The social tug of war (1)
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3 weeks, 1 day
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We call it “social media,” but what’s so social about it? Sometimes a distinction that should be obvious is difficult to make, and sometimes it’s even contradictory. Consider the phrase ‘online social networking’ for a moment. What comes to mind? If you’re anything like me, you envision someone sitting at their computer late at night, writing on someone’s Facebook wall, replying to a Tweet, or commenting on a top story on Digg. But what’s so ...
Blogging is a big game (4)
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Every once in a while, when I sit down to write a new blog article, I hesitate. ”Don’t you want to do something fun?” I ask myself. ”Wouldn’t it be more interesting to play a game, explore a hobby– anything besides work?” Fortunately, this devil on my shoulder doesn’t last for long. Why not? Well, for a nonprofessional like me, blogging isn’t work. Rather, it’s much more like a big game, and here are a ...
Observations from a first-generation Facebook member (7)
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Most of the time, the early adopter set is a super-geeky and tech savvy bunch that’s wormed its way into beta testing a service through high-powered connections, scrounging for invitations on blogs, or a similar tactic. However, today’s most popular social network actually began by locking early adopters out– only allowing .edu-registered college students to join. As a result, two very different types of users have arisen within Facebook. Not only do these two groups ...
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ltbeyer said:
I"m certainly a first generation Facebook-er and still use it accordingly. It never really occured to me to use it a different way, especially when I'm using Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg, FriendFeed, etc to keep up with my "other" networks.
Forget Firefox, scrap Safari: enter Google Chrome (3)
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Over the last six months or so, I’ve become extremely frustrated with Internet browsers. Slow, clunky, and prone to memory leaks, they become increasingly unreliable the more you use them, and that’s not right. Increasing problems with Firefox 3 led me to adopt the faster Safari on my Windows machine– ridiculous-sounding, I know, but istill the best option. Of course, working with a primarily Mac-based browser within Windows leads to a variety of other issues, ...
Sweetcron released, does not disappoint (11)
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You’ll have to forgive me for writing a short entry this afternoon– I’m much too eager to play around with my new Sweetcron installation to post at length! As promised by developer Yongfook, self-hosted lifestreaming service Sweetcron launched a public beta yesterday, opening its doors to throngs of aggregation enthusiasts. At the beginning of the month, I wrote about why I was excited for Sweetcron’s release, and I’m happy to say that my recent dabblings ...
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Bwana said:
I'm liking Sweetcron. There's room for improvement for sure but I think the plugin and theme api will spur community interest. Check mine out at http://lifestream.bwana.org
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wAsh said:
This seems like something that people might want to use to keep their friends and associates updated with their wanderings.
Observations on social media compression (2)
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It’s been a busy week for me as I’ve made the transition back to campus to begin my fourth year here at the College of William & Mary. As I’ve been tied up with purchasing overpriced textbooks, running from one end of campus to the other, and preparing an honors thesis in psychology, social media has been temporarily set on the back burner. Fortunately for me, though, this sudden paradigm shift from ample time to ...
Beating those early adopter blues — Andy DeSoto (11)
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1 month, 2 weeks
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Uh-oh. There’s trouble over on FriendFeed. Hailed lately as one of the hottest new technologies to come out of Silicon Valley, the service has been gaining more and more momentum– and dedicated users– day after day. But is the hype about to come to an end? Lately, murmurings among high-profile FriendFeed users have swept through the blogosphere: social media blogger Kyle Lacy wrote a post in which he admitted, “I’ve [been] burned out on the ...
Assembling your “party”: Five kinds of friends you should make on social networks (10)
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Making friends on social networking sites like Digg, Facebook, Twitter, or FriendFeed is a lot like assembling an old-school RPG party: it takes certain kinds of people, carefully balanced, to make the social networking experience a pleasant one. Just like you wouldn’t walk into an ominous dungeon without healers and support characters at your side, you shouldn’t brave the world of social networks without the aid of these five kinds of friends: The Content Creator ...
