Words to Lyrics Ben Ho's observations from the cloud

26 September 2011

Timelines

Filed under: I Wonder,Tech — Tags: , , — Ben @ 9:04 am

Perhaps the biggest piece of news to come out of f8, Facebook’s annual developer conference is the introduction of Timeline, a new design of the profile page. If you haven’t seen what it looks like, here is mine:

Facebook Timeline

Timeline is a new way of showing and sharing information to friends. The cover allows you to show a large picture that ‘represents you best’ in addition to your profile picture, and there are many new items that form the timeline, including new categories of post, and expanded outputs from applications via Open Graph. It expands the capabilities of what apps can do.

One thing that happens now as a result of Timeline, is that it is now easier to revisit older content of one’s Facebook profile. Facebook already begun to do this with the ‘On this day in 2010’ boxes in the sidebar. It has generated some interesting comments from my friends! There is a caveat to this though.

I’m sure many of you have heard of stories where employers check social media profiles of their staff regularly, exposing questionable actions to their colleagues. There are also stories of HR checking over potential employees, and that one post could mean not getting a job! While it could be said that this a danger of Timeline, it does make it easier to edit past content.

For past posts, Timeline only shows the most important posts. Obviously these are determined by an algorithm, possibly taking into account the number of responses to a post. But employers could learn quickly to find posts hidden from view, that could undermine a candidate’s standing.

I’m guessing that we could see soon the mass editing of past posts; akin to rewriting the past. You know what? It is just like the Ministry of Truth rewriting all the newspapers! (In case it wasn’t obvious, I am a huge fan of Nineteen Eighty-Four.) Timeline allows to backdate posts, allowing you to make you look like you did not have that drunken night out. I could remove all those embarrassing and meaningless status updates! The opportunities are limitless here. In fact, Timeline allows you to add posts right up to your birth date. Have the childhood you never had, at least online.

I wonder what you all think about Timeline and its potential. Would you rewrite your past? Or are you tired of Facebook constantly changing? For every person who likes Timeline, there will always be someone who loathes it.

18 January 2011

The “Happy Birthday! BH” Phenomenon

Filed under: I Wonder,Reflection — Tags: , — Ben @ 10:38 pm

What do you do when it’s someone’s birthday? Well the least you could do is say Happy Birthday to them. However most people find it convenient to have Facebook remind them it’s a friend’s birthday on a particular day, and simply writing on their Wall is good enough. Some people claim that wishing someone Happy Birthday on Facebook is more important than saying it to them face-to-face, or via telephone.

Not long after I joined Facebook, I began to wonder how I’d wish so many friends Happy Birthday without appearing prejudicial to a particular group of people. After all I wanted to present myself as being equal to all. It’s hard enough writing a card for a special occasion, so why create that same burden online?

My solution was to write a short (and to-the-point) Wall post on each friend’s birthday. This message would convey the message (Happy Birthday) very simply, but also stand out from the many others who wished Happy Birthday as well.

The message is simply this:

Happy Birthday!

BH

While it has done the aforementioned job very well, what I didn’t expect to happen was this message to be a small phenomenon. There’s been lots of good and bad criticism, as well as numerous imitations.

It’s been said that the message is too short. Although I admit that it is shorter than most other messages, it is still better than those that write “happy birthday” or (the worst case I have seen) “hbd”. Then again, I’m usually not the most important person in their life, so why should they waste their time reading a message from me? Wouldn’t it be better spent reading the message of their significant other?

On the flip side, when some see my message, they value it over some others. I feel honoured by this, but it goes to show something simple has the potential to make a larger than intended impact.

I have no plans to stop what I am doing, and I hope this has answered some of your questions about why I do what I do.

21 July 2010

Again on Facebook: The Friends List

Filed under: Rant,Reflection — Tags: , — Ben @ 10:06 am

This is another post about what I think about Facebook. Previously: this post of general thoughts.

I noticed that my intended use of the Friends List had changed this year. Now, on the surface, the List is exactly as it says it is; a list of friends made on Facebook. But you may or may not know about the extra functionality of creating groups of friends, that also extend to Chat (function of hiding from these groups of people).

