Facebook narrowcasting: Learn how to post (not send) to a list

A while back, I posted a lament about the perceived inability to "narrowcast" to a group of friends on Facebook.  Why?  I wanted to let my friends in San Francisco know that I was driving up to attend a lindy hop event there, but I didn't want to go through the bother of creating an explicit event, nor did I feel like pushing a Facebook message (blech!) or e-mail to every buddy I know in SF.  In short, I wanted to let both friends and acquaintances folks know I'd be in town in a non-intrusive way... like showing up in their newsfeed.

At the same time, I didn't want the other 90% of my friends outside the Bay Area being bored or annoyed by yet another Bay-Area-centric post of mine.  I mean, yeah, it's not as bad as another one of those "I need [x] for my [y]" lame Facebook game-oriented posts that keep cropping up, but still...

So what to do?  Well, bladam reader and astute commenter Chris suspected that one could indeed actually post to a Facebook list one had created... and I discovered that he's absolutely right!  So without further ado, let me outline the steps so you, too, can target just the right folks, and avoid boring other friends (and/or tipping off exes, parents, jealous roommates, bosses, parole officers, and other sensitive folks to your scandalous private business).

ExpressionEngine to Blogger -- My blog reborn

Well, that was a pain in the gluteus maximus! I've spent a total of over 20 hours (!) setting up a Blogger blog and moving all of my blog entries and comments over from my old blog home powered by ExpressionEngine.  I think I have pretty much everything transferred successfully now, but I'm counting on you, fine readers, to set me straight (in the comments) if I'm mistaken :-).

Why did I do this?
I felt I was spending too much time on technical issues and not enough time on, well, actually writing posts and replying to your comments.  The key factors in my decision to change blogging platforms were these two:
- Frustration with my blogging software (ExpressionEngine)
- Annoyance with my web host, and dealing with web hosting in general

ExpressionEngine

• Probably stemming from some file/template/database corruption somewhere down the line, I ended up having to spend 5+ hours troubleshooting each time I did even minor software upgrades.  EE staffers were always helpful and kind in working with me, but still... :(
• I never was able to find a way to add WYSIWIG post editing (yeah, yeah, I know... you're gonna make me surrender my geek badge, but hey, it often makes drafting posts easier/faster!). 
• I never became comfortable with the control panel / dashboard of EE, and sadly I did not feel their new 2.0 was an improvement.  I found the dashboard to be unintuitive, often requiring an enormous number of clicks just to do basic (and oft-needed) things... stuff was never where I expected or thought it should be, and so on.
• It became increasingly clear that EE was way overkill for what I wanted to do.  Enormously powerful but massively complex, I often had to spend a ton of time to figure out how to do even simple things with my blog.

Web hosting

• I had high hopes for NearlyFreeSpeech, but I've been disappointed.  I've experienced downtime, had my sites move to a new server (with no silent and persistent redirection on the part of the host), and surprisingly found the service not nearly as cheap as I thought I'd be.  I think the kicker was when I learned that they discourage users from serving gzip-compressed html pages to save load on their servers.  Uncool :(
• And in general, having to host one's own site is just a pain.  Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna miss a lot of things, including the ability to tweak, tune, customize, etc.  But I'm looking forward to never again wondering whether my site's down because their mySQL server died, apache choked, I forgot to pay my bill, etc. 

Why Blogger and not, say, Wordpress?
Because I want to spend time writing rather than learning php, patching my software or plugins to protect against yet another vulnerability, dealing with a web host, and so on.  Wordpress is truly an awesome, amazing piece of software... even moreso, considering that it's free.  But after spending a zillion hours tinkering with and cursing at Radio Userland, Movable Type, and ExpressionEngine, I'm looking forward to now shacking up with the not-so-powerful-but-generally-reliable partner of Blogger.

How did I move everything over?
Very carefully, and with great, great pain.  Here were the steps involved, as best as I can remember:

• Figured out how to export my entries and comments from ExpressionEngine.
  • My web host choked when I tried to export everything at once, so I did this in three batches, thus creating three export files.
• Copied relevant images and other files from my web host's server to my hard drive via FTP.
• Created an appengine account, created a Google Apps account, and then, using both of these products, somehow mapped a subdomain of mine to my app.
• Found a way to use appengine as a web host.  Apologies; I'm too lazy to find the info now, but hopefully lazyweb will help me and then I can link to it :). 
• Downloaded python to my Windows desktop, plus the Google App Engine launcher.
• Created a directory on my hard drive to store the images and other blog files referred to in my blog posts, and then uploaded them to my appengine account using the Google App Engine Launcher
  • And if anyone can tell me how I can deploy these files without having to enter in my Google Account credentials every time, I'd appreciate it :-)
• Back to the exported entry+comment files:  edited a ton of domain references, including pointers to images that I had uploaded using the EE software.
• Tried various Windows Grep programs to make batch changes to URLs in the export files, remove a lot of extra line-feeds from those same files, change emoticon smilies to text smilies, and a lot more.  I ended up paying $30 for Multiple File Search and Replace, which frankly isn't all that great usability-wise, but it seemed to be the best of the lot. 
  • On a related note, I learned (of course, the hard way) that Blogger silently discards any comment that has an img tag.  More specifically, it throws away comments that have any tags other than the following: A, B, BR, I, EM, and STRONG
• Armed with seemingly ready export files, I then had to convert these exports from MT (MovableType) format into a format suitable for Blogger importing, so I used the handy online MovableType to Blogger app.
• I then opened up a test blog to test the importing of the files.
  • This is important, because once you import and publish the entries, those URLs cannot be reused on that blog, so if your first import isn't perfect and you do a batch delete and re-import, you'll end up with even yuckier-than-usual Blogger URLs :-(.
• After doing some more adjustments via the steps above (e.g., more grepping to fix stuff), I then created my actual blog (this one) and mapped it to a subdomain.
  • Picked a template, customized it a bit, added some widgets, etc.
• Then... import time!  Only to find -- ack!  About half of my entries were imported with crappy line spacing.  So I spent literally hours going through and editing entries to fix egregiously bad (read: extra extra extra br's) line spacing.  In retrospect, I don't think better pre-processing of the export files could have prevented this.  Too many variables (amongst body formatting, comment formatting, etc.)
• Once I was reasonably sure that I was ready to move things over, it was time to have fun making 301 redirects from my old blog pages to my new blog pages!
  • I couldn't find any way to query Blogger for a time-ordered list of entry URLs, so I used Xenu's Link Sleuth.  Unfortunately, that didn't get me an actual time-ordered list, either, and I ended up having to spend a couple of hours correlating bladam.com URLs with grouped-by-month blogger URLs using an excel spreadsheet. (I was pretty easily able to get a list of URLs from ExpressionEngine to begin with by playing with existing templates).
  • I made sure to create sets of redirects for entries, months, and categories, including fixing old redirects from my last domain change, and then created separate .htaccesses per directory on my old server with these redirects in them.
• Dissatisfied with Blogger comments, I decided to implement commenting on this blog with Disqus.  But for more than a day, Disqus barfed up an error message whenenver I tried to import my Blogger comments into my Disqus account; luckily, Disqus apparently took some pepto-bismol this morning and the comments imported just fine this morning.
  • Note that replacing Blogger comments with Disqus commenting may or may not have SEO ramifications, depending upon whom you believe.  With no insider knowledge whatsoever -- just my own playing around and testing -- I have a sense that Disqus is not a happy thing for SEO, but in this case I just didn't care enough; I'd rather have fewer, happier readers and fewer comment-moderation headaches.

Whew!  I think that accounts for much of the process, though I've probably forgotten some of the zillions of steps involved in the transfer.  I also omitted the swearing parts.

What am I sorely missing from ExpressionEngine?
A lot!  Including...

• The ability to choose my own URL format for entries (rather than the ugly date format Blogger insists upon).
• The option to choose my own per-post URLs, for more memorable and scannable URLs to show up in search results and so on.
• Super-powerful templating in which it's possible to have almost any view for anything (tag lists, archives, etc.). 
• A lot of power-user stuff in general... the ability to set meta-descriptions, to futz with html title formats, to have a fav icon, and -- most importantly -- the ability to have a custom 404 page!

What is frustrating me about Blogger?

• A lof the defaults just seem ill-thought-out and often not even changeable unless you muck about in the template HTML, which is what I was aiming to avoid by coming to Blogger in the first place.  For instance, you can't change the size, the positioning, or pretty much anything about the template attribution :-(. 
• And, at least in this template, there are scary-awful padding and other css defaults that are a pain to override.  For example, every image is css'ingly placed into this hellish drop-image thing that looks out of place within the already-sorta-drop-shadowed content panels.  Okay for photos, but for every other image (e.g., icons)... ouch!
• Some things that I'd think should be really basic are just seemingly crazy-hard to accomplish.  For instance, I wanted to include a little blip of text in my sidebar which mentions how many posts and comments my blog has currently.  Simple, right?  Nope.  Despite Googling for this and trying a few suggestions, I've not found anything that works.
• No templates featuring 2 or 3-column fluid layout?  Aw :(
• Inline css, and lots of it, on every page?  Why on earth doesn't Blogger call a (user-editable) external stylesheet? :o  In general, reading through the source of Blogger-created makes me want to run and hide.

