Buzz and Aardvard and Twitter and Facebook and… Ugh!
/Warning, on this big scale of quality of the written word this piece is much closer to the ‘stream of consciousness rant’ than ‘well though out argument.’ What that means is I will likely jump around a lot and I reserve the right to change my opinion on anything I say at any given moment./
This week we saw the launch of Google Buzz and the acquisition of Aardvark by Google for $50 Million. These two things have sparked a lot of discussion about the social web and how we all use it and what specifically we use it for. I have a lot of feelings on these things but I don’t know that focusing in on my explicit experience with them really makes any difference. I tried out Aardvark for a while and after getting a grand total of zero useful replies to anything I asked (once I asked for recommendations for a local dive bar and got responses suggesting scuba diving schools) and frequently got pinged to ask questions that would be much better just sent to Google. Luckily LMGTFY was there to keep me amused, briefly, then I quit it as the annoyment trumped the utility. The Buzz launch was similar in that I was very excited to see it added, then every time I looked I just saw posts from my friends that I’d already seen elsewhere. My point being neither of these things have instantly compelled me to use them. But neither did twitter originally and since then I’ve fully admitted that it’s changed my life.
But again my personal experience isn’t important, the overall experience of the people using it and the people who may end up using it is much more interesting. I know that the big hype around Buzz is it’s use of open standards, similar to identi.ca. But I think it suffers from the same problem as identi.ca which is if all my friends are on twitter, even though I know identi.ca is “better for the web” so to speak, I don’t have any reason to switch. I’m not going to twitter because of the technology, I’m going there to communicate with my friends, and so without my friends, as a user I don’t have any motivation to use this other platform.
Spreadshirt is missing the point
Yesterday I announced the launch of R3515T.com which is largely powered by Spreadshirt. In my announcement post about it I explained that I’ve printed and sold t-shirts via different companies for most of my life but only now had print on demand services, like Spreadshirt as well as Cafe Press, PrintMojo, Printfection, Zazzle and others gotten to the point that I thought I could actually use them as the main production and fulfillment piece of the business.
I launched a new thingy
This is the longer ranty version of the story, for the short and sweet one just go to R3515T.COM and see for yourself. Basically I just launched a T-Shirt company/brand/thing but it’s not your normal t-shirt/brand/thing as I’ll be focusing a lot of attention on limited editions and using some web stuff to release new shirts all the time, and kill old shirts all the time. So yeah, that’s the short bits. If you are still interested keep reading.
Positive Spam
I have been getting some of the nicest comment spam recently. Really, it’s touching. Here’s a few samples:
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I can’t tell you how much it means to me to be thought of so highly by comment spammers. Thanks guys!!
On points and writing every day
(This is an example of what I write for 750words.com. This was today’s entry and was motivated by this get satisfaction thread. Here is the stats page for this entry so you can see how it all works.)
I can already tell today’s writing is going to be a wash. It’s almost 1pm and I haven’t gotten to it yet. I definitely find that the earlier in the day I spit this out the more creative I am for the rest of the day. That said I also think I do my very best writing in the afternoon or evening so this is more of a grease the wheels thing. Of course, if I don’t get to it in the morning then I’m bummed and stressed that I need to get it done and that is on my mind for the rest of the day until I sit down and make it happen.
I don’t mind the pressure to do this every day but the pressure that I haven’t done it yet in the day gets to me for some reason. There has already been a discussion between folks today about the point system here and what is a good motivator and what isn’t. There is a point awarded for every time you write 0 to 750 words without any interruptions greater than 3 minutes which would imply you wrote without distractions like getting up to go to the bathroom, making a phone call, eating, checking e-mail or twitter, etc. Just siting down and pounding it out. I actually really like this and it forces me to get the flow going and just spew all over the page. Usually by about 300 words I have my groove on and I just keep moving until I know I’ve crossed the 750 line.
I go out of my way to make sure that I don’t have things that are going to bother me for 15-20 minutes at least, half hour is better but that is generally what I need to make this happen. I got really freaked out the other day because I heard a delivery truck pull up when I was mid writing and I thought I was going to have to answer the door. It’s not so much the distraction that causes me to lose the point that bothers me, it’s that the threat of losing the point forces me to get into a writing groove that I can’t get into when I’m stopping to think or do other things. If I break the train of thought for any reason then I have to start all over again and it takes another 300 words or so for things to get moving again.
This is not a feeling shared by my friends. J is upset with the distraction point because he says he can’t focus on writing because he’s too worried that he’s going to miss that point by thinking about something. T agrees but actually doesn’t like the points at all and wants a way to hide them all together.
I don’t know, I think if it wasn’t for the points and the ranking that goes along with them I’d rather just be writing in a text editor on my own machine. This would give me more security and a totally stress free environment to do that in. The opt in stress of the points and the consecutive daily streaks is incredibly motivational for me and even at the height of my writing peaks I’ve never written as much in as many days as I have since I stared this project. There s something about this set up that really works for me and I think I’d be really bummed if it changed away from that.
Of course I could keep up the writing on my own and just track my word counts and consecutive days but I feel like I’m accountable to the site for some reason which works better. If I was just doing it on my own I feel like it would be so much easier for me to just blow it off on a very hectic day or tell myself I’ll just write more tomorrow to make up for it. I can’t do that with 750words.com which I like. I have to write every single day otherwise I have to face the fact that I didn’t. I can’t just pretended I had a good reason which is what I’d do on my own I think.
I certainly understand that isn’t the same thing with other people and each person has their own motives and reasons for doing this or writing in general but I’ve found that this daily brain dump, all in one shot, don’t think about it, just write, works really well for me. For instance, this is just over 750 words and took me barely 14 minutes to write. Go!