adamyntium

Category: technology

  • Time spent on social networks and the like – I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours

    After having fallen hugely behind on browsing my Facebook newsfeed, Friendfeed, etc., I decided to see just how much time I had been spending during those “on top of it” days… and, by extension, how much time it’d take me to keep up each day.

    Around 10pm last night, I “cleared out” my Reader, and picked a stopping point in Facebook and Friendfeed, so I could start fresh tonight (Monday) and see just how much would accumulate in 24 hours… and how long it’d take me to get through it.

    So here are my numbers:

    • Facebook:  Browsing (and commenting a bit) on a filtered newsfeed of one group of 270 friends:  20 minutes
    • Friendfeed:  Browsing (and commenting/liking a bit) on a selected group comprised of about 80 friends:  8 minutes
    • Twitter:  Browsed through unfiltered/ungrouped list via Brizzly (happy to offer invites to the first ten people who contact me):  12 minutes.
    • Reader:  Browsing through my ??? feeds (and checking out a few original pages + adding a couple comments):  28 minutes (”???” because Reader never was able to load up anything when I clicked on “Manage my subscriptions.”  Bummer!  But I’m guessing I have over 200 feeds, of which probably 100 are updated at least weekly)

    Just a bit over an hour.  Not that bad, right?  Except when you realize a few very important things:

    • This is more than an hour every single day, including weekends, holidays, vacation times, etc.
    • Worse yet (and more importantly), this does not include my personal e-mail, which I estimate would take me about an hour daily in and of itself to read and appropriately reply to messages.
    • Nor does this include Wave.  Or Techmeme.  Or online News.  Or really anything else in the vast online world.
    • It certainly doesn’t include the time I should be spending composing thoughtful e-mails to my Grandpa, to my friends near and far, and so on.  500 or so contacts in my addressbook… people that I care about.  If I e-mailed each one just once a month, that’s more than one substantive e-mail every day (in addition to the other replies).
    • And it certainly doesn’t include corporate (work) mail and related stuff, but that’s well beyond the scope of this inquiry, in which I’m trying to pin down this…

    How much of my free time do I spend (or would I have to spend each day) on “keeping up” with friends and news online?


    *  *  *

    Well, now you know, or at least have an idea about my time allocations. 
    Where does your time go?
    – How much time do you spend each day on Facebook, Twitter, etc.?  (Not sure?  Try what I did, and actually time it!)
    – Is that more than you thought?  Less than you thought?  Does it make sense for you?

    Curious to hear your numbers and your feelings on this…

    [Edited at 1:18am October 13 to add: Twitter stats]

  • Don’t get a G1 (but do keep an eye out for Android Awesomeness!)

    When it took me seven seconds just to be able to answer a phone call, that’s when I realized I had finally had enough.  I’ve never used an iPhone and due to disapproval over Apple’s policies probably never well, so this is not a “G1 Sucks iPhone Rules!!!1” post.  Unfortunately, it’s still a rant against the G1.

    First, let me offer some disclaimers:
    1) I’m a power user.  I’ve downloaded lots of apps, and overall, they rock.  Google Maps on the G1 is awesome.  Pandora’s new Android app made me literally giggle with glee.  And the Android OS, while clearly still a bit rough, has great potential IMHO.  But perhaps because I’m a power user (installing many apps and pushing the phone to its limits), the phone has been more frustrating for me than it is (or would be) for more, heh, normal people.
    2) And speaking of normal people… my sister—who is crazy-smart but hardly an early adopter geek—LOVES her G1.  She pretty much only uses it for phone calls and checking her e-mail, but the latter came in handy wonderfully when her desktop computer was down and also when the electricity was out where she lives.  She’s had no problems figuring out how to use the phone, and seemingly no problems getting it to do what she wants to do with it.  Though granted, when I last spoke with her, she hadn’t actually installed a single app.
    3) I know people on the Android team and I hope they do not hate me after this post.  They’re genuinely good, smart, hardworking folks who IMHO made an admirable effort towards Android Phone v1.  When the phone works well (and let me note, it mostly does), it makes you appreciate the power and opportunities in an open mobile OS

    Alas, though, for better or worse, working well most of the time isn’t sufficient for a phone. Phones should work reliably and consistently well, and the G1 does not.  It comes down to the hardware: Ouch.  Ouch.  Ouch.  Slow, as in, it often takes over five seconds for the home page to show up after you click the home button.  That, combined with the flakiness in making and receiving calls, makes it a pretty lousy phone for phone calls. And regardless of my preference for e-mail over voice calls most of the time, this is still absolutely, positively unacceptable in a phone.

