I just saw this article posted on Mashable. It goes right along with my earlier post about Facebook usage for organizations.
Here’s a quote: “Social media platforms help facilitate conversations between individuals, not companies.”
Amen to that. Amen. Amen. Amen.
Anyway, without further ado, read this article, instead of reading about it.
A few days ago a message came up that really bothered me on a discussion list I am on for Christian organizations who use the web for their ministries. I didn’t respond directly, but I thought I’d share my thoughts here.
The questions was regarding Facebook. The gentleman who wrote the message had just created a Facebook account and had no idea how to use it. Now, see, though I could go on an entire rant about how people should know more about what Facebook is if they live in any part of the world with half-decent Internet access, I am going to take issue with another part of the discussion that ensued. Indeed many replied and discussed how they set up Facebook accounts for their organizations. That, for me, is a big giant screaming ARGGGGHHHHH!
Let’s think back a couple of years. There was a social site, known as MySpace (who uses that site, anyway?). Now as we all know, MySpace turned into a huge pile of Internet trash. Meanwhile, Facebook snuck in, and with it’s strong committment to securing registration to REAL people, built a new Internet social empire. Over the years, the registration requirements have opened up, which is good. More people are able to get on, but now, we’re heading to a dangerous territory. While before you needed an actual university e-mail account or other means of authenticating yourself, now the registration is open.
The problem I see here is that organizations are coming in and creating social accounts for their group. Facebook has done a decent job of creating a Page structure that supports non-people in the Facebook network. It really irks me that people would use anything but that for a company or organizations. It’s truly contaminating my social grid.
My mesage to groups that have practiced this. Do you really know what you’re doing? Facebook is for people. The beauty of the structure for organizations within Facebook is that it ties PEOPLE together around the group. Please please please please please use it for what it’s for and how it’s intended. I will not be your organization’s friend, and I will have serious doubts about the accuracy of its college education, gender, birthdate, activities and interests.
Facebook is a beautiful organic network of people connected to eachother. Please keep it that way and help to encourage people to use the site for what it is, a social utility.
what happens when you have a great idea and somebody else comes up with the same idea at approximately the same time? frustrating..
so today, in an ironic feat of web-searchification, while working on my very own foto:blip, i discovered a lovely little app that does nearly the same thing as foto:blip. note, nearly.
clearly i’ve been beaten to the punch in providing a way to use photos instead of words to share the play by play of your life.
so what to do now? beat them with sticks!
the key differentiation that i see right now is that TwitPic (what a silly name) is a bolt-on application. it connects with the Twitter API and (sortof) extends the functionality of Twitter. not a bad idea at all. Twitter has a large and growing userbase. but, i believe that what is really needed to take the next step with microbloggery is to have a completely new application which is built from the ground up to work with images. while two Twitter add-on clients support TwitPic, allowing the posted photo to be viewed directly in the client, other venues such as the Twitter web site and the all-important Twitter Facebook application merely show a link to your photo posted via TwitPic. degrades nicely for those clients, but how will it bode for the visually-inclined user? not so well.
foto:blip has, from the very beginning, been designed to use photos as the users’ primary means of communication. to emphasize that point, photo captions are limited to a short 50 characters. we want users to communicate with their images. to do this, it is a necessity that every viewer can see the posted images alongside the caption.
i’ll be having a closer look at TwitPic shortly as I continue working on foto:blip. perhaps it will inspire me even more.
i’m about 80 percent done my new social site, foto:blip.
the concept is pretty simple. we live in a visual world, not a textual one. though words can describe many things, a picture still captures so much more.
tools like twitter are cool. it allows you to update from a variety of places, most commonly the web site, a facebook application and from a registered mobile device. it’s really cool to be able to share your day as it happens with your followers and see what your friends are doing with their days.
it’s time to take the next step. foto:blip merges the quick-posting ease of use of applications like twitter with the increased level of communication that can take place with a photograph.
some of the features include:
stay tuned for launch information.
i wish these two would merge into one supercool app.
i setup pownce the other day. it’s gotta really cool interface and a great desktop application. unfortunately it doesn’t have the same integration options as twitter, which include a Facebook application that actually works as well as SMS and various flavors of instant messages.
so the bug got me, and i setup a twitter account today. i installed the Facebook app and a plugin for my blog. now we’re all connected.
my dream would be to have the same connectivity options in addition to a desktop application. now that’d be cool.
i think i’m a status stalker. ack!
ok.. so a lot of people go and check statuses on various people.. read the ones that pop up on facebook automagically.. look at the status/away messages on aim..
but do you ever reply to them? haha. i find myself sending messages replying to peoples rhetorical status questions.
current status: Jeremy is shoving his foot in his mouth and slapping his proverbial wrist.
do you ever go through your social networking sites’ friend lists and purge out a whole lot of people who you don’t actually talk to?
i do this with some regularity on facebook, myspace and on aim as well. for some reason it gives great satisfaction to just ‘click’ and delete people from your virtual life.
sounds kinda sadistic, huh?
i’m really not that harsh, i just hate having all these random names on my list of people i don’t ever talk to. of course if they add me again after a purge session, i’ll approve..
does anyone else do this? c’mon.. no lies.
