Slashdot Mirror
Best Alternatives To the Big Name Social Media?
rueger writes "Over a couple of years I have actually found Facebook pretty useful and/or entertaining. It has certainly allowed me to stay connected with a lot of people with whom I otherwise would have lost track, and for all its weaknesses it was handy for sharing links and such. This week, though, the privacy escapades have pushed me (and a lot of other people) over the edge. If Twitter's 140 characters aren't enough, LinkedIn is too business-oriented, MySpace too ugly, and Buzz — does anyone even use Buzz? What social media options are out there for all of those non-uber-techy folks?"
To me, the 140-character limit of Twitter is more than offset by the conciseness of the information it thusly transports. I find it actually very stimulating to be limited to 140 characters. Forces you to think a little longer before you post.
As Goethe once said: Sorry for writing this long letter, I didn't have time for a shorter one.
But in any case, you can combine Twitter with a Blog and use that if you really think you need to say something longer than 140 characters, then post the link on Twitter. Posterous is an excellent site for that.
And to those who still think that Twitter is the place where people tell you they're having a sandwich -- you are obviously following the wrong people. It is the most efficient information engine I have ever seen -- and many other things beyond that.
I just idle on IRC instead.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I hear if you visit this "Outside" you can meet other people and network with them. You can have friends, interests, conversations, etc. The whole deal.
Here's the problem: if you're on a social network that few have heard of, what's the point?
Isn't the purpose of say, Facebook, the fact that nearly everyone uses it? How would a "social network" without other people even work?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
The thing that makes "social media" useful is its userbase. You could never have found/kept in touch with your old friends if you weren't signed up for a service they were also signed up for. Trying to find a smaller service by definitions means it's not going to be as useful to you.
...is the one all your friends are on. Otherwise, what's the point? Write your own if you need to. If you want to meet new people, find a site that caters to your interests or join one that everyone else is on. If you want to keep in touch with your friends, who cares which one you use as long as you agree on it.
On another note, the idea that Twitter=Facebook is alien to me. Facebook is multimedia sharing (video, pictures, short status updates, blog entries, etc.) while Twitter is just status updates and link sharing.
Ideally, it'd work something like this:
If you must microblog, Twitter is fine, or find something else. Most of them can publish to other accounts, and all of them worth considering will have at least an RSS feed, if not SMS.
Otherwise, pick any free blog hosting site, or run it yourself. Blogs already provide the basics of what "social networks" do, especially if you use XFN, but even without that, what do you really do on Facebook? Announce your status, post what you're doing, reply to other people's posts ("write on their wall"), organize events (iCal works, and Google Calendar supports it), link to people you like, follow what people are doing (RSS)... ...it's possible I'm missing what social networking is about, as I don't use Twitter or Facebook, but I also don't get what it adds above the Web itself as a medium. About the only thing I can think of is automatically suggesting certain people you might know, friends-of-friends and such, but I'm guessing anything that could provide that would also provide the exact same privacy concerns.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
The only way to win...is to not play.
Seriously, that's the best way to stay out of the Social Media Black Hole. Don't log in. Don't make an account. EVER. Ignore the temptation. Ignore the appeal.
LinkedIn is useful for business purposes. LinkedIn offers a big hammer that discourages spammers. If someone tries to "friend" you, and you don't know them, you click "I don't know this person". After a few rejections, the annoying user loses the ability to "friend" people. The same goes for "questions"; if someone puts up a question that looks like spam, and it's flagged, they soon lose the ability to post "questions". As a result, there are people on LinkedIn worth talking to. However, a big fraction of the users are "consultants" trolling for work. Lots of lawyers, but, after all, lawyers are consultants trolling for work.
I used to enjoy Tribe, which was fun and useful if you're near SF, because many of the people doing interesting art things in SF were on Tribe. But they have near zero traffic now. A few years back, they went "Web 2.0", and they broke their system so badly that "Tribe bug reports" became the most active group. Then they decided to crack down on "adult" topics to please their advertisers, and a big chunk of their user base left. Then they annoyed their main developer, and he left. After those mistakes, I think they're down to about three employees.
Adult Friend Finder. When thats down, you'll find me at MSN Gaming Zone, in the Chess rooms.
....What..?..Stop looking at me like that!
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beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his mind he dreams himself your master
What if I don't want to travel 5,000 miles everyday to see how all my friends are?
You can safely orbit a black hole, if you're beyond the event horizon and pick a trajectory that ensures you stay this way.
I think Facebook might be best treated this way: create yourself a profile with limited content. Particularly don't give informative answers to specific questions. Include a URL to your personal website / blog. Make that public. Make an email address and phone number visible to friends. Update your status and comment to friends periodically, feed links to content you have elsewhere through it periodically. You get most of the advantages of Facebook's visibility and keep their grip off your content and personal information.
