Instagram, the Better Twitter?

I like Twitter for following interesting people and entities. But lately, I've taken to Instagram more because it can also be interesting and more visually pleasing since each post has a picture telling a story.

I know Twitter has updated features to display images in web and mobile apps now, but most tweets do not have any picture whatsoever-- even though tweets with pictures have twice the amount of engagements over those that do not have a picture. See: 10 Surprising New Twitter Stats to Help You Reach More Followers.

So it's possible for Instagram to have many of Twitter's features, but none of its limitations. This raises the question: Can Instagram be a better Twitter?

Twitter

I've been using Twitter since about 2006, when they first came out. But after about a year I closed my account because I thought it was stupid and represented more of a firehose of information that I couldn't possibly read. In 2008, one year later, I reopened my account.

I returned because Twitter had matured a bit and represented a more open way to communicate than Facebook-- which then and even to this day is more for personal friends and family than the entire Internet. So in a way you could say there was something I liked about Twitter that made me rejoin.

I also learned from some social media experts how to ease it to be sips instead gushes of water going up my nose with a Tweetdeck client. Anyone remember when this client app would have a notification sound and popup for every new tweet? It was going off every few minutes and was quite distracting and annoying. @GuyKawasaki, I'm looking at you here.

What brought me back was the amount of real time, informative, and interesting posts that people were tweeting. There was only so many baby and party pictures I could take seeing on Facebook-- hopefully not at the same time.

However, there are two things that bother me about Twitter:

1. The 140 character limit
2. Horrible for conversations

The biggest gripe I have about Twitter is the 140 character total limit. Twitter handle(s), links (shortened), hashtags, and the link to the picture all eat into this limit-- not to mention the actual tweet of what you want to say.

I understand the history of the why there's a limit, but it's just really becoming outdated now-- does anyone still send/receive tweets via SMS?

We are a media rich Internet, and although tweets are easier to read than long posts, let the community decide if what's being presented in a tweet post is too long or not-- not by this hard 140 character limit. Twitter is digging itself further into a hole.

I know many embrace this limit, saying that it requires that tweets are succinct and to the point-- which definitely has some truth to it. A vertical scrolling stream of tweets can fit more with this limitation. But it also invites many to create link bait text-- the kind computers are so good at generating now.

Conversations are really horrible on Twitter, much to do with every character in a Twitter handle counting towards the 140 character limit. Yet so many still try to hold conversations on it.

Instagram

A while ago, I didn't like Instagram (IG). Similar to Twitter, I closed my account, and about a year later opened a new account with a new handle: @sunpechphoto (They don't allow you to reopen closed accounts). I now find IG to have a higher level of engagement-- possibly because every post has a picture and the community is just there to absorb in the pictures, hashtags, and even to a small degree whatever description is there.

However, there are several things I find annoying about the culture on Instagram:

1. Hashtag overload
2. Web links aren't clickable
3. Mobile first centric
4. Low resolution pictures (612 pixels)

The typical post on Instagram has an absurd amount hashtags-- which isn't really human readable by any means once it's beyond 4-5 tags. I find it to be rather stupid when the majority of an Instagram post are hashtags that I wouldn't ever look up to begin with. But the numbers don't lie, 11+ hashtags leads to more interactions. See: 8 Surprising New Instagram Statistics to Get the Most out of the Picture Sharing Network

Any web links that are in the posts and comments aren't clickable. This makes it incredibly hard to push traffic anywhere else-- it's like IG is the final destination once you get there. I think it would be hard for a business to link a product's picture right to their digital storefront.

Instagram is a mobile focused service. Currently you cannot even sign up for an account on their website-- you must have a smartphone with their mobile app downloaded to get started. Once you have an account you can login and see your stream on the website, but it's mostly in read-mode, as you won't be able to upload any pictures except from the mobile app.

The low resolution picture limitation on Instagram is going to bite them in the butt later. They only allow lower resolution square pictures to be uploaded, max size of 612x612 pixels. Sure it's nice for mobile and smaller screens, but what about the future when the term mobile goes away and we just simply have a complete experience of viewing pictures and information anywhere-- phone, door, wall, refrigerator, car, etc. A time and place where 612 pixels isn't a high enough quality to scale up to larger resolutions.

