I ran across NewsCred quite accidentally from an article on TechCrunch a couple days ago. When I first went into the site, I was unsure what to make of it. Another news site? Yet another place for people to get their blogs listed and then get their friends to vote on it (a la Digg)? Another test of my patience in trying to set up some semblance of a proper newspaper reader? Well, no it wasn't so far.

Upon first glance, you are a bit confused why there is just a listing of articles on the screen with no apparent order reason, yet the outline looks vaguely familiar. It is a newspaper folks. They draw in, and I quote:

3 Tbsp - We took the 100 biggest newspapers by circulation worldwide and extracted all the English language ones.
1 Tpsp - We then took the top 50 US newspapers.
2 Cups - We combined that list with the top 100 blogs ranked by Technorati

From there, the next step is where you take control. You are able to select the news sources you want in each category (ie: world, business, technology, sports, etc) and have those show each time as a custom newspaper. Sources are ranked with credibility scores that has an apparent algorithm behind it. The author of the posting as well as the news source posting the article is accounted for in this mathematical matrix. The matrix then pushes out a graph of credibility by many categories, even with a RSS feed to follow as shown here:

If that is not enough sorting and ranking, each individual article has it's own unique credibility number
So for the layout, newspapers on the left, blogs in the middle and your sources on the right. After about a day of letting it sit and testing it out, I am back and here is what I think the good and the bad is:
Good

• Multiple well known and defined sources of articles from major newspapers
• No way for you to randomly submit feeds as to blow up a site with crap authors and articles
• A relatively simple interface that has some basic cleaning up to do, mainly in the selection area
• Very few ads that disrupt the whole page flow
• The ability to customize each section of the newspaper to your liking
• I can get feeds in all my categories from RSS, yet that stops me from rating the credibility
• An integrated sharing pop-up (but see below)
• Email to is integrated into their site instead of launching your mail client
• A decent user giude, FAQ and 90 second tour, freakin hooray!!

Bad

• No apparent way to mark something read, how does it go away? How do I save it for later?
• Credible ratings are not visible on the summary news page, you have to open the article. Showing the number would not kill real estate
• It isn't clear why some articles are discredited, and confuses me if I should read it.
• Even though I do not read the sports section, having more direct sports related sites would benefit them
• I mentioned it above, the RSS feeds are cool but it takes me away from the site, why come back to rate?
• The integrated sharing pop-up is nice but why not let me put some of these social bookmark sites into my profile for easier cross posting. It seems to utilize AddThis.com without any apparent warning, I did not like that since those preferences get stored outside of NewsCred and it is not highlighted in my eyes it was doing it.
• Have the ability to hide my news and blog source selection area to give me back screen real esatate. Wait, then they have to move the simple ads they have, hmm, sounds like a UI design issue here

Overall, a site that I will watch grow and try to use for a while and see if I can get my daily newspaper headline fix. I have some other sites I use regularly, but that is another posting.

A recent search against my blog prompted me to actually define the profile of a social networker with  VGS.  With the complexity of the affliction, who rightfully falls under the category "Social Networker" ?

Could you point them out in a crowd?  Are they required to wear little widgets on their clothes showing their affiliation with specific sites?  Would a t-shirt with the words  

DiigoMyPownceFaceTwit

help the process of identification?

Let's explore some.

An immediate warning sign of an overindulger might be one of the following as the Person in Question does the following:

• has accounts on most major social network sites
• has accounts on most unknown social network sites
• must get access to all beta programs on social network sites
• runs social networking standalone apps (such as Twihrl and Facebook chat clients)
• has added numerous plug-ins to browsers to make accessing social network sites in mass easier
• loaded an application like Flock to attempt bringing sites into one interface

Any of the above alone might make you think you have strongly identified a social networker.  But, that really doesn't define a profile of one now does it?  It describes behavior and attempt through actions instead.

 A true profile is:

•  a person with an underlying need to be part of a larger community, either through virtualization or in real life
  • Some go so far as to bring the two together by meeting with the virtual community in places such as conferences or gatherings at local bars and Panera's Bread locations
  • This person finds themselves knowing more about strangers than family, even with some of the information being falsely presented
  • The profile allows some variance for those that actual Google another person to gather as much information to verify what is being told.  Others take the word of referrers as a voucher for someone they want as part of their community
  • This person finds a fixed set of tools that must be running at all times, even on mobile devices
  
  Another part of the profile is:
  •  the unwillingness to not be online to keep up with the never ending flow of information presented
  • This person will spend hours each day going back through the history of sites to catch up where they went to bed the night or even days before
  
  An advanced profile shows:
  •  those with higher than average technical skills able to create RSS feeds and Yahoo pipes to stream the information in a cleansed format.
  • the ability to bring interaction into web, chat and widgets
  • any attempt to find a single tool that not only allows blacklisting of specific information (such as Facebook birthdays), but postings on when someone drinks coffee
  
  As you can see, this is only the beginning of a true serial profile creation process.  As the social networker role emerges, we will be able to fully define and point these people out in a crowd.  Shirt or no shirt

I have highlighted, defined and explored VGS the past month or so.  Apparently it is an Internet phenomenon with the number of links back and chatter on the pull of Virtual Gratification Syndrome.  However, dosage has become the most recent issue.  Normally you would get your minimum intake from your news readers and some chat services.  More often than not, you would overdose to the point you had to turn some of them off entirely.  I watched Scoble do this today when he turned off Twitter and FriendFeed but was soon posting on both again anyway.

