strawberryj.am news

#WeBeJammin To The Beat of Your News 9/6/2011

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 20:05:03 -0400

With a record number of invites being sent out today, it’s time for the Tuesday Tumble of the stories users like you found to be jammin’ enough to share with your community.

A must read for startups that want advice from the pro’s of the industry, and a great share from @The_Suga_Hill who is a single southern mom, blogger, radio host, and so much more. It’s a wonder she finds time to jam!

A really great account to follow if you are a college student or a faculty member of higher education. What do you think about fast food restaurants adding beer to their menus in college towns? I sense a bit of bias if you are a student rather than faculty when it comes to the response ;)

What a bummer for both users and developers (maybe including us… *hint*). The sooner Google can push out an API the faster Google Plus will grow. It’s a shame it hasn’t been released sooner. Thanks Ironick for making us aware!

That’s it for Tuesday Tumble! As long as you keep jammin’, we will keep highlighting.

#WeBeJammin To The Beat of Your News: 6/24/2011

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 03:31:44 -0400

Another week, another batch of invites, and another post to share what your timeline deemed most popular.

This week, we definitely have an array of interesting content shared by our Jammin’ users. Here are a few highlights.

About @JNewellMedia: Innovative Solopreneur Specializing in the Design and Performing Arts Fields. Current Project: Creating Pic*Wish Wednesdays & Directing the pic*wish pixie ;)

Link to article: 15 Financial Moves to Make Right Now

About @jmorenocidoncha: Editor en Índex. Agencia especializada en servicios editoriales y web: redacción, corrección, editing, coaching para escritores, asesoramiento editorial…

Link to article: U.S. Indies Lead The Way on Digital Royalty Shifts

About @cyclonus: Innovation Technologist at a really big financial institution. I love great design, hot beats, beautifully brutal rock music and shiny things.

Link to article: Square iOS Apps Speedier, No Longer Requires Signatures For Transactions Under $25.

That’s all for this week! Keep sharing and we will keep highlighting.

Jam Out To These Monday Shares

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 03:24:00 -0400

Another push of invites means another day of great shares! This Monday we’ve got some really great ones.

The more languages the merrier! Check out the post here.

About @did1k: Website Designer who loves Pelecing Kangkung. Married to @ayuanin. Blogging in @cssasyik. Personal projects in Kualiku.com.

Make sure to follow him!

Awesome article and bookmarked on my end. Love that this was also done as a Google Docs presentation, instead of the atypical blog post. Check out the doc here.

About @digizen: Professor of Psychology at the University of Puerto Rico.

That’s all for Monday folks, but we’d love to Tumble more great shares from our Jammin’ users. Check out this post for some tips and tricks.

P.S. Make sure to follow us on Twitter, and Like us on Facebook. We jam everywhere :)

Strawberryj.am running on an oversized android phone at Best...

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 21:47:45 -0400

Strawberryj.am running on an oversized android phone at Best Buy. #webejammin

Monday Jamness: Great Shares of the Day

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 00:05:43 -0400

The week is kicking off well! Some great shares were produced by our amazing beta users today, and we’d love to show them off to you.

Our first notable share is from @digizen. This article is a must read and very informative. Check the article out, and make sure to follow Mario to see more of his tweets.

Our next notable share of the day is from @jmorenocidoncha. The article is about famous “Adult” writers who went off to create splendid children’s books. For any book nerd, this article is a must read, and Jose is a must follow.

That’s all for Monday Jamness: Great Share of the Day. We plan on having more posts like on a regular basis. To do this though, we need some of your help. So what are we asking for you to do?

Just keep sharing.

That’s all! And we will make sure to keep posting. To keep up with our users shares, make sure to follow us on Tumblr (right hand sidebar). We also encourage you to follow us on Twitter for the latest updates, and Like us on Facebook to participate in the conversation.

Happy Jamming!

