Tag Archives: Facebook

Ever Since I Abandoned Facebook

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A month or so ago, I indicated my frustration with Facebook and its many, many anti-customer approaches to business (you know, the ones that have been reported in the media where Facebook sees us as their product rather than treats us as if Facebook is the product). At the time, I decided to drop Facebook and see if I could move on. A couple of things happened that made that really difficult. So, I thought I would talk about my experiences and just kind of let you know what sort of things kind of happen.

  • First, I didn’t drop them outright or completely. I discovered that was going to be difficult. Not because I really liked it, or that I wanted to sign in and see how Aunt Myrtle’s Frozen Fish collection is going, but because of simple logistics. Facebook has just gotten too involved in my life. My writing business has a presence on Facebook and because of that, even my mailing list is kind of tied into the service. And there are peripherals I use that want Facebook, like my Oculus Go VR headset. Turns out, the company that makes it is owned by Facebook. Yeah, I could go through a process of trying to detach it from Facebook, but honestly, why? And there is no end to the apps and sites I’ve gone onto over the years that allowed a Facebook login instead of signing up directly. So, ending Facebook wasn’t as beneficial to me as I thought it might be.
  • Abandoning Facebook seemed the better alternative. Granted, it still gives them access to my data, and I know they’re constantly trying to track what I’m doing, but I don’t sign in. I went through and removed any type of thing that gives them access to my data, my location or anything else. I suspect they’re tracking my Oculus Go stuff, but I figure that unless they’re overly interested in my fascination with Hello Kitty, they’re going to get really bored, really fast. Over a month now, I’ve not signed onto Facebook once, and I kind of like that.
  • Because I don’t sign on, I’m not seeing endless updates from people telling me about their kids, their pets, their dinner, their trip to the corner store, and how many times they’ve had a bowel movement. It’s amazing how much drivel comes across Facebook. Even from me. I originally signed up to Facebook, overjoyed to be able to keep up with friends over the years, but let’s be honest: They weren’t trying all that hard to keep up with me even after I found them. There’s a reason they disappeared from my life before Facebook. We parted ways for a reason. No matter how hard I tried to get their back, they weren’t coming back. Ever.
  • Facebook has now turned into one of those clingy ex-girlfriends. Yesterday, I got 4 emails from Facebook, telling me that one of my “friends” has posted something, or included a photo, or had a bowel movement. And to play the whole bait and switch game, Facebook doesn’t give you enough information to even indicate if the post is worth signing onto them to read. It’s like: “Your hot supermodel friend Rebecca posted…” Yeah, you get the idea. Click bait from the gods of click bait. I also have 85 unread messages. 85. Oh noes.
  • My real conclusion is that I’m not missing anything. I tried MeWe (another social networking site) to replace Facebook because it had better privacy policies, but I don’t even sign onto it either. Leaving Facebook showed me how little value Facebook has as a service. It was a nice little gimmick, but that was so 2000s. This is 2019. I have better things to do.
  • This isn’t some kind of advocacy thing either. I don’t care if you do or do not use Facebook. I just know that I’m not going to be doing it. I suspect that eventually people are going to realize this as well, and if not, then you can all be as mindless as I was and continue to give it all of our data and information. Besides, there’s always Twitter, Instagram (also owned by Facebook) and Youtube. We’re never going to run out of things to steal…um, I mean, occupy our time.

What’s most annoying about the Equifax Data Breach

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By  now (September 8, 2017), most people have heard that there was a data breach at Equifax that has made over 143 million Americans vulnerable (about half of the entire country). Read more about it here.

Equifax hasn’t done itself any favors since the breach. First, it waited a month to let anyone know that their security was compromised. Second, 3 of its executives decided to cash out stock in the company a few days after discovering the breach. And third, in order to sign up for the “free” protection services, you have to agree to their Terms of Service, which basically say that you agree to arbitration and lose the right to participate in any class action lawsuit. None of those revelations sound good for the company.

