Dear FB, Twitter - We want narrowcasting, not just broadcasting!

Earlier this week, I wanted to send a Facebook message to my dancer friends in the Bay Area to invite them to a local event.  I ended up manually sifting through my entire friends list, since there’s no way to invite or message an intersection of friends.  Similarly, I wanted to post a twitter note to my Google buddies in a particular geographic region, but Twitter doesn’t support any sort of useful narrowcasting, either.

Basically, social service nowadays seem hellbent on having us share our lives and connect with more and more people.  I don’t want that, and I’m betting a lot of you feel the same way:  we want to deepen our relationships with our current friends, share details of our lives with the friends who are most likely interested in those particular details, and so on.

A lot of the brouhaha over FBs aggressive more-sharing push has been over privacy, but in the rush to protest “ZOMG, I don’t want my mom to know THAT!” the complementary concerns of narrowcasting have been largely ignored.  I’m personally a lot less worried about someone finding out something I don’t want them to know about, and far more concerned about burning out my friends with info they find irrelevant and uninteresting.

Is it not madness that I can’t post a note joking about a local politician just to my Mountain View friends?  This highlights one of a great many situations in which there are no privacy issues (I’m not trying to keep my bad sense of humor a secret from my friends in Europe), but rather that my friends outside MV aren’t likely to care about this topic.  And worse yet, these friends will likely stop reading my posts altogether unless I either post less overall (a bummer!) or magically somehow write entries that are appealing and relevant across my diverse group of friends (pretty impossible).

*  *  *

I think I speak for most of us non-hermit’y types in noting that:

• Our sphere of acquaintances and friends is growing at an astonishing rate… due to the awesome people we meet online, at work, via friends, from family members, etc.
• We have an innate desire to stay in touch with many of these folks and to share interesting and relevant stuff with them.
• Relationships are not symmetrical, nor are the related communications desires!  I may hang on the every brilliant and witty word of a friend, but she may be, um, less fascinated with my mutterings (while still wanting to keep in touch with me overall)
• There should be easier ways for us to finetune who (and what groups) we share with and who we hear from… beyond the scope of privacy considerations.
  
  
  • For instance, it’d be awesome to be able to tell our computer: “I want to share this musing with my friends who love hiking and are within 20 miles of Mountain View” or, conversely, “Highlight messages from friends who live nearby me and aren’t talking about politics.”

But alas, services like Facebook seem to be lately more concerned about giving people a megaphone than letting them share and filter more effectively.  They’re amplifying and extending the noise, which from what I gather, is more likely to alienate people than have them maintain Facebook as part of their daily routine.  And that’s a shame.

*  *  *

What do you think?

- Do you share my interests in narrowcasting?
- Or do I have an unusually large addressbook and/or overly geeky demands re: sharing and filtering?
- Are you familiar with any services that are helping folks connect more deeply vs. broadly?

Time spent on social networks and the like - I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours

After having fallen hugely behind on browsing my Facebook newsfeed, Friendfeed, etc., I decided to see just how much time I had been spending during those “on top of it” days… and, by extension, how much time it’d take me to keep up each day.

Around 10pm last night, I “cleared out” my Reader, and picked a stopping point in Facebook and Friendfeed, so I could start fresh tonight (Monday) and see just how much would accumulate in 24 hours… and how long it’d take me to get through it.

So here are my numbers:

• Facebook:  Browsing (and commenting a bit) on a filtered newsfeed of one group of 270 friends:  20 minutes


• Friendfeed:  Browsing (and commenting/liking a bit) on a selected group comprised of about 80 friends:  8 minutes


• Twitter:  Browsed through unfiltered/ungrouped list via Brizzly (happy to offer invites to the first ten people who contact me):  12 minutes.
  
• Reader:  Browsing through my ??? feeds (and checking out a few original pages + adding a couple comments):  28 minutes (”???” because Reader never was able to load up anything when I clicked on “Manage my subscriptions.”  Bummer!  But I’m guessing I have over 200 feeds, of which probably 100 are updated at least weekly)

Just a bit over an hour.  Not that bad, right?  Except when you realize a few very important things:

• This is more than an hour every single day, including weekends, holidays, vacation times, etc.


• Worse yet (and more importantly), this does not include my personal e-mail, which I estimate would take me about an hour daily in and of itself to read and appropriately reply to messages.


• Nor does this include Wave.  Or Techmeme.  Or online News.  Or really anything else in the vast online world.


• It certainly doesn’t include the time I should be spending composing thoughtful e-mails to my Grandpa, to my friends near and far, and so on.  500 or so contacts in my addressbook… people that I care about.  If I e-mailed each one just once a month, that’s more than one substantive e-mail every day (in addition to the other replies).
  
• And it certainly doesn’t include corporate (work) mail and related stuff, but that’s well beyond the scope of this inquiry, in which I’m trying to pin down this...

How much of my free time do I spend (or would I have to spend each day) on “keeping up” with friends and news online?

*  *  *

Well, now you know, or at least have an idea about my time allocations. 

Where does your time go?

- How much time do you spend each day on Facebook, Twitter, etc.?  (Not sure?  Try what I did, and actually time it!)

- Is that more than you thought?  Less than you thought?  Does it make sense for you?

Curious to hear your numbers and your feelings on this…

[Edited at 1:18am October 13 to add: Twitter stats]

Don't get a G1 (but do keep an eye out for Android Awesomeness!)

When it took me seven seconds just to be able to answer a phone call, that’s when I realized I had finally had enough.  I’ve never used an iPhone and due to disapproval over Apple’s policies probably never well, so this is not a “G1 Sucks iPhone Rules!!!1” post.  Unfortunately, it’s still a rant against the G1.

First, let me offer some disclaimers:

1) I’m a power user.  I’ve downloaded lots of apps, and overall, they rock.  Google Maps on the G1 is awesome.  Pandora’s new Android app made me literally giggle with glee.  And the Android OS, while clearly still a bit rough, has great potential IMHO.  But perhaps because I’m a power user (installing many apps and pushing the phone to its limits), the phone has been more frustrating for me than it is (or would be) for more, heh, normal people.

2) And speaking of normal people… my sister—who is crazy-smart but hardly an early adopter geek—LOVES her G1.  She pretty much only uses it for phone calls and checking her e-mail, but the latter came in handy wonderfully when her desktop computer was down and also when the electricity was out where she lives.  She’s had no problems figuring out how to use the phone, and seemingly no problems getting it to do what she wants to do with it.  Though granted, when I last spoke with her, she hadn’t actually installed a single app.

3) I know people on the Android team and I hope they do not hate me after this post.  They’re genuinely good, smart, hardworking folks who IMHO made an admirable effort towards Android Phone v1.  When the phone works well (and let me note, it mostly does), it makes you appreciate the power and opportunities in an open mobile OS

Alas, though, for better or worse, working well most of the time isn’t sufficient for a phone. Phones should work reliably and consistently well, and the G1 does not.  It comes down to the hardware: Ouch.  Ouch.  Ouch.  Slow, as in, it often takes over five seconds for the home page to show up after you click the home button.  That, combined with the flakiness in making and receiving calls, makes it a pretty lousy phone for phone calls. And regardless of my preference for e-mail over voice calls most of the time, this is still absolutely, positively unacceptable in a phone.

*  *  *

Many of you may be surprised to hear me publicly railing against what some refer to as “the Google Phone.”  I note (with some pride) that my policy has pretty much always been to offer public praise on Google products when I feel they deserve it and private (within-Google) blunt-yet-constructive criticisms of Google products that (to me) fall short.

But…

1) This technically isn’t a “Google phone.”  We made the software, but someone else made the hardware.  I’m mentioning this as a technicality, admittedly, and not intending to just pass the buck.  Ultimately, it’s got our name on it and we should (and I believe do) take both responsibility and credit for Android phones that include what’s known as the “Google Experience.”

2) I can say with firm confidence that many of the phones coming down the pike this year (18-20 is the number publicly pre-announced!) simply ROCK.    And I want folks’ first experience with Android to be one that’s consistently AWESOME, not just “Hmm, pretty good most of the time.”

You should be asking Santa for an Android phone this Christmas, even if you’re an atheist.  Er, okay, if you’re a non-Christian, perhaps you should just go out and buy an Android phone yourself.  You’ll appreciate the better (much better) hardware, slicker UIs, and a lot more to make you smile.

#geekfail -- Valuing immediacy over depth, accuracy, and understanding

Yesterday, I learned about the turmoil in Iran… from the blogosphere.  Some have argued that the immediacy of news on this and other breaking topics is a sign that mainstream media has failed and online media—specifically “real time” components of online media—have triumphed.  I believe such an assumption is not only dead wrong, but dangerous to society.

