social tools – Climb to the Stars

Musings on Twitter and Identi.ca [en]

Ever since the #fixreplies debacle, I have been distancing myself from Twitter a little. Don’t get me wrong: I’m still enthusiastic about Twitter, encourage people to join, and hope that new people I meet have an account there. But I’m slowly moving my eggs out of my one single Twitter-basket and starting to use identi.ca.

For those who missed it, the #fixreplies thing happened earlier this year. Twitter suddenly and unilaterally changed the way one viewed @reply updates sent by people one was following. Previously, there was a setting of sorts allowing you to control if you wanted to see @reply messages only when they were addressed to a person you were also following (the default), or if you wanted to see all of them (that’s the way it worked before Twitter “implemented” @replies, by the way, when it was just a user hack), or if you just do not want to see @replies (probably because you believe that “Twitter isn’t IM” or something).

Over the previous year, Twitter contended that the @replies setting was confusing (I think it was, but more because it was poorly worded than because the functionality itself was confusing), determined that for some obscure technical reason (we still don’t know which one, to the best of my knowledge) that the setting had to go, and noting that a full 98% of people were using the default setting anyway, they simply scrapped it.

Followed a huge uproar, lots of lamenting (by myself included), requests for Twitter to change things back the way they were — to no avail. Twitter apologized for the poor communication around the issue, told us they couldn’t keep the setting because the technical cost was too high, and basically suggested that they would offer grieving fans of that setting other exciting options to discover new users.

Only, it’s not just about discovering new users. It’s as simple as wanting to see all the tweets of people I follow, not just those Twitter considers relevant. In this case, they happen to consider that partial conversations are irrelevant. They’re relevant to me because they’re part of the lives of the people I follow (discovery of new users is just a really fun and valuable by-product of that).

So, enough of this already. The point here is that Twitter decides something, and Twitter does it. We are in a benevolent dictatorship position here, as we are for many of the tools we use online everyday. It’s a risk we take and I’m generally happy to — but when the benevolent dictator of a tool I rely upon as a backbone of my online life starts making changes that upset me, I start looking around.

Enter open source, interoperable standards, etc.

Identi.ca is an “open source version of Twitter”, one could say (the engine running it is called Laconica) — it basically works the same way and has the same features (at first view in any case). Contrarily to the vague of Twitter rip-offs or clones we started seeing all over the place, the important thing to note is that this project is open source. I know I’m not an open source expert and I happily mix up things that are important distinctions for people who are more involved in the “scene” than I am, but here’s what it means for me, as an end user (fellow geeks, correct me if I’m saying silly things here):

people can contribute to the code
people can take the code in another direction if they’re not happy with what the main development group is happy
who knows, maybe some kind of plugin architecture will be implemented (this is a wild guess of mine)
it’s based on an open, interoperable standard
think “GTalk vs. MSN”

There are of course certainly a full pile of other advantages to Laconica (the fact that it’s decentralized for example) but I’ll stop there.

The big problem, of course, is the people. Most people are on Twitter. Today, I’m following 567 people and am followed by 2481 on Twitter. On identi.ca, despite my best efforts, I’ve reached the staggering figures of 95 (followees) and 127 (followers).

So, should one “move” to identi.ca?

The answer is yes, and “move” is a bit of a dramatic word here.

Identi.ca acts as a Twitter client, which means that all to notices you send through identi.ca are automatically sent to Twitter too, and you can subscribe to your Twitter stream in identi.ca. You can in fact start using identi.ca without abandoning Twitter.

The best way to do this is to register the same username on identi.ca as you are using on Twitter (I’m @stephtara on both, here is my account on Twitter and my account on identi.ca). Head over to the Twitter settings tab to connect your accounts. Identi.ca will help you add people you know on both services.

Of course, there are caveats:

identi.ca is not your favourite Twitter client (if you’re using something like Tweetdeck, Seesmic Desktop, Twitterrific, Tweetie, etc.) — I’m personally waiting for identi.ca support in Seesmic Desktop and Tweetie on the iPhone
the site will sometimes throw errors at you (but on the other hand, Twitter is regularly down, isn’t it?)
“Twitter” and “tweet” are really the better names
it’s a tad more work than just continuing to use Twitter, but remember, you’re in the process of moving your eggs out of the proverbial basket.

I’m personally pretty happy with identi.ca, and like the way it seems in active development (Twitter is too, but it’s a mammoth now that Oprah‘s been there).

I’m all the more happy now that I’ve read that Twitter plans to implement support for retweets, and that it seems this will happen by removing the “RT @whoever:” intro from the beginning of the tweet, and add that information in a small byline after the tweet. My semi-automatic screening of retweets from compulsive retweeters will be a thing of the past!

So, if you haven’t done it yet, go and claim your username on identi.ca (you can use OpenID), follow me there, and nag me to follow you if I’m not but I am following you on Twitter.

See you on identi.ca!

