skippy dot net

After a valiant resistance, I finally caved in to peer pressure and created my Facebook account. I created the account because I was tired of receiving invitation requests. It's too laborious to respond to each one with an explanation of why I don't intend to use Facebook; and I felt that my extended family -- the ones sending me more and more invitations -- deserved a better response than that, anyway.

Looking at my Facebook home page, I knew right away that I made the right choice to avoid the service for this long, and it only cements my resolve to avoid using it in the future. I log in once every couple of days to see if I have any new friend requests. I plan to accept every such request, because there's no real penalty to such a plan, and no real benefit for not accepting such requests. (Alas, I actually did decline a few of the invitations that were pending when I registered my account, because I hadn't thought through my intended usage of the site very well.)

I have zero intention of creating content on Facebook, though. This has nothing to do with the much-discussed Facebook Terms of Service, and everything to do with my own limited attention span. The first and only thing I've posted to my account is:

I'm not really here. Find me at http://skippy.net/, http://flickr.com/photos/skippy, and http://twitter.com/smerrill.

I originally created the account to stave off additional unwanted invitation requests, but ultimately I hope I can use it to drive would-be friends to my existing online presence -- this blog, my Flickr photos, and my Twitter stream.

As Owen observes, "I have a formidable online presence. No really, type my full name into Google." I'm not as heavily linked as Owen, but this blog is the first result for me, so I'm not hard to find. That's okay: not everyone lives and breathes the Internet as much as I do, so I'll help them out by using my Facebook profile to point them here, and to the other resources I use.

One of the first things I did with my Facebook account was to configure the Twitter application, so that my Twitter updates would be posted to Facebook for visibility there, thinking that in this way I could use Facebook in a limited capacity to share some of myself with that community. I then immediately deactived the application. I don't want my Twitter updates to hit Facebook because then people might reply to them on Facebook, and I'd likely never see those replies. I could turn off the ability for people to comment on my Facebook postings, but then what's the point of sending that data to Facebook to begin with?

Ultimately, there are too few hours in the day for me to add yet another communication mechanism to my life. I wastespend way too much time as it is writing content for this blog, contributing to Crunchgear, posting to Twitter, instant messaging, emailing, texting and actually talking to people on the phone.

There's no specific value to me to dilute my online presence by using Facebook.

Owen invited me to join him at blogOrlando, an event he attended last year and spoke about favorably. With nothing better to do this weekend, I took him up on his invitation, despite my previously stated misgivings about so-called social media. It was a good opportunity to spend time with Owen again, but it was also a chance to meet Michael and Mark Jaquith -- two people I've known online for several years but had not yet had the privilege of meeting in real life. Several of the sessions looked mildly interesting, and I promised myself that I would remain friendly and outgoing, in sharp contrast to my usual dour and taciturn self, and that I'd get out of the event what I put into it. All in all, I'm happy to report, it was a terrific experience!

Jake McKee's opening keynote was undoubtedly one of the best keynote sessions I've seen. It wasn't preachy, it wasn't boring, and while not a lot of what he said wasn't anything I could directly operationalize in my own business endeavours, it gave me an awful lot to think about.

Amber Rhea's "Professionalism 2.0" session was exactly what I had hoped from an unconference: a free-wheeling discussion loosely moderated by the session leader. I raised a few eyebrows when, early in the discussion about what defines a professional blog, I quoted Mark Pilgrim's observation about the difference between a corporate blog a personal blog. The session was lively, and thought provoking; and while nothing was really resolved in the end, I left feeling both stimulated and satisfied.

Ted Murphy, CEO of Izea, gave a pretty good overview of how to monetize one's website. Several folks in the audience reported making truly obscene amounts of money from their various advertising schemes, so it certainly gave me some things to think about.

Alex Hillman's session on passion was interesting, and while it was a little less focused than I would have preferred, I did walk away with a few nascent ideas about how to stir up and maintain passion in a few of the circles in which I operate.

John Rife's session titled Video-A-Go-Go was a fantastic overview of some of the options for doing video online. I wrote down a lot more links than I expected, and am excited to follow up on them. The most interesting item John presented was Mogulus, whose Mogulus Studio looks like one of the coolest video solutions online right now.

