1066: Doubleplusgood

There’s been a lot of hand-wringing over both Facebook and Twitter recently, mostly due to both of them tweaking their terms of service in various ways that some people don’t like very much. Me, I don’t particularly mind too much because at the end of the day, I’m not paying for either of them, so as the saying goes, “if the product is free, then you are the product” — I accepted this some time back and think back on it any time one or the other of them does something apparently stupid. I use both daily to stay in touch with various people, so quitting either is out of the question.

For those feeling somewhat wary of the big F and the big T, however, I’d encourage you to give the big G another shot. (Unless you’re one of those people who irrationally hates Google too, in which case… err, I hear Myspace is coming back soon?) Yes, G+ is still a smokin’ hot social networking service that is far from the ghost town the media likes to portray it as. It’s an active, thriving community that has only gotten better over time.

The latest addition to the service, and one which could well prove to be a “killer feature” with a little refinement, is Communities. Communities are little mini-networks within G+ that allow members to post content as they would do normally on G+, but keep it all within one community rather than sharing it publicly or having to use the slightly cumbersome “Circles” system. It’s a good way of bringing people together who want to talk about the same thing, and it’s pretty customizable, too — you can change the community’s iconic image, title, headline and basic information, but also create categories for posts to help keep things organised, too. The latter feature needs a little tweaking — you can’t reassign a post to a new category if you miscategorise it upon creating it, for example — but the groundwork is there for a solid community system.

And, crucially, people are using it. Google+ may not quite have the same number of daily active users as Facebook, but there are more than enough to make these communities active, vibrant places to hang out. The board games community I joined has over 2,000 members, for example, while there are over 3,500 bronies hanging out in the “Pony+” community. The anime community has over 20,000 members, as do various photography-related communities. G+ is an attractive destination for photographers, as it provides practically unlimited space for high-quality photo storage along with some basic editing tools — and the G+ interface is a nice means of showing off one’s work, too.

G+ is built to be used on a variety of platforms, too. The mobile apps for both iOS and Android are quick to be updated with new features and are consistent in their behaviour and functionality. Pretty much everything you can do on the desktop website can be done from the mobile app — and the mobile app has the added bonus of looking rather lovely, too, for those who like that sort of thing.

So if you’ve got a Google account, give it a shot. And by “give it a shot” I mean do more than just open it up, complain that there’s no-one to talk to and then close it down — like Twitter, you need to actually “follow” some interesting people before it starts to show its true value. The new Communities feature will help people find like-minded friends more easily, as this was one weakness of the old version — it was quite tricky to find new people to follow.

Here’s some links to get you started. Here’s my profile. Here’s the Squadron of Shame Community. Here’s the “Too Old For This” Community run by my buddies Chris and Jeff. Here’s the board game Community.

Now get on there and get chatting! I’ll leave you with this, from The Oatmeal.

#oneaday Day 853: Friend Collecting

I didn’t understand it back in the MySpace days, and I still don’t understand it now.

Friend collecting. Why? Just… why?

I am, of course, referring to the phenomenon seen in the comments thread of this Facebook post here:

(with apologies to Kalam, who is nothing to do with this.)

“Who wants 2,000+ friend requests?” asks Ahmed Hamoui, only with poorer use of punctuation and a seeming inability to use the number keys on his keyboard.

To his question, I answer “Not me. Fuck off.”

Facebook is noisy enough at the best of times. Can you imagine how chaotic and useless it would be if you 1) got 2,000 friend requests and 2) accepted all of them? It would completely negate the core concept of Facebook (or what it used to be, at least) which is to be a “social tool” that helps you to connect with family and friends. The very nature of the way Facebook works pretty much encourages you to limit the friends you add to being people you actually know, otherwise there’s that horrid risk of people seeing photos they shouldn’t. Because despite the fact that everyone knows you shouldn’t post embarrassing photos online, everyone still does. (Not to mention the fact that you have no control over what other people post.)

