DISQUS

I was able to access Themes around noon today; however, I've had numerous friends IM me (because I reference it in my GChat status) and say they don't have access yet. I'm wondering how they are rolling it out, but it seems like it's happening relatively slowly.

I'm no artist, so I won't embarrass myself with bad pictures, but I do have an active imagination.

I see a cartoonish picture in greens and browns of a monkey in the jungle scratching his head and looking confused while a bunch of bananas hangs from a branch immediately over his head. The text reads, "Don't worry, we haven't gone anywhere. You'll find us eventually, you silly monkey."

My thoughts on Twitter's continued success despite the plethora of problems is that as with most things, any press is good press. Even if people are hearing their friends talk badly about Twitter's constant downtimes, it still may spark their interest enough to create an account.

Also, I think it's still fairly safe to say that Twitter is the only microblogging site that has really caught on outside of the early adopters/tech-inclined group. Out of my "real life" friends, none are on FriendFeed, Plurk or Identi.ca.

And last, but certainly not least, any site whose "our site has crapped out" graphic becomes a celebrity is certainly not going anywhere. Long live the Fail Whale!

Thanks for that walk down memory lane Nick. I just (half) watched the first three episodes and enjoyed them tremendously. Although, what's on YouTube is not really a movie, but the first three episodes of the series. There was a movie in the 80s that almost no one remembers where they go to rescue other Thundercats who are taken captive by Mum-Ra. There's also rumors about a live action Thundercats movie coming out next year. We'll see if that happens.

Anyway, if Viacom comes knocking on my door, I am Liono to protect me. He'll kick some corporate ass.

I've been wondering about how well Facebook Chat is doing. Nick, do you have any stats on the percentage of members who actually use FBChat? It hasn't caught on among my group of friends at all, except for the handful who are government employees and can no longer access GChat.

When I wrote my first webpage page in, um, (cough cough) 1998, it included a lot of information and stories about the things I was interested in the time. Having a personal blog, I don't see it as too different than that personal webpage I had 10 years ago. While I don't include pictures of me or intimate details about my life (which I don't do anywhere on the web except my SNS profile pages, and I don't include much information there), my blog offers great insight into who I am through my thoughts on topics that matter to me.

Being in academia, I know that a lot of people in my profession still maintain personal homepages with their CVs, their class information, etc. They use those pages as a form of validation, as if to say, "You can trust the journal articles I have published because look at everything else I have done." For us, it's essential to maintain an air of legitimacy.

That said, I completely agree that SNSs have replaced the personal homepages of a decade ago. They are much easier to create and maintain, and they are linked directly to all of that person's "friends'" pages. I mean, how much simpler can you get than the Facebook interface?

Finally, kids today are still being very creative via the Internet, just not necessarily through personal homepages. In the Pew Internet Project's "Teens and Social Media" report from Dec. 2007, they reported the following stats regarding teens' (12-17 year-olds) use of social media:

* 39% of online teens share their own artistic creations online, such as artwork, photos, stories, or videos, up from 33% in 2004.
* 33% create or work on webpages or blogs for others, including those for groups they belong to, friends, or school assignments, basically unchanged from 2004 (32%).
* 28% have created their own online journal or blog, up from 19% in 2004.
* 27% maintain their own personal webpage, up from 22% in 2004.
* 26% remix content they find online into their own creations, up from 19% in 2004.

Pew Internet does monitor the usage levels of both teen and adult bloggers, and their data show there is a teen blogging presence, albeit much smaller than the adult population. I believe most social networks are for the under 30s, and research shows more than half of 12-17 year olds have accounts with at least one social network.

In my research on college students' Facebook use, I found the vast majority of respondents log into the site multiple times a day. Personally, I tend to keep Facebook and Twitter open in tabs all day so I can check for updates at my leisure, but I am kind of obsessive about it.

Wow, this girl is an expert at one thing: spamming twitter accounts. She signed up today and is already following 1100+ people. I think that's pretty impressive. She must have a lot of time on her hands.

Did you see the interchange between her and Doug?

He writes: dammit - when will it ever stop? http://twitter.com/mediaexpert - get a clue people, a twitter account does not make you an expert.