But what makes this breach most annoying to the average American is that there was no way we could have avoided being involved. Most of us don’t do business with Equifax. We don’t open accounts with them. They open accounts ON us. We are their product, and we don’t have a choice in the matter.

Yet, we’re the ones affected. We’re the ones who will be cheated out of our money and thrown into the poorhouse if this runs the course it most likely will run. Equifax will protect Equifax long before it protects any of us. It’s entire model is not built on protecting consumers, but in reporting on consumers to big companies that give them business.

This is a lot like Facebook, even though you may not realize it. Facebook’s product is us, not its web site. Without us, Facebook has no business. Equifax is exactly the same way. The big difference is: Most of us choose to be on Facebook to take advantage of its use of us. So very few of us EVER chose to do business with Equifax, aside from the few people who wanted to monitor their credit before this all happened.

So, let this be another example to you that there are those companies out there who see YOU as a their product and aren’t willing to give you a single cent in order to exploit you. Feel good about that because it’s only going to get worse. Nuff said.

We Now Live in an Era of Institutionally Required Paranoia–And there’s no solution

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They found me, even though I live next door to the Unabomber
They found me, even though I live next door to the Unabomber

It was recently announced that hackers broke into three of the largest data brokers out there and stole millions of social security numbers, plus all sorts of other identification characteristics on people they track. Basically, what this means is that companies that track your information without your permission, or even without your knowledge, have had that information stolen from them, so all of your information is now in the hands of some very bad people who will use it to steal from you, and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it. So, have a nice day and please buy more products from random companies.

In case you were unaware of it, this sort of thing is happening more and more often. Even if you choose to remain completely off line and never even do anything that can cause anyone to try to steal from you, there are companies out there making it so that you’re already online and everything of yours online is pretty much open to someone breaking into it, EVEN IF IT’S NOT YOU THEY BREAK INTO. That’s the real scary thing because the way our capitalistic system works means that companies we’ve never done business with can now use your information, collect your information, trade with each other based on your information and pretty much put you into the poor farm by using your information.

A couple of months back, someone used my bank credit card to buy train tickets in France. I have no idea how they got a hold of my information, but I can tell you that when I dealt with my bank, I was very much put on the defensive, almost as if something I had done caused this sort of thing to happen. There was never any statement along the lines of “you know, maybe it was our fault.” Shortly after this, it was leaked that this bank suffered a huge data loss that resulted in accounts being compromised. Not once was a single comment made about that, although when it looked like maybe the mistake was on my part, the conversation was sure a lot different.

And that’s kind of the future that we have to look forward to. Credit monitoring companies maintain databases of massive volumes of information on each and every one of us. But if they lose some of that information, they MIGHT (usually if the government steps in and shames them) inform you. And they just might offer a free credit report to see how screwed you really are. If you were screwed because of their action, expect years of having to explain yourself as no one will ever believe you didn’t actually try to buy 10,000 units of widgets from St. Petersburg in the middle of the night while using your credit card to buy a bail bond for some criminal in Florida.

The real issue here is that so much information is available about people and no one seems to care that we’ve become products rather than the owners of this information. Just think about Facebook and LInkedIn. Both “services” are actually data brokers who believe they actually own your information and that your contribution is that you’re allowed to organize it for them so it’s easier to access. If you quit Facebook, your information stays there pretty much forever, no matter how much they say it won’t be. And if you never joined Facebook, your information somehow made it there any way, and they’re just basically waiting for you to acknowledge you’re who you are so they can start tracking you better and send you notices of things you should buy.

We’ve all become products who think we’re actually in control of ourselves, and that’s the real tragic thing. We haven’t been the owners of our own identities for a very long time now, and even now people don’t recognize that. Or when they do, they just sort of shrug and figure it’s too much of a hassle to bother with anyway. But when their identities are stolen, it’s usually too late, so we all play a reverse lottery game here in which we hope that nothing bad ever happens to us while we cast discerning eyes at thoese who do get their identities stolen. We’re good until it happens to us.

