We are excited to announce that we are joining forces with Infochimps, leading API provider and data marketplace! Together we’ll develop exciting new data products and help Infochimps continue to rock the world of Big Data.

Thank you so much for helping us craft Keepstream into a top notch curation product. We wouldn’t be here without your valuable feedback and excitement for social media!

With this news, we have two big pieces of news to tell you about. Firstly, we will be slowly closing down the Keepstream hand-curation product. The website will be set to “read-only mode” on September 30th. New user registration will be turned off and existing users will no longer be able to create or edit their collections. However, all collections will still be hosted online and be accessible at keepstream.com for viewing. So don’t worry, those links you’ve shared will still work just fine. We will be exploring options for exporting collections or integrating with similar curation services. If you’d be interested in something like this, let us know by sending an email to tim[at]keepstream[dot]com.

Secondly, Keepstream Reports, located at http://reports.keepstream.com, will continue forward. It has the potential to be both a more automated way to archive social media as well as a way to create beautiful, actionable social media analytics reports. It’s currently in private beta.

We are really excited about we can accomplish as Chimps, you can look forward to many exciting developments soon to come!

It’s a HACKATHON to build cool apps with the Lollapalooza API, brought to you by Keepstream and Hurricane Party. Why? Because it’s a chance to win some really awesome stuff!!!

Saturday, May 28th – 10am to 10pm
HurricaneStream 906 E 5th Suite 210
More details on the event at: http://plancast.com/p/58ta

Here’s what Lollapalooza says:

Lollapalooza is offering over $5,000 worth of prizes and tons of promotional exposure for the best mobile, web and desktop apps created using their API. Developers can access data on artists, events, stages/venues and updates for Lollapalooza 2011. Prizes will be awarded for apps that help fans get the most from their Lollapalooza experience before, during and after the Festival. Winners will be promoted on the official Lollapalooza website and to fans via email, Facebook, Twitter, and the jumbotron screens at the Festival.

More info at: http://hacklolla.com/

Join us May 28th as we hack something cool together! The event is the 28th, but you don’t have to submit your apps until June 24th at 4:00 PM CST, so no pressure – just hang out and let’s have fun. But let’s increase our chances of making something awesome by starting early.

Special thanks to our sponsor Rockify, who will providing lunch. An awesome site that will be the next-generation music platform, stay tuned!

The only sites that Keepstream doesn’t work in yet are WordPress.com and Posterous – they have to “white list” us, so you should nudge them and let them know they should allow our widget asap!

How to embed into self-hosted WordPress:

Step 1: Grab the embed code.

Step 2: Paste the embed code while on the HTML tab (HTML mode).

Step 3: Enjoy!

Step 1: Grab the embed code.

Step 2: Create a Video post.

Step 3: Paste the embed code.

Step 4: Enjoy!

The goal is clear – slice through the noise of SXSW by preserving the most compelling Twitter content. The portal will be organized by day, time, and topic to help people during SXSW and way after to be able to quickly find the panels and conversations that interest them.

Starting Thursday, March 10th, tune into the SXSW 2011 Sessions Guide: Unofficial collections of social media from the best SXSW Interactive 2011 sessions:

Click to Visit SXSW 2011 Sessions Guide

It’s not just about archiving the content though, it’s also about handpicking the best content. That’s why our archives will focus on original, insightful tweets – the best stimuli for conversation, and the most interesting content to read.

Panelists and speakers will see these archives and want to share them with their followers. The collections are a great way to present the content, both as a takeaway for attendees and for people who couldn’t make the session. Maybe even more importantly, it will help the conversation last way beyond just the day it happens – essentially forever!

We’ll be taking full advantage of the event in more ways that just archiving tweets. We’ll be livestreaming from our scrappy little downtown office, where we cowork with fellow Austin startup, Hurricane Party. Starting Thursday and lasting through Tuesday, you can tune into their video broadcast and chat with the companies at http://hurricanestream.com.

