How Facebook taught me to keep a secret

It's become almost routine for Facebook to change their End User License Agreement so that a little more of your privacy is taken away each time. Of course they want to capitalize on your thoughts, preferences and personal experiences for the benefit of their advertisers. With this kind of information their partners can then target their adverstisments towards you hoping that you'll click on whatever it is they're trying to sell at the moment. Without insight into who you are they fall short of their target audience. As such, Facebook needs to make this information available to their partners. As users become more internet savvy, the cry of foul play rings out louder each time your information is made available, and each time Facebook apologizes for not asking you if it's ok first.

The thing that we tend to forget however, is that we as Facebook users are not the client. The business partners that target their advertising towards you are the real clients of Facebook. Afterall, they are the ones that bring in the revenue and as such their needs come before yours or mine. So until that changes, don't expect the apologies to start sounding sincere any time soon. Facebook is going to continue to do what's in the best interests of their real clients.

You're upset by that statement, I can tell, but what did you expect? You pay nothing to be a Facebook user. You capitalize on the free online hosting that Facebook offers you with narry a thought towards paying for it. They host your photo albums, offer you free entertainment in the way of games like farmville, and they provide a medium for you to catch up with old friends, high school classmates, and long lost lovers. They give you an opportunity to network with new people so that you can make new friends and even futre business contacts. People trade products and services, buy and sell goods and all through the free service that is Facebook. All of this in one convenient place! As soon as you start paying for some of those services then I think Facebook will start listening to your concerns. Then their apologies about not meaning to give away your personal information, will start being sincere.

Ok, I can see you're riled up. Truthfully I am on your side. I think it's not right that Facebook can entice us in with a free product only to use us for their nefarious plans. They get us to set up shop, where we are so deeply entrenched, that it becomes difficult to leave or even find a replacement service. Then they go and pull the carpet from under us. It's the old 'bait and switch' model. It's not a very honorable thing for a company to do, if you ask me. If you say that our information is private, then stand behind what you claim and leave it that way. Don't start modifying it inch by inch until you've taken the farm away from us (it's just a figure of speech Farmville users - don't panic, they're not taking away your farm yet!).

I understand that some of the responsibility to protect my data is on my own shoulders. Facebook has started producing updates to let us know that they are making changes in advance of their dasterdly deeds. The fact that it is in a language that I cannot understand (curse you lawyers!) does not make it any less of a warning. I need to be responsible to keep up to date on the changes, prepare for them and make the adjustments accordingly. Once upon a time Facebook used to open up your information without even giving you a way to say "Hey wait a second, I don't want that to be public". At least now when they make it public, you can go and switch it back if you want, as long as you've been reading the notices and updates and have a clue about where to go to make these changes.

Failing the cumbersome task of learning Lawyer-speak and reading through volumes of notices and updates, what are my options? Pay for the service and have a bigger say? Not likely. Even if I did pay for the service, these sort of underhanded machinations by Facebook would likely continue. I suppose that really leaves me with two options.

1. Learn how to keep a secret. That's right. If Facebook insists on sharing everything I tell them (via posting it into my profile), then I will stop telling them things! No more photo's posted, no more status updates, and no more favorites or preferences. I won't list the jobs I have or have had. I won't list the city I'm from, and I won't list anything that gives away who or what I am about. Let them try to share stuff they don't have! Ha that will show them! :o) Of course that just defeats the purpose of using Facebook entirely. If I don't post that stuff, then I can't share it with my friends and family either. They will no longer be able to keep up with what's going on in my life if I don't share it with them. It means I'll have to call them (on the phone god forbid!) and talk to them in person. I can see my friends list shrinking from 200+ to about 3 or 4 people if that happens. It also means that if all my friends and family do the same thing, I won't be able to catch up on what they're doing either. No more instant status message updates on what they ate for supper, what color they dyed their hair, or how destroyed they got at the bachelor party. *sigh* That's no fun.