Today, I can get more information—and more importantly, more *verified* information—about the situation in Iran from mainstream media.  And in a few days, I’ll no doubt be able to get some insightful background information, valuable context, and more-likely-accurate news from weekly magazines.

Even online, let’s compare, one day later:
- http://search.twitter.com/search?q=iran
- http://news.google.com/news?q=iran

Some would argue… but Adam, don’t you want information right now?  How can you wait a day or even a week to learn what’s going on?!?!?!?!?!!!!!!1

To that, I’d reply with the following question:  Why do you value immediacy over depth, accuracy, and understanding?  Or, better yet, what difference will it make in your life to know about the Iranian election mess one day sooner?  Will you be able to change anything?  Help anyone?  What will you and the world lose by waiting a few more hours?

*  *  *

So why do I believe this increasing predilection towards immediacy is actually dangerous, and not just misguided?

• It’s pressuring news media and politicians to report, respond, and act before they have all the facts, before they’ve had a chance to digest what is correct and what is right.  While I doubt that people with access to nukes won’t be relying on twitter “reporting” to make that crucial decision, I wouldn’t be surprised if we start seeing more and more decisions painfully botched due to a reliance upon “what’s happening right now.”
• While there’s a chicken and egg scenario here, I wouldn’t be surprised if push towards “real time” is further feeding and exacerbating society’s collective ADD, dulling our interests and abilities in long-term thinking and planning.  What are people reading?  What are they thinking about?  If, as we’ve noticed, fewer and fewer people (including me) are taking the time to write (and listen) beyond soundbites, what does this mean for the peaceful progress of our society?

Yes, I know I’m sounding like your grumpy neighbor who perhaps just got on the net (via dialup).  No, I don’t think my griping alone will make a whit of difference.

But perhaps if enough people say, well, ENOUGH!... immediacy != value, then perhaps the tide will start turning.  Not gonna hold my breath, though.

P.S.—I realize that there IS value in real time.  In the case of disasters (natural and manmade), services like Twitter have helped with the mobilization of protests and rescue efforts and so on.  So for the citizens of Iran, I have no doubt that tweets may well have served as valuable inspiration and coordination.  But this is not news, this is broadcasting.  And for the rest of the world, I stand by my assertions that there was little value in seeing a flurry of micro-messages about events happening in other places of the world except as—and I hate to label it as such—entertainment.  But unsurprisingly the impulse to be entertained, to be un-bored… is now clearly more powerful than the desire to be patiently enlightened.

Picking a domain name -- a helpful list

My friends have been telling me that “BLADAM” is a yucky name.  Bummer.  So I’ve shopping for a new domain name, and it’s not easy!  So many things to think about, and so many damn evil squatters (but that’s a different issue).

And I thought hmm, I’ve been mulling over so many guidelines and best practices in my mind, I might as well share them!  So, without further ado, here are some of my thoughts.

• Clear pronunciation: You—and many others—are probably going to mention the domain out loud.  Is it blADAM or BlaDAMN?  Is it PenIsland or… ahem :o.
  
• Spellable: Is it lasnik or lasnick?  spendia or spendea? Mind your homophones, too.  Was that 4you or 4u or foryou.whatever?  q or queue?
  
• International meaning: Do you want your domain to mean “smelly” in a popular non-English language?  Probably not.
  
• Brevity: osteoporosishealing may convey exactly what your drug does, but—forget spelling—try fitting that on a business card!
  
• Unspamminess: No matter how clever you think you are, some-domain-name-like-this.whatever will look like spam.  Honest.
  
• Got .com?: You may have found a fab .net domain name, but what if your clients/potential customers keep mailing the .com version?  Uh oh!  Try to get both, at least if you’re in the U.S.  Old habits die hard, unfortunately!
  
• Brand matching: If everyone knows you or your company under one name, choosing a cute marketing word as your domain name may not fly.  People will probably still type in companyname.com into their browser.
  
• Cost: Some random TLD (e.g., .ly) may have their registrations on sale this month, but what about when you renew?  .com and .net (and the TLDs of big countries) will likely stay reasonably affordable.  .vanity TLDs?  Possibly not.
  
• Legal stuff: Using a major (or even minor) brand’s name in your domain name may seem like flattery, but it may get you nowhere but in trouble.
  
• Expandability: Isn’t it a good thing that Amazon.com didn’t start off as books.com?  This also means “BlogOfFred.com” may be a bad idea if you think you might add a wiki or forum later.  Or, more importantly, if your name’s not Fred.

Any items I forgot?  Post YOUR thoughts and ideas below :-D

P.S.—If you’re searching for domains, check out DomainTools and domai.nr, two of my favorite sites in this space.

Pandora Mobile highlights awesomeness but also severe lame-itude

Do you know Pandora?  If you’re in the United States, where Pandora is legally available, you may have come to enjoy this awesome uber-customizable music radio over the past years.  If you’re not in the U.S., perhaps you’ve discovered the beauty of anonymous proxies :cough:, which I’m not going to mention here :p.

But perhaps you didn’t know that Pandora has become available on mobile phones!  More good news:  It’s available for free on phones that run the Windows Mobile operating system, free on Sprint phones, and free on (some versions of) BlackBerry phones.  Ironically, it’s also free on the iPhone, and I say ironically because AT&T apparently is charging—I swear I am not making this up—$8.95 per month to its other mobile customers for the privileges of using Pandora.  I mean, I love Pandora and all, but even if I were insane enough to be contributing to the income of the evilness that is AT&T, I sure as heck wouldn’t fork over that much dough for Pandora.  For an on-demand mobile music service?  Perhaps.  But for streaming radio?  You’ve got to be kidding.

One other note on the Pandora Mobile offerings:  Apparently, I’m not supposed to be able to access Pandora Mobile because T-Mobile phones are not supported.  Which is odd, because I’m enjoying streaming music via Pandora on my BlackBerry Curve (on T-Mobile) right now.  Go figure.  I also shouldn’t mention that I was also able to do this while in Ireland a couple of weeks ago (listening to, appropriately enough, The Corrs on St. Patricks day :-D ).

*  *  *

Anyway, if you’re an iPhone user or a non-AT&T subscriber, give Pandora Mobile a go!  If you’re an AT&T subscriber, well, heaven help you, and for reasons way beyond this Pandora issue.

[Gee, Adam, tell us what you really think about AT&T :D]

*  *  *

Okay, okay, I’m thinking I should flesh this entry out a little bit :-)

Some stuff I like in the mobile app:

- Seems to work internationally (though I can imagine this being “fixed” [sigh])

- Works as a true background app on my BlackBerry!

- Can play through my BB’s speaker (actually sounds decent!) or a headset

- Song-to-song time isn’t bad

- Nice graphics, simple, intuitive interface.

- Access to all my stations :-)

- Can even view “Why [did Pandora play] this song?”

- Thumbs up / thumbs down works.

Some stuff I don’t like:

- Takes a while to start up the app

- No way to see detailed info on artist or song

*  *  *

All in all, pretty damn cool! :-D

My experiment testing user engagement on Facebook, Friendfeed, and Twitter

What did I do?!

I posted an identically-phrased note on Facebook, Friendfeed, and Twitter at around 1:30am PDT Friday morning. Specifically, I posted this: "Could you kindly help me with a super-quick experiment (takes less than 30 seconds)? I'll share results :-) Thanks!"

Why?

I was curious to see which set of friends/subscribers (henceforth referred to as "contacts") would be more apt to read my note and reply.

What happened?

As of nearly 40 hours after posting...

So does this mean Facebook is better than Friendfeed and Twitter?

No. Is a particular service a better fit or a more powerful promotional vehicle for some people or for some needs or interests? Probably. But my experiment doesn't prove that. This is based upon my sets of contacts, and was limited to a single test. I know it would make for a far more popular blog entry to trumpet this with a title of "[servicename] the [other servicename] Killer?!?!?" or "[servicename] Beats the Pants Off [other service name]" or -- best yet -- "[servicename] Set to Trounce Google?!?" -- but I refuse to support such memes or pageview-increasing tactics. At least until I receive a very lucratic offer and then decide to sell-out :D.

So what does your little test suggest?

It means that -- with my sets of contacts -- I'm significantly more likely to get engagement and actions from my contacts on Facebook.

Huh?

When looking at contact interaction, I think we have to take a few things into account:

• What's the contact acquisition rate? e.g., how many folks subscribe to / follow you each day?
  
