Two years ago, Robert Scoble and Shel Israel documented in “Naked conversations” how blogs where changing businesses and their engagement with consumers. 2006 was in fact what you might call the year of the company blog. Companies left and right, big and small, opened blogs to engage in conversations with their costumers and fans. This brough the barrier of communication - previously assumed huge and unbreakable - down to waist height. Anyone with a little interest could get in touch with the real people behind companies, the decision makers, and make themselves - and their ideas - heard.

New ways of engaging with people

We’re seeing something similar now but at a hyper-level, through different, specialized channels. Companies are now engaging with their costumers through micro-blogging systems such as Twitter - in fact, just a few hours ago, Peachpit Press started following me on there. We have twitter accounts for our projects like Goplan and Totspot, and always recommend our clients and partners to do the same, because we know our audience of early adopters cares that we’re close.

Being on Twitter allows companies to engage in short (but sweet) conversations about their products. To provide instant notifications when something is wrong, or - much better -, when something exciting just happened. A feature or product launch, maybe. The possibilities are endless when companies start seeing customers as friends. A subtle term change, yes, but it has quite the impact.

Not all about Twitter

It’s not all about Twitter, though. We’re seeing social networking profiles being opened on Facebook and Myspace for companies - and people actually befriending these and becoming fans. You become a fan of something when you really actually care, so you can imagine the value of having people who care about you and your products, that you can talk to and get opinions and ideas from.

If two years ago we were having “naked conversations”, I can’t imagine where we’re going with this. These are exciting times. Want to talk to us? Both me and webreakstuff (the whole company) are on twitter.

This is not my typical post - be forewarned. It has little to do with entrepreneurship, innovation or technology. It is, though, about the “computer” in you - your brain. It’s Jill Bolte Taylor’s speech at this year’s TED, that was posted on their website a few days ago, that I just finished watching. Jill Taylor is a neuroscientist that experienced a stroke a few years ago and gets to tell the story.

Now, before the video itself. The way Dr. Jill Taylor describes her stroke experience motivated some people at TED’s website to comment as to how these experiences could easily be recalled by someone under the influence of substances, or through meditation. That’s not the point I’m trying to make, or the reason why the video moved me to post about it. It isn’t about “finding Nirvana” (you’ll see what I mean when you watch the video). I’ve just always been fascinated by the human brain and this is a tremendously insightful description of how we think and process the world around around us. Enjoy:

Our brain is a fascinating thing, and if you see past the way the stroke experience is recollected, it’s moving (and exciting, or frightening) to realize how complex we are. Ah, I so need to read Mind Wide Open (Steven Johnson’s book on “The neuroscience of every day lives”) again.

Coincidences are fun, and this one is pretty cool. So yesterday I posted about Friendfeed needing two things to make it complete. Well strike one out of the list, because search has been done as Techcrunch, Mashable and the guys at Friendfeed themselves are reporting. I know when to say a product is lacking, and I know when to praise - this is time for the latter, for this simple modification, my friends, just made Friendfeed worth my time and account.

Now I can actually see what my friends are saying (or creating) about design, userexperience or development - these are just examples, obviously. And I can do site-specific searches (something I also asked for) which is down right amazing. And (I just tried), I can get RSS feeds for these searches. Friendfeed people, you got me. I’m a full-on user from this moment on. You win - actually, I do, because my information overload is soon to be gone.

Note: I’m re-reading my post and it sounds like sales. Trust me when I say it’s not - I’m just pretty happy about this. Maybe as happy as I was when I joined Twitter back in 05, or maybe when I joined GMail. Wow moments are hard to get, allow me to ride me for a few minutes.

Last week I posted about information overload and how we were being constantly bombed with content bits from all corners of the web (like Twitter, Facebook, RSS feeds, whatever else). Also last week, a lot of people started using (and blogging about) Friendfeed. Some people actually call it this year’s Twitter.

I’ve been using Friendfeed a bit myself and while I find it cute and somewhat useful - as you probably do, I like to know what my friends have been doing or working on -, it just isn’t helping. It’s became just another content stream where I am fed unfiltered information from people. Twitter was “hard” enough to keep track of on a busy day, but Friendfeed not only includes twitter updates, it also packs info collected from around 23 other services. Cute? Definitely. Helping? Heck no.

A couple of ideas

Filtering: Friendfeed needs filtering. If I already have Twitteriffic on, It makes sense to be able to filter out all Twitter bits from my friendfeed. If I’m in the mood for checking out photos from friends, I may want to see only photos on my friendfeed. If I’m looking for what my friends have been listening to on Last.fm, I might want to see only that.

Search, domain clustering: Why can’t I search for words in my friend feed? A term extraction algorithm + search could become a pretty good tool to know what the people I care about have been saying about, that’s say, “design”, “user experience” or “development” related. Now that would be useful.

The truth

Here’s the cold hard fact: I’m going to pay little attention to a service that only delivers more stuff. A few years ago, in order to get updates on people you cared about, you’d call, visit or email. Now you hear about them all day every day. Now that’s obviously not a bad thing, don’t get me wrong - it’s just that sometimes, it’s a little too much information.

We need these tools (Twitter, Friendfeed) - and tell me where to sign up if you’re building a product like this - to help us make sense of the data coming in by mining it, filtering it and giving it to us in a way we can consume it. I still want the ability to see and hear everything should I be inclined to, but I need (we need!), to control this flood of information we’re living with every day.

Update: Well (wow, rather!), that didn’t take long. About 24 hours after I posted this, Friendfeed announced search. The difference a simple feature like this makes is astounding.