Balls to it! (a Whatley rant-a-thon)

EDIT - I've just finished this and felt the need to come back and add images and links and stuff.
The links I'm doing now... But no images fit right. So I've done a "Welcome Video".

Happy viewing....

....and I thanks for reading.

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Right - excuse me for a minute - I need to rant...

I tried to make this blog more about 'me' but that was because I was saving my mobile mutterings for my column over at SMS Text News. Well - that's fine - but I still have a lot to say on sodding social media tools - so excuse me while I just get a few things off my chest -

...as well as deliver some well-deserved self back slapping because this year, so far, has been friggin' awesome.

And yes I KNOW I'm yet to write up a whole load of stuff that I've been promising for AGES!
Well y'know what? Here's a summary:

San Francisco was awesome. You should all go. End of.
Social Networks through SpinVox. I made it. It's mine. Go get it now. You can SPEAK to your FACEBOOK!!!
Mobile Geeks of London III - I've lined it up for the end of Feb and will be issuing deets shortly.

Job done.

NEXT!

Right - here are some things that have been pissing me off annoying me (around the web) of late:

1) Gizmodo's Prank at CES.

This involved going round the event with a gadget that turns off TVs and ....turning off TVs.  Which is all well and good and funny the first two or three times. After that it becomes irritating. Annoying in fact. Special sympathies go out to the poor Motorola guy trying to give his presentation while some idiots continually turned off his plasmas. As much I can't stand Motorola handsets (they are rubbish), no one deserves this.
Not only that - but also apparently some key members of the blogosphere are NOT happy:

Already finding it difficult to gain respectability at these trade events it must be pretty frustrating to find you'd been given a bloody nose by the very people you'd count amongst your peers. I wouldn't be surprised if CES bans bloggers next year... Which would be a huge shame.

Anyway - the backlash against Gizmodo is already happening apparently - I'm just adding to it.. so let's see what the outcome is... They have apologised.. but whether that counts for anything now remains to be seen.

2) Facebook Events.

WHY OH WHY can I not just hit ONE BUTTON and sync my events on facebook with every other sodding calendar I have to keep? See Plaxo/Yahoo/Google/iCal/And any bloody S60 calendar app I tend to be running on my N95 right now...
WHY?!

Talk about a blinkin' walled garden. Apparently the walls are coming down. Well blow me if that's not about time. I wrote a piece (that I never published here but hacked it to pieces, updated it and edited the mobile parts of it together here for smstextnews) wayback in September detailing what a pain in the ass backside this was/is.

The piece (entitled 'Think of the Children') talked (well - the unpublished parts did anyway) about Jaiku and Twitter and how they can happily 'co-exist' within the industry... Hang on - Let me go get the quote:

I'm sorry if this is out of context - but you'll get the idea:

"The walled garden appproach that these services offer mean that interoperability between the competition* (*my definition of competition is anything that competes for my spare time - my Nintendo DS is competition for the book that I'm currently reading for example) is impossible.
Imagine if you will Yahoo Mail refusing to send your emails to a Hotmail (sorry - Windows Live) account and/or a Gmail account.. Ridiculous huh? But this is what is happening currently with MySpace/facebook.

The Operators/Carriers of this world have finally come round to the idea that interoperability is the way forward. A quick glance at any website proves this as I would imagine you'd be hard pushed to find a tariff that doesn't include Xnetwork minutes. Of course, this has not always been the case... but, eventually they (the operators) sat up and listened.
This is what the social networking sites of today should be working towards..

I'm a big fan of the micro-blogging service known as Jaiku. But more so am I a fan of one of the co-founders - Jyri Engelstrom.
He believes [or at least I think he does] in complete and open syncronosity across such services..
This is evident not just through recurring themes on his blog but also whenever he is asked the question:

'Which is better; Twitter or Jaiku?'

You would think that, if pressed, he would of course say 'Jaiku'. He would have to! Right? Wrong.
No. Jyri is an evangelist of co-existence... What do I mean?
Twitter works. Jaiku works. Why shouldn't they work together?
Why insist that the user must choose one or the other and not both?

Taking this theme and expanding on it... - Why can't I send a message from my facebook to my friend's myspace?
If I tag a photo on flickr why aren't my bebo friends notified?
One day, I hope, this will be the case... much like, as mentioned, how Xnetwork minutes are now 'as standard'. "

So yeah - interoperability (or lack thereof) really hacks me off..

But hey - while we're still on the subject of facebook (ish):

3) What the hell is facebook for anyway?

Well - a few things come to mind and it's probably a mixture of these things... (and this is good that I'm writing this down actually because I've been meaning to shoehorn this into a project at work for bloody ages now) ...right so:

Facebook - and I loathe that I'm dedicating blogspace to the ubiquitous behemoth that it is - but I need to:

There's the facebook fiends that go round collecting friends like I collect socks (and I do - H&M is my best friend when it comes to socks). Like those people I know from school who I never spoke to, who in fact probably wouldn't actually spit on me if I was on fire back then... They have NO PROBLEM with hitting the 'add friend' button on my profile! WTF?!

