The Talk About Rules for Social Following Is Getting Out of Hand

As the world of online "friends" is getting increasingly blurred, and many of us are joining social network after social network, expanding our realm of friends to mean much more than just those we know in real life, artificial rules of etiquette are being created for when you follow someone or add them as a friend, and when you don't. And when two people have different, unequal rules, there is a potential for conflict, or hurt feelings, even when we have the option to step back and realize this is all very silly. No one hard and fast rule works for everybody, and I would expect that the "rules" are different for each network, given the impact "following" can mean.

This whole ruckus about "You didn't follow me! I'm going to unsubscribe!" led me to playfully suggest a new approach this evening:


(See the FriendFeed response to my Tweet here)

The issue of who to friend started well before social networking sites like Friendster and MySpace took hold, and before Twitter and FriendFeed changed the game in terms of how adding somebody as a friend could open a floodgate of information.

Early demands on who to add as a friend were problematic even in the early days of AOL Instant Messenger. Making my AIM address open to family and close friends was one thing, but soon, casual acquaintances would want my AIM address, and logging on to the service left me at their whim for contacting me, or seeing my status. Soon, I was hiding my service, pretending to be away from the desk, or blocking the very same people who still thought we were AIM friends.

With Friendster, the issue of "friending" again came up. Would I accept the friend request from a college roommate I really wasn't all that fond of? What about if there was a girl I had a crush on, who I wanted to follow, but I didn't want to "friend" in case she figured it out? (Complicated, I know)

Suddenly, the issue of friending became less about wanting to actually follow real friends, or peers, and instead, became an arms race - to get the most followers, to follow the most people, to rise up a leaderboard, or feel some kind of achievement because you could claim a friend as a household name.

There became issues with Facebook only accepting 5,000 friends. Twitter saw people set up rules to auto-follow anyone who followed them, even as it became common to follow thousands or tens of thousands. FriendFeed has seen many do the same, even though to follow a person there means not just Twitter updates, but blogs, photos, videos, and dozens more services, in addition to integrated comments.

Soon, the concept of auto-following, and gaining prominence over following a huge number, or being followed by a big name became the norm. While it might make sense for a Robert Scoble or a Duncan Riley to do it, for the rest of us, the firehose of data can be choking. And by opting out of the automatic following process, we can be called on the carpet for not acting the way others expect us to.

A few key examples:

Rahsheen Porter:
The A-List Doesn’t Care About Your FriendFeed
echo "hey, it works" > /dev/null
FriendFeed: Should I unsubscribe from people who don't follow me back ?
Pixel Bits:
Subscribing, unsubscribing, do you like me? Do you hate me?

This issue is highlighted by services which show you the disparity between those you follow, and who follows you. For Twitter, there are sites like Twitter Karma and Less Friends, and recently, one was developed for FriendFeed, called FriendVenn. Of note, I've used Twitter Karma to get my lists in sync, but haven't been able to use FriendVenn, as it's limited to 3,000 total connections so far, and I'm ahead of that mark, even if I didn't follow anybody on FriendFeed at all.

There's nothing wrong with seeing the disparity in bulk, rather than on a one by one basis, but it's more of a curiosity than a call to action in my mind.

On Twitter, I used to be quite selective about who I would follow. But over time, thanks to the improvement of Summize and Twitter's frequent downtimes, I'm not using the Web interface to watch Tweets, but only to send notes. Now, there's really zero impact to me to following a bazillion people. If it makes them feel good, then I have no problem adding them to my stream. But in reality, unless they say my name, or a search query I'm watching in TweetDeck, I'll probably never see their updates.

FriendFeed is a different story altogether. FriendFeed's best environment is the Web interface, where you see all updates. A FriendFeed follow is a lot "heavier" than a Twitter follow, as you get all the updates from all the disparate services. This means that while you can casually follow tens of thousands on Twitter, it can be a bit overwhelming to follow even a few hundred on FriendFeed, unless you're absolutely comfortable with missing out on some updates. As a result, I've been a little slower to follow people there, even as my in box on some days can be flooded with new followers.

