Random musings and Spapps

November 1, 2007 in Social Networking

Part of my frustration with this blog was because it had become a chore to maintain. Let me count, I’ve got a a facebook life, a dimisnishing orkut life, an email life, a work email life and a real life. It boggles my mind how we can keep a singular identity across all these contexts.

My boss added me on facebook a few weeks ago and I did not accept his invite until very recently — and I only did so because I was moving to NYC. My friends mother is on facebook and she added me — now that is a line I just don’t want to cross. I politely declined hoping she’d understand that I value my privacy.
These are worlds, I just am not ready to mesh.
***

Now that Google launched Open Social – there’s even more talk about applications in general. Developers are having a field-day imagining how they can monetize and retire as happy silicon valley millionnaires. First came the email, the diaries, then the blogs, then the social networks — apps seem the natural evolution. And they are great, but

— they make profile cluttered. and ugly.
they are annoying after a while and it gets even more difficult to search for people’s walls. I’ve never used the private messaging (INBOX) function on facebook as vividly as I do now – it’s just easier for me to msg them instead of spending time looking through all the crappy apps trying to find where their wall is. And I find grace in the fact that I am not alone.

Danah Boyd made an interesting obeservation over an email thread. She said, I think that the main issue with Apps is that it’s clutter clutter clutter and it starts to feel like a new form of spam. Only spam that your friends invite you to.”

That’s an interesting obeservation, right? I think like splogs – there should be a new word of application spams – spapps maybe? But makes you wonder, exactly the kind of spapps will be unleased once Google’s Open Social is unveiled.

I both love and hate the tech industry. For all the innovations, sometimes I think they just make our life more difficult. I hate them for following like a stupid herd, the newest trend in town. And what’s really sad is they do it with so much passion and that they really beleive that their silly widget might be the next big thing. Sigh.