This sort of thing happens on Twitter, too, with the whole “#TeamFollowBack” thing, whereby certain tweeters promise to follow back if you follow them. At heart, this sounds like a relatively admirable thing to do, promoting mutual, equal discussions and– oh wait, most of them are just collecting followers for no apparent reason then filling their entire timeline alternating between bragging about how many followers they have and bleating about how close to the next “milestone” they are. (Please RT.)

I trimmed my Twitter list massively a month or two back because it was just getting too much to deal with. I flip-flopped between two equally annoying problems: things moving too fast for me to be able to keep up with, and everyone posting the exact same thing at the exact same time either due to press embargoes or the death of a celebrity. So rather than complain about it, I cut the people who were irritating me or whom I hadn’t “spoken” to for a while, and now enjoy a much more pleasurable life online. Sure, my timeline still gets flooded every time a celebrity (usually one I’ve never heard of) dies, but at least I can keep up with the conversations for the most part.

Which makes me wonder why on Earth you would want to put yourself in a position on Facebook or Twitter where it is literally impossible to follow and engage with that many people. Surely at that point social media ceases being at all “social” and simply becomes white noise?

Or perhaps I’m just getting old. It seems to be mostly young kids (particularly Justin Bieber fans for some reason) engaging in this behaviour. Perhaps they have a much greater tolerance for being bombarded with crap than I do. Perhaps they’re numb to it. Perhaps they don’t really want to “socialise” at all online, simply grow a bigger e-peen than their friends and/or strangers they don’t know.

Whatever. I don’t really care. I have cultivated a relatively small but close-knit circle of friends online, much as in “real life”, and I’m happy with it that way. It’s nice to have occasional new people trickle into the mix through, say, this blog or Twitter or what have you, but I certainly don’t feel any need to bellow at the top of my lungs about how close I am to 1,500 Twitter followers, and I have no idea how many friends I have on Facebook — nor do I care.

If you’d like 2,000 friend requests on Facebook, simply “Like” this post then go fuck yourself.

#oneaday Day 821: There are Bigger Problems in the World, Like Your Face

Second only to the patented “Everyone Is So Entitled These Days And Should Just Shut Up” argument-defuser is the ever-faithful “Everyone Should Realise That There Are Bigger Problems In The World And Should Just Shut Up” conversation-closer.

I shan’t get into the former here — everyone has talked it to death and should just shut up — but I feel I should address the latter, since I saw it come up on Twitter earlier today. (And, if you’re reading this and you know that you used it, fear not — this isn’t a personal attack on you by any means, just my own thoughts on that particular argument.)

The trouble with the “Everyone Should Realise That There Are Bigger Problems In The World And Should Just Shut Up” argument (hereafter referred to as ESRTTABPITWASJSU) is that it assumes that people who are commenting on or complaining about something are equating their personal reaction to something that is “close” or “important” to them with something that is unquestionably a Big Problem For The World.

This is not the case at all. Recent examples where the ESRTTABPITWASJSU argument has been applied include independent game developer Phil Fish‘s ill-advised admonishment of the entire Japanese game development community in a very public place (and subsequent beratement of those who criticised him on Twitter, culminating with him leaving the social network altogether); and public reaction to the Mass Effect 3 ending. I have no desire to beat those particular drums in any great detail for now, so let’s put the specifics aside for a moment.

Yes. There are bigger problems in the world than both of those things. There are people losing their homes and livelihoods to the economic crisis. There are people in the world with not enough food or water. There are places in the world where diseases go unchecked. There are countries that are ruled by people with only their own interests at heart, not those of their people. There are wars being fought in the name of… what? And there are people who get so passionate about their religious beliefs that they blow themselves up in the name of their god, usually killing many other people in the process.

These are big problems. They are fucked up, massive, humongous problems that we, as individuals, can do very little about. Sure, we can throw our money at charities and, if we’re feeling particularly activist-y, attempt to take some sort of action against. But realistically (or pessimistically, if you prefer) there is very little that Josephine McAveragepants can do about these things since she does not run a government and/or army and/or bank. The problems become so massive that they take on an unreal quality — they often feel like they take place in a parallel reality distant from our own.