So that really means if I want to still enjoy a social interaction site without the grief of constantly being vigilant with my information, I will have to find some place else do this stuff from. So that brings me to the 2nd option.

2. I can leave Facebook and find a suitable alternative. *face palm* (wait... what does that mean?). Yes. I can pull up stakes and leave Dodge. I can cash in all my chips and leave the bank with nothing. Yup. Quit Facebook and go somewhere else.

A little dramatic you say? Well, maybe, but it's the principle of the thing isn't it? When Facebook starts loosing membership in record numbers.... they won't have anyone to use for their business model anymore. Their business partners will realize that Facebook is a lost cause and they'll go hunt in more abundant waters (notice the shark reference there). I wonder if Facebook will finally realize then, that we are truly their clients. Without us, there is no Facebook. Hmmmm there's a thought.

In the meantime... I have my twitter account. see you there! @smudged

PS: no - i haven't deleted my Facebook account yet. I have to put my affairs in order so to speak, before I can just walk out on it. Stay tuned though. ;o)

Twitter Lists - How I use them

Ok, I realize that not everyone that reads these posts are twitter users. So if you're not a twitter user, you can safely click on the next link and read something more interesting. If you are a Twitter user, then this will probably still be boring for you unless you're a geek like me. Still with me? Kewl. Lets get to the good stuff.

So how many people use Twitter Lists, raise your hands? Ok, just one guy in the back. Not bad. That's more than I was expecting. How many people even know that Twitter has a "lists" feature? hmmmmm looks like a few more hands went up. Kewl. Would you use the "lists" feature if I could show you even 1 way that you could improve your twitter experience with this feature? Yeah? Ok, now we're cooking with gas.

Well, here's a brief summary of the things you can use lists for:

• Filter the tweets you want to follow
• Quickly search through your the followers on your list to find someone you want to send a tweet to
• Meet other people by searching through their lists (that share common interests)
• Follow other peoples lists to save yourself time
• Create lists based on a list someone else has created
• Reduce the number of people you follow by adding them to a list so you can read their tweets without having to follow them

Before we begin, I should point out that I use Twitter directly from their page in my browser. I don't use TweetDeck or any of the other applications that are out there that may also provide alternatives to using lists. I also utilize a browser that lets me take advantage of 'tabbed browsing'. This in itself makes the list feature easy for me to take advantage of.

Also note: If you can't make out what is in any of the screen captures I have included here, just click on the image and it will blow it up to a larger size in a new window.

The first thing we need to do is show you where your lists can be found on your twitter page. If you open up Twitter into a browser page, you can find the "lists" feature on the right hand side of your window.

As you can see from this clip of my lists, you can create a list based on anything you want. I have filters for things like Canadian Olympic Athletes, Survivor Enthusiasts, Hockey etc. I have created these lists to group people by different classifications or interests. People who enjoy watching or chatting about Survivor get a list, as do Olympic athletes, and fellow hockey enthusiasts. The great thing about lists, is that a person can belong to more than one list.

Now you might be thinking to yourself.

"Ha! I don't need lists, I can just create a Search to find people talking about any of those topics! I can search on hockey, or #hockey or #CalgaryFlames or anything that relates to hockey. So I don't need to create a list! So there! Take that fool!"

Well, I won't disagree with you there. Certainly you can create and save searches to find content you are interested in. With a search you can find a tweet by a person that normally doesn't chat about that particular topic. This person may show up only once in your search. Neat.

However, I still like using a list so that I can find the people that tweet regularly about a topic I'm interested in. They may tweet about other things, but the people that fall into my lists are usually enthusiasts, and often offer a more knowledgeable opinion, or even just a more entertaining opinion about the topic I've listed them about. Having them on a list means that I can find them more quickly and tweet with them even if they haven't posted anything about the topic I'm interested in. I can initiate conversation with the enthusiast without waiting for them to show up on a search. Ok, I'll admit that it's a subtle difference from using a Search filter, but to me it's an import difference and makes using lists that much more valuable to me.

