The results from Fernanda’s survey were released. Thanks so much to everyone who helped her out!!
privacy and accountability in blogs
trying out ecto
Trying to post from Ecto to my blog. I love the idea of being able to blog offline and just upload.
Although i have a feeling that this might also encourage me to revert to writing more semi-personal entries… It reminds me so much of my LJ days. Hmm… Is that a good thing?
visual representations of SXSW
OK. That is a fanstatically entertaining representation of the echo chamber. ::giggle::
Of course, someone pointed out to me that in both of my panels, the phrase “So, i have to disagree with X” was quite common. Still, i totally love this.
Why do people give up weblogs?
Giles Turnbull asked various people why they gave up blogs.
The various responses are fascinating… My favorite: “General sense of despair with: a) myself, b) the internet population in general.”
Abrams at SXSW: the MP3
I now have an MP3 of Abrams’ talk at SXSW. (Thanks Tom Chi!!)
It was actually really really good to listen to it again. Since i was so frustrated by the first time, my expectations were really low this time (as opposed to my high hopes before). This meant that i listened and ignored all of the places where i disagreed with him and focused on the fun anecdotes. There are many fun anecdotes embedded into the talk and that was good to listen for. If i had time, i’d go through and challenge different parts of the talk. That said, most of my disagreements are philosophical. For example, i don’t believe that the social awkwardness in Friendster is parallel to social awkwardness in everyday life. There are new issues and those must be addressed.
But anyhow, i wanted to pull out the section that really got my goat the other day.
“We’re all sick of the social networking thing”
Ryze: “It was a business networking site…” When he thought of Friendster, it wasn’t about dating. “I wanted to build a mainstream service. I thought… this isn’t business networking… this is *social* networking. Friends, dating, anything to do with that kinda of stuff. So that’s how i thought of the term social networking.”
Other people thought of businessy things… “And now there’s this whole kind of thing where people are talking about social networking. And they’re referring to any service or site that has these similar concepts.” Like Spoke…. “This is salesforce enterprise software deal – really quite different.” “And now they’re calling this a space.”
So, the problems are two-fold. First is the visceral response that i got when Abrams so casually described how he found the term social networking in his creative efforts. He then goes on to assumed a shared understanding of the term he’s adopted and is upset because everyone else is talking about social networks. He suggests that they are doing something very different to what Friendster is doing and that they should not be considered social networks.
When Spoke talks about social networks, they are actually using the term *far* more accurately to its definition than Friendster. People use their social networks to do business; social networks are about people and relationships, not simply networks that are used for social events. What makes Spoke far closer to the target is the fact that they are deriving behavior-based social networks instead of relying on people articulating them. Thus, they are actually representing social networks, not performance.
As i think about this, the reason that this got my goat was because it is a repurposing of a term that has lots of history and value because Abrams thought that he was the first to come up with it and capitalize on it. The most insulting part is that Abrams critiques sites using social networks to complete other tasks because they aren’t doing exactly what he did. These sites are not simply social networks by self-definition only; those of us on the outside saw them as such too. Take Ryze. Ryze isn’t business networking… it’s social networking for a business context. This section makes Abrams come across as ignorant. And that’s quite disappointing.
(de)wiring question
I have a little Mac and a really nice stereo with speakers. I keep meaning to buy long wires to connect the two so that i can spit out iTunes. But, is there any way to do this remotely in some fun configuration that i know nothing about? Like little Bluetooth devices that would make my stereo a wee bit smarter? Or?
Friendster usability analysis
Wow. This is quite old, but it is *fantastic*. Apparently, a whole class at MIT analyzed for their midterm and were asked to “… identify three usability problems with Friendster and write instructions to their programmers on how to fix them.” Needless to say, they have a lot of thoughts on the matter.
How fascinating is it that people all over the world, in classes and personally, are putting thought into solving Friendster’s problems?
[Thanks Jason]
vaginamabutt
my talks at SXSW
I did actually talk at SXSW. I’m so bad about posting recaps of what i talk about. But here’s a short overview.
