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Plaxo Pulse and Facebook

Byrichard

For all of those privacy advocates I’m on your side for this issue. With a lot of communitis you create a profile and friends can see it. What you give them are both your name and possibly phone number but no more. When you’re building a database of contacts you must ask for it.

When you add friends to outlook, address and other applications you’ve done research and the users have given their consent. That’s not the same as harvesting them direct from facebook. No one said they wanted you to have their e-mail address. No one chose to give you those details.

If you want them ask for them. Taking contact details from 5000 people is unethical and wrong. That’s very similar to spam behaviour.

What makes this worse is that Plaxo is associated with this. I use Plaxo pulse and you can see it on the right side of this column.  I don’t mind their services but for people to harvest their friend’s data without prior consent will help increase this feeling of insecurity.

We’ve had that debate on Seesmic, on Facebook and other online communities. If we want real communities transparency and trust are key. Stop abusing it.

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Photophlow

Byrichard

Today I’ve been playing with Photophlow, a photo sharing and chat website that allows you to easily discuss and share pictures with friends within the interface as well as on tumblr and twitter.

Among the features that I find interesting are the ability to create personal rooms and invite flicks friends in. once this is done you can look at their personal photographs, favourite pictures and more. It’s a great way for photo buffs to share photographs without having to give hyperlinks all the time.

What I like about this photo sharing method is that it makes the entire process much easier. Much as you would pull out a photo album and start showing photographs and commenting on them you may do the same via this website.

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The year the Internet lost the cloak of anonimity.

Byrichard

This has to be the year where I have met the most people online before meeting them in person, which is quite amusing. It’s also the year that warzabidul as a nickname became a person in the physical world to more than two or three people. It’s the year an online person become a nickname for a real person.

It’s the year where, at least for early adopters, Twitter and Seesmic both helped create opportunities for people to meet and get to know each other online before taking it back into the physical world. It’s the year I went to a Podcamp, some tweetups and some seesm’up. It’s the year many of us stopped hiding behind avatars and nicknames and moved towards creating a brand or identity, depending on whether your point of view is that of marketing or personal fun.

I’ve enjoyed learning about the “social media” and all the new possibilities. I look forward to 2008 when many more such networks and events will be organised. It’s been a fun year to be introduced to the “Social Media” and I’m happy to have met so many people.

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The Seesmeetup

Byrichard

It’s taken no more than a few days from the time I first saw Fred2baro on seesmic to our first meeting with Deek in London for the first Seesmeetup… so called. In fact it was both Sizemore that had the first meeting although more private in nature.

One of the questions that one of Fred2baro’s relatives asked was why would you want to be part of Seesmic? Aren’t people pretend and fake? Aren’t you uncomfortable with this?

My answer was the following: When you go to a bar or you meet people face to face rather than via twitter or Seesmic you’re quite often in a bar under the influence of a drink or two. As a result you’re not as genuine as you’d be if you met in another place. In other words Seesmic and twitter are a way of getting to know people before you meet them in the physical world.

What this means is that you can generate some great friendships, some strong ones. It’s also a new contemporary method of networking than the bar. We’ve got too many distractions at home. Whether it’s from the computer, the phone or the television to feel the absolute need to go out to bars where we’d sit and be bored anyway.

The point is the following. To me the social media, especially twitter and seesmic are a great way of creating new friendships in the physical world where limitations of time and travel distances are cancelled out. If’ we’re part of an international society why not meet people online and bring it to the physical world rather than the other way around. How many times have you been sad to see a friendship disintegrate because of distance?

I have, many times. Time to enjoy these new toys.

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The new side of things

Byrichard

If you’ve got a lot of time but not much new content to surf through then the perfect place for you is seesmic because that’s where you can chat to 5-10 friends and listen to what you have to say. If you’re busy on the other hand just turn to twitter where your instant needs will be addressed immediately.

I’m thinking of this because I really think that people are using it (seesmic) as a forum. What makes a forum a forum is that you have to listen. You have to take the time to absorb the content and to react in more than one or two words. It’ a place where a “highly produced) form of content is shown.

Twitter in contast is very low keep. It’s simply writing 140 characters whilst doing five other things, whether looking through facebook, working on your blog or watching television.
They’re two different cliques which go well together. I’m combining the two, or at least trying. I’m trying to leave some personal video messages for people who have taken the time to converse with me in a different form. Seesmic wants all of your attention and everything requires user action. Twitter is the opposite, it’s like a CB, it’s like the radio. It’s something to keep you company rather than keep you entertained.

How many of you would agree with this view. How many people think I’ve missed an important aspect of these networks?

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Why i dislike how people use Facebook.

Byrichard

Facebook was a great idea. It was great because it was an online method by which to meet people within your network and to get to know them before you drop by the bar. It was especially good for those who are shy. As more people started using it though something bad happened. Mid and late adopters started using the website.

In itself this is a great thing because it means that you can find man friends and communicate with them. It was a way of re-creating connections with people you haven’t seen in a decade or more. The drawback comes when people are used to it and have added their friends.

They want something new and they go to applications, they want more features and so the api mentality was applied hence the fun wall, zombie biting and more. The drawback is that when you’ve got twenty friends you might reject the same request twenty times. When you’ve got five hundred you may reject it five hundred times.

Another flaw is how people use facebook’s funwall and other wall application like they used e-mail before that. These people are sending out a huge amount of junk and it’s a problem. A problem that’s meant I use facebook far less.

Why are people using a new form in such a bad way, Why are people using a social networking platform for nothing more than spreading rubbish? Is facebook no more than an advertiser’s paradise for giving us junk. Beacon generated a large quanitty of negative press as a result of what it was doing with user’s data.

