Social Web 3.0

Recently I used Second Life again. The first time I used it was nearly 3 years ago, and unfortunately, I’m still not sold. I know, I’m probably the only one — just like I’m someone who can’t stand MySpace unlike the millions of people who use it everyday — but there are some legitimate problems I can see.

I’m a gamer

Right, no one is sure if Second Life is a game. I’d even argue that it isn’t, unless you count an open sandbox as a game (possibly). But there is certainly no denying that the closest thing to the physical experience of Second Life is a video game. Video games are something I know; I’ve spent more time playing video games in my life than I’d probably like to admit. I’d like to think I’m pretty proficient at navigating around these games, as well.

Why then is it so hard for me to interact with Second Life? Most of my time spent in Second Life was trying to figure out what the heck I was doing. In fact, I spent a good amount of time stuck in a maze because I simply couldn’t navigate the camera to see where I was. Don’t even get me started on the time I discovered a trap.

Get a Life

The second big problem I found in Second Life was that there wasn’t any content so compelling to take time out of my first life for. I did enjoy the “exhibit” on being schizophrenic, done be UC Davis, however I couldn’t find anything else built with the same quality.

Actually, I should take that back. Wired had put together a pretty compelling space; unfortunately I only found one other person there, who was sitting 5 feet away from me. It seems to me that the attraction of having a “second life” is that it could be better than your first life, and Second Life didn’t provide that for me. Most of the time I felt like I was performing a chore, to be honest.

Some Honey to go with my Vinegar

Despite my complaints, there were a few things that I did enjoy in Second Life. One of my first experiences was with a character in game that was sponsored to help people new to the world. I chatted with her for a while and asked about what she did and why, and it was generally interesting. I could compare it to meeting a friendly new person in a new country; you’re interested in their way of life.

I also like the idea of an expandable virtual world. I don’t think it’s something that I can put time into currently, but I think I’d have been more intrigued by the whole idea if the system had felt at all accessible.

It’s certainly possible for Linden Labs to create an easier to use system and even add features — MySpace has managed to get better in the past 3 years, though there wasn’t much room to go anywhere but up.

The Idea.

Let me describe the set up: Our church has a group called The Door, which meets together the first Tuesday of the month. This month, it was on April Fools Day. On top of that our college pastor, Jeff, was on vacation in Hawaii. We decided we wanted to prank both the college students, and Jeff, and record it for YouTube. We told the students who came that we were going to prank Jeff’s office. They were split into groups and given 10 minutes to prepare, with 2 minutes to implement their idea. We also added a card indicating that Jeff was expecting a baby girl, just to add to the prank.

The Set Up.

I got to the church early to set up the camera and get ready for filming. I placed the camera in a location that could both capture the majority of the office in it’s field of view and not be discovered. Originally I planned to go in between groups to turn the camera on and off, but after the camera didn’t record the first group, I left it running. Once the groups had finished, I returned with the camera and we let them know that the camera was a prank, the video from which would be published on YouTube. From there, we said that we discovered the card in Jeff’s office indicating he was expecting a baby girl and said we wanted to film us all saying congratulations to him. Finally, after the students had left, I filmed the intern and a student leader revealing that the card was a prank as well.

The Editing.

After I had collected all the footage I’d need, as well as the picture showing the location of the hidden camera, I still had to edit it. I had a lot of blank tape between the second group and the third, and a lot of the video was just plain boring. In the end, I had maybe 20 minutes of video, which is totally unacceptable for YouTube. YouTube limits videos to 10 minutes, thus technically limiting it, and then there’s the fact that no one wants to watch 10 minutes of boring video.

I used iMovie to edit the video, since that’s what I had on hand. I began to pull out the clips that I actually wanted to use into the video. Once all the clips were together, I watched though it to decided what more I could cut from it. After that, I added transition effects, some titling, and music.

Know Your Audience

In the end, I included more footage than I could have, but mainly because of the audience that would view it. Although this video was going up for anyone with an internet connection to see, most likely only people involved were really going to watch it. For that reason, I included a lot of inside jokes that lengthened the video, but also made it funnier to the people who would be interested in it.

What would I do differently?

The big thing that I would change is the titling in it. The smallest I viewed the video was about 3 inches wide at a high resolution; when the video is viewed at high resolution, the titles are very easy to read. However, once I exported the video to YouTube, which presents the video at both a smaller size and smaller resolution, a lot of the titles became unreadable.

With all that said, here’s the video for you to watch.

Time to get down to business. This blog is all about social networking, so it’s time for me to talk about a few different social networking websites. The obvious two to look at are Facebook and MySpace; even my mom has one (literally.) The third website I’ve been using is a site called Twitter, which I wrote about earlier. Let me preface this all by saying that these are just my opinions about each site, and that I’ve been designing and developing websites for over a decade now, and along with being a perfectionist, I have a very biased view.