What do I like about Blogger?

• I like having a WYSIWIG editor (though I realize this might be partly to blame for the HTML output). It's nice to be able indent and exdent in bulleted lists without having to worry about nested ul and li tags and such.  In fact, the editor is pretty handy in general, letting you quickly add labels, move images around, backdate or postdate posts, and so on.
• The template editor has some neat functionality.  I like how I can change colors and fonts and such with just a few clicks and instantly see these changes reflected in my blog.
• I don't have to worry about my data.  While uptime isn't perfect, I'm rather darn sure that Google isn't going to lose my posts :-)
• It's free :)

Philosophical considerations
So I've spent way too much of a couple of weekends doing this blog transfer thing.  And for what?  I'm still not sure.  Looking through my bladam analytics, it's pretty clear that:

• I don't have a ton of visitors, typically around 250 a day.
• And most of those are reading just a handful of entries (often the, ahem, ones with titilating keywords; boy, must those folks be disappointed!)
• Looking back over a lot of my older entries, they're either stale, boring, embarrassing, or a combination of those attributes.  Do I even want that stuff still on the net?!
• Shouldn't I be spending time outside?  With friends?  Or making new stuff (music compositions, for instance)?

But what's done is done, and thank jeebus, it looks like the bulk of bladam (excepting subsequent tweaking) is now done and ready for new blog posts.  That, of course, raises many of the same questions:  is it true that those who can't do, write?  Or is the act of writing (and the hopeful pleasure and utility others derive from such writing) a substantive enough asset in itself?  That, my friends, is perhaps fodder for another post.  For now, I think I'm going to finally peel myself away from this computer and heave a few very big sighs of relief.

*  *  *

Anyway, thanks for reading my first post on bladam-on-Blogger, and I hope you like my new blog's home and (eventual) design and new content :-).

Dear FB, Twitter - We want narrowcasting, not just broadcasting!

Earlier this week, I wanted to send a Facebook message to my dancer friends in the Bay Area  to invite them to a local event.  I ended up manually sifting through my entire friends list, since there’s no way to invite or message an intersection of friends.  Similarly, I wanted to post a twitter note to my Google buddies in a particular geographic region, but Twitter doesn’t support any sort of useful narrowcasting, either.

Basically, social service nowadays seem hellbent on having us share our lives and connect with more and more people.  I don’t want that, and I’m betting a lot of you feel the same way:  we want to deepen our relationships with our current friends, share details of our lives with the friends who are most likely interested in those particular details, and so on.

A lot of the brouhaha over FBs aggressive more-sharing push has been over privacy, but in the rush to protest “ZOMG, I don’t want my mom to know THAT!” the complementary concerns of narrowcasting have been largely ignored.  I’m personally a lot less worried about someone finding out something I don’t want them to know about, and far more concerned about burning out my friends with info they find irrelevant and uninteresting.

Is it not madness that I can’t post a note joking about a local politician just to my Mountain View  friends?  This highlights one of a great many situations in which there are no privacy issues (I’m not trying to keep my bad sense of humor a secret from my friends in Europe), but rather that my friends outside MV aren’t likely to care about this topic.  And worse yet, these friends will likely stop reading my posts altogether unless I either post less overall (a bummer!) or magically somehow write entries that are appealing and relevant across my diverse group of friends (pretty impossible).

*  *  *
I think I speak for most of us non-hermit’y types in noting that:

• Our sphere of acquaintances and friends is growing at an astonishing rate… due to the awesome people we meet online, at work, via friends, from family members, etc.
• We have an innate desire to stay in touch with many of these folks and to share interesting and relevant stuff with them.
• Relationships are not symmetrical, nor are the related communications desires!  I may hang on the every brilliant and witty word of a friend, but she may be, um, less fascinated with my mutterings (while still wanting to keep in touch with me overall)
• There should be easier ways for us to finetune who (and what groups) we share with and who we hear from… beyond the scope of privacy considerations.
  
  • For instance, it’d be awesome to be able to tell our computer: “I want to share this musing with my friends who love hiking and are within 20 miles of Mountain View” or, conversely, “Highlight messages from friends who live nearby me and aren’t talking about politics.”

But alas, services like Facebook seem to be lately more concerned about giving people a megaphone than letting them share and filter more effectively.  They’re amplifying and extending the noise, which from what I gather, is more likely to alienate people than have them maintain Facebook as part of their daily routine.  And that’s a shame.

*  *  *

What do you think?
- Do you share my interests in narrowcasting?
- Or do I have an unusually large addressbook and/or overly geeky demands re: sharing and filtering?
- Are you familiar with any services that are helping folks connect more deeply vs. broadly?

Don't get a G1 (but do keep an eye out for Android Awesomeness!)

When it took me seven seconds just to be able to answer a phone call, that’s when I realized I had finally had enough.  I’ve never used an iPhone and due to disapproval over Apple’s policies probably never well, so this is not a “G1 Sucks iPhone Rules!!!1” post.  Unfortunately, it’s still a rant against the G1.

First, let me offer some disclaimers:
1) I’m a power user.  I’ve downloaded lots of apps, and overall, they rock.  Google Maps on the G1 is awesome.  Pandora’s new Android app made me literally giggle with glee.  And the Android OS, while clearly still a bit rough, has great potential IMHO.  But perhaps because I’m a power user (installing many apps and pushing the phone to its limits), the phone has been more frustrating for me than it is (or would be) for more, heh, normal people.
2) And speaking of normal people… my sister—who is crazy-smart but hardly an early adopter geek—LOVES her G1.  She pretty much only uses it for phone calls and checking her e-mail, but the latter came in handy wonderfully when her desktop computer was down and also when the electricity was out where she lives.  She’s had no problems figuring out how to use the phone, and seemingly no problems getting it to do what she wants to do with it.  Though granted, when I last spoke with her, she hadn’t actually installed a single app.
3) I know people on the Android team and I hope they do not hate me after this post.  They’re genuinely good, smart, hardworking folks who IMHO made an admirable effort towards Android Phone v1.  When the phone works well (and let me note, it mostly does), it makes you appreciate the power and opportunities in an open mobile OS

Alas, though, for better or worse, working well most of the time isn’t sufficient for a phone. Phones should work reliably and consistently well, and the G1 does not.  It comes down to the hardware: Ouch.  Ouch.  Ouch.  Slow, as in, it often takes over five seconds for the home page to show up after you click the home button.  That, combined with the flakiness in making and receiving calls, makes it a pretty lousy phone for phone calls. And regardless of my preference for e-mail over voice calls most of the time, this is still absolutely, positively unacceptable in a phone.

*  *  *

Many of you may be surprised to hear me publicly railing against what some refer to as “the Google Phone.”  I note (with some pride) that my policy has pretty much always been to offer public praise on Google products when I feel they deserve it and private (within-Google) blunt-yet-constructive criticisms of Google products that (to me) fall short.

But…
1) This technically isn’t a “Google phone.”  We made the software, but someone else made the hardware.  I’m mentioning this as a technicality, admittedly, and not intending to just pass the buck.  Ultimately, it’s got our name on it and we should (and I believe do) take both responsibility and credit for Android phones that include what’s known as the “Google Experience.”
2) I can say with firm confidence that many of the phones coming down the pike this year (18-20 is the number publicly pre-announced!) simply ROCK.    And I want folks’ first experience with Android to be one that’s consistently AWESOME, not just “Hmm, pretty good most of the time.”

You should be asking Santa for an Android phone this Christmas, even if you’re an atheist.  Er, okay, if you’re a non-Christian, perhaps you should just go out and buy an Android phone yourself.  You’ll appreciate the better (much better) hardware, slicker UIs, and a lot more to make you smile.

#geekfail -- Valuing immediacy over depth, accuracy, and understanding

Yesterday, I learned about the turmoil in Iran… from the blogosphere.  Some have argued that the immediacy of news on this and other breaking topics is a sign that mainstream media has failed and online media—specifically “real time” components of online media—have triumphed.  I believe such an assumption is not only dead wrong, but dangerous to society.

Today, I can get more information—and more importantly, more *verified* information—about the situation in Iran from mainstream media.  And in a few days, I’ll no doubt be able to get some insightful background information, valuable context, and more-likely-accurate news from weekly magazines.

Even online, let’s compare, one day later:
- http://search.twitter.com/search?q=iran
- http://news.google.com/news?q=iran

Some would argue… but Adam, don’t you want information right now?  How can you wait a day or even a week to learn what’s going on?!?!?!?!?!!!!!!1

To that, I’d reply with the following question:  Why do you value immediacy over depth, accuracy, and understanding?  Or, better yet, what difference will it make in your life to know about the Iranian election mess one day sooner?  Will you be able to change anything?  Help anyone?  What will you and the world lose by waiting a few more hours?

