Posts tagged “social media living room”

Whether Or Not To Tweet — Oct 9, 2021
Sometimes we have to ask whether or not to tweet. We have to ask this question because social media is seen by many, in common culture, as an addiction. Everything that is perceived negatively by society suffers, whether justifiably or not. The same is true of cyclists....
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. ;-)....
Twitter Threads and Blogging — Sep 16, 2019
Twitter threads and blogging are both free but whereas with one you need to click to read the continuation and it’s hard to print the other is self contained and easily shareable....
Twitter is Dead, Long Live Social Media — Nov 28, 2022
Le Roi est Mort, longue vie au Roi (article) is a popular phrase in French. It signifies that if the king died royalty would continue and he would quickly be succeeded. Social media has just entered a new age, I believe. Twitter, Facebook and other giants have grown too big, and algorithms have destroyed the sense of community. That an individual could buy Twitter, and affect it’s political leaning has affected people’s perception of Twitter....
Travel and data roaming — Apr 12, 2017
In July Roaming will be a bad memory for Europeans travelling within Europe. As a result of this the sale of sim cards to Ingress players, pokemon Go players and others will also be a thing of the past. What will not change is that we use social media apps to communicate with other people. As a consequence of this use we see local adverts. At the moment I am in Spain and see Google España rather than Google Switzerland. I see Spanish adverts. Local and national products are advertised to me as I browse. As Google, Facebook, Twitter and other companies know of my interests when I am in Switzerland they can extrapolate them to local businesses in Spain. Diving, climbing and other companies would benefit from me seeing their offers. if I have just a gigabyte of data then I need to throttle many of these apps. I don’t want self loading videos and other content. I want a minimum of content to make that gigabyte of data to last until I get on the plane. Advertisers suffer because as I reduce my normal browsing habits it reduces their chance of being seen. In my opinion telecom operators and advertisers should collaborate together to make it cheaper for travellers to use their smartphones. Advertisers should buy data from telecom operators so that travellers are more inclined to use their phones. Businesses will benefit from us posting to and browsing from Instagram, Swarm, Google Local Guides, Trip advisor and many other services. Everyone benefits from cheaper roaming. At the moment businesses with free wifi are helping people see more adverts. With cheaper roaming globally a receptive audience will see more adverts hence providing them with more ideas and inspiration for activities during their stay in an unfamiliar place. Advertisers and businesses should capitalise on this potential audience....
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....
Thoughts on Youtube Backstage — Aug 26, 2016
Youtube backstage is a consequence of Youtube comments not playing nicely within Google+. Google+ is a pleasant social network where people who want to have conversations and share pictures can meet and broaden their horizons. It is a place where you can write comments that are as long or as short as you want. Misunderstandings, as a result are less common. The idea of youtube backstage is to expand youtube channels so that content creators can share images, polls and more. In so doing Youtube would provide people with a one stop shop. The need for twitter, instagram and facebook would be reduced. Some youtube content creators have from two hundred thousand to ten million followers. With such a big audience youtube pages would become self contained communities. If you’re watching No Man Sky videos rather than commenting on episode videos you will comment on the game. Would this encourage people to move away from Reddit? One of the most interesting benefits of youtube implementing text, images and polls is that it would create an environment in which for advertisers to be seen without distracting people from the content. When you watch youtube videos you see pre-roll videos and banners. When videos are longer an advert is shown after a certain number of minutes. With text, images and polls adverts could be shown for longer. As channels are themed adverts will be relevant to the channel rather than a person’s browsing history. I spent a few weeks watching content created by youtubers. In that time I have watched “series” and “episodes”. If youtube finds a way to monetise the niches that content creators have built up over time then Google and Youtube will benefit. People will go from passive viewing and occasional commenting to active conversations. Conversations make social networks sticky. A sticky social network provides value for advertisers. Advertisers provide funding to content creators and this provides content creators with a higher income, providing them with the incentive to do more of the same....
Thoughts On Decentralised Social Media — Mar 20, 2023
The web was decentralised for a long time. The internet and social networks were designed around different niches. We had niches for people that did sports in the same area of Switzerland, that wanted to discuss a variety of topics, for music lovers and more. The change brought on by MySpace, Twitter, ICQ, Facebook and other projects is that it centralised all those communities so that everyone was in different communities, on three or four social networks....
Narcissism and the World Wide Web — Feb 14, 2016
According to a New York Times writer, Narcissism and the World Wide Web are increasing. “Narcissism is increasing…”...
The social media living room. — Nov 23, 2007
The social media living room is great because it’s really any device that you can connect to the web with, whether a simple mobile phone or a full spec desktop computer. Some of us look at the computer first thing in the morning and last thing at a night. This is as much as part of a technological expansion in the form of broadband. Just today an article by the BBC described how people are more and more wired with 90% using broadband, or some similar number. What this means is simple More hours spent therefore more conversation. With twitter it’s more overheard conversations. That’s not where it stops. Twitter, seesmic and similar websites turn a private discussion into a public one where the “overheard conversation” is a key point. It’s an evolution back to the route of internet chat. 10 years ago I spent 13hrs in a row online and I saw the shift from Australia to Japan, India, South Africa, Eastern Europe, Europe, NEw York and more. The difference is that at that time there was no meta data and the initiator to conversations was ASL. Now it’s reached maturity for those of us early adopters. Many of our friends are middle adopters and when they start using it they will not take full advantage. Look at how people use facebook. When asked by @leisa on twitter during a meeting in real life how often I checked facebook I answered as much as my e-mail. A lot of people do. What is not talked about is how middle adopters use it. They are far more limited. They don’t add rss feeds because they have no blog, few pictures if any on flickr and in general do not create content. They’re lurkers. Almost all of my friends are facebook I’ve been to parties with, studied or a combination of more. As a result it’s a personal network of IRL friends who have links to each other as well as through me. These people don’t use twitter, jaiku, tumblr, Pulse plaxo or more. I surprised a conversation on facebook where after seeing someone comment on their post one facebook user asked the other how dare they comment. They didn’t understand the principle of the forum. That’s something all of us are familiar with as early adopters. We are not technological determinists. We believe in the need for something and create a technology to cope. Look at Seesmic. It’s video. It’s twitter with video. One person commented on how it was based on time consumption. He said that although he would love to see everyone’s video and listen to what they have to say that because it’s time based it would take too long. As a result he’d follow just the friend’s timeline. This brings me back to twitter. How many friends do you have. Do you still use the public timeline or is your friend’s timeline filled with more than enough conversations not to need this? I think it’s a really interesting conversation. How does the social media living room integrate into your daily activities....
The social media Living Room — Dec 29, 2007
Yesterday afternoon I dropped by Nik’s house, (Loudmouthman) for what would be the first Social Media Living room event. The idea is simple. Participants of Social Media, whether through Twitter, Seesmic and other networks meet in the physical world to have nice conversations. Quite a few people turned up including Fred2baro, Danacea, Mark Harrison, Jason Jarrett and one or two other individuals. we talked about tech and about life. The point is that to create a podcamp takes too much time and there is a need for more frequent smaller events. This was a perfect opportunity. Among the amusing features of last night was the recording of a seesmic post via three laptops, three accounts and three webcams. We joked about which camera to look into and it was yet another example of taking Social Media friendships into the physical world. No more complaining that spending time online means meeting fewer people. It doesn’t. I’m looking forward to more such events....
The social media Living Room — Dec 29, 2007
Jamie Coomber - Dec 1, 2007...
The small matter of Cairo — Feb 5, 2011
What makes the situation in Cairo so interesting is the number of media outlets that you can use as sources. From 24 hour news channels like France 24, Al Jazeera, BBC World and others to individual people with mobile phones. For France 24 you have three languages to chose from, with Al Jazeera to you have three languages to chose from. With Sky News you have the choice between Standard definition and High definition. You have live cameras looking into the square. There is no lag time between the acquisition and distribution of images. There is the challenge of aquiring images from the ground though. Journalists have been attacked, as reported on twitter, and through interviews once they arrive in their home countries. Tweets have told us of arrests of certain individuals, of attacks on certain media offices etc. It means that whilst those within the country may not have access to this information we on the outside see it. One of the aspects that is so interesting is the way in which people have been able to organise themselves. Facebook, twitter and other social websites have been important, like Bambuser and flickr. Mainstream as well. I am looking forward to the literature that will come out from this event, especially if it successful. Imagine comparing a situation like that of Tomas in “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” to this situation, especially if the end result is greater freedom....
