BLADAM: Life, Liberty, Love and Stuff - (Full-text feed)

Time spent on social networks and the like - I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours

2009-10-13T07:11:45Z

After having fallen hugely behind on browsing my Facebook newsfeed, Friendfeed, etc., I decided to see just how much time I had been spending during those “on top of it” days… and, by extension, how much time it’d take me to keep up each day.

Around 10pm last night, I “cleared out” my Reader, and picked a stopping point in Facebook and Friendfeed, so I could start fresh tonight (Monday) and see just how much would accumulate in 24 hours… and how long it’d take me to get through it.

So here are my numbers:

Facebook: Browsing (and commenting a bit) on a filtered newsfeed of one group of 270 friends: 20 minutes
Friendfeed: Browsing (and commenting/liking a bit) on a selected group comprised of about 80 friends: 8 minutes
Twitter: Browsed through unfiltered/ungrouped list via Brizzly (happy to offer invites to the first ten people who contact me): 12 minutes.
Reader: Browsing through my ??? feeds (and checking out a few original pages + adding a couple comments): 28 minutes (”???” because Reader never was able to load up anything when I clicked on “Manage my subscriptions.” Bummer! But I’m guessing I have over 200 feeds, of which probably 100 are updated at least weekly)

Just a bit over an hour. Not that bad, right? Except when you realize a few very important things:

This is more than an hour every single day, including weekends, holidays, vacation times, etc.
Worse yet (and more importantly), this does not include my personal e-mail, which I estimate would take me about an hour daily in and of itself to read and appropriately reply to messages.
Nor does this include Wave. Or Techmeme. Or online News. Or really anything else in the vast online world.
It certainly doesn’t include the time I should be spending composing thoughtful e-mails to my Grandpa, to my friends near and far, and so on. 500 or so contacts in my addressbook… people that I care about. If I e-mailed each one just once a month, that’s more than one substantive e-mail every day (in addition to the other replies).
And it certainly doesn’t include corporate (work) mail and related stuff, but that’s well beyond the scope of this inquiry, in which I’m trying to pin down this...

How much of my free time do I spend (or would I have to spend each day) on “keeping up” with friends and news online?

* * *

Well, now you know, or at least have an idea about my time allocations.
Where does your time go?
- How much time do you spend each day on Facebook, Twitter, etc.? (Not sure? Try what I did, and actually time it!)
- Is that more than you thought? Less than you thought? Does it make sense for you?

Curious to hear your numbers and your feelings on this…

[Edited at 1:18am October 13 to add: Twitter stats]

Amazon, inexplicably hampering its most loyal customers

2009-10-05T04:09:36Z

[Note: Links below are affiliate links, so if you click and buy, I make money.]

I have bought hundreds of items from Amazon (yes, I’m an Amazon Prime member, surprise surprise )

Some of them I’m particularly fond of and want to either repurchase or recommend to a friend… but I can’t do easily because Amazon won’t help me. You see, I’ve not been able to figure out any way to search through my purchases; it seems I can only browse by year (and paginatedly browse at that… ack!).

I bought an amazing compressible travel pillow (below) a while back that I absolutely love, and I wanted to encourage my parents to get it for their upcoming trip to New Zealand:

...but couldn’t find any sane way to look up the product.
- I tried doing an Amazon search for “travel pillow” but there are hundreds if not thousands of travel pillows in their store.
- I then tried searching through my gmail (where I get my Amazon order receipts) for “travel pillow” but that didn’t turn it up.
- Somewhat randomly, I then searched Amazon for “orange travel pillow” and that did the trick.

Amazon, why do you make this so difficult for your active customers? Why not a simple search box in the My Orders screen?

Truly stupid Facebook status updates

2009-10-03T23:28:31Z

One of my favorite newsweeklies, The Week, has a weekly competition where they solicit various entertaining submissions on goofy name ideas or lists.

A few weeks ago, highlighting the crazy case of some Australian kids Facebook-status’ing that they’d fallen into a well or something like that, they asked for some other ideas of truly stupid Facebook updates.

Well, I submitted a handful… but clearly the editor of this contest lacks good taste, ‘cause she didn’t pick any of mine :(. So, for your edification, I’ve included them below

—-
1) “OMG, I can’t believe my stupid teacher is reading my Facebook feed!”
2) “Honey, I think I might be pregnant. Is it yours?!”
3) “Having sex. BRB in a minute.”
4) “Honey, could you please get the remote for me? I’m in the bedroom.”
5) “OMG, DID I JUST POST THAT? THOUGHT IT WAS SEARCH BOX! HELP!”
6) “My darling Jennifer, will you marry me?”
7) “How do I post a status update?”
8) “Unsubscribe!”
9) “I am Mobutu Rumppole, a Nigerian Prince…”
10) “Just got spider bite. Fingers swelling pretty bad, hardto type, any ideas on what I sh”

Don’t get a G1 (but do keep an eye out for Android Awesomeness!)

2009-09-12T21:12:41Z

When it took me seven seconds just to be able to answer a phone call, that’s when I realized I had finally had enough. I’ve never used an iPhone and due to disapproval over Apple’s policies probably never well, so this is not a “G1 Sucks iPhone Rules!!!1” post. Unfortunately, it’s still a rant against the G1.

