Doom for Google+?

I hate to be this way, but Google+ isn't gonna work out.  I like it, I'll continue to use it as long as my friends do to, but it's not going to work like they said it would.

Facebook has it down, where you are friends with everyone you've ever met.  Myspace was sort of that way too, where you had over one-hundred friends, most likely.  When I signed up for Twitter iin 2009, when it was starting to blow up, I figured that was where everyone was going to gravitate towards next.  But it never happened.  There was a select few that did, a certain circle of friends not afraid to try out the new social networking service that limited your posts to only 140 characters.  What I noticed is that after about six months, the new sign-ups of my extended circle of friends came to a sudden halt, and even some of the people that were my earliest friends just suddenly stopped tweeting.  There has been about 3 people that I know personally that have signed up for Twitter since that initial six month signup frenzy.

Then came along Google+.  It's supposed to challenge Facebook for users, but I'm sensing a trend here.  A Trending Topic, if you will.  The same 15 or 20 people that signed up for Twitter in that initial flurry are the same 15 or 20 or so people that are on Google+ with me.  I think most people are comfortable with what they know, and what they know is Facebook.  I really thought that since Google has all kinds of cool things you can do that their developers have come up with that people would like to have all their stuff wrapped up into one neat package.  What they want is their Gmail and Facebook open at the same time in different tabs.  Google+ probably won't fail miserably into a ball of fire, but it's going to be more like Twitter, where you have a select few friends that signed up for it, and no one new signing up for it for a long, long time.

But the thing is, I don't think we want to be friends with everyone we ever met again.  I hate to say it, but Google+ is doomed to fail, at least in it's goal of taking down Facebook as the king of social media.  I hope I'm wrong, in a way, I have no problem with Facebook, I just want something fresh.  Google+ is pretty cool.  But it's not going to win.  

Why I Love Twitter Lately

Internet fads are a lot of fun.  They're not hurting anyone by existing.  It's one of many distractions you can get involved with and have a little fun with.  What makes it exceptional in this day and age is the speed in which the info makes it way to the masses, thanks to Twitter.

I'm a crazy asshole

Take for example three rather large-scale, useless Internet fads of the past month or so.  First, there was Charlie Sheen, and his allegedly spiraling personal life.  The news would touch on it because he is a famous person, and when he would do something new/dumb, we all heard about it weather we liked it or not.  He did some drugs, went a little bit off his rocker in an interview or two, and people were entertained by it, mostly by the shock factor of the whole thing.  Sheen started tweeting, and it was all down hill from there.  Before you know it, he's creating catchphrases like Tigerblood and Adonis DNA and Winning.  All of it is completely irrelevant to you and me.  Really it is.  Charlie Sheen (the MaSHEEN) has zero impact on anyone's daily life if you choose to not have it in your life.  But if you watch it unfold, you can lose yourself in it, and sometimes in this crazy world, you need that escape.  You don't have to pay any attention to him, but you can chose to, if one was so inclined.

That fad lost its luster quickly, and Charlie wore out his welcome a bit.  He's trying to cash in on it now by going on tour, a la Conan O'Brien, but It's not the same.  People don't love Charlie Sheen.  People love personalities spiraling out of control.

fun fun fun fun

Then, out of the blue came Rebecca Black.  Her awful song called Friday was pointed out to me on YouTube by someone I follow on Twitter named Tony Thaxton, who is the drummer of Motion City Soundtrack.  He included a link to the video saying "Have you seen this? Worst song ever?  I hesitate to put the question mark in there."  So, naturally, I had to check it out.  Yup, that was terrible.  How can anyone honestly write that song?  Like, how could they have not changed some of those lyrics to make them at least decent, instead of unbelievably awful.  Half way through the song, I was convinced it was a joke.  How could this be real?  Who would ever write these lyrics?  But it's not fake.  It's a real song that someone wrote and thought might be a hit.  Yet, it's funnier because it's not trying to be.

A poisonous has never been funnier

After that came the Bronx Zoo's Cobra thing.  A cobra went missing from the Bronx zoo, and someone was quick enough to think of starting a twitter account for the astray slithering reptile.  The tweets were spot on, and hilarious.  Suddenly, we're talking about the snake on the Today show, and on the Big Dave and Company Podcast, and shit.  It got like 1000,000 followers in like 48 hours.  Just crazy.

Again, I am all for funny Internet fads because they take you away from what you are currently dealing with, whatever it is.  Weather you're waiting every second for your baby to be born or your job is extremely slow and monotonous or whatever the case may be.  There is usually something out there for you to shift your focus to so that at the end of the day, you don't end up putting a shotgun to the your chin.  You never know where the next thing will come from, and you can't create it.  You can take advantage of a news story (cobra) and make a fun joke about it, but you can't predict that Rebecca Black's Friday will make us all laugh. You can't create that with the purpose, because it loses what makes it funny on a viral level.

The Internet is a funny ass place, my friends.  

