Pop Loser

Klout is a Terrible, Horrible, Awful Thing

I don’t like the idea of bigger media outlets covering Klout because I think it legitimizes something that’s really, really stupid and bad (I’m not even sure I linked to the Wired story when it came out, though I did reference it on Twitter), but the New Yorker does a nice job calling out Klout for what it really is.

But clever ideas are not necessarily good ones, and Klout is designed in a way that makes it likely to fuel both unhealthy obsession and unhappy competition. When you log into Klout, it makes it easy to see, in order of score, exactly how all your friends rank. The number is more personal than those used by other social networks, and Klout displays it prominently. The iPhone app shows your Klout score in a blaring red circle —just like the number of unread e-mails and unheard voicemails. “Look at me!” it’s yelling. And sometimes, when you do look, it tells you that you’ve become less important, less interesting, less retweeted, or less whatever. Do you really want something in your pocket that will tell you what you’re worth?

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When you set your profile in Klout, you can pick “I am an individual influencer” or “I am a brand influencer.” I don’t really know what either means, but they both sound creepy. After I check Klout, I want to shower.

Subtraction By Addition — Adding Smaller Social Networks

Path, Everyme and Pair point to a possible desire for smaller social networks full of people you might actually know and care about. Maybe. I suppose we’ll have to see if any of them sell for $1 billion before we know for sure.

Pair is easy — that’s just me and my wife. Because Path pulls mainly from your Facebook friends list, it’s like a select version of that. I really like it — it’s a gorgeous app that combines a lot of the best features of Twitter, Foursquare and Instagram in a way that doesn’t feel cluttered — but most of my close friends don’t use it, and I’ve noticed that the people I do follow are using it less and less. Everyme I haven’t tried, but like Path, my contacts are culled from existing networks then sorted into groups, so it’s just preferred and more organized subsets of people I’m already connected to.

And that’s what’s kind of interesting. I could accomplish the same goals of these apps by dropping “friends” who aren’t actually my friends from Facebook or Twitter. Just stop following them. Block them. Whatever. But I don’t. In fact, most times I have no fucking clue what I’m doing with my social networks. I alternate between loving and hating Twitter and trying to decide exactly what it’s for. (Conclusion: I have no idea.) I want to blow up my Facebook page, but it’s my primary tool for communicating with family in other places (or rather, in most cases, it’s their primary tool for communicating with me). Also, thanks to Facebook Connect, it’s how I sign into a lot of services. And it drives nearly 40% of the traffic on this site.

So, for these reasons and more, I’m pathologically committed to maintain social networks that I find mostly irritating or time consuming or, frankly, just draining. And it’s forcing me (and apparently others) to add things like Path and Everyme and Pair to my life. I’ve heard of addition by subtraction, but this is subtraction by addition. I’m adding icons to my iPhone’s home screen in an effort to simplify my digital social life. But to maintain my presence on Twitter and Facebook (and Tumblr and Foursquare), I automate things — this blog auto-posts to Twitter and cross posts to Facebook — which is one of the behaviours I saw from other people that made me start disliking Facebook and especially Twitter in the first place. Nobody seemed to care.

I suppose that means we’re okay. I can have an infinite number of networks for infinite combinations of infinite kinds of relationships. And although that’s actually what I’m doing, it doesn’t necessarily seem like the best idea, right?

Social Web c. 1997

The modern social web as it would have looked in 1997. They even limit the transfer to dial-up speed, which is funny and infinitely frustrating.

Ineffective pick-up lines for the modern internet persona. [via]

That gorgeous woman over there keeps looking this way, like she recognizes me or something. I do maintain a mildly successful YouTube account with over sixty subscribers, so I’m used to this sort of unwelcome attention.

Waxy breaks down the awesome happening in the early days of Heello.

I’m a social media rockstar.

Being a social media rock star usually means staying late. Even on days when I don’t need to stay late, I’ll just do it anyway because other people are staying late. That’s just kind of how it is around here. If a coworker leaves before 9pm, the other coworkers will say something like, “Hey! I guess so-and-so’s only putting in a half day today!” Then we all laugh and joke about how worthless that person is and how he/she should be fired. Minutes later, the rest of us leave simultaneously.

Social media according to Bob Ross. The world needs more Bob Ross references.

Turntable.fm lets five people listen to music together online. You can vote down songs and give points to fellow DJs. It’s the best online listening idea I’ve seen since Muxtape.

Another example of how the UFC is crushing social media: They will give out $240,000 in bonuses to various fighters who use Twitter this year.

MySpace can now be yours for $100 million.

Friendster is deleting a bunch of user profile data, including photos, blogs and comments, at the end of May. Keep on keeping on, Friendster.

The year the check-in died.

All of this doesn’t mean, however, that Gowalla, Foursquare, MyTown, Loopt and all the services with check-ins at their core are necessarily going out of business. It does mean they need to find a way to deliver deep value to people beyond the check-in.

I use Gowalla and Foursquare, but I’ve never felt like these are tools with a long-term future. At least not in their current form. But I do think location is going to be huge, we just don’t understand how yet.

The hottest new social network is Reality. Available everywhere.

Our wire transfer protocol consists of a simple series of audible vibrations projected through the atmosphere. Most humans are equipped with the proper drivers and hardware for it, so it shouldn’t be hard to find other Reality users!

The protocol consists of a simple set of canonical strings. Each region has developed its own de facto dialect, so traveling around will require a certain degree of translation (usually accomplished through existing Reality hardware).

Caterina Fake on social media and the fear of missing out. [via]

FOMO —Fear of Missing Out— is a great motivator of human behavior, and I think a crucial key to understanding social software, and why it works the way it does. Many people have studied the game mechanics that keep people collecting things (points, trophies, check-ins, mayorships, kudos). Others have studied how the neurochemistry that keeps us checking Facebook every five minutes is similar to the neurochemistry fueling addiction. Social media has made us even more aware of the things we are missing out on. You’re home alone, but watching your friends status updates tell of a great party happening somewhere. You are aware of more parties than ever before. And, like gym memberships, adding Bergman movies to your Netflix queue and piling up unread copies of the New Yorker, watching these feeds gives you a sense that you’re participating, not missing out, even when you are.

I’m totally with her on that New Yorker thing.

(Source: readability.com)