Nick O’Neill of AllFacebook just pointed out that you can now separate all your Facebook friends out into groups. It can be used to send out mass messages and event invitations. But…. I think they are missing the main point of segmenting your friends: privacy. In my mind, the whole reason for being able to put people into groups is so you can control what each group of people see. I...
As I mentioned in a previous post, new avenues of communication complement, not replace, older methods of communication. There are a ton of ways to get in touch with me. How do you choose which one to contact for each person? My idea? Create a system where you can sign up for a special e-mail address that connects to all your different social media accounts. Any e-mail to that address will get...
I’m not a networker. I’ll give you a second to get over the shock. I’ve always operated under the impression that in the technical world, doing great work far outweighs who you know and who knows you, and that “networking” is left to the business types. In the corporate world, this holds true. You do good work, you get promoted (most of the time). Any time the word...
I’ve been using Twitter for a week now. Here’s my account. I held off on joining it for so long because I thought it was the same as IM. It has the same interface (short text messages), but is completely different. The API opens up a lot of possibilities. Plus it’s a free SMS gateway. I have a lot of ideas. Facebook’s status feature is similar, but the messaging feature is...
Wave by wave, technology has brought us amazing advancements. Problem is, they don’t replace each other, they are cumulative. People still have records, 8-tracks, tapes, CDs, minidiscs*, 8mm reels, VHS tapes, DVDs… All are recently or long obsolete, but still technically operational, and therefore used. The same happens with communication, particularly recently. Not only do previous...
Justin posted the other day about social objects, particular aspects of us (pictures, bookmarks, status, etc…) that can be shared with other people. I was going to write a post about how my “killer” social object would be location. I ended up scrapping it, but given Yahoo’s announcement of FireEagle, a platform for personal geographic information. This looks absolutely...
Google released a set of standards called OpenSocial, which will allow developers to, instead of writing, say, a Facebook application which only works on Facebook, an application that will work on any social network that supports OpenSocial (which a lot of the other social networks other than Facebook/MySpace do). It’s not the open social network. It’s not going to unseat Facebook or...
I was playing around with FriendCSV, which exports data on your Facebook friends into a format that can be imported into any number of applications. It’s cool, but the only worthwhile information are birthdays (Facebook, taking the black-hole approach to data retention, doesn’t let out essential contact information)… and the user IDs of all your friends. Quick lesson for non...
I like the idea of LinkedIn developing their own API. I think a lot of good application ideas that initially were developed for the Facebook platform will be a lot better suited to the professional attitude of LinkedIn. I have a few myself, which would be wasted on Facebook, but I believe would thrive on LinkedIn. Facebook is for my social life, where I interact with friends, and generally, play...
I love when the gov’t prevents you from working for them. So instead of actually doing anything productive, I made a fun Facebook application, from start to finish! CrazyCaptions lets your friends add funny captions to your Facebook photos! Create caption contests that show up on your profile in one step! Developing on the Facebook platform definitely has it’s benefits. No user...