Social Networking
Roy's got a post on all the digital paraphernalia he was lugging around on a recent trip to Boston. This reminded me of my own experience going to Springfield -- and how attached I still was to the 'Cloud' no matter what the circumstances were.
Case in point, was my trip down to Springfield on Amtrak. We had to stop no less than four times so freight trains which have the right-of-way on this one-track system, could pass us by. Thanks to my smartphone, I was able to log in every delay as a 'Status Update' on Facebook. Also, thanks to my smartphone, I was able to figure out where we were, using the built-in GPS program. I even managed to upload a picture of the train's (less-than-fascinating) interior thanks to the phone's camera. And finally, of course, I was able to keep up with my email and look at the occasional webpage throughout the entire trip.
This level of connectivity -- the almost obscene ubiquity of the network -- would have boggled the mind even ten years ago. And sure, there are people who would point to the triviality of its use and who would wonder why I simply didn't put the damn phone down. To which I would reply, what's so fascinating about being on a train from Chicago to Springfield that's stuck for an extra hour?
It's one of the few benefits of living in the 21st Century, so why not take advantage of it -- for at least as long as the batteries hold out.
It's only on weekends and public holidays that I catch up with my readings.
Anyway, I had a look at yet another post on the Twitter v. RSS conundrum. Here are a couple of others (1, 2) that I've read in the past couple of days.
I guess initially my reaction was, if you're depending on Twitter as your aggregator, you're in trouble because it pretty much sucks for that purpose. I mean, I'd sooner try to navigate the credits as they stream by of a feature film.
But that was only my initial reaction. From a practical standpoint, if a significant portion of your potential audience is going somewhere, then whether it sucks or not really doesn't matter.
The whole purpose of our current approach to the web is, to borrow a phrase, 'Write once, read many'. The number of outlets through which we're able to deliver our content -- free of redundancy or duplication of our efforts -- is a measure of success in this digital survival of the fittest.
The question then should never be whether a particular tool sucks but whether the content we're providing can fit into the framework. In other words, it's all about syndication.*
The moment this brilliant conclusion dawned on me, I had a look at Drupal's Twitter Module and opened an account on TwitterFeed. So yes, I've drunk the Koolaide.
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*Note: happily enough, syndication works both ways. We syndicate our own content and then turn around and reuse the content of others. So even Twitter may suck less depending on how we access it, whether directly or through some value-added intermediary.
I liked the article in BusinessWeek on the 'Real-Time Web'. It being BusinessWeek, they naturally devoted a significant portion to speculation on how to make money from this emerging trend and I had to laugh at the illusive precision of there being "at least $5 billion to be made on the real-time Web". What, just $5 billion?
Anyway, to give them their due, they correctly identify the trend:
In just the past couple of years, several developments have come together to make the Web more of a real-time experience: ubiquitous high-speed Internet connections; a growing number of mobile devices such as the iPhone with full Web browsers; and new Web technologies that enable instant transmission of messages and data. That mix has made always-on, real-time communications easy and addictive.
Okay, that sounds pretty 'real-time' to me. What I can't understand though is the focus, bordering on fixation, on Twitter in this and other articles. I mean, here it is, we've got an emerging technology that's giving us real-time group communication both in text, voice and video and the most impressive thing they can think of is a text stream limited to 140 characters?
You can't be serious. Off the top of my head, the number of possibilities include:
- Switch from traditional telephones to more computer- and network-based audio
- Conference calls on steroids -- now with video
- More ways to interact remotely at meetings and conferences -- routine live blogging and group chat are just the beginning
- Greater use of video chat -- for no better reason than there being a video camera on everyone's laptop
- Remote mentoring including real-time online editing of student research papers
- Easier and more dynamic ways to collect and organize research
And yes, I've seen the video introducing Google's ambitious Wave Project. It's nice but I'm most optimistic about initiatives that build on past successes and move forward by incremental steps. The kind of technology we've become familiar with as hallmarks of Web 2.0 (YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, etc.) has prepared us well for this next step.
[h/t ReadWriteWeb]
I put up the Google Friend Connect widget on the far right column. It kind of duplicates what the MyBlogLog widget does though in a more dynamic way.
In any case, sign up today!
I have no idea what role Twitter is playing in Iran. On the one hand, Clay Shirky and the U.S. State Department apparently think it's having a huge role.