What Are They?

Lets start by talking about Facebook, because it’s popular and I happen to like it. Facebook started out for college students only — or really — for students with a college email account. About this time I was hating, but dealing with, MySpace (we’ll get into that later). I heard tons about Facebook and how I need to look at somebody’s photos on it; unfortunately I was still at junior college and had no college email to get into it. More recently, Facebook has opened up to anybody who wants an account. That’s when I joined in — leading to me deleting my MySpace account.

The thing I like about Facebook is that it’s a really good way to connect to people in a decently well made package. I volunteer as a leader at my church, and as an organization tool, Facebook is fantastic for us. Our college group has it’s own group so that one leader can send out a message to the entire group, and they can easily opt in or out of that group. On top of that, there’s a closed group for the leaders in which we can communicate privately. Even a lot of the bible studies have their own group for communication. A big point on which I differ from the general public is that I’m happy my family is using Facebook. My family likes to know what I do, and they like lots of details about it. If they log into Facebook, they can get the details and all I have to do is answer a few more questions. I’m of the opinion that if there isn’t something you want your parents to see, don’t put it up on Facebook. I can see how friends could post pictures of you from a crazy party, but to that I just have to ask, “Why are you taking photos at a party? They don’t turn out good, get people in trouble, and distract you from the people.”1

The one thing that really bugs me about Facebook is the application SDK added somewhat recently. The idea is that it allows anyone to create an application to do something on your Facebook account. Unfortunately, put into practice, this means that you get a lot of annoying invitations for applications that you really don’t care about and are more often than not poorly made.

Now that I’ve leveled my sights at Facebook, it’s MySpace’s turn — and it won’t be pretty. MySpace was the first of these three social networking sites that I used2, and the one I’m least fond of. I’ll qualify this by saying that the biggest thing that bugs me about MySpace is how poorly it’s made. I can’t get on it without cringing at the poor interface design, or the bad markup, or how hard it really makes it for users to actually use. All that said, it is still ridiculously popular. Whether or not it’s a good tool, people started using it and it essentially made social networking somewhat of a household term. As I said earlier, I had deleted my MySpace account back when Facebook started allowing anyone, and so I haven’t been using it for about the past two years. I have followed it a bit through my girlfriend’s account, and my own account re-opened in order to evaluate it for this blog post, and I can say that nothing has really changed enough to win me back. They’ve re-skinned their account landing page to look cleaner, but as far as I can tell, they’ve just made it prettier, not easier to use3.

Now that I’ve reamed MySpace, I should talk about one of my new favorite pets, Twitter. Perhaps to understand it, seeing would help; my account can be found here. The concept behind Twitter is simple; you have 140 characters to say what you want, which you can simply post, reply to another users post, or use the “@” character and another users name to direct your post at them.

I was actually talking about writing this post to a friend today and mentioned that I was including Twitter alongside Facebook and MySpace. His first thought was that it was strange to classify it as a social network, but as we talked, we agreed that it is essentially the most basic a social network can be. You create simple messages for other users to see. From there, anyone you’ve directed a post at as well as people following your twitter account are notified of this new post and can go read it. The real problem for me is that I only know one person locally well enough to follow him. The rest of the accounts I follow are things like CNN’s breaking news Twitter feed and some well known bloggers that I respect. I think it would be a much more valuable tool if I had more local friends on it, but I still enjoy using it quite a bit.

How Do I End This Blog?

The only obvious way I can think to end this is by saying I really want to join MyFace but am reasonably scared to.

I commented on Denise's blog a while back, and she responded with a post of her own. Most of my own comment was bashing on the record industry, but also criticizing how she didn't leave much room for good content to come from individuals. I figured since the discussion is still out there, I could add to it a little more.

Crap or worthwhile? Or somewhere in-between?

I agree with the sentiment that most of the individual content released on the web is simply crap. That's the problem with giving people unlimited publishing options. It's not surprising though, and can even be entertaining. I'm not a big fan of American Idol, but when I have watched it, its to watch the auditions. There are so many terrible vocalists that come on the show convinced they're great, and no one can tell them otherwise—its hilarious. At the same time, bad self published content either doesn't go far, or does because it's laughably bad. And the good self published content might not be discovered, but if it is, it will probably be noticed. Either way, only entertaining content is reaching the mainstream. If I knew how, I'd love to trade it so that the undiscovered good content got the recognition that the laughably bad content got, but there's more luck there than anything else.

