Category: Thinking (Page 8 of 14)

The Great Facebook Compromise

October 4, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

I’ve been going back and forth for a while on what should be done about Facebook in my particular case. It would be kind of nice to eliminate it completely since I don’t ever post there, but there are some work-related advantages to being there that I just can’t deny.

Oh, and I also need a FB account to use Spotify.

My first thought was to go to an extreme and un-friend every single person on there. I even started doing that (sorry if you got axed…I made it to the letter ‘C’). The logic was that I’m easy enough to find on the web in other places if you really want to find me, but the problem is that other people aren’t. The simple fact is that I do have some great friends who have a presence on Facebook and nowhere else, and I like to keep up with them and occasionally comment.

Then I remembered reading somewhere that a person can only really have 150 friends–the Dunbar number. That gave me the idea of shrinking my list down to 150 Facebook friends as a maximum. But that required some rules. So here’s my strategy…

If I just kinda knew you but have no funny stories about you, you’re out
If I only know you through other social media (blogs, Plus, Twitter), you’re out…we communicate in those places and not Facebook.
If I only know you because the person you are married to or dating, you’re out. Think of it this way…who would get me in the divorce?
If you are close family that I regularly talk to on the phone and in person instead of online, you’re out. We already have an established means of communication, and it’s not Facebook.
If you are other family and we don’t talk even though we’re Facebook friends, you’re out. (I post photos of the family here, and I would love to share with you!)
If you don’t actively participate on Facebook anyway, you’re out (and good for you!)
If you are married to me, you’re in. Always.
If we were once really close but aren’t any longer because of time and distance, and Facebook is the only way we can stay connected, you’re in. But I’m going to try to get you to move to Plus.
If someone who trumps you tries to add me as a friend later, you may get the boot. Sorry. 150 is the limit.

Some of these rules may seem harsh, especially the family stuff, but since I don’t share on Facebook, I figure no harm done. And it also clears up a few spots for friends. So we’re pretty much down to people who I really liked in high school and college, people who have sweated and bled with me on the rugby pitch, and chicks who are good kissers.

Sorry Facebook–MySpace Had It Right From The Beginning

September 26, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

Nothing is easier than self-deceit.

– Demosthenes

Last week I wrote a post that stated Facebook had no long-term direction. Boy was I wrong. The F8 keynote address made it obvious that they have a very clear vision…they want to know everything about everything you do.

They want to seamlessly allow you to share your entire life with your friends. No effort required on your part. Just install the right apps to your Facebook account, and you can share everything you do real time, while also automatically curating the details of your life for later in Timeline.

Technologically, that’s amazingly cool, but it potentially introduces a huge problem. Real time, seamless information about you being streamed to all of your “friends” means it’s hard to filter anything. Since Facebook is so proud of it’s integration with Spotify to share what music you are listening to, let’s use that as an example.

While Facebook is right that people love to share music with their friends, they’ve neglected to realize that people also love to listen to a lot of music that they don’t want to share with their friends. Do you really want your friends to know that you love that Milli Vanilli song and listen to it first thing every morning? Don’t we all have music that isn’t at all cool, but we love to listen to?

Now…think about that exact situation applied to all the other things Facebook wants to know about you: books, movies, websites, food, (lack of) exercise, etc. Now…think about what it will mean when all of these things are lumped together. I’ll save you the suspense and cut to the chase:

Facebook is slowly but surely taking away its users’ ability to present themselves as they wish to be seen. Instead, Facebook is going to force people to be seen exactly as they are.

Take that in for just a second. The real you is going to be out there for everyone to see. Not the version you’d like to present to people.

The real you.

Now is the time in this post when we’re all going to have to be painfully honest with ourselves. Or if we don’t want to examine ourselves, let’s just consider other people we know.

Doesn’t it seem like a lot of your “friends” who are active Facebook users really just see it as the reality show they will never be cast for?

And doesn’t it seem like many of them are crafting an online versions of themselves you know isn’t 100% accurate (just like people on reality shows)?

Don’t you sometimes wonder if these people even realize that they are misrepresenting themselves?

