(Not) The Last Post

My favourite quote (out of everything I've read on the web today):

Comma. You never want one of these anywhere near you [. . .] Every time you add a comma to the description of what you do, you suck a little bit more [. . .] Commas are for unfocused hacks.

The quote isn't quite so awesome in context – it's from an article about marketing, *ho-hum* – but what a line, huh? I dare you all to yell, "Commas are for unfocused hacks!" at a professional writer or editor, as soon as possible. Preferably during a job interview.

It's hard to believe this course is coming to an end already. I've been trying to think about what I should write about that would be fitting, in this final post, now that the course is almost over . . .

First, some trivia:

The most expensive word on Google is mesothelioma. If you want to buy a Google Ad that appears on searches for "mesothelioma", it'll cost you US$99.44 per click.

Secondly, Twitter:

It's a good and useful thing. Probably. I blogged about Twitter a while ago, but just yesterday I came across a really neat article about some ways that it might be worth your while. If you're curious about Twitter but still unsure (or if you're on Twitter already, but you have no idea what to do with it), try reading this.

Thirdly . . .

I like words. I like people. Blogging seems like a good compromise.

People often talk about the "dehumanising" effects of technology, but I don't really buy into that. I think the whole memesphere of the web is powered by people communicating with other people: it all feeds off the kick we get from exercising our empathy, from recognising differences and commonalities between ourselves and others. Jokes, stories, ideas. It's all good. (Mostly.)

Anyhow, I think it's something that we should feel good about. Sometimes people are awesome, and sometimes it's too easy to forget that.

(I think I read somewhere that happiness is "seven successful human interactions per day." I like that; it sounds achievable . . .)

Has this course changed the way you think about the internet? Have you enjoyed blogging?

I know I've enjoyed this blog. In fact, lately I've been neglecting my other blog to focus on this one instead (and to focus on my homework!) . . . but I'm looking forward to getting back to my old blog, soon. Blogging is fun and satisfying in a very unique way, I think.

When this course is over, will you keep blogging?

If you keep writing, I'll keep reading, I promise.

:)

–Tim

Email: Obsolete?

By now we're all familiar with the imminent death of newspapers, the imminent death of CDs, the imminent death of television, etc. But the other day I came across an idea that I'd never considered: the imminent death of email. That got my attention.

Email went mainstream only fifteen years ago, but it's now an essential part of daily life; to imagine it being completely replaced (already?!) is bizarre. But this article has almost convinced me that email's days really are numbered; the writer has some interesting arguments, at least . . .

To begin with, email is apparently too slow for the modern internet, because it's not instantaneous. Email is stuck in the 1990s – deep down, it's still expecting you to be on dialup:

. . . email was better suited to the way we used to use the Internet—logging on and off, checking our messages in bursts. Now, we are always connected . . .

And that's why, according to the article, email is steadily being superseded by various kinds of instant messaging and chat (not to mention Twitter and Facebook). The last time you wanted to tell somebody something over the internet, did you actually use your email? Or did you just update your Facebook status?

The other big problem is email's lack of finesse. We're all dealing with more information than we actually have time to read, so we need good ways to classify and sort everything – #hashtags and meta-data, blog labels, threads. Email doesn't really allow for that. Also, we now have various personal profiles associated with our presence on the net – extra information and context about ourselves, which is a kind of "passive" communication – and email doesn't really allow for that, either.

This is why, for example, Google are setting up their Wave: a new system that's supposed to combine the functionalities of email, instant messages, social networking and collaborative documents (a.k.a. wikis) into one supreme package. When I first heard about the Google Wave I was sceptical (and also slightly . . . concerned), but the more I think about it, the more useful (and plausible) it all seems.

Is this really going to happen? Will email be completely abandoned within our lifetimes? Is it going to matter, either way?

Also: should we be worried that Google knows everything about us and is building artificially intelligent supercomputers?

Image © 2002, C2 and its related entities. Via Google Image Search ;)

Bloggo My Oggo

Logic and evidence have their place, but let's be honest: articles are most fun when they're wildly, controversially opinionative. That might be why I enjoyed reading this article, which tries to list the qualities that make a good blog.

(btw, I found it via a Guy Kawasaki tweet – so I guess Twitter is useful after all, huh?)

Here's the list:

Merlin Mann's 9 Things To Do to Make a Good Blog (Paraphrased)

1. Have a personal voice

2. Show your obsessions

3. Show where your obsessions take you – the trail of attention, the evolution of your interests. Blogs are an ongoing narrative of this – a story!

4. Write in paragraphs: craft, not crap

5. Use style and format creatively

6. Be weird

7. Inspire – make other people want to start their own blog

8. Try harder

9. Know when to break your own rules

I think #3 might be the most interesting. I'd never quite thought of blogs as being like narratives in that way, before. It's a clever analysis, don't you think?

