Let’s see if photos work. Here’s an example.

One more kitchen gadget for the junk heap. As Alton Brown would say, this is an undeniable uni-tasker. It’s a martini machine. Why do you need a machine to make a martini? Well, because shaking a shaker is so much darned work.

Uni-tasking martini machine

Thomson Reuters has partnered with Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society to launch the Media Cloud, a set of research tools for tracking online media coverage.

The joint effort is meant to bring some clarity to the vast tangle of news and information on the Web, attempting to answer questions about what types of stories are covered by which media sources, where stories begin, and how blogosphere coverage compares to that of the mainstream media.

The open-source project will debut in the second quarter of 2009.

On the Media Cloud site, the team asked the question, “What Are Your Research Ideas?“.

I’m interested to see the full capabilities of this system when it launches later this year. I’m sure it will reveal some interesting truths about the nature of news network effects. It might also assist in media research projects such as those on media bias. But one question came to mind that I couldn’t shake, so I left this comment on the post:

I’m wondering if Media Cloud will be able to analyze not only information in and around a news story, but statistics on the people who READ a story, pass it on, etc. It seems that in today’s world of immediate global communication, these figures are necessary to draw important conclusions about the relative influence of different news outlets. Do you have any ideas for obtaining or estimating the number of people who read about a given topic for each source covering it? Data such as unique visitors to a page and "send to a friend" emails is typically confidential.

A database of news stories, content analysis, trackbacks, citations, and more, can tell a lot about the distribution and nature of news coverage. But it doesn’t answer the question, “What news source is most influential?“

It seems to me more information is required to answer this question. For example, in studies of the influence of Fox News’ conservative bias, researchers measured the change in voting patterns by households who gained access to Fox News versus those households who did not have access to the channel (the control group).

Nonetheless, Media Cloud sounds like an intriguing research project, and I’m happy to hear that the software will be open-sourced and available to the world for study and collaborative improvement.

It's all a big social media circle

It all started when I decided to apply for the position of Founder’s Associate at Twitter. Rather than a standard cover letter, I submitted a strategic analysis outlining Twitter’s current competitive state and its options to win the microblogging battle and larger social communications war. The primary tools used were scenario planning and Porter’s 5 Forces.

I then presented this analysis in a session at BarCampSD (San Diego) on November 12, 2008 to an audience with great interaction and sharing of thoughts.

Fast forward to the present. I have been a bit off the grid the last couple weeks while traveling home for Thanksgiving and working on the family business. So, just yesterday I read the news that Facebook had, so far, unsuccessfully negotiated an acquisition of Twitter.

About time. Their partnership was my first recommendation in the strategy presentation.

In my mind, at least an attempt by Facebook to acquire Twitter was inevitable for these fundamental reasons:

It’s a mutually beneficial relationship

Twitter gets a business model, as tweets are displayed amongst advertisements in users’ feeds.

Facebook buys Twitter’s large, existing userbase and brand recognition rather than battling Twitter head-on with a modified status feature.

They need each other

Twitter has, by far, the largest userbase of all microblogging services. But yet its size pales in comparison to the number of people using Facebook. It’s hard to imagine another way Twitter could scale its userbase so quickly.

Facebook is missing out on all the conversations that occur outside its walls on Twitter. It would be beneficial for Facebook user frequency and volume to have Twitter conversations integrated with profiles, the Facebook platform, and the rest of the user’s social graph.

I called this scenario “Slap in the Facebook World”, describing a situation where Twitter must either partner with Facebook or watch as Facebook builds a Twitter clone and leverages its size to bully Twitter out of the ring.

Other scenarios included in the presentation:

• “Twitter in the Cloud Behind the Curtain” — Twitter as a service provider, with revenue coming from premium API access
• “Microblogging the Microsoft Way” — The microblogging platform with the largest corporate userbase wins the consumer game
• “Open Sesame” — Open standards and open source win (e.g. Laconica) and no company makes significant revenues directly from the product

If you’d like to check out the strategy presentation, I’ve embedded it below.

Disclaimer: I made this presentation quickly and for the purpose of sharing indirectly, not for delivering a speech. Therefore, I don’t advise following my example in such text-heavy slides and lack of graphics. You will put your audience to sleep!