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12May/090

Twitter believes we are too stupid for @ replies

Greetings Readers!

Normally I am fast asleep at the time that I am writing this, but it is quite warm here and I can't sleep when it is hot. Not being able to sleep, I decided to browse the new posts on my Google Reader. After sifting through all of the stuff I don't care about, I came across some news from TechCrunch that Twitter is removing a large part of the service's @ reply functionality because it seems to believe people are too stupid to figure it out. Maybe I am just cranky because I can't sleep, but this sounds like a great opportunity to go on a good rant.

Is there anything about Twitter that confuses you to the point of frustration or even wanting to quit the service? Do you find @ replies confusing? I didn't think so. @ Replies have been around for nearly as long as Twitter yet apparently all of the sudden they are too confusing for people. What is most perplexing is that this functionality that is being removed, the ability to see everybody's @ replies even if you don't follow the people they are talking to, is that this functionality isn't even enabled by default. You have to go into the settings and enable this feature yourself. If people are too stupid to figure out the basics of twitter, what are they doing mucking around in the settings area in the first place? If people can't figure out what this functionality does and how it affects their experience withe the service, I think that is more twitter's fault for not explaining it well enough instead of just implying that their users are stupid.

The truly annoying thing about all of this is that they seem to be eliminating one feature after another without adding anything. Just recently, they announced that they were killing the auto-follow feature that a user has to request to be an option in the first place. Why are you killing a feature that is obviously valuable to some people while most users don't know it exists so that it can't change how they use the service? I am not completely against killing features as I understand that sometimes they aren't useful or cause more problems than good, but killing used features for no reason and not replacing them with new functionality is something that has always irritated me. It is the purpose of a service to move forward, not back. While many services are adding features, the fastest growing service on the internet seems to be taking them away with no legitimate reason for doing so.

Twitter seems to be becoming too reliant upon third party services to fill in the gap. I will admit that while there are some really stupid services out there, there are a ton of great twitter apps and services that bring a huge value to the twitter experience. While I think it is great to let the twitter community grow and do its own thing, it is not right to expect them to pick up the slack and make new services just because you kill off an existing feature. You can help the community grow in many ways, but lowering the value of your service by disabling features is not a good move for anybody. Twitter needs to wake up and realize that it has a ton of competition from services such as friendfeed and needs to spend more time improving and stabilizing the product instead of moving backward and disabling existing functionality.

Enough of my late night rant. If you haven't already, give a listen to episode #23 of the Global Geek News Podcast. A new show should be out Thursday or Friday. Until then...

Follow me on twitter & friendfeed!

-Jeremy "pcnerd37" Bray

Tagged as: @ replies, auto-follow, Friendfeed, killing features, microblogging, Rant, stupid users, Twitter No Comments

27Jan/090

Aggregated Media Guilt

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Greetings Readers!

Do you ever feel guilty when you get behind on podcasts, rss feeds, tweets or any other form of aggregated media? I have been suffering from this guilt which I like to call 'Aggregated Media Guilt' or AMG for short for quite some time and I think its time to address it here.

I can honestly say that I have been suffering from AMG ever since I started listening to podcasts. I would often download podcasts without time to listen to them and end up falling behind. This gave me a sense of guilt because I had a ton of podcasts that I never got around to listening to. Sometimes I would merely delete them and try to forget about them, but many times the guilt was such that I would end up spending a minimum of 9 hours a day listening to podcasts just so I could be caught up and not miss anything. At the time, I only had this guilt from podcasts, but I hadn't really discovered the wonders that are Twitter and RSS feeds.

Eventually, I became an avid Twitter and RSS reader user which has been just as bad if not worse than the guilt I suffered from podcasts. Now, I am checking my Twitter every few minutes, reading over 100 tweets every morning when I get up to make sure I haven't missed anything and reading hundreds of items in my Google Reader every day. Why am I doing this? I have this feeling that if I don't, I am missing out on something. I will admit that many things in my RSS feed or Twitter feed are things that I don't care about or just a bunch of people saying the same thing. While this ultimately sucks up more time to sift through these items, I feel it is necessary so I don't miss something that I find important. I am not one to get addicted to anything, but I admit that I have become an aggregated media addict.

