If you have already signed up for TweetPo.st, you will continue to be able to use it and we hope most of the issues that have cropped up in the last few weeks will soon be fixed. If you haven’t yet signed up for TweetPo.st, we really appreciate your interest and hope to open back up soon (please follow @tweet_post to be kept up-to-date on our progress).

The brief history of TweetPo.st has been a series of lessons in building products on other people’s platforms. The first version (called TweetFace until Facebook made us change it a couple weeks after release) was basically a public prototype built in a week about a year ago. It grew out of our desire to have ‘a smarter way to update Facebook from Twitter’ for our personal use and we only did it because it seemed so easy at the time. We didn’t even tell anyone about it other than our friends, but somehow people started to notice. We were happy that folks liked it and even happier that we didn’t have to worry about it while we worked on other things.

But then last fall, we began to get reports of strange behavior when new people tried to signup. When we finally had time to do some serious investigation, it turned out that Twitter had changed things in a way that made it impossible for TweetPo.st to add any more new users without us having to basically rewrite most of it, which we didn’t have the time to do then. It was wasn’t until this February that we were able to go back in and basically build a whole new TweetPo.st from the ground up using the latest APIs from Twitter and Facebook.

Based on our research and planning, we blocked out a couple weeks to implement and test the new version. But very soon into it, we realized that things weren’t going to be that easy — specifically, some of the Facebook APIs we had planned to use were broken and all of them were really slow and/or unreliable. In practical terms, this meant we had to do a whole bunch of extra work and testing to make things work correctly for our users. Unfortunately, the very issue with the Facebook APIs is their unpredictability and so at a certain point we had to make a best guess at how to deal with it and then see what happened.

The good news is that after seeing how the application has performed (or not) in the real world over the last couple months, we have a better sense of the pattern of the underlying issues. The bad news is that the long-term fixes for these issues are again going to require significantly more time than we can give right now. So, we have made some smaller fixes that should restore performance for existing users in the coming days and we have decided to close TweetPo.st to new users until we can make the long-term fixes to properly support them.

We can’t tell you how much we appreciate the patience and understanding of our current users. We recently added Tilly to our team to help with customer care across all our products starting with TweetPo.st, and she has been totally impressed with how cool you all have been. And to anyone finding this because they want to use TweetPo.st, we’re even more bummed than you that we can’t let you in yet (and we recommend Selective Tweets as a lightweight alternative in the meantime). We only want to build products people love to use and sometimes that requires us to go for more love from fewer people. We’re hard at work on a new version of awe.sm, which is going to be our main focus for the next few months. And hopefully, we’ll be able to do some more work on TweetPo.st soon after that. Thanks again for your support!

I’m very happy to announce  we have begun private beta testing the new version of TweetPo.st. I’ll include the full back-story below, but I personally apologize for the lack of communication on TweetPo.st the last few months and for any frustration it may have caused. We’re really excited about the new version because, in addition to being able to take on new users again, we have added support for Facebook Pages, our top requested feature.

TweetPo.st is a smarter way to update Facebook from Twitter. Here are the key features of the new version:

• Post tweets as Facebook Status Updates
• Post links you tweet on your Facebook Wall (so your friends can watch videos and see pictures right in their News Feed)
• Ignore @replies
• Change @mentions to real names
• Only post the tweets you specify to Facebook (using either inclusive or exclusive filters)
• Track links posted to Facebook with awe.sm
• *NEW* Supports both Facebook Profiles and Pages
• *NEW* Manage multiple posting configurations from Twitter accounts to Facebook Profiles or Pages

While we’re eager to get as many people using the new version of TweetPo.st as soon as possible, we need to limit the number of users until we work out all the kinks. We don’t anticipate this private beta period lasting more than a couple of weeks, but feel free to email support [at] tweetpo.st if you’d like to help us test before then. Otherwise, please follow @tweet_post to be the first to know when it’s publicly available.

The Back-Story

About 4 months ago, we started seeing bug reports from users who were encountering errors signing up for TweetPo.st. It took some investigation, but we soon figured out that, due to the way we originally built the app (i.e. not using Twitter OAuth, which wasn’t available at the time), TweetPo.st had hit Twitter’s following/follower ratio limit. Without going into too much detail, this required us to completely re-architect TweetPo.st from the ground-up using Twitter’s new Streaming API.

Originally, we thought we’d get this all done in December. But, we’re a small team working on 3 products (awe.sm, TweetPo.st, and fbShare.me). So, sometimes things don’t happen as quickly as we’d like. However, we dropped the ball on communications in this case. We didn’t want to announce a revised schedule until we had one we felt we could stick to, and new things continued to come up that kept us from finishing TweetPo.st. So, instead we went radio silent, which was not the right thing to do.

