2009-05-23

Seven Reasons Twitter is Important but not Innovative

Twitter is mostly warmed-over email. Don't misunderstand. This isn't coming from a naysayer; I've always thought that email was a killer app, albeit a mature one. Here are seven reasons why Twitter isn't innovative, though it is important as a highly successful medium. Twitter will morph. In the meantime, in significant ways, it's more business as usual than transformational.

  1. Twitter's core component is not radically different from a short broadcast email. Text. Retro. Not that text is bad!.

  2. Short messaging itself isn't new. Forget SMS -- remember text paging?

  3. Instant isn't new. Forums, email, wikis --even Sharepoint -- allow for messages to be received within seconds of being posted. Not as fast as Twitter, but fast.

  4. Followers and Friends may grow with the speed of a California wildfire, but social networks originated with listservs and shared email lists.

  5. Twitter's notion of discourse threads is still emerging. Consider what effort it takes to follow a reply to a reply, especially if some time ("older") has passed between the posts. Twitter's instantaneity can be offset by intervening content clutter.

  6. Twitter's succeptibility to spam is similar to email. Follower lists at this stage of Twitter's evolution are easy for bots to harvest.

  7. Like email, Twitter hasn't found a better way than the hyperlink to connect to the broader net. The hyperlink takes you to the browser, which puts you back in Google's sweet spot, such as it did for email/Gmail.

2009-05-12

Marketing Edge for eHealth Automation?

The debate over the magnitude of savings that could be realizing by automating medical records is at a, ahem, fever pitch. At least one medical group in Long Island has taken to the radio waves touting its fully integrated electronic medical records system. In one ad broadcast in May 2009, the Queens Long Island Medical Group (QLIMG) tells listeners that a patient's records will be visible to any health practitioner across their network.

Separately, QLIMG announced in an undated news story on their website that the National Committee for Quality Assurance awarded the QLIMP Flushing North medical office "a Level 3 recognition as a Physician Practice Connections®–Patient‐Centered Medical Home (PPC‐PCMH™)." More on this certification program is available from NCQA, though details appear to be, at first glance, a bit sketchy. (ASQ, what say you about NCQA metrics?)

2009-05-05

Godaddy DNS settings for Blogger

If you're setting up DNS at Godaddy to point to your Blogger Blogspot.com website, follow these Godaddy instructions. Google's indexing doesn't make this Godaddy.com page very visible.

A more expansive discussion (not limited to Godaddy in scope) is provided by The Real Blogger Status.