I’ve read a few things on Twitter/Friendfeed being the next big thing in search. I haven’t been the best Friendfeed user, mostly because I have no Friendfeed friends, but the more I look at it the more I want to use it. (I’m actively trying to persuade my friends to start using the service, but to no avail.)
However, I’ve never, ever, used Twitter. I just can’t get into it. I have to either go to the twitter site or download a program to post, and honestly I have to many sites already to visit and too many applications already running on my PC. Call me a “out of touch”, but I just can’t seem to “get it”.
I was poking around and just set up my Friendfeed with gTalk. It seems to do exactly what Twitter does, but I can just use my gmail like I always do! It also doesn’t broadcast my status to everyone and keeps it in my friend circle (relatively).
This is a good alternative for people who are a little uncomfortable with having their micro-blogs broadcasted to the world for applications to use, but you could also say it is in complete contrast with the Twitterology of open communication.
I think I’ll warm up with this feature and maybe dip my toes into Twitter later on.
As successful as social ’services’ (which I will define as social websites that provide a social service such as twitter/friendfeed, but not social websites such as facebook) are, they use a perfect solution approach (’IF everybody used them, everbody would experience exponential benefits’) that I think will ultimately be their downfall.
As valuable as these social networks have the potential to be, they can only solve social problems which to be frank, I am not interested in; I’m a guy, I don’t care what you’re currently doing, what your eating for dinner, nor do I care about what you’ve been reading.
As a software programmer I spend 10% of my day on Google looking at other solutions that I might use/learn from. This is a non-social problem that I don’t see being solved by these ’social services’, but I do hear the hype saying it will. If this was the case, then I might be more prone to use these tools, but as it stands I gain nothing.
Comment by OldManIn2D — February 16, 2009 @ 7:57 pm
I agree with you, 100%. I don’t care what my friend’s ate for breakfast… but I do care when they’ve found an interesting article and what they think of it, or I do care about that sale on laptops they saw at Best Buy.
I also want them to care about an opinion I have on a subject and get feedback. I have dozens of thoughts throughout the day that more or less forgotten by the time I hit the pillow; in a collaborative environment maybe some of those thoughts could actually amount to something.
It’s funny, there is nothing more mundane about people conversing, and there is nothing more powerful at the same time. I think Facebook falls under the 1st, and hopefully Friendfeed will fall under the latter.
Comment by jarchowk — February 16, 2009 @ 10:42 pm