On the other hand, a reader quoted by Nico Pitney of the HuffingtonPost says it's 1979 all over again:
"Also - what is happening now with regards to spreading information to the people. They are going back to 79 strategies. basically they are printing papers having people distribute them all over the country. twitter/net etc is not effective right now - they are going back to old-fashioned style. [Sun., 6/21/2009: 12:57 PM ET]"
Then there's this exchange between On the Media host Bob Garfield and a Professor from UC San Diego currently residing in Teheran:
Bob Garfield [3:55]: "Twitter has been at the center of the conversation [sic]. It's unclear how much of a role Twitter has played. But we have seen a lot of press reports of Iranians using Twitter to give a kind of blow-by-blow description -- but more especially those in the Diaspora keeping others apprised of events."
Professor: "Twitter is a recent thing in Iranian society especially among the youngsters. My hunch is that, the Diaspora community has kind of exaggerated the effect of Twitter. Definitely there are some Iranians using Twitter in order to connect with other Iranians outside of Iran. But at this moment, I could assure you, Twitter is not the main kind of new form of communication ... which Iranians are using."
The professor seemed to think that satellite tv with its feeds from the BBC and CNN was having a greater effect.
I'm so sick of hearing about Twitter. On the Media Hype Index™, it's reaching Krispy Kreme proportions*.
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*(then, now)
I think Amazon is taking this community thing way too far. I mean, the 'Inkjet Community'?
A fascinating scandal on Facebook, uncovered by blogger Brad J. Ward, points to both the strengths and weaknesses of Social Networking tools.
The scandal revolves around an attempt by at least two companies, CollegeProwler.com and MatchU to corner the market, so to speak, on as many College 'Class of 2013' Facebook groups as possible using non-attending individuals to set up the groups and serve as Admins.
Once they were found out, representatives of these two companies, possibly sensing a public relations disaster, left comments on Brad's original post, apologizing for their actions and promising to vacate the groups they had so improperly created.
Many commentators called this 'squatting' and appropriately identified the need for Colleges and Universities to stake out prominent roles for themselves in social networking sites so that vacuums like this don't occur in which case marketers (or even worse) inevitably come in to fill the void.
But that's only half the story.
The other half is the casual almost breathless use of collaborative technology that went into uncovering this scam.
The thing was first mooted on a blog, screen-shots were put up on Flickr, a screencast was created using Jing. Brad and others searched LinkedIn, ZoomInfo and even Craigslist eventually nailing down the companies responsible for this.
They communicated with each other on his blog, through Twitter or using a group spreadsheet on Google Docs. The spreadsheet itself which has since been taken down for privacy reasons, quickly incorporated the work of at least 30 volunteers listing more than 400 schools.
And all of this happened within the space of a day or two!
Communication has been instantaneous for a while now but the variety of ways we can communicate and the number of formats we can employ is truly remarkable.
File under, 'Weird Email of the Day':
Please reset your email notification settings.
Unfortunately, the settings that control which email notifications get sent to you were lost. We're sorry for the inconvenience.
To reset your email notification settings, go to...
Thanks,
The Facebook Team
How do you 'lose' settings like this?
We all have our moments of epiphany. John Blyberg had his recently regarding Library 2.0. In a post called, "Library 2.0 Debased" he pulls no punches:
It's very evident in the profusity of L2-centric workshops and conferences that there is a significant snake-oil market in the bibliosphere. We’re blindly casting about for a panacea and it’s making us look like fools.
He goes on to warn against "arbitrarily introducing technology that isn’t properly integrated into our overarching information framework". Our choice of technologies needs to make sense, he argues, ultimately to our end-users.
This of course is completely true. As a survival tactic, if for no better reason, you'd think we'd all be trying to work out our core competencies long before shopping around for technologies.
Unfortunately a lot of what passes for "L2.0" seems to go in the opposite direction.
All too often it's how to build our libraries around blogs, wikis and social networks -- rather than the other way around. Add to this a level of individual affirmation and self-discovery more appropriate on occasion to a revival meeting than a PD, and you have a picture not of innovation but of its caricature.
Worse, there seems to be a certain element of one-up's-manship in play, at least among the more ambitious, with whoever adopting the largest number of 2.0 technologies in the least amount of time being perceived as most "cutting edge".
This isn't going to work. You might as well have a chicken with its head cut off picking technologies. At least the results would be harder to predict.
[h/t Blake]