Also see: Instagram is embracing its inner Twitter

Final Thoughts

By no means is Instagram in its current form is the great end-all-be-all of social networks. I think there's plenty of room for improvements based off the list of dislikes above. But Instagram seems to be the "active" community where as a non-celebrity you can find an audience to enjoy and engage your posts.

See: Twitter has almost 430 million inactive users

Instagram is very straight forward to use. It's an app to upload and share pictures with everyone. You can make of it what you want with little of the limitations that Twitter has imposed on their service. It seems then that Instagram can grow to be the better Twitter if they improve and current trends continue. Instagram already has video clip capability like Vine, but again without the many of the limits. See: Instagram Video Vs. Vine: What’s The Difference?

Also see: Execs At Instagram Believe They Will Soon Eclipse Twitter As They Head Toward 1 Billion Users

Many would argue that they are two separate social networks and comparing them is like deciding between eating an apple or an orange-- that it is all a matter of preference. Which I do agree with, to some degree. It's not an either/or situation where there can be only one.

But to me, it's about presentation.

The analogy I would put forward is making a speech in front of a group. You could go up and verbally say all that you want with a 5 minute limit, with little to no slides-- which is like Twitter.

For Instagram, you would be to go up with slides to help illustrate your points with a 45 minutes limit, not a measly 5 minutes. This by far seems like a better format for a presentation-- no hard limits.

This all said, the communities are vastly different. I definitely tweet a lot more, but most of which never get retweeted or favorited. See: Sad Tweets shows you all of your biggest Twitter fails. The experience of Instagram is more rewarding per post, as it seems to reach someone that's willing to engage. For me, that makes all the difference.


Above: Screenshots of the Jessica Alba's recent Instagram and Twitter posts. Engagement on Instagram far higher than Twitter.

Cleaning Up Old Social Accounts

A week ago I deleted my Instagram and Path accounts.

Today I was able to delete an old Facebook account I created in 2006 when I was in graduate school. After graduating, I not only lost access to that email address, but also forgot the password and even the email address! It was one of those school accounts that auto generates an email address based on first letter of first name, followed by however many more characters of the last name. The formula: [firstname initial][first x characters of lastname]@students.depaul.edu.

So for me, it was always hard to remember since my last name has sixteen characters! I didn't know where it stopped... ssuwata@students.depaul.edu? ssuwatan? ssuwatana? It's doubly hard to remember since email is commonplace now. Back in the mid 90s, school email addresses might be many student's first email address to be widely used.

The problem with forgetting the email address and password, is that these pieces of information are required if you want to delete your Facebook (FB) account. However, it seems a while ago FB implemented a vanity login/url for everyone. This old account was eventually migrated with the vanity url in plain view. It used the simple formula firstname.lastname in place of the email address for login.

I used that and guessed at the old password as was successful in logging into my old account! I then checked out all the friend requests that I was never able to respond to and went about to deactivate/delete my account. I am pleased I was able to delete this seven year old account that contained some of my information and wasn't under my control.

But this does raise privacy and security issues.

• What about others who forgot their email address/passwords, and/or even email addresses they no longer have access to (such as school emails)?
• Should old social network accounts float out there forever, if the user can't get back into their account?
• The auto migration to facebook vanity logins of the formula: firstname.lastname?

These are some nasty defaults from the university and Facebook. The university's default got me into it, and Facebook's default got me out.

The reason I cleaned up these social media accounts is not because I dislike the service or anything-- but simply because I am no longer active on those accounts. I see no reason to keep them and my connections on them active if they're virtually dead. Although this piece, Why I’m Quitting Instagram by Ryan Block is a fascinating read.

I also feel uncomfortable with having my data that is out of my control-- at least having it seem that way.

A while ago I used TextAmerica for moblogging with pictures. This was before there was Instagram, Twitpic, yFrog, etc. This was even before iPhones and Android devices. But I eventually stopped using the service and they eventually went under. I wondered, what did they do with my data? I don't recall being given any notice that they were disappearing. Thankfully, they did end up deleting old free account data.

