Well, 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.
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.
Common Craft has done it again, this time with an excellent video explaining social media. Watch this video if you don’t understand social media, or if you like ice cream:
No relation between me and “Jarret.”
Since we’ve been lame again this week, I thought I’d share it here instead of in the sidebar. We’re running out of excuses, I know. GRE, LSAT, work, travel. Such is life. Bear with us!
Jealous of Taylor’s recentgig 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!
In March 2007, Alex Iskold wrote about the emergence of the “attention economy”, a marketplace “where consumers agree to receive services in exchange for their attention.” The always-on nature of digital media has increased the scarcity of human attention, and in turn has increased its value. To put it concretely: the more time a company can get you to spend on their website, the more ad revenue they can potentially earn or the higher the likelihood that you’ll purchase one of their products.
I mention the attention economy not to wax theoretic about it, but to share my personal struggle with choosing how to invest my attention. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the purpose of all this technology reading and writing that I do. I enjoy thinking about the topics that I regularly cover. The evolution of web 2.0 and social network is fascinating to me, and it plays well to my geek tendencies. But my brain has been flirting recently with what bloggers have started to call “social media fatigue,” an exhaustion resulting from the overexposure to and overanalysis of those topics.
There’s Hope
However, my passion for social media was reinvigorated last week when I was directed to a web page where a friend was raising money to support her marathon run in honor of her college roommate’s struggle with cancer. I put the link up in my Gmail status and sent an email to some of my fellow classmates to let them know about it. Though I certainly can’t and wouldn’t claim to have made a huge impact, I think a few of the donors that day decided to act because of that simple message and link from a friend. By the end of the day, my friend had raised several hundred dollars, and as of today she has raised over $1,000 from over 25 donors.
Though the story is not unique or especially exciting, it brought home for me how much potential there is for social media. So much good can be done! And people create applications on Facebook that allow you to… throw sheep? Give each other cupcakes? Come on! Luckily, some people have caught on.
Well, 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:
However, my passion for social media was reinvigorated last week when I was directed to a web page where a friend was raising money to support her marathon run in honor of her college roommate’s struggle with cancer. I put the link up in my Gmail status and sent an email to some of my fellow classmates to let them know about it. Though I certainly can’t and wouldn’t claim to have made a huge impact, I think a few of the donors that day decided to act because of that simple message and link from a friend. By the end of the day, my friend had raised several hundred dollars, and as of today she has raised over $1,000 from over 25 donors.
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