Panel 1: Blogging Next: Where Personal Publishing Goes From Here [w/ Justin Hall and Anil Dash]
The only thing i remember talking about was the importance of storytelling in blogs. People want a way to share their stories with their friends and their future. They want to do so in a way where they can control the vulnerabilities that they’re faced with. We can tell people to get over the public/private concern until we’re blue in the face and it’s never going to work. People don’t get that public means persistent/searchable and they don’t get how they’re going to feel about this data in the future. It’s like asking Derrida to imagine IM when he talks about the differences between writing and speaking in the 70s. Never gonna happen. People don’t conceptualize this future, especially not when they’re 15 and trying to figure out their identity by screaming to the world “look at me!!” We all regret that. Luckily most of us don’t have it on record.
Jason Calcanis: Entry 1 — Entry 2
Fast Company (transcript)
Panel 2: The Aesthetics of Social Networks (with Jon Lebkowsky, Molly Steenson, Honoria Starbuck)
I brought up the Kant/Nietzsche approach that the only aesthetically pleasing thing is that which represents ourselves. I showed pretty pictures of Visual Who, Social Network Fragments and BuddyZoo. I talked about how people wanted to see themselves represented in relation to those that they knew. Articulated vs. behavior driven networks. Social networks stemming from anthropology and kinship networks. YASNS and the tendency to represent ourselves in context of friends… our representation being affected by our friends (including Clay turning me into a porn queen).
Fast Company (transcript)
I’m sure i babbled more; send me links if you blogged it.
death to communication; “man” is basically evil
OK. It’s a lost cause. I’m thousands of email behind, without cell phone or the Sidekick that keeps me sorta on top of email sometimes (or at least lets people bug me on AIM). Plus, my server crashed so i lost a bunch of email. Furthermore, i lost everyone’s phone numbers (again….). I don’t know how to be gracious about this so please accept my ungracious apologies for truly turning into a California flake about communication.
I used to send out emails to my friends in bulk telling them that i suck for being a bad communicator and promising to be better about it. At one point, i wrote out to everyone and said that there’s a low likelihood of me ever catching up or getting better abou communication and groveling. A friend immediately wrote me to congratulate me on learning to be honest with myself. Hrmfpt. He knew me all too well.
Alas…
Oh, and riddle me this. You are a robber. You have two phones in your hand. One is a Sidekick with a pretty little image that says “Web.” The other is a Sanyo operating Sprint with its slow backasswards Vision interface. Which one do you use to make web purchases? The Sprint of course! [In fact, as far as i can tell, you never figured out how to use the toy.] But don’t worry. You’re an equal opportunity credit card abuser even if you refuse the cool toy for the broken one. Of course, maybe this says something about interfaces for the masses that i just don’t get…
This incident once again affirmed my feelings on the “man” is basically good/evil discussion that got me into bigtime trouble in the 9th grade. We were stuck reading Lord of the Flies and apparently supposed to argue that it could never happen because “man” is basically good. I disagreed. I fundamentally believe that “man” is basically greedy (which converts to evil in a binary world). Those in power do whatever it takes to maintain power; those without it do whatever it takes to live the lifestyle they want to live. We live in a society that doesn’t see most forms of greed (a.k.a. capitalist success) as bad and we encourage everyone to strive for it. Ah, Protestant ethic. But lots of people never get out of the gates and thus are never going to win the race so they might as well cheat. I remember talking to a friend who worked in a retail store. 25% of the merchandise went out the door unaccounted for. Most theft was employees. Everyone paid for it.
So, here i am sitting in my overly privileged life griping about someone stealing shit from me that will probably cost me about 80 hours of hassle and a little over 1 month’s rent. I can cope. I can get a job. I have opportunities. I have job interviews.
I try really hard to think that maybe they stole that shit from me and helped out their kids or paid their rent. But the little doubter in me can’t help but wonder if my Sidekick and wallet went up their nose/arms. And the cultural pessimist in me wonders how much everyone’s experience with this little incident (since so many people apologied for letting them in) increased homophily in some way… increased intolerance and lack of openness for people different than us. ::sigh::
But i do indeed understand why people get more intolerant as they get older… the burns start to hurt more and more. This is my fourth time dealing with pain-in-the-ass theft in 2 years. It was always due to my naive trust. Let go of my purse at a friend’s loft (2 years ago). Let a AAA guy into my car. Left my car in mid-town NY. Let go of my purse at a friend’s loft (this week).
I hate not being able to resolve the “why” question… why do people do this? If you read this blog and you’ve ever stolen someone’s wallet, can you explain why (anonymously)? I really want to know…