Disqus - Latest Comments for warzabidul

Re: Twitter, One Year Later and Nothing Has Changed

warzabidul — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 19:40:11 -0000

Yesterday I spent half a day talking about twitter to a journalist for a national television station, and a good program. It was hard to be as enthusiastic as I once was due to how little twitter has improved, Another of the concerns is that technology has progressed such that twitter is no longer the only player on the market. There are now quite a few options.

It's not just that those options are on the desktop. Using them on mobile devices is a lot easier. Look at facebook and Skype as just two of those examples. We can update those we already know without it being public, and without the time commitment of using a "new service" like twitter. By new service I mean people having to sign up, decide on who to follow and then participate.

Twitter in my opinion, after two years of use has lost much of it's appeal. The community has been weekend considerably over the past few months,

Re: Stop Telling Me How to Use Your Products

warzabidul — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 01:44:13 -0000

Have you noticed how the conversation has become much weaker on twitter since people have become obsessed with following thousands?

At the sam time they encourage us to follow random people so they are just as much to blame as the auto-following crowd.

Re: Lego Space Shuttle but boy does it look realistic…

warzabidul — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 14:19:28 -0000

Too much free time :-)

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: Are These Social Media Relationships Real?

warzabidul — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 11:12:33 -0000

It's only online because those people aren't in the same geographic region as us. It's not by choice that we stay online. If going out meant we'd find many people being social then we would spend time differently.

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: This is 1 Nation

warzabidul — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 03:07:16 -0000

Going through airport security with that should be fun.

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: Having a problem with all this Social Media crap

warzabidul — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 04:03:15 -0000

The people benefiting most from the social media are those that I call the lifestylers. That's because the livestylers spend hours and hours online. They read and respond to everyone no matter the geographic location of the list they come from (whether a list and such). I recently gave up on twitter because it promised far less to me as a user than when I was in London.

Principally I noticed that for the amount of time you invest in twitter, when not in one of the major cities so twitter decreases in value. That's why I've moved to friendfeed. It's a far richer, idea driven community where you are not alone. When people are not conversation you enrich yourself with ideas, finding new concepts and exploring them.

When people are there, and there is a comment storm (for lack of a better descriptor, not meant as a negative thing) then we get to know some new people. As time continues so we get access to more and more information, and through knowing their character we know which people are most interesting to us in terms of ideas.

Forget the Gary Vee and others of this world. It's about the small people and small community bases, made up of early adopters, that are the most interesting, because they are the most passionate users, getting the most benefit.

At the moment the social media is about the social media but imagine in a year or two when more people start to use the social media for other topics. Imagine the olympics on a friendfeed room for example. You could have rooms by country and by event. It will bring the conversation to a higher level of interest.

In the social media future I see twitter is going to fade into the background because more than what people are doing, people are interested in what you're thinking and why. The short form isn't suited to that.

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: tumbléo

warzabidul — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 12:44:04 -0000

Hehe, nice find.

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: Tired of Twitter Talk?

warzabidul — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 04:58:14 -0000

If twitter is such a big story then why does everyone spend just 20 minutes a day tweeting. If truly twitter was that big a thing you'd find people answering more than once. You'd find them conversing. The conversation isn't there any more. Twitter is nothing but the chewed up bit of track at the end of a bobsled run.

If you're going to be obsessive about something then talk about friendfeed, or event better, talk about facebook. Facebook has 165 million active users, compared to the measly 5 million for twitter. :-).

Twitter is nothing but a sneeze in the park in full hay fever season :-)

Re: Girly geek shopping – live!

warzabidul — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 08:46:50 -0000

The speed was never in question, it's the prohibitive price of the tickets that is.

Re: The steepest roller coaster in the world.

warzabidul — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 10:45:24 -0000

I've never been on a rollercoaster.