And when you consider the ones you know really well in real life, doesn’t it seem like the only people they are really fooling about these imaginary fabulous lives are themselves and people who don’t really know them?

What’s going to happen when these uber-active users realize they are no longer able to fool other people about their real selves and are also unable to continue to fool themselves?

What happens when Facebook becomes a reflection of real life instead of a collection of beautiful self-portraits created by master artists? What happens when that mirror of their real lives is held up to Facebook’s users’ faces?

That’s not going to be a completely scary thing for most people, but the fact that it’s being shared with everyone else and that it can’t be turned off will be. Are they going to continue to be so active on Facebook, or are they going to dramatically cut back?

Personally, I’m a big fan of the ability to present yourself as you choose online. It’s why I blog under a domain name that is my name. I control it. It’s why I seldom use curse words on Twitter. I control it. It’s why I’m thankful every person I encountered in my 20s didn’t have a digital camera and a platform to broadcast my behavior to the world.

It’s the reason I basically eliminated my participation on Facebook a while back.

I’m not being critical of people who work hard on Facebook to control their online personas. I know why they do that. I get it. I just don’t think they realize that’s exactly what they are doing; and I don’t think they (or Facebook) realize what’s going to happen when the ability to control that is completely removed.

MySpace did a lot of things wrong, but there’s one thing MySpace got right.

MySpace was about me. On MySpace, we could pretend to like only the coolest music by featuring only the coolest music on our profiles. We could pretend to be way better looking than we really are by sharing only the most flattering photos of ourselves. We could pretend to be popular by becoming friends with people we had no interest in knowing and boost our friend count.

MySpace let us all be fabulous. Or gangsta, intelligent, athletic…whatever we wish we really were.

Facebook is about to take all of that away. And the better they get at representing the real world, the more their users are going to have their images of themselves shattered.

Mark Zuckerberg may have made a very critical mistake when he failed to realize that everyone in the world isn’t a billionaire at 26 with hot chicks and cool friends clamoring to hang out with them, even if that’s what we all secretly wish our lives were like.

Plus and Facebook Both Jumping

September 21, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

Every day I read something about how lame Google Plus is because no one is using it. That’s not the impression I’m getting. I see it being used a lot, although mostly by people who presumably can’t stand Facebook.

But that’s not an insignificant number of people.

And yesterday Google announced that Plus is now publicly available (no invite needed) and unleashed a plethora of new features. Facebook has been launching new stuff rapidly lately too, which pretty much indicates that they’re worried about Plus. Don’t believe that? Take note of the way they’re now automatically organizing your friends into ~~Circles~~ lists for you. Yesterday they made some major UI changes with the change to the news feed and the ticker.

When I was a more frequent Facebook user, I was very amused by the complaints from users when Facebook made small UI changes. It’s going to be worth visiting in the next few days to read what will best described as outrage over the mess they’ve created with these changes. This week’s analogy:

Netflix is to name change as Facebook is to UI change

We’ll see, but this misstep could make Plus even more viable. Robert Scoble is betting everything on Plus. And I’m becoming more and more convinced that Google has the best shot at winning the long game. Facebook has lots of users, but it completely lacks anything resembling organization and long term direction.

Data likes to be organized, and users like simple things that don’t change much.

Correct Swimming Pool Temps

September 9, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

I’m going to break this down to levels beyond scientific, based on my test data.

I’m proposing a “bust-yer-aise” scale similar to the wind chill factor or the heat index. 80 feels like 88, provided you’re working hard enough.

If 80 degree water in your backyard pool is too cold for you to cool off in, you need to increase the intensity of your run/bike/walk/row/rugby/training. Or mow/landscape harder. Whatever.

And the max temperature for a lap pool should be ~78. If you can’t make yourself sweat buckets in 78 degree water, consult a physician.

September 8, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

Watching the debates last night, I noticed that other candidates have started to talk about things like auditing the federal reserve and using terms like “Keynesian economics”.

Good job Ron Paul. You started those conversations four years ago and have shifted the debate in some very key areas this time around.

