Category Archives: Facebook

Jul 14 2012

Prediction: Dislikes – No Thanks – Not Interested

The interactivity of the internet has really changed the past couple of years since the “Like” buttons arrived on the scene. Honestly, I don’t use them at all, with the exception of liking other people’s blog posts. Mostly, I do that because it has become inappropriate to leave two-word comments like: “I agree”. And I must say this convention keeps the blogosphere a bit less cluttered, so I’m all for it. Besides, since I have lost so many brain cells to the internet, I have to confess an odd fascination of clicking through the “like” pictures every now and again after I read a blog post. I.e., there’s great time wasting in them thar links.

As I’ve said before, I don’t really see the value in Facebook, and I’ve been too lazy to get into twitter (but soon,… soon).  Because of my anti-FB predilections, I assume this is why I don’t bother with the more general likes that can be found on essentially every page these days. I admit it. I ignore the number of likes. They don’t tell me much, except that if I were a stats nut I could probably come up with formulas that tell me what percent of page views “likes” represented. So, don’t care…

What I’m curious about is how long it will take before the “Dislikes” button comes out. When it comes to regular pages, most sites aren’t going to want to post how many people disliked the page, unless the point of the page is to be controversial and anti-establishment in some way. Then the number would be worn like a badge of honor. Besides, no one likes negative people anyway.

However, I do think the “dislike” button is coming soon to an internet near you.

Why?

For the same reason the like button has become so ubiquitous. It’s knowledge, it’s quantitative, and thus has value. Any extra knowledge that can be garnered from you, businesses will want to know about it. Businesses like Amazon, and…, and… Wait, is there any other place to buy stuff online?

Well, those places too.

I believe “dislikes” are on the horizon. They may be disguised as “No Thanks” or “Not Interested”, but they will essentially yield the same information.

When I was browsing Amazon this morning, I noticed (which happens once in a while) all the “suggested” stuff and “Best Sellers”, and it occurred to me that I wasn’t interested in any of it. This is information Amazon would want to know, and thus, one day they are going to get it. If I could click a “not interested” button for “Fifty Shades of Grey”, they could blast me with something that is actually marketed toward my demographic.

As usual, I may be behind the curve on this one, but that is my prediction for the day*.

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*This statement does not suggest or imply that I will ever make another prediction. Results of prediction are not guaranteed. If said prediction becomes actualized in any fashion, this result is no guarantee of future results on, as yet, unactualized predictions.

Dec 15 2011

What’s Life Like Without the Internet?

The internet has truly been one of the most insidious creations in all of mankind’s history.  Honestly, how did I get by fifteen years ago before the electronic age developed?

It was roughly ten Moore’s Laws ago (a Moore’s Law is 18 months) that I walked into my local community college library and first used a computer for the search engines:  Alta Vista and Lycos and several others that I can’t remember because they’ve been defunct for nine Moore’s Laws. (A veritable lifetime in internet years.)  Back then, the internet was a new tool for research.  At least, as far as I knew.  I was still using books in a library fifteen years ago.  Has anyone under the age of twenty-five reading this post ever cracked a spine on a “Current Biography” volume?

Do they even make those anymore?

Within 18 months I coded my own website in HTML.  Within three Moore’s Laws (that’s four and a half years) everything I knew about coding websites was pretty much obsolete.  That was nine years ago.  By this point, email had become so blase I barely used it except as a communication tool with my students.  In that six year span, the internet went from “I need to look up this/that article” to “I no longer own a TV and spend all my entertainment time on the web.”

How did that happen?  The details are still fuzzy.  Especially at 56Kbps.

It was about this time I started noticing The Schism, The Internet Divide, whatever you want to call it.  Two camps from my generation had cropped up.  People like me, who couldn’t live without the Matrix, and people like my sister, who had pretty much decided the internet wasn’t all that and now hop online once a month for reasons unknown.  If you’re going to ignore technology that much, why pay $50 a month for internet access?

These two camps started mixing with the rest of the populace.  Namely, the younger generation who had been born jacked in and didn’t know anything but the time of the internet.  And the older people like my parents who still cower in fear when faced with The PC Tower.  After all, they saw Tron and know that this time, if they press that button they just might get sucked into the world of programs and they know they don’t have the chops to be the User that defeats the evil Master Control Program.

I can understand their fear.  I’m not so old that I don’t remember the days when a button only served one function in two states:  On and Off, Up and Down, etc.  Buttons these days serve multiple functions that scroll through options.  It’s all very confusing.  Just like the computers and the internets.  So they get a pass. Old dogs, new tricks, that sort of thinking.  As far as they know, it’s a fifty-fifty shot whether or not they end up meeting Tron who will appear to them in the electronic world using the form of a young Bruce Boxleitner.

Over the next three or four Moore’s Laws the internet transitioned.  MySpace revolutionized social behavior on the internet allowing everyone to dump their privacy and obscurity for 15 seconds of fame.  Blogging and eventually podcasting started coming into their own as actual media.  Web 2.0 had started without me (and wouldn’t become a buzzword for another Moore’s Law or two).  Finally, the internet would start fulfilling all those economic promises made a lifetime ago, back when I was still coding in HTML.

