PostBadge tag to show // FeedBurner FeedFlare. // ------------------------- // FeedBurner account and feed required. // Sign up at http://feedburner.com //================================================ class module_feedflare { function init(){ global $gregarious; $gregarious->add_settings ( array ( 'feedburner_url' => '' ) ); $gregarious->add_page ( 'FeedFlare', 'modules/feed-flare/icn_Flare.png', 'page_feedflare();', 'feedFlare' ); } function postbadge_tags(){ return array ( array ( 'tag' => '%FLARE%', 'replacewith' => 'feed_flare("",false)' ), ); } function update_info(){ return 100; } } //------------------------------------------ // TEMPlATE TAGS //------------------------------------------ function feed_flare($settings = '', $echo = true){ global $wp_query; $post = $wp_query->post; $sets = array('postID' => $post->ID, 'before' => '', 'after' => 'Gregarious FeedFlare', 'force' => 0 ); grab_sets($settings, $sets); if ( !$sets['force'] && hideOnID($sets['postID']) ){ return ''; } if( !$path = _get_feedburner_url() ) return ''; if( substr( $path, -1 ) == '/' ){ $path = substr( $path, 0, strlen( $path ) -1 ); } $path = str_replace ( 'feedburner.com/', 'feedburner.com/~s/', $path ); $path .= '?i='.get_permalink($sets['postID']); $result = $sets['before'] . "" . $sets['after']; if($echo) echo $result; else return $result; } function _get_feedburner_url(){ $feedurl = greg_get_option( 'feedburner_url' ); if ( $feedurl ){ return attribute_escape($feedurl); } else { $feedburner_settings = get_option('feedburner_settings'); if( is_array($feedburner_settings) && ($feedurl = $feedburner_settings['feedburner_url']) ) { return attribute_escape($feedurl); } else { return false; } } } //------------------------------------------ // OPTIONS PAGE //------------------------------------------ function page_feedflare(){ $feedurl = _get_feedburner_url(); ?> Two Bad Ideas at spencerb.net
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Two Bad Ideas

Published on February 9, 2010 in Technology. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

According to the FT, Google and Facebook are going to try and compete with one another more directly by making forays into one another’s core territories.

Google is planning to give Gmail users a way to aggregate the updates of their various contacts on the service, creating a stream of notifications that would echo the similar real-time streams from Facebook and Twitter, according to reports.

According to a report on the tech website TechCrunch, Facebook is planning to upgrade this messaging service to compete directly with Gmail and other internet-based mail systems.

In my opinion, neither of these services seem terribly appealing. I really think that Google is deviating from it’s formula of simple and straightforward services here. There is a fundamental issue here of how people use social media. IM status updates are not the same as tweets which are not the same as Facebook status updates. IM status updates are frequently pragmatic messages based around the actual status of the user of to engage in a chat. No one updates their FB status to indicate whether someone should sound them a message using FB chat. Twitter stands as another platform altogether – a short claim is broadcast over the public twitter domain. Aggregation isn’t critical to Twitter, but the API allows for interesting applications of aggregation. Accumulation of posts on FB allows for the display of multimedia from all over the web and functions to remove the temporal nature a tweet and IM status has.

I can think of very few uses for an aggregation of my friends IM status updates. Alright, Jim was available to chat last week, but he’s not now. Okay…Maybe Google intends to shift how people use instant messaging services and in particular their IM status updates. The problem is that there are extremely pragmatic uses to the status updates. Sometimes, I want to be online, but not disturbed or only disturbed for something urgent. Rarely, do I post a status update because I found a hilarious YouTube video, which I might do via Twitter or FB.

I doubt Google will be successful in this endeavor to compete with Facebook, unless users dramatically change their current habits.

Facebook messaging as an email platform seems absurd to me. I already dislike FB messages when I’m only receiving emails via FB. I hate to imagine what will happen once all Facebook Connect services have the ability to email users. FB messages is like an archaic email platform with no labels, folders, or archives. Everything great about Web 2.0 email services is absent. I avoid communicating over FB message at all costs. It does serve two functions though, one I support and one I despise. The first is it allows you to reach a community of people on a platform that you all check regularly, this holds particularly true among college students. The second is it allows FB groups or pages to send out mass emails with a few clicks of a button. Because of FB messages signing up for a group is like signing up for a list-serv.

Everytime Facebook has expanded its horizons, I have found it less enjoyable. FB should find more ways to give users control and interact with other parts of the web, which they have done a good job of through things like playing YouTube videos or interacting with sites like Digg.

Expanding the message service to compete with email providers is a dead end for Facebook.

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