So, when it comes to unused accounts with my personal data, I rather take a pro-active approach to deleting my accounts. One of the things I look for when I sign up for any new service, free or pay, is how easy is it for me to walk out-- to remove/delete the account.

How awful would it be if in the real world, you can walk into a store, but then don't know how to navigate your way out?

For example-- Ikea. I love their products. They're affordable, decently made, and most of all-- I don't feel bad if I have to throw them out or give them away once I no longer need the table, shelf, or whatever. However, I can't stand the layout of the place. If you've ever been to an Ikea, the place is built like a maze with sections and little shortcuts everywhere. I always have to make long walks to find the few things I want to get. I do end up staying longer than I want to, but so does everyone else-- causing lines and shortage of staff to go around! I seem to have a love/hate relationship with Ikea.

Anyway, I do feel cleaner.

Related posts:

• The History of Social Networks Part 1
• The History of Social Networks Part 2

Twitter Lists

This blog post has two sections.

For the past two days, I've been slowly reorganizing and curating my Twitter lists. After completing the task, I sent out a tweet as follows:

Twitter needs a better UI for managing lists. The click and checkbox list is just horrible.
— Steven S. (@sunpech) February 20, 2012

What I was tweeting about how there is a dropbox-like feature that makes organizing (add/remove) twitter accounts to various lists very cumbersome. The screenshot below only shows the first step of several just to get the process started for EACH TWITTER ACCOUNT I want to edit. It's a real pain in the butt.



It almost makes me not want to keep lists even. It's certainly not a feature I use myself since I use Tweetdeck and have a small-ish number of people I follow (less than 500)-- everyone is in a single scrolling column.

End of section 1. Point: Twitter List UI/UX* sucks.

Onto section 2....

Soon after my tweet, a twitter follower pointed me to Zach Holman's blog post, Don't Give Your Users Shit Work. I agree with many of the points Zach points out, that social web software shouldn't make it a pain to maintain circles/lists/groups-- the shit work. The software needs to be smart in making default common groups, and being able to decide where friends/contacts go-- smart work.

I disagree in the following situations:

1. When there isn't enough good meta info of a contact to place in a proper lists.
2. When the list isn't for private use. It's for public use.

The first point, when there isn't great meta info for the software, the list needs further human curation. The software may not be able to decide the best list to place the contact.

For example, you've connected with someone on Facebook that's not connected to your network, school, work, or any group. You are close friends, but there are no initial indications that says otherwise. You would need to manually add them to your "Close Friends" group.

The second point is the most important, when the lists being maintained isn't even for your personal use, but rather for public consumption. The lists that I've generated I do not use whatsoever. They're purely for others to view and follow if they feel that it would be of interest to them. 

For example: Chicago entities. I selected user-groups/meetups/entities in Chicago that I like and put them in a list. Twitter doesn't know that is the purpose of the list I just created. It's not a list I personally use since all my tweets are in a single column in Tweetdeck. The list is for someone who possibly thinks I know something or that I have good taste, and would like to follow what I think are good Chicago tweeple.

My point is that it's not shit work nor smart work. It's just work that needs human thought and time to accomplish. Maybe my work is all for nothing, that no one finds it useful. I can live with that.

* = UI is User Interface. UX is User Experience.

Interest in Pinterest?

Last week I signed up for Pinterest. I've used it a bit, but haven't been that enthusiastic about it. I think it's interesting, but I definitely have some concerns if I could be a good user of their service.



For those of you unfamiliar with what I would call a new social-thing-sharing-service, from their website:

Pinterest is a virtual pinboard. Pinterest allows you to organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. You can browse pinboards created by other people to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests.
People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and share their favorite recipes.

Just from their own description, they used the terms: beautiful things, weddings, home decorations, and recipes. None of this really applies to me! I mean, yes, I do like beautiful things, designs, art-- such as t-shirts, men's fashion, photography, artwork, and various tech gears, but I find myself wondering how much I would really want to share.

