How Much Is Too Much?

It’s been quite the week in the world of the internet. Twitter has been up and down multiple times every day, newly minted twitter-challenger Plurk had some initial compatibility issues for some Firefox users (myself included), Kwippy beta invites finally started hitting the stream, ping.fm made a very public reentry to the scene and Amazon.com crashed for well over an hour Friday afternoon (which is really just the icing on the cake of what has been a very active week on the interwebs). Read more...

And Now...The Backlash

What a fickle group we new media consumers are. Twitter had been everyone’s new crack for the last year or so, then, twitter stumbles (and no, this has nothing to do with my last column about Twitter’s TOS) and all of a sudden a cry emanates from the throng for an alternative to twitter. Maybe it’s Jaiku (with its newly minted Google money), or perhaps Pownce, maybe its BrightKite, or FriendFeed, Tumblr, or any other number of alternatives. Read more...

Good Ol' Fashioned Opacity

If you haven’t read Ariel Waldman’s most recent post regarding Twitter, you should. It’s not a prerequisite for reading the rest of this post (as I will sum it up), but the full story is a must read for any of you that truly care about the progression of social media and the roadblocks it will face. In essence, Ms. Waldman (a prevalent voice on twitter with over 3,800 followers) had an experience with a stalker on Twitter that began in June of 2007. The stalker (who goes unnamed in the post) was behaving in a way that clearly (at least in my opinion) is in violation of Twitter’s terms of service. Read more...

The Anti-Social Media

The other day I had a discussion with @amandachapel about the prevailing sentiment in regards to the “great social media revolution” (the conversation was mostly about social media marketing, but the prevailing sentiment carries over). “Amanda” suggested that the prevailing sentiment is becoming pessimistic. I disagreed with her then, and I still do. I am not going to get into that argument again, but the conversation got me thinking (well before she called me an amateur) about the things that social media brings to the table that are less than savory. Read more...