    *  *  *

    Many of you may be surprised to hear me publicly railing against what some refer to as “the Google Phone.”  I note (with some pride) that my policy has pretty much always been to offer public praise on Google products when I feel they deserve it and private (within-Google) blunt-yet-constructive criticisms of Google products that (to me) fall short.

    But…
    1) This technically isn’t a “Google phone.”  We made the software, but someone else made the hardware.  I’m mentioning this as a technicality, admittedly, and not intending to just pass the buck.  Ultimately, it’s got our name on it and we should (and I believe do) take both responsibility and credit for Android phones that include what’s known as the “Google Experience.”
    2) I can say with firm confidence that many of the phones coming down the pike this year (18-20 is the number publicly pre-announced!) simply ROCK.    And I want folks’ first experience with Android to be one that’s consistently AWESOME, not just “Hmm, pretty good most of the time.”

    You should be asking Santa for an Android phone this Christmas, even if you’re an atheist.  Er, okay, if you’re a non-Christian, perhaps you should just go out and buy an Android phone yourself.  You’ll appreciate the better (much better) hardware, slicker UIs, and a lot more to make you smile.

  • #geekfail — Valuing immediacy over depth, accuracy, and understanding

    Yesterday, I learned about the turmoil in Iran… from the blogosphere.  Some have argued that the immediacy of news on this and other breaking topics is a sign that mainstream media has failed and online media—specifically “real time” components of online media—have triumphed.  I believe such an assumption is not only dead wrong, but dangerous to society.

    Today, I can get more information—and more importantly, more *verified* information—about the situation in Iran from mainstream media.  And in a few days, I’ll no doubt be able to get some insightful background information, valuable context, and more-likely-accurate news from weekly magazines.

    Even online, let’s compare, one day later:
    – http://search.twitter.com/search?q=iran
    – http://news.google.com/news?q=iran

    Some would argue… but Adam, don’t you want information right now?  How can you wait a day or even a week to learn what’s going on?!?!?!?!?!!!!!!1

    To that, I’d reply with the following question:  Why do you value immediacy over depth, accuracy, and understanding?  Or, better yet, what difference will it make in your life to know about the Iranian election mess one day sooner?  Will you be able to change anything?  Help anyone?  What will you and the world lose by waiting a few more hours?

    *  *  *

    So why do I believe this increasing predilection towards immediacy is actually dangerous, and not just misguided?

    • It’s pressuring news media and politicians to report, respond, and act before they have all the facts, before they’ve had a chance to digest what is correct and what is right.  While I doubt that people with access to nukes won’t be relying on twitter “reporting” to make that crucial decision, I wouldn’t be surprised if we start seeing more and more decisions painfully botched due to a reliance upon “what’s happening right now.”
    • While there’s a chicken and egg scenario here, I wouldn’t be surprised if push towards “real time” is further feeding and exacerbating society’s collective ADD, dulling our interests and abilities in long-term thinking and planning.  What are people reading?  What are they thinking about?  If, as we’ve noticed, fewer and fewer people (including me) are taking the time to write (and listen) beyond soundbites, what does this mean for the peaceful progress of our society?

    Yes, I know I’m sounding like your grumpy neighbor who perhaps just got on the net (via dialup).  No, I don’t think my griping alone will make a whit of difference. 

    But perhaps if enough people say, well, ENOUGH!… immediacy != value, then perhaps the tide will start turning.  Not gonna hold my breath, though.

    P.S.—I realize that there IS value in real time.  In the case of disasters (natural and manmade), services like Twitter have helped with the mobilization of protests and rescue efforts and so on.  So for the citizens of Iran, I have no doubt that tweets may well have served as valuable inspiration and coordination.  But this is not news, this is broadcasting.  And for the rest of the world, I stand by my assertions that there was little value in seeing a flurry of micro-messages about events happening in other places of the world except as—and I hate to label it as such—entertainment.  But unsurprisingly the impulse to be entertained, to be un-bored… is now clearly more powerful than the desire to be patiently enlightened.

