Matthew Lang

David Heinemeier Hansson recently posted about X’s appeal.

Everything that happens, everyone who matters, is on X first. Even the most rabid Musk haters come crawling back to this platform when it counts.

— DHH, X

I’m afraid I have to disagree with this.

X was the place I checked first when something happened. It’s definitely the last place I check now. A news website like The Guardian might be where I start if there’s some breaking news story. If it’s tech-related, I’ll go to Hacker News and then possibly The Verge for more information on the story.

As for the “everyone who matters” part, I see X now as nothing more than a platform for technical people. Yip, many friendly people are on there, and they are still posting interesting stuff. Still, the general vibe to me is that it’s an excellent place for those in tech but not much else. For me, it’s become an echo chamber.

So, are others still crawling back to X?

Not for me. I might check my X timeline once a day and bookmark a few things to read later, but that’s the extent of my interaction on X. It’s not the source of good content that it was a few years back. It’s definitely not the platform that counts for everyone.

Just found out about Chris Coyier’s blog, Email is good. A blog focused on the use of email.

I don’t use email enough to contact people. Messages have replaced email for many people, but I wouldn’t mind corresponding with more people on a regular basis using email, a bit like having a pen pal.

There is a lot of online chat about why losing Twitter might be okay.

I’ve read a few threads on Reddit, Micro.blog and Twitter itself that we would be better off without Twitter. It’s a convincing argument.

Twitter has become different from its early days of tweeting by text with 140 characters. The platform has grown into a platform for the world. It broadcasts news updates, provides coverage of sporting events and scores, updates on critical political events, and acts as a marketing platform for thousands of organisations and millions of people.

In the last few years, though, Twitter has become something else. A battleground. A place where discussions can often fall into threads of trading insults at each other. A place where people, governments and organisations can pedal lies with minimal accountability. A place where people can hide behind their avatars and threaten others without being held accountable. Twitter has tried to deal with these negative experiences over the years with content moderation and enforcing the platform’s rules, but it still happens.

I might be painting Twitter as a terrible place, but there are positives to Twitter. Although I’m not a frequent tweeter, the content from the people I follow on Twitter is of value.

I’m under no doubt that many others are happy with their Twitter experience. They follow the accounts they want to, scroll through their timelines and share and interact with others on the platform as they want to. If the world is better off without Twitter, will these people be better off without it too?

Regular bloggers and those who know their way about the web will largely agree that the world is better off without Twitter. They can continue writing and posting from the platforms they enjoy using. What about the people who genuinely want the ease of Twitter and what it brings to them?

If Twitter were to disappear, I’m sure I would find alternative means of following others through different platforms and means. What about those who are not so Internet savvy? They might need help finding an alternative means of following others, which leads me to think that we’re not better off without Twitter. Well, not at the moment. The web is still an excellent platform, and this could change.

Over the weekend, I started reviewing my Feedbin account to reduce the number of unread items I see daily. Recently, I’ve noticed that I check my Feedbin account less regularly. I used to go through it a handful of times a day, now not so much. It’s not that there isn’t anything interesting there to read. There always is. I think it’s because I am scanning more of the headlines and just starring what I find interesting.

I’m also concerned by the number of high volume feeds that I subscribe to — Hacker News, Lobsters and Dev.to to mention a few. Also, I have been trying out using Feedbin to read some Twitter content. Neither of these plans is working out for me.

While perfectly manageable to use in Feedbin, the high volume feeds are becoming less and less of a required scan through daily. In the last couple of weeks, I’ve moved the Hacker News and Lobster feeds to my daily newsletter that I created using Mailbrew. Scanning the last few recent items is easier to read than continually checking through the day.

As for Twitter, I think I’ll stop reading it through Feedbin. Again, Feedbin does a great job of making Twitter work, and the ability to subscribe to individual accounts and lists is excellent. It’s perfectly usable. In my case, though, I think I would instead check Twitter myself a couple of times a day. I don’t need to see everything from the Twitter accounts and lists that I have added to Feedbin, so this week, I’ll remove these sources from my Feedbin account.

It seems an age since I have discovered many new websites and added them to Feedbin. The last time I said anything to my Feedbin account, it was a series of .NET development blogs that I thought would be useful for work. Aside from that, there’s hasn’t been much else.

Please let me know if anyone has any recommendations for interesting websites that I can subscribe to, then please let me know.

Another classy move from the Facebook family.

WhatsApp, the Facebook-owned messenger that claims to have privacy coded into its DNA, is giving its 2 billion plus users an ultimatum: agree to share their personal data with the social network or delete their accounts.

— WhatsApp gives users an ultimatum: Share data with Facebook or stop using the app

I use WhatsApp for chatting with family and friends as well as a means of communicating with a few groups at the golf club. I haven’t agreed to the terms yet (and I don’t want to), but I suspect that I will need to before the 8th of February when the new privacy policy will kick in.

Facebook has really backed everyone into a corner with this one, but I suspect that amongst the millions of users, there won’t be much of a revolt against this. There are other options to WhatsApp like Signal, but for most people, they just can’t see beyond Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp.

Looks like I removed the Instagram app from my phone at the right time.

As if Instagram weren’t addictive enough already, the company is adding a new feature that’s intended to keep you scrolling through your feed even longer. Starting today, Instagram will load ‘Suggested Posts‘ at the end of your feed, once you’re all caught up with updates from friends and other accounts you follow.

— Instagram’s new ‘Suggested Posts’ feature will keep you scrolling forever

Like Facebook, Instagram is doing everything to keep your eyes on the app. Suggested users, copying features from other trending apps like TikTok and now suggested posts. These features aren’t designed to help the users, they’re designed to keep you attached to your timeline.

Without an open API though, the options to viewing your timeline on Instagram are restricted. It’s not the kind of platform that I want to be a part of.

I was looking at the DuckDuckGo traffic for the last few years. The stats are pretty impressive. A seven-fold increase in queries over the previous five years and this month’s number of queries is already more than last January. It looks like it’s going to be another year on year increase for queries.

It’s got me wondering about my usage of DuckDuckGo.

DuckDuckGo has been my search engine of choice for many years now, and as a result, I’m pretty familiar with a number of the bang methods that are available to help with your searches.

Now, I know DuckDuckGo is a privacy-first search engine. It’s why I use it in the first place. Saying that I’d still be interested to know how many searches I do over the year and how often I use the different bang methods. I don’t want the actual search terms tracked, just the number of times I search and how often I use each of the bang methods.

If DuckDuckGo did this, it would raise a few concerns about where they are going with tracking. This functionality might be best done in a browser extension so that it’s purely an opt-in feature.

Not everyone will agree with me about tracking your search usage, but I still think it would be quite interesting nonetheless.

It’s a question posed by the tech team behind the seach engine Cliqz. Sure, they might have a vested interest in seeing more traffic going to their own search engine, but I think they’re onto something.

We need more search engines.

Google has a huge share of the search market but it has hardly lived up to it’s long running ethos of don’t be evil. What started as a great search engine with a range of good products around it, has turned into an ad platform that hoovers up data on every Google service you use.

I’m starting to wonder though if it’s not so much more generalist search engines we need, but more specialist search engines instead.

We’re at the point where we have billions of web pages, but depending on the search we want to do, even filtering through the search results can be difficult. We will always need generalist search engines, but what about search engines that focus on a particular type of search or information?

We already have a number of these specialist search engines. I’ve used job search engines over the last few month to look for specific roles in the contract market. I’ve had some success with my results on these specialist search engines but not much more than using a generalist search engine like DuckDuckgo. That’s only one example though.

There has to be more examples and matching specialist search engines to match them. And if they don’t exist, why can’t we build them?

An interesting look at choosing the right messaging app.

I use iMessage as my default messaging app, closesly followed by WhatsApp. From time to time I use Instagram’s built-in messaging as well, but that’s a rare occurence and always reserved for one-liners from friends and family.

Ideally I’d like to be using Signal as my default messaging app, but getting others on board with it is a problem. Most people I know are not aware of the privacy implications of most messaging apps they are using, so they just use what everyone else is using. The big problem here is that many of these now fall under the control of Facebook.

I loved this post from the Signal vs Noise blog about trading off tracking people through email for content.

Not everything needs to be tracked. Not everything needs to pay off. It’s perfectly fine to do things because it’s fun, feels good, is interesting, tickles your brain, or just helps someone out.

— [Let’s stop shaking people down for their email addresses] (https://m.signalvnoise.com/lets-stop-shaking-people-down-for-their-email-addresses)

This weekend the Roman Catholic church celebrates World Communications Day. This is a day that the church uses to identify how it’s message is distributed across the world and how the media impacts on the world.

During today’s sermon our parish priest touched on a number of points in the Archbishop’s letter to the diocese. However, it was one particular paragraph that really stuck out for me.

The positive use of the internet and social media depends on respectful communication. Respectful communication speaks the truth in charity. If every user of social media spoke the truth in charity, many people, including young people and children, would be happier, safer and better informed.

— 53rd World Communications Day Message

In a time when we’re frequently reminded that social media has so much going against it, we should also note that it’s not social media that is the problem, it’s just how we use it. Using it in a more positive and respectful way would certainly be a good way to start improve online communities.

As David Heinemeier Hansson leaves Instagram for the second time, the question of reality on social media rears it’s head again.

That’s the stereotype, right. Instagram isn’t the place for reality. It’s for the curated highlight reel. And I thought I understood that bargain. Surely people wouldn’t take this to be the whole picture. Surely they’d understand that it’s not all race cars and champagne and glorious sunsets. Surely I would understand that. Surely?

Regret-stergram by David Heinemeier Hansson

It’s a given that most people only post the good things on social media and this is especially the case on Instagram.

My own timeline comprises of different accounts. I follow accounts for family and friends, NFL, golf, a handful of celebs, and a mixed bag of other stuff. The point of my timeline though is that it’s mostly the good stuff. It’s the good times and experiences that people are having. And I like that. It feels good to scroll through.

I know that these photos in my timeline are not a true reflection on life. Behind every great photo, whether it’s a Malibu sunset or a steaming hot cup of coffee, is a lifetime leading up to the moment in time that the photo was taken.

I know there’s more to that person posting that particular photo. I know that person has lived a life leading up to that point and that it hasn’t been plain sailing, and that makes me appreciate that picture more and more.

I know social media isn’t a view of the real world, and that makes it easy for me to hop on and thumb through my timeline and then leave it for a while.

David also mentions Facebook recent bad press and ownership of Instagram as being another reason why he wanted to leave.

It wasn’t until the latest barrage of Facebook sludge washed over me that I gave serious thought to getting off again. To make another clean cut.

Regret-stergram by David Heinemeier Hansson

I think this is a bigger concern for users of Instagram. With the original owners of Instagram having now left, there’s little to stop Facebook putting their stamp on the platform.

I’ll keep posting to Instagram in the meantime.

Posts like Buffer’s “How to Share Posts From the Instagram Feed to Stories” are becoming less about how everyone can use a feature of social media and more about how companies, brands, and organisations can use social media. Buffer’s post even has a section for this.

Gone are the days when social media was all about people who just wanted to share something of themselves. A photograph, a thought, a revelation.

Nowadays social media has been replaced by algorithms that decided what posts you should see and ads. Now there’s going to be a new type of post on Instagram where brands are promoted through influencers.

It’s not about being social now. It’s about influence.

It’s not about people now. It’s about branding and marketing.

If this is what passes for social media these days on Instagram, maybe I am better off not being on Instagram.

A post over at The Guardian highlights a great idea that I would love to see implemented by any social media platform.

I like Derakhshan’s idea of obliging Facebook and others to open up a marketplace of algorithms: if you don’t like the current social media preference for popularity (retweets) and novelty (“latest”), you should be free to choose a different algorithm that acts on different values.

— The people owned the web, tech giants stole it. This is how we take it back

My wife is thinking of setting up a Facebook account so that she can book in for a fitness class she likes and keep up to date with the kid’s school information.

Crazy, right?

Yes, Facebook will be the single way that my wife will be able to register for the fitness class in the future and yes Facebook is the only channel that the school regularly updates despite having a website and two native apps.

Frustrating? Definitely.

There’s a section of people that still see Facebook as the “default service of the Internet”. Facebook is probably easy to set up but other than that the only perceived benefit it has for these organisations is the numbers. They think most people are on Facebook, so they use Facebook.

Facebook is a crux technology and not a good one at that. The Internet has many tools for organisations to communicate and engage with audiences. So, why do so many organisations turn to Facebook?

I don’t know the exact reason why. It could be that organisations find it easy to use and they think that everyone else is using it. It’s true that most people are using Facebook, but it’s not everyone that’s using it.

It’s not Facebook that’s the problem, it’s the view that Facebook is the only way of communicating with audiences. 

How do you change that when the majority of people see Facebook as the only way of using the Internet?

