Twitter client, behind rival Tweetdeck, which ranks as #2 on the list. But this new app could overtake Tweetdeck with its new functionality. Its actually similar in some ways to AlertThingy. Le Meur wants this client to be the Bloomberg of social software, aggregating all content into one (free) desktop app, perhaps becoming the desktop app version of FriendFeed along the way.

Disclaimer: TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington is an investor in Seesmic, although I am not.

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Seesmic will unveil a new version of it’s Twhirl Twitter client tonight at a press event starting around 6:30. Not many details on what they’re launching yet, other than the fact that they’ve rebuilt Twhirl, which has been downloaded 1.2 million times.

Seesmic isn’t releasing details, but the site they’ve set up for the new product shows the screenshot above, with multiple columns like TweetDeck, the new kid on the block that has taken the hearts of the Twitter elite. TweetDeck is far and away the most popular desktop client for Twitter.

More details when the event starts, which you can watch from home here. You can sign up for the new version here. Note that I am an investor in Seesmic.

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Not to be overshadowed by AlertThingy’s announcement earlier today, Seesmic founder — Twhirl owner — Loic Le Meur let us know that his desktop notifications client is also getting a substantial upgrade today.

Twhirl doesn’t support as many services as AlertThingy but Le Meur points out that it’s much more popular. It’s also the only desktop client in its class that supports his video messaging system Seesmic, which is no surprise since Seesmic aquired Twhirl last April.

Until today, users could only play video clips through Twhirl from the people they follow on Seesmic. But now with version 0.9, Seesmic users can record and post video clips from within Twhirl as well, bringing the construction of a Seesmic desktop client to completion.

Le Meur says that creating the right API to record and post video comments from within Twhirl took a lot of work, and naturally he’d like to see the other desktop notification tools pick up Seesmic support as well. So all of the recording functionality is now part of the APIs that Seesmic has already provided publicly. No desktop clients have used it to retrieve or post clips yet, but the web services Ping.fm and DailyMile have both added Seesmic video recording as features already.

There’s a variety of other improvements in this release, which you can read about in Le Meur’s official post on the announcement. Among them is new support for Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and Ping.fm.

Le Meur says that Twhirl has about 150,000 active users, about three times the number of those who use Seesmic regularly. The client has been downloaded about 700,000 times and about 10,000 people sign into Seesmic each day.

Disclaimer: TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington is an investor in Seesmic, although I am not.

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There are custom picture commenting plugins for Wordpress and Movable Type available, but we should note JS-Kit is not only meant for blogs, as it can be installed on any Javascript-enabled website. According to the blog post announcing the new features, JS-Kit users can now attach multiple images to each of their comments on sites running its commenting systems. Images will be auto-thumbnailed and can be clicked on for full-size viewing.

The new features comes right after the announcement that Facebook Connect had been made available to any of the 600,000 blogs and sites that are using the JS-Kit commenting widget, and after the system enabled commenters to add YouTube videos to their feedback.

In other news, JS-Kit has also been upgraded to support OpenID 2.0, not really a surprise as DataPortability co-founder and evangelist Chris Saad works for the company.

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You can check out the new all white site which ditches the Flash here. They’ve also added some additional bells and whistles to improve usability, like a big red button on the top left to start a new conversation.

User reactions are here. Let us know in the comments what you think as well (you can leave a video comment via Seesmic if you choose too).

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“We cut everything that wasn’t outsourceable, core or absolutely necessary for the company.”

Le Meur says the company isn’t in dire financial trouble yet, noting he raised a $6 million round just a few months ago. But he’s planning for a bleak fundraising future.

I am an investor in the company.

Tough times. Tough decisions.also read my blog post http://www.loiclemeur.com/english/2008/10/tough-times-tou.html

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CEO David Sacks says there are now 10,000 networks and 50,000 users just one week in. Yammer’s business model is to let people use the service for free, spreading it throughout the enterprise. When and if a company wants to take administrative control over the account, Yammer charges $1/user/month. Administrators can set access controls, such as IP controls and SSL.

The company already allows interaction with the service via the site, an AIR client, iPhone, Blackberry, IM, SMS and email. This evening they’ve also launched an API to allow third party developers to build Yammer into their applications.

First up is Seesmic, which is simultaneously announcing that they’re buildiing Yammer support into their Twhirl desktop client. Twhirl is used today to access the Twitter, Friendfeed and Seesmic video chat services. Integration should be completed in the coming weeks. (Disclosure: I’m an investor in Seesmic)

We signed up to Yammer just after the TechCrunch50 conference last week. Nearly everyone is using it regularly now. We have 14 members and 161 total messages.

The Yammer demo video from TechCrunch50 is here.

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The idea is to share moments of your life: sunsets, deep thoughts, funny faces. Or just broadcast your current status. You can upload the videos via a Webcam or your mobile phone, follow video updates from your friends, and even import contacts from Twitter. You can even link your 12seconds account to your Twitter account and it will automatically send a Tweet with a link your videos every time you put up anew one.

Is all of this pointless? Maybe, but no more than Twitter. Although, as a communications platform, text will always be more immediate and accessible than video.

The startup was founded by David Beach and Sol Lipman six months ago. They are bootsratpping it with 10 employees working for burritos. Besides Seesmic, 12seconds.tv also competes with the UK’s Phreadz. Here are a couple sample videos.

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Seesmic is designed to encourage video conversations among loose social groups (many of whom find each other on Seesmic). Since it launched in a private alpha last October, it’s attracted 21,000 users who post about 2,500 videos a day. Those videos, in turn, are watched about 300,000 times a day. Since last week, Seesmic has opened up its doors to all comers.

The company also owns Twhirl, a desktop Twitter/FriendFeed client that has been downloaded 400,000 times. Founder Loic Le Meur estimates that Twhirl accounts for 12 percent of all Twitter messages, and 5 percent of all FriendFeed comments.

Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay and Seesmic’s new board member, talks about his investment below:

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