Twitter @Replies Kerfuffle: Not Just About Discovery [en]

[fr] La suppression de son flux Twitter des @replies à destination de personnes que l'on ne suit pas n'est pas un problème uniquement parce qu'elle entrave la découverte de nouvelles personnes. C'est un problème, parce que cela nous prive d'une partie (parfois importante) de ce que partagent sur Twitter ceux que nous suivons.

A day or so after my blog post alerting you to the change in the way Twitter showed you @replies from the people you are following, Twitter broke the silence with a blog post giving more detailed information on the technical reasons why they removed this functionality. (Don’t see a direct cause-and-effect phenomenon here — I’m not that influential, despite what some may believe.)

Though I appreciate their apology about the communication disaster, there are still a few open points as far as I’m concerned:

97% of accounts did not use this functionality: this does not mean that they had chosen not to use it. Had the default setting been “show all @replies”, you can be sure that more than 3% of users would have been viewing all @replies
if I follow somebody, why would the default assumption be that I don’t want to see what they write to other people I don’t follow? Here’s what would make sense for me: default setting should be that if you follow somebody, you see all their tweets. Now, to cater for those who get frustrated by half-conversations or chatty followees (hey, you chose to follow them in the first place), allow suppression of “@replies to people I don’t follow” on a per-user basis.
the reason I am mad (and others too) about having @replies to people I’m not following stripped out of my stream is that it is depriving me of part of the public tweets of people I chose to follow. If I hadn’t seen @giagia’s tweet responding the @isntit on May 11th, I would have missed out all the fun around the heated “babies at conferences” debate. This isn’t about discovering a new person. This is about keeping up with stuff somebody I’m following (Gia in this case) is tweeting about, and involved in.

So, please, Twitter: don’t assume that all this is about discovering new people. It’s not. Since you removed @replies to people I’m not following from my stream, everything is more quiet, and I’m missing out on important parts of my friends’ lives.

Edit: oh, and while writing this post, I discovered that Twitter search does not go very far back in time. What next? are we going to discover that our oldest tweets have silently been removed from the database, one day?

Secrets of my Online Presence Revealed! [en]

[fr] Un tour d'horizon de la façon dont je gère ma présence en ligne, des outils que j'utilise et à quelles fins.

I was having a chat with Kevin this morning, and realised that though the way I had organised my online presence seemed obvious to me, it could hold some interest for other people. So, for your enlightenment and enjoyment, I am sharing with you the secrets of my life online these days and how the different tools and services I use fit in.

The backbone of my online presence is my blog Climb to the Stars, which you’re reading. That’s where my thinking goes. This is, I hope, my contribution. I don’t write here as often as I’d like to.

Aside from Climb to the Stars, I have a professional website (a bit static and inevitably out-of-date, but it’s a start). I’m intermittently active on project-specific blogs of mine: Going Far, Going Solo, eclau, Coworking Léman. I’m also involved professionally on two blogs which aren’t mine: Fleur de Pains and the ebookers.ch travel blog, both in French. At some point I did a podcast with my friend Suw Charman-Anderson, Fresh Lime Soda.

As you can see, blogging in the traditional way is far from dead for me.

My photos are on Flickr (thousands of them), most of my videos are on Viddler (a few dozen). I use Skitch to take screenshots (= photographs of my life in cyberspace) but I publish them to Flickr too.

Another very important way of “being online” for me is Twitter. Using Twitter has brought about a change in my online habits: I’m on IRC way less than I used to (still there, on irc.freenode.net, but idle and disconnected usually) and I’ve more or less loss the use for my Cheese Sandwich blog, where I used to write more “uninteresting” and personal stuff. It remains online, of course, and every now and again I write something in it, but Twitter turns out to be a better outlet for these short snippets of life I used to post there. Another “new” tool (new in the sense that it wasn’t around when I started blogging nearly 9 years ago) that has also reduced my need for a second, “personal” blog is Facebook.

I know a bunch of techy-type geeks are poo-poohing Facebook now (after the honeymoon), but I’ve actually become more involved in it during these last months, as a greater and greater proportion of my offline friends (people who don’t have blogs, don’t IM, haven’t heard of Twitter) are joining it. I use Facebook and Twitter in parallel, but I guess for me the major difference between the two is that I reach a very different audience. Facebook also has some measure of privacy, and I’m connected to way less people than on Twitter, so you’ll often find me a little bit more personal over there. That’s also the reason why I don’t crosspost my status messages between the two services.

I chat on IM a lot, and now on Facebook too. For me, it’s the necessary one-on-one complement to the rest of my rather public life online. I don’t use Skype much (usually upon request, or for certain people I have on Skype but not on my IM list).

For many years now, I’ve been storing my bookmarks on del.icio.us. I’m not somebody who enjoys organising things in hierarchies, so the tag-based mess over there is fine for me. Feedburner inserts a daily summary of those links in my RSS feed. I’ve tried Diigo, and liked it, but for some reason it didn’t stick and got lost in a browser upgrade. Maybe I’ll try again one of these days. I have a very passive account on Last.fm, and the obligatory YouTube, DailyMotion, Dopplr (etc.) accounts, but I’m not very active on them.