In keeping with Micro.blog’s lack of counts for things like followers and likes, I’ve decided to do the same on Twitter.

I have created a few CSS rules to run on the Twitter website using Stylish. These rules remove any counts from the actions section of a tweet.

The idea is that any action by myself to like, retweet or reply, isn’t swayed by the same actions of others. Just because a tweet is being liked by everyone else, it shouldn’t influence my decision to like it.

I’d like to see more of this on Twitter. Less about the numbers and more about content and discoverability.

Amongst another Twitter scare, there’s a reminder that there’s a better social network where there’s less hate.

The unruly web — unregulated and uncontrolled — is, perhaps paradoxically, the easiest place to limit hate. Not because we can stop people from publishing, but because we don’t have to live by Dorsey’s and Zuckerberg’s rules and designs.

— 2018: Some Hope by Brent Simmons

This morning I got a text message from my kids’ primary school. It was a reminder that this week was book week for the kids. Good stuff, I thought. I wonder where I can find more information on this? Reading on the message rounded off with ‘check out the Facebook page for more info’.

Well, I did check out the Facebook page, but I couldn’t see anything. I don’t have a Facebook account (anymore), so I don’t even know if it’s a private post and only intended for those that follow the school’s Facebook page.

The school does have its own website, but it is rarely updated and close to being unreadable as it’s running on a stock Wordpress theme with a few slightly choice changes.

Did I find the information in book week?

I didn’t. I gave up. However, the lack of content isn’t the issue here. The problem is the school’s reliance on a single platform for communicating with parents. The school is just one of many organisations and businesses that choose to be more active on a Facebook Page than any other websites and social media accounts they might own.

The sad truth of the Internet today is that for many, it begins and ends with Facebook. There’s nothing else on the Internet that matters. If you don’t have a Facebook account, it doesn’t matter. It’s an appeal to the masses, and with most parents having a Facebook account the school has chosen to focus on updating its Facebook page.

The problem of the school using Facebook isn’t the problem though, it’s how they are using Facebook that’s the problem.

When an organisation chooses a single place to publish content they make it difficult for others to find that information. So how can organisations rectify this?

The answer is quite simple.

1. Update their website frequently with relevant content.
2. Share the content of the website to social media platforms.

That’s it. Sounds easy right? Well for the school it might not be so easy.

Schools are busy. Education of the kids come first and rightly so. If the teaching staff are working with the kids, then who’s going to ensure that the website is updated?

The headmistress? Office staff? The janitor? Classroom assistants?

All these people have other duties as well, not to mention the fact that they might not have the confidence to update the website. We know that the school can update the Facebook page when it needs too, but Facebook has teams of engineers and designers who have made publishing content one of the most natural things to do on the web.

When it comes to CMS like Wordpress however, it’s a whole different matter, and that may be the reason why websites, like the school’s website, are rarely updated.

When I look at other school websites in the area, my kid’s school website isn’t alone.

Schools are a hive of activity. Not a week goes by when there isn’t something on for pupils and parents to get involved in. With all this action you would think that the school websites would frequently be updated.

Sadly not.

Facebook Pages is an easy way for many organisations and businesses to publish content, but like the school, they could be missing out the very people that want that information.

Whether you’re a school, business, a sporting club or any other organisation has a group of people following you, you’re content should start it’s publishing cycle on your own website. That’s the centre of your web presence, and as long as you invest in an excellent hosting platform and use a hosted solution or manage to keep the website up to date and in working order on your own, then you’re always going to have that space for people to turn to.

When you want to tell the world about something, put it up on your website and then share it to your social media accounts for others to see.

If you don’t like the idea of sharing to social media platforms, then start a digital newsletter that people can subscribe too. This is something that I would like to see the school implement as we’re still getting bulletins printed on paper and jammed into the kid’s school bags.

A weekly newsletter of the following week’s activities would be a great way of letting parents know what is happening at the school. And of course who doesn’t have email?

My kid’s school isn’t alone in their dependency on a single social media platform. Many other organisations like it choose to focus their time and effort on a Facebook page and end up siloing their content away from others.

Don’t be a Facebook Page organisation. Invest in your own website and let that be the starting point where people come to look for updates.

Is attention no longer a viable form of currency?

We’re told every day as creators online that attention = prosperity. But no one’s attention online lasts long enough for that to be true anymore (if it ever was).

— The Value of Attention by CJ Chilvers

Social media might make you famous for five minutes, maybe even a few times over, but what about the times when people’s attention is elsewhere?

I can understand the joy on Twitter when a certain account was removed by a member of staff who was leaving.

De-activating an account out of your own personal agenda isn’t playing by Twitter’s rules though, and it certainly wouldn’t be as funny if it was your own account that was deleted.

Once again though it throws into question Twitter’s “house rules” and what constitutes playing by these rules and breaking them.

The Trinet (Amazon, Facebook, Google) is a depressing prospect for the future of the web.

The War for Net Neutrality in the USA won a battle in 2014, but in 2017 we are seeing a second battle which is more likely to be lost. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are probably soon going to dictate what traffic can or cannot arrive at people’s end devices. GOOG-FB-AMZN traffic would be the most common, due to their popularity among internet users. Because of this market demand, ISPs will likely provide cheap plans with access to GOOG-FB-AMZN, while offering more expensive plans with full internet access.

— The web begain dying in 2014, here’s how by André Staltz

There’s still one thing that the web has in it’s favour. People are still willing to make it the best open platform it can be.

Google might have shut down their RSS reader but there’s been a number of replacements sprung up that people are willing to pay for like Feedbin.

Facebook might have the social internet sewn up just now, but people are continually challenging that with alternatives like Mastodon and Micro.blog.

Amazon might have the shopping internet market share, but how long can they continue that success? Retail is a never-ending cycle of new companies and stores trying to sell products. Can Amazon remain on top?

I’m optimistic that the web can still be and open platform for all. It comes from educating people about the sacrifices they’re making in using the Trinet’s applications and services and what the trade-off is. I suspect most people are not too bothered though, but there are people who are willing to support and work towards an open web.

Gregory Brown is closing his Twitter account (@practicingdev).

In 24 hours I’ll be shutting down this Twitter account for good. I am OK, and will resume blogging at practicingdeveloper.com. A few months ago I tried to take a break from Twitter and (once again) failed. I don’t like that feeling, so need to take stronger action.

I’ve been following Gregory for a few years now. I like what he writes about and subscribe to his blog.

I have mixed reactions on his decision to leave Twitter. I’m sad for others that follow Gregory on Twitter but happy that he’s taken this step and will continue blogging.

I’ve often thought about deleting my Twitter account but I’m not quite ready to do it. I’m quite happy to let Micro.blog cross post what I need from here to Twitter for the time being. I think the time is coming though. The day when I say goodbye to Twitter.

Update: Some links in this post pointed to pages that no longer exist and have been removed.

It seems that I just can’t let go of my Twitter timeline. Despite not been very active on Twitter for the last few weeks, I still like to read through my timeline and see what’s what. Largely I mostly interested in web development news and updates from people but I’ll read other bits that people have posted.

Lately though my Twitter timeline has been a storm of political updates about what Trump is doing, not doing and other news surrounding him. It’s getting to the point where my timeline has become a channel for political news and lots of other updates from the US. To be honest my Twitter timeline isn’t where I want to read about this.

What’s happening in the US regarding Trump, prejudice and racism is important. There’s change happening and that’s good. What I find difficult to do is to follow my timeline with all of this going on.

I’m simply not interested anymore in these kind of updates on Twitter due to the fact that it’s simply become too much to follow and digest.

I’m trying to get a reign on my timeline again by adding more topical filters to restrict what I see and block retweets from most of the people I follow.

It’s not that I’m trying to create a bubble of the world I see. I know what’s happening in the US and I’m aware of it through various news sites. I just don’t need to see this in my timeline as well.

I honestly think this is the last chance for me and Twitter to get along. The last few months have seen me fall away from Twitter. A lack of tweets and activity on my part is due to the fact that I don’t like spending too much time on Twitter these days. I see the value in what Twitter does for other people but there’s already enough noise on it without me adding to it.

For the moment I’m just going to try and tame the timeline that I have.

… re-imagined.

via BoingBoing

Gab aims to be an honest and open network for people to converse online. Their basic features appear to be great. Honestly though, what are the chances of this thing taking off?

Not a month goes by now without criticism of Twitter and it’s walled garden network.

I really don’t like that we are all putting our content, including those golden joke tweets, into someone else’s silo. You’re giving Twitter full control over all of your content. That’s a huge price to pay for the exposure, especially in the light of the fact that there are user-controlled alternatives.

— Let’s replace Twitter with something much better by Charl Botha

I don’t think Twitter needs to be replaced, but it certainly needs to be improved and Twitter is actively doing that. It’s a long-term goal so we the people should be patient.

So, should we replace Twitter? I don’t think so.

While I agree that Twitter isn’t considered an open part of the Internet, you only have to sacrifice a few privileges to use it. I say a few privileges because you can still create and run your own blog and focus on hosting your more premium content there rather than on Twitter.

Twitter is many things to many people, but if you’re a blogger it should be thought of as a delivery platform for your blog. Share your blogs posts on Twitter and have people come to your blog to read the rest of your content.

Twitter doesn’t need to be replaced it just needs to be used in a way that makes your life easier.

Love these. Especially the news page.

Update: Some links in this post pointed to pages that no longer exist and have been removed.

Good to see technology being put to good use.

A Swiss journalist has created a Twitter bot that tracks dictators’ flights to and from Geneva, as part of a crowdsourced effort to shed light on potentially shady dealings. The bot, called GVA Dictator Alert, tracks planes registered to authoritarian governments and automatically posts their arrivals and departures to Twitter.

— This Twitter bot is tracking dictators’ flights in and out of Geneva by The Verge

Naughty dictators!

… with the Friday link pack courtesy of Swissmiss.

I’m on the fence about this.

Products and companies get acquired all the time. The concern that many have is that Instapaper will eventually be pulled as a product. Not a crazy theory considering that many tech acquisations do this.

I’ll keep using Instapaper until that day but there’s room now for a similar product that will continue to run on it’s own. Any takers?

Finally starting to see some positive moves from Twitter.

Be great if they could make it easier for the majority of us to verify our accounts as well.

It appears that Twitter is dying. It’s losing money and credibility. John A De Goes looks at the major problem Twitter has. It’s a product.

Facebook is touting video as the next big thing for their platform. However, Tim Carmody points to a number of benefits of the written word.

Text is surprisingly resilient. It’s cheap, it’s flexible, it’s discreet. Human brains process it absurdly well considering there’s nothing really built-in for it. Plenty of people can deal with text better than they can spoken language, whether as a matter of preference or necessity. And it’s endlessly computable – you can search it, code it. You can use text to make it do other things.

— Facebook is wrong, text is deathless by Tim Carmody for Kottke.org

A question prompted by Nicholas Bate in his Jagged Thoughts for Jagged Times series.

In the New World of Work the relentless quest to get us to communicate and communicate now, most forcefully illustrated with the increasing provision and use of so-called productivity tools such as instant messanging means there is no time to think.

And therefore there is little of worth to communicate.

I’ve highlighted that last section as it’s got me thinking again about the value of Twitter.

I’m finding it difficult to warrant my time spent on Twitter. I rarely do anything on Twitter these days. My biggest gripe is that to gain any kind of audience you need to take part more. Which in turn means tweeting on a more frequent basis. Yet I don’t like just throwing anything out there unless it has some thought to it. I could tweet more often but is it worth it? Am I just adding more noise?

Update: Some links in this post pointed to pages that no longer exist and have been removed.

All this week I’ve been writing about finding value with social media. Social media as a mainstream communication is already ten years old if we start the clock from 2006 when Twitter began. In that time, it’s seen an explosion of growth but as it becomes more mainstream is it’s attraction and value wearing off?

I don’t think so. I think more people are simply using social media in a way that suits them. I know that my own way of using social media has changed over the years. No longer am I sending over 20 updates a day. I keep my interaction down to a minimum preferring to only dip into my timeline a few times a day. Sure I might miss something, but I gave up on staying on top of my timeline a long time ago. It just isn’t possible.

There’s also the changing landscape of social media. In the beginning there were people. Just people chatting away and sharing links, pictures and other content. Then the corporate companies got wind of the possibility of getting the brands and products in front of these millions of people. I’d like to say it’s a good thing, but the use of ads as a revenue stream is a poor way of ensuring your startup is profitable unless this is the startup’s business plan from day one.

Then there’s the new kids on the block. Snapchat is fast becoming as popular as Twitter and Instagram (from what the kids tell me), but I think I’ll stick with what I know. That is until they are eventually surpassed by other social media platforms.

There’s still value in social media, but it needs like anything else, time spent curating the good from the bad, managing your time on social media wisely and knowing the limits of social media. That’s how you get value from social media.