In other words, the core purpose is to list out your friends, or more accurately, your personal connections (you will see why later).

But this isn’t the point. I want to focus on who makes up your Friends List, not how many.

Now, Facebook has default groups of friends by network. If you think about it, you make friends at high school (one network), at university (another network), and at each workplace you work at (yet more networks). It is fair to say, that the social nature of each environment is different. Hence (if you have one), the criteria of whether someone is your ‘friend’ or not differs between networks.

Using my criteria as an example, someone who graduated with me from high school (i.e. same Year 12 group) will have more chance of being my ‘friend’, than someone who I met once at uni. My previous criteria was that only people I associated with regularly were ‘friends’.

Obviously, the more social experiences one has, the more friends there should be. But from the example above, be aware of who you friend and what you share with them. I have found that there are people who you would want to ‘friend’ due to the value of a personal connection with them. But be aware, there are some statements that shouldn’t be made public, because there are people who do not deserve to know/care.

We can also extend this thinking to family members on your Friend List. There has been lots of debate about whether one should friend their parents/relatives. A general rule is if the relative lives overseas or is of similar age, then it is acceptable for them to be added. But for those that are older, some caution must be taken.

The lesson to take away from this, is to be careful who you ‘friend’ on Facebook. Unless you want to become a news story.

8 June 2010

I do and don’t like Facebook.

Filed under: Rant,Reflection — Tags: , — Ben @ 4:24 pm

So, today I have completed the marketing exam. My mind is still quite focused on concepts (and my performance in the exam), so in the little ‘power-down’ period I have, I thought I might write a few thoughts on a service we all use so much that it is now ubiquitous: Facebook.

Facebook now has hundreds of millions of users around the world. It has been described as a ‘meta-layer’  (BOL podcast, within the last 2 weeks) of the internet. This is easily seen in Facebook Connect and Instant Personalisation functions. These extend your Facebook account identity to third-party websites, and personalise the content of said website according to what you have in your profile.

These functions are also common functions of social networks which include the Wall (public messages), groups/pages, events pages, photo/video sharing etc…

Now, don’t get me wrong. Facebook is fantastic at keeping in touch with people you haven’t spoken/seen in a long time. As people’s contact details change their Facebook presence is constant, regardless of whether they have updated it with their new address or not (in most cases). It makes easy to arrange events at a moment’s notice, share media, tell your friend that they’re cool, and so on. That’s why I like Facebook, now here’s why I don’t.

Facebook has moved into a position where it wants to be a central repository for your identity and content. Because all your information (including page, group data etc) is on the site and organised (in most cases) by you, this potentially makes it easy for them to share this information to advertisers and third-parties. Subsequently, marketers can segment down to your interests what you like, and serve up super-relevant ads. Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook founder) said at the recent D8 conference that the world will move towards applications designed around people and the nature of what people do, not software.

What is also noticeable, and mentioned by Zuckerberg, is that new Facebook features are almost always protested, because an engineer has found a new way to present information. Take a look at News/Live Feed. It was met with intense criticism initially, but now it is standard and quite useful.

Now here is what I prefer to do. I’m not a fan of signing up for services that duplicate functionality I already have. I share my photos on Flickr. I try to use email as much as possible (minimise Facebook messaging/wall posting). But note, this doesn’t mean I’ll stop using Facebook. (Actually, maybe this will)

23 August 2009

My Social Map

Filed under: Tech — Tags: , , , , — Ben @ 8:17 pm

I thought I’d show you how my social networks interact with each other. This might shed some light on how you might organise your social networks to best interact with your fans.

Shown below are my most used networks/services and how they interact with each other.

Slide1

(Click to see bigger)
As you can see, I target my social services to multiple places. Delicious, Twitter and flickr are pushed to all places: Blog, universe (my website, and the respective service sites), Friendfeed (aggregator) and Facebook.

Facebook is special because it allows me to publish things to a limited audience, whilst being able to share public stuff with friends. This blog is also great, because it provides a front for these posts and all the services. All my stuff is public within each social network. All a bit simple really.

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