Pages Tagged “social networking”
Blog Posts
- Last Tweets Standing
Popped over to Twitter to delete the last handful of posts I left there when I deleted most of them back in December. Decided to leave two for now, though I might still delete them before the new TOS takes effect. Oct 2008: If only the super high-tech jet fighters had identified, clarified & classified, […]
- Privacy and Trust: Threads, Twitter and the Fediverse
Privacy has many layers. Keeping cloud files from leaking to another account is one layer. Not data-mining those files is another entirely!
- That Blue Checkmark
Twitter Blue is what happens when you start treating a tool as a status symbol, so you throw the tools away and start selling gold-plated hammers made out of thin plastic.
- Detweeting (and More)
Not that I’ve been particularly active on Twitter for quite a while now, but the way things have gotten, especially under its new owner, I decided it was finally time to go. I haven’t deleted my main account (yet), but I’ve deleted most of my tweet history, and the accounts I used for side projects, […]
- Fediverse: Beta to Production
The Twitter-to-Mastodon migration is like going from beta testing the Fediverse to production. Just like a public beta always turns up issues that were missed during development, when going to production you suddenly have a *huge* pool of new users who are going to use the system in ways you didn’t anticipate and haven’t already […]
- Twitter: Amp Up the Noise
Making the blue check mark mean “This person can afford $20/month†instead of “This person is who they say they are†is only the latest way Twitter has downgraded its signal/noise ratio over the years.
- The 2022 Social Media Experience
The 2022 update: What it’s like to use Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Mastodon, Pixelfed and Instagram now.
- May I Have Your Attention Please. All of it. FOREVER.
One thing I like about the Fediverse is that it doesn’t constantly scream for your attention to keep you online as long as possible.
- Mount Doomscrolling
The way the Palantir network compromises Saruman and Denethor shows the danger in who controls the algorithm that manages your newsfeed.
- Online Permanence: Host Your Own or Use a Service?
What you put on Facebook or Twitter will die when they do (or sooner, at their whim). What you host yourself will stay…as long as YOU can keep it up.
- Instagram Getting Even More Hostile to the Web
Instagram is now requiring you to sign in to view public profiles. You can still look at (for example), my Instagram profile, but once you scroll down a few pages, it pops up a login form and you’re stuck. A spokesperson said, “This is to help people see photos on Instagram and then understand how […]
- Thoughts on Tumblr’s Escape from Verizon to WordPress
At least it’s going to a social media company and not another conglomerate. And one that’s more responsible than the big two!
- Dear Twitter: Please Ditch the Clutter
Have you ever been to a Las Vegas casino? The main floors tend toward sprawling layouts, with lots of shiny distractions to entice you to stay and spend more time and money on the slots instead of helping you get where you’re going. That’s what Twitter’s new layout feels like. When Twitter started out, the […]
- Preventing Notification Overload
To keep myself from getting distracted by too many notifications on my phone, I ask myself the following questions whenever a new category pops up: Will I need to act on it? (Likes/favorites are nice, but I don’t need to respond.) How time-sensitive is it? (“Your ride is here” is more time sensitive than planning […]
- Random Thoughts on Self-Hosting
I’ve been thinking about what it means to self-host a service, and that there are degrees even within that. I have a self-hosted WordPress blog in the sense that I manage an installation of WordPress, but I run it on a VPS at a web host. It’s not as self-hosted as someone running a server […]
- Taking the Safety Off
Purism’s explanations for removing various safety features from Librem One’s social network sound like someone explaining why they removed the mirrors, brakes, horns, seat belts, airbags and signals from the cars they’re reselling, because they know those cars are only ever going to be driven on a track where they’ll never have to change lanes […]
- Verizon is Already Trying to Sell Tumblr
Wow, that shoe dropped sooner than I expected. Verizon is already shopping around to sell Tumblr. I figured it would be toward the end of the year, not the middle. After Tumblr’s ham-handed ban on adult content last fall purged a bunch of accounts, sparked a lack of confidence, and triggered an wave of users […]
- When did I start using Flickr?
I’ve been going through old scenic photos that either never made it online or I only posted low-res versions on my blog and uploading the ones I still think are decent (or at least interesting) to Flickr. Which has got me wondering: When did I start using it? Other social networks are easy. I signed […]
- The Best Backups are Scheduled Backups
I’m thinking about social media backups again after Prismo lost all its data, and after one of my own test blogs crashed. I can and do automate backups on the VPS where I host my main blogs. I can manually backup my social media accounts, but IIRC none of them offer automatic scheduling. I have […]
- Shouting Into the Less Exploitative Void
Sometimes you choose which social app to open based on who you want to talk to who you want to hear what you want to talk about Sometimes you’re just shouting into the void. At those times, I figure I’ll choose the void that feels less exploitative. That’s part of why I still have a […]
- I made my final post on Google+ yesterday
“Babylon 5 was the last of the Babylon stations. There would never be another. It changed the future … and it changed us. It taught us that we have to create the future … or others will do it for us. It showed us that we have to care for one another, because if we […]
- Year of the Social Media Purge
Flickr and Tumblr have deleted content to fit new business models, MySpace lost 12 years of music, and Google+ is shutting down. Back up your accounts!