And then, like I said, it’s generally too late. But that’s okay. We have much more important things to pay attention to. Who has time for this sort of thing?

At wit’s end with writing

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I honestly don’t know what to do. I can’t seem to get anyone interested in my writing. It’s not because it’s not good enough; it’s mainly because it’s not famous enough, and it’s never going to be “famous” enough because no one reads it.

I guess what gets on my nerves is that I tend to support all of my friends and colleagues on their social networking sites, but rarely is that ever reciprocated. I’ll give a thumbs up to someone’s ridiculous cat picture or to someone’s latest “look how cute my baby is” photo. But rarely does that get returned.

I have about one friend on my social networking sites who I am very thankful for because she’s always supporting me with my writing. Probably more than she should ever have to. But she’s a rarity. I sometimes wish there was more I could do to support her, but I try.

Recently, I published probably the most important book of my career. To give it the credit it’s due, I need to hype the hell out of it because the publishing world is not the same place it was a decade ago. Publishers don’t support you. Writers are pretty much on their own, and unless they were Stephen King-level of famous a decade ago, they’re pretty much stuck with trying to make an impact in a world that has the attention span of a five year old.

So, I have been trying everything possible to get people interested in this book. For the first time ever, I created a book trailer and put it on Amazon and Youtube. It’s really funny and entertaining. The people who have seen it, all ten of them, love it. If you start to get my drift, I now can’t get people to watch a Youtube of a promo for a book that they aren’t interested in reading either. Basically, a writer trying to get traction today is essentially screwed.

The tragic part of trying to make it has a lot to do with the mechanisms that drive the whole industry now. In order to advertise my book anywhere, you generally have to have at least 4 to 5 reviews that are 4 stars or above (averaged). So, if you don’t have people who already read your book and reviewed it, you can’t get advertising for it so that people can actually read it and review it. And if by some chance you got those first five reviews and then could pay for some advertising, you then have to get dozens of reviews before you can actually start hitting a breaking point of where people will ever even notice that you’ve written a book. If you’re unknown, kind of like I am, then you’d probably get better results standing on the corner and throwing copies of your books at passing cars, hoping to hit one, blinding the driver so that he has to stop after running into a flagpole.

Anyway, here’s a last look at the video I created for this campaign.

 

The Problem with Investing in Imaginary Goods

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Today, Zynga’s stock kind of went into a tailspin downwards. Zynga, in case you’re not aware, is famous for building software that used to consist of games you could play specifically on Facebook. Then they went public, making lots of money and continued to try to make games (sometimes in Facebook and sometimes outside of it). At the time of their IPO, all I could think to myself was “this is a company that doesn’t really make anything that’s profitable.” Their profit comes from trying to get people to pay for virtual goods IN A FREE ONLINE GAME. While pay for play works in some venues, like MMO’s like City of Heroes and Lord of the Rings Online, people didn’t go to Zynga because they were interested in playing a specific game. Zynga, on the other hand, tries to interest people in their site and THEN trying to get them to play some of their games. And then if that works, they try to get them to pay money for the game they’re already getting for free.

Does anyone see a problem here?

Well, their stock is continuing to go down, mainly because their “hits” are very old, and they’ve never really done anything to convince potential customers that they have something just as good. Farmville was their famous property, and even though I played it at the time, I never invested a dime in the game, and after I grew bored with it, I stopped playing it and anything else Zynga had to offer.

Facebook, however, has been interlinked with Zynga since the beginning. Facebook gets a bit of profit from anything that Zynga makes from its transactions.

Which means I should probably talk about Facebook, too. This is another online company that has absolutely no value whatseover. Basically, it’s value is to get people to sign on and then tell other people who are signed on what they’re doing. Facebook offers nothing other than being the park bench where people are sitting.

