Showing posts with label Online Communities. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Online Communities. Show all posts

Monday, May 17, 2010

Texting I’m All Thumbs

You know you’re old when the kid sitting next to you on the park bench is happily typing on her mobile phone with her thumbs as fast as she can talk, meanwhile, you are struggling typing “Hi” using every finger possible.

“How many messages have you sent?” I ask the kid as I continue to struggle with my “thumbing.”

“Fifteen,” she says, not even breaking her concentration as she continues texting.

Even in the office, I am starting to feel like an out dated paper weight, as I watch the new generation on the corporate ladder text their way to the top. In meetings, I see these new young people sitting off on the corner of the table, thumbs moving so fast you can see the motion blur.

“One meeting,” I interrupt.

“Uh?” they scoff.

“May we have one meeting, PLEASE?” I scold, as I sternly tell the new kid in the office to stop texting and pay attention.

That’s another thing – attention spans just don’t exist anymore, everyone under thirty these days seems to pre-occupied with their digital devices.

Evrythn is shortened thse dys. SO even if I were to take away the kid’s BlackBerry, I’d never understand what was on it.

The short forms used for texting help the kid thumb her messages lightening quick, but a side effect is she talks the way she texts, so half the time when you talk to her, you haven’t a clue what she just said.

I wonder if scientists have come up with a long horrible sounding phrase for that condition?

If they aren’t texting a friend, tweeting their latest thought on Twitter, chatting on Facebook, then they are fiddling with their MP3 music player, or they are watching a video on their mobile device, or they are shooting a “pic” to send to their buddies.

With their heads constantly buried in their electronic gadgets, it’s a wonder they can see where they are going.

I swear the new kid never looks up from her BlackBerry.

Whatever happened to the old days, when people used to actually talk to each other face-to-face? Those were the days, when you could actually see how the team was doing, instead of being texted emoticons – punctuation marks combined together to graphically represent emotions.

Since when did :) replace a smile?


You know you’re old when the kid sitting next to you on the park bench is happily typing on her mobile phone with her thumbs as fast as she can talk, meanwhile, you are struggling typing “Hi” using every finger possible.

“How many messages have you sent?” I ask the kid as I continue to struggle with my “thumbing.”

“Fifteen,” she says, not even breaking her concentration as she continues texting.

Even in the office, I am starting to feel like an out dated paper weight, as I watch the new generation on the corporate ladder text their way to the top. In meetings, I see these new young people sitting off on the corner of the table, thumbs moving so fast you can see the motion blur.

“One meeting,” I interrupt.

“Uh?” they scoff.

“May we have one meeting, PLEASE?” I scold, as I sternly tell the new kid in the office to stop texting and pay attention.

That’s another thing – attention spans just don’t exist anymore, everyone under thirty these days seems to pre-occupied with their digital devices.

Evrythn is shortened thse dys. SO even if I were to take away the kid’s BlackBerry, I’d never understand what was on it.

The short forms used for texting help the kid thumb her messages lightening quick, but a side effect is she talks the way she texts, so half the time when you talk to her, you haven’t a clue what she just said.

I wonder if scientists have come up with a long horrible sounding phrase for that condition?

If they aren’t texting a friend, tweeting their latest thought on Twitter, chatting on Facebook, then they are fiddling with their MP3 music player, or they are watching a video on their mobile device, or they are shooting a “pic” to send to their buddies.

With their heads constantly buried in their electronic gadgets, it’s a wonder they can see where they are going.

I swear the new kid never looks up from her BlackBerry.

Whatever happened to the old days, when people used to actually talk to each other face-to-face? Those were the days, when you could actually see how the team was doing, instead of being texted emoticons – punctuation marks combined together to graphically represent emotions.

Since when did :) replace a smile?


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Monday, October 26, 2009

MySpace VS Facebook War Over – MySpace Concedes Defeat

The battle to be the largest online social networking site is over with a clear winner and loser. This past Thursday (October 22), the recently anointed chief executive officer of MySpace told the Financial Times that the company is no longer competing with Facebook.

Former Facebook executive Owen Van Natta, who became MySpace’s executive officer a mere six-months ago told the newspaper “Facebook is not our competition, we’re very focused on a different space.”

Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...Image via CrunchBase


This announcement comes as MySpace (owned by Rupert Mudoch’s NewsCorp) has taken a severe – and now fatal – beating. Just this past September, Facebook had over 58 percent of the American social network traffic, while the older, and once larger MySpace’s share crashed to a low of just 30 percent – a substantial drop from their 66 percent score a year ago, according to online research firm Hitwise.

Looking at the unique number of people using each site, again MySpace has taken its lumps. Although MySpace is still one of the most popular websites on the Internet, it averaged about 100 million unique members worldwide, the new king of social networking, Facebook has about 300 million unique users worldwide.

In the six-months since Van Natta took the helm at MySpace, the comp

Facebook, Inc.Image via Wikipedia

any has slashed costs and jobs, eliminating 30 percent of their workforce. They’ve also removed the least used features, which include the weather and classified jobs sections.

MySpace has also been known to have unusual – some may say downright odd – methods for determining membership. When Jordan’s Daily – Almost! signed up for a MySpace account, and had spent over two-hours customizing and designing the page for our reader’s engagement and interaction, within a handful of hours later MySpace deleted the account, without giving any reason whatsoever.

Although this international current affairs blog wasn’t deemed worthy enough to hold membership by the MySpace administrators, one can easily find profiles on MySpace geared towards get-rich quick scams from third-world countries (such as those your junk email filter usually catches), mail order brides from Russia, prostitutes peddling sex for cash, and even one profile which appeared to be someone selling babies from China to couples who couldn’t conceive, and were turned down by adoption agencies.

MySpace executive Van Natta told the Financial Times “the engagement with our users wasn't there.”

Perhaps that’s because those running MySpace did not have a clue as

Apple Inc.Image via Wikipedia

to who exactly their users were?

Congratulations to Facebook – a company that takes the time to explore and understand their members and their needs – and a place where Jordan’s Daily – Almost! was welcome from day one. You can check us out on the new champion of the social networking world here.

MySpace may have lost the war, but they are not gone for good. The company is changing direction and trying to reinvent itself to bec

iTunesImage via Wikipedia

ome an online music distribution site. It has recently signed agreements with Apple Computer Corp. to run its own iTunes-type of online store, using the computer company’s iLike application.

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