*  *  *

So why do I believe this increasing predilection towards immediacy is actually dangerous, and not just misguided?

• It’s pressuring news media and politicians to report, respond, and act before they have all the facts, before they’ve had a chance to digest what is correct and what is right.  While I doubt that people with access to nukes won’t be relying on twitter “reporting” to make that crucial decision, I wouldn’t be surprised if we start seeing more and more decisions painfully botched due to a reliance upon “what’s happening right now.”
• While there’s a chicken and egg scenario here, I wouldn’t be surprised if push towards “real time” is further feeding and exacerbating society’s collective ADD, dulling our interests and abilities in long-term thinking and planning.  What are people reading?  What are they thinking about?  If, as we’ve noticed, fewer and fewer people (including me) are taking the time to write (and listen) beyond soundbites, what does this mean for the peaceful progress of our society?

Yes, I know I’m sounding like your grumpy neighbor who perhaps just got on the net (via dialup).  No, I don’t think my griping alone will make a whit of difference. 

But perhaps if enough people say, well, ENOUGH!... immediacy != value, then perhaps the tide will start turning.  Not gonna hold my breath, though.

P.S.—I realize that there IS value in real time.  In the case of disasters (natural and manmade), services like Twitter have helped with the mobilization of protests and rescue efforts and so on.  So for the citizens of Iran, I have no doubt that tweets may well have served as valuable inspiration and coordination.  But this is not news, this is broadcasting.  And for the rest of the world, I stand by my assertions that there was little value in seeing a flurry of micro-messages about events happening in other places of the world except as—and I hate to label it as such—entertainment.  But unsurprisingly the impulse to be entertained, to be un-bored… is now clearly more powerful than the desire to be patiently enlightened.

My experiment testing user engagement on Facebook, Friendfeed, and Twitter

What did I do?!
I posted an identically-phrased note on Facebook, Friendfeed, and Twitter at around 1:30am PDT Friday morning. Specifically, I posted this: "Could you kindly help me with a super-quick experiment (takes less than 30 seconds)? I'll share results :-) Thanks!"

Why?
I was curious to see which set of friends/subscribers (henceforth referred to as "contacts") would be more apt to read my note and reply.


What happened?
As of nearly 40 hours after posting...

So does this mean Facebook is better than Friendfeed and Twitter?
No. Is a particular service a better fit or a more powerful promotional vehicle for some people or for some needs or interests? Probably. But my experiment doesn't prove that. This is based upon my sets of contacts, and was limited to a single test. I know it would make for a far more popular blog entry to trumpet this with a title of "[servicename] the [other servicename] Killer?!?!?" or "[servicename] Beats the Pants Off [other service name]" or -- best yet -- "[servicename] Set to Trounce Google?!?" -- but I refuse to support such memes or pageview-increasing tactics. At least until I receive a very lucratic offer and then decide to sell-out :D.

So what does your little test suggest?
It means that -- with my sets of contacts -- I'm significantly more likely to get engagement and actions from my contacts on Facebook.

Huh?

When looking at contact interaction, I think we have to take a few things into account:

• What's the contact acquisition rate? e.g., how many folks subscribe to / follow you each day?
• What's the contact retention rate? How many people stick with you (vs. defriend or unsubscribe)
• What's the attention rate? How many actually read what you post?
• What's the engagement rate? How many click on your links?
• And lastly, what's the action rate? This is just subtly different than engagement, but I mean this to distinguish between clicking on a blog post link and actually posting a comment there.

And, from my limited test and experiences, here's the more detailed comparison:

• Acquisition: I've found that I acquire contacts on Twitter far more rapidly than on either of the other services.

I've been gaining followers at a much faster rate on Twitter than on Friendfeed... typically more than 7-10 a day on Twitter vs. 1 a day on FF. In fact, I even plugged Friendfeed to nearly 100 of my buddies via a friendly (albeit form) e-mail, and got a sum total of zero friends subscribing to my FF feed from that. Bummer :-(. FF's a much harder sell, at least amongst my non-geek friends, than I previously assumed. Balancing that, though, two friends I personally referred to FF a while back are now two of the service's more active users :-D. Also, note that my Twitter subscriber count got a HUGE boost because I was recently subscribed to by the wildly popular Google account on Twitter.

• Retention is a bit harder to assess.

For a while, I used the third party service Twitterless to let me know who unsubscribed from my feed each day. Seemed like I lost about a follower a day on Twitter, which was a little depressing, so I'm glad that feature of Twitterless ceased to function a while back. Though I've culled my own Facebook friend list, I haven't really noticed if/when my friends have unfriended me there. And I've also not tracked/noticed people unsubscribing from me on Friendfeed, though I'm sure it's happened, despite the consistently scintillating quality of my FF posts (HAH!).

• Attention: Not sure how I could possibly measure that. There's no user-available "analytics for Friendfeed / Facebook / Twitter" that I know of. Bummer.
• Engagement, or click-thru rate... in the past, I've found that I've gotten proportionally the most clicks from Twitter contacts, followed by Facebook and then Friendfeed.

Contemplating Attention and Engagement... I'm guessing that Friendfeed's generally-helpful/intriguing "Friend of Friend" option could nonetheless be substantially diluting the total attention that feeds-of-friends get. In other words, when someone subscribes to me on Friendfeed, they then start getting (by default) a stream of not only my content, but also the content of my friends' items I comment on or Like. More to look at means, understandably, attention spread across more items = less time looking at my items. Then again, one could argue that this is balanced out by the fact that people who aren't subscribed to me are likely to be seeing my items in their feeds when their friends Like or comment upon my entries. Hmm.

I'm not quite sure why Facebook engagement seems to be proportionally so much higher than on the other services, but I think it has to do with the friendship-vs-content orientation of my respective contacts. More specifically, I believe my FB network consists of more strong / moderate friendship ties, whereas people following me on Twitter and FF may be more apt to be reading my stuff because, well, they like my stuff (funny comments, links) vs. liking me personally. So given this, when I asked for a quick favor, it makes sense that I'd get a higher response rate from friends vs. fans.

• Action is where things get a lot more complicated.

When looking at the magnitude of action -- that is to say, getting a single reply (minimal action) vs spawning a lengthy thread of comments (extended action) -- then the services are quite different from my experience. On Twitter and Facebook, I've found that I quite often get one reply or a small handful replies to my posts. On Friendfeed, more of my posts go without any comments, but... on Friendfeed, I'm more likely to see a post get a large collection of comments. This isn't surprising to me. Though Facebook has moved more towards facilitating a Friendfeed style of item+comment, Friendfeed's been IMHO by far the strongest service in town for conversations. In contrast, on Twitter it's quite easy to post an @ response, but rather frustrating to follow a conversation. I think this explains why I tend to see more robust conversations on Friendfeed, but more frequent (albeit less voluminous) replies on Facebook and Twitter.

The tone and content of a post also plays a large role in determining the extent of replies for me by service. Examples of post-types that are most likely to elicit replies on the various services (again, for me; your mileage may vary!)

- Facebook: "Having a rotten day, could use a hug!" [expression of emotion, change in personal status, in-joke shared amongst friends]

- Friendfeed: "Whoa, check out this robot who recites poetry! WANT! You, too?" [early link to article highlighting a new geek toy or popular geek meme, profound observations or statements of concern, anything about the Kindle, Apple, or Obama]

- Twitter: "At big electronics store in Japan. Should I buy digital camera here or wait 'til Korea?" [questions that don't demand a complicated response, simple but unexpected notes (e.g., "Now in Bora Bora for 3 hours!", "Just got engaged!")]

General caveats:

• Interconnection: Lots of interconnection between the services! Twitter is integrated into FF and FB, for instance. However, I don't import my twitter feed into my Facebook account, and I also immediately deleted the twitter-post in Friendfeed to help mitigate this issue.
• Facebook UI change: Facebook just switched over to a new format. This could have increased or decreased attention to my link.
• Timing: The timing wasn't necessarily optimal. Posting it so late on Thu night meant that -- by the time most people accessed their account on the various services -- they likely already had a ton to look at... e.g., my post was no longer "fresh" at that point.

Personal caveats/notes:

• Difference in contact symmetry:
  Anyone can follow me on Twitter and FF (assymetry / self-selection), but I pick (and am picky about) who I friend on FB (due to both its symmetrical friends model and my own preferences).


• Difference in contact type:
  My contacts on FB are far less geeky than my contacts on the other services. They also tend to be typically personal friends rather than acquaintances or fans. In contrast, my contacts on Twitter seem to be largely online marketers, SEOs, and geeks. Same on FF, but with a much higher emphasis of online marketing / uber-geeky folks who are deeply excited about stuff online. Many of my FB friends just dabble a little bit online and most tend to be buddies from school, work, dance, etc.