I have a VodPod account which I use a bit like “del.icio.us for videos”, but which I’ve fallen out of love with because it keept logging me out and wouldn’t let me log back in (with OpenID) in the pop-up window. So much for one-click bookmarklet publishing. In the video department, I also have a seesmic account, where I am intermittently active. Huge bursts during a few days/weeks, and then nothing at all for month.

I’ve always wanted a way to collect all the stuff I do/publish online into a single lifestream somewhere. I’m not sure anybody would actually want to follow it, but I guess it helps me feel “whole” rather than scattered all over the place. I tried out Suprglu for this ages ago, and was happy with it until the service didn’t seem to be able to follow anymore. Then I used Jaiku for that purpose, and briefly Tumblr (but I was feeding Tumblr into Jaiku too, so it was a mess and I stopped quickly).

Friendfeed came along and seemed the ideal lifestreaming application. SocialThing looked promising, but like Diigo I guess, it didn’t stick for me. I tried being active on friendfeed, but it didn’t really stick either (a few things bother me: I can’t have a summary page with just the items of mine which were liked or commented upon; it’s also very “noisy” for me, in terms of the amount of data it displays, and it displays it in an incomplete form, forcing me to click and come back, click and come back& anyway). So friendfeed sits there, happily lifestreaming me to the world, and to the sidebar of Climb to the Stars.

One old obsession of mine has always been comments. Way before cocomment, I had a tendancy to keep copies of my long comments elsewhere, or bookmark them. I now use backtype to capture my comments. (I also have a Disqus account but it’s pretty passive.)

I’ve recently become much more active on Tumblr, where I have a tumblelog, tentatively named Digital Crumble. As with many tools, I had an account for a long time before finally “getting it”. I’ve found a good handful of interesting people to follow and reblog, and I use it to publish all sorts of random “secondary” content: short notes, my comments (imported via backtype), my screenshots (via Flickr), my collected videos (via VodPod, but probably in future directly through Tumblr). But mainly, I use Tumblr to publish quotes. I’ve always been a note-taker. When I read a book, it’s with a pencil. When it’s only, I highlight paragraphs I like and with the click of a bookmarklet, send them to Tumblr, complete with an automatic link to the source.

This is one of the reasons I use feedly as my feed reader (when I use one), as it allows me to publish quotes and annotations to Tumblr.

Digital Crumble is quickly becoming an important companion to Climb to the Stars: Climb to the Stars for my stuff, and Digital Crumble for things that others have said or created.

I will spare you the long list of services I have an account at but don’t use actively (plus, I’m sure as soon as I’ll hit publish, I’ll think of something I should have included).

I hope this little peek into my online life will have satisfied your curiousity about the life of the pink-haired online geek :-).

Twitter Metrics: Let's Remain Scientific, Please! [en]

[fr] On ne peut pas prendre deux mesures au hasard, en faire un rapport, et espérer qu'il ait un sens. Un peu de rigueur scientifique, que diable!

10.02.2011: Seesmic recently took its video service down. I have the videos but need to put them back online. Thanks for your patience.

Video post prompted by [Louis Gray’s Twitter Noise Ratio](http://www.louisgray.com/live/2008/04/whats-your-twitter-noise-ratio.html). I’m still [somewhat handicapped](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2008/04/24/the-neighbours-cat-won/) and [used up my typing quota this morning](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2008/04/27/diigo-i-think-i-like-the-idea-bonus-content-conversation-fragmentation/). corrections: measure time, measure **distance** (not “speed”) My graphs: Zoom in to the beginning of the graph: Attempt to spot trends: Not conclusive. See also: [Stowe’s Twitterized Conversational Index](http://www.stoweboyd.com/message/2008/03/scoble-on-the-s.html) — interestingly, Stowe became much more “chatty” on Twitter lately 😉 **Update: The Problem With Metrics** — a few thoughts on what metrics do to the way we behave with our tools. Confusing ends and means.

FriendFeed Appeals to Women, Too! [en]

[fr] Quelques commentaires sur FriendFeed, un nouveau service de lifestreaming. Et en réaction à une liste de "blogueurs élite" quasi entièrement masculine, allez -- une liste de femmes de mon entourage qui sont sur FriendFeed.

*Scroll to the bottom of the post for **The List**.*

[Brian Solis on bub.blicio.us](http://bub.blicio.us/?p=781) joins [Louis Gray](http://www.louisgray.com) in commenting upon the fact that [“elite bloggers” are joining FriendFeed](http://louisgray.com/live/2008/03/elite-bloggers-joining-friendfeed-in.html) in respectable numbers. [FriendFeed](http://friendfeed) is a lifestreaming service, which allows you to aggregate all your online presence and publications in one place.

The first such application I bumped into was [Suprglu](http://steph.suprglu.com/) (just checked, it’s still running, wow!), [two years ago](http://steph.wordpress.com/2006/02/05/meet-suprglu/). I was happy with it for some time, and then disappointed that it had too much of a lag (they didn’t have much resources, at least at the time).

