Tag Archives: WebSites

LinkedIn = Monster.com + Facebook?

That pretty much explains it all, right?  I mean, what else is there to say?  It’s not exactly breaking news, and if you did a Bing search, we’d probably find that someone has made a similar claim.   Who can say for sure?

All of that aside, what is the point of LinkedIn, and who out there is actually pay for its services.  I’ve been a quote-unquote user of the site myself for quite some time, but mostly in the passive sense.  It wasn’t until just yesterday, after receiving an email requesting I authorize a link request, that I allowed the site to read through my Google contacts to find folks I know.  What I found is that I, for some reason, have a bunch of email addresses for folks I don’t actually know.  Strange, to say the least.  But I went ahead and sent link requests to all of them.  We’ll see who responds.

Even as I’m thinking it over and writing it out, I still can’t understand the need for such a website.

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Facebook Fail — Parents?

If you would have asked me a month ago, I would have without hesitation told you, “parents will be what brings Facebook crumbling to its knees”.

Like many others, I have been mulling over ideas for a while as to how Facebook is ever going to make enough money to stay in business and started thinking “surely now that parental units are signing on to the service to engage their peers while monitoring progeny” that Facebook had definitely found its way to ultimate fail.  Because, when has it ever been cool, or acceptable, for any adolescent to admit, not only enjoying, but actively engaging in the same activities as their parents…and publicly!?  As the adult-like folks were joining more rapidly, surely the kids would slowly leave and find a new stomping ground.  Even if your own parents weren’t playing web 2.0 with you, your peers would already be moving on so there would be no need to stay.

A mass exit of these young folks, who by the way don’t have income, creates a huge problem because Facebook has a better chance getting into a parent’s wallet by way of the child’s wants than the direct willingness of any grown-up to dole out funds for some seemingly useless service.  Think about games like Rune Scape and WoW.  These games are making loads of cash because kids everywhere are dipping into their parents’ cash stashes.

Kids abandoning their accounts doesn’t mean Facebook is completely out of the monetizing game.  It could change its plan to better target an older audience and sell dating services, or adult content.  Something older folks might actually pay for online.  But this is a huge reach and would probably upset a lot of investors who didn’t plan on buying into a glorified version of adult friend finder or “where are my exes now?” type products.  (Although, why should they be upset if they’re getting some kind of reasonable ROI?)

Seriously, though, it seemed as though Facebook was done for.  No way they could find real revenues now.  Except, then a tiny little game like FarmVille comes along and every Farcebook clown in town is signing up, sending neighborly invites, harvesting crops, and mom and daughter are exchanging ducks for cows.  A common ground, which according to The Business Insider, FarmVille creator Zynga is pulling daily revenues over $500,000 for these types of online social games where real human beings spend precious moola buying virtual goods.  (How now brown cow?)  Zynga then turns around and spends a supposed $50MM annually buying advertising spots on Facebook.

It isn’t adding up for me just yet, but maybe I’m missing something.  Perhaps Facebook has found it’s money maker.  Perhaps it will be the social network that brings families closer together, or what have you.  Or maybe it really is still just a passing fad.

There are three things to take away from this, if nothing else:

  1. While FarmVille seems like a ridiculously silly game, it’s necessary to remember that it’s really no different than any of the Sim (city, earth, ant, etc.) games so many of us enjoyed in the 90s.  Which is to say, “you were once silly too.”
  2. While Facebook seems like a ridiculously silly platform, it’s important to accept that it has awesome potential.  Not just for its creators, but for third parties, to capitalize upon.  We cannot just brush it to the side, and to do so would be small-minded and stupid of us.
  3. There were a lot of “F” words in this post, but there are two more we need not exclude because when combined they concisely describe the overall sentiment — fucking fascinating.

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Facebook De·sen·si·tiz·ing Us

It’s not limited to just farcebook, but that seems to be where I notice it most, and that’s when the moods of status updates don’t match the moods of profile pictures.  It’s somewhat unsettling to read something like “RIP ” next to a photo of some smiling head.  And then the next status update is something about grabbing a burger at the local soda shop, or other.  You get the idea.  But really, is that the length of this person’s mourning period?  I’m against announcing the death of a close friend or, even forbid, a family member.  I can’t do it.  I just won’t.

