Facebook's news feed is trying to get me killed

Facebook is supposed to have these awesome algorithms that show you things of interest to you, right?

Today I got a link encouraging me to "Leave The City And Go Raise Huskies In Lapland", a link which talks about living in a cabin with no water or electricity in Lapland. To be fair it's quite an interesting read, but the title really isn't for me.

These aren't huskies, but I don't have any pictures of huskies.

I'd be rubbish at raising huskies in a specialist dog raising school in a nice warm climate, never mind sending me to Lapland.  My thumbs and heels would crack in the cold weather, I'd have no phone without electricity (and even if I got it charged would I have superfast broadband?  Seems unlikely) and meanwhile the huskies would lose all respect for me and spending their days chasing me round and round until I fell over and they could run me over with the sled.

Apparently on a good day you can get some water boiled in twenty minutes.  I expect over twenty minutes to have made a drink, drunk it, and then be trying to get someone to make me another one.

No, as interesting as a life in Lapland sounds, I think I'll stick with mine for now. If only there was a post advertising "Stay In Your House And Earn Money By Writing Not Very Funny Tweets"...

(I did this post as a vlog also, if you want to watch it...)

Facebook related multi media extraordinaire

I'M PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE... sorry, I left caps on.

I'm pleased to announce the launch of this social media explosion of posts and videos between myself and Tim Clark over at Life, Explained, about Facebook.  Yes, we've crossed the Atlantic Ocean (electronically) and social media channels to hit everyone everywhere about everything that we wanted to write about Facebook.

Facebook, in a world where every day a new app is announced or a new piece of hardware launched, is ten years old.  Ten years ago there wasn't iPhones, or any other smartphones (at least not in a format that we'd recognise), no app stores, again no real tablets...

And my hair was bigger

I apparently joined Facebook in October 2007, which roughly coincides with me getting together with my current partner, so I suspect that the relationship had something to do with me starting on Facebook.  And apparently my first status update was "pondering life" which is relatively deep for me as generally the only thing I ponder nowadays is if I can get a quick nap in before having to do something.  Or it was possibly me attempting to look deep and philosophical to a girl that at the time had recently completed a course on Philosophy.

Knowing me, that seems likely.

Facebook has changed a hell of a lot over time.  I remember when I first used it that the thing that stood out to me was how easy it was to use.  When setting your profile up, you could pretty much click on anything you wanted and type whatever you wanted and it'd accept it.

facebook.com is currently the second most visited website in the world (after Google), and shows little sign of losing its dominance on the Internet, with almost 1.3 billion active users, and that number continuing to grow.

Recently they've been hit by the news that they carried out psychological research on users without clearly telling them, and I wonder if I was one of the people selected.  I vaguely remember going on Facebook one day, and being asked me how happy I was on a scale of one to ten - I thought this was a slightly odd request, but I answered it and carried on reading my timeline.  I must admit that I can't say that I feel particularly upset or violated if Facebook did indeed involve me in their research (although if they do want to give me some compensation then of course it had a very real effect on me and I'd like payment via electronic bank transfer please), that said I am generally fairly oblivious to things that upset other people - I recall staying in a hotel room in Majorca one night, and seeing something scuttle over my suitcase.  It scared me for a moment, then I decided that I wouldn't be capable of doing anything about it anyway and so went to sleep.

I like sleep.

At any rate, this is indeed a multimedia explosion of Facebook-related social media stuff, so catch my video about the future of Facebook (which includes a genuine pretend video of what life will look like through Google Glass with a Facebook app) and get to Life, Explained for Tim's stuff there.

I also recommend the very straightforward way that Tim demonstrates, via the medium of animation, a comparison between Facebook and the world.  Thanks very much for stopping by if you've traveled over from Tim's excellent blog and I hope you've enjoyed today.  If you did, perhaps you may be interested in a warning about a vomit -repelling mattress.  Or, if you'd like to hear more about Facebook, here's some thoughts on its logical evolution.

Psychological Testing on Facebook - The Logical Evolution

So, we discovered that Facebook carried out some psychological testing to see what happened when people got bad news, and when they got good news.  Unsurprisingly, people were generally in better moods themselves when their newsfeeds were full of good news, and vice versa.  It's all very interesting, and I'll put to one side the outrage over Facebook doing "secret testing" on over half a million people.

Let's think about this.  What else could they do as a result of this?

Imagine if you had a college essay coming up.  The weeks before you could see lots of creative posts like this:

Or if you wanted to lose weight, it could help you out by showing you posts like:

However, we all know that advertisers are the heart of Facebook.  So, when we're in the market for some new bedroom furniture, we're far more likely to see:

(Check out my last post about vomit absorption and mattresses!)

And of course ultimately, this is what all of us will see.