I have an up and down experience in finding value in using social networks. Twitter is definitely not my goto place these days and App.net is now a distant memory due to it’s lack of participation. It was these two networks that I always thought I would spend my time on when online. What has surprised me in the last year though is that I’m regularly turning to Instagram as my preferred social network.

I always thought of Instagram as just a photo sharing app. I can already share photos on Twitter so why would I bother doing the same thing on Instagram?

Here’s the thing though. Instagram is just a photo sharing app. It allows you to share photos simply and easily. The biggest change I’ve seen in the time I’ve used Instagram is probably it’s user-interface overhaul a couple of weeks ago and yes I do love their new icon. Since joining I’ve yet to see any major change in the way Instagram works as an app. And that’s because it doesn’t need to. It works well without needing to continually change.

Since coming back to Twitter, it hasn’t been everything I thought it would be. I have a public account there and I like sharing photos there but I don’t like to share everything. I’m also on Path but that’s a private app and is mainly for keeping in touch with the family. Instagram fits the gap in-between the two. My account is private and I keep followers down to a minimum.

In this case Instagram is well worth investing some time in because it doesn’t demand too much of my time. I can drop in when I want to and because the timeline is visual, it’s easier to scroll through without getting sidetracked. It has value for me because I can easily keep up with friends and family across the world and it offers a simple way to share online.

Being a valuable social network isn’t always about having the most features. It can be about having a minimum list of features, but making the most of these features and Instagram certainly ticks that box.

Update: Some links in this post pointed to pages that no longer exist and have been removed.

I do. It was great. It’s a shame it fell into obscurity and was eventually closed down.

After months of private beta testing, FriendFeed opened to the public in early 2008 to enthusiastic response. Louis Gray, an early adopter, saw the potential for a new kind of social networking. “[W]e can expect the service to grow tremendously,” he wrote, “kicking off the next wave of social networking services aimed not at posting busy profiles, but instead, aimed at collaboration, sharing and communication.” Tech and Web 2.0 journalists flocked to the site, using it as a kind of proto-Twitter to find breaking news and distribute their own stories.

— The rise and fall of FriendFeed, the social network that brought you the ‘Like’ button by The Kernel

Update: Some links in this post pointed to pages that no longer exist and have been removed.

I think of social media as one of those necessary evils in life. I’m well aware of the benefits of globally connected platforms that keeps people in touch, especially in the event of a natural disaster or event. Social media has proved itself as great way to keep people in contact with others. Like I said, that’s all good, but a good social media platform has value. Things that interest me as a consumer. Links, text, images. Anything that falls within my interests is valuable.

Lately it seems that Twitter has been failing in this respect. There’s doesn’t seem to be any value in Twitter anymore. I’m in a constant battle of finding people to follow and unfollowing people that don’t tweet anymore. This wasn’t a problem when I first used Twitter as I could see the value from my timeline. Interesting tweets and links had value and it kept me checking into my timeline on a regular basis. Now, it seems that I can go a couple of days without checking Twitter and not miss anything.

I was an early user of Twitter. A year after it launched I created my Twitter account. After a few years though I wasn’t seeing the same value that I seen in the early years of Twitter and so I closed my account. I ended up re-creating my account on Twitter last year. There’s a problem though. The problem lies in the fact that I haven’t a clue what I’m using Twitter for. Since starting my Twitter account up again, I’ve had a few interactions with others and it serves it’s purpose in a few areas, but mostly I’m wondering if I even need it at all.

These days though I’m stepping back from Twitter and using it mainly as a source of content to consume rather than to publish things. I’m also keeping my use of it sporadic. I’ve noticed a few other people are changing the way they use Twitter as well. People that I know would tweet all through the day are now down to just tweeting a handful of times a day at most. I’ve even stopped using tools like Buffer for sharing content. I just don’t see the need in tools like that when I’m more of an infrequent visitor to Twitter.

So is Twitter still valuable? I think it’s largely lost it’s value for me. I only check it a couple of times a day. Twitter has it’s uses but I don’t see the great need for it like I did a few years ago. It still has a value for my freelancing business and I’m in the process of moving some of the people I follow to that account, but that is a topic for tomorrow’s post.

I love this idea of paying a subscription fee for using Twitter, but I fear that it might be too late for Twitter.

Before you scream at me to tell me I’m a dope for suggesting this to Twitter, let me give you this tease: Like anything in this world, in the most efficient economies, you get what you pay for. There’s a bright side in paying and that’s a better user experience. It’s why there are so many apps in the Apple Store that have a regular version, which you get for free, and a Pro version, which you pay for.

— My $4.5 Billion Gift To Twitter by Darren Rovell

I’ve not been a fan of the whole Twitter experience since signing up again and I’m getting little in value from it. This is largely because the people I follow (who were regular tweeters in the past) are no longer that active. There are some benefits, but most days I never check my timeline and instead steer towards a couple of curated lists I have.

A great post about how the concentration of power in journalism now lies with technology providers and social media platforms.

Social media and platform companies took over what publishers couldn’t have built even if they wanted to. Now the news is filtered through algorithms and platforms which are opaque and unpredictable. The news business is embracing this trend, and digital native entrants like BuzzFeed, Vox and Fusion have built their presence on the premise that they are working within this system, not against it.

— Facebook is eating the world by Columbia Journalism Review

It’s happening again. I’m falling out of favour with Twitter. Last night I thumbed through about six or seven promoted tweets in my timeline and I hadn’t even reached back an hour in my timeline. I don’t mind Twitter injecting a couple of promoted tweets in my timeline but six is a bit much.

It’s taken me a while to realise it but Twitter is killing itself. We haven’t had a great feature added to Twitter in a long time. Instead we get constant fiddling with the timeline and more promoted tweets. I was all ready to defend Twitter a couple of months ago but that defence has been worn down. The timeline is less fun to read these days with the interruptions of promoted tweets and other content such as recommend people and apps.

The worse part though is that it doesn’t have the banter from years ago. Very few people I follow are what I would call active users. Back in the day there were plenty of active users in my time. Maybe everyone else is busy or like me they’re put off by Twitter.

As I’m writing this in my editor in Ghost, the title reads “Social Media Sucks”. Yeah, I know. Strong words in that title. I don’t like them either, but having them at the top of my editor as I write this actually reminds me of all the great things that social media brings. Here’s a few of the positive things I get from Twitter:

• My son’s golf course and coaching updates from @paisleypro.
• What’s on the grill at the home of @culturaloffering.
• Local news and updates from @paisleyorguk.
• Deep thoughts and revelations from @patrickrhone.

There’s so much more as well and from the 300+ accounts I now follow there are so many more that I could list. It’s a tailored timeline that I curate to my own needs.

If I don’t like something that someone says, then I unfollow.

Disagreeing with someone though is a different thing, and while I might disagree on certain topics with people I follow, it doesn’t mean they’re wrong and I’m right or vice versa. It’s a difference of opinion and that keeps my timeline interesting. I enjoy that.

The worst of Twitter is something that I haven’t been personally experienced but I see time and time again. People with a large number of followers become easy targets for the Twitter mob and their flaming torches and pitchforks. The mob that prides itself on correcting every wrong done. The mob that stands for justice and equality. What they actually stand for is easy pickings. They find the easiest wrong to correct and pounce. This is the worst of Twitter and is going to drive people away from the platform.

Stephen Fry was the latest victim of the Twitter mob. I don’t blame Stephen Fry for leaving Twitter. I also don’t think he overreacted in leaving. He made his decision based on not one past experience but several. It’s sad that people are driven to such measures. It makes Twitter a less entertaining place.

I’ve update the title of this post, to reflect the changing tide of Twitter. I just wish it was more like it was in the beginning.

The perfect analogy of the relationship between Twitter and the user’s of Twitter.

I don’t think it’s terrible or the end of the world. Life in a silo where you and I are the product. McDonald’s doesn’t ask the chickens whether they like the options for Chicken McNuggets. A similar thing. The main difference is the chicken probably couldn’t say. Humans have opinions, feel disempowered, not heard, not loved, bored, and we like to be consulted. A good shitstorm provides temporary relief for all these ills. So for a while, venting, then life goes back to the normal humdrum.

— Twitter’s new timeline? by Dave Winer

Maciej Cegłowski, the creator of Pinboard, highlights the growing obesity of the web and what can be done to improve it.

Let’s preserve the web as the hypertext medium it is, the only thing of its kind in the world, and not turn it into another medium for consumption, like we have so many examples of already.

Let’s commit to the idea that as computers get faster, and as networks get faster, the web should also get faster.

— The Website Obesity Crisis by Maciej Cegłowski

Having read this I’ve just checked this site and I’m glad to say that the index page and a few of the longer form posts are definitely smaller than a major work of Russian literature.

Great to see that DuckDuckGo is still growing.

Through Dec. 15, DuckDuckGo received 3.25 billion search queries this year, according to its publicly posted traffic statistics. That’s up 74% over the same period last year. Monday, Dec. 14 was its first day with more than 12 million direct queries.

— DuckDuckGo, the search engine that doesn’t track its users, grew more than 70% this year by Quartz

Although still not in the same league as Google, I think it’s only a matter of time before they start to encroach on Google’s dominance of the search industry.

A nice reminder that there are more pressing matters in the world than the growing number of icons in my menubar.

We are becoming disconnected from collective issues for want of personal entertainment. If continued, informing the masses on domestic and foreign affairs could very well devolve into an exercise in herding cats. While the individual might not see this as an issue, the collective should because it will influence entire generations. Those who cannot see past themselves are doomed.

— The Public Square of You by Caesura Letters

Update: Some links in this post pointed to pages that no longer exist and have been removed.

The latest update to Twitter has seen the replacement of the favourite action with a star to a like action with a heart. Do I care? Not really.

The majority of drivel that is pumped through Twitter these days has me wondering if it’s worth spending my time on it. Don’t get me wrong there are a few great people who tweet there, they just don’t tweet all that often. It’s probably not a bad thing to be honest, I could do with stepping back a bit from Twitter.

Arment has expressed his hope that blocking bad ads will lead to publishers being forced to adopt “better monetisation methods”, from selling adverts directly (and so cutting out the data-collecting middlemen) to collecting direct payments from readers. To that effect, Peace offers the ability to “whitelist” sites easily from the share menu in Safari, if a user wants to support a specific publisher.

— Adblockers shoot up iOS 9 app charts on day one by The Guardian

I’ve got a couple of adblockers installed on my iPhone, No more dodgy data hoarding ads for me. This is definitely the mark of a new age of Internet folks!

I regularly go through the feeling of drowning in digital. I like being online and everything that comes with it, but when you’re working with software and development tools all day, the last thing I want to see at the end of my work day is a tablet, my phone or even my television.

This week I’ve spent a fair bit of time looking at my various digital outlets and wondering if they are in fact worth the effort to maintain. Here’s my list so far:

• My blog
• Twitter
• App.net

App.net is definitely going. I’ve no interest in keeping an account alive for the sake of having the name of the handle I would prefer. If someone else grabs it, fine. I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.

I have a love/hate thing going with Twitter. I love being able to have one presence on the social network scene. I’m not on Google+ or Facebook, so having an account on Twitter isn’t a bad thing. I hate what Twitter is though. It’s a distracting and destructive time consumer if it isn’t managed properly and lately it seems to be hoarding all my time. The worst part is I’m not tweeting that often to warrant spending the amount of time I do on it. There’s also the problem of activity. The people that I follow just aren’t as active as they used to be. Maybe that’s a good thing, but sometimes it feels like there’s nothing going on in the timeline. Am I missing the point of Twitter?

Finally, the blog. I had my finger over my mouse for a few seconds ready to trash the whole thing. Years of posts and stuff gone a in a few seconds. I didn’t though as you can see as it’s still here. I like my blog, I like the outlet it gives but lately it’s become a burden and it shouldn’t be. I’m faced with two choices for this. The first choice is I keep going with this blog and change my posting routine to be less intensive. One blog post a week is enough with a weekly link post to round up things. The second choice is to start a new blog elsewhere. I’ve got a couple of other domains at hand that I could start from. This site would stay up and running for the foreseeable future, but at some point it would be put out to pasture.

Decisions, decisions.

Update: Some links in this post pointed to pages that no longer exist and have been removed.

A little reminder that the Internet is simply a facade into people’s lives. You need to actually know a person to know the life they lead.

What I share online only represents a tiny portion of my life. Sure, I live a pretty decent life, and really don’t have anything to complain about, but still — it’s not nearly as interesting as a lot of folks assume. And conversely, I’m sure a lot of folks I assume have an amazingly awesome, super interesting life are exactly the same.

— No one on the Internet is living the life you think they are by Paul Jarvis

I like this idea of a secure, self-hosted mailbox.

Ever since going Google free, I’ve tried a number of different services to cover my needs. In this post I’ll highlight seven alternatives to Google’s own products.

