We’re NOT Friends, Sorry

Twitter and Pownce are broken. MySpace, too. Oh, and pretty much every social networking site on the planet, too. For me, at least.

It’s not the technical aspect. Not the concept, either.

(Well, I don’t understand the hype and/or praise sites like Twitter is getting. From a technical standpoint, it’s well done, I won’t argue that, but I don’t get the point of the sites. But back to the topic.)

No, it’s the semantics.

You see, offline, I don’t call many people “friend”. This doesn’t mean I am surrounded by unpleasant people, quite the contrary. But I make a difference between friends and pals or contacts. A friend is someone I would risk my life for. Usually this two-way trust has grown over a few years, and is something important to me.

Now, online, I am expected to call every Tom, Dick or Harry “friend”, and somehow, that doesn’t work for me. I create an account at, let’s say, Pownce, and am instantly bombarded by new friend requests. Usually by people I haven’t spoken to before, let alone met.

Yeah… I am afraid I can’t do that, Digital Dave.

Sites like Flickr do it differently. People are “contacts”. If I decided I like them, I can promote them to “friends” or “family”. Which is okay. If we have spoken online, maybe in the office, maybe even met, then I am willing to add you as “contact”. That’s cool and not diminishing our relationship.

And this is my point: just calling someone “contact” instead of “friend” doesn’t mean I don’t like that person. It just means I don’t know him/her well enough to consider him/her a “friend”. Because to me, this word has a meaning. Shying away from labeling you “friend” isn’t impolite, it’s honest. Because we are not friends.

There are people I am fond of, people I like, but with whom I am not that close. I enjoy hanging out with them, and I enjoy their company, but they’re not my friends. And that is perfectly alright, for both them and myself.

(Truth to be told, it wasn’t always like this. But I’m growing older, and my views change.)

Another example: The other day there was a bit of drama in our little WoW guild. There was a younger lad who we were playing and chatting with quite often. At some point, he felt thoroughly insulted when Christian (pal of mine) and I kindly tried to explain to him that we were not his friends. Heck, we had never met. We were playing an online game together, and chatting a lot while doing so. We tried to get the message across, tried to explain that we liked him, but we didn’t consider him a friend in the true sense. He got upset and left the guild in anger.

Well, it happens. Not much I can do about it.

The net is our (relatively) new world. Our habits are changing, human relationships might, too—at least a bit. Still, should we abandon our values? If everyone is a “friend”, it means nobody is. For me, this prospect leaves a lot to be desired.

Dear site builders, please stop trying to build a virtual Woodstock. I know you’re probably just trying to achieve a feeling of “I belong here” for your users so they come back, but for God’s sake, stop making me pretend I care equally about everyone. Because I don’t.

—

Update, 2007-07-25, 9:18 CEST: jr suggested the use of a new word for this type of online kinship, and I like the idea. His suggestion was “webbie”, but to me that sounds too much like a certain online award.

Anyways, my personal proposal is the use of “webster”. I’ve checked Wikipedia, the original meaning of the word has kind of “expired”, so let’s re-use it. :) Are you with me, people?

“Web 2.0”, “AJAX”, “BARF” - A Call To Action

After reading another great press release I think I now know what “Web 2.0” means. Up until now I was convinced that if you asked 10 people what it means, you’d get 10 different answers. Turns out all the tech guys have it wrong, tho.

You see, it’s all in the pronunciation. It’s not “Web two-point-zero”, it’s actually “Web two-point-oh”. As in “Web two-point-OH-MY-GOD WE’RE, LIKE, TOTALLY COOL”.

Don’t laugh.

The other day I looked with a friendly non-tech guy at some purdy web pages. (I am not dissing him for not knowing this stuff, he is not a programmer, which is completely okay. I am just telling this to illustrate a point.) It went like this:

Guy, pointing: “That looks pretty cool, what with it sliding out smoothly and all! Ah, Web 2.0, great. Is that AJAX?” Me: “No, it’s a ‘dropdown’.” Guy, pointing: “Or here, all these big image things with the text, that is Web 2.0, right?” Me: “No, it’s static images with text link overlays.”

Thank you, crazy Internet marketing hype machine. I wish you weren’t decentralized so I could visit and burn you down.

That term should be banned from the face of the net. Every time I tell people I work on the Intertubes for a living, it’s always “Wow, like Web 2.0?”.

Okay, fellow tech guys, listen up, this needs to stop. I propose answering questions like that with “No, not ‘Web 2.0’ and ‘AJAX’, we’re doing BARF now. ‘BARF’ stands for ‘Bidirectional Asynchronous Request Forwarding’, it’s hot right now. I could explain it, but it’d probably take too long. There’s a number of articles on oreilly.com, look it up, it’s great. It’s going to be in the next release of Django and Rails, man—right in the core, built-in!!”

Don’t tell me it wouldn’t work, don’t tell me it wouldn’t work.

If you’re laughing right now or thinking I am just saying this, you’re mistaken. Let’s turn the Bullshit Train around. I am dead serious.

—

Update #1: The acronym was inspired by the fine Iranian soap products, of course. Update #2: I changed the phrase from “Bitwise Asynchronous Request Forwarding” to “Bidirectional Asynchronous Request Forwarding”. It just makes more sense this way.

Revelation, Web 2.0 edition

It just dawned me that on the web, Germany must be to the UK and US what China is to the rest of the “real” World (at least in the perception of the rich western countries): copycats.

Cases in point: Frazr vs. Twitter, StudiVZ vs. Facebook, a dozen del.icio.us clones vs. del.icio.us.

Seriously, the (visible part of the) German startup scene is making a sad impression. Pretty much each new German site I see is more or less a carbon copy of a successful UK or US site. The other day I was even approached whether I wanted to help clone Pownce (“Hey, how quickly could one copy a site like that?”). What happened to ingenuity and/or integrity?

I really start to believe I know the only original guy around.

On Communities

After building community sites for a while by now I think I have grasped the social dynamics blueprint of community sites to some degree. For example: most community-centered sites are starting out small (naturally), then gathering a relatively small loyal following (#1), then gaining momentum (#2), attracting more and more regulars (#3) and — after a while — die (#4). The circle of life, so to speak. But the devil’s in the details. Let’s take a look at how it works (according to me):

1. The small loyal following. People find the site through different channels; they like the concept, the idea, identify with it and decide to stick to it. Everyone knows everyone else, fuzzy feelings ensue, good place to hang out.
2. Gaining momentum. The regulars tell their friends who come to check it out, are heartily welcomed by the existing users who like to see their beloved site to bloom. They believe in the site for a number of reason, that’s why they hang out there all the time. There’s a feeling of going forward, of reaching out to the sky.
3. Attracting more and more regulars. Too many people to know everyone, the old sense of community is somewhat lost in the site’s process of growing. With the flood of new people joining there are a couple of black sheep (read: trolls and fuckwads) who get an utterly moronic kick out of annoying people for one reason or the other.
4. Death of the site. The oldtimers have lost the faith in the site after seeing it go down the drain, after literally feeling the sense of quality, both in people and content. It’s just not the same anymore. A few hardcore believers try to stay and smooth the waves but the majority doesn’t care anymore, and their voices don’t have the same weight anymore. Too many people, it’s like the paradise is lost in a sea of tourists. The oldtimers leave, with them goes the old spirit of the site, the very soul of it, the maintainers get desillusioned, start to drink and close the site, having lost their faith in mankind.

Personally I think this life cycle is bound to happen to every community site on this planet. Sooner or later, doesn’t matter, the Community Reaper is going to get them/us all. My belief.