Posts with tag "Facebook"

Facebook doesn’t give a shit if you don’t trust them

Category: Technology
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10 comments
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Posted 1148 days ago

Ah Facebook, you sure like to jerk around the tech pundits in the blogosphere don’t you. Take for example that last privacy flap where you turned everything on by default and then left it up to users to opt-out.

The thing is you knew that the large majority of your users wouldn’t, or couldn’t be bothered about the whole silly privacy thing. All they want to do is get logged in as quickly as possible to see how their FarmVille; or some other such stupid social game, was doing.

But when the digerati called you up on the carpet over the change you quickly flashed the fact that 35% of the people that had logged in had made changes. What exact changes we’re not sure .. maybe they just left everything the same and clicked on the Next button as quickly as they could because they could hear that cow calling them from FarmVille.

Wow 35% though .. that sounds pretty good eh. Yup it sure does, until you turn that into real numbers and then compare it to their stated user number of 500 million. In this case 35% works out to 175 million give or take a couple of million. That leaves 325 million users who didn’t make any changes to their new auto opt-in privacy settings.

So over half of the Facebook members couldn’t careless how; or with whom, their information is being shared. Not a bad number of people to make money off of don’t you think; and all at the cost of having to put up with a few irritated bloggers who Facebook doesn’t really need hanging around anyway as they are always gumming up the works with their big mouths.

Braindead TechCast EP30: Who knew – a condom for your remote and Kotex pulls a Dominos

Category: Podcasts
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Posted 1151 days ago

After a hellva time getting Talkshoe to play nice Sean and I spent the next twenty minutes bouncing all over the place – not intentionally – it just worked out that way. From the Facebook can give you syphilis to the fact that Kotex is pulling a Domino’s in their latest advertising campaign that for some reason broadcasters don’t want to care.

Yup .. definitely all over the place but it was fun.

Here’s the posts referenced in the show – or at least all that I can remember at the moment.

Facebook ‘linked to rise in syphilis’ – Telegraph
Twitter Quote of the Day: Roy Bragg – Shooting at Bubbles
Sprint CEO: Rate Plans Will Move From Minutes To Gigabytes – Digits
Instapaper For The iPad May Be The First Killer App. And It Will Be Universal. – TechCrunch
Kotex mocks its longtime ad strategy in new spots – The Inquisitr
Can Microsoft really build a better browser? - Ars Technica

Enjoy the show

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Deleting a social media service account – something I’ve never done before

Category: Technology
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3 comments
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Posted 1152 days ago

Almost like clockwork the early adopter hardcore group is once more waxing poetically about FriendFeed.

You know, that other service, the one that was the darling of the tech pundits and early adopter crew. Ya, that one, the one whose founders got a really nice payday from Facebook as the behemoth shot Friendfeed in the head.

Of course the purchase didn’t (mercifully) kill off Friendfeed rather it just placed it on life support so the die-hards would still have a sandpile to play in and the PR around the whole deal was more manageable.

For me Friendfeed had become a love hate relationship. In the beginning I just didn’t get the service but after giving it a second chance I became one of Friendfeed’s biggest fans. Then they made the change to their version of real-time display of timelines and after having my say on the matter pretty well left Friendfeed.

Do we really want a Facebook Web?

Category: Technology
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6 comments
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Posted 1167 days ago

Your parents are probably on Facebook, as are your kids and there is even a chance your grandparents are on Facebook as well.

You neighbor is probably there playing FarmVille and you stand a good chance of getting Friend requests from the corner-store clerk at some point. Even those neighbors and irritating jerks from work are knocking on your Wall. Even people you wouldn’t have anything to do with anywhere else will eventually seek you out.

Yet we continue to flock to Facebook in droves but for what?

In the homogenized world of pastel blue Facebook it all reeks of sameness. Any changes they make to the service are only meant to achieve two things: keep you safe and comfortable in the Facebook womb and to provided increasing numbers of eyeballs to advertisers and marketers.

It seems that every other day we hear of yet some new way that Facebook is trying to make itself a safe replacement to that mean, nasty, and uncertain online world. From teaming with PayPal so you can easily spend money within Facebook to the possibility of its own email system everything is geared to remove you from ever needing to go anywhere else on the web.

As Louis Gray points out

But Facebook has become that go-to site that absorbs what many other sites used to. It has become the platform for sharing photos, the platform for messaging, the platform for casual games, and personal connections.

Just as Google wants to index all the information in the world Facebook wants to index all the social interaction on the web.

But what exactly are we getting in return for all this blandness and sameness? Games that are nothing more than ways to keep you on the service and spending money? Endless quizzes that for the most part are nothing more than marketing ploys?

Is this really the web we want?

Braindead TechCast EP13: From Facebook to Vejazzling it’s been a day of wrong

Category: Podcasts
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Posted 1178 days ago

It’s Hump Day folks and with that we find ourselves dealing with a whole bunch of wrong.

It starts out with a news flash from outside of the tech field but we just couldn’t pass up talking about it. Yes folks you do can now have glittering crystals a-fixed to your groin area in the newest fashion statement to hit the streets. It is only just starting but if you hurry you can get in on Vejazzling and be ahead of the curve.