Search Engine - DuckDuckGo

It’s been two years now since I stopped using Google for searching needs and started using DuckDuckGo. Overtime I used DuckDuckGo’s bang methods to redirect search queries to Google if DuckDuckGo didn’t have what I was looking for, but overtime I’ve had to do that less and less. I’m not sure if DuckDuckGo’s search results are improving or my searching needs have lessened over time. Either way, I’ll be sticking with DuckDuckGo for the foreseeable future.

Email - FastMail

This is another service that I started using two years ago and I continue to use today. FastMail’s email service isn’t free for those with a moderate sized email archive, but paying for a service helps ensure that it stays around for a long time. Gmail is free, but with an email client that integrated a whole bunch of other Google services, it started to feel less like an email client and more like a communication centre. Gmail’s spam filtering was also once the best spam filter in the field, but I’m glad to say that FastMail’s own spam filtering is great and I’ve no complaints.

Cloud Storage - Dropbox

I never used Google’s own cloud storage product, Google Drive. I’ve been a user of Dropbox since it first came out. What I like the most about Dropbox though isn’t its pricing, or it’s synchronisation across devices. I like the fact it isn’t part of something bigger. I think if Google or Microsoft were to buy Dropbox then I would have to look at another cloud storage solution. I don’t like the idea of having all my Internet eggs in the one company basket.

Document Management - Pages, Numbers & Keynote

Desktop apps can be just as efficient as cloud solutions like Google Docs. In fact maybe even more. I use Pages, Numbers & Keynote for all my document needs. I usually have my MacBook with me most days when I am working so using these native apps is a no brainer. If I needed remote access to my documents to edit them I would maybe consider using something else, but for my needs this is sufficient.

Analytics - Gauges

I was a long term user of Google Analytics for various websites over the years, but after a while I simply got overwhelmed by all the metrics and stats that Google provided. My needs were simple. I wanted to see how much activity my website was getting in terms of clicks and people. At the time Gaug.es was a product of GitHub, but the service has changed hands. It’s still the same service that GitHub made and nothing has changed much over the time since the handover. Gauges isn’t the only alternative though, there are a number of alternatives that serve different needs.

Blogging - Heroku & Jekyll

Who says you need to replace one service with another. What about combining products? My blog has been through lots of different iterations but since 2013 I’ve been using Octopress which is just a nice layer over Jekyll. Recently I switched to just using Jekyll. I didn’t need the extra layer of functionality that Octopress provided.

With my blog catered for I needed a host as well for it. Given my website is static, I could use Amazon’s S3 storage, but I wanted to be able to extend my site with Sinatra if needed. In the past I’ve used Linode to host my blog, but with Heroku’s recent pricing change towards cheaper dynos, I’m now hosting my blog there. It also means that when I commit my changes to GitHub, my blog is automatically deployed to Heroku.

Rolling your own blog isn’t difficult to do but for those that want a simpler way to publish, there’s a number of good alternatives.

Calendar - iCloud & Fantastical

Lastly it’s the turn of the calendar. I used Google’s calendar service a lot. Probably second in line in terms of daily use to Gmail. I use Apple’s Calendar app to keep my calendar synced between my laptop and my phone, but I also use Fantastical to manage my calendar on a day to day basis.

Going Googe free is a big move if you have heavily invested your time and needs in Google’s own line or products and tools. I was fortunate in that I used mostly Gmail and Google Calendar and they required minimal effort to move across. Two years later, I’m still happy with my own chosen stack of apps that are outside of Google’s borders.

Not only can you be Google free, but the alternatives are just as good in terms of functionality.

I suspect the ease of switching away from Google depends primarily on whether you use Gmail. I never have — it solves problems I don’t have, and I greatly prefer native IMAP email apps — so Google has never had deep integration with my data or a significant presence on my iPhone.

I didn’t set out to aggressively quit Google-everything, but once I changed my browsers’ default search engine to DuckDuckGo, that has mostly happened. The most surprising part was how easy it was for Google to mostly fall out of my life, how quickly it happened, and how little I missed it.

— Why not Google? by Marco Arment

Adam Keys has some thoughts on this. I like this in particular.

Keep a private list for high signal-to-noise follows. Good friends and people whose ideas I don’t want to miss end up here.

— Ideas for Twittering Better by Adam Keys

I’m still not that much into Twitter. It serves it’s purpose, but I don’t follow or participate that often.

Before the Internet, the best way to make a group of people heard was to have those people sign a petition. Under a common goal, a group of people would sign a petition and have it sent to a person in authority or government. This person is most likely seen as the one person with the power to exercise the changes requested in the petition. It doesn’t always work, but when enough people make their views heard in the form of a petition, it is hard to ignore.

Today the Internet provides an easily accessible global platform that makes being heard even easier. Services like 38 Degrees and Change.org aim to make the process of petitioning even easier by allowing people to sign up to petitions regardless of their location in the world. My view of such services when they first appeared was that they would be a great benefit. People could make their views clearer and more people could get behind petitions from the comfort of their own home. Overtime though, I’ve become less enthusiastic about petition services.

Misplaced Importance on Petitions

While petition services have been used to highlight and push for change in a number of topics that affect society they also have been used for questionable aims.

Over the years of petition services being available there have been a number of petitions started that you have to wonder what significance they have and their importance.

Asking Death to bring back Terry Pratchett? I would love to be reading new books from Terry but we all know that no amount of petitioning is going to make this change happen.

Demanding the BBC re-instate Jeremy Clarkson? After a number of run ins with the BBC it seems that Jeremy’s luck has run out. I would love to see Jeremy back on Top Gear but I’m pretty sure that a petition is not going to make him a Top Gear presenter again.

Petitions like these may have started out as harmless fun, but the problem with them is the misplaced importance put on them. While Clarkson’s petition to be re-instated has reached just over the one million mark, another petition calling for people to be automatically registered into the organ donor list has only attracted just over sixty thousand signatures. What’s more important?

The Empty Gesture

Petition services make signing a petition easy. Fill in the form on the page and you’re done. That’s it. You never have to see that petition again or even have to follow up to it to see what happens. So, is signing these petitions an empty gesture or do they genuinely make a difference?

I’ve signed petitions like these in the past, but not even thirty seconds after signing the form am I doing something else and I quickly forget I even signed it. That’s not to say though that the petition hasn’t made a difference. In time petitions have brought about change and made a difference. The question is, if you didn’t sign the petition would it still have made a difference? Also, is there weight behind the number of signatures that a petition contains?

Maybe signing a petition should involve more than just signing the petition and sharing your support on social networks, but what else is there to do? Fund the petition with money from your own pocket? Attend a rally in support of the petition. These are definitely options, but for most people signing the petition, just signing it is all they want to do.

Another Digital Distraction

The big drawback to petition services is that they are digital tools and therefore suffer from the same single fault that all digital tools and services suffer from. They are a distraction.

When I walk through the centre of town there are usually people hanging about with clipboards asking for a few minutes of your time. Be honest, when faced with people with clipboards, do you usually skirt past them or reply quickly, “You don’t have the time.”?

I usually do one or the other and I’m guessing I’m not alone based on the number of people I see stopping to chat. While most of the time I probably could spare a few minutes, there are times when I am trying to be somewhere at a specific time. So no time for distractions.

The same can be said for petition services. When you sign up for one petition, you could end up being put on the mailing list for other petitions or you could sign up to be notified about what happens to petitions after you have signed them. For a couple of weeks there it seemed I was getting an email every other day from these petition services. I started unsubscribing from the various petitions I had signed as well as unsubscribing from the petition services themselves.

What started as a tool for bringing about change simply became another digital distraction. It had lost it’s value for me.

Petition Still Require Action

Petition services are a great tool for bringing about change, but I think more needs to be done for a petition than simply signing it. Physical presence is a great show of support, so attending a rally may make more of an impression than a simple signature would. The defeats the purpose of digital petitions though.

I also think that petitions could benefit from a scale of importance or relevance for petitions. While most petitions fall under the category of politics or society, a further breakdown of petitions based on their topic and their importance could allow people to follow a more select group of petitions.

Good to see Marco Arment switching to DuckDuckGo.

I’ve been using it for the best part of two years. I don’t see me ever going back to using Google.

Left unchecked, you could easily waste away your time online. Posting, bookmarking, pinning, reading, uploading, downloading, torrenting and streaming. We’ve entered into an era of the Internet where there’s growing demand for you to be connected to anything and everything. If it’s not managed properly you could easily get sucked into an almost endless zombie state of clicking, scrolling and swiping. It’s something that I’ve grown more aware of over the years, but with kids in the house, you suddenly become more aware of how much time you spend being connected. I don’t want my kids to remember their parents as “those two with their heads creaking into their phones”.

With this in mind, I’ve started being a little bit more selective of how I manage my time being connected. This doesn’t necessarily mean that I only class the time I’m on the Internet, this can include any form contact with my laptop and smartphone. Cutting back on the this time is the key, but how do we do this?

In the last couple of weeks I’ve made a few changes to the apps I’m using and how I use them, and I’ve found that there’s two key places where you can improve severing that attachment to technology. Automation and filtering.

Automation

Automation is the ability to take a number of manual steps and make them run on their own without any human intervention. Sounds a bit daunting to start with, but there are in fact a number of great services that can make detaching from technology easier.

I’ve used IFTTT for the last couple of years to automate a few things between different services I use. I wouldn’t call myself a power user, but it’s easy to set up recipes means that you can schedule all manner of action between the different channels you might use.

I’ve only just started using Zapier in the last couple of weeks. IFTTT is great but I’ve heard good reviews about Zapier as well. My first impressions of it are good, and while they don’t cover all the same channels that IFTTT does, they do have a vast catalog of services that you can hook into.

Using tools like this can handle the mundane tasks for you, like backing up your photographs to Dropbox or builing lists on Twitter for an event you’re attending. Each step might only take a few seconds to do, but given that you’ll probably end up repeating these steps time and time again, it’s worth looking at tools like IFTTT and Zapier to handle them for you.

Filtering

Filtering is where we want to pick out the signals from the noise. What’s the important stuff? It’s something I haven’t used much in the past, but I’ve finding it to be more and more useful to limit my time online.

Perhaps the first place you might have came across filtering is on a number of Twitter clients. Tweetbot and Echofon allow you to mute keywords in your stream. This comes in handy when you don’t want to see tweets about a particular topic. I recently muted keywords for the Apple Watch event a couple of weeks ago and recently also blocked tweets from the SXSW event. Both topics weren not in my interests and so to stop my timeline being polluted with links to these I muted them in Echofon.

The last place I’ve seen filtering avaialble but haven’t used yet is in the RSS reader application, Feedbin. For each of the RSS feeds you have, Feedbin gives you the option to mute a feed. I haven’t used this yet but knowing this feature is here means that I’m abit more open to subscribing to other RSS feeds. I can mute feeds that are perhaps covering a specific topic over a number of days or weeks and if it’s something I’m not interested in, I can mute for that period of time.

This is just a couple of ways in which I manage the daily onslaught of information. I would be interested to hear of other suggestions that you use to manage and reduce your time being connected to the digital world.

Update: Some links in this post pointed to pages that no longer exist and have been removed.

A little reminder that while we’re connected in more ways now than we have ever been, our number of meaningful connections doesn’t change at all.

The lesson to learn from Dunbar might be this: our pursuit of building ever-expanding and “influential” networks might be a fundamentally vain pursuit. Rarely, perhaps never, do our lives comprise of more than about 150 meaningful relationships. Although a digitally connective world might suggest that the size of our network is representative of our ‘value’ or ‘potential’ to have an influence on others, our human network capacity probably has not really changed at all.

— One Hundred and Fifty People: Revisiting Dunbar’s Number by Caesura Letters

Update: Some links in this post pointed to pages that no longer exist and have been removed.

A very interesting idea.

Lazin-Ryder is one of a number of Twitter users who are using homegrown methods to make their tweets self-destruct. He says that having his tweets disappear automatically makes Twitter feel more conversational and casual, and less like a professional pressure-cooker.

— Meet the tweet-deleters: people who are making their Twitter histories self-destruct by Fusion

Update: Some links in this post pointed to pages that no longer exist and have been removed.

No spot comes close to YouTube when it comes to the number of dumb and vicious remarks in its comments section. Even bland videos, ones without an ounce of controversy, are ripped.

— Mean Magnet by Michael Wade

I’m just wondering if video is easier to consume than actually spending the time to read something and let it sink in. I suspect many of the comments on YouTube are simple knee-jerk reactions to each video.

Marco Arment on what could be Google’s biggest challenge yet.

Shallow social-shareable listicles and clickbait headlines have always been plentiful on the web, but it does seem clear that they’re getting much worse and more dominant recently.

Google is making the problem worse, but they’re not the root problem. In fact, the real problem is a pretty big problem for Google, too:

Everyone’s spending increasingly more consumption time dicking around in apps and snacking on bite-sized social content instead of browsing websites and searching Google.

