Posts tagged “facebook”

Zero Minutes Per Week on Facebook — Nov 15, 2021
I noticed that Facebook has a way of letting you know how badly you are addicted to their website. In the process I learned that I spent zero minutes on their website this week, and one minute last week. I do not spend time on their website because it fails to provide me with a community that I want to interact with on a daily basis. There are a number of reasons for this but the key reason is that they spent so much effort trying to make the timeline more addictive that they made it repulsive....
Zero Minutes Per Week on Facebook — Nov 15, 2021
richard - Nov 1, 2021...
Why i dislike how people use Facebook. — Dec 14, 2007
Facebook was a great idea. It was great because it was an online method by which to meet people within your network and to get to know them before you drop by the bar. It was especially good for those who are shy. As more people started using it though something bad happened. Mid and late adopters started using the website. In itself this is a great thing because it means that you can find man friends and communicate with them. It was a way of re-creating connections with people you haven’t seen in a decade or more. The drawback comes when people are used to it and have added their friends. They want something new and they go to applications, they want more features and so the api mentality was applied hence the fun wall, zombie biting and more. The drawback is that when you’ve got twenty friends you might reject the same request twenty times. When you’ve got five hundred you may reject it five hundred times. Another flaw is how people use facebook’s funwall and other wall application like they used e-mail before that. These people are sending out a huge amount of junk and it’s a problem. A problem that’s meant I use facebook far less. Why are people using a new form in such a bad way, Why are people using a social networking platform for nothing more than spreading rubbish? Is facebook no more than an advertiser’s paradise for giving us junk. Beacon generated a large quanitty of negative press as a result of what it was doing with user’s data. In some ways it’s as bad as television advertising and the freesheets. It’s got great potential but due to the lowest common denominator it’s no longer as interesting an application as it used to be. How long till we start getting spam via these networks. Is there a place for advertising on social networks. Are consumers not active seekers of information? I’m a blog reader. I skim through over four hundred rss items a day and I get a lot of information this way. I’m an active seeker of information that relates to my interests. As a result is there still the need for old media style advertising. Would not narrow casting and conversation generation become more interesting propositions. That’s what Chris Brogan writes about. It’s what Nik Butler of Loudmouthman is doing. That’s what Danacea of Forbidden Planet has to explore, along with many other companies. How, in an environment where people are reading more and more articles a day do you create brand awareness? How do you allow people to find out about your interests? Groups are one good way because they’re passive. You join a group, your friends see it and they may decide to join that group too, without you having to ask them to. The whole concept of inviting friends to open applications is counter productive to an enjoyble user experience on fa®cebook. Why use a network that generates more work than pleasure? Here’s a continuation of the discussion by Anne Zelenka of GigaOm....
Vanity fair is wrong to label Zuck as the top disruptor — Sep 9, 2015
Zuckerberg Tops Vanity Fair’s 2015 List of Disruptors Every successful social network first establishes a friendship network where a tight knit group of people interact with each other on a very frequent basis. In the case of facebook it was uni friends interacting with uni friends from the same campus. On twitter it was people in the same time zone conversing with people in the same city as themselves. It eventually led to face to face meetings and a new network of recognised friends. The same can be said of Seesmic when it was about “Join the Video conversation”. Notice my avatar… It’s the seesmic racoon. :-) Zuck wasn’t a disruptor or genius so much as the right person in the right place at the right time. Nothing he did was innovative. He just packaged it effectively. As a side note I have noticed that over a number of years the social aspect of twitter has suffered. It no longer feels like a social social network. it feels more like Google Reader. it’s amusing to see how social networks evolve and revolve from one type of network to another depending on what people want- Mark Zuckerberg Tops the 2015 New Establishment List"”and Snags the October Cover! I remember when there were dozens of RSS aggregators for the sharing and distribution of blog articles. Over time traditional sources used the same technology. Google Reader and Google News became good sources for getting news stories and information. Facebook and twitter, social networks, decided that conversations were a waste of time and so encouraged their networks to be used as news aggregators. Recently Facebook reached the billion user daily mark. Amusingly this happened when the social network is at it’s weakest. It’s Unique Selling Point, connecting friends, has been lost. I went back to blogging because I grew tired of the rubbish being shared on twitter, facebook and other social networks. For years I insisted that social networks were a great way of meeting new friends and finding new business opportunities but as everyone overdid it with followers so the conversation and personal connections decreased. In the article they state that “Facebook chairman and C.E.O.Mark Zuckerberg has struck deals with _The New York Times_and BuzzFeed to publish articles directly into users’ pages.” I don’t go to facebook for news. I use the NYtimes app, I use Google News, I use news360, scoopinion and other applications. I use the applications because I found the condescending and sensationalist tone used by facebook marketers was offensive. We are a generation of university graduates on a university social network being treated as if we were primary school students. I don’t appreciate it. I also don’t appreciate the multiple posting of the same articles and tweets in timelines both on twitter and facebook. In theory twitter is an app that you keep open and monitor throughout the day. If something has to be posted several times then congrats on having such a disengaged audience. ;-)....
Two million members for the London Network on Facebook. — Jan 8, 2008
There are now two million people who consider themselves to be part of the London network. It is currently the biggest network Facebook has to the best of my knowledge. I know it was the largest before and there’s a good chance it has remained so. That’s a lot of people. There are 117 events occuring just for today. There are almost a quarter of a million post on the group wall and the top three posted items are Clarkson’s story about bank pranks, Israeli girls and a crash on the m40. Now what would encourage so many people to join this facebook network. Are they all immigrants or students, are they people who have friends in this city so they decided to become part of the network. What does it mean from a social point of view? As i’ve mentioned there are 117 events for today, 165 for tomorrow, 161 the day after and so on. Does this mean that as a person London living in London I could get everything I want and need socially via what the London network is telling me is going on? Would I be able to fill an entire day with activities via this network? It could be interesting to try it and see what happens. Are you part of the London network? 116 of my friends are listed as such. How about you and your friends?...
Two million members for the London Network on Facebook. — Jan 8, 2008
Lewis - Jan 5, 2008...
To all facebook users please take this survey — Apr 12, 2007
For the purpose of the last assignment in my last module please take this survey on how you use facebook. Click here to take the Online Survey Thanks for your time and see you soon...
Threads and Europe — Jul 7, 2023
Yesterday Facebook, discguised as meta, and Meta, disguised as Instagram launched Threads. Threads is meant to be a twitter competitor. The paradox is that Facebook has always been a twitter competitor, and this has become more evident with every iteration of both social networks. It is paradoxical that Facebook would need threads, to compete with Twitter....
Threaded conversations and community — Dec 7, 2014
From the 1970s to 2007 we had threaded conversations through bulletin boards, forums, groups and other centralising discussion points. For a brief window of about two years conversations became so captivating that people wanted to meet in person as strong friendships were established. By 2009-2010 the threaded and personal conversations between web users was hijacked by “social media” marketers and so the speed of conversation and quality of interactions collapsed. In it’s place hashtags would replace user engagement with quick metrics. The golden age of conversation has been replaced by the dark ages of indifference. Every day that we spend online we see how disengaged people have become. Look at twitter. Do you still see user to user conversations. Look at Facebook. Do you still see engaging content and passionate conversations? I see a waste of time. The conversations which were taking place have been replaced by dumbed down headlines and sensationalist content. For several years we have heard about how corporations should not have access to our data because of what they will do with it. From where I am surfing the web and interacting with the online community I see a more serious problem. I see that as the chance of individual to individual conversations has decreased so the quality of shared articles, videos and other content has been dumbed down. This is evident on Facebook and Twitter. These networks are becoming ghost towns. They have millions of user profiles that are slowly going dormant. That social media networks are going dormant is excellent. Instead of wasting time with Ello, Diaspora and other solutions I believe that going back to the blogging habit will benefit everyone. It is decentralised, it is interest based and it is long form. Through Worpdress.org tools, through Disqus and other solutions so our ability to connect and communicate is improved. It forces us to be positive and to be accountable. Everything that you share can contribute to your reputation and help share your passions. We should not be hidden behind silos and we should not be anonymous. We need to break the twitter and Facebook duopoly....
There Are Two Parts To The World Wide Web — Jul 23, 2007
the future of the web...
The twitter colour wars and sheep mentality — Mar 23, 2008
As if zombie slaying, vampire biting and sheep throwing weren’t enough the facebook lunacy has reached Twitter via Zefrank and the stupid colour wars. As if the conversation was not interesting and fulfilling enough for twitter users there is now a movement to create a colour war encouraging people to split into groups. I dislike this movement for a number of reasons. For a start it’s a complete waste of time because it does not require people to do anything in the physical world. Just change your avatar and you’ve participated. That’s similar to the zombie wars. As a second point it’s encouraging people to break into smaller clusters and groups, which although fun in certain situations where groups are too big is pointless on twitter. In particular I saw that for one colour the point was not to tweet but rather be tweeted at. Now why would you ask for people to remain silent when the whole reason behind twitter is status updates, firstly and conversations as a side effect of the first. When few people used hotmail it was clean and e-mails were worth reading but as chain letters arrived so the usability went down. When geocities became popular so pages became flooded with junk, same with myspace and later facebook. I really don’t want to see this junk making its way into the twitter stream. I spend too much time there to appreciate it. That’s why I won’t participate....