It’ll be a way for attendees to see what life is like for a startup, especially during a crazy time like SXSW. And to mix things up, why not get a little silly! We hope it can be an inspiration for what startups are all about – making great products and having lots of fun. Activities currently scheduled include a beer pong tournament, free ice cream, and a nerf gun war, among others.

Watch the video here, or on the HurricaneStream site:

Are you coming to SXSW? Come find us or stop by our office! We’re at 906 E 5th St. in downtown Austin, tweet me @timgasper to get my attention.

And don’t forget to track all the best tweets with the SXSW 2011 Sessions Guide!

Hashable is a tool to keep track of new people you meet in the real-world and see who your friends are meeting. Typing in the Twitter handle of a newly-aquainted contact in the iPhone or Android app will generate a #justmet tweet mentioning both parties. Connecting in this fashion is more useful than simply exchanging business cards; both parties are exposed to inherent social pressure (the tweet is public) and have an incentive to continue the relationship.

During the presentation, attendees were exposed to a candid history of Hashable and how the team developed the app over the past year. There were a number of actionable takeaways that other startups can utilize in the development of their products:

Iterate on early product concepts with small test batches

Before Hashable had a definitive product roadmap, the team would release simple prototypes to small groups of 20 people. Each release was given to a unique set of testers and engagement on the prototype was scrutinized in excruciating detail.

With an extremely constrained sample size, the team could quickly determine if they were onto something based on the active usage of just a few people. The team experimented for a few months before landing upon the #justmet concept.

“Nerdy” input methods are confusing for many users

In the early versions of Hashable, users could only make connections through specific #hashtag tweet syntax on Twitter. While it was a neat trick for power Twitter users, the command-line input method was complex and intimidating for many people. Hashable remedied this issue by providing web and (more recently) iPhone and Android apps for connection inputs.

Don’t always assume that the cool or unique way to interface with your app will work for everyone… simplify the process for non-early adopters.

Target key influencers in a calculated and strategic fashion

The Hashable team, like many other startups, created a list of the top influencers in the startup community: VCs, angel investors, popular startup co-founders, etc. Hashable went further, segmenting individuals into categories and adding lesser-known influentials to their lists. They generated a list that included more than the typical “elite” of Silicon Valley.

With an extensive list in hand, Hashable hustled to get the top-tier influencers signed up for the app. They were not as concerned with the level of activity of these users; Hashable wanted the “big names” in place for when they invited everybody else.

Getting “name-worthly” people in your system, even if they are light users of the app, can immensely help with the credibility of your startup and your brand.

—
Hashable is looking to rock #SXSW this year; feel free to #justmet the Keepstream team if you meet us in person. Check out tweets from the Austin #HashyHour in the Keepstream collection below.

With our embed widget, rather than disrupt your audience’s workflow, you can deliver content directly to them by integrating a social widget into your blog or website.

We’re excited to announce we’ve just launched a big refresh of that embed. It’s easier to read, it’s prettier, and it’s less invasive. To embed, grab the code from the right sidebar of a collection page. Or hit the Embed button, next to the Share Collection button.

We aren’t stopping here though. We have a lot of other plans to enhance the widget, such as customization and the ability to share.

Please let us know what you think the top priorities are for improvement from here – by commenting below or by posting at Get Satisfaction. Seriously, we really need your thoughts – please comment!

Here’s an example of what the new embed looks like.

Digg 1.0
It’s a barebones site with the core functionality and nothing more. Reminds me of Hacker News in some ways.

Digg v 1.0 - click to expand

Digg 2.0
Now we start to see some familiar elements. Good ‘ol Helvetica. Yellow digg count boxes. Timestamps.

Digg v 2.0 - click to expand

Digg 2.1
The blue top bar appears. Digg pretends the Digg Spy is new even though it’s been around for over a year haha.

Digg v 2.1 - click to expand

Digg 3.0
Digg places categories at the top. They also put focus on two key features: the ability to filter by time (24 hours, 7 days, 30 days, etc.) and the ability to quickly bury a story.