• Why Friendfeed / Facebook / Twitter and not [blah blah blah]?
  Because these are the social networking/broadcasting-type services I predominantly use. I have also tried Friendster, Myspace, Orkut, Tribe, Multiply, Jaiku, and likely many other services I've forgotten about, but the three above are the ones I'm active on.

And now for some notes from the respondents:

In addition to the main survey question asking people where they clicked on the link from, I also invited people to leave a freeform comment. I'm not sharing all of them (due to privacy concerns), but have excerpted (and replied to in brackets) some below:

• Did worry it might implode my computer with malware, but hey, I'm leaving the company in two weeks! :-)[Yeah, I hadn't even thought of how my impersonal-sounding click-here request might be misperceived. Wonder if that lowered the clickthru rate?]


• You're my hero, Adam!
  [Aw, and you wrote that even before you read this blatheringly long blog post. Hope you still feel the same way :-)]


• Uh, it's WAY too soon to be talking engagement -- I mean you just confirmed we were FRIENDS yesterday!
  [What if I added you to my Top Friends app list in FB? Would that win your heart?]


• When you write up the results, please keep emphasizing that these are just your friends and try not to generalize.:-D
  [I hope I've suitably emphasized that!]


• Although I clicked through from FB because I have FB chat turned on in Pidgin and it shows me status updates right there.
  [That's a very good point. I wasn't thinking about how use of third party tools could skew this experiment.]

• Good idea Adam, though I wonder if it may be slightly different results for others. After all, you are "the Adam Lasnik". [I doubt my micro-celebrity status (in the webmaster world) would affect things one way or the other. Might be responsible for getting me more subscribers on Twitter and Friendfeed, but that's why I listed proportional results above :-)].

I also got another interesting comment which further accentuates the complication involving the use of third party tools with these services... and also touches upon the frustration of data silos:

Hmm, I think you're missing a subtlety. I selected Facebook because that was the source of the thing I saw. However, where I actually saw it was in Google Reader. I feel like I spend a lot of time trying to get Facebook stuff *out* of Facebook and into the applications I prefer to use. FB does not really make this as easy as it should be. Also, I usually end up getting stuck with two copies of things when someone, for example, imports their Twitter posts to FB. But at least in Reader I can really quickly scan all the updates in a list, skimming over the duplicate or uninteresting ones. (I just wish I could get a FB feed for a friends sub-list!)

Oh, and Vinny... thanks for the hat! :-)

Wow, that experiment was neato! Can I do that, too? Should I do it? Are you gonna repeat it to see how things change?!

Yep! Technically. Probably not. Unlikely.

Frankly, I'm guessing my friends would get highly annoyed with me if I identically repeated this experiment, and -- worse yet -- I bet that people in the webosphere would get really pissed at you (and me) if this experiment was duplicated ad nauseum. So sorry, I've got first-mover advantage. Take solace in the fact that I likely won't get rich and famous from this, though. Unless I'm offered a book deal along the lines of, "A Completely Unscientific Experiment Exploring User Engagement With Three Darlings of the Interwebs -- The Untold Story" for one MILLION dollars. But that also seems at least somewhat unlikely.

Thanks for reading, though! And hey, while you're at it, go subscribe to my Friendfeed and Twitter streams :D

* * * 

P.S. -- You're welcome to check out the click-thru data of my original request via bit.ly :-D.

* * *

And now... YOUR turn!

Do my experiences match yours? Do you see similar demographic differences in your friend/follower sets amongst the services? What kind of response rates have YOU seen? Other thoughts?

Gmail tip: Use "Quick Links" to help you find important mail quickly

Do you use Gmail?  The new “Quick Links” feature, offered via Google’s Gmail Labs project, can help save you time and highlight important mail.

WHAT QUICK LINKS DOES
Think of it as sort of a “Saved searches” feature :-D.  Basically, you can take any search and “save” it so that it appears as an option under a Quick Links menu on the lefthand side of your Gmail screen.  For instance, one of my favorite quick links is this saved search: “TO:me IN:inbox.”  When I click on this link now, it shows me all mail that’s been sent to me personally that’s still in my inbox, weeding out all the “junk” bulk mail… e.g., newsletters, ads from vendors, etc.  Other options could be showing mail just from a specific time period that has attachments, mail that is starred but not in your inbox, etc.

HOW TO GET THE QUICK LINKS FEATURE IN YOUR GMAIL
1) Go to your Gmail.
2) Click on “Settings” at the top of the page.
3) Then click on “Labs”
4) You’ll find many add-ons, or labs features which may interest you.  Enable “Quick Links” and/or any other labs features you like.
5) Lastly, click “Save changes” at the bottom.

HOW TO USE QUICK LINKS
1) Type in any search into Gmail (in the regular search bar, or using the Advanced Search).
2) Click “Add Quick Link” on the lefthand side of your Gmail page.  Voila! :-D

*  *  *

For those of you who have used Quick Links, what are some of the favorite / most useful / most creative links you’ve created?

Embedding a chat room with Meebo... just testing.

Intriguing.  I’m attempting to embed a Meebo chat room below.  I’ll keep this window open for a while, and will make sure to be here at 7pm PST (10pm EST) today, Sunday.

All "friends" aren't created equal! (why we need better relationship marking in social networks)

I’m planning on quitting twitter.  Flickr—at least as a social site—is getting frustratingly unwieldly.  You know why?  Because pretty much all social sites like this treat all my friends, co-workers, acquaintances, online buddies the same, and it’s a big, stupid, completely off-putting mess!

Sure, these services want to reduce complexity… they know that many folks may not want to take the time to put friends into groups.  And eventually, some really smart service is going to actually do it automatically for me (“Hmm… Adam only looks at Fred’s pictures once in a while, but he looks at Mary’s photos minutes after he’s notified of her updates…”).

Look, I’m not an insanely popular guy.  But I have over 600 people in my personal contacts folder.  I regularly interact with tons people at work, and sincerely care (personally) about at least a dozen or two of ‘em (to the point where I want to see their travel photos, want to know when they’re excited or depressed, etc.).  But when people have “friended” me on Twitter or Flickr, I’ve often unselectively reciprocated… and now I’m just getting overloaded.  Too much info.  Too much info I do not care about.

And this is where nearly all social services seem to get things wrong.  At risk of being callous, I could pretty much care less if a distant acquaintance is having an off day or just uploaded photos of his Aunt Elda’s wedding.  But I sure as hell want to know if my office mate is about to arrive at work grouchy or an awesome friend in a different timezone is having a rough week, and so on.  To the extent that social services of all types can eventually alert us to events and feelings that mean a lot to us, that’s a huge win.

Flickr lets me mark someone as a contact, friend, or family.  That’s somewhat useful, but I’d say that these distinctions barely scratch the surface in helping me manage photostreams or viewing permissions.

Facebook lets me mark someone as a “limited friend” (is that like “single serving friends” from Fight Club? :-P), but—again—that’s not all that helpful. 

Why can’t I rank my contacts’ importance on a scale from 1-10… 10 being I want to know their every feeling and action and 1 being I don’t want to be bugged by any notifications ‘bout them unless they’re getting married… and to a hot celebrity.  Or in addition to / instead of degrees of that sort, why can’t I indicate that I want monthly digests of most my contacts, weekly digests of a few, and daily or even as-it-happens updates on my select group of best-friends?

*  *  *

And it’s not just what I want to know, it’s also about what I want to share.  There are very different things I want to share with my Mom, my recent-ex-girlfriend, most of my colleagues, my closest friends, my roommate, and so on.  I should be able to put my contacts into “share groups”—with easily check-box-able overriding options per shared item—and then quickly and powerfully indicate which groups I want receiving which update or types of updates.

And, again, to the extent to which my preferences and habits can be algorithmically determined (albeit manually overridable) and designed to streamline my sharing and discovery choices, that’s super!  Facebook’s gotta know whose wall I post on most often, who I tag in most of my photos, and so on.  Surely it can make educated guesses on the strength of our ties.

Oh, and just to make things more complicated… it’s not all about only the strength of ties… it’s about context.  Many of my colleagues and friends get excited about news about new geek toys or web sites.  Other friends are in my lindy hop (swing dancing) group, and many of them couldn’t care less about the newest Web 2.0 doodad.

So I may want to share tech stuff with some friends, arts stuff with others, personal musings and rants with close buddies, and so on.  Complicated, yes, and likely with no absolute/easy answers.  But at least the social networking/sharing services could try a bit harder! :-D

*  *  *

So probably this week is when I’m gonna uninstall twitteroo and give up on both reading and posting occasional updates.  It’s not just a matter of signal vs. noise, which I lamented earlier, but the complete lack of any sort of targeting, grouping, etc.  There are days in which I really do want to read the blatherings of my fellow SEO/SEM/Search-engine geeks.  But some days I just want to know if a good friend is happy or sad.  Or if another friend finally bought her airplane tickets to come back to the States.  Right now, I can neither selectively broadcast nor read notes sorted/filtered by strength or type of ties.  And that’s jarring, frustrating, distracting, and whole ton of other negative adjectives.

