Yovav (Jay) Meydad's Personal Blog

Since the first Twitter clients on the iPhone came out, I have tried many of them. Eventually I picked TwitterFon and when the Pro version was released I immediately upgraded to it. I find the feature set rich, it is very easy to use and has overall good stability and performance.

But as a long time user of TweetDeck’s desktop client, when I read that an iPhone version was just released, I thought to give it a try.

Well, I must say that TweetDeck for iPhone still has a long way to go before it becomes my preferred twitter client on the iPhone. Here are a few reasons why based on a 5 minutes usages:

• The app is not stable at all. In 5 minutes it crashed 5 times on me. In one of the cases, after a crash I had to try 3 times before the apps actually worked
• Strange error message indicating that I am not connected to the internet appeared while I was on Wifi kept appearing (see gallery below)
• The app does not seem to have a local cache of draft messages. If the app crash while you type a tweet, after restart you will have to start all over again!
• If you type in a tweet and then attach to it a photo, your tweet message will disappear and gets replaced by the link to the photo. Ugh!
• Search is not easily accessible. A few steps are required before you can do that which makes search a feature for power users only. First you need to add a new column called “Twitter Search” and set its initial search tern. Then whenever you want to actually edit the search term you have to: (a) navigate to the search column (b) click on the column settings wheel (c) change the search term. However, on TwitterFon search is a main function that is always visible at the bottom bar which makes it very easy to modify a search term
• Too many times and extra click is required:
  • TweetDeck opens by default in the column preview mode and it forces you to hit another time a column in order to make it use all screen area. IMHO, this should not be the default logic as for most user the Friends column is what they want to read most of the times when the app loads. Better usage of the 80%-20% rule would help here
  • When viewing a streem of tweets, you can not just click on a link that was tweeted to open it. You first need to open a specific tweet in a large preview mode and only then the link becomes live
• Last personal preference is the UI color. I prefer a light and bright app

On the positive site, TweetDeck has some features that I wish could be added to TwitterFon like:

• Growl integration – those little notification icons that float at the upper left corner whenever there is a new update
• QuickFollow button which lets you quickly type in a user name and follow

It is interesting to see how the battle to be the most popular twitter client is accelerating. But for now, I stick with TwitterFon Pro as my preferred Twitter client for the iPhone.

For a detailed comparison check out this great post.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

In the last year I have seen several house ads running on the AdSense network, promoting different Google services such as Chrome, Picasa and Google Analytics. But today while reading TechCrunch, I saw for the first time an ad targeted to acquire new advertisers.

I wonder if that is a response to the fact Microsoft AdCenter came out of beta recently or to the Bing launch, a search engine that I highly recommend using.

BTW, does anyone know if (and how much) Google pays publishers when visitors clicks on these house ads and take action (download picasa or chrome, sign up for analytics or as advertisers)?

google-house-ad-adwords

A few days ago, my wife asked me to create a new brochure for her birth doula business. A quick search in my gmail inbox took me to VistaPrint’s website where I quickly completed the design process and ordered new brochures.

The last time we used VistaPrint was two or three years ago. My wife created business cards using their service and I remembered a fair experience. Since then, for a couple of years, VistaPrint has been sending me all sorts of promotional emails several times a week. Most people think that these folks are pretty good at spamming their customers, but I think differently. Probably because at my previous role as VP of Products at Spark Networks one of my team’s responsibilities was email marketing, and I know how complex email marketing campaigns and systems could become. And so, when I look at these types of things it is not from a regular users prespective.

In a nutshell, VistaPrints email marketing efforts are great for:

• They have dozens of campaigns running simultaneously. There is an offer for everyone.
• There is a clear connection between the offer received via email and the website experience. Emails are always tied to promotion codes.
• Emails are being sent several times every week. VistaPrint never drops the ball and ensures they are always on your mind. Or at least in your inbox.
• VistaPrint also offers personalized emails with dynamic content based on customers status. For example, if you start a project and then leave in the middle without completing it, within less than 24 hours you will get an email, that contains a preview of your current work and an additional discount. Just come back and complete the project. This is not that trivial when done at large scale.

I think that what VistaPrint is doing is pretty impressive for an eMarketer, and anyone who has an email marketing component in his marketing activities should look into them and learn.

The only negetive thing I could say is that as a customer you have to pay for everything on their site (very good for their business though), including for a PDF version of the file designed. So, I just waited for the shipping to arrive and last night I scanned the brochure and uploaded it.

My wife likes the result and so do I. And so, if you live in the greater Los Angeles area, San Fernando valley or Ventura county and looking for a birth doula or a private prenatal yoga instructor, you should check her brochure (below) and website – BirthSpeak