writer. singer/songwriter. techie geek. princess of random.

Facebook Shifting Borders?

The other day my friend Ian and I were having a facebook wall conversation and it wasn’t until he commented on my message on his wall that I realized you could comment on that as well (hey…there’s some things I don’t pay attention to ).

As my friend Bobby just did the same thing earlier (commenting on my wall post), I write this post being all kinds of  divided.  Is this the end of the wall-to-wall?  It makes sense because then the conversation follows on your profile where it began and you can see the exchange of things.  But then, I feel that you miss that element of two people on different profiles talking to each other.

Twitter-like?

Is this another Twitter-like integration by facebook as well?  Essentially adding in comments to people’s wall posts allows for other people to make their own comments if they knew the person.  I’ve done this on twitter every once in awhile, but though I’ll occasionally throw in a “I don’t know you, but that’s awesome!” comment in a string related to a facebook status, I haven’t really felt the need to do it in facebook.  Or perhaps it’s because I’ve never had the option?

Facebook with Twitterish Features

I’ve not been too big a fan of Facebook’s obvious changes to deflect the Twitter craze, but obviously (sans the Facebook Governance), they are a business and they need to figure out how to combat the competition.  But as individual tools, I see Facebook and Twitter as not different players in the same game (“Social Media”), but rather different dialects of the same language.  Some of its changes, it’s as if Facebook is trying to forcibly integrate another dialect into its own…and well – it’s awkward.  Twitter’s recent changes to interface are more about how to improve itself for its users and I think that’s how it really should be.

Commenting on wall posts, however, I think is just another facebook habit this user has to acquire.

iTunes 8 (from the apple.com website)

This post is off of a twitter exchange I had with greenlagirl (who runs that awesome greenlagirl website).  While it’s inefficient (among other things) that iTunes currently doesn’t have streaming of its online content, a little research told me that it might not be this way for long.  Engadget.com, off a CNET posting, noted in February 2009 that this might be the wave of the iTunes future.   It makes sense after all that iTunes would adopt streaming (evenutally), what with netflix streaming and hulu.com‘s popularity.  My friend Julius remarked that he had recently caught up on his tv shows (while in a sick stupor) and it had almost made him think to cancel his cable (before remembering that it didn’t carry some cable shows).

The main point of my exchange with greenlagirl is, “who really wants to download those files when you can stream them?”  Currently iTunes has movie rentals that you can download for 3.99.  How about charging me a dollar (or nothing!) for me to see the content through streaming?  It might also be a great business venture with hulu if there’s overlap of content (which there probably will be) and competition if there’s content hulu (and others) might not have available. 

 iTunes 8 was released September 2008 and iTunes 7 was released September 2006.  But if you’ve followed the history if iTunes 7 and iTunes 8, it doesn’t really take a new “version number” to have a whopping lot of changes.  Much of the different changes in the last couple of years reflects the introduction and life of the iPhone. 

This then makes me think beyond just iTunes. YouTube streaming is a mainstay feature on the iPhone (mainstay ’cause it gets its own button when you buy it – at least my first generation iPhone did) and you can watch your YouTube content on your iPhone.  Maybe the next thing isn’t just streaming on iTunes, maybe it’s on the iPhone as well.  If they don’t do it, someone else has probably done it and if not, probably will.

I kind of hesitated writing “efficient” and “facebook” next to each other, but there are a few changes to facebook I have liked (and I’m kind tired of being a ‘negative nancy’ – where does that phrase come from? all the nancy’s i know aren’t negative – ’cause I’m generally pretty chipper).  The thing that striked me recently  that I liked was when I created an event listing.

Well…

When I finished creating an event.  The process of creating the event itself is quite annoying.  As I do work for an event-related website, I’m a big fan of “add event/create your event” buttons and links.  But wait this was supposed to be positive…

Okay.  So once you get through the process of adding an event, when you look at the guest list of attending, maybe attending, etc., it now appears in a light box.

Facebook - Event Guest List Light Box

If you’re an admin, you can easily click “Make Admin” button beside the person and authorize that they become an admin.  So simple and concise.

-cct