Thursday, December 30, 2010

Forum Making Money

Mollie Vandor is the product manager for Ranker.com where she likes to make lists about reading, eating and bad-TV-watching. She’s also the media director for Girls in Tech LA. You can find her on Twitter @Mollierosev and on her blog.

Whether you’re looking to make a big change, or just tweak a few little things, the new year gives you the perfect opportunity to reflect on your behavior and resolve to do better going forward.

Of course, it’s one thing to say you want to tackle a typical resolution like get in better physical shape, get in better financial shape or — like many of us who work on the web — get your social media presence in order. It’s another thing to actually accomplish those big, broad goals.

So this year, instead of making your goals big and broad, why not take a page from the web world and use analytics to pinpoint the specific stuff you want to change? And, by that same token, why not use data tracking to hold yourself accountable for keeping all those resolutions too?

Read on for some tips on how to use social media to corral your New Year’s resolutions. Let us know in the comments below what tips worked for you, or share your own resolution advice.

Let’s Get Physical/>

There’s the freshman 15 everyone gains from collegiate pizza and beer, and then there’s the startup 15 many of us tech geeks gain from sodas and office snacks. Between the time spent sitting in front of a computer screen and the time spent networking over drinks and dinners, it’s easy to put on pounds when you work on the web. Of course, you can always try the startup diet, but that’s not necessarily going to work for everyone.

Keeping a food and exercise log might sound like a daunting task, but it turns out you may already be tracking some of that data without even knowing it. Foursquareclass="blippr-nobr">foursquare actually lets you see your entire checkin history and, if you do a quick search, you can find it so you can easily see whether you’ve really been going to the gym or frequenting your fast food runs.

Similarly, the Foursquare stats page lets you see your own checkin trends in handy graphs and lists. There’s even a site called weeplaces that lets you turn your Foursquare, Facebook Places and class='blippr-nobr'>Gowallaclass="blippr-nobr">Gowalla checkins into graphic visualizations. And, weeplaces will let you filter those visualizations by food-related checkins and parks and recreation checkins, so you can really get a handle on your history.

class='blippr-nobr'>Google Mapsclass="blippr-nobr">Google Maps also lets you search your own history, so can get a visual reminder of the places you’ve been searching for, and start picking up on trends in your own behavior. You just have to enable it. And, of course, there’s the age-old pedometer, made a lot easier and more fashionable via a host of iPhoneclass="blippr-nobr">iPhone and Androidclass="blippr-nobr">Android apps that let you easily track how much you’re walking without having to do anything more than a quick download.

Of course, once you establish the things you want to change about your eating and exercising habits, you still have to make those changes stick. class='blippr-nobr'>Appsclass="blippr-nobr">Apps like LoseIt, Weight Watchers and LiveStrong let you log calories you eat and calories you burn via your smartphone. Fitango prescribes personalized plans to help you get in shape, and gives you a forum for sharing milestones you meet with your friends. Similarly, Phitter is like a fitness-focused class='blippr-nobr'>Twitterclass="blippr-nobr">Twitter stream where people share weight loss trials, tribulations and tips to help keep each other going.

Or, you can try something like the Social Workout Challenge, which gives you fitness goals to meet and a community of people to keep you accountable for meeting them. If you really want to take your weight tracking to the next level, there’s even a scale that automatically tweets your weight to the world. While you’re at it, FixNixer and QuitMeter also give you similar tools for tracking your way out of a smoking habit, another great way to get yourself in better physical shape in the new year.

Money, Money, Money/>

For many people, the New Year is also a great time to get a fresh financial start. But again, it’s a lot easier to make changes going forward when you know how you’ve been behaving in the past. That’s where a site like Mint.com can be very handy. class='blippr-nobr'>Mintclass="blippr-nobr">Mint aggregates all of your various accounts, including credit cards, bank accounts and assets, and then turns your spending habits into easy-to-read charts and graphs that show you where you’re spending and where you could be saving. It even lets you compare your shopping and spending habits with other people in your area, so you can see how you stack up. Many credit cards, like American Express Blue and Visa Signature, also give you year-end spending summaries that show you how much you’ve spent, how much you’ve saved, how much interest you’ve accumulated and more.

