Evening Reading: 3/25/09

By on March 26, 2009 in Tech

MK and T:  I like this post by Marshall Kirkpatrick about Twitter.  We’ll have to see what the secret special features are, but I don’t think I’d pay for my Twitter account.  And I’m not alone, as nothing leads Marshall’s how much would you pay poll with 57% of the votes.  Combined, nothing and less than $5/month have 81%.  Having said that, Marshall makes a compelling case for Twitter’s value.  Twitter has largely replaced my Delicious “popular” feed for purposes of scanning for new post material.  I only have one mild criticism of Marshall’s post.  I hate the phrase “thought leaders,” because implied in that phrase is a decision as to who the thought leaders are, and we all know that on Twitter, like the blogosphere, popular is often confused with smart.  Jason Calacanis is popular.  Seth Finkelstein is smart.  But, sadly, you know who has more influence in the blogosphere.  Here’s a good rule of thumb one of my professors drilled into my head: any time there is a group to be created, the most important question is who decides who is in it.

Bad Counting Department:  PC World has a list of the Top 5 NAS devices, that contains 10 devices.  Bad counting notwithstanding, it’s a good list for those looking to create a private cloud.  I’d move the HP MediaSmart server from number 2 to number 1.

One Down, One to Go:  Google Docs has added a much needed find and replace feature.  That’s great, but if Google wants any significant business traction, it simply must figure out a way to allow tracked changes.  This is an indisputable fact.

Good Memories:  Wolfenstein 3D is out for the iPhone.  I remember countless hours playing that game back in the day.  I want Civilization for the iPhone.  Any chance?

Standing 8 Count Department:  The Drama 2.0 Show lands a hook to the jaw to Mike Arrington and TechCrunch.  I think Mike often defeats his own purpose by acting like a petulant baby, but I still read TechCrunch, simply because it covers stories that interest me.  If Mike’s unwillingness to mange his personal brand hurts TechCrunch’s bottom line, maybe he will realize that you can be lucky, successful and humble.  I’ve never understood why so many of these former-nerds who manage to achieve a high profile in the blogosphere (the blogosphere, for heavens sake) start acting like they think rock stars act. 

Kill the People- Just Save the Puppies:  Extremist groups also defeat their own purpose by alienating the undecided- the very demographic they should be trying to appropriate.  When this PETA does one nutty thing after another, like protesting the fact that dogs get killed in a video war game, this PETA is the result.  Philosophically, I am sympathetic to animal rights, but idiotic moves like that make me want to eat a tasty cheeseburger.  Or a dog.  Here, Lucky Dog.  It’s time for dinner.

Worried About the Beaver:  Here are 6 Things You Didn’t Know About the Leave It to Beaver.

Personal Fouls:  If you have tens of thousands of followers and I am unable to engage you in relevant conversation, I will eventually un-follow you.  If you have a few hundred, I will immediately un-follow you.  My Pink Floyd policy required me to remove several people from my list today.

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About Kent

Reader, writer, arithmeticer. Proprietor of Newsome.Org, a tech, music and life blog.
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  • Ethan

    “If you have tens of thousands of followers and I am unable to engage you in relevant conversation, I will eventually un-follow you. If you have a few hundred, I will immediately un-follow you.”Okay, I’ll chime in. I trust you grok how Twitter works, right? I mean, all is well and good down in the 10:10 following/followers trenches, but if you are one of say, 200,000 followers of a given account, they’re getting so blasted with @replies that they probably can’t read them all. You’re better off exploring a different conversation avenue than Twitter if that’s the case.For all of your complaints about Facebook, I’m thinking that the benefit is that you have a visual record of who is out there “hearing you breathing” rather than Twittering which really is the latest iteration of shouting into the void.As one of the jerks who uses Twitter (very sparingly) for business purposes, I’m not getting much value from having about 3 actual customers following us and the rest being companies that we have no legal means of doing business with. It is useful to see tweets about industry specific news, but I decidedly have to not follow our actual customers and so on to ensure that I see those tweets.Anyway, I find your points about these different services interesting but I’m not sure what you’re wanting to accomplish with these various edicts. Coming into a web service cold and subsequently handing down the 10 Commandments is, mmm, what’s the word?

  • http://www.blogger.com/profile/05268190745887737505 Kent

    I don’t know if I understand how it works for the rest of the world, but I’ve been a semi-active user for a month or two. Sure, someone with 200K followers would have a hard time keeping up. But someone with 300 who is posting questions and appearing to seek conversation should not have that problem. I hurl my runes into the void from here; when I go to Twitter I am generally looking for more interaction- more like a message board/IM hybrid.I’m not all that interested in people just listening to me. Again, they can do that here. I am certainly finding Twitter to be less than conversational. The fact that 3/4 of the people I see there are into SEO, MLM, etc. tells me that authentic conversation is probably the exception.It’s hard to have a genuine conversation when everyone is focused on trying to make a quick buck.About the commandments- if you think those are presumptive, you should listen to me tell Dino Gaudio how to coach basketball.And the crazy thing is that I think I’m right on both counts.