- Quick thoughts on Twitter’s prototype changes
As you’ve probably heard, Twitter is planning major changes, and is testing them in a prototype app. Threaded conversations are good, though I think the UI here still needs polish. Hiding the interaction buttons until you click on the post: Yeah, it might make people think a little more. Putting some friction into sharing can […]
- Weighing alternatives to Facebookified Instagram
Like many people, I’ve moved away from Facebook over the last couple of years. I haven’t deleted my account, but I only visit once or twice a month, and it’s been a long time since I’ve posted there. And like many people in that survey, I’ve come to prefer Instagram to Facebook. Friends and family […]
- The Smartphone Paradox: Social Media vs. Actually Using the Damn Thing
This post I rescued from my Google+ archive in August 2011 really speaks to how quickly expectations for mobile computing were derailed by the social media feedback loop. Years ago, I wanted a smartphone so I could write down all the blog posts I compose in my head when I’m away from a computer. Now […]
- Hot Take: The Great Flickr Purge
Yahoo was never sure what to do with Flickr after they bought it. And when they realized they’d missed the smartphone revolution, they tried to make it into something it wasn’t suited for (an Instagram equivalent) and couldn’t sustain (cloud storage for ALL your photos!) I remember when they panicked over Instagram and the best […]
- Why I have more confidence in Flickr/SmugMug than Tumblr/Verizon
Last month, Tumblr and Flickr both announced policy changes that will impact a lot of users, and upset even more. Flickr announced that they’d be shrinking the storage offered to free accounts while adding features to paid accounts. Tumblr announced that all adult content was going to be banned, and immediately set about flagging posts […]
- The 2018 Social Network Experience
What it’s like to use Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Mastodon and Instagram in 2018.
- Facebook-Forced “Business Pages”
Anyone familiar with what Facebook Pages considers to be a “business?” Facebook decided to group my “business pages” (two blogs, neither of which is a business, one of which I had already marked for deletion a few days ago) into a “business account.” I thought maybe they’d flattened their definitions, but another page (for a […]
- Who are phone notifications for?
Phone notifications aren’t notices, they’re alerts. They should serve your interests as the person using the phone, not the interests of the app or service.
- Delicious Irony
While looking up importers that I could use to move various third-party archives into something self-hosted, I found an add-on to pull Facebook posts into Keyring Social Importers, an extensible WordPress plugin. At the top of the list of built-in services: Delicious. “Hey, I used to have a ton of stuff on Del.icio.us! I don’t […]
- How I Use(d) Google+
With yesterday’s news that Google+ is shutting down next August, I found myself looking again at my exported archive from the network. This time I was less interested in the format (which has changed since January – you can export as JSON instead of HTML if you choose, and it includes media now), and more […]
- LOLSpam Returns as a Super-Simple Mastodon Bot
Back when I was comparing social media archives, I considered resurrecting my old LOLspam project as a Mastodon bot. I never quite got around to it, partly because I was able to do most of what I wanted to automate using IFTTT, so I stopped investigating that last 5%. Last night, I threw together a […]
- Mixed Feelings: Facebook Has Shut Down (Some) Auto-Posting
I have mixed feelings on Facebook closing down automated posts to personal* profiles. It might cut down on spam, and it will lead to better descriptions on link posts, but it also locks you further into their silo. You can still write elsewhere and link back to it on Facebook, but you can’t use WordPress […]
- Categorizing Social Networks
You can broadly categorize social networks by four factors: How replies are handled, whether you follow people or topics, is it broadcast by default, and is it one service or many?
- Long-Form Twitter: WHY OH WHY?
Twitter is suited for short statements and back-and-forth conversation. It’s terrible for anything long-form. Long Twitter threads* and images filled with text remind me of the old tech support days when users would paste screen shots of error messages into Microsoft Word documents and email me the document. It was a terrible tool for the […]
- It’s ALL the off-topic boards now.
Remember when we’d talk on topic-focused message boards? Flame wars got heated, but rarely spilled over. If you dared, you could also visit the off-topic boards, at the risk of seeing people at their worst. Social media dispenses with topics. It’s all the off-topic boards now.
- Flickr vs. Instagram / Who’s in Control?
