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The real anti-Facebook is good old email

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Re: The real anti-Facebook is good old email

#131

Post by digi_owl »

tmail21 wrote: post #116
TeMPOraL wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the difference is subtle, but a little different. Status updates on Twitter, Facebook, etc. feel like a part of the service - something that exists on Facebook. By checking your timeline you're only looking at events that exist elsewhere. On the other hand, receiving a mail feels like it came to you . It does not exist as an entity somewhere in the world, it's a message that came to your inbox (and possibly t…

I think you hit the nail on the head. An email is yours in the sense that once sent to you, the sender cannot 'take it away' or 'modify it' or 'delete it'. This is different than many other 'communication protocols' out there such as Facebook Posts, Twitter Posts, Slack comments, Shared Docs etc. which all have the notion of an 'owner' who can retract permissions, modify, delete etc. after 'send'. The email analogy w…

Reminds me that at one point Heinlein requested that any letter etc he had sent people were to be returned, so he could burn them...

Re: The real anti-Facebook is good old email

#132

Post by fallat »

tmail21 wrote: post #116
TeMPOraL wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the difference is subtle, but a little different. Status updates on Twitter, Facebook, etc. feel like a part of the service - something that exists on Facebook. By checking your timeline you're only looking at events that exist elsewhere. On the other hand, receiving a mail feels like it came to you . It does not exist as an entity somewhere in the world, it's a message that came to your inbox (and possibly t…

I think you hit the nail on the head. An email is yours in the sense that once sent to you, the sender cannot 'take it away' or 'modify it' or 'delete it'. This is different than many other 'communication protocols' out there such as Facebook Posts, Twitter Posts, Slack comments, Shared Docs etc. which all have the notion of an 'owner' who can retract permissions, modify, delete etc. after 'send'. The email analogy w…

I'm thinking of setting up "gateways", like bitlbee, so I can do:

To: facebook#post#friends@localhost

Subject:

Body:

Hey this is a post to Facebook, from email!

Re: The real anti-Facebook is good old email

#133

Post by saryant »

jschwartzi wrote: post #97
lmm wrote: post #87

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.

Facebook used to have this feature but I can't find it anymore. I only found out about it after meeting someone in Tokyo and have never been able to find the feature since which leads me to wonder if it's geofenced.

Re: The real anti-Facebook is good old email

#134

Post by pjbrunet »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #127
pjbrunet wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A popular subject for a tiny, passionate minority that has little relevance relative to the huge number of everyday users out there." Linux did take over Windows. You realize Android is Linux, right? That's 80% of the mobile market right here https://twitter.com/BIIntelligence/status/605748823709859840... And now Microsoft is building Android apps. So that tiny, passionate minority was right ;-)

Linux didn't take over Windows: it took over much of the server space and a specific form of it dominated mobile. Windows still dominates the desktop space as the commenter clearly meant. Further, a single company and product line has been holding its own against Android with profits that made Microsoft and IBM look poor. In the end, all the volunteers and paid programmers combined working on Linux couldn't displace…

I could write several books on that subject (yawn) but my larger point is that this technology affects billions of people now. Maybe it wasn't obvious at the time, but Slashdot was a big deal and so is Hacker News. These people have a lot of influence. It's a small world, after all ;-)

Re: The real anti-Facebook is good old email

#135

Post by garduque »

pjbrunet wrote: post #123

I was saving up this idea, but here's how you could disrupt Facebook. This is already happening, but it could be automated. In short, automatically DELAY posting to Facebook. Let everybody know at the bottom of all content: This was published first at example.com and released to social media (Facebook) after X hours. Make Facebook look antiquated like a newspaper. Let everyone know, Facebook is the old news. If you w…

I don't know anybody who gets "really time-sensitive" info from Facebook. I can't even think of an example beyond your not terribly good example of a shampoo sale.

Re: The real anti-Facebook is good old email

#136

Post by garduque »

codingdave wrote: post #52

Periodic updates to friend and family about what is new in your life has a long tradition behind it. Before email, even, it came in the form of Christmas Letters, including with the Christmas cards. And they absolutely serve a purpose for one-way communication out to people. TinyLetter sounds like it would meet that need nicely. Of course, it cannot be too frequent. Family members and friends who send out mass update…

Reading the title I thought the subject was going to be more along the lines of your response, not an ad for a newsletter service. The anti-Facebook is going back to how we communicated on a personal level before there was Facebook. Anything else still seems like a gimmick.

Re: The real anti-Facebook is good old email

#138

Post by knight17 »

wyclif wrote: post #80
Gracana wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't know it supported RSS, so I tried it. Seems nice enough: https://imgur.com/NdqMcbx

That toolbar tho. Ugh. I assumed he was talking about Outlook.com, not Outlook 2013.

Ribbon is collapsible in all Microsoft applications: Ctrl+F1 or click on the ^ in the right most part of the ribbon.

Re: The real anti-Facebook is good old email

#139

Post by andybak »

morgante wrote: post #49
Animats wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's got to be a "sponsored story". At the bottom of the page, there are links to more "Sponsored Stories - Powered by Outbrain". What is happening, and happened years ago, is that many people stopped using Facebook messaging and went back to email. It's easier to get messages via email on smartphones than to run Facebook's app.

Maybe in your social circles that's true, but everyone I know has started to rely on Messenger for almost all their non-professional communication. It's simultaneously killing both email and SMS.

Messenger == Facebook Messenger?

Please specify for those of us that don't use it. There's been several apps known as 'Messenger' over the years.

Re: The real anti-Facebook is good old email

#140

Post by knight17 »

wyclif wrote: post #102
lmm wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shrug. Not my experience. Google+ looks deader than disco here.

It's going to if you never circle anybody and none of your friends use it.

None of my friends use G+ but it has lots of active communities and there are many people who use it in a twitter-like manner -- posting non-personal items, starting discussions and the like that are crowd pullers (+1s, comments, resharing to other communities).

G+ is a good network, I hope the Facebookers will remain on Facebook and Google will find some way to open it up to outside web to integrate it with its active communities and the wide web - a prime example is the G+ blog comment system. It had potential to be the no 1, but they squandered away the opportunity by limiting it to G+ and Disqus scored there.

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