When Facebook went public, it was already feared that there was no real revenue stream available from the company. All it really did was advertise, and it doesn’t do it very well. In its early days, I paid for an ad to sell one of my books on their site, and the results were horribly bad. I never paid for the service again. Instead, I got much better returns from places like Goodreads.com. Facebook, as people have started to realize, has a customer base that shows up, looks at traffic and then goes away. Some stay online forever, but they NEVER press any of the buttons that take them to the ads. In other words, Facebook has absolutely no revenue stream whatsoever when it comes to advertisements. The only way they could make money is to charge people for using the service, but once they did that, their service would become a graveyard.

This is the problem with companies that sell imaginary goods. Some, like Lord of the Rings Online, which actually offers something tangible (a lot of fun and a strong customer base that has remained with them for years, first as paying customers), Facebook and Zynga offer nothing really tangible. Zynga doesn’t even offer very good games. They’re casual games, which means that they’re meant to be played as you’re doing something else. Think of their games as almost an afterthought. Whereas, Lord of the Rings Online is a game meant to be played with your full attention.

Facebook, as well, offers nothing but a place for people to report their happenings. If you’re not a celebrity, chances are pretty good that not a lot of people (aside from really close friends and maybe family) really care. Even Google Plus, which does appeal mainly to following celebrities, isn’t all that popular, no matter how much Google wishes that weren’t so.

Facebook has a few days until its reckoning emerges. You see, they have to reveal to stockholders just how well they’re doing. I suspect they’re not doing well. With Zynga’s loss reported today, it’s only a matter of time before we hear that Facebook isn’t doing any better. And then their stock is going to go down really fast.

It’s unfortunate, but then we’re dealing with companies that have no actual value, other than perceived value and fantasies of being more than they really are. I like to think that their value is comparable to my ability to date Jessica Alba. Sure, it’s very possible it might happen, but she’s really an imaginary good (a really, really GOOD good), but the reality of my dating her is pretty dismal. That’s how I see Facebook and Zynga. Slowly, I’m noticing more and more people are starting to feel the same way.

Why Don’t People Trust Facebook?

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There’s an article today on MSNBC, indicating that according to a poll, people generally don’t trust Facebook. The reasons the article comes up with are interesting, but it left me wondering if there’s not something a bit simpler going on in the minds of people who are focusing on the social networking site. Let me put it into my theory:

1. People don’t trust a company that continues to chip away at something it claims it’s not trying to do, and by that, I’m referring to compromising privacy. Since day one, Facebook has been trying to gain more and more information about people and then use that information for its own personal profit. When called on it, they back down, a bit, and then turn around and try another attempt at circumventing their own rules, while pretending that’s not what they’re doing. It’s like a romantic partner who claims never to cheat, and you keep finding him/her with someone from the opposite sex, and once confronted, he/she claims it will never happen again. And then next week, it does. That’s the main problem with trusting Facebook. It’s almost as if they feel they’re too big to be held responsible for their actions. And when confronted, they really don’t care.

2. People don’t trust a company created by young people who galavant around as rich, privileged asses. Since Zuckerberg became the new billionaire on the block, people generally don’t like him. The corporate world doesn’t like him because he shows up at fancy meetings in a hoodie. The common people don’t like him because he’s that geek kid that screwed you over in secret and then tried to pretend it was someone else. Girls don’t like him because he’s a womanizing prick who wouldn’t ever get a girl if he didn’t also happen to be a billionaire. Face it. Every social situation that appears around him displays him as an ass. Sure, he could be the greatest, nicest guy around, but the movie about him makes him look like a backstabbing smart kid who even screwed over his own best friend for money. It’s hard to trust someone like that, even if the movie was completely false and it turns out he’s nicer than Mother Teresa.

3. Facebook doesn’t actually do anything to generate an actual profit. You see, that’s the thing that’s been bothering me since day one. It’s a social networking site where THE MEMBERS are the ones actually doing all of the socializing. Facebook is like the road you drive on to get somewhere. It isn’t cool. It doesn’t make your trip more enjoyable. It’s just there to get you from one place to the next. Yet, it’s like the road then sending you a message indicating that it’s now going to take all of your vital information and sell it to all of your friends (and then charge you for it) because you decided to actually drive on the road to get to work once. The analogy is a bit strained, but I’m sure you get the idea.

