Facebook must Fail

Read a recent comment on the decline of Facebook.

It's just like any other innovation. And you don't need to be an expert or an analyst. Someone paid to have an opinion on tech matters. People will always want something else. Facebook takes time. And for many it takes a lot of time. Now unless I become an addict, I realize, "Hey?! Where did my life go." ...and Facebook...done. I need something less time consuming and just as falsely fulfilling. Who has that for me?

As an experiment: If you know any high school kids, then ask a few about what they use to say meaningless things to people they may or may not actually know. I suspect you will find not many mention the billion dollar advertising machine that is Facebook. So if current high schoolers don't care what ten year future is there, at least for now?

Ask yourself then. What do these social sites make? Your answer I suspect will reveal they make nothing. And with the other tools available to you, you can do without any of  the connectedness social media provides.

All of us know, there is no reality to hundreds of friends, thousands of followers, millions of views. You know the people you see. And you know the people you talk to every day day.

What is the next innovation in social media? A face to face conversation.

what? i have to wait 10 seconds! i'm gone!

if you want to know what the goldfish are about, just read the last bit of the post.

i saw an article suggest we would tolerate 2 seconds of delay for a video. the idea is if we have to wait 2 seconds we pick another video. that seemed a ridiculous assertion to me. so i waded through the paper a bit. it will take a lot more than then ten minutes i just gave it. so after you click the link don't bother reading the article. none of us are smart enough to get it.

here's a quote:

Viewers watching videos on a better connected computer or device have less patience for startup delay and so abandon sooner. For instance, a viewer with fiber broadband connectivity is 38.25% more likely to abandon sooner during startup than a similar viewer with mobile connectivity.

so if were on the old Galaxy, Nexus, iPhone or whatever we'll wait.

if were on fiberoptic cable internet we have the attention span of a goldfish (really, really short).

cities wasting the most time on twitter

before you look at this chart, guess which major city was resposible for the most tweets June 2012. but since you won't do that just look.

from semiocast.com (link @ right)

what readers want

the short answer: nobody knows. traveling the internet world of experts gives a wide range of opinions:

good content (what's that)

personal stories (not really anyone's business, unless empathy increases readership. then we're all for it)

solve the readers problems (you don't have any of those, right?)

publish regularly

don't publish too regularly; it's confusing (thank you dueling experts; and one of them is condescending. really, too confusing. come on, we live in 3 second attention spans. more, more, more...)

respond to comments (this one we believe)

anticipate what the readers want (psychics have their own blogs)

tell the readers what they want (we really like this one)

we are certain we can give the reader what they want. just tell us in the comments. no magic. no guessing.

you know it would be a cool experiment. you offer a topic. we here at mentalogica noodle about a bit. give an opinion. see if we can make somemone angry (or happy).

our intent is to serve our interests while integrating yours.

how 'bout that: no links.

instagram versus your photo

we found this over at digitaltrends.com. read it.

we want you to stay informed. privacy evolves almost daily in todays digital world.

imagine you sent family pictures to aunt sally. she then uses your photos to earn money from your face. for some reason your face is perfect for their new label. a label covering a salsa jar, a juice bottle, whatever you can imagine.

now, is this the same problem instagram faces?

who owns the profit gained from your picture?

some of these concerns must involve a right to privacy. some CEO's (fb) want you to believe those days are over; that privacy is a bygone concept. it seems unlikely that all or even most of us believe this. but we seem unable to restrain ourselves. we trot our lives out to the internet. and then are mad when everyone knows our business.

you owe it to yourself to think about your posts, your comments, your uploaded photos. gather some wisdom and filter your choices. be smarter with your words and pictures. and much of this won't matter to you. make a choice. have an opinion.

is Facebook really viable longterm?

why does Facebook constantly send potential friends lists to email? with 1 billion users in sight, how could anything go wrong?

perhaps a real look at users, ad click through rates, purchases because of the ads, and frequency of use per user would reveal weaknesses.

consider that instagram owned by Facebook removed high quality images from twitter. twitter pics must be a threat. and with hundreds of millions of users why are high quality photos on twitter a cause for concern?

let's all think about this for a bit. somewhere out there is the innovator with the idea to reinvent social platforms. please start your own business. Facebook google and the like want to pay you great out of college salaries so they can own your ideas. they took chances. so should you.