Then came [Jaiku](http://steph.jaiku.com/), which I liked, but I never quite got used to the layout and the fact that only titles were posted. [Tumblr](http://steph.tumblr.com/) entered my world at about the same time, and for a while, I wasn’t sure how to use both these tools without being redundant. I finally decided that [Tumblr wasn’t for lifestreaming](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/09/23/finally-getting-tumblr/). At that point I was also on [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=503315010), and the newsfeed there was pretty nice as a lifestreaming service. Then the apps arrived and [things started to get ugly](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2008/01/09/facebook-foire-aux-applications/) — but I still like my newsfeed, particularly as it does some editing for me (selecting stories I’m likely to find relevant, based on a magic mix of criteria including my “thumbs up/thumbs down” ratings on existing newsfeed elements).

Lifestreaming has two purposes:

– gather all my stuff in one place, so that I can point people to it
– gather all the stuff of all my friends in one place, so that I can follow them all together (this is more presence-like).

For the first, nothing beats (to this day) [Jeremy Keith’s lifestream](http://adactio.com/extras/stream/) in readability. I keep telling myself I need to [grab the code](http://adactio.com/journal/1202/) and do it for myself.

For the second, I’m ambivalent. I like jaiku, but I find it not very readable. The Facebook newsfeed is more readable and is edited down to a readable amount of information, but not everybody is on Facebook, and it’s not public. FriendFeed is promising, in that it’s rather easy to set up, but I don’t find it very readable, and it would need some editing features (so I can filter out stuff manually, of course, but also some automatic editing which I could turn on and off).

So, I like FriendFeed. I wish they’d make it easier to add people, though. One quick example. Here is a screenshot of the listing of my “followers” (=people who have subscribed to me):

There is no indication of if I’ve subscribed back or not. Compare with Twitter:

This, in my opinion, is a user interface problem that has been “solved”. If you create a new social tool, please don’t give us an interface which looks like it ignores existing solutions to obvious user headaches, like figuring out if you’re following back people who are following you (there is a higher chance that the people you want to follow will be amongst the people follow you already).

So, I’m looking forward to seeing where this will go. As such, I’m not actually using FriendFeed so much as sitting on it, waiting to see when it becomes usable.

**Coming back to the two posts I mentioned at the beginning of this article**, my initial reaction while going through the list of “elite bloggers” using FriendFeed was “hmm, I’m not in it”.

Well, of course. I mean, I’m quite lucid about the fact that all this blogging and online presence does have at stake (amongst other things) receiving a certain amount of recognition — and although I’m reasonably good at not letting this kind of motivation drive my activities. But it’s there, somewhere in the background. I’ve talked about this a lot in French, I realise — particularly in [interviews I’ve given to the press](/about/presse) and [talks](http://stephanie-booth.com/speaking) about blogging in general, but not much in English. Anyway, I’m not dwelling on this as it’s not my main point, but I always have this little secret hope (that I’m not overly proud of) that I’ll “make it” into this kind of listing. But enough with that.

My second reaction was: **where are the women?** Now, sorry to pull the whole “sexist” card — and those who know me are aware I’m far from a flag-carrying bra-burning feminist (though who knows, in another place and time, I might very well have ended up burning underwear in public) — but when lists of “influential/elite/top whatevers” show up and women are totally unrepresented in them, I think “ah, another guy who is mainly interested in what other guys have to say, and who might suggest at some point that we need to talk about the problem of ‘women in technology'”. *(Nothing personal, Louis — this is more about my reaction than about who you are.)*

So, in an attempt to encourage you to check out **some of the women in my world which I have found on FriendFeed**, here is a list of Some Women On FriendFeed. And yes, I’ve put myself in the list, of course. **Oh yeah, this *does* have a taste of linkbait.** But I won’t be offended if nobody picks it up. So, here goes.

– Ambiome / [Ambiome[Dot]Net](http://ambiome.net/blog)
[http://friendfeed.com/ambiome](http://friendfeed.com/abiome)
– Cathy Brooks / [other than that…](http://www.otherthanthat.com/)
[http://friendfeed.com/cathybrooks](http://friendfeed.com/cathybrooks)
– danah boyd / [apophenia](http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/)
[http://friendfeed.com/zephoria](http://friendfeed.com/zephoria)
– Dannie Jost / [uncondition](http://uncondition.blogspot.com)
[http://friendfeed.com/dannie](http://friendfeed.com/dannie)
– Dori Smith / [Backup Brain](http://backupbrain.com)
[http://friendfeed.com/dori](http://friendfeed.com/dori)
– Emily Chang / [Strategic Designer](http://emilychang.com/go)
[http://friendfeed.com/emilychang](http://friendfeed.com/emilychang)
– Gabriela Avram / [CONIECTO](http://coniecto.blogspot.com)
[http://friendfeed.com/coniecto](http://friendfeed.com/coniecto)
– Gia Milinovich / [Gia’s blog](http://www.giagia.co.uk/)
[http://friendfeed.com/giagia](http://friendfeed.com/giagia)
– Hillary Hartley / [static{fade}](http://staticfade.blogspot.com)
[http://friendfeed.com/quepol](http://friendfeed.com/quepol)
– Laura Fitton / [Pistachio Consulting](http://pistachioconsulting.com/blog/)
[http://friendfeed.com/pistachio](http://friendfeed.com/pistachio)
– Lilia Efimova / [Mathemagenic](http://blog.mathemagenic.com)
[http://friendfeed.com/mathemagenic](http://friendfeed.com/mathemagenic)
– Lisa McMillan / [Lisa McMillan dot com](http://lisamcmillan.com)
[http://friendfeed.com/lisamac](http://friendfeed.com/lisamac)
– Nicole Simon / [Cruel to be Kind](http://crueltobekind.org)
[http://friendfeed.com/nicolesimon](http://friendfeed.com/nicolesimon)
– Stephanie Booth / [Climb to the Stars](http://climbtothestars.org)
[http://friendfeed.com/sbooth](http://friendfeed.com/sbooth) *whoops, sbooth, not steph!*
– Suw Charman-Anderson / [Strange Attractor](http://strange.corante.com/)
[http://friendfeed.com/suw](http://friendfeed.com/suw)
– Tara Hunt / [HorsePigCow](http://horsepigcow.com)
[http://friendfeed.com/missrogue](http://friendfeed.com/missrogue)
– Virginie Pfeiffer / [Mistress of the Web](http://mistressoftheweb.wordpress.com)
[http://friendfeed.com/vivipfeif](http://friendfeed.com/vivipfeif)

