Yesterday, drowning in a sea of updates, I disconnected from the Twitter hive. Its constant stream of free-form presence updates has undeniable appeal, but the sheer volume of information, coupled with the lack of mediation tools, has made it unmanageable for me.
I briefly flirted with Jaiku. In addition to the updates, it also aggregates feeds for a user, letting you collect RSS feeds, presence information, and status updates all in one place. So few people I know use Jaiku, however, that that flirtation was short lived.
So I've turned to facebook. Facebook has the appeal of Jaiku's feed aggregation, coupled with Twitter's short form status updates. It also provides deeper tools than Twitter or Jaiku for managing which updates end up being delivered to your mobile, and which not, which solves the "sea of updates" problem for me. Facebook gives you very fine control over which updates and from which users are delivered as text messages, versus accessible only online.
Best of all? Apparently my whole network already knew about facebook. When I loaded my contact database into it to see who I knew on facebook, I had an instant friends network of nearly 200 people.
Whatever the category represented by Twitter and Jaiku, facebook seems to have already conquered it.
Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry maker Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.
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You will be missed on Jaiku & (much less on Twitter). I understand your desire for selective updates as it goes in line with “new presence”. However that brings a lot of ? to my brain.
Incredible how traction is hard to sustain in these social networking environment.
Will I see you around in Second Life soon? Later – Martin
Alec,
Interesting post and decision. Somewhat ties in nicely with something I wrote today how our communication is increasingly moving back into separate “walled gardens” such as Facebook, Twitter and Jaiku:
http://www.disruptiveconversations.com/2007/05/facebook_myspac.html
It’s definitely an interesting time… and it’s a struggle to figure out where best to spend one’s time and energy. Congrats on at least making a decision in that regard!
Dan
Alec,
I think you should reconsider!
Cheers
Stuart
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