91–100 of 165 posts
Founder of TinyLetter here. Cool article! Glad TinyLetter is still going strong & a successful acquisition for MailChimp.
fuckedcompany.com was a great site. Wish there was a better archive than the bits saved at archive.org.
I don't think email is a good replacement for Facebook. Rather what we need is open (email protocol like) social networks. The problem with Facebook is that its a monopoly, and closed. What if it were open, such that I can send a friend request from G+ to Facebook. Just like I can easily send an email from yahoo email id to gmail. This openness, if incorporated, can solve the monopoly problem as well. Plus we don't h…
I think we need multiple protocols. One for ordinary messages (ok, we have email for that), one for statuses, one for tagging people, one for publishing events, one for indicating which events you are going to, etc.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But getting someone's Facebook is less socially awkward than their email address. I don't understand why this would be. Would you explain why -for your cohort- this is true?
An email address feels more intimate - it's something a romantic partner would have but a friend wouldn't necessarily. And asking someone for an email address is asking them to spend thirty seconds spelling things out (particularly in a bar), and another thirty waiting for you to send them an email to confirm. Facebook is just a question of typing their name, which you already know - often it can autocomplete based o…
But, while we're here:
> Facebook is just a question of typing their name...
Many folks in my peer group used an (often oddly-spelled) nym when they created their Facebook account long, long ago. (Also, many folks in my peer group abandoned their FB account long ago, but that's another matter entirely. ;) )
> ...and another thirty [seconds] waiting for you to send them an email to confirm.
They way I've seen this handled is to either show the person how you spelt the email address, or have them wait for the "new email" notification to confirm that you did, indeed spell the address correctly.
Yet another way is to hand your conversation partner a business card.
Facebook is flexible enough to provide this. You can post updates visible only to a group of people. Problem with Facebook is how people use it. Users tend to have > 500 friends on an average including ones to whom you have never spoken or never want to speak. This would make your timeline pretty irrelevant and uninteresting to you. Why would I care if a colleague in your first job (10 yr ago) went on a trip with his…
You can in theory, however in practice I've found it to be very cumbersome. I spent some time in 2011 trying to sort my Facebook 'friends' into groups - people I know from work, from tech meetups, and so on. It was too much work and the groups were too coarse. Facebook's graph search was promising, and I'd love to occasionally share a link (say) my policy-wonk friends will like, but there was no way to pair up graph search and status updates, e.g. share a link with "my friends who like technology policy". And of course, graph search is gone now.
I think Facebook's thinking is that you should just post an update and they'll figure out who'll be most interested in it. But the problem with that is there's no way to know who exactly is reading your status updates.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is what diaspora tried to do. It has not gone well.
Diaspora was written by a bunch of college students who were unqualified to be implementing the security protocols necessary. Given that one of the biggest reasons people want to move off Facebook is security, that's a no-go. The fact that Diaspora failed at implementing this idea doesn't mean that the idea is bad.
I'm not convinced that anyone apart from readers of Hacker News and Reddit wants to move off Facebook.
Discussions about the problems of FB on HN remind me of 2000s-era Slashdot discussions of why Linux is better than Windows and is poised to takeover the desktop: A popular subject for a tiny, passionate minority that has little relevance relative to the huge number of everyday users out there.
(BTW, I'm not a big FB user and am sympathetic to discussions of its problems, but I'm also aware that apart from a small number of nerds no one cares.)
Founder of TinyLetter here. Cool article! Glad TinyLetter is still going strong & a successful acquisition for MailChimp.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But getting someone's Facebook is less socially awkward than their email address. I don't understand why this would be. Would you explain why -for your cohort- this is true?
An email address feels more intimate - it's something a romantic partner would have but a friend wouldn't necessarily. And asking someone for an email address is asking them to spend thirty seconds spelling things out (particularly in a bar), and another thirty waiting for you to send them an email to confirm. Facebook is just a question of typing their name, which you already know - often it can autocomplete based o…
You already have your phone out, and they probably have to take theirs out to confirm, so it doesn't add anything that doesn't already exist. But this application of QR Codes saves typing in a good way.
I don't think email is a good replacement for Facebook. Rather what we need is open (email protocol like) social networks. The problem with Facebook is that its a monopoly, and closed. What if it were open, such that I can send a friend request from G+ to Facebook. Just like I can easily send an email from yahoo email id to gmail. This openness, if incorporated, can solve the monopoly problem as well. Plus we don't h…
That is what diaspora tried to do. It has not gone well.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
An email address feels more intimate - it's something a romantic partner would have but a friend wouldn't necessarily. And asking someone for an email address is asking them to spend thirty seconds spelling things out (particularly in a bar), and another thirty waiting for you to send them an email to confirm. Facebook is just a question of typing their name, which you already know - often it can autocomplete based o…
I feel like the typing/confirmation issue could be solved by adding a QR code generator to your email app, and having them scan the QR code on your phone to share details. You already have your phone out, and they probably have to take theirs out to confirm, so it doesn't add anything that doesn't already exist. But this application of QR Codes saves typing in a good way.
And if you want their info vs giving them yours, then they also have to know how to get their address displayed as a code.
Technically no problem, in practice I wouldn't expect it to work.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Diaspora was written by a bunch of college students who were unqualified to be implementing the security protocols necessary. Given that one of the biggest reasons people want to move off Facebook is security, that's a no-go. The fact that Diaspora failed at implementing this idea doesn't mean that the idea is bad.
Given that one of the biggest reasons people want to move off Facebook is security, that's a no-go I'm not convinced that anyone apart from readers of Hacker News and Reddit wants to move off Facebook. Discussions about the problems of FB on HN remind me of 2000s-era Slashdot discussions of why Linux is better than Windows and is poised to takeover the desktop: A popular subject for a tiny, passionate minority that h…