I’ve compiled this list of folks in the racing and automotive industry who I was able to find on Twitter. If you think I’ve missed someone, please message me @giberti or leave it in the comments below. This post was last updated January 8, 2009.

1. @AdamDenison (Adam Denison) PR guy at Chevrolet
2. @alliancecars We hope this tool will help you know a few of the cars that are available to see immediately. Things change very fast though so always call before coming.
3. @Alicia_at_Honda American Honda Motor Co. corporate communications staffer, all things Honda and digital media enthusiast.
4. @AuctionDirect (Eric Miltsch) Perfecting the online used car industry
5. @auto123 The Canadian Automotive Network
6. @autoblog from autoblog.nl
7. @autoblogrss from autoblog.com
8. @AutoDefense (William D. Ferreira) Former Automotive Technician now soon to be Attorney – Specailizing in Automotive Defense Law, From Mechanic’s Liens to Administrative Defense
9. @autoinsane News & Reviews for the Certified Car Nut
10. @autoline John McElroy and the Autoline team provide insider analysis and perspective on the Automotive industry.
11. @automart Internet’s top dealer-only website looking to help Twitterers in their car shopping experience!
12. @AutomotiveParts Syd’s Eastside sells used recycled, remanufactured and new aftermarket parts for American autos, trucks & equipment.
13. @AutoPromoCenter Acquire the best car lease deals from all So Cal car dealers & allow car shoppers to find & compare car lease deals. No personal info needed.
14. @autorevo AutoRevo CEO
15. @bentoboxx (Joe Neuburger) The most Un-Hip Guy in Hollywood…and I like it that way!
16. @bmwblog BMWBlog is the house for all the bimmer related news, stories and photos.
17. @bobbychuck Exploring correlations between social media and NASCAR marketing
18. @bushautoblog (Adam Bush) Bush’s Auto Blog is an automotive website devoted to bringing you the latest car news and reviews daily. Clean, concise, unbiased and entertaining.
19. @CARandDRIVER Car and Driver is the worldwide leader in providing objective test results and expert vehicle reviews, and it’s here that you can get the inside scoop.
20. @carbase Dealer website vendor, automotive SEO
21. @CarConnection TheCarConnection.com is the Web’s Automotive Authority, offering a complete editorial source for news and reviews, shopping guides, tips and more
22. @CarMagazineNews
23. @CarMaxChris PR guy learning my way in a New Media world
24. @cars Automotive news from DriversDrive.com.
25. @Carscoop Blog about cars
26. @carsetcinc Let us know how we can improve the used car buying experience. Give us your opinion, good, bad or ugly, we want to hear it!
27. @CarVideos Compiliation of awesome car videos from the internet
28. @dealexpert (Eric Pederson) Less linear, tastes great. Now trending good hearted swerve
29. @DerekRoss (Derek Ross) Motorsports Entrepreneur – Racing Subject Matter Expert
30. @desertdingo
31. @driftermama I am a mother of a 5 yr old lil girl and a fiance to a funny guy.. I run a few websites, work at JCPenney, do freelance web design, and am a student soon
32. @driverside Because owning a car is hard, we want to make it easy.
33. @EasyAutoSales Online automotive classified service
34. @edmunds Edmunds.com – empowering the automotive consumer. All about cars, news, pricing, research.
35. @eGMCarTech A blog dedicated to providing our visitors with the latest and most reliable news on the automotive industry along with reviews and live coverage of auto shows
36. @egonitron (Chris Burdick)
37. @EngineDemocracy Representing the more than six million Americans who depend on good U.S. jobs from a strong and healthy domestic auto industry
38. @F1
39. @FemaleRacing All the latest news regarding females in motorsports
40. @FordCustService (Michael Mc Elhone) We’re here to help. Click the link to submit comments or questions about our products & services. This account is run by Michael Mc Elhone, analyst at Ford.
41. @FordMustang Celebrating 45 years in the fast lane.
42. @FordRacing (Susan Pollack) PR person for Ford Racing. Giving you all the latest and greatest updates in the world of Ford Racing
43. @FordTrucks Durability, towing, hauling & fuel efficiency – the 2009 F-150 has it all. It’s Built Ford Tough.
44. @george_s The PR guy at General Motors of Canada, and I love cars… what a combo!
45. @GMblogs (Robyn, Lesley, Wendy, Nuria, and sometimes Adam) the official stream from GM
