Life’s News Feed

For all, events, mini trends, and other phenomena often come to represent aspects or periods of your life. Italia 90, for one. Or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

The funny thing about Facebook is that it feels a bit more than this. I know it’s just a tool to capture and share events, phenomena etc, but when I think about University nights out, I think of the Facebook photo upload and tagging marathon the day after. I’m sure you do too.

As the social glue, Facebook (or more importantly, the News Feed) feels synonymous with a broad range of defining life periods. And it’s getting broader.

The reason behind these musings is my noting, on a recent glance over my News Feed, a series of photos uploaded from the fifth annual ‘Tour De Lash’, an event which involves men, bikes and many pubs. I remember the photos appearing from the inaugural Tour, fresh faced enthusiasm personified.

Not much had changed, in truth. Old school friends with broader waste lines, departing hair lines, girlfriends and wives in tow. The evidence of a few more years on the jolly bender known as life.

I sometimes think that it’d be quite fun to capture periodic screen grabs of your News Feed from the first Facebook forays to today’s occasional glimpses. For those, like me, careering towards 30, I’m sure there would be a depressing familiarity about it all. First the manic photo uploading and tagging marathon of snake bite stained lips and Wednesday night debauchery followed by commentary chitter chatter of students poking, scarbulousing and graffiting around.

Then, without warning, the nights out photos stop (or are replaced by dinner and after work sneakys), the ‘miss you’s’ dry up and on the first glimpses of Summer our eyes are confronted with wedding dresses, confetti and first dances.

An occasional new born pops into view. Suddenly it’s albums worth of first smiles and congratulatory wall posts. In the blink of an eye your News Feed has shifted from a stream of debauched hedonistic filth to picnics and family day outs.

What next? First day at school? New house? Kids wedding? Grandchildren? And then what, death? A newsfeed of funeral photos and sympathetic clucking?

No doubt we won’t even remember what Facebook was as death bells begin to toll – considering the uptake of the site by parents, employers and old teachers, I wonder what legs it has now. But even so, there’s something about the Facebook News Feed which, quite subconciousely, as come to represent so many of those standard life changes that we all, and through every generation passes.

Twittering about Twitter

I know, I know; another thought piece on Twitter. Or more accurately, a confession interspersed with an observation or two. I hope that makes this all slightly more palatable. Oh, and please don’t expect anything revolutionary, these are just the musings of someone trying to understand more of how all this crazy hoo ha works. However, first things first; I’ve been converted. Any initial misgivings of a service which I presumed was created and housed solely by self absorbed egomaniacs convinced in the overarching importance of their breakfast menu has been replaced by a committed and complete embracing of all things Twittersphere. I’m a tweet geek.

But why? I’m still not remotely interested in the inane chatter of idiots (of whom they are plenty) but what Twitter has provided me, completely unexpectedly, is the best information aggregation tool on the internet. I follow interesting people who post up interesting links which I read. Simple, but great.

The harder part is trying to work out what Twitter actual is, or more pertinent, what does Twitter represent. From a purely personal perspective, there seem to be two prominent themes.

1. An open instant messaging style service compatible with a wider circle of friends then practical with actual instant messaging and less reliant on immediate response.
2. An open forum to advertise links, resources and information of interest to your followers

On purpose 1, which I think many would presume to be the more prevalent, and also, I’d argue, the description to which non Twitter users would be more likely to subscribe, the service falls down hopelessly. Unless all your friends are all social media experts it is unlikely your social circle will be well represented. Similarly, as soon as you begin following even a moderate number of people it is pretty much impossible to engage in any type of real conversation. Quite simply, how many @replies do you see on the average twitter feed? Not many.

So, purpose 2. And this is where it gets much more interesting because here we see an interesting shift in regards to one of the most fascinating aspects of the internet – and to date, one of its greatest failings – aggregation.

This has been something that has troubled me for some time. Take any subject; media, advertising, fishing or postage stamps, and you’ll find such a plethora of information online that even 24/7 dedicated Googling would only scrape the surface of what’s available. You can subscribe to your favourite blogs, add RSS feeds to Google reader, search high and low for new sources, but ultimately, as we all know, there are never enough hours in the day. Sourcing information online is a truly inefficient process, one where you the inevitable conclusion is of inadequacy and frustration as one feels ever further behind in the great knowledge rat race.

Today was the first time I had visited my Google reader in over a week. The number of unread posts was enough to close the window, turn away, and conveniently forget to visit again any time soon. Why had I failed to keep more up to date with my reading? Well, simply because the latest selection of articles, blog posts or reports I have found the time to enjoy have all come from links posted on my twitter feed, humming happily away in the background on my tweet deck (or tweet dick, as I have heard it amusingly, and possibly accurately, called)

In short, Twitter provides me with the ability to RSS feed not just blogs or news sites, but people. And people are MUCH more interesting to RSS feed because they are multi-faceted beings offering insights into their bookmarks, their sources of info, and their nodules of knowledge – wherever it may be, wherever it is from, and whatever form it comes in.

