The image above, which looks like a broken Death Star, is actually a visual representation of my Social Graph (at least on Facebook).
Rather than explain what a Social Graph is, I’ll just tell you this. First, there’s a new kind of geek in the world now. I’ll call them the Social Geeks™. These are the people who are dubbed “social media gurus“. Second, the Social Geeks® have come up with a fancy sounding term (so they/we can charge more per hour) called a “Social Graph”. You know it as your “friends”.
Now, if I can stop using quotations for a minute, the real point of the Social Graph isn’t for the generic person who uses the internet. It’s an analytical tool so that those Social Geeks∞ can sell their souls to the devil (a.k.a. marketing departments), telling them how to get in touch with your friends so that you can be sold that 4th burrito you really shouldn’t have eaten at lunch (and then the 24 hour fitness membership you’ll use for 2 weeks).
Ok, it’s not all bad. Plenty of academics use Social Graphs to determine behavior, affinity, and other academic stuff. And, as we all know, 99% of what academics study don’t cross over into the business world where it becomes applicable to the generic public.
All that to say….
Pretty cool picture huh?
One of my favorite authors, Seth Godin, recently touched upon the subject of signal to noise in social media and the web in general. It’s interesting to me that his perspective comes at such a fortuitous time as this. Literally, the day a few of us will be getting together to discuss the [...]
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As we all know, I dislike advertisements, so I’m working on a deal with the folks from hashtags.org. I love their service, but I hate the massive ads they placed up on the site. I talked with one of them about that and suggested they remove them or make them a little less annoying. Instead, we may be working out a trade where they’ll take my suggestion and drop the ad. They’re considering removing the ads simply because I’ve offered a trade. I will give them a sponsorship slot on this blog. The trade is much more in their favor as I get a ton more traffic than they do right now, but it’s worth it.
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Lately, I’ve had a few people ask questions about how to create their own websites. What I’ve been recommending if you’re on the cheap is to look at some of the great open source web design template sites. These websites are awesome, and I’ve used them many times in the past, and will [...]
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iPhone movie and music downloads
I’ve been playing with every feature on the iPhone that I can, using it as much as possible in my daily life and showing it off to other people. Doing so has shown me a few bugs in the system they have to work out.
Here’s what I have. [...]
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I promise to keep this short and sweet. I wanted to formally announce my new products page, which will list all the products, scripts, etc that I’ll be selling from this blog. Unfortunately, pages are not included in the RSS feed for a blog, which is why I’m announcing it here and now.
What’s [...]
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(photo courtesy matthijs on flickr)
How’s that for a sensational title? Techcrunch, watch out!
I’ve been working on the War of the Worlds blog/book lately, and I figured I might combine this little project with Ning, the build-your-own-social-network app that I’ve been fond of for quite some time. I was thinking a lot about a [...]
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A few years ago, a few friends of mine had a vision. Not the kind with hallucinogenic drugs involved. The kind with social good involved. The Martin Luther King Jr. kind.
As the story goes, Lionel and Misha Thompson have, for years, loved giving money to people anonymously. They’d often slip [...]
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