I’m not going to delete my Twitter account just yet.  In case it’s not clear, I think there are some compelling cases for this sort of thing… and I’m hoping that eventually the service will help me share and glean what my friends and I are “doing now” with greater granularity and thoughtfulness.

And indeed, I hope other services eventually wise-up, too.  MySpace may be the most popular social network, but it is so (I’m confidently sure) only because of the obnoxiously strong power of the network effect, not because it really supports social sharing and discovery in an effective way.  The sooner other services learn that not all relationships are equal, the sooner the online world will truly help us manage and improve our (real, offline) relationships.

*  *  *

Updated on June 18, 2007:
I don’t always agree with Robert Scoble’s take on communications and networking and I’m frankly displeased that he’s invoked “nazis” for something far from evil, but I nonetheless think he makes some excellent points (related to my rant above) in his blog entry “Social networks as “friend” Nazi (design flaws in Facebook, Jaiku, Twitter).”

Stop being a twit on twitter!

Don’t get the wrong idea.  Despite having a cold and ironically being hot in an apartment with no airconditioning, I’m not unhappy with my life.  True, I’m a bit cranky again, but I’m not deeply bummed.  Just ornery and snotty.

Today, it was just a little thing that triggered my annoyance:  For perhaps one of the last times, I read yet another asinine tweet on Twitter.  In an effort to not call out a specific (normally nice and sensible) fellow, I’ll slightly obscure it thusly: “Going to the bathroom.”

Going to the bathroom.  We all do it.  We all know we do it.  It’s not particularly exciting—at least typically—and it’s hardly the thing a normal person would announce unless there’s some particular need-to-know (roomies in a one bedroom apartment, little kids asking to be excused from a class, etc.).  But make it Web 2.0 and, wheee, suddenly people believe that they need to share such crap with others… or that others have even a faint interest in reading such banal nonsense.

So, Adam, I imagine you retorting, chill out and just unsubscribe from those people that tweet lamely.  I would, except every once in a while, these same folks refreshingly tweet something interesting or useful… or even a note or question directed specifically @me.

It’s like how your Aunt Frida (hopefully no longer) sends you teeth-gnashingly stupid forwards.  Bill Gates is gonna give you a million bucks.  P&G supports satan worship.

Frida is a good person, a well-meaning lady, but sometimes she just doesn’t THINK before she hits “send.”  And, clearly, you don’t want to filter her notes into your junk mail because at least one out of every ten notes she sends is something you really *do* want to read… a happy-birthday wish, a sad revelation about her health, or even just a simple cute “I’m thinking about you :-D.”

Thankfully, nearly all of my friends and relatives have gotten smarter about e-mail etiquette.  When are (normally quite intelligent and thoughtful) people gonna wise up about Twitter?

At risk of being told, “Dude, who the bleep do you think you are to tell us what to do?” I’m going to, well, suggest what I think is optimal Twitter usage.  You sure as heck don’t have to conform to my personal views on Good Twittering, but I’m more likely to read / less likely to unsubscribe from your tweets if you do :-D.

I believe that the following things make sense to post on Twitter:

• MOOD:  How you’re feeling (“Kind of sick; apologies if I take longer than usual to reply to e-mails.”)
• QUEST:  What you’re looking for or struggling with (“Dang, no matter how hard I try, I can’t find Hanuta in Bay Area stores.  If you don’t know the joys of Hanuta… Google it! :D”)
• ACTION:  What you’re doing (“Struggling with a blog post.  Hate sounding so holier-than-thou, but sometimes a good rant is needed, you know?”)
• ANTICIPATION:  What you’re looking forward to (“Planning a trip to Seattle, Montreal and Toronto… can’t wait!  Anyone got tips?  E-mail me!”)
• FILTERING:  What you find interesting (“Fascinating article on…”)

The following ought to result in you getting slapped with a wet e-noodle and subjected to watching hours of old Jerry Springer videos with the sound real loud:

• CHEESE SANDWICH:  What you’re doing that is totally boring / regular / etc. (“Having lunch” or “Reading my e-mail”...)
• BORINGLY PERSONAL:  What you’re writing is positively of interest to only one person (“Hey Fred… please don’t forget to return that book!” or “@Mary, thanks!”)  Try e-mail.  Or IM.  Or (gasp) the phone!
• BLOGVERTISING:  What you’re blogging.  Each and every time.  For the love of RSS, if I wanted to be notified of your *every* post, I’d subscribe to your feed. 

*  *  *

Look, I haven’t said anything sooner ‘cause I worred about offending people… folks that I like and respect.  And there’s been plenty of Twitter-hate already.  But I don’t hate Twitter… I am just deeply frustrated by what I perceive as the wasting of its potential.  It’d be so neat to have a quick window into friends’ and colleagues life.  I care when my friends are tired.  I’m curious to know when my colleagues are traveling to a conference.  Even something as seemingly boring as “Filling up junky ‘92 Sentra en route to Chicago.  Why didn’t I fly?!” tells me what kind of car you have, that you’re on a trip, that you’re frustrated, and you’re going to Chicago.  Contrast that with the absolutely useless waste of space: “At the gas station.”  Blegh!

So I implore you, before I feel compelled to uninstall Twitteroo and delete my account—think just a brief moment before you tweet.  Ask yourself:

• Will more than one or two people in the world care about this?
• Can I add even a smidgen more detail to make this informative or entertaining?

Please… and thank you!

Where is Adam (online)? My participation in and thoughts about various presence/sharing services

In case you're interested in stalking me and/or knowing what my thoughts are on various online presence / networking / bookmarking sites I have tried, here's a (completely unscientific, wholly biased, unabashedly uncomprehensive, and generally of questionable use) list :-D

FYI, I'm findable via my full name on the services below unless noted otherwise.  And sites owned/operated by Google are indicated by [g], as a brief disclaimer/reminder since I work for Google (but not on any of the
products or product-types below).

Social networking

• Facebook
  - a social networking site which used to be used primarily by college students (perhaps still is) and is gaining fame and respect in new quarters
  
  It's my favorite social networking service by far. I belong to the Google, San Francisco, Indiana University, and Northwestern University groups, and generally only add friends, co-workers, professional acquaintances I know decently well from meeting in person, and so on. I've actually found this to be useful not for making new friends, but rather for catching interesting info and fun tidbits and insights into my current friends' lives. I am impressed with nearly all aspects of this site: the strong configurability of privacy options, the reasonably-clean and standardized views*, decent navigability, and overall utility. I haven't really gotten into the groups, though, which mostly seem like exercises in humor and/or vanity.
  
  *This just in: According to Eliot on Wired, Facebook may be opening up its profile pages to widgets. Given the smart people I know that have recently been hired to work at Facebook, I can only hope that the service won't be horrifically MySpaced (uglified to hell and made practically unusable). But hey, if things turn south, I'll at least have people I can poke about it!
• Friendster
  - one of the first social networking sites, now apparently a haven for lonely Filipinos.
  
  I have an account here, but almost never log in. Some nice integration, I suppose, but nothing that really interests me. The brash obnoxious ads are a turnoff. And regarding the demographic reference... it's more a puzzled commentary on how various services (Orkut, Friendster, probably others) end up becoming so particularly popular in a handful of countries. I suppose much of this could be explained by the network effect (e.g., some popular Filipinos became active on Friendster, invited their friends...), but I can't help but wonder if UI / User Experience interlaces in interesting way with cultural preferences and expectations. Put more pedestrianly... I wonder what it is about, say, Friendster that causes it to appeal so much to Filipinos? (and Orkut to Brazillians, etc.) I bet someone has studied this. Paging danah...? :-D
• Orkut
  - a quirky social networking experiment by a Google engineer, now noted for its loyal userbase outside of the USA.
  
  Ah, not much to say about the service at this point. I no longer use it, but hey, many many millions of people around the world love it.
• Multiply
  - What's a total of seventeen users times practically zero awareness? Join this service to find
  out!
  
  Seemed interesting initially, but it was hobbled by a confusing interface and an anemic adoption rate. I think maybe two of my friends at most use this service nowadays.
• MySpace
  - Just like what you'd get if you had a spastic monkey doing design, an evil genius devising navigation (how many ad views per simple action?), and a bunch of lemmings for fans.
  
  Aaaaagh! Make it stop. Make it stop! At least make it stop blinking-spazzing-playing-seven-clips-simultaneously and generally serving as an affront to aesthetics, art, common sense, and humanity. To
  preserve what's left of my sanity, I prefer to view the success of this monstrosity as due purely to the network effect (it was an early entrant, everyones' friends were on MySpace, yadda yadda). Anything else is just too depressing. And yes, I have an account here only so my surprisingly-less-enlightened friends will quit bugging me to establish one, so I suppose that makes me mildly hypocritical.
• Tribe
  - Want to meet artsy, hippie, burning-man types? This is your scene :-D
  
  I like the threadedness of the message forums, but the site feels a bit cluttered and unfocused. Plus... again, sorry to bring up the network effect, but... most of my friends outside of the Bay Area are elsewhere online.

