Why let it trend?

The internet can be a racist, sexist, bigoted place as we all know, but it can also be a positive place where people stick up for and defend the rights of others.  Both sides of this can be seen on Twitter, where from time to time surprisingly offensive trending topics can pop up.

I remember a few weeks ago I was looking through my Twitter stream, and was caught with shock when I noticed that #blamethemuslims was a TT; I decided to check out why this was trending and what people were saying about it.  Most of the tweets were in fact not racist at all, but instead in solidarity with the Muslim people.  While there were a few offensive ones, but most read things like “#blamethemuslims for math and writing” or “don’t #blamethemuslims their faith is hijacked by those who don’t understand”.  I find this to be a very interesting concept, the people who are stating positive sentiments are the very ones keeping a very offensive hashtag trending.  This seems a bit backwards to say the least, inspiring what one is arguing against.

To me this shows how desperate for attention people are.  If they really cared, the best thing to do would be to completely ignore the TT or at least try to start a trend with something more positive, like #dontblamethemuslims. 

I just wanted to vent my frustrations; I’ll be back later with a more substantive post.

Staying on top of it

Social media is an ever changing landscape and in order to stay on top of it you have to employ a variety of methods.

I recently read an article on Mashable (here) that detailed how the pros stay on top of it and felt inspired to throw in my two cents.

1.       Twitter. I find twitter is the best way to stay on top of new news in the digital world.  You can follow large news organizations and professional bloggers for the inside scoop.  Not only that, if you follow the right people you can get some gems that you may have otherwise missed.  Both the primary advantage and disadvantage is that twitter is continually updating; if you’re actively reading it’s a great place to find information, but if you check every few hours or so, great content can become buried.

2.       Google Reader, by far the best RSS reader out there (as the Mashable article states).  I use Google Reader for my favorite blogs, the ones which I do not want to miss a single post.  It’s great because, like twitter, it’s multi-platform.  The only downside (and this goes for Twitter too) is reading on the iPhone or other small screens can kill your eyes.

3.       Podcasts.  I love podcasts because of the ability to listen on the go.  If I’m on a train or bus where I can’t look at my phone because I’m too busy trying to keep my balance, I can still stay current.  The problem that I have with podcasts is trying to download while out-and-about, due to slow data speeds (though that could just be my poor cellular service).

4.       The internet.  I feel like this explains itself.  You go on and read what you want.

5.       Friends.  Ask them.  They may have some information you find relevant, if not just ignore it.

Klout: for better or worse

Imagine yourself in junior high.  Got the braces?  Don't forget the ugly clothing that you thought was cool. Now pretend that your least favorite teacher asked forced you to run for class president and everyday posted the results so the entire school could see it.  That's what Klout is.

A proper description of Klout would be to call it an online social influence tracker.  The service connects to various networks (with your permission) and through its algorithm calculates how influential you are.  Currently the networks are Linked In, Twitter and Facebook, though Klout claims that they are adding more in the future.

The idea of measuring social influence was bound to happen at some point but is it a path we want to go down?  Currently users choose to sign up for Klout and connect their accounts, however once in they can then see the Klout score of all the people they follow and all of their Facebook friends.  It is not hard to imagine a world where Klout score turns into a high school popularity contest where people compete for a higher number.

This is a problem.

Klout score can only be raised by interacting with one's networks.  It would be easy to game the algorithm by spamming your friends and your family with pointless content and becoming what amounts to a comment or reply troll (depending on the social media platform).  My anger lies in the fact that I feel like Klout could really decay the quality of current social networks.  Who wants to wake up with 50 posts from friends on their Facebook wall asking them to comment on whatever nonsense they type?  Not I.

If used for good Klout can be a positive thing, a way for people to measure and reflect upon their own self-worth in the online world.  For now it's too early to tell what will come of Klout, but if it continues to gain popularity we all will be forced to be subjected to its judgmental algorithms.

(Disclaimer): I am a Klout user with a score of 40.

For more information visit Klout.

The "War"

While I do not want to talk about Google+, as long as the chamber is echoing I might as well make sure my voice is one of them.

Let's talk about this "war" that is raging with Google+.  If you are not blind you may have noticed that I placed the word war in apostrophes; I did this because I do not believe there is really a war.

For the last few weeks, since Google+ came out, the blogosphere has been really up-playing the supposed fight between Google and its arch rival (insert name here).  Sometimes the rival is Facebook, which makes sense given the profile creation and maintenance aspect of Google's service, along with similar sharing features.  However, sometimes the Google rival is Twitter, which makes less sense.  I haven't really seen Google+ used for broadcasting or micro-blogging in my experience with it, but hell, why not?

The point is that nobody really knows who Google+'s rival is, it is still way too early to tell its purpose.

Now let's focus on the numbers.  Google+ is at what? About 20 million users.  Let's compare this to Facebook's 750 million users.  This is not a David and Goliath tale, this is Godzilla vs a labradoodle.  Google may be fast growing, but Facebook has a massive advantage that is not going away any time soon.  Not to mention that while people may be adopting Google+, I doubt they will be leaving their already established networks on Facebook.

Until you can use all the features of Google+ through text, it most likely won't really be taking a swing at Twitter either.  With the recent deletion of Google+ business pages, Google seems to be sending the message that it does not want companies broadcasting on their platform, a key feature of Twitter.

I know the people want to see blood, but it's far too early to start throwing around words such as "war" and "fight".  Can we all agree to let Google+ develop into something before we start over-analyzing  and cross-comparing it?  Everyone seems to want to see it succeed, so let's not doom it before it starts.

The Twitter Problem

The problem is an issue of who, what and where.

