Monthly Archives: November 2006

Flickr, Odeo & YouTube: One of these things isn’t like the other

1 Reply

Dave wonders why Flickr and YouTube have taken off as media sharing experiences, while the podcasting sites, like Odeo or Podshow, haven’t gained any traction.

Dave thinks it’s because Flickr provides an immediate experience: click, the picture loads in almost no time, and then you can appreciate it, comment on it, etc. The podcasting sites don’t offer the same sort of instant gratification. And YouTube? Well, it provided free hosting.

I think Flickr and YourTube have more in common than Dave gives them credit for. YouTube might not provide nearly instantaneous gratification, but it, like Flickr sits at the center of the users attention while they are using it. I think most people consume podcasts like they consume radio. It’s in the background, stealing cognitive cycles from what ever the other thing is they are working on. For that reason, it doesn’t invite the same interaction. This is even more of an issue because some people listen to podcasts on portable devices (like an iPod) that doesn’t allow them to provide feedback.

Update: Removed reference to Dabble.

Friendster Is Distinctly Sub-Par

Leave a reply

After noticing that the alumni group I created on facebook had spontaneously gained members, I decided to spend more time exploring the presence of Reedies on other online social networks, including Friendster, and I’ve reached an important conclusion: Friendster sucks is distinctly sub-par. This isn’t exactly an original insight, but it’s become meaningful to me.

In what ways is Friendster distinctly sub-par, you may ask:

  1. It’s broken. For two weeks or more it hasn’t returned any results when I click the “Reed College” link in my profile.
  2. It’s SLOWER than a very specific swear that I’m not going to use right now, since I originally used “ass” in the title of this post and then decided to clean up my language. When I use Friendster’s search to look for profiles that list “Reed College” it takes forever to display each page of results. It doesn’t help that…
  3. It pauses and inserts fricking dating site ads in between every 4th entry in the search results for True.com. They are all targeted using info in my profile, because they are all women in or near Seattle and I’m a male in or near Seattle. Of course, they ignore an important part of my profile, which is that I specified that I’m “just looking around,” and that I didn’t check that I’m looking for a “relationship with women.” Also, the women they list don’t appear to have anything to do with Reed College, AND some of them are clearly not looking for men.

It may or may not be important to reach out to alumni using Friendster, but I don’t think I’m going to be the one to do it. It’s too irritating to use.

Hey You, What Other Blogs Should I Be Reading?

1 Reply

So,  I know that there are some of you out there reading this blog via RSS aggregators and what not and I’ve got a question for you:

What other blogs should I be reading that I might not already be?  Maybe you have a blog of your own, or maybe you know a guy, who knows a guy, or maybe you just happen to be reading something I can afford to miss.

So, why not leave me some suggestions in the comments for this post.  And while you are at it, introduce yourselves.