Adactio: Links

Every Mobile Social App Site, Ever · Visual Idiot

This is kinda funny (because it’s kinda true).

How Yahoo Killed Flickr and Lost the Internet

A heartbreaking article about just how badly Yahoo fucked up with Flickr. It’s particularly sad coming out right as the Flickr devs roll out an improved uploader and a more liquid photo page …but it seems like band-aid development at this point.

Sex differences in intimate relationships : Scientific Reports : Nature Publishing Group

Albert-László Barabási and Robin Dunbar are among the authors of this paper — it’s the scale-free network equivalent of the Avengers.

The Jig Is Up: Time to Get Past Facebook and Invent a New Future - Alexis Madrigal - Technology - The Atlantic

An excellent longish-zoom article by Alexis Madrigal with an eerily accurate summation of the current state of the web. Although I think that a lack of any fundamentally new paradigms could be seen as a sign of stabilisation as much as stagnation.

Google are about to murder a good friend of mine — Glenn Jones

Glenn gives a rational thoughtful explanation of why he’s as pissed off as I am about Google’s destruction of the Social Graph API.

Official Google Blog: Renewing old resolutions for the new year

Google are shutting down the Social Graph API. Twunts.

My first Instagram Christmas, a nervous step away from Flickr « Rev Dan Catt’s Blog

I had exactly the same resistance to Instagram as Dan and I had exactly the same Yuletide conversion.

An open letter to Arran Ross-Paterson : Cennydd Bowles

Cennydd is a gent, slow to anger. So it took a lot to get him wound up enough to write about this issue. I’m glad he did.

The Social Graph is Neither (Pinboard Blog)

This post from Maciej might initially seem negative but read it through to the end: there’s a very powerful positive message.

The Ruins of Dead Social Networks - Alexis Madrigal - Technology - The Atlantic

Reminiscences of the BBSs of yesteryear that could in time be applied to the social networking sites of today.

The Technium: Why the Impossible Happens More Often

A wonderful reminder by Kevin Kelly of the amazing interconnected world we live in, thanks to network effects.

Get a coffee, give a coffee - Jonathan’s Card

A lovely little social experiment: you can buy a Starbucks coffee with Jonathan Stark’s card; you can also top up the card. You can track the card balance on Twitter.

Facebook will destroy your children’s brains | by Martin Robbins @mjrobbins | Science | guardian.co.uk

A pitch-perfect parody of people that peeve.

Experience Is What We Make It | UX Magazine

The Riegers are like emissaries from Planet Smart and we mere mortals are fortunate that they take the time to give us great articles like this.

notes.husk.org. The Post-Delicious World.

Paul has some further thoughts on self-hosting bookmarks while trying to retain the social aspect.

notes.husk.org. Sticking With Delicious.

Paul explains why he won’t be moving from Delicious: the social network is too valuable.

Qwerly: API Documentation

It's down for me right now, but this API from Qwerly looks like a great addition to complement Google's Social Graph API — it finds rel="me" links from a Twitter username.

Weak Ties, Twitter and Revolution | Wired Science | Wired.com

Responding to Malcolm Gladwell's recent piece in the New Yorker, Jonah Lehrer argues that the strength of weak ties *does* extend to social activism.

Twitter, Facebook, and social activism : The New Yorker

A well-argued piece by Malcolm Gladwell on the relative pros and cons of weak-tie networks and strong-tie hierarchies ...although, as always, Gladwell relies on anecdotes more than data to make his point.

Lanyrd | the social conference directory

The latest creation from Simon and Nat. It's surprisingly addictive and useful — play around with it for a bit and you'll see what I mean. Lovely stuff.

What The Fuck Is My Social Media Strategy?

Making it up so you don't have to — somewhat like my New Media Company Name generator from a few years back.

The Web Means the End of Forgetting - NYTimes.com

This article needs a great big "citation needed" slapped on it. Yes, people need to think about what they post on the web, but no, that stuff will not stay around "forever." If anything, the web suffers from the opposite problem: memory loss.

Emily Toop » BuildBrighton needs your help

Live in Brighton? Like hardware hacking? Build Brighton needs your input.

Minimal Competence: Data Access, Data Ownership, and Sharecropping. - Laughing Meme

Kellan outlines the bare minimum you should expect from any service that you are putting data into.