Carrying through on this theme of fail we bring you the news; and the PR recovery, of CitiBank freezing the business account of social networking start-up Fabulis. Apparently it had to do with some objectionable material on the start-up’s blog. It is important to note for those that may not heard of Fabulis yet it is the start-up behind the social networking site geared to gays. Now Citi has come out and apologized says that the three people involved in the original action have been reprimanded and the account unfrozen.

We leave off with a discussion concerning the news that Facebook has managed to secure itself a patent on ‘news feed’ which left both Sean and I shaking our heads in amazement.

Post referred to in the show:

VEJAZZLING! – MOB Living
UPDATED: Did Citibank Block a Startup for Gay Content? – GigaOM
Facebook gets a patent on ‘news feeds’ – are you frikken kidding me – The Inquisitr
Facebook Patents The News Feed (Updated) – All Facebook

Enjoy the show

EP13: From Facebook to Vejazzling it’s been a day of wrong

Facebook and Twitter – it’s a case of apples and oranges

Category: Technology
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Single comment
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Posted 1178 days ago

The other day I wrote about wanting to be allowed to shoot anyone who tries to propagate the ol’ Service A kills Service B silliness. It’s a good thing then that I like Mark Dykesman because for some reason a normally smart man has fallen into this trap.

In a post yesterday Mark posits that Twitter will die before Facebook and yes on the surface he makes some interesting points

Twitter is a limited platform that is unlikely to evolve. Gen Y and younger (not to mention members of Gen X and older) can do Twitter in their sleep. But, it probably doesn’t do everything they want to do. They aren’t into just reading text. Yes, you can send links via Twitter, but each extra click you add is a barrier to it being used.

Facebook can basically do everything that Twitter can do, plus a whole lot more. To some people, Facebook is the Web because it’s a portal to other things. You can share photos on it. You can write your notes. You can share links. You can keep track of your friends. You can spend hours on it playing Flash games. And so on.

Twitter? You can send text messages. But only short ones. With links. But unless you have an extra app loaded, you really don’t know what the links are until you click on them.

Facebook could eventually die as well. It probably will die someday. It has its own limits and it may yet be replaced by a better (read: open) platform.

But which will die first? Twitter, no question in my mind. It may take 1 year, 2 years, 5 years, 10 years, or longer, but Twitter will eventually die because simple tools only last until something equally simpler, cheaper, easier to use and more powerful comes along. We’ve seen it over and over again with different kinds of technology. The same thing will likely happen to Facebook. But I think Twitter will die first.

Interesting points and ya as I said – on the surface they appear to be quite valid. Except there is one big glaring problem that Mark, and others who feel the same are missing.

Comparing Twitter and Facebook is exactly like trying to compare apples to oranges.

Regardless of the fact that Facebook has tried to mimic what Twitter does it cannot, and will not be able to match it. They are two totally different beasts and occupy two totally different ecospheres within the larger web. It is precisely because of the simplicity of Twitter that it is slowly becoming a part of the plumbing that is the web. Facebook is the high-rise apartment building sitting on top of the web.

There have been contenders for the Twitter crown before and both Pwnce and Jaiku had a richer user option interface. Where are they now? Gone.

There are current attempts to copy the success of Twitter and yet Indenti.ca and Plurk are still nothing more than plumbing wannabes.

So as much as we all might like to get the gossip train going the fact is that Twitter isn’t going anywhere soon and neither is Facebook – they serve two totally different needs.

I think Steven Rubel’s mind has become waterlogged from Lifestreaming too much

Category: Uncategorized
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Single comment
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Posted 1181 days ago

I see a lot of really off the wall ideas and conversations during a day to the point I often wonder if anything will make me shake my head it total and utter bewilderment anymore.

Then along comes Steve Rubel with a statement that stops me dead in my tracks and raise my head to the sky all the while muttering “Oh Lord….”. After all what more can you do when someone said that the future of the web is one without sites.

Sure on the surface that hits all the wet and warm spots of the social media mavens but when you look at the reasoning that both Rubel and Paul Gillin give for this so-called inevitable future of the web – well – let the head shaking commence.

This of course comes hot on the heels of a post by MG Siegler at TechCrunch about the Associated Press directing all their traffic to their Facebook page.

Steve thinks this is a news game changer

The AP is now changing the game for news by not only going where attention spirals are taking us but by also using their content to curate a conversation on Facebook and – above all – build relationships.

Paul Gillin says this about the site-less web

These are the first ripples in a wave of new technology that will make the Internet effectively site-less. By that I mean that the metaphor of the Web as we’ve known it for the last 15 years is breaking down. The Internet is increasingly not about sites but about content and people

So let me get this straight. The future of the web, and all its incredible richness, is going to be places like Facebook, Twitter, Buzz and Foursquare.

If this is what the future of the web is going to be like then we will lose more than we gain.Contrary to what Steve Rubel thinks the AP isn’t a visionary in the least. They have just found a new way to concentrate and control their product.

There’s nothing visionary about that.