*Self-promotion: follow me on [Twitter](http://twitter.com/stephtara) or [FriendFeed](http://friendfeed.com/steph) and don’t forget to [blog about](http://going-solo.net/support/) [Going Solo](http://going-solo.net), or even [register](http://going-solo.net/registration)!*

Encore au sujet de Facebook [fr]

[en] An answer to Carlos's comment on my last post. The "interesting things" I'm waiting for us to be able to do with the new Facebook "friend lists" is to use them for sharing and privacy purposes.

[Carlos](http://blog.osez.ch/) a laissé [un commentaire tout à fait pertinent](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2008/01/09/facebook-foire-aux-applications/#comment-368971) à [mon dernier billet au sujet de Facebook](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2008/01/09/facebook-foire-aux-applications/), et j’aimerais y répondre ici.

Tout d’abord, Carlos, merci pour ton commentaire — et ça me fait plaisir de voir que tu es d’accord avec moi sur l’ensemble. Voici quelques points de ton commentaire auquel j’aimerais répondre plus précisément:

> Même si myspace est à la ramasse, facebook ne va pas beaucoup plus loin, le seul + notable c’est d’avoir l’identité réelle des gens (pour autant qu’on joue le jeu) à la place de pseudos.

En ce qui concerne l’identité réelle, c’est plus que “jouer le jeu” qui est attendu de nous. Facebook a viré des gens qui utilisaient des pseudonymes — demande à kittenfluff sur Seesmic — et surtout, toute l’idée de Facebook étant de te connecter avec *les gens que tu connais déjà*, c’est un peu dur pour eux de te trouver si tu n’utilises pas ton identité officielle.

> Si tu en as l’occasion, je serais très intéressé d’avoir ton point de vue et de voir se developper ta dernière phrase “qu’on puissse faire quelque chose d’utile avec sa liste d’amis”.

*Oops. Voir plus bas. Les paragraphes qui suivent ne répondent pas vraiment à la question de Carlos. Voyez après le passage en gras pour la vraie réponse. Mea culpa.*

“Faire quelque chose d’utile avec sa liste d’amis:” c’est justement, à mon avis, utiliser facebook pour partager des faits ou actions réels, et agir sur la réalité. C’est la “réalité” qui est la clé, ici. Alors bien sûr, il n’y a pas que Facebook pour faire ça.

Tout réseau social le permet. Les blogs sont un réseau social, donc la structure est très libre. Avec mon blog, je partage avec mon réseau (les gens qui me lisent) mes pensées ou parfois les événements de ma vie. Idem avec Twitter. Idem avec Dopplr, Seesmic, etc.

Facebook permet de concentrer tous ces petits “actes de la vie numérique” en un seul endroit. Alors, bien entendu, mon blog aussi. Si tu regardes les sidebars, j’essaie d’y fourrer tout: mes [liens del.icio.us](http://del.icio.us/steph), [Twitter](http://twitter.com/stephtara), [mes photos](http://flickr.com/photos/bunny), mon [deuxième blog](http://steph.wordpress.com)… et j’en passe. Résultat — on me le fait assez remarquer: c’est trop chargé. C’est pas fait pour ça. Je pense que 90% des gens qui passent par ici ignorent le contenu de mes sidebars. Je les laisse car je pense que ça peut avoir une valeur pour la personne qui débarque ici pour la première fois — mais clairement, c’est pas fait pour ça.

Sur Facebook, par contre, alors oui — c’est fait pour ça. C’est Facebook qui va se charger de rendre “les dernières nouvelles de mon monde” plus digest pour mes contacts. C’est un super-aggrégateur de news, si on veut.