I have a few friends of mine who gave up Facebook when it first started to become big. They haven’t looked back since. Sure, it’s harder to keep in touch with them, but I don’t get the impression that they’re hurting for their decision. They didn’t trust Facebook since day one, and as a result they gave it up. To be honest, I may end up doing the same thing myself because it hasn’t proved to be all that useful to me over the long haul. My writing business hasn’t improved, and when I go onto Facebook, all I see is the same kind of messages I used to see before, except now it seems like Facebook has changed its algorithms again so that not everything is showing up as it should. And recently they announced that they want to charge people in order to make their updates appear. To me, that’s bordering on final straw territory. So, I may disappear soon, but not because of anger or anything, but because like the majority of the people in that poll: I don’t trust Facebook.

But worse, rather than just not trust Facebook, I’m starting to realize I may not even want Facebook. It doesn’t really serve much of a purpose for me if it wants to monetize me rather than monetize stuff I do and give me a cut of the profits. I work for a company that monetizes me as part of its agreement to pay me a salary. Facebook doesn’t do that. It expects the activity for free and then wants to profit even more off of it.

Which brings me to the soon to come public release of Facebook on Nasdaq. The owners of Facebook are trying to push that phantom value even higher and profit even more. But secretly, I suspect that there’s really no value in a paper tiger that doesn’t actually do anything other than rely on its constituents to fill in the active feeds. Without the people, Facebook is just another web site, like Myspace and someone useless like a Netscape browser. Talk about bubbles. This seems like the most ridiculous helium bubble we’ve ever manufactured, and when it bursts, I hate to be covered with the Myspace residue that is going to explode over everyone.

Problem #77 with Adopting Google+

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I’ve been experimenting with Google+ since it emerged, and as much hype as I read from the major news sites, I just haven’t bought into the propaganda they keep spewing out. I keep reading how Google+ is going to replace Facebook, but no matter how much I look into the service, it fails on almost every level. Let me explain:

1. No one is on it.

Oh, I know how they keep claiming a gazillon people are on it and all that, but I’ll let you in on a little secret (if you haven’t used Google+). No one you know is using it. And that’s the problem right there. Sure, it’s great that Felicia Day (creator of the web episodic show The Guild), Wil Wheaton (the guy who played the kid on Star Trek the Next Generation and has been pulling cameos on other shows like Big Bang Theory and The Guild ever since), and Taylor Swift (the singer) are all on it, but what it’s really turned out to be is a glorified Twitter account where you get to actually see postings of these people, instead of blurts of words from their Twitter feed. But again, so few “normal” people are using it, which means if you want to use it to follow some celebrity with a one-sided conversation (where they never hear from you), then it’s fine. But what makes it different from watching some celebrity gossip show? Nothing, really.

2. The Interface Lacks Substance

Everytime I use Google+, I’m convinced I’m missing something because I go on it and then wonder why I wasted the time. It’s like there’s a whole other big room that’s part of it, but I just haven’t figured out the secret handshake to get into that other room. I suspect that other room doesn’t exist, but even if it does, what good is a service if you can’t access it? That’s my problem with Google+. It has nothing going on for it that keeps me interested. I’m a news junkie, which means I want to see things going on. Right now, my Google+ feed is filled with nonstop cute cat pictures from the celebrities that somehow think this is interesting and relevant. I’m not kidding. The only other type of posting seems to be from April Summers who shows naked pictures of herself in Playboy, which can be cool, but not really newsworthy. Every other person I follow seems to practically repeat the same information but a little bit different each time. The people I’d like to follow and know more about don’t actually have an account, or they have an account and don’t use it (like Taylor Swift).

