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Conversational Social Networks

Byrichard
Ben Thomspon wrote, “How Facebook Squashed Twitter“.  The article looks at social networks from a marketing point of view. I like conversational social networks. Social networks by their very name are for conversations. They are about connections and they are about friendship, collaboration and more. 
In its Golden age twitter was a social network to establish new friendships with people we had yet to meet. It was a great tool, especially in places like London where the community of users was big enough to be interesting. Facebook, on the other hand, was a network of school friends, university friends and eventually colleagues. Facebook was more of an interactive yearbook.
Between 2006-2009, both networks were good because they were about friendly conversations, event organisation and personal sharing. At this time user engagement and stickiness were very high.
Both Twitter and Facebook are losing their appeal. Twitter lost it’s sense of community in 2009 when people went from following friends to following celebrities and when conversations went from being  individual to threaded by hashtags. As the closeness between users faded so did the stickiness of the network.
Return on investment has always been looked at from the point of public relations or marketing because they are the people paying. Their cost is financial and so twitter wanted to keep them happy. They ignored the other cost. Time. Private individuals need to justify giving their time and attention to social networks too. In the early days of twitter, when it was a conversation tool, we could justify spending the entire day on twitter because it allowed us to establish new business contacts, new friendships and more. When attention shifted from conversations and friendships to utilitarianism the network declined in value.
Facebook too is declining but for other reasons. It is a network of friends who are getting married, having children and working hard. They don’t use facebook in the same way as before. Social networks need to re-invent themselves as time progresses. Twitter needs to work on re-creating tight-knit communities and Facebook needs to find ways of making itself relevant to parents and working professionals now that our university lives are behind us, for the most part.
Social Media and Social networks have been around since the birth of civilisation. The difference is that social networks are now online as much as they are offline. Social media have gone from being paintings in caves to being Devo art, memes and other products. Facebook and twitter were great social networks because they helped to assemble communities on the World Wide Web. We are now shifting to regionalisation and interest based networks. I am thinking of Strava, Glocals, Sports Tracker and more.
I stopped using Twitter because I stopped finding conversationalists. Facebook too, is at risk. If they do not make an effort to remain relevant both of them will become dormant networks.

Virtual reality and Dining

Byrichard

The history of entertainment is a long one. We have gone from banquet entertainment during Roman and Medieval times. We have had radio and television to entertain us. We have also had books, magazines and kindles. The idea of Virtual Reality and dinner is not that strange.

What is fascinating about Virtual reality is that in our lifetime it has gone from requiring massive computers and cumbersome devices. Today virtual reality can be experienced with a mobile phone. The technology has shrunk and become affordable to such an extent that restaurants want to take theme restaurants from décor, painted walls and location to virtual reality.

the impact of virtual reality is a natural fit for restaurants that want to create a complete experience around a meal, not just serve a plate of food.

In this article they discuss virtual reality as a way of enhancing your dining experience. To use a local example imagine that you are eating a fondue at the Valais or the Chateau D’If in Geneva. The restaurants are located at the side of busy roads. With the virtual reality set you could watch immersive videos of a peak of your choice. It could be live or pre-recorded. You would feel like you’re sitting at the Rocher De Naye or Aiguille Du Midi for example.

If you’re eating bison at home then you could have a live feed from Yosemite, the field with bison near Geneva or the Polish forests. If you’re eating certain types of fish you could watch a natural history document about the oceans and that specific type of fish. It could bring you closer to your meal and serve as an educational purpose.

There is one thing I am curious about, in relation to Virtual Reality meals. How do you see your food? What technological advances will allow you to be immersed in virtual reality and see your food and the person you are with? When that next step is taken Virtual Reality restaurants will be more enjoyable.

Suunto and Sports tracker collaborate.
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Suunto and Sports tracker collaborate.

Byrichard

I have been using sports tracker for years. I first used it on the Nokia N95 8GB several years ago. This was an excellent app that allowed you to track your moves using the mobile phone as a GPS. The limitation of such an app was battery life on mobile phones. The battery usually did not last more than an hour at first and eventually progressed to two hours or more.

The first Suunto Device I used was for diving. I used the Suunto D9 dive computer for many months before upgrading. As I satisfied with this device I bought the Suunto Ambit 2 and eventually the Suunto Ambit 3. The reason for buying these watches is battery life. As normal watches they can last for 100 days, losing about one percent a day. If you use them as fitness watches then they easily last for a day or more.

When you’re doing via Ferrata, hiking, cycling or doing other sports you want the device you use to track your fitness efforts for as long as you’re going. That’s where Sports trackers and other mobile phones had their weakness. Mobile phone apps sometimes crash. If you’re pushing yourself hard during a workout you do not want to reach the end of a workout with no data.

Another frustration I often encountered was with Movescount, Suunto’s social sports app. At the end of quite a few workouts, I was unable to sync my workout data and analyse my progress. At the time,

I wanted to see Suunto and Sports tracker combined. They’re both Finnish companies and they both excel at specific tasks. Suunto for the hardware and Sports tracker for the analytics. By combining the two we have the best of both worlds.

Communications between Movescount and Sports tracker has been available for several weeks at this point and it works flawlessly. I have hiked, cycled, walked, sailed and climbed and each activity has synced without problems.

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Cycling in Winter

Byrichard

After cycling over 1100 kilometres in 2015, I aim to cycle 1200 kilometres in 2016. This goal is an easy one to achieve. It’s the 21st of January and I already have 100 kilometres logged. The weather over the last three weeks has been cold and wet. We have had rain almost every day and it recently turned to snow. As there is a lack of good weather there is no choice but to go out in the bad weather.

Cycling in these conditions is messy. Your clothes get soaked from the rain and as I cycle in the countryside I come home covered in mud. When I get home I change into dry clothes and I recover quickly.

Rain is easy to deal with once you’re ready to feel wet and dress for the cold. What is more challenging is cycling on slick tires on snow. Some of the roads I cycle on are salted and cleared but as I also use agricultural roads they are covered in snow. Safety takes focus and concentration. The rear wheel skids if you apply too much force to the pedal and the bike can skew if you are not careful.

Cycling in such conditions is not ideal. It demands resistance to the cold, stamina to continue making the effort and determination to set an achievable goal. I will continue towards 200 kilometres by the end of February. Cycling consistently now will make summer all the more pleasant and rewarding.