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May 23, 2012

Tag: social media

August 9, 2011

Redditalk

by Frank — Categories: Internet — Tags: , , — Leave a comment
Reddit Sticker

Image by cambodia4kidsorg via Flickr

Way back in the day – and by that, in geek terms, I mean probably a year ago – I used to want to keep up with the news of the day in the world at large. Yes, as much as I enjoyed reading about crazy new gaming devices or the latest in tech and geekery, I did yearn, after a fashion, for a way to keep up with all the other stuff that was going on. Thing of it is, I just didn’t want to become one of those misanthropic or sheltered geeks. You know the type – the ones that during a raid profess that they’d rather eat horse balls than try to discuss or keep up with things like politics, world events, and the fact that there is something going on beyond the next boss kill. I have work that requires me to socialize and talk to other people – some of them people who would look at you like you were speaking a foreign language if you rattled off the latest and greatest in video games and computer parts – and knowing what’s going on out in the world makes for good knowledge, or at least, small talk.

It’s why for a while, I tried to follow the news through rss feeds from traditional sites – CNN, MSNBC, Fox, et al. Now before this degrades into a discussion of how the various news sites are biased more than a stereotypical fat cop endorsing a donut store, I want to say to my small, but faithful readership that I followed all the sites equally because the news was different and had its own tone. While I’m an optimist and sometimes very much an idealist, I do know that the plain jane reality of reporting means that some bias is present at some point or another. When you understand that, it becomes much easier to deal with the fact that news is inevitably also biased, and therefore open to my own twisted interpretations. So thus I followed the news sites, watching and weeping as my Google Reader feed updated in the 1000+ for numbers of articles unread, and did what I could to read.

But Reddit has changed all that for me. For the uninitiated, Reddit is sort of “social news”, or as I like to call it, “news flavored with a generous amount of social media sauce”. The concept is simple – aggregate news from a variety of topics, and allow users to submit either links to said news or submit some of their own. The selfsame community votes articles up or down for visibility, and the site itself is mildly moderated and observed for content. The result is what is appropriate self-styled “the front page of the internet”, or “the voice of the internet”, and in all its chaotic, ever-changing glory, it is. News is delivered from a variety of categories, and “What’s Hot” is set onto the front page as a means of showing which articles are the most popular, whether they be as serious as a news story or as hilarious as cafeteria ninja. When I saw all of what I could discover- things that not only I wanted to know about the world but also of the internet at large – I immediately unsubbed from my other news sites and now only follow Reddit, choosing only the things that I want to read about, serious or not. Sadly, like many others who have any interest in random hilarity, I’ve been sucked into the vortex of insane that is Reddit for long periods of time, sometimes almost to the detriment of my productivity.

If sustainable, Reddit has the kind of dynamic, malleable model of news delivery that will become the future of how people report, talk about, and discuss news. Even blogs like this one are a self-contained targeted audience, while Redditors can basically reach an audience of potentially millions with content that is popular enough to be voted up. It’s definitely something to ponder myself as I think about how I want to let other people know what I’m thinking and what I’m sharing. For now, I’m plenty contented with sitting on Reddit and passively and happily being assaulted by its cacophony of funny images, political and social news, and unique takes on world events, and look forward to what other people post next to keep me from getting my work done.

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July 13, 2011

Plus One

by Frank — Categories: Internet — Tags: , , , — Leave a comment

Lately I’ve been getting a little more into the swing of the social media thing. This doesn’t seem to be a surprise to many of you, as those of you who know me outside of this blog know me to be a rather social person when it comes down to it. I’ve found that the whole social media movement beneficial to me for a variety of reasons, not the least of which would be keeping up with people I never really see or talk to anymore, but who I want to keep in touch with. And then there’s that whole thing about gathering followers on Twitter – it’s like some sort of crazy Internet Pokemon game that you can never win (but want to keep playing). Cheap plug, by the way – you can help add to my followers at PhoenixRed (550 and growing!).