The Lowest Common Denominator — Jun 4, 2015
When animated gifs were new and overused on geocities they were tiring. They were used by people whose homes are surely filled with kitsch. Facebook, with it’s declining user engagement decided that it would join the “me too” bandwagon. As a result of this we will see a noisier unsociable feed. Twitter has made retweets confusing today. When something is retweeted or commented on you want to see the relevant tweet with the comment. As retweets are today we see a comment and a hyperlink. That comment and hyperlink are useless as they require you to click through to understand. In some circles this would be seen as spam. Users must always know where the link they are clicking is taking them. I look forward to finding conversation sites where user interactions are the reason for the network to be in existence. At the moment too many “social networks” have encouraged spammy behaviour rather than conversation. As the social networks are filled with junk so the statement that “social media websites are a waste of time” is being made clearer every day....
The Immature Coming of Age of Social Media — Mar 15, 2023
Around a decade and a half ago I grew tired of seeing blog headlines that said “The top ten blah blah”, “Three signs that …” and more. It grew tiring to see all those headlines, to a point where it generated the term clickbait. The idea of a headline being written to attract people to a click where there was no content behind it....
The idiocy of the Hashtag — Nov 4, 2015
Every day I am reminded of the Idiocy of the Hashtag. Twitter is a conversational medium where the more we converse the more addictive the social network becomes. Every single @ reply was a reaction to what we said or shared. Connections between users were strong and so the network effect took twitter from being a strange experiment in 2006 to being a social network from 2007-2009. In those days we engaged with people directly. Social media marketers, people with families and other priorities came to twitter and decided that they would indoctrinate people in to seeing twitter as a broadcast rather than conversation tool. Broadcasting did away with the conversation. It replaced the conversation with buzz words like ROI (return on investment) and other buzz terms. From a conversational medium where everyone talked directly to everyone else these “experts” hijacked the conversation and encouraged the use of the hashtag. The hashtag took person to person communication, encapsulated it in a hashtag and neutralised the individual to individual communication channels. Individual to individual communications are what makes all social networks addictive. If I believe that someone wants to listen to me, to talk, to exchange ideas then I am likely to make time for them, to read what they have to say, to create a personal connection. That personal connection had me travel to Paris, London, Geneva, Lausanne, Lille and other destinations. Imagine that twitter was still a conversational medium. Imagine that we established personal connections with the event organisers. Imagine that instead of a hashtag we were talking with the twitter account of event organisers. Imagine for a moment that twitter was seen as networking, that socialising on this network was not seen as a waste of time. Imagine that it was seen as a wise investment of time. I was at two international events last month in Geneva and I had my laptop and a data connection (or two if we count event wifi). I could have listened and live tweeted the events and I could have engaged people socially. I could have engaged with the panel and the speakers. They want me to use a hashtag. I refuse to use hashtags because a hashtag is not a conversation. A hashtag is metadata. Metadata should be used to help with threading but should not be the conversation. The conversation, comments and thoughts should go directly to the organisation. The impact of a conversation is far stronger than a hashtag. A hashtag is solitary, is lonely, is disjointed, fails to engage. We see it’s weakness every time an event takes place. I was at one event where I saw that the hashtag only appeared in tweets by the event organiser. The only other place it appeared was in retweets. If you work as a social media marketer you need to engage with people. You need to get people to reply to your tweets, not tweet a hashtag. Event twitter accounts should serve as a conversation hub. They should trigger groups of people at the event and following the event remotely to converse, to share what they think, what they do, who they need to help them. There are two strengths to twitter that very few people use. These are the ability to connect with like minded people before an event, so that by the time you meet them in person you can proceed with a collaboration rather than small talk and secondly to connect with other people after an event, to establish more personal connections. Remember that twitter is a 140 character medium. Twitter is great for short conversations and quick updates. It lacks in substance when it comes to sharing content. Facebook, Google Plus are better when what you have to share takes more than 140 characters. Facebook and Google Plus allow you to build connected communities in a way that is impossible on twitter. Both Facebook and Google Plus have threading, have topic separation and more. They are modern web forums. Twitter is a chat room. Use the web forums to have threaded conversations around specific events and panels and use twitter to establish personal connections with event attendees and others. Yesterday Twitter decided to allow people to follow 5000 twitter accounts. “While it’s entirely possible to see a lot of activity when you’re following 2,000 accounts, the 5,000-user limit increases the chances that you’ll see something interesting.” Social network stickiness relies on familiarity and a personal connection. If you follow 5000 accounts there is an excellent chance that you will fail to personally engage with any of these accounts. As a result twitter will be the place you visit because of hype rather than personal interest. Twitter is a conversation medium that has identified itself as a broadcast medium which is why there are so many spammers present today. It has encouraged people to have millions of followers, it has encouraged people to follow other people whom there is no chance of personal engagement. They have encouraged their user base to listen rather than interact. Look at the million follower accounts and how they idealise this, rather than the more manageable 300 person limit. Three or four years ago there was some discussion on the number of people that individuals could know well and that number was low. They said that we could get to know about three hundred people well. This means that if we’re on twitter we should not follow more than three hundred people. We should follow those whom engage with us. We should make time available to those who make time available for us. We should make sure that we have personal connections with as high a percentage of those we engage with in social media as possible. When twitter was still a social network and twitter celebrities were still normal people we could converse with iJustine, Sarah Austin, Chris Brogan and many others. With Seesmic we could connect with Scoble and Le Meur. In the early days we could create warmer connections because there were fewer of us and attention was not as costly as it is today. Essena O’Neill is one of the people who came to social media too late. She managed to have more than half a million followers which is fantastic for the ego. Half a million followers would make most people happy....