Put it this way. My personal profile and photos are housed on Facebook. Some further photos on Flikr. I write a blog, occasionally, which are mostly rehashes of cool things I’ve discovered on other people’s blogs. By default, adding a blog entry takes time, so inevitability I may only blog about 1 in 50 interesting things. This is especially true if I don’t get time to blog for a few days by which point, so many other people have done so there’s no point in me doing the same. Oh, and my blog, like so many others, is theme specific. Believe it or not, there are other things out there which I find interesting beyond media. Gosh, I’ve never written the term ‘blog’ so many times in one paragraph in my life. Web 2.0, baby. Anyway, my bookmarks are on Delicious, my videos stored on my YouTube video channel. Etc etc

So what if you were really interested in me? You’d need to be my friend on Facebook, subscribe to my Flikr stream and YouTube channel, and RSS feed my blog. It’s as if facets of our personality are pieces of real estate housed in different compounds, and for an outsider a comprehensive view of what makes me tick involves troopsing around the internet visiting each of these pieces of real estate in turn. Time consuming, inefficient, and ridiculous.

Of course, no one is interested in me. But viewing this from a purely personal perspective, we can look at the type of people whose content I find interesting and whose content I want to be kept up to date with. And this, ladies and gentleman, is where Twitter suddenly fits snugly back into the equation as the beginning of a shift in information aggregation which treats the individual as the gatekeeper to their online personalities (of which we have many) and allows this information to feed through, from their plethora of sources, to their followers. As I said earlier, it’s an individual, personal RSS feed, through which content from delicious to Flikr to Facebook can be filtered and distributed in the form of 140 characters and a tiny url.

What does this mean for me? Well, it’s easier. And in a world of time constraints, ease is paramount. And like everything about the net, those people who offer the greatest number and most interesting selection of insights will rise to the top and enjoy the cultural, and advertising, capital associated with such a position.

But, I hear you say, Twitter is all good for feeding blog updates, or posting ad hoc links to great content, but it hardly provides the one size fits all gateway to an individual’s life. Where’s the Facebook profile, or Flikr stream? Well yes, exactly, and that’s why Twitter is the first step towards this new reality and not the celebrated solution to everything.

Information aggregation should be an opt out process. If I want to follow Mr Interesting, that one click should provide me instant access, through one platform, to their Facebook, YouTube, delicious etc etc (or whatever Mr Interesting is willing to allow public access to) at which point I should be able to chose not to be kept updated on certain aspects of their life. Do I care if Miss Fascinating has been tagged in a series of dinner party photos? No, of course not, but if Miss Fascinating is happy to share that information with her followers, the mechanisms should be available for me to opt out of receiving that information and access without having to venture across a number of different websites, log ins and feeds.

In a world obsessed by opinion formers and key influencers, the next logical step is for these people to do the job of information aggregation on our behalf, filtering to us through their personal funnel the best, most interesting and relevant insights and information they have access to from whatever sources or format that information comes in. This fundamental shift from ‘real estate’ sources (blogs, profile websites, photo hoisting sites) to personal sources is the vision of the future offered by Twitter, a vision which will fundamentally change how we source knowledge on the internet and one which will make all of our lives a hell of a lot easier.

I think.

The National Gallery

I walked by this lovely institution t’other day. Promised myself that I must go again, and rather like so many of London’s famous landmarks, realised that I probably wouldn’t ever get round to it.

So back at the office I thought I’d hunt down some of the actual paintings I will never find time to go and see properly. First port of call, The National Gallery website. Ok, so we have some photos, some commentary on the picture, the ability to send the photo to my mobile, and… erm, well, that’s about it.

But I wanted to comment on the paintings I really liked or really hated, I wanted to share these photos with my friends, add to this blog or my Facebook profile, add information on the artist or an interesting anecdote relating to the history of the piece. I wanted to ask questions and have responses from people with a genuine interest. I wanted the whole thing to be housed on Flikr, or Facebook, or another form of interactive social platform where people like me who knew nothing could talk, understand and learn about this crazy classic art nonsense.

More than anything I wanted to be persuaded that, actually, a visit to the gallery itself was worth a few hours out of my day. That when visiting I would know the paintings I wanted to see up close and personal, understand what motivated the artist when he created his piece, understood more of the social context behind the imagery, been provided informative answers on my ignorant questions which would improve both my understanding and desire to explore the matter further.

But a visit to the National Gallery website does none of this. So I probably won’t get round to going anytime soon – my loss, you may say. But the technology is available, the audience willing, but I wonder if proffesional snobbery will always resist taking art from the gallery and onto the net. I hope i’m wrong.