Facebook Paralysis

I have been neglecting my Facebook page lately to the point where I am not really sure what to do about it.  When I first started using Facebook, I let it read my address book and so immediately I got a bunch of online "friends", and over time about a dozen or so real world friends, and maybe an equal number of business associates have joined my list of Facebook friends, as have a number of Buzz people from here.  In addition, I tend to accept most "friend request" I get from people I don't know, and for me a number of them seem to hail from India plus I have some of the people .  The problem is none of these people have the slightest thing in common so my thread there is really weird to read - at best: uninteresting and irrelevant to where my life is right now, at worst: psychotic.


Last night, I went to Facebook and found it to be a disturbing experience.  The first post I saw was a rant about some horrible child molester from Nothern California.  Fair enough, people need to vent about these things sometimes, but the poster - a woman I had me online, (but not in person) on a dating site went on to say how pathetic it was that the "bleeding hearts" wouldn't want to execute the guy.  Now I happen to be in favor of the death penalty - and I might have wanted to execute this guy, but I didn't like the way she linked "child molester" to "bleeding heart" as she has posts like this all the time - you know, where something incredibly evil or stupid happens, and it is "the liberals" fault.  When one of her friend jumped in with with another attack on those child molester loving bleeding hearts I jumped in with a post defending people who don't believe in the death penalty - even though I am not one of them.  Well, my "friend" came back to defend her friend, and I don't think anyone enjoyed the exchange.


Well that didn't go real well, so I went to the next post in my stream.  This one was from a social media consultant who does have an inactive account here on Buzz, but is far more active on Facebook.  She had a  post that said simply *Google's Days are Numbered* and nothing else - presumably because of the "Facebook Groups" announcement that was made yesterday.   Well I am no Google fanboy, but I fired back that it was a ridiculous statement, and she fired back something about her not being a Fanboy for Facebook but that I should know that "Google Buzz had failed".  A few more back and forths like this, and I don't think either of us enjoyed the exchange either.


So this was not so much the feeling of being part of a "social network" as it of a guy stumbling around at a party where everyone had clustered into different groups, and then listening into their conversation and shouting something - maybe even getting into an argument, and then moving to the next group and doing the same thing.  It is a party that I don't like, and where I do not fit in.


I have some disagreements with the way Google has done things on Buzz, but I am especially concerned that they seem to have been out outmaneuvered by Facebook.  That Facebook would beat them to the punch with their new "groups" function, especially giving that Google has its own perfectly serviceable "Google Groups" product, is astounding.  Is my "friend" right?  Are "Google's days numbered" and has "Buzz been a failure"?


So the situation is this -  just as I am about to leave the party at Facebook, the host brings out a new punchbowl for the guests, and here at the Google Buzz party, at least right now, the punchbowl is empty.

British Airways giving 250 small businesses airline tickets in global expansion contest

As part of its Face to Face program, British Airways is holding a competition giving small businesses the chance to win free international airline tickets. Some 250 business owners will win international airfare to anywhere British Airways flies and the top 3 video entries will have the opportunity to present their pitch to a celebrity panel, and the grand prize winner gets 10 international airline tickets.  To participate, all you need to do is answer this question:  “If you could travel to any city outside the United States to grow your business, where would you go and how would the trip help meet your business objectives?”  http://www.faceofopportunity.com/

Collaboration – If it Were That Easy We Would all Do It

With the demise of Google Wave, which I thought was terrible for collaboration, I thought this article by Carl Frappaolo made some good points.  It is not just about the technology - there is more to it than that.  http://www.cmswire.com/cms/enterprise-20/collaboration-if-it-were-that-easy-we-would-all-do-it-well-008243.php

The best way to get someplace you've never been

There is a wonderful scene in the old Seinfeld series where Elane just got fired from her job and is walking down the street crying on a rainy evening.  She then bumps into a "Mr. Peterman" who was carrying an umbrella.  He was the guy who was ran a catalog company who later became her new boss.  " I don't even know where I'm going.", Elaine sobbed.  " That's the best way to get someplace you've never been" Mr. Peterman said.

I always thought that was strangely profound,  Not knowing where you are going being "the best way to get someplace you've never been".  It so fit with Mr. Peterman's character of a world traveler and adventurer.  I thought about that today when I came across this post about not setting goals.  Since setting goals doesn't seem to be working out all that great for me, maybe I will give this a shot.

http://zenhabits.net/no-goal/

Do business plan contests leave out the most worthy start-ups?

Tim Berry might be onto something with this post about how most business plan contests leave out the most worthy start-ups.  This problem, he points out, is that these things get controlled by the investors, and the best investments don't necessarily make the best companies. He comes close to saying something important but stops short, "the bootstrappers are still left out; and that’s a shame".

Maybe he should have taken that a just bit farther - most of these contests, and their evil twin the "award dinner" are also a shame.  These "contests" are organized almost exclusively for the benefit of "investors" - who want to see start-up companies go through hoop jumping exercises for them.  For the vast majority of small companies, these contests are a huge waste of time - they do more harm than good.

http://timberry.bplans.com/2010/07/business-plan-contests-leave-out-bootstrappers.html

The Web is Dissolving

Great post by Julian on Superfeeder, discovered by Tyler Strause on Buzz.  He believes the Web as we know it is "dissolving" in several different dimension: geographical space, time, from our computers, and- the one I found interesting, from our websites:


"This I think is the most intriguing fact. There used to be a time where I would be on NYT.com, on Craigslist, or even on my wells fargo account. This is dissolving too : the data I consume is more and more decoupled from the publishing site. I very rarely go to NYT.com’s home page, however, I keep consuming it from links I see passing by, from news reader… etc. My bank account? I access it from Mint.

The next step is to actually have a true data freedom, where not only my data is exportable, but also where it is in sync : I update my status on service Y, and service X knows about it. I add a friend on Facebook and Flickr knows about it too. My web profile will become this “bus” of data about me that people can access from several endpoints (like Twitter, or LinkedIn, or this blog), and not a huge archipelago of small bits that I need to update one by one".

The full post is worth a read: http://blog.superfeedr.com/the-web-is-disolving/