The Dumbing Down of mainstream media — Aug 16, 2015
Recently I have found mainstream anglo-saxon media much harder to tolerate. A few years ago I went to see 90 films in 9 months. I had no TV and the World Wide Web wasn’t quite as accessible then as it is today. For years I could watch BBC World from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to sleep. I also read articles and blog posts. I can’t stand the hollywood film output anymore. They are so comfortable with their formulas that within ten minutes I knew the plot line. I used to read dozens of newspapers a day and dozens of blog posts a day. I noticed that blog posts started to become formulaic and so stopped reading blog after blog. The quality of content went down at the same time as output went up. Every blog post was a Top Ten article. Newspaper headlines used to provide the audience with information about what the article was about. You’d read the headline, skim the first paragraph and decide what to read next. As Social media became socially acceptable for growing portions of society so we see the decline in headline usefulness. Headlines should answer the who, what where, when, why how questions and engage you as a reader. The Guardian, the BBC, The Independent and other news sources rather than writing headlines about the content of articles write sensationalist headlines that are designed to blackmail you in to clicking a link. Usually the articles hidden behind these headlines are a waste of time. They provide little of value and they assume ignorance of current affairs. We live in the information age. Within 15 seconds whether you’re sitting at the top of a via ferrata or in a library you can get information on any topic that interests you. Remember that the web is the hypertext markup language. When you write today you can add links to help contextualise the story, you can provide videos and pictures. You can also write in as much depth as you would like. In the information age I would have liked, and I would have expected that writing would become more demanding. Knowledge would be assumed and context would be easy to provide. When background information is a search engine result away it would be logical to assume that experts and writers could write as if we, the lay reader, were also experts. Look at the way the refugee crisis is covered. We see terms like “thousands drown in sea” “Fortress Europe should let in more refugees” and many more phrases. These phrases do nothing to inform and educate the audience. They are only entertaining us. They are encouraging prejudice and stereotypes rather than discourse. With unlimited bandwidth, time and space the topic of refugees and migrants could be covered in great depth. Documentaries could be produced to provide context as to why people are pushed from where they lived. Xenophobia is a result of over-simplification. Imagine that tomorrow when you wake up you see François Hollande or David Cameron in Calais speaking with refugees. What effect would that have on the national debates of migration? We see ourselves as liberals and we see ourselves as citizens of the world. Why, as citizens of the world do we never see our leaders visit refugees? Let’s forget the status quo and let’s go for a contextualised actuality. (Actuality, Actualité, french for news. I chose not to use the stigmatised word Reality). Another example of the dumbing down is the TWIT network. I used to love listening to those podcasts. I would listen to at least five or six of their programs a week. TWIT, Macbreak weekly and others. I started to lose interest when they switched to video and my interest decayed completely by the time it was more chit chat than news. Editing gave their shows value. Without editing you’re wasting an hour and a half of listening time. Media production and advertising revenue is based on the “Lowest Common Denominator” theory. The simpler content is to understand the more views it will get. The more views it gets the more valuable it is. When media assets are owned by the financial sector and when giving dividends to share holders is more important than value to costumers so you get the erosion of quality. This erosion in quality means chasing a greater number of eyeballs with an ever decreasing quality of content. The Guardian, the BBC and other “mainstream media” companies have fallen in to the trap. They don’t need the money, they’re subsidised, but they need the eyeballs to justify their funding nonetheless. If the mainstream media want to destroy themselves then that’s fine. In theory. In practice this leaches in to the social media landscape. As an early adopter I join social networks and social media distribution platforms in their early days, when the intellectual, entrepreneurial and curious people are around. Conversations and friendships make empty social networks look and feel lively. As users engage stickiness grows. As stickiness increases so value increases. Look at Twitter and Facebook as prime examples. Twitter was a fantastic conversation tool in it’s early days, so fantastic that for the first time in a social network I would meet with users every week at it’s peak. Facebook was a uni friend network. We had all partied together and as we knew each other well we could be open and social in a closed network. When advertisers, social media gremlins and PR professionals came in to these landscapes so the conversation chased the rabbit down the hole of the lowest common denominator. Conversations diluted and friendships decayed to the point where trolling became standard. The dumbing down of the mainstream media led to the decline in sociability and friendliness on social networks at a time when social media became mainstream. As a positive last thought everything is cyclical. We will see mainstream media smarten up again. We will go back to long form articles, and we will go back to interesting film plots....
The Best of Ingressed Obsessed — Feb 11, 2015
Taking a Twitter Break — Jan 17, 2023
For the first time since I took a Twitter break in 2007 I am taking another in 2023. The first time I took a twitter break I deleted my account but got asked to talk about Twitter for the RTS (TSR) back then so I went to my secondary account and started using twitter again. Since then I have continued to love and hate twitter in equal measure....
Stop wasting time on Instagram with friends - Algorithms and attention — Mar 16, 2016
Instagram is a photo based social network that allows two types of users, ego-maniacs on one side, and explorers on the other, to share images of interesting things they see and do. Some people share beautiful mountain images and others share images of their trips to Paris, Rome and more. I share images of Via Ferrata, climbing and a number of fun sports. The ego-maniacs share images of themselves in as many places as possible. Instagram is a “last active, first seen” kind of social network. We see the most recent images first. We see active users frequently. Less engaged viewers are less visible. This is a participation reward model. The more engaged you are with the community and the more people will see your content. There is no favouritism. The algorithmic timeline will penalise the most active users and encourage the cult of personality. The Cult of Personality social media model is great for marketers and public relations accounts because it makes those with the most likes and comments more visible. When you’re conversing with two hundred or more people this is enviable. As people interact connections are created and communities form. Conversations are a two direction affair. According to Statista Instagram now has 400 million users. Selena Gomez is the most followed person on Instagram at the time this post was written. 69 million people follow the account. Images from the account are suitable for a glossy magazine rather than a social network. They lack in warmth and familiarity. The account is cold as a result. These cold and impersonal images can easily get a million likes and algorithms will push this content to the detriment of images by friends and family. [gallery ids=“2784,2785,2786”] Chronological timelines are great because activity and personal engagement reward account holders. When you switch to an algorithm based timeline you will unfollow celebrities to avoid having their posts flood your timeline. Facebook demonstrates what happens when you shift from a chronological timeline to an algorithm timeline. User engagement and interest declines and what were once vibrant conversations lose in appeal and the return on invested time, for users declines. This decline results in the network’s tab being closed in our browsers and the app becomes dormant. Dormant networks resort to sending e-mails to re-engage their users. Both Twitter and facebook do this. Imagine if you received a tweet to let you know that you got an e-mail or that e-mails appeared in your Facebook timeline. It demonstrates that networks like Facebook and twitter, by focusing on making money, forgot to make their products essential. By making this mistake both Facebook and Twitter need to nag us to come back via e-mail. If algorithms are used in timelines then the algorithm should keep posts by our friends chronological and apply the algorithm to celebrity accounts. We already have an algorithmic option on Instagram via the explore tab. Instagram must resist the urge to break personal timelines as this will disengage users. [gallery columns=“2” ids=“2787,2788”]...
Staring at phones in the rain once again... — Jan 3, 2015
Once again I was out in the rain walking around a city. Once again I was looking downwards and then up. I was also looking around and navigating through a city I have been to before but only for a meal and on my way to another place. I went there for a blogobar event many months ago. More recently I went through the city on my way to a Via Ferrata near La Chaux De Fond. This time was different. I was meeting people who stare at their mobile phones when walking around city. To many of you this describes what you think is wrong with society. Too many people withdrawing from society, not interacting. This isn’t the case. These people who met from 10am on a saturday until 1145 before a group picture was taken are ingress players. Ingress as you know from previous posts is a muntiplayer augmented reality game that people play by walking around in the real world. They walk towards buildings, monuments, statues and other sights of interest. As a group, as I wrote about yesterday we had three missions as a group. I only did two of these with the group. One of them required a physical walk up to the castle of Neuchatel and back down the slope. As we walked we saw parts of the city which I had yet to see. The second walk was from the train station down towards the lake side. This is relevant for two reasons. The first of these is that I am a hiker and in summer I spend my weekends in the mountains. The second is that I have walked around more cities than I can remember. The best way to get to know a city is by walking. You gain a sense of scale. You understand it’s geography and you also see what points of interest are where and how they are connected. Rome is a city which I visited many times alone. I love the city because I love the life style contrast between Geneva and Rome. I also love the city because of it’s history. Where else do you park a car in a basement next to some Roman walls. Where else do you have two Millenia of history so visible? Ingress today offered me an opportunity to meet with strangers and do activities with them, to see parts of a new city and to have company. So often mobile phones are associated with solitude and isolation. Through this account you may understand that mobile phones and especially smartphones can be inclusive. The conversations that we had through social media have faded as the noise has gone up and this is where social augmented reality games can pick up. They can provide a new opportunity for people to connect. Next month I plan on going to Firenze for another event. So far over 600 people have signed up. They will come from around Europe and around the world to meet in a beautiful city with a rich cultural history. This will be the backdrop for the game. I look forward to visiting the city once again and meeting new people precisely because of smartphones rather than despite of them....
