The new Digg adds features and layout which emphasize the users network instead of site wide content. I think this is a good move by Digg to stay competitive in the social media sphere considering the rate at which  some networks are stealing incorporating primary features from other sites. The site still maintains it’s focus as a content submission / rating tool, and all comments are still posted on submitted content and not user profiles. But now Digg  focuses on content submitted by a users network first and site wide content second. Read the rest of The New Digg »

There is no doubt that MySpace is no longer the golden child of the internet that it once was and maybe it will never see those glory days again, but with a Google PageRank of 9 and an Alexa Rank of 21 it’s obvious the social networking site is far from dead.

The Benefits of Using MySpace

Customization: MySpace’s double-edged sword. No 1984/Equlibriumesq profiles here, MySpace allows for a level of customization unparalleled by most other social networks. Version 2.0 of its site profiles even switches to tableless layouts with ids and classes which make it easy to apply css styling.  Stylization with custom graphics, colors and layout, are highly beneficial to branding, and can help distinguish user identities and correlate profiles across different networks. The down side of this for MySpace is those profiles with poorly implemented markup, less than tasteful designs, and those bogged down with too many media objects (animations, audio, video, etc), early in its history this also made the site a phishing magnet untill they started filtering external links.  It’s a common belief that the negative aspects of customization caused many people to stop using MySpace, so whats a social network to do?  Maybe scaling back on the amount of customization allowed on user profiles would appease some, I personally think limiting the amount and size of media elements which can be embedded into a profile would be a good start. Read the rest of My Take on MySpace »

The following code uses the SimpleXML extension so it requires PHP5. What it does is search through the XML output of search results for a given user name on Twitter. The version of the code below is set up to bypass Tweets beginning with “@” indicating an @ reply message. This behavior should be simple enough to change if so desired, it should also be easy enough to tweak it to exclude RT: style retweets as well.
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