Tag Archives: Facebook

Why Google won’t ever get social

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Recently, Google changed their accounts infrastructure so that Google Apps accounts behave more like normal Google accounts. You’d think this would be a good thing, but it’s had a very negative unintended consequence.

Previously, you could associate multiple email addresses, including Google Apps email addresses, with a single Google Profile. This has been extremely useful, especially for using a product like Google Groups.

Their recent infrastructure change reversed all of this. Specifically, I use danielbachhuber@gmail.com to log into my Google services, but use d@danielbachhuber.com and other email addresses with my Google Groups. Because the Google Apps email addresses can no longer be associated with my primary Gmail account, I can no longer participant in the myriad of Google Groups I’m a part of. Furthermore, I have no idea where else this problem is going to manifest itself.

Google won’t ever get social because they’ve just fundamentally broken the concept of one login for multiple identities and contexts. As strongly as I am against it, this is what Twitter and Facebook are doing right.

Tracking data on everything: ’10-’11 web services stats for the J-School

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Judy Watson, associate dean at the J-School, asked me last week to pull together relevant usage and performance metrics for work we’re doing on the web. They’ll be a part of an annual report back to CUNY central. I thought it’d be fun to share them here too. Continue reading →

Thoughts on journalists using Facebook

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First, Brian Boyer wrote: “Craigslist takes the classifieds, fool me once. Groupon takes the coupons, fool me twice. Good thing nobody else is selling display ads!”

Then, Nieman Journalism let Vadim Lavrusik publish essentially marketing copy about how journalists can use Facebook’s Pages product. For free. In exchange for the ability to run ads against your content.

To this, I said: “I’m sorry, but journalists getting in bed with Facebook is the mother of all bad ideas. See: http://db.ly/103 Shame on you @niemanlab“

And: “Newspapers sell display ads, last I checked. Facebook has a many billion $ valuation from its display ad biz. Therefore = ?”

And: “‘Here’s the problem: journalists just don’t understand their business.’ I couldn’t have said it better myself.”

And: “Yo journos: How much cash will Facebook give you when it goes public with a $50+ billion valuation? My bet: a lot less than Arianna did.”

Now Paul Bradshaw, a prominent journo-blogger in the UK, has decided to use Facebook’s Notes product exclusively for a month. Vadim, under the Facebook for Journalists moniker, explains:

But to answer your question, you should reference the terms. You own your content. Facebook gets a license so that we can put ads next to it. Not dissimilar from other companies.

Ah, referencing ever-changing terms of service. If you aren’t the customer, you’re the product. Writing these points out on territory I control so I can point to it later.

I’m back on Facebook and Twitter

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Yes, you can call me a hypocrite. Yes, I’m still a firm believer in portable data and identity. Pragmatism won out over idealism.

One, an increasing number of sites now use Facebook and/or Twitter exclusively for their user authentication. In this context, having a corporate-controlled ID is unfortunately better than having no ID. Two, at work I’ve had to ask other people to do tasks I should be doing and I’m done feeling weird about that.

This little ol’ weblog is still my preferred publishing residence and that won’t change anytime soon.

Challenges in quitting Twitter and Facebook

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On Kommons, Tal asks:

You recently quit both Twitter and Facebook. As someone who works in Internet and media, what challenges have you faced? Will you come back?

Quitting Twitter has been a mixed bag. The most significant challenge is not being able to influence the news innovation zeitgeist as directly or as visibly. This isn’t to say I was all that influential to begin with; rather Twitter has better mechanisms for understanding how what you’re mindthinking resonates with others. Retweets or click-throughs indicate whether you’re on point, @replies show whether people want to engage in conversation on a given subject, and who’s following you is a sign of your reputation within that community. It isn’t quite the same publishing on a personal website where the subscription mechanism is RSS, interactivity is limited to longer-form commenting and trackbacks, and there’s no way of presenting who reads you.

I suppose the second most difficult challenge is tracking conversations. There were 100 or so people whom I’d pay the most attention. The real-time nature of the platform, coupled with people being logged in all the time, creates a space like a large ballroom where you can go ask someone a question at any time. I can still hear snippets of conversation by subscribing to a limited number of people by RSS, or paying more attention to roundups like Nieman Lab’s, but the experience is only 50% as engaging as it used to be.

On the flip side, there are two things I’ve been fortunate to escape: the increasingly loud echo chamber any time a bit of news breaks is artfully manufactured and the circular, inward obsession with “social media” on “social media”.

Quitting Facebook was easy, except for a bit of hate from the girlfriend. The only use I’ve been missing people for is looking people up; that Facebook is a structured people database is quite nice. There should be an open equivalent based on microformatted websites.

The honest truth is the first few weeks weren’t tough at all; not spending all my time on (mostly) Twitter and (less so) Facebook meant I’ve had a lot more time to work on new releases for side projects, read long-form, and hang out with my girlfriend. The last week or so has been difficult, I feel disconnected from the hive mind, but I won’t be back until there’s an open, interoperable protocol for real-time publishing I can run on my own server. It’s pretty awesome to be able to look up and reference your content from a few years back.

The river must flow. You can build a dam but the water will find an alternate path.