D’un certain côté, il n’y a rien de révolutionnaire à ça. C’est d’ailleurs le cas pour beaucoup de ces “outils web2.0”. Prends Twitter, par exemple: il y a des clones partout, mais pourtant, c’est toujours Twitter qui occupe le devant de la scène. Pas nécessairement pour cause de suprématie technique, mais à cause de la communauté qui s’y trouve. Je ne vais pas quitter Twitter pour un concurrent, car tous mes amis s’y trouvent. Idem pour MySpace, idem pour [Skyblog](http://sbooth.skyrock.com) chez les ados francophones. On reste à cause des gens.

Et Facebook bénéficie aussi de cette dynamique. A un moment donné, Facebook a passé le “[Tipping Point](http://www.gladwell.com/tippingpoint/index.html)” (un livre à lire, en passant) — et on va sur Facebook car “tout le monde” est sur Facebook. On va pas sur Facebook pour pouvoir jouer aux Vampires ou même au Scrabble, on y va car les gens qu’on connaît y sont déjà, et qu’on pourra donc partager avec eux facilement les nouvelles de notre monde, et organiser des sorties Karaoké ou des journées comme le [Website Pro Day](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/14/website-pro-day-deuxieme/). Faire quelque chose d’utile avec sa liste d’amis, c’est ça.

**Mince, je viens de réaliser que je ne suis pas en train de répondre à ta question, que je viens de comprendre à l’instant.** Je ne suis pas encore réveillée, j’ai une excuse 😉 — désolée d’avoir réexpliqué tout ceci, que je réalise en fait que tu comprenais déjà. Arghl. Avec un peu de chance ce sera utile à d’autres!

Je reprends ta question, donc. **Faire quelque chose d’utile avec ses listes d’amis**, ces listes que Facebook nous permet de définir, quoiqu’un peu maladroitement. **La** chose utile, c’est de pouvoir utiliser ces listes pour gérer des droits d’accès. Par exemple: “les gens étiquetés ‘collègues’ n’ont pas accès à mes ‘status changes’ ou à l’album de photos ‘soirées’, sauf s’ils sont aussi étiquetés ‘amis'”. Ou bien: “mes ‘copines du jeudi’ ont accès à une série d’articles un peu salaces, mais personne d’autre”.

Tu vois l’idée? (C’est plus court et simple que ma “fausse réponse”, hein…)

> On nous a présenté de belles choses du côté de [l’OpenSocial](http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial) qui permettra à un maximum de services tiers de s’intégrer aux profils et surtout de créer le lien entre les différentes communautés, mais on dirait que ça prend plus de temps que prévu.

> Vu les intérêts en jeu, je me demande jusqu’à quel point le mot “open” est bien choisi.

Ah, OpenSocial. Regarde du côté de [Social Network Portability](http://microformats.org/wiki/social-network-portability), une initiative partie du mouvement des [microformats](http://microformats.org/wiki/Main_Page-fr). OpenSocial va dans cette direction, mais il ne faut pas attendre de miracles pour tout de suite. Ces choses prennent du temps. Quand OpenSocial a été présenté, c’était quelque chose sur papier. Il faut maintenant que les divers acteurs l’implémentent, et suivant qui… ça va pas se faire demain.

Donc, je pense que là tu es un peu injuste et impatient 😉 mais si tu veux développer plus loin ta pensée à ce sujet, je te lirai avec intérêt. (J’avoue qu’en plus j’ai suivi d’assez loin la saga OpenSocial, laissant à d’autres le soin de s’en occuper.)

Facebook, foire aux applications [fr]

[en] Facebook has become a gigantic app-fest, and I regret it. Many newcomers around me see only that, and fail to understand where Facebook's real value lies. Not in the Vampires, Superwalls, or Secret Crushes. But in the network of people you have there, and what you can do with them: plan events, share online doings, or discover more about them.

Facebook se répand comme une trainée de poudre en Suisse Romande. J’y retrouve donc des amis “offline” qui souvent, m’avouent ne pas trop y comprendre. Ils reçoivent des tas d’invitations pour toutes sortes de choses, qu’ils acceptent, passent plus loin — mais pour être honnête, ça lasse vite, ce genre de jeu.

Quand je lis des articles dans la presse au sujet de Facebook, même topo: tout est centré sur les fameuses applications, qui permettent de jouer aux Vampires, de comparer ses goûts musicaux, et de découvrir qui a secrètement flashé sur nous. Mais que se passe-t-il donc? Est-ce si superficiel que ça, Facebook?

Même si Facebook est devenu célèbre (médiatiquement) dans un deuxième temps grâce à sa plate-forme d’applications, ce n’est pas ce qui m’a attirée vers ce réseau social. J’y étais “avant les apps”, moi 😉

Facebook, c’est tout d’abord un splendide carnet d’adresses des toutes mes connaissances (moins celles qui résistent encore et toujours à l’envahisseur, bien entendu). Un “facebook”, littéralement: un carnet de visages, un répertoire de mes amis et d’informations à leur sujet.

C’est ensuite un endroit où je peux faire circuler l’essentiel de mes activités numériques: j’y centralise des alertes concernant la publication de billets (comme celui-ci), mes [tweets](http://twitter.com/stephtara), et quelques mots d’humeur parfois un peu plus privés.