But I’m not here to tell you how much of a social media addict I am. Today I’m going to be talking Google Plus, the search engine/software giant’s answer to Facebook’s dominance. Plus hit the web in beta a bit over a week ago, and since then geekery has been ablaze with updates about the new and shiny, how the tool might or might not unseat Facebook, and the implications in the market. For my part, I’ve always been a bit cautious about the adaptation of new tools – especially new social media ones. Why is this? Well, mostly it’s for my own protection – I already use Tweetdeck, cross-post entirely too much to my Facebook (I’ve had people wonder what in the blue hell is a Follow Friday before), and utilize my smartphone as a means to share ridiculous images such as my parking lot with the power cut off. Any more than this and I’ll be needing an IV to connect directly into my arm for my social media fix.

The other reason I’m taking the Google Plus thing a bit slowly is that I always like to use the tech after they’ve worked out some of the inevitable bugs and kinks. If you’re a heavy first adopter, you get to experience all of that in real time, with the real frustration that goes with it. I haven’t seen any weird things with Google Plus so far, but you know they’re coming – the first funny and hilarious post I see of someone who mistakenly shares their “dancing with monkeys” video with the Public and not only their family is inbound, trust me.

But all that being said, you know me – I think new tech is always awesome and great, and Google Plus is no different. A ground floor implementation of Circles – groups of people who you choose to view, share, or otherwise organize as you see fit – is a great way to provide an alternative to the “I share with everyone by default” option of Facebook. The current purity of the interface as well as the lack of the adspace or privacy things that Facebook has been known to dabble in are also good selling points. There’s also the potential of integration with Google’s powerful toolset of software – GMail, Docs, Reader, and more – which should give it a natural leg up in the features department. Already there are people raving about the simple yet neato features of selective viewing, private and granular media sharing (though I’ve been tagged in at least one drunken pic already, but that was my fault), and social tools like webcam enabled Hangouts.

I like the buzz and the talk – I like it a lot, hype be damned and optimist that I am – mostly because the main thing that Google Plus provides is competition. Facebook entered the scene as a college-only app that eventually creeped in and stomped the heck out of MySpace with features that simply made sense and were easy to use. But after that, it had admittedly settled into a complacent, perhaps portly, king on the throne – one leg thrown over a chair leg while nomming on a chicken leg. The inclusion of Google Plus into the social media space as a direct competitor to Facebook will either shock the king into dusting off the sword and shield and taking up arms, or knock him righ toff the throne. Time will tell whether or not Google Plus will do one or the other with Facebook – but for now, I plan on using it and enjoying the show. So look for some Plus posts in the future!

January 10, 2011

Everyone’s An (Online) Critic

by Frank — Categories: Internet, Social Geekery — Tags: , , — 1 Comment

I’m not sure if I want to know where they got a movie where a cat was in a bride’s outfit…

Anyway, today’s little missive to start the week involves something I was thinking about the other day as people were reacting to some seriously awful news regarding the shooting in Tuscon, Arizona of a politician and a few other folks. I know my first reaction was to hope for the recovery of the injured and feel sympathy towards those that had lost someone, especially the family of the 9 year old girl. It’s never a good thing to see such violence perpetrated, and I think we can all learn and take to heart the value of life despite the tragedy.

My second reaction, however, was to go to the internet, which is really the subject of today’s post. I would have to say that even as recent as a few years ago, there weren’t this many people writing about this many subjects online. Through social media I got the quick, couple of second updates and thoughts from people – 140 characters and short sentences provided me with the up to the minute opinions of people who were reacting to the news. When I got home, blogs, news sites, and shared internet links provided a plethora of thoughts, ideas, craziness, and, well, let’s just say “passionate” viewpoints about the whole issue. It was definitely enough to keep me enthralled for an hour or so.