Professional networking

• Ecademy
  - The professional networking site that's the non-American version of LinkedIn. But more
  expensive.
  
  Tried it once. Was annoyed at the apparent lack of any free level of service, so that was the end of that. I didn't see anything about this service worth paying for that I couldn't find via other online or  offline means.
• Ryze
  - "Hi, I'm a stay-at-home marketer. Would you like to join the most amazing wealth creation
  scheme that combines hot dogs, Buddhist monks, and..."
  
  Used to use this professional networking service quite a bit, but now it feels relatively empty and multi-level-marketing focused.


• LinkedIn
  - Like any other powerful tool online or offline; great if you use it wisely, potentially painful if you don't.
  
  I like this service overall. I've not used it much for my own networking, but I have definitely been pleased to help others... pass along legitimate requests, and so on. The key is not treating it like MySpace (adding everyone who requests you to add them), but rather judiciously linking to people you trust and who trust you... ideally, folks you have professional ties with or can similarly vouch for.

Resource sharing / reviewing / bookmarking

• CitySearch
  - Big, colorful, commercial, and overstuffed site that features user-submitted reviews on restaurants, hairdressers, etc.
  
  Used to use this, but have moved over to Yelp, which seems -- if not more accurate -- at least more interesting, more entertaining, and slightly-less cluttered and commercial.
• Del.icio.us
  - Lamely named social bookmarking site that's been (sort of) superceded by more robust and feature-rich offerings and is now owned by Yahoo
  
  The geek "Web 2.0" (ack, I feel dirty already) crowd latched onto this early on, and I never quite got the appeal. Other services have offered considerably more features... of particular note, the ability to take a searchable "snapshot" of the page when it's bookmarked for easier retrieval later. On the flip side, this site had (and still has) an admirably spartan feel to it. No ads (that I can see), and no clutter. For those who crave APIs, minimalist feature sets, and simple bookmark sharing, del.icio.us could still be a reasonably good pick.
• Digg
  - Watch out, here comes the highly-opinionated and non-buying mobs! (is so! is not! yeah, well, your mamma was an SEO! LOLZ!!!!!!!1)Okay, so perhaps that's a bit unfair. Digg was an interesting idea and still continues to surface some noteworthy or at least entertaining sites. But, as with many fine ideas, it's been creaking at the seams
  due to its mass adoption and resultant oft-moblike/groupthink feel. Anyway, I no longer check this site with any regularity... not enough time, too poor signal/noise ratio.
• Google Reader -
  An outstanding feed-reader that's easy and fun to useSure, I'm biased, but after an unsuccessful first version, the Reader team's got their groove goin' on. Nifty keyboard shortcuts (hit ? to see 'em!), a pleasant UI, and the capability (which I sadly haven't used yet) to make any of your tags/folders publicly-viewable. Now if they'd just combine this with a
  public-version of Google Bookmarks... :-D [g]


• StumbleUpon
  - A serendipitous and often wondrous way to surf the Web and discover cool stuffI shied away from this service for ages; I don't have time to aimlessly "stumble" around the Web! But I've been slowly using it more, and finding it has useful features and unearths cool sites for me :-D.
  [My Stumbleupon page]
• Yelp
  - Irreverent, sometimes painfully hip, but typically entertaining and often useful
  
  Want consistently unbiased and deeply thoughtful reviews of restaurants and other local places? Then Yelp may or may not be your cup of tea. But if you're patient and have a good sense of humor, you can often glean quite a bit of helpful info about various places around town. The conversations in the Talk section can be surprisingly cathartic, friendly, and even useful. [My reviews]

Photo sharing

• Flickr
  - The most active and diverse photo sharing site I've ever seen, with a doggedly committed community-oriented management
  
  Sure, they've gotten a lot of flack after getting absorbed by Yahoo. Yes, like on any user-generated-content-site, there's bound to be crap, controversy, jerk-offs, and so on. But that aside, Flickr undeniably has an astounding number of gorgeous, hilarious, and downright captivating photos taken by talented photographers as active members. And speaking of active members... the Flickr crowd is hugely loyal, passionate, and not shy :-D. [My photos]
• Fotki
  - The skinnable and surprisingly easy-to-use popular photo site you've never heard of
  
  Sets within sets! While Flickrites are still begging for this, Fotki's had it for ages. It also has journals and a bunch of other doodads that are done better elsewhere, but thankfully that stuff doesn't clutter up the simple-yet-powerful photo interface. $30/year gets you unlimited storage and very cheap (and good!) prints. [My photos]
• PicasaWeb
  - Jarringly basic and spartan for geeks, surprisingly easy-to-use for normal people (who just want to easily share their photos with their family)
  
  Want to join a feature-rich photo site with great sense of community? This ain't it. But it's reliable and -- as a very nice bonus -- you can upload your videos to be displayed within your galleries (Google Video style). Best hidden feature: use the right and left arrow keys to zoom through galleries and enjoy the pre-caching and the perfect-fit-to-your-display views. [My Photos] [g]
• Honorary mention: Smugmug
  - I've never used it, but really like the attitude of its CEO and the intense, friendly customer-focus he has pushed throughout his company.
  

Instant messaging

• Trillian
  (my choice at home) - Offered in both a free and more-powerful $25/year version, Trillian is mostly reliable and amazingly handy
  
  No matter how much I try to convince all my friends to use Google Talk ("GTalk"), a ton of 'em still insist on sticking with Yahoo! Messenger, AIM, or -- dog forbid -- MSN Messenger! A few of them even still use their AOL accounts for e-mail; I've disowned those folks... but hey, I digress
  those other apps at the same time and having my computer grind to a halt, I use Trillian at home, which automatically logs me into all the networks and displays my buddies in a totally customizable and wonderfully compact single-column view. Downside? Sometimes connectivity to different networks is flakey. And though they promise a Web-based version Real Soon Now (tm), it's seemingly impossible at present to easily sync one's Trillian account across computers, so your chat history gets split between your desktop and laptop and so on. But hey, one app to rule them all? Pretty damn useful!
• Google Talk (my choice away from home) -
  Simple, great voice quality, usefully integrated into Gmail (and elsewhere).
  
  It's lightweight, fast, and just works. I really like how chats are (optionally) archived in my Gmail account, so I don't have to remember whether I e-mailed a friend or chatted with her about an upcoming party... I can do one search and know for sure that I forgot to invite her! [g]
  

Other

• Plaxo
  - "I'm updating my addressbook..." aaaaagh! Thankfully, Plaxo is much, much more than this.
  
  This is one of those sites despised by many geeks and, in fairness, journalists and other popular peeps who at least previously got deluged by the perfect storm created by clueless n00bs and a suboptimal viral approach pushed by Plaxo in the early days. With an improved emphasis on improving the existing network rather than wildly expanding it, Plaxo is now increasingly loved by millions of folks (like me!) who appreciate the service's (mostly free) offerings. The core feature which I use and find invaluable is the sync'ing of my friends' contact info into my various addressbooks. Plaxo has recently announced that their upcoming 3.0 version (ah, gotta love engineers' creative naming skills) will also support
  Gmail addressbooks. w00t!!! Disclaimer: I was a contractor with Plaxo a couple of years ago.
• Twitter
  - Look, I'm having a cheese sandwich! I just burped. I tat i taw a putty kat! i'm a twit therefore i am. Just got my cell phone bill, lemme open it up and... AAAAAAAGH!Twitter -- the oft-stultifyingly boring but oh-so-Web-2.0-utility that lets you, uh, share "what are you doing now?" ("I'm picking my nose, but it's really hard to do while typing...") Maybe it'd be more
  interesting if I had more friends on it. Feel free to twit (?) me at http://www.twitter.com/thatadamguy.

Gmail user? The new "murder," er, "mute" function will have you crying tears of joy

Lots of folks have noticed that five very cool new features debuted today in Gmail:
1) Enhanced UI, with Reply and other handy features placed at the top of conversations.
2) Notification when new messages have been made in the conversation since you started drafting your reply.
3) Forward an entire conversation (all messages).
4) Send chat messages to your friends using Gmail chat or GTalk even when they’re offline (the messages’ll be held for them).
5) Get Gmail on your mobile phone with a rich app (not just slow Web pages).

[Read more about these new gmail features]

But what I have to share with you is even more deliciously glorious… especially for those of you who are on lots of mailing lists or who have boring (albeit perhaps well-meaning) friends who just won’t shut up.

Friends, Romans, fellow GMail users… I introduce to you…

MURDER!