(Except for #7; it might be true, but it's not useful advice!)

Anyhow – listen up! Based on this list, I have a game for you. A game of death.

No, wait, not a game of death. This is the game: think about how many of these qualities your blog has. If you have 6 or more, you win! If you have all 9, you are lying. How many (& which) would you like to have?

(I'd be happy if I thought my own blog maybe had #1, #4, #6 and #8 so far, but I don't really know; either way, I'm sure I still need to try harder . . . )

Do you agree with the list? What qualities are truly important, do you think?

Be nice, I know your name

As a bit of a follow-up to my last post about net anonymity . . .

"You can claim anonymity, but there is a range of things that a judge will use to determine whether you have used your anonymity responsibly" [my emphasis]

That's a provocative quote from this article about recent legal decisions unmasking people's internet anonymity, and the precedents being set. What's also interesting about the article, though, is its discussion of how and why this might not even matter.

See, the article argues that the rise of social networking (among other things) is undermining net anonymity on a basic, socio-cultural level. In the future, apparently, we'll almost always be authenticated & named on the net – just as usually we are on Facebook and in real life. Correspondingly, future internet forums & chats will be much nicer than they are now, because if we're identified then we're responsible for what we say – just as we are in real life. The article points out that, for example, nasty anonymous twitterers are never popular. Only the authentically real (or known fake) identities maintain an audience.

"It might be entertaining to post anonymously, but it's not very interesting to read . . . When people are going to be named, whether it's their real name or a persistent pseudonym, it takes them more of an effort to maintain the credibility of their name." [my emphasis]

Interesting, huh? Does it sound plausible to you?

More importantly – does using your real name make you a nicer person? And is that a good thing, or a bad thing?

Enjoy yr weekend, folks :)

I'm Like A Bird

I've resisted joining Twitter for a long time because, you know, Twitter? Only journalists, nerds and stupid celebrities (and their stalkers) use Twitter, everybody knows that! It's just a wank, right? Worse than blogging, even. Forget about it.

That would probably be a dumb and unfair exaggeration, but that doesn't mean it's not a common reaction. It seems that because Twitter has gone from what? to it's everywhere! with such speed, a lot of people I know already feel that it's just not cool anymore. Of course back when it was cool, hardly anyone was using it, so there was little point in signing up. But now that it's been aggressively colonised by mainstream celebrities, it's just tragically unhip.

It's the same thing that happened to Facebook after your mum and dad joined. The difference is that Facebook, unlike Twitter, enjoyed a good year or so (i.e. 2007) dominated by twentysomethings – the parents and bosses didn't make it over until more recently.

If you were born in the 1980s, you and your friends joined Facebook around 2007–08, right? That was the crucial year-without-parents that entrenched Facebook's social essentiality. And even if you've now changed your mind, even if you now openly despise Facebook, now it's too late! Because if you quit tomorrow, how will you get invited to parties? How will you flirt? How will you play Scrabble? Facebook today is like a mobile phone: it's so culturally pervasive that it's more of a hassle to avoid than it is to play along.

Twitter hasn't had Facebook's luxury of incubated hipster coolness. It has had a huge amount of press coverage and good buzz, but I have a weird suspicion that this might be due to two unusual factors:

1. Twitter is excellent for journalists. It's a 21st-century evolution of the wire service, perfect for concise bulletins and constant updates. And if a whole bunch of journalists are suddenly using a new technology, it makes sense they're going to be interested enough to write a whole bunch of articles about it – even if these journalists are actually an unusual minority, compared to everyone else.*

2. Ashton Kutcher.

Of course, I could well be wrong about this. I live in a social bubble of my own. Most people I know don't really dig Twitter, but "most people I know" is not a meaningful demographic – everything I've said here could easily be way off. And yet, recent data indicates that I might be right: it turns out that most Twitter users are older professionals, while twentysomethings are definitely in the minority. But is this the way Twitter is going to stay, or will the demographic suddenly broaden after it passes the tipping point (as recently happened with Facebook)? And so what if it does, and so what if it doesn't?

Anyhow. My point: I joined Twitter this afternoon. Why?

Because yesterday, my housemate joined. Which meant that I suddenly had a total of two close friends on Twitter. If that's all it takes to convince me to join, maybe Twitter really is the future. I honestly don't know.

Answer me, people: is Twitter cool?

And, either way: so what?

*This is only a hypothesis, unfortunately: I've been able to find some data on Twitter demographics, but nothing that talks quantitatively about journalists. So this hunch of mine may be, in fact, complete crap.