— Google and blogs: “Shit” by Marco Arment

Does this explain why Google are going to show tweets in their search results?

I’m back on Twitter.

After weighing up the options, I’m probably better being an active member of at least one social network rather than none at all. Working for yourself is great, but the lack of office banter can make for very quiet days.

Fancy following me? I’m @matthewlang.

I’m stepping away from App.net. It was a hard decision but I think I made the right move.

When I first read about App.net I was already in the Twitter doldrums. I was annoyed with the lack of post length, the lack of a business model and the growing number of spam accounts that automatically followed you. I was disliking Twitter more and more by the day.

The 22nd of August 2012. That was the day I signed up for App.net. It was heralded as the social network for those that want more control over their data, a service that isn’t afraid to charge it’s customers for the privilage of using their service. At first it was seen as a great move. A sustainable social network. It sounded so great. I promptly signed up.

It started out so promising. There was already a micro-blogging client, an API and the promise of more to come. More did come. With a better API, developers shipped clients for all the major mobile platforms. There was a number of nice services that were born off the back of the App.net API. After the initial launch hype, subscriptions tailed off and the App.net community carried on. For the first year things looked so great. It was all going so well.

Over the course of the second year there were a number of new features including a notifications system for everyone as well as a crowdfunding platform for people to validate their product ideas. In the community there was a lot of discussion about the future of App.net. So many people were interested and cared for the future of it.

Ever since the App.net State of the Union post from the App.net blog though, the future of the social network has looked uncertain. Prominent subscribers to App.net have stopped posting or in some cases just completely deleted their accounts. For the last few months my timeline has appeared to be less and less active. While most days you might get a conversation on a particular topic, some days it feels like you’re just talking to yourself. The buzz around App.net has died and what’s been left behind is the remnants of a what could have been a great service.

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been weighing up whether I should continue to dedicate my time to using App.net. “You get what you put in” is a popular opinion of why you should continue to use any social network and it does hold true, but sometimes you just have to quit regardless of how much you want to participate. For me it was just a lack of interaction that made me decide to leave. People did participate in conversations but it just wasn’t as frequent as it previously had been on App.net.

Over the last two years, App.net has been home from home. A stream of people I’ve connected with on a daily basis. Posts, links, images, polls and stories all shared in a little corner of the Internet. I don’t regret the time that I have spent there. It’s been a great experience and I’ve connected with some great people but it’s time to move on.

Update: Some links in this post pointed to pages that no longer exist and have been removed.

I’m going to give Twitter another go but this time just as a broadcasting tool.

In the past I’ve been against using Twitter. For me it became too much noise and watching my stream day in and out was becoming difficult to manage. I could have scaled back the number of people I followed but after choosing to stop using Twitter, it was clear I wasn’t missing out on much.

The people who I like to follow already keep their own sites and blogs updated on a regular schedule. I already follow these people using RSS feeds from their sites and blogs. It doesn’t make much sense to ‘subscribe’ again to these people through a different medium.

And yet, I do think there is a use for Twitter. Ever since I read a post about the use of Twitter as a broadcast medium (sorry, can’t find the link!), I’ve wondered if that’s how I should be using Twitter?

So far a month, I’m going to activate my Twitter account again and point my site’s RSS feed to Twitter. I’ve set myself a number of limits though.

• My Twitter account will be a broadcast only account. No tweets, favourites or reposts will come from me personally. The only tweets I will be making will be fed from my RSS feed.
• I won’t be interacting with others on Twitter. If a tweet receives a reply in the form of constructive criticism then I’ll endeavour to contact that person through email.
• My account will remain private. Strange I know, but I want to get a handle on the number of people that follow me. In the past I’ve had to continually block unwanted followers on Twitter. I’ve no idea what their engineers have done, if anything, to clamp down on spam accounts. The best way I see to get control is to accept each follow request as they come in. With my account only posting links from my blog, I don’t expect to see many follow requests and the bulk of them that request to follow me should be genuine enough.

We’ll see how it goes.

Free services are the most popular way to attract users, but what are you compromising on for this to happen?

The word ‘free’ is still a popular way for many online services to gain the users they need in order to start becoming more than just another blip on the Internet radar. With that enticing offer of being free, most people sign up, use the service and then decide if they want to keep using it or not. The pull of being free can be a powerful thing and like so many things people like it when they get something for free.

In the beginning users of the service are happy. They can’t believe their luck that this service is free and they can use it on a daily basis. They love the new service and sing its praises to their friends who in turn sign up as well. It is free after all. The trend continues and if the service is a hit it can eventually scale to becoming the next big thing.

After a few years, the service owners wants to start making some money, but they don’t want to charge their loyal users for the privilage of using their service. That would be a terrible idea. Instead the service owners decide to change some things about the way the service works. Maybe they limit the API, change a well liked feature to what the service owners think is better (for them anyway) or even just start throwing some ads in. That last one always works right?

Alas the loyal users of the service start to feel like they have been cheated and throw their arms up in the air in objection to the new changes the service are implementing. Just because they have been loyal to the service since its early days, it’s wrongly assumed that the service owners are going to listen to their users. Sadly they don’t. And then an amazing thing happens. Despite the drawbacks to using the service with the new changes they don’t approve of, the users decide to keep using the service. It’s not about free anymore though, it’s about the people your connected to using this service. How will you ever connect to these people without this service?

Clearly I’m taking a few examples from social networks like Twitter and Facebook, but the rules apply to any service that starts out being free and refuses to entertain the idea of a paid account or subscription. The rule is that in order to gain the user base you need to become a smash hit, you need to make your service free for everyone. You need to make it instantly attractive for people to use and that starts with giving it away for free.

It’s a plan that has been played out with many services now and while there have been successful exceptions to this (well done Trello), many free services stick to being free and then try to generate revenue by using brand advertising and promotion or selling data as a product to others.

It’s at this point where the idea of a free account is nothing more than a compromise. In exchange for using the service in question, you must be prepared to accept the changes to the service and continue using it as best as you can. You might not like the changes that the service are implementing but the decision to continue using it or leave the service is down to you. You’re the user after all.

This is the cost of many free services now. If they don’t require something back from you in return now, chances are they will in the future. It’s just a matter of deciding how much you’re willing to compromise on to continue using the service.

It’s one of the first big technologies to emerge from the early days of the Internet, it’s still a preferred form of chatting online for many people and yet I’ve never used it. I’m taking about Internet Relay Chat or IRC for short. I wouldn’t expect many people to have used it with the abundance of free chat apps that are now available for mobile devices, but what I think is unusual about me is that I’ve been using the Internet for over 20 years, well before the age of mobile devices and apps and to this day I’ve never used IRC.

The first time I heard about IRC was during a tutorial class at univeristy. We were supposed to be learning about using multimedia to put together an interactive article but with the teaching assistant only able to focus on one quarter of the room at a time, many students were in fact using the time to chat with friends on IRC. When one of my class mates showed me what it was I was intrigued but it quickly slipped my mind and for a few years I never looked at it again.

In the early years of my career I then discovered that many of the programming languages and topics I was interested in at the time had matching channels where like minded developers could meet to help each other out. Even then though I didn’t see the point in using it. What might have been a major road block for me was that I wasn’t an active computer user outside of work. Work was work and it started at 9am and finished at 5pm. Since then I’m glad to say that my attitude to my career has changed and I’ve taken it a bit more seriously and invested in reading and learning programming languages in my spare time. Still to this day though I’ve not used IRC.

A few years ago when the Ruby on Rails framework was in its early years, there might have been an active channel or two for developers to chat about the framework and help each other out but social networks are gradually replacing old technologies like IRC. It won’t be long before just the die hards are left using IRC. I’ve no doubt that it is a good way of communicating online, I just think that people that know about IRC look for something a bit more shiny in terms of a user interface while many new users to the Internet immediately turn to social networks rathen than the protocols that existed in the early days of the Internet.

Even though I’ve never used IRC, I think it’s a shame that a key technology such as IRC is overlooked and frequently never considered as an option when looking for places to chat with like minded people. IRC numbers might be dwindling but I am going to download an IRC client and open up a few channels to see what all the fuss is about. With just one dedicated social network under my belt, I think I can afford sometime exploring other ways of chatting online. Besides, I might actually get to like it. I know I usually hold off when it comes to adopting new technologies and apps but I think 20 years is too long a time to wait to see if something takes off. IRC is still here so why not give it a try?

Many readers here will know of my support of the social platform, App.net, and how it has become a worthy alternative to other social platforms. It’s a place where I hang out daily, watching conversations happening, taking part in them on the odd occasion and using the 256 character length posts to bash out my thoughts, opinions and ideas through out the day.

I wasn’t particularly surprised by the news yesterday that the App.net team is having to scale back its number of employees and rely on contractors to maintain and support the App.net platform. The App.net team have been quiet of late and there hasn’t been a visible enough uptake of new members for me to see that App.net platform is growing. It’s not all bad news though, Dalton and Bryan have said they will continue running App.net indefinitely.

I’ve heard so many arguments that App.net doesn’t have the user base to sustain growth and given the recent announcement from Dalton, it’s hard to argue against this. The thing is though, it’s still making enough money to sustain the platform, but this for me is the worrying part.

App.net started as a platform that required payment before you could create an account here. $36 per year is the cost. It’s not much for many people, and there’s even the option of paying monthly. It was this pay wall that guaranteed that there would be some sense of mediation of users coming onto the platform. If you were serious about joining you paid up. Dalton’s recent post reads that hosting is covered by the renewal of paid accounts, but how much of the hosting costs are being used to support free accounts on the platform?

I want App.net to survive and continue to grow, but the free tier account has always been a sticking point. Accounts that don’t contribute to the sustainability of the platform and their continued use of other features such as Broadcast means that they’re using up part of the hosting of this platform while giving nothing in return.

I could be wrong about this and I don’t have the numbers to prove my argument, but I would like to see the platform reducing the features that are on offer to free accounts and continue to add more value to paid and developer accounts. If these accounts are the ones that will sustain App.net in the future, then surely they must be the primary focus rather than building features for all in the hopes that some free tier accounts upgrade?

It’s not all bad though, the App.net team have open sourced the Alpha client for the platform. It’s from this point on that I hope that contributions made by the community will drive this social platform back into a more healthier state of sustainability and growth.

I love the community behind App.net. My timeline is a much more pleasant place for reading than any single day that I had when I was on Twitter. Interesting conversations and shared links provide a much better environment than being the one account in millions on Twitter.

I’ll continue to post on App.net until the lights go out, which I hope is years away from now.

Update: Some links in this post pointed to pages that no longer exist and have been removed.

Marketing your product online has one bad rule. It’s not a rule so much as a practice. Whether it’s good or bad, I’ll leave down to you to decide. Here it is.

In order to market your product effectively online, you at least need a presence on each of the major social networks.

I’m talking social network accounts here. Google+, Facebook and Twitter. Without a doubt the most popular networks out there, and if you want to market your product you need an account for each of these networks so that you have an outlet for your product. I’m aware that you don’t need to be sitting on these accounts on a daily basis to monitor it, but it does require some maintenance. And that’s my problem. Why do you need to have an account in these networks just to market your goods? Is there an alternative?

There is and it’s probably been staring you in the face since you sat down at your desk this morning with your coffee.

It’s email.

Long forgotten as the first popular form of sharing content, email has been increasingly replaced by social network forms of communications. It is one of the last remaining forms of open communication that just works. You can send a message to anyone providing you know their email address. It doesn’t matter which email service you use, which client you use or even if it’s self-hosted. Email just works and it cuts across the borders of social networks easily. Straight to the people that matter. The people who buy and could potentially buy your product.

You might be able to reach more people by managing a separate account on each network, but do you have time for that? I sure as hell don’t.

Lately I’ve seen a resurgence in the use of email by others to market their products and services. Newsletters are an increasingly great way to market your product to others. Letting people know of changes and offers in your product keeps your customers up to date. A call to action at the end of the email is also a great way to encourage potential customers to check out your product or even buy your product.

The best thing about it though is that it’s already there.
Waiting to be used. Marketing your product starts with an email to the right person. Sometimes that’s all that’s needed to start selling your product.

Remember having a start page? I do.

Everytime I would open my browser, I would be faced with a billboard of widgets that funnelled in data from different sources and displayed them all on the one screen. It was beautiful. Before RSS readers took off, the start page was the go to place for all your news.

I remember my first start page, the Google Personalised Homepage. It was great. All my important feeds on the one screen. Everything I wanted to read for the day in one place. Gradually this evolved over time into iGoogle and with it came changeable backgrounds, widgets created by Google and thousands of widgets created by others. It went to a tabbed page so that you could setup multiple tabs on your homepage. Now you could categorise widgets and cram more data into your home page and you wouldn’t need to scroll down to view those widgets, you just clicked on a different part of the screen (yes, I’m failing to see the convenience in this too).