Tweet, tweet.
Super super super early stage, but very interesting is Diaspora. This open source project aims to create a completely decentralized social network. It's inspired by Eben Moglen's call for us to break out of the walled gardens.
While walled gardens aren't going away, I really hope this project is at least partially successful giving people back control of their own data.
Just use the transporter?
I thought we agreed not to tell the non-techies about this!!
These social networking sites are, in the end, about making money in various ways. It may start off with placing ads, but eventually, they will not be able to resist the sale and ab/use of the data they collect about the users. If you want to do social networking that you can trust, you will have to put up your own site.
Current status: sensual
If the whole rest of the planet isn't using it, what's the point? Windows is what we're stuck with. Get over it.
So its ok to just bend over and take it since it is popular? What if Torvalds had this attitude? If nobody challenges the leader, then we are stuck with their mediocrity; the lack of competition will yield sub-par satisfaction. Having that kind of attitude is completely nullifies any incentive for innovation and new ideas, and stifles the chance for competition to improve what the [insert mainstream platform here] offers.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
Sure, Mark Zuckerberg's a douchebag, but most large corporations are run by douchebags and yet I still buy Cheerios at WalMart and drive a Chrysler.
Here's the thing - and don't tell anybody I told you this - if you don't put anything private on Facebook, then your privacy won't be compromised by it.
I use Facebook. I use it because most of my friends are on it. It's a nice way to stay in touch with people who I know, but most of whom I couldn't finish a single beer with and still have anything to talk about. I like these folks - they're part of my past and present - bu some people I only have very small things in common with. I also know when things are happening (a friend's play, or their kids league championship ball game), and where I have common interests with acquaintances whom I would either not interact with at all, or would take years to become closer.
But guess what - I don't put anything on Facebook which is (a) embarrassing (b) particularly personal (c) not already available with an internet search. I never Facebook while drunk (well, I don't get drunk - but you get the idea), and I don't attack people or things. I don't join "causes". I'm not a marketing wasteland, though. I've filled out my "favorite" things sections. BFD. If knowing that I'm in my 40s, like Bowling for Soup and Amadeus, and am married gets Facebook a couple of dollars in ad revenue, go for it. Kroger already knows when I'm on a fucking Diet, and CVS probably informs their spies when the rest of my household has seasonal allergies.
So, that brings me back - unless you really need something else, and are willing and able to migrate your entire friend group to it - quit your whining, be smart with your data, and surf with due caution. You know you can't trust Zuckerberg, and that's 98% of the way to keeping your information safe.
Oh - and whatever you go to will be just as bad eventually. Google can't always not be evil, and even open source projects can have a mole.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Check out the free and open source software, Caucus and build your own social network. I belong to such a Caucus-based community, where invited members can speak openly, and I strongly agree that Facebook is seriously limited by privacy concerns.
You could also look up "The Well" and see what communities of a similar nature are out there. Seems you're looking for something like that.
Identi.ca uses it, and I think the purpose is for people across different social networking sites to be able to follow each other.
Found it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenMicroBlogging
This would ostensibly lead to a decentralization of social networking sites while still allowing people to discover other users.
Will it eventually be possible to have a social-networking standard so that anyone can run their own server, just as with email? In that case it wouldn't matter if one friend uses facebook, another myspace, a third linkedin; they would all adhere to the same standard and so which particular social-networking service you use would become irrelevant.
PS: I apologize for being lazy but I haven't thought about this at all, so there could easily be some glaring reason why it can't possibly work.
I deleted my account yesterday. Feels great :)
Food is social networking, too. Plus, it's 3d fully interactive real-time 360 degree hyper-real resolution with full sensorial input. It's, like, real.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
If you haven't heard of it, it doesn't do what you want it to.
Insanity: voting in the same two parties over and over again and expecting different results
Slashdot.
Been around quite some time, too...or so I heard.
One that hath name thou can not otter
You reject Buzz as a social network (quite reasonably) because it's not popular enough and then solicit suggestions for an even more obscure social network?
"What kind of music do pirates listen to?" -Paul Maud'dib
"Yeeeaaarrrrr n' Bee!!" -Stilgar, Leader of Sietch Tabr
I've heard that the founder and current CEO of Multiply has been on Slashdot forever.
But guess what - I don't put anything on Facebook which is (a) embarrassing (b) particularly personal (c) not already available with an internet search.