Oh wait, that’s not exactly right.  Officially, the new feature is called Mute Thread, or “Mute” for short.  Here’s how it works:

THE OLD WAY:
1) You’re reading some posts about the elections.
2) You were once excited about reading this stuff.
3) But at least one conversation is now on its 471th message.  You keep hitting Archive but the damn conversation keeps popping up every time someone makes a new post!
4) You’re ready to tear out your hair.  The posters’ hair.  Your keyboard’s hair.  Er, keys.
5) MAKE IT STOP!  MAKE IT STOP, PLEEEEEASE!

THE NEW WAY:
1) You get yet another annoying message in the same damn conversation that’s already been conversed to death.
2) You press the ‘m’ key.  Unless a message is written *directly* to you (e.g., your name is in the TO spot), you’ll never see that message in your inbox again!

In short, the Mute feature enables you to tell Gmail: “Archive this conversation AND all future posts in it… just have ‘em skip the inbox!”

[See official Gmail info on Mute]

I can think of only one downside to this feature at the moment:
If you filter your discussion list mail into separate labels (say, “Prolific Politics List”) and already have those posts skip the inbox… then the M key will sadly have no effect.  It doesn’t remove labels, it just creates a “get out of inbox free”

But that aside, I think this is a super-awesome feature, and one that—to my knowledge—is unique amongst major Webmail providers.

So, go ahead, indulge in those high-traffic lists again.  And don’t hesitate to threaten any annoying poster, “Dude, if you write one more word about Rummie, you’re getting SO m’d!”

DISCLAIMERS:  I work for Google.  I am not on the Gmail team.

International calling / SMS rates -- Why so high?

Okay, BLADAM friends, apologies for two rants in a row (in a sadly otherwise dry AdamBloggingSeason), but… why does T-mobile—an international company—charge so much for international calling, roaming, and texting?

And Cingular—the only other American mobile phone company I know of that supports international roaming—has rates that are even worse, from what I gather.

Anyway, on T-Mobile, the rates for me to call from the U.S. overseas are more than triple what I’d pay via a discount calling card or even AT&T Callvantage.  Calling from overseas to *anywhere* ranges from about $1 to $4 a minute for incoming OR outgoing calls.

But what *really* gets my hide is T-Mobile’s charge for text messages sent to and from my friends in Europe.  15 cents each for me to send a handful of text characters, and 35 cents each to receive the same.  What the heck?!  I know, I know, this voluminous amount of data has to potentially pass through companies that aren’t T-Mobile, but still!  And no, T-Mobile’s varied texting-bundle plans do *not* include international SMSes.

I’ve played with various SMS options online, but haven’t found any to be reliable for either sending or receiving text messages internationally.  Oh lazyweb, anyone know of good options? (other than calling up T-Mobile and telling them they’re provincial jerks for their usurious rates, which, I admit, doesn’t exactly qualify as a good option)

Bloglines, Newzcrawler... and the new Google Reader

A few weeks ago, I already started transitioning all of my feeds off of Bloglines. Why?
- It's slow.
- It's down too often.
- Reorganizing feeds (moving them to different folders, etc.) is worse than being stuck in a closet with Vanna White. Night after night after night after night.
- It's similarly painful to mark just a few articles in a feed as read or unread.

I've moved over to Newzcrawler, a stellar newsreader app for Windows. Beyond just tons of cool power features, it also lets me pretty easily sync my feeds between my desktop and laptop using an external FTP site (okay, geeky, I know).

* * *

With that said, I've still been hoping to see some vast improvements in the online-reader front. Rojo seems to be getting better. And I've heard rumblings over other cool services as well. When I learned today that Google had entered this space, I was extremely excited. Please, I thought, give us another Gmail. Or Maps! :D If not for me, at least for my less-geeky friends whom I'm dying to get into feed reading.

So far, alas, I'm rather disappointed in the Google Reader. I know it'll get better, but for now, Googlers...

1) It's too cluttered and overwhelming.
Hide some stuff. I know that sounds counterintuitive, but blog text blends into all the other text and I find it just tiring to spend more than a few minutes in Reader.

2) No mouseovers?!

3) Ambiguities
Is "Read items" a description or an action? Okay, admittedly this is rather a nitpick, but it is a top-line link ;-).

4) Search what?!
When I see a search box at the top of the page, I expect to be able to search the content-in-context. In other words, if I'm in my Gmail account, I expect to search my mail. If I'm in Reader, I expect to search for a string in my read and/or unread feed items. From an expected user-action standpoint, what's likely to be more common: adding new feeds, or working with the feeds one already has?

5) Save me from overload!
There's no way to mark an entire feed as read. Or group of feeds.

6) Why the weird quasi-breadcrumbs in center focus?!
Why do I want to see "New Subscription" "New Subscription" article article article... Just show me new articles. If I want to see what I'm subscribed to, I'll go to the Your Subscriptions tab! :-)

* * *

Other quick suggestions/observations:
- Add a space in "Subscriptions(#)" to make it "Subscriptions (#)"
- Include a shortcut key to go to the pulldown menus. Actually, quit using HTML-style pulldown menus as action-triggers. It's not good UI, IMHO, and it's confusing when more than one says "More actions..." (plus with more than one on a page, that sort of makes it hard to use a keyboard shortcut)
- Allow for the multi-selection (and from there, tagging) of feeds.
- Include a feedback link directly on the Reader page.
- Enable us to see ALL articles from a given feed in one fell swoop (ala Bloglines)
- Let us easily sort, reposition, edit, and delete labels and sets of labels.
- BUG: I unsubscribed from a feed, it's outta my list, but I'm still seeing items for it.
- Gimme feed icons, please! When I have 200+ feeds, it's how I can most easily spot some of my favs :-)
- Dim links if they're not applicable (e.g., dim the Page Up link if I'm already at the top)
- I tagged an entry. How do I search for it by tag now? (I only see how I can filter feed tags)

* * *

Okay, let me be a LITTLE less of a jerk here and note what I *DO* like about Reader:
- Keyboard shortcuts! :-)
- Ease of adding new feeds (by keyword, by title, by URL... very flexible!)
- Nice how the filter narrows as I type! (but it'd be even nicer if ESC cleared it)
- Pretty fast (excepting the short time earlier today when it was first released)

* * *

Anyway, I'll keep my fingers crossed that Google rapidly works on this beta, giving it top resources... rotating in seasoned PMs / APMs, providing needed equipment for scalability and so on. For now, though, I'll happily stick with Newzcrawler, and -- admittedly grudgingly -- suggest that my newbie friends start off with Bloglines for now.

Wikis will hit big time with Y! Whiteboard (another AdamPrediction)

My prediction:
Wikis have not yet hit critical mass, but they will by 2006 Q3 when I predict Yahoo! will unveil a well-integrated wiki feature called "Y! Whiteboards."

So what's a wiki?!
First, those in the un-know may be wondering what the heck a wiki is. Yeah, yeah, it sounds just as goofy as "blog," but it's worth getting to know.

A wiki is basically an application on the Web that lets practically anyone edit or even create pages and easily link them together. Think of it as an extendable set of whiteboards, with all interested folks having handy virtual dry-erase markers and erasers. It's a fabulous albeit admittedly not flawless solution enabling groups of people to collaborate on a particular topic or defined scope of topics.

Okay, gimme an example!
One of the grandest wikis of them all is Wikipedia, a massive free encyclopedia. Although not without controversies and challenges of its own, Wikipedia has inarguably grown up to be a valuable and impressive resource. And of course, it does have an entry on Wikis :-)

Or take my new humble wiki, "Lindy Hop Whiteboard Supreme." A distinguishing factor of the (hosted) software I'm using is that folks using Firefox and IE can use rich-text controls to edit pages. Even so, though, I've found contributions to be few and far between so far. :| [Want to try it out? Play in the playpen :-D]

So what does all of this have to do with Y!, and what on earth is a Yahoo! Whiteboard?

I'm glad you asked, but first, this C.M.A. disclaimer:
Before I spill all (my wild conjectures), let me clearly state up front that I have no insider Y! knowledge. I don't work there, I know few folks who do, and they don't tell me anything Y!ish anyway. So all of this is pure guesswork / passionate hoping :-D.

* * *

There are two things that have been holding back mass understanding and adoption of wikis, IMHO:

1) AWARENESS
Name a popular site appealing to non-geeks (e.g., ESPN, Disney, Google) that features wikis. Can't do it, eh? And go ahead, ask your neighbor if they like playing with wikis. You'll likely either get a blank stare or a slap.

2) USABILITY ISSUES
Translation from geek-speak: Wikis are generally painful to actually use. With most wikis, you have to learn "wiki markup" before you can author any nicely structured documents. Sure, many geeks'll argue that making something bold is really simple, yadda yadda... but ask those same geeks to create a multi-level bulleted list or drag-and-drop in some photos, and they'll excuse themselves with a "Wikis are just fine in plain text anyway!" They're lying. It's like the Web circa 1995; sometimes fun to look at, but contributing content is like getting a root canal. Without anaesthesia or a spell-checker.

Additionally, many wikis require you to register before you can contribute. People tend to be sick of giving out their e-mail address to yet another site and remembering yet another password.

