Tweet This
(Communications • Internet)
At first it was something approaching an amusing experience, composing 140-character text messages and seeking a method on the high seas of Twitter madness.
But in the end, for me, this “social media” collapsed under a constant barrage of porn spammers and oblivious commercial promoters, not to mention the slim odds of obtaining actual useful information via tweets or various Twitter apps or searches.
Life is short enough as it is.
→ B.Dunn, Feb 28, 2010, 05 34 pm
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How Can You Laugh When You Know I'm Down?
(Internet • )
Most of those who attempted to access this little site late yesterday afternoon and evening were greeted with an empty page. No error message, no explanation. Just a page indicating that perhaps the proprietor’s mind had gone blank.
It wasn’t entirely true. The proprietor was thinking, all right, mostly about what the hell happened to his web site.
Among my various web projects, this is the only site not hosted on my own servers. When I started it, some friends I once worked with set it up on their server and refused to charge any hosting fees. It’s been a nice arrangement. But there are the occasional home-made blips and bumps.
Like it turned out that one of the guys needed to upgrade a database program, and just got around to it when he had the spare time, which he has little of these days. That happened to be yesterday late afternoon/evening.
Just in case you were wondering.
→ B.Dunn, Oct 13, 2009, 06 01 am
TwitchFace
(Internet • Communications)
You can be sure that when both your son and father poke you in the digits from the same social medium, the fall of Rome can’t be far behind.
Ha! That was a perfect twoosh!
Which is what they call an exact 140-character post on Twitter, a site where attention deficit disorder is considered a positive attribute.
Whoa! Twoosh again!
(Just for the sake of TwitShock and awe the rest of this blog post will consist solely of perfect twooshes. Go ahead. Count the characters.)
Twitter was created in 2006 to serve mostly as an enhancement device for stalking people without having to leave the comfort of one’s house.
But when it came time to visit with the VC guys, the TwitFounders decided, wisely, to call it a “real-time short messaging service” instead.
Sign up for an account and you’ll see a box at the top of the page. Since you don’t know any better yet, actually answer the query above it.
Of course, nothing happens. Eventually you realize there’s nothing else to do but “find people” and read their 140-character sales pitches.
Soon, strangers begin stalking you, too. I average a new “woman” follower every 3 days, mostly trying to get me to click on porn site links.
People wiser and more Twitchy than I expound on TwitterVirtues. Ask a tough question, they say, and in an instant you receive expert advice.
I gave it a shot, but I must be doing something wrong. “Can someone tell me the name of a good Thai restaurant near Katy at I-10 ?” I asked.
“Ya, TwitchFace, I got something good for you to eat. Right off of Mason,” a user named ZeroXtalpe responded. “What kind of car you drivin?”
I suppose it’s only a matter of time before, somewhere in America, someone commits TwitterMurder, and the headlines and hand-wringing begin.
Yet what can one expect? Like its nemesis, Facebook (and more about that later), Twitter is only a social tool for digging through humanity.
No matter how good your shovel is, it still can’t turn rat shit into rubies, or alter the social fabric. Yeah, baby, another perfect swoosh!
→ B.Dunn, Sep 03, 2009, 09 57 am
Everybody Is A Star
(Media • Internet)
Here’s another indicator big American newspaper publishers can ignore as they plunge headlong toward fiscal folly by trying to force their web visitors to pay for online news content:
Fewer than 5% of Europeans paid for any online content in the past three months, according to the European Information Society’s 2009 annual report. More to the point, among the other 95% who didn’t pay for any content in the past three months, “half of them state that nothing would make them change their minds” and pay for content.
I’m afraid Rupert Murdoch, Dean Singleton, Hearst and the rest have convinced themselves that their news content is just so gosh-darned compelling that, given the right software, they can exchange it for cash even if it means reversing gravity or turning human nature on its head. Of course, as you can see right here, they can’t. But it’s become apparent Rupert at least is going to have to burn his fingers himself in order to become convinced the stove is hot.
What I found most interesting about the European Union commission’s report was its confirmation of a couple of online facts: Most people aren’t interested in paying money to obtain online access to “professionally produced” content – whether written, photographed, sung, spoken or videoed. But people are falling all over themselves to produce and distribute their own writings, photos, songs, podcasts and videos online. Witness the rise of web publishing and the popularity of tools provided to the non-technical: blogging software, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr.
Maybe this is the logical extension of where things are heading: The only reason people have been willing to pay so much to see a Hollywood movie or hear a heavily promoted rock band’s album, or watch a hit HBO TV series, is because they didn’t know that just about one out of 10 people have the artistic talent to make an entertaining movie or sing beautifully or report with clarity to their fellows what events are transpiring in front of their eyes. Maybe all this latent human creativity has simply been repressed and lying fallow because the proper tools for production and distribution were far beyond the means of any but the fabulously wealthy.
But now that professional or near-professional-quality music, photos, news reports or videos can be so cheaply and easily created, and distributed nearly for free, maybe it will turn out that the average person would rather be entertained or informed or amazed by talented people they know and have learned to trust. As opposed to people with a history of trying to figuratively twist their arms to extract a pay wall or a licensing fee or a ticket surcharge or a monthly invoice or a commercial interruption.
Maybe no matter what the newspaper monopolists do (or the cable and broadcast TV monopolists or what’s left of radio, for that matter), most of their business value will continue to turn to dust right before their eyes.
Not just because most of them haven’t figured out how to work within the framework of digital media and are instead trying to remake it into their own analog image of what they wish it could again be. But, more probably because, as the giant public wakes up to the new publishing power it holds in its own collective hands, it becomes apparent that the Many are far more creative, innovative, fun and interesting than the Hollywood-Disney-Sony-Rupert corporate-created cardboard Few.
→ B.Dunn, Aug 21, 2009, 08 41 am
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