We all still use email, of course. But email was better suited to the way we used to use the Internet—logging off and on, checking our messages in bursts. Now, we are always connected, whether we are sitting at a desk or on a mobile phone. The always-on connection, in turn, has created a host of new ways to communicate that are much faster than email, and more fun.
Going back in history, it's possible to imagine digital technologies — from websites to cell phones to Facebook and Twitter — making a real difference. Imagine if these options were available to Soviet dissidents and refuseniks who, back in the 1970s, were limited to secretly communicating by one handwritten samizdat at a time. Maybe the "Iron Curtain" would have come down a decade earlier. Or perhaps the outcome would have been different in Tienanmen Square in 1989 had Chinese protesters been able to communicate and organize instantaneously.
"Google is the king of regular search. FriendFeed is the king of real-time search. This makes the coming battle over this issue much more interesting," Mr Scoble told the BBC.
Our new forms of writing—blogs, Facebook, Twitter—all have precedents, analogue analogues: a notebook, a postcard, a jotting on the back of an envelope. They are exceedingly accessible. That it is easier to cultivate a wide audience for tossed off thoughts has meant a superfluity of mundane musings, to be sure. But it has also generated a democracy of ideas and quite a few rising stars, whose work we might never have been exposed to were we limited to conventional publishing channels.
Amateurs and experts share real estate on our screens. We scroll down to add our comments; we join the written fray. The rush of prose is intense, but also exhilirating. So many hats are in the ring.
But recently – over the past six months – I've noticed a new trend: fewer blogs with links, and fewer with any contextual comment. (I'm defining a blog here as an individual site, whether on Blogger or Wordpress or an individual domain, with regular entries.) Some weeks, apart from the splogs, there would be hardly anything. I didn't think we'd suddenly become dull. Nor was it for want of searching: mining for blog comments, I use Icerocket.com. Technorati.com and Google's Blogsearch.
Where is everybody? Anecdotally and experimentally, they've all gone to Facebook, and especially Twitter. At least with Twitter, one can search for comments via backtweets.com – though it's still quite rare for people to make a comment on a piece in a tweet; more usually it's a "retweet", echoing the headline. The New York Times also noticed this trend, with a piece on 9 June about "Blogs Falling In An Empty Forest", which pointed to Technorati's 2008 survey of the state of the blogosphere, which found that only 7.4m out of the 133m blogs it tracks had been updated in the past 120 days. As the New York Times put it, "that translates to 95% of blogs being essentially abandoned".
Today, the Google-Facebook rivalry isn't just going strong, it has evolved into a full-blown battle over the future of the Internet—its structure, design, and utility. For the last decade or so, the Web has been defined by Google's algorithms—rigorous and efficient equations that parse practically every byte of online activity to build a dispassionate atlas of the online world. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg envisions a more personalized, humanized Web, where our network of friends, colleagues, peers, and family is our primary source of information, just as it is offline. In Zuckerberg's vision, users will query this "social graph" to find a doctor, the best camera, or someone to hire—rather than tapping the cold mathematics of a Google search. It is a complete rethinking of how we navigate the online world, one that places Facebook right at the center. In other words, right where Google is now.
Facebook isn't just kneecapping Google's search engine; it is also competing with it. Facebook encourages its 200 million members to use Microsoft's search engine, which it installed on its homepage late last year as part of the deal struck between the two companies. At press time, it was also planning to launch Facebook Search, allowing users to scour one another's feeds. Want to see what some anonymous schmuck thought about the Battlestar Galactica finale? Check out Google. Want to see what your friends had to say? Try Facebook Search. And it will not only be for searching within Facebook. Because Facebook friends post links to outside sites, you will be able to use it as a gateway to the Web—making it a direct threat to Google. Why settle for articles about the Chrysler bankruptcy that the Google News algorithm recommends when you can read what your friends suggest?
