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?

Time spent on social networks and the like - I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours

After having fallen hugely behind on browsing my Facebook newsfeed, Friendfeed, etc., I decided to see just how much time I had been spending during those “on top of it” days… and, by extension, how much time it’d take me to keep up each day.

Around 10pm last night, I “cleared out” my Reader, and picked a stopping point in Facebook and Friendfeed, so I could start fresh tonight (Monday) and see just how much would accumulate in 24 hours… and how long it’d take me to get through it.

So here are my numbers:

• Facebook:  Browsing (and commenting a bit) on a filtered newsfeed of one group of 270 friends:  20 minutes
• Friendfeed:  Browsing (and commenting/liking a bit) on a selected group comprised of about 80 friends:  8 minutes
• Twitter:  Browsed through unfiltered/ungrouped list via Brizzly (happy to offer invites to the first ten people who contact me):  12 minutes.
• Reader:  Browsing through my ??? feeds (and checking out a few original pages + adding a couple comments):  28 minutes (”???” because Reader never was able to load up anything when I clicked on “Manage my subscriptions.”  Bummer!  But I’m guessing I have over 200 feeds, of which probably 100 are updated at least weekly)

Just a bit over an hour.  Not that bad, right?  Except when you realize a few very important things:

• This is more than an hour every single day, including weekends, holidays, vacation times, etc.
• Worse yet (and more importantly), this does not include my personal e-mail, which I estimate would take me about an hour daily in and of itself to read and appropriately reply to messages.
• Nor does this include Wave.  Or Techmeme.  Or online News.  Or really anything else in the vast online world.
• It certainly doesn’t include the time I should be spending composing thoughtful e-mails to my Grandpa, to my friends near and far, and so on.  500 or so contacts in my addressbook… people that I care about.  If I e-mailed each one just once a month, that’s more than one substantive e-mail every day (in addition to the other replies).
• And it certainly doesn’t include corporate (work) mail and related stuff, but that’s well beyond the scope of this inquiry, in which I’m trying to pin down this...

How much of my free time do I spend (or would I have to spend each day) on “keeping up” with friends and news online?


*  *  *

Well, now you know, or at least have an idea about my time allocations. 
Where does your time go?
- How much time do you spend each day on Facebook, Twitter, etc.?  (Not sure?  Try what I did, and actually time it!)
- Is that more than you thought?  Less than you thought?  Does it make sense for you?

Curious to hear your numbers and your feelings on this…

[Edited at 1:18am October 13 to add: Twitter stats]

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.

Dependence on the Internet

Just going through some of my old files, and I came across an unpublished journal/rant thing re: my frustrations upon loss of Internet connectivity.  This was from back in *2001*.  Amazing how some dependent at least I was on the Internet back then!

Okay, I feel as blind as a bat right now.

My internet connection has been flakey for the last week or so, and that’s been frustrating, but now as I write this my connection is completely down, and I feel both furious and helpless.

I’d like to put postage on a few packages I put together for friends, but I can’t print postage when I can’t connect to the Internet, so I’ll have to drive to the post office and wait in line.

A friend from out of town is coming out to visit today, and I promised to take her around to some tourist traps, er, I mean tourist attractions.  But without the net, it’s a lot harder to figure out driving directions, get parking information, find out attraction prices, and so on.  I’m picking her up from the hotel she’s staying at in San Bruno, and I don’t even have a map of that city.  So I’ll have to call the hotel to get directions.  Except that I don’t have the number of the hotel, nor do I have a yellow pages handy.  Guess I’ll have to call Directory Assistance and pay 50 cents.

I was supposed to order some travelers checks and Swedish currency this morning for my trip, but I can’t compare rates online or even order the stuff without my net connection.

I had hoped to research and order some tourist guides on Stockholm and London, but I can’t do that either.

Before heading out with my friend today, I wanted to check on the latest weather report, but that’s a no-go as well.  Guess I’ll have to turn on the radio and sit through a bunch of crap in the meantime.

I wanted to look into some travelers insurance and health insurance for my trip, but I can’t imagine doing that without the Internet.

And of course, I can’t access any of my new e-mail, nor can I send any e-mail, and that drives me nuts.

Heh… wow.  Remember, I wrote this more than eight years ago!  And after re-reading it I got to thinking… my goodness… what would happen if the whole Internet went down for even just a day (particularly a businessday)?  And just to be fair, imagine that the SMS network was down, too, so teens couldn’t text each other.  Would people be panicking in the streets?  Curled up in a ball in bed?  Actually discover a book or sit down to play piano for a while?  Maybe actually talk to other people in cafes instead of clickety-clacking away?  I wonder.

