Alexandra Samuel's blog | Social Signal

I'm writing this blog post with the assistance of Zemanta, a web service that claims to enrich your blog posts and emails by inserting links, related pictures, articles and tags. I thought I'd take it for a spin to see how it works here on SocialSignal.com.

TripItGate has me thinking about how to make social network invitations more useful, less spammy, and less of a hassle.

Invitations are a standard part of social network signups and usage. When you join a social network, you're typically asked to connect with friends who are already using the same service. If you're willing to share your username and password on other systems -- like Gmail, AOL, MSN, Yahoo, Facebook and Twitter -- the network you've just joined can suck all your contacts in from your other networks, and tell you who you know on the network you've just joined.

Last weekend I added a search on "@robcottingham" to TweetDeck so that I could track the comments on Rob's Northern Voice keynote. (BTW, if you aren't using TweetDeck to keep track of your Twitter pals, I highly recommend it; like many people I know, Tweetdeck has transformed Twitter from being a tool I use occasionally to a vital part of my workflow and community.)

Will Aldrich from TripIt wins this week's Social Signal silver star in social media relations. (To those of you who would point out that this is the first week that the silver star has been awarded, let me say that such observations may be held against you by judges in future weeks.)

I've just jumped in line for a new service called Tracer from Tynt. It aims to help you track who is copying content from your site, and put that info to good use. But why tell you about it myself when copying Tynt's content is such a great demo of how this works?

I knew it was only so long before I'd succumb to the insidious, criminal forces that lurk everywhere online. Kleptomaniacal hacker, intrusive snoop, indy pornographer....I could take my pick of evils.

And tonight, I chose to become a spammer. Or more precisely, TripIt chose for me.

TripIt is a travel planning site that a number of my friends use to organize their business travel. I logged in tonight because I was planning to include it in a (positive) round-up post and wanted to take some of its features for a spin.

If you've ever wondered whether social media is funny, check out the reaction to Rob's Teh Funny Northern Voice keynote. The Twitter backchannel is reprinted in text below.

These tweets are in chronological order, so you can follow the thread of the conversation. In related news, we'd love to hear of a Twitter search tool that lets you sort results in chronological order; flipping the order from the reverse chronological results given by Twitter's own search was quite a chore.

Valentine's Day celebrates the power of relationships. We're celebrating with a Social Signal relaunch.

The relaunch of our site and business coincides with the explosion of interest in social media. Business leaders and nonprofit communicators are asking how social media can support marketing, collaboration and innovation. Public officials and public citizens want to know how social media creates new opportunities for communities and conversation, on- and offline.

Conversation is a little miraculous. Through conversation we learn about the world around us, about each other, and about ourselves. We discover what we have in common and how we look at things differently. We arrive at common solutions and build lasting agreement about how to do a better job, together.

You can find evidence of the transformative power of conversation in just about any field. When you read stories about people who are trapped in life-endangering situations (like a building collapse), they often say that what let them survive was another person engaging them in extended conversation.