Thanks, Phil, for posting this video:
JESS3 / The State of The Internet from JESS3 on Vimeo.
Fairly wow indeed. I’m very glad not to be a server jockey for Facebook.
At last … the information you’ve always wanted: how to get un-followed on Twitter.
If you use Twitter, you’re familiar with the following scenario: someone follows you, and you find out via email, or some other software you’re using for the purpose (unless you’re automating Twitter, which is usually a bad thing in itself, but we’ll deal with that another day).
You take a look at the user’s stats, and if he or she has a decent number of tweets in relation to following and following numbers, you consider following back. You also check to see if the user is following way more people than are following him or her … because that’s usually a sign of someone trying to game Twitter to develop a big megaphone without putting any significant energy into earning that megaphone.
Sometimes when you’ve done this step, and even noticed that the user’s tweets are potentially of interest to you, you notice something else. Like this, for example:
I followed this user, then read a few more of his tweets. Lo and behold … multiple repeat Tweets.
This is a sign of a user with one or more problems:
As soon as I saw all the repeat tweets, I un-followed this user. The funny thing here is that I’m actually interested in some of the topics he’s covering. But his behavior smells like spam.
Moral of the story? Old methods may not work in new media.
My good friend Rastin Mehr and several colleagues are soon to launch the Anahita Social Engine … an open-source framework for building social networks and applications.
Here’s their latest overview presentation:
Robert Scoble knows who I am! He cares about what I do! He wants to know when I’m in the office, and when I go to Starbucks, and when I have an ingrown toenail! He’s following me on Twitter! I matter!
Or not.
This is obviously a fake Robert Scoble on Twitter … with about 50,000 fewer followers, and 20,000 fewer following than the very similar-looking real deal.
Here’s the real Robert Scoble on Twitter. I think he’s following me too.
But if anybody thinks that actually matters, I’ve got some beachfront property in Alaska for you. It’ll be great in 300 years, when global warming finally kicks in.
A truly wonderful part of any user-generated social community is the Jupiter-sized amount of spam that kamikazes towards the site like John Daly to the pro club bar.
Twitter, a social messaging site, is not immune. That won’t shock anyone in the social media know, but I gained a new appreciation for the spam-friendliness of Twitter when nerkaszs followed me.
This is a person with 27 updates, each of which follows the exact same format: “I just updated my Squidoo page: [ link to page ].”
This is obviously a borderline spam account, with no real personal info or valuable knowledge transfer on any particularly discernible topic. This is purely and simply an SEO play on Squidoo lenses that nerkaszs has built and presumably collects some PPC income on.
So why would anyone follow this account? Anyone who takes 5 seconds to actually look at it will drop it faster than a bar of soap on a string in a prison shower.
The answer is the secret to Twitter’s Spamability Quotient: 39%. Many Twitter users automatically follow anyone who follows them. There are a variety of ways, including this one that Dave Taylor explains.
I’m guessing the TSQ is about 39% … based simply on nerkaszs’s stats. Whoever Nerk is, she/he/it follows (yeah right) 918 people and has suckered 360 people into following (repeat yeah right) him/her/it. Do the math and you’ve got 39% of all people who are followed who will automatically reciprocate.
And that number says interesting things about spammers’ ability to use Twitter as a reproducible loudspeaker.
He’s hardly an unbiased source, but I like how the new CEO of LinkedIn defines three of social networking’s heavyweights:
“LinkedIn is the office, Facebook is the barbecue in the backyard, and MySpace is the bar,” says Hoffman, referring to the three major social-networking sites battling it out for millions of consumers and billions of dollars in online ads.
Rings true with me.
LinkedIn is where I connect with business professionals, contacts, co-workers, and partners. Facebook is for friends, acquaintances, and old classmates. MySpace … I’m not sure if I remember my MySpace login information. (Perhaps that says something about me as a married 30-something with kids!)
By the way, if you’d like to connect with me on LinkedIn … please feel free!
I would like someone to create a new Facebook app, based on the myriads of Likeness quizzes. But instead of likenesses based on fruits, movies, books, cars, friends, or anything else, it would be based on the degree to which you dislike likeness quizzes.
Bah. Humbug.
My good blogging friend Leo Bottary asked this question on LinkedIn Answers:
Describe the mindset one needs to be successful at using social media tools?
Here’s the answer I gave:
There’s a few qualities that come to mind:
- some familiarity and comfort with technology
- some commitment of time to engaging with social media
- a relaxed attitude about controlling every aspect of a message
- an ability to communicate effectively
- above all, a desire and willingness to learn
People who are new to social media should get their feet wet by finding some blogs and podcasts in their niches and just reading and enjoying them for a month or so. Get familiar with the conventions and styles that are out there. Read a few books, like Robert Scoble’s Naked Conversations.
Then start simple, with a blog. Add a Flickr account if you’re into pictures, and link the two. Ensure that you’re on Facebook, LinkedIn, and any other social networks that might be verticals in your area.
Say interesting, informative things about your industry. Link generously, and be generous with data.
Most importantly, don’t lose it when people disagree. That’s natural, and it’s going to happen. Use these situations as learning experiences. Respond calmly and politely, apologize when you were wrong, and move on. You’ll be respected for how you deal with disagreement.
There are a lot of good answers to that question – follow the link above to see them all.