Here is how dosage is being affected.  With the splitting of content across services, you either have to be on them all, or watch your VGS flare up since you no longer can get everything you want in one place. Cases in point:

• People aren't commenting on blogs as much, they comment on blogs in FriendFeed
• People don't blog as much, they Twitter
• Bookmark services now add up to over 200, which one do you think I use?
• RSS readers are numerous and offer alternate abilities, some just for feeds (a la my Google shared), some for friends and some for social networking around feeds
• People don't send files over email, Drop.io and Pownce are trying to take that market.

So how do you cope? Where do you turn? When you start to get the VGS shakes, do you fire up 17 browser windows, a Twitter client and a multi chat interface (Digsby or Trillian)?

As each new service comes along, a small percentage of poeple move over.  Not always because it is new, that is for immediate testing, but the value of the service.  Then you have a few choices:

1.  Create a mega feed as I did in Jaiku long ago
2. Pull as many friends with you as you can to the new service and start again
3. Leave everyone behind to find you if they want
4. Move to the new service and push everything back into it, as I did with Facebook.

So VGS dosage not only comes from the amount of time and energy you put into getting your fix, but the scattering of your suppliers.  Do you drive to every new intersection to pick up your fix?  Hope a central supplier comes in?  Or find new ones where you were before when someone leaves?

Tell me, where is your daily dosage?

Our first site review is on Toluu, a social RSS feed finder.  Listen in as we give it a rating and talk about the functionality, usability and stickiness.

This will replace TheSocialNetworker series as a corporate merger is going on. Ok, not really but the podcast is growing and this will take it to the next level. So give it a shot and if you like it stay subscribed to the new one!!

You can find Corvida on Twitter here
You can find Chris on Twitter here

Music today was brought to you by Drop Trio, via Magnatune

Until iTunes is official you may subscribe right here

I find myself overwhelmed like many of you with enormous amounts of feeds, news and sites that I wish I could absorb in one sitting.  I have recently taken a different approach to get back some of my time and allow for exploring more.  Let's go into it.

First, there is the news reader dilemma.  I know there is specific content I always want to see and topics I wish I could find more on.  News readers like Particls take care of this for me.  I not only give it all my feeds to go and find, it also takes key word searches, and key word rankings, to go out and explore and find more articles based on my interests.  If I find I am not liking something, I can deny more on that topic, source or even blacklist it all together.  THink about this.  A newsreader that takes a topic and finds content and feeds instead of specifying feeds and hoping for content (much like you hope from me all the time).  Timesaving and absorbing new knowledge is the key here.  I have found some online readers that are trying to learn from you and they do ok.  But ok is not enough unless you can plug a feeder into my head at night while I sleep.  I need finely tuned, cleansed and accurate feeds in a timely basis.

Second there is self built alerts from items like Google and TweetScan.  Unless you can watch the public Twitter stream, you miss tons of good links and conversations.  Using such tools as TweetScan, I configure a listing of items to watch and each day it delivers me those Tweets.  I can then scan quick and see if I want to comment or even follow that person. Not only have I sparked good conversations, I find new people to follow based on topics they write about.  Instead of waiting for people to find me to follow back.

Social aggregators, or alligators.  Whatever you want to call them.  The large mouth of conversation as people tell us all about their entire life.  I did a nice piece comparing aggregation versus lifestreaming a while ago here.  My point is, people control what they put into the stream,. not you deciding.  So even with all the good stuff, as soon as someone inserts a site in their stream you don't like, you get the crud too.  We need an aggregation service which a person lists all their stuff and then let me pick from there.  A tuned and tailored information feed of poeple I want to follow.

Attention profiles.  Do they exist in the true sense?  How do they know what you attention is?  Are things you look at required for work or for outside learning? Attention profiles are a new area I am exploring so my opinion is lopsided right now.  I will refrain since I admit I need more practice before I speak.

1339559049
I ran across this totally by accident and found it an interesting twist on creating a profile, there is none.


There are three steps to begin chatting.

1. Search for a chat room on some topic
2. Make up a random nickname
3. Chat away

No profile needed, no verifying a user account, just chat. All the rooms get assigned tags, so searching was quite easy.