If Twitter and Facebook are like shouting into the void, hoping someone will hear you, Flickr is like building a gallery and hoping someone will visit. When someone finally does, they’ll see it, and look around.
But that scream on Twitter is already fading on the wind.
- It’s not all here.
I talk about different things in different places. Just because I’m not talking about something on one site, doesn’t mean I’m not talking about it. Just because I’m not talking about something online doesn’t mean I’m not talking about it offline. Just because I’m not talking about something doesn’t mean I’m not learning about it […]
- Link Sharing and Source Trails
I read a lot of articles in one of two ways: Open a bunch of tabs and then read them one at a time Save a bunch of interesting-looking stories to Pocket and then read them one at a time So by the time I’ve decided to share a link to the story on Facebook […]
- Facebook Desperately Wants You Back!
Sometimes I’ll go a week or two without logging into Facebook. It doesn’t take very long before they start sending me reminders trying to bring me back. “See Alice’s message and other notifications you’ve missed” “Bob updated their status” “Carol posted a photo” It’s only been since the weekend and Facebook has sent me two […]
- Personas and Facets of Online Identity
Back in the day, @SpeedForceOrg was my comics fan persona on Twitter, as well as the newsfeed for the Flash blog. As more people joined me there, that seemed less appropriate and it became just the newsfeed/editorial voice. I find myself replying with my main account account to people I follow on the other. Which […]
- How Link Shorteners Leave Holes in Your Social Media
Another problem I’ve noticed in my Twitter archive: Lots of URL shorteners and image hosts have shut down or purged their archives. Sure, bit.ly and is.gd and tinyurl and ow.ly are still around. But in the days before t.co, I used a lot of different Twitter apps that used different shorteners or image hosts. I […]
- Searching Your Twitter History: Case of the Missing Context
One of the problems with Twitter’s search capability is that the results are isolated. I’ve said before that one of the keys to making a social account feel like I own it is that I can find things in it if I want to go back later. You can search your old Twitter posts by […]
- How to Post to Mastodon From Anything Using IFTTT
Update October 2024: I’ve moved this article over to my troubleshooting site.
- Deciding Where to Post Online
Things I think about when choosing where to post something original, once I’ve decided to post it. Audience. Who’s going to be interested in this? Family? Friends? Fans or hobbyists or people in my industry or some other shared-interest group? People looking for troubleshooting help? Do I just want to say something for the record? […]
- Broadcasting “Likes”
I figured out exactly what bugs me about Twitter & Facebook putting friends’ Likes in the timeline.
- What makes online posts feel “permanent?”
Facebook is testing a feature to make their posts less permanent, but they already feel ephemeral (even though they aren’t). My thoughts on why that is.
- I “Liked” Twitter Favorites
It shouldn’t make any difference that Twitter renamed Favorites★ as Likes♥. It’s a coat of paint. But labels do matter.
- Low-Tech/High Tech B&N
I stopped frequenting Barnes & Noble a while back because they were so determined to sell you a Nook and get you out of the store, never to return. (That, and for a while we had a great indie bookstore nearby.) Now they’re selling vinyl records. And holding events. They’re doing Throwback Thursdays and a […]
- This Fan Used To Post Tons Of Comic-Con Coverage, Then Stopped. Can You Guess Why?
Social media has enabled fans to follow SDCC without setting foot in San Diego, but being part of the conversation has a cost for those at the con.
- Overloaded Cell Network? Send a Text
BoingBoing explains why SMS messages are more likely to get through than phone calls or mobile data during a large emergency. (Short version: They’re async, so the phone or tower can retry later, and they’re momentary, so they don’t tie up a channel like a call would.) The article doesn’t bring it up, but I’d […]
- Recent Links: Geography, Internet and Comics
Live wind patterns, historical travel times, reliability of social networking, the importance of web page weight, emergency gadget power, UNIX Daemons and Seurat’s Justice League.
- Who Owns Your Online Profile? Thoughts on Instagram, Facebook, and Blogging
When you live your online life through a social network, you give up control. If Facebook is no longer around 10 years from now, what happens to all your photos?
- The Culture of *Now*
Are you sharing something about a current event online? It had better be really current, because the internet has a very short attention span.
- Not “Frictionless Sharing” Again…
Frictionless sharing is just a way to generate noise. I don’t want to know every article you read on some website. I want to know which articles you think are worth sharing.
- Facebook Sync Messes Up Users’ Address Books
Fury after Facebook messes up smartphone users’ address books: Remember how Facebook sneakily changed your default email address to @facebook.com? … Some smartphone users…are reporting that their on-phone address books have been silently updated to make @facebook.com email addresses the default way to send a message to their contacts.Graham Cluley at Sophos The lesson: Whenever […]
- Google+, Blogging and the 90-9-1 Rule
Activity on Google+ depends on where you’re looking, and participation rates follow the same patterns you’ll find elsewhere on the internet: many lurkers, fewer posters.
