Internet Culture

It was the final goodbye today for my Instagram and Facebook accounts. I don't even want to link to them.

In the past, I have left a still running social network because of the way other people were abusing the offering, and the service's lack of doing anything about it. This time it is different.

I deactivated my Facebook account in Februrary 2011. I don't even think I wrote about it, I just did it. I figured if there was a compelling reason to do come back, it would find me. Nothing ever did. I wrote about the problems I had with Facebook late in 2010.

Technorati Tags: Internet Culture Rants

My last post about the thinking I have already done around replacing ping.fm in my personal workflow. I am starting to think about what it is I actually want to accomplish in putting something together. And part of this is in doing an inventory of what is already available to do some of the things I want to do.

And that's where things start getting interesting.

Over in Google+, Gina Trapani posted that This Week in Google included a an interview with Dalton Caldwell on App.net. After watching the segment, I went through Dalton's g+ updates and read through the postings, especially "What Twitter could have been" and the follow up posts.

I think Dalton's primary points are entirely on target, and it applies to much more than just Twitter or Facebook. The question of how any free to use sites are going to make money and not charge people using the site any money has been sticking out there since the beginning of the Internet as I've known it.

Technorati Tags: Internet Culture sysmango.com

Recently there has been a lot of chatter about how Google Plus is a ghost town. This started me thinking about all the other social networks that don't have the media exposure that Google is able to provide. How many of them would think ghost towns would be an improvement. At least ghost towns have ghosts.

Just a disclaimer, this entire discussion is based on my own skewed perspective. I can only talk about social networks from my own limited social capacity (which is possibly stunted compared to most other people.

I joined a number of social networking sites alone. I usually haven't invited anyone to join these sites with me. Occasionally, I would ask Natalie, but mostly she won't join unless other people join with her. It took almost 3 years to convince her to join Facebook, and that was more due to everyone else who joined, not me. Given that, it is really quite possible that any site only looks like a ghost town, mostly because I'm judging the entire site from my own dark back alley on the edge of town.

This suggests that my experience with any social networking site might not representative.

Technorati Tags: Internet Culture

This is a small website. The number of pageviews a month can be counted in the low tens-to-hundreds. The amount of traffic this page receives or would not receive today isn't even a concern. To that end, I don't know there was any impact to this website's traffic by using the script that redirected browsers to SOPAStrike.

Today was about showing support for and trying to educate about the need for sensible copyright laws in the US.

SOPA and PIPA, in the current forms, risk the crushing of a number of forms expression via the Internet. Yes, some of these forms of expression are questionable in their adherence to US copyright law. Some forms of expression utterly disregard copyright as well as concepts of fairness and fair use.

Yet the amount of content and conversation on the Internet that IS covered by fair use and in compliance with US copyright law that would be at risk is significantly larger body of work. And this is free speach.

Technorati Tags: Censorship Internet Culture

This is a small website. The number of pageviews a month can be counted in the low tens-to-hundreds. The amount of traffic this page receives or would not receive today isn't even a concern. To that end, I don't know there was any impact to this website's traffic by using the script that redirected browsers to SOPAStrike.

Today was about showing support for and trying to educate about the need for sensible copyright laws in the US.

SOPA and PIPA, in the current forms, risk the crushing of a number of forms expression via the Internet. Yes, some of these forms of expression are questionable in their adherence to US copyright law. Some forms of expression utterly disregard copyright as well as concepts of fairness and fair use.

Yet the amount of content and conversation on the Internet that IS covered by fair use and in compliance with US copyright law that would be at risk is significantly larger body of work. And this is free speach.

Technorati Tags: Censorship Internet Culture