Moronic Stunt Goes Terribly Wrong

Alright so I put a poll up on the blog last week and I kinda accidentally posted it with only two options for an answer, thus making it seem that there are only two possible answers to the question. When I did it, I kinda chuckled to myself about it, and decided to leave it because that was funny. I failed to realize that there was probably other answers/opinions held on the group by my readers, but I felt that by only giving two options to choose from, albeit accidentally, would give me a laugh. It was a success, because I actually forgot that I did that. So the unanimous opinion held by my readers as to you're feelings on the band Chicago are "meh, they're okay." But apparently, no one is allowed to have an opinion higher than that. So, yeah...but anyway....

Every so often, I like to grab the attention of my followers on Twitter, because sometimes, I like to be paid attention to. I often to this by pulling publicity stunts that take a series of posts to complete, like chronicling my attempt to quit smoking back in November or running Twitter polls about what is you're favorite candy bar. Well this past weekend, especially on Monday, I did a bad job of checking my Twitter, and when I finally did, I had something like 200 new posts in my feed that I had to go through, and I knew it would take hours to read them all. I like to read them all because I like all of the people I follow. I feel that the people that I follow all post something interesting, and I like to read things that are interesting. Well, I didn't exactly have enough time to get through all of the tweets, and I felt bad about it. I realized that I was following entirely too many people and I needed to get rid of some of them. The problem was trying to figure out whom to unfollow. So I told my followers that whoever annoyed me the most over the next 24 hour period, I would choose the five most annoying to ax. I called it the Chopping Block. Well, it didn't work out as planned, because there is a particular person in Canada named Navin Vaswani that goes by the name "Eyebeleaf" that is a writer and sports enthusiast. He was going on and on about Jose Bautista and the Toronto Blue Jays and it was bothering me, yet I couldn't bring myself to unfollow him. He did a trip around the country visiting every Major League ballpark, and coincidentally, he happened to be at the game I went to in Atlanta on May 16th. We almost met there, but I couldn't find him. He is usually pretty funny and gives prospective from north of the boarder, which is nice/interesting. So even though he was annoying during the said 24 hour period, I could not ax him.

So when it came time to do the chopping, I chose obvious people that wouldn't take it personally if I had done so. In fact, I chose people that probably wouldn't even notice. I chose Lebron James and Chris Bosh of the Miami Heat. I started following them when all of the NBA free agent stuff was going on, and now that it's over, they were not giving me any useful information anymore. I also chose to unfollow HONashville. I started following them (Hands On Nashville) during the Nashville flood back in May because they were organizing the flood recovery efforts and I wanted to help. Lately, they just tweet inspirational quotes, and give no information on how to volunteer, so I axed them. I axed BPGlobalPR because it was a joke account designed to give fake public relations from BP in the wake of the oil spill. Well, the joke was getting old so they went out too.

The final person who got the ax was a local all-ages music and arts venue here in Nashville called Rocketown. Number one, I have never been to Rocketown, even though they often have bands play there that are quality. Number two, as an all-ages venue, they tend to cater to the youth of Nashville, and I'm not really all that youthful anymore. So I decided that I could unfollow them as they fill my feed up with all kinds of things about stuff that I'm not all that interested in. Well, when I Tweeted who I was axing, they noticed, and retweeted it, making me look like an asshole. So then I felt bad, and sent out an apology tweet and refollowed them, because I'm not an asshole. I instead unfollowed Horatio Sanz, because he tries to be funny on Twitter, but just isn't.

I felt guilty telling someone I didn't want to be their friend.

That's when I realized the whole thing was totally misguided. I should have never made a game out of me unfollowing people, because by unfollowing someone, it shows that you don't care about them, and it's a bit personal. If I had quietly unfollowed them, they would not have noticed and we would have both just gone on with out lives and all be better off. But when I point out that I'm possibly ditching you, it makes me sound like an asshole, weather I axed you or not. I just got angry about having my twitter feed full of stuff, obscuring the good stuff that was posted by people I actually care a lot about and I took out my frustrations on people I don't know. I hope I entertained anyone that watched the whole thing go down, as that was my plan, but I felt bad for Rocketown, who were just trying to be promotional and have good intentions. I have no reason to publicly tell everyone that follows me that they are useless, because that makes me an asshole.

I had to get this off my chest. Thank you for reading

Hypocrisy at it's finest, right here

As I was reading my old blogs in boredom, I stumbled upon the one I wrote about the game Foursquare. Well, last weekend, I bought an iPhone. Once I got the iPhone, I started downloading all the apps I could think of, all the ones I had heard of here and there. I had several recommended by friends and family to get. Well, in the flurry of App acquisition, I downloaded Foursquare. Then I started using Foursquare. So in other words, I am a hypocrite. But from what I understood, it was only really a big deal if you post your locations on Twitter that it makes it dangerous. I don't know, man I guess I'm just testing the criminals out there to see how dedicated they are to stealing shit.

I should probably not be typing right now, for I could be in serious trouble for doing so, so until tomorrow morning, have a good one!

