Go. Listen. Subscribe…

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This is an old video, but it speaks the truth.

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The video says it best.

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But what is “good” or “awesome”? Nobody is those things. They become it. The culture creates a platform from which people can feed and build on each other until they are “good”.

Unfortunately, culture also isn’t something you can decide to shape to your liking. It is not built by what you give or provide. It is built by what you don’t do. It is often irreversible. It is guaranteed not to exist when you establish the expectation that you are not allowed a list of things to do or the expectation that you don’t have the support you need to be good.

What better way to get more people using their platform and using it even more than they do now than by (1) making the other platforms—iOS and Android—commodities, and (2) making a device that makes Facebook the operating system?

Speaking of Facebook. If Facebook does want to be web or the platform that everyone uses to communicate then sure, why not expand their “phone app” to enclose the entire phone operating system? And why the phone? Because it is the most personal item, in many cases, that we own and actually carry around. All day. Every day.

Gowalla aimed to tell our story as we visited places by giving others an insight into where we are instead of just me telling you. A point that Facebook doesn’t do at the moment. Not well. Facebook check ins are sort of dead. There is no excitement behind them.

Facebook has nailed communication and helped establish digital links and connections. The connections have been established, but I think it’s fair to say that Facebook sucks at telling that story. Just look at how many times profiles have been revised in recent years. Gowalla could be the missing piece that will add that level of interactivity that is missing.

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About two months ago, my co-founder Scott and I attended F8. We were blown away by Facebook’s new developments. A few weeks later Facebook called, and it became clear that the way for our team to have the biggest impact was to work together. So we’re excited to announce that we’ll be making the journey to California to join Facebook!

Congratulations to the Gowalla team… but I’m sad to see you go. To think of what could have been.

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My first steps towards becoming less busy were all very simple and tactical. I set my phone to do the fewest possible notifications. I get a warble when someone texts me. Besides that, I don’t get a notification when email arrives, when someone comments on a social network, or any of those. And guess what? I’m still responsive. I’m still valuable.

This is a constant battle that I keep with myself. I love trying out new services, but every so often I have to sit down and decide, which ones am I going to actually use, which ones can I delete and how many many actions and notifications can I turn off.

I believe that that at this time Twitter DMs and TXT/SMS are the only notifications that are actually active on my phone.

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