Let me explain.

I like what I like, it's my style or culture and whatnot. I'm unsure if I would want others to try to copy my style. I already don't like it for the rare occurrences when I meet anyone who has the exact same t-shirt I do.

Don't get me wrong, I love sharing knowledge such as interesting links, videos, articles, blogs, pictures, etc with my various social networks. But these aren't intimate in this real world such as personal fashion and style. Imagine if a friend decked out their living room to be so similar to yours because they saw some of the things you just pinned up. Or worse, they decked it out better than you did.

I know this is unlikely to happen. Or is it? Already, maybe once a year I see someone wearing the exact same t-shirt I have. It's certainly not the end of the world, but it does make me glad that I didn't wear that exact t-shirt out that day.

So I ask, what incentive do I have to share what I consider to be something of personal taste that can be copied widely by others in my social circles?

Maybe I have it wrong. I love reading and sharing reviews on Amazon products I love. I also do reviews on my very own blog. That helps a person make a decision in buying the item if they come across it on Amazon or even my own site. But I suppose a slight advantage to doing that is because I'm an Amazon Affiliate, where any clicks-thru purchases helps put money in my pocket.

Maybe my real issue is that it's very much tied to what would be a very real social network. And because there is a specialized social network, it can be effectively used for specific interests. I wonder if my Amazon Affiliate link, when pinned to my board will be stripped my affiliate identification, and replaced with Pinterest's?

Anyway, I'm not saying this service is horrible or anything. I actually think it's very good. But I'm just not feeling it after one week of using it.

Google Plus is for Geeks

Google Plus (G+) is for geeks. It's how it is now, and I think that's how it's going to be going forward, more or less.

I've been using G+ now for about a month. I scored an invite early on, and a few days later invited a good chunk of people from my Gmail contacts. I went through the process of making circles, refining the circles, installing the add-ons into my Chrome browser, and so forth. Basically, I did just about everything most power G+ users would do, minus adding thousands of people into circles. I personally don't see how Robert Scoble can read and sort through the tens of thousands of posts he must be getting daily. But he's a true G+ freak power user.

The first few rounds of invites really went out to the bloggers, social media giants, and digeratis. For the most part, they like it. I certainly like it. And this group all should. The community and ecosystem resembles FriendFeed (FF). For those of you who are unfamiliar with FF, it was basically a once popular real-time feed aggregator that pulled from many social media and networking sites. It was popular among the very same crowd that's using G+ now. Many call it FriendFeed 2.0.

I see that many people that I invited, just don't use it. They either don't get it, don't care for it, or don't want to bother with yet-another-social-network. Whatever the case may be, I can see that they're not generating visible content. Facebook (FB) and Twitter seems to be doing business as usual. But G+ has the very niche users: the geeks. Bloggers, photographers, software developers, entrepreneurs, techies, etc... are all generating content daily.

Honestly, this all feels very familiar to me. It's as though I've been here before....

I remember back in 1998/1999. I was an undergraduate still. Many of my friends were either in high school or also in college. I really liked ICQ as an instant messager (IM). Their software was far superior to AOL's AIM in terms of functionality. But it didn't get widely adopted amongst my American friends. Too many people were stuck with AOL as an internet service provider (ISP). By default they didn't adopt ICQ because AIM was already available to them, which all their friends were using. Instead AIM became the popular standard, and AOL eventually bought out ICQ, which turned into a bloated software with less support.

Remember when Gmail first came out in 2004? Previous to this spectacular email service, there was AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo, and various other options. I remember the tech elite being the first to jump onto Gmail beta and use it. Sure Gmail in 2011 is popular (and out of beta since 2009), but despite that, there are still plenty of people still on AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo, and even Comcast for email. Sometimes I wish I could stage an email intervention for those still using non-Gmail services. For the most part, people didn't switch to Gmail because of the cost of losing their email, the burden of updating their contacts, unable to think of email as conversations, the different user interface/experience (UI/UX), or even trusting Google, and I'm sure other costly reasons.