And then she responds: @marchdoe play nice with me and I will play nice with you.

This is freakin' amazing. Since when did they let all the crazy people out of the psych wards? I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm pretty obsessed with the social web -- it's what I wrote my master's thesis on and what I'll research for my PhD -- but people are taking this stuff just a little too far. I *completely* agree with your frustration over people like this girl Nick.

I think on top of the legal implications involved in selling your profile, there are significant ethical issues arising from such activities. If a profile is sold, is the purchaser (or seller) required to notify all friends/followers of the change in ownership? With Facebook, the issue is obviously much more serious, as more personal information is typically contained in users' profiles. On Twitter, I can block people who start following me to build up lists of users; but what if I don't know the true identity of the person following me? That is some very thin ice.

And most importantly, if someone is willing to spend that much money on a Twitter profile, maybe they can also lend me some money to pay back my student loans? I hate wasteful spending.

PS: The bid is up to $1525 now! Ridiculous.

For my master's thesis, I am researching the impact of our online identities on our offline relationships, specifically on the implications of social networking sites like Facebook on the future of person-to-person interaction. Research clearly shows that these sites serve as a central location for a person to collect his/her weak ties rather than a place to maintain one's most intimate relationships. One 2006 survey said the average Facebook user has 180 friends, but certainly does not maintain a close relationship with more than a handful of them. My research echoes this, in addition to suggesting that there are some real-world negative consequences because of just how much people reveal on social networking sites.

In Pew Internet Project data from Dec. 2006 (a little outdated, I know), only 8% of adults ages 50-64 reported having created a profile on a website, including social networking sites. We can assume this number has risen a little in the last year, but not significantly.

See: http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/65/dataset_dis...

I do know that several of my professors maintain Facebook accounts, although I think that academics are certainly an exception to the rule. My parents, for example, would never create profiles on SNSs. They don't even have an Internet connection at home (much to my dismay)!

I'm glad you posted this because I had been wondering why someone like me (who uses Twitter rarely) was suddenly being followed by several new, random people. As you say though, the problem is not a significant one yet, since you do not need to reciprocate the following.

Wow, a lot of people are having serious issues with Gmail spam. I have this problem with my Yahoo! account (150-200 spam emails a day), but not really with my Gmail. I have noticed an increase in the past few weeks though, from maybe 1 spam message every few months to 5-10 spams a week.

This is a tough call. For general news, I tend to go to major news sites (eg, NYTimes.com, CNN.com, etc.), as I don't want to miss anything that I might otherwise miss on an RSS feed. I guess I also like the "feel" of going to these sites directly, as it's the closest I ever get to reading the paper.

For tech news thoguh, I am a devout follower of Google Reader, as there are about 20 blogs I like to read, and there is no way I'd ever keep up with them if I tried to go to each individual site. And I love that I can star stories I find interesting or important and go back weeks later and easily find them.

I would check out two 2007 reports issued by the Pew Internet Project, if you're interested in finding more data on teens and social networks.

The short memo, "Teens and Online Stranger Contact," released last October, echoes these findings that about 1/3 of teens have been contacted (although not necessarily harassed) by a stranger, although its age range is 12-17 years old, so that offers insight into slightly older adolescents.
Link to memo: http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/223/report_dis...

The larger report, "Teens, Privacy and Online Social Networks," released in April 2007, offers quite a bit of insight into how teens 12-17 manage their online identities.
Link to report: http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/211/report_dis...

Slight mistype in Facebook's slogan: Facebook is a social utility that *connects* you, not "contexts" you.

I totally agree about the irony of MySpace, although there's nothing like a well-intentioned slogan to convince the naive.

I am a strong believer that major players in the market need short, five-words-or-less slogans that capture their essence, and Facebook doesn't do that. I wouldn't even consider what you list as a slogan, as it's just a description of what the site does. Of course, in today's world, sites like Facebook don't seem to need catchy slogans to entice new users; rather, they need to find ways to keep users from getting too bored once they're already on the site.

Oh my god, this game is way too damn addictive. Thanks Nick, now I have found a new way to waste time when I should be doing work. At least I'm a nerd (which I already knew) and not a goat!