- Google Plus – Is Google Taking Over the World?
If I were Facebook, I would be bricking it right now, based on these numbers. Google+ is just getting warmed up, and there are some very obvious features to come, just in terms of catching up to Facebook's functionality. They're already signing people up at a frightening rate, and honestly, once they role out events, tied in to Google Calendar, what's the point of Facebook any more?
Tag: facebook
Bookmarks for January 5, 2011
- What the Goldman Sachs Facebook investment really means
Yes. This. I do not believe that "ad supported" will keep Facebook running forever, or even much past the end of this year. The user engagement metrics just don't support it. They need some actual revenue streams, and that's where the wheels are going to come off their wagon, I suspect.
Bookmarks for December 6, 2010
- Lady Gaga, Kim Kardashian’s Digital Death Not Moving People – DesignTAXI.com
On the one hand: I'm sorry that the fundraising hasn't been as as successful as they hoped, because it is a good cause, on the other, surely a child of six might have thought that while people *like* having celebrity drivel as part of their Twitter/Farcebook experience, it's not something people would actively *miss* if it went away – whichever marketroid through the campaign up is clearly not very good at their job, especially as the campaign ensures it's own silence – they can't remind people that they're not there in order to drive donations without violating their pledge. (No, I'm not donating via said campaign. Show me a cause where I can get celebrities to stop Twittering/Facebooking for good by pledging, and I'll get the chequebook out.)
- Falling out of love (Phil Gyford’s website)
More grist to my mill in re: getting rid of books as physical objects: cheap POD books, which is where we're heading for book-as-physical-object (unless you want current bestsellers, which I almost never do) tend to be shoddier things. A good POD book is just as good as a regular book, but I've seen some very shoddy examples in the past, where I would definitely rather have had the ebook.
Bookmarks for November 12, 2010
- You Write 'Bias Journalism' and I Read 'Derp'
Joel Johnson treats people who write the comments on gizmodo like they deserve to be treated.
- Is this evidence that we can see the future? – life – 11 November 2010 – New Scientist
Between this, and the whole "the universe is actually only two dimensional" thing from a few weeks back, I'm becoming concerned about the informational underpinnings of reality. Of course, it's statistically more likely that we're all participants in some vast simulated reality than it is that we're actually really here, so y'know, whatever. I'd just like it if we were in a high resolution universe without the memory leaks.
- A LIFE ON FACEBOOK on Vimeo
Amusing conceit, slightly flawed movie. Has anyone written the Facebook equivalent of an epistolary novel yet, I wonder?
- London Bloggers
The London bloggers directory updates. Nice! I've just been through most of the Tooting Broadway ones, though, and most of them are dead or no longer updated, and I can spot a couple of people in there who I know don't live in Tooting any more. It's just me left hanging around, making the place look untidy…
Bookmarks for November 9, 2010
- Kicker Studio: Everything I’ve Ever Learned About Giving Design Critiques I Learned from Tim Gunn
You could apply these set of rules to any form of critique/review not just design, and you'd probably come out doing pretty well.
- The Times’ Paywall and Newsletter Economics « Clay Shirky
Lots in here, but here's the key thing: "This re-engineering suggests that paywalls don’t and can’t rescue current organizational forms. They offer instead yet another transformed alternative to it."
- danah boyd | apophenia » Risk Reduction Strategies on Facebook
Not blogging this as an anti-Facebook thing, just as some interesting information about non-standard ways people use social networking software in a privacy intensive manner.
- EaaS (ECONOMY as a SERVICE) – Global Guerrillas
It's one way of looking at MMOs (and related industries), I guess. I'm aware that Warcrack has a GPD higher than some countries, and that there was a point (I haven't checked, it may still be true) where the virtual currency in Eve online was worth more that the currency of Iceland, where the game is based, but they're both entirely virtual, and I'm not 100% convinced that we're going to get the ability to rapid deploy and re-use these things in a full physical-world context (that a full EaaS would need) any time in the next five years.
Bookmarks for October 19, 2010
- Surviving the Future: Jamais Cascio excerpts on Vimeo
Mr Cascio being clever, as per. Wouldn't mind seeing the whole documentary if the opportunity were to arise, but these bits from Jamais are worth the price of admission on their own.
- Noteshelf for iPad on the iTunes App Store
If and when I get round to buying an stylus for the ipad, I could see this getting a lot of use, mostly at work. (I've tried handwriting without a pen, just using a fingertip, but it's a but rubbish.)
- Facebook in Online Privacy Breach; Applications Transmitting Identifying Information – WSJ.com
By this point, there really isn't a lot of point in saying anything. I'm just y'know, sighing and rolling my eyes.
Bookmarks for October 6, 2010
- The .ly domain space to be considered unsafe | :Ben Metcalfe Blog
This could get slightly interesting if they ever come for bit.ly – engendering the single most massive dose of instant linkrot the intertubes have ever seen. (This is, of course, why URL shorteners are evil, and why anyone who uses them outside of twitter is a fuckwit). It's strongly suggest that if you need to post a shortened link anywhere, you use is.gd or goo.gl or another similar service. (Incidentally, in case anyone's wondering, it's stuff like this that made me use black-ink.org and not sda.ir as my primary domain when I consolidated everything.)
