Disqus - Friends of ledretch

Re: Scriptfrenzy - The challenge

warzabidul — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 05:11:11 -0000

It's warzabidul as it was last time. I'm still thinking of characters and ideas at the moment.

Re: This is 1 Nation

warzabidul — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 05:48:26 -0000

Of course, at ome point in the not too distant future.

Re: This is 1 Nation

warzabidul — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 10:55:29 -0000

You know me, I'm too modern for my own good so i enjoy being social online as much as offline.

Re: Dear twitter friends…

warzabidul — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 05:31:39 -0000

I still tweet but just warza, rather than warzabidul as a twitter name and I am still following you from that account. Those who were following me, in large part were friends. Too many of them took too long to aknowledge my tweets so they were devalued.

Now it's a new twitter account and friendfeed. On friendfeed I'm one of the two hundred most active users of the site at the moment.

Follow my new twitter account.

Re: Dear twitter friends…

warzabidul — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 17:16:43 -0000

It's no joke, I did delete that account. I have a backup of my last 3800 tweets on that account and thousands more are backed up on various portions of the web, either through tweetbackup, greader or others.

One of the reasons for my frustration has been how people speak and profess their knowledge of social networks yet are to conventional to actually use them to their full potential.

As a result I am still on twitter, but with a far reduced presence.

Re: Having a problem with all this Social Media crap

warzabidul — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 07:46:00 -0000

I agree with part of what you're saying about friendship. That's one of the reasons I'm so frustrated with twitter in particular. There's not much we can do. It won't change overnight.

I think we need a shift away from computers towards mobile phones at an affordable price. That's when we'll see the biggest shift in attitude.

Re: Having a problem with all this Social Media crap

warzabidul — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 17:57:25 -0000

And that's why I love feedly so much. With feedly I can see all friendfeed, twitter and other conversation sites in one place and when I press the conversation tab I can see who conversed about it and if it split then I can select which of the conversations I'm most interested in following. Of course at the moment it doesn't have that many users but within a short amount of time that may be the most interesting option of all.

Re: Having a problem with all this Social Media crap

warzabidul — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 14:20:55 -0000

I know, that's why I want to filter out the re-tweet and certain tags. That's why I want to avoid talking with people that give formulaic answers rather than genuine ones. If I wasn't struggling with this idea I wouldn't have deleted my two year old twitter account.

I am on friendfeed at the moment precisely because I want to find a better, more involved of engaging with people. That's why I'm commenting on this blog post, among many others.

Re: Having a problem with all this Social Media crap

warzabidul — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 14:17:48 -0000

I've been exploring the idea of friendship, in particular with twitter and I agree that a lot of people think of friendships as little more than a commodity. In the case where I see people are not engaging with me as deeply as I wanted them to I have unfollowed them. I have taken a lot of time to work on the friendships online.

It's the same with friendships offline. We meet people, we enjoy meeting them one or two more times and we go a different way. It's the same thing in the internet and twitter age but with a difference. Here there is a backlog of past friendships and relationships.

How many of the phone numbers on your mobile phone do you still use for example? 10-15. Of the friends you have on facebook how many have you known for years? How many of them will you see again?

Friendships have not changed in nature. The way we experience them has.

I hate the "I'm followed by three thousand people and following two thousand". I really do think that notion is a silly one. I no longer engage with those people. As a group we need to find the people that value us as much as we value them.

Re: Having a problem with all this Social Media crap

warzabidul — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 14:10:00 -0000

It depends where you live, in some cultures going down to the pub after a day of work is still very much part of the lifestyle. In England you do have the pub culture where you go out and you meet your friends, you network and you meet people in the real world.

All of these social media events are about just this thing, about meeting new people and making new friends that way. We've seen the pictures and the communications that take place after an event and we see how engaging it was. I say "was" because there has been a shift. As a lot of those I established good friendships with, in the real world, started to network more so they felt the need to follow more and more people, which is easy.

The moment when social media lose their value is when those you meet lose contact with you, are not willing to aknowledge that you've thought about what they're doing and reacted to that. It is quite evident on twitter for example. As more people join so the personal links are being diluted. Rather than retweet what people are saying why not converse about it instead.

Conversations are the way we used to follow up a blog post, a tweet and more. By conversing people were personally more engaged in the mediums they are using. It took both time and engagement. That engagement is what made it so interesting and pleasant to meet those people in person. It allowed a new friendship forming pattern. Of course that's still the case but the challenge is to find those people.

I don't disagree that it's a waste of time, but at the same time I'm fascinated by the idea that one day as more people use these tools so the ability to have more personal engagement will get better.

I find myself moving back to the long form today, through blogs, friendfeed and commenting to engage on a deeper level with people, to discuss ideas as much as anything. After all why not take a few minutes and discuss things through the written word? It's not a waste of time. It's a learning experience.

We are in the early days of all of these discussions and as a result the conversations are limited in scope, relevant only to a select few. That doesn't matter though. In three years time the landscape will be different. We will have conversations more relevant to our interests.

In summary it's a waste of time when people are part of a community, post something but never come back to see how the conversation has progressed. We don't need to do it instantly. With a blog post this conversation can afford to be discussed over a period of weeks and months, every few hours in some cases. We can go about our daily life.

Re: Having a problem with all this Social Media crap

warzabidul — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 13:55:18 -0000

It depends largely on where you live and how active the local community is on these sites. In London when everyone you meet, especially within certain certain circles have twitter accounts, facebook accounts and more then you can get a lot out of it.

I went to quite a lot of events I found out about through the people I met on twitter.

