Nels Wadycki

…but I may never know.

Part 1: Shock and Awe

I made a decision to try to just focus on positive things with this blog, but given my previous obsession with Lifestreaming, I can’t help but comment on this.

I read about AOL’s Lifestream earlier today on TechCrunch who, rightfully, said that it might be what Google Buzz should have been. From what Michael Arrington says, it may be all that and more.

The problem is, when I tried to sign in using Facebook Connect (which I would normally say is a great use of social network integration by AOL), I get this:

Whawhawhat? Really? No, really?

I’ve never seen that permission asked for before, and I hope I never see it again. While Facebook may be the Walled Garden with Reinforced Steel and Concrete Walls, I kind of like it that way. I can post stuff that I know only people I’ve friended will see.
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Nels Diatribes, Facebook, Lifestreaming, Twitter AOL, Facebook, Facebook Connect, Fail, Lifestreaming, Twitter

From a (sort of) recent Facebook status update:

While I agree for the most part with the “Tumblr > Twitter” sentiment, well, that’s kind of obvious. Twitter is definitely good for some things (mostly sharing short fleeting thoughts, but also sometimes for sharing links, and conversing with people who use Twitter as their main form of communication). I did not see “being a blog” in that list, though. And as Commenter #1 points out, you can view Twitter updates on your Tumblr dashboard while posting slightly longer commentaries on Tumblr. Of course, Commenter #1 also makes the fatal mistake of saying that he (or she) wishes they knew HTML.
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Nels Blogging, Diatribes, RSS, Social web, The New Web, Twitter Blogging, Diatribes, RSS, Social web, Tumblr, Twitter

I’m so famous that all of Chicago is following me on Twitter! What up!

Nels Twitter Chicago, Twitter

From Read/Write Web.

I just still feel like I’m missing something. I can’t get past the fact that Twitter is not a feed reader, yet people insist on using it as one. I mean, if I were following all the people whose feeds I read on Twitter instead of using Google Reader, I don’t feel like I would see even half the posts that I do now. Granted, I skip over half of them anyway, but at least I know that I’m consciously skipping things I don’t want to see instead of just losing them to a Devil’s Kettle whirlpool of information.

Here’s the Top 5 Reasons I Still Use An RSS Reader:
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Nels Diatribes, RSS, Twitter Diatribes, RSS, Twitter

Not only can you now use the Lite Facebook Interface – i.e., the Twitter Facebook Interface – but Facebook is also said to be (slowly) rolling out @ tagging of people in Status Updates. I actually posted a Status Update a while back pondering if Facebook were to add that feature, thereby eliminating my need to ever use Twitter again. And now my dream (yes, it’s a pretty lame dream) has come true. Now I can just use Facebook for my “mass” communications until I’m famous enough that thousands of random people will want to read my thoughts 140 characters at a time. (Or they could just read my blog, I suppose)

Nels Facebook, Twitter Copycheating, Facebook, Twitter

Only the obvious ones have been submitted to the SongsInCodeDB.

worldAsWeKnowIt.end(); self.feel = “fine”;

Wish skeelo = new Wish[]; skeelo[0] = “taller”; skeelo[1] = “baller”; skeelo[2] = “girl who looked good”;

if (ready) { hereICome = true; } else { hereICome = true; } you.hide = false;

if ( !woman ) { cry = false; }

temperature = temperature + 100; clothes.off();

Guitar g = new Guitar(); g.color = “#CCCCCC”; if ( picasso.know() ) { buy(g); g.play(); }

if ( romeo.makelove(juliet) ) { juliet.cry(); }

public boolean bringDown(landslide) { if ( reflection.see() ) { landslide–; bringDown(landslide); } }

Problem[] jz = new Problem[99]; for (int p=0; p

dc = chillin; pg = chillin; if (this.name == wale) { kill(it); }

if ( me.hasWorld() ) { empire.build(); }

Nels Memes, Social web, Twitter, Uncategorized Songs In Code, Twitter

Here’s Kim Kardashian’s alleged FriendFeed page. It would be easy enough for a simple name squatter to do something like that, especially since FriendFeed allows you to import not just a Twitter feed, but Twitter followers without a password.

I’m leaning towards about 75% that it’s not really her. I’d give her about a 25% chance that her crew is smart enough to realize how popular the Ashton/CNN and Oprah things were with Twitter, and they did this to get the jump on the Next Big Thing.

The other 75% I’d split pretty evenly between a) Squatter and b) Friendfeed. That’s right, I’m giving equal odds to the idea that FriendFeed did this themselves to try to attract some additional publicity to their service. And as I mentioned, with their setup, it wouldn’t be too hard to just pretend you had no idea. I mean, I could go to the nearest public library and in 5 minutes, have a completely anonymous Oprah FriendFeed that looks just like the Kim Kardashian one except probably with more followers (or “subscribers”). They probably figured that doing someone as high profile as Oprah or Ashton would have made it obvious what they were doing. But Kardashian is a pretty good mark: her reputation is a little questionable (furthering the speculation that it might actually be her), and she has a lot of crazy people who are obsessed with her (furthering the squatting idea).

