Tag Archives: twitter

July 3, 2011 Posted in Business 10 Comments

Contention != Trolling

By Ben Kepes

I’ve been blogging now for around five years. In that time I’ve published about 2500 posts and gathered 4000 or so comments. Prior to blogging I wrote freelance for magazines and the odd newspaper. I’ve also sent out around 26000 missives on Twitter in the past few years – so

Tagged , , , , , |
May 3, 2011 Posted in Business 2 Comments

vCita–Helping Freelancers

By Ben Kepes

Part of the new economy seems to involve a lot of people doing freelance work, often remotely and generally on a case-by-case basis. I know I fall into that class and it seems that a huge number of the people I converse with on Twitter are also. One of the

Tagged , |
April 1, 2011 Posted in Business 4 Comments

The Flip Side of an API Economy

By Ben Kepes

I spend a lot of time talking about the amazing value that connected applications can bring. The thing that powers this value is the humble API – the little widget that sits between disparate applications and allows them to make magic. But all is not happy in API land, GigaOm

Tagged , , , , , |
March 18, 2011 Posted in Business 2 Comments

Twitter, 140 Characters, or More?

By Ben Kepes

Recently TweetDeck introduced support for Deck.ly, a feature that allows users to post messages longer than the 140 character twitter limit. The move was something of an experiment in monetization as the link to the expanded tweet takes users to a specific web page which TweetDeck is then able to

Tagged , , , , |
February 18, 2011 Posted in Business 3 Comments

Service-now Goes Social

By Ben Kepes

Service-now is just announcing their Winter 2011 release and, true to the trend du jour, their ITSM offering is chock full of social features. I’ve written about Service-now, a SaaS for enterprise IT management vendor, previously. With this release, they’re trying to jump on a bandwagon given that ultimate of

Tagged , , , , |
January 7, 2011 Posted in Business 4 Comments

Quora’s Uptake Velocity, and Unintended Consequences

By Ben Kepes

I’ve spent a few days thinking about the seemingly rapid rise of Q&A site Quora. While a great case study for the value that utilizing Cloud infrastructure can bring, my thoughts are more about the speed at which Quora seems to have become the property du jour. I only started

Tagged , , , , |
November 23, 2010 Posted in Business 2 Comments

Twitter’s Firehose, A Missed Opportunity or a Savvy Move?

By Ben Kepes

I was in the front rows last week when Twitter and Gnip co-announced at the defrag conference that Gnip would be selling 50% of all the messages posted to Twitter for $360,000 per year, or 5% of all messages for $60,000 per year. Marshall covered the new fully over on

Tagged , , , , |
September 20, 2008 Posted in Business, Design, Efficiency, IT, SaaS, SocialMedia, The Cloud, Web x.0 2 Comments

Joining the microblogging legions….

By Ben Kepes

Legions of different applications that is… At the recent Techcrunch50, Twitter-for-enterprise startup Yammer took out the top prize. I was interested to read a post by Bernard a couple of days later where he uncharacteristically lashed the decision. Basically Bernard calls Yammer a "me too" offering that offers little that

Tagged , , |
August 14, 2008 Posted in Business, Design, IT, SaaS, Strategy, Web x.0 3 Comments

Could this be a way for Twitter to monetise?

By Ben Kepes

Twitter has just switched off SMS notification of messages to users outside the US, India and Canada, citing concerns about the costs involved in providing the service. The Twitterverse has gone mad with complaints – especially in the UK where they tend to whine assert their perspective more readily. I’ve

Tagged , |
August 14, 2008 Posted in Business, Collaboration, SocialMedia, Society 2 Comments

When you speak in the village square…

By Ben Kepes

Background: Individual A sent a friend an "@" prefixed tweet asking for advice. A company doing a general twitter search picked up the message and sent a message to individual A offering their services to help. Individual A spat the dummy claiming he was the recipient of spam, his privacy

Tagged |

The Author

Ben Kepes is an analyst, an entrepreneur, a commentator and a business adviser. His business interests include a diverse range of industries from manufacturing to property to technology. As a technology commentator he has a broad presence both in the traditional media and extensively online. Ben covers the convergance of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users. More on Ben

Subscribe to the Blog

 Subscribe - Posts for all authors

Enter your email address and we'll send our posts to you: