Many people have been talking about twitter’s new RT beta feature and it may seem like most people don’t like it. But I thought I would throw my 2 cents in the ring about what I think of the feature.

In case you are unaware, Twitter is rolling out an official retweet feature that is in beta right now. It allows users to RT with just one click (no more copying and pasting tweets), and it provides a way for people to easily see how much their tweets are being retweeted.

Now there are some obvious drawbacks to this. The new feature only lets you RT the tweet as it was originally written, you can’t modify it or add your comments. For some people this is a drawback, but for others it’s a plus.

It’s a drawback if you frequently like adding comments to the things you RT, and it could be positive because tweets no longer need to be short enough to add your username to be “re-tweet-able”. A tweet that is exactly 140 characters can easily be retweeted now, where in the past it would have needed to be shortened to allow space for RT @that persons username.

One reason that I like the new RT feature is that it helps to regulate fake RT’s and is a great way to discover new people to follow.

A few things I would change:

1. Avatar correction. I would want the avatar to be the person that I am following who is choosing to share this information with me. After all, the people I follow are people that I trust. So seeing what they retweeted to their followers should be reflected by showing their avatar in my timeline.

2. RT alerts. Similar to the way that Tumblr shows users alerts when someone else has liked or reblogged your post. If a simple one line alert showed up in my timeline letting me know that my tweet had been retweeted it would make the whole process easier and more encouraging for users.

3. 3rd party support! Currently desktop and iphone apps are not taking advantage of the RT feature because it is so new. There is no place in tweetdeck or tweetie for me to see my retweets the same way I would see @replies. In fact, if someone retweets a tweet that has my username in it using the official RT function, that tweet won’t show up in my @replies of a 3rd party client at all.

The fact is that it will be very hard for twitter to rope in a feature that was created by the users and standerdize it. That can’t force you to stop retweeting the old way, so they new way will be hard for people to adopt.

What are your thoughts on the new feature?

Let me know in the comments.

Supporting your local economy can seem overwhelming.

Why should you go out of your way to support your local farmers when you can get cheaper produce elsewhere.

Why go to an independent bookstore when you can get the books cheaper on Amazon?

Well when you spend your money at local and independently owned businesses the money does more than you think.

A while ago I heard about the 3/50 Project, an effort to get people to spend $50 a month at 3 local businesses in an effort to boost local economies.

“If half the employed population spent $50 each month in locally owned independent businesses, it would generate more than $42.6 billion in revenue.”

“For every $100 spent in locally owned independent stores, $68 returns to the community through taxes, payroll, and other expenditures. If you spend that with a national chain, only $43 stays here. Spend it online and nothing comes home.”

That got me thinking, where does the web fit into all of this?

I consider myself a fairly digital person and I am the first person to gravitate to shopping online. So what do sites like Etsy do to the local economies of their sellers? Has anyone crunched the numbers on that?

Even though the web might not be able to help us with all of our local purchase decisions, it can help us find places to spend our money that are independently owned.

Delocator is a website designed to help users locate independently owned businesses.

Launched in 2005 Delocator was created so users could locate independently owned cafés. The Delocator is the opposite of an online retail store locator, common to corporate store websites. In 2006 book stores and movie theaters were added. Finally, in 2009, users can log in to the site, modify their entries and add more types of independently owned stores.

Do you know of other online resources that help users support their local economy? Leave it in the comments and I will add to the post.

So I’ve been asking people what they think of my new theme, and most people like it. However I did get one comment on twitter that threw me for a bit.

@danlavelle said:

@sarahcooley love the format, very simple and easy to read. What don’t I like? The fonts. Too industrial and not enough personality conveyed

I mentioned in my last post that both themes (old and new) have had the same font. Helvetica.

It’s the type of font that does display anything, no personality, no emotion, and yet…it says everything. It’s clean, simple, timeless.

I never really noticed Helvetica has a font until I saw the documentary film, Helvetica.

From the website:

Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which celebrated its 50th birthday in 2007) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives. The film is an exploration of urban spaces in major cities and the type that inhabits them, and a fluid discussion with renowned designers about their work, the creative process, and the choices and aesthetics behind their use of type.

The film showed me how much this simple little font had already affected my life. It’s everywhere!

So I stand by my choice of font, and I think it says a lot about me!

If you are on iTunes to check out Helvetica, you should also check out the other documentary by Gary Hustwit, Objectified. They are both really interesting.

Also from the website:

Objectified is a feature-length documentary about our complex relationship with manufactured objects and, by extension, the people who design them. It’s a look at the creativity at work behind everything from toothbrushes to tech gadgets. It’s about the designers who re-examine, re-evaluate and re-invent our manufactured environment on a daily basis. It’s about personal expression, identity, consumerism, and sustainability.

