Ze Home of Evan Samek

According to David Martin, Vice President of Primary Research at Nielsen Online, Twitter’s current visitor retention rate, that is the number of visitors that return to Twitter after signing up within one month is about 40%.  Now for some strange reason, Nielsen isn’t reporting how exactly they determined that number.  I’m going to go ahead and guess here, but I bet they calculated that based on visitors returning to the Twitter.com domain, which won’t give them correct results.

Now whats the problem with this?  Well, everyone, and I do mean pretty much everyone, wants to get off of the Twitter website ASAP and use a client that sits on their desktop.  If not a desktop client, they are using the Twitter API in a number of other ways on another site, normally another social network mash-up site. This is because while Twitter is a great service, their UI isn’t as seamless as Tweetie for Mac or Twhirl or as popular as TweetDeck.  It’s not that Twitter’s UI is bad, its just why would anyone rather be reloading the pages on a website to see their replies rather than just switch to an already loaded tab sitting on your desktop. So really, the Twitter.com domain isn’t being hit by folks like Facebook or Myspace (as they have graphed out), rather they are relying on Twitter’s API to deliver the service. The incredible amount of API call statistics, I would assume, is not accessible by Nielsen since Twitter is a centralized service running exclusively through themselves.

I call for a new study to be published with these variables addressed, or reveal that they accurately analyzed Twitter’s retention rate with respect to Twitter’s API.

After being on twitter for over a year now, I have finally started to follow mass amounts of people in search for some good inspiration, friendship, and conversation.  However, with all these new friends, I have to weed out the one’s who aren’t really contributing to the conversation-at-large.  The ‘tweeps’ I usually weed out are users that….

1. Only tweet links.
2. Talk about how their inbox has 1,000′s of unread emails that must be answered.
3. Constant @’s to my tweets that have nothing to do with what was said.
4. Only retweet other people’s tweets.  What, have you no thoughts of your own?
5. Celebrities or other famous-types who don’t interact with fans.
6. Celebrities or other famous-types who have someone else tweet for them.
7. Constant self promotion.
8. Ridiculous use of Adjix to gain money from links (it’s even worse if an ad is embedded into the tweet).
9. Tweet once in a blue moon. I will never see your tweets, so whats the point of following you?
10. Tweeting about completely useless information, like “I’m hungry”.  At least tell me what you are eating or going to eat; or even you inexplicable love for a particular cuisine.
11. Anyone who is rude in 140-characters or less.

What kinds of tweeple do you drop when weeding needs to be done?

Inspired by @gayadesign on twitter, I’ve have decided that all designs I work on will be posted here for criticisms and review by other web developers/designers on twitter.

Below is a screenshot of a concept for a local musician, Robbie Cooper, that I am in the process of developing.  What do you guys think? Criticise! Suggest! Compliment! Enrage me!  Anything goes.

Oh, and please retweet if you wouldn’t mind! Thanks!

I have decided, after about 4 or so hours of usage, to do a quick critique of the new Tweetie for Mac app.  This is different than a review, in which I would outlined every aspect of the program with criticisms along the way.  In contrast, this post will only list my criticisms of the app.

Make direct message and ReTweet more accessible

Don’t make me right click to get this menu.  Make the menu appear when rolling over the picture or the ege like the reply icon as in Twhirl.  These functions are not secondary, they are primary to the twitter user.

Why are hashtag subjects (#) so gray against a gray background?

This just makes it hard to see the subject in a tweet.  Increase the contrast, it is not something that should be hidden with the background.

Everything else is pretty damn good.  Haha.  This was a shorter critique then I thought.

Hey All!

Welcome to my new blog.  It hasn’t changed that much but at least I’m finally heading in some direction with it.  I thought for my first new post I would write about the plugins I’m using this time around.

• Contact Form 7 – This plugin is amazing.  Really simple to use AJAX form, that even has a form generator in the admin section for a truly customizable experience.  It even has a built in option for a CAPCHA area, to prevent spam. (However you have to download this as a seperate plugin to use the functionality.)
• Flickr Gallery – Really simple to use Flickr implementation plugin that allows you to important your Flickr photostream in a variety of customizable ways.  Currently I have mine set to display the most recent uploads.
• Twitter Updater – Automatically sends a tweet to my twitter profile to let my followers know I just posted a new blog post.
• All in one SEO Pack- Everyone should know about this one already.
• Google SiteMaps XML – Again, a great SEO tool which everyone already knows about.
• Ozh’ Admin Drop Down Menu – Now this plugin is incredibly helpful.  It makes all admin section navigation in drop down menu format with CSS.  I couldn’t stand having to click through the various higher-level nav to get to the lower-level admin pages.  This saved me about 15 minutes of clicking time.
• Sociable – Easy integration of social networking and bookmark services. (Which is below this post…tweet me please!)

I’m also using various other plugins, but they are technical and/or aren’t important enough to talk about here.  Anyways, enjoy the new blog look and feel.  Hopefully now that I have a more presentable blog, I will write more.

Evan