30 posts
Instagram, I loved you.
You were my first real relationship after Twitter, and right now I feel angry and bitter about you turning your back on all the good stuff we had going. I feel shut out by you, and I can't bear the thought of you and Facebook, you know... 'together'...
_content.jpg?1334057157)
I don't know how I can keep all this hurting inside of me...
Wow, I've never experienced this feeling before.
Facebook have done something cool. The new Timeline profile page is phenomenally well designed - almost magical compared to what was there before.
In the best-case scenario, a picture is worth a thousand words. More often, at least in my life, it only tells part of the story.
Case in point, the above photo: a bunch of people gathered around a swimming pool. This picture was snapped about two minutes after my friend C declared his ability to swim two and a half lengths of the pool underwater... and about 45 seconds before he failed spectacularly.
But that isn't the whole story.
Last week I was at the LSE to listen to a talk by Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer. The talk was titled ‘It’s all about people’ and was based on the core premise that as a society we are moving from using the web for information retrieval to using it for social discovery, Facebook being somewhat at the core of this movement.
Photo credit: Maria Moore/LSE
Yesterday’s annoying article-of-the-day has to have been Richard Hillgrove’s piece in the Guardian in which he lays out his vision for social networking sites in the aftermath of the Ryan Giggs comedy road show.
The SXSW posts will no doubt continue to pour in in bits and pieces, but it's time to go back to the curated weekly data. This week, we'll be looking at mobile. Made by Many recently obtained a presence in Sweden to focus specifically on mobile, so it's a good time to focus on the topic.
Like many people, I've considered deleting my Facebook account. Not out of spite, or the desire to make a stand, but mainly because it's no longer useful. I've met all the people I'm going to meet on Facebook, and I struggle to see the value in remaining a member.
Whenever I seriously think about deleting my account, though, I can't go through with it.
It might be that I'm holding out for some of those long-lost friends to get in contact. I keep the Facebook beacon alight and fire the occasional flare into the internet, where I know the people who don't Twitter or Instagram will see me.
But that's not really it, and now I see what keeps me connected to Facebook when the value in the service has disappeared:
Following on from my post last week, here's what's been happening in the tech space this week. The companies being invested in are certainly those that are truly a) hot and happening and b) showing a lot of potential for growth.
When I got my iPhone, one of the first apps I installed was Mappiness. There was a bit of buzz about it in the office at the time. I was intrigued by the idea - to map your happiness over time - and also into supporting the research by LSE. It all seemed so easy. Mappiness pinged me twice a day between 8am and 10pm and I dutifully answered the 6 questions on my level of happiness, location, activity and company.
Signing up for Quora has made me stop and think about whether I live in a connected world. All my friends are online, or at least have an online presence. I have mobile phone numbers and email addresses for my friends, sometimes once, twice over. My friends have presences all over the web, on Facebook and Twitter to name just a few.
Or do they?
I found finding my friends and contacts on Quora quite tough. Admittedly because the service is only beginning to catch fire (or spark at least) but also because my digital connections are nowhere near as complete as I inherently believe they are. With this mind I’ve stopped to harvest my address book, Twitter feed and Facebook friend list to find out where my friends are. How often do I interact with them digitally and in the real world? How easy are they to find and contact? Am I connected?