  


• What's the contact retention rate? How many people stick with you (vs. defriend or unsubscribe)
  
  


• What's the attention rate? How many actually read what you post?
  
  


• What's the engagement rate? How many click on your links?
  
  


• And lastly, what's the action rate? This is just subtly different than engagement, but I mean this to distinguish between clicking on a blog post link and actually posting a comment there.
  
  

And, from my limited test and experiences, here's the more detailed comparison:

• Acquisition: I've found that I acquire contacts on Twitter far more rapidly than on either of the other services.

I've been gaining followers at a much faster rate on Twitter than on Friendfeed... typically more than 7-10 a day on Twitter vs. 1 a day on FF. In fact, I even plugged Friendfeed to nearly 100 of my buddies via a friendly (albeit form) e-mail, and got a sum total of zero friends subscribing to my FF feed from that. Bummer :-(. FF's a much harder sell, at least amongst my non-geek friends, than I previously assumed. Balancing that, though, two friends I personally referred to FF a while back are now two of the service's more active users :-D. Also, note that my Twitter subscriber count got a HUGE boost because I was recently subscribed to by the wildly popular Google account on Twitter.

• Retention is a bit harder to assess.

For a while, I used the third party service Twitterless to let me know who unsubscribed from my feed each day. Seemed like I lost about a follower a day on Twitter, which was a little depressing, so I'm glad that feature of Twitterless ceased to function a while back. Though I've culled my own Facebook friend list, I haven't really noticed if/when my friends have unfriended me there. And I've also not tracked/noticed people unsubscribing from me on Friendfeed, though I'm sure it's happened, despite the consistently scintillating quality of my FF posts (HAH!).

• Attention: Not sure how I could possibly measure that. There's no user-available "analytics for Friendfeed / Facebook / Twitter" that I know of. Bummer.

• Engagement, or click-thru rate... in the past, I've found that I've gotten proportionally the most clicks from Twitter contacts, followed by Facebook and then Friendfeed.

Contemplating Attention and Engagement... I'm guessing that Friendfeed's generally-helpful/intriguing "Friend of Friend" option could nonetheless be substantially diluting the total attention that feeds-of-friends get. In other words, when someone subscribes to me on Friendfeed, they then start getting (by default) a stream of not only my content, but also the content of my friends' items I comment on or Like. More to look at means, understandably, attention spread across more items = less time looking at my items. Then again, one could argue that this is balanced out by the fact that people who aren't subscribed to me are likely to be seeing my items in their feeds when their friends Like or comment upon my entries. Hmm.

I'm not quite sure why Facebook engagement seems to be proportionally so much higher than on the other services, but I think it has to do with the friendship-vs-content orientation of my respective contacts. More specifically, I believe my FB network consists of more strong / moderate friendship ties, whereas people following me on Twitter and FF may be more apt to be reading my stuff because, well, they like my stuff (funny comments, links) vs. liking me personally. So given this, when I asked for a quick favor, it makes sense that I'd get a higher response rate from friends vs. fans.

• Action is where things get a lot more complicated.

When looking at the magnitude of action -- that is to say, getting a single reply (minimal action) vs spawning a lengthy thread of comments (extended action) -- then the services are quite different from my experience. On Twitter and Facebook, I've found that I quite often get one reply or a small handful replies to my posts. On Friendfeed, more of my posts go without any comments, but... on Friendfeed, I'm more likely to see a post get a large collection of comments. This isn't surprising to me. Though Facebook has moved more towards facilitating a Friendfeed style of item+comment, Friendfeed's been IMHO by far the strongest service in town for conversations. In contrast, on Twitter it's quite easy to post an @ response, but rather frustrating to follow a conversation. I think this explains why I tend to see more robust conversations on Friendfeed, but more frequent (albeit less voluminous) replies on Facebook and Twitter.

The tone and content of a post also plays a large role in determining the extent of replies for me by service. Examples of post-types that are most likely to elicit replies on the various services (again, for me; your mileage may vary!)

- Facebook: "Having a rotten day, could use a hug!" [expression of emotion, change in personal status, in-joke shared amongst friends]

- Friendfeed: "Whoa, check out this robot who recites poetry! WANT! You, too?" [early link to article highlighting a new geek toy or popular geek meme, profound observations or statements of concern, anything about the Kindle, Apple, or Obama]

- Twitter: "At big electronics store in Japan. Should I buy digital camera here or wait 'til Korea?" [questions that don't demand a complicated response, simple but unexpected notes (e.g., "Now in Bora Bora for 3 hours!", "Just got engaged!")]

General caveats:

• Interconnection: Lots of interconnection between the services! Twitter is integrated into FF and FB, for instance. However, I don't import my twitter feed into my Facebook account, and I also immediately deleted the twitter-post in Friendfeed to help mitigate this issue.
  
  
• Facebook UI change: Facebook just switched over to a new format. This could have increased or decreased attention to my link.
  
  
• Timing: The timing wasn't necessarily optimal. Posting it so late on Thu night meant that -- by the time most people accessed their account on the various services -- they likely already had a ton to look at... e.g., my post was no longer "fresh" at that point.

Personal caveats/notes:

• Difference in contact symmetry:
  
  Anyone can follow me on Twitter and FF (assymetry / self-selection), but I pick (and am picky about) who I friend on FB (due to both its symmetrical friends model and my own preferences).
  


• Difference in contact type:
  
  My contacts on FB are far less geeky than my contacts on the other services. They also tend to be typically personal friends rather than acquaintances or fans. In contrast, my contacts on Twitter seem to be largely online marketers, SEOs, and geeks. Same on FF, but with a much higher emphasis of online marketing / uber-geeky folks who are deeply excited about stuff online. Many of my FB friends just dabble a little bit online and most tend to be buddies from school, work, dance, etc.


• Why Friendfeed / Facebook / Twitter and not [blah blah blah]?
  
  Because these are the social networking/broadcasting-type services I predominantly use. I have also tried Friendster, Myspace, Orkut, Tribe, Multiply, Jaiku, and likely many other services I've forgotten about, but the three above are the ones I'm active on.

And now for some notes from the respondents:

In addition to the main survey question asking people where they clicked on the link from, I also invited people to leave a freeform comment. I'm not sharing all of them (due to privacy concerns), but have excerpted (and replied to in brackets) some below:

• Did worry it might implode my computer with malware, but hey, I'm leaving the company in two weeks! :-)
  
  [Yeah, I hadn't even thought of how my impersonal-sounding click-here request might be misperceived. Wonder if that lowered the clickthru rate?]


• You're my hero, Adam!
  
  [Aw, and you wrote that even before you read this blatheringly long blog post. Hope you still feel the same way :-)]


• Uh, it's WAY too soon to be talking engagement -- I mean you just confirmed we were FRIENDS yesterday!
  
  [What if I added you to my Top Friends app list in FB? Would that win your heart?]


• When you write up the results, please keep emphasizing that these are just your friends and try not to generalize.:-D
  
  [I hope I've suitably emphasized that!]


• Although I clicked through from FB because I have FB chat turned on in Pidgin and it shows me status updates right there.
  
  [That's a very good point. I wasn't thinking about how use of third party tools could skew this experiment.]
  

• Good idea Adam, though I wonder if it may be slightly different results for others. After all, you are "the Adam Lasnik".
  
  [I doubt my micro-celebrity status (in the webmaster world) would affect things one way or the other. Might be responsible for getting me more subscribers on Twitter and Friendfeed, but that's why I listed proportional results above :-)].

I also got another interesting comment which further accentuates the complication involving the use of third party tools with these services... and also touches upon the frustration of data silos:

Hmm, I think you're missing a subtlety. I selected Facebook because that was the source of the thing I saw. However, where I actually saw it was in Google Reader. I feel like I spend a lot of time trying to get Facebook stuff *out* of Facebook and into the applications I prefer to use. FB does not really make this as easy as it should be. Also, I usually end up getting stuck with two copies of things when someone, for example, imports their Twitter posts to FB. But at least in Reader I can really quickly scan all the updates in a list, skimming over the duplicate or uninteresting ones. (I just wish I could get a FB feed for a friends sub-list!)

Oh, and Vinny... thanks for the hat! :-)

Wow, that experiment was neato! Can I do that, too? Should I do it? Are you gonna repeat it to see how things change?!

Yep! Technically. Probably not. Unlikely.

