Tom Raftery, social media consultant, speaker, blogger and podcaster
If you are getting tired of Facebook, you will appreciate this (and even if you are not getting tired of Facebook, watch this and you might start to see why it has become really annoying!).
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FaceBook opened its APIs for third party developers last year, opened its registration to all and saw a meteoric rise in use.
The developers started creating all kinds of applications for FaceBook and the FaceBook Platform was pronounced as the next big thing! And an investment by Microsoft putatively valued the website at $15bn.
However, of late a lot of the sheen seems to be coming off FaceBook. Privacy concerns started raising their head and were given significant credence when FaceBook launched its ill-fated (and short-lived) Beacon project.
Users discovered just how hard it is to actually close their accounts and more recently the New York Times reports that FaceBook has had to implement a procedure for people to have their accounts closed. Closing the account and deleting the information which was in the account are two different operations however.
Listening to the conversations on Twitter it is pretty obvious that people are tiring of FaceBook.
I have a huge concern over what is happening to my information on FaceBook. Not just what is FaceBook doing with it but every time you add an application to your profile, you are giving that application developer access to your FaceBook data.
Personally, the amount of completely frivolous emails and requests I receive from the site (Vampire bites, Human Pets, Pokes, pointless quizzes, etc.) have completely turned me off it and I may log in now once a week just to check my Inbox. Then again I may not!
Are you experiencing FaceBook fade?
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While everyone talks about the power of FaceBook as a cool means of getting a message out, you hear very little about the power of Twitter as a communications tool.
I inadvertantly compared the two in recent months and found that Twitter was by far the more potent communications tool (in my unscientific test, at least).
What happened was, last November and December I changed the status on my Facebook profile to reflect the fact that I was looking for a job. My profile displayed that info for several weeks. In all that time I had one person approach me offering me some possible contract work. No more.
However, two or possibly three times since Christmas I have mentioned on Twitter that I am looking for a job and from that I have received 6-7 strong expressions of interest some of which are at the stage of swapping proposals.
The very first time Will Knott asked me why Twitter was so powerful was at the first Cork Open Coffee meeting back in March 07 and I remember telling him that the power of Twitter is in the network. Twitter continues to prove me right.
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Plaxo started life as a place to hold your contact information online.
That was quite handy and they allowed synchronising from your Mac or PC so your contact data were always held safe in the cloud.
More recently Plaxo added a feature called Pulse. Pulse allows you to tell it where you publish photos, blog posts, bookmarks etc. and it creates a lifestream, a la Facebook which it publishes to your Pulse network.
All sounds nice, right?
Sure, however, for some reason, and I don’t know why, of all the social networks I have joined (and I have joined a few!) Pulse seems to generate the most emails. The emails typically have the subject line “[someone I have never heard of] has added you as a business connection”
On Facebook and Xing, the other two social networks I frequent most, I occasionally get connection requests from people I don’t know. But not very often, and usually a bit of digging will show how they are connected to me.
However, on Plaxo I get waaay too many of these business connections and I have no idea where they are coming from.
Is this just me or are others finding Plaxo also generates too many connection requests from strangers?
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I mentioned earlier in the week that Google was about to launch OpenSocial, a Social Network API platform. Since then Mike Arrington in TechCrunch is reporting that not only is it happenning but MySpace, Bebo and SixApart are on board too!
The OpenSocial site is now live and confirmed participants so far are:
Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING
Why OpenSocial?
The web is more interesting when you can build apps that easily interact with your friends and colleagues. But with the trend towards more social applications also comes a growing list of site-specific APIs that developers must learn.
OpenSocial provides a common set of APIs for social applications across multiple websites. With standard JavaScript and HTML, developers can create apps that access a social network’s friends and update feeds.
Many sites, one API
Whither FaceBook, the current social network colossus in this? They and Microsoft (their recent investor) have got to be wondering how to meet this challenge to their dominant position. Probably the best approach would be to jump in too - that way they have all the advantages of the open platform without the development costs. Google are saying it is an open platform and they wouldn’t see that one coming!
The chances are though that they won’t jump on board and there will be two social network standards, Google’s OpenSocial standard and FaceBook’s.
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Via the FaceBook Observer comes this gem:
Free to any kind of home. Lazy, slob, unmotivated, comes with no future plans, does not do chores, parties all night, sleeps all day, curses in his sleep, eats constantly, does not clean up after himself, very expensive, mouthy, knows everything, works sometimes.
Added bonus - own car, full-time girlfriend(no job) and very large black lab.
Let me know if interested, willing to deliver
Having been up for 2 hours last night with a crying 18 month-old, I can well sympathise with the sentiment!
The black lab looks nice, though!
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