46. @gmtruckclub DFW based but World Wide Chevy & GMC Truck Club
47. @gravlguts Cars, cars and more cars!
48. @GriotsGarage Griot’s Garage is the premiere source for auto enthusiasts, car care perfectionists, and garage dwellers everywhere.
49. @GTChannel Cars, cars, cars. GTChannel is all about professionally produced car videos on racing, drifting, testing, impressions and battles.
50. @h2cardadvocate (Greg Blencoe) CEO of Hydrogen Discoveries, Inc. Check out the “For hydrogen advocates only” blog above to learn about how hydrogen fuel cell cars will solve the oil crisis.
51. @hondagrrl (Brandy S) Veteran automotive journalist blogging about family, cars, and travel
52. @HorsepowerHeels (Erica Ortiz) Drag Racing Gal taking on the big boys at 200+mph
53. @ImportRPM
54. @IndyCarSeries News Updates and more. Unofficial Twitter. Made from fan to fan.
55. @insideline_com Scott Oldham, Editor in Chief of Inside Line, the greatest automotive web site in the universe.
56. @jalopnik Jalopnik loves cars. Secret cars, concept cars, flying cars, vintage cars, tricked-out cars, red cars, black cars, blonde cars — sometimes, cars just because o
57. @jeepreviews (Garrett) Internet marketer and Jeep owner since 1995. My current Jeep is a 1998 TJ w/ 4″ lift, 33s, lockers, & some other trinkets. Tell me about YOUR Jeep!
58. @jill_anne (Jill Anne) I’m a girl who writes about cars for a living.
59. @JoeSimpson (Joseph Simpson) Writer, designer, social observer. Focus is cars, auto industry, mobility and cities
60. @kelleybluebook Official Kelley Blue Book Twitter. The leading website for New Car Prices, Used Car Prices, Blue Book Values, Car Reviews & Videos
61. @KickingTires (David Thomas) Journalist/Blogger at cars.com
62. @kitcars (James Martell) Publisher of KitCarConnection.com and site devoted to kit car aficionados.
63. @LawMotors Sioux Falls Used Car Dealership. Offering sound-proof cars at thousands below others. Internet is Internet.
64. @lessoctane
65. @leeTrans I am a car nut with gasoline running through my veins. I am the CEO of a exclusive auto transport co.
66. @mark_atkinson (Mark Atkinson) Automotive journalist who loves driving them as much as I do writing about them. Also a real video game geek, although marriage
67. @michaelbanovsky (Michael Banovsky) Auto journalist / writer / photographer extraordinaire
68. @MissMotorMouth (Michelle Naranjo) Likes cars, dogs & people. In that order. <- in fire save in reverse.
69. @motorphilia (Aaron Manley Smith) Philosopher, Artist, Business Owner, Rouge Evangelist, Theological Anarchist, and working hard to make the world better for you.
70. @MotorTorque I am an online automotive site based in the UK. I also like SEO, SMM and green stuff.
71. @mpgomatic (Daniel Gray) where mileage matters …
72. @MustangEvo (Brent Wilson) MustangEvolution – Ford Mustang Community
73. @nascarinsider The dynamic duo, giving readers the inside on all things NASCAR. Feel free to drop us a question or comment!
74. @oneighturbo Your #1 site for all things VW, Audi and Porsche!
75. @OutDrive OutDrive – Autos with a twist
76. @PriceMParts Your Performance is Our Priority
77. @RaceDrive Motorsport directory
78. @RaceRemote RaceRemote Motorsports Media Network
79. @redracer (Kevin Kennedy) Racin’ (PR) and baseball (fan) Fool. EVP at PCGCampbell Marketing and Communications
80. @ridestory Love talking and writing about cars.
81. @ScottDeYager (Scott DeYager) Leading the social media efforts for Toyota in North America.
82. @ScottMonty (Scott Monty) Head of Social Media at Ford Motor Company
83. @SpeedFreaks Motorsports Radio & TV. REDEFINED.
84. @sportscar The lifestyle website for vintage, sports and collector car enthusiasts.
85. @StarAuto (Jim Even) Service manager at Star Auto Authority in suburban Chicago. Your vehicle service experts. Photography guru. Love to cook. Alpaca farmer wanna be.
86. @stergios Car Information Junky
87. @suzukiofwichita Fast, Fun, Stress-Free Car Shopping…
88. @TeslaMotors The official Tesla twitter
89. @tg_news Car News from Top Gear Magazine
90. @therealautoblog We obsessively cover the auto industry
91. @toyotanewsroom Official Tweets from Toyota USA
92. @volvo1800 Very into Moto Guzzis, Aermacchis, MG Midgets + now, again, after many years Volvo 1800s
93. @VolvoXC60 Meet the car that stops itself! The New Volvo XC60 is on the “From Sweden With Löv” Tour.
94. @wreckedmagazine The best magazine/website about Drifting on the Internet

Names and descriptions taken from Twitter profiles.