First, let me offer some disclaimers:
1) I’m a power user. I’ve downloaded lots of apps, and overall, they rock. Google Maps on the G1 is awesome. Pandora’s new Android app made me literally giggle with glee. And the Android OS, while clearly still a bit rough, has great potential IMHO. But perhaps because I’m a power user (installing many apps and pushing the phone to its limits), the phone has been more frustrating for me than it is (or would be) for more, heh, normal people.
2) And speaking of normal people… my sister—who is crazy-smart but hardly an early adopter geek—LOVES her G1. She pretty much only uses it for phone calls and checking her e-mail, but the latter came in handy wonderfully when her desktop computer was down and also when the electricity was out where she lives. She’s had no problems figuring out how to use the phone, and seemingly no problems getting it to do what she wants to do with it. Though granted, when I last spoke with her, she hadn’t actually installed a single app.
3) I know people on the Android team and I hope they do not hate me after this post. They’re genuinely good, smart, hardworking folks who IMHO made an admirable effort towards Android Phone v1. When the phone works well (and let me note, it mostly does), it makes you appreciate the power and opportunities in an open mobile OS

Alas, though, for better or worse, working well most of the time isn’t sufficient for a phone. Phones should work reliably and consistently well, and the G1 does not. It comes down to the hardware: Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Slow, as in, it often takes over five seconds for the home page to show up after you click the home button. That, combined with the flakiness in making and receiving calls, makes it a pretty lousy phone for phone calls. And regardless of my preference for e-mail over voice calls most of the time, this is still absolutely, positively unacceptable in a phone.

* * *

Many of you may be surprised to hear me publicly railing against what some refer to as “the Google Phone.” I note (with some pride) that my policy has pretty much always been to offer public praise on Google products when I feel they deserve it and private (within-Google) blunt-yet-constructive criticisms of Google products that (to me) fall short.

But…
1) This technically isn’t a “Google phone.” We made the software, but someone else made the hardware. I’m mentioning this as a technicality, admittedly, and not intending to just pass the buck. Ultimately, it’s got our name on it and we should (and I believe do) take both responsibility and credit for Android phones that include what’s known as the “Google Experience.”
2) I can say with firm confidence that many of the phones coming down the pike this year (18-20 is the number publicly pre-announced!) simply ROCK. And I want folks’ first experience with Android to be one that’s consistently AWESOME, not just “Hmm, pretty good most of the time.”

You should be asking Santa for an Android phone this Christmas, even if you’re an atheist. Er, okay, if you’re a non-Christian, perhaps you should just go out and buy an Android phone yourself. You’ll appreciate the better (much better) hardware, slicker UIs, and a lot more to make you smile.

Tragedy of the social commons

2009-09-10T07:39:59Z

Tonight I was tired. Tired but—perhaps solely through repeated mental flagellations—ready to be brave.

Tonight at the weekly swing dance, I was going to ask Miss Q to dance. Extremely talented, very attractive, and admirably most humble, too. Miss Q, that is. Darned ambiguous references, but indeed I digress.

Grammatical nits aside… for reasons I cannot quite narrow down for certain, it appears as though my bravery was either contagious or most coincidentally most ill-timed or a combination thereof. You see, that *other* fellow was determined to dance with Miss Q. And the young man beside him. And yes, that other chap dashing up beside the both of them.

Miss Q had a queue and a rather constant queue at that. Oh, not the visible English-style straight version, but rather a discernible one nonetheless. Ranging from skulking to brazen, star-struck and/or love-struck leads grabbed their opportunity, sometimes with frightening literalness, and Miss Q handled it all with the utmost in grace and good nature. Was she delighted or annoyed or simply exhausted by all the attention? I cannot say. I was quietly and perhaps just a bit more than mildly seething at my ill fortune, and so in this circumstance I cannot fully trust my normally perceptive nature.

But I know this: of the collective of Miss Qs here and elsewhere on the dancefloor—particularly in this arenas where the Misses outnumber the Misters—there by my estimation must be an aggregate tiredness and frustration on the shoulders of both sexes. The Misses have nary a rest, much less a chance to do much choosing of their choosing. They pair with those who are the quickest, the most cunning, the most persistent, the most unsubtlely lurking in the not-so-background, which may or—more likely—may not dovetail with those who are the most talented or otherwise desirable partners.

And, as you surely may have guessed, the disappointment lies not just within the fairer sex here, but rests upon the equally unlucky section of lads. For we have two choices: one-up the others in desperate aggressiveness or sit on the side passively ruing our lot and the escalation of hounding-stealing-hoarding that has led to this sorry condition. Those compelled into the former may succeed on occasion but feel ashamed on the whole of what they’ve been driven to. And those self-relegated into the latter behavior must simply feel, well, stamped writ-large with a neon ‘L’ upon their forehead.

* * *

What does this suggest, other than that I have a dramatic flair for cartooningly exaggerating a seemingly run-of-the-mill situation rather than answering e-mail or getting much needed sleep?

Ah, dear reader, it suggests more than this! Much more! For dance is but a metaphor for life! Or, at minimum, the situation I’ve described above reminds me of social interactions in a much broader sense than just the lead-follow rituals associated with selecting dance partners.

Bars. Clubs. Particularly given the most-typical uneven ratios of men (many) to women (few), what we end up with is an ever-escalating atmosphere of urgency, high volume, and desperation, which leads to the all-too-cliched-but-true situation of women massively annoyed by obnoxiously brazen and bad pickup lines and (worse) physical aggression. And on the other side, an unfortunate mix of mostly puzzled, frustrated, and perhaps even angry men who refuse to raise their bets and behavior (and thus fold) The women go home and complain to their girlfriends about being besieged by “jerks” all night, and guys complain to their mates about the unfortunate and equally-unfortunately-named “sausage fest” and the lack of opportunities reasonably available.