The twitter colour wars and sheep mentality — Mar 23, 2008
Nicole - Mar 3, 2008...
The twitter back channels — Feb 21, 2008
Twitter is one of those places that takes some time to get the hang of but once you do it’s going to suck you in and won’t spit you out till you’re exhausted. It’s a little bit like seesmic except that in this case you don’t look like you’re so in love with your computer that you’re talking to it. In reality twitter is just the surface of our interaction with the groups of friends we have met and made through this network. Twitter is first and foremost about short messages to say what you’re doing right now. Over time though it’s become much more. As more and more people started to use it so the want to comment on what people are doing increased. Overtime as more and more comments were made so conversations occured. These conversations are a little more complex than you may think. Initially conversations via instant messaging services like ICQ, Skype, Yahoo and others are about one to one communication. Twitter is about the overheard conversation. In other words as I’m talking to one person another person overhears what I’m saying and they want to join. Over time a community forms. Some call it the twitterverse, others the twittosphere, and some call us the twitterati. The result is the same. It’s a community of people based around twitter. They are for the most part involved in the social media although a growing number of people are “tourists”, in other words they’re looking at this social networking system or tool and seeing how they can apply it to their own lives and business practices. There’s another dimension. The invisible conversations that are taking place. With some people I have exchanged hundreds of messages in private, via direct messages. With other people it’s via google talk and in other cases via the skype chatrooms. In other words it’s a dynamic conversation across a number of instant messaging services. There are a number of uses. In some cases some conversations are too personal to have out in the open, with others the conversations are very focused and the community is a community through a skype chatroom or conference call. As a result there is a strong feel of belonging within certain communities. Seesmic is one website and over time a community that has profited greatly from twitter, and I mean in terms of the members of the community rather than the wealth generated. As people created videos so a link with the video title would appear. As the “Seesmic” tag appeared more and more so a buzz was generated to create interest. As more people were invited through friends using twitter so more interest grew. It was also a two channel conversation. One channel being twitter where short messages could be exchanged easily and the second channel video where opinions could be exchanged through visual means. Quite a few parties took place then. Many questions are also asked by those that use twitter. Some of these questions are easy to answer within 140 characters and a list of responses is left as a blog entry. It’s a quick method of getting a number of points of view efficiently. Occasionaly entire conversations come to life about a number of topics and multiple people talk to multiple people and after three or four hours results and conclusions are drawn up and a comprehensive blog post covering a range of issues can be written up. Twitter is a simple way of keeping in touch with what friends are doing but it also creates links with people we would find very hard to get hold of using more contemporary methods such as facebook, e-mails and other. This is a glimpse of what the future of communication will hold. Skype, seesmic, gtalk, facebook are all there to add depth to the twitter conversations....
The Scoble Vs Facebook event — Jan 3, 2008
This is a response to a post on Segala: Scoble opens up debate about walled gardens after being booted by Facebook. There are two key factors to take into account. The first of these is the issue of privacy and the second is the free flow of information. Unlike most other sites facebook is both hated and detested by different groups of users. As a recent university graduate and member of the international community it’s a great way to keep up with what my friends are doing without having to make hundreds of five second phone calls. The second aspect has to do with Openness. Facebook was started as a forum based on one campus in one university but due to it’s popularity expanded further. As a result it became a national and then international sensation. That’s whilst still a student based website. This is where the issue of privacy plays a key role. If we are to trust this website then it must make sure to do everything within it’s power to stop information collected. That includes e-mail and phone numbers, What you display is your choice and your friends can do what they want with that information, within the limiations set forth by facebook. That’s where trust comes in. Without trust Facebook will dissapear much faster than any network because people give real names, real relationships and real addresses. Identity theft would be a disaster. Now how does this all fit in with Robert Scoble? He’s got over five thousand facebook friends. If he decides to collect all the details we’ve offered up to facebook then both Robert Scoble and Facebook will suffer. Scoble for a breach of trust. Facebook for the same. Now what good has come of this so far? We’ve seen that they take privacy very seriously. So seriously that they’re ready to get a storm of criticism for banning one of it’s best known members (within the geek community). I actually feel far more secure in how Facebook deals with my information now that this has come to light. I think that if facebook bring this point to light they are going to gain a great amount of credibility....
The Scoble Vs Facebook event — Jan 3, 2008
Robert Scoble - Jan 4, 2008...
The Paradox of Instagram’s Twitter — May 21, 2023
Within the last two days I saw a headline that is either amusing or tragic. The headline is that Instagram is creating a twitter clone, or even a Twitter competitor. This is amusing, or tragic, because Twitter and Facebook have always been competitors. You had the network of strangers that became friends, with Twitter, and the network of uni friends that became estranged years after graduating with Facebook....
The New Facebook — Mar 14, 2009
Facebook is now a mixture between friendfeed and twitter. You get videos, photographs, status messages and more from all your Real life friends networks. One of the most powerful new features is that by using the group feature we can now see our friends according to a number of settings. If I want to look for Uni friends I click on that list of friends. If I want twitter friends I press on that list. If I want Geneva friends and their status I’d press that and get the required information. Now we’ll see a decline in facebook user time due to them not understanding it and not having the time to figure it out but within the next week or two they will use it more and more. The real time view also means that conversation will now be emphasised and help people in different geographic regions stay connected. As my distaste for the way people use twitter grows ever stronger so the new facebook layout encourages me to engage with more of my real life friends there. It’s a big “see what you missed out on” to the twitter owners and their poor website implementation and innovation cycle. I was struggling to see a reason for being on twitter. That has just become stronger....
The New Facebook — Mar 14, 2009
Paul W. Swansen - Mar 6, 2009...
The new facebook and lifestreaming — Sep 7, 2008
Lifestreaming is not something the mainstream understand yet. they’re still getting to grips with the idea of lost anonimity on a place like facebook. This is visible through the creation of the facebook group to cry about the new facebook. I’m an early adopter and I love new ways of connecting with people and that’s why I’m sitting in an appartment in Paris after spending a fun night with 20 friends from seesmic (or so). They’re all friends I met through social media. In particular I met them through Seesmic. Imagine posting a video that anyone and everyone can see. I like to describe it as video instant messaging. Record a video of yourself talking about something and wait for your friends to answer in video form There area number of features on the new facebook that are similar to those of jaiku. These are rss integration, status updates (as in twitter) and commenting. They’re all things that I’ve been playing with for months now. It’s part of my daily life. I understand and embrace this change. It will be interesting to see how long it takes for those I met in the physical world to start tweeting and seesmicing or using jaiku. Will it be a year or two? They did take a year to finally get to facebook after all....
The Modern phonebook — Aug 19, 2007
Recently I have been trying to categorise websites and how they are used into single words. To this end I have recently started to view facebook as a self actualising phonebook. There are a number of factors which help to contribute to this feeling. One of these is the ability for me to add all “real life” friends without adding any “virtual friends” - friends I do not know in person. In so doing it limits the number of people in my contact list to those I have talked to in person at least once, but occasionally spanning two decades or more. What is great about facebook is that those you have not seen in a decade are once more part of your daily life. I look at what people are posting and I know they’re in a number of countries. I can see which are their favourite films, whether they have recently travelled, whether relationships have crashed and burned or more. I can also see what they’re up to. Twice in the last week I have noticed events put on by friends. One event was by friends whom are part of my University of Westminster days whilst others are from when i was a Bournemouth University student (albeit in Weymouh an hour away). When I went to the Westminster event I recognised quite a few faces since they are part of my recent history. It allowed me to meet new people and one comment was interesting. The girl who organised the event commented that most of these people did not know any others. She was the degree of seperation between all of us. As the night progressed so the links would strengthen and people who had been strangers just a few hours before would become familiar once again. The next day saw me going to another facebook event but this time with people I had not seen for half a decade. By taking a look at the newsfeed in facebook I could catch up with these people. I saw that one friend was having their birthday that night and that another friend from the same time period was also going to be there. Looking through the photo stream I could see what the latest adventure had been. If people think that it’s important to mention something then it’s easy for you to notice and aknowledge this once you meet them next time. When you think of a phonebook you usually associate a limted amount of details like phone number, address, business and address. Facebook gives these details but it also gives us so much more. It’s a great tool for those of us who are mobile and willing to travel. There are three contributing factors which help make facebook popular; the first of these is mobility, the second is international travel and the last is broadband. The first two factors are related. I am thinking about the distance and time it takes to get from where you live to where the friend lives. If you’re in North London and your friend is in North London then it’s easier to keep in touch via the facebook newsfeed than to commute over an hour to see that individual. At the same time as more of us have international groups of friends so the cost of phone calls and ability to see how friends regularly declines. We need technology that allows us to keep up to date with friends and that’s why we need the enhanced phonebook. Broadband is the enabling technology. There is a lot of information. Imagine taking two hundred pictures of an event where twenty of your friends are. If you have to mail each of these to each friend then this is going to take a lot of time and effort. Facebook allows you to do this without hinking about it, hence keeping friends you may not see frequently current to the life you are currently leading. In effect the more open your network of friends are the easier it is to remain up to date with current developments. At this moment in time Facebook is one of the best adapted to these needs...
