August 26, 2004
Gmail Again
I've got more gmail invites available. Email me if you want 'em. (My email is in upper right corner of my blog homepage).
August 18, 2004
Dot Node
One more social networking site. I couldn't help myself. Dot node has an interface remarkably similar to Orkut's, but it doesn't have the page load and time out problems Orkut has. I like it.
August 13, 2004
John Perry Barlow Today
This guy is always up to something interesting and now there are more things than ever going on in his life. Read this one all the way through to find out about his new reality TV show, his conversion to being a Democrat, and getting busted due to the increasing practice of searching checked baggage (I, for one, am constantly finding those stupid notices in my luggage letting me know they were poking around in there).
August 11, 2004
Orkutcide
Several longtime contributors to Orkut are commiting "Orkutcide". I recently posted the following in the Orkut Design community in response to this slightly heavy-handed diatribe by Xah. Someone told me they liked my post, so I decided to share it here also. It goes like this:
It is difficult for sincere personal and professional networking to co-exist alongside of frivolity. However, there is certainly a place for frivolity.
When I first started using Orkut in May, I was surprised at how barren most of the serious communities were. Plenty of members, but no discussion.
I soon discovered that the real action was in humorous communities. In these places, and in individual scrapbooks, I quickly discovered who was witty and literate - I was impressed by the quick minds of several posters.
This resulted in my attending a party and meeting some of these people in real life. None of them were teenagers nor morons. All of them were wonderful, intelligent folks, some of them techies and some not.
So, Orkut suceeded in providing a social networking purpose for me. It is not at all what I expected, and it is increasingly difficult to use, what with slow response times and the Brazilian factor, but it is a form of social networking.
Orkut has an identity crisis. It's true purpose must be decided upon and then it's design must be altered to support that purpose. Until then, well, hey, "it's beta."
It is difficult for sincere personal and professional networking to co-exist alongside of frivolity. However, there is certainly a place for frivolity.
When I first started using Orkut in May, I was surprised at how barren most of the serious communities were. Plenty of members, but no discussion.
I soon discovered that the real action was in humorous communities. In these places, and in individual scrapbooks, I quickly discovered who was witty and literate - I was impressed by the quick minds of several posters.
This resulted in my attending a party and meeting some of these people in real life. None of them were teenagers nor morons. All of them were wonderful, intelligent folks, some of them techies and some not.
So, Orkut suceeded in providing a social networking purpose for me. It is not at all what I expected, and it is increasingly difficult to use, what with slow response times and the Brazilian factor, but it is a form of social networking.
Orkut has an identity crisis. It's true purpose must be decided upon and then it's design must be altered to support that purpose. Until then, well, hey, "it's beta."
August 10, 2004
Multiply
Multiply is another social networking service. A big crowd from Orkut is migrating over there. Some of them also use dotnode, tribe, and friendster - some people like to try everything or do it as research. But several people are switching for the sole reason that Orkut's servers can't handle the load - they are victims of their own success.
It's fun to watch the early adopters playing with this new tool. John Perry Barlow is already on there and has 131 contacts and, of course, they all look like very interesting people. Multiply uses different paradigms than Orkut, but has the primarily the same services. The groups/communities of special interest are still pretty small - I don't know when it was launched.
UPDATE - 8/18/04 - I just noticed that JPB deleted his Multiply account. It may have to do with some of the scuttlebut going around that Multiply claims rights to all the content you post. Also, another thing I didn't like about Multiply is, if someone is your friend, they can automatically see your email address. Dinah Sanders had an interesting post questioning their integrity/intentions on August 15th and others have blogged about it also. My personal take on it is that they're just sloppy. Either way, I don't think their product is all that great.
It's fun to watch the early adopters playing with this new tool. John Perry Barlow is already on there and has 131 contacts and, of course, they all look like very interesting people. Multiply uses different paradigms than Orkut, but has the primarily the same services. The groups/communities of special interest are still pretty small - I don't know when it was launched.
UPDATE - 8/18/04 - I just noticed that JPB deleted his Multiply account. It may have to do with some of the scuttlebut going around that Multiply claims rights to all the content you post. Also, another thing I didn't like about Multiply is, if someone is your friend, they can automatically see your email address. Dinah Sanders had an interesting post questioning their integrity/intentions on August 15th and others have blogged about it also. My personal take on it is that they're just sloppy. Either way, I don't think their product is all that great.
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