* * *

To clarify, my swing dance experiences are typically many many MANY times better than the hyper-clarified and starkly drawn portrait I’ve painted here. And for tonight, it was more my own stubbornness (I was set on dancing with one particular woman) that resulted in the sullying of what should have by all other measures been an outstanding night (presence of friends, a strong live band, etc.) But it made for a good excuse for a blog post and I found myself sincerely drawn (once again) to the parallels between social dancing and the broader arena of meeting and flirting and dating. Specifically, what I felt I was observing was a miniature version of the tragedy of the social commons which, upon further reflection, might better (albeit less pithily) be described as “The Tragic Inevitability of Behavioral Escalation in the Context of Mixed-Gender Social Environments.” But the latter—while a title I might be able to sell or rent to thesis’ing Psychology PhD students—is way too long for a catchy blog title. Almost as piss-poor a title as some musical one might otherwise wisely stumble upon.

Anyway, with all MY pontificating out of the way, what do you think? Do queues of the sort I described lead to women becoming frustrated and less apt to genially interact with guys? Or is this one-upmanship of sorts an expected but altogether benign reflection and self-selection of the assertive vs. the doormats, the latter of whom need to learn to buck up anyway? I look forward to hearing your thoughts, even if those thoughts are, “For the love of Dog, Adam, why do you overanalyze stuff to such a degree, and at 1am no less?!”

Cirque du Soleil’s “O” show in Las Vegas - my review

2009-08-08T23:09:38Z

So what did I think of Cirque du Soleil’s show “O”?

Absolutely beautiful. I think my mouth was open most of the time, and I’m glad there weren’t flies about (just people flying, and they’re bigger. And sexier. And waterproof, apparently!)

One of my friends that attended with me joked (okay, somewhat lamely) that the show is called O because everyone keeps breathlessly sighing or marveling “Ooooooh!” But maybe she’s right.

Some quick specific thoughts:

I sat in row M. If I had my choice, I’d sit in maybe row D or E. I’d rather see expressions and subtle movements, even at the slight expense of getting “the overall picture.” Row M wasn’t bad at all, though.
The expensive seats are $165 after tax. That hurts. Shockingly, I still think it was worth it, and I may attend again when I’m in Vegas next year.
My three friends and I got last minute tickets (and, as noted, fine seats) by arriving just over two hours prior to a Thursday early show. I’m guessing this’d be much less successful Fri-Sun. And we got the *last* remaining tickets. So I’d indeed recommend booking ahead or—if you’re available to see a show on a weekday, get there 2.5 hours early and bring a snack to eat in line.
I didn’t quite click with the clown scenes. Cute, but not particularly funny or entertaining.
Sure, the feats of the performers were insanely amazing, but I was more taken by the artistic creativity and beauty of the show. There were a few sections in which I thought, hmm, maybe this is a bit repetitive, but overall, the show captured and held my attention strongly.
Gotta pee? Go well *before* the show starts, or you’ll be pretty frustrated with, well, all the water around . And there’s no intermission!
O is in the Bellagio hotel, and the buffet there is outstanding! My friends and I were amazed at the quality and diversity of food that was available for our 9:30pm dinner! And, unlike most buffets, (non-alcoholic) drinks are included at no extra price… including fresh-squeezed OJ. Yum!

Anyway, go see the show. Quite an experience!

Insane transparency—Seeing or even setting what your colleagues earn

2009-08-08T20:55:41Z

At Google, we have pretty radical transparency, at least in Engineering where I sit. With few exceptions, we can all see what every colleague is working on (via the Project Database or “PDB”), what they’ve recently accomplished (via weekly self-composed “Snippets”), and even what their core contributions have been to the company (their Google resume). Through our performance review system, we can not only review our peers (and have them read exactly what we wrote about their strengths and weaknesses) but even review our bosses.

I think on the whole this transparency is outstanding… ethical and useful. But one part is missing, right?

- We can see what people are working on.
- We can see how people are performing.
= We can see what they accomplish.

but…

- We CANNOT see what their compensation is.

and beyond that…

- We do not have a direct SAY in their compensation, only quite indirect input into promotions.

Let me make one thing very, very, very clear here:

I believe that total compensation transparency (beyond one’s own private understanding of his or her own salary and compensation mechanisms) IS A BAD IDEA. Let me repeat that. I am NOT seriously advocating that companies disclose the salary of each employee within or even outside of the company, nor do I suggest that employees be empowered to set and adjust their peers’ compensation packages.

But… what if? And why does salary remain so strongly one of the last taboos in this increasingly hip world of transparency? What is it about human nature which makes us (even me!) shudder at the thought of this specific set of ideas?

* * *

Notwithstanding my quite-likely rational revulsion to the idea of compensation transparency, it would seem that there are some good arguments for such openness:

This might fix (what rank-and-file consensus would deem) stunningly inappropriate salary packages… on either end of the spectrum. That do-nothing middle manager? He’s making WHAT? Not any more he isn’t! That super hard worker in internal systems who stays late and doesn’t get the glory of working on glamorous projects? Totally increase her salary!
People would (at least in theory) be paid more along the lines of what they’re currently worth vs. what they had the savviness to negotiate.
You could potentially stress out less when asking for a raise because either you’d have full knowledge of where you are on the pay scale or, in the scenario in which peers set your pay, it’d be out of your control.

But I do believe there are far more arguments against radical compensation transparency.

