Sproutworx Worldwide

Google Wave

I haven’t done much research into what exactly this is, but I feel like Jens and Lars aren’t going to let us down.

“Back in early 2004, Google took an interest in a tiny mapping startup called Where 2 Tech, founded by my brother Jens and me. We were excited to join Google and help create what would become Google Maps. But we also started thinking about what might come next for us after maps. As always, Jens came up with the answer: communication. He pointed out that two of the most spectacular successes in digital communication, email and instant messaging, were originally designed in the ’60s to imitate analog formats — email mimicked snail mail, and IM mimicked phone calls. Since then, so many different forms of communication had been invented — blogs, wikis, collaborative documents, etc. — and computers and networks had dramatically improved. So Jens proposed a new communications model that presumed all these advances as a starting point; I was immediately sold.”

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More thoughts on Twitter's reply situation.

A year ago yesterday (ironic?), Twitter wrote a post regarding the @ replies system and how it works. Here is a sample:

The Setting
There is an @ Replies setting you can find under Settings / Notices:



This has nothing to do with @replies directed to you. This is about what @replies you see from people you follow. The default—@ replies to the people I’m following—is probably what you have it set on (98% of people do). That means, if you’re following me, but not following @veronica, you wouldn’t see the tweet above (unless you went to my profile). 

The beauty of this is that I can feel free to @reply Veronica without worrying about the fact that only a subset of my followers also follow Veronica, so they won’t know what I’m talking about. My followers will only see my update if they follow both of us (if they have their setting on the default).

…

This is obviously too confusing. We want to make some changes to make it more clear. We could clarify the setting. But my preference is to take out the setting altogether and just make it work like the default. That way, it works the same for everyone.

My favorite part is at the very end there. We could clarify the setting. [ED. which I think they obviously did in the provided example above.] But my preference is to take out the setting altogether… Well last night, they finally acted on their intent and removed the ability to change the default. (see my previous post.) What I find so hard to believe about all this is how literally stupid of a change this is.

I understand the value of having the ability to remove fragmented conversations from your stream if you don’t want them. But I feel like their change has removed a fundamental aspect of Twitter that makes it so different than all other social media tools, not to mention has others, like Facebook, shitting their pants and trying to mimic them. By nature, Twitter is a open stream of thoughts and conversations. It’s walking into a bar or crowded room and being able to talk to everyone there…not just the people you know. By changing the reply setting, Twitter has taken away one of the easiest ways for you to learn and meet new people.

Imagine if your email client were to suddenly, with no warning, change the way that mass emails worked, so that you only received replies to the email from people who were in your address book. Or only people whose phone number you had in your phone could call you. These forms of communication all operate the same way: know the right way to contact someone (email address, phone number or account name) and you can get in touch with them. Twitter has taken the system one step further by opening up that dialogue. Twitter is not personal instant messages, it is not private text messages…it’s an open forum. They installed Direct Messages to handle private conversations. Everything else is fair game. That’s what’s made Twitter great. Maybe that is not for everyone, but that’s why they gave users the option originally to change it. But now they are using the excuse of poorly written copy and vague “serious technical reasons” be the reason to fundamentally change their product? They couldn’t find one person in the world who could succinctly say how the @ replies system works so they throw it in the can?

Thankfully, Twitter says it’s hearing all the feedback and that changes will be coming soon. I just fail to understand why they took the Facebook approach of “do first, mess up, then backpedal to a solution”. Seems very uncharacteristic and makes me nervous as the year progresses and they continue to makes changes to find their revenue stream.

#fixreplies re: Twitter's first Fail.

Twitter used to allow the option to turn on or off “fragment conversations”—People you follow on Twitter saying something through a @reply to someone you didn’t follow. It was a way to balance signal:noise by turning it off. It was a way to discover new people you weren’t following but were friends with people that you did follow by turning it on.

In the settings menu of Twitter, it was always worded a little funny and didn’t make perfect sense to people, apparently. So rather than reword it, they got rid of the option all together. With their only explanation being, roughly, “it was confusing, so we got rid of it.” Way to go, slackers.

Here’s Marshall Kirkpatrick’s take on it:

Are you familiar with The Onion’s biting political commentator Baratunde Thurston, cyborg anthropologist Amber Case or Google’s Kevin Marks? If not, that’s too bad - they are all really interesting people I talk with a lot on Twitter. If you’re not following them, though, you’ll never discover them through my public conversations again. As far as you’re concerned, those conversations just silently disappeared.

The new policy isn’t something you have to opt-in to. It’s not something you can opt-out of. It’s true for people who use 3rd party Twitter clients to read their Tweets. It’s more fundamentally closed than Facebook is; on that site I may not be able to view the profiles of strangers talking to my friends, but I can see that the conversations are happening and I can read the comments. This new Twitter policy breaks one of the fundamental rules of social activity streams: that I can discover new people by seeing who is conversing with the people I already know.

via readwriteweb.com

Stuff I couldn't make up:

Upon returning to class after the Golden Week holidays, students at a Tokyo elementary school were delighted to find their teacher had been replaced by a robot. The talking humanoid, named “Saya,” was originally developed as a receptionist robot in 2004 by professor Hiroshi Kobayashi of the Tokyo University of Science, but has recently begun taking on work as a substitute teacher.