K, guys, when some impressively large fella is rapping to his MacBook Pro about social networking, can you really question if this social networking thing is mainstream?
SEO Rapper: Symbol of the social net generation
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Tag Archives: social networking
Skype as Facebook, and a quick counterpoint
Luca posted a great blog today, about how Skype has a way to become a social networking powerhouse, a la Facebook. Interestingly, it was on Facebook that I saw Luca’s tweet about the new post:
All that above together with the new features introduced with Skype 2.8 for Mac made me wonder: can Skype ever become the next big thing in the field of “social networking” rather than “only” the most popular VoIP service ever? Let’s try to analyze how far Skype is from this “big picture”.
Users are not certainly a problem for Skype. With over 200M users (not active, but downloads), it’s not far from the huge 150M active users of Facebook. What Facebook is missing at this time is a powerful desktop client. Despite the world of consumer services is moving to the “cloud”, having an always on client on your PC has many benefits, such as being always available and experiencing a realtime interaction with your friends.
I don’t know if a desktop client is the best place to do social activity management. The browser is good for what’s it’s good for: rich browsing experiences. But I don’t want to change the form factor of the IM client just to accomodate a feed list or yet another messaging utility. Skype needs to stay in the same size and shape it has now: on the right side of my screen, occupying maybe 10% of my real estate.
Plus, the other thing that’s cool about Facebook is that nothing has to be immediate. The realtime nature of Skype conversations is precisely why I’d sometimes rather communicate on Facebook, or e-mail, etc. But please read Luca’s post, as it is a really cool idea that warrants deeper inspection.
Newspaper doomsayers not looking at the full picture
After reading some posts at the Atlantic and Slate about the impending doom of the newspaper industry, and specifically the ostensibly ill-fated New York Times, I feel I’ve got to come to the defense of the newspaper.
As these two pieces have approached it, you’d think the newspaper, and print media in general, have no merit at all when compared to the web. But this is arguably not true, and a gross simplification of a more complex problem. Sadly, the people who’ve argued the web allows cheaper, faster, more demographically-appealing news coverage are right. But, because they look at consumer trends alone, they’re wrong about the roots of the problem facing papers today.
That is, the web isn’t killing papers with its competitive advantages. The web is killing papers by beating them over the head with their own cockiness. First, newspapers they’re always the purest, best source for news–and this is sometimes true, but more because of the deep pockets of paper financiers than because newspapers employ English majors and journalism grads. To say you need more than a sense of fairness, a knack for clarity, and a smidge of brevity to succeed in the reporting business is only a partial truth: but the flip-side of this expression, the one that says only nimrods work for online outlets, is false. Newspapers employ good purveyors of the written word, and so do web sites.
But the thing that’s killing newspapers right now isn’t a disparity in newsmaking power: In fact, they can get the news to their web sites as fast, or faster, than the most well-informed blog or Slate. Actually the real problem in the paper business lies in the dimishing value of print advertising to potential advertisers. The web has a near-zero production cost when compared to the composing costs of a newspaper. This means advertisers aren’t required to spend as much money on the web to get the same mind share in return, at least in theory.
Furthermore, content management techniques on the web outstrip any current CM thinking in the print periodical industry. The web is a cheaper, faster output mechanism that doesn’t require QuarkXpress or InDesign labor, doesn’t require expensive inks and press upkeep, and doesn’t impose a diesel bill for distribution. Yet these issues alone don’t undermine the success of the newspaper. Remember, newspapers still think they are all-in better than web sites. Cockiness is at the heart of the matter.
The web also empowers the news preferences of the consumer, something newspapers have struggled with. Lifestyle nonsense doesn’t matter to the guy who wants the business section and real estate doesn’t matter to the single twenty-one year-old. The web solves this by putting the end-user in command of his news consumption preferences. Of course, it does so at the expense of the tactile pleasure of handling and reading the news from the printed page. While sentimental, this can’t be over-valued.
That said, it’s easy to pick on papers because of what the’re bad at. But there are still free rags that turn a profit. And there are still monthlies that turn a profit. I write for several of them. There are also small-market dailies that break even or make a small profit by concentrating on the news that is hyperlocal in nature: high school sports, local arts, and the like.
But if the Times and the small-market news shop alike are going to be in business in 10 years, it’s going to have to be online. The boomers will start dying and the diminishing value of print advertising will so burden the print industry that the web will be, for some shops, their only option.
Hopefully, my friends in the print industry recognize this long enough before it happens that survival is still an option. The newspaper industry must first recognize that classified advertising is not the model of the future but of the past. Paying $40 for something you can do on EBay or Craig’s List isn’t going to work any more. Moreover, display advertising can continue to work but only if newspapers learn how to subsidize print production costs using the web. This is a difficult proposition at best, since the web itself has no physical production costs to speak of.
Newspapers: here are your keys to survival. 1. Keep it local. 2. Play the web game and learn how commerce works online. Classified advertising is a dying ilk. 3. If print production and daily delivery remain close to profitable, find out who your customers are. If they’re over 50, by and large, it’s time to move online for good.
I hate to say it. I really do.
More sex theme trouble for Playstation Home
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Sony’s (embarrasingly non-innovative) Playstation-based virtual world, called Home, is experience more shrinking growing pains. This time, the issue revolves around censorship. From the article:
The problem was that the words he was using – “gay,” “lesbian” and “bisexual” – were being filtered from text chats and were not being allowed in the naming of clubs or in postings in club forums. Marsh, who is straight but supports gay rights, said he raised the issue with Home community managers during the private beta test, but the problems persisted after the public beta introduction of Home on Dec. 11.