Do you or people you know suffer from the same problem? Do you fell like you are missing something if you don't see everything?

I believe I have come up with a solution. I find that if I have a manageable level of aggregated media, I experience guilt, but if I have a source of aggregated media that is not possible to keep up with, the guilt goes away. For example, I follow around 200 people on Twitter. This is a fairly manageable feed as there is probably only in the neighborhood of 500 updates a day or so. Some of those updates I find valuable and others I don't so they get glanced over. In the end, I am trying to find the value which makes me check my Twitter every couple of minutes to see what I have missed and what conversations I can join in on. Friendfeed on the other hand is very different for me. I follow a large number of people on there so that there is so much stuff that is aggregated and passes by that there is no possible way that I can read everything. Realizing this, it completely changes my mindset and gets rid of my guilt. By knowing that I cant keep up with it no matter how hard I try, it frees me from thinking I need to spend all of my time trying to consume what is shared.

In the end, with the way that comments and likes are done with FriendFeed, it becomes much easier for me to pick out the interesting items on FriendFeed because there is generally a lot of activity around anything worth while. You can't really see this in RSS readers or on Twitter so it becomes a case of you having to find the nuggets in the river instead of letting other people find them for you and giving you a chance to see them before they pass by.

In the end, you have to realize that while you may miss some valuable content, more is always coming and chances are what you missed wasn't life altering. Whether it is on Twitter, Google Reader, or your podcatcher, great content will become obvious and you should let others find the great content for you so that you don't have to look for it yourself and feel guilty for missing something.

What do you do about your aggregated media guilt? I would love to hear how you cope with it and your strategies for fighting against it. Leave your stories in the comments!

Follow me on Twitter and FriendFeed!

-Jeremy "pcnerd37" Bray

Tagged as: aggregated media, aggregated media guilt, firehose, Friendfeed, Google Reader, guilt, New Media, podcasts, rss, social media, Twitter No Comments

15Dec/080

How Do You Pick Your Social Networking Friends?

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Greetings Readers!

Last night, I was playing around with the cool new website, socialmedian, when I came across a post about the dangers of random friending. This story got me to thinking about how I choose my friends on my various social networks. After giving some thought to it, I thought it would make for an interesting blog post, so here it goes.

How do you decide who to friend on social networks? Do you have have different rules for friending for the different social networks? Personally, I have different rules for friending depending on the social network and what the use of the social network is. For example, with only a couple of exceptions, if I friend somebody on a site such as Facebook, which I find to be a more personal social network as that is where I keep much of my contact information and various other things, it is because I personally know you or have had contact with you at some point. This differs greatly from other networks that I am apart of. On Twitter, I would say I am about as picky about the people I follow, but its based on different criteria. When it comes to Twitter, I have two main criteria for me to follow you. First, I will likely only follow you if you tweet about things that I find interesting or helpful. Links to things showing me how I can do better with things such as blogging, podcast or others is probably the best way to have me follow you. Second, you can't tweet too much. I don't like it when people tweet excessively (20+ times a day). If you are using your tweets to send great links and information, I usually overlook this, but I don't want my twitter stream to be flooded by a single person. While I love Twitter, I don't want to spend all day staying up with my feeds because one or more of my twitter friends insist on Twittering until their fingers fall off. Different yet again, is how I use FriendFeed. If I friend somebody on FriendFeed, it is solely based on the content the produce and share. If I like what you are posting, I will follow you to make my FriendFeed use more valuable. It is kind of the fire hose approach, but I find its the best way to keep from missing out on great content.

One of the great things about social networking is that you can use the networks however you please. It can be a great way to keep in touch with friends and family as well as a great promotional tool. However you use your networks, I think the idea still remains that you are judged by the company you keep. When I introduce somebody to a network such as Twitter, I will be showing them my profile and I want them to see that I can get value from Twitter by following people that are intelligent and willing to pass along information that I find helpful or informative in some way. Being able to give myself a valuable experience based upon the people I friend on social networks is great, but it is also a great way to get new people on the service because they can see how such a service can provide value.