Frankly, I'm guessing my friends would get highly annoyed with me if I identically repeated this experiment, and -- worse yet -- I bet that people in the webosphere would get really pissed at you (and me) if this experiment was duplicated ad nauseum. So sorry, I've got first-mover advantage. Take solace in the fact that I likely won't get rich and famous from this, though. Unless I'm offered a book deal along the lines of, "A Completely Unscientific Experiment Exploring User Engagement With Three Darlings of the Interwebs -- The Untold Story" for one MILLION dollars. But that also seems at least somewhat unlikely.

Thanks for reading, though! And hey, while you're at it, go subscribe to my Friendfeed and Twitter streams :D

* * *

P.S. -- You're welcome to check out the click-thru data of my original request via bit.ly :-D.

* * *

And now... YOUR turn!

Do my experiences match yours? Do you see similar demographic differences in your friend/follower sets amongst the services? What kind of response rates have YOU seen? Other thoughts?

Facebook's Frustrating Friending... and my reluctant choice

I have over 500 Facebook friends.  That’s a statement to help you understand my predicament, not a badge of honor.  Of these, a handful are close friends, a big bunch are “regular” friends, a ton of ‘em are colleagues with which I have varying degrees of social contact and interest, and an even larger ton are “acquaintances or less.”  From that latter category, I still value many of those admittedly “weak ties.”  I may not know someone well, but perhaps she and I connected strongly even after just a brief meetup.  Or… maybe I don’t chat with that one fellow much anymore, but he used to be my best friend in high school and I still care about how he’s doing.

But then there are the other “friends.”  People I met once at a conference and exchanged pleasant pleasantries with.  Someone from college who was the girlfriend of an acquaintance.  Or someone who… uh… who is that guy?

*  *  *

The biggest and most painful flaw in Facebook’s friend-system is that it assumes that two people in a “friendship” see the relationship in the same way… and thus have the same interests (or interest level) in both sharing and learning about each other.  I have no doubt that there are people I’m interested in hearing about (and from), but who absolutely couldn’t give a rodent’s posterior about my latest blatherings or photos.  On a related note, I have work buddies that I enjoy chatting with, but would probably not to subject them to my occasional angst, drinking photos, dating whines, and so on.  As a friend of mine once commented, “You don’t want to see your boss in Speedos” or, more intellectually, many people understandably feel uncomfortable sharing or reading “out of social context.” You get my point.

*  *  *

Sure, Facebook’s “friend lists” can ameliorate some of these issue a bit.  But not completely.  And the UI is so awkward, so confusing, so annoying, it almost makes setting up friend lists more trouble than they’re worth.

What Facebook needs to do is break the friend-reciprocity requirement.  Just because I’m interested in following a person’s photo stream or reading their latest musings doesn’t mean they want to be forcefed AdamInfo.  More specifically, Facebook needs a “subscription” model, just like what we have for blogs, on Twitter, on Friendfeed, and—for crying out loud—in real life. 

Each person has two rights in this far-more-ideal non-reciprocal friends model:

1) The right to set privacy boundaries, dictating who (individually and/or by group) can access what aspects of their space (profile, activity stream, etc.)

2) The right to follow or subscribe to whatever or whoever he or she wants, subject (of course) to any applicable privacy boundaries mentioned in #1… WITHOUT the other person having to indicate the same level of interest.

There’s also a #3, which I find to be a strongly desirable albeit not required component of this model:

3) The right to more keenly control sharing, so that it’s aligned intelligently not only with the interests of the sharer (as in #1), but also with the interests of the potential reader (related to #2).

#3 might seem redundant, but it’s not.

*  *  *

A hypothetical example:

Pat has buddies Fred and Jen.  Fred and Pat are fast friends.  In contrast, Pat has a crush on Jen and want to know everything about her, but she doesn’t have the same interest in Pat.

- Clearly, Jen’s gonna want #1 here.  She doesn’t want Pat to see her stuff at all, so she either blocks him or gives him limited privileges. 

- She may, however, want to keep tabs on the fellow to see if he’s spreading rumors or going from creepy to threatening, so she takes advantage of #2 above.

Under the current model, the latter part wouldn’t be reasonably possible.  Jen would have to friend Pat, and wouldn’t that be awkward?! (and potentially hazardous, by sending absolutely the wrong statement).

So then we have Pat and Fred.  As fast friends, they really want to follow everything of each other.  There should be a system, perhaps not only algorithmic (which I believe FB already has in place) but optional-manual as well, which enables the two to indicate, yes, turn on the firehose; let me know when my best friend sneezes.  Again, Facebook has some functionality along this line, but it doesn’t scale well within an account, it’s confusing, and it’s basically a pain in the ass.

This is where #3 comes into play.  Facebook should enable folks to more easily share smartly… e.g., “pushing” those conference photos or blog entry on technology to colleagues, but not gym buddies or high school chums.  Of note, this is NOT the same as privacy; I’m not suggesting that this should be used as a substitute for effective privacy controls or filtering, nor even that the untargeted folks in the above scenario couldn’t view those items if they wanted.  But rather, it’s an issue of respect and priority; it’s less that those folks would be offended and more that they’d be simply bored.  What I’m calling for is a sharing that respects not only boundaries, but likely interests.

*  *  *

And lastly, we return to the most painful part of Facebook’s current friending model:  the increasing noise to signal ratio.  In other words, when I view my homepage feed, a lot of it is uninteresting to me.  And, alas, I miss tidbits about friends that I am interested in hearing about.  Yes, again, I could use friend lists (and do), but this doesn’t help streamline many other reading or transactional activities on FB; I still have to wade through 500+ names when recommending friends to friends, for instance.

So today I’m finally making that hard choice:  I’m being selfish and reclaiming my addressbook.  I’m removing a not-insignificant-number of folks from my Facebook addressbook (read: de-friending them) not because they stole my girlfriend or poked my eye out with a bb-gun or made me lick Grand Central Station with my tongue (though, indeed, all of those would be good reasons for de-friending), but rather because we don’t really chat so much any more or have drifted apart or never really chatted much socially in the first place,  etc. etc. etc., and the benefit of those weak ties is outweighed by the collective—I hate to use this word—clutter.

Offended?  Blame Facebook.  Or, better, yet, if you’re bummed that I’ve de-friended you, do one or both of the following:

- Contact Facebook and let them know that it’s high time they update their friending system to improve sharing & privacy and reduce awkwardness.

- Follow me on FriendFeed (and, obviously, feel very welcome to engage in conversation with me there).

*  *  *

Thanks for your understanding :-D.  Also, why not share your thoughts below on how Facebook Friending works?

I, Robot

Hello.  Good day.  A little quiet?

I’m feeling a little blue myself.

You know, A little anxious for no particular reason

A little sad that I should feel anxious at this age.

You know, a little self-conscious anxiety resulting in non-specific sadness.

The state that I call blue.

- spoken by the narrator (“Man In Chair”) in the awesome musical “The Drowsy Chaperone”

Today I am a little sad because of a small heartbreak.

And a little anxious because, well, I should not be admitting this in public.

Real men

don’t

do cry.

But real businessmen… the type who are strong, who manage or mentor, who think of respect and solidness and promotions… they are not bloviatingly blathering on a blog, blissfully or blamefully or otherwise.

Think.  Think of someone you look up to at work.  Do you want to know his private foibles, hear of his personal struggles?  Really?  No. You want someone to look up to.  Someone at least a little bit larger than life.  A rock, or minimally a damn large stone.

You have your own problems, and when you want to schadenfreudically delight in someone else’s problems, you have your TV or paper or favorite internet gossip sites within an arm or eyeball’s reach.

When your current or future dear leaders are feeling blue, they ideally do not show you, much less tell you.

Then again, maybe it’s different today.  Maybe the Live Journalers of the modern era will grow up to be respected leaders… warty angst, noserings and all.  Perhaps someday we’ll view an executive’s late night facebookings with indifference rather than annoyance or scorn.

Or maybe not.  Maybe he or she will methodically scrub, hoping the last trace of emotion is gone.  Here, look, a résumé.  A fine, level-headed portfolio indeed!

And only a strong, competitive, safe, and secure heart.

Why this blog doesn't decently render in Chrome

UPDATE:  Vinny sent me a script that fixes it.  Much thanks!

—-

Right after I wrote a neato article on Chrome and Google Bookmarks, my blog stopped “working” in Chrome.  I finally figured out why.

Apparently, the script set that powers my dropdown menu—the “Accessible Website Dropdown Menu”—is written to look for the string “Apple Computer” in a browser’s useragent and serve webkit-oriented stuff to those browsers.  But Chrome now lists “Google inc.” in the user agent.