We apologize for not handling the situation as well as we should. And we hope you find the new version of TweetPo.st worth the wait when we make it publicly available in the next few weeks.

As part of Facebook’s button release, they also announced a new API for pulling the share data directly from them. They were kind enough to give us a preview of this API, and we actually launched a new version of our button using the combined Facebook and awe.sm share data over the weekend. Here’s what’s new:

• Uses combined share data from Facebook and awe.sm for the most complete stats
• Cleaner look and slightly taller (9px) large button (it is now 53px wide by 69px tall)
• Ability to customize the background and text colors of the badge in the large button
• When there are no shares, the badge in the large button is clickable as a sharing interface

We also upgraded our WordPress Plugin to accommodate these changes and include some user requests:

• Support color customization in plugin
• Added the ability to disable the button from appearing on Pages (vs Posts)
• Improved plugin performance by eliminating javascript

At this point, our version of the button is primarily targeted at existing awe.sm publishers. But, there are a few reasons other folks might want to use it over the Facebook version:

• You think ours is purdier
• You like our WordPress Plugin
• You want to use the Google Analytics integration

Please let us know if you have ideas on how we can make the button even more useful.

A few weeks back I decided to build a button for my blog that would give me the same functionality of ‘retweet’ buttons, like the ones from TweetMeme and Backtype (both of which support awe.sm by the way ), for sharing on Facebook.

I built it in a weekend on top of our powerful Aggregate Data API, and then we decided some other folks might like it too. So, we put up a little splash page and started quietly asking people to test it. Mashable was the first major blog to launch it this past weekend, and were very helpful in providing feedback. You can now also find it live on The Next Web, and grab it for your own site at fbShare.me.

What it does:

• Displays the number of shares and on hover the total number of clicks for those shares (displays Facebook logo when 0 shares)
• Gives you a choice between a large or small button
• Tracks the shares from the button using your awe.sm API Key or fbShare.me links
• Allows you to add Google Analytics parameters to fbShare.me links

Please note, this is NOT an officially endorsed Facebook tool. It doesn’t have special access to secret Facebook APIs that tell you how many times a link has been shared on Facebook. The count and click numbers are only for share actions that happen via awe.sm. In addition to the shares that occur through the fbShare.me button, any that happen through other awe.sm-enabled sharing or syndication tools, like Sociable, AddToAny, and TweetPo.st, will also be counted.

We put this out there because we thought it was cool and hoped others would find it useful. It is also a great reference implementation for the kinds of valuable sharing tools that can be built on top of the awe.sm APIs. awe.sm is a social media campaign tracking platform for publishers, and we want to offer them the broadest selection of syndication and sharing tools possible. Our real value isn’t in building our own tools, it’s in helping the developers of the thousands of great tools out there offer publishers a way to connect those individual solutions together to form a cohesive system.

Our hope for fbShare.me is that it will inspire more great tools developers to incorporate awe.sm-powered functionality into what they’re building. So if you’re working on a social media syndication or sharing tool for publishers, please check out our APIs and feel free to drop us a line at developers [at] awe.sm.

awe.sm for Publishers
Our mission here at the Snowball Factory is to help connect creators of interesting content with the people who love it. And we believe social media provides an incredibly powerful infrastructure to do that. awe.sm is the centerpiece of our efforts to make social media a more efficient, effective, and measurable marketing channel for content publishers. awe.sm integrates with the tools you already use to make the whole of your social media self-promotion efforts (e.g. pimping your latest blog post on Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, etc) greater than the sum of the parts by giving you a comprehensive view of the resulting traffic *right in Google Analytics*. awe.sm is currently supported in Twitterfeed, AddToAny, TweetFace (which we built too ), and our version of the Sociable WordPress Plugin. We’ve been working with TechCrunch as well as a number of smaller publishers during our alpha, and as of today we will be handing out invites to publishers who complete our survey. For more information on our publisher offering, please drop us a line to publishers [at] awe.sm.

awe.sm for Developers
In building awe.sm, we realized that sharing analytics is a pain point felt by a broader group than just publishers and we wanted to make our solution available to others building applications with sharing components. To that end, awe.sm was built from the APIs up and developers can recreate any of our features (or build new ones of their own) entirely in their own apps. We like to think of it as analytics infrastructure-as-a-service. And we’re proud to already be powering features of Zentact, Famery, SimplyBox, and KISSmetrics. We’re still limiting access to our API documentation at this point. But if you’re a developer who would like to check it out, please send a brief description of your application and how you would like to use awe.sm to developers [at] awe.sm.

