Friday, May 23rd, 2008
At first I thought it must be spam… “[name withheld to protect the innocent] added you as a friend on Facebook.” Then I thought there was someone out there who maybe had the same name. Nope. That’s her.
Now let me say that I love my MIL. She is one of the most wonderful people I know – a great mom, a fantastic grandma and an accomplished actress. But she is occasionally technology-challenged. So for her to have found me on Facebook was both impressive and terrifying at the same time.
Then I started thinking should I just ignore it? Or should I accept her invitation? How did she find me? Does she have a MySpace page too – ugh. Do I really want her to know my Stripper Name? (Its Heidi Overhoney BTW) Do I want to know hers? Um, no.
But I would like her to see the photos I’ve posted of her grandchildren – that way I don’t have to do it again on the Kodak site. And its great for her to have all my contact info, see what I’m up to, and stay in touch without really staying here. It made me realize what a great tool Facebook can be and how quickly this social networking phenomena has evolved.
When you’re finding common threads between 60-year-old family members and kids just barely out of college – that’s pretty powerful. Its not only putting us in touch with people sharing similar interests whom we may not know yet, but also facilitating new connections with people we supposedly know really well. Its enabling me to offer up another side of who I am and in return find out a little bit more about her. That’s pretty cool.
So should I accept her request? Would you?
Friday, February 29th, 2008
Have you seen the recent iPhone advertisement on TV featuring a custom Facebook site!? Well if you haven’t – you can check it out here. The iPhone and Apple in general are doing amazing things with interaction design and now it seems Facebook has teamed up with them and created a fantastic web-based interface. “Who cares” you ask “I don’t have an iPhone.” – well neither do I, but an estimated 10 million of us are projected to by the end of the year. 10 million users! After the initial wow factor after seeing the ad, I put on my “practical” hat (I wear a lot of hats, both literally and figuratively) and said to myself – “Hey self – are we going back to the days of creating browser specific web-sites – well that sucks!” However, 10 million people are using perhaps the most inspiring web device that any of us have seen – maybe it’s time to throw caution into the wind and consider creating custom sites just for this tool. The cool factor alone might be worth it – but browsing a newspaper or reserving a car would be so sweet on one of these things with a little iPhone customization. I started thinking – how are they doing it? How is it that Facebook can look so different on an iPhone – what’s the secret? Well, I honestly haven’t done all my research (sorry), but what I did find surprised me a little. I can actually open the iPhone interface in my regular browser! I typically use Firefox and Safari, but I checked ie and sure enough – it’s broken (what did you expect?). Anyway, if you are on a standards compliant browser check it out: Facebook on an iPhone – but not an iPhone (I’m taking the liberty of resizing the window for you to approximate an iPhone). Granted you have to use your mouse instead of you finger to navigate the thing, but it still seems very cool to me. Could we do this for our clients? I sure don’t see why not.
Sunday, January 13th, 2008
The question, “How do I break-up on Twitter?” was asked this weekend by my friend and co-worker Sara. No, she was not looking to break up with a boyfriend using Twitter. Instead, she was talking about the concept of following in Twitter and whether it looks bad to stop following someone.
For those of you unfamiliar, Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows you to send updates or tweets to the Twitter website in 140 character less that answers the question, “What are you doing?” I personally am a twitter addict and find it somewhat interesting to know what my friends; co-workers and even Barack Obama are doing throughout their day or thinking.
In Twitter, you can follow the tweets of others and others can follow your tweets. Sara’s question surrounded the thought, what if she has realized someone she has followed for months, is not someone she really wants to follow anymore. Will it offend them if they notice she is no longer interested in their random thoughts or updates? Will they think she is breaking up with them and ending their “Twitter” relationship?
This got me thinking. Is rejection the same in the social networking world as it is in the real world? If someone takes me off their friend list in Facebook would I be hurt? Would I question whether or not I consider myself interesting, if people stopped following my tweets in Twitter? If my blog dropped from 50 visitors a day to 5, would I start to wonder what I did or didn’t do? Probably. No, I would not fall into a deep depression or give it a thought for more than a few minutes, but I would probably question why. Why did they no longer want to be in my social network?
I guess rejection is rejection, whether in real life or via the web. I know before I de-friend someone or stop following someone, I will think about it a bit first.
Thursday, January 10th, 2008
I for one am excited about this. Facebook has joined the DataPortability Workgroup with Google and Plaxo. This is positive because it is a sign that Facebook is loosening its previously closed standards. The Workgroup is trying to create best practices that will allow users to access their friends and media across many applications.
Some good links on the topic:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/08/this-day-will-be-remembered-facebook-google-and-plaxo-join-the-dataportability-workgroup/
http://venturebeat.com/2008/01/08/facebook-google-plaxo-join-data-portability-lots-of-hype-even-more-work-to-do/
Wednesday, January 9th, 2008
Here are some statistics on Facebook and MySpace. It is amazing how face these sites have grown and continue to grow. Some highlights I found very interesting:
Facebook
* Sixth-most trafficked site in the United States (comScore)
* More than 65 billion page views per month
* More than half of Facebook users are outside of college
* Over 7,000 applications have been built on Facebook Platform
* 100 new applications added per day
* More than 60 million active users
* An average of 250,000 new registrations per day since Jan. 2007
* More than 14 million photos uploaded daily
* No. 1 photo sharing application on the Web (comScore)
* Photo application draws more than twice as much traffic as the next three sites combined (comScore)
MySpace
* 100 billion rows of data
* 14 billion comments on the site
* 20 billion mails on the site total
* 50 million mails per day (more than Yahoo, Hotmail, or Google)
* 10 billion friend relationships
* 1.5 billion images