I came across their tools and they do offer a desktop version called Lingr Radar and even a Firefox plugin. I didn't bother taking the time to check those out, since I would not be staying long.

I know, you are asking why would I even look. Well because I get freaking links and invites on a constant basis and this was one of them. Will I be back? No. Was it interesting? Was there the expected anonymous crazy sex rooms, oh plenty of those.

Kinda to see someone go back to the good old days. Ha

This is just simplest way I found to see who I am following compared to who follows me. I got this link via SheGeeks. The opening screen of the site (shown below in fig 1) is very non-assuming with a giant word Whack!.

Fig 1

Once you Whack, it asks for your Twitter login, as expected. This is where you sit patiently and watch it run a counter. I was curious as to how it would egnerate a result. Would it be a list? Would it be icons? How about both. The result is amazing.



I was quite impressed with not only the directional colored arrows, and the timestamps of when they last posted. The icons the user has in place is pulled in and off you go. You even get a dialog box to sort the users in many ways and hide who you want to see.



Once you sort, select everyone you want to either follow or unfollow and scroll way down to the bottom where you find some bulk buttons. For those of you with thousands of followers, this could be a timesaver or a visual pain. Either way I love it!



So Corvida would give this the awesomesauce stamp of approval and I the same.

I came across not just a person with VGS, but a new form of social criminal.  While stopping through a restroom at the local mall this weekend (don't ask as I hate malls), I ran across some teens in there, handling what business you would in a bathroom.

  While one of them was in a stall he was having a conversation, that I found more than amusing, with his friends who were waiting around.  He was sending Tweets out to find out who else was in the mall, where some others were, etc.  I hesitated.  Did he say he was in there Tweeting?  Actually taking the time to craft 140 character messages while sitting with his pants low on his ankles?  In a public restroom, in a mall, with his cell phone in his hands?  He then was obviously not pacing as he waited for some return @ messages.  His concentration of his true task at hand so clouded by VGS?  Just the thought of unknowingly receiving a tweet from someone in this position.

 I chuckled and said the word V - G - S as I made my way out the door.  They looked confused as expected as I checked the public timeline.

Quick, raise your hands if you have done this?  Wait, keep them up, now go wash them, ewwwww.

A few weeks ago I published the start of a syndrome I tagged as VGS.  Amazingly, it was well received by many of you, well, that have it already.  But since then I uncovered another aspect of VGS.  One that still fits in the syndrome, but shows a slightly different behavior.  This person carries many of the following traits:

• always online in some form or fashion
• constantly updates us with loads of personal information
• links to news that they feel should be shared instantly
• makes heavy usage of social bookmarking
• streams themselves through one of the many streaming services
• feel that Twitter is akin to yelling from a city rooftop
• decided blogging is passe, IM is an ok medium, but rarely emails and unless it is a cell phone, forget it
• is always on the latest beta of every social networking site
• finds that none of the current tools do everything they wish
• never have enough friends, followers and watchers

So what we find when studying this behavior is the virtual gratification from knowing someone read one of their many postings, bookmarks, tweets and watching a stream.  They thrive on the reverse voyeurism that brings people into their life at a never ending pace.  They can never get enough followers, viewers or listeners.

I haven't yet found a cure except total burnout.  This person will either drop dead in the middle of a tweet with thousands watching on live video, or totally find themselves unable to type or click with carpal tunnel.

I read a great blog post on OwnYourIdentity.com while sitting at the airport.  Many great comments followed the posting titled "A Journey of a Thousand Steps"

My mind starting racing around all the great ideas and comments.  However, to me there is that glaring hole.  Many people posted they don't care how their data syncs between services (bookmarking services were used as an example) or if they can export their Flickr photos if that site goes under and move them to Picasa.  The point isn't about synching or moving.  If we follow that path, we start with a small pod of information that another provider can grab and bring over into their systems. Now we have duplication of data and expect eh vendor to maintain the integrity and timing of the updates.  At any time, a vendor could decide to cut all ties and then you either move to a manual approach or dump one of them.  And the friends on that site with it.

Why aren't we treating the data as a blob, with limited (some basic rules) structure requirements, an open API to know how to get the blog and good user controlled security models?  From there, the developers of all these applications really give us a reason to utilize them.  They build a social networking site that accesses the blob and wraps cools tools and services.  Notice I did not say copies, takes or moves the blob.  Accesses.  You provide them with the proper access to what data you want that site to see from your blob and let them build.  I now know that I am storing my data one time, one place, one security base and when I update, everyone can get it in the way I want across services.

Forget updating 20 sites and then attempting to map blog posting into Tweets, Tweets in FriendFeed, photo into Flick, Flickr into Jaiku and Facebook and then all that into some widget on your blog once again.  What a mess.

So I think the word goes from DataPortability to DataStability or DataSittingInOnePlace

Update: Another blogger with an opinion