I'd like to share some of my ideas and obsessions in this blog. Today I asked four friends for advice regarding social networking and blogging. The following conversation resulted. Here's my original email, from early this afternoon:
As you’ve all noticed, I’ve taken a tentative step into the murky pool of
online social networking, with access to MySpace and some activity on
Facebook. (Suzanne, thanks for the photo I used for my profile!). Now
I’m wondering how to take the next step, without having it consume my
life. I figured I might join a few more groups, and post a few of the
short essays I’ve been writing, supposing that my unoriginal ideas are
more interesting than my humdrum daily life. I’d appreciate your several
opinions on the best places to do this. Also, what the hell is poking?
Sounds obscene. And which of all the other gizmos that are out there is
worthwhile? Many thanks for clueing a newbie in, Jonathan
The first to reply was Steve:
Welcome to the Dark Side....
First, read this:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/14/facebook
It's predictably snarky Brit PC blather, but still worth considering. Jon
Jost cancelled his Facebook account after he sent me this link. But
then he is more righteous than most of us.
At first Facebook seems like a slightly more "grown-up" version of
MySpace. I assure you, it's not. The two are becoming more and more
alike all the time.
Facebook has millions of extra add-on "applications" that will only
suck up more hours of your life that you will never get back. Yet many
people seem to enjoy them. Personally, I don't use any of them and
ignore all requests to do so. (apologies to those who have tried to
send me Good Karma, etc.) MySpace has since started adding all this
kind of crap as well.
"Poking" is Face-speak for "Yo! 'Sup?". Yes, it is truly an unfortunate
choice of terminology. Especially when applied to a family member. Ew.
I don't even want to know what Super Poke might be.
Super Wall allows people to post videos and all kinds of other
bandwidth-eating nonsense. Get it at your own risk.
On the top bar is a button called Privacy. Go there and click on News
Feed & Mini Feed. Uncheck all of the boxes. This will minimize
Facebook's tendency to blab everything about you to everyone you know.
A good friend of mine bought some prescription meds online and Facebook
actually broadcast that info to all of his friends. To make sure this
does not happen to you, go here:
http://www.facebook.com/privacy/?view=feeds&tab=external There was a
big controversy about this last year, led by MoveOn, and Facebook
finally relented and offered a way to turn this Beacon "feature" off
(although they do not make it easy to find at all). Their defense was
that they just wanted to make it easier for you to share info with your
friends. Pure evil.
If you want to know less about what everyone else is doing, on your
homepage under the Newsfeed (on left) scroll all the way down to the
bottom and click Preferences. That will take you to some buttons that
control how much info you get about what kinds of things. I have all of
mine turned all the way down and I still get much more info than I want
about other people. I wish I could get rid of the Newsfeed entirely.
If you want to post your essays (and I wish you would), I would suggest
setting up a blog, either on Blogger.com (where we have the Nonseq and
Chapel sites) or Wordpress. There are others as well that I am less
familiar with. They will just get buried on Facebook or MySpace, and
only your friends will be able to read them there. You can always post
links to a blog on your Facebook profile.
One other bit of advice:
Facebook hits you with advertising based on info gleaned from your
profile. So the more specific you are about your interests,
activities, music, movies, books, etc., the more aggressively they
target you for advertising around those things.
I have found that being as vague as possible on profile categories
drastically reduces the amount of advertising I am exposed to. When I
had actual names of books, movies, TV shows, musicians, etc., it went
way up. Now I get almost no ads at all. SP
Rob weighed in next:
most of the apps on facebook are cheezy and naked data mining operations with all
the teleological moment of Hello Kitty, so avoid adding like proverbial plague.
joining groups is ok, instant messaging is useful, i use event postings. It tends to
become a sort of back door email, that groups your conversations like gmail but
keeps chronology of hotmail.
on Facebook you can join large communities like NYC or Evergreen,; on Myspace
communications seem pretty limited to whom you accept as friend. Facebook friend
circles start to expand exponentially after a certain density, like 75/100 - it
suggests who to 'friend' based on incidence of common 'friends'.
you can blog your alleged thoughts on myspace, dont know much @ facebook blog app,
if any. You can set up a blog free at blogger.com or blogspot.com
must eat/rc
Here's what Suzanne had to say:
Hey Jonathan,
I just read Steve's advice and find it very valuable, important to
know... I've heard some of it before but it is good to be reminded.