The mobile phone app — Sep 11, 2007
Everyday at least one friend has one of their friends lose their mobile phone and all numbers on that device. As a result you find that there are hundreds of groups with the title “named individual has lost their phone” where everyone is expected to post their mobile number for quick synchronisation. It would be quite simple to implement. As everyone adds their contact details into the database and as you acknowledge that those in your contact list are your friends you could develop an api that would allow you to download all that information straight to your phone whether HTC, motorola or nokia. It’d be an interesting application to have. It would also slow down the rate of “i lost my phone” which in itself would be a great improvement....
The friendship Wheel — Dec 31, 2007
Whilst looking at another person’s Facebook profile I noticed something. Two thirds of the people were connected to each other yet one third had no connections. It made me think about the nature of the friendship wheel and how it demonstrates how you use facebook. If you use facebook for real world friends and connections then the friend wheel will show that the connections are many and diverse. Everyone knows everyone else and there is a real sense of community. In contrast take a look at the friendship wheel of someone who adds people they have never met and the nature of the friend wheel changes entirely. Everyone appears isolated. I like seeing that there are so many connections between my friends on Facebook and aim to keep it this way for as long as possible....
The friendship Wheel — Dec 31, 2007
plasticsnow - Dec 1, 2007...
The Facebook Monopoly — Jun 29, 2017
I am tired of the Facebook monopoly. While Google gets fined for helping people shop websites like Facebook do the opposite. Instead of increasing the diversity of content on the web and the sharing of ideas it has helped create silos of like minded people. Likeminded people is a polite way of saying brainwashed in the case where opinions are based on opinions rather than facts....
The Facebook Friend Density Map — Oct 12, 2007
The Friend density map is an interesting one. It shows you where the highest concentration of your friends is. It’s a good idea when you’ve got friends spread around the world as we do. It’s a shame it’s limited only to the US at the moment. I can only see six percent of my friends this way....
The Facebook and Friendfeed lifestye — Mar 17, 2009
Facebook and friendfeed are now the same thing. They both provide exactly the same thing but for different audiences. Facebook is a network of real friends, where you share everything with those that count on you as a friend. That’s where you get party pictures, relationship statuses and more. Friendfeed is where you go to get world news, current affairs and industry information from people you have yet to meet. Both of them now allow you to filter your information by groups or lists. I for one have two twitter lists in Facebook, twitter friends I’ve already met and had a good time with, and a second twitter stream where it’s twitter friends I have yet to meet. That’s where I can follow those of you whom I have unfollowed on the real twitter, for lack of proper interaction. On friendfeed I have a twitter stream as well, but this is raw, I can still react to your twitter stream by selecting to comment straight into the twitter stream or by proxy through comments in friendfeed. In part this evolves according to how willing you are to adopt the friendfeed lifestyle. I’ve been thinking of friendfeed and how friends in news could use it. I spent four hours at work, off the clock, chatting with someone that works in news, but doesn’t use google reader and speaking about how we, as individuals filter our news. Everyone does it, but most people are happy jumping from one site to another to get the information. The website that person looked at does have RSS feeds which could be aggregated into google reader and feedly. That’s an important advantage. It means that when you’re off work, in between shifts you can still get all the news coming to you, but without using the professional systems. It means that you shape the information flow, as well as it’s speed. The more sources you add to your reader, the faster information comes in and overwhelms you, if the right filters are not in place. Look at the social media landscape now and it’s not that busy if you’re looking for hard news but that will change as people grow more accustomed to the way the current social media types use it. We need to shift away from the social media types to the lifestylers. I use this term to describe everyone that uses the social media, not as a promotional tool for their activities and their blog posts, but instead for the content created by others with society at large as a source of information gatherers and sharers. How would friendfeed look if the film and television industry used it. How much more conversational would the WEF Davos room on friendfeed have been if those participating in the conference conversed here, as much as at the events. A lot of conversation is invisible because those who talk about it do so with those in the industry. What if part of that discourse came online? Look at the BBC website for example, and how it provides three top stories today, Madagascar and the new president, Russia and it’s rearmement plan and Fritzl. If the news editors for the News agencies met on friendfeed and discussed the top three international stories how much richer would the dialogue be? How many more related stories would we find? We can get a taste for this from Google’s news page, according to country. You can see which stories are the most written about and see how the dialogue is advancing but that’s an algorithm. It requires little time or involvement to exist. As a result recommendations may not be that interesting, or that well selected. Imagine a top three international stories room on Friendfeed and how that would progress, as news agencies provide items for national news bulletins. You could have sub sets to that room according to regions according to treaty alliances. There could be a room where NATO encourage Europt to work closer, making Europe as an entity more powerful. You see that with recent discussions from various recent Nato events. I watched and listened to plenary sessions taking place in Africa during the changes-challenges.org when live streams were being made available by the event organisers for greater transparency. Some sessions were on the front page of the website. As a result even if you were not invited to the event there was a certain degree of transparency, the same was true of the World Economic Forum. As part of my work I have been streaming such events and I have tried listening in, to see what people were saying. What is a shame is that at the moment there is no diversity in these online communities. Only the earliest of the technologically adopters are participating. the conversation, as a result is boring for anyone but those hyper-engaged within these communities. I use the term hyper-engaged because in reality there is a lot of information coming in. All of that information takes time to ingest. The best way to absorb all of that information is for us to watch it in real time. Facebook have that option now, the real time view, if I remember the term correctly, and that will help to introduce a large portion of people to what is called the “Real time web”. The real time web is best demonstrated by the real-time view on friendfeed. People are finding new sites, commenting on links and more n real time. As soon as something is added to the stream you see it. If you’ve got two or more screens then you can monitor all of this in real time. There are apps to help with the assimilation of all this information. Of course we’re not there yet, at the moment the geekiest of the geeks are playing with it, and some have more time than others to be invested in this. It’s just that it’s so well adapted to all professions that it will be interesting to see how Friendfeed and Facebook revolutionise the way we get our information and how we react to it. What I love most is that because facebook brings that to over three hundred of my university, school and work friends we, social media types have an easier job of driving adoption to the masses....
The Facebook and Friendfeed lifestye — Mar 17, 2009
kyle - Mar 2, 2009...
Socialthing aggregating several websites at once. — Mar 22, 2008
I’m active on more social networks than I have time to go through in a day and that’s where Socialthing comes in. It allows me to follow news from facebook, twitter, pownce, tumblr, flickr, vimeo and livejournal. What I like about this site is how easy it is to see everything that goes on. Whereas friendfeed is nothing more than a few lines of text this version of a social feed aggregator is the visual aspect. At a glance I can see which social network is giving the content and I can post accordingly. If I see a status update on facebook for example I can view the profile and add a comment. There’s that option with twitter too. I can see everyone’s tweet and I can reply to any friend’s post quickly and easily. As a positive sidenote I can follow what’s going on on pownce without logging in. I’ve often felt that the limitations of that site is the lack of people outside of California using it. At least this way I may find my interest growing. If I’m in a rush or there’s an important message to get out I can simply select to “post” a message to all these social networks at once. That saves a lot of time although as expected this should not be used too frequently as it adds a lot of “noise”. I’m looking forward to more services being included...
Social networking and freebase — Aug 24, 2007
As you’re painfully aware by now there are hundreds of social networking websites but none of them have a communal database. If you’re on orkut your data stays there, if you’re on yahoo communities your data is there. All these social networking websites are very similar in what they ask of you but different in how they link you. Loudmouthman got me thinking about how you could use a database like freebase to share this data between networks, sort of like openid but with more data. Freebase is a database for volunteers, similar to a wiki but whereas the wiki is a collection of articles this is a database where you write the front end and implement it according to your needs. If you’re interested in video production and television for example you could take the television section of that database and make it accessible within that site. If you encouraged your users to create their profiles within that communal database then details which are not so critical to your persona (whilst being careful not to make phishing to easy) could be used so that you input your data only once. By having a communal database the migration from one social networking website to another would be far smoother, more transparent. You’d have the same user profile in a number of places and you would have more freedom to concentrate on what you feel is important. If one website goes down then that is not as critical since your presence is spread in a number of places therefore there is less opportunity to be in trouble should your main social website go down, as was the case with Facebook and Skype within the past few weeks. RSS feeds are already helping to spread your presence across a number of websites and sites like Jaiku and tumblr help aggregate your daily output to a number of locations. As a result of such practices. In effect you’d have built in redundancy. If one node goes down then five others can be used whilst waiting for your preferred social network to come back online. In summary since we are members of more than one community there is a demand for a communal database from which the sharing of certain types of data would promote the spread of online presence between more than one community at a time. By facilitating the process of setting up a number of communities there is less opportunity for us to be bogged down in content we are uninterested in. Communities, rather than forums could be far more specific to our needs. I would welcome your views on this topic....