Once you’ve nailed down how your money is going out the door, you can start figuring out ways to keep more of it in your wallet. Again, this is where tracking will be key to actually keeping those resolutions. First, you can establish your financial goals via an online calculator, which lets you figure out exactly how much to start saving. Once you’ve figured out your goals, there are more than 50 great, free mobile apps to help you track your spending. On Facebook, the BillMonk app will help you keep better track of those tricky situations where you’re sharing a bill with friends, and you need to make sure everyone knows what they owe. XPenser lets you record your expenses from any device, including via tweet and e-mail, and TweetWhatYouSpend gives you a forum for sharing your expenditures with everyone on Twitter, so your friends can help hold you accountable when you blow your budget shopping those post-holiday sales.

Get Your Social Media in Shape/>

Whether or not you work on the web, if you’re reading class='blippr-nobr'>Mashableclass="blippr-nobr">Mashable, chances are you have a social media presence. And, just like your physical and financial identities, your social media self might be due for a little makeover in 2011 too. The good news is that the data is even easier to find when you’re talking about your personal tech habits. For example, you can use the Top Words app to figure out the topics you talk about most on class='blippr-nobr'>Facebookclass="blippr-nobr">Facebook. Klout tells you which topics you talk about the most on Twitter, and all sorts of other stats that will help you pinpoint what it is about your social media presence that you may want to change.

Similarly, BackType analyzes your Twitter profile and tells you what percentage of your tweets are replies, retweets, links, etc. Like Klout, it also tells you who you’re influencing and who your influencers are. And, it shows you your most shared sites. All of these are great data points for determining things you’d like to change about your social media presence. Finally, ViralHeat gives you in-depth analysis of the sentiment around your various social network profiles, which really lets you hone in on how your social media behavior is being received by your followers on Facebook, Twitter and across the web.

Once you’ve established what you want to change, you can set up ViralHeat to send alerts and updates directly to your inbox so you can track the impact of those changes on the fly. Similarly, since Klout and BackType both update regularly now, you can see your statistics change as your behavior does, which is a great way to keep yourself motivated. And, of course, make sure you set up Google Alerts to track all the activity around your various accounts.

If your resolution involves blogging more often, there are plenty of apps to help you do that on the go, right from your phone. Another way to remind yourself of things you want to blog, tweet or post about is by using a service like TwittRemind, which lets you tweet yourself reminders to do things throughout the day.

To make the most of your many profiles, consider setting up a hub page via a service like about.meclass="blippr-nobr">about.me, which lets you showcase all your profiles in one place. Or, sign up for a social network aggregation service to make it easier to make changes on all your profiles at once. You also might want to consider setting up a targeted Twitter list of friends and followers who can help you hold yourself accountable and focus your social media efforts so you can minimize the number of relationships you’re managing and maximize the return you’re getting from all these changes.

New Year, New You/>

Whether your New Year’s resolutions involve getting yourself in better physical, financial or social media shape, the web can help you figure out exactly what you want to change and how you’re going to keep yourself accountable for changing it. 2011 is a brand new year and a completely fresh start, and, breaking your New Year’s resolutions is so 2010.

More Social Media Resources from Mashable:

- 10 More Creative Uses of the New Facebook Profile [PICS]/> - 10 Cool Facebook Status Tips and Tricks/> - 6 Reasons Why Social Games Are the Next Advertising Frontier/> - 3 Things Brands Must Do to Reach Millennials Online/> - How Social Media Can Help With Your Long Distance Job Search

Image courtesy of iStockphotoclass="blippr-nobr">iStockphoto, DNY59

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    class="f-el">class="cov-twit">Follow Mashable Social Mediaclass="s-el">class="cov-rss">Subscribe to the Social Media channelclass="f-el">class="cov-fb">Become a Fan on Facebookclass="s-el">class="cov-apple">Download our free apps for Android, iPhone and iPad






Over the weekend a number of developers in the Android Market support forums were reporting a highly disproportionate transaction fail rate (some devs claiming 80-100% of purchases failing). The problem continued with no response from Google for days, costing many of the developers real money and more than a few one star market reviews.