The Best App Store is the Mobile Web

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 20:05:07 -0400

After last night’s hiccup over our lack of clear terminology, some asked why we didn’t go the native app route on either iOS or Android.

While we know that native mobile applications are all the rage, it simply didn’t make sense for us for a few reasons.

1. Cost

Hey, we are a startup in closed beta. That means resources are tight, and priorities have to be made. With only one developer currently working on Strawberryj.am, devoting time to building and maintaining a native app for just one mobile OS takes a lot of time.

2. Availability

Does it ever tick you off that some iOS apps are not available on Android? Yeah, it irks us too.

By releasing a mobile optimized version of Strawberryj.am, we knock out two birds with one stone. Technically, if your mobile browser is built on top of Webkit, then Strawberryj.am is mobile ready for you as well!

3. Updates Are Lame

You hate updates on your computer, and I’m sure this hate extends to apps on your mobile phone as well. With Strawberryj.am being available on the mobile web, we can release bug fixes and features with no work required from the user.

This is the beauty of the web for the desktop, and we want you to experience that seamless beauty on your mobile device as well.

With these reasons, we are confident in our decision to embrace the mobile web.

What are your thoughts on this decision? Make sure to let us know on Facebook or Twitter.

#WeBeJammin to The Beat of the Mobile Web

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 02:36:11 -0400

A few hours ago, we released a mobile web app to our users.

Whoo!

While this news is exciting, we also mislead some users when informing them via email.

That’s not jammin’ at all, and we realize the need to clarify.

Strawberryj.am offers a mobile “web” application. There is no need to access your respective App Store/Marketplace. Simply type in Strawberryj.am into your mobile browser, log in, and let us do the work.

We’re sorry about the confusion, and have taken measures to make sure the same issue doesn’t happen again.

Let the jammin’ resume.

The Worker Bees Went on Strike

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 14:18:30 -0400

Here at Strawberryj.am, we love seeing people use our product. It makes our job that much more exciting, and also gives us a great opportunity to see what works and what doesn’t. The problem is, we are in beta for a reason, and things tend to break at inconvenient times.

One of those times was last night. We made the decision to send out a mass invite to all those waiting on our beta list. With this came two issues that inconvenienced our users.

1. Forgotten Password Broken

A couple of users informed us that they could not get into their accounts due to losing their password. The typical suggestion for this is to request a new password through our forgotten password form. While this nearly always solves the problem, last night the forgotten password form broke.

This was due to an upgrade to make Strawberryj.am mobile compatible (more on that very soon). We discovered the issue quickly thanks to new jammin’ user @petermaleh, and it has now been resolved.

2. Two Minutes of Downtime

We went down last night for about two minutes due to some overload on our databases. This sucks, we know, and we hate it as much as you do. As of this writing, everything is back under control with the occasional sporadic error as we keep the load on the databases down.

We definitely don’t like it when errors happen, and we know that even though we are in beta, first impressions are everything. That is why we appreciate any and all feedback, and are thankful when you’re patient with us.

Make sure to buzz with us on Twitter, Fan us on Facebook, and Tumble this blog to get the latest on what is happening with Strawberryj.am.

Customer Service Nightmare: Sears vs. iPad Devotees

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 11:20:05 -0400

Customers are ruthless, and being a former employee as a Customer Service Specialist, I can vouch for that. I once had a customer yell at me for ten minutes over four cents because our register miscalculated tax. So when I see situations like the latest Sears misprint, my heart goes out to both the consumer, and the retailer.

The question is, does Sears owe it to their customers to give them iPads as advertised, instead of refunds?

My answer, plain and simple, is no. While a $69 dollar iPad would obviously be awesome, customers need to live in reality as well. There is no way on gods green earth that Sears is going to sell the iPad nearly $500 dollars below normal price point. A refund is sufficient, especially since no product has been shipped.