R. Alexander Spoerer gave a really interesting presentation on a story he's writing online, using only Twitter. I found it to be a pretty catchy gimmick, using different Twitter accounts to provide the dialog for the characters. I think it must be really hard to try to tell a story using dialog exclusively. Check it out at callinghome.tumblr.com.

Finally, Erik Hersman gave the closing keynote about some of the uses for social media in Africa, and how he's facilitating them. His new project, Ushahidi, allows individuals to "crowdsource crisis information". It looks like a truly useful solution for some very real problems around the world.

I left the conference feeling very energized for a number of projects -- current and planned -- and I really hope I can keep that enthusiasm going. I also hope that I can use what I saw at blogOrlando to influence PodCamp Ohio next year. If we can make PodCamp Ohio a better unconference, I well be very happy. And with Ohio LinuxFest just around the corner, I won't have to wait too long to try to execute some of what I learned.

The happy hour party after the conference lasted longer than the conference itself for a few of us. It was an absolutely great time to chat with the folks there: developers, users, consumers, journalists, probloggers, and folks everywhere along the spectrum. One interesting fellow I chatted with briefly is a real estate agent in the Orlando area, and he's looking to improve his already successful online presence. His ideas were interesting, and he was clearly very excited about his future plans. Owen, Michael and I cornered Sarah from Read Write Web and picked her brain about what she liked and disliked about the blogging tools she uses (currently Movable Type and WordPress). It was an informative discussion, and gave us a chance to advocate Habari. Sarah -- and everyone else we spoke to about Habari -- seemed genuinely interested, and I'm hopeful that folks will join the mailing list(s) to share what they like and dislike about our project!

The aptly named Brilliant Jeni stuck it out with us three to close the bar, and a great time was had by all. Earlier in the evening we had met Henry, a tremendously friendly man who had a rather unique angle on asking for handouts. He came back just before the bar closed to celebrate his birthday. All of us thought he was just feeding us a line, but he was only too happy to produce his identification to prove it to us. It was an uproarious occasion, and I don't think I've laughed so hard or for so long hard in a very, very long time.

I was able to keep my promise to myself to remain upbeat and outgoing, and I got out of blogOrlando exactly what I put in. I'm extremely glad I made the trip, and I will definitely consider going again next year.

The value proposition of social media sites like Twitter has always been somewhat vague to me. I've stated before that I'm skeptical of social media, and that I'm not one to jump on social network bandwagons. I recently purged a bunch of people from the list that I follow on Twitter because I wasn't seeing any value to reading what they had to say. There's only so many hours in the day, and I'd prefer not to spend them reading about what other people had for lunch.

I know that part of my problem with aggregating too much information is the workflow I use. I'm extremely linear when I process things: I work from oldest to newest when reading news in Google Reader. It's only in the last couple of months that I've started marking whole categories as read, even if I hadn't read them: "if I'm not reading them, why am I aggregating them?" is the question I ask myself. When I reload the Twitter home page, I scroll down to the last thing I read (or the bottom of the page, if I'm that far behind) and then work my way up. I rarely page back to see items pushed off the home page. I use the Twitter home page because I haven't found a dedicated Twitter client I like.

But the thing that's really stuck in my craw right now is duplication of information. Most of the people I follow on Twitter are also people included in my list of feeds in Google Reader. Whenever someone posts a new blog entry, there's almost always a Twitter message declaring that fact (our software automates this for us). I almost never click the link from the Twitter message to the blog post, knowing that the post will eventually be picked up by Google Reader for me to review. Most of the people I follow on Twitter also tweet enough other stuff to make it worth continuing to follow them on that service. A notable exception is, interestingly, CrunchGear: the overwhelming bulk of the CrunchGear tweets are simply the new posts that have gone online. Since I'm aggregating CrunchGear in Google Reader anyway, what's the value in following them on Twitter?