3. It’s Owned by Google

Google is a great search engine, but honestly it doesn’t really innovate in anything. It does a really good job of seeing what other people do and then streamlines it. But there’s rarely any innovation or brilliant thought behind it. Or when there is, it’s designed by engineers who still haven’t figured out how to communicate with the masses, so they set up really complicated environments and expect the people to figure out how to maneuver through them (“I’m looking at you, Google Adwords!”). And there’s always the fear that Google, in their infinite wisdom, will just cancel your account because you disagreed with something they had to say, or do, cutting off four or five services you might be using that had nothing to do with the reason you got shut off in the first place, and like Facebook, they won’t speak to you in order to fix the situation because you’re irrelevant to them, as you’ve always been.

Facebook Offers Brand New Stalker Feature

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I figured it was only a matter of time. One of the things that Facebook had going for it was that all other things considered, that crazy ex of yours wasn’t going to be able to follow your updates because you were way too smart to ever accept his or her Facebook friend request. Now, Facebook has decided, most likely because Zucker-dude probably likes to stalk cute females who think he’s kind of creepy, that even if you’re not friends with someone, they can still get updates to your status.

The reason behind this, according to Facebook’s PR, is that now celebrities can use Facebook like they’re supposedly able to use Google +, even if they’re not really using Google + because it’s not popular enough yet. However, the main benefactors of this sort of thing is anyone who has wanted to friend someone they want to get close to but that other person thinks you’re just a bit too creepy to be following them. Now, you and your creepy self can follow her no matter how many restraining orders have been issued. Facebook feels that getting you closer to that crazy guy is a feature that you really shouldn’t be able to opt out of.

Oh, I’m sure you’ll be able to opt out of it (if you can figure out how), but a few weeks into it, once Zucker-dude realizes that he’s not getting enough money from ad revenue to build another island to house his army of fembots, they’ll make it mandatory, because Facebook really knows better about what you want than you do. You just don’t know it yet. It’s kind of like the whole, “please post your pictures on Facebook because then we kind of own it, even though we don’t really own it, but we’re going to use it regardless of what you think cause we’re richer than God, and you can’t afford an attorney to sue us anyway” thing.

So, if you have an old ex who just doesn’t want anything more to do with you, Facebook has your back. As for that ex, well, it’s her fault for not realizing how we’ve changed and how much we mean it when we promise not to a) “cheat on you again”, b) “hit you when we’re drunk”, or c) “bring home another floozy from a bar because we thought you always wanted to do a threesome but were too shy to say it out loud”. Come on, baby, you know we love you. I mean, just ask our best buddy, Facebook. Facebook would never lie to you, right?

Now open the damn door and let me in!

The Problems with Facebook & Google No One Talks About: Censorship

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Some years ago, when the Internet was very young, I was one of the early adopters of the new technology and started building web sites for companies, organizations and individuals who wanted them. In the beginning, it was interesting in that the people who needed web sites tended to be in three categories: adult businesses, churches and social celebrities. To be honest, the social celebrity market wasn’t really launched yet, so you really relied specifically on adult businesses and churches, a somewhat unique duo of activity.

My first web site I built was for a church. So was my second one. And then members of those two churches contacted me, asking me if I could build a site for them as well, as there were no web designers around yet. It turns out that the people who contacted me were professional dominatrices, looking for new ways of attracting clientele. Not really one to care where business came from, I built their sites, and almost out of nowhere, dozens of brand new clients showed up, all wanting my business. What I discovered then, and later, was that I was one of the few web designers around they came across who just wanted payment (not the rest of what their activity had to offer). What had happened to them in the beginning of the Internet was potential clients saw a way to get free sessions from them, and then basically held them hostage (they would have control over their web sites) until they got all of their “needs” met. With me, they paid me money, and they got everything they wanted without any hassle.