Along came time based backgrounds. These were backgrounds that would change over the course of the day. Now you didn’t need to see the same thing in your background all through the day, it would change as the day went on. You could only see this if the you didn’t have a screen crammed full of widgets.

I even tried Netvibes for a brief spell and while it as fun to try something different, I went back to using iGoogle after not using it for a week. It was just too familiar and easy to use. Also I had invested time in getting the start page setup exactly as I wanted it.

All good things come to an end though and sadly last year, Google pulled the plug on iGoogle. Online trends have moved on from start pages. Most people now open social media clients as their first port of call for the day or maybe they go straight to their favourite news site to catch up. Only the insane try and start the day by opening their inbox.

Only a few services remain now that offer the start page experience, but I don’t see the benefit in using them now. There’s too much data out there for me to consume, certainly too much to fit on iGoogle regardless of how many tabs you have on the page.

Feedbin is my new start page now with a greater focus on curated content rather than just letting any old thing in. It has multiple feeds in it like my start page had, but it’s better at letting me choose what I want to read and that’s more important now.

Social networks are everywhere. Some are aimed at specific individuals and markets while others just want to be the biggest network on the planet. Visit any website for an individual and you’re more than likely to see a string of icons where that person can be found on different social networks. You can see one at the top of this page right now. Take a peek. I’ll wait.

Did you see it? A conservative list compared to many other network lists on the web. The reason my list is small is that these are the main networks I use on a daily basis. App.net for conversation, Github for coding, LinkedIn for my career and lastly the most over-looked social network of them all, the RSS feed to my blog. Where’s the rest you might ask? Well they’re not there for good reason. I simply don’t use anything else. At all.

I’m happy with the networks I use and take part in and anything more than this would invade my spare time. I just don’t have time for anything else. I know plenty of people that use these networks in the right way and it works for them. They might be multi-disciplined professionals and use Github, Dribble and Flickr for their work. They have multiple talents and need more than one network to share their work. A good reason then to on multiple social networks.

For others though I suspect there’s more to having a massive list of social networks against their name. For others I think joining multiple networks is nothing more than a ego boost. I could be wrong but I’ve heard enough conversations about social networking to realise that there are people out there who see a long list of social networks to their name as nothing more than just an ego check.

People that want to be seen using the latest network, regardless of what the site or service does, are using that service for the wrong reasons. Joining networks due to popularity might be considered okay if you want to gain value from that particular network if you’re a business owner or product owner and you can see a market in that network. Seeing a social network as the next big thing people will be talking about and joining it right away is not going to make you any more liked or respected. It’s certainly not going to make your life anymore fulfilling.

It’s sad to see people join so many different social networks just because they can. They’re not a professional indicator and they’re certainly not a masure of success. They’re a time sink if you’re not careful in managing your time on them.

I’d much rather see a carefully curated list of social networks against a person’s name or profile. A list of networks that person takes part in and shares their creativity in those networks. A curated list of networks is an indicator that the person has taken the time to weed out those networks that are surplus to their needs and they’ve recognized the networks that benefit them.

That’s the person who’s site I like to read or follow. The person that would much rather focus on putting a short story together, publish some code or even show their sketchnotes for a talk they have attended. Their focus is on what they create, not putting their name on every social network they can join.

Update: Some links in this post pointed to pages that no longer exist and have been removed.

In the quest to find news users for people to follow in my Netterpress newsletter, I started putting together a few scripts that would poll new accounts created on App.net and update them over the course of the week. I only filtered for accounts categorized as ‘human’. I figured that this would limit some of the spam accounts I would get. At the end of the week I would sort the accounts by the number of posts made for each account and then starting hand checking each account from the top of the list looking for interesting users to include in the Netterpress newsletter.

A sound idea in theory, but when it came to checking the accounts, I was disappointed to find that most of the active accounts at the top of my list were in fact spam accounts or valid accounts entirely powered by automated feed tools. There only a handful of actual human accounts in the fifty most active accounts that I looked at last night.

I’ve never previously done this on other social networks like Twitter or Facebook, but given my experience on Twitter in the past it’s hard to be surprised by this.

Social media is it’s own worst enemy in my eyes. The very tools that make it easy for us to post from one location to different networks are the very same tools that are used to automate the posting of irrelevant and unsolicited content.

The barrier to many social networks is nothing. All the networks I have heard of are free. Even App.net has a free tier for anyone to join. It’s that free entry that makes it so appealing for many, but to others they see an opportunity to post irrelevant content.

In App.net’s case, there is a growing number of feed accounts appearing on the platform. While that’s okay for feeds that deliver valuable content, there’s no getting away from the fact that people will setup accounts to deliver unwanted content, regardless of the social network you use. It doesn’t matter what social network you are a member of, there will always be spam accounts trying to dilute the pool of valued content.

I’ll be checking through the data over the weekend in preparation for the next Tuesday’s newsletter. Hopefully I’ll be able to pull together a list of some new users to recommend to others for the next edition of Netterpress.

Update: Some links in this post pointed to pages that no longer exist and have been removed.

Many of you will know through my posts that I’m a big App.net fan. It’s my goto place when I want to drop in on conversations, strike up news ones with others and also just as a place to post what I am doing. It’s also the one public social network that I participate in.

I’ve never been interested in creating a Facebook account as I simply seeing as being too much of an overhead to maintain. I also deleted my Twitter account this year. It was coincidental that the timing of this action happened at the same time as Twitter were enforcing new rules on the use of their API. I just felt that I wasn’t getting anything back from Twitter in terms of value.

Since switching to a single public social network, I’ve noticed a number of positive things that have occurred as a result of my limiting action.

No more drowning in micro-information

The first thing I immediately noticed was that I was no longer constantly checking my Twitter timeline. Looking back I wonder now why I even had an account there in the first place. It’s a social network for micro-updates that only offers limited information in each post. I did find it interesting hearing what other people were working on, but Twitter’s post limit of 140 characters seriously limits the amount of context you can put on a post.

Less apps and services to use

With just one social network to my name, I have less apps on all my devices. It’s a minor thing but having less apps on my devices means less time updating them, searching for new ones and of course less time checking them. I also work with a ‘one in, one out rule’. As much as possible I will try and keep the number of products and services I use down to a minimum. That means that more often than not, I will replace older apps with new apps rather than running two at the same time.

Less of a digital footprint

I like keeping a small digital footprint. Nothing to do with trying to stay under the radar in terms of the government spying on you, but more to do with my own data and it’s safety. As soon as I stop using a product or service I try and delete the account I had with that product or service. I do this because I don’t want my login details lying around on another companies database when it doesn’t need to.

It’s not for everyone

Limiting yourself isn’t for everyone, but it was amazing to see how little I depended on Twitter after just a couple of weeks of deleting my account. I used to think of social networks as places to find more information on topics, but the truth is that I find everything I need in the form of blogs, newsletters and podcasts.

I now see social networks as more of a place for conversation. Fortunately App.net does this aspect of interaction very well and I’m happy to remain a paying subscriber to it.

Update: Some links in this post pointed to pages that no longer exist and have been removed.

It’s been a couple of weeks now since I first presented the idea of a newsletter for App.net. A lot has happened in the last couple of weeks, so here’s a recap.

Initial feedback was good

Based on poll taken by a number of App.net members, there was very positive feedback on the idea of a newsletter. A number of ideas and suggestions were sent to myself regarding content for the newsletter. A second poll asking if user’s would like to see personalised content wasn’t as popular.

Using the App.net API

Another thing that came out of this was the possibility of using App.net so that users could authorise their accounts so that we use the user’s email address to send them the newsletter. Once this was done I had another idea to personalise the newsletter based on posts from each user’s timeline. I would read the user’s timeline for the week and include highlighted posts from the past week in the newsletter. There were two problems with this.

The first is that the App.net API does not include a user’s email address in their profile when you ask for it. Understandable really given that this email could be used in other ways by an application that has access to the API.

Secondly the original idea was for a newsletter. At the time I hadn’t considered a personalised newsletter until a few days later. Now that I’ve had a chance to access the API, reading user’s timelines for highlighted posts is a major task that would require more time than I currently have available.

The idea of building a full application to support personalised content for the newsletter is a large undertaking and one that I wouldn’t be prepared to undertake unless I had a number of sign ups already interested in this. Based on the light feedback I had it simply wasn’t enough to warrant my time at the moment.

So what’s the plan with the newsletter then?

Well, the plan is to still provide a premium newsletter for App.net members who can sign up with any email address they choose. I am not going to be using the App.net API in anyway for the newsletter, as I’m still essentially testing the validity of this idea. Yes people voted on it and said it was a good idea, but when it comes to getting paid subscriptions will people still be so positive about it?

In order fully test this idea, I will be moving ahead with publishing a newsletter for the App.net community but it will be limited to a number of editions in order to test whether the idea has enough subscribers to carry forward.

I’ve still got a number of questions about sign ups, cost of the newsletter and hopefully the possibility of making the newsletter free until the number of sign ups has reached a set limit.

This week I’ll be announcing the account that will act as a contact point for the newsletter and where people can submit ideas or content for the newsletter. I’ll also hopefully be releasing the sign up page for the newsletter next week. A couple of weeks after this I’ll be releasing the first edition of the newsletter.

Update: Some links in this post pointed to pages that no longer exist and have been removed.

Last night I posted to App.net an idea for a premium newsletter that aggregates and reports on activities and news happening within the App.net community. The response I got back from people was very positive. A lot of people expressed interest in the newsletter.

Why a newsletter?

It’s a question I asked myself a few times while writing this blog post. App.net members can already find out this information on App.net itself, the only problem is that they might not know the correct hashtag or account to follow to get that information. The newsletter is not just a way of letting you know what’s happening on App.net but also as a way of bringing App.net members together.

I’m trying to foster a better way of brining people together on App.net.
Since signing up for App.net I’ve enjoyed being here and I want to continue enjoying that experience. That’s why I thought about introducing a newsletter for App.net members. A unified way of getting up to date information in one place. You can still use your own methods if you prefer, e.g. searching for the right hashtag for the book club or finding out when the next writers challenge is. The newsletter isn’t compulsory, it’s optional. It’s your decision how you want to interact with App.net.

Why premium?

When I say premium, I mean a newsletter you pay for. Why would you pay for it? Well why wouldn’t you? It takes time to collate, write and edit newsletters and while most free newsletters rely on ads, I don’t think that ads are what people want to see in the newsletter, although I haven’t validated this yet.

App.net started out as a premium service that indicated right from the start, no ads. I was hoping that the newsletter would follow the same path.

On the other hand I can appreciate those that wouldn’t pay for such a newsletter and would want to receive it for free. If you’re not paying for an App.net account then why would you pay for an App.net newsletter? Also we’re trying to foster participation in this community and many people have free accounts. Why would they want to pay for information that they can get that information through other means?

Then there is those who are already paid members. Do they really want to pay for a monthly subscription on top of their membership? To bo honest, I would. The newsletter would have to deliver value though.

I’ve been thinking about this and while I can see the benefit of a free newsletter for one and all, I see little reward for those that could be contributing to the newsletter. That fluffy feeling you get from doing something for free for someone can only get you so far. What if the newsletter takes off and demands more of my time?

I started a poll last night (thanks @abraham), to get feedback on whether people would sign up for a premium newsletter on what’s happening in App.net. For me the number of responses are too small to definitely say that yes most people would be interested in a paid newsletter. At 9am (GMT) this morning the responses were as follows:

• 61% (11 votes) of respondents indicated that they would be interested in a premium newsletter.
• 33% (6 votes) would be interested in a newsletter if it was free.
• 6% (1 vote) said they wouldn’t be interested in a newsletter at all.

Clearly there is demand for a newsletter, but a premium one? I’m not sure on that yet.

What’s in it then?

Here’s the good part. I’ve been able to get a lot of great feedback from people with very interesting ideas for content for the newsletter. Here’s some of the suggestions so far:

• App.net meet ups across the world - Really just a list of where App.net members are meeting in the next couple of weeks. Usually I hear of these things through App.net itself, but having these delivered to your inbox is a better way of finding out when they are happening.
• Community calendar of events and activities happening on the network - Really what I think we have in mind here is dates for events like #thememonday, #wedc as well as book clubs or movie nights that are happening across App.net.
• New apps and services - Got a new app that you want everyone to know about? Then why not spread the word through the newsletter. We’ll also let you know when apps and services get important updates as well.
• New interesting users - I’m not talking about celebs. I’m talking about writers, photographers, thought leaders, musicians. If anyone important joins App.net we can let you know through the newsletter.
• Tips and suggestions - Did you know that Alpha supports the Markdown syntax for embedding links in your post? Not a lot of people know that, but wouldn’t it be great to see tips like this and getting more from App.net with other titbits like this.
• Featured photo - Every week a photo taken by an App.net user will be featured in the header of the newsletter with a link to credit that user.
• Member profiles - Every week we could feature a user in the newsletter and do a small Q&A session with them. This could include the ADN staff as well if people wanted this. The point to this is that everyone in the community is important so featuring users in the newsletters would be great to foster connections between people.

