Intended for cogdogblog, but the comments form clobbered on submit, saying I needed to enable cookies and javascript.
I'm a reactionary and inherently distrustful of commercial social apps/services, ever since reading the AOL TOS in the mid-90s and seeing they claimed perpetual rights to anything I put on their servers (this as I was preparing to put my speed reading book on line). So too with FB, MS, and even Twitter. I suppose the one thing that makes it easier for me to play on twitter is the brevity precludes posting of tremendous substance. That and I have dear friends active on twitter. But I'd be much happier with a an open protocol which enabled this kind of fun rather than a Murdoch or Theil sponsored app.
The above notwithstanding, MySpace and Facebook and Twitter "built it" and now "they have come." Ease of use trumps most other concerns, which is why television went from being the "killer educational app" to the wasteland it is. So too with all things tcp/ip I fear. Like the 78 and the betamax, open protocol based solutions have probably had their day. Long live the panopticon.
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Chris L wrote
The thing is.. there *is* an open protocol for exactly this kind of stuff. But a protocol is not an app-- and once someone builds the app that allows for the things that make Twitter (for example) interesting, then they are suspect. But without the app, it isn't particularly useful in the way that posting twitter-like posts to one's blog alone, as asides or the like, isn't much like participating on Twitter.
Alan Levine wrote
Sorry about the javascript/cookies thing. Its a new anti-spam plugin I am trying. I dont lose sleep over TOS since I dont post anything of value; they, you can have it. I'm no prisonor, I am leaving my cell right now to go outside and water my flowers and trees. Wow, an ASCII captcha, sweet!
beau wrote
Chris,
It isn't the creation of the app; it's the type of app. Twitter, MySpace, Facebook all are app which rely on me using a server over which I have no control. Contrast that, say, with Firefox or a true OSS app. I don't like putting my stuff on other people's boxes with no assurance that I have any input on how it's used/deployed.
Alan,
No worries, truly, on the javascript/cookies thing. And, heh, congrats on stepping out of the cell. ;)