UPDATE: 12/23 – BIG thank you to @MissMotorMouth for the great list of folks to add.

This last year I’ve become increasingly aware of smallish media companies, one or two employees, that seem to be trying to eek out a living by simply commenting on social media trends, this blog occasionally included. I’m not sure how much of this is due to new companies sprouting up or just my own awareness and understanding of the marketspace. The question for me becomes how many sources can cover the same news? Main stream media often takes a bias slant on stories, covering politics or other topics from a conservative, liberal, centrist, libertarian or whatever slant. The coverage of the social media space is far to narrow and doesn’t often lead to differentiation based on ideologies.

Regardless, I think we’re reaching gluttonous proportions and are in danger of becoming an echo chamber, described by Shel Isreal and Robert Scoble in Naked Conversations. Social media is definitely a huge portion of the future technology scene right now and it deserves coverage – but I think we’re covering it too much. I’m watching multiple blogs cover the same news within a few minutes of each other and that’s the part that scares me.

Consider the following post from Facebook about birthday notifications. It was picked up by Inside Facebook with commentary on how it may impact applications providing similar services as did TechCrunch and allfacebook. The saddest part is that none of them are adding additional value. None of the coverage is ground breaking or adds any real value to the experience.

Want more proof? When the fbFund winners were announced it was picked up by nearly every site covering Facebook news. This is actually news worthy, thousands of dollars are being given away! However, with coverage like FaceReviews near regurgitation of Facebook’s announcement and list of winners, I’d say we’re in danger of becoming spam sites. Thankfully some sites are actually reporting on the apps and adding value to the conversation.

I suspect we’ll be seeing consolidation of these blogs soon as those sites that add value stay afloat in troubling times and the others either switch focus to their real strengths or wither and die.

Mobsters, Likeness, Top Friends, Super Wall, Own Your Friends, Bumper Stickers, Movies and Poker – this is just a sampling of the highest engagement applications on Facebook and MySpace. What these applications all have in common is a mass market appeal. They are general enough that just about everyone can find something cute or fun about these applications for at least a day or two. The applications measure success in installs, page views and virility. However, another classification of application, specific to much smaller audiences, is emerging as a stronger player in the application space which requires a different measurement separate than the categorical classification that application developers can choose to place themselves in.

The goal of these other applications is not monetize via CPC, CPM or CPI advertising, nor to be bought by the large application shops RockYou, Slide, Zynga or SGN. Instead, these applications exist primarily to provide a service to their users. These applications will fail when measured using the traditional methods of installs, daily active users and day over day growth. The audiences are much too small. They require a new metric to measure their success. Success within this category isn’t reaching 22%¹ of Facebook’s user base. Success for these applications is defined as increased affinity for a product, service or company. It needs to be measured and reported differently.

This might be measurable through acquisitions, loyalty, usage or retention. Using Twitter as an example, it’s certainly capable of becoming a mainstream product, but hasn’t reached mainstream adoption – at least not yet. Twitter currently reaches an estimated 2.2 million users a month². It’s regarded by some as having moved beyond the early adopters³ and easing into the early majority on the technology adoption lifecycle. The Twitter application launched May 25th along with the Facebook platform. It currently boasts 64.5K monthly users of which is hardly chart topping – in fact, it’s really quite dismal – it’s not even one of the top 500 applications. What the application does though is provide enhanced user experience by integrating status updates between the two sites.

The Twitter application is valued by Adonomics at approximately $105K. However, this number means nothing! The goal of the application isn’t to sell it or even monetize the traffic. Even the overall ranking of the application is irrelevant. A better way to measure the ROI of the application is to measure the interaction and retention. This metric that can accurately quantified by answering a series of questions.

1. Does the application impact the retention and interaction of users for Twitter?
2. Does the application increase usage of Twitter?
3. What overlap in the userbase exists between Facebook and Twitter?

Lacking quantitative data from Facebook and Twitter, you’ll have to settle for my observations.