- Say hello to mechanically separated chicken. It’s…
Horrifying. I knew about this, but I didn't *know* about this. From now on, I'm only eating chicken where I can name the specific part of the chicken it came from.
- Is your private phone number on Facebook? Probably. And so are your friends' | Technology | guardian.co.uk
I know I sound like a broken record when I link this stuff. Tough. I can't decide if Facebook are stupid, or actively malevolent, but here's the bottom line: a service I quit using, because I didn't trust them with my person data, as a result of a number of breaches of privacy and security, has my phone number, something I regard as one of my most personal items of data, despite my best efforts. It's not something I give out to just anyone. Yet, tt's an accepted social norm to meet people at parties, and become friends on Facebook, and that's fine. But just because I'm someone's friend on Facebook does not mean I want them to have my number. A practical example: I do have a work account on there. It has two friends. I have neither of their phone numbers. Or rather, I *had* neither of their phone numbers. Now I've got them both. Neither of them has uploaded their number to Facebook. (I checked.) Read this article, then write to Facebook.
- russell davies: something something something
Lot of interesting stuff about the lack of future (for lack of a better term) that's around at the moment. Playing join the dots with Mr Stross' idea that we might be suffering from massive future shock as a culture, it's not hard to see why we might be lacking a bit
- Think Progress » Tennessee County’s Subscription-Based Firefighters Watch As Family Home Burns Down
There's so much going on here, it's just not funny. Mob jokes, political commentary against a conservative/libertarian point of view. But here's the thing: it's just not funny. A family's home burned down, and people with the equipment to help them stood and watched the flames. In what world is selfishness on that scale not a crime punishable by imprisonment?
Bookmarks for September 21, 2010
- Politics of storytelling – Laurie Penny interviews China Mieville
This is food for thought. Key quote: "Storytelling is clearly an extremely important function of societies, but it's nonetheless unproven that to be human is to be a storytelling being. Even if it is the case that human beings are completely intrinsically storytelling animals, it doesn't follow that that's something to celebrate, any more than we should celebrate the fact that human beings are defecating animals."
There're a number of obvious counter-arguments, that can essentially be lumped in as "the power of art to bring about change" but it's still a point of view worth remembering.
- I was wrong about veganism. Let them eat meat (but farm it right) | George Monbiot | Comment is free | The Guardian
I think I'm going to have to pick this book up. A lot of the numbers around the environmental impact of livestock farming have seemed off to me particularly in relation to arguments about grain (because, well, what's wrong with grass-fed?) and water (because invariably, the numbers seem to assume that any water fed to a cow never leaves the cow, which is pretty self-evidently wrong). It's nice to see that someone's actually taken the numbers apart and proved them wrong/fallacious, and done so in a way that convinces even a big hippy like Monbiot.
- Alex Payne — The Very Last Thing I'll Write About Twitter
A clear and sensible statement about the need to decentralise services like Twitter, Facebook, and really, almost any service, if you want it around for the long (decade+) haul. Idle thought: Someday, someone will figure out how to massively decentralise search, and than things will get really interesting. (Google have, of course, effectively done this internally in that their search architecture is spread over cluster after cluster, but that's not the same as true decentralisation…)
- Diaspora Developer Release
I really want this to succeed – once it's out of beta, and at the more-or-less easy to install stage, I'll probably put some time and cash, into setting up a Seed. I absolutely know that there are people I've lost touch with since leaving Facebook, and I know my social life has suffered for it. I've felt quite disconnected from many of my friends this year, and it's bugging me quite a lot of late. I'm not blaming anyone, you understand and I'm not going to be one of those arseholes who think that it's everyone else's fault – I knew what I was doing when I walked away from Farcebook – I'm just a little sad that people don't seem to use any other contact medium any more. So as soon as I can, I'll help offer a better alternative…
Bookmarks for August 19, 2010
- How To Disable Facebook Places Tagging | Bill Cammack
Facebook have added 4square like geolocation into their offering. Naturally, they've fucked the privacy settings up on it, by making it possible for your Facebook friends to include you in their location updates, so you'll need to go in and turn that setting off, so that your friends can't advertise when it's appropriate to burgle you. Fuckwits.
Bookmarks for June 2, 2010
- "Likejacking" Takes Off on Facebook
Oh look. Facebook "likeing" has security vulnerabilities. At the moment, what's out there appears just to spam your facebook friends by inserting extra "likes" into your feed. Wonder how long before someone uses it to do something more malicious? This is pretty much the ne plus ultra of my problems with Facebook – it's not just that they're shady privacy invading bastards, it's that they're actively encouraging people to have bad security habits, by teaching them to trust things that are not trustworthy, and it's only a matter of time until someone gets seriously screwed by that.