…so if I am already using Posterous to publish more private stuff that somehow doesn’t belong here and would otherwise get lost on Twitter; and other blogs to publish my professional interest – what will I post to Kikuyumoja.com then?
Another explanation could be:
-
Posterous = pictures, as e-mails from the phone or computer, with a short caption, need for post editing
-
WordPress = full blog posts with longer text, using offline editor to compile posts, published on this domain
-
Twitter = status updates, mood, great chance for direct communication with other individuals, good Tweets aren’t archieved (maybe bookmarked as “Favorites”, but that’s about it)
-
Facebook = private communication with friends & internet folks I met / wd like to meet on a drink or two; my Twitter feed = 90% of my FB status updates
(there are of course more services than these four, but they are the ones I use the most)
On the other hand, I wouldn’t want to have everything in one stream. I’ve also unregistered all my feeds from Google Buzz & Friendfeed. Small pieces, loosely joined. Loosely.
Thought about a redesign on Kikuyumoja.com last night – the WordPress template here is from 2006 – and ended up changing the Favicon only. I’d like to upgrade this and a few other WP blogs I administer to a really cool, minimalistic, bigger font WordPress 3.0 template that supports all those fancy WP 3.0 gimmicks.
Oh, and the new Favicon – because of this. The “Kikuyumoja logo”. :-)
I’ve been registered with “stayfriends.de” for almost six years by now. They were much better than facebook, as far as privacy is concerned, but with a rather limited users-community. For people like us, who have grown up outside Germany, it doesn’t offer the same potential as facebook, having a database of only German speaking schools. It does have a pretty tidied-up database, however, as well as a very efficient privacy-policy.
Unfortunately, it seems to have passed its zenith some time ago, with hardly any new joiners from my generation. I am in touch with all those worth staying in touch with, and therefore stayfriends.de has become somewhat obsolete for me by now.
Since I have already paid for the whole year in advance, I’ll leave my profile until the end of 2010, and then terminate my membership – which leaves me to mention one big advantage of stayfriends over other social networks, which is the privilege that you can actually delete and remove yourself from it permanently.
A short while ago I have created a profile on facebook, after long hesitations. I am not very content with their T’s and C’s at all. Facebook contains mainly rubbish waste of time-activities, like “surveys” (which are, in fact, only masquerading yet another form of subversive personal data-collection), games, or communities to save the dolphins/whales/elephants/rain forest/historic bowling-club/endangered fish species…
All just a load of crap. But unlike stayfriends, facebook’s commercial activity is not selling space in a database, as it is actually absolutely for free to register and upload your photos. Facebook earns its money out of the personal information, submitted by millions and millions of users worldwide.
It’s interesting, how everybody is wailing about the privacy infringement by our government, when the media picks up stories about the installation of cctv-cameras in public spaces, or storing the telephone numbers you have dialed on your mobile in the past six months.
But hardly anybody seems to mind that your name, photographs, hobbies, friends, interests and political opinion are readily available to anybody, simply by googling your name.
Im not as paranoid anymore as I used to be, and have accepted the fact that there is no real privacy anymore anyway. Everytime I use my ATM-card, switch on my mobile, or use my laptop to go online inside a starbucks, I am releasing all sorts of personal data. I doubt that a few assorted pictures on facebook will make much of a difference (mind you, I do not submit any pictures showing other family members or friends without their permission).
The bid advantage of facebook is, that it is so common. Buddies in Germany, Kenya, China or Australia are all there, and most of my stayfriends-friends have also signed up on facebook anyway, making a dual membership obsolete.
It remains to be seen if facebook will dry up the same way as stayfriends does now, once the hype is over and users start to realize the emptyness behind all those little game-activities. Probably not for a long while. But it did prove that “staying in touch” is only a peripheral function of a social website; primarily, it is for entertainment.
It will not replace my personal adress-book in any way.
Thx for your extended comment, Dave.
You know I think you shd get a blog one day. Or publish here as a guest author.
Stayfriends: I’ve cancelled / deleted my account with them – which I had from the very beginning – a few month ago. Never missed it.
Facebook: I am afraid that “no data is private” in a Zuckerberg way will become the default, the norm for all data. One can already see this with the next generation that doesn’t have any problems publishing embarassing videos on YouTube.
I used to dislike Facebook for many reasons, and their frequent UI changes were reason enough to delete the profile – but I’ve changed my mind about this. I think the differences with Facebook are the following:
a) biggest user base
b) “grows” with its users, i.e. new applications
c) multi language
d) common denominator which no other network – except for Twitter and Gmail – currently has. Not Xing, not Linkedin, not Plaxo, not Studivz & Co, not Orkut. Meeting someone new – chances are, he/she has a Facebook account. There’s so much behind this that doesn’t become obvious in the first place.
The mini games and surveys are for beginners, curious women and those who only login once every 2 weeks. I’ve also used them in the beginning, but changed to contributing more serious / important stuff to my profile when more and more friends (from the offline world) joined.
As for the privacy: yes, similar on my side. I think it’s good to remain in control of what is being published.
Plus: there shd be a privacy setting that says: delete my name from any pics from users who share their pictures with the world. Because what if you care about your own privacy but your friends don’t (who will publish your photo).
Address book: that’s something I never understood. How on earth can Facebook believe we would like to have all Facebook contacts listed on our personal address book?
Facebook is heading into an interesting direction. Yes, maybe in 2 years time we’ll all be using something else. I think humans will always make use of a social network – either offline or online, and publish private data because they also want to. The real problem of publishing to the internet is that the inet doesn’t forget.