Does the application impact the retention and interaction of users for Twitter? Yes. I suspect if we could peek into Twitter’s database, we’d see that interactions for users continue for longer periods if they’ve installed the Facebook application. Why do I think this? Read on…

Does the application increase usage of Twitter? Yes. I know from personal experience that I’ve continued using Twitter longer than I had expected to because of the integration. At times I’ve used it only as a status update tool. Sending a SMS or using a phone specific tool is easier than the mobile facebook application available for my phone. Other times I use it as a conversational tool. The main point here – I continue to use it.

What overlap in the user base exists between Facebook and Twitter? Again, this is an estimate but nearly 100%⁴ of the people I follow on Twitter have Facebook accounts. However, only about 20% of my friends on Facebook have (or use) a Twitter account. While Twitter clearly has the potential to be a mainstream tool, it doesn’t have the presence that a MySpace or Facebook does.

The Twitter application likely has positive reprecusions for Facebook as well. By integrating the status update directly from Twitter, Facebook continues to get more content contributing to the “virtuous cycle of sharing” Mark Zuckerberg spoke about at F8 ‘08. Wouldn’t this classify the application as a success? As of this writting, Twitter doesn’t have an official application for MySpace. I expect we’ll see if MySpace allows applications to update the users status.

The question remains, how can we take these difficult to obtain numbers such as audience overlap and integrate it with the more available metrics? We need a metric that holistically evaluates an application. Measuring mass alone is no longer sufficient to define success. I propose they’re measured by interactions, retention and perception. Mix into that formula monthly reach and install and we’ll be able to arrive at a value that more accurately ranks and sorts applications on the whole.

¹ Slide FunSpace reached 22.3 million Facebook users according to the monthly active user count on September 5, 2008

² Compete reports 2,218,330 visitors to Twitter.com in July of 2008.

³ Robert Scoble stated April 9, 2008, “Anyone who joins Twitter after today is not an early adopter. So, not interesting for me to follow.”

⁴ Conducted using PollDaddy and an analysis of people I follow.

This morning I decided to follow TheOnion on twitter. I love how TheOnion is leveraging twitter, effectively to reinforce their brand. Much to my surprise I received a direct message shortly there after…

i suppose we should thank u for following us, but do the gods thank man for his dutiful sacrifices? we’re watching you.

When I finished the Facebook version of Muddl, it was clear the game wasn’t sufficiently viral to draw big traffic on it’s own, it needed a little boost. Zynga was present at GSP East and talked about their game network that developers could join for free in a link exchange type format. I’d heard about it before and even looked at it for a different application I work on — I signed up to give it a whirl. Since I’m not one to put all of my eggs in one basket I also looked at the game bar from SGN as well — here’s what I found. (more…)

This week at GSP East the big names in the OpenSocial space came forward and basically gave a brief sales pitch on why they’re the platform to build on. Allen Stern has a nice synopsis of the panel. As a developer making decisions on where to focus time and efforts it seems like OpenSocial itself is really just playing catchup to Facebook. Most of the development folks I know are focused on Facebook still and are waiting for OpenSocial. The philosophical discussion aside, OpenSocial is looking stronger and stronger each day. Facebook recently open sourced their platform, but they’ve yet to announce any partners (beyond Bebo) who are adopting it. So their late foray into openness may be moot now.

2007 Facebook launched their platform. Quickly applications were built that leveraged the communication tools on the Platform and apps became viral. Virility for developers isn’t a bad thing. Virility means users, it means page views, it means eye balls, it means investment dollars. As we prepare to close Q2 in 2008 – Facebook is clamping down the communication channels open to applications. Slide has said publicly that they will stop creating “viral” apps and focus on generating good content and monetizing the massive audience they’ve amassed. Early 2008 MySpace followed suit releasing an OpenSocial platform. Their strategy was to allow no viral channels to applications at launch (although they are slowing opening the valves). This effectively crippled applications that didn’t have nice hooks.

So as I’m sitting at Graphing Social Patterns East this week, listening to speakers discussing the future of this industry it makes me wonder. Is this the year where applications that actually “do” something will succeed? What is the measure of success for these non-mass adoption applications? Will the money flow to these smaller more niche audience applications? My prediction for this year is that with the launch of applications on LinkedIn and more of the social networking platforms is that applications that provide real value beyond the “poke” type applications will succeed. The only question that remains, will the money be there to support the developers as they venture out into this brave new world?

