"Not another social network?!"

Online social networks have been literally booming over the past couple of years, thriving on the content that they don't even have to create - why should they, when hundreds of millions (if not billions) of users, myself included, are doing it for them?

That's all fine and dandy, but it seems to me that something went wrong along the way, and the bubble's beginning to burst. There are so many out there now, that many people are now hunting down the best app which can do the best job at updating all of them at once. To put it simply, it's just too much to handle, at least for the average (non-geek) user.

Which more or less conveniently brings me to my next point: because of this clutter, many good up-and-coming social networks don't stand a chance.

Take Dopplr, for example. It has a very simple, yet particularly useful purpose: as Jimmy Wales put it, "You put in your travel schedule and link to your friends. It allows you to see where everyone is. I love it." I'm personally an avid user of Dopplr, and I'm making serious efforts to get my friends to join, simply because it's easy to use, very handy and arguably the best there is on its niche. Unfortunately, their usual response is "Not another social network, dude, I can hardly handle the ones I'm on as it is!"

But then again, typical social networking users don't check out TechMeme or follow The Crunchies. Hell, I don't even think they've ever googled their way into finding the best solution. They're not seeing the good stuff. They just go with it on a first-come, first-serve basis.

So I'm wondering whether the problem is, in fact, this never-ending stream of crappy alternatives to the good networks, this clutter... Or is the discouraging and brutal truth that they don't really care? If so, take that for a target consumer. [pic via]

Not Cool, Google.

Dear Google,

I'm a bit disappointed by your neglect of Romania on your Maps service. It's summer 2009, and you still aren't providing any street maps whatsoever (only a handful of major roads). Not that I'm bragging or something, but this is indeed an issue. Here are some facts to help you digest the ugly truth:

• Romania has the 9th largest territory and the 7th largest population among the European Union member states
  
• Bucharest is the 6th largest city in the EU by population within city limits
• Bulgaria, who joined the EU at the same time, has Google street maps
  
• Apple has been selling Google Maps-enabled iPhones in the country for over a year now
• even an Android device will soon hit the local market

And the list goes on.

The worst part, though? All those questions/requests/rants on your Support page - which, as you may have imagined - still go unanswered. And you even have the nerve to list it as a first result on a search for Bucharest!

The Google Car's been spotted on numerous occasions around here during the past 6 months - great - but isn't an actual street mapping crucial before you start providing Street View? Do something, already!

Yours frankly,
An irritated customer.

Posting habits

In the next instalment of my series of excuses for not blogging often, I say this: it's not really practical anymore, for me at least, because there are more convenient substitutes. Let's break it down a bit:

1. I find an interesting read. I either tweet it, post it on Delicious, friendfeed or on Facebook (and if I find it in the NY Times, I just use that wonderful app entitled TimesPeople).
2. I take an interesting photo and want to post it. It either goes to Flickr, Twitpic or Facebook.
3. I'm at an event and want to do some live 'reporting'. Tweetie it is, then.

So, once again, here I'll only be scribbling down random thoughts which I find inadequate (or, better said, just not short enough) for either of the services mentioned above. [pic via]

The Real-Time News Cycle

Hasn't the news cycle changed yet again? There was the 24-hour news cycle, then the 90-second one, and now we're closer than ever to the real-time news cycle. I'm not going into the literature, but rather giving examples.

Today, a Turkish Airlines plane crashed near Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport. I first heard about it from BNOnews, at least 15 minutes before Reuters picked up the title, then CNN and SKY, and then everyone else. The proof is right here. The first picture I saw was on Twitpic, from someone who was driving by on the highway, and then came the closer shots. By that time, I was already monitoring the #schiphol hashtag via Twitterfall, as new information became available. And my TwitScoop column in TweetDeck looked something like this:

Even as I'm writing this, I'm getting tweets about the press conference they just held.

Twitter (and its universe of tools) has managed to become a real-time news provider. Sort of. I agree with Stephen when saying that we just *found out* about the story on Twitter, while getting a closer look via the usual major news outlets. Then Paul Smith pointed out that this won't change journalism - it will enhance it, by merely changing the way we engage it. For now...

Shiny New Safari

While Mac geeks everywhere are drooling over the release date of the cool Google Chrome (myself included), the folks over at Apple seem to have gotten the vibe and released a beta version of their acclaimed Safari browser, which, I must admit, is very tempting.