Social networks and project collaboration — Jul 31, 2015
Jacques Yves Cousteau’s documentaries would have done well in the social media age, especially if the social media age moved away from profit and money. Imagine that social media companies such as Facebook and twitter were Not For Profit Organisations and imagine that instead of having advertisers they had sponsors. The quality of content and discussion would increase and the time wasting element that so many people worry about would be gone. Alexandra Cousteau, grand daughter of Jacques Yves Cousteau is on twitter and she shares articles related to conservation and related topics. Not for profit organisations such as MSF and UN organisations such as the United Nations Development program all share content and articles that provide their followers with valuable resources for bringing conversations forward. Social networks should be seen as anything but a waste of time. Their purpose would be to find clients, to find collaborators and to find mentors. In having these three resources finding new projects, employment and collaboration opportunities would increase. We would eliminate viral videos, tabloid content and keep high value, high return on investment prospects. Rather than PR and marketing specialists flooding our timelines with emotional but useless content we would have high value content worth responding too. The aim would be to demonstrate our strengths in a high brow environment where conversations are possible and encouraged. From the time I was ten years old I have lived in the international community, between school, where I worked, university and more. As a result friends are distributed around the world rather than driving distance. Imagine that this network stopped seeing social networks as tabloid as commercial and a waste of time and instead saw them as useful work tools. For me this is nothing new. When I was in London when twitter was in it’s infancy and when facebook too was in it’s infancy I saw both social networks as networking tools. I met hundreds of people via both networks and I continue to do this today but at a less efficient pace than I would like. The aim would be that for every four or five days of social media use I would get two or three in person meetings with people to discuss projects and collaborations. I would also like to be inspired and encouraged to work on specific projects. The Game Ingress by Niantic labs is a perfect example of what I would like to see within a professional context. Through the game Ingress I have met people in Paris, Fribourg, Lausanne and Geneva to mention just a few. If I go to Paris on the 22nd I can meet agents. If I follow mission days or First Saturdays then I can meet people in a number of cities. I mention this because although ingress is not a professional network it is still a project network. It requires geographically based teams to collaborate to achieve goals. If we could distribute that kind of network for documentary production and collaboration then employability and familiarity would both benefit. It’s a shame that with all of the communication tools we have today we see social networks such as facebook and twitter as PR and marketing tools rather than collaboration and relationship tools. I have web designers, musicians, camera operators, writers, journalists, photographers, fundraisers, financial analysts and digital analysts as friends on Facebook and yet it is hard to see what people are working on. Imagine social networks that are optimised to benefit from your existing network....
Social media, loneliness and isolation. — Mar 22, 2015
“The pathology of social media is all about loneliness” Social media professionals take the weekend off. Twitter users use hashtags so that their content can be found without being followed. Everything is turned towards discoverability rather than commitment and conversation. Social media practitioners know that people aren’t listening attentively so they repeat and repeat in the hope of a click or two. Hashtags are just a way of pretending that a conversation has had an audience. It doesn’t measure the number of comments and responses. It doesn’t measure how long threads lasted before they stopped. There was a time when people like me would read every tweet from people we followed and we would converse daily. It created a lot of friendships and led to a lot of face to face meetings. In today’s social media landscape I do see loneliness rather than socialising. I see on twitter that people are actively posting only once or twice a day. On Facebook I have seen such a serious decline in participation that there is little reason to stick around. My generation were active in social media for a short amount of time and now they have retreated to “normal” life. Whilst some people have hundreds of likes on their instagram images I have half a dozen to a dozen. Almost every like on Instagram is a person that I have conversed with online for years. There is a chance that I can tell you how long we’ve been chatting online, whether we’ve met in person and at what event and which networks we have shared. Twitter friends were trusted enough to become facebook friends. Facebook and twitter friends followed on instagram etc. Facebook was a very active and social place when we were all at university and having the same social life. Twitter was a very social network when I was looking for work and meeting the London Social Media crowd, the French social media crowd and the Swiss social media individuals. Ingress has presented me with a large group of Swiss people whom I have met many times recently as an active player of Ingress. Many of them are around my age. We use Google hangouts to talk and plan missions and are in constant communication. Glocals was good for finding people to explore new activities and locations with but the connection lasted only as long as the activities. There was little to no follow up socialising online. The Glocals Scuba diving group is the one I got along with best and the group with which I did the most activities. It’s a shame that this was an activity for people a decade older than me. When I think of the social journey both online and offline I see that loneliness is not the pathology of social media. I joined Twitter because I love to try new things. Facebook was a network of university friends whom I saw every day. Seesmic was a network of people whom I developed strong friendships with that last to this day and Glocals was probably the only network I joined out of solitude and a need to do things on weekends. I like the irony that the network I joined to avoid solitude is the one that resulted in the deepest feeling of it. Eventually every social network becomes lonely but we would say the same about the city from which our friends have gone, of the bars and more. Geneva is referred to as an airport hub. People come to the city for a year or two and then leave. As a result the refreshing of friendships is very high and it takes a certain personality to cope. Modern transportation; planes, cars, and trains create a pathology of loneliness and social media are part of the solution for as long as the social networks are frequented....
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 girlfriends — Dec 15, 2007
I like the social media and I spend a lot of time with them. Occasionally i meet the people involved in real life and so the social media are no longer quite as interesting, although of course I still have fun with them. One of the things I’ve been thinking is the term social media girlfriend. What would require for a person to be a social media girlfriend? What does it require in the physical world? Conversation for a start. It would entail many conversations and discusssions, so far Twitter and seesmic both provide that. I wake up in the morning, hardly able to open my eyes yet I open up the laptop and type “good morning world” to which i get a good morning back. There are currently two social media girls that wish me a good morning. Melissah in Australia is one of them. Maggieconv in the US is the second. The three of us are in different timezones but we wish each other good meals, nice evenings, good mornings and sweet dreams. We’re friends in the same sense that flat mates may be but with one big difference. We are not within the same physical space. We’re separated by distance, over a thousand kilometers when we’re lucky, over 20,000 when we’re not. That’s unimportant. It’s the idea that we share our daily lives through text messaging, data access on phones, websites, blogs and even facebook. To some people this is an abstract idea. Why would you want to meet people online in such a way. Well in fact chatrooms were like this a decade ago. IRC is like that today. There’s one major difference. We’re not anonymous. We know how the people look, we know how they sound. We know when they’re happy and we know when things are going well. We also know when they’re going badly. If both physical and virtual friends are both inhabiting the same spaces nowadays then what discounts those whom we don’t know from another context? If I meet you at the cinema and we become friends then everyone would accept that. Online though people wouldn’t. Of course that is changing. For me the distinction is fading since I have met so many of these people in real life, occasionally quite a few at once. Anyway part of the reason for this post is that I was called a flirt online, told that half my seesmic videos answering one girl’s posts were flirts. It kicked off a conversation about flirting and that’s fun. we’re using the social media and we’re flirting. That’s a great idea. The idea that we’re flirting with people across a new medium. That’s where the idea of a social media girlfriend came into place. I saw two friends flirting across both seesmic and Twitter and I thought that this was the perfect opportunity to come out with the idea. Anyway to cut a long story short I was meaning to type @melissah but started to write @maggieconv instead. Would she be more likely to be a social media girlfriend? We added each other on Facebook so there’s a chance she c0uld be a social media girlfriend....
Social Media and Via Ferrata — Aug 27, 2015
People on linkedin were discussing whether social media campaigns are worth organising and keeping. When it comes to extreme sports such as Via Ferrata, rock climbing and other extreme sports then I believe that the audience is ready and enthusiastic enough for a social media presence to be desirable. Via Ferrata is an outdoor sport that can be practiced in France, Italy, Spain, Switezrland, Austria, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and Peru. As a result of the diverse place where this sport can be carried out so social media became an excellent avenue through which to share information about the sport. I have loved the sport of via ferrata for five years now, half a decade. What I loved about it was the simplicity of the sport. After just two or three climbing lessons and going with a guide once I saw that I could handle via ferrata comfortably without a guide. I always insisted that I would take people with rock climbing experience, not absolute beginners. Via Ferrata is a specific sport requiring specific equipment and specific experience. It requires a head for heights and an ability to hike for an hour or two before a climb and another hour or two after the climb. As the locations are usually remote it also requires someone with a car and whom can navigate. Social networks such as Glocals for Geneva and Lausanne, Xdreams, for Geneva specifically and the Via Ferrata Suisse group for the French speaking part of Switzerland are good places to find participants. The first two examples are to connect with the international/english speaking community and the latter is to connect with the French speaking community. Glocals is a local social network helping the international community in Geneva, Lausanne and other cities to meet up and be active. Through this site you can meet people to work on hangover, meet people to scuba dive and meet people to do outdoor sports such as hiking, climbing, via ferrata, swimming, canyoning and much more. Due to the nature of the social network are spread around Switzerland and the meeting point is usually the event, with car sharing from strategic points. Via Ferrata Suisse is a nice online community for French speaking via ferrata practitioners on Facebook. As they are spread across the French speaking parts of Switzerland they can provide information and tips on via ferrata that are local. Aside from connecting people social networks and social media are great for the sharing of pictures, personal accounts and textual information about via ferrata. Some people want beautiful landscapes and so pictures will help them select which via ferrata to do. Others are afraid of heights so they will avoid being too far from the ground. A third group will look at how exertional via ferratas will be. I have seen two people run out of energy at Plan Praz and I have seen everyone feel weak by the time they finish the Leukerbad Via Ferrata. Tourism professionals and equipment manufacturers can benefit from a social media presence. I see that Iloveclimbing, Suunto, PETZL, Mammut and other brands actively share the adventures that either their athletes or enthusiasts of their equipment are enjoying. It’s a great way to make me dream of going to some locations, getting that piece of kit or trying an activity at that time of day. To give a specific example I have wanted to do the Moléson by night Via Ferrata for years now and have never got around to it. For two or three years it was because of work and this year it was because of the weather and because I had already booked Leukerbad for the weekend it was moved to. Next year I will make it. I love suunto, Mammut and PETZL. Rather than advertise to the city dweller like Apple, Fitbit and withings do they organise social media campaigns around the great outdoors and around extreme sports. As a result of their social media policy I identify very strongly with their products. In the case of suunto I have dive computers and fitness watches. I understand the passion that their athletes represent in their social media campaigns. Social media is about socialisation and passion. Via Ferrata is a sport that people feel passionate about but because it requires physical fitness and a head for heights your pre-existing group of friends may not be the best suited for your passion to take off. That’s where social networks and social media can help find new via ferrata, see what to be wary of and meet new people. According to these three parameters Via Ferrata and social media are perfect for each other. Sports companies, tourism offices and transport infrastructure would result from a social media presence....