Hyperbole and a Half: Things That Can Make You Feel Like an Idiot Almost Instantly

I'm going to have to start ticking things off this list.

Liminal Existence: Identity

Blaine outlines the vision for Webfinger.

A real person, a lot like you | Derek Sivers

A beautiful reminder.

Designing with Social Skills | Darren Hoyt Dot Com

An examination of websites behaving conversationally, including Huffduffer.

Building Social Web Applications

The blog of the book by Gavin Bell.

Web 2.0 Suicide Machine - Meet your Real Neighbours again! - Sign out forever!

A quick way of leaving Facebook, Twitter, Linked In and MySpace. It uses the password anti-pattern but after using this, I guess you won't be needing that password again.

Enhance User Profiles with Google’s Social Graph API [Ruby & Rails]

Some Ruby on Rails code for enhancing sign-up forms using Google's Social Graph API, inspired by Huffduffer.

Ident Engine

Glenn has taken Google's Social Graph API, YQL and various parsers, and he's wrapped it all up in one JavaScript library. The demos are mind-boggingly impressive.

Social Networks Aren't Good Businesses - washingtonpost.com

An interesting take on the business models of social networking sites.

Is Happiness Catching? - NYTimes.com

An examination of behavioural contagion in social networks.

Ficly - A better, shorter story

Ficlets is back ...as Ficly. Take that, AOL: this site is just too good to roll over and die.

Identify: Google People With Two Keystrokes - ReadWriteWeb

A nice overview of Glenn's XFN Firefox plug-in.

Dave Gorman: When Twitter Gets Weird...

Dave Gorman understands Twitter. Many do not.

tweenbots | kacie kinzer

Tweenbots are human-dependent robots that navigate the city with the help of pedestrians they encounter. Rolling at a constant speed, in a straight line, Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right direction to reach their goal.

Portal Me

A person-specific portal generated using Google's Social Graph API. And it's less than 5K!

Identify - Firefox entension | Madgex Lab

Okay, I know I said "holy freakin' crap!" the last time I linked to one of Glenn's Social Graph API experiments but now he's gone and created a Firefox plug-in: press alt-i and you can see the social graph for anyone's site. Holy freakin' crap!

"Social Media is Here to Stay... Now What?"

danah boyd addresses the Microsoft Research Tech Fest.

Social Graph Explorer | Madgex Lab

Holy freaking crap! Glenn's Social Graph Explorer is bloody brilliant!

YouTube - Newsnight Goldacre Sigman BBC2 20090224

Behold the double awesomeness of Jeremy Paxman and Ben Goldacre! Susan Greenfield, alas, is simply embarrassing.

Us Now - Home

A film project about the power of mass collaboration, government and the internet.

Why you should have a Web Site (and other Web 3.0 issues)

This presentation by Steven Pemberton increases in value over time.

Experiments in Data Portability - Screencast

Glenn has created a screencast of his superb Skillswap presentation, syncing up the audio with the slides.

Anna Pickard: Why is the idea of online friendships still treated with such disdain? | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

A lovely article from Anna on friendship and the internet.

How your friends' friends can affect your mood - life - 30 December 2008 - New Scientist

The spread of happiness, obesity and smoking habits through social networks.

SNIF :: Welcome

Social networking for dogs through RFID. Spimy animals FTW!

BBC NEWS | Technology | Online time 'is good for teens'

Mimi Ito talks to the BBC about the findings of a report into teens geeking out online.

Yahoo! Application Platform - YDN

This sounds like Yahoo's answer to Facebook Platform for single web pages or (spit!) widgets. We'll see if the reality matches the hype. "The Yahoo! Application Platform allows you to build and launch open-social applications to the largest daily â€¦

Nasty as they wanna be? Policing Flickr.com

A nice little report on community management at Flickr.

YDN UK at dConstruct (Yahoo! Developer Network Blog)

A write-up of dConstruct 2008 from the YDN crew who so kindly co-sponsored the closing party.

Ma.gnolia.org

Magnolia's going Open Source. Soon you'll be able to host and run your own instance of the social bookmarking service.

Recipes, Food Photos & Discussion at Open Source Food

A seriously nice recipe sharing site. Everything is creative commons licensed and everything looks delicious.