  • Dependence on the Internet

    Just going through some of my old files, and I came across an unpublished journal/rant thing re: my frustrations upon loss of Internet connectivity.  This was from back in *2001*.  Amazing how some dependent at least I was on the Internet back then!

    Okay, I feel as blind as a bat right now.

    My internet connection has been flakey for the last week or so, and that’s been frustrating, but now as I write this my connection is completely down, and I feel both furious and helpless.

    I’d like to put postage on a few packages I put together for friends, but I can’t print postage when I can’t connect to the Internet, so I’ll have to drive to the post office and wait in line.

    A friend from out of town is coming out to visit today, and I promised to take her around to some tourist traps, er, I mean tourist attractions.  But without the net, it’s a lot harder to figure out driving directions, get parking information, find out attraction prices, and so on.  I’m picking her up from the hotel she’s staying at in San Bruno, and I don’t even have a map of that city.  So I’ll have to call the hotel to get directions.  Except that I don’t have the number of the hotel, nor do I have a yellow pages handy.  Guess I’ll have to call Directory Assistance and pay 50 cents.

    I was supposed to order some travelers checks and Swedish currency this morning for my trip, but I can’t compare rates online or even order the stuff without my net connection.

    I had hoped to research and order some tourist guides on Stockholm and London, but I can’t do that either.

    Before heading out with my friend today, I wanted to check on the latest weather report, but that’s a no-go as well.  Guess I’ll have to turn on the radio and sit through a bunch of crap in the meantime.

    I wanted to look into some travelers insurance and health insurance for my trip, but I can’t imagine doing that without the Internet.

    And of course, I can’t access any of my new e-mail, nor can I send any e-mail, and that drives me nuts.

    Heh… wow.  Remember, I wrote this more than eight years ago!  And after re-reading it I got to thinking… my goodness… what would happen if the whole Internet went down for even just a day (particularly a businessday)?  And just to be fair, imagine that the SMS network was down, too, so teens couldn’t text each other.  Would people be panicking in the streets?  Curled up in a ball in bed?  Actually discover a book or sit down to play piano for a while?  Maybe actually talk to other people in cafes instead of clickety-clacking away?  I wonder.

  • Picking a domain name — a helpful list

    My friends have been telling me that “BLADAM” is a yucky name.  Bummer.  So I’ve shopping for a new domain name, and it’s not easy!  So many things to think about, and so many damn evil squatters (but that’s a different issue).

    And I thought hmm, I’ve been mulling over so many guidelines and best practices in my mind, I might as well share them!  So, without further ado, here are some of my thoughts.

    • Clear pronunciation: You—and many others—are probably going to mention the domain out loud.  Is it blADAM or BlaDAMN?  Is it PenIsland or… ahem :o.
    • Spellable: Is it lasnik or lasnick?  spendia or spendea? Mind your homophones, too.  Was that 4you or 4u or foryou.whatever?  q or queue?
    • International meaning: Do you want your domain to mean “smelly” in a popular non-English language?  Probably not.
    • Brevity: osteoporosishealing may convey exactly what your drug does, but—forget spelling—try fitting that on a business card!
    • Unspamminess: No matter how clever you think you are, some-domain-name-like-this.whatever will look like spam.  Honest.
    • Got .com?: You may have found a fab .net domain name, but what if your clients/potential customers keep mailing the .com version?  Uh oh!  Try to get both, at least if you’re in the U.S.  Old habits die hard, unfortunately!
    • Brand matching: If everyone knows you or your company under one name, choosing a cute marketing word as your domain name may not fly.  People will probably still type in companyname.com into their browser.
    • Cost: Some random TLD (e.g., .ly) may have their registrations on sale this month, but what about when you renew?  .com and .net (and the TLDs of big countries) will likely stay reasonably affordable.  .vanity TLDs?  Possibly not.
    • Legal stuff: Using a major (or even minor) brand’s name in your domain name may seem like flattery, but it may get you nowhere but in trouble.
    • Expandability: Isn’t it a good thing that Amazon.com didn’t start off as books.com?  This also means “BlogOfFred.com” may be a bad idea if you think you might add a wiki or forum later.  Or, more importantly, if your name’s not Fred.

    Any items I forgot?  Post YOUR thoughts and ideas below 😀

    P.S.—If you’re searching for domains, check out DomainTools and domai.nr, two of my favorite sites in this space.

