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Yep - ten thousand tweets

Yesterday afternoon I arrived at a milestone point, ten thousand tweets on twitter. That’s After less than a year of using the website. To me it’s replaced the university bar for two reasons. The first of these reasons is I’m now a graduate so there’s not much point in going to that bar anymore. The second reason is the organic way in which you create a network of contacts. When you first arrive in twitter it’s a scary place. You see thousands of 140 character messages arriving every few minutes and it’s a time consuming to find the people that you find interesting. There’s the notion that you “follow” people. It’s used to describe the way in which you listen to what they have to say. As you listen to this conversation you see that one person talks with another person and over a period of time as you follow the conversations so you get to see who the participants are. Over a period of days or weeks you’ve got several dozen people you’re following. That means that you’re now able to have many conversations a day. It’s just a question of how much time you’re willing to put. In this respect it’s like university. There are two ways you can treat student life. You can be an Honours student with very few but good friends or you can be a high achieving student who’s created a network of hundreds of friends. I chose the latter option. I could go into university any day of the week and it would take an hour to walk from one side of the building to the other because of all the friendships I had established there. It’s the same with twitter. The more time you put into twittr the more you get out of it. The fact that people like Robert Scoble, Chris Brogan and Chris Pirillo take the time to follow and listen to people on twitter tells you a lot about the types of conversations that are occuring. The first two individuals take a huge amount of time to talk with people on twitter and it’s a really great tool to see what’s going on, in fact so great that I no longer feel the need to read as many RSS feeds or listen to as many podcasts, simply because I’m participating in the conversations before they become even blog news. There is another aspect to twitter. When you’re on twitter you may be behind your computer, having never met any of these people in person and so it’s really strange to use twitter. It’s thanks to Sizemore organising the London twitter meetup a few months ago that I started to see Twitter in a very different light. It wasn’t just a website. It became a means by which  for me to create friendships online before bringing them into the real world. Jeff Pulver, Chris Brogan, Robert Scoble and many others do the same. On the lighter side there’s the flirty side of Twitter. The social media make flirting fun. Quite a few times I’ve created nice friendships with girls and as a result had 2-3 hour conversations via IM, Video webcam and more. It’s a way of life for a new age in human interaction. A year ago I would meet people in person and when they moved to another country the friendship would go online. Now it’s the reverse and that’s what I enjoy so much. That’s why I don’t feel it’s an addiction. Does it sound like I’m an addict?

Plaxo Pulse and Facebook

For all of those privacy advocates I’m on your side for this issue. With a lot of communitis you create a profile and friends can see it. What you give them are both your name and possibly phone number but no more. When you’re building a database of contacts you must ask for it. When you add friends to outlook, address and other applications you’ve done research and the users have given their consent. That’s not the same as harvesting them direct from facebook. No one said they wanted you to have their e-mail address. No one chose to give you those details. If you want them ask for them. Taking contact details from 5000 people is unethical and wrong. That’s very similar to spam behaviour. What makes this worse is that Plaxo is associated with this. I use Plaxo pulse and you can see it on the right side of this column.  I don’t mind their services but for people to harvest their friend’s data without prior consent will help increase this feeling of insecurity. We’ve had that debate on Seesmic, on Facebook and other online communities. If we want real communities transparency and trust are key. Stop abusing it.

The Scoble Vs Facebook event

Robert Scoble - Jan 4, 2008

Why is it OK for Facebook to import your contacts from Gmail but it isn’t OK for it to export back out to Gmail?

Because when you get details from a friend you’re asking them directly, whereas with Facebook they gave the information the site, not specifically to you. From a legal point of view collecting that information without permission from the user would go against people’s ethical standards. It fuels the debate about giving your real name and details even further. We’ve already discussed it on Seesmic last year (a week ago in real time).

The Scoble Vs Facebook event

This is a response to a post on Segala: Scoble opens up debate about walled gardens after being booted by Facebook. There are two key factors to take into account. The first of these is the issue of privacy and the second is the free flow of information. Unlike most other sites facebook is both hated and detested by different groups of users. As a recent university graduate and member of the international community it’s a great way to keep up with what my friends are doing without having to make hundreds of five second phone calls. The second aspect has to do with Openness. Facebook was started as a forum based on one campus in one university but due to it’s popularity expanded further. As a result it became a national and then international sensation. That’s whilst still a student based website. This is where the issue of privacy plays a key role. If we are to trust this website then it must make sure to do everything within it’s power to stop information collected. That includes e-mail and phone numbers, What you display is your choice and your friends can do what they want with that information, within the limiations set forth by facebook. That’s where trust comes in. Without trust Facebook will dissapear much faster than any network because people give real names, real relationships and real addresses. Identity theft would be a disaster. Now how does this all fit in with Robert Scoble? He’s got over five thousand facebook friends. If he decides to collect all the details we’ve offered up to facebook then both Robert Scoble and Facebook will suffer. Scoble for a breach of trust. Facebook for the same. Now what good has come of this so far? We’ve seen that they take privacy very seriously. So seriously that they’re ready to get a storm of criticism for banning one of it’s best known members (within the geek community). I actually feel far more secure in how Facebook deals with my information now that this has come to light. I think that if facebook bring this point to light they are going to gain a great amount of credibility.

Photophlow

Today I’ve been playing with Photophlow, a photo sharing and chat website that allows you to easily discuss and share pictures with friends within the interface as well as on tumblr and twitter. Among the features that I find interesting are the ability to create personal rooms and invite flicks friends in. once this is done you can look at their personal photographs, favourite pictures and more. It’s a great way for photo buffs to share photographs without having to give hyperlinks all the time. What I like about this photo sharing method is that it makes the entire process much easier. Much as you would pull out a photo album and start showing photographs and commenting on them you may do the same via this website.

The friendship Wheel

plasticsnow - Dec 1, 2007

Was that mine? A bunch of snowboarders and then people I’ve met randomly who are completely unconnected :o)

The friendship Wheel

Whilst looking at another person’s Facebook profile I noticed something. Two thirds of the people were connected to each other yet one third had no connections. It made me think about the nature of the friendship wheel and how it demonstrates how you use facebook. If you use facebook for real world friends and connections then the friend wheel will show that the connections are many and diverse. Everyone knows everyone else and there is a real sense of community. In contrast take a look at the friendship wheel of someone who adds people they have never met and the nature of the friend wheel changes entirely. Everyone appears isolated. I like seeing that there are so many connections between my friends on Facebook and aim to keep it this way for as long as possible.

The year the Internet lost the cloak of anonimity.

This has to be the year where I have met the most people online before meeting them in person, which is quite amusing. It’s also the year that warzabidul as a nickname became a person in the physical world to more than two or three people. It’s the year an online person become a nickname for a real person. It’s the year where, at least for early adopters, Twitter and Seesmic both helped create opportunities for people to meet and get to know each other online before taking it back into the physical world. It’s the year I went to a Podcamp, some tweetups and some seesm’up. It’s the year many of us stopped hiding behind avatars and nicknames and moved towards creating a brand or identity, depending on whether your point of view is that of marketing or personal fun. I’ve enjoyed learning about the “social media” and all the new possibilities. I look forward to 2008 when many more such networks and events will be organised. It’s been a fun year to be introduced to the “Social Media” and I’m happy to have met so many people.