More details are in the bug report I filed (which, rightly, was marked “works as intended,” since it’s a script problem, not a Chrome bug).

If any folks more adept at JS than I am want to either help me fix this or—better yet—help the UDM folks fix it, that’d be super :-D.

Google's new browser, Chrome, and Google Bookmarks

Have you tried Google’s new browser, “Chrome”?  It’s fast and it rocks.  But there’s no Google Toolbar!  How can you bookmark pages to a central location (Google Bookmarks)?  Here’s how, in just a few quick and easy steps :-D.

1. First, download Chrome (duh!) :-D.
   
2. If you don’t already see a bookmarks bar (right below the address bar or “omnibar” and above the actual web page) turn it on by hitting CTRL-B (you can hide it anytime by hitting CTRL-B again).
   
3. Visit this help page on Google Chrome and bookmarking.
   
4. Go ahead and—you guessed it—drag that little box to the bookmarks area of Chrome.

VOILA!  Now whenever you want to bookmark a page, just click on that little bookmark.

*  *  *

But what happens when you want to find that page again?

Well, for one thing, Chrome’s omnibar is pretty damn smart… even smarter than you might initially expect!  Try typing just a few letters from that site’s URL or title and it may very well show up for you in the omnibar :-D. But if you still want to see all your bookmarks, you can do one of two things:

• Revisit Google Bookmarks OR
  
• Check out the cooler experience of Google Notebook, and you'll find all your bookmarks under the UNFILED folder (click on the left), where you can annotate, group, and optionally share your favorite bookmarks with friends.

* * *

Hope these tips help you enjoy Chrome even more!

* * *

EDITED on Wednesday, September 3 to add:

Thank you to Simon B for the improved link to the bookmarklet! :-D

Gmail tip: Use "Quick Links" to help you find important mail quickly

Do you use Gmail?  The new “Quick Links” feature, offered via Google’s Gmail Labs project, can help save you time and highlight important mail.

WHAT QUICK LINKS DOES

Think of it as sort of a “Saved searches” feature :-D.  Basically, you can take any search and “save” it so that it appears as an option under a Quick Links menu on the lefthand side of your Gmail screen.  For instance, one of my favorite quick links is this saved search: “TO:me IN:inbox.”  When I click on this link now, it shows me all mail that’s been sent to me personally that’s still in my inbox, weeding out all the “junk” bulk mail… e.g., newsletters, ads from vendors, etc.  Other options could be showing mail just from a specific time period that has attachments, mail that is starred but not in your inbox, etc.

 

HOW TO GET THE QUICK LINKS FEATURE IN YOUR GMAIL

1) Go to your Gmail.

2) Click on “Settings” at the top of the page.

3) Then click on “Labs”

4) You’ll find many add-ons, or labs features which may interest you.  Enable “Quick Links” and/or any other labs features you like.

5) Lastly, click “Save changes” at the bottom.

HOW TO USE QUICK LINKS

1) Type in any search into Gmail (in the regular search bar, or using the Advanced Search).

2) Click “Add Quick Link” on the lefthand side of your Gmail page.  Voila! :-D

*  *  *

For those of you who have used Quick Links, what are some of the favorite / most useful / most creative links you’ve created?

Bureaucratic snafu snags Catholic Priest and leaves me wondering: what's my role?

A friend of mine just let me know of a frustrating and seemingly unfair issue in his neck of the woods:  A popular and much-loved priest in South Dakota is apparently about to be deported due to what seems to be a pretty lame bureaucratic snafu (pemanent residency application accepted but later lost/misplaced).  An advocacy site is here: HelpFather.

But nothing is quite as simple or as black-and-white as it seems, of course, at least in my mind :-)

Here are reasons why I was tempted not to post this on my blog:

- I’m agnostic, and am not a fan of Catholic doctrine / influence / etc.

- This matter’s already gotten press.  What more could my humble blog do?

- Speaking of my humble blog, and selfishly for a moment, would my readers really care about this somewhat-local-oriented issue at all?

- This guy’s a priest.  Can’t he just pray for this to get fixed?  If that’s ineffective, maybe it’s God’s will for him to return to Ireland?

- There are always at least two sides to every issue.  Can we trust that the folks advocating on behalf of this priest are telling the whole story?

And reasons why I ultimately posted this:

- A favor to my friend :-)

- Someone’s gotta help the little guy.  And this one seems like a nice fella, mired in an uncaring and often-crappy bureaucracy.

- I do have some power as a blogger.  Perhaps by helping get this guy’s predicament known outside of South Dakota I—and my readers—could make a difference.

- Sometimes it’s the little things in life that matter.  Is this guy really important in the grand scheme of things?  Maybe not.  But he means a lot to my friend and my friend’s family.  Lots of small things, “small people”... they all add up, all contribute to the richness of communities, to our planet.

- And, let’s be honest here… I bet people are more interested in this story than in my swinger blatherings, no? :-P (hmm… I’m combining a priest-related posting with a swinger reference; it’s a good thing I am agnostic, or I’d be going to hell :D).

*  *  *

What about you?

What do you think of this priest’s situation? Of me posting this on my blog?

Embedding a chat room with Meebo... just testing.

Intriguing.  I’m attempting to embed a Meebo chat room below.  I’ll keep this window open for a while, and will make sure to be here at 7pm PST (10pm EST) today, Sunday.

All "friends" aren't created equal! (why we need better relationship marking in social networks)

I’m planning on quitting twitter.  Flickr—at least as a social site—is getting frustratingly unwieldly.  You know why?  Because pretty much all social sites like this treat all my friends, co-workers, acquaintances, online buddies the same, and it’s a big, stupid, completely off-putting mess!

Sure, these services want to reduce complexity… they know that many folks may not want to take the time to put friends into groups.  And eventually, some really smart service is going to actually do it automatically for me (“Hmm… Adam only looks at Fred’s pictures once in a while, but he looks at Mary’s photos minutes after he’s notified of her updates…”).

Look, I’m not an insanely popular guy.  But I have over 600 people in my personal contacts folder.  I regularly interact with tons people at work, and sincerely care (personally) about at least a dozen or two of ‘em (to the point where I want to see their travel photos, want to know when they’re excited or depressed, etc.).  But when people have “friended” me on Twitter or Flickr, I’ve often unselectively reciprocated… and now I’m just getting overloaded.  Too much info.  Too much info I do not care about.

And this is where nearly all social services seem to get things wrong.  At risk of being callous, I could pretty much care less if a distant acquaintance is having an off day or just uploaded photos of his Aunt Elda’s wedding.  But I sure as hell want to know if my office mate is about to arrive at work grouchy or an awesome friend in a different timezone is having a rough week, and so on.  To the extent that social services of all types can eventually alert us to events and feelings that mean a lot to us, that’s a huge win.

Flickr lets me mark someone as a contact, friend, or family.  That’s somewhat useful, but I’d say that these distinctions barely scratch the surface in helping me manage photostreams or viewing permissions.

Facebook lets me mark someone as a “limited friend” (is that like “single serving friends” from Fight Club? :-P), but—again—that’s not all that helpful. 

Why can’t I rank my contacts’ importance on a scale from 1-10… 10 being I want to know their every feeling and action and 1 being I don’t want to be bugged by any notifications ‘bout them unless they’re getting married… and to a hot celebrity.  Or in addition to / instead of degrees of that sort, why can’t I indicate that I want monthly digests of most my contacts, weekly digests of a few, and daily or even as-it-happens updates on my select group of best-friends?

*  *  *

And it’s not just what I want to know, it’s also about what I want to share.  There are very different things I want to share with my Mom, my recent-ex-girlfriend, most of my colleagues, my closest friends, my roommate, and so on.  I should be able to put my contacts into “share groups”—with easily check-box-able overriding options per shared item—and then quickly and powerfully indicate which groups I want receiving which update or types of updates.

And, again, to the extent to which my preferences and habits can be algorithmically determined (albeit manually overridable) and designed to streamline my sharing and discovery choices, that’s super!  Facebook’s gotta know whose wall I post on most often, who I tag in most of my photos, and so on.  Surely it can make educated guesses on the strength of our ties.

Oh, and just to make things more complicated… it’s not all about only the strength of ties… it’s about context.  Many of my colleagues and friends get excited about news about new geek toys or web sites.  Other friends are in my lindy hop (swing dancing) group, and many of them couldn’t care less about the newest Web 2.0 doodad.