The really interesting content to me is the content that's neither bad, nor good. There's a song that's been circulating around the internet called “Chocolate Rain” by a guy named Tay Zonday. What makes that specific song so interesting to me is that it gets something right and then repeats it until it's not so great anymore. Another part of it is that he looks 15-years-old (He's really 25) but has such a deep voice; it adds a little interest to him singing. This is someone that could possibly be developed into a good artist, which is something the major recording companies aren't doing anymore.

What's wrong with the music industry

The music industry wouldn't develop Tay Zonday; there's no immediate money in it. Today's music industry is all about what they can make the most money on right now. I realize that this isn't the case for everything, but the majority of the pop and rap genres have fallen victim to this.

Self publishing makes it interesting again

Back to Denise, she had taken it that I am for restrictions on content on the web. This isn't the case; My opinion is that content on the web is naturally filtered. Worthwhile content gets passed on, and the rest is left alone. What's great about self publishing is that it lets us be in charge of filtering the content, and not executives worried about a quick buck. Since we are the ones that consume the content, it makes sense that we are the ones to decide what is worth publishing. Like I said, that encourages people that lack talent to publish as well, but in the end I think that having the ability to decide for ourselves what is worth consuming is the most important.

There's been a lot of talk about social networks and their influence on society lately. This isn't surprising; Social networks are widely popular. It's common for youth particularly—but even possible for any age group—to have either or both a MySpace and Facebook account. Speaking personally, I have a Facebook on which both of my parents1, my pastor, etc. are friends of mine; I even just added my boss as a friend. I add this just to show that my Facebook account is on display to just about any source of authority in my life. With that out of the way, I want to address the idea of privacy on social networks and disciplinary actions that result from these types of web site.

Who would be so stupid?

I have to ask the question, “Who would be so stupid to publicly broadcast something they don't want known?”

Students post pictures of themselves holding cans of beer and bottles of liquor—even when they're underage. They pose suggestively wearing little—sometimes no—clothing. Some appear to be smoking marijuana in bongs or joints, even holding firearms. They openly write nasty comments about each other or their teachers and coaches online.2

Who are we kidding?

There's another side to this argument; People have been committing objectionable behavior long before they've had a social network account, and to some extent, we know this. People under the age of 21 have been illegally drinking for a long time now—most likely for as long as there has been a law against it. The difference is that there's more proof of it now. I think people need to actually evaluate these objectionable activities and be clear on the punishment.

I've held jobs that commonly make it known to the employees that they “want you to be able to share anything” with them, without consequence. It sounds like a great idea, and they really do mean it, but it doesn't work like that in practice. More often a policy like that means that whoever is in charge really wants to know what problems there may be, but won't hold true to the “no punishment” side of things. My point is that there's always going to be things going on that the authority is unhappy with, and they need to either be clear what the consequences are for it, but at the same time fully expect that consequences easily lead to secrecy. The other side is to really hold to the ideal of having no consequences and limiting their ability to respond to something the find objectionable.

Let me sum this up.

To sum up my opinions more simply, people need to realize that if something is at all public—shared with anybody—it can easily spread to anyone. At the same time, most objectionable behavior isn't that uncommon. Underage drinking happens whether you can prove it or not, and that isn't a very surprising concept to anyone. We need to evaluate what battles we're going to fight; Is punishing someone's objectionable behavior worth never having access to the rest of their behavior?

Technology is to the point where the average person can produce high quality content for very little money. On top of that, websites are constantly opening up for people to share this content; For video, there's YouTube and Vimeo, for audio there is MySpace and purevolume1, and for text there are too many ways to publish online for me to count. Unfortunately just having an outlet doesn't guarantee quality.

Well, what about all that crap?

Anyone who has spent a day online could probably show a lot of really good content that they had seen that day, but the majority of it would be crap. I'm not going to mince words on this subject; most of the content on the internet is terrible. The real question is whether this matters or not. Here's a few ideas about why this may not matter:

Terrible content doesn't get word-of-mouth— Most of the good content I see online has been recommended to me by someone else. I have friends that tell me, "You have to see this!" and follow all sorts of sites that do the same for all their followers. Now, word-of-mouth doesn't guarantee that I'm being sent to something I'll enjoy, but certainly someone enjoyed it enough to recommend it, meaning there is probably another who will enjoy it too.

Content sharing websites like YouTube and purevolume have ways of highlighting the best content— It's hard to find a site hosting content that doesn't have some way of rating the content on it. On both YouTube and purevolume, the entire front page is dedicated to content that has been visited the most or has gained the most peer recommendation, along with paid content promotion. This is basically the official sort of word-of-mouth.