Over the past year I have been an avid Yelp user. Originally I started using it so that I could remember places I ate out in the city. Yelp was good to be, I found some great places that I can now call some of my favorites because of Yelp.

And when I moved to Philadelphia there was no doubt in my mind that I was going to need Yelp more than ever now.

That being said I have noticed some things that I really wish Yelp did that would be especially helpful when visiting, or moving to a new city.

Recommendations!

There are a lot of places that I love in NYC but I have not been able to easily find their “Philly counterparts”. If Yelp had a way to show you places you might like in a new city based on places you have reviewed and liked before, I think it would be very helpful.

Also if there was a Yelp feature similar to Urban Spoon for the iPhone, but using the data that Yelp already knows about me and places I like to eat. For example if I could select a radius on a map, and just press a button that would give me some suggestions, that would be awesome.

But unlike Urban Spoon, these suggestions would not merely be random, but would be tailored to me.

As many of you know, I am moving to Philadelphia this weekend for a new job. When most people move they have to empty out where they are moving from, organize all their things, pack clothes, ship larger items, but that’s basically it.

Yesterday I started to think about what moving means for all of my profiles all over the web. Most of the sites and communities that I am active on have a location, or a city in the profile. I will have to go through and change my current city on all of these sites. I know this doesn’t seem like that hard of a thing to do, but it can become very time consuming.

Even harder then physically changing your current city, is keeping everyone up to date with your location. People perceive you to be living somewhere, but that might not be where you actually are.

Sites like foursquare help with this. Letting you know where your friends are in your city, or when your out of town friends are in town. But one of the big problems with foursquare is that you can’t see where your friends in other cities are. You are only shown who is in your current city.

I have found that checking in on foursquare had helped my friends to be more aware when I am traveling, or in a new city.

Yesterday I tweeted “Are there any social media sites for moving to a new city”

One person responded and said “Does craigslist count?” Craigslist is great when you are moving and need to sell large pieces or when you need to find and apartment.

But sites like Yelp! can also be very helpful when you are living in a new city. Yelp can help you find everything from good places to eat, to a great place to get a haircut. Yelp has been great for me in NYC, but I am hoping that the Yelp Community in Philadelphia is as active.

Do you know of any other sites that have been helpful for you during a move? Or sites that have helped you settle into a new city? I would love to check them out, so please let me know in the comments.

Of course I have my own personal tour guide to Philadelphia, Drew Olanoff (@drew) <3

But if you know me, you know I am always looking for new sites and communities to check out.

So today I went to my local Apple store with my friend Rosie because her iPhone had gotten the white screen of death and we needed to get it replaced. While hanging out we started talking about Twitter. I was very interested to hear about her experiences with twitter. She has had an account for a while but only started using it regularly this May. She said she started twittering during finals week because she just wanted to tell everyone everything and then she remembered that she could do that with twitter.

She told me that she felt like she didn’t think she was really using it correctly. I told her that there really isn’t a “correct” way to use twitter, but I was curious as to what made her think that.

She had some really interesting insights about how she uses twitter and ways she would like to see it be improved. These were things that I had not really heard from a lot of users or really from the general tech community so I thought I would share them with you all.

The first thing that she felt was missing was a facebook type of “wall-to-wall” view, for your conversations back and forth with one person. I know that there are some apps that do this but Rosie mainly uses the main twitter web page when she is at a computer and twitterific on her iPhone. She would like these features to be built into the main twitter site.
However you can use search.twitter.com/advanced to search for conversations between specific people.

She also was really wishing that she could see her list of followers/following in alphabetical order. This was something I never felt the need for but I was really wondering if other people might find this helpful as well.

Rosie also became frustrated that she could not just DM anyone. She wants to be able to have a private conversation with anyone, no matter who is following who. She said that it was kind of strange that you might be able to have a one-way DM conversation if you were DM-ing one of your followers who then could not DM you back because you were not following them.

Her last insight was that she felt that the interface and general feel of twitter was a little childish. She couldn’t really explain why she felt that way, but I thought it was interesting none the less.

If you want to follow her she is @rosesness on twitter.

I would love to hear your thoughts on her thoughts.

Here is the video from my talk at BarCampNYC4. It’s a little long so I hope you enjoy it.

Originally this post was titles 5 reasons I won’t use your web product! But I decided that these were all things that companies could change about their products so I am trying to make it a more positive post.

I get asked to try tons of new sites and services every day. Sometimes people want me to review them on randomsarah.com, sometimes people want them to be considered to be featured on What’s it all About, and many times it’s just friends and other people on twitter telling me about new tools I might not know about.