  • Pandora Mobile highlights awesomeness but also severe lame-itude

    Do you know Pandora?  If you’re in the United States, where Pandora is legally available, you may have come to enjoy this awesome uber-customizable music radio over the past years.  If you’re not in the U.S., perhaps you’ve discovered the beauty of anonymous proxies :cough:, which I’m not going to mention here :p.

    But perhaps you didn’t know that Pandora has become available on mobile phones!  More good news:  It’s available for free on phones that run the Windows Mobile operating system, free on Sprint phones, and free on (some versions of) BlackBerry phones.  Ironically, it’s also free on the iPhone, and I say ironically because AT&T apparently is charging—I swear I am not making this up—$8.95 per month to its other mobile customers for the privileges of using Pandora.  I mean, I love Pandora and all, but even if I were insane enough to be contributing to the income of the evilness that is AT&T, I sure as heck wouldn’t fork over that much dough for Pandora.  For an on-demand mobile music service?  Perhaps.  But for streaming radio?  You’ve got to be kidding.

    One other note on the Pandora Mobile offerings:  Apparently, I’m not supposed to be able to access Pandora Mobile because T-Mobile phones are not supported.  Which is odd, because I’m enjoying streaming music via Pandora on my BlackBerry Curve (on T-Mobile) right now.  Go figure.  I also shouldn’t mention that I was also able to do this while in Ireland a couple of weeks ago (listening to, appropriately enough, The Corrs on St. Patricks day 😀 ).

    *  *  *

    Anyway, if you’re an iPhone user or a non-AT&T subscriber, give Pandora Mobile a go!  If you’re an AT&T subscriber, well, heaven help you, and for reasons way beyond this Pandora issue.

    [Gee, Adam, tell us what you really think about AT&T :D]

    *  *  *

    Okay, okay, I’m thinking I should flesh this entry out a little bit 🙂

    Some stuff I like in the mobile app:
    – Seems to work internationally (though I can imagine this being “fixed” [sigh])
    – Works as a true background app on my BlackBerry!
    – Can play through my BB’s speaker (actually sounds decent!) or a headset
    – Song-to-song time isn’t bad
    – Nice graphics, simple, intuitive interface.
    – Access to all my stations 🙂
    – Can even view “Why [did Pandora play] this song?”
    – Thumbs up / thumbs down works.

    Some stuff I don’t like:
    – Takes a while to start up the app
    – No way to see detailed info on artist or song

    *  *  *

    All in all, pretty damn cool! 😀

  • My experiment testing user engagement on Facebook, Friendfeed, and Twitter

    What did I do?!
    I posted an identically-phrased note on Facebook, Friendfeed, and Twitter at around 1:30am PDT Friday morning. Specifically, I posted this: “Could you kindly help me with a super-quick experiment (takes less than 30 seconds)? I’ll share results 🙂 Thanks!”

    Why?
    I was curious to see which set of friends/subscribers (henceforth referred to as “contacts”) would be more apt to read my note and reply.


    What happened?
    As of nearly 40 hours after posting…

    So does this mean Facebook is better than Friendfeed and Twitter?
    No. Is a particular service a better fit or a more powerful promotional vehicle for some people or for some needs or interests? Probably. But my experiment doesn’t prove that. This is based upon my sets of contacts, and was limited to a single test. I know it would make for a far more popular blog entry to trumpet this with a title of “[servicename] the [other servicename] Killer?!?!?” or “[servicename] Beats the Pants Off [other service name]” or — best yet — “[servicename] Set to Trounce Google?!?” — but I refuse to support such memes or pageview-increasing tactics. At least until I receive a very lucratic offer and then decide to sell-out :D.

    So what does your little test suggest?
    It means that — with my sets of contacts — I’m significantly more likely to get engagement and actions from my contacts on Facebook.

    Huh?