Conan is still funny and celebrating a special holiday

I believe I have talked about Twitter before, but damn it, I'll do it again. If you hadn't noticed, Conan O'Brien decided to join Twitter. This is cool because Conan is everybody's hero. He's funny and we all miss him on TV. I don't remember a time when Conan wasn't on TV, because of my age. So anyhoo, last Friday, Conan decided to randomly follow someone who was following him. The person he randomly chose was Sarah Killen, from some po-dunk town in Michigan (shout-out) and said he would "change her life." It seems to have done exactly that. All of a sudden, she's on morning radio shows, CNN, Good Morning America, and I'm sure a number of other programs. Someone bought her a computer, and have helped her out with her coming wedding. This is amazing to me. I mean, people win stuff everyday, like the lottery, reverse flying V guitars, and other killer things, but this one is different if only because it was all made possible by the human touches of Twitter. The people that Tweet are real, and you can potentially have contact with the famous.

There are some people out there that feel that this is something that is not really that important and you have your own life to live or whatever. But to me, having a sort of connection with someone famous is pretty cool. I recall one criticism of Twitter that some people have brought up is the argument of "who cares?" Well you know what? I care. I want to know what Ashton ate for breakfast (even though i stopped following Ashton because he is useless on Twitter). I want to know what Jessica Alba is reading, or what Chad Ochocinco is doing this weekend. I care because these people are just people, who happen to be in the public spotlight. I'm a person, you're a person (presumably) and I care about what you are doing. I know it's hard for some people to understand, but I care about that. Even if it's just a temporary escape from everyday normal life. You can't just go through life bashing what other people enjoy. What a miserable person you would be. I'm guilty of this sometimes, but not nearly as much as some other people.

On a side note, today is 311 day. This is a national holiday for all fans of the band 311. Every other year, they put on a special concert to celebrate 311 day. Usually it involves them playing for approximately 4 hours, covering most of their catalogue, which dates all the way back some 20 years. It's really an impressive thing to see, that one band can give back to their fans with a concert that is so awesome. I am in envy of those that are privileged to attend. This year, they are offering a webcast of the concert on their website for a small fee. I doubt I will take advantage of it because I have to work tonight, but I would love nothing more than to watch that. Oh well...maybe in 2012?

So happy 311 day everyone, and always try to remain positive!

(ed. The 311 day concert is an entire 5 hours, not 4. even better)

Please steal my things

Everyone should know by now that I'm about 2 weeks behind what's abuzz usually. Not by choice, but because I usually don't think what was abuzz was of much importance when it was abuzz. No, it usually takes me a week or two to realize what everyone was talking about. Also, I was going to talk about what I'm going to talk about when it was abuzz, but I played video games instead.

Did anyone catch any of that? Let me try to clarify.

A few weeks ago, I read an article in the trusty Tennessean about a website called PleaseRobMe. Basically, it takes the information people have posted on FourSquare, especially the ones that post their FourSquare updates onto their Twitter pages, and shares them with the world. As I talked about yesterday, FourSquare lets everyone know where you are and how often you visit, earing points or whatever, and making you look cool because you go to Panera Bread 9 times a week. Having a website like PleaseRobMe makes sense to me, it's public information at this point. You tell people you're not home, and that might indicate that no one is home. You're basically saying Please Rob Me. PleaseRobMe is a service not to encourage that people actually steal other peoples shit, but to make others, like me, more aware of what they're actually sharing via social networking. This whole thing goes back to what you should and shouldn't post on the internet. I have become self-aware of my web presence in the past few weeks and how it can be hurtful, because as it was pointed out, you can say things digitally, and someone will eventually read it. Feelings can be hurt, jobs can be lost, et cetera et cetera. But the idea of not telling everyone in the world you are not home, I honestly never thought of.

I remember suggesting to my mom that it would be fun to change the answering machine message whenever we went out to the store or wherever, to tell people why exactly we weren't answering the phone. I felt it would be of service to our friends and family to share that information. She told me it would be a bad idea, because someone we don't know could call to scope out our house to rob it, hear the customized message on the machine and know we weren't home. Makes sense to me. So I abandoned my plan to enlighten our callers. That concept never crossed over to me when it came to updating my Twitter or Facebook. If someone was scoping you out, you just told them you are not home. Bam, no more PS3, laptops, big screen, dog, Wii, blah blah blah. In fact, sharing your whereabouts via a social networking tool is tenfold worse than just leaving a up-to-the-minute status update on your answering machine. People have to actually call you to hear you personalized message on the answering machine. They just have to search you on the internet and wait for you to tell them the information.

You think to yourself, "I have Renters/Homeowners Insurance! I'm good." How much you wanna think they're gonna give you when they find out you told your robbers you weren't home, come take my things? Good luck with that.

So in the future, I'm going to be careful of what I say about where I'm going/for how log. I don't want to get robbed.

(a little P.S. here at the end of this...This took me so long to finally write because the Please Rob Me website doesn't really work properly here on the work computer, and I kept forgetting to investigate the inner workings of the site on my free time at home, so I've been putting it off and putting it off until I eventually just decided to write this blog today even without really checking out the website. If you do, let me know if it's cool or whatever. Thanks.)