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Tommaso said:
Originale e ben fatta questa visione del gruppo di amici online come un party di un RPG.
The Pownce Yearbook: community revitalization in action (1)
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I‘ve been planning an article on how an online community might revitalize itself for some time now, but why go into detail when I can just give a fantastic example? Yesterday, a “manga face” meme swept through the communities on Pownce, Plurk, and other social networking sites. Using the free cartoon/manga face generator Face Your Manga, dozens and dozens of users participated by crafting their own faces and sharing with the community. In particular, Pownce’s ...
DISQUS and Tumblr: A tale of two releases (5)
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It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the age of DISQUS, it was the age of Tumblr. Over the past two days, two highly-regarded and much-loved Internet services released updates: Top-notch global commenting system DISQUS and microblogging/aggregation tool Tumblr. Unfortunately, in the world of incremental updates, all is not created equal, as these two very different ...
What the iPhone Application Store tells us about Twitter (4)
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Despite the service’s recent technical issues, the entire blogosphere seems to ooh and ahh the value of Twitter. Even now writers and web gurus continue to hail its simple beauty: just today, TechCrunch blogger Gregor Hochmuth published a new article entitled “Why Twitter Hasn’t Failed: The Power of Audience.” However, even though the Twitterati continue to sing its praises, some simple insights provided by the new iPhone Application Store suggest a different truth: that Twitter, ...
Tablet PC integration proves duly rewarding (1)
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Every once in a while I enjoy taking a step away from the broader picture of Internet technology and social media services to more closely examine the impact technology is having within my own community. When I learned that a chemistry professor at my university, the College of William & Mary, had received a national award for his use of technology in the classroom, I knew I had to share the news with readers here ...
Why I’m excited about Sweetcron (8)
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Not entirely breaking news, no, but the more I think about it the more excited I get: Sweetcron is going to change the face of lifestreaming. Designed by this totally rad looking guy named Yongfook, this soon to be released self-hosted automated lifestreaming blog software (what a mouthful!) has gotten some recent coverage in my favorite tech blog Read/Write Web that has me impatiently drooling for the software’s release. The project’s main splash page marks ...
Escaping a social network, if only for an evening, can be surprisingly rewarding (7)
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Whether you want to believe it or not, the way a particular social network is designed can have wide-reaching effects on our behavior. Staying plugged into any network, digital or otherwise, for a prolonged amount of time can begin to change us unconsciously in a way we don’t realize until we finally become untethered. Here’s a little anecdote of why I’m iterating this particular message now. Taking a break from Plurk Lately, I’ve been spending ...
Cross-posting: saving time at the expense of others? (6)
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2 months, 1 week
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Social media blogger Rahsheen Porter recently wrote a great piece about Ping.fm, a useful web service that lets you send the same message out to a number of social media services (”cross-posting“). In his insightful post, he details a complex method of ensuring that the right social networks receive the correct messages, providing the biggest bang for the buck. Rahsheen’s article illuminates the good that cross-posting services can do for both creator and consumer alike, ...
Socialthing! stagnation coincides with AOL buyout? (5)
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2 months, 1 week
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Internet startups are tight ships. Most feature a bare-bones team and just enough resources to get by, hugely unlike today’s decadent mainstream corporations. What happens when one of these startups is approached by an Internet giant hoping to acquire it? Perhaps the limited resources on hand necessitate an important decision: continue to evolve for the benefit of the user, or put development on the back burner in order to negotiate a profitable deal. Socialthing! slowing ...
Delicious redesign launches, but I still hate tagging (1)
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At long last, we have a new Delicious. Faster, more accessible, and better designed, the redesigned and renamed social bookmarking champion is no longer a vision of the future but an establishment of the present. I’m not going to cover the launch here– if you’d like to read more, check out ReadWriteWeb or TechCrunch’s excellent coverage– but rather, address an issue that’s remained relatively unchanged with the 2.0 iteration: tagging. Tagging is a cornerstone of ...