The other one that gets to me, is when folks are venting about their days, or going on about how difficult  their lives are, and I read these updates that go something like, “just want to break down and die” but it’s positioned neatly near a large happy face of one or two people getting along all nice and cheery.  What’s the deal with that, and how am I, or others, supposed to interpret such a mixed message?  I can’t do it.  I just won’t.  If you’re picture is happy, then I have to assume you’re playing a silly joke with words.  Body language is the true indicator and it’s been indicated in your personally provided photo.

But the absolute best, which has very little to do with anything, is when the twitterati start angrily hollering back and forth to each other.  It’s like they’re yelling across a crowded room for everyone to hear, and what’s the point.  How can we take anything seriously from any of these online social services when seemingly most of the folks who frequent are just a bit off their rockers?  I can’t do it.  I just won’t.  We can’t feel anything you’re writing as it was meant to be understood.

My pet rodent just died and now you’re  off to the park for a bit of Frisbee flinging.  Text me your twenty and maybe we can meet up, you insensitive clod.

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FriendFeed Your Facebook, Or Eat People

Before we get to getting on, let’s be clear that I’m in no way condoning cannibalism, but I’m also not condemning it.  Folks gotta do what they were programmed to do, and if that involves physically dining on people, then, let’s just hope it’s not you or me.  Either way, I’m not here to judge the eating habits of my web browsing brethren and, umm…what’s the female version of the word ‘brethren’?

Getting to the point.  I’m no stranger to Facebook connections telling me in real-time (real life?) that I either A) have a unique way of using the service, or B) that I update all the time, so I must C) always be logged in.  At least one or two of those three things is/are technically true.  And we’ll order it as so, to keep things simple:  I am not always logged into Facebook in the sense that folks are implying when they ask the question.  I do update frequently, or often, depending on your use of the English language.  And, I do have a semi-unique way of interacting with Facebook relative to those connections I’ve gained via the service, only in the sense that most of the connections I have are not, how do you say, early adopters?

Introduce friendfeed, the quote-unquote easiest way to share online.  The service that "enables you to discover and discuss the interesting stuff your friends find on the web."  (The major problem I have with that, is that none of my real-time friends, as far as I know, use the service.)  Done so through the simple process of signing up for and creating a friendfeed account and then connecting it to any and all other online services you choose to interact with.  Friendfeed keeps a steady stream of all your online activity, in one place, and feeds it to all your supposed cohorts, if you’re willing to call them that.

But I don’t use friendfeed for the friending feature; although, I do have folks that I follow, and some that have followed me.  No.  I use the service specifically to load up my Facebook, uh…wall?  I guess you would call it, to update my connected world about things I’ve found interesting on the web.  Well, mostly interesting.  I’ve also connected my friendfeed to these various accounts for a variety of reasons: picasaweb, flickkr, twitter, brightkite, my blog’s RSS, and, most importantly (also the reason I appear to be so active on Farcebook), my googleReader shares.

There you have it.  Once a Facebook eats a friendfeed, a Facebook user never really has to log in again.  The friendfeed maintains a constant connection while continually monitoring a user’s activity around the InterWeb and makes updates accordingly.  The one caveat being that you’ll have to access your FB account to find new connections.  If those connections find you, they can be confirmed via a mobile application on a cellphone.  (Very handy.)

The flip-side being, of course, that most users of Facebook require constant attention and if you don’t routinely post publicly to address their narcissism, then they will more than likely refrain from attending to your feed.  Hardly a concern, if you know what I mean.

Enjoy!

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Twitter On Oprah, Ashton Kutcher Vs CNN

Some wild and crazy times have fallen upon the Twitterverse, and all the Twits are following to see who will win the race to one million followers — @aplusk or @cnnbrk ?  By the time you read this, the verdict will surely have been determined and Ashton Kuthcer will be on the Oprah show to talk about his Twitter experience along with Twitter CEO Evan Williams.  Together, the two will help Oprah make her first tweet live from the show.  She’s recently created her account @oprah and already has more than 50 thousand followers, and she hasn’t tweeted a peep.  Wow!

The actual interesting part isn’t that these clowns are amassing celebrity-like followings (because, you know — they’re, like, celebrities), but that Twitter is getting a ton of exposure to the, quote-unquote, real world.  More than 5 million new Twitter accounts were created in March alone, so imagine what Oprah will bring.  That’s right, probably a lot of folks you’re not going to be too interested in following.  Which says more about the fact you’re here reading this than it does about the millions of people soon to start tweeting their daily afternoon housecleaning activities.  Oh golly.

