Disqus - Latest Comments for Ellen Petry Leanse

Re: Proper Twitter Etiquette, What is it?

Ellen Petry Leanse — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 13:38:30 -0000

Tweeting as "myself," I am pretty careful about what I put. It seems that most of my Tweets are "@"s in response to other things; dialog, conversation. If I originate something, I try to make it worth commenting on, at least in theory...and something I'm ok having on Facebook. Guess I think that the listening, for me, is more interesting than the talking?

Tweeting for business (I am @ribbit) I am there to learn and listen. I try to find people related to our dev community (Flex, Flash, Ruby, anyone interested in voice, VoIP, Android, iPhone...we're an open platform for voice as object in Web apps) and engage in conversations about our direction, our company, what we're working on, cool things that happen. We're early-stage, but over time I could see announcing updates to our dev platform, new releases from our dev community, things happening in our store...stuff of real value. We will also continue to ask questions...so far, our followers have been really cool about answering.

It hits me that this Twit world is a lot like the "real" world. Talking to yourself is kinda crazy. Having a conversation is kinda awesome. Maybe if it's not good enough to get a response, most of the time it's not worth saying?

Deep thoughts (not), but just what hit me.

Re: Do You Use Social Applications?

Ellen Petry Leanse — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 17:58:21 -0000

I have to say I enjoyed the excitement of the deluge of social apps that swelled in my FB notifications in the months following F8. It was cool to see what people were coming up with — games, clever little widgets, occasionally something really creative or useful. I loved the Bob Dylan app...so clever, a hint a a new way of branding/marketing...and of course the excellent NYTimes "most forwarded articles" app, which beautifully integrated a valuable social experience (sharing news articles) with a tie-in to the native NYTimes site.

I must say, though, I quickly became annoyed with the "Virtual Armpit Fart" category of app, which swarmed in plague-like proportions in the late months of '07, and found myself cringing at anything that contained the words "Super," "Poke," "Naughty" or "Throw."

But that might just be my advanced age speaking. I am older, by a factor of 2, than the average FB user.

I am glad that FB added a "block this app" option so that I can spare myself from receiving countless mind-numbing invitations to apps I really don't want to use.

I do find myself wishing for more practical apps on Facebook. I like how it centralizes a number of my connecting and "staying informed" activities and I would use it more if it delivered more functional value. I think I'd like FB, or something like it, to feel more like a desktop to me; there are some collaborative projects that would be convenient to work on in such an environment.

I continue to use a list-making app that (full disclosure) I developed on FB several months back. I use it to create shopping lists, planners of all types, to-do lists and more. It's especially useful when people share lists together (often for fun, but for productivity, too), and I'm proud to say that although our user base is MUCH lower than the NaughtyPoke type of app, our daily usage and retention is quite high.

Take a look if you'd like:

http://apps.facebook.com/listing/

cheers,

Ellen

Re: Facebook Makes Some Design Updates

Ellen Petry Leanse — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 14:49:33 -0000

Another change...curious to hear thoughts on this: what happened to the "Networks" link at the top of the page?

Re: Facebook narcissism

Ellen Petry Leanse — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 01:26:18 -0000

Funny...kinda thematically aligned with this...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SH9iEn8Jfk&...

The truth always hurts!

Re: Facebook narcissism

Ellen Petry Leanse — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 01:27:11 -0000

And my page is comin' right atcha!

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=19479377896