Social conversations and the social media — May 1, 2015
If you read “How to Win Friends and Influence People” you see how important it is to take notice of other people, to be positive and to be interested in what they are doing. That can be a challenge for everyone. We all have different priorities so putting other people first is a challenge. The World Wide Web is a place where we can listen and talk at the same time. We listen to a conversation and then we comment. We can start our own conversation and wait for others to see it and respond. As a result we are both engaging with others and letting others engage with us. There is a bilateral trade which leaves both parties feeling good. Social media, today a misnomer, was a conversation place. Everyone talked with everyone and everyone became familiar with everyone else. The Global Village that Marshall McLuhan wrote about looked like it would become a reality. At the time when this reality looked the most feasible was the time before mobile phones and proper data plans. At this time we used computers from a fixed location, either at home, an office, university or other places. With Wifi we had some freedom but nowhere the freedom that smart phones and data plans have provided us with. That’s why people’s feeling that mobile phones are disconnecting people is such a ridiculous notion. In my vision of the world, in the adoption cycle that I observe the mobile phone is the great connector. We meet people online, we appreciate them, we meet them in person. Seesmic and the early days of twitter were very good tools for this lifestyle. As data plans included more and more data so it would follow that social media websites would be about individual to individual conversation. It would logically follow that people would feel more at ease conversing online as their friends adopt the technology and have chats. Facebook, twitter and Google Plus should be social web forums where people are interested in the people they follow. What I see, as data plans and smartphone adoption rises is the opposite. People share links and promote rather than converse. Social media should be rebranded as Ego Media, brand media or advertising media. The platforms that should have made us conversational have been overtaken by advertising. It’s a good time to continue blogging. It’s a monologue until you contribute a comment. The World Wide Web is a de-centralised conversation tool and we move from platform to platform looking for the places where the personal connections are strongest. As the social media days fade in to history now is the time for each of us to blog, to write about what we feel passionate about....
The Paradox of "kicking smartphone addictions". — Mar 9, 2017
It’s amusing that people think of “kicking smartphone addictions”. We now have a decade of experience in the current social media landscape. We have a decade of using smartphones rather than feature phones. In effect we have had a decade to adapt our lives to the age of the ubiquitous smartphone. We can ignore the Blackberry and Nokia ages where phones were for phone calls, playing snake and business rather than pleasure. [caption id=“attachment_3418” align=“aligncenter”] Those that see social media as a disease usually have partners. People who see smartphones or social media as addictive usually have one thing in common. They have a “partner”. They spend their free time with a specific individual. “It’s about finding balance. I became conscious of what matters to me, in my life. My smartphone is still a part of it, but it’s no longer the boss.” I have never been addicted to the device as such. My passions lie with what I can do with the device. I was passionate about Twitter when it was a social network. I was passionate about facebook when it was a way of keeping up with friends. If Twitter and facebook become ego-networks for marketers and public relations professionals then the “addictive” aspect of smartphones vanishes. As social media goes from a conversation to a broadcast and a monologue it delivers another opportunity. It gives us the chance to go back to reading books. As we no longer “socialise” with smartphones the “addiction” is gone. We loose nothing by spending time “offline”. You don’t need to give up the smartphone or any apps. If you’re like me you can pick up an e-book reader and replace Facebook and twitter with reading. If you’re going to passively read an e-book reader is an interesting alternative....
Mental Health and Social media — May 23, 2017
There is a lot of discussion about Mental Health and social media because most people are not social media natives. They are either Luddites who do not appreciate playing with technology. They see themselves as users rather than participants and then there are extroverts and other people who see Social Media as a threat to their way of life. We live in societies built for extroverts rather than textroverts. As a textroverts social media is a place for me to have full conversations without having to compete with extroverts who often hijack conversations through charisma and the superficiality of what they have to say. The Royal Society for public health wrote a [paper on the topic](file:///Users/richard/Downloads/RSPH-YHM%20Social%20Media%20&%20Mental%20Health%20Report.pdf) [caption id=“attachment_3508” align=“aligncenter”] Instagram is bad ;-) It’s amusing that Instagram is theoretically the worst social app because if people use it like me then they would share their hikes, their climbs and their adventures. These would lead to FoMO and a feeling of solitude if people were motivated to do the same activities as me but unable to. Anxiety, body image, depression and bullying are all consequences of how marketers have encouraged people to use instagram. When brands and social media “personalities” post certain images and when brands promote certain behaviours then they encourage people to idealise the wrong things. They encourage superficiality rather than genuine interactions. It should be highlighted that a lot of people use Instagram for selfies and this leads people to compare themselves to others. If they photograph food, sports, mountains, seasides and more the negative aspects highlighted above would vanish. [caption id=“attachment_3509” align=“aligncenter”] Ranking social media It’s amusing that Youtube is the highest and most positively ranked social medium because it is the one that my generation see as having the most negative comments. We often joke that youtube is fine until you read the comments. It’s good that people like Twitter and Facebook because twitter is great for getting to know people and Facebook is a useful way of staying in touch with friends when we travel and move around for work and university. The Royal Society for Public Health came out with a few recommendations:...
Ridley Scott is exploring an idea discussed by Dziga Vertov several decades ago — Jul 25, 2010
Disclaimer: These are thoughts, rather than a well structured post. Ridley Scott wants your user generated videos for a film “A Day on Earth” and whilst people are hyping this idea as something new the concept is an old one. Dziga Vertov had an idea that he would capture Life Unawares. Eventually he would end up with an experiment in six reels called “The Man with the Movie camera”. It’s aim was to show Soviet Russia as it was. It was an experiment in editing and in story telling. Skipping ahead you also have the Cinéma Verité movement, where the camera and micro trottoir would go out into the street to interview people and find out their opinions on a variety of topics. I would be more specific but I haven’t watched the film in a long time. What I do remember is the Eclair camera with “crystal” sync sound. Technological innovation freed the camera operator and sound man to continue experimenting. Today everyone has a video camera. Everyone has one on their phone as well as their photo camera. Life is constantly being documented in video form. 24hrs of video are uploaded a minute to youtube. video recording is an everyday part of life. I’m sure we will see a great diversity of moments, some births, some sailing, some rock climbing, some sporting event and more.I haven’t taken a look at how long they want the finished result to be. Seesmicers have had fun with this idea already. We had hat days, we had other events, we would go out with the cameras and film. With Qik too we did this. There is nothing new about the process. There is only a far greater ease to share the material internationally and collaborate. As a side note we still remember Pangea day, another event with the same line of thought, but where people presented finished products rather than moments....