In response to this, many have argued that most states require that Sears honor the advertised price. This is true, for brick and mortar stores, but not for online retail. And in the case of brick and mortar stores, they are allowed to deny claimed ad price if fraud is suspected (this does not happen often). There are also various exceptions as well when honoring prices that are clearance vs. sale.

Now, the better question is, did Sears make the right decision?

This is a tricky one, but we have to assume that a company who has been in the retail business for so long knows a thing or two about handling a mass of angry customers.

If Sears felt that making these customers angry (as they should’ve known this mistake inevitably would) was worth the cost of losing them as potential repeat customers, and had data to back that up, then I find it to be an acceptable move from a business perspective. Would it be a move I would’ve taken though?

Not a chance.

As a big wig at the Sears company, I would’ve bitten the bullet, taken the loss, and went after the third-party that made the mistake. After all, while Sears and others are defending themselves by, “it really wasn’t OUR product,” that logic doesn’t matter. Sears is the face of the product in the eyes of the consumer, and that leaves Sears with the responsibility to rectify the situation publicly.

With that said, the situation has only garnered so much attention because of the iPads near god-like status with consumers. Truthfully, this situation is not uncommon, and has happened to Amazon and others before, with the same response.

What do you think about Sears customer service fiasco? Make sure to let us know on our Facebook Page, or Twitter.

Making Popular Personal

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 01:03:00 -0400

Popular: Of, pertaining to, or representing the people, especially the ~~common~~ people.

When you think of popular, you probably think of meat-dressing sensation Lady Gaga, or teenage girl heart throb Justin Beiber. While they are popular on the global scale, they are probably not immediately popular with you.

Here at Strawberryj.am, we want to show you popular. But instead of showing you the latest news about what is mainstream popular, we want to show you what is popular “to you.”

Strawberryj.am does this by analyzing what links your friends are showing the most. We justify this strategy of showing you popular for a couple of reasons.

1. You’re willing to listen to your friends

If your friends share it, you will probably listen/respond to it. If a bunch of your friends are sharing and talking about a particular item, we can assume that you will pay even more attention to that particular item.

2. Friends are a natural filter

Typically we like people more when we can identify ourselves with them. That is why on Twitter, I follow a lot of people who are interested in either tech or long boarding, and continue following them because they tweet about my interests. In this way, the people I follow act like a natural filter, defining what should or should not interest me.

Our goal with Strawberryj.am is to find what is most popular amongst your friends, and display that content in a smart, unique, and well-designed form. The easier we can make popular for you, the happier we will be.

Make sure to follow us on: Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr.

Our awesome demo video by @dhettema.

Sun, 17 Jul 2011 16:08:55 -0400

Our awesome demo video by @dhettema.

What Affect Could Klout Have on the Relevant Web?

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 00:18:00 -0400

Strawberryj.am is very invested in your social graph, it is essential to determining what content you see at the top of your timeline. If your friends don’t share it, our algorithms determine you probably don’t care about it.

With such a heavy reliance on your social graph, attempts to measure your influence score should weigh heavily on us at Strawberryj.am. After all, the demand for such a service is there, as is demonstrated by leader of the pack, Klout.

This then begs the question; should a score by Klout, or any other influence ranking service, be used as a factor in determining relevant content?

Let’s discuss the possible implications.

1. Does 100 = 10?

Right now, our algorithms puts heavy weight on the number of RT’s/Shares a link gets within your social graph. So if you follow one hundred bots, and forty of those bots share the same link, chances are you will see that link at the top of your Strawberryj.am feed.

If we weighed in Klout scores, we could theoretically put more weight on three shares by users with high Klout scores vs. twenty shares of users with low Klout scores. .
This would lead to some interesting results, and could possibly lower the influence that bots have on deciding what you see within Strawberryj.am (assuming that is what you would prefer to occur).