For someone like me, there weren't really many options: decent-constantly-updated-and-packed-with-features Firefox and kind-of-simple-and-not-really-attractive Safari.

But that changes with v4 of the latter, with the nice Chrome-ish tabs, impressive speed, a better design and all of that Apple goodness (like Chrome's Top Sites starting page, only neater; or Browsing History in Cover Flow mode). It sucks to be a PC right about now.

How To Get Bashed on Live Television

Or how to stumble upon the best incentive to get a job on another continent.

I found this on Pete's PR Hall of Fame - it's about talkshow host Noel Edmonds basically crucifying a press officer (also disclosing his name and exact position) for declining an invitation to the show by actually stating something like "we don't talk to entertainment shows like yours".


There's a worthy cause in the middle of all of this - a disabled Royal Marine hero who didn't get approval for the construction of a bungalow properly suited for his needs. You can read more about that on the Facebook group (which already sports more than 190.000 members).

I guess that the PR guy did ask for it...

[pic via]

Risky Business

Weber Shandwick has just released Risky Business: Reputations Online™, which is "a worldwide online survey of 703 senior executives conducted by Weber Shandwick in cooperation with the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU)".

Some of the findings which I find rather interesting:

• global executives are 5 times more likely to trust traditional media appearing online as they are to trust strictly online media (72% vs 13%)
• the greatest perceived online reputation risks are employee criticism and confidential information leaks (41% each)
  
• a huge 87% admit to having accidentally sent at least one message to the wrong person (potentially inflicting serious damage to their rep)
• very surprisingly, 38% track search engine results and use social media monitoring tools
• only 10% believe that building relationships with A-list bloggers gets them anywhere

You can find it all here, plus some fine tips on how to properly handle your client's online reputation. Not bad at all!

Adieu Apple Mail

Like just about everyone, I have to deal with two types of e-mail: personal and work-related. In terms of choosing clients, the latter doesn't really give me any options, because our company policy clearly states that we have to use Outlook on our workstations, and if not, we can access its webmail version (which unless you're sporting IE is practically as useful as SquirrelMail).

Now since I use a Mac for just about everything else, I've been conveniently attempting to go with Apple Mail. But that doesn't seem to work anymore (maybe Snow Leopard will look into it some more). The alternatives? Entourage or Thunderbird. Guess what - no, thank you!

The solution: plain old Gmail. The classic browser-based version. After reading last week about the proper implementation of Google Gears solving the 'offline access to e-mail' issue, I was convinced I could give it a shot. So I did. And it works. After spending an hour or so to put everything in order, assign the proper labels and set up my other mailboxes, I was set. And I finally get to (really) use the Ninja theme. BONUS: Google's neat little menu bar Notifier.

#googlemayharm

It seems we're witnessing the day Google messed up?!

As of less than an hour ago, Google seems to have introduced some kind of extra browsing protection and is now flagging EVERYTHING as potentially harmful for your computer - even itself. The Twittersphere went crazy (just check the hashtag in the title or use Twitter Search). TechCrunch is covering it too - let's see what happens.

In the meantime, can you imagine a world without Google?

Update: By the time I checked again, everything had already gone back to normal, and the whole malware issue seems to have completely disappeared. Now let's find out why this happened.

Update 2: Google came out with an apology, along with a detailed explanation of what had happened, about an hour and a half after everything was back to normal (at 9AM on a Saturday morning, to be more precise). In other words, a textbook example of how a situation as such can be handled.

In-Your-Face-book

Following Bogdana's description of Facebook as being "a face value book of private lives", I do kind of see that tabloid approach on its users, due to that controversy it generates over apparently innocent settings.

Example: today I noticed this story from one of Sergiu's tweets about how a man chopped up his ex-wife after she changed her relationship status on Facebook from "Married" to "Single". Now there's some self-esteem.

An example of my own (not as harsh though): when I got promoted this year, I thought it would be best to leave the old position listed and just add the new one with the very same company. After adding it, I checked my profile and noticed something like "Mihnea no longer works at McCann Erickson". Good one!

Experiment: my Facebook relationship status is "Single". I have just changed that setting to remove any status. The latest post on my profile is now as follows: "Mihnea is no longer listed as single" - and I have already been asked twice about why I changed it. A far worse alternative is if you feel like keeping your "Married" status off the record - your wife will have a blast. :)

Now, I do know that one of this social network's very first functions was this gossipy relationship status trinket, but let's not overdo it with the remarkably misleading notifications, people!