I'm a networking newbie myself... and it has (sorta) consumed my
life a little bit... but I feel that's only temporary, as is the
usual case with something new and fun that takes a bit of
experiencing to figure it out and get it all working right... the
time consuming aspects for me right now have to do with delving into
iLike music and vid archive which is totally fascinating, and
hopefully not too annoying to the friends I'm sharing them with...
and setting up a couple of Facebook pages for our shops, which is
rather time-consuming and chiropractic-visit-inducing, although also
quite personally empowering... the links are on my Facebook page...
these pages are not anyway near done yet but you can see what I'm up
to,... me who knows NOT how to web-design or anything like that....(I
also have to do this with MySpace but so far my little forays into
MySpace have been fraught since I find it totally annoying and
freakishly mystifying.)
My experience of Facebook makes me think of the Smithfield Cafe,
where I used to hang out a lot, and if you waited long enough,
anybody in the world could come through the door.
So, here I am transported back to the Smithfield Cafe and I'm having
a great cup of coffee, which indeed I am having at the moment
(although it's not as good as the latte you once fixed me), and lo
and behold there is nobody there whom I would not wish to see! There
are some people I like to see on a regular basis (such as Jenny and
Norman for example) and I can go over to their table(s) and chat
about the daily ephemera and talk about the movie I just saw and
compare notes about things mostly trivial or maybe important, and
then, what do you know... someone walks through the door whom I met
briefly at Evergreen 25 years ago and they come over to me and say
"didn't you used to sell cookies and have rainbow colored hair"...
and we get to talking and pretty soon this is another person
(although this person actually lives in Hawaii) with whom I have a
regular casual pleasant contact ... I can go over to his table with a
book of photos or a game or a picture of my dog, or whatever...
The other day we went to a BBQ at the home of Peter Randlette whom I
haven't seen in 25 years, met other people who had heard of Mingo's
farm, and Kristin, the cookie lady (not me) and then another person
just joined Facebook whom I'd been thinking about and out of contact
with for the same period of time... so in that respect I think it's
really worth the inconveniences. If a person has stayed in the same
place for a long time and maintained all their contacts and not gone
through as many changes as I have... it might not resonate as much.
By the way, a "poke" is nothing obscene -(although they could have
called it a nudge or a "hey-you" or something less annoying)... or
you can go for a "superpoke" which involves much more "physical"
demonstrations, such as throwing a sheep or a chicken....
Plenty of gizmos are fun and some are worthwhile and fun. Usually I
pick up on a new gizmo by visiting a friend's page and discovering
something nifty. When I go to download the gizmo there are a bunch of
reviews which either rave about it or give it such dismal reviews
that I say forget it.
Anyhow! So great to hear from you Jonathan! I'm interested to hear
what the other guys have to say... love,Suzanne
I wrote back:
Thanks Suzanne,
I loved your Smithfield Cafe analogy, though I'm sure any satisfaction I
was able to give as a barista was due to dumb luck.
I'll probably lean more towards Steve's advice about apps and privacy
issues, especially after reading Tom Hodgkinson's Guardian article, which
is genuinely scary. And I hope to set up a separate blog site that will
be accessible beyond my friend list. In any case, your somewhat less
paranoid take on all of this is truly reassuring.
By the way, did I ever send you that photo of Hannah on the farm with the
basket, or the ones of you and Andi? If not, I'll do so when we get back
to New York at the end of next week. love, Jonathan
Suzanne responded:
Hey Jonathan,
No we didn't get the photos and would love to have them! I'll look
forward to that.
I do think Steve's advice is great and I've taken some of it myself
for sure... it's good to be educated. I personally believe in being
as prepared as you can, but to have an optimistic attitude about the
possibilities of good to come through whatever has been taken on.
