How many do you belong to?
A quick count indicates I'm probably on about twenty of them and maybe active on ten of those or so.
There are probably some gaps - I'd call YouTube a social networking site and MetaFilter too. Any site that allows you to create a profile and connect with other people on the same site fulfills a couple of the main criteria for "socialness" in my opinion which both of those sites do.
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Wednesday, July 21
List of Social Networking Sites
by
Jason
on Wed 21 Jul 2010 07:28 AM CST
Thursday, May 13
More Facebook Fallout
by
Jason
on Thu 13 May 2010 09:01 PM CST
[Edit: A sample of the growing Facebook backlash from across the web.]
I recently wrote about the backlash against Facebook for the increased loosening of their privacy controls. Between that, their arbitrary movement of your profile information to suit their needs, security holes in their chat and Instant Personalization program and the increased whispers about the ethics of Facebook's founder, the site is facing perhaps the biggest backlash in its short history. (It's pretty rich irony that a site that defines social networking could suffer at the hands of its own users talking about it on blogs, Twitter feeds and on the Facebook site itself!) The best summary I've seen so far of why this loosening of Facebook privacy standards should be of concern to people is an infographic called "The Evolution of Facebook on Privacy" (probably better titled "The Devolution of Privacy on Facebook") which I found on Reddit. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a text-based timeline of this same information. As scary as this increased openness is (to try it, log-out of Facebook then, before logging back in, try searching for yourself or going to the domain you probably registered for yourself - www.facebook.com/headtale in my case - to get a sense of what anyone surfing the web can see about you now.) But just as IBM was supplanted by Microsoft who were, in turn, supplanted by Google who are now threatened by Facebook's attempts to become the dominant technology company in the world, there is always the promise of something coming along to replace the current leader - or at least provide an alternative. In this case, it might be an an open-source, decentralized social network called Diaspora. "The Diaspora* group was inspired to begin their project after hearing a talk by Eben Moglen, a law professor at Columbia University, who described the
centralized social networks as “spying for free,” Mr. Salzberg said." The New York Times profiles the Diaspora idea and Wired has an article titled "Facebook Has Gone Rouge - It's Time for An Open Source Alternative" (but with an unfortunately placed Facebook "Like" button at the bottom of the article - which is it, Wired???  )What this all means remains to be seen but with even high-level politicians beginning to pay attention to Facebook's activities, there's a definite sense that this is something big. It could lead to a big backlash and a mass migration to a new service (anybody use MySpace anymore? Friendster? Did anybody ever use Classmates.com?) Or it could be status quo as the majority of Facebook's 500 million members - the non-techy moms and grandpas stay there, happily playing Farmville and not realising the possible implications of Facebook's increasing commodification of their information (and I write that, not truly understanding the implications myself!) But I think I will go scrub my profile a bit. I'll apparently still get targeted ads based on the info I provided in the past - even after deleting it. But it will hopefully send a small message. Sunday, May 9
Betty White on SNL and Six Other Victories of the Internet That Influenced Pop Culture
by
Jason
on Sun 09 May 2010 07:24 PM CST
Former Golden Girl and definitely not-the-typical Saturday Night Live host, Betty White actually *was* the host of last night's show, mainly because of an Internet campaign that started on Facebook. Here's an article that details some other examples of Internet campaigns affecting pop culture.
Thursday, May 6
Facebook Doesn't Care About You
by
Jason
on Thu 06 May 2010 05:29 PM CST
Facebook has a
long history of implementing features that are counter to what users
want and/or treating their users like shit with a general lack of respect.
Lately, Facebook has been giving an even stronger impression than ever before (if that's even possible) that their early appeal as the one social web site which gave you total control over your information and your privacy is on its way to the dustbin of history as they try to establish an even more dominant position online by sharing and connecting more and more user information which was previously private. Given their founder's early actions to his recent flip-flop comments, this isn't surprising. But it is frightening. A sample of the coverage...  The
Facebook Privacy Wars Heat Up (The Atlantic) Facebook's
new social features secretly adds apps to your profile (PC World - this story
has been amended to say that this was due to a "bug" but I think
previously, Facebook has used this same reason to backtrack when it was
obvious they were testing the waters on something that would be
controversial.)
Facebook further reduces your control over your personal information (Electronic Frontier
Foundation)
The Facebook privacy settings you've lost forever (Gawker) Facebook
chat security breach (CBC)If Google was smart, they would re-jigger Orkut, give it a much better name and promote the hell out of it (top search result for every search you do?) to try and take market share from Facebook at this critical point in the social networking wars. If there was an easy way to jump and Orkut somewhat mirrored Facebook's features, I think I'd seriously consider making the jump. But barring that, I'm really thinking about giving my account a good pruning at the minimum. I'm not ashamed of too much I have on there but at the same time, I might not want every single person doing a web search for "Jason Hammond" to know I'm a fan of say, Stampede Wrestling as well as a supporter of gay marriage. Who knows what people might infer? I have no doubt that Google is no less dangerous than Facebook as a single entity of power online. But they are much less blatantly in your face about it!  Sunday, March 28
The CMO's Guide to the Social Landscape
by
Jason
on Sun 28 Mar 2010 10:42 PM CST
Easily the best session at the PLA Virtual Conference I hosted at RPL last week was the one on "Marketing as Conversation: How to Interact with Your Community Through Your Web Site".
