…friends come and go in real life; but on Facebook, they usually just come. Friend lists tend to get bloated over time because users have a harder time defriending each other virtually than in real life. And even if they are going to defriend each other virtually, it has to be a deliberative effort, unlike in real-life when you just stop seeing certain people.

Your circle of friends is a spotlight on a crowd, that’s constantly shifting and refocusing.  Facebook doesn’t reflect these social shifts as naturally as it should.  The resulting problem exemplified by the news feed – a feature that assumes that you have an equal amount of interest in all your “friends” at all times.  Hendrickson lays it down:

…Facebook makes me reluctant to publish there, because I don’t feel as though my friends have indicated an interest to see my constant updates. The problem I have as a content consumer is just the flip-side: when I load up Facebook, I see content produced by people who I don’t particularly want to hear about or from.

In general, I’ve had little patience for those who are disgusted or frustrated with the world of status updates.  If you don’t care about what someone had for lunch, don’t listen.  Turn off their updates.  De-friend them.  But on the other hand, I shouldn’t have to do that.  Even though they’re not all my “best” friends, I still like to keep a list of everyone I know in case I’m bored.  As the largest and most dominant social network, Facebook needs to present a system capable of the type of plasticity that’s really happening in people’s lives.

What should Facebook do?

The answer I hope to see could result from some smart integration with mobile phones.  My cell phone has all the data necessary to improve the value of my Facebook network.  It knows who I talk to most often, it knows who I talk with for a lengthy time, it knows my “favorites” list, it knows where I live, and it knows the places I frequent.  More importantly, it can assemble a model of each of these things as they relate to one another over time.  It’s closer than any other device is to my actual social life, and it should inform my otherwise dumb list of Facebook friends.  Why not let this data inform the way Facebook presents itself to me?

From there, lots of interesting things could happen.  The Facebook homepage might actually present meaningful information to me.  There could be really smart “suggested” events that were activities that I might realistically consider.  Advertisers could get in the mix, and offer group discounts to some friends that might actually get together and act on a good deal.  Friend suggestions could be MUCH more meaningful – and could more effectively diversify my circle of contacts.

Most important to me is that a clearer picture of ourselves would start to emerge online, in a way that we could see it, and start to learn from it.

Unfortunately, doesn’t look like you can build something like this with the iPhone, but perhaps Android phones can do it.  Either way, this type of smart integration is definitely on the horizon, and it’ll be interesting to see how Facebook and other networks approach it.

There’s still lots of people who have no idea how twitter works, and complain about it all the time. People ask me about it, so thought I’d write about it. I’ve summed it up based on some common complaints I hear from people about why they think it’s dumb:

1. “I don’t care about what So-And-So had for lunch.”

On twitter, you choose who you want to listen to (or “follow”, as twitter calls it). Therefore, if you’re listening to bunch of mundane crap like people’s lunch orders, it’s your own damn fault. You’re listening to stupid people. Blaming twitter in this way is like walking into a crowded party, paying attention to one person who talks about their lunch all night long, and then blaming the house that is hosting the party. You can’t blame a house. It’s just a house. Our hypothetical party also has EVERYONE on twitter, and if you think that there’s NOBODY on Twitter saying ANYTHING of value, you should stop reading. All these words will just confuse you.

Also, some people incorrectly assume that twitter is like instant messaging or email where incoming messages popup at any time, and are imposed directly on you. People are almost never waiting for a reply, and you don’t really need to read anything. You take in as much as you want, and therefore are in control of the value exchange. People can send you a personal message, but it’s pretty understood that timeliness isn’t necessary. Nobody cares if you don’t pay attention and miss stuff.

2. “I don’t have anything that I want to announce to people”

So don’t. You can get just as much value out of the medium if you just sit back and listen. I’d argue that your reward will be more personal and therefore more relevant to you if you contribute, but it’s not required. Also, you don’t have to talk about yourself. I follow people who have awesome links to resources I care about, like music / art / design / technology.

3. “Aren’t Facebook Status updates the same thing?”

Facebook has done a few things lately to be a little more like Twitter, but I still see them as completely different. This is entirely due to context in which I see each network. To me, my facebook contacts are people I’ve marked as “friends” because I want to be able to send them a message if I need to. I don’t really care about what 99% of them are doing from day to day, but I still want to be able to look them up if I want to, in case they might be dead.

Twitter is a very small set of people who I WANT to hear from IF I decide I want to hear anything anything at all. If I’m tired of hearing about something or someone, I stop listening for a bit. I’m not “de-friending” someone, just shifting my attention. There are zero consequences.  Facebook is starting to get at this with groups, but at its foundation FB is about something different.

So there’s really no downside to twitter it in my mind. You hear about whatever you want to hear about, and it’s as easy or complicated as you want it to be. If you get plenty of new information every day, and your brain is full of new ideas all the time, you’re awesome, and don’t even need the internet, let alone twitter.

Guitar Animation Project from Charles Gallant on Vimeo.

Photos of the construction are available here

Old drawings & illustrations:
- flower
– guitar decal design
- octopus
- bridge
- fish

Old Actionscript 1.0 stuff:
- coordinate system exercise
– very weird interface idea
- my first flash game ever
- coordinate system project
– yet another coordinate system exploration

Old Animation Project
- The Scientist