Today we’d like to announce our second public project, FeedStats. FeedStats exists for the purpose of visualizing FriendFeed users’ data to see how they interact not only with the service, but with other users. It’s a quick way to find what services they’re using, when they post, and who interacts with their content the most.

Inspiration for the project came from a popular (and similar) utility for Twitter called TweetStats. We liked their service enough that we’ve modeled ours after their high standards. Though we’re apples to their oranges, we feel that we owe quite a bit to Damon for inspiring us to build FeedStats.

Integration with FriendFeed

One of the coolest things about FeedStats – aside from the awesome data visualization – is that you can interact directly with FriendFeed using your account. You may choose to use our site completely without signing in, but you’ll miss out on some cool features. Once you authenticate yourself to us, we’ll use your account to perform functions like one-click following of other users you stumble upon on our site. Though it’s the only feature right now that requires authentication, there might be more in the future. Rest assured that your credentials are safe and we take privacy seriously.

Graphs You’ll Find Useful

All the information we use is collected directly from the FriendFeed API using publicly available methods. If you do have a private account, we won’t be able to process your stats at this time.

For all the public users, we chart the services you use (in bar and pie charts), how many posts you make each day of the week, how many posts you make each hour of the day, and who likes and comments on your content the most. The final, and possibly most useful, chart we build is called the Like Compatibility Index.

The Like Compatibility Index is generated by looking at posts you’ve liked recently and seeing who else has liked them. We’ll tally up the users with whom you have the most likes in common and give you the option to follow them or view their stats or profile. The Like Compatibility Index is great for finding other users who have similar interests as you.

Like Compatibility Index Chart & Top 10

Screenshots

Services that have posted to FriendFeed

Services that aren't Twitter that have posted to FriendFeed

User Profile on FeedStats

A relatively quiet weekend in the world of microblogging. Here are a few posts worth noting:

Watch out Twitter, here comes Flutter

Mashable posted this “mockumentary” by Slate Magazine. If you have ever thought tweets should be shorter than this video is for you.

Tracking Topics on Twitter

Both Mashable and Read Write Web broke down their list of top sites and tools for tracking trends and topics on Twitter. Neither sites mentions What the Hashtag however there are several sites that I have not seen before and hope to be checking out in the coming week.

Did we miss anything?
These were the news items we noticed over the weekend. If there was anything we missed or we should include in our posts this week shoot us a note at tips@microblink.com.

Microblink is a blog dedicated to news, reviews and how to’s in the growing world of microblogging. Each day new tools, platforms and uses are being created and it is more than we can cover alone.

We Need Your Help

Do you have the inside scoop or a tool to share? If so, Microblink needs you. We’re currently looking for guest bloggers to help our site cover more ground. If you are interested in writing a one-off post or contributing regular content, contact our editors for more details about how to get your content published.

Send Us Your Story Ideas

For those with one-off posts, please include the title of your post and a brief description of what it will cover. Titles do not have to be final, however, it will help us get a clearer picture of your post so we can properly slot it into our schedule and find ways to work it into the site.

Types of posts that have frequently done well on our site include reviews and how to or walk-through posts. We will only publish new or original content, so please do not submit any articles that have been previously published on other blogs or websites.

There’s a First Time for Everything

This is our first open request for guest posts on Microblink and we hope to feature as many people as possible.

If you have been sitting on a post idea but are looking for help on when and where to post, please contact us and submit your idea through our contact form.

With SXSW going on this weekend there was no shortage of news or announcements. We plan to cover a few topics in posts later this week, however, here are a few things not related to SXSW that you may have missed over the weekend:

• It may not be much of a surprise due to the amount of TV coverage Twitter has received, but their growth numbers are sick. Check out the graph featured on TechCrunch and note that it only represents visits to Twitter.com, which excludes mobile and desktop apps.
• A number of blogs picked up the Jaiku source code release, but I first read it on DownloadSquad. If you are looking for another roll-your-own microblogging solution, check out the JaikuEngine.