Social Media and The Human Return on Investment — Apr 23, 2016
Social Media and the Human Return on Investment, because contrary to popular belief we use social networks to socialise, not to shop. As we grow older and more mature our close network of friends changes and evolves. We go from school friends to university friends and then to professional friends. In the process we move from a village to another village, from a town to another town and eventually from one city to another. In the process the links we have with some friends strengthen and others degrade over time. This is modern life. I find it hard to discern whether the return on time invested on social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and others is decreasing because people’s understanding of these social networks is shifting or whether it is related to growing up. As the people I know get married and have children their priorities change and privacy becomes more important. We have to keep the children safe. Facebook, as a social network is less engaging than it used to be. The people I have as friends post less frequently, the events we can participate in together is shifting and the content shown in timelines is evolving. To compensate for the decline in friends engaging in social networks like twitter and Facebook people are following publications, brands and news sources. This flow of information is tailored to the lowest common denominator. The sensationalist writing style discourages me from following these sources of information. I have a concern that what were social networks until two or three years ago have become advertising networks on which people occasionally socialise and interact with other individuals. I feel that a bigger and bigger portion of the time that people spend on advertising networks is looking at mainstream content and comments. On Facebook as I scroll down the timeline I notice an increasing number of adverts. Personal posts are less and less frequent. Has the community left this “social” network? I have spent years thinking about online communities and how they interact. During this time I have seen the ebb and flow from one type of community to another across multiple platforms and applications. Within the next two to five years social networks will be virtual reality environments such as we saw with World of Warcraft, Everquest and Second Life. The question is whether people will want to socialise in virtual reality or whether it will be populated by gamers. Every online social network is stigmatised. This stigmatisation prevents people from fully exploiting the potential of social networks. We see this stigma through the use of dating apps rather than Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and other social networks. Dating apps are stigmatised but at least you swipe left or right and you’re done. ;-). You’re only “active” for a few seconds at a time. On Facebook and twitter you need to be active for hours, days, weeks or even months… You have to be careful. You may be stigmatised. ;-) Now that most people see social networks as a waste of time it gives us more time to do other things. It gives us time to read, to do research, to watch television and even to go two or three hours without looking at a mobile or computer screen. Imagine that. ;-) I believe that on the one hand the stigmatisation of Social networks as a waste of time has discouraged people from using them to their full potential. As a result of this people feel comfortable spending ten to fifteen minutes a day on these networks. On the other hand I see marketers, public relations specialists and advertisers push for their campaign to be seen. As peer to peer communication goes down and human return on investment (ROI) decreases, and as marketing campaigns take over the timelines they are effectively closing the door on people’s motivation to spend time reading through their timeline....
Social Media Silos — Jul 1, 2023
Years ago we heard that Facebook was a silo. What was meant by this term is that FaceBook would pull content into its social network and behave like a portal, without allowing people to leave. It encouraged people to see the World Wide Web as Facebook and nothing else. For a while it worked....
Sharing Videos With Facebook — Jun 18, 2007
Through technology such as that available on Facebook, video sharing has become quite a bit easier. Whereas on a website like youtube where you share video footage with the world on Facebook you select who you share your videos with. There are three settings, share with everyone on your network, including all friends, share with everyone who is tagged in the videos and their friends, or simply restrict it to your friends. I particularly like the option to share between your friends and the friends of tagged friends because it’s so flexible. we don’t have the same friends so it’s a good method by which to distribute videos, best of all it’s free. Another feature that’s interesting is key frames. You can cycle through up to ten screenshots of your video and find the frame you feel is best suited to illustrate the video. It’s as easy to select a frame as to when you’re sharing a website with your network. I have run into a number of limitations. The video must be under ten minutes in duration and 200 megabytes in size. Keep in mind that the video will be converted to the FLV format which can be read on almost all browsers. I’ve uploaded seven videos already and so far the interface has behaved well. I managed to upload a 50+ megabyte video but due to its length being too long the software complained. I also tried to upload an iPod format video and it complained as well so that’s something I think they should work on. It’s not going to replace the broadcast machine interface I’ve installed on my website but it’s a good method by which to share amateur videos between friends and for those who would like to do it professionally to showcase some of their better work. Two additional video options are uploading by mobile phone and recording from your webcam. The recording from webcam is a feature that’s interesting if you’re in a public place with your laptop and you’re uploading video of specific events. I’ll try uploading video from the mobile phone at a future date. As I see it this is yet another strong feature that has been added to Facebook and unlike the fortune cookies, I like software and others this is something that helps promote the imagined and real communities I discussed in a recent essay. (That essay will be uploaded once it’s been moderated properly). I’m going to take some time to convert and upload quite a few more videos to Facebook over the coming weeks and months....
Replacing FaceBook with Meetup.com, Replacing the past with the present and the future — Feb 11, 2019
I have had a meetup.com account since I was using yahoo as my primary e-mail provider. For years my account was dormant because activities that I were interested in were either in another country or at a time when I could not participate. Recently I have found that activities are at times when I can participate. As a result of this I am building a new network of people to climb with....
Preparing fondue — Apr 25, 2017
The Swiss Television archives shared this nice news item about how to prepare a fondue from 1969. It’s nice because we see the old way of preparing a fondue with the fluid burner rather than electric heaters. We also see the ingredients being placed in the caquelon....
Podcast listening and more — Jun 20, 2007
Since I finished my dissertation my biggest time sink has been listening to podcasts. For some reason, I download the entire series of podcasts and work through them one at a time until there are no more. It’s a way of relaxing. It’s also a way of getting information quite easily. In London, I hardly ever leave home without the iPod whilst in Switzerland due to my driving I can’t listen to podcasts when traveling by car. When it’s on foot however I can. I found a loop that I do that’s about an hour’s walk and if I chose to I can make that loop last a shorter or longer amount of time depending on which paths through the fields I’ve chosen. Over the past few walks, the rain started falling onto me but it was warm enough and the rain so weak so as not to inconvenience me. During this podcast listening, I’ve learned a lot about technology and the opinions of a team of people. I’ve seen the evolution in attitude between various podcasters. We see the evolution from being fairly new at certain podcast programs to being quite weathered in by the entire process. As a result, the content is more relaxed and feels more familiar. It’s more familiar to me as well. I know these individuals now, as they’ve talked over time. It’s not quite as remote anymore. As I listen to podcasts I’ve started to think that they’re not that innovative. They’re doing what radio did years ago but rather than concentrate on music and other such topics they concentrate on technology and those behind the scenes. In so doing there’s been a shift from a celebrity culture of films and music to one of the bloggers, web developers, and more. We’re in a time when being online is so easy and so normal that everyone is there. Within the past 8 months, Facebook has gone from having two or three of my friends there to over 200. That’s quite a big shift, quite a change. The online world is no longer the realm of the geek. In fact, it would seem that being online is no longer a geeky pastime. I was also thinking about how social networking websites have become the new portals. Remember yahoo, Altavista and others attempting to become portals, the starting point for most people’s web experiences. Now Facebook, at least within my real-life circle of friends, seems to be the most important. Everyone seems to be there now, or almost. How long will Facebook remain popular?...
Plaxo Pulse and Facebook — Jan 3, 2008
For all of those privacy advocates I’m on your side for this issue. With a lot of communitis you create a profile and friends can see it. What you give them are both your name and possibly phone number but no more. When you’re building a database of contacts you must ask for it. When you add friends to outlook, address and other applications you’ve done research and the users have given their consent. That’s not the same as harvesting them direct from facebook. No one said they wanted you to have their e-mail address. No one chose to give you those details. If you want them ask for them. Taking contact details from 5000 people is unethical and wrong. That’s very similar to spam behaviour. What makes this worse is that Plaxo is associated with this. I use Plaxo pulse and you can see it on the right side of this column. I don’t mind their services but for people to harvest their friend’s data without prior consent will help increase this feeling of insecurity. We’ve had that debate on Seesmic, on Facebook and other online communities. If we want real communities transparency and trust are key. Stop abusing it....
People From The Past — Jul 9, 2007
Since I started using the world wide web one thing has become clear over the past year. The web has become personal. We have seen a migration from a worldwide web of strangers where everyone is hiding behind an avatar to a worldwide web where no one is hiding behind an avatar, where everyone wants to be seen. In the early days of the world wide web when no one was sure what the world wide web was about many people created websites and web rings and such were formed. Webrings were an early form of tagging whereby a list of websites on a particular subject would be put together to help promotion between websites. Over time this disintegrated. Another difference is the mentality of webmastering. Whereas before a website was designed to provide text-based information within the smallest amount of data (due to network limitations) it has gone the other way. From HTML pages to Flash-based video players. The Web has become a far more important tool now that broadband is so popular. At the same time, broadband and “always-on” connections have meant that whenever you turn on the computer you’re online. In the early days, I had a friendship with a Swedish girl, via e-mail. The friendship was an interesting one because it was one thousand word e-mails one to two times a day for an entire month before it ceased completely. That’s a lot of communication between two countries at a time when social networking was in its infancy, at least online. Remember the Geocities chatrooms, those that were text-based were a popular question was A/S/L… Those days were more interesting. In those days you’d chat with someone and try to keep them interested and establish a friendship which would result in getting an e-mail address to stay in contact. Profiles and logins became more advanced and chatrooms are now designed so that everything about you is clearly visible (that you choose to make public) therefore some of the more basic questions are no longer needed. I have been a member of many online forums and I have seen how they have changed from being fairly simple places for people to share ideas a post at a time to massively complex social networking websites such as myspace, Facebook and others. This brings me to the idea of portals. I remember when companies like yahoo attempted to give you as much information as possible on their main page and the most activities to enjoy were numerous so that you would stay there. A few years later and one of the top social networking websites is Facebook where not only do you have all your friends as members of the network but additionally they may choose how much they share with others. It’s become a central node for the web-based user experience. In this time those networks have demonstrated one thing, the ability to re-establish links. On Facebook it’s getting back in contact with school friends I haven’t seen for more than a decade whilst in other situations, it’s about people we met during vacations in another country. It’s a way for friendships to be created and to remain alive thanks to the virtual communities that have formed. I wonder how long it’ll be before my friends use Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce or other SMS enabled social networking communities online. In America, with Facebook, this is already a reality. For other countries with patience, it will be a reality as well and we will be truly connected. I’m already experimenting with that idea via twitter....
