The silence is golden...

Facebook, grow up a bit, you need to ...

2009-07-08T14:00:00.002Z

It seems to me facebook are starting to change their ways a little, though not enough for my liking simply because of the way they continue to treat their users, the most important aspect of the whole business.

Treating your users like children is NOT the way to go.

There are now far more of the older generation on there, I would say 90% of the friends I have on facebook are 25 to 45 (my own age group), 5% under 25, 5% over 45 ... just recently it's been shown that the older generation (over 55) on facebook is also increasing, are they going to treat them like kids too?

Then again that's no surprise whan facebook was started by a college student for college students, ie little more than kids themselves.

The growth of facebok has been pretty explosive yet they have not changed their mentality with it, well the owner is what 24, 25 ... say's alot really about why they need to "grow up" as a whole.

I have now seen dozens of people delete their accounts out of frustration and YES I debated on doing it myself, it's something I will do if things don't improve for the users, no-one likes to be treated like a kid and facebook is NOT the be all and end all!

It's no secret (wrote about it on here) I've had issues with them like tens of thousands of others and all because of stupid rules and lack of clarification on them.

You want limits and rules to be respected, spell them out clearly!

It's a two way street so you have to do YOUR part too facebook, that means respecting the users.

You also have to be fair on how you implement it, I can promise you this, there was a 16 or 17 year old girl in the national papers not that long ago who admitted spending ALL her waking hours on facebook with her 5000 friends, I bet she has NEVER been blocked, and yet she must have used faceboook WAY more than I have!

As a user I have the right to express an opinion on this and I only want, just like everyone else, a better experience on facebook, not have to walk on eggshells.

The stupid limits, once you have been blocked (usually without warning) and then unblocked, you should never be blocked again UNLESS the users, IE your friends, COMPLAIN about you.

Do you think facebook, that you know me better than my OWN friends?
No I thought not!
Not ONE complaint to facebook from my friends, and yet they have blocked me twice!

What part of being "social" do you not understand facebook?

I'll spell it out, the MORE social the users are, the better!

It's no secret facebook are losing money, THAT is the problem you should be dealing with, not pissing the users off, let the users do the job of "policing" their own experience and the friends they have, they are NOT stupid!

If some friend spams the crap out my profile with some porn or other crap, or starts insulting me or friends and getting abusive it's, "remove from friends" and BYE BYE ... pretty simple.
I don't need YOU doing that for me.

YOU get on with what you screwed up with from the start, monetising the damn place!

Tip, ads don't work FULL stop! (Beer icon over there) ;o) - - - - - :o)

Twitter, missing the obvious?

2009-07-07T00:13:00.001Z

It seems twitter and facebook are having some issues lately, of different sorts, problems that I'd have thought would have shown themselves to be obvious to them long before now, problems they could have then avoided by acting on what should have looked so obvious.

You would have thought with all the data they already had, IE ... before the massive growth both experienced due to free publicity, it would show them what looks to be an obvious weakness or potential problem further down the growth path.

The other thing which I think is an issue, one that should be a priority is the lack of trust and appreciation to the users themselves, after all these social sites are user driven.

The users can "police the place" in a more effective way at times than the owners themselves leaving the owners to deal with improving the user experience, the most important aspect they deal with. (friendfeed get it spot on). this is beneficial to both parties after all. The users want a better experience.

I write this as a user, from my own experience with the sites, not based on others opinions ... my own experiences, and I do jump in. ;o) I will write about facebook in the next post ... so ...

"Twitter twoubles?"

Twitter has been suspending accounts by mistake recently while dealing with spammers, those who auto-follow using crap and follow trains, bots. There was a warning from twitter that they would deal with this sort of thing a couple of weeks back, how they were looking at the way people were using twitter.

It's spammers, bad thoughtless marketers and porn floggers who only care about big numbers, it's usually one or all of these that ruin things, just as we are now seeing here.

While I still have my account thankfully I have seen the rate the spammers and auto follow bots do this stuff, I have been blocking them daily for a few weeks so hopefully it's something twitter will continue to deal with, not sure they will ever win that though!

To be honest the stupidest group is those who thought it a good idea to "jump on the bandwagon" with crap like the "get 400 folllowers a day" while not normally that kind of general twitter user, maybe this is what happened with some of these that were so called "accidentally suspended" or "legit users" to other users.
IE...
Twitter targeted them all, so those who thought ...."well it won't do any harm, it's a one off" were effected, if so, tough, hopefully they think about it next time, plenty of us ranted against it long before this happened, so twitter are not really at fault, them users are.

The hashtag (#) is another thing they will always need to keep an eye on as it is used to get into the "trending topics" list on the home page, it's not hard to do as users of a forum have proved, just as they have done with google bombing.using anchor links over the years (it's not new) ... what are hashtags again? Anchor links!?

Twitter also I think need to work with link shrinker's and twitter app developers a bit more closely to jointly deal with any issues. Having a twitter only link shrinker with scanning process would get rid of the threat of viruses and worse which they have experienced a while back.

To have every single link converting into this twitter only shrinker would make a massive difference and could help with stats, both for twitter and the users which improves it all.

Working closer with those app creators who use the twitter API would only lead to improving the overall experience for the users rather than squabbling over the word "tweet" being used with the creators etc, and doing updates and more without working with the app developers to keep the experience hassle free for the users themselves.

Let's not forget though, we as users should also play our part in keeping it to our liking, taking responsibly for how we use it, report the porn spammers and crap, play our role in using it how we want it to be used help the app developers improve the experience etc.

What about you? How do you feel as a user of twitter?

R.I.P: Twitter is dying, long live ...

2009-07-03T21:23:00.001Z

... blogging.

Lets get this straight ...

Twitter will die long before blogging does, the fact it's treated like a "popularity" contest with the auto-follow bots, crap follow trains (where you can "gain" 400, 500 or whatever number it is), lame competitions, and other sly abuses makes it worth less now for the user.

I am continually blocking some porn spammer or other spammy crap, I look at their twitter and they have one "tweet" and they follow 500 people, and have no followers, or they follow none and have 500 odd followers, not hard to see what crap they use!

I would rather have 100 followers with reach than 2000 with none, it's not all a numbers game you know, I don't really get better results traffic wise now I have more than 2000 followers then I did when I had 1000, there could be many reasons for it, but the more followers you have only means that, you have more followers. Not all followers are equal, just as not all traffic is equal.

People are vainly trying to get the twittering celebrities attention in order to get some response, saying that it will "make their day plus get me more followers"

I don't give a flying shit about the fact some like A Kuchter has 2 million, and if he tweets to you you will gain tons of followers, who cares?

Meaningless ...

The other thing is twitter is 100% usable without going to twitter, how do twitter monetise their "webspace" when everyone is using something else to post to it?
Ads on the main twitter "home" page would be useless in that respect, plus who would really take notice of them?

Much like any social site, if you get banned and your account is deleted, that's it, you lose!
You have lost whatever you post to them, much like a few years ago with forums and people losing great content because they get banned.

Blogs are ours, I own this, noone can "ban me" from writing here, or delete this except me, or my host, and even then it's possible to back up a copy of it all so you don't lose it.

I am surprised at seeing someone say they get 90% of their business from twitter, they say that it's usually new orders, ie not much repeat orders, they even say it would be devastating to get banned from there, wtf are you doing relying on twitter?

It's good you get the work from there, if you do, not so good that you have to be there to get it and if you lose it you lose nearly all you incoming work.
If you have a blog you have a central for them to come to you.

Twitter will not outlast blogging!

Do you agree?

I AM better then YOU...

2009-07-02T18:12:00.002Z

Ok... maybe not, not with them damn things on anyway!

I am a little perplexed by the fact some people take all this shit so seriously, I saw someone had stopped reading a blog simply because the blogger had written "fuck" on their blog, although it was in that context probably the right word.

Before you say, "that word is never right in any context", I ask you to pick a mallet and chisel up, have a bash at some stone, you will enjoy it and find it a little therapeutic, a stress buster if you like ...until you whack you thumb which will happen ... then you find me a better word to say then than that one! ;o)

Lighten up, that's my advice, if one word and it was one word, not a habitual thing like I don't do on here, if it was a one off do you really think it's worth stopping reading it, if you get value from the blog?

That's crazy and silly on your part. If you never read this blog again just because I actually used that word for this post ... (hard not to if I want to make the point) ... then doesn't that say more about you than me?

Of course, you readers are smart though. ;o)

If something offends you that easy, then in my view it's best to start dealing with the "why it offends you" issue.
Then it won't offend you, simple really. Thick skin is needed in life.

Lifestream vs Blog...why the damn vs?

2009-07-02T12:52:00.000Z

Have been giving some thought to all the blogging ~~and~~ or lifestreaming conversations going around recently on blogs, in the social sites and probably even on the phone!

There does seem to be some shift going on with the impact of immediacy and the ever shortening of the attention span regarding content online, people seem to like snacking on short content, more so if a conversation can build around it, like what happens on friendfeed.