Biases based upon “visible wealth” might skew perception and adjustments, resulting in harmful demotivations. Have you seen the car that manager drives? She surely doesn’t need more money. Let’s dock her pay (even though that may drive her out of the company, to the firm’s detriment).
That aforementioned super dedicated hard worker in internal systems? Her low profile and lack of direct revenue impact may cause many to perceive her as less driven, less worthy of compensation star status despite the actual criticalness of her work in the background.
Study after study has shown that our perception of and happiness with compensation is driven less by raw numbers or trends or even buying power, but rather keeping up with the Joneses. In other words, getting a raise of $5000 is apparently not nearly as satisfying as earning $5000 more than one’s teammate. Can you imagine the drama involved with compensation transparency given this aspect of human nature?!

* * *

And here’s an even crazier additional proposal:
What if you could actually set your own pay (again, with the group transparency)? As in, each quarter or year, literally determine how much you’re paid (though obviously if you asked for $10 million, the company could fire you on the spot due to reasons of insanity).

Rich folks who were working just for the love of it could more easily adjust/decline “excessive” salaries.
People might temper their pay a bit out of embarrassment, realizing that they really shouldn’t be earning 8x what their equally-worthy colleagues do.
People who needed a bit extra short term (for a house payment, etc.) could temporarily front-load their salaries.
When an individual employee accomplished an admirable but not very visible achievement, they could again temporarily increase their pay. Or when they realized that they’d been slacking, they could dock their pay.
Or if an individual felt like taking a couple of extra days off, they could take that as “unpaid time” without form filling and bureaucracy.

There’s some precedent for this self-determination at work; Netflix, for instance, lets their employees take vacation “as needed” without a preset limit. And vacation is a type of compensation, right?

* * *

What do you think? Again, please remember that I’m bringing this topic up not to advocate change but to philosophically examine our thoughts on compensation, transparency, taboos, and so on

Knott’s Berry Farm—For shame!

2009-06-15T07:51:32Z

Okay, this is not a rant on junk food. I think when people eat Cheez-wiz, they aren’t misguided enough to assume they’re eating healthful real cheese. When people eat a double fudge brownie, I doubt they’re confusing this with an apple. And when people eat Cap’n Crunch cereal, there’s no way they’d assume they’re consuming real fruit. Oh, um, wait a minute, someone did? Er, well, anyway, you get my point

But seriously… sometimes there’s an absolute nasty & unhealthy food paired with such obnoxiously, blatantly misleading marketing that I can’t help calling a spade a hyrogenated [sic] artificially flavored spade.

First, the marketing that, by all means, should condemn some marketer to eternal dietary hell:

“In 1920, Walter and Cordelia Knott began selling fresh produce, berries, and preserves from a roadside berry stand in Buena Park, California. Their family business earned a place in history in 1932 when Walter Knott cultivated a lucious new fruit, the boysenberry. The farm that started it all has also become a family amusement park that delights millions.

The Knott family is pleased to extend their tradition of quality to include premium shortbread cookies. Richly flavorful, these classic favorites are prepared using popular Knott’s Berry farm fruit fillings.”

Let’s dissect this, shall we?

> In 1920, Walter and Cordelia Knott began selling fresh produce, berries, and preserves from a roadside berry stand in Buena Park, California.
...and boy, would they be horrified to see how their heirs have sold them out!

> ...when Walter Knott cultivated a lucious new fruit, the boysenberry.

...which you’ll find all of likely one-tenth of a gram of in this plasticfood monstrosity.

> ... premium shortbread cookies
... where “premium” means “premium profits for us, utter crap for you.”

> ... Richly flavorful
... from lots of high fructose corn syrup

> ... these classic favorites
... if you call a frankenstein concoction of chemicals “classic.” Maybe a classic case of deceit.

> ... using popular Knott’s Berry farm fruit fillings.
... oh, wait, we meant popular dental fillings!

* * *

But enough pre-commentary. Without further ado, let’s take a look at these charming ingredients, shall we? (and out of kindness, I’ll substitute normal text for the ALL CAPS printed)

Enriched wheat flour [artificial vitamin enrichment crap omitted], margarine (liquid soybean oil, partially hyrogenated [sic] soybean oil, water, salt, whey, lecithin, mono and di-glycerides, sodium benzoate a preservative, artificial butter flavor, beta carotene and vitamin A palmitate), raspberry topping (high fructose corn syrup, red raspberries, apple powder, fruit pectin, citric acid, natural and artificial flavors, calcium chloride, FD&C red #40 and blue #1), sugar, eggs, baking soda, natural and artificial flavor, baking ammonium, and salt.

Mmmm… delicious, no? Just like Grandma would have made it… if she had access to a chemistry lab *and* passionately hated your guts.

Oh, and lookie here, (unsurprisingly) almost no redeeming nutritive qualities at all… little fiber or protein, and a charming 3 grams of trans-fat (I didn’t even know there were many packaged goods that still had this stuff in ‘em nowadays!)

For comparison, let’s take a look at a typical recipe for berry shortbread cookies:

1 cup butter, softened
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup seedless raspberry jam
GLAZE:
1 cup confectioners’ sugar
2 teaspoons water
1/2 teaspoon almond extract

(from AllRecipes.com)

Notice a difference? Yes! You recognize and can likely pronounce the ingredients, and there are fewer than a dozen of them.

* * *

Look, as I said, I don’t have a problem with companies making utter junkfood. I do, however, have a problem about them so blatantly misrepresenting their product. Even an intelligent acquaintance of mine said (without any prompting from me) that she used to eat these cookies every day for lunch, figuring that they were relatively harmless. Oops!