Picking a domain name -- a helpful list

My friends have been telling me that “BLADAM” is a yucky name.  Bummer.  So I’ve shopping for a new domain name, and it’s not easy!  So many things to think about, and so many damn evil squatters (but that’s a different issue).

And I thought hmm, I’ve been mulling over so many guidelines and best practices in my mind, I might as well share them!  So, without further ado, here are some of my thoughts.

• Clear pronunciation: You—and many others—are probably going to mention the domain out loud.  Is it blADAM or BlaDAMN?  Is it PenIsland or… ahem :o.
• Spellable: Is it lasnik or lasnick?  spendia or spendea? Mind your homophones, too.  Was that 4you or 4u or foryou.whatever?  q or queue?
• International meaning: Do you want your domain to mean “smelly” in a popular non-English language?  Probably not.
• Brevity: osteoporosishealing may convey exactly what your drug does, but—forget spelling—try fitting that on a business card!
• Unspamminess: No matter how clever you think you are, some-domain-name-like-this.whatever will look like spam.  Honest.
• Got .com?: You may have found a fab .net domain name, but what if your clients/potential customers keep mailing the .com version?  Uh oh!  Try to get both, at least if you’re in the U.S.  Old habits die hard, unfortunately!
• Brand matching: If everyone knows you or your company under one name, choosing a cute marketing word as your domain name may not fly.  People will probably still type in companyname.com into their browser.
• Cost: Some random TLD (e.g., .ly) may have their registrations on sale this month, but what about when you renew?  .com and .net (and the TLDs of big countries) will likely stay reasonably affordable.  .vanity TLDs?  Possibly not.
• Legal stuff: Using a major (or even minor) brand’s name in your domain name may seem like flattery, but it may get you nowhere but in trouble.
• Expandability: Isn’t it a good thing that Amazon.com didn’t start off as books.com?  This also means “BlogOfFred.com” may be a bad idea if you think you might add a wiki or forum later.  Or, more importantly, if your name’s not Fred.

Any items I forgot?  Post YOUR thoughts and ideas below :-D

P.S.—If you’re searching for domains, check out DomainTools and domai.nr, two of my favorite sites in this space.

Pandora Mobile highlights awesomeness but also severe lame-itude

Do you know Pandora?  If you’re in the United States, where Pandora is legally available, you may have come to enjoy this awesome uber-customizable music radio over the past years.  If you’re not in the U.S., perhaps you’ve discovered the beauty of anonymous proxies :cough:, which I’m not going to mention here :p.

But perhaps you didn’t know that Pandora has become available on mobile phones!  More good news:  It’s available for free on phones that run the Windows Mobile operating system, free on Sprint phones, and free on (some versions of) BlackBerry phones.  Ironically, it’s also free on the iPhone, and I say ironically because AT&T apparently is charging—I swear I am not making this up—$8.95 per month to its other mobile customers for the privileges of using Pandora.  I mean, I love Pandora and all, but even if I were insane enough to be contributing to the income of the evilness that is AT&T, I sure as heck wouldn’t fork over that much dough for Pandora.  For an on-demand mobile music service?  Perhaps.  But for streaming radio?  You’ve got to be kidding.

One other note on the Pandora Mobile offerings:  Apparently, I’m not supposed to be able to access Pandora Mobile because T-Mobile phones are not supported.  Which is odd, because I’m enjoying streaming music via Pandora on my BlackBerry Curve (on T-Mobile) right now.  Go figure.  I also shouldn’t mention that I was also able to do this while in Ireland a couple of weeks ago (listening to, appropriately enough, The Corrs on St. Patricks day :-D ).

*  *  *

Anyway, if you’re an iPhone user or a non-AT&T subscriber, give Pandora Mobile a go!  If you’re an AT&T subscriber, well, heaven help you, and for reasons way beyond this Pandora issue.

[Gee, Adam, tell us what you really think about AT&T :D]

*  *  *

Okay, okay, I’m thinking I should flesh this entry out a little bit :-)

Some stuff I like in the mobile app:
- Seems to work internationally (though I can imagine this being “fixed” [sigh])
- Works as a true background app on my BlackBerry!
- Can play through my BB’s speaker (actually sounds decent!) or a headset
- Song-to-song time isn’t bad
- Nice graphics, simple, intuitive interface.
- Access to all my stations :-)
- Can even view “Why [did Pandora play] this song?”
- Thumbs up / thumbs down works.