No, none of that.  As Twitter grows its user base, so grows the streaming real-time conversation of what’s happening at any given moment in real time.  The value in this is so amazing that I can’t quite get my head around it.  Third party tools are just starting to tap the near infinite resource to maximize all the glory that is…well, I don’t know what it is, but it’s huge.  Trust me.  All these guys – Twitter Search , Twitt(url)y , TwitterFall , (and my favorites) OneRiot , and StockTwits – are quickly having their existences validated and being given greater purpose as they continually refine their algorithms to sift and filter the larger and larger stream of chatter.  Without these groups of programmers, Twitter is a wasteful time sink.

The information is freely out there – on Twitter on the Interweb – find and support the tools that properly exploit it to meet your needs.

Update: Ashton pushed through for the win, check it out .

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Chrome Breaks Google Or WebBroswerSaysWhat?

I couldn’t say for sure if it’s just a late April Fool’s post, but Alex Chitu at Google Operating System has searched the Chrome help forum and compiled a list of humorous quotations from users seeking help .  My favorite from the list:
"Should I remove my original Google now that I have installed Google Chrome?"  At first read, it gives me reason to chuckle.  But then I realize these people really exist with their limited computer-use knowledge base and that I often assist similar folks in real life, which will some day bring me baldness and all its glory.

Bringing us back to the basic problem: how are people that aren’t interested in software or computers supposed to know the difference between an email client and a web browser?  Confuse the matter more by using a web browser to read email and it’s reasonable to see how anyone could get mixed up with all this.  Most people just want it to work, they don’t have much use for how or why it works.

There’s no easy answer for how to fix it, if there’s a fix at all.  (I’d argue that some day this won’t be a problem, but let’s stay on topic for now.)  The easiest answer would be to stop all software updates and new software releases while simultaneously educating all users to a minimum standard.  Not exactly realistic nor ideal, I want my software updated, and I get a kick out of useful new applications.  But I don’t have time to educate the world.  So I’ll do what I can for the folks nearest me, and you do your part to educate those nearest you.

At the same time, I find it hard to believe there are many folks who both know how to exchange information via an oline forum and can’t tell the difference between Google the search service and Google Chrome the web browsing product.

Nano Blogging, The New Mirco Blog

When 140 characters is just too much to read or furnish, there’s the new 26-character, nano-blog alternative. Flutter.  Take a peak, leave a Flap:

If Flutter’s too much, take peace of mind in knowing we’re months away from Flutter intern Laura’s new 10-character service Shttr.  All the benefits of Flutter, but without the vowels.  Talk about quick, efficient communication.  No longer will quips be outdated by the time you finish reading them!

All seriousness aside, "share your thoughts – brie"

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Adam Carolla Podcast Stealing Babies

I only found out last Tuesday that Adam Carolla would no longer be on FM radio with his radio show, which is a bummer for anyone who enjoyed listening (regularly or irregularly.)

Turns out it may not be the end of the world for those of us who have been following Carolla for years through his various shows.  The Ace Man has decided to get with it and go Podcast style.  The upside being there are no program directors screwing with the content so Adam and his guests are free to talk about and say whatever they like.  Which, based on the second show, really gives the feeling of being right there hanging out with the fellas over a couple beers and a pool table.  It’s a good time.

It’s brand new, being that he only went off FM on Friday, but the show has a lot of potential.  The initial response was strong and positive — a very good sign — so Carolla sounded much more enthusiastic in the second show.  (Helped also by the fact that he had Dr. Drew to chat with, as opposed to the first show where Adam was going it alone.)

While I’m not a fan of pre-recorded shows, it’s only a matter of time before the show takes full advantage of all the Internet has to offer, including: Skype, Twitter, and some sort of instant messaging, all making the show more interactive and giving its host more to talk/rant about.  The exact reason we all tune in.

So stop in, check it out, and load The Adam Carolla Podcast into your favorite feedreader (if you’re like me) or use a trusty mobile MP3 listening device (if you’re less like me).  However you choose to consume it, get your daily dose of the Ace Man and company!  You won’t be disappointed.

College Humor On MTV

It’d be so sad except college humor has never been that funny, so it’s rightfully gone to die on MTV.  Jake and Amir on the other hand, is a pretty funny Internet short.  It’s hard to say if it’s the rest of the cast bringing them down, or the fact that they are creating content longer than 3 mintues.  Perhaps a mix of the two.  Either way, College Humor has no place on television.