Archives for 2014
I get the anger. I personally loathe Facebook and I have for a long time, even as I appreciate and study its importance in people’s lives. But on a personal level, I hate the fact that Facebook thinks it’s better than me at deciding which of my friends’ posts I should see. I hate that I have no meaningful mechanism of control on the site. And I am painfully aware of how my sporadic use of the site has confused their algorithms so much that what I see in my newsfeed is complete garbage. And I resent the fact that because I barely use the site, the only way that I could actually get a message out to friends is to pay to have it posted. My minimal use has made me an algorithmic pariah and if I weren’t technologically savvy enough to know better, I would feel as though I’ve been shunned by my friends rather than simply deemed unworthy by an algorithm. I also refuse to play the game to make myself look good before the altar of the algorithm. And every time I’m forced to deal with Facebook, I can’t help but resent its manipulations.
THIS
What does the Facebook experiment teach us? — The Message — Medium (via iamdanw)
The challenge that Facebook has is that the root cause of having a cluttered feed is really the underlying social network that one constructs—it’s the core of their product.
They’ve made small attempts to address that, like introducing asymmetric following, but I can’t imagine that has been all that effective given their size. (Overhauling your product when you’re at the scale of Facebook is incredibly hard, and they’ve succeeded in many cases, which is an impressive feat.)
In Facebook’s mission to connect everyone, the product doesn’t allow the individual to control their proximity to people in the way that we naturally do in real life. The answer isn’t to give users more control, since having knobs (i.e. Google+ Circles) is too onerous (most people won’t customize). And since they’re too big to re-architect the product (probably not a good idea) they’re understandably left playing whack-a-mole with the symptoms, instead, which is suboptimal.
Thus, we’re stuck with this socially awkward dinner party host who is trying to make sure everyone is only talking to the people who they’re likely to want to talk to, resulting in an overly socially sterile environment that feels more like a chaperoned dance than a party.
Outside of defensive reasons, it makes a ton of sense that the company is splitting out its service into discrete apps, and buying up anyone who is exhibiting growth, especially on mobile and especially systems like chat that have a different social network architecture.
(via garychou)
https://blog.rememberlenny.com/2014/07/03/i-get-the-anger-i-personally-loathe-facebook-and/
Intimacy by design
I’ve been thinking about where to push my project. I’m undergoing a cyclical process of chasing the shiny object. I could be ‘iterating’ on an idea that started out rough. I knew I wasn’t going to be making a project for graffiti artists. My initial drive was to focus on a demographic that I felt was personally interesting. I always knew I was going to allocate my attention to the problems that were larger in scope.
Graffiti artists appreciate the ability to silence their online presence. They also like to be able to publicly display the works they create. More appropriately, they like to prevent the consequence of their work. They want to create, share, and distribute without the legal consequences of impeding on existing public property rights. This is understandable.
I have a hypothesis about graffiti artists. If they are like the writers I have known (I use the term writers to refer to graffiti artists and not writers in the traditional sense). Writers are attuned to the quality of another writers work. They either know and appreciate another writer or completely ignore them. At the point that a writer gets on another writers radar, they are going to stick out everywhere they go. This is my experience.
The more places I go, the more I recognize graffiti artists in different places. I started out recognizing artists from the Bay Area in the Los Angeles county area. When I moved to Shanghai, I was surprised to see well known international artists who made their mark. Of course, being in New York, I see artists from around the world. The times have changed and graffiti is painted over to prevent decline in real estate value.
This is not to say that all graffiti is bad for real estate. If we look back to the Banksy visit in New York, we can see a clear example of perceived value. Properties in the UK and other parts of the world skyrocket in value when ‘marked’ by Banksy. When art gets painted over, its not just a shame for the artist, but in some cases the property owner as well.
Graffiti artists value intimacy. They value the network of awareness that stems from the shared interest in getting ‘up’. I think this close network of likeminded individuals is a modern day rarity. There are many platforms for accessing communities of people who are likeminded. These feel too transactional for my taste. The organizers and the individuals who partake in presenting at meetups are surely a close knit group. The attendees are not.
I believe there is a place for conscious content sharing. I want to know who sees what I share. I want to have control of that aspect. Almost like a google doc, in its privacy and sharing privileges.