The entire purpose of this post is to publish a post while having set up Wordpress (the software that runs this blog) to ping (notify) flog blog (the software application that updates Facebook with my new posts when I post them here) every time I publish a post.
. . .
. . .
Err, jargon often sucks, but I think we can all agree it can have a wonderful brevity to it.
. . .
. . .
Bleh, flog blog often sucks. It very rarely picks up my new posts, which is annoying. And it still has not picked up my ping, which was sent 15 minutes ago.
I am so over Facebook.
Essentially, I’ve put my Facebook profile on autopilot using applications that suck in all my data from around the web. But I hardly ever go there myself.
Why?
Well, first of all, my employer blocks Facebook. While I certainly wouldn’t spend a long time there anyways during the work day, it’s annoying to get little email notifications during the day about something a friend did on Facebook, and then having to think about that later if I want to check it out.
Secondly, and much more importantly, while the application infrastructure of Facebook is amazing, it’s also fingernails-on-blackboard perky-happy-chirpy-people-on-Monday-mornings annoying.
Let me say that again: ANNOYING.
Everytime anyone does anything, Facebook feels like it needs to notify me. So-and-so is playing Scrabulous, someone else took a picture of a cup of coffee, someone else is super-poking me, and his dog is joining some stupid corporate fan club because they happen to like Tim Hortons coffee.
I love to know when someone has posted a new blog entry.
But I don’t need the minutiae of their every footstep on Facebook. There’s a massive annoyance factor in being sent some kind of message that actually isn’t a message. It’s not a real message … not a note, or email, or IM, or actual communication … but a piece of digital flotsam, tossed off randomly from some interaction with a Facebook application, sent easily and spammishly and automatably to tens or hundreds of “friends.”
But that’s not the worst part.
The worst part is that half the time, when you get this piece of digital flotsam, if you actually care to see the picture of the cup of coffee, you have to install the application that the “friend” used when adding it to Facebook. And then you have to sell your soul to the devil and allow the application to know the most intimate details of your online life.
Enough!
The social utility doesn’t have any.
The world is obviously coming to an end when a video blogger like Scoble is at Davos live-broadcasting everyone he meets. Here’s Danah Boyd, who has interesting things to say about teens, technology, and social networking:
Fred Wilson just posted on the future of media based on his kids’ usage and some financial/valuation data:
He admits this is based on a sample of 3 kids living with both birth parents who are fairly affluent, which skews the results (many kids don’t have the resources to buy TV series on DVD, for instance).
But what the wealthy have one decade, every has next, right?
I’ve finally, finally, finally invested some time and energy in this, my new blog … and it feels good.
The idea is that Sparkplug 9 is the focus of my digital life. It’s the hub connecting all the spokes of my online interactions.
And they all – plus anything that doesn’t quite fit into any of the above categories – make up my online footprint.
Overall I’m pretty happy with how it all fits. It’s all very web 2.0 to be able to link bits and pieces from many different sites. Ideally, YouTube would have a better way to stream your videos onto your site … I’m not sure that having them all appear in one video player is the best option. But overall: not bad.
The beauty of it all is that it’s so easy with Wordpress, the blogging software I use. Most major web 2.0 companies supply Wordpress plugins to add their functionality to your site. And if they don’t some enterprising and generous plugin writer has, and is sharing the fruits of his labor.
Online identity is a complex thing … we worry about who owns it, we look for different ways to analyze it, we want to control it, and we worry about who will find it.
As for me, I’m just going to worry about creating it. Or, more accurately, living it. I’ll let the chips fall where they may … since the only worse than having a negative online identity is having no digital footprint at all.
Friends are great. Invites to events from friends are fine. Notifications that friends have updated photos or blogs are wonderful.
But, with apologies, since I turned 15 some time ago, I really don’t need invites to a million “likeness” quizzes based on movies I like or don’t like, personality tests based on chocolate flavors I prefer, fan clubs, “presents” that aren’t really presents and certainly can’t be unwrapped, and invites to be “best friends” with someone that I’m already “friends” with on Facebook.
Arrgghhh!
Are we not satisfied with robbing children of childishness by incessantly driving adult tastes in everything to younger and younger ages, so that we must now also perform the inverse and infantalize ourselves with giggly fluffy pink nothings and superpokes and other such nonsense?
Social networking is cool and wonderful. It’s helped me reconnect with friends I’ve lost track of years ago.
But that doesn’t mean I want to act like a pubescent Japanese schoolgirl.
PS:
Since I’m already up in high dudgeon, here’s one more thing that bugs me. I’m not going to add 50 Facebook apps to my account every day, giving them and their creators access to any and all information about me.
So there. Bah. Humbug.
What with the insane euphoria of the web 2.0 crowd having found something slightly less web 1.0ish than MySpace in the social networking space and the insane euphoria of the VC crowd having found a new poster child for massively inflated valuations, I’ve been trying to maintain sort of a cool distance from Facebook.
(While, naturally, having a profile that I hardly touch.)
But this morning an old buddy from school sent me a message. By old buddy from school, I don’t mean university or even high school. I’m talking elementary school.
Wow. I hadn’t even remembered his last name, but I had remembered Jaimie.
Reconnecting with someone you haven’t seen in maybe 20 years is pretty cool.
Welcome to Sparkplug 9, John Koetsier's blog on technology and social media.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