So I may want to share tech stuff with some friends, arts stuff with others, personal musings and rants with close buddies, and so on.  Complicated, yes, and likely with no absolute/easy answers.  But at least the social networking/sharing services could try a bit harder! :-D

*  *  *

So probably this week is when I’m gonna uninstall twitteroo and give up on both reading and posting occasional updates.  It’s not just a matter of signal vs. noise, which I lamented earlier, but the complete lack of any sort of targeting, grouping, etc.  There are days in which I really do want to read the blatherings of my fellow SEO/SEM/Search-engine geeks.  But some days I just want to know if a good friend is happy or sad.  Or if another friend finally bought her airplane tickets to come back to the States.  Right now, I can neither selectively broadcast nor read notes sorted/filtered by strength or type of ties.  And that’s jarring, frustrating, distracting, and whole ton of other negative adjectives.

I’m not going to delete my Twitter account just yet.  In case it’s not clear, I think there are some compelling cases for this sort of thing… and I’m hoping that eventually the service will help me share and glean what my friends and I are “doing now” with greater granularity and thoughtfulness.

And indeed, I hope other services eventually wise-up, too.  MySpace may be the most popular social network, but it is so (I’m confidently sure) only because of the obnoxiously strong power of the network effect, not because it really supports social sharing and discovery in an effective way.  The sooner other services learn that not all relationships are equal, the sooner the online world will truly help us manage and improve our (real, offline) relationships.

*  *  *

Updated on June 18, 2007:

I don’t always agree with Robert Scoble’s take on communications and networking and I’m frankly displeased that he’s invoked “nazis” for something far from evil, but I nonetheless think he makes some excellent points (related to my rant above) in his blog entry “Social networks as “friend” Nazi (design flaws in Facebook, Jaiku, Twitter).”

How to pick an apartment (with the help of a damn cool Google Spreadsheet "wiki")

I’m in apartment-hunting mode, and have amassed a set of criteria for my search that I thought you might benefit from… and be able to easily add to!

With the new release of Google Docs and Spreadsheets (horrid name, super product), I can now do all sorts of cool stuff!  For instance, I’ve embedded the spreadsheet below for you to read… but I’ve also included links at the bottom for you to:

• EDIT ONLINE:  Load up the spreadsheet online in edit mode!  Your changes will be reflected within five minutes on the document AND this page, so please be both thoughtful and nice (I can revert as necessary, of course).
  
• EDIT OFFLINE:  Download the CSV and load it up in Excel or Excel imitator :-P.
  
• VIEW: ...as PDF, HTML, TXT, and in other formats as well.
  
• SUBSCRIBE:... view Atom or RSS

Pretty neat, eh?  And now, on with the show!

• EDIT:  View and edit online (general Google Account required; add lines as needed by right-clicking cells and selecting INSERT… or you can highlight several rows and select INSERT [n] ROWS ABOVE/BELOW)
  Aw, bummer!  As described in the comments below, I hadn’t realized that the usernames (and, thus, gmail e-mail addresses) of collaborators would be listed in this doc, so I’m un-sharing the doc until and unless this no longer happens.  Thanks, Rockya, for the discovery.
  
• DOWNLOAD / VIEW:  CSV, XLS (Excel format—new link for this entry), PDF, TXT, HTML, ODS
  
• SUBSCRIBE (1st page): Atom, RSS

I welcome your comments below…

- On the actual criteria I’ve listed (or has been added)

- On this use of Google Docs and Spreadsheets

- On anything else related to this entry :-D

Stop being a twit on twitter!

Don’t get the wrong idea.  Despite having a cold and ironically being hot in an apartment with no airconditioning, I’m not unhappy with my life.  True, I’m a bit cranky again, but I’m not deeply bummed.  Just ornery and snotty.

Today, it was just a little thing that triggered my annoyance:  For perhaps one of the last times, I read yet another asinine tweet on Twitter.  In an effort to not call out a specific (normally nice and sensible) fellow, I’ll slightly obscure it thusly: “Going to the bathroom.”

Going to the bathroom.  We all do it.  We all know we do it.  It’s not particularly exciting—at least typically—and it’s hardly the thing a normal person would announce unless there’s some particular need-to-know (roomies in a one bedroom apartment, little kids asking to be excused from a class, etc.).  But make it Web 2.0 and, wheee, suddenly people believe that they need to share such crap with others… or that others have even a faint interest in reading such banal nonsense.

So, Adam, I imagine you retorting, chill out and just unsubscribe from those people that tweet lamely.  I would, except every once in a while, these same folks refreshingly tweet something interesting or useful… or even a note or question directed specifically @me.

It’s like how your Aunt Frida (hopefully no longer) sends you teeth-gnashingly stupid forwards.  Bill Gates is gonna give you a million bucks.  P&G supports satan worship.

Frida is a good person, a well-meaning lady, but sometimes she just doesn’t THINK before she hits “send.”  And, clearly, you don’t want to filter her notes into your junk mail because at least one out of every ten notes she sends is something you really *do* want to read… a happy-birthday wish, a sad revelation about her health, or even just a simple cute “I’m thinking about you :-D.”

Thankfully, nearly all of my friends and relatives have gotten smarter about e-mail etiquette.  When are (normally quite intelligent and thoughtful) people gonna wise up about Twitter?

At risk of being told, “Dude, who the bleep do you think you are to tell us what to do?” I’m going to, well, suggest what I think is optimal Twitter usage.  You sure as heck don’t have to conform to my personal views on Good Twittering, but I’m more likely to read / less likely to unsubscribe from your tweets if you do :-D.

I believe that the following things make sense to post on Twitter:

• MOOD:  How you’re feeling (“Kind of sick; apologies if I take longer than usual to reply to e-mails.”)
  
• QUEST:  What you’re looking for or struggling with (“Dang, no matter how hard I try, I can’t find Hanuta in Bay Area stores.  If you don’t know the joys of Hanuta… Google it! :D”)
  
• ACTION:  What you’re doing (“Struggling with a blog post.  Hate sounding so holier-than-thou, but sometimes a good rant is needed, you know?”)
  
• ANTICIPATION:  What you’re looking forward to (“Planning a trip to Seattle, Montreal and Toronto… can’t wait!  Anyone got tips?  E-mail me!”)
  
• FILTERING:  What you find interesting (“Fascinating article on…”)

The following ought to result in you getting slapped with a wet e-noodle and subjected to watching hours of old Jerry Springer videos with the sound real loud:

• CHEESE SANDWICH:  What you’re doing that is totally boring / regular / etc. (“Having lunch” or “Reading my e-mail”...)
  
• BORINGLY PERSONAL:  What you’re writing is positively of interest to only one person (“Hey Fred… please don’t forget to return that book!” or “@Mary, thanks!”)  Try e-mail.  Or IM.  Or (gasp) the phone!
  
• BLOGVERTISING:  What you’re blogging.  Each and every time.  For the love of RSS, if I wanted to be notified of your *every* post, I’d subscribe to your feed. 

*  *  *

Look, I haven’t said anything sooner ‘cause I worred about offending people… folks that I like and respect.  And there’s been plenty of Twitter-hate already.  But I don’t hate Twitter… I am just deeply frustrated by what I perceive as the wasting of its potential.  It’d be so neat to have a quick window into friends’ and colleagues life.  I care when my friends are tired.  I’m curious to know when my colleagues are traveling to a conference.  Even something as seemingly boring as “Filling up junky ‘92 Sentra en route to Chicago.  Why didn’t I fly?!” tells me what kind of car you have, that you’re on a trip, that you’re frustrated, and you’re going to Chicago.  Contrast that with the absolutely useless waste of space: “At the gas station.”  Blegh!

So I implore you, before I feel compelled to uninstall Twitteroo and delete my account—think just a brief moment before you tweet.  Ask yourself:

• Will more than one or two people in the world care about this?
  
• Can I add even a smidgen more detail to make this informative or entertaining?

Please… and thank you!

 

Where is Adam (online)? My participation in and thoughts about various presence/sharing services

In case you're interested in stalking me and/or knowing what my thoughts are on
various online presence / networking / bookmarking sites I have tried, here's a
(completely unscientific, wholly biased, unabashedly uncomprehensive, and
generally of questionable use) list :-D



FYI, I'm findable via my full name on the services below unless noted
otherwise.  And sites owned/operated by Google are indicated by [g], as a
brief disclaimer/reminder since I work for Google (but not on any of the
products or product-types below).

Social networking

• 
  Facebook
  - a social networking site which used
  to be used primarily by college students (perhaps still is) and is gaining
  fame and respect in new quarters
  
  It's my favorite social networking service by far. I belong to the
  Google, San Francisco, Indiana University, and Northwestern University
  groups, and generally only add friends, co-workers, professional
  acquaintances I know decently well from meeting in person, and so on.
  I've actually found this to be useful not for making
  new friends, but rather for catching
  interesting info and fun tidbits and insights into my current friends'
  lives. I am impressed with nearly all aspects of this site: the strong
  configurability of privacy options, the reasonably-clean and standardized
  views*, decent navigability, and overall utility. I haven't really
  gotten into the groups, though, which mostly seem like exercises in humor
  and/or vanity.
  
  *This just in: According to Eliot on Wired,
  Facebook
  may be opening up its profile pages to widgets. Given the smart
  people I know that have recently been hired to work at Facebook, I can only
  hope that the service won't be horrifically MySpaced (uglified to hell and
  made practically unusable). But hey, if things turn south, I'll at least
  have people I can poke about it!
  
  
  
  


• 
  Friendster
  - one of the first social networking
  sites, now apparently a haven for lonely Filipinos.
  
  I have an account here, but almost never log in. Some nice
  integration, I suppose, but nothing that really interests me. The
  brash obnoxious ads are a turnoff. And regarding the demographic reference... it's more a puzzled commentary on how various services (Orkut, Friendster, probably others) end up becoming so particularly popular in a handful of countries. I suppose much of this could be explained by the network effect (e.g., some popular Filipinos became active on Friendster, invited their friends...), but I can't help but wonder if UI / User Experience interlaces in interesting way with cultural preferences and expectations. Put more pedestrianly... I wonder what it is about, say, Friendster that causes it to appeal so much to Filipinos? (and Orkut to Brazillians, etc.) I bet someone has studied this. Paging danah...? :-D
  
  
  
  


• 
  Orkut
  - a quirky social networking
  experiment by a Google engineer, now noted for its loyal userbase outside of
  the USA.
  
  Ah, not much to say about the service at this point. I no longer use
  it, but hey, many many millions of people around the world love it.
  
  
  
  


• 
  Multiply
  - What's a total of seventeen users
  times practically zero awareness? Join this service to find
  out!
  
  Seemed interesting initially, but it was hobbled by a confusing interface and an
  anemic adoption rate. I think maybe two of my friends at most use this
  service nowadays.
  
  
  
  


• 
  MySpace
  - Just like what you'd get if
  you had a spastic monkey doing design, an evil genius devising navigation (how
  many ad views per simple action?), and a bunch of lemmings for
  fans.
  
  Aaaaagh! Make it stop. Make it stop! At least make it stop
  blinking-spazzing-playing-seven-clips-simultaneously and generally serving
  as an affront to aesthetics, art, common sense, and humanity. To
  preserve what's left of my sanity, I prefer to view the success of this
  monstrosity as due purely to the network effect (it was an early entrant,
  everyones' friends were on MySpace, yadda yadda). Anything else is
  just too depressing. And yes, I have an account here only so my
  surprisingly-less-enlightened friends will quit bugging me to establish one,
  so I suppose that makes me mildly hypocritical.
  
  
  
  


• 
  Tribe
  - Want to meet artsy, hippie, burning-man
  types? This is your scene :-D
  
  I like the threadedness of the message forums, but the site feels a bit
  cluttered and unfocused. Plus... again, sorry to bring up the network
  effect, but... most of my friends outside of the Bay Area are elsewhere online.
  
  

Professional networking

• 
  Ecademy
  - The professional networking site
  that's the non-American version of LinkedIn. But more
  expensive.
  
  Tried it once. Was annoyed at the apparent lack of any free level of
  service, so that was the end of that. I didn't see anything about this
  service worth paying for that I couldn't find via other online or offline
  means.
  
  
  
  


• 
  Ryze
  - "Hi, I'm a stay-at-home
  marketer. Would you like to join the most amazing wealth creation
  scheme that combines hot dogs, Buddhist monks, and..."
  
  Used to use this professional networking service quite a bit, but now it
  feels relatively empty and multi-level-marketing focused.
  
  
  
  


• 
  LinkedIn
  - Like any other powerful tool online
  or offline; great if you use it wisely, potentially painful if you
  don't.
  
  I like this service overall. I've not used it much for my own
  networking, but I have definitely been pleased to help others... pass along
  legitimate requests, and so on. The key is not treating it like
  MySpace (adding everyone who requests you to add them), but rather
  judiciously linking to people you trust and who trust you... ideally, folks
  you have professional ties with or
  can similarly vouch for.
  
  

Resource sharing / reviewing / bookmarking

• 
  CitySearch
  - Big, colorful, commercial, and
  overstuffed site that features user-submitted reviews on restaurants,
  hairdressers, etc.
  
  Used to use this, but have moved over to Yelp, which seems -- if not more
  accurate -- at least more interesting, more entertaining, and slightly-less
  cluttered and commercial.
  
  
  
  


• 
  Del.icio.us
  - Lamely named social bookmarking
  site that's been (sort of) superceded by more robust and feature-rich
  offerings and is now owned by Yahoo
  
  The geek "Web 2.0" (ack, I feel dirty already) crowd latched onto this early
  on, and I never quite got the appeal. Other services have offered
  considerably more features... of particular note, the ability to take a
  searchable "snapshot" of the page when it's bookmarked for easier retrieval
  later. On the flip side, this site had (and still has) an admirably
  spartan feel to it. No ads (that I can see), and no clutter. For
  those who crave APIs, minimalist feature sets, and simple bookmark sharing,
  del.icio.us could still be a reasonably good pick.
  
  
  
  


• 
  Digg
  - Watch out, here comes the highly-opinionated and non-buying mobs! (is so! is not! yeah, well, your
  mamma was an SEO! LOLZ!!!!!!!1)
  
  Okay, so perhaps that's a bit unfair. Digg was an interesting
  idea and still continues to surface some noteworthy or at least entertaining
  sites. But, as with many fine ideas, it's been creaking at the seams
  due to its mass adoption and resultant oft-moblike/groupthink feel.
  Anyway, I no longer check this site with any regularity... not enough time,
  too poor signal/noise ratio.
  
  
  
  


• 
  Google
  Reader -
  An outstanding feed-reader that's easy and
  fun to use
  
  Sure, I'm biased, but after an unsuccessful first version, the Reader
  team's got their groove goin' on. Nifty keyboard shortcuts (hit
  ? to see 'em!), a pleasant UI, and
  the capability (which I sadly haven't used yet) to make any of your
  tags/folders publicly-viewable. Now if they'd just combine this with a
  public-version of Google Bookmarks... :-D [g]
  
  
  


• 
  StumbleUpon
  - A serendipitous and often wondrous
  way to surf the Web and discover cool stuff
  
  I shied away from this service for ages; I don't have time to
  aimlessly "stumble" around the Web! But I've been slowly using it
  more, and finding it has useful features and unearths cool sites for me :-D.
  [My
  Stumbleupon page]
  
  
  
  


• 
  Yelp
  - Irreverent, sometimes painfully hip, but
  typically entertaining and often useful
  
  Want consistently unbiased and deeply thoughtful reviews of restaurants and
  other local places? Then Yelp may or may not be your cup of tea.
  But if you're patient and have a good sense of humor, you can often glean
  quite a bit of helpful info about various places around town. The
  conversations in the Talk section can be surprisingly cathartic, friendly,
  and even useful.
  [My reviews]
  
  
  
  

Photo sharing

• 
  Flickr
  - The most active and diverse photo sharing
  site I've ever seen, with a doggedly committed community-oriented
  management
  
  Sure, they've gotten a lot of flack after getting absorbed by Yahoo.
  Yes, like on any user-generated-content-site, there's bound to be crap,
  controversy, jerk-offs, and so on. But that aside, Flickr undeniably
  has an astounding number of gorgeous, hilarious, and downright captivating
  photos taken by talented photographers as active members. And speaking
  of active members... the Flickr crowd is hugely loyal, passionate, and not
  shy :-D.
  [My
  photos]
  
  
  
  


• 
  Fotki
  - The skinnable and surprisingly easy-to-use
  popular photo site you've never heard of
  
  Sets within sets! While Flickrites are
  still begging for this, Fotki's had
  it for ages. It also has journals and a bunch of other doodads that
  are done better elsewhere, but thankfully that stuff doesn't clutter up the
  simple-yet-powerful photo interface. $30/year gets you unlimited storage and
  very cheap (and good!) prints.
  [My
  photos]
  
  
  
  


• 
  PicasaWeb
  - Jarringly basic and spartan for geeks,
  surprisingly easy-to-use for normal people (who just want to easily share
  their photos with their family)
  
  Want to join a feature-rich photo site with great sense of community?
  This ain't it. But it's reliable and -- as a very nice bonus -- you
  can upload your videos to be displayed within your galleries (Google Video
  style). Best hidden feature: use the right and left arrow keys to zoom
  through galleries and enjoy the pre-caching and the
  perfect-fit-to-your-display views.
  [My
  Photos] [g]
  
  
  
  


• 
  Honorary mention:
  Smugmug
  - I've never used it, but really like the attitude of its CEO and the
  intense, friendly customer-focus he has pushed throughout his company.
  
  
  

Instant messaging

• 
  Trillian
  (my choice at home) - Offered in both a free
  and more-powerful $25/year version, Trillian is mostly reliable and
  amazingly handy
  
  No matter how much I try to convince all my friends to use Google Talk
  ("GTalk"), a ton of 'em still insist on sticking with Yahoo! Messenger, AIM,
  or -- dog forbid -- MSN Messenger! A few of them even still use their
  AOL accounts for e-mail; I've disowned those folks... but hey, I digress
  those other apps at the same time and having my computer grind to a halt, I
  use Trillian at home, which automatically logs me into all the networks and
  displays my buddies in a totally customizable and wonderfully compact
  single-column view. Downside? Sometimes connectivity to
  different networks is flakey. And though they promise a Web-based
  version Real Soon Now (tm), it's seemingly impossible at present to easily
  sync one's Trillian account across computers, so your chat history gets
  split between your desktop and laptop and so on. But hey, one app to
  rule them all? Pretty damn useful!
  
  
  
  


• 
  Google
  Talk (my choice away from home) -
  Simple, great voice quality, usefully
  integrated into Gmail (and elsewhere).
  
  It's lightweight, fast, and just
  works. I really like how chats are (optionally) archived in my
  Gmail account, so I don't have to remember whether I e-mailed a friend or
  chatted with her about an upcoming party... I can do one search and know for
  sure that I forgot to invite her! [g]
  
  
  
  

Other

• 
  Plaxo
  - "I'm updating my addressbook..."
  aaaaagh! Thankfully, Plaxo is much, much more than this.
  
  This is one of those sites despised by many geeks and, in fairness,
  journalists and other popular peeps who at least previously got deluged by
  the perfect storm created by clueless n00bs and a suboptimal viral approach
  pushed by Plaxo in the early days. With an improved emphasis on
  improving the existing network rather than wildly expanding it, Plaxo is now
  increasingly loved by millions of folks (like me!) who appreciate the
  service's (mostly free) offerings. The core feature which I use and
  find invaluable is the sync'ing of my friends' contact info into my various
  addressbooks. Plaxo has recently announced that their upcoming 3.0
  version (ah, gotta love engineers' creative naming skills) will also support
  Gmail addressbooks. w00t!!! Disclaimer: I was a contractor
  with Plaxo a couple of years ago.
  
  
  
  


• 
  Twitter
  - Look, I'm having a cheese
  sandwich! I just burped. I tat i taw a putty kat! i'm a
  twit therefore i am. Just got my cell phone bill, lemme open it up
  and... AAAAAAAGH!
  
  Twitter -- the oft-stultifyingly boring but
  oh-so-Web-2.0-utility
  that lets you, uh, share "what are you doing now?" ("I'm picking my nose,
  but it's really hard to do while typing...") Maybe it'd be more
  interesting if I had more friends on it. Feel free to twit (?) me at
  http://www.twitter.com/thatadamguy.
  

Getting hired by Google

I recently noticed that a fellow Googler posted some thoughtful tips about interviewing at Google, and -- now that I'm a bit more comfortable blogging about Work -- I figured I'd contribute to the conversation a bit by offering my own, unofficial tips.



Note the unofficial part. I work in Search Quality; aside from occasionally being asked to interview candidates (like most Googlers) -- I have nothing to do with our recruiting, recruiters, etc., nor do I pretend to speak for the HR folks. The stuff below is based on my own observations and opinions.



* * *



Application and interview tips



Broadly: be interesting, be humble, demonstrate outstanding
competence in your direct area, briefly highlight your well-roundedness
(academically, workwise, and personally), and clarify how you are an excellent
fit with both the position you're applying for and Google overall. 



Admittedly, with an insane number of applications a year, it
is a bit of a numbers game.  Some
outstanding people get rejected.  And, though I haven't witnessed this
personally, I'm sure some jerks get offers.  Luckily, Google's been
overhauling its hiring processes, and I'm optimistic that particularly the
percentage of great people getting overlooked (in relation to the number of
apps) will decrease.



Some specific tips and notes:

• 
  Write a decent cover letter
  




• 
  Write with a tone that's professional yet warm... not stiff or dry.  Your (discernible) voice should come
  through.
  
  


• 
  Keep it to one page (max!) or less.  Maybe even a lot less.
  


• 
  Convince Google of the fits described above -- that's critical!!!
  




• 
  Your resume can be in PDF, Word, HTML, or text formats (unless otherwise requested, of course!)
  
  




• 
  But note that it will be ultimately
  printed out.  This means that reasonable pagination can be helpful
  and also suggests that a comprehensive 20 page document is perhaps not a
  great idea.  When you want your recruiter and interviewers to know
  more about your background & interests, links are your friends.
  




• 
  Respectful persistence can be appropriate
  




• 
  If you genuinely have another offer on the table, let your recruiter know!
  


• 
  If the recruiter promised to get back with you in [x] days, and in [x+1 or
  x+2] days you haven't heard back, politely e-mail them.
  




• 
  If you have a friend at Google who can articulately and sincerely vouch for
  you, that can work in your favor.
  




• 
  Your association / relationship with that person matters.  They'll be
  asked how they know you and
  how well they know you (and your
  skills).
  
  




• 
  Passion matters and is skillfully perceived.  You're probably wasting
  your time unless you really are
  excited about a particular position.
  


• 
  Getting turned down for one Google position does not mean you're ineligible
  to apply for another position down the road.
  


• 
  General interview advice that probably applies for pretty much any company:
  




• 
  Ask thoughtful questions.
  


• 
  Allow time for traffic and parking and finding the right building. 
  Google -- at least the Mountain View campus -- is a big place!
  


• 
  Dress one or two steps better than you expect your interviewers to
  be.  Less than that, and people may wonder about your judgment. 
  More than that, and people may think you're clueless or arrogant.
  




• 
  The "right" dress at Google probably varies by department. 
  Engineering folks tend to be more informally dressed than sales
  folks.  If you're interviewing for a senior management position,
  I'd probably dress a bit more formally than you would for an intern
  interview.  But the official advice also really makes sense
  here:  dress comfortably.  If you feel comfortable and
  confident, it'll show.
  




• 
  Get a good night's sleep the two
  nights before.  Sleep deficits are cumulative.  If you have a
  morning interview, make sure you're getting up early the two or three
  mornings before to get yourself ready to be mentally and physically alert
  during your interview time.  On a similar health note, drink and eat
  smartly the day of your interview.  Hunger pangs are distracting.
  


• 
  Invest in a good pen to take to interviews.  The heft and reliability
  can be a real-even-if-small confidence booster.  Taking occasional
  notes can help you remember info or questions for later, and also might
  indicate a sense of thoughtfulness and interest to your interviewer.
  


• 
  On the whole, think of interviews kind of like first dates.  You
  don't want to do all or even most of the talking.  You're there to
  impress, to learn, to help determine whether there's a good potential for
  a relationship.  First impressions are important.  Show you are
  caring and thoughtful by asking good questions.  Avoid having spinach
  in your teeth (floss beforehand!).
  
  

Possibly-little-known factoid:

No Googler -- not even Larry or Sergey -- can singlehandedly extend an
employment offer to anyone.  While candidates don't have to go through as
many interviews nowadays, most candidates -- regardless of level -- typically
interview with quite a few peers; team-fit is critical!



* * *


I expect to offer some more Google-thoughts in the future, but -- as a reminder -- this is my personal blog, and as such, I expect to generally blather on about anything I feel like discussing, ranting, dissecting, punning, lamenting, etc... which is more likely than not to be boring to the impatient sort.


Oh, and one last thing: please keep comments on-topic as a courtesy not only to me, but to the cool folks reading my blog. Thanks!




* * *


Related entries:

- A blunt note to HR folks and interviewers

- How to evaluate your current job & career... and thoughtfully consider future options



and lastly, for a blast-from-the-past... some perspective & a bit of cranky ranting...



- What do you do? (self = job?) And how are you?