Going back into FriendFeed just a few years ago. I considered FF to be one of the best web apps that no one used. The weakness that FF had was that unless a user generated content from Twitter, their own blog, or other not-so-popular social network with an RSS feed, the service wouldn't be of much use. FriendFeed got bought by Facebook in 2009, to which it then turned into a ghost town because development and support ended.

From these three cases, we have examples of:

1. Popularity beating functionality.
2. Switch-over cost being perceived as being too high.
3. Inability to fully utilize a great service because it's not a fit.

And they are all valid reasons. Well, maybe not the Gmail one... Sorry, I'm incredibly biased towards Gmail, I love it so much!

I see all these reasons being applicable as to why Google Plus may not be a true competitor to Facebook or even Twitter. As a G+ user, I think it's already a better ecosystem than FB and Twitter. G+ has better interactions and a richer UI/UX than Twitter. The content is far better than what most FB users posts-- at least in my experience, which may differ from yours. But none of the examples would apply to geeks in general. Geeks are natural early adopters of new things and technology.

G+ a fresh start that improves upon Twitter and Facebook, althougth it still has quite a few kinks to work out and improve on. As far as I'm concerned, the G+ can just as easily stand for Geek+.

The History of Social Networks Part 2

In The History of Social Networks Part 1, I covered the legacy social networks that I was once a part of. I use the term legacy to mean out-dated, unpopular, and in some cases discontinued.

Now I'm going to cover the current social networks that I am active on today. I guess you can say that these are my picks, for now.

Facebook

I remember when I first heard about Facebook. It was probably from my youngest sister and another friend, both of which were in college still-- around maybe 2004 or 2005. I had already graduated and was working. I was also in graduate school at Depaul University. I kept hearing so much from these two about this new sites, which were supposedly better than anything else out there.

I admit I didn't have much interest in it since the primary users were college kids. It was a network I had long departed from for two to three years already. Eventually, I did sign up for it when I finally got around to signing up for the optional school email address. This was a time Facebook only allowed people with school email addresses to be part of their social network. This was maybe 2005 or 2006.

Facebook still didn't capture much of my interest. It may have been because blog sites such as Xanga were all the rage, especially for the eldest of the Generation-Y and most of Generation-X. Not to mention I was still blogging on my personally written blog.

Up until 2010, I used it a lot for contact management, posting and sharing interesting links of videos, articles, and pictures. I added pretty much everyone, and sought out everyone to be facebook friends. I use it quite a bit today, reluctantly. Facebook used to be fun for me, back when I had 200-400 friends on it. I could pay attention to the main feed as well as comment on people's post comfortably, without having to scroll through too much. After 600 plus friends, it no longer is the case for me. I have accepted too many friends, most of which the content shared is of low quality in my honest opinion.

This is easily the biggest social network in existence today. It used to be a network for college friends, but has since ballooned into the very social platform that everyone is expected to be on, and has spread across into other websites as the default login and identity.

Twitter

I've been on Twitter since it first started in 2006. Back then I tried it, I didn't get it, and I just unregistered my account (@sunpech). About two years later, in 2008 I tried it again (reactivating my account) after attending a social media event, where I was recommended to use Tweetdeck to help manage the stream of noise. I mean, that's how I saw it back then, noise-- it was like drinking water from a firehouse. Too much, too fast, with very small amount of signal or interest. In other words, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) was too low. But thanks to Tweetdeck, it helped me manage my interest stream/lists, who to follow, and how to tweet easily. That, and I had to unfollow @guykawasaki, as that account tweets way too much.

As I've seen people tweet,

Facebook is for friends and family. Twitter is for interests.

I think this is very true. Well, at least the last sentence is.

Facebook is a mess, and interestingly enough, pure noise to me, while Twitter is everything of interest to me. It has it's own culture, limitations (140 character tweets), and community. I should give a special mention to Google Reader, although it's not really a social platform, it's a fantastic reader. Twitter very much compliments Google Reader in terms of what I read and pay attention to every single day.