IN ANTICIPATION OF THE LONG-AWAITED PUBLICATION OF DAN BROWN'S FIFTH NOVEL, THE LOST SYMBOL, ON SEPTEMBER 15 OF THIS YEAR, DOUBLEDAY IS PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE THE LAUNCH OF A SUMMER-LONG EVENT FEATURING AN ENIGMATIC ARRAY OF CODES, CRYPTIC TRIVIA, PUZZLES, SECRET HISTORY, MAPS, APHORISMS, CIPHERS, ARCANE KNOWLEDGE, AND MORE.
THERE WILL BE A NUMBER OF FOCAL POINTS. THELOSTSYMBOL.COM, NOW DECEPTIVELY SIMPLE IN APPEARANCE, WILL REVEAL MORE AS THE SUMMER ADVANCES. THERE, YOU WILL ALSO FIND LINKS TO THE OFFICIAL DAN BROWN FACEBOOK PAGE AND TO LOSTSYMBOLBOOK - THE OFFICIAL TWITTER PAGE FOR THE NOVEL. DAILY POSTS IN BOTH SPACES WILL CHALLENGE, INTRIGUE, EDUCATE AND ENTERTAIN!
ENJOY YOUR SUMMER...AND REMEMBER TO MARK SEPTEMBER 15TH ON YOUR CALENDARS - WITH A SYMBOL OF YOUR CHOOSING.
You liberated my life when you wrote and confirmed, black on white, what I was secretely thinking about Faith and Church. I gladly joined the ranks as one of your best fans.
Thank you
I have learned so much from your books!!!They have inspired me to study different religions, and sciences. When The Lost Symbol comes out you can count on me being the first to bye a copy!!
“ Twitter did not just kill my blog though, it also killed my golf game. I have not played a round of golf since my birthday in September and as passionate as I have been about golf since my early teens, I barely miss it. Tiger Woods wounded my golf game because no matter how much I played or practiced and no matter how much technology I threw in my bag, I could NEVER hit the shots he could hit. Twitter finished it off for now because it replaces the social part of the game that I craved. The course was where I ‘closed’ business.
Sure, Facebook investor and board member Peter Thiel can try to damp enthusiasm for Twitter by saying Facebook is eyeing lots of acquisitions. But there's a reason Facebook was hungry enough for Twitter that it offered $500 million in stock and cash to a company with a small staff and no revenue—in the middle of a recession.
And there's a reason Twitter didn't take it. Twitter knows it's just getting started, and it is the closest thing to an eventual threat. It would have been like Facebook taking Viacom up on its $750 million offer or accepting $1 billion from Yahoo! back in 2006.
When I last spoke to Twitter founder and CEO Evan Williams, he coyly told me he was nowhere near done building out Twitter as a service or a business and that he has a clear vision for both. He's not going into a lot of detail, but I can tell you it has a lot to do with the real-time news feed that Twitter has become; there's also a lot of potential in the way Twitter lets you search for information on the Web in real time—not at some fixed point in the Web's recent past.
... an average man—one with 120 friends—generally responds to the postings of only seven of those friends by leaving comments on the posting individual’s photos, status messages or “wall”. An average woman is slightly more sociable, responding to ten. When it comes to two-way communication such as e-mails or chats, the average man interacts with only four people and the average woman with six. Among those Facebook users with 500 friends, these numbers are somewhat higher, but not hugely so. Men leave comments for 17 friends, women for 26. Men communicate with ten, women with 16.
What mainly goes up, therefore, is not the core network but the number of casual contacts that people track more passively. This corroborates Dr Marsden’s ideas about core networks, since even those Facebook users with the most friends communicate only with a relatively small number of them.
Put differently, people who are members of online social networks are not so much “networking” as they are “broadcasting their lives to an outer tier of acquaintances who aren’t necessarily inside the Dunbar circle,” says Lee Rainie, the director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, a polling organisation. Humans may be advertising themselves more efficiently. But they still have the same small circles of intimacy as ever.
One of the basic truths of the web is that you give up data to websites so you can use their services. This is true in particular of social networking sites like Facebook where the point is to share - ie to spread content. Once you let it go - you no longer have full control over your content online. The internet is interactive and other people are going to get involved.
People should realise that in this context, online privacy is a contradiction in terms. If you want to keep something truly private, don't post it online - that is the only basic rule to follow.