“I can understand if they’re filtering out profanity, but if feel like it’s discrimination,” Marsh said. “By blocking a word like ‘gay,’ which is a preferred term by the gay community, you’re encouraging it as a bad word.”
There are a couple of things that strike me here. First, if you live in the midwest and have junior high-aged kids, the word “gay” is indeed used, too frequently, as a derogatory expression. If a teenager doesn’t like something he or she calls it gay. It’s quite common. I don’t know if it’s vulgar or not, but I don’t believe it’s censorship-worthy. Second, lobbying the proprietors of a miserable, unpromising project like Playstation Home about gay rights is like picketing fifty miles from the nearest Wal-Mart: unlikely to have any effect, and completely out of place.
If you don’t like something in Home, there are plenty of other options to suit your social (and yes, sexual) preferences: like Second Life, Sims Online, the list goes on and on. Heck, I’ve known (multiple) people whose marriages have been destroyed over affairs that started on World of Warcraft. Bottom line, if Sony thinks it’s accomplishing something by banning the use of the word “gay”, they’re wrong. And if a gay activist thinks he’s accomplishing something by complaining about it to Sony, he’s probably wrong too.
Interestingly, Sony has also opted to block the words “Christ” and “Jew”. So I guess neither gays nor religious advocates will have much success setting up special interest groups. The article goes on to say that because it’s early yet for Home, Sony can be forgiven. I say take a cue from Linden Lab: Second Life is the wild wild west; nothing is off limits. Kind of makes it more fun.
And I guess that’s the bottom line. In our initial evaluation of Home, my girlfriend and I basically came to the conclusion that it wasn’t fun. If Sony can solve THAT problem, all this other stuff would be worth talking about.
2008 in Review: Twitter, PS Home, VoIP, and more
Well, it’s the time of year again. Time to look back, and forward.
2008: the harbinger year for a revolution in the telecom industry? No, not exactly. Nor was 2008 the year of action of for end-to-end VoIP. But 2008 was a good year for me. I more or less quit consulting on VoIP, as the majority of clients who need help with VoIP are too small for my firm, and the top 5% of clients available in the field are too big for it. The in-betweeners are dominated by a group of recruiters who beat each other up and submit VoIP candidates to internal employment positions I can’t be interested in.
Twitter was an interesting subject, retrospectively, in 2008. On one hand it’s dying at the hands of Facebook. On the other hand, it’s got so much vigor and a following, too. Twitter is one of those things that, even as an objectively expert witness on the subject of social media, I still struggle to grasp. I wonder what the sex appeal is, minus all the fluff of a LinkedIn or a Facebook, of Twitter.
Sony launched a social network for the PS3. The world essentially yawned, already beaten to death with the concept as previously implemented by things like Second Life, Sims Online, and World of Warcraft. Now, if Nintendo had launched a social network along the lines of Animal Crossing–now that might be cool.
I received a pool table and air hockey table for Christmas and have nowhere to put either of them. At the moment my basement is full. My son wants me to move the foozball table to the living room. A-hem. Kids take a while to develop decorating taste, I guess. Maybe in 2009.
As predicted, Sony Home a playground for horny teenagers, sex fiends
If previous observation is any indicator, Sony’s 3D social network, Home, was bound to attract a specimen of user whose weakness for video games seems to parallel a considerable thirst for virtual sex. In its heyday, Second Life was plagued by a very open sex culture, where users would participate in virtual sex acts, build giant sex costumes for use in-game, and so forth.
(Editor’s note: I told you so.)
So it certainly makes sense that Home, a free online virtual world geared around selling other PS3 titles, would rapidly become filled with greasy, horny kids. And since it’s not a Wii title, Home’s remote control citizens are demographically lopsided in favor of males. What do you get when you combine a legion of aggressive, pimply guys with a small number of curious gals?
Well, it certainly is offputting to women, no question. Not to mention–neither my son, nor my daughter, 11 and 13, will be allowed to use Home.
So is the answer turning Home into a police state, a la Brittania in 1984, where sex was essentially illegal? Perhaps we should redefine online sex as what it really is: laughably poor behavior. Problem is, Big Brother can’t monitor everybody. Even in 1984, he couldn’t. Winston, the main character, and his woman still found a way to do the deed–and Winston, with everything to lose by breaking the law, was a brainwashed comrade.
So self-obsessed teenagers with nothing to lose aren’t likely to cooperate should Sony drop the hammer.
Sony’s bally-hooed Home project to leave beta tomorrow
As if we really need ANOTHER social networking tool, this time geared around, ostensibly, advertising Blu Ray discs with video games on them in a virtual world called “Home”, Sony is launching their virtual world on December 11. We previously covered this in a post that provided one of the first public glimpses of the Home beta.
So what IS Home? Well, it’s a subset of Second Life with shorter learning curve, better graphics, and no built-in economy. It seems that Sony has decided to launch a virtual world that has none of the annoyances of Second Life, but also none of the intrigue. What determines the success or failure of this thing is how well Sony can integrate Home with other titles. But I think I smell a flop cooking.
I break Playstation Home story — Techmeme misses it!
I was among the first three or four who broke the story on Playstation Home, the social network currently in Beta for Playstation 3, on my blog over a week ago, and yet Techmeme frontpages a Times Online article a week later. I don’t get it.