Further to a discussion in the forum… After a couple of weeks with Facebook I find it quite fun to check in once a day to see what my friends may be up to, and I do actually receive one or two internal emails from facebook now, which proves it has gained people’s involvement and trust. But it occasionally can be tiring having to install new applications every time someone sends me a drink, zombies me, wants to play me at scrabble etc, and ultimately the closed nature of it is a bit annoying (not being able to see more about people, i.e. their full profile, without being invited to do so as their friend etc)… Still, it’s fun, and fun is good! Plus quite a few people have befriended me via NFS which is great. I’m here, put something on my super-wall, or join our Notes in Spanish group!
Twitter… I don’t know if I want to start using twitter as a way of having endless conversations with people, and I certainly don’t need the sms text messaging side of it, but I do like it as a micro-blogging system for passing on interesting things that I wouldn’t normally put on Notesfromspain, e.g. interesting links, notes on great books etc. As web-guru Dave Winer puts it:
It’s a micro-blogging system. Posts are limited to 140 characters. Enough for a bit of text and a link. This is a powerful idea, but not a new one.
I agree, and as such have stuck a little list with my latest three twitters in the right-hand sidebar of this blog as an experiment. I recently decided to give up notesfromBEN.com due to lack of time to update it regularly with the kind of things I originally thought I wanted to, but I think my twitters might be a nice micro-replacement, and the NFS side-bar list provides a great way of keeping a few off-topic notes from Ben within NFS.
So, verdict so far:
FacebooK: pretty good fun, jury still deciding on how useful it is…
Twitter: looking interesting!
…just my 2 cents! What do you reckon?
gary
4 Aug 07 at 4:05 pm
There arent enough hours in the day….
Beckett
4 Aug 07 at 4:59 pm
Make sure you’ve got your firewall up.
Today on Yahoo News: “Hackers: Social networking sites flawed”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070804/ap_on_hi_te/social_networking_vulnerabilities
Uncle Drew
5 Aug 07 at 3:44 pm
We should start an anti-Twitter campaign.
Don’t know if you’re familiar with the American cartoon “The Jetsons”, but there’s the beginning when the father is running on a treadmill in outer space, the thing malfunctions and starts going too fast and he yelps “Jane, get me off this crazy thing!”
Sometimes we all just need to turn off!
ryan
6 Aug 07 at 10:23 am
Twitter is becoming a favorite and not for reasons I completely understand. I use it as a feed reader of sorts. Since most of my friends on it are bloggers and they automatically post a link when the post a blog entry, I then can quickly go to their site.
also it’s great for commenting on wine tasting notes, with other wine bloggers…been a fun way to have small debates…though I do prefer Pownce with it’s longer entry lengths and ability to add sound clips
As for facebook, it’s becoming a platform. In the same way people thought they wouldn’t need all the stuff included in MS Office, I think one day programs like FB and Netvibes will be the only desktop and publishing software you will interact with.
Vergentino Robles
6 Aug 07 at 3:30 pm
Some people prefer Jaiku over Twitter. I prefer Tumblr as a “small blog” app.
Graham Tappenden
6 Aug 07 at 10:59 pm
OK, I’m going to give Twitter a go – I’ve signed up for Ben’s updates to be delivered by SMS (and deactivated them during normal sleeping hours