Some stuff I don’t like:
- Takes a while to start up the app
- No way to see detailed info on artist or song

*  *  *

All in all, pretty damn cool! :-D

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?

Facebook's Frustrating Friending... and my reluctant choice

I have over 500 Facebook friends.  That’s a statement to help you understand my predicament, not a badge of honor.  Of these, a handful are close friends, a big bunch are “regular” friends, a ton of ‘em are colleagues with which I have varying degrees of social contact and interest, and an even larger ton are “acquaintances or less.”  From that latter category, I still value many of those admittedly “weak ties.”  I may not know someone well, but perhaps she and I connected strongly even after just a brief meetup.  Or… maybe I don’t chat with that one fellow much anymore, but he used to be my best friend in high school and I still care about how he’s doing.

But then there are the other “friends.”  People I met once at a conference and exchanged pleasant pleasantries with.  Someone from college who was the girlfriend of an acquaintance.  Or someone who… uh… who is that guy?

*  *  *

The biggest and most painful flaw in Facebook’s friend-system is that it assumes that two people in a “friendship” see the relationship in the same way… and thus have the same interests (or interest level) in both sharing and learning about each other.  I have no doubt that there are people I’m interested in hearing about (and from), but who absolutely couldn’t give a rodent’s posterior about my latest blatherings or photos.  On a related note, I have work buddies that I enjoy chatting with, but would probably not to subject them to my occasional angst, drinking photos, dating whines, and so on.  As a friend of mine once commented, “You don’t want to see your boss in Speedos” or, more intellectually, many people understandably feel uncomfortable sharing or reading “out of social context.” You get my point.

*  *  *

Sure, Facebook’s “friend lists” can ameliorate some of these issue a bit.  But not completely.  And the UI is so awkward, so confusing, so annoying, it almost makes setting up friend lists more trouble than they’re worth.

What Facebook needs to do is break the friend-reciprocity requirement.  Just because I’m interested in following a person’s photo stream or reading their latest musings doesn’t mean they want to be forcefed AdamInfo.  More specifically, Facebook needs a “subscription” model, just like what we have for blogs, on Twitter, on Friendfeed, and—for crying out loud—in real life. 

Each person has two rights in this far-more-ideal non-reciprocal friends model:
1) The right to set privacy boundaries, dictating who (individually and/or by group) can access what aspects of their space (profile, activity stream, etc.)
2) The right to follow or subscribe to whatever or whoever he or she wants, subject (of course) to any applicable privacy boundaries mentioned in #1… WITHOUT the other person having to indicate the same level of interest.

There’s also a #3, which I find to be a strongly desirable albeit not required component of this model:
3) The right to more keenly control sharing, so that it’s aligned intelligently not only with the interests of the sharer (as in #1), but also with the interests of the potential reader (related to #2).

#3 might seem redundant, but it’s not.

*  *  *

A hypothetical example:

Pat has buddies Fred and Jen.  Fred and Pat are fast friends.  In contrast, Pat has a crush on Jen and want to know everything about her, but she doesn’t have the same interest in Pat.

- Clearly, Jen’s gonna want #1 here.  She doesn’t want Pat to see her stuff at all, so she either blocks him or gives him limited privileges. 
- She may, however, want to keep tabs on the fellow to see if he’s spreading rumors or going from creepy to threatening, so she takes advantage of #2 above.

Under the current model, the latter part wouldn’t be reasonably possible.  Jen would have to friend Pat, and wouldn’t that be awkward?! (and potentially hazardous, by sending absolutely the wrong statement).

So then we have Pat and Fred.  As fast friends, they really want to follow everything of each other.  There should be a system, perhaps not only algorithmic (which I believe FB already has in place) but optional-manual as well, which enables the two to indicate, yes, turn on the firehose; let me know when my best friend sneezes.  Again, Facebook has some functionality along this line, but it doesn’t scale well within an account, it’s confusing, and it’s basically a pain in the ass.

This is where #3 comes into play.  Facebook should enable folks to more easily share smartly… e.g., “pushing” those conference photos or blog entry on technology to colleagues, but not gym buddies or high school chums.  Of note, this is NOT the same as privacy; I’m not suggesting that this should be used as a substitute for effective privacy controls or filtering, nor even that the untargeted folks in the above scenario couldn’t view those items if they wanted.  But rather, it’s an issue of respect and priority; it’s less that those folks would be offended and more that they’d be simply bored.  What I’m calling for is a sharing that respects not only boundaries, but likely interests.