This was great for me, and them, and lasted for years until I went back to school and had less time. Then I slowly pushed my clients off onto other designers I came in contact with, and slowly ended doing that sort of business. It was good to do so, too, because that’s when everyone started to learn how to do web sites, and a specialty designer like me was easily outnumbered by paint by number designers who really dirtied the whole industry. I kept a few clients over the years who knew I was a designer first, and not just a spaghetti code generator (the kind of people who used pre-packaged software that was impossible to maintain and change without continuing to use the same pre-packaged software, and it was also impossible to personally configure if you wanted to do something different than the software did out of the box).

Anyway, the reason for mentioning this is that one of my clients was an adult bookstore, and at one point, we were using a shopping cart service (before I learned to design them in php from scratch). In the middle of the night one evening, they shut down her site, deciding that they didn’t like her “pervert crap” and no longer wanted to do business with her. To them, it didn’t matter that her business had been around longer than theirs had, and that we had put a LOT of work into designing the site. They shut her down in the middle of the night because their owner suddenly “found God” and no longer wanted “smut” on his sites. The thought that he didn’t “own” her site meant nothing to him; however, his control of the shopping cart software, which configured the site’s business end, practically ended her business overnight. So I had to learn php, build a brand new shopping cart (when people weren’t doing that sort of thing yet) and then relaunch her site over a weekend during a week of tests at school. It was a nightmare, but I got her going again.

What I most remember about that incident is that the shopping cart manager wouldn’t return a phone call, and when I finally got a hold of him, he was the rudest person I ever spoke to. He really felt that he was talking to scum, so he didn’t have to address that person as a human. It was an eye-opening experience.

Years ago, I was asked to fix a woman’s business site because Google had shut her down completely. She was a pro dominant, and she knew about me through mutual acquaintances who had known someone who had done a site through me years ago, so she contacted me in the middle of the night, crying, saying that Google had just shut down her online business and she couldn’t even get anyone to answer why. She had followed all of their rules to the T, and she was in compliance with everything she could imagine would need compliance. Yet, out of the blue, they shut her down. Which meant everything that was tied to Google for her was also shut down. I tried to contact Google, and kept getting the run-around from them. Finally, I told her she could rebuild her site from scratch with a new Google account, or she could be smarter and just build her site from scratch using a non-Google tied server. So I ended up building her a clean site that had no connection to Google whatsoever. She’s still going strong today, although she’s probably not an early adopter of Google Plus for the crap they put her through.

Last night, I received a frantic phone call from a woman who said that she was shut down on Facebook a few days ago. The person she spoke to wouldn’t even give her a reason, quoting some obscure rule about “compliance with rules” and wouldn’t elaborate. Her gazillion friends are all gone, and much of the networking she designed through Facebook is now gone. She asked me if she should jump to Google instead now that she realized that Facebook is adult-unfriendly. I couldn’t give her a happy answer that she was expecting because I knew what her future would probably be with Google.

And that’s what I wanted to talk about. Two of the biggest kids on the block are fighting for supremacy in social networking sites, and they’re probably the two biggest unfriendly social networking sites around. If you’re doing anything with which they disagree, they don’t just turn their head and disagree, they shut you down completely, forcing their morals upon you because they have the power to do it. Like that shopping cart company from years before, they don’t care that there are thousands who feel as you do. Their personal desires are more important than yours, and if you don’t comply, you lose. And of course, you have nowhere else to turn, so screw you.

That’s what we have to look forward to with Facebook and Google. Now, I know the majority of people won’t ever do anything to worry about being forced out, but honestly, you don’t know that. What it means is that an organization that is trying to gain your business by promising to let you network with people like you is quite willing to shut you down if those people like you are not in agreement with what they personally think is cool, or okay. It’s like the old line of “when they came for the Polish, I did nothing because I wasn’t Polish, when they came for the French I did nothing, because I wasn’t French, and then when they came for me, there was no one left to speak for me.” Now that’s not an exact quote, but you get the idea. Years ago, when there was a huge backlash against the gay community, I was an avid spokesperson against the backlash because even though I’m not gay, I felt that if thugs were able to hurt people who were gay, there’s only a matter of time before someone starts coming after me for whatever weird things I might be into (yes, I know, being gay isn’t a choice or weird, but I’m stretching for an analogy here). For the longest time, I had colleagues thinking I was gay because I was an out spokesperson for gays, and they couldn’t understand why someone would advocate for something they weren’t personally. That’s why that misquoted quote is so poignant. People won’t speak out for others without a personal stake, and that’s why so many atrocities continue to happen in this world.