Picasa
I was a Flickr user, but their desktop software wasn't as good as Picasa, so I made the switch to use the latter as my main photo application. I would say these two are the two popular photo social networks currently. I almost feel as though the rivalry between these two are like Canon vs Nikon. In the end, they're both good, very popular, but in the end it just comes down to what you want out of each. I think Flickr has a better community than Picasa, but Picasa is just far superior software, and plus they don't limit how much you can upload to your album each month.

I know about Instagram, but it's iPhone only for now. Perhaps I shouldn't say this until an Android app comes out, but I will say it anyway: I don't get why its users take such awful photos with the crazy ugly filters. The pictures of food on it make me lose my appetite. There's a time and place for the vintage photo filters, and most of the time, is not it.

LinkedIn
The social network for professionals: LinkedIn. I've been on it for a while, but never really used it for anything. I find that it's a ecosystem full of recruiters who blindly want to connect and spam you with job offers. I hope to one day fully utilize the site, as other job sites I've used lack the human/face element of a company-to-employee relationship. I think the professional social network has a lot of potential, just so long as they stick to being pure professional, and not try to deviate from that core.

Foursquare
I had a Gowalla account before I used Foursquare. What won me over was how Foursquare had apps for my Android device, as well as Blackberry and iPhone. Gowalla, like many other companies, only had an iPhone app. I think that's what prevented them from find the success that Foursquare found by releasing for all platforms at the same time. I'm not saying Gowalla is legacy or bad in any way, I just think, they would have done better if they approached the check-in, location-based social network like Foursquare did, by pushing all smarphone platforms.

I think Foursquare is still going through a lot of growth. There was a period of time in 2010 that I swore off from using the service, and started to use Yelp just because their service had better uptime during peak hours. But it wasn't until when I was in Bangkok, Thailand, did I notice the power of Foursquare. Because it's powered by the users, in that any user can add a location to the service, that it was so immensely popular in Bangkok. Yelp, unfortunately did not have a presence in Thailand at all.

Foodspotting

I would describe Foodspotting as a social network for foodies that is picture-driven. I think this is a great example of how the future of social networks isn't in one huge social network for all, but rather in specific and very niche markets. Foodspotting is obviously catered towards foodies that take pictures of their food, that is their culture.

Initially they only had an iPhone app, but in March 2011, they finally released an Android app-- so I was finally able to join and contribute from my phone.

Google Plus (G+)

This is the newest social network from the search giant Google. It's not quite open to the public, but I'm using it as a beta user currently. I often think of Google's rather disappointing past attempts at social networks: Google Buzz, Google Latitude and Dodgeball, and Orkut.

Things I would like to see with G+ is better integration with Google Reader, Music, Maps, Blogger, and Picasa. Although the latter is somewhat already the case.

I consider G+ to be a nice medium between Twitter and Facebook. Circles is a fantastic way to organize friends, and although many would say that the same feature is in Facebook, I would argue that's not quite true. With Facebook, when you friend someone, by default it's mutual, and the relationship is immediately two-way.

On G+, and even Twitter, by default it's initially one-way-- someone can follow you, but you don't have to follow back. This is a fantastic noise control. I hope to blog more about this in a post all it's own.

Spotify
I haven't been so excited about a music driven social site since Lala. I really enjoy discovering new music and playlists, and overall storing it all in the cloud. That was what Lala was before Apple bought them and closed them down. I was pretty mad at Apple for shutting down such an awesome service that was still in it's infancy. But anyway, Spotify has made it's way into the US now, and I jumped on from day one pretty much, and immediately jumped to paying a premium account.

Since the birth of the mp3, music has long had it's hand in the social network. People just want to share/steal music. However the record labels has made all of that troublesome. But all of that could be a different blog post all together.



What does the future hold? It's hard to say. But looking at the history, at least my history, of social networks, we can see a few things:

1. Social networks, like all popular things in the real world, they come and go.
2. The very niche social networks are becoming popular or at least seem to have staying power .
3. There are still new social networks and communities to be discovered.

The Internet is very much about connecting not just information, but people and their interests. The traditional social networks that tries to be everything, I think will soon discover that they can't do a good job to please everyone. Users will find a better hangout that delivers a better social platform for their specific interests.