Now that I have created a bunch of lists I can then open up each list in its own browser tab window. Each window represents people who've I've filtered out based on content that I'm interested in. Then I can flip to the tab I want - refresh it - and read only content from those people. Wait... what if I have a Survivor list and it's a Tuesday and no one is chatting about Survivor? Well, the answer seems obvious to me. I usually don't scan through my survivor list till Thursday or Friday when there is likely to be chatter about that topic! So it's not like I will have a tab open for every single list I have, all at the same time. I may only open 3 or 4 depending on who I want to interact with.

So how do you create a new list? Well there's a few ways actually, but here's how to accomplish a couple of them.

When you see your "lists" on the right hand side of your twitter feed, you will notice at the bottom of the section there are a couple of options. New List and View All. Click on New List

Then you will get this window:

Create your list name, add a description if you wish, and determine whether or not you want it available as public or private content. Once you've done that, you can begin to add people to your list.

The second way to create and add people to a list, is to select a specific Twitter User and add them directly from their page. For instance, if I find Ashton Kutcher on twitter (@AplusK) I will see a drop down for lists from his profile.

Click on the lists drop down and then either add him to one or more lists that you already have, or click on New List and create one on the fly for him there.

Easy! Just like that, you now have 2 ways to create and add people to lists in Twitter!

Next question please!

"What else can I do with lists?"

Well, I'm glad you asked. A neat thing about lists is that you can look at the lists other people have made public. Maybe they have a list for something that you are also interested in. You can then follow this list without having to create one for yourself. You can also see who's on their list and follow them if you wish. In his way you are now adding to the number of interesting people you read tweets from. Additionally you can also add the people on their list to an aggregate of your own list! Lets take a look at some examples.

Ashton Kutcher only has 2 lists that he follows (and is on thousands of lists himself).

You can see in the above image he has a list for "end-slavery" and "katalysthq" (which is a business endeavor he's involved in). If we click on katalysthq we can take a look at the tweets from that list and also see who's on the list itself.

From here we can choose to follow the list or see who he's following, and if we're really curious we can see who has decided to follow the list - katalysthq (that one Ashton has made).

To give you a better example of how I made use of this feature, I want to show you my Olympic lists. When the Olympics were being hosted in Vancouver this year, people were crazy about all things Vancouver, and anything related to the Olympics themselves - including the athletes. Someone had taken it upon themselves to create a list of all the Olympic Athletes that had twitter accounts. I stumbled up this list and went - "Hey this is pretty cool! Now I have a feed that shows me all the tweets from the athletes as the games are going on!" Then I thought to myself "This would be even cooler if I could just read the tweets from Canadian athletes." So I decided to pillage from the list that was already created. I could then figure out which of the people on his list were Canadians, and create my own list from those entries. Later on as I discovered new Canadian Athletes, I could then add them to the list.

I found the @verified/olympians list and decided to take a peek at who it was following:

Now I notice that Stephanie Rice is at the top of the list. I have several options. I can now follow this person myself, or add her to a list of my own (even creating one on the fly), or just browse over to her profile and see what kind of stuff she chats about. If it's interesting then I might be motivated to add her to one of my lists.

As you might imagine, the people on this list may not have things that I'm interested in reading about on a daily basis. So as you've probably figured out by now, you don't have to follow everyone you have on your lists.

Let that sink in for a moment. You don't have to follow them to add them to a list.

"Meh, Big deal" you say.

Well the biggest advantage that one little detail offers, is a way to trim back your main stream of tweets. I only follow about 200 people and I find that my twitter stream is packed with tweets, most of which are relatively mundane and not all that interesting. I follow @thatkevinsmith The guy can be a prolific tweeter. Sometimes his tweets will flood my stream. Kevin has tweeted over 8500 times!! He hasn't been on twitter more than about a year or so. Some mornings I will wake up and see 20 or 30 tweets in a row, just from him!! I find him entertaining, but hey... that's just me.

Some people will actually unfollow him because he tweets too much for their pleasure. I can understand this, but I like having his tweets in my main feed. If it really bothers you, there are two options that you can use to still follow his tweets without having to follow the guy. 1. Create a search for his id, or 2. create a list and stick him on it. Maybe you have a list of people that are prolific tweeters, like @thatkevinsmith and @Alex_Ruiz and want them all on one list. So there you go. Stick them on that list, un-follow them and they no longer fill your stream with their wisdom. Yet you can still read up to the minute tweets from them by having them in a list that you pop open in it's own tab. Voila!

By taking advantage of this feature, I have lists with all kinds of people on them. I don't follow everyone that is on those lists and as such the number of people that I follow is pretty manageable. Hopefully they are not insulted if I don't follow them directly, but there are a ton of people that follow me and visa versa that I hardly ever interact with. Why keep a stream of tweets from people that I don't chat with on a daily basis? I can still interact with them by keeping them on a list and at the same time, keep my main stream fairly clean.

I think twitter might move in this direction more and more as people figure out how to take advantage of the "lists" feature. People will follow less people, have more lists and use them better to their advantage.

There is one more benefit I'd like to point out to you. Its about finding a specific person in your follow list. Unfortunately twitter has not implemented a search feature for you to find someone in your follow list or your followers list. If you have more than a 100 followers, it can be very cumbersome to flip through page after page to find a specific person you want to send a tweet to. However, if you have a dozen or so lists and they happen to be on one of them, you can then flip to a smaller subset of your bigger "following/followers" list. Instead of searching through a thousand followers, you can search a list with only 20 people on it. Searching through that list is way easier than tracking them down in your main list. Not perfect, I'll admit, but still better than nothing. Hopefully twitter will implement a search feature sometime in the future to accomplish this instead.

So to recap, here's the things I talked about in this post and the ways you can use "lists" to your advantage:

• Filter the tweets you want to follow
• Quickly search through your the followers on your list to find someone you want to send a tweet to
• Meet other people by searching through their lists (that share common interests)
• Follow other peoples lists to save yourself time
• Create lists based on a list someone else has created
• Reduce the number of people you follow by adding them to a list so you can read their tweets without having to follow them

I hope this has been helpful and informative even if it has been a long winded read.

Cheers!

Time to start writing again

Well, I'm told that if you want to get better at writing, you should probably do more of it. So whether or not anyone reads these things, I think I'll try to make an effort to post something more often (notice I didn't say every day!).

One of the things I have noticed about my writing skills as of late, is that I have gotten sloppy. I find after reading old emails, twitter posts, and even facebook posts, that I often get ahead of myself and skip words. I guess I just can't type as fast as I think and I push on to complete my thought without proof reading my work. So with that in mind, I encourage you - my loyal reader(s) to be strict with your criticism and point out my mistakes. In this way I hope my writing skills improve at a much faster rate. Be nice but be picky. It's through critique that we learn and get better.

Now having said all of this, I do wish to point out that I have never majored in English. I have not taken any literary classes and I have not attended any writing classes after leaving high school. What you see is what you get as far as writing style and composition goes. I've never been published, although thoughts of writing a book have tickled my imagination. As a profound Twitter Philosopher once said

"YOU, a published writer?..Internet don't count. Any asshole can throw shit up on there." - @Shitmydadsays

So with that understanding, this blog doesn't count. ;o)

As you sit there reading this you're probably thinking to yourself

"Why am I reading this? I haven't learned anything new, he hasn't entertained me in anyway, and there's no hook to draw me back in the future!"

Well, all I can offer you is the opportunity to comment and ridicule me. If enough people leave comments then hopefully that will provide you with some entertainment value! Or not. Really, I'm just using this as an exercise to practice my writing. If you stick around, I'm sure I can find something for you to enjoy.

Thanks!