If you are so inclined (and we are not Facebook friends), you can now subscribe to my public updates there. I’m still a little skeptical of this fundamental change in the way Facebook operates — effectively putting the final nails in the coffin of the original Facebook social contract — and so I reserve the right to turn this off at any time. (Truth be told, Google+ is way better for long-form social networking.) I’m more curious to see how well it works — I feel like it could be confusing. If you want to read more about it, ReadWriteWeb founder Richard MacManus goes in-depth with it (and demonstrates how it works via my profile).
Tag Archives: Facebook
A new use for Facebook
A more accurate use of Facebook these days.
This pretty much sums up my usage of Facebook lately. Google+ is ridiculously busy now. I can’t imagine what kind of a madhouse it will be like when it opens up permanently to everybody.
The beginning of the end of status update conformity at Facebook
Facebook changing the size of the font in the news feed is half the story. I find it more fascinating that Facebook status updates now start on their own line, and not next to a person’s name (at least on the general feed; the Wall continues to use the old design). It’s the end of an era for syntactical conformity at Facebook.
Facebook Places Clairvoyance
The fun of having five years of archives: seeing how I joked about “Facebook GPS” in 2006 as a potential upcoming feature. Turns out my joke was only four years too early.
Resistance is futile
The new Facebook stuff is pretty cool (I’ve already rolled out Like buttons on each ReadWriteWeb article), but I cannot get the Mark Zuckerberg-as-Faceborg-King metaphor out of my head. Their intent is to be the underpinning of the social Web via their implants (erm, plugins) that will enhance our Web experience. I’m just waiting for a pseudo-cybernetic Sir Patrick Stewart to show up as Facebook’s spokesperson, that’s all.
A doozy of a weather day ahead
In advance of a doozy of a weather day, I’ve spent a portion of my evening revamping the Charleston Weather blog. I’ve installed the latest P2, Automattic’s excellent real-time WordPress theme, and I’ve also (with any luck) enabled PubSubHubbub for posts to the blog. Weather information is exactly what the real-time web is designed for, I think — tomorrow may be a great test of that. So, especially if you’re in Charleston, follow the blog tomorrow along with the alerts we’ll have on Twitter, Identi.ca, and Facebook. Hopefully things will turn out better than the strongly-worded alerts have been telling the story, but it’s tough to say.
facebook.com/jaredwsmith
So The Great Facebook URL Rush of 2009 is over, and in the end, my Personal Brand remains intact: facebook.com/jaredwsmith. We now return to your regularly scheduled geekery, already in progress.
New Facebook: Consistently Inconsistent
So after much impatience, sarcasm, and self-doubt, I finally got the updated Facebook look sometime while I was driving home from work yesterday. And you know, after all that, I’m somewhat underwhelmed.
Yes, I’m doing it wrong: A blog about blogging
So the conventional wisdom is not to talk about a medium using the medium that is being discussed; i.e. you’re not supposed to tweet about Twitter, you’re not supposed to blog about blogging…whatever. These people who tell you this are the same people who tell you that auto DMs on Twitter are a good thing. Thus, I categorically reject this conventional wisdom, because we don’t break any ground with conventional wisdom ANYWAY.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but over the last couple months, I’ve more narrowly focused the blog on social media topics. There’s a lot about Facebook. There’s a cubic crapton about Twitter, all intermingled with some Brightkite, FriendFeed, and identi.ca. Sure, I’ve written about the Super Bowl, but I’ve kept the topics pretty narrowly focused. This is a side effect of my using Twitter; items that I might have posted as “asides” here often end up there because of its sheer convenience. Another thing I’ve discovered: FriendFeed is a stellar way to micro-blog, especially if I need more than 140 characters. It can offer instant feedback and viral promotion via “likes,” and the conversation there is tough to top right now. It’s not just using different services, either. Two of my big topics here of late have been Serious Business show notes and weather, and I’ve shifted both these items off to their own sites in order to let them flourish.
So where does that leave the ol’ homestead? Scrambling to adjust, and reacquire its voice. Continue reading
Facebook Reverts TOS (Temporarily)
Saw this on top of my Facebook homepage this morning:
Over the past few days, we have received a lot of good feedback about the new terms we posted two weeks ago. Because of this response, we have decided to return to our previous Terms of Use while we resolve the issues that people have raised.
It’s the prudent thing for Facebook to do while they weigh the ramifications of the terms. Kudos to them for recognizing a mistake and taking steps to fix it.