The Underscore Archives

On 17 Jul 2007, at 11:30, Thayer Driver wrote:

>
>> I know a lot
>> of you are complete (social) networking junkies (yes, Thayer,
>> looking at you :p ).
>
> Kinda, but it's more down to my job - and also its an interest.  As  
> in,
> I've worked in social web since 2000 and see that as my calling.
> Therefore love them or hate them I try out most social networking
> concepts/sites etc to have a decently formed opinion on them.  A  
> lot are
> shit, or re-working the wheel, but once in a while there are some good
> ones.  I agree with Richard's post on a few being the main winners  
> soon.
>

Right, yeah, you are an oddbod in the stats ;)

And the minute after I posted my rant on social networking sites, I  
was dragged into a meeting in which I was shown the plans to yet  
another one by a potential client who wants a cost for building it.  
Groan.  First question back to them (and this was by our salesperson,  
not even from me, was 'So how is it different from facebook, flickr,  
etc?' and the response: 'I don't think it is, but that is what our  
client wants').


> My biggest problem with all the social networking stuff is it's just
> another reason to put a PR spin on yourself.  I can't actually be  
> me so
> much these days as everyone is so connected.  Whereas in the past,  
> I had
> a very tight personal network that I could swear on, be hungover  
> on, get
> bladdered on etc without wondering who was watching.  These days it's
> all "Can I say that without it professionally haunting me" etc.
> Recently I posted on someone's Upcoming event from my personal  
> account.
> He then Twittered and blogged that a "disgruntled Chinwag employee"  
> had
> posted on his event, thus pushing traffic to my personal post and  
> ending
> up with me having to delete my personal upcoming account.  There are

Well indeed, and if you watch that Facebook video about its directors  
and political connections, you can extrapolate the notion to some  
quite scary ideas.

> many more stories like that but I'm sure you see my point.  Also, it's
> not just what I do and say, but what my friends do and say about me in
> an open forum, when it can be then shown on a profile that I might not
> notice for say a week or two if I'm on holiday.
>

Hahahahah.... you want us to believe you are not connected to your  
social networking sites when you are on Holiday? :p


>> How do all you lot use these
>> sites to effectively communicate with all your friends when
>> you have to send the message to a gazillion sites to make
>> sure you reach all of them!?
>
> Honestly?  It currently takes up I'd say a good third of my personal
> time keeping up with them all, but as I mentioned before, due to my  
> work
> and general career direction I see it as a nessessity.
>

Fairy Snuff.

>> At Europython last week there was a talk by Simon Willison of
>
> <snip/>
>
>>  He suggested that people
>> would in reality probabaly end up signing up with *all* of
>> them.... so in that case you still end up with a myriad of
>> authentication credentials..
>
> See, I reckon there's a business in a subscription based service where
> people pay to have their names or tags registered immediately on  
> social
> beta's.  I mean, how annoying is it when you want to be
> del.ici.ous/underscore and find out it's taken etc?  I do genuinely
> think there's a pre-register service just aching to get into that  
> market
> and make a killing.

That is actually a side-effect of OpenID.  Your OpenID is a URL, so  
once you are thayer.chinwag.com on one site, you are that on all  
sites, no-one else could grab it.  That is not to say that many sites  
will then allow you to have a screen name, so you can have something  
more appropriate for the site in question (and shorter).

-Matt

-- 
Matt Hamilton                                       matth at netsight.co.uk
Netsight Internet Solutions, Ltd.        Business Vision on the Internet
http://www.netsight.co.uk                             +44 (0)117 9090901
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