Monday, June 02, 2008 |
Plurk = Twitter Killer?
Well, I think we all know 2 things.... The first is how much many of us love Twitter.... The second is how much we also hate twitter. If there is a list of unstable start ups somewhere then Twitter would have to be in the top 5. The amount of crashes the service goes through is just mind boggling.... And once upon a time Twitter actually cared about the users enough to at least keep them up to date on what was going on. Now? Well, not so much. I mean, hey, Twitter has enough users so why should they care if they piss someone off? We were ok with the growing pains because we all really felt that Twitter (the company) was really a part of Twitter (the network). They've certainly lost touch of that and as a result I think most of us are fed up. Not only is Twitter alienated from the users but the service is getting progressively worse. If things weren't bad enough we had the TOS fiasco which confirmed the fact that Twitter doesn't really care about us. We all love the concept of Twitter but I think that majority of us have had enough.A few months ago the internet brought us BrightKite which is an absolutely amazing tool and something that I absolutely love. Many people began calling this the "Twitter Killer" but I don't believe this is the case -- well, I at least hope not. BrightKite is incredible for local communication. It's an awesome way of connecting with people that are physically near you and a way of talking about things that are occuring where you are. All of your "notes" are placed on a page for the location that you are checked in at. The thing is that for this to be a twitter killer, it really needs to take the focus away from local and put it more on global and the problem with that is the more that starts to occur the less BrightKite is what it was intended to be. I love BrightKite. I use BrightKite. I want BrightKite to stay focused on what it does best -- and that's not global. But who's this? Plurk? I just found out about this less than a few hours ago and I'm already blown away by the interface. It is really sleek and thought out. Plurk is certainly a global communications system that does what Twitter does -- except with A LOT of additional features. In just the hour that I have been playing with it I really am excited about it. Right now there isn't any SMS/Mobile compatibility, however, their FAQ asks "How do I use Plurk from my mobile phone?" and the answer is "Give us 6 weeks and we'll tell ya" .... I'm anticipating this very much! So everyone, please add me at Plurk. You can add me at BrightKite as well..... oh, and I guess you can add me at Twitter too and keep up with what's going on with me there (provided the service is actually working). Plurk - bblboy54 BrightKite - bblboy54 Twitter - bblboy54 Labels: brightkite, messaging, plurk, twitter, web 2.0 (C)2003-2008, Bob K Mertz - Some Rights Reserved |
Saturday, August 11, 2007 | |
It's obvious that younger people are more involved in social networking but I don't think it's the issue of technology that most think it is. It was really the early 90's that interest in computers really started taking off. Granted, I was interested in the 80's but the 1990's brought computers into everyone's home. I was the last person in my group of friends to actually get a "real" computer and that happened in middle school. Is it possible that it has to do with emotional attachment and filling a void that was created by technology? The reason I left myspace a few months ago was simply because it is no longer what it was intended to be. People say it's a site to connect with people that you haven't seen in a while. When I first got my myspace account, that happened frequently but as time went on, it was obvious that it was drifting away from being that. Facebook, on the other hand, has a lot of ways to interact more but, more importantly, has important "social blocks" that help prevent it from becomming what myspace is now. For instance, there are no such things as "top friends" which means you don't have to pick favorites (which you are forced to do on myspace). You also have a lot more searching power on facebook but you are limited to who's profile you can actually view. You have to be a member of a network to see people's profiles in that network (unless they add you). You are able to search for anyone using very specific criteria but it blocks the ability to just randomly search for people and add them as your friends. Essentially, on facebook you have to know what you are looking for, where on mypsace you don't. So what is the big deal about whether you are able to search for someone based on random criteria? Well, in almost all cases those random searches are for the purpose of filling a void that isn't being met in real life. So many people are hiding behind their computers now and they are not experiencing what life is really about. Technology is an amazing tool that allows us to connect with and keep in touch with people around the globe but at the same time, it is taking the focus of what friendship and relationships are all about. Giving someone "a hug" online will never be able to take the place of giving someone a real-life hug. We try to push the experiences that technology can give us and we create "features" that pull us away from what life was meant to be. SMS messages, email, instant messages.... we are tied to this network 24 hours a day because it's now not only on our computers but it's on our phones and other mobile devices. We are now even ordering pizza online to avoid having to talk to someone on the phone... think about it.... we're using technology to pull us away from a technology that took us away from physical interaction. Yes, phones did that. Instead of having to go to your friend's house and have a conversation you could now talk to them even though they were across town. Now that technology is progressing, telephone calls are too personal for us. Maybe this has a lot to do with why the online pornography business is booming.... we don't want to have to deal with relationships anymore so we see millions and millions of people turning to pornography which attempts to give sexual satisfaction without the ties of a relationship -- or even a friendship. I am as guilty as the next person with all of this but I have slowly been realizing a lot of what I was stuck inside. The irony of the situation is that I lived in 3 different apartment complexes during the time I lived in Northern VA and out of all of that I met only one neighbor at only one of those. That's more than 2 years of living next door to hundreds of people and I met one. Now I live in the mountains where there are only 2 other houses visible from my house and in only a few months I know them both. Think about it -- where is technology at? It's in the cities... the higher the population is, the more technology is available. Where I live, I consider it a blessing that I can get a cable modem but in NoVA, you have countless options for getting faster internet connections and a lot less to do outside of the apartment or house. I love going to Shenandoah National Park because it helps me realize how much more there is outside of cyberspace. I realized how much I had been missing by being 100% embedded in technology and going to the park cuts me away from technology all together. To me, it is a blessing to not have cell phone coverage while I'm in the park -- it forces me to realize more about what the world is. What changed for the class of 2001? I think it's probably the generation that really started losing touch of the importance of spending time together and how important other people were to our lives. There is nothing wrong with the fact that more and more people are using social networks or using cell phones or any other kind of technology. I use technology all the time and it is a huge part of my life but I'm slowly realizing that it's not the use of technology, but the motive of using that technology, that is important. Labels: facebook, myspace, social networking, society, web 2.0 (C)2003-2008, Bob K Mertz - Some Rights Reserved |
(C)2008, Bob K Mertz - Some Rights Reserved
BibleBoy's Blog by Bob K Mertz is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