OpenSocial, a group effort to create a widget platform spear headed by Google, has a few glitches that I’d love to see fixed. They are largely comparison items from Facebook, who has recently announced that it will open source it’s own platform. Regardless of the motivation, there are a couple of items I’d like to see ported from Facebook to OpenSocial.

1. Support for FBML like syntax: “Hold on a second! Standard HTML is the benefit of OpenSocial over Facebook” folks are probably thinking. While that’s true, without an effective way to capture and store user information for more than 24 hours (pesky terms of service documentation) developers are left querying for friends pictures etc over and over and over again. While this isn’t inherently a problem, if you wanted to display a 1,000 profile pictures for some unknown reason, you need to call the API a large number of times. Then generate the HTML and pass it to the client. This makes applications painfully slow. It’s great to store the numeric id (12345678) and be able to pass it back to the pre-client for parsing. The best examples are and . These really are very handy.
2. Support for FQL like syntax: OpenSocial does a great job of providing methods for gathering most of the information you would want from the social graph, but it’s lacking in the ability to remix the data in new and interesting ways (easily). OpenSocial requires all of the heavy lifting to be done on the client (or the application backend if their API allows it). Most clients have a reasonable limit as to how big data structures can effectively be and have the application still function. Processing on the applications infrastructure negates another advantage of OpenSocial which is requiring very little in the way of hardware to operate.

There are also some learnings here for Facebook. I’d like to see a few OpenSocial conventions ported from OpenSocial to Facebook.

1. OAuth Signature: To be fair, Facebook does provide signed requests, but it would be great if they’d use a standards based signature instead of their own homegrown version.
2. External JavaScript Libraries: Facebook’s FBJS is powerful and provides most functionality that developers need. It’s even been open sourced so it can be used outside of the Facebook universe. However, developers who’ve been working with jQuery, ProtoType or any of the other numerous javascript libraries have to start at the beginning again. Additionally, they may be missing the functionality in the FBJS library that they need.

Both platforms still have a ways to go in terms of making developers life’s easier and users application experiences more robust. I think it’s great news that Facebook is opening their platform more. It’s really more symbolic than anything, because they still ultimately control what they do or do not implement on their platform. Bebo is the only other social network using Facebook’s model and it still requires some re-writing for developers because of syntax difference and lack of some features.

Data portability has been a hot topic as of late. What I think everyone has neglected to consider is who owns which bits of data. For example, my email address is mine. I choose to give it out to friends, family, associates that I want to be able to contact me. That doesn’t, however, mean that it’s also theirs to use how they see fit.

For example, if you’re my friend and you wish to download your social graph to port it to Hi5, Ning or somewhere else, you should be able to do that. However, that doesn’t mean you can take my email, phone, physical address etc with you. What needs to be preserved is our association, not my data. This could be achieved by a public identity such as OpenId and a UUID value tied to each user – ideally the solution would be easier to create so even my mother could do it. Conversely, your data should be able to be ported to the new network without interference from Facebook, MySpace or anyone else.

What makes this discussion difficult is shared property. Consider a tagged photo on Facebook for a minute. I’ve taken the photo which includes you. To make it more complicated, let’s say you tag yourself in the photo. I still own the photograph, it’s even protected under US Copyright law should I choose to exert my rights. But you’re in it – and you want to use it as a profile picture… what to do? This type of shared relationship requires permission in my opinion. Since we’re friends, you know if I’m likely to grant you permission or not when you ask. This process could easily be automated. This could even be automated to the less vague bits of information such as contact information (email, phone, address etc).

Today marks a milestone for my Twitter usage. I tweeted my 1,000th tweet. What does that mean exactly, well, honestly not very much. However, as I scanned over the last 2-3 hours of tweets when I woke up this morning I noticed the increasing number of flame wars between thought leaders in technology frustrating. A feed of 20-30 tweets might contain 5-6 messages back and forth between folks who are in some sort of pissing contest about who’s right, wrong, cool or whatever.

It’s kind of sad.

As everyone struggles to really figure out how to effectively use Twitter it becomes hard to determine the best method for leveraging the technology effectively. I’ve been using it to keep up on industry insiders thoughts (which is probably why I get so much noise and childish banter in my feed). Others use it as initially intended, to tell folks what they’re doing and yet more for shameless self promotion.

I’d love to see more quality information from the industry visionaries who could all take a lesson from @jowyang and @guykawasaki and less banter about who’s right and who’s wrong. Guy and Jeremiah, and I’m sure many others, somehow keep above the fray and still add value to my Twitter experience.