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I’m going to play with Flixwagon
Because three or four, I’ve lost track of how many, live streaming applications for the phone aren’t enough i’ve started to play with flixwagon as well. So far it’s taking some getting used to but I hope that by tomorrow I’ll have learned more. It’s still an alpha and only works with select phones.
I could test it from here and now but it’s night time and there are more interesting places from which to play.
Content creation and Social Networks
Content creation and Social Networks both fulfil our need to communicate with others. In one case we are working on the long form and creating content in blog form, photographs, well produced videos and more and through certain social networks we do the opposite. On twitter and facebook we spend most of our time writing two or three sentences at a time. These posts are quickly out of date.
Content creation in the form of article writing, blogging, well produced video, photo essays and more take time. You need to think of an idea and you need to think of a narrative. You need to find 300 words of content. You need to find at least two or three minutes of content if not more. If you challenge yourself to create this content then you see why facebook, twitter, vine and other short or quick social sharing platforms are so popular. It also explains why Geocities and other platforms eventually implode.
According to recode Twitter is making a huge video push — and tweaking Vine’s six second limit in the process.
The move is also symbolic of Twitter’s willingness to change elements of its product that have become part of its identity. Last month Twitter tweaked its iconic 140 character limit to get people tweeting more. Now it’s tweaking Vine’s six second video restriction, too. Former Vine boss Jason Toff (who left in January for Google) told
Recode last fall that Vine’s video limit was not “overly sacred.â€
Vimeo differentiated itself from other video sharing services in that it showed that it wanted high quality edited videos rather than rushes like we used to find on Google. In the last few months the quality of videos on youtube has really increased. There are a number of gameplay, engineering, fitness videos, how-to instructional videos and more. Finally Youtube is a source for serious content. We will see when Vine, Snapchat and other video services establish the same reputation.
Letter writing and blogging are similar. Recently Documentally started letter writing again. These “letters” are newsletters written every friday and sent by e-mail to a small number of people. I too have started “letter writing” but as blog posts. The beauty of “letter writing” is that we can write when we have time rather than when people are available. As these are asynchronous people can read what we wrote ten minutes or ten years from now. Now that instant messaging style social media conversations are sent back to the history books we have a greater freedom to choose where we share content.
A busy few days
Tomorrow I will be in Lausanne once more, this time to meet the people from Bloggy Friday. It’s Switzerland’s bloggers and social media types coming together for a chat and the traditional fondue (or so it’s been for the past few weeks) and an opportunity to hear about new projects.
Last month it resulted in me hearing about minsh and going to a demonstration of what the website will provide for users of twitter. i’m not going into details just yet but when it comes out some people might find it quite interesting.
The second event is the TGIO (Thank goodness it’s over) party for the National Novel Writer’s month and the Swiss writers that participated. it’s a sleepover right next door to where I live and that will be interesting.
The main event comin up is of course LeWeb which I will be attending this year through a great piece of luck. I’m looking forward to the presentations and meeting many new people. It should be an interesting to pick up ideas for how to develop and re-wrte some parts of the book I’m currently working on.
The culmination of the week of course will be on Friday when 30 of the French Seesmic community will meet for a dinner.
In all it’s going to be a very social media week and it’s refreshing for it to take place in a place like Paris. I will take some video and photographs and blog what I think is of interest. For now it’s a restful evening whilst looking forward to the fun week ahead.
Social media and Interactivity
I have been studying and discussing media tech and society. I have also been listening to the podcasts from the SXSW event on interactivity and my view of technology and daily life has changed. That’s reflected by what I was going to post as an answer to a comment on flickr.
The iphone will sell because it’s what people want. People have accounts on flickr, they’re part of myspace and they’re on facebook. There friends are as well.
Recently I’ve been going out with a camera and taking up to 180 pictures in one night. I upload them to facebook, controlling who can see them and they’re popular. People get round to requesting more pictures so I need to take more.
With my mobile phone comes a one gig mini sd card therefore I can store thousands of pictures. I show people the pictures and if they want to see them online then at least I’ve got a practical way of getting people to approve them.
What was SXSW about? Interactivity. Why? because social networking websites encourage the free sharing of all the media you’re creating.
Taking Yet Another Twitter Break
With the current situation at Twitter I have chosen to take a twitter break. Twitter hasn’t been fun during the last three years, which is part of the reason I went anonymous, private, and then public but anonymous again. It used to be about having conversations with people that I would eventually want to meet in person.
Now that Twitter has shifted political slant and verified account have lost their status there is little to keep me on Twitter. I see it slipping in the wrong direction and I do not want to be part of the network at the moment. I might return in a few weeks or months. For now I think that the best is just to stay away.
I have two mastodon accounts now, on different instances and I am willing to give those networks a chance. I’m on those instances but there is a difference. I am not inclined to invest weeks, months or years on trying to find a community, only for it to be destroyed, once again. Either the owners just grow bored, or the social network is bought, or the users grow bored and leave. After flitting from website from 1996 to today I have lost the drive to invest any time on networks that can be bought by billionaires, with no checks or balances. Why do we provide value to websites that are just sold by greedy people to other greedy people?
I did consider returning to Facebook and Instagram but I don’t think I am inclined to return to these networks. If pandemic policies change and we get to COVID zero then I will have a strong motivation to return to Facebook, for the groups. For now I might take a short break.
I think blogging and web development have a better return on investment than social networks. I will focus on these.