Tag Archives: web2.0

social networking

If you’re following 1000 people you’re really following noone

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So I’ve been using Twitter a lot more lately and, like most people, I’ve found it interesting but useful and useless at the same time.  How is that?  Let me explain.

So Twitter is interesting for many reasons.  Microblogging is a lot easier than blogging – as is evident by my hundreds of tweets and zero blog posts the past 6 months or so.  It allows you to follow interesting people and interact with them – I’ve actually responded to and gotten responded back by both WP Limits and The Ferrett.  It allows you to keep up with and see “behind the curtain” on interesting people – web comics I enjoy like Shortpacked and Questionable Content, awesome geeks like Felicia Day and Shamus Young, or even just keep up with friends or friend’s projects.  It even allows you to give feedback to companies and get replied back to.

So it’s useful for the above reasons – how can it also be useless?  Well, like blogging for every one meaningful @reply or comment you get there are dozen or hundreds of voices lost in the wind.  For the common man is there really any use?  Also, there is the follower dilemma.

One of the interesting things I’ve noticed is for people follow people incessantly.  Now, following some people is part of the usefulness of the service.  But there has to be a tipping point.  At the time of this writing, and after doing a cleanup of the people I follow, I’m following 74 people.  I see hundreds of tweets a day – if not thousands.  The fact that people are limited to 140 characters helps but even at that I tend to skim a lot.  What is the benefit for someone to follow 200 people?  500?  1000?  It’s not like Facebook where you can friend someone and then hide them – so that you can interact with them if need be but they’re not part of your “stream.”  If you’re following someone on Twitter they’re always in your stream.  I suppose lists help but even they only serve to raise the tipping point by an order of magnitude.  Is someone following 10,000 people really following anyone at all?  They’re likely not reading most – if any – of the tweets in their stream.  So why bother?

I guess the real issue I have is the “popularity contest” aspect – “if you follow me I’ll automatically follow you” mentality that some people have.  Yes, you end up collecting followers like Pokemon and have a large audience to blast out your content to – but is anyone really listening?  In the cases of celebrities, sure, I can see the point to having thousands of followers – and even following them back as it makes them feel proud and connected to say “celebrity X follows me on Twitter!”  But I’m curious if anyone else ponders the fragility of the facade for the common man.  I guess my point is that unless you’re someone who would naturally have a larger audience – celebrity, web comic, organization – you’re only fooling yourself.

I’m going to experiment more with lists.  I haven’t really yet.  Maybe they’ll change my outlook on the “following many people” aspect at least.

social bookmarking, social networking, web2.0

Sweet Ma.gnolia

I’m a big enough man to admit when I’m wrong. Well, sort of. Almost since I began this blog, back when it was hosted on wordpress, I have been singing the accolades of del.icio.us. Recently I had begun to expand out and see what else there is in the social bookmarking field. I had tried Blinklist and wasn’t too impressed. They imported my del.icio.us links but lost my privacy settings and the interface was not very pleasing to me.

Then I discovered ma.gnolia. I had written it off as a sort of neat little lower 2nd or higher 3rd tier entrant into the field but had heard good things about it. After signing up and using it for a week now – I’m hooked. It has a much better UI than del.icio.us or blinklist, it imported all of my links no problem, it generates your own link blog that you can claim on technorati and just overall I am really impressed. It’s designed by the smart people at Happy Cog Studios who employ one of my favorite web designers / developers / people – Jason Santa Maria. If I could half the design skill and coding expertise (along with a little Meyer knowledge) I wouldn’t be half bad.

So feel free to check out my link blog or my about me – and yes, that picture with the two people is me and my girlfriend. More on that later in the week.

Sorry I’m not better looking. Don’t judge me.

Random Tidbit: Check out the LEGO Digital Designer.

life

Unplanned Hiatus

I realized after my last post that I had sort of taken a long, unplanned hiatus from my blog.  I apologize for that.  Between work and my personal life, I was just not feeling creative enough to provide content that I thought was of value for the topics I usually contribute to.  Work has been going good, I have finally become a full fledged member of the Helium team, and we have a lot of exciting things coming up.  I can’t talk too much about them, but I’m proud to be part of the team.  I’m learning a great deal and though I definitely feel like a junior member of the team I hope to increase my contributions as time goes on.

One thing I have been reading more into is mash-ups and pipes.  I hope to have more interesting thoughts and ideas on that in the coming week to ten days.  I’m still trying to find if there are any legal problems with this type of site – I’m assuming if I have no ads and no income generated from it, likely not, which is how I plan mine to be – but I want to research it a little more.  If you have any knowledge on this, please feel free to let me know.

I have also, as I mentioned, stumbled into the wall of providing unique and interesting content on a regular basis.  Unlike most blogs, I don’t see this as a sort of diary.  It’s purpose is more as a guide to web design from a beginner to intermediate level with tips, ideas and thoughts on css, accessibility, web standards and search engine optimization.  I have been thinking of changing or merging it with interested writers in like subjects to form a more well rounded and more frequently updated information source.  The same sort of people you would find on a development team – database gurus, development (php, ruby on rails, cold fusion, etc), and possibly even a graphic designer viewpoint.  I’m not sure if there is the interest out there or even if my audience constituents those types of people, but I’m curious to see if that might be a better solution and provide a better product.  Otherwise I may have to consider scrapping my blog and simply using my articles as content on my site – which I look to be updating and expanding again soon.

Random Tidbit: I found a blog containing an interesting look at different brand name logos redesigned with a web 2.0 feel.  Very interesting.