awe.sm Partners
Each publisher’s approach to social media marketing is different, and we don’t believe there is (or should be) a one-size-fits-all solution. And while we will build some tools, like TweetFace, ourselves when we can’t find existing ones that do what we want, we’d much rather partner with folks who are totally focused on making a great tool to solve a particular publisher need. That’s why we’re very excited to announce awe.sm support in AddToAny, one of the most innovative share widgets out there, to go along with our previously announced Twittefeed integration. In addition to recommending partner tools to awe.sm publishers, we also plan to offer an affiliate model for partners who drive premium awe.sm signups. So if you’ve got a publisher tool that you’d like to integrate with awe.sm, please hit us up at partners [at] awe.sm.

Private-Label URL Shorteners (What you can get right now!)
One of the most notable features of awe.sm is that it can shorten long URLs, which we’ve been told is particularly useful for this thing called Twitter that everyone is talking about . It is such a notable feature that a bunch of people asked us if we could do it using domains other than http://awe.sm, which we can. In fact, we’re already powering URL shorteners for some of the above mentioned partners including TechCrunch (tcrn.ch), KISSmetrics (klck.me), Topspin (t.opsp.in), and AddToAny (a2a.me). So starting today, we’re officially offering *private-label URL shorteners running on your domain starting at just $99 per year*.

For $99/year, you get:

• a hassle-free hosted solution with no set-up costs
• 10k shortened URLs per month and no limit on redirections
• full clickstream stats and Google Analytics integration
• support in all awe.sm-enabled publisher tools
• 99% monthly uptime money-back guarantee

We also offer advanced features like the ability to build your own stats UI as well as dedicated servers and higher SLAs. You can get started now or ping us for more info at domains [at] awe.sm.

See for yourself:

And here’s a link to the PDF version. Thanks to everyone who attended for being a great crowd and having some really insightful questions.

P.S. This is my second time presenting at BarCampLA. The last time was at BarCampLA 1 in 2006

Presenting: 10 of the Smartest Big Brands in Social Media

While this is ostensibly a post about large national/global brands, I found the underlying lessons from these examples to be potentially useful to *anyone* seeking to use social media to build brand equity. You should definitely go read the original post for the full details on each campaign, but here’s my take on the important lessons from each one:

1. Blendtec Blends it on YouTube – Creativity is king; advertising is just content someone is willing to pay for you to watch, it doesn’t *have* to be annoying and uninteresting
2. Burger King and the Sacrifice Facebook Application – People like to have fun
3. Starbucks Asks for Your Advice – Making your customers feel like they’re part of the process builds brand loyalty through a sense of co-ownership
4. Sun Microsystems and the CEO Blog – Kill them with transparency (a variation on my dad’s old adage: ‘kill them with kindness’); disarm your critics by giving them a voice and answering them back
5. IBM With Lots of Blogs – Content == Authority; as long as it’s quality content (and on-brand), more *is* better on the Internet — it gives you higher search engine ranking and it doesn’t hurt to be the first thing a prospective customer finds when they do research on your area of interest/expertise (what do you think this blog is all about? )
6. Zappos on Twitter – A company (not just a brand) can have a personality in the Internet age, and it is defined by its employees; being accessible and relatable reminds your customers that there are real people behind your brand, and that tends to make them like you more (unless those real people really suck )
7. Comcast on Twitter too – Empower your community manager to address customers needs; Frank from Comcast doesn’t just spew marketing platitudes into the Twittersphere, he actually helps customers in need (Corollary: if you have an unempowered community manager fronting for your brand, he/she is bound to get slaughtered and likely do more harm to brand equity than good)
8. Ford and Social Media PR – Bad press doesn’t go away on the Internet; it’s not like the conventional media world in which all you need to do is weather *this* news cycle — that disparaging blog post will be popping up in searches for your brand for the rest of your life and beyond, so you’d better get out there and address it
9. Graco Uses Pictures on Flickr – *Every* customer should be writing a testimonial; make it so easy and fun for your customers to show their brand loyalty that it’s a no-brainer for them
10. Dell Doing it Everywhere – Social media isn’t media; this isn’t an ad buy you make selectively based on demographics and vertical content, it’s a horizontal platform for customer engagement comprised of many different elements — you may not have the time or resources to be everywhere, but take the time to craft a campaign in which the whole is greater than the sum of the parts