Digg v 3.0 - click to expand

Digg 3.1
Digg adds the media types to the top nav (news, video, images, podcasts). The site has so much traffic and quantity of stories now, so they add Upcoming to show stories that aren’t the most popular but are quickly trending upward.

Digg v 3.1 - click to expand

Digg 3.2
I’m guessing Digg realized more clicks get driven through categories, so they make that the bigger, more prominent nav element. And search gets labelled as new even though it’s been around forever. Maybe they update the results page or the algorithm.

Digg v 3.2 - click to expand

Digg 4.0
Digg hits the big four zero and like the rest of us, has a mid-life crisis. I do enjoy the cleaner look though.

Digg v 4.0 - click to expand

And so that’s the story of Digg as told by their user interface. I think what I find so interesting is that Digg was iterated over the course of 6 years. Digg had to deal with a lot of scaling and behind-the-scenes work, but I feel like many startups these days build similar feature sets much more rapidly. Maybe I’m just delusional. Or maybe today’s improved programming tools and APIs are making a huge difference.

What do are your thoughts on Digg’s evolution?

Twitter Favorites Suck. Keepstream Can Help.

Favoriting is a ubiquitous Twitter feature that lets you flag a tweet as being something worth saving. But it’s just one raw chronological stream. That makes it almost impossible to find and share those awesome pieces of content that you saved a week ago – a month ago – a year ago.

What we need is a way to organize our favorites, the same way we organize our bookmarks when we save an interesting link. Delicious.com has been doing this forever with regular links, but it’s a social media world now – that’s where we find cool content, and that’s where we need to save it!

How to organize your Twitter favorites and retweets:

Not only does Keepstream let you organize and share your Twitter favorites, you can also organize retweets.  And if you want a more fully-featured way to create bundles of tweets, we also have a Create interface for the professional curator (video: Keepstream Tutorial on Vimeo).

Bottom Line? Favorite or retweet the best tweets. Then later, stop by Keepstream to organize them.

Consider the big picture – there are many other ways to flag content as important, such as voting something up on Quora or Reddit, digging something on Digg, liking something on Facebook, and more. That activity is curation happening all around us, but usually it’s hidden from our view. This is what we are working on at Keepstream – making the social web a more organized place, and helping us find the content that is truly important and personalized.

Some popular chats include:

• #journchat – long running weekly conversation (Mon 7-10pm Central) between journalists, bloggers and PR people
• #prstudchat – a platform for conversation between Public Relations Students, Educators and Professionals (monthly, time varies)
• #campuschat – connecting college-bound students, their parents, educators, and administrators (Wed 8-9pm Central)

For more info on Twitter chats, check out this blog post on Mashable.

Twitter is great for serendipity – chance encounters. However, hashtags and conversations are more structured, and can benefit from being archived to be viewed later. What if you want to remember the conversations you had? What if you want to follow up with certain people? What if you missed the chat?

Keepstream is a great solution for publicly archiving your discussion tweets, whether you save all the tweets from the chat or only the highlights. All of Keepstream’s benefits come along for the ride, including link previews, annotations, and embedding. The embed widget is particularly useful – most chats have a post-chat recap blog post, and Keepstream’s widget is the ideal way to incorporate tweets into it.

Twitter chats aren’t the only discussions that happen around hashtags. Conversations happen all the time spontaneously or deliberately with hashtags or keywords at their core. Some example collections on Keepstream:

• #LessAmbitiousMovies – They would have been easier to make, but definitely not as good. http://keepstream.com/JimEngland/less-ambitious-movies
• #KDMCinfo – Tweets during Will Sullivan’s multimedia workshop on mobile reporting tools and tips. http://keepstream.com/ModernJourno/mobile-reporting-wisdom-from-journerdism-kdmcinfo
• #PCATX – Conversations during ProductCamp Austin. http://keepstream.com/PCAustin/productcamp-austin-6-what-people-said

If you ever have questions on how to archive a hashtag discussion into Keepstream, reach me anytime at tim@keepstream.com.

An example embed: