Los Havros

Warning: article is very long.  A hot cup of your favourite beverage is advised

I’m going to deal with a couple of social networking sites that you’re all familiar with: Facebook and Twitter.  This is the result of when I once went off on a rant about social networking, and afterwards I thought I’d better write this stuff down before I forgot it.  Honestly, it’s some good stuff!

Facebook: My, how you’ve changed

My relationship with Facebook , I’d imagine, is what some marriages  can end up like.  You marry someone, and then they change until the person who you’re with is not the person you married.  Yadda, yadda, yadda…  I suppose what I’m trying to say, is that Facebook has undergone so many iterations now that its getting ridiculous.

Initially, in the hazy days of 2006, Facebook was just for University (or for you Americans, ‘College’ I guess) students, and I used Facebook as my primary method of keeping in touch with the many different people I met whilst at University.  Whilst I don’t begrudge Facebook opening up to the general public, I really don’t- an unfortunate result was that I was now being contacted by many people from my School days who I’d rather forget about.

I’d rationalise it in terms of quliaty of information, and relevance.  Instead of getting news feeds from good friends both from Uni and at home, I had people clogging up my news feeds with death, drugs, crime, horrendous binge drinking and pointless drivel.  Then to top it all off (and to continue with my marriage metaphor), Facebook decided to open up the platform to third party applications.  Fair enough.  But my God, the spam.  It nearly ended in divorce for me and Facebook as I at times, I was just a couple of clicks away from leaving the service for good.  Yet I’d built up such a valuable list of contacts that I couldn’t quite let go.

Moving on from those turbulent times, I then started to use Facebook less and less, due to my work overtaking going out and partying as my number one priority.  I simply wasn’t being tagged in any pictures that often, and more or less since, I’ve let Facebook gather dust (metaphorically, of course!).  I suppose the only use for me now, is Facebook’s instant chat which is quite useful.

Well, that’s enough about my Facebook sob story, I’d now like to move on to rant and rave about the media and Facebook.  The newspapers and the news channels can’t seem to get enough of Facebook, and how cool and new age it is.  Let’s not forget that the (old) media is literally run by people who are just not on the pulse when it comes to new technology.  People like you and me, who are on the coal face of new media, don’t see anything special about Facebook and it contemporaries.  It’s just another web site.  Deal with it.  For those of you like me, we were brought up either in or around the digital age in which rapidly innovating technology and services are just another part of life, like self-service checkouts, the latest mobile phones, and services such as iPlayer etc (which I’ll get to later).

Next on my hit list, Twitter: “stick THAT in your pipe and tweet it!”

Again, Twitter is one of those wonders of the modern age that people like you and me take for granted.  I’ll concede that I’ve only been on Twitter since early 2008, but let me make it clear that it was before the media and the general public suddenly got interested about it.

I’m going to make exactly the opposite point about Twitter.  The more the merrier.  This is because of the signal-to-noise ratio as I see it.  You only get tweets from those you choose to follow.  Thus Twitter is as useful or as pointless as you choose to make it.  Interested in web design?  Follow some of the best designers and columnists on the planet!  Perhaps you’re more into Zoology?  Then you can follow related news sources, researchers and TV presenters relevant to that area.  The world’s your oyster.

This is the whole reason why having more people on Twitter is better for everyone.  There’s a more diverse range of information from people with different perspectives and specialities.  So there.  You follow them, or you don’t.  But what about breaking news?  The myriad of different Twitter apps and services ensure you stay up-to-date.

You can search for something specific, utilise hash tags, or stay in the loop by monitoring trends across the ‘Twittersphere’.  Yet again, Twitter seems to be more akin to magic to the old media, but online users have been used to this sort of service for years.  Every single day, websites break news faster than traditional media.  Twitter users have known that news breaks faster on Twitter than even conventional websites.  Hey, it’s the future after all.

Finally: “It’s TV, but not as we know it, Jim”

The last topic I want to cover is the BBC‘s iPlayer service.  I’ll cut traditional media a bit of slack on this one as TV is probably the only one of the three services I’ve mentioned here that will affect most people within the general population.  I really do feel for some people, particularly the elderly who are struggling with the switch from analogue to digital TV for instance.

However, it has to be said that services such as iPlayer shouldn’t really come as a surprise.  Sky and cable TV have been working their way towards this kind of service for the past decade.  I find it hard to believe that this little revalation in TV viewing could have snuck up on them like this.  BT’s Vision service is already doing what iPlayer and associated technologies will become: TV, and on-demand content piped straight to your set.

Yes, when iPlayer came along, I immediately started using it and thought ‘neat’.  So did a lot of other people, really as its remarkably user-friendly.  I just don’t get what all the fuss is about, and why it needs to be covered in the news so often.  Spare me.

To conclude

I know I’m not writing an essay, but I like all my big articles like this to have a nice beginning, a middle, and an end.  Old habits die hard I guess.  Perhaps, despite my rant, it is myself and not the traditional media and the general public who are out of touch.  People like you and me are most certainly not the general public.  We already know the value of new media, and so should the general public.  It is important that everyone has access to the value and benefit that these services can provide.

That’s all folks.  If you’ve read this far, then congratulations are in order.  This is possibly the longest article I’ve ever written here.  If you want to raise a point, or discuss something with me, then you’re more than welcome to.  Otherwise, feel free to have a lie down after reading this, I sure need one after writing it!