* * *

Yahoo! can change all of that, and I think they will. Here's why:

1) Y! has experience with rich-text controls and increasingly is getting good at mass-consumer usability niceties.
Their new mail Web client is apparently fabulous, and based upon my experience with its predecessor (Oddpost), I believe it. Drag and drop deliciousness. Painless formatting. All good stuff for a wiki. Geeks will undoubtedly be able to optionally author pages in HTML; the rest of us can icon-click and shortcut-key our way to content-contribution bliss.

2) Wikis are sticky
Wikis tend to revolve around a specific topic, appeal to a specific demographic, and often illicit strong loyalty within group members. What does this mean? Well, for advertisers and, by extension, Y!'s beancounters, it's a cash cow that members milk themselves. :-)

3) Y! gets integration... and oh, is there integration potential!
Despite some glaring and frustrating resource allocation issues re: Y! Groups and related problems, I do think Y! has some good integration smarts. And imagine the coolness of a wiki, er, whiteboard (friendlier name) attached to each Y! Group, floated next to a Y! chat room, integrated into each Y!360 circle, included as part of one's new Y! Mail account for access-anywhere notes, and more. Or, hmm... how about Flickr group integration? That could be fun!

4) Y!'s large userbase will help facilitate attribution and accountability options.
Want to start or edit a Y! whiteboard? If you already have a Y! ID, you'll be good to go. And if not, well, that's quite an incentive to get one, eh? I envision that Y! whiteboards will include a strong and flexible permissioning structure, including read, edit, create, and delete permissions based upon:
- Y! ID (only these 8 Y! buddies can edit, but all can read...)
- Y! group membership (only members of Foo group can read, and only Foo administrators can edit)
- 360 affiliation (1st degree friend, 2nd degree, colleagues, best friends...)
- Y! mail (only I can edit, anyone in my Y! address book can read)

Plus the anti-spam possibilities are intriguing:
- Reverse all edits by ID
- Reverse all edits except for those from Foo group administrators
...and so on.

* * *

With the acquisition of Flickr, I'm optimistic that Y! is seeing the
'Online Community' light, and I am hoping for great things to come from the big Y!.

But why not Google? Or Amazon, Microsoft, AOL...
I don't think Google quite gets integration yet. And Google IDs aren't nearly as ubiquitous as Yahoo! IDs. Lastly, I've been quite disappointed with Google Groups. In a nutshell (and to my surprise and disappointment), I just don't think Google understands online communities or knows what to do with them. While the company's community communications are steadily improving, it still seems to focus on and be good at tools that empower individuals, not groups.

Amazon? That company isn't brave enough to embrace open community communications yet. I heard rumblings about an Amazon Social Network a while back, but... well, I'll believe it when I see it. Book reviews are pre-screened, Amazon.com badly botched its acquisition of PlanetAll (though admittedly that was 7+ years ago), and I just don't perceive Online Communities and collaborative sharing in Amazon.com's DNA at this time.

Microsoft? Too much of a control freak. While they've been doing wikis as part of their developer section (Channel9), and quite admirably in many ways, I just don't see them releasing such power to the general public. And if they did, it'd only work in IE... alienating about 50% of those folks who'd want to contribute to wikis in the first place. Robert Scoble, I encourage you to prove me wrong. :-) (I love that guy AND I love baiting him :-P)

AOL? They're a close partner of a company I'm doing consulting for, so I'm going to plead the fifth.

* * *

Any possible wiki-introducers that I've missed?
And do you think I'm on the mark, or will wikis be forever outside the mainstream... a pie-in-the-sky idea embraced primarily by geeks with too much time on their hands?

A review of Google Talk: Not yet revolutionary or compelling

As hyped in breathless news articles over the last few days, Google came out with their own IM (instant messaging) client this evening, Google Talk.



VERDICT: Clean, uncluttered, intuitive, and rather unexciting in its current version.

To be frank, I was (somewhat unfairly) disappointed with GTalk. Granted, it's just v1 of a public beta, so I shouldn't be so greedy, but... unlike with Gmail, I didn't see anything that made me go WOW!

Great voice quality? Sure, but Skype has already got that (and also already has a humungous userbase).

Ad-free (at least for now)? Yes, but so is Trillian, the IM app I already use and love. Incidentally, the Pro version of Trillian (a very worthwhile buy, IMHO), along with other clients, can connect to the Google network. This is because Google is smartly and unselfishly running their chat service on the open source Jabber platform.

And indeed, I'm having trouble seeing how Gtalk will gain traction for the time being. AIM, Yahoo, and MSN users really have little incentive to switch, especially since GTalk doesn't (at least yet) interoperate with the big 3. Trillian users... I can't see any reason why they'd switch, either. Skype folks? As noted above, I simply can't forsee any defections.

* * *

Let me sprinkle in a few positive notes, though:

You can run an 'embedded' form of GTalk within the Google Desktop sidebar. Exit GD, wait a few moments, then restart it. Click the little down-arrow at the top right, select ADD/REMOVE PANELS, and check off Google Talk.

Google Talk replaces the current Gmail Notifier, and that's handy.

GTalk scans your existing GMail address book, and lets you easily find and invite others to GTalk.

Oh, and there's a puzzling little easter egg in the About dialog box. Click on the ABOUT link in GTalk (or the sidebar component), and you'll notice this in light text towards the bottom:

play 23 21 13 16 21 19 . 7 1 13 5

Anyone wanna guess what the significance of that is? 23, undoubtedly, stands for the 23rd of August -- the release day, but the rest...? Maybe it's something that, if you can solve it, you get a Google job offer? Get cracking! :D

* * *

Anyway, I'm guessing (and hoping) that Googlers have a trick or two up their sleeve with regards to this new product.

What are your thoughts on this?

Gmail: Do we really want a TERABYTE of space? (a.k.a. "Be careful what you wish for...")

[See other BLADAM entries on Gmail... and also, as I've noted earlier, please do not ask me for an invite; I don't have any to spare... sorry! - Adam]

A number of Gmail users -- including yours truly -- have noticed that Gmail has seemingly upped the service storage limit to one terabyte. That's right... 1,000,000 -- one million -- megabytes (compared to Hotmail's two megabyte free storage limit, for instance). To put this into perspective... even if you got 250 e-mails each DAY (averaging four kilobytes each), it would take you about 2,739 YEARS to fill up this much space.

Of course, there's certainly the possibility that the new indication of a terabyte of space is a Gmail bug. Gmail is, after all, still very much in beta. But what if it's not a bug? What if the terabyte storage limit is really, well, real? Would we truly want a terabyte of space? Or would this lead to more problems than benefits?

Okay, those may sound like silly questions. After all, isn't storage space like money... the more the better?

Maybe not.

I'm beginning to ask myself about the issue not only of diminishing returns (at what point does the space-race become a bore?), but -- more importantly -- whether such a huge capacity could lead to some unexpected challenges.

True, Google search is excellent. But here's what worries me as I think about the consequences of really dumping in and keeping many tens of thousands of even the most banal / temporarily-significant e-mails into my Gmail account:

Let's say I know I'm looking for an e-mail I got a few years ago from a woman named Jen. Or maybe Jenny. Or Jennifer. Something like that. And we were talking about going on a skiing trip together. When I have 200,000 e-mails in Gmail...

- I have to remember to specify ("Jen" OR "Jenny" OR "Jennifer") AND ("ski" or "skiing") since Gmail doesn't support partial word searches (though admittedly this isn't different from what one must do now for this sort of search).

- I may be deluged by false positives... e.g., notes from travel agents named Jen/Jenny/Jennifer, friends talking about going skiing with their fiance Jen or colleague Jenny, an article in the New York Times written by journalist Jen Smith talking about a bank robbery by someone with a ski mask, and so on.

* * *

Even in searching my own 2-gig-or-so Outlook e-mail collection nowadays with a fabulous search tool ("LookOut"), I find myself increasingly regretful that I didn't throw away a lot of the newsletter e-mails, temporary "verify your subscription" e-mails, one word reply e-mails with a ton of quoting, and so on. Specifically, I'm starting to suspect that being a packrat -- and, in particular, having the ability AND encouragement to support this habit -- may not be all it's cracked up to be.

Don't get me wrong. I still love Gmail and think that, overall, it's a humungous step up from the miserly accounts one gets with Hotmail and Yahoo and so on. But at the same time, I wonder if people are prepared for potentially frustrating consequences of REALLY saving absolutely all their e-mails.

What do you think?

Added later the same day:
Google, please don't vengefully remove my terabyte of storage. I may be concerned, but I'm still greedy. And at my current rate of overall mail sending/receiving, I'd fill up a gig in 440 days! :O

Added May 19, 2004 (the next day)
Oops. Be careful what you diss; looking a gift horse in the mouth may cause the horse to kick you. Er, in this case, the extra storage has gone *poof*. Bummer.

And wait... adding to the confusion... some of my friends still show a 1TB limit in their Gmail account. Hmm!