What’s the next step?

Providing I get enough positive feedback from App.net members then I think a simple first edition of the newsletter is required. Something for everyone to enjoy. What I also need is actual content as well and a structure for that content that will make up the newsletter. I’ve created a patter room for the ADN newsletter as well as an account on App.net for the newsletter.

Update: Some links in this post pointed to pages that no longer exist and have been removed.

A couple of days ago I wrote about what I perceived as a problem on App.net. Finding actual interesting people on App.net through recommendations. Over the next couple of days my timeline on App.net has exploded with people talking about this topic.

I was concerned about finding interesting people in App.net given that there appears to be a high number of bot and feed accounts recommended to you in the Recommended Friends section of the App.net Passport and on Alpha. I just want to find interesting people, not bots or feed accounts.

Having had a conversation with App.net’s founder, Dalton Caldwell (@dalton), over the course of Tuesday and Wednesday on App.net, it is clear that this isn’t so much a problem with App.net but a problem with all social networks.

I checked out the “People You May Know” block on my LinkedIn page. Initially it only showed me three people, but none of the people in that list were people I knew, worked with or even worked in the same company as them. It was only until I expanded the results further that I started to see people that I had recognised or work with previously. However, the results still showed that the majority of people there weren’t people that I actually knew.

I remember the same widget also displayed on Twitter when I had an account there. Quite often, you could see that the people that Twitter recommended to you was based on your bio, your tweets and probably other information that Twitter graph internally. It wasn’t completely accurate and often you wonder get a recommendation to which you would respond, why? Why is that person being recommended to me?

It’s quite simple. Machines are not good at making relational decisions. My new friend on App.net, @novia, pretty much summed it up for me.

@matthewlang long ago my answer to a question about why computers can’t figure out simple things like this: computers suck at relational reasoning: Even if we create contextual awareness, it would take years of training & they’ll still make errors.
— App.net by @noviad https://alpha.app.net/noivad/post/12500139 App.net %}

So if machines suck at recommending other people for you to follow on any social network based on your own preferences, then how do you find the type of people that you want to follow?

The answer is simple.

Engage, take part, chat, converse, interact.

Be part of the social network rather than just a bystander.

Looking back at my Twitter days it took me a good couple of years to get my list of friends down to a list of mixed interests that suited me. Based on tweets, interests and location, I managed to get a nice timeline of like minded, interesting people to follow. I did this by tweeting to people, searching for hashtags in profiles and finding users or lived in my part of the world.

The same can be said for App.net, but there’s a bonus with App.net. Conversations are indeed richer there, and that’s where you find interesting people. By taking part. By contributing your ideas, opinions and thoughts to conversations. In order to find interesting people you have to seek them out. You have to intrude (in a nice way) in conversations and take part. It’s through this action that I found a few more interesting people to follow last night.

Looking back, I’m actually glad that there isn’t an all singing all dancing recommendation tool for people on App.net, because it would take the fun out of finding people on the service and connecting with others. I still think that there should search facilities for people on the service and that perhaps the recommendation feature in the App.net Passport have a filter that allows you to only see recommended people, but that would be all that others would need.

Thanks to Dalton and everyone that contributed to this post through their many conversations on App.net.

Update: Some links in this post pointed to pages that no longer exist and have been removed.

While flicking through my App.net timeline last week, I stumbled across a post by Guido Osorios which led me to reading about his reasons for downgrading his account on App.net to the free account.

I hate the fact that I originally payed for a great social API that didn’t hold up well at all. A little over a year has passed since its beginning, and so much about App.net permanently changed, and in my experience, it did for the bad. Sure, it may have hundreds of thousands of registered users now, but most of what made App.net different is long gone — I haven’t discovered a single person in months by now.

— Downgrading App.net by Guido Osorios

While I don’t agree with Guido’s comment about the direction that the API is taking, I do agree with his concern about finding people on App.net.

I am also finding it increasingly difficult to find people. With the introduction of PourOver, the number of feed accounts have risen and will likely continue. Having these types of accounts are great for members of App.net, but it would be nice to be able to search for just people in Alpha and not have any bot or feed accounts show up.

Maybe it’s time for a search directory of just people accounts on App.net?

It would be great to have more people to follow on App.net especially some people I miss from Twitter, but that can only happen if more people join. Now that we have free accounts for people to try it out, I thought there would have been an influx of people but alas it seems that most people are happy to stay on Twitter.

Update: Some links in this post pointed to pages that no longer exist and have been removed.

While the rest of the family were getting ready this morning, I sat at the edge of my bed and checked out the two websites I quickly look at every morning. The BBC News website and the Hacker News website. After quickly scanning today’s headlines I moved on to the Hacker News website. I noticed a submission for Alfred 2 workflows. Mental note made, I must check that out later on.

Once the house was empty, I grabbed a coffee and looked at the Alfred 2 workflows. All good stuff and should help me on a day to day basis, but then I noticed a workflow for something called Dash. Another tab opened and there it was, an offline documentation manager for various languages and frameworks that web developers use. All the documentation I need to do my job without having to go near the browser and I can even work offline if needed, safe in the knowledge that most of the docs I need are accessible.

I could have done with knowing about this months ago. Late to the party again.

It’s okay though, because that’s what learning and experience is all about. Picking up the tools and knowledge as we go along. Sure we can get a head start by reading someone’s tool list and start using all their recommendations but I’ve yet to read one of these lists where the person has all the tools that I need to use as a web developer. No one person has all the answers.

Okay so you’re late to the party with an application or service that would have made your job easier in the past, but the past is gone. Ahead lies the future and with it plenty of chances for you to use that new tool to make your job easier.

You might be late to the party, but it least you made it.

Yesterday I read a blog post about a LinkedIn user who was unhappy with the service and had opted to delete his account. I’ve been here before as well.

Back in my previous job as an ERP developer, I wasn’t actively using my LinkedIn account and the only emails and connections I got were from recruiting agencies.

Why am I on this network and what is it for? I simply couldn’t get my head around the right way to use LinkedIn. I spoke to a few people about it and all of the said you must be on LinkedIn, even if it’s just to have your details there and you never use it again.

Rather than going with the advice of many I spoke to, I deleted my LinkedIn account.

A couple of years rolled by and I changed jobs twice. It wasn’t until the end of last year that I re-created my LinkedIn profile due to the fact that I had been paid off. I wanted to broaden my scope for a job so wide that I was willing to go back on LinkedIn and have my profile searchable by everyone there.

Now that I am grudgingly back on LinkedIn, I’m back to where I was previously, what is LinkedIn for? I understand that as a network, LinkedIn does require some time to be spent on it updating your profile, making new connections, sharing interesting links, taking part in LinkedIn’s groups, but I tend to forget about doing this and it’s only when I receive a notification that I end up spending five minutes or so reviewing my profile, maybe adding a skill to my profile that I have picked up in the last couple of months.

Faced with the prospect of deleting my LinkedIn account again or just sucking it up and trying to invest some time in my LinkedIn profile, I’ve decided to opt for the latter. I should be using LinkedIn to market myself as a freelance Rails developer, but how do I go about doing this? Here’s one idea I had:

Sharing Rails How To Guides - In order to attract clients to my profile, I should write a number of “how to” guides on using Rails and share these on LinkedIn. These won’t be small blog posts, but in fact detailed guides to some aspect of implementing a generic feature in a Rails application that will demonstrate my knowledge of Rails and what I can offer in terms of knowledge as a developer.

I’m still slightly perplexed by LinkedIn as a network and what I can do to make better use of it. Perhaps you have some idea on using LinkedIn effectively? If so, contact me with your thoughts on using LinkedIn. I’d like to get more out of LinkedIn rather than it just sitting there not doing very much.

Path, the social network that limits you to just 150 people, just pushed a new update to their app that offers a premium model with complete access to their shop. At the moment their shop comprises of only stickers for use in messages with your family and friends and filters for the pictures you send. The option to upgrade to premium gives you access to all these items in the Path shop for an annual cost of $14.99.

While I applaude Path’s decision to finally offer a premium model, it’s not the premium model that I envisioned. I don’t want stickers, filters or anything like that. I’m looking for the ability to share my posts to other networks like App.net and to others by email. I also want to export the data in my Path so that I have complete access to all the moments I have accrued since I started using Path. There’s a lot of good memories in there.

These are the features I would pay for, not stickers and filters. I’m all for supporting the products and services I use, but the product must offer something in terms of real value to me besides it’s core functionality. Full access to a sticker book and some Instagram-style filters isn’t going to make me upgrade to their premium model.

Perhaps those extra features I described will be available in the future but the for the moment, I’ll be staying away from the sticker premium model that Path are offering.

Update: Some links in this post pointed to pages that no longer exist and have been removed.

I mentioned yesterday that the web can be a great platform for communicating and change, but is often misused. I gave an example of such a misuse, a petition that lacked worthy content. Not worthy of your time, which to you is precious. And that’s another problem with the web. There’s so much of it. How do we filter the signals, the content that you should be consuming, from the noise, the content that isn’t worth even looking at?

Searching the web can yield some real finds like topical blogs, forums and e-books. This takes time though, and once we find an interesting source of content, we then need to spend some time validating the content. In my experience I have found that the best content is the content that is referred to you others. Two examples of this are content that is referred to you from others in your network and content from curated newsletters.

From Your Network

Over time I’ve built up this network of bloggers around me who put great content on their blogs. Michael Wade, Kurt Harden, Curtis McHale andNicholas Bate to name a few. I’ve been reading their blogs for a long time now, and when I see something interesting on their blogs that I would like to share, I link to it from my own blog.

It also works the other way. When any of these bloggers find something interesting on my blog they pass it on to their readers. This network of blogs is a great source of vetted content that I can be assured will interest me. Building a network like this can take time, but it’s worth it in the end.

From Newsletters

I subscribe to a number of newsletters. Some for programming, some for writing and there’s plenty of others. Email newsletters were once the crowning glory of the internet but then RSS came along. People found it easier to manage a feed reader than their burgeoning inbox. However newsletters have recently made a comeback.

The great thing about newsletters are that they are curated by someone else. Thought and time has been put into ensuring that the newsletter contains relevant content for its subscribers. And it’s for this reason that I subscribe to a fair few newsletters. I don’t want to invest time in searching for content when someone else can provide it for me.

These are two of the main ways in which I filter the best content for myself. There are others ways, but these two methods I find yield the best content for me.

Update: Some links in this post pointed to pages that no longer exist and have been removed.

The internet is an amazing platform for the world to communicate and innovate on. It can provide volumes of information at our finger tips, allow us to communicate with others on the far side of the world and if you’re brave enough, it even allows you to publish your own creations such as books, music and more.

And yet, it is continually misused the world over. Where most people see it as an open communication tool, some see it as a surveillance system. Where most people see it as an e-commerce tool, others see it as a tool for defrauding and cheating. Where most people see it as a tool for change, others see it as a tool for control.

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last few days, you’ll know that Ben Affleck was chosen to play Batman in the next Batman/Superman movie. It’s been met with mixed opinions, but the decision to cast Ben Affleck has prompted a petition on Change.org to have Ben Affleck removed as Batman. It hardly seems a worthy use of the tools that the internet provides.

I’ve signed a number of petitions on Change.org that I have identified as being of benefit to individuals or whole populations. In each case, the petitions that I have signed would be of worthy benefit to others if action was to be taken as a result of the petition.

I refuse to sign a petition that calls for a casting choice for a movie to be removed. It simply doesn’t rank as important enough a topic for me to get upset or passionate about it. And it shouldn’t even have got as far having a petition on Change.org.

I’m not saying that the internet can’t be used for debate and entertainment. I frequent a lot of websites on a daily basis where discussions take place over the best programming languages, the best text editor and other topics. Yes these are discussions that aren’t a priority, but the debate is entertaining.

What I find wrong is when perfectly good tools for helping people are mis-used.

All around the world there people that require your help. As an individual you may feel powerless to do anything on your own but by taking the right positive action, you could be another cog in the wheel that will eventually turn and provide people with the beneficial changes they really need.

So with that in mind, why not be a good responsible netizen and use your web tools wisely. Used correctly, they can bring good to others.

Since I went Google free, I’ve been using DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine. It wasn’t really the accumulation of your search history that made me move to DuckDuckGo. I just wanted to try something different.

That said, one of the key things that makes DuckDuckGo different from Google is that your search isn’t tracked. When you search on DuckDuckGo, you remain anonymous. I’m not too concerned about Google archiving my search history; I just wanted to reduce my Google search footprint and see less advertising on my search results.