People appreciate video of an event for the second time — Oct 8, 2007
A few months ago I filmed the Silent Disco in Paddington station, one of London’s main train stations. As a result of the coverage of the event many people were happy to see it. With the footage I have recently filmed of the events that took place on the 6th of October I am once again getting a lot of that appreciation through facebook comments. It feels good and I need to find more events to cover that will get this type of response. update:-- I’m also really looking forward to watching the trends on tubemogul as I see whether it will increase over a period of hours or a period of days. It’s always fun to watch how many views you get over a period of weeks and months....
Patent Misuse — Aug 7, 2007
A recent blog post is bringing people’s attention to a group who want to sue Facebook for patent infringement. The problem with this patent is that it is so broad in it’s language that it would include almost all social networking websites....
Over 400 views of the Sandstorm video — Feb 15, 2007
I’ve just checked the number of hits on the Silent disco hits and it’s now up to over four hundred views. That’s a nice amount. I’m quite happy with this number because it’s from my website rather than another source. I’ve been posting videos on the web for many years and I’ve seen many projects start and fail and others expand. It used to be that websites would have just 5 megabytes and websites would be html based. We’re in web 2.0 now and it’s normal for me to download over a gig of data per day when I’m at home. Some people say that video on the web is going to cause problems, that there are bottle necks and that’s it’s not built for live video. That’s because they’re new to the web and think they’re gurus after just two years of daily use. I remember when it was the 56k modems and use was paid per minute. I remember when short text pages would take a while to load. I remember when chatrooms did not require you to create a profile which everyone could see. Where everything was fleeting, as bars are. You’d see hundreds of people but you had to converse with them. ASL used to be a popular question Today there’s no need. Just click on the username and you find out everything about them that they want you to know, age, sex location, websites, groups they like and more. For the past few weeks I’ve become really familiar with facebook and how powerfull a tool it is. I love it. It’s great because when you’re out meeting people you often get to meet up to 20 people in one night sometimes and there’s no way you’re going to remember them. Ragweek is an example of them. Too many faces. Not enough personal detail for the name to stick in my mind. Facebook means that I go online and I can review the night, see pictures of new friends and learn a little more about them. When I was at the silent disco there are a few people I notice in quite a few shots and by posting pictures online they’ve presented their identity. They are no longer nameless faces that shall remain irrelevant to my life. They seek each other out and tag themselves in video frames I’ve posted. In so doing their friends can see them. They enjoy it. It’s not a stalker medium. it’s about the McLuhanist global village. It’s about the extension and enhancment of social interaction. I was doing some research for an essay about technological determinism yesterday which explains the use of such terms. When McLuhan talked about the medium as the message he talked about the media as a thing which acts as an extension. Imagine you go out and meet someone and you get their name and phone number. The phone number is great because you can talk to them live with no difficulty. A facebook account is greater because it allows you to understand their personality, their likes and dislikes and more. It’s a way for people to embelish on spontaneous meetings. It’s the global village that McLuhanits have examined and studied. Since everyone knows everyone else facebook is the village taverna. It’s where you speak to your friends about other friends and a community forms. If you interact with enough groups then that village, that medium (facebook) becomes a family. There is nothing sinister about it for the simple reason that you do not remain anonymous. Everyone whose interest you have summoned will be able to feed their curiosity and the next time they go to an event they will invite you. I love it. When I was living in a small village in Switzerland I was afraid that technology was a great isolationist tool but that view has changed. What is isolationist about going online and sharing your interests with others. i created one group and 56 people became members. Those members are all fans of the Paleo Festival. Events are shared and talked about. I may not spend every day around those at King’s but this does not mean that I have not been invited to their events. I was invited in person to the clavicle challenge but did not participate. I’ve been invited to parties via sms, bulletins on myspace and event notifications on Facebook. People invite other friends and you’ll see how many people are planning on going and next time you meet them you’ll be able to discuss that. In other cases, as with the silent disco I was able to see an event and participate. Once the event was over I was able to share the content with many people. They come, they participate. They take pictures and upload them. I upload some as well. The event was only an hour long but the bond formed through the event is enhanced and perpetuated through Facebook. There is a night at the SU bar tonight involving tequilla shots. Many people will meet but how many friendships will last beyond a night. There’s one girl who I chatted to at the beginning of the year but now she doesn’t recognise me. Similar things happen every year and it’s tiring. Facebook has become the new social hub. I see how everyone is doing and they see how I’m doing. They post pictures and I’m reminded of how much fun was had at those events. It’s perpetual, a cycle of positive feedback. Does technology determin how people interact? Yes because it helps them get to where they want to get and affects the comfort level but no because human nature is human. In other words the fundamental principles remain the same although the means by which certain things are done affects the interaction. Why study the media? Because by studying the media you are studying communication between individuals, whether it’s the type of chair they’re sitting on or the type of alcohol they’re drinking. It encompasses our daily lives to such an extent that it’s considered a mickey mouse course. Why spend 30hrs in a library reading books that were written thirty years ago when the media changes at the speed of thought. I’ve seen the media landscape change so much within the past 10 years that every day I form new opinions and philosophies about communication. Media studies are within every book about film, every photograph, every song, every bag. We’re saturated by the media around us therefore we discredit those who study the media. I don’t me we as in I but rather the metaphorical We of society as a whole....
Open Social vs Portal facebook — Nov 4, 2007
Loudmouthman, amongst others was expressing his desire for a means by which to aggregate all our online data through one central account. I though of Freebase and Openid and how they could work. Google though had other thoughts. Whilst Facebook behaves like a portal opensocial helps agggregate content. Facebook assumes thatyou come to their website, spen an hour there and then disconnect. Opensocial assumes that you are an active participant of the new socialmedia landscape on several websites at a time. We currently have a growing number of people that spend more and more time using new technologies to communicate with others. Most of us have flickr accounts, joost accounts youtube and more but for our friends to keep up is a challenge. Getting them to sign on to any social network is particularly hard. Myspace was the key website for a while before facebook overtook. In the past two days I’ve joined Lijit and Open Social. Both work the same way. They take your user id. in my case warzabidul and you tell them which networks you’re part of. The content is then aggregated to a central pag. As more and more friends join open social and lijit so you should get a greater sense of what they are up to. It’s a convenient way to keep up to date with what friends around the world are doing. Look at the sidebar to get an idea of how Plaxo Pulse is using the opensocial idea. Florian Seroussi also pointed me to this article that should help you understand what it’s about. I’m looking forward to more people using it and I love the great flexibility that it will give it’s users. If you’re using it them write a comment and I’ll visit your site to see your social media presence....
On studying what you love — Mar 27, 2007
I love technology, especially in the form of online communities. I’ve been part of so many online communities I have some degree of expertise. I’ve seen the birth of the chatroom and it’s evolution, the popularisation of instant messaging and through flipside and nochicktrix I’ve seen the forming of virtual communities. More recently I’ve seen the increase from virtual communities to real communities. Over the past two years, almost everyone I know has created a myspace account and for a while, this was the best place for people to be. More recently though people have moved to Facebook. Having more than 140 friends, of which only three I do not know, is a sign of how times have changed. It’s actually fashionable to be part of an online/offline community. All the parties I’ve recently been to have been advertised on Facebook among other places and it’s become the social networking site of choice. If you’re not there you don’t know what’s going on anymore. It’s a great shift. It’s also replacing e-mail. Why e-mail people when all your friends are on Facebook. Why not take advantage of unlimited photo uploads to Facebook to add all those past nights for everyone to enjoy. I love the way technology is going. It’s sociable....
On studying what you love — Mar 27, 2007
Claire - Apr 1, 2007...
O2 and iPhone — Jul 5, 2007
According to a number of articles, 02 and Apple are in final discussions about the iPhone and how they will distribute it within the European Union. So far we still have to wait until December of this year to get it in Europe. I don’t think I want to own this particular phone because the one I have now has almost all these functionalities to start with. I also like having a qwerty keyboard for ease of typing whilst on the move, unlike the iPhone. The browser is probably the strongest feature of the iPhone but this is irrelevant for most websites. Both Google and Facebook, two of the only websites I’m interested in using on the move have created useful interfaces for those on the move. in the case of Gmail, it’s the interface that allows you to check and send e-mail within their own java applet which is installed on your phone. In the case of Facebook, their strength is in giving you just the features you want, i.e. what your friends are doing, the latest news, and more. It’s great to get some quick information whilst unable to go online. I want to try out the iPhone and see how great and easy it is to use. Apple loves making software that is simple to use, without submenus as you find with windows mobile so for newbies it’s better. In a few months, I may get to see the iPhone in person and see how good it is… unless I fly to the US or go to one of the EU Macworld....
Nucking Futters — Jun 18, 2007
Internet addiction and e-mail addiction should have gone the way of the polaroid years ago. Why are there several news sources claiming that people are addicted to e-mail? That’s like claiming that people are addicted to toilet paper or using a pen when writing on paper. It’s a question of practicality and it’s already an out of date claim. Who still writes e-mails when you can send a pm, write on someone’s wall or send out bulletins. Most of those reading this post will understand what I mean. When’s the last time you sent an e-mail? Hotmail has been replaced by Facebook and myspace. Why would you use old fashioned technology like e-mail when Facebook and myspace are more practical. There’s no spam, there’s no spending twenty minutes looking for the names and addresses. It’s a pointless article that demonstrates a lack of understanding of the new online communication channels. There are so many to be used, whether for photo, audio, video, or other. As an afterthought, it’s a bunch of statisticians having fun with numbers. Why don’t they do polls like the one I did, why don’t they give some theory behind the article? I haven’t even read the article, skimming was enough for my prejudice for such an article to form. Get the early adopters to write and explain the relevance of such statements, not the computer illiterate. I want the skills I have learned through my media tech and society module to be used. “Science sans conscience n’est que ruine de l’ame” or in this context, “stats without analysis are no more than a waste of time”. ;)...
Not Enough Time — Jul 18, 2007
As I went through my video archive I’ve found a lot of good videos. As a result of this, I’ve been reminded of many moments and memories. There are a few people I’ve seen frequently since the shooting of the footage whilst others have not been present for months or years in some cases. I love watching this footage and I can’t help but want to upload the videos to Facebook. It’s not that I particularly like the video interface on Facebook but rather it’s easy to do with the people bothering to look at them. The first video I uploaded to the web was of the Crete graduation back in 2000 but at the time no one would watch them. Finally, technology has come to a point where sharing is easier. I’ve uploaded three clips and am in the process of uploading the fourth clip now. One or two are of a fashion show, another one is of a snowball fight and the last is of some friends dancing. These videos are tame compared to others I have. It’s part of contemporary life, that it is recorded. How many times are you photographed by tourists as you walk through London? How many times have you been filmed during parties that you may have forgotten. What about those conversations? I don’t live in the past. I live in the present and I love to film. I love to watch a scene and film it from many angles. I love to capture conversations without the people noticing so that a few years later we may laugh as we view them. Friends acting in plays or performing in various ceremonies are probably the best but parties are good too. Especially when the video is of the cameraman (in other words me) as he is distracted by something. It’s amusing footage. Some of it my friends will see, some of it will be archived and preserved for later....
Map Your Friends - Facebook Api — Jul 29, 2007
As I was looking through the applications I found an application that helps to map your friends according to the geolocation details they added to their profile. As your social network is more global so you will find that your friends are more spread around the world. As you’ll see for me there’s a lot of clustering around London where most of the people I know on Facebook are living....
Likemind Coffee morning in London — Jan 18, 2008
Two nights ago whilst having a conversation about technology with Fooz on twitter I got a message from Jamie about the Likemind coffee morning in Central London that she thought might be of interest to me. I decided that I would go and it was worth the effort. From what I gather it’s held once a month. It’s a meeting that started around 0830 and continued till 1030 where a few people from various backgrounds in the media came to talk about a variety of topics. It ranged from Facebook and those that influence discussions to Qik, twitter and seesmic. Of course other topics were also discussed. I talked to Mark of Wishful Thinking who wrote the e-book Time Management for Creative People. He has some interesting ideas and his blog can be found here. Whilst talking to him he touched on a number of interestin topics of which i would like to find out more. One was copyright and music for example, recommending a blog or two I should read and from the conversation I am interested in seeing what he’s been writing about. If I’m not mistaken (and I did meet quite a few people) I also talked with Lauralynne about the challenges of finding work but also about twitter, a subject I know well. Arriving at almost 400 tweets she has a very different to the whole twitter thing. When talking to people many of them are not sure what it’s about yet and that’s why talking to her about it was good. I talked to her about how society is changing. Previously when you met people you would meet them in person, be friends with them for a few weeks or months and one of the two would move to another country or another city and so the link would be lost, hence the utility for something like facebook. It then progressed onto a conversation about twitter. I explained my view that twitter is not just about saying what you’re doing. Another person who was listening in asked us to define twitter. I defined it as a multiplatform chatroom that you can take with you. I talked about the key difference between IM and twitter. With instant messaging you chat with someone and you’re telling them about things as if you’re talking and you expect an answer. With twitter it’s about the day to day life. Through following your stream they’re going to come through a lot of noise depending on how often you tweet. That noise is what makes conversations easy when you meet twitter friends. You’ve got three topics ready because you know about the good and bad things currently going on in their life. It means you’re friends offline. Live in a city like London and you meet these people and a physical world friendship can occur. The motivation behind this point was the notion that technologies are helping to seperate people and I wanted to refute that argument with the points made above. If you go through some of my previous posts you can follow the progression of these ideas further. I heard Mark Iddon talk about his blog about multiplatform content and it sounds interesting although I have not yet had the opportunity to visit the site. Another person I came across was Damiano whose blog Nitmesh sounds interesting. It is described as : “A comment on the imploding chaos of the convergence that hopefully entertains, enlightens, educate, reminds and shares ideas that might stand out and make a remarkable difference”. Overall the meeting was good, productive. I arrived feeling both inspired and shattered. Normal, I got to sleep at 4am and got up at 630 because I enjoyed the thought of being able to have more conversations in person rather than via twitter or seesmic....
Likemind Coffee morning in London — Jan 18, 2008
Mark McGuinness - Jan 0, 2008...
Invisible without a website — Oct 8, 2007
Having a website is essential in today’s media landscape for one simple reason. You don’t exist until I can hyperlink to a website containing examples of your work and describing what you do. This is particularly true in today’s new media landscape. For the minimalist among you a facebook or myspace page is the bare minimum. For those of you that take your work seriously though a website is more efficient. There are a number of reasons for which having a website is essential. The first of these is visibility. If you’re going to an event and you take hundreds of pictures then no one will notice them unless you share them publicly. You don’t need to be published to get your big break. That’s the point of viral marketing. Produce some content. Make it public and then mention it in a few places. If it’s good then others will advertise that work to friends from now on. You are now visible. That’s in an ideal situation. Yesterday when I went to the protest (which event? Describe it in a few words and link to it) I met two friends, one is a well established photographer whilst the other, is, as yet a relatively anonymous face in the crowd. With the established friend it was easy for me to link to his work because he has a high quality site. It’s something concrete, easy to see and assess. For the second person there is not much I can do to demonstrate their worth except mention their name but is of limited value, without a link. Why? Because there is no action to follow a “plug”. The plug is a term used to describe how one person promotes their work through another person’s content, whether it be in website form, podcast or other. As you are talked about more frequently, your visibility increases and, with it, people’s interest in what you do. John C Dvorak of Dvorak.org/blog is the best example. Anytime he can, he will mention his website and, although for the first ten times you may not react, you will go to the website, eventually. He’s got another reader. Whilst you’re surrounded by new media people everyone has a blog, a website, possibly a podcast and more. Leave this group, though, and most people are “invisible”, except, for young people, facebook. Most of them are shown in their bikini, at drunken parties or in other situations that would not reflect well within more traditional work environments. That’s why facebook should be kept private and personal, confined to a group of friends. When you apply for a job online, you’ are one of a thousand applicants. It must be a nightmare reading all those applications. I am taking as an example the work I did for blogwise, a human moderated database of websites. Each day several hundred people would apply for their blog to get through. As you look at the first ten your mind is clear and you’re interested. After several dozen you’re tired and by the time you reach several hundred you skim through. The same happens when you’re applying for work - boredom sets in. When you think about how much time people spend looking for content and entertainment on the web you begin to understand why and how important it is to have something to show. When I worked on my dissertation I looked online and found an interview of Jacques Yves Cousteau a matter of minutes after he won his Oscar for Le Monde Du silence. I needed, for a documentary, a soundbyte of Rupert Murdoch speaking about Myspace - and after several months of searching we found the key clip. That’s also how a documentary maker found my content for use in a documentary that will be on ARTE television in Spring 2008. The point is simple. In the past when you created content and you wanted people to notice you the best method for visibility was to be mentioned in physical examples, whether magazines, DVD or on the air. Today we’re all part of the same media landscape. What this means is that there is unlimited time for content to be shown. But how do you stand out, to get noticed? If there’s an event taking place and you have the time to cover it, then do it - and find where people are actively talking about it. That’s a great way to promote your work. If people see your latest video and want to find out more about you, they can go to your website, if you have one, to see further examples of your work. They read your blog to see your thoughts, they follow your twitter stream to see whether you’re a party animal, they check your linkedin profile to see who you know that they may know and, as a result, they get a better idea of what kind of person you are. You’ve just increased your chances of being noticed - and hired....
How To Block Twitter and Facebook Using The Hosts File On A Mac. — Oct 21, 2020
If we’re not learning every day then we’re wasting our time. If we’re not up to mischief every day then we’re likely to become unhappy. In light of both of these things let me give you a quick tip for blocking Twitter and Facebook....
Google Plus is Shutting Down in August — Oct 19, 2018
By shutting Google plus in August 2019 Google have shut down one of my favourite social networks. From the start I have said that it reminded me of Jaiku, an excellent, european alternative to Jaiku that never reached critical mass and so was sold to Google, which then shut it down and eventually released Google+...
Finalising the dissertation — Apr 27, 2007
At the moment I’m re-reading the dissertation and going through every paragraph individually to make sure that the content is good. It’s currently floating at about 9900 words and I’m feeling fairly confident with the content. there is still work to be done but within the next three or four days I hope to be done with this piece of work. Once more I went walking around the library and I met almost only girls from my course quite amusingly. They’re at various levels of stress as you’d guess. Some are quite confident, feeling that they’re well on their way whilst others prefer not to talk about the subject. through the status messages that one guy put on Facebook I thought that he had progressed really well but a message today led me to the opposite conclusion. It would be inferred from what he has written that he has not done as much work as I had thought initially. In other news, I tried working on the work experience module but I found that I simply ended up angry so I gave it up as a bad job. It’s curious how that happened. I’ll work on it in a day or two when I’m feeling more open to it....
FaceBook's Primitive Content Management System — Jun 18, 2020
Facebook’s Primitive Content Management System, because aside from being a social media platform, it is a CMS, makes it very hard to delete posts, images, and more in bulk. Facebook should be seen as a CMS because it allows us to share images, posts, events, and more....
Facebook Is Down — Jul 31, 2007
Social networking websites should never be down because their success comes from three factors; ease of use, accessibility, and reliability. With a good layout and good interaction, the website attracts the novice as well as the weather-beaten web surfer that’s seen it all. Accessibility is about it being easy to use on all browsers, whether mobile phones, laptops, or desktops. The third one is the key....
Facebook Disappointment — Apr 11, 2007
What makes a professional camera professional? Direct access to all of the functions without going through ten sub-menus simply to adjust the sound level or open up the iris. What was great about Facebook. Everything was available on sight, not hidden away in sub-menu. They decided overnight to “simplify” the look but what they’ve done is forced me to think about the logical place for something to be and hoping I’m right. I wish they hadn’t changed something that was working so well for me. Facebook, why change something that works so well. Why this obsession with sub-menus?...
Facebook Disengagement — Jun 9, 2016
Facebook disengagement by those I know has become so serious that I have decided to take a break from the social network myself. For many years this was a network of people I knew and spent time with in person. It has school friends, uni friends, activity friends and social media friends. For many years it was a place to socialise, share events and images. From the moment Zynga polluted Facebook with Farmville the conversational aspect of the social network degraded. As the conversation declined the sentiment that Facebook was a waste of time became a reality. Facebook users no longer use the network to share their lives and converse. They use it to share sensationalist rubbish. Aside from Social media marketers Facebook has become a ghost town. As normal people no longer use the social network you are saturated with sensationalist rubbish. Facebook has become the preserve of the lowest common denominator. It has become a tabloid news distribution network and those who enjoy intellectual stimulation have moved on to other networks. The content has declined in value to such a degree that I felt myself turning in to a troll. Every second or third article that people share is sensationalist rubbish and I feel the urge to call it rubbish. I don’t want to offend individuals so rather than do this I will take a break. Social networks are about people connecting and conversing. It is about sharing what inspires us both through the adventures we have and through the links we share. Every article and headline should inspire us. For as long as social media practitioners focus on telling us how to feel rather than provide a description of the content of articles I will stay away. Conversations are personal and current affairs articles should be factual. When a network like Facebook no longer has conversations and when articles are emotional the world is upside down and the model is broken. It is time for social networks and social media to become personal once again. It amuses me that I write this about facebook. I wrote the same about twitter a few months and years ago. Social networks and their strategists keep making the same mistakes....
Facebook And Technological Determinism - A Case Study — Apr 23, 2007
What’s the worst thing about being a student. The stress never disappears. What’s the best thing about being a media student? As long as you can find the theoretical background that goes with an activity you love you can justify doing a case study on the topic. I’m fresh back from the library where I went through looking for some books about the internet and society, the virtual community, reading digital culture, The World Wide Web and contemporary cultural theory, and finally the social shaping of Technology. I’m not going to read every single page but rather going to explore the notion of community and how it affects contemporary life. I know that the World Wide Web has progressed from such a point that being online is no longer the domain of geeks but rather the empire of all those with interesting lives. Look at musicians and sites like Myspace for example. Look at the FIBA website during the FIBA 2006 world Championship. Look at everyone posting pictures of cats on various websites. It’s part of the digital lifestyle. The premise of my case study is simple. Whereas five years ago being online was seen as something that only the least socially apt of people would do the opposite is now true, as demonstrated by the popularity of Myspace for a while, Facebook at the moment and then Virb for the near future. Those who saw the death of society because of how technology is getting people to stay at home without conversing with anyone in their physical world is a thing of the past. Twitter, Jaiku, Facebook (the mobile version) MSN messenger - the mobile version all ensure that we’re wired whether we’re sitting in a bedroom on a beautiful sunny day or standing outside under the torrential rain. Of course, there’s no rain but the point remains the same. A world where people can only be online from behind a computer is gone hence greater sociability. Let’s see how I manage to integrate that notion into my case study ;)...
Facebook, a personal rather than social network — Aug 28, 2007
Ten years ago if you met someone and they gave you their visit card you’d put it away somewhere and eventually you might have come back to it but the information would need updating. Over the years social networking tools on the web have evolved from simple mail clients to web forums and finally to Myspace and Facebook. With Facebook we find what I think of as an enhanced phonebook. When you meet someone at a party today there’s a good chance that this individual has a facebook presence. As a result when you go home they may add you as a friend and in so doing you are brought into their lives. You can see where they’ve worked, for how long and what they were doing. you can see whom they associate with and how they tend to meet people. Facebook has become a daily feature of contemporary life. Facebook does not limit your interactions to the people you’ve met during your time at parties, events and more. It also allows you to join groups, some are based on occupation, others on passions and yet some more on soemthing that may be relevant to only ten to twenty people. As these groups multiply so you decide to associate through these people through forums and the likes. For a time I was part of the Lecture napping appreciation society whilst others were part of the “curse of the N18” amongst other groups. Today a friend joined a group which I would never join for the simple and good reason (simple et bonne raison) that reflects the views for which I avoid the place. I’m living between London, a city of up to twelve million (depending on the demographics you chose) and a village of no more than 2000. I love the contrast between the two and as a result feel no need to visit the place that the group boasts about. The point is that as a medium becomes more commonplace and as more people feel comfortable with the technology so their personalities are reflected in a variety of ways which give a great wealth and diversity of character to the medium they are using. It is precisely because of those differences in interests that we gain as a social group. We, the international internet users, have a great wealth of opinions and views available within a few keystrokes and we should constantly aim to promote those interests that most effectively reflect our character, things that friends may take years to notice but that can be made obvious online. Facebook, in my opinion, is a personal, rather than social network where you promote the interaction between friends you’ve had for years and friends you’ve only just met. There are other networks that are great for making new online friends but Facebook should be kept for those people whom you have met face to face....
England is Top EU country for social networking — Oct 11, 2007
According to a recent article in the Times England is top EU country for social networking with 5.6 hrs a month spent on social networking websites such as Facebook:...
Discussing News on Facebook — Jul 5, 2016
Discussing News on Facebook is not as interesting as it is on Google Plus. On Facebook publishers and friends tend to share and promote clickbait rather than articles that they have actively looked for and read. Google+ in contrast is a place where people surf the web reading news stories and when they find a good one, link to and share it. For this reason I go to Google+ for news and current affairs if I go to a news aggregator rather than Facebook....