After all there is only so much that can be done to defend oneself. I
also feel that people have a tendency to spend their energy warning
against catastrophe without mentioning the good things because they
genuinely don't realize they haven't actually said what they like
about something, and they do like things about it or they wouldn't be
doing it!
The separate blog site has also been recommended to me for our shop
pages.
Another point... for me I find that the mundane details of a
friend's life are just as interesting (and at times more so) than
their informed opinions on the so-called greater issues of the day!
Just thought you ought to know.
In other words, I'm SO happy to be hearing from you. love, S
Then Norm replied:
I have the opposite approach to Steve - none of my interests, experiences,
or posts involve things that are remotely marketable, so (I hope) the effect
is that I clutter up their database with information that is worthless to
them and their customers. I also get very few targeted ads.
I do get one about a homeless guy, with the slogan, "don't end up like him",
which may reflect Facebook's opinion of the prospects of someone with the
interests that I've shared. I'm still waiting for the targeted ads that are
aimed at fans of the Fugs, Russell Hoban, Roger Bacon, etc.
Rob's comments seem on the money. I have chosen to keep my Facebook
involvement pretty vanilla (no superwall, few applications) because I don't
like the clutter these application (and some of their users) produce. That
may just be me being old-fashioned. (if you can believe that!)
I have a separate blog (which is under a pseudonym, Mert Bevin), where I
post bile and spew. I think a blog would be a reasonable venue for much of
what you (Jonathan) want to post. I modeled mine on Steve's Non-Seq Blog,
which I think is excellent.
I still maintain the old web site sohl.com as well, where I publish things
that I think have lasting value for at least a few people. These are ad
free, which I prefer. (Someone recently referred to one of my sites as
having a readership in the negative numbers, which seems about right.). By
the way, Jonathan, you should check out
http://www.sohl.com/Quills/Quills.htm which started with a conversation with
you many years ago.
I view advertising as a mind-control tool of the devil(s), particularly
video advertising, but at the moment, FB falls into my acceptable zone. The
day I start getting inflammatory political ads may be the day I quit. --Norm
Lastly, I sent the following:
This is truly amazing. Within hours of sending my original email, I had
thoughtful replies from all four of you, each longer than my original
query. I'm glad I sent it this week, when we all presumably have some
down time.
I set up a blog on blogger.com, "further definitions" (the title of a
Benny Carter LP, reflecting my tendency to sound pedantic). As I was
uploading my first post, which was going to be about some boring 19th
century painters, the page froze. (I'm using my brother-in-law's Windows
PC this afternoon, and I was confounded by this little hand that popped up
and stopped me in my tracks.) So I decided to open the blog instead with
this interesting five-way discussion, if I can get all of your permissions
to do so.
Norm, it took six months, but I became a mbiramaniac. I loaded all four
of the CDs you gave me onto my computer & iPod, along with some Stella
Chiweshe, Dumi Mariare, and The Soul of Mbira. Such amazing music! Debra
and Hannah also love it. We'd appreciate any further info about the music
and the artists.
I'm glad sohl.com is still up. I think Rob in particular will appreciate
the quills page. I plan to revisit the Map of Consonance soon to see if I
finally get it. And I'll check out the Mert Bevin site as well.
Thanks again to all of you, Jonathan
4 comments:
I got the following comments via email, before I turned on the open comment feature. I've removed return addresses for privacy. --Jonathan
From Steve Peters Mon, July 7, 2008 7:03 pm
You are welcome to post my grumblings if you must, though I think it's
at the risk of not getting off to a very exciting start. Besides, we
all know what we all said. I'm much more interested in reading your
own stuff. You are one of the few people I think should actually have
a blog. It's a medium that was made for the way your brain is wired.