2. How do you define a follower?

For me, (@holdenpage), each person I follow holds equal value. I followed you because I found you interesting, and have every intent of keeping up with you as best as I can.
But many others, especially the heavy hitters, follow many, and openly admit they do not consider each of their follows equal. After all, how can they? In some cases they keep up with 20,000+ follows.

For them, an influence score may be necessary in order to determine the best of their timeline. A couple hundred shares by a bunch of bots may prove relatively useless to them, but twenty shares from the most influential of their followings would cut down on the noise, and truly show them the best of their social graph.

3. Is Klout, and its competitors, reliable enough?

This is probably the largest debate about such services in general, but there is no doubt that as these services grow, their algorithms will improve. Nonetheless, it is hard to rely on something that will always have exceptions to the rule, and one person’s influencer is possibly another person’s idiot.

While Strawberryj.am has no plans currently to use Klout, or other ranking services as a signal for what is relevant to you, the question to do so will soon have to be answered. Such decisions have implications for all of us in determining what is relevant to you, even for our competitors.

So users, should influence scores be used as a ranking signal, or should the thought stay dead in the water? Don’t be shy, let us know through Twitter, and give your response on Facebook.

What Have You Been Saying About Jam? #WeBeJammin

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 23:41:40 -0400

This past week, we’ve gotten a lot of feedback/praise from Strawberryj.am users. All the feedback has been great, and the praise very appreciated. Here’s a few highlights!

From: @dmonzel

From: @moody_mommy

From: @SteVsHero

From: @ZaddleMarketing

This past week we also did an interview with @atjonny on his blog StartupStori.es. We encourage you to check out the interview, and let us know what you think of our current vision and future plans!

We also got featured on GeekMom by Gina Clifford. She had great coverage, and even caught on to our little Lists hiccup :)

With that, we hope to continue to see such great responses from users, and want to give out a big thanks to all who have tweeted/facebook’ed and blogged about Strawberryj.am.

Keep on Jammin’, and make sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr.

#WeBeJammin To The Beat of Your News 7/7/2011

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 04:00:51 -0400

As we let more people into Strawberryj.am, more and more people are sharing great stories that are relevant to them from followers and friends. Let’s check out a few of the stories shared this past week.

[Tweet Link]

I am not sure how I feel about all this hacking going around. There is a fine line between proving a point, and being irresponsible, and I am not quite sure where this falls. After all, isn’t it still considered stealing even if you leave the door unlocked?

[Tweet Link]

You can always count on Allen Stern from CenterNetworks to keep it real, poking holes in the Google Plus blogosphere hype in his latest post. Thanks for pulling us over zealous tech lovers back into reality, Allen.

Until next week, we hope you enjoy a couple of these great shares from our Jammin’ users, @Jimminy and @alexkinch. You can also follow us @strawberryapp, or Like us on Facebook as well.

Buzzing Through the Features: Consuming and Sharing

Mon, 04 Jul 2011 22:52:11 -0400

Since Strawberryj.am is all about discovering the best content from your followers, it only makes sense that we enable you to share the best of content with others, and consume it easily.

We let you share and consume content in multiple ways, with some of those being native to Strawberryj.am, and some through integration with our awesome partners. Let’s jam through them.

Choose Your Source:

We let you easily RT content, but we also make it easy for you to choose who you want to RT. Since Strawberryj.am gets the best content from your friends, we clearly show who has been sharing the links via their Twitter image. All you have to do is hover over the person, and click RT as shown below:

Read Now, or Read Later? The Choice Is Yours:

I don’t know about you, but I love reading content in a clean, uncluttered environment. The flashing ads are distracting, and sometimes blogs aren’t so friendly on the load times. Strawberryj.am solves this by giving you just the post by clicking, “Read Now.”
Once clicked, you have the option to go to the actual article to experience the content on site, and make a comment or two.

But here at Strawberryj.am, we know that you may find an article worthy enough to read, but simply don’t have the time to read it. That’s why we give the option to “Read Later”, and automatically add the content to your Instapaper account. Quick and easy.

