Looking through the feedreader today I spotted two friends, Phil Campell and Chrisian Payne here
Maybe in a year or two I can travel to a number of these events and enjoy a little more travel once again.
When I first saw seesmic I thought of it as a video version of twitter but that point of view has shifted. I now think of it as an online video forum where video messages have replaced both text and pictures. I would expect many more websites of the sort to grow and it will see in a new era in social interactions on the web.
What I question is how long this video chatting website will last. Is there much demand for such a product and will it see itself become a valuable web success or simply another stepping stone in the road towards an increasingly digital lifestyle. What are your thoughts on the topic?
Happn is a location based dating app, at least in theory. I have had the app on my mobile phones for a year or more and have yet to meet a Happn user in person. In theory Happn shows you who you have crossed paths with and where. It also tells you how many times you have crossed paths with specific individuals.
One of the biggest limitations of this app is that for now users of the app are based in cities rather than the countryside. As a result I will cross path with dozens of people I go to Geneva or Lausanne but will cross paths with no one when I am up enjoying a via ferrata. I find this to be a shame. It is precisely when I am on a via ferrata that I want to find people to share the passion with.
A few days ago I was at the Plainpalais fanzone in Geneva as people queued up and waited to get in to watch France Versus Germany. I launched the app and saw that a lot of people at the event had the app active. I walked away from the fanzone and forgot about the app.
So far with this app I do not remember having any matches or making any real effort to meet people that I see come up. Some apps are fun for statistical analysis rather than face to face encounters. Two people I know have turned up on the app. I have enjoyed a few via ferratas with one of these people and worked on a number of interviews with the other. One is in Lausanne and the other in Geneva. We will see if I ever meet someone via the app. Knowing me it will happn (;-)) when I can be bothered.
For two years I’ve been using twitter and during that time I have spent far too much time on the site. As a result I built many friendships. Always paying attention to twitter, even when mobile was a great way of using twitter in the past, but due to people having less time every day to tweet I am adopting a new twitter usage model.
I am now scheduling when I will be active on twitter. If you want to find me and chat on twitter then there are three time slots during the day when I will be monitoring the site.
These times are:
0930-1000
1030-1040 and
1930-2000 Central European time (CET).
Now to wait and see whether this promotes more conversation.
My twitter account will not come back to life until they allow for the restoring of accounts.
Sports and live events are Twitter Cash cows, as a result of which the will of those contributing to twitter financially is given priority. I have seen two or three tweets about the speed with which olympic anim gifs and other content is removed. In one case I saw that content is pulled down within minutes.
On the other side of the equation is bullying and harassment of ordinary people on twitter. In the cases where people are bullied or harassed twitter is passive, letting people deal with the fallout from flame wars and other unpleasant moments.
Twitter was a social network for the first year or two but since then it has become a broadcast network. It focuses on the people that bring it money rather than attention. It focuses on verifying accounts with hundreds of thousands or even millions of viewers to serve its own interests. Users like you or I are not that important.
There is the popular phrase that “people who complain still want to do business with you”. I stopped complaining about twitter years ago. I deleted my first account and stopped using the service. If you are not happy with the way twitter behaves and if you are not happy with the preferential treatment that it offers its sponsors then the simple solution is to reduce the amount of time you give twitter.
When twitter was a social network you were justified in keeping the twitter application open on your phone and laptop but since it has become more of an RSS aggregator that devotion of time has become worthless. If you’re not happy with twitter spend less time on the network. Use it as infrequently as you use the bath in your home. We take daily showers because it takes less time and because there is less waste. The same is true of twitter.
Twitter is a social network that needs eyeballs to justify charging its clients money. Broadcasters and the IOC are clients. If you’re on twitter complaining you are a pair of eyeballs. You are the attention they are looking for. If you are unhappy and abandon the network that pair of eyeballs is gone and their revenue stream declines. When enough people affect their bottom line in this manner they are forced to change.
Twitter is easy to replace today for the simple reason that it became a news aggregator. There are dozens, if not hundreds of apps and social networks for the sharing of news, information and other content. Twitter is no longer alone. If enough people move away then they will be forced to change. We are the commodity. The audience justifies the fees. If the audience is gone then the fees are unjustified. Twitter was meant to keep us happy and it has failed. That is the reason for which I tweeted 70,000 times in the first two years and less than three thousand times in the last five years.
To Maggie and Chris I dedicate this, my 600th blog post as you are now in Florida, engaged and planning the rest of your life together.
We have exchanged hundreds of messages over the past year and it’s been fun. Now the dynamics have progressed and in so doing why not mark the occasion 🙂
Have fun.
As a sub note I also dedicate it to my Cousin and his fiancée.
And to Seesmic Whit and Claire.
Wifi is something that should be ubiquitous so that our digital lifestyle may not be limited to being online at home or at work. It should include, bars, restaurants and city squares. In some cities wifi is easy to find but in others that’s not the case.
The lazy way to do wifi mapping could be with the geo loc software on the n95, a flickr account and free wifi. Everytime you find free wifi, get the GPS co-ordinates, include them in the exif and upload them to twitter. Once that’s done get the rss feed of the geo tagged images and feed them to google earth.