Posts Tagged ‘friendfeed’

Is FriendFeed Dead Yet?

March 7th, 2010

dead.jpgSince FriendFeed was acquired by Facebook last summer, there has not only been a large exodus of users from the site, but also an increasing volume of pronouncements that FriendFeed, if not already dead yet, is in fact dying rapidly. The major outage last week sent TechCrunch into a near-orgasmic state of proclaiming that, not only was FriendFeed dead, but that no one cared.

As a matter of fact, people do care whether FriendFeed lives or dies, and it is to serve that community of brilliant, innovative individuals that I created the site, Is FriendFeed dead yet?. Using a patent-pending “death checker” algorithm, plus some math, I am able to determine with a high degree of certainty whether or not FriendFeed is still alive. Now, with this site, you do not even need to visit FriendFeed.com to determine if it’s dead yet—you can do this entirely from my site.

Let me know if you’d like to donate to support its continued development.

» Read more: Is FriendFeed Dead Yet?

Let me try that again

January 22nd, 2010

My people shop at WalmartThe response to my decision on Wednesday night to close my FriendFeed account has been, to say the least, rather interesting (and somewhat overwhelming). Responses have ranged from shock and outrage to anger to mere flippancy. Most people have been overwhelmingly kind and generous, and a few have said, in essence, that I need to grow a backbone and learn how to deal with it.

All these responses are probably valid, in some way or another, and I’m not going to try to argue against any of the charges made. But, in response to the statement, “this is all too abstract for me,” I’ll try to clarify the particular issue:

People behave far worse online than they ever would in person.

» Read more: Let me try that again

Video impressions of Gnomedex

August 23rd, 2009


Call waiting

May 22nd, 2009

image.php.jpegI remember when “call waiting” was introduced by our local phone company in the late 1970’s. It was considered a really useful technology, in that, if you were waiting for an important call, you could still take other calls in the mean time. However, as our society became ever more obsessed with newer, faster, more immediate gratification, it revealed its dark side: it made people rude.

At some point, we (our society) decided that it was much more important to talk to the new, exciting, and (as yet) unknown person who was calling us, than to continue talking with the living, breathing, and oh-so-real person that we were already conversing with.

It reflects an obsessive belief that “newer must be better” and that “I need to find out what’s happening” rather than “continuing the existing conversation.” Of course, when you state it bluntly like that, it’s rather obvious what’s happening.

Fast forward thirty years, and Steven Hodson is commenting on the real-time web:

At what point did the quality of opinion and thoughtful discourse become less important than knowing the minute something happened in the world in a 140 characters or less? Just how is all this real-time web making it any easier to find and/or share content of value when we have to spend so much time just watching stuff go by on Twitter and Friendfeed because we might miss something?

Today, it’s not just telephone calls that get relegated to the back burner when someone new appears; News itself is being overwhelmed by fast-breaking, often faulty real-time transmission of information. By forcing people to respond in 140-character chunks, Twitter and its ilk have compressed an already soundbite-oriented culture into something of an incoherent scream.

» Read more: Call waiting

it’s SOCIAL media, not social MEDIA

April 30th, 2009

Buses

Following Hurricane Katrina, my nephew was a US Coast Guard search and rescue team member. He took this photograph (and many other compelling images) during rescue operations in the days and weeks immediately following the hurricane.

Katrina represented a catastrophe of the largest kind, not merely because the technology failed, but, more importantly, because our normal social structures failed. People, when separated from food, shelter, medical care, safety, and other basic needs, rapidly lose a sense of group membership and start to think purely of their own self-interest. There’s nothing surprising in this, but Katrina brought it, shockingly, in front of our eyes, with devastating impact.

Available SeatingSocial collapse usually happens on a much smaller scale, however. Someone loses a job, runs out of money, feels desperate, and starts to behave in an anti-social manner. Or they may have an agenda to push and are willing to stop at nothing to see it succeed. Or they may feel slighted, and they respond with uncharacteristic viciousness.

This is the dark side of the social media world, and one that I honestly hope most people haven’t experienced. However, I’ve found myself doing and saying things online that I would never have done or said in person. The reality of close contact with people establishes some of those social controls that guide our behavior in the real world, and those controls are often missing online.

» Read more: it’s SOCIAL media, not social MEDIA