Plus, by choosing Kardashian, you get not only someone whose Google Trends indicate she’s actually competitive with Oprah terms of search, but you also get bloggers like me (and TechCrunch) posting pictures of her, which is probably what most people are searching for when they look for her anyway, which will attract attention from people outside of the technocrats.

Finally, let me add the possibility that FriendFeed contacted celebrities to import their Twitter accounts to FF for a little bit of spending money or Cristal. I’m sure they know that links are the currency of the internet and nothing brings links like geeks and hot (or at least supposedly hot) women.

And so as not to disappoint the people who are inevitably going to end up here looking for Kardashian booty… there’s a couple more pictures are the jump.

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Nels Social web, Twitter FriendFeed, Google Trends, Kim Kardashian, Name Squatting

First up: ReadWriteWeb calls out Facebook’s Twitter envy. I’m with them… Why does Facebook want to be Twitter? There is already Twitter. Twitter has a totally different core competency than Facebook. Why is Facebook trying to change their own core competency to compete with something that has such an unproven revenue model?

On the other hand, competing with Twitter has forced Facebook to open up it’s Stream with an API. Now, can I start liking my friends posts in the iPhone app? Okay, I know, really this move was made so that 3rd parties can develop (or add onto) their own apps to help Facebook be as cool as Twitter is with their API.

But beyond the arms race with Twitter, the stream API will open up the possibility for many new applications both within Facebook and outside its walls. An obvious one would be better filtering options for your activity stream. It would be simple to create an app that shows you the most liked or most commented on items in your stream, for example. Or now that stream can be plugged into various social search engines to give you socialized real-time results. Hell, if I could just search my own activity stream, I’d consider that a giant leap forward. But Facebook still only allows developers to cache data for 24 hours, so you wouldn’t be able to build a very powerful search engine or return results from more than a day ago.

Facebook has also become not just an OpenID provider (issuing party), but also a relying party. I believe they’re the first big site out there to do that. I’m not sure why all the others haven’t, because honestly, it’s kind of annoying to have 20 different sites that provide OpenIDs but if no one accepts anyone elses OpenID then it’s pretty much useless.

I’m glad that Facebook is opening up, but here’s a couple more things they can do to compete with Twitter (and/or make me happy):

• Allow tagging of friends in status updates
• Allow users to view a feed with ALL updates from ALL friends
• Try to make more content viewable on a single screen of the iPhone app
• Start rolling out vanity URLs to users in order of when they joined Facebook

Nels Facebook, Social web, Twitter Facebook, openid, Twitter

And I’m willing to bet most people don’t even realize it.

Since Facebook added comments to just about everything that passes through the News Feed, it’s created a microblog for every member of the network.

I now feel justified laughing at people (at least, behind their backs) who thought I was weird for having 3+ blogs (and a Twitter, and Jaiku, and Tumblr, and Soup.io). Suckas! You’re bloggers now too!

Nels Blogging, Facebook, Lifestreaming, Twitter Facebook, Jaiku, Tumblr, Twitter

Charles Nutter talks about reducing the number of people he’s following on Twitter. Here’s a quote from the post:

To me, the value of Twitter is both in keeping track of what people I respect are working on or find interesting and as a sort of micro-feed, a little forced 2-second thought break to help me step back from hard problems. Whether you buttered your toast on the bottom or found an unrecognizable lump of once-food in the refrigerator is worthless to me…so if that’s the tweets you’re inflicting on the world, why should I begin or continue to follow you?

That’s certainly one point of view. And one to which I am diametrically opposed. I mean, sure, if my friends want to tell me about what they are working on or find interesting, that’s all well and good. But really, I enjoy knowing if my friends butter the top or bottom of their toast, or if they found a lump of unrecognizable once-food in the refrigerator. That’s why I want to use Twitter, and that’s the entire reason I use Twitter. In fact, I’m sure if more of my friends realized how easy it was to use, and that they didn’t have to compose entire blog entries to let people know what’s up, I’d be even more happy. I subscribe to the Facebook status update for my friends, and that’s more of the same, but it helps me keep tabs on what’s going on with my peeps.

If every post from my Twitter friends were “writing a new Cocoa script”, or “Got my Ruby execution time down by 50%”, I’d be bored out of my mind. I want to know where my friends are, what they’re doing, what they’re eating, all of that. Of course, I don’t want to know that about just any random person who decides to follow me on Twitter. But if it’s someone I know, bring on the reviews of the new NIN album, the destruction of bath mats, the TV marathons, the smells on the train, and tha ma’fxckin’ book videos (NSFW).

Of course, the beauty of the Twitter, is that both Charles Nutter and Nels Wadycki can get what they want from the same application.

Nels Twitter