    When looking at contact interaction, I think we have to take a few things into account:
    • What’s the contact acquisition rate? e.g., how many folks subscribe to / follow you each day?
    • What’s the contact retention rate? How many people stick with you (vs. defriend or unsubscribe)
    • What’s the attention rate? How many actually read what you post?
    • What’s the engagement rate? How many click on your links?
    • And lastly, what’s the action rate? This is just subtly different than engagement, but I mean this to distinguish between clicking on a blog post link and actually posting a comment there.
    And, from my limited test and experiences, here’s the more detailed comparison:
    • Acquisition: I’ve found that I acquire contacts on Twitter far more rapidly than on either of the other services.
    I’ve been gaining followers at a much faster rate on Twitter than on Friendfeed… typically more than 7-10 a day on Twitter vs. 1 a day on FF. In fact, I even plugged Friendfeed to nearly 100 of my buddies via a friendly (albeit form) e-mail, and got a sum total of zero friends subscribing to my FF feed from that. Bummer :-(. FF’s a much harder sell, at least amongst my non-geek friends, than I previously assumed. Balancing that, though, two friends I personally referred to FF a while back are now two of the service’s more active users :-D. Also, note that my Twitter subscriber count got a HUGE boost because I was recently subscribed to by the wildly popular Google account on Twitter.
    • Retention is a bit harder to assess.
    For a while, I used the third party service Twitterless to let me know who unsubscribed from my feed each day. Seemed like I lost about a follower a day on Twitter, which was a little depressing, so I’m glad that feature of Twitterless ceased to function a while back. Though I’ve culled my own Facebook friend list, I haven’t really noticed if/when my friends have unfriended me there. And I’ve also not tracked/noticed people unsubscribing from me on Friendfeed, though I’m sure it’s happened, despite the consistently scintillating quality of my FF posts (HAH!).
    • Attention: Not sure how I could possibly measure that. There’s no user-available “analytics for Friendfeed / Facebook / Twitter” that I know of. Bummer.
    • Engagement, or click-thru rate… in the past, I’ve found that I’ve gotten proportionally the most clicks from Twitter contacts, followed by Facebook and then Friendfeed.
    Contemplating Attention and Engagement… I’m guessing that Friendfeed’s generally-helpful/intriguing “Friend of Friend” option could nonetheless be substantially diluting the total attention that feeds-of-friends get. In other words, when someone subscribes to me on Friendfeed, they then start getting (by default) a stream of not only my content, but also the content of my friends’ items I comment on or Like. More to look at means, understandably, attention spread across more items = less time looking at my items. Then again, one could argue that this is balanced out by the fact that people who aren’t subscribed to me are likely to be seeing my items in their feeds when their friends Like or comment upon my entries. Hmm.
    I’m not quite sure why Facebook engagement seems to be proportionally so much higher than on the other services, but I think it has to do with the friendship-vs-content orientation of my respective contacts. More specifically, I believe my FB network consists of more strong / moderate friendship ties, whereas people following me on Twitter and FF may be more apt to be reading my stuff because, well, they like my stuff (funny comments, links) vs. liking me personally. So given this, when I asked for a quick favor, it makes sense that I’d get a higher response rate from friends vs. fans.
    • Action is where things get a lot more complicated.
    When looking at the magnitude of action — that is to say, getting a single reply (minimal action) vs spawning a lengthy thread of comments (extended action) — then the services are quite different from my experience. On Twitter and Facebook, I’ve found that I quite often get one reply or a small handful replies to my posts. On Friendfeed, more of my posts go without any comments, but… on Friendfeed, I’m more likely to see a post get a large collection of comments. This isn’t surprising to me. Though Facebook has moved more towards facilitating a Friendfeed style of item+comment, Friendfeed’s been IMHO by far the strongest service in town for conversations. In contrast, on Twitter it’s quite easy to post an @ response, but rather frustrating to follow a conversation. I think this explains why I tend to see more robust conversations on Friendfeed, but more frequent (albeit less voluminous) replies on Facebook and Twitter.
    The tone and content of a post also plays a large role in determining the extent of replies for me by service. Examples of post-types that are most likely to elicit replies on the various services (again, for me; your mileage may vary!)

    – Facebook: “Having a rotten day, could use a hug!” [expression of emotion, change in personal status, in-joke shared amongst friends]

    – Friendfeed: “Whoa, check out this robot who recites poetry! WANT! You, too?” [early link to article highlighting a new geek toy or popular geek meme, profound observations or statements of concern, anything about the Kindle, Apple, or Obama]

    – Twitter: “At big electronics store in Japan. Should I buy digital camera here or wait ’til Korea?” [questions that don’t demand a complicated response, simple but unexpected notes (e.g., “Now in Bora Bora for 3 hours!”, “Just got engaged!”)]