In fact, throughout the presentation, I just kept nodding my head and grinning like a goofball, thinking to myself, "Yep, uh-huh, that's right!" Here's a graphic I came across that reinforced many of the points of that presentation in a different way - "The Chief Marketing Officer's Guide to the Social Landscape" Good stuff! Friday, January 15
Friday Fun Link - Conversation with an Anonymous Facebook Employee (January 15, 2010)
by
Jason
on Fri 15 Jan 2010 10:36 PM CST
Very revealing conversation
with lots of info about the behind-the-scenes workings of Facebook as
well as the site's future plans. Obviously, it's important to keep in
mind this is an anonymous interview on the Internet. So who knows how
true it is?
AllofFacebook.com, a site dedicated to all things Facebook has an analysis but won't side one way or the other, only stating that it rings for them (as it did for me...but I freely admit how gullible I can be sometimes.) (via MetaFilter) Sunday, December 27
Facebook's Great Betrayal
by
Jason
on Sun 27 Dec 2009 01:42 PM CST
This article entitled "Facebook's Great Betrayal" is a bit out-dated now but a few weeks ago, users logging in to Facebook were asked to choose some new privacy settings - many of them ominously set to "Everyone".
A lot of the success of Facebook versus other social networking sites was that it gave users such granulated control over who could see what information about them but now, in an attempt to catch up to Twitter and with Google adding "Real Time" search as a major factor in generating search results, Facebook has made another move that has rubbed a lot of users the wrong way including encouraging users to share more information publicly and making some information public no matter what the user wants (lists of friends, profile pictures, etc.) Coincidentally, I'm reading "Accidental Billionaires: the Founding of Facebook - A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal" which gives some insight into the personalities that created the world's most popular social networking site. Thursday, October 15
If It Was Good Enough For Genghis (And A List of Controversial Topics)
by
Jason
on Thu 15 Oct 2009 07:11 PM CST
Shea posted a hilarious anti-breastfeeding article pro-Nestle Fake Milk Formula to her Facebook status with the usual heavy response to anytime this type of topic comes up - from both pro-breastfeeding moms and those who weren't able to or aren't as worked up about the prevalance of formula in our society.
It made me think, what are the most controversial topics you can bring up with someone to guarantee a good argument (or awkward silences): - religion/atheism - politics - abortion - euthanasia - parenting - breastfeeding - social programs (pick one) - economic programs (pick one) - pornography - sex - gambling - anything to do with races/gender issues/sexual orientation and all that fun stuff - why the Leafs suck so badly (okay, nobody disagrees about this!  )So anyhow, that's a long way of saying that I hope Shea posts this article about the completely different attitude towards breastfeeding that exists way around the world in Mongolia (although if you did a study, I'm sure the attitudes in Mongolia are much more common worldwide than the typical North American way of doing things - baby breastfeeds for maybe 3-6 months if they're lucky or else mom says she just wasn't able to do it - which might be true but you shouldn't admit in the same article that you "didn't realise how much work breastfeeding would be" or mention that being able to leave baby with grandma and grandpa for a night out is a nice bonus as was the case in the article Shea posted to her Facebook.) Thursday, September 17
Twitter Times
by
Jason
on Thu 17 Sep 2009 10:10 PM CST
Facebook has stolen added a new feature, inspired by Twitter, where you can tag another user by using the "@" sign and then typing the person's name in your status updates.
When I was trying it out to tag Shea in a post, I ended with a rhetorical "Is this a Twitter killer?" A few people were quick to respond that this wasn't the case with one very succinctly saying "Um...no." So I should clarify what I meant with my half-baked comment. I obviously don't think that one appropriated feature, no matter how core to the experience, means that Twitter's going to disappear (although they appear capable of doing this to themselves regularly anyhow!) But I do wonder if the rapid Twitter-ification of Facebook does mean that the casual user (here I'm talking about people who aren't early adopters, who don't work in libraries and get excited about every new technology that comes along, and yes, I'll say it, the type of person who answer a LOT of Facebook quizzes) might be less inclined to make the jump to getting on Twitter if they're already on Facebook? Nah, those people can still follow Ashton Kutcher and Britney Spears if they join Twitter. They'll leap too!  (Now, as for whether MS-Office Online will kill Google Docs, that's a much more plausible scenario...) Friday, September 11
Friday Fun Link - Funny Facebook Threads (Sept 11, 2009)
by
Jason
on Fri 11 Sep 2009 11:23 PM CST
[2009-09-17 - Edit: "b" and "c" aren't that close on the keyboard so I wonder what sort of a Freudian slip it was to type "Facecook" in the subject line of this post originally?]
A minor trend I've noticed lately is people posting screen caps of funny Facebook threads they come across... "Michael Jackson is dead?" "OMG! I HATE MY JOB! My boss is a total pervvy wanker" "Thank-you Michael. I had a great time." (NSFW!!!) Why You Shouldn't Friend Your Parents On Facebook Why You Should Always Log Out of Facebook While At Your Parents' House Why Parents Shouldn't Be Allowed on Facebook in General So stupid... "I split my vag!" (I would hope that the NSFW is self-evident here.) (Hmm, and some surfing around reveals that, of course, there's a whole sub-reddit dedicated to the topic that I'd never seen before!) |
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