As a uni student as well, because so many people are on facebook it's a great way of seeing what events to go to and to have a follow up. With the presence we have through social media we do add to our social life in the physical world.

Lot's of the people I used to follow on twitter go to a lot of the events and I could to, if I was willing to spend a large amount of money. That's because I would have to fly to the events most of the time.

If more local people were more active on all of these sites then there's a good chance it wouldn't be noise, because I would be on location, rather than living by proxy.

I agree with you that there is a lot of noise, the question is how soon till that social media noise becomes local, and therefore more relevant.

Re: replaced mother boards, the n95, press accreditations and qik

warzabidul — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 12:48:49 -0000

Hey, of course, was fun being at the events. Glad you liked them.

Re: Dear twitter friends…

warzabidul — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 07:52:03 -0000

I was on twitter for two years with an average tweet rate of 72.6 per day. And from one day to the next it no longer exists. Too many superficial people on the site. It was time for me to move on. I am using a secondary account but twitter is going to be a far smaller part of my life. So small that I will only go to check on twitter when I have replies or a new follow.

It's like that relationship you see going nowhere. It was time to break up. I made sure there was no going back and I'm happy for that.

Re: Friendfeed Notifier fun

warzabidul — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 08:58:03 -0000

So far it's been working fine for me. Not sure what's breaking Adobe air on your system.

Re: The Facebook and Friendfeed lifestye

warzabidul — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 21:10:08 -0000

That's because those are niche websites. There's a chance I may find a use for the scuba diving one though.

Re: Wether Friends count more than followers

warzabidul — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 08:25:41 -0000

You know me. I would rather read your blog and participate there, where it's not time sensitive rather than on twitter where people don't seem to have the time anymore.

There is a mass migration of celebrities, especially English but I'm not sure that necessarily means more users. It just means more accounts for the time being. That's not a bad thing for twitter.

I'm still on jaiku occasionaly bue because I find more tools that work with friendfeed it's more interesting to use that service at the moment.

Thanks for the comment by the way.

Re: Monkey Thieves, Great in HD

warzabidul — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 08:49:45 -0000

Did a quick search and I found this link for videos: http://natgeowild.co.uk/programmes/monkey-thiev.... Hope you find some of what you were looking for.

Re: Yet another reason to love Google Latitude

warzabidul — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 12:32:06 -0000

Couldn't you send a kml with that data?

Re: Why it’s a waste of time to follow certain people

warzabidul — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 04:09:43 -0000

I have been testing the theory and so far I've been getting far better results. I send no more messages to those that don't answer because I don't follow them. I see more of the tweets by people who enjoy conversing and as a result I can have great conversations on twitter.

The drawback is that I probably ended up flooding a few timelines recently. Not too worried though. It doesn't hapen all the time.

300 people is a big investment of time when you're reading every tweet. At one point I was following over a thousand. I noticed on a few days that it meant receiving over 10,000 tweets a day. Now I only get two to three thousand I think. Much easier to manage :-)

Re: A proposed Social Media Deontology.

warzabidul — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 16:21:14 -0000

From what I see you're working on some community building too. You've got 25 within 5 months. I'm not sure about the details but I see you're experimenting with live blogging and community building for a particular group of people.

Community building is one of the hardest things to do online. It's one of those things you have to cherish because without that active community your website or project does fall to the side. We've seen a few projects fail over the years.

Re: A proposed Social Media Deontology.

warzabidul — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 02:08:36 -0000

About 5 million people use the website from what I've heard, but out of those people I'm sure there are people you know already that might be using it, Could start by following them and seeing how they use it.

Re: Why it’s a waste of time to follow certain people

warzabidul — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 07:14:26 -0000

I love twitter and I've given a lot of time to the site as a user. I've met some interesting people and had some interesting conversations. If I can keep it like that then I'm happy.

Those who want to use twitter differently are free to do so. I simply won't follow their twitter activity because I don't enjoy it as much.

Re: Why it’s a waste of time to follow certain people

warzabidul — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 05:52:03 -0000

I know that not everyone wants twitter to be personal, and that's part of what frustrates me at the moment. I feel that social networks are at their strongest when people have a personal connection with those they are followed by and who they follow.

I'm listening to everyone, learning about their point of view. Earlier today one person who was not following that many, and not followed by that many said that he found tweetdeck to be interesting because he could join into a greater diversity of conversations. In that context I see the value of tweetdeck. I'm also happy for his comments that made me re-think that position.

There are a number of services that aggregate content without people actively going through that data and it's a shame. Jaiku didn't grow as much as it could because of that problem. That's just one example of many of course.

Those who are new to the social media should not forget that it's about conversation, that they shouldn't simply promote their product but instead take advantage to converse with their followers.

Marketing and public relations have always wanted to know what people were thinking. Now that they can maybe they should spend more time listening, asking questions and digesting those responses.

It's a complex issue and I love studying how the social media are evolving. I'd love to go into more detail but this is already a long comment.

Re: Anonymous comments have value

warzabidul — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 15:18:39 -0000

But then again a french blogger friend of mine wrote a blog post about that topic yesterday. She addressed the issue of the person who was being targeted and how her life in a few years may be affected.

Hate is something that we find everywhere though. It's just a matter of seeing whether there's any substance to the hate that's being spread or not. There are a few things we would all like to complain about but rather than be direct about them we try, through reasoning to demonstrate why another point of view might be more beneficial.

Re: Anonymous comments have value

warzabidul — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 15:13:38 -0000

Of course, if you're being harassed that's something different, at least by requiring an e-mail address you reduce the chances, and if you use disqus you can probably block them more easily.