- Klout’s methodology confuses me
Klout’s methodology confuses me. When I first signed on with two profiles — one personal, the other for Speed Force — they classified my personal profile as an “explorer,” and Speed Force as a “specialist.” This makes sense to me. Speed Force also had a higher score for quite a while (it certainly has a […]
- Recent Links: Social Networking
Linkblogging: How long do links last? What’s the future of Delicious? How quickly can you cross-post? Why does this site need to post to Twitter under my name?
- Facebook, or Firehose?
Between the ticker and the plans to auto-share even more activity on the timeline, I’m beginning to think that Facebook should call itself Firehose instead. I’m tempted to ask, “Who the hell wants this?” but based on past experience, that usually means I’m just not in the target audience. TechCrunch | Share Buttons? Ha. Facebook […]
- Is *Now* Better?
We can instantly post photos, video or words for the world to see, from anywhere, anytime. But should we? Immediacy can be useful, but is it always better?
- Recent Tech Links: Unmaintainable Code, XKCD on The Cloud and More
How To Write Unmaintainable Code – what not to do when programming. Computer de-evolution: Features that lost the evolutionary war – ITworld ComputerWorld (via Slashdot) Two XKCD comics: First, “The Cloud” explained. Second, anyone who has used command-line utilities on Linux will appreciate Manual Override. International Usability – Big Stuff the Same, Details Differ (Jakob […]
- What’s behind Twitter’s Ban on Twidroyd & UberTwitter?
So, Twitter blocked access from Twidroyd and UberTwitter today, citing acceptable use policy violations, then classily pushing their own apps. IMO this would be similar to Google blocking Internet Explorer or Firefox from accessing their services, then telling people “oh, you can use Chrome.” UberMedia has made some changes to appease the Twitter TOS guardians, […]
- Two “Critiques” That Aren’t
Just because you don’t have a use for it doesn’t mean no one does. And pop culture from your formative years wasn’t really that much better than today’s.
- Social Bots
Amazing how many “people” are sending Facebook messages to the postmaster account, offering helpful links to resources for *ahem* improving uptime. On a related note: Google’s Social Graph thinks I own Cute Overload. It seems to treat all LiveJournal syndication feeds as one profile, and I linked to K2R’s LJ feed with XFN.
- The REAL Problem with Twitter
Twitter asks its users the wrong question, and it’s outgrowing the limitations of SMS messages.
- Friends or Followers: Social Networking Terminology from LiveJournal to Facebook to Twitter
Since LiveJournal’s debut, social networks have expanded the meaning of ‘friend.’ What does it imply to have friends on Facebook and followers on Twitter?
- 5 Things I’ve Learned About Twitter
For the longest time, I figured Twitter was little more than a social toy. But after signing up two months ago, I’ve completely changed my view. Here are five lessons I’ve picked up. 1. There are many ways to use it. Twitter asks the question, “What are you doing?” Some people answer that, and post […]
- Opera hits MySpace
Following the trend of musicians setting up shop on MySpace, the social networking site now hosts a profile for the Opera Web browser. (Just kidding about the musicians part.) On a related note, I’ve found that on the rare occasions I’ve looked at MySpace pages, Opera tends to be more responsive than Firefox, which tends […]
- Joined ComicSpace
Figured what the heck. I’m now on ComicSpace. Because I need yet another site to suck up all my time. It’s being described as MySpace for comics people—creators, fans, reviewers, etc.—though the feature set is pretty sparse right now. I’ve resisted MySpace itself partly because of a somewhat adversarial relationship with the site*, partly because […]
- New meaning to PDA
OK, this is bizarre. Apparently a Hong Kong software company is preparing to release a Virtual Girlfriend for high-res mobile phones. It—or I suppose I should say “she”—is structured as an online game, on the virtual pet model. (Remember the tamagotchi fad?) You hold conversations with “Vivienne,” give her virtual gifts, even work up to […]
- Time Slots on BlogExplosion
The only people who see this site through BlogExplosion are the people who are logged in at the same time I am.
- Welcome, BlogExplosion Visitors
In hopes of bringing in some more readers, I signed up with BlogExplosion yesterday. I’ve spent some time last night and tonight surfing through their system, and I’ve seen some interesting blogs, some boring blogs, and some infuriating blogs. (Politics… why did it have to be politics…) If you’re coming here through BlogExplosion, feel free […]
- XFN Updated
A new version of XFN has been released, with a few changes and a few new attributes. (XFN, the “XHTML Friends Network” is a simple way of adding information to a link to indicate your relationship to that person.) New relationship types include kin and contact, expanding the family and friendship dimensions, and me. The […]