In today’s modern geek media age, the events of the world and how everyone reacts to them is like a giant, persistent episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, whose premise was critical (and comedic) commentary on bad films. While not every event and every happening plays out like movies that have cat brides in them, there is a certain level of screwball as well as the serious that makes it play out eerily like MST3k. But in general, there are a lot of normal Joes and Janes, mixed in with all the professional and career folks, that sit in the theater of the Internet and toss out their level of commentary at what is happening on the real-life screen, and that’s an amazing, instant, and wonderful thing.

Some people would say that the saturation of online opinion and commentary on the world’s events is a bad thing – that there is a giant signal-to-noise ratio that needs to be maintained, that people who generally provide poorly formed, or even poorly inappropriate, opinions are a reason for limiting the amount of attention and people that can be considered credible online. But I think that the collective voice of everyone’s MST3k-ish criticism is more important, accurate, and credible than anything else out there. It’s important because people are talking and conversing about things, no matter how poorly written it might seem, it’s accurate because it’s a collective opinion reflected in a larger amount of people, and it’s credible because it’s real. Not everyone can and should react to something as a journalist or a professionally trained writer should. There’s a certain level of credibility in the person who is indignant, or emotional, or perhaps even inappropriate in their commentary on what is happening. It’s a humanistic element that I think is part of why blogs like mine can find a niche and continue to exist in it.

Given the choice between having only a few critics to read that I know will write detailed and thoughtful comments and having everyone be a critic where I can choose the kind of commentary I want to read, I’ll take the latter – especially if the Internet is going to provide me with more entertaining thoughts on cat brides.

January 7, 2011

It’s Not Just About Toilet Tweets Anymore

by Frank — Categories: Internet, Social Geekery — Tags: , , , — Leave a comment

Today’s post is about not just the meteoric rise of social media and its association applications, but about a curious, and particularly awesome thing that I noticed while reading over my friends’ feeds this morning.

There’s so much less toilet tweeting.

Now I’m not trying to be crass or disgusting by using this sort of terminology. If you wanted that, you’d know me through Facebook or through MSN and I could give you plenty of that, since I’m a 12-year old on those services. No, when I say “toilet tweets” I mean to say that there’s much less of the obsessive personal minutiae that people tend to tweet about on Twitter. I use the term “toilet tweets” because, well, anyone who’s used Twitter for any extended amount of time probably has encountered at least one person on their followed list that’s thought it  appropriate to share with the world that they’re visiting the porcelain goddess. It doesn’t get much more personally detailed than that, to be honest.

The fact is, social media these days has in my estimation began a process of growing up and maturing into the kind of thing that a lot of the internet apps tend to do – they have fun, personal uses but they also have practical business and in some respects, money-making applications as well. Heck, I just talked about how social media stuff managed to take a homeless guy with a talent and get him job offers. That’s some powerful and amazing stuff – well beyond the use that Twitter first got when people were more concerned with posting about what side their toast was buttered on than about sharing a really neat link.

Even the personal use of social media and things like Twitter has changed for the better. When I first got into Twitter after resisting the initial fad, many more people were using it more as a way to tell people about the details of their day, in the context of how they felt at that very moment. While this use still persists today, most of the people on my list that I follow (and who follow me) use Twitter as a way to share links, get causes going, raise money, or increase awareness of issues and ideas that they might have or get behind. Tweets have moved from “I’m doing my makeup” to “I’m buying this makeup in support of breast cancer research”. People have moved from posting about how mexican food gives them the runs to how Mexican immigration to America is a serious issue to be looked at (with an accompanying research link). Twitter still sees the personal stuff, but the noise of it has become more in tune with not just how people feel at the moment, but how they feel in general and strikes their fancy.

Sure, some of us might miss the days when all Twitter was, was a feed of personal thoughts and randomness – but that can still be found, if you look hard enough or know which of your friends is the type to tweet while throwing their game controller through the TV. I’m just glad it’s becoming something so much more than that, and that it’s practicality will ensure its longevity moreso than its fun purposes.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to tweet about how delicious and wrong having Pepsi for breakfast is.

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