And finally some apps that are not for Twitter!

• On Saturday Loic Le Mour announced the launch of Seesmic for Facebook. The new desktop application is an Adobe AIR app (like Twhirl) that allows users to post updates to Facebook. At this time the app only supports text updates, but there are already plans to allow posting pictures and videos.
• Louis Gray posted a nice overview of the new Friend Feed Desktop Notifier. The notifier is a lightweight AIR app, so if you are looking for something more than update notices, this app is not for you.

It’s been nearly three weeks since we first launched What the Hashtag?!, our community-powered encyclopedia for Twitter hashtags. In that time we’ve nearly doubled the number of hashtags we’re tracking and we’re getting some great participation from the Twitter community.

Aside from the 78 registered wiki authors, a number of people are also talking about the service throughout the blogosphere:

• Mark Rohde (@mrohde) recommended WTH?! as “a great tool if you want to engage in conversation on Twitter.”
• @hackr wrote about WTH?! just days after reporting on What the Trend, a service similar to ours, but with goals of defining all trends on Twitter, not just hashtags.
• Fred Delve bookmarked WTH?! in the educators group on Diigo.
• WTH?! made it onto Rare4You’s list of Twitter tools.
• WTH?! has been bookmarked 74 times on Delicious and 18 notes have been written about it.
• Andrew Lih (@fuzheado) says WTH?! is “about as perfect a parallel to Ward Cunningham’s original purpose of the wiki you will find.”
• HashtagDirectory.org closes shop a few days after opening as a result of finding WTH?: “…after a quick tour through its features, we are happy to say – go forth and define!”
• Antonia Zerbisias (@AntoniaZ) was introduced to “an entire feminist network on Twitter” thanks to learning about #fem2 on WTH?!

Thanks to everyone who has participated on the site or used it to look up hashtags. Also, watch for an announcement from us soon about a WTH?!-related contest (with prizes!).

Here is a run down of what you may have missed this weekend:

Is Twitter considering hyperlocal news?
In an interview with Twitter CEO Evan Williams Germany’s Der Spiegel published a new hint to Twitter’s future. From the interview one of the features being considered includes an extension that will allow users to see what’s happening in their immediate vicinity.

At this time it is not clear if this is currently under development, brainstorming stage or how exactly it will work. (via TechCrunch)

Mark Zuckerberg is on Twitter
A number of blogs are reporting that Mark Zuckerberg is on twitter. Some have even speculated why and how he will use it. My thoughts… don’t look too far into, following Shaq will be more interesting. You can follow Zuck at http://twitter.com/finkd. (first spotted on 140char)

Did we miss anything?
These were the news items we noticed over the weekend. If there was anything we missed or we should include in our posts this week shoot us a note at tips@microblink.com.

Our little blog that could has been our core focus over the past 6 months. In that time, we have contributed to many conversations covering the what, how and why of microblogging.

Finding sponsors for the blog allows us to continue to do so and extend the conversation through tools we are developing such as our own Twitter integration on the site and our recently launched What The Hashtag?! site.

We could not have gone this far alone, and even though their campaign ended earlier this week, we would like to give a big shout out to Silicon Prairie News.

Silicon Prairie News was our first ever sponsor of the Microblink blog. As a website dedicated to providing news and information covering the Midwest creative class they were a perfect fit for a blog about microblogging out of Des Moines, IA.

On their site you’ll discover the latest stories and upcoming events happening in the Midwest. You will also find a growing collection of video interviews from people making things happen in the Midwest.

Explore Silicon Prairie News and get a taste of the Midwest’s creative class at http://www.siliconprairienews.com.

Advertise With Us

Microblink is seeking out new site sponsors for our growing readership. Our audience is comprised of a diverse mix of readers including social media consultants, venture capitalists, developers, bloggers and technology early adopters. By sponsoring our site your brand will be seen alongside all of our content in addition to being featured in our bi-weekly recognition post.

