Overview: Social Web

"It's also possible to see Rooms, Ello, and Tilde.club as a rebuke of the new internet _ a place dominated by designed-by-committee apps that raise millions before the first users even sign up, where interactions are either real and largely mundane (Facebook, Instagram, most of Twitter), or shadowy and toxic (Yik Yak, Reddit, 4chan). These new exp…

"The news media sector has become heavily dependent on traffic from Facebook and Google. A reliance now dangerously close to addiction. Maybe it’s time to refocus on direct access... Which company in the world wouldn’t be seen as fragile when depending so much on a small set of uncontrollable distributors? for a news, value-added type media, the…

After the standard survey of Facebook's impact on news & democracy, an interesting analysis of the way Facebook's: "trending topics has had a deeply pernicious effect on the way news is produced... encourages publications to look for what's trending and pump out something on that subject as quickly as possible... lots of quickly aggregated p…

"With several overlapping features, Facebook's Pages, groups and profiles leave many users confused... each has its own purpose and works for different types of content." - What's Really the Difference Between Facebook Pages, Groups and Profiles?

What happened when 60 odd people had a go at the Participation mindmap?

"trying to game the algorithm doesn’t work, and that the only real secret to getting lots of interaction from Facebook for your content is to create and post great content (this was always Google’s argument as well). But what is great content? ... is it clickbait that drives people to share, or is it in-depth analysis of important topics?... by g…

"The notion that the world outside its homepage remains anonymous is increasingly untrue. Millions of internet users voluntarily give Facebook, Google, and others access to their movements across the web and on mobile when they use “social log in,” or the ability to sign in to a website using credentials from the big identity providers.... as mob…

"These APIs will usually take text in the form of a file or URL, and ... identifies the topic of the text you submit, and/or finds “named entities” in the text.... include people, places, organizations, nations... Given that there are several APIs that offer similar services, how can we (and you) choose between them?" - Semantic APIs, what to co…

"With a joyous lack of irony, people complained that the Elio funding meant they would have ads and sell users data, meaning they shouldn’t be trusted. They complained on Facebook. The speed of which Ello gained traction, even when it was still in alpha showed that Facebook may be weaker than assumed... The main reason people use Facebook and Twi…

If you care about EU democracy you need to care about European media, particularly as the upcoming US media invasion gets underway. They'll be pushing on an open door when they get to Brussels.

""How to stop trolling online?” is the question of the moment. From [Quora's] inception, its efforts have been geared towards “making quality scale,” ... also meant keep making the application a safe place for users to write... It has introduced a new anti-harassment feature, where users are prompted to flag any comment or post ... Quora moderat…

"I can only assume that they were naïve about what taking venture capital would mean for a project like this. Which, to put it bluntly, is the nail in its coffin.... When you take venture capital, it is not a matter of if you’re going to sell your users, you already have... In the myopic and upside-down world of venture capital, exits precede the…

One thing I'm not hearing is whether website owners will be able to use Atlas data to customise their user experience. "Atlas will allow marketers to tap its detailed knowledge of its users to direct ads to those people on thousands of other websites and mobile apps.... Facebook has deep, deep data on its users. You can slice and dice markets, l…

"Ello..., may be forced to renege on its promises... received $435,000 in seed funding from Vermont-based VC firm Fresh Track Capital. ... none of its financial responsibility is disclosed on the site.... Freemiums is how Ello plans to make its money, charging users for premium services. "

The last is the best: "14... One sure way to trigger writer's block when blogging is to think, "I have to capture all my thoughts on this idea and write it about it definitively once and for all."" I definitely fell into that trap, and also definitely found that I could: "... work around the edges of an idea over days and weeks and months and re…

"If you’re thinking of organizing an AMA for yourself or your company, here are some suggestions for making it a good one. "

Just substitute 'governments' for 'businesses' and 'brands', 'citizens' for 'customers', and 'policy' for 'product' in this excellent HBR post: "Businesses need to take Ello and its manifesto as a wake-up call to rethink the way they use social networks to reach customers... That means stepping back from the relentless quest for followers, click…

"Roughly two-thirds (64%) of U.S. adults use Facebook, and half of those users get news there — amounting to 30% of the general population. YouTube is the next biggest social news pathway ... users who arrive via Facebook spend far less time and consume far fewer pages than those who arrive directly. The same is true of users arriving by search..…

"Facebook executives met with a group of drag queens from San Francisco to discuss the social network’s infamous “real names” policy... Facebook apparently had no intention of negotiating because the policy was crafted for the sale of targeted ads not for the safety of human beings with complex identities.... Facebook appears like a school bully…

Mashable hedges its bets: ""We believe a social network can be a tool for empowerment... Not a tool to deceive, coerce, and manipulate — but a place to connect, create, and celebrate life. You are not a product."" - What's Up With Ello, the Anti-Facebook Social Network?

"But for those searching for what's next, Ello is not it. There have been a few versions of this virtuous social network before—from Diaspora (forgotten), App.net (oof), and even Path (oy) ... [Diaspora] was intended less as an imitation of Facebook than as an escape route from it... New York magazine wrote almost four years ago to the day."

"This is a Big Deal for a lot of people right now, because the software companies that support our social lives have become so evil and pervasive and controlling in recent years." - What Does Ethical Social Networking Software Look Like? — The Message — Medium

"What's fascinating about Longform isn't its success... but how it went from a fairly simple website to an ambitious world-changing platform by nothing more than user feedback. No abstract theories... Just the simple power of going iteratively from MVP to a product people want... the new Longform app allows you to follow individual writers' wor…

"A good social media manager doesn’t have to have experience in the subject matter; they know how to do their research, build personas, adapt and be creative... Not understanding target demographics is like playing darts without a bull’s eye." - The Psychology That Informs Social Media | Social Media Today

"The trouble is that information doesn’t nourish us... it turns out to be boring.... if there is an antidote to boredom, it is not information but meaning... Information is ... an undifferentiated stream of sense and nonsense ... the journey from information to meaning involves more than simply filtering the signal from the noise. It is an alchem…

As commented on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/groups/New-Narrative-Europe-closing-event-4203563.S.5916497700450234368), a poll with an interesting set of options to choose from: "Do you: a) Love Europe as a state of mind? b) Love Europe as a solution to the challenges we face together? c) Love Europe for its victory over the barriers which o…

"...another link in a chain of legal rulings that help establish the idea that bloggers - and other members of ... "the networked fourth estate," ... can be seen as performing acts of journalism... we need to protect acts of journalism, not just specific actors who engage in them. the First Amendment protects acts of journalism or publishing — …

Not all shortform content is clickbait - Chartbeat thinks Circa shouldn't worry. "The depressing truth of the Internet is that short-form content hangs out on the same end of the distribution curve of the Internet as long form when it comes to attention. ... the majority of pageviews get fewer than 15 seconds of engagement. Facebook is looking …

"It seems like Facebook’s favorite pastime is messing with its algorithm, to the terror of brands, media, and consumers everywhere. ... Today’s change is all about timing. The company wants to make the posts that appear in your feed more relevant based on the context of “when.” That way, you’re not seeing your friends statuses about the Emmys day…

"Just because Twitter wants to be more like Facebook doesn't mean Facebook doesn't want to be more like Twitter. " - Facebook Takes Another Tip From Twitter And Pushes Trendy Topics - ReadWrite