If you are getting tired of Facebook, you will appreciate this (and even if you are not getting tired of Facebook, watch this and you might start to see why it has become really annoying!).
Tag Archive for 'facebook'
FaceBook opened its APIs for third party developers last year, opened its registration to all and saw a meteoric rise in use.
The developers started creating all kinds of applications for FaceBook and the FaceBook Platform was pronounced as the next big thing! And an investment by Microsoft putatively valued the website at $15bn.
However, of late a lot of the sheen seems to be coming off FaceBook. Privacy concerns started raising their head and were given significant credence when FaceBook launched its ill-fated (and short-lived) Beacon project.
Users discovered just how hard it is to actually close their accounts and more recently the New York Times reports that FaceBook has had to implement a procedure for people to have their accounts closed. Closing the account and deleting the information which was in the account are two different operations however.
Listening to the conversations on Twitter it is pretty obvious that people are tiring of FaceBook.
I have a huge concern over what is happening to my information on FaceBook. Not just what is FaceBook doing with it but every time you add an application to your profile, you are giving that application developer access to your FaceBook data.
Personally, the amount of completely frivolous emails and requests I receive from the site (Vampire bites, Human Pets, Pokes, pointless quizzes, etc.) have completely turned me off it and I may log in now once a week just to check my Inbox. Then again I may not!
Are you experiencing FaceBook fade?
While everyone talks about the power of FaceBook as a cool means of getting a message out, you hear very little about the power of Twitter as a communications tool.
I inadvertantly compared the two in recent months and found that Twitter was by far the more potent communications tool (in my unscientific test, at least).
What happened was, last November and December I changed the status on my Facebook profile to reflect the fact that I was looking for a job. My profile displayed that info for several weeks. In all that time I had one person approach me offering me some possible contract work. No more.
However, two or possibly three times since Christmas I have mentioned on Twitter that I am looking for a job and from that I have received 6-7 strong expressions of interest some of which are at the stage of swapping proposals.
The very first time Will Knott asked me why Twitter was so powerful was at the first Cork Open Coffee meeting back in March 07 and I remember telling him that the power of Twitter is in the network. Twitter continues to prove me right.
Plaxo started life as a place to hold your contact information online.
That was quite handy and they allowed synchronising from your Mac or PC so your contact data were always held safe in the cloud.
More recently Plaxo added a feature called Pulse. Pulse allows you to tell it where you publish photos, blog posts, bookmarks etc. and it creates a lifestream, a la Facebook which it publishes to your Pulse network.
All sounds nice, right?
Sure, however, for some reason, and I don’t know why, of all the social networks I have joined (and I have joined a few!) Pulse seems to generate the most emails. The emails typically have the subject line “[someone I have never heard of] has added you as a business connection”
On Facebook and Xing, the other two social networks I frequent most, I occasionally get connection requests from people I don’t know. But not very often, and usually a bit of digging will show how they are connected to me.
However, on Plaxo I get waaay too many of these business connections and I have no idea where they are coming from.
Is this just me or are others finding Plaxo also generates too many connection requests from strangers?
Spotted this story yesterday on Valleywag - long story->short, guy working as an intern for a US branch of Anglo-Irish Bank, took a couple of day’s leave saying he had to head to New York home suddenly.
I just wanted to let you know that I will not be able to come into work tomorrow. Something came up at home and I had to go to New York this morning for the next couple of days.
Then a photo of him is posted on Facebook dressed as a fairy (complete with wings and wand) at a Halloween party when he was supposed to be home in New York!
His boss, who obviously has a sense of humour, in his reply to the email included a copy of the photo, said:
Thanks for letting us know–hope everything is ok in New York. (cool wand)
and bcc’d the whole office!
There goes his credibility, if not his internship!
Valleywag are implying in their story that there is something new here. Facebook helps hip bosses keep track of employees!
I can’t help but think that this story has happened over and over again. Employee does something silly. Gets caught. The only thing that changes is the names and the technologies.
I’m sure there were similar stories doing the rounds with the advent of the phone and later the fax. There is nothing new here.
It is a great photo though!
After Steve Clayton demoed it to me last week, I decided to try playing around with Microsoft’s Popfly. Popfly is a tool for creating Mashups in Silverlight, with a drag and drop interface.
It comes with a tutorial (on right) and the interface is easy to get used to. In fact it is even easier to use than Yahoo Pipes.
I built the app below in a few clicks. It displays the status of my Facebook contacts.
This app was created in Firefox on my MacBook Pro.
One glitch I did note was that you can’t write into the Search box (when using Firefox on a Mac).
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