Scobleizer - Latest Comments in What would get me (and others) to shut up about Facebook?

Re: What would get me (and others) to shut up about Facebook?

tnsetop — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 03:27:34 -0000

There may be advantages in this approach — for instance, if two or more of my friends are attending Gnomedex, it only shows up in the feed once — but many folks will want more granular control over viewing their friends’ calendars inside Facebook. Google Calendar does this right, in my opinion.

Re: What would get me (and others) to shut up about Facebook?

William Smith — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 23:22:13 -0000

Meh, I don't see it Robert. Orkut is, as you suggest, pretty barren. Nothing new has gone on there for years. Not that I hold Facebook in ultimate regard or anything like that, but unless Google scrapped Orkut and started over completely, I just don't see it competing.

William
www.sugarattack.com

Re: What would get me (and others) to shut up about Facebook?

Omar Shahine — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 11:43:17 -0000

Hate to break the news to you, but Microsoft already stores all your contact data, and that of over 300 million people as well (messenger and hotmail address books). In fact, it has been doing so for many more years than the new shiny objects.

Re: What would get me (and others) to shut up about Facebook?

Brian Adkins — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 01:29:32 -0000

First impressions of Facebook were not good, in fact, I found the UI to be non-intuitive. However, after fooling around today - adding some friends, adding some applications, experimenting, etc., I have to say that the "application" aspect is quite powerful. It's possible that Facebook is the flavor of the month, but the successors will have to provide something similar to allow developers to create applications IMO.

I do have to say that I don't like the "walled garden" aspect. I like the interoperability standards of email, IM & RSS, so something that would allow people to integrate those types of things with a widget/badge type of app on their own sites would be preferable to me.

In other words, having to jump from Friendster to LinkedIn to MySpace to Facebook and re-add people, etc. seems the wrong way to go.

Re: What would get me (and others) to shut up about Facebook?

Scott Mace — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 18:47:02 -0000

Plaxo incorporates calendar sharing into its site and I like that about it. You're using Upcoming in your Facebook page and Upcoming is problematic. For instance, individual Upcoming users don't have iCal feeds (I checked with Upcoming), therefore you can't subscribe to those feeds in Facebook unless you use the "subscribe to all my friends' feeds" option in Upcoming. There may be advantages in this approach -- for instance, if two or more of my friends are attending Gnomedex, it only shows up in the feed once -- but many folks will want more granular control over viewing their friends' calendars inside Facebook. Google Calendar does this right, in my opinion. I think Plaxo does too, though I haven't checked it in detail.

Re: What would get me (and others) to shut up about Facebook?

jeffpulver — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 06:59:12 -0000

Facebook IS the internet portal of 2007. And it is where you will find me. :)

Re: What would get me (and others) to shut up about Facebook?

Han Xu — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 05:42:18 -0000

Actually, what would be so brilliant about a play by Google to upgrade Orkut would be that they wouldn't have to deal with the hassle of trying to convince their users to migrate to it. Take all of their GMail users, import their address book and saved addresses, and BAM -- instant social network. Then you integrate Groups, Calendar, Docs & Spreadsheets, and you could see a much more complete platform come up overnight.

Re: What would get me (and others) to shut up about Facebook?

sumanth — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 21:25:55 -0000

http://mashable.com/2007/07...

Myspace badly wants some coverage!

Re: What would get me (and others) to shut up about Facebook?

Robert Scoble — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 19:44:45 -0000

Chris: I was on LinkedIn too and dropped it because there's an expectation there that you'll do stuff for people. I know they made a choice to tell everyone you wouldn't do anything for others, but that just seemed rude and not fitting in with the usage model there.

More and more people I trust, like Jeff Pulver who runs some of the biggest conferences in the industry, are telling me they are getting off of LinkedIn. http://pulverblog.pulver.co...

Facebook's application platform is why you'll need to move someday.

Re: What would get me (and others) to shut up about Facebook?

chris — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 19:10:24 -0000

Funny what you say about Linkedin since it's the only networking site I'm part of due to being pinged by so many people that I used to work with in various companies. And a lot of people are in the same boat as me, our time is too precious and we're not self-absorbed enough to get involved with myspace, and have busy enough social lives that we have zero interest in facebook. Yet getting us hooked in professionally has seemed to have worked.
Where do you think Linkedin misses the boat?

Re: What would get me (and others) to shut up about Facebook?

spinchange — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 16:25:28 -0000

Google actually has been working on redesigning Orkut. They even backed a project @ Carnegie Mellon University to explore how & what it would take to create a "Grand Unified Social Network.
I wrote about it here:http://www.thesocialbookmar...

Re: What would get me (and others) to shut up about Facebook?

Umesh — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 14:25:46 -0000

It's wrong to say Orkut came out after FB. Orkut in India had hit the roof in 2005 itself, at a time when Facebook was completely unheard of.

I'm not trolling for Orkut, just correcting Robert there. When he talks about Orkut as the next shiny thing that he'd like to rave/rant about..I feel like saying "hey wait a minute...Orkut's even older" Pownce is the new shiny thing...but I think these things are a waste of time...too geeky...

Re: What would get me (and others) to shut up about Facebook?

daspark — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 11:29:45 -0000

I signed up for Orkut years ago when that hideous thing came out and I haven't touched it since.