A fair amount of people have twitter accounts, some people have multiple ones, I am one of those people.  Though recently I have grown tired of using multiple accounts and remembering what each one is for.  I have one that I used to write my thesis, one personal account, and one slightly more professional account.  Remembering what to post where, and who can see what has grown old and confusing.

I have opted to start using only my semi-professional one (Twitter.com/JWeekz) but this creates problems.  Having linked it to all my various social media platforms, both professional and personal, not only can my friends see it, but also perspective employers, my employees, my coworkers and my college buddies.  There always is the potential to be watched, so I have to be careful about what I say.  No matter how badly I want to tweet about that TT, I have to stop myself before I say something I may regret later.

Not only do I have to worry about what I say, but also who I follow.  While I don't think following my favorite musicians and movie stars is an issue, I want to be careful about what information I'm reveling about myself.  Political affiliations, obscure interests, there are things that I don't want some people to know, but that I want to keep tabs on.  Thus the Twitter problem.  Do I follow them and not care who notices, or do I hide my interest from the prying eyes of whoever cares to check in on me?

Who sees what I tweet, what I actually tweet and where I tweet it: The Twitter problem.

Spotify

I was reading one of my favorite blogs, Spinsucks.com,  and today they did a post about the new music service, Spotify.  I thought, "you know I have time, and I'm in on the Spotify American Beta, so why not me too".  Here is the link to their post: Spinsucks: Spotify.

Being a member of klout you get free early access to Spotify.  I've been playing with it and enjoying it so far.  It is kind of like GrooveShark, streaming music for free as long as you're connected to the Internet.  But aside from being 100% legal, I can't really discern a different between Spotify and GrooveShark aside from Spotify being a downloadable app and GrooveShark being a webapp (definitions used loosely).  Sure the legality issue may make a difference to the RIAA and musicians, but to me and most other Internet users we do not really care as long as we get our music.

Spotify has a share feature that allows you to post your favorite songs to Facebook or Twitter.  It also allows your Facebook or Spotify friends to view playlist or favorite artists (assuming you grant your friends permission to do so).  It looks pretty clean and the buffer speed is fast to say the least, of course living in a major city with already fast Internet speeds buffering times have never been an issue.

Currently I am a Rhapsody subscriber (ya I'm one of those suckers).  I pay $10 a month to take my music on the go.  When you spend half as much time commuting as I do, it makes sense to have lots of music and not buy each song individually.  That being said, I just cancelled my Rhapsody account in favor of a switch to Spotify once my subscription runs out.

Spotify promises lightening fast sync times, and it's simplistic UI make it easy to manage music, create, and edit playlists.  Not to mention if the excitement around Spotify holds it could become an invaluable tool for sharing music.

I'm making the switch.  I'll say more once I upgrade at the beginning of next month.

Not worth it

I was talking to one of my friends about this blog, and how I write for non-existent ears.  He suggested that I get at least some readers or "what else is the point?"

First, the point is that it's out there.  It's online.  The world can access it, and it's contributing to some greater collection of knowledge or noise, depending on what you want to call it.

Also there is the problem of getting people to read what you have to say.  The best way to get traffic is to mercilessly pimp yourself out.  Whether it be to your friends or to the Twitter masses, what ever you do, it's still pimping yourself.  I could annoy all of my friend by continually linking my blog posts to my Facebook, Linked in or Google+ pages, but then anything decent I want to say gets drowned out by the noise I've created by linking my blog posts.

Another option is to use Twitter.  I could finish all my tweets with tiny url that links back here, but then I become all that I hate: a bot, a twitter troll, an e-pimp, whatever you want to call it.

As I sit here in front of my computer, typing away, I can sit happily knowing that though nobody is listening at least I stuck to my guns and didn't bot my friends or the world.

Alienated or Connected

Have you ever wondered what would happen if the internet went out?

This weekend I took a trip to the Vineyard with my longtime girlfriend and something similar happened.  We were on the remote part of the island, so I couldn't get data, and the wifi was so weak I would pretty much have to be sitting on top of it to get any sort of connection.  It was horrible.

The trip itself was awesome, beaches, shopping... the works; never a dull moment.  Still something felt like it was missing without any sort of E-connection to the outside world.  I would carry my iPhone with me everywhere I went with vain hopes of getting some sort of a bar or two so I could access the Internet.  Occasionally I would get a bar, raising my hopes.  Maybe I could get an e-mail, check facebook for a bit or even send a picture via flickr.  But no.

Even on the beach, while watching the clouds drift my mind would be drifting with them, wondering what was going on in the world of Twitter.  Did one of my tweets get retweeted?  Could I be a Twitter superstar and not even know it?  Not to mention I lost a few foursquare mayorships.

It's sad I know, however it raises an interesting discussion about the nature of being plugged in.

Am I alienated or connected?

Here is a picture of a cat with a watermellon... on a beach:

Social media why?

Why do people use social media websites?  Twitter, Facebook, Linked in, MySpace, Google+, Foursquare, the list goes on.

I am not only guilty using all of the sites above, but do so regularly.  WHY!? I have no idea.  Is is some latent desire to have more communication?  Do I want to be noticed and become famous somehow?  Do I think that people out there actually care what I have do say?

The answers are: no, no and no.  So then why?

Aside from Twitter I generally know all of the people that I communicate with on the other social platforms, so I can scratch out famous.  My friends already don't care what I have to say anyhow, and I have no desire to be famous.

The only other possible explanation I can think of is content.  To share videos and websites, but even that still it makes no sense, if that was the case why not just use one social media website; surely facebook would suffice.

Maybe social media is a niche hobby.  Some people collect stamps, some people are into cars or beer, others are into social media.  Discovering it, using it, finding the latest and greatest.

I don't know I can't really think of any other reasons, but why not?

Here is a picture of a cat: