Tuesday, October 21st, 2008
I wanted to talk about this post by Hutch Carpenter awhile back. The basic idea that he says is that Facebook is getting his attention again because of the increased interaction in his network.
The same applies for me. Previously I spent maybe ten minutes a day on Facebook, logging in just to check message or development in groups, now when I use Facebook, it’s open almost the whole time I’m online so I can check for new status updates, photos, posted items and the like. It’s brought much more value to me than the old Facebook where I see whose egg hatched into a dinosaur.
I read somewhere about Facebook applications talk about losing a lot of traffic literally overnight, which I suppose is inevitable since interaction seems to be the new focus of Facebook, not applications. That said, I believe that if you have a truly fun application, people will still visit it regardless. I still go to Visual Bookshelf and Premier League Picks, for example.
When I first started using Twitter, I tried to explain to people that it was like updating your Facebook status, and now with Facebook’s ability to comment on status updates, I think they’ve really grasped the Twitter concept and made it into a very powerful one. Hutch gives examples of how much more interaction he has on Facebook compared to Twitter for the same update. On many levels it makes a lot of sense. Would I bring my friends over to Twitter if there’s a powerful equivalent on Facebook where my friends already are?
i guess it’s easy for the social media types like us to appreciate the new Facebook, but I really want to hear from the average users. Those who used to use Facebook to throw sheep or rate friends. How does the new Facebook work for you? Does the increased interaction make a difference? Please comment!
Tags: facebook status updates, hatching eggs, hutch carpenter, increased facebook interaction, new facebook, new facebook layout, premier league picks, twitter, visual bookshelf
Posted in community, facebook | 6 Comments »
Sunday, September 28th, 2008
If needing to take notes is my personal benchmark for how good a book is (like Joseph Jaffe’s Join The Conversation), then Andrew Keen’s Cult Of The Amateur falls firmly in the opposite category. To be honest, for the first half of the book I was waiting for the “haha gotcha!” moment, because no one could be this blind towards the benefits of Web2.0 and community and collaboration.
But I soon discovered it would never come.
Keen fancies his book a polemic, but what it really is, is a rant. After reading the first chapter, every subsequent chapter was merely a repetition of what was said before, albeit with different examples and/or research.
Speaking of research, that is the one thing that Keen does well. I enjoyed reading the statistics, but not the conclusions drawn. for example he gives a timeline for the decline in music sales and says something to the effect that is no coincidence that this happened at around the time of the internet’s birth.
Keen loves the old world. He loves the “cultural gatekeepers” like reporters, news anchors, editors, movie reviewers and the like. Maybe crowdsourcing doesn’t always work, but I would almost always rather determine whether I want to watch a movie based on what people say online, than that one singular review in the newspapers by a “cultural gatekeeper”. In fact I’m working on a deck talking about “The New Gatekeepers”, so obviously I am in direct opposition with Keen here.
One thing Keen does do well, is highlight the problems the internet has brought. Online gambling addiction, pornography, plagarism, not watching one’s online identity. I’m in agreement with these social ills, but the way he writes the book, it sounds like these eclipse everything good about Web2.0 (democratisation of media, more choice than ever via the long tail, experiences that we’d otherwise never have, collaboration, discussion, community, the list goes on). And he makes it sound that these are so terrible that we should just get rid of the internet entirely, although he stops just short of saying that.
Keen also points to Viacom suing YouTube as a “powerful message”, but my bet is that Viacom (who owns MTV, VH1 and Nickleodeon) is wishing they had bought YouTube instead of Google. Just think of the possibilities if Viacom owned that media channel.
All in all, I did not enjoy reading this book at all. Not just because it goes against everything I believe in about social media and community, but because the arguments are one sided. He talks about the money lost by Frito-Lay choosing to go with an amateur advertising campaign, and makes it the fault of social media. But is it anyone’s fault that “professionals” failed to deliver better content and creativity than the “amateurs”? He simply takes one side of the coin and runs with it.
For people already in this space, I wouldn’t recommend reading this book because it isn’t going to change your mind. The arguments are just not strong and/or compelling enough, and your money will be much better spent going towards a book that will help improve your social media life.
But hey don’t take my word for it, check out visual bookshelf on Facebook for many similar reviews, or just check out at this user-generated content by another reviewer (which I found while looking for the cover image). I bet Mr. Keen hates all these “amateur” review and wishes it were all done by a “cultural gatekeeper” instead.
Tags: andrew keen, cult of the amateur, cultutal gatekeepers, facebook, frito-lay, join the conversation, joseph jaffe, polemic, rant, Research, the new gatekeepers, viacom, visual bookshelf, web2.0, youtube
Posted in Books, Singapore | 3 Comments »
