http://www.viraloptingenerator.com/index.php

This script is different to Optin Accelerator in a number of ways

• The script is hosted 100% on your server
• No subscription fee
• It doesn’t “send home” any date, so it is 100% your responsibility

In theory that makes it almost exactly the same as the scripts used by the big boys of Web2.0 though their servers are less likely to conk out the first time someone with 200 contacts in Gmail uses the script if you are on shared or even most reseller hosting. You would probably have problems on most virtual servers as well.
I don’t know if the service can be configured to use a 3rd party SMTP, whether it uses sendmail, phpmailer, or swiftmailer.

If you are a smart programmer, picking this up might give you a few ideas, but remember

• It is still against the published ToS of Aweber
• You are still encouraging people to do something that is unsafe if running an internet business
• Legal liability – it is you sending the emails – in some ways I would be worried about the claims on the sales letter that it doesn’t keep a record – if you are sending emails there is always a record somewhere, though you are best advised to keep a record of every email you send anywhere.
• The script needs to be maintained for updates – maybe it will be updated over time, but best to allow for programming time to keep it working.
• The Plaxo option is free, and maybe safer

I have thought a little more about the suggestion Aweber make about forwarding emails – that is actually unsafe for most email lists, because many readers will also forward unsubscription information. What happens if they forward it when you are price testing? Forwarding effectively encourages public posting.
Maybe it is better to mail the person sending when they use a standard TAF with a letter encouraging they forward that to friends and also the message that goes to their friends.

It is still TAF though, so check with your email service provider.

There are lots of posts about how wonderful it is, or pointless but very few delving into some of the flaws or missing features. I know they have support and feedback on Google Groups… but I hate Google Groups, and the feedback from the groups isn’t necessarily making it out into the blogosphere.

I am going to keep this a little shorter than normal, I am working with Blogcatalog who have a couple of competing features (their dashboard and activity widget) thus it wouldn’t be fair to delve into this too much.

• It seems to take forever for FriendFeed to update StumbleUpon (8+ hrs) – that is forever in Social Bookmarking and news
• Stumbleupon reviews are not included with the listings, though for some reason Delicious bookmark descriptions are imported as comments
• Whilst the friend suggestion interface is great, reciprocating 40+ friendships of people who have just joined is just an impossible task – I need to see who hasn’t been friended yet, and some nice Ajax to reduce page loads to a minimum (Mixx has this similar terrible problem)
• How many people are actually following me? There doesn’t even seem to be an obvious total count.
• Not storing username and password just isn’t enough – I honestly hate any application that thinks it is ok to share Google account details – do you really want to give them access to your private email, Adsense and Adwords account? For ex-Googlers to think this is OK is extremely perplexing, or even worrying

However my biggest gripe with it, which some people seem to love is the way it takes away part of the conversation from the original source. Duncan highlighted this FriendFeed flaw very well today (warning strong language)

if I want to participate in a conversation about a blog post or similar content, I’ll leave a comment on that blog, not a third party app, because if someone writes something worthy of conversation, they should have first call on the conversation, unless of course the topic is one that requires a blog post in itself.

And going on to express this even stronger

Correct, I didn’t “like” anything because when I want to comment on an item, I’ll do it at the source, like the vast majority of people would. If it’s a Tweet I’ll reply on Twitter. If it’s a blog post, I’ll leave a comment. Why the f#$% would I want to use a third party service? Why the f#$% would I want to comment on a Tweet on FriendFeed? Or is it that I should just because he says so? Pass the bong…

I agree with Duncan

I am not sure how someone will achieve this, but what is needed if commenting is included in Lifestream services is a way to respond in the medium of choice or origin, and that includes responding to blog comments, but Lifestream applications are never going to be able to keep up with the speed of conversation on blogs, or Twitter.

You effectively create a comment echo chamber, and fragmented conversations often with people not even reading the original content.

For a content producer that causes major problems.

Fav.or.it may be the answer, in private beta -I generally don’t sign up for private betas in areas Blogcatalog could be potentially working on, even if I am not aware of it which is quite frequently.

Don’t Expect Me To Respond To Comments On FriendFeed

It might seem anti-social or against the ethos of social media, but as Brian Solis explained, my account on FriendFeed isn’t actually intended for me.

It’s not about you per se. It’s about those who enjoy following your activity online. And yes, there are many tools that do this, but at the end of the day, why not make it easier for people to connect with you using the tools that they’re most comfortable with.

New Social Neworks?

I haven’t looked at Social Thing yet, Read Write Web compares them both – honestly the only service that will get all my passwords is a desktop application, and even then it will be encrypted on my HD.

FriendFeed use a secure page (probably need account to view page) for providing your account data – they know it is sensitive – why would you share it with them?

Lumpy Porridge

When I was a kid I hated lumps in my porridge, I suppose that has never changed.

Whilst writing this post, FriendFeed finally caught up with my Stumbleupon submissions, but they are provided as “clumps” of posts and updates unless there has been specific FriendFeed activity on the item, such as a comment or someone “likes” and item.

I am aware that they are having difficulty with access restrictions to 1000s of feeds on the various services, and this will represent a scalability problem, especially with the new influx of users.

This occurs in every interface – online, Facebook, email daily broadcast, iGoogle – they are choosing what I should see at a glance

MyBlogLog API & Blogcatalog API & Social Graph API

When I visit any of these aggregation services, they don’t know who I am, and who my friends are. The best they can currently manage is to use Facebook, and in fact Facebook is currently the best way to add friends to FriendFeed.

MyBlogLog and Blogcatalog know who you are – using a combination of what you have defined within your profiles, and possibly using Google’s Social Graph API a lot more is possible, allowing you to collate friends from multiple services.

Note:Plaxo is meant to do something using the Social Graph API, so when creating an account I added my MyBlogLog Profile which provides tons of data, and to be honest with recursive use of the API it should be able to find a number of profiles, blogs etc.

Privacy advocates might think I am odd, but when I arrive at a new service, I just want it to have all my public data available, that can be reasonably obtained. I don’t want to have to provide private data such as passwords.

No one has quite got things right yet, more on Techmeme