Quora and lateral thinking — Jun 14, 2016
Recently I saw the question “Why can’t I charge my mobile phone while riding my scooter?” on Quora so I decided to provide the answer that you see below. In my eyes my answer is legitimate. As an ingress player, as a scooter driver, and as someone who has done what I describe in the answer below I do not see why it is not a valid answer. Quora and lateral thinking are not synonymous. It would seem that Quora users do not like lateral thinking. [caption id=“attachment_2919” align=“aligncenter”] Downvoting legitimate answers This is a legitimate answer because within the ingress playing community everyone that I have met uses an external battery to recharge their phone whilst out and about. Some of them carry the battery in a pocket, others in a bag and yet more of them have a special case for the bike so that they can play the game with ease whilst moving from portal to portal. If you haven’t played Ingress on a bike then you should definitely try it. To have a reasonable answer downvoted by a user of Quora degrades my motivation to contribute to the site. I was once threatened with a ban for providing a link to back up and source what I had written. A second time I had personal attacks for writing a question to a questions asking for thoughts on a topic and now I see this downvote to a legitimate answer. Social networks and online communities should be about open and free discussions where peoples’ thoughts and opinions are valued. When they are not valued then the return on investment for community members declines. It also discourages people from contributing to the community. Ideally you should highlight what you like and ignore what you dislike. By ignoring what you dislike you offend no one. You discourage no one. In the grand scheme of things I have had 153 upvotes and only one downvote that I am aware of. This should not discourage me from using the network in future. I will take a break from the social network once again. Other social networks are more inviting, more open, more stimulating....
Pride and media consumption — Mar 29, 2015
I enjoyed reading the Unbearable Lightness of Being so much that I read every book by Milan Kundera. I also read every book by Albert Camus because I enjoyed reading La Peste so much. Laura M. Holson wrote an article about “Unplugging without FOMO” which I skimmed after someone on twitter commented on twitter that and I strongly disagree with this person’s view. It brings us to the conversation about high and low culture. I take the view that media consumption should be focused on high culture. For my dissertation I watched hundreds of documentaries. I watched every David Attenborough documentary, every Jacques Yves Cousteau documentary. I read many books and articles on the topic of the documentary genre and as a result I take pride in the knowledge that I have acquired in the process. When I skimmed through the article I saw that the discussions were about low culture, about tabloid topics. They speak about things that I would never discuss as they are of no importance or interest. These are things that have no effect on my quality of life. At the same time I do feel the usual regret. Mid to late adopters came to social media, made it tabloid and then complain about the stream which they and their friends generated. In my childhood I read encyclopedia articles during breakfast, as a teen I spent hours in computer rooms learning about webmastering and search engine optimisation before others were interested. I was experimenting with video compression tools in the late 1990s and gained a deep understanding of the tools that would lead from new media to social media. The conversations were about culture and people took a constructive attitude. From 2009 onwards I saw the shift away from personal conversations between friends to the hunt for followers and the loss of the personal connection and I blogged about it. As I went back to read the article about unplugging so I see a reaction to what I have been saying for years now. Articles are being written for people with no staying power. Social networks are becoming broadcast rather than exchange and the superficiality of the web is driving people away. I am happy that social media and microblogging are beyond their sell by date because it means that I can give time up to blogging once again. I can once again discuss topics that interest me in long form. It means that we will spend more time reading, more time learning once again. That is the beauty of the shift away from social media. In reality I have nothing to gain from participating in the Meme media. Même media, the Same media. The media where people use hashtags to be certain that they are in the flock, the flock of hashtag users rather than conversationalists. If I can’t converse I will have a monologue and people who are like minded will find me and we shall converse away from the madding crowd. Someday I will read that book. I love to read and I love to write. Today I am doing both as it’s raining outside....
Pride and media consumption — Mar 29, 2015
Documentally - Apr 3, 2015...
The Post Social Media Era — Jun 16, 2016
I believe that we are shifting towards a Post Social Media Era where social networks are built in to online activities. People love to say that online social networks and social media are a waste of time and that they have a negative impact on how we feel about ourselves. For years I have been trying to demonstrate that social networks and social media are as valuable and important as socialising in person. The first 17 minutes are about a game that attempts to provide the player with empathy for those suffering from Anxiety. It then inspires Jack Septiceye to provide us with a look at how he felt after leaving college, how youtube helped him connect with people and how it had a positive impact on his life. When most people read about social networks and social media they read about making money, social media marketing, trolling, disinformation, depression and many other topics but very few of these articles look at the positive impact that connecting with people can have through social media. Social media, after all connect people whether they live in the middle of a big city or in the middle of the countryside. When you live in the countryside and practice sports in the mountains then the car and social media are equally important for having a sociable life....
Playing With Flickr — Sep 15, 2021
It’s interesting, isn’t it? Flick is a website that I have been part of since 1996 and I have been so distracted by Facebook, Instagram and other social networks that I have forgotten about it. Several times I expected the website to wither and disappear but it hasn’t. It is still around and it still has an active community. What’s more, this is so many magnitudes better than Instagram. for a start it has tagging, groups, albums and everything else. Secondly you have galleries and more. You can control who sees what and when. You also have access to the API with a minimum of effort. I mention this last fact because I am tempted to play with it soon. I feel ready....
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...
My love/hate relationship with twitter turns Ten — Mar 21, 2016
I have been active on the World Wide Web for two decades, two thirds of my life. Half of that time has been spent as a twitter user. I was among the first to use the service and I saw it go from being a curiousity to being the most popular conversation tool around. When twitter was young the iPhone was in it’s infancy and data plans did not exist. As a result it was SMS based. The SMS idea was short lived as it ended up costing the twitter founders too much. Twitter owes an immense debt of gratitude to Apple, the iPhone and the shift towards mobile data plans somewhere other than Finland. When we were Twitter infants, when we were discovering the network and thinking of how to use it we were stuck at a computer and dependent on wifi and power sockets. If we left the house we missed on the conversation. Twitter at the time was a compelling network, especially since I was lucky enough to live in London during the golden age of Twitter. Twitter is a fantastic and compelling social network that has the wrong people affecting its feature. Marketers, public relations professionals, investors and other groups are too busy trying to push content to people rather than attract people. Yesterday afternoon I came across the term “Organic Social media” in relation to Instagram’s shift from a reverse chronological timeline to an algorithm driven timeline. A shift in the definition of social media has taken place. A decade ago social media implied that people were sharing content and commenting on it. They were making statements and friends and colleagues would comment conversationally. Marketers et al have destroyed the conversation and shifted everything towards an “I am the best so look at me” fed by likes, comments, shares and other tricks. As Twitter turns ten years old I grow curious about the future of friendships and online conversations. I question whether social media landscapes will become as unfriendly to introverts as bars in the physical world. Will social media become the place where the most conventionally appealing individuals thrive?...
Mastodon, Social Media and Addiction — Dec 16, 2022
I’d like to discuss Mastodon, Social Media and addiction. Specifically I would like to discuss how I do not want to invest my time in a social network where people are already discussing social media s if it is an addiction. We have seen that this has a negative impact on social networks. Look at Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and others for illustrations of this....
Mastodon has Eight Million Accounts Today — Dec 3, 2022
Mastodon has reached eight million accounts today. That’s close to the population of Switzerland and two million less than London. Mastodon is growing because it was ready to scale up at the right time. As Musk and Twitter shift towards the Right, and as Musk perpetuates conspiracy theories, on a daily basis, so he prepares the idea conditions for other social networks and opportunities to thrive....
Jaiku is back — Jan 22, 2011
Remember Jaiku? it’s that site that was compared to twitter and behaved like friendfeed before friendfeed existed. Over the last two days activity has increased on that site as at least twenty people go back to communicating on the site. It’s a throw back to a community that had been quite lively. Online communities are funny in the way they cluster back to a place where they used to be. It’s like a migration but of an electronic kind. Does this mean I’ll have to pull out the N95 and use jaiku from there? We’ll have to see....
is twitter changing your blogging habits? - A 2008 response — May 4, 2015
Yes and no. Twitter is replacing instant messaging and chatrooms. It’s an open method by which for people to communicate instantly with others. It’s also about the overheard conversation although that term has disappeared. What does "overheard" mean? Well simply that whenever two people discuss a topic hundreds of people are following this conversation and when they decide they have an opinion they can cut in. They do have that 140 character limit though, so they need to get to the point is efficiently as possible. When that isn’t possible then they can do the next best thing. Write a comment in a blog post or even write a blog entry of their own where the conversation that took place on twitter is synthesised into a more digestible chunk of information. As a result twitter is changing people’s blogging habits but the question is why people want to chat publicly rather than in an enclosed space. Today people like transparency. Disclaimer: This is a post from the 28th of Octobre 2008....