For many people, social networks can be about having great conversations. I rarely use my social networks in such a manner, but that is based on some personal preferences that I might discuss at a later time, but it centers around having the option to respond but not feeling obligated to respond to what somebody has to say. For people who use social networks for conversation, friending people largely becomes about who is an interesting person to have a conversation with. I don't know about you, but I don't have much use for people that can't hold up their end of the conversation. I'm not looking to have 'yes men' as friends (my ego isn't that big), but I do like to conversate with somebody who has an opinion about something and can support their position intelligently. This is part of how I choose guests for my podcasts as well.

No matter how you choose to use the multitude of social networks, you likely have an opinion as to what makes a good social networking friend and how your choose your social networking friends. How do you choose your social networking friends? Do you take a cautious approach and friend only a few, or do you friend everybody and cut back on the people you don't think fit well with how you want to use a particular socail network? Tell me how you handle freinding on social networks in the comments!

Follow me on Twitter!

-Jeremy "pcnerd37" Bray

Tagged as: choosing friends, Facebook, finding friends, friend whoring, Friendfeed, friending, Myspace, social networks, Twitter No Comments

3Dec/081

Twitter vs FriendFeed

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Greetings Readers!

I have been using Twitter for close to a year and FriendFeed maybe half that time at best and I feel its finally time for me to declare which service is better. Before I announce the better service, I should say that their overall function is similar but not exactly the same.

For those that don't know, Twitter is a great "micro-blogging" tool. With Twitter, you are encouraged to tell people what you are doing. You can also have conversations on Twitter and share the really cool things you find online with all of your friends. The number of things that can be done with Twitter is practically limitless. Twitter also has a huge community around it to the point that there are tons of programs that allow users to interact with the service, such as TweetDeck, something not common with other services. FriendFeed on the other hand is this (minus the large community) and more.

FriendFeed allows you to do the same things as I mentioned above with Twitter, but you can do much more with it. FriendFeed is about aggregating your online presence and sharing it with other people who can share it with their contacts if they choose. With FriendFeed, whenever you write a blog post, put a picture on Flickr, Digg a story or do pretty much anything else, it will be put in your stream for all you contacts to see and comment. When a friend likes or comments on your posts, the content is shared with their friends which allows for content to spread to many people very quickly who would likely have not known about the content otherwise. With threaded comments that are essentially open to anybody assuming an item shows up in your feed to comment on, FriendFeed allows for much a much greater discussion with many people than can be done with Twitter.

Given this comparison, FriendFeed clearly seems to be superior to Twitter, but its not a perfect service. With Twitter, you can follow many people, but the more people you follow, the less valuable the service becomes because you tend to miss tweets and don't always know what is going on. Personally, I find the maximum number of people I can follow while not becoming completely overwhelmed with Tweets is around 200, but I would say that 150 is a more reasonable number. This depends of course on how often the people you follow tweet, but it seems to be a good number for most people. FriendFeed on the other hand, the more people you follow, the more valuable the service becomes. Since the conversations are opened to everybody and not just to a friend or two, there isn't a real negitive impact for following a large number of people. I find that the more people I am subscribed to on FriendFeed, the more cool items that I find interesting come across my FriendFeed. Since many of the people I follow comment on similar things, while my feed is a little busier, it doesn't seem to become overwhelming. Also, with the more people you follow, the more cool things you will find. The only problem here is that FriendFeed only has a fraction of the users that Twitter does.

As I am sure you can tell, I prefer FriendFeed to Twitter for many reasons, but I still use Twitter (whos messages are aggregated into FriendFeed) because it has more users who I have a closer relationship with than my FriendFeed friends. If my Twitter friends were on FriendFeed, I would be likely to leave Twitter. I do think that this will change in the future as more people see that more value can be gained from FriendFeed than Twitter. Until that time comes, its really about where the people are at, which at this time is Twitter.

While Twitter is a great service, one which I use many times of day, I think it is no where close to providing the value that can be offered by FriendFeed. Not taking into account the community surrounding the service (various apps that use the service such as TweetDeck), the only thing that Twitter is better for is the larger number of users. FriendFeed is better in most every aspect which is why I think it is the better service.

Winner: FriendFeed!

What do you think about FriendFeed and Twitter? Which do you think is a better service?

Follow me on Twitter!

Follow me on FriendFeed!

