Lifestreaming Apps miss the point
I have been playing with most of the new lifestreaming applications. SocialThing, FriendFeed and a few others.
This big deal about these applications is that they take activity information from a slew of social sites, such as Facebook, Flickr, upcoming, etc, and they bring that information all in to one place.
The image on the right is an example of my FriendFeed.com stream. You can see that it includes updates from Blogs, Twitter. If you could see the whole page, you would see images, bookmarks, messages and more.
I really liked the idea of a combined lifestream at first. The name “lifestream” describes the fact that these apps are all creating a stream of information about our online lives, and there is power in sharing what we are creating, curating and synthesizing.
The problem that is cropping up however is that these apps are probably better called “noise aggregators” or “NoiseStreamr”s than anything else. By the time I had friended a few dozen people on FriendFeed and started trying to keep up with their blog posts, twitters, del.icio.us bookmarks, Jaiku status and more, I start to feel like I am experiencing more of a info-avalanche than I am floating down a lazy river of socially relevant news.
I don’t think that this problem is inherent to information streams, but it is pretty obvious that these tools are in their infancy and a lot of art and science is going to have to go in to improving the information flow.
The most immediate thing they could do would be to provide a way for the user to offer feedback on what feed items are actually interesting to them and which ones are not. ie: If I give someone’s del.icio.us bookmarks a thumbs down every time I see it, then you should stop showing it to me. If I give a thumbs down on ever single del.icio.us bookmark I see, then make sure you never show me one again.
There is a clear trend toward data streams built out of my social network, but the focus has to be on reducing noise, not adding to it.
Is IT becoming extinct?
Is IT becoming extinct? | IT Project Failures
Since the days of punch cards, IT has believed itself to be guardian of precious computing resources against attacks from non-technical barbarians known as “users.†This arrogant attitude, born of once-practical necessity in the era of early data centers, reflects inability to adapt to present-day realities. Such attitudes, combined with recent technological and social changes, are pushing IT to share the fate of long-extinct dinosaurs.
While ITs demise won’t happen overnight, the trend is clear.
Keeping the Faith: The E2.0 Evangelist
“Why is it so hard? Well, corporations are often geared towards “risk management”. When I’ve had to push concepts of social computing in my professional career, I have on several occasions encounter folks that jump to “risk management”. Why not? Haven’t we trained people to think this way?
Companies often say they want to promote “risk taking” and “innovation” but we don’t reward them for that. The truth is that we ask for this, but when we take a risk and it doesn’t pay-off, the company often comes down hard on those people. Actions speak louder then corporate messaging. Over time, we train people to be risk averse. You won’t get fired for NOT adopting social media in the company.” - Rex Lee
The end of software… | Irregular Enterprise | ZDNet.com
I then spoke to another Irregular, Jevon MacDonald who has been working in the so-called Enterprise 2.0 aka socialprise space for some time. He said that where the startups fail but where the incumbents succeed is in identifying a specific value proposition within specific industries. His view is that Sharepoint will be a ‘big winner in the next five years.’ If the amount of noise being made by Microsoft is indicative, then it should be a winner. But…he also says: “Sharepoint deployments are horrendous and I really don’t know why people put up with them.†- The end of software…
JR on the market
“The difference between this and a standard stock market crash is a lack of trusted information. In a stock market crash, like 1987, nobody questioned the underlying information about the firms behind the stock, rather, the question was what the price of that stock should be. In this crisis, information about the underlying assets is too uncertain and too complex to understand. FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) abounds and nobody trusts anybody else anymore. That is a recipe for a global financial meltdown.”- John Robb
20×2
20 x 2 : What’s The Difference? from photojunkie on Vimeo.