However, I don’t think they are going to be talking about “the fence that keeps us all in” during the 2016 campaign. I’m afraid you may be losing it us a little on that front.

Thinking my money would be better spent this time around helping Newt stir the pot.

Lucrative Twitter Niche Identified!!!

September 6, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

Twitter is still growing every day, and it’s harder and harder to get noticed and recognized there. No matter what niche you are trying to target with your marketing efforts, it seems like it’s more difficult to build a following among anyone other than the people who are also marketing in that niche.

I was looking over my “New Followers” emails over the weekend and checking out the profiles of some of the people who looked like they may have a motive for using Twitter other than selling me something. There weren’t many to be found. But I did find a new niche. It was serendipitous!

The untapped niche on Twitter is…

People who are just being themselves and not pushing a sales pitch until I want to vomit at the thought of the idea of owning whatever they are selling.

If you are moderately interesting, I’m going to be much more likely to pay attention to what you are trying to sell me when you finally, after gaining my trust, try to sell it. I’m a tightwad, so I won’t pay that much attention, but at least I’ll pay more attention.

If you are really into fitness (or web applications, or politics, or music, or fill_in_the_blank), that’s awesome. Me too. But I don’t want to hear someone talk about one single subject all the time in real life. Why would I want that on Twitter? If you can’t talk about anything else over a cup of coffee, you are probably obnoxious and boring.

And so is your Twitter account.

Hurricane Preparedness – Irene

August 23, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

It looks like Hurricane Irene is going to miss us for the most part, although I’m sure we’ll get plenty of rain and some good surf out of it; more surf than I could handle anyway.

Unfortunately, the rest of the east coast may not be as lucky as we were this time around.

We did the usual things to prepare over the weekend when it looked like we were going to be hit, at least the things a newb like me could think of. Power outage is the biggest concern since we don’t have underground utilities in our neighborhood:

Remove possible projectiles from the yard
Stock up on water, beans and rice, charcoal, flashlights and batteries
Plenty of gas for the car and chainsaw

Next up are a couple of things I’m doing to get ready for a bunch of rain:

Sprinklers off for a few days…I think we’ve got plenty of water coming
Empty the pool down a little…more water
Hex the dead tree in the neighbors’ yard to fall into their yard and not ours

Hopefully I’ll be posting mostly surfing photos and not many damage/clean up photos over the weekend.

August 18, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

I promise I’m not going to have a daily Ron Paul post like I may have possibly been guilty of during the last election cycle. But here’s a way Ron Paul ~~could~~ could have put his organization and fund raising abilities to substantial use…

Switch parties and force Barack Obama to primary against him.

Just an idea.

**UPDATE**

I realize that’s not possible at this point, but it would’ve been an interesting turn of events.

An Interesting Question, An Interesting Answer

August 18, 2011 / Scott / 2 Comments

From @MatthewHurtt

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/matthewhurtt/statuses/104211751242964992″]

If someone comes up with an App that lets kids remotely control a robot arm that picks up rocks and launches them or throws punches at defenseless passersby, we may be in some danger.

But rocks are heavy. And punching sounds a lot like exercise to me.

From what I’ve seen, that sounds like more effort than many of them would be willing to engage in. Plus, it would be hard to hit your target while simultaneously texting your friends that you are tormenting innocent strangers.

And some innocent strangers punch back.

How The Ames Debate Could Have Been Won

August 12, 2011 / Scott / 4 Comments

If you watched the GOP debate last night, you are probably worried. I heard one analyst mention that there’s a political void right now in politics (on “both” sides). I know these candidates all have consultants who are highly paid and know more about politics than me, but let me tell you what would have struck a chord last night–focus on the economy.

When I say focus, I mean that someone up there should have answered every single question in relation to the economy.

Immigration? “I think _____, but if we can’t develop a sustainable economic policy, no one will be immigrating here anyway.”

Afghanistan? “I think _____, but if we can’t develop get a sustainable economic policy, we’ll have to bring the troops back very soon or leave them stranded there.”