P.S.—Might think twice before buying any of Knott’s Berry Farm jams or other products, eh?

#geekfail—Valuing immediacy over depth, accuracy, and understanding

2009-06-14T21:11:08Z

Yesterday, I learned about the turmoil in Iran… from the blogosphere. Some have argued that the immediacy of news on this and other breaking topics is a sign that mainstream media has failed and online media—specifically “real time” components of online media—have triumphed. I believe such an assumption is not only dead wrong, but dangerous to society.

Today, I can get more information—and more importantly, more *verified* information—about the situation in Iran from mainstream media. And in a few days, I’ll no doubt be able to get some insightful background information, valuable context, and more-likely-accurate news from weekly magazines.

Even online, let’s compare, one day later:
- http://search.twitter.com/search?q=iran
- http://news.google.com/news?q=iran

Some would argue… but Adam, don’t you want information right now? How can you wait a day or even a week to learn what’s going on?!?!?!?!?!!!!!!1

To that, I’d reply with the following question: Why do you value immediacy over depth, accuracy, and understanding? Or, better yet, what difference will it make in your life to know about the Iranian election mess one day sooner? Will you be able to change anything? Help anyone? What will you and the world lose by waiting a few more hours?

* * *

So why do I believe this increasing predilection towards immediacy is actually dangerous, and not just misguided?

It’s pressuring news media and politicians to report, respond, and act before they have all the facts, before they’ve had a chance to digest what is correct and what is right. While I doubt that people with access to nukes won’t be relying on twitter “reporting” to make that crucial decision, I wouldn’t be surprised if we start seeing more and more decisions painfully botched due to a reliance upon “what’s happening right now.”
While there’s a chicken and egg scenario here, I wouldn’t be surprised if push towards “real time” is further feeding and exacerbating society’s collective ADD, dulling our interests and abilities in long-term thinking and planning. What are people reading? What are they thinking about? If, as we’ve noticed, fewer and fewer people (including me) are taking the time to write (and listen) beyond soundbites, what does this mean for the peaceful progress of our society?

Yes, I know I’m sounding like your grumpy neighbor who perhaps just got on the net (via dialup). No, I don’t think my griping alone will make a whit of difference.

But perhaps if enough people say, well, ENOUGH!... immediacy != value, then perhaps the tide will start turning. Not gonna hold my breath, though.

P.S.—I realize that there IS value in real time. In the case of disasters (natural and manmade), services like Twitter have helped with the mobilization of protests and rescue efforts and so on. So for the citizens of Iran, I have no doubt that tweets may well have served as valuable inspiration and coordination. But this is not news, this is broadcasting. And for the rest of the world, I stand by my assertions that there was little value in seeing a flurry of micro-messages about events happening in other places of the world except as—and I hate to label it as such—entertainment. But unsurprisingly the impulse to be entertained, to be un-bored… is now clearly more powerful than the desire to be patiently enlightened.

On public displays of affection—but not that kind

2009-06-02T19:19:14Z

Today, we send and receive notes publicly in a way that seems shocking when viewed by communications standards just a decade ago. Expressions of friendship, social plans, etc.

“I miss you!”...
“Hey, are you going to Fred’s party tomorrow?”...
“Save me a dance this Wednesday!”... etc.

Why do we like this, why do we post rather than e-mail? Bonding? Convenience? Insecurity? Is it just an extension of the old “You’re the greatest!” scribblings we got in our high school year books?

I feel torn about this.

On one hand, I must confess to being oft-delighted by both the chance to quickly share warm feelings or make arrangements with friends and acquaintances all over the world, many of whom I might not otherwise have a chance to more formally or personally converse with. But on the other hand, this almost seems like a narcissistic and lazy version of friendship, and a behavior that’s not particularly seemly in someone who is nearly four decades old.

I’m almost past feeling bad about not handwriting letters anymore. I still feel awful that I have unreplied-to e-mails in my inbox from dear friends that I’ve put off for “when I have time,” yet here I am writing a blog post.

Have we become a culture of relationship snackers? Has the ease of publishing, of communicating, of virtual hugging (not to mention cow-throwing) resulted in an exciting and perhaps overall-positive broadening of our social circle… but at the expense of deepening relationships?

What do you think? Why are we so drawn to this micro- and public communicating? What does it mean for us? What does it mean for relationships?

Dependence on the Internet

2009-06-01T04:14:36Z

Just going through some of my old files, and I came across an unpublished journal/rant thing re: my frustrations upon loss of Internet connectivity. This was from back in *2001*. Amazing how some dependent at least I was on the Internet back then!

Okay, I feel as blind as a bat right now.

My internet connection has been flakey for the last week or so, and that’s been frustrating, but now as I write this my connection is completely down, and I feel both furious and helpless.

I’d like to put postage on a few packages I put together for friends, but I can’t print postage when I can’t connect to the Internet, so I’ll have to drive to the post office and wait in line.

A friend from out of town is coming out to visit today, and I promised to take her around to some tourist traps, er, I mean tourist attractions. But without the net, it’s a lot harder to figure out driving directions, get parking information, find out attraction prices, and so on. I’m picking her up from the hotel she’s staying at in San Bruno, and I don’t even have a map of that city. So I’ll have to call the hotel to get directions. Except that I don’t have the number of the hotel, nor do I have a yellow pages handy. Guess I’ll have to call Directory Assistance and pay 50 cents.

I was supposed to order some travelers checks and Swedish currency this morning for my trip, but I can’t compare rates online or even order the stuff without my net connection.