Happy Facebooking!

Being appropriate with social media

When I was at college studying IT far too many years ago (fourteen perhaps?) one of the things we learned about was "netiquette", or basically the practice of being polite whilst on the Internet and using email.

This has evolved as social media has taken off and we are ever more connected to the world (and more importantly, our contacts) 24/7.

However, this can cause issues.  I personally feel for those people in their teenage years who may make one or two mistakes in their time, acting silly or making bad judgement choices.  We are all human and none of us are perfect.  However, the new generation is under more and more scrutiny, everyone has a camera attached to their phone (and everyone has a phone in their pocket) so anything occurring can be photographed and shared with groups of people within seconds of it happening.  This is a great freedom but also means that people need to be careful how they behave and with who.

For example, I have my blog, my twitter account, my LinkedIn account, my Facebook, and several email addresses - professional, personal and mainly spam ones.  And I have to make decisions on what gets posted to which account, as what may be suitable material to appear on one I may not want to show on another.  Some people have more than one twitter account, one for work and one for personal use - I've not taken that option (yet) but as a result I am aware of what is going up on my twitter feed and try to ensure that it remains acceptable.

Also taking seemingly safe options such as "liking" something on Facebook - I may like the thing I've clicked on, but if friends of mine (who may also be work colleagues) see me liking something that they find offensive, does that cause an issue?

Possibly.  Do be aware that everyone has slightly different senses of humour and can take offense at different things, and something that you find absolutely fine can be anathema to another.

Very important for anyone in work is to be aware of your organisations social media policy and guidance (if available).  I've certainly read my organisations details several times and do strive to ensure that I stay on the right side of the guidance.

To hear from someone who is far more of an expert on these things than myself, check out Paul Wilkinson's website, pwcom.co.uk - Paul is a specialist in social media and is a fantastic speaker about the subject too.

I'll finish off just to give an update about the G4C event I've been arranging - the event we've been doing on Employability is taking place tomorrow at Sheffield Hallam University.  Everything is looking extremely good for the event and I'm very much looking forward to it.  We have now sold out of tickets for the ticket which is great (although I feel bad for anyone who wants to attend but now can't) so fingers crossed for a great evening and everything running smoothly!  We are filming the event and hopefully we'll get the video up at the weekend.

Why I don't repost messages on Facebook

Hi!

Really hoping I don't annoy anyone with this post (anyone that I'm friends with anyway).

From time to time I'll see on my Facebook timeline messages by one or more of my friends.  The message will be something along the lines of..

"If you see this, you're a real friend of mine. If you think of me as a real friend, reply to this post and repost this message on your wall so that I know that I'm a real friend of yours too.  Don't just reply to this post because I need to see the message on your wall to prove that you're a real friend."

I just made that one up, I haven't copied anyone elses, I promise.  These messages come in all shapes and sizes, from friend ones like the example above, to ones against illnesses or outrages in the world.

I never repost these, but it does worry me slightly that some of my friends might take offence at the fact that I don't.  It's probably not the case, but for the sake of clarity I wanted to explain myself.

I personally view these messages in the same light as chain letters.  That's the short answer to it.  I never forward on chain letters, because I consider it a waste of money (mine) and time (mine and other people) for no benefit.  Chain letters which promise well being if you send this letter on to five people - what if you send it but one gets lost in the post?  Do I not get my well being because of the vagarity of the postal service (I should say at this point the postal service is generally excellent however).

I certainly believe that there are things in this universe that we don't understand yet.  And taking that belief forward, that the power of the mind may well go further than we understand as well.  But I don't believe that a chain letter has any such power.

And because I think of these particular Facebook messages in the same light as chain letters, I don't repost them.

Let me stress that I have no issue whatsoever with people putting these messages up in the first place, or with reposting them if they wish to.  People are free to do as they wish and I do not think any less of them for doing it.  But, if they are disappointed that I haven't reposted it then I hope this blog post explains why I haven't done it - it's not out of apathy (for once), it is actually a conscious decision not to.

If, by chance, one of my friends actually wrote the post on their wall rather than reposting it themselves, then I do acknowledge that is different, but please do accept again that I won't be reposting it on my wall for the reasons above.

And for the fact that my wall is full of junk anyway.

Like blog posts!

Social Media in Construction - the revolution begins...

I attended the first meeting of the new Constructing Excellence Social Media Task Group today in London, at CE's offices on Buckingham Palace Road.  The group was co-ordinated by Paul Wilkinson, a veritable guru on all things social media, and had a good representation from construction professionals at different levels in all types of different organisations.

Paul ran through a presentation of his (I think I've found the right one on the net - you can view it here) giving us all a good session on social media, running through examples of good usage of the new technology, and new ideas.

