Enabler
The word "enabling" seems to be used most often in two contexts: technology and substance abuse. You can draw your own conclusions from this, but be warned that the rest of this post is pretty geeky, so feel free to let your eyes glaze over at any time.
I've been pretty anti-Twitter ever since it hit the big time shortly after SXSW. For the most part, I fail to see why anyone would want to be inundated with a never-ending stream of trivia about their acquaintances' daily routines. Imagine that you had a friend who called you every half hour to say things like, "just wanted you to know that I'm at home eating a chicken salad sandwich." Now imagine that you had 50 or 100 of those friends, texting and IMing you day and night with the most mundane details of their lives. Granted, maybe your friends have more important things to say, but as Scoble points out, the content tends toward the trivial, since it's hard to say anything too deep and meaningful in 140 characters.
For what it's worth, I have the same criticisms and doubts about Facebook, Plazes, etc. I know this places me dangerously close to falling into the "curmudgeon" category, but I also know the attention span of the average web user. Plus, as soon as advertisers realize the gold mine of personal information that's being published online, the lifestyle spam alone will drive lots of people away. If you post that you're waking up and need coffee, StarbucksGuy17 would really like to add you as a friend.
Having said this, I really do want to grok the appeal of the whole concept, so I keep signing up and playing with different sites. Yesterday I finally found a compelling use for it when I put together my own Twitter/Flickr mashup. The server app scans the RSS feed from the "recent comments" page on my Flickr photos every X minutes, and updates a special Twitter bot account that I created. Once that's working, I can follow updates to that bot, and get them on my phone or via IM.
The end result of this is that this morning, on the train between Barcelona and Terrassa, I got an SMS saying that someone had left a comment on one of my recent Flickr photos. I opened the web browser on the phone, and two minutes after the comment was left I was reading and replying. It may not seem like much, but for a Flickr junkie like me, it's pretty cool.
Maybe there is something to this Web 2.0 thing after all.
Next post: Horseless carriages - technological marvel or devilish witchcraft?
I've been pretty anti-Twitter ever since it hit the big time shortly after SXSW. For the most part, I fail to see why anyone would want to be inundated with a never-ending stream of trivia about their acquaintances' daily routines. Imagine that you had a friend who called you every half hour to say things like, "just wanted you to know that I'm at home eating a chicken salad sandwich." Now imagine that you had 50 or 100 of those friends, texting and IMing you day and night with the most mundane details of their lives. Granted, maybe your friends have more important things to say, but as Scoble points out, the content tends toward the trivial, since it's hard to say anything too deep and meaningful in 140 characters.
For what it's worth, I have the same criticisms and doubts about Facebook, Plazes, etc. I know this places me dangerously close to falling into the "curmudgeon" category, but I also know the attention span of the average web user. Plus, as soon as advertisers realize the gold mine of personal information that's being published online, the lifestyle spam alone will drive lots of people away. If you post that you're waking up and need coffee, StarbucksGuy17 would really like to add you as a friend.
Having said this, I really do want to grok the appeal of the whole concept, so I keep signing up and playing with different sites. Yesterday I finally found a compelling use for it when I put together my own Twitter/Flickr mashup. The server app scans the RSS feed from the "recent comments" page on my Flickr photos every X minutes, and updates a special Twitter bot account that I created. Once that's working, I can follow updates to that bot, and get them on my phone or via IM.
The end result of this is that this morning, on the train between Barcelona and Terrassa, I got an SMS saying that someone had left a comment on one of my recent Flickr photos. I opened the web browser on the phone, and two minutes after the comment was left I was reading and replying. It may not seem like much, but for a Flickr junkie like me, it's pretty cool.
Maybe there is something to this Web 2.0 thing after all.
Next post: Horseless carriages - technological marvel or devilish witchcraft?
posted by greg at 11:33 AM
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