Why I will never join facebook

Be a part of a "tribe"

facebook isn't the first social group that ever existed - before facebook was bolt.com (or recently orkut.com), or even now many other underdogs like hi5.com, Netlog, Tagged, Bebo co-exist, even with the previous leader of the pack which is unable to regain popularity myspace.com...

Social group website, works more or less the same way ... you create an account, you post photos, videos, links and interact with "your tribe" - be it your close family, your co-workers, or simply people that are sharing more or less the same hobbies.

Now being successful as a social group is not easy - you have to provide an attractive website, with ease of use, you have to be aware that some people will post things that are not "politically correct" or might even be illegal (in some way - like links to download of mp3 or 'bootleg' movies etc ...).

And even in many instance, the most annoying of all, porn - the all invasive porn that will find the way into any sort of network to spread.

That's the reason you will have this 'report button' - and that link will suddenly disappear, and sometime users account...

Now for the social group provider, the only thing that really count (at the beginning) is to spread like wildfire, so the first case of "porn invasion" or abuse from users will be ignored. Because the step after acquiring a large user base, is the step where user get trapped with this particular website.

Enter the Trap

After your friends, co-workers, etc ... are trapped, then basically this website will become the way you will interact with them by chat, or messages left on their timeline, the problem is that on this platform - you are under surveillance, under scrutiny of marketers, business poll, advertisers, and psychologists that are trying to manipulate, control, and brain-wash people.

And at some stage, you will have to make this choice to stay in because the interaction with your "tribe" is more important - or you will just figure out, that enough is enough and wasting your time in being part of an experiment to turn you into a lab rat, is definitely going too far.

The tactics they're is using to give the impression that it constantly grows - is that you can't ever delete your facebook account, it will stay there "deactivated" ... ready for you to reactivate it (because they know you will be back anyway).

At first (like in any abusive relationship), the partner is showing all his "attractive" side, and wants you to be part of what looks like an interesting and passionate symbiotic relationship - and as soon as you are part of it, it decides (without your accord) that well, some things should be different, and then it starts doing thing in secret, and you will feel more and more like you have been duped, you have been foolish to even start dating this asshole, but it's too late ... now he has all your stuffs, and the more you wait the harder it will get.

And that's the reason you will never find me on facebook.

Image Credit :
http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/2019.html
http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/2017.html

Additional Credit :
http://www.moreofit.com/similar-to/www.hi5.com/Top_10_Sites_Like_Hi5/

Microblogging platform review

What is this, and why does it exist?

Microblogging or tumblelog is that (relatively) new trendy type of social website (social .. yes, but not quite like facebook) where you have this never ending stream of pictures, video, quotes, or texts - where you can reblog, like or share and add new content.

For the "content creator" it's way faster than writing long articles on the "traditional" platform like blogger.com or wordpress.com and microblogging serves the purpose of having a hand on the pulse of the internet, much like twitter but with more emphasis on pictures and videos. That's why you can also find #hashtags on tumbleblog. And the reblogging is an even faster way to share content that will snowball and could actually in matter of hours spread all over the interwebs.

For the "surfer" - the fun part about microblogging is that selection of blog you select and will follow and which will merge with the current stream of informations and give you that unique personalized content you will be scrolling endlessly everyday - a very important tool in the procrastinator arsenal.

While facebook is for connecting with friends, and family - tumbleblog are more like a way to connect with like minded people, writers, cosplayers, freelances, comics artists, comedians, spiritual teacher etc ...

Some examples, okay ...

The most famous platform is (probably) tumblr.com - so famous in fact, that it has this "aura" of pillar of the internet (along with 4chan, reddit, twitter and facebook).

But it's not the only one, there's soup.io  quite popular in central Europe, Germany and Austria.

There's also diaspora which is a platform that from the beginning has a priority on privacy and respect for the user (for those who don't trust facebook or google+)

In my experience every of these platform had a quite difficult time in their beginning  - when users were constantly having errors and couldn't post because of server's errors and whatnot.

NB : The first time I discovered the tumbleblog concept was with the now defunct meme.yahoo.com  (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Meme for more details) - it seems like they had a different strategy in mind because later they bought tumblr.com

Which is like usual saying something on the quality of the platform - the importance, isn't in the technology or the ease of use, but really in the number of people connecting, using and interacting with it. For people that don't know what I'm talking about they should look for the rise and fall of myspace.com.