What I love about Facebook is it's become the dialogue of my friends' and even business colleagues' lives. It takes the Twitter/Jaiku/Pownce world and combines it into the little actions you can actively take on a social network. So whether I manually type in "I'm having a ham sandwich" or I post a picture, both appear as a single line microblogged action.

I have a summary of why I think Facebook has become so successful here: http://www.sparkminute.com/...

Re: What would get me (and others) to shut up about Facebook?

Robert Scoble — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 02:05:37 -0000

Jeremy: yeah, I just posted to my profile a video done of a physicist at CERN that was poured into FaceBook. Great stuff.

Re: What would get me (and others) to shut up about Facebook?

Jeremy Toeman — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 01:52:11 -0000

Good post here - I think it'll be a long time to get a shift from Facebook. It's got the massive momentum of 18-25 year olds who use it in a way that anyone outside of age group really doesn't understand unless they've done a lot of hands-on observation.

Further, the tech/biz community is adopting it, and while there's a lot of hype around things like Twitter, Facebook is a much bigger time investment for people, making them much less likely to change.

We launched apprate.com specifically because we think the opportunity for Facebook-related platform plays will be huge. Of course, I also own fbapprate.com, but I liked hedging my bet with the more generic name. :)

Re: What would get me (and others) to shut up about Facebook?

Robert Scoble — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 01:51:51 -0000

Umesh: i generally don't block any comments. Chris pisses me off lots too, but I leave him here cause I believe in freedom of speech, for better or worse.

Re: What would get me (and others) to shut up about Facebook?

Umesh — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 01:49:48 -0000

This Chris guy @34 really bores me a lot Robert. Are you getting paid to have his comments here? He reminds me of Don Quixote.

Also, since you touched on Orkut, I want to add it is the biggest social networking site in India. Its like Yahoo or Hotmail right now, even more popular.

We don't know (or love) Facebook very much though FB is really "shiny" and more sophisticated. Rather FB is simple and private.

Everyone I know has an Orkut account. I know its ugly but its so easy to use. FB is beautiful but geeky for Indian tastes. Trust me. Orkut is a masala movie, very popular, though not refined. FB is an art movie, refined, but not as popular.

Privacy? Social networking sites have been made to mainly strut your stuff. :-) That's what makes them viral.

I told my friends about FB, they are not buying it. Orkut is enough they say.

Re: What would get me (and others) to shut up about Facebook?

Robert Scoble — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 00:14:46 -0000

LayZ: not related in getting it out, but related in getting it seen as cool enough to get the attention to shift off of Facebook.

Re: What would get me (and others) to shut up about Facebook?

LayZ — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 23:44:34 -0000

@34 Fair point, but I still don't see how the XBOX360 hardware problems are in any way related to Microsoft's potential ability to deliver a social networking solution.

Re: What would get me (and others) to shut up about Facebook?

macbeach — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 21:14:30 -0000

So what is your Orkut ID Robert?

I deleted mine months ago too, although I generally like most things Google.

Problem is that when they buy existing code that has been around a while it takes them a while to integrate it well.

Orkut was very slow and buggy for a long time after the purchase. I'm having another look. Looks for one thing like they have managed to get the performance up in spite of the bazillion users in Brazil.

Most of this social networking stuff bores me. On the other hand if I were looking to connect up with old college folks etc, I'd much rather use Orkut than Myspace. Come to think of it, I'd rather stick my hand in a blender than use Myspace.

My hope though is that all these things are forced by user demand to interact with one another. I should be able to be seen by Myspace users or Facebook users by only having an Orkut ID, and visa versa.

Of course we are still waiting for the Instant messengers to interoperate aren't we? I won't hold my breath.

Re: What would get me (and others) to shut up about Facebook?

Rodgers — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 20:25:45 -0000

Least Facebook keeps the geeky sociopaths off the street, I give it that much at least.

Re: What would get me (and others) to shut up about Facebook?

Chris — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 20:03:09 -0000

That last comment was for LayZ.

You have to remember that were Facebook, Orkut ect... are all Yugos of Social networking, @Home is a high end BMW.

It's the difference between being seated in this chair
http://www.panasonic.ca/eng...

or being seated on a log stump in the woods.

Not everybody can afford that chair, but those that can are going to be infinitely better off.

Re: What would get me (and others) to shut up about Facebook?

Dimitar Vesselinov — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 19:56:12 -0000

Some blogs on Orkut:

http://en.blog.orkut.com/
http://orkutplus.blogspot.com/
http://www.insideorkut.com/

Re: What would get me (and others) to shut up about Facebook?

Chris — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 19:51:04 -0000

“and, anyway, even the coolest thing at Microsoft (Xbox) is having quality troubles, so not likely.”

Xbox and PS3 have contact management, crappy email, instant messaging and more. PS3 is about to come out of beta with @home which should be THE Social networking platform for all gamers ever with finality.

http://www.engadget.com/200...
"PlayStation Home will be a free download, and will eventually include a virtual cinema for watching movie downloads"

MS's Xbox is legacy * 1000 as far as social network gaming platforms is concerned when @home RTM is in the PS store.

Re: What would get me (and others) to shut up about Facebook?

PXLated — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 18:59:26 -0000

> "PXLated: everything is temporary if you take a long enough viewpoint." <
Yes, but you know what I mean, longer than 3, 6 or 9 months. I know that's considered long to a certain crowd.