Are You Bombarding? It’s time for you to be Buffer’ing:

As much as you may like to share with Strawberryj.am, and as much as we enjoying seeing it, bombarding your followers with Jam shares is sometimes not the best move for your followers. That is why we have partnered with Buffer, which manages your shares, and determines the best times to share the content you’ve buffered with your followers. The integration is simple and easy, simply click “Add to Buffer,” and confirm your intent.

As always, we are looking for better and more convenient ways for you to consume and share content. This is simply the begginning, and you have any suggestions on how to improve what we currently have in place, let us know.

Make sure to follow us on: Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr!

#WeBeJammin To The Beat of Your News

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 01:18:37 -0400

Yesterday night, we let the floodgates open and have had a massive influx of new Jammin’ users. With that came some awesome Strawberrj.am shares from our newly minted users.
[tweet link]

If you haven’t used Square yet, get on it. The device, and application, is awesome. As a personal Square user myself, I can attest to the greatness of it.

I volunteered a while back for Humane Society and wrapped Christmas gifts to raise money. At the event, I lent out my phone to the other volunteers, and people thought Square was so cool they donated money without even having us wrap gifts!

Square deserves every single penny of that $100 million, and the world of easy payments will be kickin’ better for it.

[tweet link]

Talk about eating your own dog food. Supposedly the Twitpic founder was running around naked and got arrested for it. The proof? Tweeting a picture from his own service from the back of the cop car.

What a ballsy, and damn entertaining dude (as depicted in his Twitter profile picture below).

P.S. Note to startups, I think the, “getting coverage by running around naked” is a one-run thing y’all :)

That said, there are many other great stories that our users have been sharing, and we hope to share more with y’all Jammin’ users in the future. Make sure to check out @atjonny and @NolandHoshino, and while you’re at it, make sure to follow @strawberryapp too!

Giving the world a sneak peek Check out our public preview on...

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 04:38:25 -0400

Giving the world a sneak peek

Check out our public preview on http://strawberryj.am/tnw
It shows you what’s trending in Amsterdam during The Next Web 2011.

Link trends for #fail. Try #win for a happier start of your day.

Tue, 19 Apr 2011 02:23:02 -0400

Link trends for #fail. Try #win for a happier start of your day.

Funky weird sharing pattern… Looks like a virus to me

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 04:37:55 -0500

Funky weird sharing pattern… Looks like a virus to me

Outperforming Techmeme

Mon, 21 Feb 2011 06:12:31 -0500

I’ve been a Techmeme junky for a very very long time. The site consistently provides high quality and timely tech news which makes it an excellent target to measure strawberryj.am against.

Important to note is that Strawberryj.am’s trends are purely based on the people that I follow. On my @chicagofoodtest account I have yet to see a single trending item that matches anything on Techmeme.

Never the less, I’m a techie and I follow a bunch of interesting tech people so here’s a quick overview of my @dhettema account in relation to Techmeme:

I’ve had news trend on strawberryj.am before it showed up on Techmeme at least four times last week (which feels pretty awesome)
Jam shows me personally relevant tech news, that didn’t make it to Techmeme, every day (Dutch news for example)
Techmeme still has cool stories that don’t make it to my jam stream (so I still visit it ever day)

Clearly my personal account isn’t focussed enough to compete with Techmeme so I’ve created @beatingtechmeme to see if we can beat Techmeme on the trending tech news game.

I’ve started by following pretty much everyone that Twitter recommends in the tech scene, the next step is to dissect @techmeme’s followers and see if I can cherry pick the right people (probably using needlebase to give me some insight). Lastly I will follow people on some awesome tech lists.

I will post my results by the end of the week…

p.s.
We are also working on getting trends for lists which would make my @chicagofoodtest and @beatingtechmeme accounts obsolete. For now I’m taking this approach to prove myself right or wrong.