In some ways it’s as bad as television advertising and the freesheets. It’s got great potential but due to the lowest common denominator it’s no longer as interesting an application as it used to be.

How long till we start getting spam via these networks. Is there a place for advertising on social networks. Are consumers not active seekers of information?

I’m a blog reader. I skim through over four hundred rss items a day and I get a lot of information this way. I’m an active seeker of information that relates to my interests. As a result is there still the need for old media style advertising. Would not narrow casting and conversation generation become more interesting propositions. That’s what Chris Brogan writes about. It’s what Nik Butler of Loudmouthman is doing.

That’s what Danacea of Forbidden Planet has to explore, along with many other companies. How, in an environment where people are reading more and more articles a day do you create brand awareness?

How do you allow people to find out about your interests? Groups are one good way because they’re passive. You join a group, your friends see it and they may decide to join that group too, without you having to ask them to.

The whole concept of inviting friends to open applications is counter productive to an enjoyble user experience on fa(r)cebook. Why use a network that generates more work than pleasure?

Here’s a continuation of the discussion by Anne Zelenka of GigaOm.

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A social media binge

Byrichard

This weekend I went on a social media binge. A social media binge is the moment when you forfeit sleep and the rest of reality for a few hours as part of the social media.

For the purpose of this particular challenge I set myself two pass times. The first of these was to twitter and the second was to seesmic. If you read previous posts you’ll find out what twitter. As to seesmic that’s another story. It’s close to being instant messaging with videos.

Normal video chats are live. I talk and as I talk you can respond and interrupt me. In seesmic you talk, type a title and share the video. After that another person speaks, presses stop and posts. Over the period of a few hours many more posts appear and as they do so the conversation evolves exponentially. All of these videos is available to every over member so there is a great degree of overheard conversation. This overheard conversation is where the fun begins.

I’ve seen girls dancing, guys act like zombies, discussions about literature and social media. I’ve seen so many things that it feels like the social media equivalent of a music festival. Watch seesmix clips on youtube to get a better idea.

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Two Seesmic evenings later

Byrichard

For the past two days I’ve been monitoring and participating in the seesmic conversations and it’s been a really interesting experience. There are so many different people. You’ve got some people living in San Francisco, others in South East Asia, France, Australia and England and they’re all coming to chat via video.

This chat is different from other chats in that it’s recorded segments. It’s about people speaking about key parts of their day. Both Documentally and Sizemore for example decided to meet up at Sizemore’s place to have a very entertaining evening of Seesmic video posting and discussion. As a result of this Jester joined in although quite timidly, at least for the start. With time I’m sure she’s going to become quite active.

There is a great range in age group from those that are children all the way up to their parents and beyond. As a result it’s a family environment, a community where people joke around and have fun. It’s a place that shows how a community can form without any ties in the physical world, at least initially.

It’s a great place and the best way for you to get a taste of the conviviality for this website is seesmix, the daily show that summarises the hottest conversation for the day. On some days it’s conversations about racoons, snow, a song that sticks into people’s heads and many more topic.

It’s also about the overheard conversation. It’s about someone putting something out there and waiting for people to respond. It’s about individuals talking and for others to involve themselves, community building. As a result of this it’s quite different from the culture and the use of video phones that we had envisaged many years ago.

I really enjoy the conversations on seesmic and I can see how strong a community it can become with the right discussion and time. I can see it as a video version of twitter and I’m wondering whether threading would be that useful, after all the conversations are working fine as they are.

It’s about actuality, about currency. If you want to get something out of this community then you need to participate rather than sit on the side and listen. You’ve got to become part of the storyline, to show your character to encourage others to interact with you. There are apparently about 1000 people currently active although no more than 50 people are trully active on the site at the moment.

As it moves out of Alpha we can expect a lot more fun.

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On meeting Robert Scoble at the London Geek Dinner

Byrichard

This afternoon Nik Butler, Loudmouthman sent me a text message asking whether I was free to go to the London Geek Dinner where Robert Scoble would appear. Of course I was free so I decided to go to the event and met a number of people. The first person I met was Robert Scoble for this particular event. He was standing at the door and as I came up he welcomed me into the room, we shook hands and I got his business card.

That was quite unexpected, so approachable. I spent some time talking with Loudmouthman, Michael Beddows, Liz Strauss and Giles Thomas.

The London Photowalk itself saw us walk from The Geekdinner venue down towards Southbank and the film cafe. It’s the first time I went to the bar and I’ve been living in London for over three years now. It’s amusing to see how many photographs were taken and videos recorded. It was the photographer photographing the photographer. Scoble interviewed people as we were walking down the street and others were filming the filming.

I enjoyed the evening and meeting Scoble. For a while I nicked his video camera and filmed some shots of London for him. One of those shots was the Midnight ring of Big Ben. That’s about it for tonight.

 Video 1 Video 2 Video 3

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Twittervox – as seen in central London

Byrichard

The film Juno was screened to a crowd of bloggers of which both Loudmouthman and I were part of. As a result it gave us the perfect opportunity to do a twittervox. The video can be found here for direct download.

After meeting with Nik Butler and others for the screening of the film Juno several tweeters meet up at the Union bar to discuss both the film and other topics

Those present were danacea of Forbidden Planet, Loudmouthman of Loudmouthman.com, Rupert Howe, Beth, Robert Croma, Sizemore, Jess and many more.

I will admit to liking the response I have had so far from my fellow seesmicers and twitter users. It was a good night and I look forward to more of them in the near future.