The problem appears to be sorted out now, a lot of the developers reporting problems have come back to say transactions are clearing, but the fix alone doesn’t look to be enough to soothe some angry developers. Many seem absolutely shocked that the Market appears to have zero weekend support, some are demanding refunds from Google, and all are really just looking for an honest explanation of what happened.


This tip came through a few days ago (thanks @_zehro!) and I probably should have posted it then, but I figured better late than never. A few of the devs in the thread had asked for media support to shed some light on the situation and this is my attempt to do that. If this is water under the bridge by now, just ignore this post (or let me hear it in the comments).


The problem: a recap


I’m going to do my best to summarize the problem and resulting uproar, but if you really want the full picture you can read the original thread over in the forums. The problem first showed up on December 4 (a Saturday) when judez posted:


What’s going on in Android Market? Every sell I have is declined. The system’s been failing for the last 6 hours.judezAndroid Market forum


It seemed that Google Checkout was randomly (and frequently) declining orders for a large number of developers (the majority of which appear to be outside of the US). Over the next few days/hours, more and more posts poured in showing the increasing frustration with the situation:


This is an utter disgrace now … I have lost an unbelievable amount of revenue because of this. I am fuming! There must be action we can take. I am getting too many support requests to even comtemplate dealing with, my reputation is being ruined because the users don’t know what’s happening and are blaming me, and still Google hasn’t said a word!!dooblouAndroid Market forum


Aside from the lost revenue, developers were concerned about the one star ratings that were starting to flow in:


It’s not just the sales, it’s also killing our reputation as developers. The user can’t download our app but they can download all their other paid apps so they assume that we have programmed our application wrongly.zehroAndroid Market forum


Being a developer myself, I can assure you one thing we realllly hate is a problem/shortcoming outside of our control making us look bad. As someone who solves problems for a living, it’s infuriating to have a real problem stare you in the face.


The resolution


On December 6 (a Monday) a Google employee finally showed up in the thread to report the problem had been solved:


As I mentioned on the other thread, we do deeply regret the inconvenience and pain caused to all of you, and take our responsibility to our merchants and developers very seriously. I certainly didn’t mean to be dismissive in my response.


Re: the reasons. We’re still digging into some of the underlying reasons with our integration partners, and will try to share more soon. Please be assured we will take measures to ensure this is repeated.salgarGoogle employee


Like I said at the beginning of the article, the problem was fixed days ago. I’m just writing about it now because most of the developers seemed disappointed that Google wasn’t able to even answer to say they were looking into things. The whole thread is filled with people who seem to feel amazingly disrespected.


The user dooblou did a fierce job of summing things up:


@salgar: The whole episode was an utter disgrace. “Regretting the inconvenience” isn’t really an apology either, is it? There was no communication with the developers, it took over 2 days to even start addressing the problem and it has all left a very bitter taste. I really think you should consider arranging a refund of the 30% we pay to you over the time frame this all occurred … this would go a little way to helping us all feel like we weren’t paying for support that never existed.


And on the note – how difficult is it to employ a member of support staff over the weekend that can monitor the Market? All it takes is 1 person to sit there monitoring activity – can you not even provide that for the 30% fee you take from us?


Finally, the ‘cut and paste’ response you gave everyone to their support requests was perhaps the biggest insult of all. I provide attentive and personal support to all my customers/users and it pays dividends (hey, I even do it at the weekends!) – why can’t you do the same. Out of all the support requests I have made to the Android Market, not a single one of them actually answers any of my questions – it’s like you skim read it, get the gist, and then choose the appropriate standard response to send back. Thanks for that.


So go on, make a gesture to prove that you take us seriously and that you value our contributions towards Android’s success. At the very least, you should email Android Market users that were caught up in this debacle and explain to them the issues and that it was not the developers’ faults. Please do this for us – EDUCATE THE ANDROID USERS – it’s the absolute bare minimum that you owe to us. I’m fed up of providing support for Google/Android as opposed to my own applications.dooblouAndroid Market forum


So what now?


Some of the developers were asking for a refund of the 30% paid to Google during the outage, figuring since no support was provided that no money should be split. Others are trying to figure out what to do with the one star reviews that were incorrectly levied against their apps. Google still hasn’t said much, only that the problem existed and is now gone. Should they be expected to do more than that?







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