Digital Web Magazine - Portable Social Networks, The Building Blocks Of A Social Web

Ben has written a superb article outlining the hows and whys of distributed social networks with hCard and XFN, finishing with an inspiring call to arms.

Business Technology : New Service Helps Tech Startups Choose Terrible Names

I had a very pleasant chat on the phone with Ben Worthen from the Wall Street Journal. He likes my social buzzword generator.

Social networks may be imaginary | The Register

My new motto is "The Social Graph is a Spherical Cow."

Olinda (Schulze & Webb)

The Olinda has arrived. I love the physical API.

Facebook In Real Life is Today's BIG Thing - APR 30, 2008

This isn't just funny, it also encapsulates a lot of the ridiculousness of Facebook interactions.

Designing for the Social Web: the Book - Bokardo

Joshua has just finished writing his book. Mazel tov! It's bound to be a good one.

OAuth support for Google Accounts and Contacts API - OAuth | Google Groups

As promised by Kevin Marks in the Q&A after my panel at South by Southwest, the Google Contacts API now supports OAuth. w00t!

Headshift :: Twitter scepticism: justified or not?

Lee is a Twitter sceptic. Shun the unbeliever, shhuuuunnnnn!

App Engine, Facebook Platform, OpenSocial, and the Future of the Web - O'Reilly Radar

David Recordon shares his first impressions of Google App Engine.

Spokeo? More like Spooky-o; bad practice taken to the extreme. at Aral Balkan

Aral points to what is possibly the most egregious password anti-pattern implementation yet: a new startup called Spokeo http://www.spokeo.com/public/join

Licence to Roam » BarcampBrighton - Portable Information

Liveblogged notes from a discussion I participated in at BarCamp Brighton 2 about Social Network Portability.

4 Technologies for Portability in Social Networks: A Primer - ReadWriteWeb

A nice summary of the technologies presented at my SXSW panel.

Google Code Blog: URLs are People, Too

This is great news! Brad Fitzpatrick and Kevin Marks have built a new Google API that will spider XFN links.

Waxy.org: Daily Log: The Times (UK) Spamming Social Media Sites

Andy Baio does a nice bit of investigative journalism in exposing the social network spammer hired by The Times. The internet treats crass marketing as damage and routes around it.

The Existential DiSo Interview on Vimeo

Chris interviews himself about portable social networks and distributed identity.

If all your friends jumped off of a bridge… at Ben Brown, Internet Rockstar

Ben Brown outlines the reasons why he left Facebook: "I think it is important to note that Facebook, though they claim to be a tool for staying connected, is actually a software tool designed *primarily* to deliver marketing messages to its audience."

It’s high time we moved to URL-based identifiers | FactoryCity

Chris says that URLs are people too: "You’ve got my URL, now, tell me, what else do you really need?"

Preoccupations: Adactio hits St Paul's

David follows up on my talk at St Paul's with cornucopia of thoughts and links that's more in-depth than the talk itself.

Extortr: online blackmail for the masses

What a great antisocial network: blackmail people with rich media. Upload photos or videos; demand a price from the victim; if they don't pay, the whole world sees the evidence.

Giant Global Graph | Decentralized Information Group (DIG) Breadcrumbs

TIm Berners-Lee explains what the "graph" part of "social graph" means. I'm still not keen on the term but I really love the idea (although I also disagree about the building blocks required today).

Portable Social Networks: Take Your Friends with You [Content]

Brian's article on portable social networks is a clear and concise introduction to the subject with explanations of the technologies involved.

DataPortability.org - Share and remix data using open standards

A new site to track the building blocks of portable social networks: OpenID, OAuth, hCard, XFN and more.

Foamee

Here's Dan's latest project (and of course it looks gorgeous). I've been testing it for a while before the official launch and it's really sweet. Best of all, there is no sign up. All the interaction happens through Twitter. Clever.

The Global Sympathetic Audience - New York Times

An article about Twitter focusing on one threatened suicide and one averted break-up. Leisa and her excellent phrase "ambient intimacy" are quoted.

Third time’s a charm « Davidville

Tumblr has just added a shedload of new features.

Web2Summit: Opening Up the Social Graph

David Recordon announces a new developer tool for tracking status changes on social networking sites.

Preoccupations: Life, the web all a tangle

David Smith has written a brilliant overview of how the perception of the Web is converging towards Tim Berners-Lee original vision of a read/write environment.