This was a hazy time for me and my internet days.  As I worked more and more on my thesis, I had less and less time for the internet.  I gave up video games for math very early on (even before MySpace was popular) in 2003.  Because of all this work on the outside world, MySpace had been replaced with Facebook before I even knew this social revolution was going on.  No worries here.  I was never into advertising myself anyway.  Oh wait, I did have that old HTML website.  It’s been so long since the beginning of this post I forgot about that.

I received my PhD in May 2007.  That’s almost exactly three Moore’s Laws ago to those who are counting.  Since then, I have started working on my childhood dream of writing.  Hence the reason I’m advertising myself once again.  I’m a podcast junkie.  I read off my computer because I find it more comfortable than holding a book.  (Though I’ll be getting a Kindle soon.)  All my entertainment comes from a PC.

So what would life be like without the internet?  I have no idea.  Deprived of all the constant upgrading and creative content, I guess I’d just watch TV and get pissed off every January and June as my new favorite shows were cancelled.  Maybe that’s what would get me online once a month.  To sign the petitions to get my cancelled shows uncancelled.  But those never work.  I’d know that if I were ever online.

Sep 29 2011

Coming Soon, er… Eventually: Dim Speak

I have no release dates as of yet.  I only finished the final edits this morning, but my book, Dim Speak, is finally done!

I still have plenty to do before I can self publish the novel.  For instance, I need to get a book cover.  I’m not even sure how long that will take.  I suppose I still need to set up a twitter feed, which I’m pretty sure I’ll do eventually.  I’m still on the fence about Facebook, but as of today I am leaning toward the “make a page” side.  That might still change.

Most importantly of all, I need to start developing a strategy for the book’s release.  Since I’ve decided to self publish, if I put it out there with no advertising I’ll get what I pay for:  Nothing.  I don’t plan on spending big bucks on a big advertising campaign.  I don’t have big bucks.  Who does?  But I will have to invest a lot of time.  And that’s a resource every writer wishes they had more of.  Especially since this story is a duology and I really would like to start on the sequel.  No one wants to wait a year to see the end of the one semi-major plot point that is left hanging at the end.  No.  There’s no cliff hanger at the end.  I think cliff hangers are cheezy, but the story is definitely not fully resolved.  But I digress.

Back to marketing.  My first thought is to set up an email list.  Those who sign up for the list will get a free copy of the novel, under the proviso that they promise to post a review at Amazon when they’re done reading it.  If they don’t feel they can give the book a favorable review, then I won’t force them to post a review, but I won’t stop them either.  The idea is to let the book speak for itself.  We’ll see how much this back fires.

The important thing is the email list will be a group of people I can peddle works to in the future, so I am essentially building up a clientele that I can reach directly.  While I am working on the sequel I have a series of novellas I want to release.

Anyway, step one is done.  The book is complete.

Sep 11 2011

To Facebook, or Not Facebook

That is the question…

At least it is for me.  After all these years I still do not have a Facebook account. I have never had a need to advertise myself online.  But now, I kind of do.  If I am to engage the theoretical mass of readers I may one day acquire, Internet 2.0 dictates that I need some sort of social media to converse with them.  Though I’m still not sure why my own website/blog can’t do that for me.

Yesterday, I found another reason to possibly open a Facebook account.  I was trying to get in touch with an former professor that I had at a community college.  For those that don’t know, community college websites tend to suck major ass.  At least all the ones, maybe a half dozen, that I’ve been on do.  I could not find a faculty page, nor could I even find a department page for the English department.  It wasn’t even grouped in with the Humanities department or anything. Nada.  I figured by now, the guy was retired or partially retired and I had been hopeful for a “retired professor” page or something, but could find nothing.

The above is pretty much the only reason anyone ever gives me to get a Facebook account.  It’s easy to find people you’ve lost touch with.  I’m not looking to get in touch with people from my past.  I’m looking to engage new readers.  Maybe not now, but when the time comes.  But I digress.

So I do the next best thing and run a Google search for this professor.  Honestly, I’m so bad with names, I’m surprised I remembered it.  I found him writing guest essays for the local paper’s website.  Cool.  But there was no way to contact him personally on that site.  Bad.

I’m guessing now that if he’s internet savvy enough to be writing guest essays online, then he’s probably got a Facebook page.  Why?  Because more than half of the people online, yes literally more than half the people online, half Facebook pages.  So I figure it’s at least an even bet that I could reach him on there.

So what do I have against Facebook?  Nothing per se.  Except that I feel it is the antithesis of what the internet represents.  To me the internet is  the Wild West.  A large prairie where you can run off and find what ever your little heart desires and do so in any manner you desire.  Facebook is the civilizing domestication of the internet.  It is a gated community that tells you how you’re to communicate and socialize with others.  It is like taking Wallstreet and forcing the stock brokers to queue up for their trades, rather than letting them run amuck screaming with little pieces of paper.  Admit it, if all those Wallstreet movies had dignified brokers walking around civilly discussing and making their trades, who would watch?

That’s how I see Facebook.  Boring…