If you are interested in sponsoring Microblink, email us at advertise [at] microblink [dot] com for more information or to request our media kit.

Here’s what you might have missed the weekend.

Evan Williams: How Twitter’s spectacular growth is being driven by unexpected uses
A number of blogs have picked up on this video of Evan’s talk at TED. In his presentation, Evan talks Twitter’s history from how it started to how its features have grown from its users using Twitter in unexpected ways. At just eight minutes it is worth the watch.

Over a million quips and counting
Over the weekend Kwippy announced that they reached over a million “quips” (updates) through their microblogging platform. That is a major milestone for anyone in this space. You can check out the team’s latest happenings and leave them congratulatory note on their blog.

SocialToo says no to auto-DMs
The automated direct messaging issue heated up our comment section in the past. It is a touchy subject and many in the past week have voiced up against them. As such, SocialToo CEO Jesse Stay announced they will be completely disabling auto-DMs in order to stop this practice.

In his blog post, Jesse points out there are legitimate reasons for this service however the complaints are coming over loud and clear and SocialToo has decided to take a stand (for the good, thank you).

You can read more about it on posts from RWW and Louis Gray.

Did we miss anything?
These were the news items we noticed over the weekend. If there was anything we missed or we should include in our posts this week shoot us a note at tips@microblink.com.

At Microblink we continue to redefine who we are and the services we provide. Our first publicly released project was this blog, but today we are very proud to announce our newest project, What the Hashtag?!

What the Hashtag?! (WTH?!) is a user-editable encyclopedia for hashtags found on Twitter. Currently, there are a number of ways track hashtags, but WTH?! exists to extend hashtags beyond the conversation on Twitter by allowing users to document what they stand for and where they can find more information about them.

The idea for WTH?! was born just a few months ago as more and more nearly undecipherable hashtags were popping up on our radar. Because of the nature of hashtags and character limits in a tweet, many recent hashtags were simple acronyms. On WTH?!, these hashtags can be better explained on a page dedicated to that hashtag. Users can document and share a description of the hashtag, link to related hashtags, share external links to sites of interests and view a live stream of tweets using that hashtag, courtesy of Monitter.

To make things easy on the user, we’ve developed a number of tools to look up hashtag information:

• Over direct message with our Twitter bot
• With a GreaseMonkey script that replaces hashtags on Twitter.com with links to WTH?! pages
• Using the WTH?! Search Engine plugin for Firefox
• By creating a keyword search for WTH?! that allows you to look up hashtags in Firefox’s address bar

Over 480 hashtags have been added to our site since its launch and more are added everyday. If you are a regular user of hashtags to track conversations about events, ideas, topics, etc., please check to see that those hashtags are listed on What the Hashtag?! for the benefit of Twitter users everywhere. We feel this new project is a great way to dig deeper into hashtags and we are excited to help users share and discover the meanings behind them.

We love covering the latest news and sharing our experience in microblogging, however we couldn’t keep Microblink running alone. Thank you to our sponsors and advertisers for helping us keep this site running and enabling us to pump out content longer than 140 characters.

Advertise With Us

Microblink is seeking out new site sponsors for our growing readership. Our audience is comprised of a diverse mix of readers including social media consultants, venture capitalists, developers, bloggers and technology early adopters. By sponsoring our site your brand will be seen alongside our content in addition to being featured in our bi-weekly recognition post.

If you are interested in sponsoring Microblink, email us at advertise [at] microblink [dot] com for more information or to request our media kit.

Thank You To Our Sponsors

This week we are proud to present our first ever sponsor, Silicon Prairie News.

Silicon Prairie News is a website dedicated to providing news and information about Omaha, Nebraska’s creative class, which includes (but is not limited to) entrepreneurs, innovators, investors, artists and other visionaries.

On their site you’ll discover the latest stories and upcoming events and be able to browse through a growing collection of video interviews from Omaha’s game changers.

Visit Silicon Prairie News and get a taste of the Midwest’s creative class at http://www.siliconprairienews.com.