One of the real pleasures of the blog world are MP3 blogs, where
people post all kinds of cool music, most of it out of print, some of
it downloadable. And they all have links to many others. Here are some
of my faves to get you started:
http://awesometapesfromafrica.blogspot.com/
http://redkelly.blogspot.com/
http://destination-out.com/
http://excavatedshellac.wordpress.com/
http://prewarblues.org/
http://shortwavemusic.blogspot.com/
http://www.moteldemoka.com/
http://www.officenaps.com/
From: Norm Sohl Mon, July 7, 2008 9:24 pm
I agree, nice thread, and nice to hear from everyone. I appreciated that
Suzanne focused on the positive of FB, since after all, there is a reason
why we all spend time there. I tell people that Facebook is a way to
maintain shallow relationships with many people - and I don't see this as a
bad thing. I don't always have enough to say to warrant an email or a call,
but I still like to see what people are doing (status updates), what they
look like now, and what they value and find value in at the moment.
Regarding our discussions, I agree with Steve that what you have to say is
going to be much more interesting than what we are discussing, but if that
is what you want to do, go for it. I think there is a hierarchy of quality
that is expected for different forms of posts:
From low to high:
Email
Discussion lists and comments
Blogs
Web Sites
Wikipedia (etc)
This is not to say that email is worthless, or that Wikipedia (etc) is
always accurate, just a rule of thumb. I would say things here that I would
never think of posting to the web, because this is a less formal, less
permanent medium. If I have something to say to a wider audience, I would
choose a more permanent way to say it.
Whatever you post, back it up (on paper or hard drive) since any on-line
service can vanish over night leaving you with no record of your work.
I am glad to hear that you are enjoying the music - the 45's from Zim are
particularly rare, and almost no one hears them anymore. I just came back
from Zimfest today (oddly enough), where I helped host a couple of women
mbira players from rural Zimbabwe. It was pretty fun, and I learned a bit
about the Chipendani (mouth bow), which has almost totally died out, and
managed to purchase one to practice on.
If you want to hear more mbira, the place to go is "www.mbira.com" which is
run by Erica Azim. She has around a hundred recordings of excellent
players, both famous and not, with many examples of different tunings,
traditional singing, etc. Most of these recordings are of very traditional
players, since it is her mission to document this part of traditional
culture before it is wiped out by AIDs, political turmoil, and poverty.
One very cool thing about mbira is that it is a non-profit, and most all of
the cost of a CD goes back directly to the musician who recorded it. I know
this, since I helped smuggle some of this money into Zim last year. I plan
to return to Zim if and when things stabilize to work with Erica as engineer
doing some more recordings. This is not only a way to get some excellent
recordings (the best available) but helps these folks (and their art)
survive until things improve. Let me know what you are looking for, and I
will help you pick out some titles.
--Norm
From: Steve Peters Mon, July 7, 2008 11:05 pm
Blogger is not very Mac-friendly, and is especially hostile towards
Safari. If you are not already using Firefox as your main browser, do.
It is much more compatible with Blogger and other Windows-oriented
sites, and is a much better browser all around. Safari just sucks
rocks. Possibly the worst thing Apple ever made.
If you are using Firefox, and begin a new post, just below the Title
window you will see seven little buttons (if you are using Safari you
will only see three or so). The third one from the left is for
hyperlinks. First, select the text you want to link, then click that
button, and it will show a window where you can type or paste the link
you want to correspond to that text. Et voila, you haf zee leenk.
You will also find more self-explanatory buttons up there for Bold,
Italic, Quote, Spellcheck, Photo upload, and Video upload.
Generally, Blogger is pretty straightforward and idiot-proof. Hence my
use of it rather than learning html and doing a "real" web site. If you
have any more questions feel free to hit me up.
BTW, I have another blog on hold that I have yet to write a single post
for, called Just One Song. The idea is to choose a single song by any
given artist and write about what makes it, and them, so great. And you
thought choosing five Hurley songs was a bitch...
Subject: computable loads
From: richard sandler Tue, July 8, 2008 12:34 am
js,
99% of the the internet is brought to us all by fossil fuels,
us fools!
we (you, i) are the problem.
i puke on facebook:
it's a hand job when what one really wants is:
real face, real books, real pussy and real cock.