-Jeremy "pcnerd37" Bray

Tagged as: comparing Twitter and FriendFeed, Friendfeed, Twitter, Twitter v. FriendFeed 1 Comment

18Nov/081

10 Things to do When Twitter is Down

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Greetings Readers!

Given the recent Twitter problems of the last week, similar to the months ago when Twitter was down almost as much as it was up, I decided I should compile a list of things that people can do while Twitter is down or showing the Fail Whale.

1. Use other services similar to Twitter.

There are many other services that perform a similar function to Twitter that can hold you over until Twitter returns. Many people like services such as Plurk or Pownce. While I never cared for Plurk, I do like Pownce although rarely use it because I don't have that many friends on the network. Personally, I mainly use FriendFeed (me). Friendfeed is great for not only communicating in a manner similar to Twitter (it does unfortunately lack direct messaging functionality) but it is a great place for people to announce their latest online content creation. Friendfeed is able to detect new blog posts, favorited YouTube videos, new Flickr photos and much more and then put them in your stream to share with others and get feedback on your online activities.

2. Blog

There are millions of people who have a blog and chances are, you do as well. Try filling the Twitter void by doing some blogging. Whether you want to talk about how bad the drivers in your area are, or just want to share some of your favorite recipes with the Internet, blogging is a great way of expressing yourself and inviting others into your life and thoughts. If you don't already have a blog, you can start one for free with sites like Wordress and Blogger.

3. Read blogs!

Like I mentioned, there are millions of blogs on the Internet. There are likely to be a ton of blogs on the subjects you care about. Google your interests to find related blogs and join in on the discussion! Whether you are looking to learn something or help others learn by commenting on posts, blogs are one of the most valuable things on the Internet. Don't forget to comment on the blogs that you read! Bloggers thrive on user feedback and you can often contribute to the discussion by bringing your own perspective to the issue (For more information on being a constructive commenter, read this blog post).

4. Start an online discussion!

There are many places on the Internet that are great for having an online discussion such as chat rooms and message boards. Much like with blogs, there are countless chat rooms and message boards that are dedicated to a large number of topics. If you are having trouble finding a blog post that you want to bring you insight to, try starting a thread on a message board or find a chat room dedicated to the topic you want to discuss. Although these communication mediums have been around almost as long as the Internet, they are still a great way to communicate with people you don't know about subjects that you are interested in.

5. Create a video!

With services such as YouTube, almost anybody can create a video and put it online at no cost. The only thing you really need to put a video online is a camera or webcam. One of the great things about user generated content is that there are very few restrictions you have to abide by when creating things like online video. Whether you want to create video of your kids to show the rest of the family, or make a funny video you hope will be the next 'Leave Britney Alone' video, when it comes to making online video, or really any online content, you are limited only by your imagination. If you really want to have fun, try creating a video podcast!

6. Create an audio podcast!

Speaking of podcasts, probably the most popular podcast medium is audio. Creating an audio podcast is easy, all you need is a microphone and some audio recording software such as Audacity. You can create a podcast on just about any topic. Personally, I have two technology related podcasts, the Global Geek News Podcast and the Geek News Daily Podcast. Whether you want to talk about technology, politics, food or anything else, an audio podcast is a great way to have a conversation with other people that know about the same topic as you and then share it with the rest of the world. Of course you can go solo on your podcast, but how you run your podcast is completely up to you!

7. Check out new podcasts!

If you are like me, you often fall behind on podcasts and need to catch up. When Twitter is down, it is not only a great time to catch up, but a great time to check out new podcasts you have never heard or watched! Whether you are using the Zune software or iTunes, they are some of the quickest ways to find new podcasts on topics that interest you! If you don't use software like that, don't fear as most podcasts can be found on PodcastAlley.com. Some podcasts aren't as good as others, but there are some great shows out there that will entertain and educate almost anybody. If you are looking for some of my personal recommendations, ask in the comments and I will throw some great shows out there.

8. Watch online video

There is millions of hours of video online, so you can easily watch some online video and never run out. This often depends on where you are in the world as to what content you can get to thanks to licensing, but you can find tons of videos online on sites like Hulu.com or TheWB.com. With these sites and many others, you can easily watch many of your favorite television shows and movies for free! If you are looking for less professional content, there are of course sites such as YouTube, but even they are getting on the professional content bandwagon and starting to show TV shows for free! Also, don't forget to check out the new and improved Joost!

