mainstreaming of social networking fatigue
July 8, 2008
an e-card from someecards. [thanks stef!]
Toronto: I want my Facebook!
May 22, 2008
The other day, I was biking up the Bathurst hill and I passed the Telus billboard advertising Facebook mobile on their phones for the upteenth time. Fun fact: Rogers was the first to advertise their Facebook mobile service, followed by Bell and Telus. 
The billboard reminded me of sign I saw on the window of the women’s clothing store Smart Set at the Eaton Centre earlier in the week. It had a Facebook logo and was advertising some new fashion cubes application, where you can compete with your friends about who has the best fashion, or something equally ridiculous. I was taken by the “Add Smart Set Fashion Cubes to your applications!” that was under the Facebook logo. I think that was the first time I’ve seen such technical language on the outside of a women’s clothing store. It’s still super gendered (compete with your friends to see who is the hottest), but really, is anyone surprised? I looked out for more Facebook logos as I walked through the mall, and not surprisingly there where two more at the Bell World and Rogers stores.
But that’s not all! At the end of April, I saw a presentation at CaseCamp about the success of TD Canada Trust’s Facebook app. That same night, Bryan Segal, VP at Comscore did a presentation about the insane popularity of social media in Canada. According to Comscore, Canada is the “most penetrated country” and “we view the most content and spend the most time interacting with social media.” In this context, its not really a surprise that Toronto is madly in love with Facebook.
So, this all got me thinking. A clothing store advertising it’s Facebook app, and a bank has one too? And there are so many extra Facebook shirts in Toronto that random bike riding junk collectors are wearing them? What I’m witnessing here in Toronto is so obvious that it’s invisible to me. It’s the first time a social web service, or anything from the internet really (besides when the web itself became big and we started seeing URLs all over the place… but that’s more a protocol and less a commercial service), has become so tightly integrated into so many aspects of mainstream life. For Torontonians, Facebook is becoming the mediator for so many everyday interactions, between people and between people and companies, and its being done at level of penetration we’ve never seen before.
Moar!
Rogers TV ad for Facebook mobile
My growing collection of photos of Facebook appearing in real life around Toronto
As seen on Queen West West
May 21, 2008
There was a rather ratty looking guy with crazy dirty hair carrying a desktop computer, three rods of something, a half exploded tv-like electronic device of some sort and two bags of miscellaneous parts, all while trying to ride a bike… and he was wearing a blue FACEBOOK SWEATSHIRT.
ROFLCon documentary airing this week on CBC!
May 21, 2008
My ROFLCon documentary is airing this morning at 11:30 ET on CBC radio, and again Saturday at 4pm. It features Tron Guy, David Weinberger, Leslie Hall and Anil Dash. Yay!
It’s also up on the Spark blog for your on demand listening pleasure (skip to 17:51).
For my first ever time doing radio, I think it turned out pretty well! Nora Young was super nice and took the time to coach me through the voice stuff to make sure it sounded good. How lucky is that? She has a cult following for having such an amazing radio voice (well, that AND being brainy, obviously). Also a big thanks to Luke Walker for being my crew in Boston.
making friends without the internet
May 6, 2008
there’s this guy that i started talking to… well… he started talking to me, at bathurst station, and we talked all the way up to claxton on the #7 bus.
he isn’t on facebook (he told me) and when i tried to google stalk him, there were no results. except for this other guy with the same name who seems obsessed with parachutes.
i kinda love it. people adding you on facebook that you just met is like a commitment. i mean really, it turns the world into a small town. everyone is so easy to reach. they’re right there. i like the mystery and freedom of space and time.
i’m also so careful about what and who i write about on here now. not like the olden days when i was writing to the vast unknown expanse of THE INTERNET. but i know i can write this and he probably won’t read it (oh just watch him now! uhh hi;) ).
but it’s also weird because googling and facebooking is so habitual to me now. i need my backgroud info on people. and pictures. lots of pictures, like everyone gleefully puts up at facebook so we can all look at each other. i feel like that telepathic guy from heroes when he tries to listen to people’s thoughts when the haitian mind blocker dude is around. cuz yeah, my super power is without a doubt the internet, especially internet stalking >:]
(i’m tempted to start writing in all lowercase again. it’s so much prettier. and it just flooooows when i write this way)
Video of my interview with Tron Guy!
April 29, 2008
I’m back from ROFLCon (*tear*) with my computer full of interviews with internet celebs and thinkers, which I’m working on turning into a radio doc for CBC’s Spark. I’m just working out with the folks at Spark about what to do with all of the extra audio that doesn’t make the doc (there’s so much good stuff!), but until then, here’s the full video of me interviewing Tron Guy that Luke recorded.
You can also check out the guest blogging I did on the Spark blog. I posted my wrap up last night.