En retour, si mes amis font de même, Facebook me fournit via mon “News Feed” les nouvelles de mon monde. Qui a publié quoi, qui est où, qui a rejoint quel groupe. Bref, un condensé de nouvelles provenant de mon réseau social. Et Facebook fait ça intelligemment: je peux lui dire quel genre d’informations je préfère voir, et lesquelles m’indiffèrent. Je peux choisir de mettre en avant certaines personnes, recevant un plus grand nombre de leurs nouvelles — ou moins, pour d’autres. Et maintenant, je peux même indiquer, pour chaque information publiée dans mon News Feed, si je suis contente ou non que Facebook me l’ai servie.

Mais là où Facebook bat tous les autres réseaux, c’est pour la gestion des événements. Il est hyper facile de mettre sur pied un événement et d’y inviter ses amis. Je l’ai fait pour [WPD et WoWiPAD](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/17/wwpad-wpd/). On peut aussi facilement mettre en avant un billet publié, un événement, ou une photo en les partageant, soit sur son profil, soit en privé via un message à un ami ou plusieurs.

Ça me désole de voir que pour tant de monde, Facebook se résume à une “foire aux applications”. Il faut dire que la plupart sont bien conçues, vous invitant sans arrière-pensée à spammer vos amis pour qu’eux aussi aient un Superwall et un Funwall (j’en peux plus de ces deux, arrêtez, s’il vous plaît). Oui, bien sûr, c’est nul, toutes ces applications. La plupart n’ont aucun intérêt ou presque.

On retiendra tout de même: Scrabulous, pour jouer au Scrabble (en français aussi!), Books, pour partager vos lectures, et si vous utilisez des services comme Twitter, Dopplr, Pownce, Flickr — installez sans hésiter les applications Facebook qui y correspondent.

Si vous débarquez sur Facebook, souvenez-vous: l’intérêt n’est pas dans l’accumulation des applications diverses sur votre profil, qui finira par ressembler à un sapin de Noël surchargé et bariolé. Facebook, c’est avant tout un lieu de contact avec ceux que vous connaissez, de près ou de loin selon vos goûts. Alors oui, ce contact peut être ludique (certaines applications le sont) — mais il ne faut pas aller par-dessus-bord non plus.

Ah, les fameux “friends”. Sur internet, dès qu’on se connaît, on est amis, n’est-ce pas? C’est peut-être vrai dans les premiers élans de découverte d’un nouveau réseau social, mais quand on commence à avoir quelques centaines “d’amis”, le terme perd son sens. Et si on est quelqu’un de sociable, dont le réseau est passablement présent sur internet (comme moi), on y arrive vite, aux quelques centaines de contacts. Notez que je dis “contacts”.

C’est pour ça que cette nouvelle fonctionnalité de Facebook, qui permet de [faire des listes d’amis](http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=7831767130), est un pas en avant super important. J’en ai parlé longuement en anglais: nous avons besoin de pouvoir [contrôler plus finement ce que nous dévoilons](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/09/16/ethics-and-privacy-in-the-digital-age/) de notre sphère privée. En d’autres mots, nous avons besoin de pouvoir [apporter une structure à nos réseaux sociaux en ligne](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/08/16/we-need-structured-portable-social-networks-spsn/) — car notre réseau social a une structure. Tous ne sont pas égaux, parmi ceux que l’on connaît. Il y a les amis proches, la famille, les collègues — ceux avec qui on va manger à midi, mais aussi ceux à qui on ne parle presque pas, les copines du jeudi soir, les amis d’école perdus de vue, les personnes qu’on aimerait mieux connaître… etc. On retrouve ce besoin dans [l’histoire récente au sujet de Google Reader](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2008/01/04/desinformation-en-20-secondes-google-reader/): on veut [plus de granularité](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/26/granular-privacy-control-gpc/) pour ce qui est “privé”. Pour le moment, c’est un peu tout ou rien. Soit c’est privé, soit c’est public.

Un jour, et c’est ce que j’essayais d’expliquer [dans le Grand 8 du 1er janvier](http://info.rsr.ch/fr/rendez-vous/Les_hackers_informatiques_ne_sont_pas_forcement_mauvais.html?siteSect=1001&sid=8581901&cKey=1199111430000&bcItemName=le_grand_8&broadcastId=545429&broadcastItemId=8486271&rubricId=8888&programId=110451&bcItemName=le_grand_8), on pourra régler finement qui a accès à quoi dans ce que l’on publie, en fonction de comment on “classifie” (bien mauvais terme, je vois plutôt ça se passer avec des tags) les gens de notre réseau. Alors certes, on n’en est pas là avec Facebook. Pour le moment, vos “listes d’amis” vous permettent simplement de les inviter en bloc ou de leur envoyer un message commun facilement. L’interface pour placer les personnes dans les listes est également trop encombrante. Mais c’est un pas dans la bonne direction.