It's not necessarily what personal info you put on Facebook that's going to come back to bite you in the ass; it's your social network itself. Back in the 1950s, during the McCarthy witchhunt, you got into trouble not so much for what you did, but for who you associated with (or even were just seen talking to). At that point you had the choice of either denouncing that person or being blacklisted yourself. As an aspiring dictator, I drool profusely thinking about how easily I'll be able to cleanse the social landscape of it's undesirable elements. They're falling all over themselves trying to give me lists of all their friends, no housecalls or torture needed.
Of course, it can't happen here, falling on deaf ears, etc...
if you don't put anything private on Facebook, then your privacy won't be compromised by it.
So, if you don't put up your real name, don't "friend" anyone, don't comment to anyone, don't join groups, and don't play games, you've removed all potentially private information. Oh yeah, you've also removed all usefulness at the same time.
Personally, I am not a facebook user, as I've never had any inherent trust of the company and Zuckerberg in particular. I'd like to say Google would do better, but with the uselessness of Buzz, and Schmidt's recent comments about privacy being only necessary if you're hiding something, I'm not counting on them either.
So, I'm waiting for an alternative to come around.
I hate talking on a cellphone. I don't know why, but talking without visual feedback is annoying.
After face to face talking (which isn't an option in many cases, obviously), I tend to prefer IM. Video calls would be OK if they didn't have perceptible lag.
Dilbert RSS feed
Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.
~ Blaise Pascal, Lettres Provinciales, xvi (1657)
[I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter.]
Say you're a minor. The child privacy/ anti pedophilia laws will do wonders for you.
New slashdot layout sucks.
then why would you use a network you haven't even heard of yet?
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Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
When social networks first started to appear, I didn't see the appeal. But I'm starting to understand it now.
The things people do on social network sites have been around as long as the Internet; it's just that the modern way of doing them is a bit more convenient.
Suppose my wife and I go out and ride a bicycle event (such as the annual ride from Seattle to Portland) and have a great time. My wife will probably write up an email about it, and send it to a list of our friends and relatives. She has to maintain that list and keep it up to date, and people who aren't on it might never find out about it, even if they would love to read about what we are doing.
The alternative is that she could post it on Facebook or some other site. She could set the privacy settings so that only our friends can see it. Facebook automatically starts helping friends find each other, so over time more and more friends are automatically able to see the posting. And, like a blog, it's also an archive old old posts, so newly added friends can go back and read older items they missed (if they so choose).
Once I realized that Facebook is actually a better way to send out these sort of updates, I started to like it a bit more.
Like anything else, it can be overdone. You might think it is very entertaining to say "I'm eating a sandwich right now" but I doubt I'd agree.
And I don't recommend sharing lots of really personal information: an example today I heard is that some person might say "Man, I really hate my boss" and then his/her boss might find the page and read that comment! Likewise, if you like to go to parties where people drink giant vats full of beer, and/or smoke strange things, you probably don't want to post photos of yourself at those parties; and you don't want to post things like "man I'm so wasted ive got the munchies so bad 4:20 ha ha." Later, possibly even years later, you might be applying for a job someplace and the new company might decline you just because of those wild and crazy public updates.
Another thing to consider: there is a horrible amount of spam in normal email (about 95% of all email sent is spam!). Some people are increasingly relying on social networking sites to communicate: instead of group-emailing their friends, they just update their micro-blogs; instead of sending an email to a friend, they just use the chat feature. Personally, I am very offended that spammers are breaking email for the rest of us, and I don't want to see everyone retreat into walled gardens owned by corporate overlords; I'd like to see a proper fix for email. But nonetheless, there are some people who rarely or never bother to check their email, but check their social page many times a day.
I think in the near future, we will see a great convergence: you will use one client that will alert you to instant messages, emails, personal messages from social networking sites, updates to your friends' micro-blogs, and RSS/Atom feed updates. You will be able to reply via instant message, email, personal message, or updating your micro-blog, or updating your blog if you have one. People don't really care what the transport is underlying the messages; why do we need one client for instant messages, another one for email, another one for social network sites, and another one for RSS/Atom? (One of the selling points for Google Buzz is that it is knitted together with your Gmail.) I would love a super-aggregator, where I could get it to alert me if a message is really urgent or from someone really important, and where other messages would just queue up for my later perusal.
P.S. Two clients:
Ubuntu 10.04 includes a social networking client called Gwibber. It aggregates all social networks for you, and can color-code messages to help you keep track (like, blue messages were pulled from Facebook, but red messages came from Twitter, etc.). You can post an update, and it will automatically push it out to multiple services (Facebook, Twitter,
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
The people I know who are most active in Facebook are also the people that don't miss a Uni party, know almost everybody in their course and are never at home at Saturday nights.
The people that have small profiles are the ones who have a more restricted circle of friends and less time/will to go out.