I had hoped to research and order some tourist guides on Stockholm and London, but I can’t do that either.

Before heading out with my friend today, I wanted to check on the latest weather report, but that’s a no-go as well. Guess I’ll have to turn on the radio and sit through a bunch of crap in the meantime.

I wanted to look into some travelers insurance and health insurance for my trip, but I can’t imagine doing that without the Internet.

And of course, I can’t access any of my new e-mail, nor can I send any e-mail, and that drives me nuts.

Heh… wow. Remember, I wrote this more than eight years ago! And after re-reading it I got to thinking… my goodness… what would happen if the whole Internet went down for even just a day (particularly a businessday)? And just to be fair, imagine that the SMS network was down, too, so teens couldn’t text each other. Would people be panicking in the streets? Curled up in a ball in bed? Actually discover a book or sit down to play piano for a while? Maybe actually talk to other people in cafes instead of clickety-clacking away? I wonder.

Picking a domain name—a helpful list

2009-05-10T23:15:02Z

My friends have been telling me that “BLADAM” is a yucky name. Bummer. So I’ve shopping for a new domain name, and it’s not easy! So many things to think about, and so many damn evil squatters (but that’s a different issue).

And I thought hmm, I’ve been mulling over so many guidelines and best practices in my mind, I might as well share them! So, without further ado, here are some of my thoughts.

Clear pronunciation: You—and many others—are probably going to mention the domain out loud. Is it blADAM or BlaDAMN? Is it PenIsland or… ahem :o.
Spellable: Is it lasnik or lasnick? spendia or spendea? Mind your homophones, too. Was that 4you or 4u or foryou.whatever? q or queue?
International meaning: Do you want your domain to mean “smelly” in a popular non-English language? Probably not.
Brevity: osteoporosishealing may convey exactly what your drug does, but—forget spelling—try fitting that on a business card!
Unspamminess: No matter how clever you think you are, some-domain-name-like-this.whatever will look like spam. Honest.
Got .com?: You may have found a fab .net domain name, but what if your clients/potential customers keep mailing the .com version? Uh oh! Try to get both, at least if you’re in the U.S. Old habits die hard, unfortunately!
Brand matching: If everyone knows you or your company under one name, choosing a cute marketing word as your domain name may not fly. People will probably still type in companyname.com into their browser.
Cost: Some random TLD (e.g., .ly) may have their registrations on sale this month, but what about when you renew? .com and .net (and the TLDs of big countries) will likely stay reasonably affordable. .vanity TLDs? Possibly not.
Legal stuff: Using a major (or even minor) brand’s name in your domain name may seem like flattery, but it may get you nowhere but in trouble.
Expandability: Isn’t it a good thing that Amazon.com didn’t start off as books.com? This also means “BlogOfFred.com” may be a bad idea if you think you might add a wiki or forum later. Or, more importantly, if your name’s not Fred.

Any items I forgot? Post YOUR thoughts and ideas below

P.S.—If you’re searching for domains, check out DomainTools and domai.nr, two of my favorite sites in this space.

[Overheard] - “How do I get balls?”

2009-04-10T23:58:41Z

Officemate: So I got everything all set for the event. Computers, powerstrips, food. Only thing I forgot was chairs! [smacking forehead]
Me: Why don’t you use these instead? [pointing to one of the inflatable balls we have in our office for sitting on]
Officemate: [looking intrigued, yet uncertain] Hmm! How do I get balls?!
Me: [incredulous pause, then uncontrolled laughter]

Luckily my officemates have a good sense of humor

Pandora Mobile highlights awesomeness but also severe lame-itude

2009-03-28T01:17:33Z

Do you know Pandora? If you’re in the United States, where Pandora is legally available, you may have come to enjoy this awesome uber-customizable music radio over the past years. If you’re not in the U.S., perhaps you’ve discovered the beauty of anonymous proxies :cough:, which I’m not going to mention here :p.

But perhaps you didn’t know that Pandora has become available on mobile phones! More good news: It’s available for free on phones that run the Windows Mobile operating system, free on Sprint phones, and free on (some versions of) BlackBerry phones. Ironically, it’s also free on the iPhone, and I say ironically because AT&T apparently is charging—I swear I am not making this up—$8.95 per month to its other mobile customers for the privileges of using Pandora. I mean, I love Pandora and all, but even if I were insane enough to be contributing to the income of the evilness that is AT&T, I sure as heck wouldn’t fork over that much dough for Pandora. For an on-demand mobile music service? Perhaps. But for streaming radio? You’ve got to be kidding.

One other note on the Pandora Mobile offerings: Apparently, I’m not supposed to be able to access Pandora Mobile because T-Mobile phones are not supported. Which is odd, because I’m enjoying streaming music via Pandora on my BlackBerry Curve (on T-Mobile) right now. Go figure. I also shouldn’t mention that I was also able to do this while in Ireland a couple of weeks ago (listening to, appropriately enough, The Corrs on St. Patricks day ).

* * *

Anyway, if you’re an iPhone user or a non-AT&T subscriber, give Pandora Mobile a go! If you’re an AT&T subscriber, well, heaven help you, and for reasons way beyond this Pandora issue.

[Gee, Adam, tell us what you really think about AT&T :D]

* * *

Okay, okay, I’m thinking I should flesh this entry out a little bit

Some stuff I like in the mobile app:
- Seems to work internationally (though I can imagine this being “fixed” [sigh])
- Works as a true background app on my BlackBerry!
- Can play through my BB’s speaker (actually sounds decent!) or a headset
- Song-to-song time isn’t bad
- Nice graphics, simple, intuitive interface.
- Access to all my stations
- Can even view “Why [did Pandora play] this song?”
- Thumbs up / thumbs down works.