J’attends, retenant mon souffle, qu’on puisse faire quelque chose d’utile avec ces “listes d’amis”. Si Facebook rate cette coche, qu’importe — un autre réseau social le fera. Et croyez-moi, celui qui implémentera ce genre de fonctionnalité correctement aura une bonne longueur d’avance sur les autres.

Seesmic Tips [en]

[fr] Quelques tuyaux à partager après quelques jours sur Seesmic. (Traduction intégrale, pour une fois.)

Allez directement sur http://www.seesmic.com/Seesmic.html pour éviter d'avoir à vous re-loguer à chaque fois.
N'essayez pas de tout suivre. Comme dans la vie, on ne peut pas tout suivre. Autant l'accepter tout de suite, sous peine de sombrer dans la folie.
Pour le moment, il n'y a aucun moyen simple de voir à quelle vidéo répond une autre vidéo, ou bien où sont les réponses à une vidéo donnée -- sauf en faisant manuellement le tour de la timeline publique à la recherche de vidéos du même nom. Mais ils bossent dessus.
La qualité vidéo est merdique, mais n'y prenez pas garde. C'est une Bonne Chose, en fait. Ça nous libère des soucis de qualité technique pour nous encourager à nous concentrer sur le contenu.
Pour éviter que la fin de vos vidéos soit coupée, attendez sagement que la bare de progression grise dans l'écran de prévisualisation ait atteint le bout de la barre (illustration). Parfois, il manque quelques secondes à la vidéo quand vous la prévisualisez, mais dans mon expérience, la vidéo finale est complète (pour autant que vous ayez attendu!).
N'annoncez pas toutes vos vidéos sur Twitter. Soyez sélectifs. Ou ouvrez un nouveau compte rien que pour ça.
Quand vous cliquez sur "follow xyz" à droite de la vidéo, ça donne l'impression qu'il ne se passe rien, mais en fait, la personne est effectivement rajoutée à vos amis.
Essayez de regarder la caméra, et pas votre image sur l'écran (plus facile à dire qu'à faire!)
La webcam reste active après que vous ayez fini l'enregistrement. C'est un bug Flash, pas de la faute à Seesmic (donc vous en faites pas, ça tourne pas!) Si ça vous dérange ou que vous avez besoin d'économiser vos batteries, rechargez simplement la page.
La timeline est parfois capricieuse, ou certaines entrées n'y apparaissent pas. Dans le doute, rechargez la page, ou visitez les pages individuelles des gens pour être sûr.
Si vous en avez marre de devoir subir les annonces de vidéos dans des langues étrangères qui vous échappent, cliquez sur la petite terre à côté de "Post a video" pour les filtrer.

Voilà, je crois que c'est tout!

A few tips after [a few days using Seesmic](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2008/01/02/seesmic-addiction/).

– Head for [http://www.seesmic.com/Seesmic.html](http://www.seesmic.com/Seesmic.html) directly if you don’t want to be asked to log in each time.
– Don’t try to listen to all the videos. Just like in life, you can’t follow everything. Accept it now or it’ll drive you crazy.
– There is no way for the moment to easily find which video another video is replying to, or where the replies to a given video are — short of going through the public timeline and clicking on anything with a similar name. They’re working on it, though.
– Don’t worry about the fact the video quality is bad. It’s a Good Thing. Forces you to concentrate on content rather than technical quality (a daunting prospect, when it comes to video).
– Prevent Seesmic from chopping off the end of your video by making sure you wait for the [grey progress bar](http://flickr.com/photos/bunny/2162799057/ “Image.”) in the preview screen (after recording) reach the end. The preview may be cut before the end, but in my experience, the final video isn’t.
– Don’t Twitter all your videos. Be selective or set up a separate Twitter account.
– Clicking on the “follow username” link on the right actually *does* make you follow that person, even though it seems nothing is happening.
– Try to look at the camera, and not yourself on the screen (easier said than done).
– Your webcam will remain active after recording a video. It’s a Flash bug, not Seesmic’s fault (don’t worry about your privacy, it’s not recording). If you need to save power or if it bothers you, just reload the page.
– The timeline sometimes gets screwed up, or some posts don’t appear in it. Reload, or visit individual user pages.
– If you’re sick of having your timeline “polluted” by [foreign languages](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=On5bhmW3EA4) you don’t understand, click on the little earth icon (next to “Post a video”) and filter them out.

There, I think that’s it!

Seesmic Addiction [en]

After the initial doubts, addiction:

I’ve lost count of the number of videos I recorded. I’m drowning in them. I’m afraid you can’t easily track them down if you’re not the lucky holder of a Seesmic account (it’s still closed, though they’re working on opening it — there are 15’000 people on the waiting list for invites).

I did a short piece on WoWiPAD. I talked about upcoming posts here on CTTS. I spoke against conversation threading. I participated to the collective dissing of the expression “social graph”.

I left a nice message for Loïc, in French, to tell him I liked his service (I usually complain about his stuff more than praise it, so it’s worth noting).

Similar Posts:

Similar Posts:

Similar Posts:

Similar Posts:

Similar Posts:

Similar Posts:

Similar Posts:

Similar Posts:

Similar Posts:

Similar Posts: