Facebook Fallout

Just as my most conservative and least impressable friends are finally lured into Facebook's shiny blue garden, I'm observing a sea-change among the restless seekers and taste-makers of internet fun - people are beginning to complain of being bored, and even leave, deleting their profiles. My favourite quote (anonymous for the purposes of this blog) was the marvellous, "Facebook is currently experiencing technical difficulties". What, that everyone's bored of it already?"

The Terms of Service state that Facebook not only own all content you put there, but also that they will own the archive of your content, deleted or not. Add this to the fact that they will also collect data about you from "newspapers and other sources such as instant messages" (it's the "such as" which concerns me), plus the very real CIA connections from the top down and you have the world's most spooky social network. They have been taken to task recently by bloggers when they refused to acknowledge the right to a pseudonym - Article 15 of the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works.

Before Facebook caved in and allowed him back in (to take his place alongside 500 people named Jesus Christ), "Jon Swift" wrote:

By banning bloggers who use pseudonyms Facebook has declared war on the blogosphere. More and more bloggers have been using Facebook as a social networking tool, but how useful will it be if so many bloggers will be left out. I know a number of prominent pseudonymous bloggers who still have profiles on Facebook but apparently their days as Facebook members are numbered. I'm not going to rat them out to Facebook's jack-booted thugs, however, even if they threaten to torture me.

Some of these prominent bloggers used to be among my more than 200 Facebook friends. I wonder if my Facebook friends have noticed yet that I am gone. I wonder how many of them have sent their zombies to bite me only to have them return unsated. Oh, how I miss being poked and being invited to join silly groups and causes and to install buggy widgets on my profile page that I then have to immediately uninstall.

This socially and politically conservative business has been hugely successful since opening itself up to people outside its orginal college constituency, and allowing third party application writers to come into the garden and make hay from its nicely manicured lawns. But in all probability, Facebook's very popularity contains its downfall. What nobody likes to say is totally obvious - there is a limit to success, and I sense that Facebook is nearer to that limit than people currently imagine.

What happens when an exclusive, fashionable club becomes well known? As their dancefloor fills with the great unwashed, the movers and shakers move elsewhere. Unconcerned by the links with the CIA, sufficiently savvy to create plausible fictions in order to maintain discreet privacy, they are are already regrouping in places beyond the reach of Mark Zuckerberg and his latest investors, in places far more interesting, where new forms of self-expression are being enabled without fratboy rules, and new dances are being danced which will make the Facebook foxtrot soon seem very dated and ordinary.

Facebook, and others within the current spate of dazzling new media webshows, will shortly be learning the lesson that the music business, the film business, showbusiness have all known for a long time - nobody likes last year's fashion.

Like my kind actor friend once said to me, as I shared a pint with him after a particularly good gig, "Don't be too hot, for once your moment in the limelight has passed, you will forever struggle to recapture that sweet moment of success and popularity; and the consequent chill is very cold indeed."

On Seesmic

I've never been one for mindless bandwagon-jumping. I look askance at people who attempt to glow beautifully under the rapidly passing headlights of this or that technology bus. My skin tone and moral complexion don't need to look good, thanks to a deal I made with the Great Genie of Personal Confidence back in 1988. I simply cannot look any better. At all times, thanks to the excellent bargain I made, I am bathed in good light without the need of buses or other transportation. But, I do get curious from time to time, and I hop on board to see what the journey is about.

I've been intrigued by the flurry of internet business start-ups in 2007, and particularly those looking to do something around the phenomenon which has become known as social media which for various reasons is where I now spend a lot of my time, but I'm choosy about keeping my online life de-cluttered. I joined Twitter end of 2006 to see what all the fuss was about, and it took me a while before I saw the value of it, rather than just seeing novelty. I joined Jaiku and a few other Web 2.0 sites to explore them and judge them all against one other; they all work slightly differently, but the question is, differently enough to make a difference? Much as the conventional, older parts of the internet, blogging, forums, have done, I made new friends via Twitter, and I also found I was maintaining and deepening existing friendships. In the end, I find value (or not) in the context of my real, everyday life - you know, the smell of sex, and all that.

A while back I noticed (via Twitter) that several of my friends were using Seesmic, a new web-based video blogging tool, still as yet in Alpha, i.e. not public, and in the process of being constructed. There's a best of Seesmic on YouTube called Seesmix. My curiosity piqued, I recently asked Loic Le Meur the man behind Seesmic for a look, and he kindly let me see what the fuss was all about.

I once described Twitter as "community text radio" when trying to get the point of its rolling 140 character commentaries and quips across to someone recently. Seesmic is more like community video chat, contributions arriving on a permanently unfolding roll, content uncensored conversational and spontaneous, with multi-threaded memes running back and forth organically.

At the moment, the site seems pretty much based on webcam moments - a lot of people in front of their laptops - with the option of converting videos to flash before uploading. Like Twitter and Flickr, Seesmic has a combination of public and private settings - you can choose to follow people, you can also watch the public timeline. I like that it integrates into other useful popular internet applications like Twitter and Skype, so by following the Twitter stream (which has RSS, so you can subscribe to it like a blog or a podcast) you can, if so moved, watch videos as they come in.

I prefer to film on location and on the move, as anyone who has witnessed DeekDeekster.com will know - I am a big fan of pocket video. As soon as I have a WiFi phone with a decent web browser and good video capability that can plug into its web interface, I can see this being really useful for me. Better for spontaneous short-form video than sites like Blip or BlogTV, more about conversations than egotistical display à la YouTube, and unlike Facebook, not claiming your work's copyright by default, I can really see this addition to the new mediasphere catching on.

Check out my meandering muse on Seesmic here.