Same here. Those are the social butterflies. Sadly, I never developed that skill and just feel awkward at parties and gatherings and compensate by randomly saying inappropriate things.
In fact, that was the best part of smoking. It gave me an excuse to walk out of a party for a few minutes. I am quitting smoking, but will continue to use that as an excuse.
Sorry to reply to myself, but I am curious how many other slashdotters starts to feel physically sick and anxious at parties?
Hell, I get anxious and as a result a little angry just when talking to an overly friendly co-worker.
The solution to truly being safe in your distopian world is to have no friends at all.
I'm nearly 60 [although most of my life has been spent with computers], I hated Facebook from inception, it 'felt' shallow and stupid and something that made friendship a commodity. Also I didn't [and don't] like the constantly changing privacy and ownership 'landscape'.
So, since I have a green agenda, I've helped a group in East London implement an Elgg instance for my fellow greenies: http://www.hackney-environment-network.org.uk/ like a credit union, mamy of these people have a common bond with myself.
I'm hoping that these smaller and sometimes subject oriented groupings may be part of the social network future. A missing piece is an ethical, open-source, privacy preserving consolidator though. One reason I chose Elgg was for the 'promise' of OpenSocial: http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial/
On y va, qui mal y pense!
Well, they say that on the Internet the nickname really rather is what the person wishes to be, that what he really as.
*looks at your comment*
*looks at your nickname*
You wish!! ;)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
privacy != security.
Compromising your banking account information is a matter of security - it's about protecting resources or confidential data, and in that case you have all the reasons to go into a rant about not sharing info if you want to keep it secret.
Compromising your family's friends and activities is a matter of privacy - it's about protecting from undue intrusion and interference in their daily private life. The whole point of privacy is that these personal thoughts and activities are not *important* enough to be public, much less secret - it's the quotidian life. And the importance of keeping that private is that quotidian actions are not public speech or performance and are simply 'no one's business'.
It's no secret that public disclosure of the most banal activities modifies their behavior - you don't even need some oppressive authority watching and acting on that information, social pressure is good enough for a conforming/normalizing effect.
If everything in life is assumed to be public and subject to inspection by strangers, people will censor their actions and interactions in different ways - most by avoiding anything socially questionable or even just atypical, others by turning daily life into a clandestine process (and incidentally reinforcing the idea that privacy is about 'suspicious, secret activities').
Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4, everything else follows...
But guess what - I don't put anything on Facebook which is (a) embarrassing (b) particularly personal (c) not already available with an internet search.
It's not necessarily what personal info you put on Facebook that's going to come back to bite you in the ass; it's your social network itself. Back in the 1950s, during the McCarthy witchhunt, you got into trouble not so much for what you did, but for who you associated with (or even were just seen talking to). At that point you had the choice of either denouncing that person or being blacklisted yourself. As an aspiring dictator, I drool profusely thinking about how easily I'll be able to cleanse the social landscape of it's undesirable elements. They're falling all over themselves trying to give me lists of all their friends, no housecalls or torture needed.
Of course, it can't happen here, falling on deaf ears, etc...
And the facebook privacy changes back in december have made your list of friends public information. Read those policies folks: you can remove the list of friends from your profile so they don't show (or restrict it to friends only, etc), but they're still considered public by facebook. This means they can give it to whomever they want, and already provide it to any application a friend of yours may be using.
You're not using Buzz because you don't think anyone uses it (I think you're right, incidentally), so you're asking us for other social networking ideas that you've never heard of? Sounds like a losing proposition to me.
Someone needs to make a new Facebook, like how it was when it started up. Back when it was used to find people, connect to them, and keep in touch on occasion, but wasn't meant to be your portal to the Internet or a gateway to every social interaction in your life. I found value in Facebook back then. Now? The only value I find in it is what I've invested previously, not what I'm gaining. That said, I'm aware of the sunk costs fallacy and don't want to be a victim to it for too long, so if they push much harder, I will be leaving Facebook as well. From the very beginning I had everything set to friends only (or stricter), but now I'm being forced to remove parts of my profile as they make them public, since I simply don't want to share that information with others I don't know.
http://www.classy.dk/log/archive/001074.html
I good friend of mine realised this to their horror, after a political crackdown started, and they were in facebook, tagged next to several people on the hit-list. I suggested that they kill their account by posting their login and password. Viola, account compromised and not a legal liability. You can honestly say 'anyone could have done it'.....
Waiting for the other shoe to...
Crabgrass is a pretty unique social networking utility. It is maintained by the folks over at riseup.net, and is free software. Since it is done by the riseup folks, you know it is built with privacy and security in mind... http://we.riseup.net/