I have noticed that the search results differ vastly from Google’s regarding the number of results. Google simply offers more results than DuckDuckGo. It is simple numbers. Google has been around longer and has had time to build the most popular search engine. However, I can find what I am looking for on DuckDuckGo most of the time. Where the results haven’t been successful on DuckDuckGo, I can append the !g operator on my search to tell it that I want to search Google. I don’t use this often now, but having it is nice.

A benefit of DuckDuckGo is that the search results can be ad-free. None at all. I love this. Search results that are just search results and nothing more.

You need to change this in the settings, but seeing a search engine give you this choice is refreshing. For a while, it seemed that Google was hell-bent on pushing as many ads down your throat as possible on a single page.

DuckDuckGo does offer a few extras to help with other tasks besides searching. Aside from the typical math calculations you can enter, you can also do the following:

• Expand shortened URLs with the expand command followed by the URL you wish to expand, e.g. expand [bit.ly/a](http://bit.ly/a), which will show you the expanded URL on a search results page.
• Search other sites for things, e.g. on rails will search the Hacker News website for stories and comments containing ‘rails’.
• Generate a password for an account. For example, password 15 strong will generate a strong password of 15 characters.

DuckDuckGo also provides operators that you can use in your searches. It simply means that you can search through other sites right from DuckDuckGo. I use it often for searches on Amazon using !a and Wikipedia using !w. Couple these with searching DuckDuckGo from Alfred, and I have a fast and easy way of searching DuckDuckGo and other sites.

Since I started using DuckDuckGo, I’ve been impressed with its results and capabilities as a search engine. Every day, I learn new shortcuts and ways of searching. That means less mouse clicks for me and less time spent tracking down the search box on other websites. It’s flexible and fast and well worth checking out if you’re looking for an alternative to not just Google but also Yahoo and Bing.

Update: Some links in this post pointed to pages that no longer exist and have been removed.

… a blog on note-taking.

Update: Some links in this post pointed to pages that no longer exist and have been removed.

Alex Kessinger has compiled all his blog posts on the future of feed readers into one handy little book. The full document is here but there’s also downloads in the form of a PDF and a Kindle book.

It’s great that Alex has done this as feed readers really are an underappreciated tool. I’m actually glad to see that Google’s Reader platform being turned off. It’s opened the market for more feed readers that each have their own thing to offer.

Update: Some links in this post pointed to pages that no longer exist and have been removed.

With Google Reader going soon, people have been looking for a replacement RSS Reader. Fortunately for me I decided look for an alternative a few weeks ago when I wanted to go Google free. I looked at a number of different options for an alternative RSS reader at the time, but Feedbin really stood out for me.

It’s a paid product. Not free. That’s important for me because I want to use the product in the long term. Supporting this product by paying money to use it is just common sense. Free products can come and go but investing your money in a product provides some sense of insurance that it will be around longer. This is by no means a guarantee that Feedbin will be around forever. An annual Feedbin subscription is just $20 per year.

As an RSS reader, Feedbin does everything you expect a reader to do. You can subscribe to feeds using the textbox at the top of the screen. Underneath this are three panes. The far left is your list of feeds or folders of feeds if you like to be organised.

The next pane is the items in that RSS feed or folder. You can navigate these easily with the mouse or with keyboard shortcuts.

Finally the far right pane is the current item you are viewing or the reading pane.

Keyboard shortcuts can be used to move about between feeds, folders and items. From what I remember most of the shortcuts are similar to Google Reader so those migrating from Google Reader should be able to pick up the new shortcuts quite fast. As an ex-Reader user, I find it easy to navigate about Feedbin.

Feedbin also has support for sharing to an extensive range of services. You can share items to many services like Instapaper, Pocket and Evernote. This is done through the use of URLs that many services provide. Feedbin provides tokens that can be used within these URLs so that you can include the entry title, url and feed name within the URL to the service you wish to share to. I love this feature as it simple to customize what you’re sharing. Some people may not like that it’s not truly integrated with other services and instead relies on just URLs to share to other services, but given the number of services Feedbin can share to, I can wait for better integration.

Finally there’s iOS support. The Reeder app is the best way to view your Feedbin feeds on your iPhone. Unfortunately at the moment there is no Reeder support for Feedbin on the iPad or OSX, however Reeder development will resume at the start of July and hopefully we’ll see more Reeder support coming.

It’s an interesting time for RSS readers. Many people are turning to Feedly as a replacement for Google Reader, but I just didn’t like the Feedly interface or the it’s iOS applications. In the time that I have used Feedbin I’ve had no reason to complain about the service. Aside from the unread counts being a little out on some feeds Feedbin really is a great little RSS reader. I’m looking forward to seeing what the future holds for Feedbin.

Update: Shortly after this review was written, Feedbin was moved to much faster servers. Performance of Feedbin on the previous hardware wasn’t much of an issue for me but I did read about others complaining of speed and response time. On the new setup though Feedbin is definitely faster than it was previously.

It’s a well known fact that if you’re a reader of my blog, you’ll know that I love the App.net service. A subscription based network for those that want something more than just ads in their timeline. Since taking up residence on App.net, I’ve found that I am no longer as active on Twitter.

These days I check it about once a week. Only out of habit really. Previously I was following just 50 accounts on Twitter and today I cut that number in half. I’m now following just 25 accounts. The plan over the next few weeks is simply get this following count down to zero and then delete my account.

I just don’t get as much value from Twitter these days. I don’t find client work on Twitter, I don’t use it for marketing myself as a freelancer (that’s what my website is for) and it’s been a long time since I marked anything as a favourite there. Really it’s just another placeholder for me on the web, but is it really that important to have a Twitter presence now? Once I delete my account it will be gone forever. I might be lucky enough to get my username back if I sign up again but the chances of that happening are remote.

Anyone else out there considering giving Twitter the chop?

Update: Some links in this post pointed to pages that no longer exist and have been removed.

Feedly has been my choice of RSS reader for about 2 years now. Initially I was won over by a service that provided a better user experience but still allowed me to continue to use Google Reader as my main RSS reader.

Feedly was a great application but lately I’ve become a little bit weary of it. One particular problem I have is the number of times I need to log back in. I’ve got Feedly running on my Macbook, iPad and iPhone. About once a week I would need to log back in on either the iPad or the iPhone. Logging in each week can be a bit of a pain. Especially as it’s linked to my Google account.

It was time to look for something else.

After some searching I found the RSS reading service Feedbin. It’s a subscription service with a web client that also works with the Reeder app for the iPhone.

At just $2 per month or $20 for the year, it’s relatively cheap, but as a paid service it at least has more of a fighting chance of being around in the long term.

I’ve taken the $20 for the year offer as I want to try Feedbin for the long term. With the use of Reeder I have a supporting app for my iPhone that can let me use my Feedbin account. It will be interesting to see how Feedbin pans out as my main RSS reader over the next year.

Great timeline animating.

While trawling through my RSS feeds looking for blogs to unsubscribe from, I came across Andrew Chen’s blog post about his decision to completely remove the RSS feed from his site.

As of today, I’ve removed the links the RSS feeds on this blog, and ultimately will phase them out completely in favor of email.

— RSS I quit you.. by Andrew Chen

Not a wise decision in my eyes and here’s why.

Your inbox isn’t an RSS reader

Using email to subscribe to web sites only works for a handful of blogs. You could comfortably subscribe to about five blogs and you would be able to manange reading a few emails a week from these blogs if they were not to frequent. Doing this for anything in the double digits number of blogs is a bad idea.

I don’t want to flood my inbox with tons of emails from different blogs. Thats why I use RSS. That’s why I use a RSS reader. I subscribe to the sites that I want to follow and then I can batch my reading of those sites to a time that suits me.

It’s convenient and it works.

RSS isn’t dead

Many people are starting to wonder if Google Feedburner will be next for the chop from Google but even if it was to be shut down, that’s no indication to say that RSS is dying or dead. All it says is that Google isn’t interested in dealing with a an RSS product.

RSS is alive and well everywhere. You can still find RSS feeds for millions of blogs and websites and Feedly are doing a great job of bringing over hundreds of people from Google Reader to their feed reading service. In the last few years there have a number of great RSS feed readers released on tablets and smartphones so that you read on the go.

Completely removing the RSS feed from your blog is a bad idea. After reading Andrew’s post I found another website that I can unsubscribe from.

Sorry Andrew.

Matt Gemmell has an excellent post on the community that has built up around App.Net and why he’d like you to consider joining.

The practical effect, which I notice daily, seems to be that people are more willing to participate in conversations, and also more careful about how they express themselves. Such a broad generalisation has no hope of being true for everyone, but it’s been my consistent perception during the months I’ve been using the service.

— App.Net for conversations by Matt Gemmell

Update: Some links in this post pointed to pages that no longer exist and have been removed.

Let me get this clear to start with. I only use my RSS reader to scan feeds from blogs that I am subscribed to. This post is just tips for getting through your RSS feeds without taking the time to read anything.

Group your feeds

Grouping your feeds is a great way to batch feeds for scanning. I group my feeds into a number of groups based on the general topics of each feed. I have groups for web development, tech businesses, bikes, picture blogs and online products and services I use.

Grouping feeds in this way means that when you scan the feeds, you’re scanning a particular topic rather than scanning a list of feeds of completely different topics.

Scan the headlines

Don’t read everything. Unless you’re following between 10 and 20 blogs, you’ll never be able to read everything in a short period of time. Instead scan the headlines of your feeds for interesting posts.

I used to read everything in my feeds in case I missed something, but reading everything takes a long time. Yes, scanning the headlines of your feeds might means you miss an interesting post, but you’ll get through your feeds a lot faster.

Use a read it later service like Instapaper

RSS readers are great for categorising and scanning your feeds, but I like to use a separate service for reading. Many RSS readers let you favourite individual articles and send them to another service like
Instapaper so that you can read them at a later date.

Read it later services also let you collect articles for reading at a later date when it suits you. I tend to get through my feeds first thing in the morning. I favourite posts I want to read later. When I favourite my posts, they are sent to my Instapaper account so that I can read them later on. Many RSS readers have this feature built in and read it later services like Instapaper also have settings that let you import favourite posts from your RSS reader.

Keep a list of blogs to scan daily

I have a group of feeds that I want to scan on a daily basis. I scan this group every day first thing. It’s a collection of blogs of varying topics, but they’re blogs that I find highly valuable and therefore they’re the blogs I scan every day.

Trim dead or rarely posted feeds

I don’t subscribe to a feed that posts once a month or less frequently. I like content on at least a weekly basis from a feed. Every 2 or 3 months I check the feeds I am subscribed to determine if they’re still delivering a steady stream of content.
Google Reader is great for this as it tracks the stats of each the feeds you have subscribed to. Staying on top of your feeds this way means that you can delete stale feeds and therefore have less headlines to scan.

RSS feeds and readers have fallen out of fashion with many on the Internet, but as long as people are still blogging, there will always be a place for RSS readers to consume these blogs.

Update: Some links in this post pointed to pages that no longer exist and have been removed.

Netter and netizen are just a couple of the words I’ve heard used to describe the people on
App.net. The social network (dare I use the term) burst onto the scene in 2012 with promise of being a self sustaining ad-free social network that will be paid for by it’s users by an annual subscription fee. I joined in August 2012 and now six months on, I’m still thoroughly enjoying the experience on App.net.

I still have my Twitter account and I now use it purely as a marketing tool for freelancing. I was on Twitter during the week, doing a quick poll from other developers. Within a few minutes of posting my tweet, the first in about a week, I got two follower requests from spam accounts and I also got a couple of replies to my question from spam accounts.That’s what really gets me about Twitter. It’s the spam. With a majority of the tweets I make, I end up with a couple of new follower requests from vague accounts that I would rather didn’t follow me. On App.net though things are a little difference. The subscription fee is the perfect entry barrier to weed out spam accounts. I’ve never have to block a vague account on App.net.Then there’s the people. Okay, I’m missing a few people on App.net that are on Twitter, but then there’s people on App.net who aren’t on Twitter. It’s a whole different crowd. On Twitter I mainly follow other developers who work with the Ruby programming language but on App.net I’m following a wider range of people. A wider range means different content to read on a daily basis.

Finally there’s the features that App.net are rolling out. In the past few months, private messaging and file storage have been two big announcements in App.net. Now these might be conceived as typical features for a social network, but where App.net is different is that these features were built to be transparent and easily managed by App.net’s users. Take the file storage within App.net. With just a click, I can export all the files I have stored in App.net so that I can take them elsewhere. Yes other social networks might offer this, but App.net built this in from the start. Features are built with the user in mind, not with advertising in mind.I’m glad to be part of a social network that puts its users first. It definitely beats being another cog in an advertising platform.

Update: Some links in this post pointed to pages that no longer exist and have been removed.

… brought to you by xkcd.

… the Internet?

How appropriate for today’s massive tech companies.

Today’s XKCD is amazing.

Enjoy.

Answering the questions in physics that you didn’t ask at school. This time it’s a mole of moles.