Guantanamo Bay? “I think _____, but if we can’t develop a sustainable economic policy, those prisoners may as well be hostages that someone’s going to ransom.”

Energy? “I think _____, but if we can’t develop a sustainable economic policy, there won’t be any jobs to drive to and folks won’t be able to buy power to heat and cool their homes at any price.”

While I have my own opinions about what that policy should be, I’m not pushing those here. I’m saying someone on that stage should have been smart enough to relate every issue brought up in last night’s questions to the number one issue on everyone’s mind. That’s the economy, stupid.

It worries me that the “best and brightest” can’t figure out that the economy is all most people are concerned about right now. Once unemployment and the national debt are both down, we can once again enjoy the luxury of worrying about what other people do with their private parts behind closed doors.

Investing for Triathletes

August 9, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

During yesterday’s market tumble, I saw this tweet from @lokibeat…

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/lokibeat/statuses/100660260204843008″]

It made me chuckle, but it also made me think of a couple of things triathletes and runners can hopefully relate to. First of all, the practical…

I prefer to think of dips in the market the same way I do water stops. At first glance, water stops cost me time in races because I walk them. But the truth is, water stops gain me time because I walk them. Walking the water stops gives me a chance to take in a lot more fluid than I could if I tried to run through them. That fluid is an investment in my total race. So I think of dips in the market as a chance to buy more of the same thing I was buying a couple of weeks ago at a discount. We’re talking about investing, not trading, right? It’s a ironman/marathon, and I’m not selling next week whether the market is up or down.

Secondly, @lokibeat is right…it is more about the trip than it is the destination. I think a lot of us enjoy the day-in-day-out training more than we do crossing the finish line at a race. Even on race day, when we say we “had fun”, we’re talking about the entire race…not just the finish line.

So chill out, walk the water stops, and take in as much fluid as you can while someone’s there to hand it to you.

And you might as well go ahead and make friends with the pain for now. You’ll feel better in a few miles.

Blogging Like Mike Jones

August 5, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

I’m Mike Jones (who?) Mike Jones

The one and only, you cain’t clone me

Got a lotta haters and a lotta homies

Some friends, some phony

Let’s break down the example Mike Jones gives us here and how it applies to blogging. We’ll take it line by line.

I’m Mike Jones (who?) Mike Jones

Unlike other rappers, Mike Jones uses his real name and isn’t afraid to put it out there. He’s not “Mike Ice” or “MC Jones”. He’s Mike Jones. What? Didn’t get that? Not sure who he is? Just ask him…he’ll tell you…over and over. He’s Mike Jones.

Don’t be afraid to stand behind who you really are.

The one and only, you cain’t clone me

Mike Jones is himself, and there is no other Mike Jones.

If you are blogging from your unique perspective, no one else can adequately imitate your style.

Got a lotta haters and a lotta homies

Not everyone appreciates Mike Jones’s style, but that’s ok with him. A lot of other people do.

Everyone doesn’t have to love your blogging style.

Some are real, some are phony

Mike Jones is aware that all of the people who love him aren’t genuine in their love; they just want something from him. That’s ok with Mike Jones because the phonies still add to his mystique. They still buy albums and say his name…Mike Jones.

Traffic is traffic.

Now, just pretend you read this five years ago. Back then…

Mike Jones – Still Tippin’

July 29, 2011 / Scott / 5 Comments

If you suddenly (never saw it coming) found yourself maxed out on your credit cards, what would be your first move? Would you call Visa and try to convince them to up your limit in order to save your credit score, or would you call the cable company and cancel HBO?

July 28, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

Gut feeling:

Since Google Plus came online, Facebook’s traffic hasn’t been affected very much.

Since Spotify became available in the U.S., Pandora has seen less traffic.

Just a thought.

July 27, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

Ok Google…

I’m on your site (Plus) using your OS (Android) and the browser supplied with it on an unrooted device (Acer Iconia TA500). So why can’t I include photos in Google Plus posts when I’m using the browser instead of the Android app?

Not a huge deal, just something I noticed.

Nothing is easier than self-deceit.

– Demosthenes

Gettin’ After It!