May 27th, 2008, 10 Comments »
Over dinner, Julie and I were musing about setting up a mutual friend. We scanned our brains for other friends and acquaintances who are single.
Recognizing the shortcomings of my brain, I figured Facebook might do a good job of standing in. I poked around a bit, but didn’t immediately find what I was looking for.
I turned to Google, and discovered the Facebook app Most Eligible Singles. It looks pretty silly, but once you add it, there’s an option on the app page to show your single friends. I have shockingly few, particularly of the female variety. Of the 465 Facebook ‘friends’ (take that term with a Dead Sea’s worth of salt) there are only 17 females who are declared as ’single’. And only six of those are in Vancouver.
After a little more looking, I eventually found the Facebook profile search, where you can filter on any profile variable. However, the results don’t seem to easily discriminate between your immediate friends, and friends of friends. So, it’s sub-optimal.
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April 13th, 2008, 16 Comments »
Since it launched, I’ve been conflicted about Twitter. It’s an ego distillery, and the signal to noise ratio is ridiculously high (or should that be low?).
Yet, I’m feeling increasingly obligated to engage with the tool for professional purposes (not to mention the book we’re writing). I encourage all of our technology clients to use the service, but there would be obviously be applications for an active personal account as well. A friend recently launched a new project, and announced it on Twitter. He called it something like “a fantastic lens for focusing attention”.
But, man, I just can’t get interested.
Thinking about it, I wondered if it had something to do with an obligation to ‘follow’ a few hundred members of the digerati. Or even the social obligation to follow everybody who’s following me? I more or less bowed to that perceived pressure in Facebook, and now I’ve got 455 friends and rising. How many of them are actual friends or colleagues in any kind of meaningful way? Less than half, I’d guess. As such, it’s a useless tool for monitoring actual friends’ activity. And I’m not even sure if I want to do that.
My New Baseline
So here’s my latest Twitter experiment. I’m only going to follow people who I personally know, and with whom I have an ongoing regular relationship. We see each other at least occasionally, or exchange emails or something. If I met somebody two years ago at a conference, and haven’t seen them since, they’re out. If I read their blog and comment regularly, and send them an email every once and a while, they’re in. That’s my new baseline.
I just culled my Twitter following list down to 33. It will increase, as I haven’t actively sought anybody out to add, but I’m going to try to be disciplined about it.
Hopefully this approach will help me get more excited about the tool. Instead of just another fire hose of geeky news, I’ll be watching my friends and colleagues lives. Which, just as mine would, may turn out to be tremendously dull. But I’m giving it the old college try. Again.
I don’t expect to ‘tweet’ (that is, broadcast messages) very much at this stage. I plan to just watch and reply to others if something tweaks my interest.
UPDATE: I’m so conflicted about Twitter that I failed to include a link to my Twitter stream o’ tweets.
16 Comments »
September 23rd, 2007, 3 Comments »
I’ve read speculation that on social marketing services like Digg and StumbleUpon, the more ‘friends’ you have, the more juice your account has to promote things you bookmark. I gather Digg recently made some improvements to the ’social’ part of their service. I’ve recently received a number email notifications of friend requests from the service, which never used to happen.
In any case, will you be my friend? Uh, if you friend me, I’ll friend you. We’ll be a happy social bookmarking family. You can do so over at my StumbleUpon and Digg profiles.
ZOMG! Tnx 4 the add!
3 Comments »