*  *  *

And lastly, we return to the most painful part of Facebook’s current friending model:  the increasing noise to signal ratio.  In other words, when I view my homepage feed, a lot of it is uninteresting to me.  And, alas, I miss tidbits about friends that I am interested in hearing about.  Yes, again, I could use friend lists (and do), but this doesn’t help streamline many other reading or transactional activities on FB; I still have to wade through 500+ names when recommending friends to friends, for instance.

So today I’m finally making that hard choice:  I’m being selfish and reclaiming my addressbook.  I’m removing a not-insignificant-number of folks from my Facebook addressbook (read: de-friending them) not because they stole my girlfriend or poked my eye out with a bb-gun or made me lick Grand Central Station with my tongue (though, indeed, all of those would be good reasons for de-friending), but rather because we don’t really chat so much any more or have drifted apart or never really chatted much socially in the first place,  etc. etc. etc., and the benefit of those weak ties is outweighed by the collective—I hate to use this word—clutter.

Offended?  Blame Facebook.  Or, better, yet, if you’re bummed that I’ve de-friended you, do one or both of the following:
- Contact Facebook and let them know that it’s high time they update their friending system to improve sharing & privacy and reduce awkwardness.
- Follow me on FriendFeed (and, obviously, feel very welcome to engage in conversation with me there).

*  *  *

Thanks for your understanding :-D.  Also, why not share your thoughts below on how Facebook Friending works?

I, Robot

Hello.  Good day.  A little quiet?
I’m feeling a little blue myself.
You know, A little anxious for no particular reason
A little sad that I should feel anxious at this age.
You know, a little self-conscious anxiety resulting in non-specific sadness.
The state that I call blue.

- spoken by the narrator (“Man In Chair”) in the awesome musical “The Drowsy Chaperone”

Today I am a little sad because of a small heartbreak.
And a little anxious because, well, I should not be admitting this in public.

Real men

don’t

 do cry.  But real businessmen… the type who are strong, who manage or mentor, who think of respect and solidness and promotions… they are not bloviatingly blathering on a blog, blissfully or blamefully or otherwise.

Think.  Think of someone you look up to at work.  Do you want to know his private foibles, hear of his personal struggles?  Really?  No. You want someone to look up to.  Someone at least a little bit larger than life.  A rock, or minimally a damn large stone.

You have your own problems, and when you want to schadenfreudically delight in someone else’s problems, you have your TV or paper or favorite internet gossip sites within an arm or eyeball’s reach.

When your current or future dear leaders are feeling blue, they ideally do not show you, much less tell you.

Then again, maybe it’s different today.  Maybe the Live Journalers of the modern era will grow up to be respected leaders… warty angst, noserings and all.  Perhaps someday we’ll view an executive’s late night facebookings with indifference rather than annoyance or scorn.

Or maybe not.  Maybe he or she will methodically scrub, hoping the last trace of emotion is gone.  Here, look, a résumé.  A fine, level-headed portfolio indeed!

And only a strong, competitive, safe, and secure heart.

Why this blog doesn't decently render in Chrome

UPDATE:  Vinny sent me a script that fixes it.  Much thanks!
—

Right after I wrote a neato article on Chrome and Google Bookmarks, my blog stopped “working” in Chrome.  I finally figured out why.

Apparently, the script set that powers my dropdown menu—the “Accessible Website Dropdown Menu”—is written to look for the string “Apple Computer” in a browser’s useragent and serve webkit-oriented stuff to those browsers.  But Chrome now lists “Google inc.” in the user agent.

More details are in the bug report I filed (which, rightly, was marked “works as intended,” since it’s a script problem, not a Chrome bug).

If any folks more adept at JS than I am want to either help me fix this or—better yet—help the UDM folks fix it, that’d be super :-D.

Google's new browser, Chrome, and Google Bookmarks

Have you tried Google’s new browser, “Chrome”?  It’s fast and it rocks.  But there’s no Google Toolbar!  How can you bookmark pages to a central location (Google Bookmarks)?  Here’s how, in just a few quick and easy steps :-D.

1. First, download Chrome (duh!) :-D.
2. If you don’t already see a bookmarks bar (right below the address bar or “omnibar” and above the actual web page) turn it on by hitting CTRL-B (you can hide it anytime by hitting CTRL-B again).
3. Visit this help page on Google Chrome and bookmarking.
4. Go ahead and—you guessed it—drag that little box to the bookmarks area of Chrome.