What if instead of using email we used Twitter or instant messaging to get information out?  I use Twitter, but I never considered it as a replacement for email, merely as an alternate communication channel.  What if instead of having meetings we had video conferences, which can be set up easily and for free with software such as Google Hangout, and we could even record the conference for future reference.  No more problems six months after a meeting trying to work out if a certain point was mentioned from the minutes taken, simply play back the recorded conference.

For G4C in the Yorkshire & Humber region I'm very interested in social media because of the distributed nature of the population.  I'm well aware that I need to run events in Leeds to attract the majority of the Yorkshire population.  I'm also aware that this automatically reduces the chance of people attending from Sheffield, York and Hull (not to mention the many other towns and settlements in the county).

Paul also recommended that organisations set up Google Alerts so that they can be informed of when new content about their organisation is put up on the Internet.  This can be done here.  And again, it's free to do.

There was a lot of concern in the room about control of social media, which is a fair point.  Social media for work has to be focussed, and some control available.  It's all too easy for social media use to become people going on Facebook and playing games all morning.  But provided that it is controlled, there are some huge benefits.  And people should be able to take responsibility for what they post with social media - if people are trusted to send letters, telephone clients, and email out information, is social media that much different?

One point that was made was about how social media can allow a persons personality to come through, helping relationships to be built.  If every tweet from a person is purely another sales pitch or press release, I tend to switch off.  But if I see something of that person, what they are like, it allows them to become a real person in my view.  And then I'm more likely to read their press release when they do send it.

New technology has massive benefits that over the next few years people will think of ways to use.  We're currently able to use GPS to position people and items on the world.  What if some kind of positioning system was made so that it could be installed on utilities pipes and cables?  Rather than relying on statutory undertakers drawings, we could have some kind of RFID tag that when you dig close to it the tag is activated, and the excavator can tell that there is a pipe there and that they have to swap to hand digging.  Rather than using GPR kit and cable detectors, we could do it by walking over the site with a mobile phone or tablet.

Another example of the use of technology was one organisation who was able to take a BIM model of a building out on site on their mobile phone, hold the phone up to where the building was due to be built, and the software showed the built structure on the screen, allowing the viewer to see how it would interact with the adjacent buildings, how sunlight would shine once the building was constructed.  An excellent way to show clients a representation of the completed building prior to construction.

I'm very much looking forward to the next social media task group (despite it being in London!).  If anyone else is interested in getting involved, let me know and I can pass your details on.

Paul's site, including his blog, is at http://pwcom.co.uk/ and he also has a huge amount of presentations viewable at http://www.slideshare.net/EEPaul

Is anybody on Twitter real...

Following on from the virus last week, it's now hit my other half pretty hard, plus my son seems to be coming down with it this morning as well which is worrying. It also seems to have given my system a kicking in general so I'm waiting for advice from my consultant and being very careful what I eat (translation - not much) so altogether I'll be happy when we're all better.  On the plus side losing a pound or two wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.

I keep getting followers on Twitter, which is really cool.

For the uninitiated, Twitter is a "microblogging service" - basically you can write tweets, which must be a maximum of 140 characters, which then everyone who is following you can see.  You can follow people yourself, to see what they are tweeting.  Popular celebrity twitterers (twitterati?) include Stephen Fry and Lady Gaga - the latter has almost 30 million people following her, which is just insane if you think about it (or not for the matter).  Personally I recommend The Guild, Geek & Sundry, Felicia Day, and Wil Wheaton.

My twitter account is at RavenswingThog if you want to follow me.

But how many (I presume) fake Twitter accounts are there?  I have, at the moment in time, a huge 68 followers.

Of the 68, about 44 are work related in some manner.  A few more are friends, but there's a few which are clearly fake accounts.  When I say fake accounts (lets call em zombies), its usually a female with a random name that includes "xxx" in it and all their tweets are random garbage like "once I went outside but it rained".  Quickly scrolling through I can see at least nine zombie followers.

It just seems odd to me to have zombies trailling after me, listening to my tweets. I guess the reason why is that they follow real people in the hope that they follow them back, they then have a long list of followers and sell tweets to businesses (for $100 we could tweet to all of our followers about your urinal cake business!)

More worrying, I did a quick search on the net for "fake twitter followers", which led me quickly to a website that would check how many of these you had following you.  But to do this, the website would have permission to post tweets on my behalf.  I wonder how many people sign up to something like this, and then the app happily goes along tweeting about whatever it wants on their account.

Facebook apps do the same.  If you're not careful all types of Facebook games and the like take the ability to post on your timeline about themselves.  Generally I try to be fairly careful and reject those apps that want too much access, or if there's an option of "who sees the posts from this app" I set it so that only I can see the posts, and it doesn't bother my friends.  After all, I generate enough noise without apps helping!