    General caveats:

    • Interconnection: Lots of interconnection between the services! Twitter is integrated into FF and FB, for instance. However, I don’t import my twitter feed into my Facebook account, and I also immediately deleted the twitter-post in Friendfeed to help mitigate this issue.
    • Facebook UI change: Facebook just switched over to a new format. This could have increased or decreased attention to my link.
    • Timing: The timing wasn’t necessarily optimal. Posting it so late on Thu night meant that — by the time most people accessed their account on the various services — they likely already had a ton to look at… e.g., my post was no longer “fresh” at that point.

    Personal caveats/notes:

    • Difference in contact symmetry:
      Anyone can follow me on Twitter and FF (assymetry / self-selection), but I pick (and am picky about) who I friend on FB (due to both its symmetrical friends model and my own preferences).

    • Difference in contact type:
      My contacts on FB are far less geeky than my contacts on the other services. They also tend to be typically personal friends rather than acquaintances or fans. In contrast, my contacts on Twitter seem to be largely online marketers, SEOs, and geeks. Same on FF, but with a much higher emphasis of online marketing / uber-geeky folks who are deeply excited about stuff online. Many of my FB friends just dabble a little bit online and most tend to be buddies from school, work, dance, etc.

    • Why Friendfeed / Facebook / Twitter and not [blah blah blah]?
      Because these are the social networking/broadcasting-type services I predominantly use. I have also tried Friendster, Myspace, Orkut, Tribe, Multiply, Jaiku, and likely many other services I’ve forgotten about, but the three above are the ones I’m active on.

    And now for some notes from the respondents:

    In addition to the main survey question asking people where they clicked on the link from, I also invited people to leave a freeform comment. I’m not sharing all of them (due to privacy concerns), but have excerpted (and replied to in brackets) some below:

    • Did worry it might implode my computer with malware, but hey, I’m leaving the company in two weeks! 🙂[Yeah, I hadn’t even thought of how my impersonal-sounding click-here request might be misperceived. Wonder if that lowered the clickthru rate?]

    • You’re my hero, Adam!
      [Aw, and you wrote that even before you read this blatheringly long blog post. Hope you still feel the same way :-)]

    • Uh, it’s WAY too soon to be talking engagement — I mean you just confirmed we were FRIENDS yesterday!
      [What if I added you to my Top Friends app list in FB? Would that win your heart?]

    • When you write up the results, please keep emphasizing that these are just your friends and try not to generalize.:-D
      [I hope I’ve suitably emphasized that!]

    • Although I clicked through from FB because I have FB chat turned on in Pidgin and it shows me status updates right there.
      [That’s a very good point. I wasn’t thinking about how use of third party tools could skew this experiment.]
    • Good idea Adam, though I wonder if it may be slightly different results for others. After all, you are “the Adam Lasnik”. [I doubt my micro-celebrity status (in the webmaster world) would affect things one way or the other. Might be responsible for getting me more subscribers on Twitter and Friendfeed, but that’s why I listed proportional results above :-)].
    I also got another interesting comment which further accentuates the complication involving the use of third party tools with these services… and also touches upon the frustration of data silos:

    Hmm, I think you’re missing a subtlety. I selected Facebook because that was the source of the thing I saw. However, where I actually saw it was in Google Reader. I feel like I spend a lot of time trying to get Facebook stuff *out* of Facebook and into the applications I prefer to use. FB does not really make this as easy as it should be. Also, I usually end up getting stuck with two copies of things when someone, for example, imports their Twitter posts to FB. But at least in Reader I can really quickly scan all the updates in a list, skimming over the duplicate or uninteresting ones. (I just wish I could get a FB feed for a friends sub-list!)

    Oh, and Vinny… thanks for the hat! 🙂

    Wow, that experiment was neato! Can I do that, too? Should I do it? Are you gonna repeat it to see how things change?!

    Yep! Technically. Probably not. Unlikely.

    Frankly, I’m guessing my friends would get highly annoyed with me if I identically repeated this experiment, and — worse yet — I bet that people in the webosphere would get really pissed at you (and me) if this experiment was duplicated ad nauseum. So sorry, I’ve got first-mover advantage. Take solace in the fact that I likely won’t get rich and famous from this, though. Unless I’m offered a book deal along the lines of, “A Completely Unscientific Experiment Exploring User Engagement With Three Darlings of the Interwebs — The Untold Story” for one MILLION dollars. But that also seems at least somewhat unlikely.