Social Media: no one wants your real opinion

give the people original content. its what they want. is it really?

each day there are millions of retweets. people make near identical comments on myriad items. we don't want ideas that are uncomfortable. sharing the same ideas gives us belonging.

we find a community. do we lose ourselves to common opinions?

these short essays appear to generate comments. we hope people will argue in the comments. but we intend argument in the logic sense. present premises. support a conclusion.

perhaps we should offer more inflammatory or emotionally charged content.

and to follow: why is huff post so popular? no idea. it's just another link curating website with a few bloggers. nothing interesting.

you don't need no education (sorry r. waters)

at edudemic.com. an article considering the use of social media, text messaging, and free university courses. education will be very different five years from now. maybe your teacher will be sending you homework help through facebook, twitter, pinterest, or whatever may have replaced these in five years.

check this out from University of Colorado. is this you?

facebook privacy controls

it seems you may spend some of every day scouring the social platform. remove your tag from photos. ask for picture removal from uploaders. yes, you may now shore up your privacy with even more time on facebook. read and study their privacy controls. decide what matters to you.

in the meantime here is a video from an innovative musician/comedian Reggie Watts:

TED talks

tweet threats

consider this news from nbc. there are many in the world of the micro-blog placing their unfiltered thoughts to hundreds of millions of others. there should be consequences for such actions.

these thoughts expressed in public lead to criminal action. this is a public comment. so many of us get to read it. this is not a private thought.

the micro blogs are not filtering for you. you had better do it yourself. you are accountable.

a threat against a president brings government agents to your door. is this appropriate now?

you give - instagram takes

perhaps your likeness will give instagram its next baby food star or wheaties box. you gave away your privacy when you made your picture available to the public. And 100 million users most definitely makes a "public".

there is no right or cause to complain. if you don't want your life in everyone's face then stop putting it there. let instagram have its candy. it will take millions of you to leave before instagram would care. until millions abandon the platform your complaints have these equivalents:

Said at McDonalds: I'm never eating here again

Said at WalMart: I'm never shopping here again.

we guess that if 10,000,000 leave then maybe the photo sharing site will not use your picture to their benefit.

remember the first purpose of any business is profit. so there is profit in your pictures. just not for you.

thinking about pinterest

fair warning: never have looked at pinterest. plan to explore it in the coming weeks. this idea expressed by a user of the site:

where was your family while you were constructing the most fabulous dining room ever?

all of us participating in these virtual communities are guilty of this. (pause briefly to through rock from inside of glass house)

this graphic from mashable.com a great site you should be visiting.

more information on twitter and tweets

reviewing twee.co

a site with easy to follow analysis of twitter trends. and the added feature: backtrack through the day in 20 minute intervals. watch trends come and go.

today is the first time we noticed a German hashtag take the number one spot. #IchLiebe1D

this graphic at semiocast.com check the article.

twitter gives back all your tweets

at tech crunch some ideas for what yu may do with the thousands of unread tweets you wrote during important or useless times in you life. Perhaps this becomes the "dear diary" you never kept.

find yourself some program to analyze your words & patterns

make a pretty graphic from a word cloud

evaluate your life. and realize we all spend too much time avoiding real conversations. and ignoring those closest to us; all to micro-blog and thus micro size who we really are

at mentalogica we send out one or two each day

not our graphic. found at briansolis.com

short homage to the social media catfish

“Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.” ― Oscar Wilde

and because catfish are in no way appealing in pictures, here instead a poem mentioning catfish

Poets of Summer

Pollywogs and dragonflies

Salamander slime

Some are dreamt and summer schemes.

Mud Daubers on the cattails

Catfish on the hook

Crawl daddy in the cranny.

Crickets with backward knees

Buzzing honey bees

Poets of a summer dream.

Martin Hunter

What could replace Facebook?

just because one day the company may claim 1 billion users does not make it invulnerable. there was a time when we all traveled by horse. and certainly the industries built around the use of horses fought to keep the automobile off the streets.

right now facebook may consider itself unbreakable. but why would you spend a billion dollars on instagram. say what you may. you wanted to eliminate a threat.

so much of what goes out into that world is unread, unconsidered, and unloved. much as what we type here today.

what will replace or really challenge the large social media companies.

let us suggest it will be very small social media companies. sites for your neighborhood. not just groups lost in a social media ocean. but a social site just for your maple street neighborhood. no one else sees it. it only concerns people you see every day.

and when you can't talk right away you can strengthen your community online at maple_post.com

Social Media Slang - Troll

A troll is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community. Their intent: to provoke others. A troll wants to take your blog, twitter, social network conversation and to wreck it.

An original troll: our fellow beneath the bridge. Three Bill Goats Gruff. A Norwegian tale many of us know: De tre bukkene Bruse. If you don't know this one. Find it for yourself.

karma mobile

here's is innovation worth knowing: social wi-fi hotspot by karma through Clearwire at youkarma.com

how many total years so far spent in social media?

you probably never thought about this. the answer is: 230,060 years

here is something that is 200,000 years old: this underwater ocean grass