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Facebook could kill Twitter? Yeah, and I'm a flying pig

Nick O'Neill over at AllFacebook has an interesting idea — Facebook could trounce Twitter if they would only add the ability to fetch status updates from their API. Interesting idea… but so very, very wrong.

The first big mistake here is that Facebook already allows for fetching of status updates, something with FriendFeed users so that whenever I change my status on Facebook, it'll show up shortly to all my followers on FriendFeed. The second is the fact that O'Neill doesn't seem to recognize that Twitter and Facebook cater to two very different crowds. And while there is some overlap between them, making it easier to grab status updates from Facebook won't change that, nor will it give any real advantage to the Facebook crowd.

As I've seen it, there are two types of people in the social space: Those who want everything under one roof (people who use Facebook, MySpace, et al. primarily) and those who distribute themselves between various services (who use Twitter, Flickr, etc. and usually tie it all together with FriendFeed or similar service). Just because Facebook could make it easier for developers to create applications similar to the ones that currently extend Twitter's usefulness isn't going to mean there'll be a mass exodus away from Twitter. Really, we won't give a damn.

Never mind that those of us who live the distributed social life like it, whether because it's more resilient (with multiple services in each niche, if one crashes, we can use another in the interim) or because it's better for privacy (no eggs in one basket syndrome, can use different sites for different friends). The whole way this is set up, there's nothing Facebook can really do to make us move over to them short of literally killing off all competition.

In short, some Facebook API changes (if even needed) won't do anything to kill off Twitter. Facebook and Twitter are in two different worlds.

Oh, and I just found that back in late August O'Neill wrote about how Live Feed would kill off Twitter and FriendFeed. So far you're zero for two, Nick! But keep playing, let's see how deep you can dig this hole. That, or stop the hatin'.

Chris Charabaruk's blog

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Submitted by Chris Charabaruk on Sat, 03/01/2009 - 11:34.

Give me your podcast suggestions!

So, which podcasts does everyone listen to? I'd like to know what podcasts might be of interest to add. Currently, I'm already listening to the following:

So what interesting 'casts am I missing? Give me your suggestions, and why I should listen to them.

Chris Charabaruk's blog

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Submitted by Chris Charabaruk on Fri, 02/01/2009 - 17:40.

Designing and developing a social network

Remember what I said in my New Years post about releasing something big and serious? Well, it might be a bit premature to mention this, but a friend and I are looking at throwing together a social site built around a certain type of activity. (No, it's not sex.) Details are (purposely) light at the moment, but as things progress I'll be talking more and more about it, no doubt.

Anyway, here we are, with an idea, and how we figure things will work, at least on the user side of things. This morning, my mind was filled with ideas on how to start implementing things. We're looking at building the site with ASP.NET (I bought Programming ASP.NET 3.5 for a reason) but I'm thinking more about the database side of things — how we'll store user profiles, connections, the actual objects of importance for the social application, etc. After all, there's more than a few different ways to do this, depending on what .NET technologies we'd like to use.

It doesn't help that we haven't answered all the questions about how things will operate, but so far our individual assumptions more or less line up nicely. One of the things I'm working on as I play mind games with myself about the whole thing is documenting how things flow in the application from a user perspective (in prose, happy little diagrams, and some pseudo-UML diagrams using PowerPoint and/or OpenOffice.org Draw). At the same time, I'm boning up on ASP.NET, picking up on things I ignored or forgot in college, and learning about new things added since I left.

I doubt we'll be in any kind of shape for even a private beta until perhaps May or June. Two people devoting 5-10 hours a week to a project like this doesn't give me much hope that things will progress quickly. But we'll see.

Chris Charabaruk's blog

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Submitted by Chris Charabaruk on Fri, 02/01/2009 - 13:08.

Welcome, 2009!

Well, it's now 2009. With another year just begun, it's time for me to start looking at what I want to accomplish this year. Hopefully I'll do a much better job of things in '09 than I did in '08.

Most importantly, for 2009 I need to get a steady source of income, by which I mean a job. Perhaps a tall order, given the state of the economy at the moment. But it's very important for me to become self-sufficient enough to allow me to be able to provide for others as well. (So if you need a programmer, contact me!)

As well, I hope that 2009 will be the year that I get some serious projects of non-trivial size and complexity, working and available to others. There are (more than) a few projects of mine not listed on the site here, because they are in no usable state, and I don't want to go announcing them just to later say that nothing is going on with them. Similarly, I need to pare down the number of different projects I have to a much more reasonable number, that or make five or six full-grown clones of myself.

Finally, this year I need to sit down with my fiancée and start on the wedding planning. Because even if I don't, she will start it.

Each of these is a bit tricky and perhaps difficult, from my point of view. However, there's nothing preventing me from achieving each of them, even in just the first quarter (or less!) of 2009. Wish me luck, folks. I have some things I need to get done.

New Years Resolution

Chris Charabaruk's blog

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Submitted by Chris Charabaruk on Thu, 01/01/2009 - 23:11.

Screw the technology! Focus on what users understand.

Image via Wikipedia

2008 has been a fairly interesting year in the realm of single sign-on services. Every tech person's favourite method of signing into multiple sites with the same service, OpenID, has seen a lot of corporate adoption throughout the social internet. And not too long ago, Facebook unveiled its Facebook Connect service, letting you access a number of sites with your Facebook details.

If things continue the way they are, this time next year nobody will know what OpenID is (or was).

The reason I say this is because there's currently more focus by OpenID developers and providers about the technology of the system, and not enough on educating users and maintaining mindshare. While OpenID is mysterious and potentially scary for those who don't understand it, practically everyone on the internet can pick up on the idea of "log in with Facebook" when they want to start using a new service, or post comments on a blog, etc.

My warning to OpenID people: Talk to your users! Let them know why OpenID exists, and how to use it, and why it's good for them. Don't talk about how it works, or what neat tricks it uses. Just show them what it does for them and how it makes their life simpler. Otherwise, 2009 might see you guys lose to Facebook. And I don't want that.