The way I choose to follow people on FriendFeed was first, people I knew, or engaged with elsewhere, second, following people who engaged in my activity through comments and on the feeds of the others I followed, and third, friends that those I follow engaged with, and whom I shared interests.

This more tentative approach means I have only 300+ people I follow on FriendFeed instead of 3,100 or more. I believe that by adding more and more, the fun and engagement will surely be lost, just as it was on Twitter's Web interface when I added so many people, or in Facebook, where I get new friend requests daily from people I'll probably never meet. I expect there are probably some good 250 to 500 new people who I'll find interesting on FriendFeed who might be following me now, but I want to make that choice after seeing their activity, not just on automatic.

Am I really going to overweight my social networks with ladies? Probably not, as fun as that sounds. But am I going to overweight every network with every single follower I possibly can, again, probably not. The way I use Twitter and FriendFeed or Facebook or LinkedIn or any other service that relies so heavily on connections is the way that I do it, period. It's not necessarily the way you should do it, and no one right way is right for all people. But if there is a point where I'm not following you, and you are following me, it's probably not personal, and it shouldn't be made personal. To each their own.

TechCrunch Reports AOL Completes Netscape's Demise

It's silly how one can get nostalgic over a software application, but Netscape Navigator, in its original incarnation represented to many, including myself, the first days of massive Web adoption. Netscape was the first huge Internet IPO, and the first real solid challenge to Microsoft's monopoly, after Apple had made its share of missteps. Now, as TechCrunch reports, the browser is officially left to die.

While I had used Mosaic prior to Navigator, I dutifully downloaded all the beta versions of Netscape on my Mac my freshman year of college. My roommates didn't understand why I kept Navigator 0.93, 1.1 and 1.12 on my hard drive. Some part of me wanted them for history, I guess. But as we all know, it was Netscape who became history. Internet Explorer dealt them a body blow, and Microsoft squeezed their life from them. Then AOL's acquisition of Netscape made things unbearable.

The browser stagnated, and Apple had grown closer to Microsoft, as Steve Jobs told an annoyed Macworld crowd that Internet Explorer would be the Mac's default browser. Mac IE 5 was actually pretty good too! Meanwhile, Navigator skipped version 5 altogether, and rolled out a clunker, moving from Netscape 4 to Netscape 6, but it was too late. And by then, we'd all moved on - to IE, to FireFox, and eventually, to Safari. Now, Netscape is but a blip in Silicon Valley history, one that helped kick off the first Web bubble, preparing the way for future tech giants like Yahoo! and Google, and reinvigorating the economy.

A quick search of my Mail archives shows the importance of Netscape.

As I wrote in February of 1996 in a letter home, my freshman year, called "Bad tech day":

"About dinnertime, my computer went totally nuts. To make a long story short, my entire sytem folder was thrown away, including all extensions, preferences, and the like.The final result may still not be final, but there are some key things missing. ALL mail from Eudora which I had saved since October is GONE. All mailboxes. All adresses. All nicknames. All Bookmarks for Netscape, which I was proud of. Gone."

Later, from March of 1996 in another letter home, called "Checks and balances":

"Here's something annoying. I have a Macintosh. Non-Power PC, with a 68030 processor... This means I don't have a Java-supporting Netscape browser, to view live sports scores, and I can't download RealAudio 2.0, which I also need. Ahh. The life of the underprivileged."

Later in March, I sent home a "Top Ten Anagrams for Netscape Communications". I have no idea where I first got it, so apologies to whomever I ripped off:

Top Ten Anagrams for "Netscape Communications"

10.Companies can't consume it
9.I cannot compute sans mice
8.Can't access 'net... I'm on opium
7.Um, options scam can entice
6.Net's uncommon capacities
5.Connect communities, ASAP
4.Mosaic IPO, etc., can stun men
3.Optimum 'net access: An icon
2.Connect it up; amass income

And the number one anagram for "Netscape Communications":
1.Mosaic, minus neat concept

Just think, those e-mails home were from 11 years ago, and we're still talking about Netscape today. While AOL and Microsoft can take away the company and its browser, they can't take away its legacy. Long live Netscape.