    Thanks for reading, though! And hey, while you’re at it, go subscribe to my Friendfeed and Twitter streams 😀

    * * * 

    P.S. — You’re welcome to check out via bit.ly :-D.

    * * *


    And now… YOUR turn!

    Do my experiences match yours? Do you see similar demographic differences in your friend/follower sets amongst the services? What kind of response rates have YOU seen? Other thoughts?

  • Facebook’s Frustrating Friending… and my reluctant choice

    I have over 500 Facebook friends.  That’s a statement to help you understand my predicament, not a badge of honor.  Of these, a handful are close friends, a big bunch are “regular” friends, a ton of ‘em are colleagues with which I have varying degrees of social contact and interest, and an even larger ton are “acquaintances or less.”  From that latter category, I still value many of those admittedly “weak ties.”  I may not know someone well, but perhaps she and I connected strongly even after just a brief meetup.  Or… maybe I don’t chat with that one fellow much anymore, but he used to be my best friend in high school and I still care about how he’s doing.

    But then there are the other “friends.”  People I met once at a conference and exchanged pleasant pleasantries with.  Someone from college who was the girlfriend of an acquaintance.  Or someone who… uh… who is that guy?

    *  *  *

    The biggest and most painful flaw in Facebook’s friend-system is that it assumes that two people in a “friendship” see the relationship in the same way… and thus have the same interests (or interest level) in both sharing and learning about each other.  I have no doubt that there are people I’m interested in hearing about (and from), but who absolutely couldn’t give a rodent’s posterior about my latest blatherings or photos.  On a related note, I have work buddies that I enjoy chatting with, but would probably not to subject them to my occasional angst, drinking photos, dating whines, and so on.  As a friend of mine once commented, “You don’t want to see your boss in Speedos” or, more intellectually, many people understandably feel uncomfortable sharing or reading “out of social context.” You get my point.

    *  *  *

    Sure, Facebook’s “friend lists” can ameliorate some of these issue a bit.  But not completely.  And the UI is so awkward, so confusing, so annoying, it almost makes setting up friend lists more trouble than they’re worth.

    What Facebook needs to do is break the friend-reciprocity requirement.  Just because I’m interested in following a person’s photo stream or reading their latest musings doesn’t mean they want to be forcefed AdamInfo.  More specifically, Facebook needs a “subscription” model, just like what we have for blogs, on Twitter, on Friendfeed, and—for crying out loud—in real life. 

    Each person has two rights in this far-more-ideal non-reciprocal friends model:
    1) The right to set privacy boundaries, dictating who (individually and/or by group) can access what aspects of their space (profile, activity stream, etc.)
    2) The right to follow or subscribe to whatever or whoever he or she wants, subject (of course) to any applicable privacy boundaries mentioned in #1… WITHOUT the other person having to indicate the same level of interest.

    There’s also a #3, which I find to be a strongly desirable albeit not required component of this model:
    3) The right to more keenly control sharing, so that it’s aligned intelligently not only with the interests of the sharer (as in #1), but also with the interests of the potential reader (related to #2).

    #3 might seem redundant, but it’s not.

    *  *  *

    A hypothetical example:

    Pat has buddies Fred and Jen.  Fred and Pat are fast friends.  In contrast, Pat has a crush on Jen and want to know everything about her, but she doesn’t have the same interest in Pat.

    – Clearly, Jen’s gonna want #1 here.  She doesn’t want Pat to see her stuff at all, so she either blocks him or gives him limited privileges. 
    – She may, however, want to keep tabs on the fellow to see if he’s spreading rumors or going from creepy to threatening, so she takes advantage of #2 above.

    Under the current model, the latter part wouldn’t be reasonably possible.  Jen would have to friend Pat, and wouldn’t that be awkward?! (and potentially hazardous, by sending absolutely the wrong statement).

    So then we have Pat and Fred.  As fast friends, they really want to follow everything of each other.  There should be a system, perhaps not only algorithmic (which I believe FB already has in place) but optional-manual as well, which enables the two to indicate, yes, turn on the firehose; let me know when my best friend sneezes.  Again, Facebook has some functionality along this line, but it doesn’t scale well within an account, it’s confusing, and it’s basically a pain in the ass.