VOILA!  Now whenever you want to bookmark a page, just click on that little bookmark.

*  *  *

But what happens when you want to find that page again?

Well, for one thing, Chrome’s omnibar is pretty damn smart… even smarter than you might initially expect!  Try typing just a few letters from that site’s URL or title and it may very well show up for you in the omnibar :-D. But if you still want to see all your bookmarks, you can do one of two things:

• Revisit Google Bookmarks OR
• Check out the cooler experience of Google Notebook, and you'll find all your bookmarks under the UNFILED folder (click on the left), where you can annotate, group, and optionally share your favorite bookmarks with friends.

* * *

Hope these tips help you enjoy Chrome even more!

* * *

EDITED on Wednesday, September 3 to add:
Thank you to Simon B for the improved link to the bookmarklet! :-D

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?

Bureaucratic snafu snags Catholic Priest and leaves me wondering: what's my role?

A friend of mine just let me know of a frustrating and seemingly unfair issue in his neck of the woods:  A popular and much-loved priest in South Dakota is apparently about to be deported due to what seems to be a pretty lame bureaucratic snafu (pemanent residency application accepted but later lost/misplaced).  An advocacy site is here: HelpFather.

But nothing is quite as simple or as black-and-white as it seems, of course, at least in my mind :-)

Here are reasons why I was tempted not to post this on my blog:
- I’m agnostic, and am not a fan of Catholic doctrine / influence / etc.
- This matter’s already gotten press.  What more could my humble blog do?
- Speaking of my humble blog, and selfishly for a moment, would my readers really care about this somewhat-local-oriented issue at all?
- This guy’s a priest.  Can’t he just pray for this to get fixed?  If that’s ineffective, maybe it’s God’s will for him to return to Ireland?
- There are always at least two sides to every issue.  Can we trust that the folks advocating on behalf of this priest are telling the whole story?

And reasons why I ultimately posted this:
- A favor to my friend :-)
- Someone’s gotta help the little guy.  And this one seems like a nice fella, mired in an uncaring and often-crappy bureaucracy.
- I do have some power as a blogger.  Perhaps by helping get this guy’s predicament known outside of South Dakota I—and my readers—could make a difference.
- Sometimes it’s the little things in life that matter.  Is this guy really important in the grand scheme of things?  Maybe not.  But he means a lot to my friend and my friend’s family.  Lots of small things, “small people”... they all add up, all contribute to the richness of communities, to our planet.
- And, let’s be honest here… I bet people are more interested in this story than in my swinger blatherings, no? :-P (hmm… I’m combining a priest-related posting with a swinger reference; it’s a good thing I am agnostic, or I’d be going to hell :D).

*  *  *

What about you?

What do you think of this priest’s situation? Of me posting this on my blog?

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).”

How to pick an apartment (with the help of a damn cool Google Spreadsheet "wiki")

I’m in apartment-hunting mode, and have amassed a set of criteria for my search that I thought you might benefit from… and be able to easily add to!

With the new release of Google Docs and Spreadsheets (horrid name, super product), I can now do all sorts of cool stuff!  For instance, I’ve embedded the spreadsheet below for you to read… but I’ve also included links at the bottom for you to:

• EDIT ONLINE:  Load up the spreadsheet online in edit mode!  Your changes will be reflected within five minutes on the document AND this page, so please be both thoughtful and nice (I can revert as necessary, of course).
• EDIT OFFLINE:  Download the CSV and load it up in Excel or Excel imitator :-P.
• VIEW: ...as PDF, HTML, TXT, and in other formats as well.
• SUBSCRIBE:... view Atom or RSS

Pretty neat, eh?  And now, on with the show!

• EDIT:  View and edit online (general Google Account required; add lines as needed by right-clicking cells and selecting INSERT… or you can highlight several rows and select INSERT [n] ROWS ABOVE/BELOW)
  Aw, bummer!  As described in the comments below, I hadn’t realized that the usernames (and, thus, gmail e-mail addresses) of collaborators would be listed in this doc, so I’m un-sharing the doc until and unless this no longer happens.  Thanks, Rockya, for the discovery.
• DOWNLOAD / VIEW:  CSV, XLS (Excel format—new link for this entry), PDF, TXT, HTML, ODS
• SUBSCRIBE (1st page): Atom, RSS

I welcome your comments below…
- On the actual criteria I’ve listed (or has been added)
- On this use of Google Docs and Spreadsheets
- On anything else related to this entry :-D

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!