I love trying out new online tools. It is one of my favorite things to do. But there are a few things right of the bat, that will make me not want to use a site or service.

So here is my list:

1. The Sign-up process: The first thing a new user is going to go through when trying out your site or service, is the Sign-up process. If it is to complicated, or long, I won’t even continue with the process.

Tumblr‘s sign-up page is a great example. 1,2,3 and your DONE!

2. Design: both Graphic Design and User Interface Design. I am a design geek 100%. I love shiny tools. But I have said this many times before, I will not use your product because it’s ugly. When you are starting a site, PLEASE take the time to invest in a good designer. I can promise you that it will pay off. People do judge books by their cover, and they automatically form opinions about your site within the first 5 seconds. Simply based on what it looks like.

For years I did not use GMail because I didn’t want to stare at it all day. I thought it was ugly. Once GMail added themes, I was hooked.

3. Video Tutorial: I can’t tell you how many times I sign up for a service and once I am done with the sign-up process, I have no idea what they want me to do, I have no idea what the service does. This is where I look for an intro video. A simple screencast on how to get started is really all it takes. Sometimes your users need a little push to start using the site. They need to know how, and video is the easiest way to show them.

Screencast video tutorials are very easy to do, but if you can’t do it yourself you can always find people to do it for you.

4. Something like it already exists: This one is a little harder to change, but I think it is worth it when you are creating anything for the web to REALLY see what else is out there. If your site or product is not WAY better than your competition, then people will most likely not give you the shot you deserve. Imitation is not a business model. It is important to create something new and innovative that people will love, and the critical mass will come.

5. Community: While community is not something that belongs as a part of every site, there are some great communities in places when it may not have been obvious that they belong.

Take Yelp for example. Yelp is a site where most people go to find restaurant reviews and other reviews. People can read reviews and write reviews. Now this might not be screaming for a community, but the Yelp community is thriving. You can ask questions, see what your friends are reviewing, create events, there is a ton of stuff to do on Yelp.

Listen to your users, if they are asking for community tools, give it to them. Even if it is just a place to give you feedback or talk about the service, people love community. Creating a strong community will only help your company. Story communities create brand advocates that will be willing to speak on behalf of your product and practically eliminate your need to do any marketing.

Some of you may know that for the last few months I have been working on my podcast called What’s it all About. In late December I partnered with Ambush TV, the company that is producing Gary Vaynerchuk‘s new show Obsessed, with Samantha Ettus, and we started the process of re-launching a show.

You may remember when What’s it all about first premiered. It was back in September during Web 2.0 week in NYC. The first episode we did was explaining twitter, and it got quite a bit of attention. I was surprised at how people responded to a show that I put together in my bedroom with my iMac, but the response was good. At one point the show was featured in iTunes “New and Notable” category.

It was very exciting. However I soon came to realize that I wanted to do more with the show and I did what I never should have done and that’s doubt myself. I realized that I couldn’t put out the kind of quality show all by myself, without funding, from my bedroom. (I probably could have if I really tried, but I doubted myself and I didn’t try) I only made two episodes of the show before I got discouraged with technical difficulties and no one to help me fix them.

So I started to look for a way to make the kind of show I wanted. Ambush TV came to my rescue! My friend Tim Kres-Spatz was starting Ambush TV with his friend Mark and I thought it was the perfect solution.

Ambush.tv creates original video content based on the passions of fresh faces from across the internet. We transform great ideas into high value, high definition productions of broadcast television quality.

Ambush TV has a studio space not to far from where I live, and they had the equipment to help give me great production quality for the show. I still needed some help with the techinical side of things. I wrote the show and hosted the show, but my editing skills were never that great (I was using iMovie) and I had a vision for the website for the show that I could not exicute on my own. So I brought in my friend Rob Blatt. He is an award winning producer and has been a podcast guy for years. Rob is now co-producing the show with me, he edits the show, and he did all the design on the blog. He took what I had in my head and helped make it real and for that I am very thankful!

The show is still in the developement stages but we want to develop it with all of you. We want to hear from you about what you would like us to cover on the show. We want your feedback, and anything you could do to tell people about the show would be greatly appreciated.

The other day I was watching that first episode and I realized that in September when originally launched the show I had less than 300 followers on twitter. (These days it’s close to 1,400) it made me realize how far I have already come and I have this great community to thank.

Well here is the first episode of the show for your viewing pleasure.

Talking about deciding what social tools to use when building our site for What’s it all about.

If you have experience with wordpress MU, buddypress, or bbpress, I would love to talk to you about those experiences.