Google Is 95% Of My Search Traffic

My SiteMeter stats have made one thing clear over the last several months - my traffic from Google and Google Images is growing rapidly, and no other search engine, including Yahoo!, MSN, Live.com or AOL, are even making a dent.

There's really no second place. Instead, there's Google, and then there's everybody else.


Google traffic to louisgray.com dwarfs all competitors.

In the last few months, referrals from Google Images have largely taken over the #1 position from Google's standard searches. Over time, the ANtics comics have drawn a tremendous amount of traffic from curious baseball fans, and the occasional odd post on The Simpsons and adult material have delivered the lion's share of the rest.

Using the Summary Web logs analysis application, I reviewed the site logs from January 1 forward, and saw the massive gap between Google and everyone else to be more than I had ever anticipated. It turns out that thanks to Google's unique combination of Google search, Google Blog Search, Google Image Search and Google Reader, the company is delivering almost 96% of all referrals from search engines to my blog. AOL, MSN, Live.com and Yahoo! don't even crack one percent apiece.

A lot of people are concerned that Google's position is a bad thing for consumers and for competition, and it's clear the competition isn't making a good show in this race. But if the other players even had serviceable offerings, this would be a different story. The sad truth is that they don't. If they want to stick around, they should either dramatically enhance their offerings, or forget competing with Google, and stick to other tools they do well - whether it be start pages, instant message tools, news or social media. As it stands today, the verdict is in, Google has won, and they've won big.

Why I Stopped Using IM and Won't Use Twitter

One of the most-recent fads to sweep the Web is that of Twitter, a service where you leave simple, short messages telling people just what it is you are doing right now, whether that's eating breakfast, walking the dog, cramming for an exam or watching television. The idea behind it is instant insight and status sharing, taking blogging up a notch beyond a daily journal, to instead, a minute by minute chronicle of your day. And I'm not in the least bit interested.

When Instant Messaging (IM) first debuted, it was a great way for people to chat one to one between computers, without the slowness of e-mail exchanges or cost of using the phone. When I first saw an instant message from one computer to another, I was floored, and I can tell you exactly where I was, just like I can tell you exactly where I was the first time I heard a computer speak with a human voice, and the first time I saw webcams used. Each time, I recognized just how cool these technologies could be. But with each, they found a niche, not a revolution.

Like everyone else, I first used instant messaging to talk with friends and family, but then it started to spread to casual contacts and colleagues. The intimacy was gone, as people would add buddies to their buddy list to increase their feelings of self-worth. Entire web sites were built with a goal of comparing one person's buddy list length to another. And as in the real world, sometimes you just didn't want to let some of those people on the buddy list know you were available, leading to annoying conversations started by people who knew just when you logged on and off, and if you were idle or busy. Then came the need to hide yourself from individuals who kept you on their buddy list, even as you had deleted them from yours.

The actual benefits of instant messaging quickly went away for me. Conversations that should have taken place in 3-5 minutes on the phone would now take 15-20 minutes, 5 of which would be awkwardly used trying to get the conversation to a close, waiting for direct responses to questions, and making sure you weren't both typing at once. And the idea that instant messages would aid you in collaboration at work were a bunch of hooey. Anybody I know at the office using IM is using it to talk to a spouse or friend, or, if with another colleague, to complain about the boss or another co-worker. The actual productivity of IM is a significant negative.

I uninstalled my AOL and Yahoo! instant messenger clients from my work computer and laptop a long time ago. At home, I still have iChat, built into the Apple operating system, and have Proteus tucked away for that rare time I think of a reason to use it - but I intentionally told my Mac not to turn on instant messaging services on login, so nobody could bug me.

It's real simple. What is said over IM is very rarely business, and prevents people from getting work done. It's a significant time-waster, and a technology whose time has come and gone. The idea that I would take it up a notch and tell Twitter my every step is yet another task that would get in the way of my actually working, so we're not interested.