9. Shop Online!

It is almost the Holiday Season, its time to stop putting off that holiday shopping! With great shopping sites such as Amazon.com and Buy.com, its easy to find the gifts that your loved ones want. Of course its always a good idea to buy something for yourself when you get something for your friends and family! Why hassle with the crowds at the major retail stores when you can get the same products online for cheaper and not have to pay sales tax (this depends on where you live)? I have saved thousands of dollars by shopping online and you can too! With the current state of the economy, saving every penny you can is not necessarily a bad idea. Warning: Beware of scammers! With online shopping increasing during the holiday season, its a good idea to keep an eye out for people trying to rip you off or steal you identity.

10. Play games online!

There are tons of great games to play online to pass the time. Whether you want to play some simple flash games on websites such as AddictingGames.com or some great games on Xbox Live, there is a vast number of games that you can play online. Depending on the kind of games you like and whether you want to play with others, you can choose from thousands of games to online. Not everybody can afford the monthly fee of games such as World of Warcraft, but there are many free games that are great for passing the time! Do a search on free games and you will likely find more games than you could ever have time to play.

These are just a few of the many things that you can while Twitter is down without having to leave your computer. If you have any suggestions for this list, put them in the comments to share them with everybody!

Follow me on Twitter!

-Jeremy "pcnerd37" Bray

Tagged as: addicting games, blogging, flash games, forums, Friendfeed, microblogging, online games, online shopping, online video, Plurk, podcast, podcasts, Pownce, vlog, Xbox Live 1 Comment

11Sep/080

Yammer won the TechCrunch50?! What were the judges smoking?

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Hey readers!

This is my fist on a good number of posts coming out of the TechCrunch50, a truely amazing conference. Before I start posting my thoughts on many of the other companies that were at the conference, I figured I should start with the winner, Yammer.

For those of you that weren't at the conference, watching it on Ustream or reading the many blog posts from it, Yammer is basically a threaded Twitter clone for the enterprise environment (speaking of which, you can follow me on Twitter!). The creators apparently decided to steal the threaded conversations idea from Friendfeed, throw it into their Twitter clone and make it enterprise exclusive in the way that Facebook was exclusive in the early days where only people with university email addresses could join. In this case, its only for people with a company email address.

If you attended or followed the coverage of the conference, you would most likely agree that this was far from the most deserving company. They didn't even bother to change the Twitter look to something unique. Like many things that presented there, I would consider this more of a feature than a company. It would not take much for Twitter to do the same thing, plus they already know the micro-blogging space and have a good bit of experience under their belt. There were a number of truly revolutionary products unveiled at the event, but this was not one of them. Adgregate Markets and Swype were just two of the truly industry changing products that were far more deserving of the honor than a Twitter knockoff. I will of course be writing about those companies and many more in the next few days.

With over a thousand applicants to the conference, this makes me wonder just how bad the applicants were that didn't make the cut. I don't understand how this could have even been a finalist unless there were some kind of kickbacks to the judges or if the judges were too drunk from the parties to make a logical decision. I am completely baffled by this decision. They came up with a business model for Twitter, good for them. Sell the idea to Twitter, don't try to create a company out of a feature, especially when the same job can be accomplished in a more organized fashion with a simple message board.

Anyway, this is the first of many blog posts on my thoughts about what was presented at the conference. Over the next couple of days, I will be covering my favorite companies and companies that made me ask myself why how they got got past 1,000 other companies to get into the conference. I will also be doing a Global Geek News podcast in the next week also with more of my thoughts as well as on many of the other big topics, so stay tuned for that!

-Jeremy "pcnerd37" Bray

Tagged as: Facebook, feature, Friendfeed, message board, micro-blogging, podcast, social networking, TechCrunch50, Twitter, Yammer No Comments

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Global Geek News Blog The home of more Global Geek News insight and opinions

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Twitter believes we are too stupid for @ replies

Aggregated Media Guilt

How Do You Pick Your Social Networking Friends?

Twitter vs FriendFeed

10 Things to do When Twitter is Down

Yammer won the TechCrunch50?! What were the judges smoking?

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Buy me a Pizza!

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