The History of Social Networks Part 1

Paul Adams has an insightful presentation: The Real Life Social Network. It's a great read, but it is a little long (224 slides)! Basically, he points out that the social network isn't a fad, that it's here to stay, and he goes through to talk about how relationships are, online/offline, behaviors, etcetera. Check it out if you have some time.

Since I started using computers, there's always been a yearning to connect with others online-- through a social network in some way, shape, or form. I think it's come a long way, considering I've been using the Internet for nearly twenty years! I want to share with everyone, my history of social networks. I was not a part of every one, but I can tell you about a great many that I was.

Here are my legacy social networks, in chronological order (to the best of my knowledge):

America Online (AOL)
Before AOL, my sisters and I used Prodigy and then Compuserve to get "online". There were bulletin boards that you could post to back then, as there were no browser back then-- at least I don't recall there being any. This was during the time period between 1993 to 1995, I was barely a teenager then.

We switched over to AOL because there was a social aspect to it. You could build a profile for yourself and chat with your friends on the very first instant messenger (IM). There were also live chat rooms (no video/audio of course).  You logged in via the software interface given by the Internet Service Provider (ISP), and that was it. I never really used IRC back then. This was the social network 1.0 to me.

Asian Avenue

I probably joined Asian Avenue my freshman year in college in 1997. I'm pretty sure my Canadian-Chinese roommate got me on it. It was a social network for Asians obviously. The site is still alive today, but it's very different from how it was back then. My account no longer exists, as they terminated it without giving me any notice. I just recall it being somewhat of a game where the number of visits to your profile was rewarded with points that you could use to get a free Asian Ave hat, t-shirt, or some other prize. I never got enough points to get anything.

Geocities
This was barely a social network, as it was a place you could set up a basic website for  yourself. I used this to start looking into HTML and post tons of animated GIFs of Dragonball Z characters. Hey, it was 1998! Today, the site is closed. Oh how I wish I could see my first webpage I designed! It's worth mentioning because many of my friends had an Asian Ave site, but also a Geocities one they would link to.

Classmates.com
I'm no longer a part of this social network-- if that's what it's intention was. I can't even remember how I got onto this network back in college even. It may have been through email circulation. I don't recall using it for anything whatsoever. I do recall getting tons of spammy emails though. I probably signed up for this around 2000/2001, and removed my account a few years later.

Friendster
I would consider Friendster the first social network that the masses of people actually used and became immensely popular. The problem was that it grew so much and so fast that their servers could not handle the load. It was down often or the site loaded very slowly. Soon enough people were messaging each other to leave and go try MySpace, where they said the site actually worked.

Friendster is still alive today, although I think it's weird how their login allows you to sign in with your Facebook account. I deleted my account shortly after joining Facebook, right around 2006.

MySpace
I was part of this social network for about... six months before deleting my account. I just got tired of all the requests from strangers to connect, not to mention MySpace had the ugliest site of all time. The culture, the way the masses abandoned Friendster for it-- overall, as a user, it was a shady social network to be a part of.

I disliked how so many companies and movie studios flocked to open up a webpage here. MySpace was getting more hits than Google at one point. Looking back now, it's understandable why companies ran to set up a movie site there. It's because they want a presence there and to be able to connect with their customers.

hi5
This was a social network that many of my Thai friends used. I don't think it caught on much with my other US friends. I left this site after realizing only my Thai friends were really using it. I think many Thais, starting in 2009/2010, started to leave hi5 for Facebook too.

FriendFeed
I like to consider FriendFeed the best social network that most people never knew about, or used. It was pretty isolated to just bloggers, social media giants, and techies. The service basically pulled all the different feeds (blogs, photo streams, tweets, etc), and put them into one.

It never really hit mainstream, but that was what was great about it. It had culture and community all it's own. Sadly though, they were bought out by Facebook in 2009, and since has become a ghost town.

orkut
Google launched orkut around 2004. They created a lot of buzz (excuse the pun) around it by making it invite-only. A lot of people wanted to join, but they wanted to have it grow organically by only allowing members to to invite others with limited invites. This somewhat led to their demise as Facebook just got bigger and bigger at the time because most college email addresses were allowed in.