I’m just saying.

Why Google Plus Won’t Beat Facebook

Business, Social Networking, , , , ,

I recently signed up for Google Plus. It took finding someone who get me into the beta, or whatever it is they’re calling the early period of Google Plus, but because everyone was talking about how great it was, I had to see for myself. Right off, I can tell you that I’m extremely underwelmed by the experience. The majority of the problem for me is that there’s no one I know already on it, so joining it is kind of useless. Plus, working with Google is a nightmare of proprortions when it comes to user friendly material. Not once, with any product, has Google ever really gotten it right. I’m surprised that I’m still having to make this comment.

One thing that Google fails at is simplicity. Oh, it claims it’s simple, but almost always whenever you want to do something that’s not right out of the original set up, you’re pretty much screwed. I discovered this with Gmail, Google Voice, Google Adsense and practically every other product Google has ever put out. You see, Google wants to integrate all of its products together, but it seems that their process was designed by Kafka, who believes that the more levels of hell that you have to go through to accomplish something the better off you should be. I discovered that with Google Ads. Tried to set up a simple ad, much like I had done with Facebook for one of my books. To this day, I don’t know what I kept doing wrong, but I could never get it to work. However, a few weeks after complete failure, Google charged me $5.00 for “launching” the service that could never be launched. It took me an hour more of dealing with page after page of confusing menus before I figured out how to stop Google from continuing to charge me for something I never could figure out how to use.

Google Plus is a lot like that. I can’t figure out how to add anyone that’s actually on Google Plus. Sure, I figured out how to add a few people I know, but they’re not on Google Plus, so they’re just imaginary names in my “circles”. How to find anyone else, well, Google doesn’t explain that. It just has these annoying little pages that I keep going back and forth on, unable to get any further or to find any way to make the service useful in any way, shape or form. With Facebook, I remember finding a friend the first time out, and in minutes, I actually had a connection. I’ve been on Google Plus for a few weeks now, and much like my real life, I’m still my only friend. My news feed is empty and has never shown me a piece of information. Talk about a social networking program revealing the truth. I’m not sure I want that much truth.

The other thing about Google is that it loves to link all of its products together, so that no matter what you do, if you are involved in one of their enterprises, you’re linked to everything else you do with them. So, if you end up doing one thing wrong, like using a business instead of your name, you might end up getting arbitrarily deleted or locked out of your email account. I’ve seen Google cancel people on a whim before, and giving them more reasons to do so is really not a great idea. At least with Facebook, if they cancel my account, only my account gets lost. I can still receive my email and everything else I do online.

The biggest problem Google Plus has right now is that its owners want it to be the “cool” place to go, so they’re going after the movie stars and celebrities and pretty much saying screw you to the rest of the crowd. But all social networks are actually made popular by the rest of the crowd, and rarely by the celebrities. Sure, the celebrities make it cool after it gets big, but that’s an after the fact thing, and companies like Google just don’t get that. They’re trying to get to the “already famous” stage of celebrity without doing the work that actually gets you famous. Sure, they’re Google, which means they’re big, but let’s be honest. All Google has ever really done great is create a search engine tool. Their email is okay, but it’s not ground breaking, and I’ve discovered myself rarely using it these days (choosing a Yahoo account instead, or my own dedicated one that is tied to no one but me). So, if Google wants to make it big with Plus, it has to do something to make itself famous first.

And my experience with the service has been less than stellar. That, in my opinion, is why I don’t see them being the Facebook killer they so want to be.