This is why people prefer to turn their attentions to problems they feel they can solve, or that they feel they can at least have an impact on. They have every right to do that. They may often have selfish interests at heart, but recent examples of organised action aimed at these relatively minor issues have proven that it’s far from being isolated individuals shouting and screaming about Games for Windows Live in Dark Souls or whether the Mass Effect 3 ending constituted false advertising (apparently, according to one Better Business Bureau blogger anyway, it does, believe it or not) — these are groups of people who are prepared to stand up and be counted in order to tackle problems they feel like they can face.

It’s an idealistic, utopian vision to believe that people (read: the Internet) will rise up together and do something about the bigger problems in the world than the ones they have successfully tackled to date. Maybe it will happen one day. Maybe these small “victories” will give some people the confidence to try something bigger, a little piece at a time. Protesting, say, a war is a bigger deal than signing a petition against the ending for a video game. Some people may be scared to jump in at the deep end, particularly with the apparent risk to life and limb frequently presented by the media, so they take the “safe option”. They feel like their voice is being heard, but relating to an issue which is smaller, closer, more relatable.

The key thing, though, is that none of these people who are sweating the small stuff are saying that the issues they feel strongly about are more important than the Bad Shit Happening Everywhere Else In The World.

No-one is equating those things except, ironically, in many cases, those people making use of the ESRTTABPITWASJSU argument.

#oneaday Day 818: “So Fed Up With SOMEBODY…”

Passive aggression. It’s an ugly business, for sure, but never has it been easier to participate in than in this age of social media. While the phenomenon has been around for many years in the form of bickering couples saying things like “SOMEBODY didn’t do the washing up” or making other such pointed remarks either directly at each other or to other people within earshot of their partner, it wasn’t until people gained the ability to broadcast their every waking thought to the entire world that it became the worldwide craze that it is today.

I’m not sure exactly what it achieves. I’ve indulged in it in the past — in my defence, there were extenuating circumstances at the time — and it didn’t really make me feel any better, though it did have the effect I desired at the time: to get some validation and reassurance from friends, and to piss off, upset or otherwise get the attention of a specific person. I wasn’t particularly proud of the result. I ended up feeling worse about the thing I was trying to get out of my system than before the passive-aggressive incident. So I try and avoid it in most cases these days. (Note: most. No-one is infallible. And I’m aware that not sharing the details of said incident above could be construed as a form of passive aggressiveness. But, well, shut up.)

Why has social media been a catalyst for the growth of passive-aggressiveness, though? Quite simply, it’s because it gives people the ability to feel like they’re being heard even when no-one is really listening. Post something along the lines of “SO PISSED OFF WITH SOMEONE RIGHT NOW!!!” on Facebook and within a matter of minutes you’ll have at least one “Like” and one comment saying something along the lines of “u ok hun?”. Since you’re being passive-aggressive, though, you couldn’t possibly say exactly what’s up with you at the time, and as such you drop vague hints as to what is bothering you without actually saying it. Or, worse, you leave a comment to the “u ok hun?” commenter saying “I texted you”, letting everyone else reading the comment thread know that you’re telling someone all about what/who has pissed you off this week, encouraging a flurry of private messages and texts to said person asking “Do you know what’s up with so-and-so?”

Eventually, of course, the whole sordid saga comes out because statistically, someone in your group of friends is likely to have loose lips. We know this from sitcoms where one member of a group of friends is forced to keep someone’s secret but finds themselves increasingly tempted to reveal everything to someone else, whom it transpires actually knew it anyway. Or, to base ourselves back in reality, some people like telling others secrets because it gives them a feeling of power — “I know something you don’t, but I’ll tell you if you buy me a drink/buy me a pony/sleep with me” — and thus said secret gradually spreads and spreads until, inevitably, it gets back to the person it originated from, who traces it back to the person who they told in confidence and then posts another passive-aggressive status update about how they’re, like, totally so pissed off with people who can’t keep secrets.

You get the idea, anyway.