I could, of course, aggregate the Twitter feed(s), so that Google Reader is my sole source of incoming information. But I've noticed a pretty big lag in Google Reader most days, such that a tweet posted early in the morning by someone might not be displayed to me in Google Reader until mid-afternoon. Most of the time, this might not be a big deal, but every now and again someone will tweet something that merits an immediate response: either a question for which I know the answer, or a request for a recommendation, or even an invitation. These things can be time sensitive, and I'll have missed the window of opportunity if I rely on Google Reader catching them and displaying them to me.

It's this delay that also prevents me from using something like Yahoo Pipes to create some kind of filter to weed out the extraneous bits, so that I can focus on the compelling data from each disparate service I use.

The thought that started this little tirade was the idea that I might integrate my Twitter posts directly into my blog, in a fashion similar to Chris' lifestream. Rather than a dedicated page, though, I would simply grab my tweets and store them as a new Habari content type for display alongside my normal posts. I could then also include my Flickr photos, and whatever else I wanted, making the front page of my site the complete clearinghouse for all my online activities. Then folks could simply aggregate one site to follow what I'm doing.

It's a nice idea, but it fails in execution. In addition to the delays noted above for feed readers acquiring new data, the convenience of replying on Twitter is made more complex: a reader would have to see in my feed what I had posted to Twitter, then go compose their reply either at the Twitter site or in their Twitter client. Similarly for commenting on my blog, or on any Flickr photos I posted: following the lifestream is just one piece of the puzzle. Interacting with the information presented in that stream is the next hurdle.

What do you think? How would you like to simplify and integrate interactions with aggregated information?

I'll just say it: I don't like the so-called "social media" aspects of the current Internet. Maybe it's because I've been engaged in online communities for more than twenty years; maybe it's because I'm a misanthrope. I don't use -- nor do I have any interest in -- Digg, Facebook, LinkedIn, LiveJournal, MySpace, Reddit, or whatever other "social networking" sites are currently in vogue. I'm not particularly interested in meeting new people through these venues, and I'm extremely wary of the so-called "value" they provide. I have my blog, and I'm satisfied with it.

There is a very rigid limit to my capacity for continuous partial attention, so I am extremely conscious about adding new things to follow. I intentionally limit the number of email lists to which I subscribe. I'm very selective about the feeds I add to my news reader. I'm even more selective about who I follow on Twitter; and I refuse to participate in more than one microblogging solution; so Jaiku and Pownce and Tumblr and whatever else is out there are right out.

I recently attended the first Columbus TweetUp, at which Columbus Twitter users had an opportunity to meet one another face-to-face. I felt a bit like an odd-man-out at this gathering in part because many of the attendees seemed to know one another already; but mostly because I wasn't following any of them on Twitter, nor was I likely to do so. I'm simply not interested in reading the goings-on of a dozen or more people just because they happen to live in the same city as me. The (very) occasional gem of insight I might glean from following one or more of them would be almost instantly drowned out in the noise of constant updates and replies to one another.

Don't get me wrong: I'm glad that these folks find Twitter (and similar services) so useful. I'm glad that they've found a way to extend their network of contacts. It's just that for me, it's too overwhelming. Maybe it's the pessimist in me, but I often approach signing up to receive quantities of new information from the "coming back from vacation" point of view. When I come back from vacation, is this stuff going to overwhelm me? Am I going to simply delete huge swaths of this stuff if I get too far behind on it? If so, why am I paying attention to it to begin with? Or maybe I'm simply too mercenary about the matter, looking for what benefit their Twittering and blogging will provide to me. Or maybe I really am just anti-social and not particularly interested in what folks have to say if I don't have an existing meaningful connection to them in some capacity (which begs the question: how do I establish said meaningful relationships with new folks?).

At the TweetUp I did have a very nice conversation with Denise. This was in part due to the seating arrangements -- she was the only person near me who wasn't already engaged in conversation with someone else -- but it was also due to a variety of similarities we share. It was nice to make an acquaintance, and I even started following her on Twitter when I got back to my computer. Thankfully, she updates as infrequently as I do, so I'm not drowning in updates I'm uninterested in reading.

It's ironic that I'm so ambivalent about local technology users communicating with one another, but so enthusiastic about global communications and the wonderful experiences it creates.