WHY?!

Were we friends at school? No - scrap that - ARE we friends NOW?! No.
(on this - have any of you hit the 'ignore' button on a friend request yet? Do it. It is SO empowering)

Maybe facebook needs to bring in hidden 'layered' friends:

• Friends who I know and love and see/speak to regularly
• People I work with
• Some bloke I met down the pub last night
• You who's name I don't actually remember who sat four tables away from me in Science class.
  

And YES I know that facebook has just introduced that stupid friend grouping thing etc but that's not the point.
Maybe it's my definition of the word 'friend' which - between you and me - I don't bandy about lightly...

Right so yeah - Facebook fiends. Adding friends like it's some kind of race. Well it ain't. So you lose.

Then there's the facebook address bookers. Now these people I don't really mind that much. Having read about them online a fair bit of late... these folk actually use the 'social tool' (that's right - it's a TOOL not a NETWORK, but we'll come back to that) for a single purpose and that is: As a very active contacts list.

What do I mean?

Well - instead of searching my contacts in outlook or in my N95 et al - I can search my 'friends list' on facebook and immediately glean a whole bunch of info about that person.

Email (do people still use this medium socially? I think I read somewhere that in 2007 email usage went down by about 80%. I think that figure could be wank rubbish. But still, food for thought) addresses, phone numbers, current status etc... ie: "Steve is planning beers tonight.." that there is a reason for me to call him.
Plus it gives you reminders about upcoming birthdays and events and such like as a personal contacts/diary would do so... but oh look..  We've come back to the walled garden thing again.
Grrr...

Ok - moving on from them - there's folk like me. The sharers. I've built my social network up around me using facebook and now I use this tool for one function (as I am growing to dislike the site somewhat of late) and that is to share cool things I find online with my non-geeky friends.

I mean - I can share links through my Google reader to the 10 or so people that care to read or I can send a TinyURL out to the 50 or so people who are following me on Twitter... OR I can use my Jaiku to do something similar but ultimately - by using the social tool of choice (facebook) - I can share anything cool I find with over 400 of my friends/acquaintances/business contacts/etc... so of late, that's all I've been doing. Sharing.

Incidentally -

'Share' is going to be THE theme of 2008.

In every sense of the word. That's what I think anyway.
This is based a whole bunch of shit great stuff I've seen happening in '007 and in the first ten days of '008.
I'll prolly expand upon this another time - already I feel like I've written bloody loads. But who cares... it's my first proper post of the year - allow me a little self indulgence already!

Ok - coming back to the thing about facebook...

4) It's a Social TOOL - not a SOCIAL NETWORK!

As I've previously stated, I'm a huge fan of Jyri Engelstrom, creator of not only Jaiku but also the dude to first come up with the theory of Social Objects. I could explain what they are - but Hugh MacLeod, he of Gaping Void fame (read his website - it will change your life) has already nailed it to the wall better than I ever could. So go.
Read. Read some more. And get yourself an education.

EDIT - someone else who gets it: Russell Beattie

So yeah - facebook is a social TOOL. People throw objectives like: "We need to make money out of these social networks..."

To the point actually where recently I was unfortunate enough to be invited along to the Telecommunications Executive Network evening (a 'TEN' event) which was subtitled:

"Social Networking: What's Telcoms got to do with it?"

And it was all tally ho and where's the money and ad-sales this and monetization that... but everyone just seemed to miss the effing point.

To the point where I raised it as a question:

"Good evening. James Whatley, SpinVox... There's a school of thought that the money is not in fact in Social Networks but in fact Social Objects. Here we are in this room and I know maybeeee... one or two people here. They aren't in my social network and I doubt very much that I am in theirs. But here we all are gathered here tonight around this Social Object. The network builds itself around it. The money, therefore... is in the object. Not the network. If you build it they will come. Your comments please?"

Well - that went down a treat!
(especially as the last question of the evening!)

The following exchange:

The guy from Ogilvy: "Is that yours? I'm stealing it..."
Me: "Er no. Actually it's Jyri Engelstrom's. Co-founder of Jaiku..."
Ogilvy: "Ah.. see! Another Aggregation site!"

AN AGGREGATION SITE?! AAAAAAAAARGH!

That. Says. It. All.

*sigh*

Ahem - anywhoo - that was a lovely evening.. :)

I was clearly the youngest person in the room and yet I felt completely out of my depth.
And in this instance being OUT of my depth meant swimming around in the shallows...

But hey - let's not bitch moan - it was a very good evening... and I was known at the canapés afterwards as 'The Social Object Guy' which was quite amusing...

But yeah - Social Objects. They are what form the foundations of Social Networks. Plant the seed of a network with a Social Gesture from your Social Object.

Again - as Hugh Macloed rightly points out - it ain't Rocket Science.

I seem to have gone off on a tangent... Where were we? Oh yeah - things that are annoying me online...
Err... I've had my Mobile Web Rant elsewhere... and I've raged about facebook to the nth degree...
What else...

Hmm.

No. I think that's it.

I'm done.

For now anyway...