The locked effect

Over at Tame the Web there's a rather interesting blog post that I think will provoke a lot of discussion over aspects of social networking, this particular post looks at Twitter. A bit of background,Twitter, like many services, allows you the option of keeping your profile locked. This means that only those that you allow can follow you. This has both good and bad points like any service, but everyone chooses what works for them.

The post over on Tame the Web is simply an image from Flickr, the picture of a lock that you see on when someone has a locked profile on Twitter, and the description that was underneath the image. It's the words under the image that bother me:

"That is when I may consider following someone with protected updates.

Watchya hiding?

I don’t wanna know,

I ain’t interested.

Nope."

To me it implies that there is something wrong with people having locked profiles. That because, people have choosen to not share part of their life with everyone in the world, that they are in effect, creating a proglem. The responses by Lee and Kyle, while offering good opinions, seem to want to place everyone in the same boat. If x doesn't work then clearly y is the alternative and thus everyone is happy, (Y in this case being have two separte accounts.) But it doesn't always work that way. Y isn't always the option, sometimes its z or zx or zy or so on. Everyone has different experiences that lead them to participate in Twitter and how they choose to set up their account and who they allow to follow them. There is no right or wrong answer to how you set up your profile, or how you participate in the conversation as long as you enjoy how you are participating.

But, there is a problem with trying to put everyone in the same boat and saying if you have a locked account, you aren't participating in the discussion. Everyone has different experiences that lead to how they make decisions. You may not always agree with them, but should at least seek to understand where they are coming from and in the case of locked social networking profiles, respect them for their decision.

Friendfeed vs. Twitter

Others have posted their thoughts recently about the two services and the differences between them, and they did much better than I ever could, so I'll try keep my thoughts short.

Twitter is a great service, when it works. It doesn't take too much effort to find out on Google that Twitter is having all kinds of trouble staying up. And this is a bad thing because people really like the service it offers. You can Direct Message someone, its easy to let people know what you're up to, and you can see what your friends are up too. It's a great way to also play Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. You can follow your friends post to other people and back others and keep going to the original source. It's been a great way to meet people you would have never had the opportunity too. But it has its limitations, namely that it won't stay working. As well as other little glitches that lets random people start following you.

Friendfeed is a bit of a different service. You can still post updates and follow people, but you can also tie in some of your other Web 2.0, updatable sites. You're followers can know when you've added new bookmarks, new movies to Netflix, updated your blog, and so on, all in one web site. Here's Friendfeed's FAQ that provides a pretty good description of what they do. While Friendfeed has its own faults, such as you can't Direct Message someone and if someone's profile is private its hard to tell who they are, it has some great pluses. It's a great way to roll your multiple services into one location. If you want people to be able to easily follow when you've updated your Flickr account or one of your many blogs, this is the place to see it. Friendfeed let's your followers instantly know when one of these services has been updated.

But what I really like is there's more of a sense of community building. You aren't limited by 140 characters to talk and discuss things. You can have a real conversation and share links and pictures. Conversations are threaded together so you can instantly see when someone else has added a point to a previous post. You don't have to go to thirty different pages and friend multiple people to see where the conversation started or is going, it's all in one neat thread for you. Because I've this I've met and talked to people I wouldn't normally have had the chance too. And they've started following me, which I find really cool as some of them have been big names in library world for a while.

So I'll keep Twitter around, but Friendfeed is really growing on me.

If you have links about the comparison please post them below!