I wanted to get into orkut so badly back then. Once I did get in, when they opened it up to everyone, it was already too late. Everyone seemed to have lost interest. Why would anyone want to be part of a social network that barely any of their friends were on? At least in the US it never took off. I still have my account on there, but it's meaningless to me-- and I'm assuming most of my friends that even bothered to join.


These legacy social networks are either closed or ghost towns of what they formally were. I'll have a part 2 of this where I'll talk about the current social networks I'm a part of now.

What's next for Social Media?: GPS-enabled applications

There are some really cool GPS applications out there that are about to push the boundaries of technology and social media as we know it. I remember years ago when I shared a link to Loopt with friends, pretty much everyone didn't like the idea of sharing that much information with each other. Today, I already have a few friends jumping onto to use such an app. Google has now also released a similar application out called Google Latitude, but based on their Google login system. I also just finished manually updating my G1 phone to use RC33, just so I could be one of the first to use the app.

What I'm a little surprised about is how Facebook doesn't have a social GPS application of their own. Loopt already ties in to both Facebook and Twitter status feeds. But there is so much untapped potential with what can be done with users that choose to interact using these applications. Imagine a service that is able to provide relevant ads or suggestions based on your location? The sky is literally the limit to what can be achieved.

Links:

• How to manually update T-Mobile G1 phone firmware to RC33

Facebook to become the new AOL?

I used to use Prodigy as my Internet Service Provider (ISP) back in the 1990s. It was fun to post to bulletin boards and participate in various discussions. I then jumped over to use America Online (AOL) because of it's nicer interface, live chat rooms, email, instant messaging, buddy lists, and overall better features. To be honest, back then I used the Internet for two things: to talk about wrestling and find Dragonball Z pictures.

 

Today, I find myself hooked on Facebook. I'm just fascinated with reading up on friends' profiles, what they're doing, events, birthdays, pictures, etc. In many ways, it's everything that I used to use AOL for, and more. If Web 2.0 is the current version of the web, then Facebook is basically AOL 2.0. Of course I don't mean this literally, because then we'd be going back quite a few versions.



With Facebook, I can:

• Send/Receive Messages (like Email)
• Maintain a social network (buddy list)
• IM with friends (Chat)
• Join discussion groups (bulletin boards)
• Play games

I enjoy Facebook, but I do wonder if it will go the ways of AOL. Although it's a hot startup right now, I wonder what if their business is truly sustainable. There are so many social networks out there (MySpace, Friendster, Hi5). And there are other similar services (Twitter, FriendFeed, Digg), many of which operate on a more open network. What I mean by that is that Facebook requires users to login and only upon login to view and use their services. Although this provides a certain level of community and security/anonymity, it's far from being open which is what the Web is all about.

Having a closed network promotes the idea that only their users will benefit from their services. I like how they offer services to share links found on the web with a simple click (Heck, I use it!), but it seems to only drive traffic into Facebook, and not anywhere else. I feel many business minds out there are thinking What's wrong with that? That's great! What company wouldn't want to do that where all arrows point inwards?!

I'll tell you what's wrong, it doesn't contribute to making the web any better. The sharing that takes place is centralized on the here and now. Since when can we search to find that interesting post a friend shared from 3 months back? And even if we could find it, how can we share that with anyone else outside of Facebook users?

For instance, I would like to be able to download all my friends' contact information and store it in my Blackberry. But the current privacy setup prevents any application from getting to such information. I'm sure many privacy advocates love that idea, but if such information was to be really kept private, why publish it to be shared amongst your closest 100+ friends to begin with? The important thing is not how it acts by default, but that there is no option to turn it on, to share this information in such a way. The same can be said with picture sharing.

But maybe I'm just jumping the gun a little too soon here. Maybe down the road they will open up their network some more and play with everyone else a little bit more. Hopefully that will occur while people are still interested in them and not on the next fad.

Interesting Reads:

• Facebook is the New AOL
• Facebook is Not the New AOL