Social Networking and
the art of self-promotion
Andrew answers to a C|Net articles on the failure of social networking sites (Molly Wood’s Five reasons social networking doesn’t work) by suggesting that the Internet doesn’t need special social networking sites: The Internet in its world wide whole is a social networking place.
Molly Wood makes an interesting point, though, when she mentions that one thing that makes social networking sites a less than ideal place to hang out is that so many of the personal profiles in these sites are, well, not that interesting. My take is that most people who spend time creating elaborate profiles on social networking sites are trying to sell themselves (whether to get a date or a job or just to be popular). And ads get boring really fast.
There are promotional tendencies in many blogs too, but you can also find much more candid expressions of people’s individuality. There is something extraordinarily relieving and endearing in things that people write when they come back from work or from the fancy party, and in the silence of their room stop being pretty and invincible, and start talking about the way they really feel. Especially when they are smart and write well.
Please let me buy sheet music!
Do you remember the time when searching the web for something specific meant spending hours and hours in unsuccessful search? When trying to buy something from the web too often meant miserable failure? When web browsing was inextricably associated with that physical feeling of defeat, frustration, dizziness, hopelessness, and alienation? That was before God created Information Architects.
Well, it’s not over yet. Today I tried to buy sheet music from the web (the first violin part of Beethoven 6th Symphony, possibly Kalmus edition) and I couldn’t. In my quest, I encountered sites that were so bad I can’t believe they actually exist. I visited the Julliard bookstore online (try it if you’re brave enough). You search for your music, are inundated with hundreds of results that are not sortable in any way and cannot be filtered, and this obnoxious blue box on the side sardonically blinks at you:
“Can’t find it?”
“We’ve got it”
“Contact us at…”
… and if you cannot write the phone number plus three-digit extension in two seconds, you have to wait for the freaking blue thing to cycle back to the contact information.
One by one, I visited a stream of horror sites that left me more and more frustrated (do you want names? Here are names: Shar Music, SheetMusicPlus, Theodore Presser, the Sheet Music Company). One after the other, these sites with tens of thousands of music items, welcomed me with browser incompatibility, malfunctioning search engines, inability to sort or filter results, and no category structure to browse. For some reason, a lot of these sites have a similar search engine that allows you only to search for one parameter at the time (the artist OR the name of the piece) and does not order the results by any type of relevance criterion; then you are on your own. Do you have any idea how many results you get when you search for Beethoven?
So, I wasted an inordinate amount of time and I am without my music. The good news is: information architects and usability engineers–as well as the people at the Julliard bookstore who know where the music hides–won’t be without work any time soon.
Things I can’t get used to: “Excuse me!”
In August it will be 11 years since I moved to this Country. I think I am pretty well integrated (well, even more than I feel comfortable admitting). However, there are still a few things I cannot get used to and make me crazy. No matter what, there are things Americans do that I find really rude.
Don’t get me wrong, Italians are NOT more polite than Americans. It’s just that the boundaries between what is socially acceptable and what is not are somewhat shifted.
For example, every time somebody says “Excuse me!” I have an immediate rage reaction. It’s funny, because in Italian we use the same expression (”Mi scusi”) to make somebody know that they are in our way. And if you read the dictionary definition, it looks really innocent: “Excuse me: used to acknowledge and ask forgiveness for an action that could cause offense.” But for some reason, and in a way that I cannot change or control, I cannot stand people saying “Excuse me.”
The tone of voice and the non verbal cues that go with “Mi scusi” make it sound like “I am truly sorry and I apologize for the inconvenience, but can you please move?” to me. When an American says “Excuse me,” instead, I perceive something like: “Moron, why are you on my way? What did I do to find myself in the same physical space with you? Move out!” It just sounds really rude to me. It makes me feel like the blame is on me.
I wonder if it’s because of the emphasis on “me” that it’s often used (Excuse MEEE; as when it’s exagerated to mean “that was really rude of you”) and it makes it sound like it’s all about me. Or maybe it’s because it gives the idea that physical closeness among people is something really bad and you need to apologize, even if there are three feet between you and them. The truth is, I don’t know what it is. I just know I can’t stand it.
I never say “Excuse me” unless I am truly pissed off. It just doesn’t occur to me to use it. I say “I am sorry!” and smile really broadly. So, if you meet me and I say “Excuse me!” get out of the way really fast. I must be in a really really bad mood and ready to bite.
Corporate geese
This evening, leaving the office way too late, I saw a bunch of corporate Canadian geese in a neat business casual outfit (it must have been “bring your chicks to work” day). I have pictures to prove that it was not just workaholic delirium.
Going to work
Done for today…
…time to go home
See more Corporate geese pictures »
Metafatigue
Andrew coined the new Technorati tag “metafatigue” and it seems to fit pretty well with a coule of my previous post, so I will adopt it if he doesn’t mind (I assume that the idea behind Technorati tags is to spread them through blogspace like a well adapted species).
By the way, this is also my first attempt at trackback.
Technorati Tag: metafatigue
Yahoo!, Smugmug, and value of loyalty
In my never-ending quest for efficiency and productivity, today I found myself tinkering with Yahoo’s calendar and to-dos. I noticed that Yahoo remembers calendar preferences that I set the first time I used it. I started to get sentimental. I have had my site on Geocities for more than 5 years and my Yahoo e-mail account for more than I can remember (8 years? Did Yahoo! even exist so long ago?). It must be the longest relationship I’ve ever had outside my friends and family.
Yahoo may not be the best or cheaper service provider or the best search engine, but it has served me reliably and loyally for a long time even before I started paying them for Yahoo Mail Plus and Geocities hosting. It still does an outstanding job blocking spam and following me around; old friends can still reach me at the same e-mail address I had when I met them, even if I’ve changed mailing address six times since then. And now I know that remembers my preferences for years and years. I wish I could say the same of my husband or even my mother.
A couple of days ago I tried to upload some pictures to Flickr and I couldn’t because I had reached my upload limit (6 pictures? You must be kidding!). So I went back to my old and trusted Smugmug where I already have an account, and I noticed that Smugmug can do pretty much all that Flickr can do. Sure, it lacks the cool community, the blog-ready features, and their service e-mails are not quite as entertaining; but I have all my pictures there and once the Wow! effect of the new cool features has faded, convenience still wins.
Technorati Tag: metafatigue
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