IFTTT - Instagram to Twitter — Jun 22, 2016
Instagram is still a healthy social network. It still finds an engaged group of users who want to share their adventures, meals, friendships and more with other users. Some of them love sharing selfies and others share beautiful landscapes. This keeps the network vibrant and young. Twitter on the other hand has neutralised peoples’ passion and engagement with the site. They wanted to become google reader, they wanted mass following of key accounts, they wanted to neutralise the social, conversational aspect and they have succeeded in their goal so effectively that now an IFTTT rule reduces the need to visit twitter. [caption id=“attachment_2980” align=“aligncenter”] Which network do you prioritise When you share your instagram photos as native twitter photos you are hiding that you are disengaged from Twitter. By hiding this disengagement from the social network you are hiding that you may not respond to replies, mentions etc. By not responding to those interactions you are negating the purpose of your presence on the social network. [caption id=“attachment_2979” align=“aligncenter”] The once social network Twitter continues to decline When you fail to interact directly with websites such as Twitter you perpetuate the notion that twitter is a place where bots interact with bots because humans are no longer present. When humans are gone, when interactions between users no longer take place then what remains of the “social network”? Two hundred and ninety six thousand people have added this recipe to their IFTTT accounts. A quarter of a million people have chosen to spend time on Instagram rather than twitter. For this reason it makes sense to share pictures via Instagram. We will see your instagram account and we can start following it. In so doing we spend our time more effectively. Instagram still has a future. If you post to the networks that you want to use there is a good opportunity that others will want the same. Lets cut out twitter. ;-)...
Headlines and muted news sources — Oct 24, 2014
I have started to mute news sources that provide us with headlines that tell us how to feel rather than give us information about the content of the article. On Facebook the alternative would be to unfollow people I have met in person, friends. I prefer to mute news sources and get updates from friends. We will see when social media “experts” and headline writers go back to writing headlines that tell us about the content of articles....
Happiness and Social Media — Apr 12, 2023
It is the turn of the Washington Post to discuss whether people are happier after leaving social media. As with every other article I have skimmed on the topic it discusses addiction and more without discussing the reason for which social media might be bad for one’s mental health....
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+...
Google Plus Is A Good Product Which People Should Take The Time To Understand. — Apr 25, 2014
The American blogosphere is corrupt. Google Plus is an excellent product. It provides it’s users with an elegant amount of control as to who sees which post and whom it can be shared with. It provides groups and communities. It allows you to create your own circles. In Essence Google Plus is an extraordinarily flexible space where community building should be encouraged. Why does the American Startuposphere and blogosphere hate Google so much? Samsung has benefited from Android. We as private individuals have gained a lot through Gmail and google’s search engine. Google reader was really popular for a very long time in web terms....
Glympse and real time location sharing — Jan 19, 2011
Glympse is a real time location software that allows you to share your location with twitter, facebook, by e-mail or via a number of other social networks. It is simple and intuitive to use. Connect your facebook, twitter and other services with the application. When you are heading to work or to the mountains for a ski trip you can start to share your location in real time. You can set the amount of time that the location is shared. This is better than google latitude, foursquare and other services because it requires nothing from the receiver of this location sharing offer. Instead they simply click a link and they are kept up to date with your location progress. The flexibility of this service gives the user good control therefore fearing for your privacy is not so relevant. What I would like to see in future versions is the ability to play back the route we have taken. I would like to playback the train trip from one city in Switzerland for example....
Foursquare and evolving electronic social meetings — Jan 9, 2010
We’ve all got smartphones. Some of us are using Nokia, others are using blackberries and yet more are using Android and Iphones. As a result when we interact with people we are not interacting with them from a desk somewhere in a building. We’re interacting with them from the middle of the street or on public transport. As the shift from computers to mobile devices gains momentum we will be meeting more and more people this way. For the past decade it was reserved to geeks through many different sites. At first it was all about protecting your identity and being anonymous. That changed. From Geocities, through myspace and to facebook we have grown more accustomed to sharing more personal information about who we are and where we hang out. As a result of this increasing familiarity, and as more people grow to understand the advantages and pitfalls of online interaction so a new type of activity is taking form. From twitter where avatars were used to facebook where profile pictures are used our digital identity has evolved, become more open, and more open. On twitter we used to use avatars but more and more people use pictures of themselves. As a result of this the level of trust has improved. That’s where brightkyte and other websites are starting to become the norm. Recently I have been using Foursquare. I can follow as more and more people locally, in Geneva check in to different places. If I’m at Geneva airport for example I check in and I can see who else has checked in at this location. It’s an international location so there is a good chance of not meeting people there. In other locations though, as more people from our physical group of friends, and by this I mean non geeks, use these services so they gain relevance for “normal people”. Mix this in with the Iphone and the ease of use of the mobile apps we have some interesting new tools and services by which to meet new people. If I go to Les Brasseurs in Lausanne, Geneva or Nyon so I see who else has been there and could decide to meet them and see whether we enjoy their company when meeting face to face. Foursquare has a feature that I find interesting, we can share our phone number with those whom we trust to be friends and so we can exchange a few messages before meeting them in person, building trust and assessing the character of the person before meeting. Over a period of a few weeks as trust builds up so we can discuss whether to meet in person. For those of you reading this on my blog the idea is old. You’ve already been to 20 tuttles, tweetups, seesmeetups and other events and you’re a veteran of this type of meetup. For others, who are more used to glocals and facebook though the idea is relatively new. You might feel uncomfortable about this way of doing things. To you I say one thing. As more of your friends use these services, and as your network of trusted friends grows on these services grow so your motivation will grow to meet others. Take the frontline club in London as a case example. If I went there once and checked in only that time, never to come back then you would know not be so inclined to see about meeting me. If you see someone else checks in often to this place then your motivation to meet them may increase. As a result of several people checking in to that same location a number of times so the cluster of people may increase and become more important. As an example think of the independent cinemas that may be close to where you live, the City in Pully in Lausanne. As four or five people check in more often and through the common interest finally you may decide to meet. The key advantage of services like foursquare is that these sites are local. That is to say that you are kept aware of what those around you are doing. You are not inundated by the irrelevance of what the international community are doing but rather the local. The benefit of such services is they are providing you with local more relevant people to meet, without the effect of isolation that other types of services may make you feel. The drawback of services like twitter is that you are given a lot of irrelevant information. You don’t need to know who chats with who, what they are doing. Instead you simply see where they’ve been and how often. That’s where the relevance of the badges and mayorships come in. For different type of activities so you get a unique type of badge. If you check into a gym for example, you acquire the gym rat badge. It is unlocked for going to a venue with the tag gym. If you go ten times in a month, so people will know that you enjoy going to the gym. As other badges are created, for going to the cinema or the pub so you can see which people are most active in those forms of activities, hence learning of the relevance of their interest in similar activities. This is not a dating site, and it’s not a place for geeks. Unlike yelp and trustedplaces you do not need to give your opinion of the venue, it’s a three second “this is where I am and this is how many times I’ve been there” type statement. As the number of users increases so the opportunities to meet people with similar habits increases. Of course you can add tips and what to do at these locations, which others can see. As different types of personalities go to different places so the recommendations will increase. As you see what people recommend you do, at different times of the year so the wealth of ideas will increase. The foursquare app on the mobile phone allows you to arrive in a place you have not visited, click on what’s near me, see what venues are already in the database, see what people recommend you do and for you to go to those places and add yourself to those places and acknowledging that you have done what others have suggested. It’s an interesting idea that will come of age within the next few months as more and more users pick up these new habits on sharing local information and experiences. This is in effect part of the social medial lifestyle that some of us have been discussing for a number of years by now....
