It's Wednesday, which seems to be posting day in my new less-frequent posting schedule. The seasonally usual dark and cold commute is now complete for the morning. The forecast calls for something-that-might-be-cloudy-to-sunny and uses the standard sun-with-clouds icon we see so often here in the PNW.
If you have followed these finite rumblings with even vague regularity you will know I loves me some technology. Whether waxing fondly reminiscent about an old sea-green Hermes typewriter or an iPad app, I admire technology that is both elegant and functionally precise, and especially technology that really does something for me or extends my capabilities. Three current examples of apps (two for the iPhone and one for the iPad) that fit this criteria:
- Twittelater Nue (a Twitter client for the iPhone so beautiful to use it makes me want to check in)
- Camera+ (produces stunning camera results from the iPhone camera)
- Zite (a brilliant customized magazine, almost magical)
However, applying this same enthusiasm to social media, the results are decidedly mixed for me. Twitter has become very useful and powerful for me, Google+ shows promise but is wait-and-see still, and Facebook has become something I increasingly dislike using.
Facebook is starting to feel like an old skin, itching to be sloughed off. It is crowded with advertising, hoaxes, games, inane "surveys," and promotions. It's interface and privacy policies (an oxymoron if ever there was one) shift constantly, which makes navigating Facebook like watching a stop-motion origami-in-progress video. The new Facebook apps for iPad and iPhone are crowded, buggy, and seemingly capricious in the information they present. Both constantly suggest folks I don't know as people I should "friend," and both give this useless and intrusive behavior top billing on finite screen real estate.
But my itch to ditch Facebook is about more than all of this (sufficient as all this should be). You know how, in what is clearly becoming its sunset era, personal email is now more about SPAM and an endless stream of forwarded jokes, LOL-cats, contrived inspirational stories, pass-this-on-to-ten-friends-and-make-their-day, and ridiculous political fictions? Facebook feels like it is going much the same way. The quality of the posts are getting buried under the quantity of effortless shares and likes.
Oh, I love the photos of friends and family, and the posts that keep me connected with folks I don't get to see everyday. And I like the thought-provoking articles that occasionally get shared out, mostly by colleagues, and especially the resulting discussion thread that grows in the comments. Not as good as a good discussion over a cup of coffee (or gourd of mate!), but in a crowded and busy world, these online discussions often serve as a useful stand in.
To use an old expression, the signal-to-noise ratio is growing so poor that I frequently miss a post I would enjoy seeing for all the other crap Facebook tosses at me. Facebook allows us, too easily, (to quote Douglas Adams) to attack, "...everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it [is] often difficult to tell which [is] which."
I've been playing with Google+, and like how clean it is compared to Facebook. No ads, no games, no interface crowded with shifting shite. Of course, it is still largely bereft of friends and family at present, too. Hopefully that will change, because I do think it represents a cleaner space for staying connected than does Facebook. I also think it provides much better tools for sharing and managing photos, with it's link to Picassa (now called, simply, Google photos). Upstart potential, to be sure.
Of the big three social media tools, though, I am finding myself increasingly drawn to Twitter (and you can follow me there at kevmckonline). When I first experimented with Twitter I didn't really "get" it. You don't, really, until you start following a bunch of individuals and organizations. I follow the local Dept. of Transportation tweets and so I see traffic conditions and alerts for the area, I follow the local newspaper and news station tweets, so I get a lot of my news there, too. I also follow several micro-local twitter feeds, so I get the kind of community news that is so hard to find otherwise. I follow organizations I care about, bloggers I want to keep tabs on, and the friends and family I know who are on Twitter. Mark Bittman, James Lileks, Bloomberg News, Pink Martini, Sigure Rós, The Economist, TUAW, Stephen Fry, Lynnwood Today, Edmonds Patch, Advisory Bored, Guayaki, SoundersFC, Barack Obama, and many others, pass daily through my Twitter feed.
It all comes to me in an elegant stream that I can scan quickly, and click on specific tweets to read more or follow links to stories and articles. Photos are inline (in the better Twitter apps), unless someone is still using Flicker (in which case they require extra steps to view regardless of the social network the come through). Posts have to be kept to a tight 140 characters, which keeps status updates focused and to the point (you want to rant, set up a blog and link to it!).
So far, so good, but there is one more less-intuitive value to Twitter. Twitter doesn't support comments. You can direct message someone, you can publicly reply (which becomes its own tweet, separate in the timeline), and you can quote/retweet someone. If you post specifically to garner feedback or validation from others, though, Twitter will seem a bit lacking. That is a very good thing, in my opinion.
So, increasingly you will find me on Twitter, and I do hope more of my friends and family will find their way there as well. Because I check Facebook with less and less patience or frequency. I keep a hopeful eye on Google+, waiting for some critical participation mass to form, too. Twitter I follow regularly.
Speaking of following, this morning I followed very little traffic in, and the following tunes followed one after the other, in this particular order:
- Train: Give Myself To You
- The Guggenheim Grotto: Philosophia
- Pink Martini: Hang On Little Tomato
- Bruce Cockburn: If I Had a Rocket Launcher (Live)
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