Some stuff I don’t like:
- Takes a while to start up the app
- No way to see detailed info on artist or song

* * *

All in all, pretty damn cool!

My experiment testing user engagement on Facebook, Friendfeed, and Twitter

2009-03-15T00:32:56Z

What did I do?!

I posted an identically-phrased note on Facebook, Friendfeed, and Twitter at around 1:30am PDT Friday morning. Specifically, I posted this: “Could you kindly help me with a super-quick experiment (takes less than 30 seconds)? I’ll share results Thanks!”

Why?

I was curious to see which set of friends/subscribers (henceforth referred to as “contacts”) would be more apt to read my note and reply.

What happened?

As of nearly 40 hours after posting…

So does this mean Facebook is better than Friendfeed and Twitter?

No. Is a particular service a better fit or a more powerful promotional vehicle for some people or for some needs or interests? Probably. But my experiment doesn’t prove that. This is based upon my sets of contacts, and was limited to a single test. I know it would make for a far more popular blog entry to trumpet this with a title of “[servicename] the [other servicename] Killer?!?!?” or “[servicename] Beats the Pants Off [other service name]” or—best yet—“[servicename] Set to Trounce Google?!?”—but I refuse to support such memes or pageview-increasing tactics. At least until I receive a very lucratic offer and then decide to sell-out :D.

So what does your little test suggest?

It means that—with my sets of contacts—I’m significantly more likely to get engagement and actions from my contacts on Facebook.

Huh?

When looking at contact interaction, I think we have to take a few things into account:

What’s the contact acquisition rate? e.g., how many folks subscribe to / follow you each day?
What’s the contact retention rate? How many people stick with you (vs. defriend or unsubscribe)
What’s the attention rate? How many actually read what you post?
What’s the engagement rate? How many click on your links?
And lastly, what’s the action rate? This is just subtly different than engagement, but I mean this to distinguish between clicking on a blog post link and actually posting a comment there.

And, from my limited test and experiences, here’s the more detailed comparison:

Acquisition: I’ve found that I acquire contacts on Twitter far more rapidly than on either of the other services.

I’ve been gaining followers at a much faster rate on Twitter than on Friendfeed... typically more than 7-10 a day on Twitter vs. 1 a day on FF. In fact, I even plugged Friendfeed to nearly 100 of my buddies via a friendly (albeit form) e-mail, and got a sum total of zero friends subscribing to my FF feed from that. Bummer :-(. FF’s a much harder sell, at least amongst my non-geek friends, than I previously assumed. Balancing that, though, two friends I personally referred to FF a while back are now two of the service’s more active users . Also, note that my Twitter subscriber count got a HUGE boost because I was recently subscribed to by the wildly popular Google account on Twitter.

Retention is a bit harder to assess.

For a while, I used the third party service Twitterless to let me know who unsubscribed from my feed each day. Seemed like I lost about a follower a day on Twitter, which was a little depressing, so I’m glad that feature of Twitterless ceased to function a while back. Though I’ve culled my own Facebook friend list, I haven’t really noticed if/when my friends have unfriended me there. And I’ve also not tracked/noticed people unsubscribing from me on Friendfeed, though I’m sure it’s happened, despite the consistently scintillating quality of my FF posts (HAH!).

Attention: Not sure how I could possibly measure that. There’s no user-available “analytics for Friendfeed / Facebook / Twitter” that I know of. Bummer.

Engagement, or click-thru rate… in the past, I’ve found that I’ve gotten proportionally the most clicks from Twitter contacts, followed by Facebook and then Friendfeed.

Contemplating Attention and Engagement… I’m guessing that Friendfeed’s generally-helpful/intriguing “Friend of Friend” option could nonetheless be substantially diluting the total attention that feeds-of-friends get. In other words, when someone subscribes to me on Friendfeed, they then start getting (by default) a stream of not only my content, but also the content of my friends’ items I comment on or Like. More to look at means, understandably, attention spread across more items = less time looking at my items. Then again, one could argue that this is balanced out by the fact that people who aren’t subscribed to me are likely to be seeing my items in their feeds when their friends Like or comment upon my entries. Hmm.

I’m not quite sure why Facebook engagement seems to be proportionally so much higher than on the other services, but I think it has to do with the friendship-vs-content orientation of my respective contacts. More specifically, I believe my FB network consists of more strong / moderate friendship ties, whereas people following me on Twitter and FF may be more apt to be reading my stuff because, well, they like my stuff (funny comments, links) vs. liking me personally. So given this, when I asked for a quick favor, it makes sense that I’d get a higher response rate from friends vs. fans.

Action is where things get a lot more complicated.

When looking at the magnitude of action—that is to say, getting a single reply (minimal action) vs spawning a lengthy thread of comments (extended action)—then the services are quite different from my experience. On Twitter and Facebook, I’ve found that I quite often get one reply or a small handful replies to my posts. On Friendfeed, more of my posts go without any comments, but… on Friendfeed, I’m more likely to see a post get a large collection of comments. This isn’t surprising to me. Though Facebook has moved more towards facilitating a Friendfeed style of item+comment, Friendfeed’s been IMHO by far the strongest service in town for conversations. In contrast, on Twitter it’s quite easy to post an @ response, but rather frustrating to follow a conversation. I think this explains why I tend to see more robust conversations on Friendfeed, but more frequent (albeit less voluminous) replies on Facebook and Twitter.

