Archive for the 'Facebook' Category

Defending Social Media

Published by Taylor on February 2, 2009 in Blogging, Computing, Culture, Facebook, Lifestyle, Privacy, Social Networks and Web 2.0. View Comments

Reader Jared (not Jarred) left a lengthy comment on my post about what I feel is our growing need and ability to create and share content.  In short: our attraction to social media.  I want to pull out what I think is the essence of Jared’s concern, because it merits a more complete response:

Dig[ital] interconnectedness, to me, connotes an element of dystopic irony, a warning that we might not end up getting what we want out of this, and someday find that while social media was created and driven by a fundamental desire and longing for connection…it left that behind at some point in the past. [...]

The more data and content we create, the more noise. We keep finding more noise, more noise, more noise everywhere. White noise. [...]

It’s good stuff, this Internet….as long as we know what we’re getting ourselves into.

The issue of useless “white noise” comes up a lot.  The fact that the web is for all purposes infinite, and the information online limitless, makes the idea of constant content creation by an ever-expanding group of people seem completely overwhelming.  “I can’t even find time to read all the online articles in the NY Times every day” we think to ourselves; “My Google Reader is up to 4,000 unread items!  I don’t need MORE content–I’m barely keeping up with what I’ve already chosen to follow!”

Questioning whether the social media we use and follow will allow us to connect and grow in meaningful ways is almost completely tied to the issue of noise.  After all, absent the noisy distractions that Jared describes, the Internet would be an incredibly useful place.  Anyone who skims through the comments section of any popular YouTube video (a phenomenon captured brilliantly by XKCD) understands the limits of the current social web: when everyone speaks with equal weight and access, a lot of useless and ignorant crap is published online.

But let me argue that the proliferation and widespread adoption of social media–even in the midst of more noise–will be a good thing for a few reasons:

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When I Heard The Learn’d Software Engineer

Published by Jarred on September 11, 2008 in Culture, Facebook, Humanism, Social Networks, Sociology and Web 2.0. View Comments

Clive Thompson, a columnist for Wired, contributed a fascinating piece to Sunday’s New York Times Magazine.  “I’m So Totally, Digitally Close to You” examines the phenomenon of “ambient awareness” that has been developing alongside the evolution of the Web.  Thompson brings a balanced perspective to the debate over the influence that the Internet has on our lives, a debate which recently has been dominated by alarmists who claim (often with little data) that the digital millennium will actually take us a step backwards as a race.

Ambient awareness is the term applied to the “incessant online contact” that characterizes the current developments on the Web.  From the Facebook News Feed to Twitter, users are currently preoccupied with accessing an aggregation of tiny details to form a larger picture.  The metaphor Thompson chooses is beyond perfect:

Each little update — each individual bit of social information — is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends’ and family members’ lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting.

And so the mystery behind the obsession with keeping on top of our friends and their “updates” is revealed, even to those who think they had it figured out.  It’s not the trees that fascinate us; it’s the forest.  It’s on a level just beyond passive perception.  We skim and absorb the information, choosing only to dive into the details only when something piques our interest.

So is this good or bad?  A step forward, or a step back?

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Mea Culpa: Facebook Chat Is, In Fact, Useless

Published by Jarred on July 1, 2008 in Facebook, Social Networks and Web 2.0. View Comments

faceplant-dive.jpgWell, it’s been over two months since Facebook integrated chat into its offerings.  In my preview post, I said that Facebook Chat “will probably have the most significant impact on the user experience since the introduction of the News Feed” and that it would “revolutionize the social networking experience.”  Harping on the real-time notification feature rolled out with Facebook Chat, I wrote:

This is but one example of how Facebook wants to turn your asynchronous social networking experience into a synchronous one.  By being able to instantly notify you of changes in and updates to your social graph, they give you the feeling that you are actively engaging and interacting with your friends.  Your graph is no longer a snapshot, but a moving, fluid web of connections and content.  Of course, by giving you that feeling they also want to attract you to stay online longer to see more ads.  Genius.

Boy, did I have it wrong.

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Annonymity and Secrets Online: Postsecret on Facebook

Published by Taylor on June 8, 2008 in Facebook, Privacy and Social Networks. View Comments

I’ve been reading Postsecret regularly for a few years now. I always get excited when a new batch of secrets pops up in my Google Reader window on Sundays. For those who don’t know, Postsecret is a community art project of sorts consisting of anonymous postcards mailed to the curator (for lack of a better term), Frank Warren. Warren picks out about 20 postcards from the week’s mail and posts scanned images onto the Postsecret site every Sunday. The postcards detail secrets ranging from hysterical to neurotic; tragic to troubling. Warren has produced a series of books filled with Postsecret postcards, and regularly speaks at college campuses about the unique project.

Recently, Warren started a Facebook page for the Postsecret project. Every week, he posts a photo album full of new secrets (beyond what’s posted on the blog), and (unlike on the Postsecret blog, where commenting is disabled) many Facebook users comment on the postcards.

This week on Facebook, Warren posted a single secret–one anonymous contributor’s list of “Secrets I Have Never Told To Men I Know.” He then challenged Facebook users: “What are your secrets? Write your list here [...]” Many comments followed, and things got pretty interesting.

One of the constant characteristics of Postsecret has always been the anonymity of submitted secrets. Part of why Postsecret is compelling is that readers generally know nothing about the source of wild or painful secrets. And yet, on Facebook, many readers chose to share secrets with their name and affiliation (High School/University, or location) in the open. I was surprised by what I read in the 2,100+ comments (2,141 as I’m writing this) that accompanied the original secret.

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Is FriendFeed Doomed?: Jarred Guest Posts at SarahInTampa.com

Published by Jarred on May 20, 2008 in Blogging, Computing, Data Portability, Facebook, Google, Social Networks, Tropophilia and Web 2.0. View Comments

Jealous of Taylor’s recent gig as a guest poster, I decided to accept an open call for contributors made by Sarah Perez for her excellent blog sarahintampa.com. Sarah regularly blogs for ReadWriteWeb — one of the preeminent resources for technology news and analysis on the web . Thanks to Sarah for letting me jump in!

My guest post talks about how FriendFeed is going to encounter enormous, if not deadly, pressure from the recently launched Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect initiatives.

Facebook and Google realize that people are tired of filling out profile after profile, uploading user picture after user picture, connecting to friend after friend… on site after site after site. In “the real world”, we have one social graph of our friends and one identity. Both are centrally located in our brain. We block and expose different facets of our identity to different parts of our graph. This is how the web should, and will, work. Google and Facebook want to be our digital, social brains. [...] When you visit a website, you’ll no longer have to create your identity — Facebook or Google will load it for you. You’ll be able to concentrate on leveraging your identity in the context of the website you’re visiting and the services it provides.

What does that have to do with FriendFeed? Well you’ll have to head to Sarah’s blog to find out!