Social features, functions, relays and exclusivity

The Long Tail blog has a post up about social features. Chris Anderson mirrors my thoughts from last December about the differences between social features and social functions, the main point of his being that more sites across the board will adopt social features. The Long Tail post by way of a Micro Persuasion post that claims that the portals (Yahoo!, Google, MSN) will "win" the social networking wars. There, Steve Rubel makes that point that people might use social networking services, but they get there through trusted portal partners and will use those portal's services (email, IM, etc.) even more while using social networking sites. Back to Chris, who says that, "... focused sites that serve niche communities will extract the best lessons from Facebook and MySpace and offer better social networking tools to the communities they already have."

To a certain degree, I agree with them both. I do believe, like Steve, that all the traffic galloping through the big social sites will have positive impacts on the portals. We already know that much of Google's traffic comes from MySpace, for example. I also agree with Chris that many many more organizations will begin to build small, very vertical social applications that really tailor services to meet their needs and the needs of their clients' clients; I'm starting to think of this as "social relay" functionality. That is, can a social site provide not only for the group needs of its immediate members, but ways for them to then push out to their constituents? A good example is professional services (lawyers, accountants, architects, etc.). A social site that helps lawyers, for example, network and communicate in specific ways would be good. One that helped them then pass along appropriate social features to clients and posible clients would be better. Hmmm... I'm thinking that "social relay" needs a post of its own at some point...

Anyway... Chris and Steve both kinda make the point that you can take your social biz from MySpace to Facebook (as many kids do when they hit HS or college), so the social ties there may be kinda weak. Yup. I been sayin' that for awhile. Both MySpace and Facebook are collections of social features, predicated around basic, high-level social functions... but not around any one in particular. And when you base a service on a collection of lowest-common-denominator features... Gulp.

So the heart of the question becomes (I think), at what level do you embed "the wall?" To be social with some means being unsocial with others. Not in a mean way, but at the level of appropriateness to your community/ies. My writing buddies don't (necessarily) care about my marketing stuff, my game stuff, my work stuff, etc.

I'm already running into this on Facebook. I don't use it much, being a Child of Email. But I've begun having some weird moments of virtual fugue, when folks I know who aren't from work post stuff or ping me or poke me or put something on my wall or whatever. I signed up for Facebook through work, and at least 70% of my friends there are work/industry related. But a few kids from the college where I teach once a week have friended me, as have some buddies from previous work lives and some plain-ol' friend-friends.

Now, it's something I'm getting used to and, I assume, would not have any problems with if I used Facebook lots more. It would be like my home email where... hmmm... wait a sec. I mostly get email from friends and family at home. Some cross-over, but not much. And my virtual-social relationships r.e. games mostly take place on blogs and listservs. And my writing stuff happens (again, mostly) on a writing site.

There are lots of little plug-ins on MySpace and Facebook that let you do various, specific, fun or useful things. But they are "in Facebook" not "of Facebook." When the Web gets to the point where there are some easy, free "space creation" tools (I'm looking at you Google, and you Raph Koster), that allow for really generic plug-ins... will there be a need for Facebook and MySpace? I mean, you still need a host for the files (but the portals have that) and a unique moniker (again, the portals' got 'em)...

I think I'm beginning to really agree with Steve. I'm not sure, though, that the portals will "win" the social wars. I think that the rest of the Web will just become social enough that a specific place ain't needed. Maybe it will take 2 years, maybe 5, maybe 10. But if I can embed all the social features of MySpace or Facebook into my email/IM client (or into my group's web site)... there goes the need for a dedicated social provider.

What is Google doing with JotSpot anyway... 

Why...

Is the article count for Vicipedia, the Latin translation of Wikipedia, in Arabic numerals and not Roman?

As far as I can tell, the count should read:

    Nunc sunt XVCVXCII  paginae

Except the first X and both V's should have lines over them. Which I can't seem to make happen in WordPress.
 
Damn intertubes... can't handle dead languages. 

 

 

New short story: Move Your Pawn

As seen here.

Veni, Vidi, Venting

[Note: new caegory of blog posts -- "feh." This is just me airing random rancor. So feel free to skip this post unless you enjoy that sort of thing.] 

Two new things annoy the crap out of me. And since I can't call you up and vent, you'll have to settle for a bitchy little blog post.

First, I'm watching the OK HBO series, "Rome" on DVD. It's OK. I like historical, period pieces with great costumes and gratuitous nudity. No big set-piece battle scenes, even though it's about Caesar kicking Pompeii Magnus' bootox. No battles... just aides wandering in and telling the folks back in Rome, "Caeasar has won!" It's about as exciting a way to depict some of the greatest battles of history as is getting an email about... well... battles.

But that's now what I'm complaining about. Despite the lack of large-scale gore, for some reason on every disc in this series, the subtitles pop on for no reason in the middle of a scene. Right in the middle. Like, mid dialogue. Boop! All of a sudden, Mark Anthony has got letters up his toga. Which I then have to turn off using a four-button push sequence on my remote. We are annoyed.