The tone and content of a post also plays a large role in determining the extent of replies for me by service. Examples of post-types that are most likely to elicit replies on the various services (again, for me; your mileage may vary!)

- Facebook: “Having a rotten day, could use a hug!” [expression of emotion, change in personal status, in-joke shared amongst friends]

- Friendfeed: “Whoa, check out this robot who recites poetry! WANT! You, too?” [early link to article highlighting a new geek toy or popular geek meme, profound observations or statements of concern, anything about the Kindle, Apple, or Obama]

- Twitter: “At big electronics store in Japan. Should I buy digital camera here or wait ‘til Korea?” [questions that don’t demand a complicated response, simple but unexpected notes (e.g., “Now in Bora Bora for 3 hours!”, “Just got engaged!”)]

General caveats:

Interconnection: Lots of interconnection between the services! Twitter is integrated into FF and FB, for instance. However, I don’t import my twitter feed into my Facebook account, and I also immediately deleted the twitter-post in Friendfeed to help mitigate this issue.
Facebook UI change: Facebook just switched over to a new format. This could have increased or decreased attention to my link.
Timing: The timing wasn’t necessarily optimal. Posting it so late on Thu night meant that—by the time most people accessed their account on the various services—they likely already had a ton to look at… e.g., my post was no longer “fresh” at that point.

Personal caveats/notes:

Difference in contact symmetry:
Anyone can follow me on Twitter and FF (assymetry / self-selection), but I pick (and am picky about) who I friend on FB (due to both its symmetrical friends model and my own preferences).
Difference in contact type:
My contacts on FB are far less geeky than my contacts on the other services. They also tend to be typically personal friends rather than acquaintances or fans. In contrast, my contacts on Twitter seem to be largely online marketers, SEOs, and geeks. Same on FF, but with a much higher emphasis of online marketing / uber-geeky folks who are deeply excited about stuff online. Many of my FB friends just dabble a little bit online and most tend to be buddies from school, work, dance, etc.
Why Friendfeed / Facebook / Twitter and not [blah blah blah]?
Because these are the social networking/broadcasting-type services I predominantly use. I have also tried Friendster, Myspace, Orkut, Tribe, Multiply, Jaiku, and likely many other services I’ve forgotten about, but the three above are the ones I’m active on.

And now for some notes from the respondents:

In addition to the main survey question asking people where they clicked on the link from, I also invited people to leave a freeform comment. I’m not sharing all of them (due to privacy concerns), but have excerpted (and replied to in brackets) some below:

Did worry it might implode my computer with malware, but hey, I’m leaving the company in two weeks!
[Yeah, I hadn’t even thought of how my impersonal-sounding click-here request might be misperceived. Wonder if that lowered the clickthru rate?]
You’re my hero, Adam!
[Aw, and you wrote that even before you read this blatheringly long blog post. Hope you still feel the same way ]
Uh, it’s WAY too soon to be talking engagement—I mean you just confirmed we were FRIENDS yesterday!
[What if I added you to my Top Friends app list in FB? Would that win your heart?]
When you write up the results, please keep emphasizing that these are just your friends and try not to generalize.
[I hope I’ve suitably emphasized that!]
Although I clicked through from FB because I have FB chat turned on in Pidgin and it shows me status updates right there.
[That’s a very good point. I wasn’t thinking about how use of third party tools could skew this experiment.]

Good idea Adam, though I wonder if it may be slightly different results for others. After all, you are “the Adam Lasnik”.
[I doubt my micro-celebrity status (in the webmaster world) would affect things one way or the other. Might be responsible for getting me more subscribers on Twitter and Friendfeed, but that’s why I listed proportional results above ].

I also got another interesting comment which further accentuates the complication involving the use of third party tools with these services… and also touches upon the frustration of data silos:

Hmm, I think you’re missing a subtlety. I selected Facebook because that was the source of the thing I saw. However, where I actually saw it was in Google Reader. I feel like I spend a lot of time trying to get Facebook stuff *out* of Facebook and into the applications I prefer to use. FB does not really make this as easy as it should be. Also, I usually end up getting stuck with two copies of things when someone, for example, imports their Twitter posts to FB. But at least in Reader I can really quickly scan all the updates in a list, skimming over the duplicate or uninteresting ones. (I just wish I could get a FB feed for a friends sub-list!)

Oh, and Vinny… thanks for the hat!

Wow, that experiment was neato! Can I do that, too? Should I do it? Are you gonna repeat it to see how things change?!

Yep! Technically. Probably not. Unlikely.

Frankly, I’m guessing my friends would get highly annoyed with me if I identically repeated this experiment, and—worse yet—I bet that people in the webosphere would get really pissed at you (and me) if this experiment was duplicated ad nauseum. So sorry, I’ve got first-mover advantage. Take solace in the fact that I likely won’t get rich and famous from this, though. Unless I’m offered a book deal along the lines of, “A Completely Unscientific Experiment Exploring User Engagement With Three Darlings of the Interwebs—The Untold Story” for one MILLION dollars. But that also seems at least somewhat unlikely.

Thanks for reading, though! And hey, while you’re at it, go subscribe to my Friendfeed and Twitter streams :D

* * *
P.S.—You’re welcome to check out the click-thru data of my original request via bit.ly .

* * *

And now… YOUR turn!

Do my experiences match yours? Do you see similar demographic differences in your friend/follower sets amongst the services? What kind of response rates have YOU seen? Other thoughts?