    This is where #3 comes into play.  Facebook should enable folks to more easily share smartly… e.g., “pushing” those conference photos or blog entry on technology to colleagues, but not gym buddies or high school chums.  Of note, this is NOT the same as privacy; I’m not suggesting that this should be used as a substitute for effective privacy controls or filtering, nor even that the untargeted folks in the above scenario couldn’t view those items if they wanted.  But rather, it’s an issue of respect and priority; it’s less that those folks would be offended and more that they’d be simply bored.  What I’m calling for is a sharing that respects not only boundaries, but likely interests.

    *  *  *

    And lastly, we return to the most painful part of Facebook’s current friending model:  the increasing noise to signal ratio.  In other words, when I view my homepage feed, a lot of it is uninteresting to me.  And, alas, I miss tidbits about friends that I am interested in hearing about.  Yes, again, I could use friend lists (and do), but this doesn’t help streamline many other reading or transactional activities on FB; I still have to wade through 500+ names when recommending friends to friends, for instance.

    So today I’m finally making that hard choice:  I’m being selfish and reclaiming my addressbook.  I’m removing a not-insignificant-number of folks from my Facebook addressbook (read: de-friending them) not because they stole my girlfriend or poked my eye out with a bb-gun or made me lick Grand Central Station with my tongue (though, indeed, all of those would be good reasons for de-friending), but rather because we don’t really chat so much any more or have drifted apart or never really chatted much socially in the first place,  etc. etc. etc., and the benefit of those weak ties is outweighed by the collective—I hate to use this word—clutter.

    Offended?  Blame Facebook.  Or, better, yet, if you’re bummed that I’ve de-friended you, do one or both of the following:
    – Contact Facebook and let them know that it’s high time they update their friending system to improve sharing & privacy and reduce awkwardness.
    – Follow me on FriendFeed (and, obviously, feel very welcome to engage in conversation with me there).

    *  *  *

    Thanks for your understanding :-D.  Also, why not share your thoughts below on how Facebook Friending works?

  • I, Robot

    Hello.  Good day.  A little quiet?
    I’m feeling a little blue myself.
    You know, A little anxious for no particular reason
    A little sad that I should feel anxious at this age.
    You know, a little self-conscious anxiety resulting in non-specific sadness.
    The state that I call blue.

    – spoken by the narrator (“Man In Chair”) in the awesome musical “The Drowsy Chaperone”

    Today I am a little sad because of a small heartbreak.
    And a little anxious because, well, I should not be admitting this in public.

    Real men don’t do cry.  But real businessmen… the type who are strong, who manage or mentor, who think of respect and solidness and promotions… they are not bloviatingly blathering on a blog, blissfully or blamefully or otherwise.

    Think.  Think of someone you look up to at work.  Do you want to know his private foibles, hear of his personal struggles?  Really?  No. You want someone to look up to.  Someone at least a little bit larger than life.  A rock, or minimally a damn large stone.

    You have your own problems, and when you want to schadenfreudically delight in someone else’s problems, you have your TV or paper or favorite internet gossip sites within an arm or eyeball’s reach.

    When your current or future dear leaders are feeling blue, they ideally do not show you, much less tell you.

    Then again, maybe it’s different today.  Maybe the Live Journalers of the modern era will grow up to be respected leaders… warty angst, noserings and all.  Perhaps someday we’ll view an executive’s late night facebookings with indifference rather than annoyance or scorn.

    Or maybe not.  Maybe he or she will methodically scrub, hoping the last trace of emotion is gone.  Here, look, a résumé.  A fine, level-headed portfolio indeed!

    And only a strong, competitive, safe, and secure heart.

  • Why this blog doesn’t decently render in Chrome

    UPDATE:  Vinny sent me a script that fixes it.  Much thanks!
    —

    Right after I wrote a neato article on Chrome and Google Bookmarks, my blog stopped “working” in Chrome.  I finally figured out why.

    Apparently, the script set that powers my dropdown menu—the “Accessible Website Dropdown Menu”—is written to look for the string “Apple Computer” in a browser’s useragent and serve webkit-oriented stuff to those browsers.  But Chrome now lists “Google inc.” in the user agent.

    More details are in the bug report I filed (which, rightly, was marked “works as intended,” since it’s a script problem, not a Chrome bug).

    If any folks more adept at JS than I am want to either help me fix this or—better yet—help the UDM folks fix it, that’d be super :-D.