Jul. 13 2011

nevver:

Hate it

current status.

Apr. 06 2011

In Which, Finally, I Understand Facebook

What Facebook offers advertisers that other news organizations do not, says Gans, is a quality he calls magnetism – limited content of high value, frequently renewed. Few readers remain on the site for very long. But they return to it regularly: they are faithful. And this creates a proposition that advertisers may find compelling. If they want to reach a large fraction of the US population over the next few days, Facebook may be the way to do it. The alternative is to purchase multiple digital impressions in many media, hoping to find the right eyeballs.

Roughly speaking, this is what Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has done. He has assembled readers in order to sell their attention to advertisers – it’s a classic two-sided market, just like a newspaper or a television show, except that before Facebook, Gans says, “No one had figured out how to sell ads while your friends and family were talking to you.”

yup.

(Source: azspot)

Feb. 08 2011

re: living in public.

interesting fact about private events on facebook - information from an invite, indeed private on the fb web user interface, isn’t scrubbed from an invitees event iCal feed if they chose to export it (which anyone can do from their events section).

thus, making it public if said person uses that feed in a public forum (like a KML pipe that plots his events on a map in the sidebar of his blog).  guess it’s my fault that facebook’s implied privacy settings don’t extend to all data access points controlled by its platform?

probably.  zuck, of course, is infallible.

Sep. 23 2010

Facebook is not worth $33,000,000,000

Minority investment valuations aren’t real
Facebook is now supposedly worth $33,000,000,000, but that number is entirely based on what star-struck minority investors have paid for a tiny slice of the company. The company has supposedly taken just under a billion dollars in venture capital and small secondary-market sales of stock. So the actual money that has changed hands is just 3% of the total evaluation of the company! In other words, the evaluation is resting on the flawed assumption that Facebook could actually ever get 33 times as much money to change hands if they wanted to. There’s just no way, no how that’s happening right now. If it could, they’d IPO tomorrow. So the Facebook evaluation based on minority investments is in my mind a complete joke in the sense that there was $33,000,000,000 dollars on the table. Irrational investor exuberance indeed.

…

Now this was all fun and games until somebody promised the Newark schools $100 million in stock based on the fantasy evaluation of his under-profiting company. But now it’s real. They’re selling the skin before they shot the bear or peeing their pants to get to the hut or whatever you want to call it. It’s just not good, alright?

i’m not usually so negative about, seemingly, positive stories but this just doesn’t feel right to me or a friend whom it’s supposed to help (regardless of the PR spin/announcement happening same day as the social network hitting theaters).

Sep. 16 2009

Facebook wants to aggregate status between friends. Twitter wants to aggregate status between topics. This fundamental difference drives extremely different models for using micro-updates and subsequently renders Facebook and Twitter as non-competitors.

Hacker News

One of the better descriptions of the difference between Twitter and Facebook that I’ve read.  I don’t think they are at war the way major media publications portray them to be.  Facebook is closed, Twitter is open.  Facebook will never be Twitter.

(via bleikamp)

you heard it here 2nd.

Mar. 20 2009

What’s a good example of a disruptive company? Why, Twitter, which Zuckerberg tried to buy for $500 million in cash and stock. Having failed to grab Twitter, Zuckerberg has redesigned his website in its image — a steady stream of real-time updates which are impossible to follow unless you stay on the website all day long. Which sounds great, unless you have a job, a family, or a life.
The Roots of Facebook’s Redesign Crisis

my ambivalence about this subject is slowly turning into an opinion that is falling on the side of the masses: that this re-design wasn’t a good idea.

i work in digital media and frequent facebook but there are many times where i don’t have it open and am actually doing work. the beauty of its previous design was its curation abilities. i was able to define whom i wanted to see information about, the kinds of information i wanted to see about them and even the frequency. this let me ignore facebook all day and then check it during the evenings, picking up where i left off and systematically looking at different sections i cared about. i can’t do this anymore and therefore facebook isn’t as valuable to me.

editing, curation, etc. are all finer design points that are trying, desperately, to tone the constant information overload of this digital age. some get it, most don’t. although, people are starting to see the value. why do you think facebook was so popular to begin with? it had perfected the art of helping anyone manage their network efficiently.

update: this post gives some good insight on ways to manage the home page better. whenever i take the time, i’ll probably be able to get things back to how they were in terms of the news feed actually being useful. however, net net, it’s a regressive design choice by facebook. when you’re designing for singular use (as in facebook isn’t a “group” activity), information overload should be carefully tempered.

Nov. 14 2008

First Casualty of the Obama Administration

urg:

Last night while on Facebook, I noticed that I was unable to access the account of a close friend. A friend in whose wedding I served as a bridesmaid. Thinking it was a Facebook glitch, I e-mailed her this morning to check in.

She wrote back saying that due to things that were said during the election, she thought it best to remove me as a friend.

I’ll be the first to say that my passions were ignited during the election season, but despite the fact that Facebook “friends” made utterly racists comments in their status messages I never defriended them. While their opinions may differ from mine and I might be disgusted by their tone and content, I do see it as part of their rights to say what they think.

So, my progressive values and belief in Barack Obama cost me a friend. But, in the end, I think I got a whole lot more.

this is a legit reality of young america.  facebook (and social networks in general) introduced a whole new dynamic to self-expression and belief systems that haven’t been part of general elections past.

i’m very interested in seeing how these things develop in real-time.  this is happening now.  not “has happened with someone else” or “will be happening in the future.”  decisions about your person are being made in real-time based on opinions drawn from your digital imprints.  i’ve encountered similar situations during this election.  friends who i see socially that might oppose things i believe in or make assumptions/broad-stroke statements about one candidate or another.  then having to go meet up with them, drink a beer and talk about something completely different makes it very hard to keep a straight face.