Forcing people to be active daily with Stories — Aug 28, 2019
Facebook and Instagram both have “Stories”. Stories are temporary vertical pictures and video that are only available for a limited amount of time before they are backed up and saved for retrieval once you request your data....
Did anything happn? — Jul 12, 2016
Happn is a location based dating app, at least in theory. I have had the app on my mobile phones for a year or more and have yet to meet a Happn user in person. In theory Happn shows you who you have crossed paths with and where. It also tells you how many times you have crossed paths with specific individuals. One of the biggest limitations of this app is that for now users of the app are based in cities rather than the countryside. As a result I will cross path with dozens of people I go to Geneva or Lausanne but will cross paths with no one when I am up enjoying a via ferrata. I find this to be a shame. It is precisely when I am on a via ferrata that I want to find people to share the passion with. A few days ago I was at the Plainpalais fanzone in Geneva as people queued up and waited to get in to watch France Versus Germany. I launched the app and saw that a lot of people at the event had the app active. I walked away from the fanzone and forgot about the app. So far with this app I do not remember having any matches or making any real effort to meet people that I see come up. Some apps are fun for statistical analysis rather than face to face encounters. Two people I know have turned up on the app. I have enjoyed a few via ferratas with one of these people and worked on a number of interviews with the other. One is in Lausanne and the other in Geneva. We will see if I ever meet someone via the app. Knowing me it will happn (;-)) when I can be bothered....
Conversational Social Networks — Jan 28, 2016
Ben Thomspon wrote, "How Facebook Squashed Twitter". The article looks at social networks from a marketing point of view. I like conversational social networks. Social networks by their very name are for conversations. They are about connections and they are about friendship, collaboration and more....
Close to Success - Exporting Instagram images to WordPress Natively — Jun 2, 2020
When Instagram was a self-run startup I loved the product. I loved that it was a way of sharing images with friends. I loved that it was fast and that it was light. I also liked that it had it’s own community. I liked that it was a way of sharing real life with people we conversed with online....
Bullying Disguised as Satire — Aug 18, 2020
We’re in the middle of a pandemic. Some of us go without conversing with people in the real world for days or even weeks at a time. Is now the time to be offensive about people’s social media habits? For plenty of TikTok users, their only window into the social world is their phone....
Black Mirror - A television series — Dec 4, 2016
Black Mirror - a television series Black Mirror is a television series that was broadcast by Channel 4 a few years ago and made available to Netflix audiences recently. The series explores a variety of topics and issues to do with technology from death to crime and existentialism. It also explores themes like family and friendship. We spend a lot of time thinking about technology and how it has changed our lives. Sometimes it’s fun to watch 80s series to see the world as it was before computers and the internet and sometimes it is fun to watch dystopian essays or short stories exploring facets of modern life. In modern society we see that social media is affecting the discourse that is taking place between politicians and normal people. We see how social media and the lowering of the barriers of entry to the fourth estate have created a golden age for propaganda and disinformation. We see in The Waldo Moment that a CGI bear can mock the political system. It could be directly related to what we have seen happen recently. Be Right Back deals with online identity and how a person can be emulated once they have died. The question is an interesting one. The more active we are on social media the more our character and personality can be understood and reflected back. This is limited. We are not entirely ourselves online. There are some things that we hide from the online world. In Fifteen Million Merits we see a dystopian vision of the world where everyone lives in a small dark room. They get out of this room to go and peddle for a few hours to get Merits. Once they have 15 million merits they can “apply” for a different kind of job via a talent show. Nosedive explores popularity and social networks. Everyone is constantly being rated based on what they share, how they interact with others and more. In such a dystopia people can progress or lose privileges based on reputation. In such a reality people are vulnerable. A vertovian theme is explored in “The Entire history of You”. An implant called the Grain records your entire life and you have the ability to fast forward and rewind moments of your life. In so doing you can analyse what went well, what went badly and more. You can also see more than you were intended to see through other peoples’ recorded experiences. In this episode we see the Kino-Eye, the all seeing eye. Your life is no longer private. I like some of the themes that are explored in this series and I recommend people to watch at least some of the episodes. I feel that they are relevant to our discussion about social media and online lives....
Access to contemporary technology helped promote my habits as an early adopter. — Mar 13, 2015
Parents in the silly con valley are idiots. They are in a trillion dollar industry and make billions a year because people want to use the technology they are developing. Think about how different my childhood would have been if we had learned camera work and video editing in art classes rather than painting, pottery and other less interesting art forms. Imagine if as a child I had not watched Cousteau Documentaries. Two of my strongest passions would never have emerged… scuba diving and documentary making. The luddites who amass personal wealth worth billions should understand that new technologies promote creativity and innovation rather than the opposite. Look at games and how they have evolved. Look at the emergence of multiplayer gaming right up to the leading edge games like Ingress among others. Without creativity and free time with new technologies revenue would be less forthcoming. My passions for video and editing were held up for many years because I had no access to an edit suite. Imagine how the children of Sillicon Valley execs are having their creativity stunted because of the very people who have most to gain from their children being early rather than late adopters. “Those who endorse this approach say computers inhibit creative thinking, movement, human interaction and attention spans.” These people demonstrate just how limited their understanding of modern technology is. News organisations are teaching their staff how to shoot and edit news stories using mobile phones, others are using tablets to write books and more. The idea that information technology prevents people from moving around in today’s world is redundant. How many of you still have a desktop at home that you use regularly. I personally use my mobile phone and a laptop most of the time. The laptop is with me everywhere I go. As a child and as a professional the thing that limited my movement is classroom and office time. In the classroom you learn at the speed the teacher chooses. There is no fast forwarding, skimming or rewinding. Everyone learns the same information at the same speed… in theory. In practice we learn at different speeds and information technology allows us to build knowledge actively. As children we had books and we learned by reading different chapters at different moments. Imagine studying the Roman civilisation as a child and wanting to see pictures and video from the time. Multimedia devices and computers would bring more to life quicker. I strongly believe that children should be given the freedom to use the technology or medium they want to use. It is not up to adults to decide which tools are relevant to their children. As an early adopter contemporary values and norms have held me back and stop others from keeping up....
A social media binge — Dec 11, 2007
This weekend I went on a social media binge. A social media binge is the moment when you forfeit sleep and the rest of reality for a few hours as part of the social media. For the purpose of this particular challenge I set myself two pass times. The first of these was to twitter and the second was to seesmic. If you read previous posts you’ll find out what twitter. As to seesmic that’s another story. It’s close to being instant messaging with videos. Normal video chats are live. I talk and as I talk you can respond and interrupt me. In seesmic you talk, type a title and share the video. After that another person speaks, presses stop and posts. Over the period of a few hours many more posts appear and as they do so the conversation evolves exponentially. All of these videos is available to every over member so there is a great degree of overheard conversation. This overheard conversation is where the fun begins. I’ve seen girls dancing, guys act like zombies, discussions about literature and social media. I’ve seen so many things that it feels like the social media equivalent of a music festival. Watch seesmix clips on youtube to get a better idea....
A Short Lived Interest in Substack Notes — Apr 14, 2023
When I heard about Substack Notes I felt an interest in the project. I liked the idea of a site where we could write long form posts on one side, and short form posts on the other. I liked the idea of having conversations with people and creating new connections. That’s why I use social media and that’s what makes social media social, rather than a news website or some other form of website....
A move away from centralised "social networks" and "social media" — Nov 25, 2014
Facebook engagement has declined since farmville distracted people away from conversations and towards mindless interactions with games, the sharing of tabloid content and emotional posts. These changes have had an adverse effect on social networks and the way in which we engage with people. I have noted a shift away from individuals towards following “celebrities” and “thought leaders”. Rather than interacting with 300 people on your timeline, becoming engaged and getting to know people well we have moved to a “yelling to be noticed” model. I have many thoughts on this topic and will elaborate later. Have you thought about how Ello, App.net and other social networks are trying to do what so many forums and discussion forums did before? They’re demonstrating how much context they are lacking. Instead of investing more time with social networks that may never gain traction I’m returning to this blog/website....