...anything you upload to Facebook can be used by Facebook in any way they deem fit, forever, no matter what you do later.* Want to close your account? Good for you, but Facebook still has the right to do whatever it wants with your old content. They can even sublicense it if they want.
You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof.
"We have to do it in the Facebook, with the Twittering, the different technology that young people are using today," Duncan ventured.
"Let me just say that I have 4,000 friends on Facebook," contributed Blackwell, putting his hand on Dawson's and Anuzis's knees. "That's probably more than these two guys put together, but who's counting, you know?" Acknowledged Saltsman: "I'm not sure all of us combined Twitter as much as Saul."
Anuzis claimed he had "somewhere between 2- and 3,000" Facebook friends, which prompted Blackwell to remind the audience that he has 4,000 friends on the social networking site by waving four fingers behind Anuzis's head.
The candidates were significantly more comfortable when asked how many guns they own. Duncan claimed four handguns and two rifles, Anuzis boasted of two, and Blackwell replied: "Seven -- and I'm good."
"In my closet at home," replied Saltsman, "I've got two 12-gauges, a 20-gauge, three handguns and a .30-06. And I'll take you on anytime, Ken."
The thing is, social media has rarely found its feet in online advertising. The extra data that exposing the social graph was supposed to provide has yet to translate into far more targeted advertising.
The Chicago Tribune is now reading Chapter Eleven
Jeff thinks he knows everything, but Roy knows better
Roger believes that bloggers should always be topless
Paul is happy to be reciting that monologue again
Ian is wondering if he will always be known for Wallcharts
Stephen has started the hat diet
Guido thinks he might be going soft
Sir Michael has been soft for a long time
Charles has commented on Jonathan and Russell again
Charles is now a fan of YouTube
Sam is now writing The Forty Six Steps
Charles has removed television from his list of interests
Roger Commented on Marina's new photo
Catherine joined the group I'm Feeling Hateful Again
Simon cannot believe that Franz Ferdinand has been shot
Roger and John and Simon are now friends with Paul, but Paul thinks they're all monologues
Henry has re-joined MI6
Nick is wondering why the world is so flat and has concluded that it is all the fault of PR
Robert is still a fan of his friend's books
Rod is thanking his lucky stars that despite the credit crunch there still is money to be made from fraying Victorian hemp
Richard is in Florida
Richard has added England to places he'd like to visit
Michael commented on David's new play
David is now online
David is now writing a play about the failure of the internet to bring about democracy
David is looking forward to the first night of his new play, Only Connect
Michael commented on David's new new play
Dylan is worried about the credit crunch
Robert is blogging
Roland is now friends with Robert
Peter is now friends with Robert and Roland and George
The Indy has joined the group Save the Chicago Tribune
Jeremy is still offline
Simon added Lohengrin to his Music I Like
Mark has joined the group I Love I-Player
Piers poked Simon
Simon poked Piers
Lionel is now friends with James and Rupert
Marjorie is frankly confused
The London Newspaper is thinking WHAT ON EARTH ARE THEY TALKING ABOUT?
The Guardian has moved
The king thinks Hamlet's annoying.
Laertes thinks Ophelia can do better.
Hamlet's father is now a zombie.
- - - -
The king poked the queen.
The queen poked the king back.
Hamlet and the queen are no longer friends.
Marcellus is pretty sure something's rotten around here.
Hamlet became a fan of daggers.
Mark confirmed that Facebook was investigating the possibility of launching a music application.
To make a really good music application you have to have access to music. We felt that because we are operating at a much larger scale than any of the developers at this point, right now at least, we felt like we had a good chance of helping someone negotiate to get access to the music necessary to create a good music application. That is the theory as to why we were exploring this.
MW: I don’t think that’s true. I think it is- if you’re on MySpace now, you’re a [expletive] cretin. And you’re not only a [expletive] cretin, but you’re poor. Nobody who has beyond an 8th grade level of education is on MySpace. It is for backwards people.
Jon Fine: What do you identify as the problem?
MW: Facebook.