It seems to be the huge space between short blurbs like on twitter (140 max letters) and a full blown blog like say ... this one ;o)

Tumblr stepped into this space, and having used it myself it seems ok for what it is and does, posterous now stepped into this space too and I do prefer posterous for it's simplicity and the fact you can just do the whole lot through email.

I know you can use email on other platforms but posterous takes that to another level really and the only thing I can see making waves like it is googles aptly named wave!

Posterous as it is could be the simplest way to have a presence online and that is what matters, having some central hub from where your content reaches out, (and you only need to email it!), like the telegraph pole above, the lines reach out to the outpost, like twitter, friendfeed and others.

If you have no presence yet and no domain, setting up one for posterous is by far the simplest and fastest way to get started, it's like when blogger started but better and far easier!

I can see the appeal of lifestreaming yet I still feel a blog where you can go into more depth on your content is the way to go forward and instead of replacing blogging with lifestreaming, see how you can use it to compliment your blog after all there is no right or wrong way to do this, only you will know if it's worth doing for you.

There is no need to "dump" your blog or whatever, that's silly really unless you KNOW it's best being dumped and you will only know that over time, not next week, or a month ... more like 6 months and like anything else, test it for yourself and make your own mind up.

I could happily lifestream all day but that won't feed me ... at the moment. ;o)

So I will carry on blogging but will also use posterous often as I feel it is worth trying, IE I am acting on my own advice here. ;o)

"Farrah Fawcett funeral photos"

2009-07-01T13:36:00.001Z

What is wrong with people, searching for "farrah fawcett funeral photos" online, it is a huge trend on google.
It does say alot about the "pic's or it never happened" mentality out there, then again look at all the silly "Elvis is alive" stuff that gets bandied about everywhere, all the time ... disturbing for the members of the families I think.

I wrote about this last night but not about "farrah fawcett funeral photos" which I find a little tasteless anyway but the even worse search trend that was "Michael Jackson autopsy photos" on my posterous blog, and overnight it had well over 100 150 hits!

Not surprising seeing how many were actually going to google and searching for it anyway, but never expected that many hits on one night and not sure they were from the search engines, as I have no idea how well posterous does there...will have to add the analytics's. ;o)

I do find it a bit disturbing that people adopt this car crash mentality, so far as to actually go and type in "farrah fawcett funeral photos" and waiting for the results, wanting to see them. Not pleasant really.

How does it make you feel?

Posterous, the big easy ...

2009-07-01T12:15:00.001Z

Or the blogger killer?

So, I was a little late giving it a try but I am glad I got round to checking it out properly last night because I think the set up is just so simple, clean and easy.

They are making use of the one thing we all use and take for granted, that's email, the.ubiquitous nature of email over a website or blog platform like blogger, wordpress makes it perfect in today's world with the speed and mobility we seem to be living with, doing it all on the move so to speak, snacking on content.

The fact you don't even have to set up an account to start is unusual and good, just send an email, while that itself sounds a little odd, it really is that simple, just send an email to postATposterous.com (replace AT with @ of course) and it does all the rest for you!

After that you simply wait for an email and in that will be a link to the blog itself and your option to "claim" it, add a password for security and you are done, and only do that once, from here it's just send the email.

Email straight to your facebook too, simply by changing the email send address to facebookATposterous.com
Add images, videos etc by using "attachments" in email like you would normally do when emailing a friend.

You simply use the email subject line to write the blog title, attach whatever you want, write the content in the body part of the email, send, wait for the reply, look, share with your readers. :o)

You can even make it private, or allow others to post to your blog, family, friends etc and they only need to email, nothing else, not even having to leave your inbox to reply to the blog with a comment, simply reply by email.

It seems odd because we all use the same email address to send to, it makes sense though when you consider how easy it is then to use it, no remembering odd secret words like with blogger. The only time you need to change the sending email is when you set up another posterous blog, then the address has the blog name in it too, for example postATblogname.posterous.com replacing the "blogname" with your real blog name of course.

I do think posterous is worth trying out, it is the perfect set up those who like and use email but don't want the hassle of setting up a blog. OAP groups, church groups, charity groups other niche groups and such would benefit greatly from a group posterous set up, all only needing to send an email.

I am even debating whether to forget about switching this blog to wordpress from blogger, use posterous instead, not entirely sold on that yet, although you will see me using posterous because it is so simple and usable. :o)

What about you?

Michael Jackson's moonwalk? Pah...

2009-07-01T00:56:00.000Z

Amazing examples of the dancing which probably inspired Michael Jackson, though I have to say these guys seem to by so much better at it . ;o)

The guy on the round platform, who looks like he falls off is great.