Next in my list of Newest Trivial Gripes is lighted devices in movie theaters. Now that everybody's cell phone, Blackberry, iPhone, Smart Phone, etc. has a backlit screen, people checking their electronic proddings during the feature becomes... distracting. I've econountered a few folk who spent several minutes texting (I assume) during a movie, the liquid glow of their tiny screens taking me out of my special, distracted movie watching place. Same goes for whipping out the cell phone to check the call you just missed.

Last night, however, while seeing "The Transformers" with my son, I experienced the ultimate (so far) in glowing, egotistically annoying behavior: the blinking BlueTooth headset.

Some ding-dong in the front row wore his cell phone's little ear-piece thing-a-ma-bob throughout the entire movie... and every three seconds, it blinked. A lovely, bright blue mechanical lightning bug effect that made it just about impossible to watch the film. I eventually slouched down so far that the head of the nice man in front of me eclipsed the pulsing evil.

I haven't heard a cell phone ring in a movie theater in about five years, I think. People know to put them on vibrate, and the theater often reminds us to do so before the feature. That's great. Now we need to remind people to silence and veil their frippin' devices. "Please eclipse your various light emitting diodes and liquid crystal displays."

Feh. 

Will enjamb for food

An interesting post over at Purple Motes about a street poet. Not a poet reciting his poetry on the street, but selling it sheet-by-sheet. Interesting.

Sometimes--depending on the occasion--when I'm asked, "What do you do?" I answer, "I'm a poet." Usually that gets a nice, blank stare. Then a response along the lines of, "No. Seriously." And then I chuckle and say, "Right. Seriously. I'm a poet." Which starts to get irritating; I admit this. I do it to remind people that we are not what we do from 9-5 (or 8-7). We are not the sum of our corporate selves. Sometimes. Some of us. Hopefully.

On a related note, I sold a poem. I've never sold one before (unless you could the 100 poems included in TaleWeaver). I've sold writing of mine, and have spent a decent chunk of my professional career being paid to write (ad copy, technical writing, brochure-ware, etc.). But that's different than someone specifically paying you for one poem.

What was the poem? I can't tell you. I can say it was a sonnet. I sold it off'n my Etsy store. The other things I've sold off there were two "Previous Life Bios for Your Cat."

Selling a poem like that was more meaningful, in many ways, than gigs I've made 100x the money off of. 

New poem: Passing

Passing 

 

"thanks."

the word eaten by wind
as I hold the heavy door
turn to catch a whiff
of brunette and hazel
and grey wool and
iPod

young young young
slight and slightly
curved

for less time than it takes
swung glass to shut me in
her out
I forget my headache
my debt, dead, day

in scent
in vanilla
in baby powder
something something something

something young

Differently Sorry, Jump-Me! and why rules should be broken

My folks bought my son the boardgame "Sorry" for his birthday earlier this month. Dan and I took it out the other night to play... and could not find the instructions. Well, the English instructions. The ones in Spanish were on a nice piece of paper floating in the box.

I don't speak or read Spanish, so... there you are. In typical Havens fashion, we decided to make up rules on the spot.

The details of the ones we made up don't really matter. They weren't spectacularly weird or wonderful... they used the number cards and the pieces in basically the manner perscribed by the game. But they were a bit funkier. [Note: later, when attempting to put the pieces back in the box upside-down, we discovered that the English rules were printed on the bottom-side of the smaller, inner cardboard box that holds the board. Had we not screwed up the puting-stuff-back procedure, we never would have found them.]

This isn't new for us. More than a year ago, we made up a version of "Reverse Checkers," that I refer to as, "Jump-Me!" The rules of checkers (at least as I've always played it) state that if you can jump an opponent's piece, you must. Well, hearing this, Dan and I came up with the idea for a game where you move, jump and king the exact same way... but where the winner is the one who maneuvers the other into eliminating all of his pieces; i.e., the one with no checkers left wins. A friend of mine, after hearing about this, referred to it as "Golf Checkers," since you want to have fewer pieces.

Years ago, while camping in the Berkshires, I had a good friend who worked at the camp. Warren and I would play all kinds of games, but our favorite was Risk. Problem is, with just two of us, Risk rules (as written) were less than optimal; the game really requires 3-6 players for any kind of strategic considerations. So we added a few twists of our own. We came up with "rogue state" rules where smaller, randomly developed nations/players could turn the tide of the game. We added navies and paratroopers. All kinds of stuff.

We also invented war games that used generic game elements that were always laying about; a deck or two of playing cards, dice, etc. We developed a very complex naval combat game using only two decks of cards and two six-sided dice. And a bunch of tables/charts about damage allocation. But it needed no board, as the position of the cards on the table relative to each other determined distances.

My point is basically this: games are great and fun and I love them. But if you're just playing games, you're missing out. You need to play with games as well. By farting around with the rules and coming up with alternate ways to play, you create something unique and possibly more entertaining. You think about meta-gaming, play balance, rule theory, etc. Even if you don't know you're doing those things, they are helpful creativity exercises.

So here's today's assignment: make up a game. Use an existing game like "Sorry," or pieces from several or many, or just a pen and some paper.

Last example: I've taught my son that whenever he plays rock-paper-scissors, he should skip those three and point a finger-gun at his opponent instead. Of course they'll have to redo the round. But it's funny and it points out the boundaries between metaphorical power and real power.

Plus, we all know that rock really beats paper, anyway...