Tags: video, mit, jay maynard, tron guy, cbc, travel, roflcon, spark, boston, academic
Leslie Hall’s mum!
April 27, 2008
There was a rumour (on the internets!!1) that Leslie Hall’s mother was going to be at ROFLCon. I have a theory that awesome women usually have awesome mothers, so I just had to talk to Leslie’s. I found Rena Hall at Leslie’s t-shirt booth, adding the finishing touches to the gold corn shoulderpads for that evening’s show (yes, she made the original Gold Pants too!). She agreed to do an interview with me and Luke about what it’s like to literally give birth to an internet meme but only if Leslie said yes (aww), which she did, but in exchange we had to audition for a spot she was doing for G4tv. What a rough deal. I ate a donut and did the robot dance, but that’s another story…
So without further ado: the “godmother of the internets” in me and Luke interview Rena Hall (a k4t3.org/lukewalker.org exclusive)!
PS My blog entries from day one and two of ROFLCon are up on the Spark blog, plus lots of piccies on Flickr.
Tags: rena hall, leslie hall, roflcon, academic
ROFLCon here we come!
April 23, 2008
Luke, my ever trusty internet conference co-adventurer and mischief maker and I are off this afternoon on our two-day geek pilgrimage roadtrip to Boston for ROFLCon. We’re going to stop in Syracuse to go to TGI Friday’s, which I’m probably way more excited about than I should be.
I’m going to be guest blogging my adventures (check out that link… see me and Zuck are BFFs for evah, really!) on the Spark blog this weekend as well as creating a short radio doc which should air May 21 (!!!) I’m going to be interviewing the I Can Has Cheezburger? guys, David Weinberger, Tron Guy, Leslie Hall, Dinosaur Comic’s Ryan North, Leeroy Jenkins and Anil Dash to find out what they think about the whole crazy internet meme thing and why we love them so much. If you have any questions you want me to ask please post them!
(At the risk of sounding like a total cheesy fan girl, this is just about the Best Thing Ever because not only do I love me my internet memes, I’m a huge fan of the CBC, Spark and the show’s host, Nora Young, who I’ve thought was the bee’s knees since she hosted DNTO and a hero for women in technology everywhere. When I went treeplanting, I took a wind up radio so I could listen to the CBC in my tent. </fangirl>).
Holy crap I’m excited! Time to go re-cultivate my layer of apathetic cool professionalism.
Non-nerds can now read about rickrolling in newspaper
April 18, 2008
A surprising thing happened today: the Global and Mail ran a story by Ivor Tossell about… wait for it… rickrollling! (thanks Luke for the link, I’m glad someone still reads the paper;) )
I’ve been lamenting the sad state of journalistic reporting on internet culture for a while (in fact, it was part of the focus of the talk Leigh and I did at Notacon a few weeks back… where we also rickrolled the audience. heh!), so it was really nice to see an article that mostly gets it (4chan is mentioned!!), save for the slightly curmudgeonly “What is all this haberdashery!!!1 You kids get off my lawn!!!!!!1111″ kinda tone. And to be picky, LOLcats don’t speak like hacker kids, they speak kitteh! It’s totally different (GNARR). But how can you not love Tossells description of rickrolling as “a dead end made flesh and given a bouffant hairdo”?
So, I want to know who this Ivor Tossell guy is and how he convinced his editors to let him do that story. I suspect it has something to do with Facebook and LOLcats softening everyone up to the idea that hey, this internet thing may be more than just gadgets and nerds.
PS Fono says he’s a sad boy because there are no more good internet cartoons, like Magical Trevor and those fucked up GI Joe PSAs.
Tags: rickroll, journalism, internetculture, academic
Rethinking Facebook: From Zero to Two Accounts
April 11, 2008
At the end of last year, I decided to delete my Facebook account because I was so angry with how hard it was to delete your account (among various other common complaints about said site). For I while, I had no Facebook account. Now I have two, which I realise is really weird considering my feelings about Facebook. But, it’s complicated, like everything I guess.