As human beings, we have a variety of means of communication at our disposal, and it’s pretty clear to most of us that being upfront and honest about things often makes life a lot easier in the long run, even if it might be a bit like tearing off a plaster in the short term. But in the heat of the moment, it’s all too easy to focus on that “short term” bit and take the easy option, which is to bottle up the things we’re really feeling and simply spout vague bullshit into the ether in the hopes that someone — anyone — will reach out to us and give us someone to talk to.

We never learn our lesson, though — at least not if my Facebook news feed and Twitter timeline are anything to go by.

#oneaday Day 812: Perspective (And Retro Filters), People, Please

It was announced today that Facebook has acquired the popular mobile photo sharing and hipster filtering app Instagram, which has been available for some time on iOS and recently launched for Android phones. The deal was sealed for somewhere in the region of $1 billion in cash and Facebook stock, which is an excessively large amount of money by anyone’s standards.

I shan’t go into the ins and outs of the business side of things here (check my colleague’s posts over on Inside Facebook for more details as well as a bit about what FB and Instagram have been up to together) but what I did want to talk about a little was the public reaction to the news.

In short, the reaction has not been overly positive, at least among the people I follow on FB and Twitter and their friends. I have seen numerous comments today that are simply along the lines of “oh, fuck” without any real explanation — basing their negative reaction simply on the widespread assumption that Facebook Is Evil.

As it happens, some of these people may be right to be a little concerned for the future of Instagram. Facebook has gobbled up several other social services over the course of the last few years, and the result has often been that said services disappeared without a trace. Location-sharing Foursquare rival Gowalla, for example, shut down its service a short while ago as its founders and key team members were reassigned to work on Facebook’s own location service. Meanwhile, group messaging service Beluga was also swallowed up around this time last year, and eventually disappeared off the face of the Earth, only to be replaced by the Facebook Messenger mobile app.

Mark Zuckerberg has taken great pains to attempt to assuage the fears surrounding Instagram, however, noting that a key part of the service is its connectivity with non-Facebook networks such as Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare, Flickr and Posterous. If Facebook is truly planning on keeping Instagram as its own independent entity to begin with, it wouldn’t make sense to remove the facility to post to these other networks. What is probably more likely to happen is that Instagram’s popular photo-filtering features will make their way into the official Facebook apps, making it even easier for people to take faux-retro pictures at every opportunity.

Perhaps Facebook will dissolve Instagram eventually, and that will be a bit of a pain for those who have Instagram but not Facebook accounts — but it won’t be the end of the world as some people seem to be suggesting. There are plenty of other “hipster photo filter” apps available — Streamzoo and Lightbox appear to be two popular suggestions — and, in my purely anecdotal experience, the apparent majority of people who use Instagram use at least one other social service alongside it anyway, even if it’s not Facebook, meaning they can simply direct followers to their Twitter/Tumblr/whatevr if and when they start using another service.

So Instagram being taken over by Facebook isn’t cause for sadness, anger or irritation. It was a completely free service, after all, meaning in practice it had no real obligations to remain the way it was forever. Instead, we should be celebrating the fact that a small team succeeded in living the dream — to create something simple, fun and popular, and subsequently to make an absolute fucking butt-ton of money out of it. It’s a success story of the modern age, made all the more notable when you compare it to the $35 million Yahoo! paid for Flickr back in 2007.

So if Facebook taking over Instagram bothers you, simply use something else — there’s plenty of alternatives, as outlined above. In the meantime, the two companies can work on better integration of Instagram’s popular features into what is, like it or not, the world’s biggest social network. If you had paid money to use Instagram then you may well have a slightly stronger case for being pissed off; as it is, what we have here is a small company who offered its services to the public for free taking a once-in-a-lifetime business opportunity — and, more to the point, no real evidence that Facebook’s involvement will in any way compromise what the service is now.

As with so many things on the Internet, perhaps it’s best to wait and see what happens before getting irrationally angry or sad about this. Otherwise all that jerking’s going to put your knee right out of joint. So to speak.