Content from traditional sources isn't guaranteed to be good— How many TV shows are simply terrible, how many movies are near unwatchable, and how much music just sucks? The assumption is that traditional content publishers have a process of review to make sure that what they put out is good, but that assumption doesn't ring true when you take a look at the content. The music industry is especially in a sorry state—I can't recommend enough that you watch the documentary Before the Music Dies.2 The music industry seldom develops artists these days, opting to record what's hot now and try to fix it's deficiencies after the fact digitally. I suppose that's a bad criticism of developing good content, since somebody must listen to all that dime-a-dozen pop music, however it is still a good argument about how poorly the industry develops content. Keep in mind that someone like Ray Charles might not make it today, just because he's blind. Led Zeppelin got it's name from being told their band would go down like a "lead zeppelin." Just like the Mythbusters3, however, we all found out a lead zeppelin can fly.

Skip past this paragraph if you don't want to hear about producing your own music

Because I am a musician, you get to sit through my opinions on "user generated content" in terms of music. Alright, you don't have to sit through it, but you might learn something. When (or lately "if") I release an album, I will release it online on my own web site. With a little effort, making a professional recording isn't hard. You can buy mixers with computer interfaces which you can plug all your instruments and microphones into to record on your computer. Apple ships GarageBand to record with all it's computers, free. My own setup includes an 8 channel mixer and two professional microphones with cables and stands, all for around $500. My point here is that recording your own quality audio is very possible. The benefit is if I release my own album, I can circumvent the recording industries fears and misconceptions about audio in the digital age. I could—and would—release an album supported by donations. I'd have the ability to give people the music online—for free—and ask for people to donate if they'd like for me to continue recording. That way, if my album sucks and no one enjoyed it, I'll know that I either need to work to do better or stop altogether.

Overall, I don't think you can really put rules and limitations on user generated content, just based on it's quality. You can't stop people from making terrible content, it will happen anyways. The beauty of it is the amazing content that comes through too.

With blogging becoming more and more mainstream everyday, something new had to take it’s place as the newest personal publishing format, right? Micro-blogging1 is that new format, and it's really no more than status updates—Micro-blog post’s are almost always less than 200 characters and usually used as a means to update friends or anyone to what you’re doing.

Twitter is the micro-blog

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?2

Twitter is essentially synonymous with micro-blogging. Of course there are alternatives, but you’d be hard pressed to find one nearly as popular as Twitter. So what is it? Twitter lets you post up to 140 characters, and then follow what people are tweeting3. It’s definitely drawn a crowd—you can even read tweets from Darth Vader. More seriously, even CNN updates with it’s breaking headlines on Twitter. Since the only limit to what you can do with Twitter is the length of what you have to say, it leaves lots of creative potential. Businesses could post product releases, famous people can use it to boost their popularity and exposure.

Our society moves so fast that we don’t give anything much time. In the online community, there’s an acronym, “tl;dr” which stands for “too long; didn’t read.” And while the online community can take this idea of satisfaction now to the extreme, it’s easily seen in business and education as well. Businesses are looking for what can make the most money today; Students stop paying attention the longer their lecture is.4

In this sort of society, 140 characters is set up to rule.

What could kill Twitter?

The first post by someone answering the essential Twitter question, “What are you doing?” is likely to be “trying to figure this thing out.”5

With all new things, a relatively small group of people adopt it and love it; the rest have no idea what it is or why they need it. I’m fairly connected to the group of people that love Twitter, and still had a hard time figuring it out (saying that as if I’ve actually figured it out.) The first question I had is why I really need this. I already update my status from time to time on Facebook, and while it’s interesting to browse people’s status when I’m bored, boredom is really the only motivator for that. The second question was if I knew enough people on Twitter for it to even be useful to me. Unfortunately for this writing, the answer to that question is no. Even if my friends have heard of Twitter, they’re still hung up on the issue of why. Michael Simmons, a web developer out of Chicago said, “I like it, I just don’t use it, because I think of it as a ‘what am I doing’ thing, and I just work.”

On the opposite side, those who have many friends on Twitter can get burnt out on the concept. Just like with blogs and videos on the internet, most of it is just crap that you move through on the way to the good morsels. Compounding that is the fact that the people with lists of friends on Twitter already have full RSS feeds of blogs and other content they read, as well as full email inboxes and an IM account full of friends. Talk about content burnout. Remember, the idea behind things like Twitter is to absorb content in short form; What’s the difference between long form content and a bucket full of short form content?

The future is bleak?

All that said, I think Twitter is shaping the future of content on the web. I remember the days when blogs—then weblogs—were new and there was even more controversy than there is now on their existence, with only a core group of adopters. Today, blogs are everywhere; People get payed to blog.

I think as Twitter grows, people are going to learn how to use it better. Just like how out of so many blogs, a few great blogs rise to the top, I think the same will happen with Twitter. I don’t necessarily think that Twitter is for everybody—neither are blogs—however I think it is perfect for certain people.