D-Day Film archives on Facebook — Jun 7, 2017
Yesterday D-Day Film Archives were shared on Facebook. These film archives were of landing crafts landing troops on the beaches, of battleships firing rocket salvos at the coast, of gliders being pulled by planes, of paratroopers getting and more. Over the years films have been preserved by transferring the footage from one film stock to another and then transferred from film to tapes. The problem with film and tape is that they are stored in a physical location that only archivists have access to. This means that if we’re curious about seeing the footage, like the footage included in this post we would have to go to the film archive and ask for permission to see this footage. Within a few hours, days or weeks we might get an answer. We would have transport costs, access costs and more. The advantage of digital video archives accessible online is that everything is accessible within a few seconds with the right keywords. This means that a child hearing about the Second World War for the first time can do a quick search and see this footage. History, rather than being words on a page, is brought to life. It stops being an abstract subject for the mind. In this footage, we see our grandparents and our nephews and nieces see their great-grandparents. An effort, by the international community, should be made to preserve, digitise and then make available as much of this film material as possible. The technology exists today so that, at the very least, we can have digital backups of all of this material and in the best case scenario for this material to be available for future generations to watch and study. I have already spent 15 months as a video archivist and media asset manager and I would like to continue this line of work. I find it to be a fascinating and interesting way to learn about history. It inspires to find books that contextualise the material that I am seeing on screen. This material makes us more informed citizens of the society in which we live....
Cutting down on Facebook, Instagram and Youtube — Jan 15, 2019
The Issue...
Cheapening the user experience — Aug 24, 2007
There are a great diversity of websites out there and each one has it’s own strengths. As a result of this it is not unusual for me to visit twenty to thirty websites on a daily basis, from the likes of twitter, my own website, news sites and more. What this means is that I find the tools that are best for what I want to do on a variety of websites. To each website it’s own purpose. That’s why I’m so dissapointed with what facebook has become at the moment. In the good old days of e-mail use you would start with a clean account and every e-mail you received you wanted. As a result you might get one or two e-mails every few days but they were of interest. Over time spammers started sending their junk and this personal space was less personal space. At around the same time friends began sending chainmail, participating on “which character are you most like” and other activities. As a result of this there was a lot of static which meant more time would be wasted processing the influx of information. This problem then came to social networking websites. One of the weaknesses of myspace was that everyone could put megabytes of junk on their pages and the website would slow down and crash certain browsers. In other situations people spam you via the bulletin boards in such way that you start to ignore them. I thought that facebook was different. I used to view facebook as a mature online community that was about people keeping in touch with their friends. The sharing of personal images, personal videos and personal work was great. That is, until the api came along. A I look at the daily requests on facebook I have zombies biting me, I have several application requests that do the same thing for music and more. The “questions for friends” api is one of those useless api that makes you sign into a service you don’t want to use so that you can read the question a friend wants to ask you. The “compare me to my friends” api is another annoying one. Yesterday I noticed that I was more likely than someone else to do something and I signed up for the api, unselecting all the elements that would advertise the api to those in my news feed. I wanted to see whom I had been compared to but found out that I had to answer fifty questions before being able to use the api. At this point I removed the api. The beauty of the World Wide Web is the vast amount of specialised websites and tools that allow for the sharing of a variety of elements. If I want friends to know about my travels then I’ve got World66, website I used before going to Poland. If I want to talk about good food and restaurants then I’ll drop by Trusted Places and read what users have written. If I want to play games online then I’d go to Kraland, nainwak, travian and a number of other websites. I see Facebook as the modern version of the phonebook where I can keep up to date with what friends are doing and where they are geographically. I enjoy the ability to see photographs and videos of what they’re doing but hate being spammed with movie trailers and other junk. I want facebook to be about my network of friends and what they’re doing in the real world. If there is too much extraneous content then I shall be looking for a less populist website. The fact that it’s been banned in certain work environments demonstrates it’s declining value as a social networking website....
Bill Palmer of Iprong 3c, twittermail3k twittter 3k+ — Oct 15, 2007
Today’s news is as follows. Having seen that Bill Palmer of the Iprong podcast and website would add the 300th friend on Facebook I decided I would take this opportunity to add him. His podcast is "for the ipod generation so take the time to listen to it. It’s mainly about iphones and ipods but mixes in quite a few artists in the process. The second event was becoming the 3000th person to use twittermail. I saw someone mention that they were up to three thousand and I decided to be the 3000th. Now that’s done it’s great. It’s twice as great since it helps to emphasise that I have reached over three thousand tweets since becoming a twitter member. The last bit of news is that it’s blog action day tomorrow. The topic is going to be the environment so right anything with an environmental conscience for your blog and share it with the world. That’s it for tonight....
Playing with Meta AI in a Sandbox — Feb 27, 2026
Today I decided to download and play with Meta AI but I didn’t use my Facebook or Instagram accounts. I used a brand new account with no connection to me. I don’t trust Facebook and the Meta “pattte blanche”, especially with AI, given how AI can manipulate us without us realising....
The Case for Dumping FaceBook and Threads — Dec 12, 2025
Yesterday afternoon I was trolled by an American account of a person living in Germany. I commented on the absurdity of bicycle lanes that are just two hundred meters long and the troll account said “be happy to have that”. I felt like answering in a hostile manner. I refrained from doing this. I deleted my threads account instead....
Utilitarianism and the Death of Social Media — Nov 11, 2025
In 2006-2007 when Jaiku and Forums had threads, these made conversations flow. When Twitter was a chatroom conversations flowed too, until the arrival of the hashtag. The issue with the hashtag is that it brought in people who are toilet social media browsers, rather than habitual social media participants. I could have written users, but that is part of the issue with Social Media and Utilitarianism....
The Rational Decision to Deactivate my Facebook account — Oct 16, 2025
During the pandemic I deactivated my FB account for years because it felt so toxic as an environment. I reactivated it when Musk bought Twitter. At the time it felt like a “least worst” option, rather than a pleasant site. In the process I used FB extensively, and I found communities but I also found a lot of noise....
Thoughts on WhatsApp and GoSocial — Jun 3, 2025
Before Whatsapp was bought by Facebook it was a great platform for people to chat with family and friends. When Facebook bought Whatsapp, many people, including myself, migrated towards Signal to avoid remaining in the Facebook sphere of influence. Social groups, and their luddites remained on Whatsapp, so we had to revert to using Facebook owned Whatsapp....
Whatsapp With the Signal — Feb 11, 2025
For a while Whatsapp was a fantastic cross platform messaging tool for friends, families, groups and more. It was cross platform, fast and convenient. Eventually rather than rely on Facebook Messenger and Facebook, Facebook bought Whatsapp to consolidate its monopolistic grasp on the social web. As a result of this I tried to dump Whatsapp but it is hard to do so....
What Threads Could and Should Be — Sep 5, 2024
People on FB have pigeon holed me as negative, and don’t understand why I am this way. The reality is that I believe the algorithms highlight when I am negative, rather than positive. I also think that there is a certain amount of bias against me. I post plenty of positive things but I think algorithms hide them or the subconscious does....
Apple and Meta Fight About Privacy And the EU Weighs In — Jul 2, 2024
A few days ago we saw that talks between Apple and Meta had amounted to nothing. There was talk about including Meta’s AI efforts into Apple Intelligence, unti Apple said “Forget it” or somethign to that effect. I skimmed the headlines but don’t remember the details....
Migrating Photos from Facebook to Google Photos — Feb 15, 2024
There has been a shift within cloud services such as Google, Facebook and others. That shift is to make migrating photos from one service quick and easy. The old fashioned method would be to download media from service A before re-uploading it to service B. This requires lots of space on hard drives and this could be a luxury you do not have, especially with laptop drives being as small as they are....
Dormant Social Media Life While Sorting Through Drives — Feb 2, 2024
Recently my Social Media Life has become dormant. I do visit Facebook every so often but I ignore Instagram, barely touch Mastodon or the fediverse, and in general have stopped looking at social media for a social life. It’s not that my life offline has become vibrant. It’s that online is empty of meaningful engagement, especially in winter....
Threads in Europe — Dec 18, 2023
A few weeks ago Facebook (I refuse to whitewash that company by calling it Meta) decided to blackmail European users. The deal was simple. We were coerced. "Accept to pay for Facebook or we will force you to see ads. This was a lose lose situation that the European Union is now fighting. Imagine being given this choice. If you pay you’re going to be rewarding a company that has abused us....
On Using Facebook Again — Nov 11, 2023
Recently I reverted to Facebook due to the death of Twitter, but also because of the political bias I see on Mastodon instances. That political bias has encouraged me to take a break from that social network until the conflict is over....
The Facebook Three Billion — Nov 8, 2023
Over the last two or three days I have played with the idea of returning to Facebook. There are several reasons for this. The first reason is that Facebook has three billion people and you can find people local to you, which is a huge plus. The second reason is that with Facebook we can find activity based communities for hiking, climbing, cycling and more. We’re talking online but with local communities it becomes easier to meet people in person, rather than remaining isolated online....
Being European and Paying for Facebook and Instagram — Oct 31, 2023
For those of us living in Europe we now have the option of paying for Facebook and Instagram, not to see ads. In theory this is fantastic and we should be jumping on the opportunity....
Threads and the Fediverse — Aug 11, 2023
A few weeks ago I was completely opposed to Threads being connected and accepted by the Fediverse because I hated the idea of 100 million users flooding a social network with 10 million users. Now that threads has imploded I feel differently....
On Quitting Corporate Social Media — Jul 21, 2023
It’s interesting that we can stop using a website that is so integral to our lives for years. During the pandemic I quit facebook because I was flamed and trolled at a time when I needed friendship and support. Facebook has been known to make people depressed. During lockdown I decided to quit Facebook and Instagram....