At first I was curious to see what it was like to not have a Facebook account. This went on for about a month. I didn’t really miss it, but had to get Fono to look up events for me that were listed on Facebook. Then I decided it was stupid to be doing Facebook research without actually being on Facebook, so I created a fake account under a fake name which I would use just to talk to my close friends. My thinking was that this would maintain my privacy and avoid the context collisions that I had with my real account. I emailed everyone I wanted to add (using real email, not Facebook messages, because I didn’t want anything tying the real me to the fake me) and told them my alias. Some of the people I didn’t warn beforehand were reluctant to add me because they had no idea who I was (which highlights an interesting trend - people aren’t as willing to interact with strangers online as they were back in the days of ICQ random chat). The nice thing about the fake account was that I never had to add anyone I didn’t want. I’d just say that I didn’t have a Facebook account. This caused some problems though for professional contacts who I wanted to add, but if i did it would defeat the purpose of my fake account. But the most unexpected thing was that people didn’t treat me like me, they treated me like a character or a stranger. I think by not being me, I was disrupting a balance of power. People act as themselves on Facebook as long as everyone else does. If I’m cheating, so to speak, by hiding behind an alias, I’m gaining an advantage through anonymity. Thinking it might help, I changed my alias’s first name to my real name, but still maintained a fake last one. To my surprise, Facebook actually let me make this change, even though it was an entirely new name and was pretty obvious one of them wasn’t real. Not forcing people to call me by something other than my name seemed to help. I also started interacting with people again through the site (leaving wallposts, tagging photos etc.) which I had been avoiding doing to maintain my anonymity. I discovered that this increased people’s interaction with me in return. I’m not sure if I was building trust back or getting people used to my new profile or an unspoken rule that people will only interact with you if they think it will be reciprocated, especially in public/performative communication spaces like the wall.
This was all going well until I discovered that Facebook was having friends.get party and a developer’s garage at SXSW that you had to RSVP for on Facebook and they were checking IDs at the door. I needed to get in, but obviously I didn’t have any ID with my alias on it, so I grudgingly created a new account with my real name and added some people to make it look legit. I told myself I would delete the account after SXSW… probably… unless some really awesome people added me… then I’d have to think about it.
And of course they didn’t bother to check my ID, or even my name. Both events had the atmosphere that I imagine was similar to that found at Microsoft in the 90s. The party and the garage were both held at a trendy bar, filled with plasma screens showing a Facebook promo video. There were free unlimited redbull vodkas for all (very dangerous). Robert Scoble was there at the front during the developer presentations, recording everything. Everyone seemed super ra-ra Facebook and the sense of excitement was very contagious. Luke and I both felt the effects of drinking the koolaid (or the redbull vodkas…).
But a turning point in my thinking was this:
Mark Zuckerberg casually hung around after his presentation (still wearing his now famous fleece) so I went over and asked him why Facebook didn’t have multiple profiles that you could show to different people in different contexts, because the problem with limited profile is that people know they are on it - there is no plausable deniability. Zuckerberg replied that he thought it was dishonest (I think he actually used the word lie) to show people different things and that the most happy people, according to an academic study (which I cannot find - anyone know what it’s called?), are the same in all contexts of their lives. I argued that it wasn’t lying, just revealing different parts to different people but he didn’t agree. He told me they were going to have more “organic” controls that allowed for more granular control of who sees what (they’ve now added these. It’s the thing that allows you to make lists of who sees what. I wasn’t that impressed), but was not going to have multiple profiles because he basically thought it was an incorrect way of interacting. This was a fascinating revelation of how Facebook’s design is largely shaped by how Zuckerberg thinks people should act.
Even though I didn’t agree with his take on context management (or lack thereof), talking to Zuckerberg humanized Facebook for me… It was like meeting someone you’ve been having a flamewar with on the internet and seeing they aren’t all that bad. I had forgotten that it’s just people behind Facebook, people who are among the first to be designing the mainstream mechanisms and systems for online social networking… or whatever it is they’re building (I have a sense what we know as SNSes are just the beginning). A big part of my thesis proposal was looking at users and designers (a lot of research thus far has focused just on users and treated the technology as given, as if it could not have been made any other way), and this reminded me of how important it is to see that technology is not just that; there are people and ideologies behind it. They’re just making it up as they go along, and making adjustments based on seeing what happens. But there is still a tremendous responsibility on their shoulders, since they have the data of 70 million people in their care. Don’t worry, I’m not becoming a Facebook fan again, I’m just a bit more forgiving… or at least remembering to see the other side of the coin.
All this humanizing wasn’t enough to make me keep my new real account though. When I started adding new people to my account that I knew, I told them it was a professional profile, which signaled not to post stuff that was NSFW. The rest of the people I add are mostly professional anyway, so it goes without saying. This was what made me feel comfortable… it was clear what the purpose of my new profile was and what was appropriate to write on my wall. With my old profile, it had started out as a secret, guarded thing that only other university/college kids to see. Then it slowly morphed into being for everyone. How can you control expectations and contexts when the purpose and audience of your profile has changed? Different people that I knew from different contexts all had differing expectations of how to interact with my profile. By killing my first Facebook self, and making a new one with an explicitly professional propose, I’ve overcome the context *ahem* fuck (because it really was not just a collision) that was making me crazy. I’m also far more comfortable having professional stuff about me online, which somewhat addresses the privacy concerns I have with Facebook. As for IP issues, I just don’t upload anything I care about. All said, I still have major issues with how Facebook is handling privacy and intellectual property concerns. It really shouldn’t be up to me, the user, to sort all this stuff out.
Tags: sxsw2008, developer'sgarage, friends.get, sxswi, academic, facebook, sxsw, thesis