(where one relaxes
on the axis
of the wheel of life,
to get the feel of life,
......from jazz, and cocktails."
~b.s.)
mental telepathy ("morphic resonance," as rupert sheldrake calls it)
produces no CO2.
let's work on that.....
okay, i may be tres unrealistic but virtual reality (facebook, et al)
IS the new mind control and we would all be far better off growing
cabbage
and corn, rather than fiddling on our virtual violins, while we
contribute our computable loads to the icecap's burn.
xx,rjs
From: Phil Straus Tue, July 8, 2008 9:33 am
Jonathan,
Very interesting Guardian article. Thanks.
Phil
From: Joseph Sofaer Tue, July 8, 2008 1:25 pm
Sweet Jonathan,
I plan to set up a real blog one day and I've been trying to get Simon
to let me set up a blog for him.
For now you can check out my fake blog: http://jorgeluisgorgeous.com/
Facebook is pretty interesting. It has definitely gotten a lot scarier
since I left college. Beacon is particularly perverse.
Your friends have it down pretty well.
Make sure you have your privacy settings where you want them (mine are
reasonably conservative).
The main thing for me is setting my profile to be friends-only viewable.
But I think that if you use it to reconnect with old college friends
etc you'll enjoy it.
One thing that was not mentioned that might be interesting to you is
that facebook's terms of service are such that if you upload
photographs they essentially own the rights to them.
I would recommend the following applications:
apps.facebook.com/scrabulous
and no other ones.
I really miss you, Debra and Hannah!
All the best,Joseph
From: Laure Liverman Tue, July 8, 2008 6:12 pm
Yo Jonathan,
thanks for including me in this email. I've just read the blog...though not the
article yet...and found
myself thinking...Wow...I can barely just check my email, never mind the responding
part...I usually
ponder responses to simple emails for days and eventually find myself so far behind
that the
conversation either is short lived in my head, or I resort to the phone. Being
predominantly a visual
thinker I get bogged down in translating visions into comprehensible language.I just
don't know how
people do it...So I know nothing of facebook a bit about myspace...and even
so...from just checking
email or doing research for work, I feel as if I could spend a good half my waking
hours on the net.
Sadly, I often skip over emails when people say things like "this is really cool"
without giving me a
hint as to what I'm going to be viewing...most often it's drivel/trivia I surmise
and quickly hit the
trash button. All this web-activity seems sometimes to be a substitute for really
living --though I've
become quite the workaholic these days caught up in the morass of paper-work --
speaking of
which... got to get back on the road...By the way...Santa Fe is a hotbed of mbira
activity.
Love Laure
From: rob
Date: Mon, July 7, 2008 1:17 pm
most of the apps on facebook are cheezy and naked data mining operations with all
the teleological moment of Hello Kitty, so avoid adding like proverbial plague.
joining groups is ok, instant messaging is useful, i use event postings. It tends to
become a sort of back door email, that groups your conversations like gmail but
keeps chronology of hotmail.
on Facebook you can join large communities like NYC or Evergreen,; on Myspace
communications seem pretty limited to whom you accept as friend. Facebook friend
circles start to expand exponentially after a certain density, like 75/100 - it
suggests who to 'friend' based on incidence of common 'friends'.
you can blog your alleged thoughts on myspace, dont know much @ facebook blog app,
if any. You can set up a blog free at blogger.com or blogspot.com
must eat/rc
Ach, Jonathan, I'd say you were born to blog, like me. I found I surfeited on facebook pretty quickly, but it is useful for finding long lost people and can be entertaining. The apps on Facebook are mostly, yes, annoying, and after the first few times the fun palled and I got tired of being emailed by them.
I've been blogging five years, which makes me the ancient of days in the blogosphere. I use blogger, which is very nicely done. They do a very good job of protecting you from spam comments, for example.
Jonathan, I am enjoying this read. I have been blogging on Wordpress for a few years now and enjoy it thoroughly. My blog has evolved several times but maintains the original idea of "my view from the Ozarks". I'm looking forwrd to reading here from time to time.
Sarah
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