Reach out and ??? someone

Last Thursday I needed to get a hold of Jeff, so I phoned his cell. I got his voicemail (a rare occurence) and left a message telling him to call me back that night. He did not. Throughout that night I kept my MSN Messenger open hoping that he would appear online. He did not, so finally I sent him a quick e-mail with the substance of what I wanted to talk to him about. Jeff phoned me back the next day around noon with no idea why I had wanted to talk to him, having received my voicemail but not my e-mail.

If I want to get a hold of my sister, I know that the first thing to do is to call her cell phone. If she doesn't pick up, it means that she's at work, so I will text her instead if it's timely. If the issue is not timely, I will send her an e-mail. I never call her landline at home.

If I need to get a hold of Dan, I will phone him at home and then at his office. If he does not pick up, I try to find him on Skype, and if not, then I send him an e-mail.

If I need to contact Dana, I text her. This never fails.

My point, and indeed I have one, is that the age of social networking has actually made it more difficult to get a hold of someone than in the days when the only option was to phone a landline and leave a message. Everyone has their own unique Social Network Fingerprint, so to speak, prioritizing some platforms and programs over others. I normally use MSN Messenger, but I still use Yahoo Messenger because one of my friends is on Yahoo but not MSN. A few of my friends, including Jeff, use G-Mail chat, but I don't, which is why I didn't think to check for Jeff on G-chat on Thursday. A friend's brother uses Facebook chat as his primary chat program.

With all these choices available, it's miracle that we can even get a hold of people, especially when we really need to. Exhausting all options becomes exhausting as we try to remember which friends privilege which programs. I guess I'm just waiting for the day when we simulateously, collectively develop the power of selective telepathy and can just 'think' to the person we want to. Collective (but controlled) telepathy would solve all the problems detailed above. After all, chat programs, e-mail, telephones are all external ways of engaging with others. What we really need to do is to tap into something closer to consciousness—something that does not require the mediation of phones or computers—to bypass the clutter that is keeping us from reaching others. Is that too much to ask?

No, no I do not.

Put away that Facetwiberrier, Mr. MLA

Yet another way that provincial MLAs are no different than university undergrads: they are compelled to text/Facebook/Twitter all time, in this case, during Question Period. And dammit, the Speaker of the House is not going to take it any longer! He's publically chastised members for being on their PDAs during QP.

What kills me about this story are the people speaking against this policy on the record, complaining that the government needs to be in contact with citizens to be effective. But—and this is very important—the ban applies to Question Period only, when MLAs should ostensibly be paying attention. One could argue that Question Period is a waste of time anyway and people might as well be catching up on tweets, but the Speaker can't subscribe to that point of view and must discipline the MLAs. After all, if even the Speaker can't take Question Period seriously, then who can? And really, the constant Twitbookexting is not the actual problem. Instead, it is a sign of how little respect is accorded to Question Period in the first place. So the problem isn't really the technology—it's the fact that no one respects Question Period enough to put the damn phone away.

Oh, yeah, and if this government really wanted to be in touch with Albertans, it wouldn't have kept quiet about environmental charges faced by Suncor regarding dumping sewage in the Athabasca River or passed Bill 18, which will creates strict new regulations about who can see and rent movies, banning unrated movies from video stores, meaning that a lot of foreign film and documentaries won't be legally available for rent. (You know you rents these movies? Me. And I am definitely not under 18.)

This province. GAH.

Fine lines

Preparing to teach Pride and Prejudice this week and thinking about the careful ways that we define our social relationships. For example, this is how I recently explained to a friend of mine my relationship with another acquaintance:

"Let's put it this way: She knows I'm on Facebook. I know she's on Facebook. But neither of us has friended the other."

I'd like to see Facebook come up with a status for that.

Facebook now just Little Brother

Facebook (must I hyperlink the word?) has moderated its latest intrusion of users' privacy, Facebook Beacon, a program that sent notices to all of a Facebook user's friends when they bought something on one of 44 participating websites. These notices show up on newsfeeds accompanied by a complementary banner ad on the left.

Facebook Beacon prompted an online petition against its practices that led to today's announcement. The Becaon feature will remain, but case-by-case opt-outs will now be available and more noticeable so that not everyone will know that you bought a Fight Club movie poster on allposters.com.

Facebook is trying to walk a fine line between respecting people's privacy and making a profit so that it can stay in business. While I believe that Facebook (the application) is not "private" in any sense of the word and that users lack a private subjectivity that they possess in real life, I also believe that my personal information shouldn't be used by any kind of tracking software for such blatant marketing purposes. Ideally, what I buy is no one's business but my own.

My post was inspired by a rather dense digital media marketer quoted in the New York Times story:

“Isn’t this community getting a little hypocritical?” said Chad Stoller, director of emerging platforms at Organic, a digital advertising agency. “Now, all of a sudden, they don’t want to share something?”

The quotation, along with the existence of Beacon itself, indicates how far marketers have to go before truly understanding the mindset of the Facebook user. Yes, Mr. Stoller, all of a sudden, we don't want to share something. Perhaps you have noticed that everything we share on Facebook we volunteer. Perhaps you've noticed that users can determine which kinds of actions are published to their public newsfeed. Perhaps you've noticed that people in general don't take lightly to having their own information used without their knowledge or information. The issue, sir, is not about not wanting to share, but not even knowing that you're sharing and not having the chance to say, "no, thanks, I'd rather not."

I believe that Facebook execs and advertisers have gone about tracking user purchases the wrong way. Facebook is unusual because its very existence depends on the public nature of its information gathering. We know that Facebook tracks us because we see it in our newsfeeds. But everytime the cashier swipes my Safeway, my Indigo card, my Shoppers card, I know that the information is flying through the ether into a database in who-knows-where as well. That doesn't seem to bother me as much because, oddly, I have no idea what the information is being used for. In other words, the information gathering seems—and only seems, mind you—more benign because I don't see the end results.

Facebook can't lull its users into the same sense of false security. But what it could do is capitalize on its users' odd penchant for sharing every bloody part of their lives online— emphasis on the "sharing". If Facebook could figure out how to make users want to talk about their latest purchases (sale notices? promotions? coupons?) there would be less backlash. I do tell my friends if my favourite store is having a good sale or if I bought something particularly nice for myself recently. I do it because I'm an excitable (self-aware but still excitable) consumer. Capture that excitement, Mr. Zuckerberg, and you might be in business.

List: This quarter in analytics

In lieu of a dissertation post, tonight I present: odd info from my blog stats

Most popular search term that has lead to my blog: "knocked up controversy" (clearly this post)

However, if you take the results from "facebook remove friend" and add it to all the other search terms that are variations on "remove" "friend" and "facebook", the result greatly outweighs the Knocked Up hits. So for the record: if you remove a friend on Facebook, no one ever gets notified. How do I know this? It's a long story, but it's actually not my long story, so it's not getting told. I also know that if you reject a friend request on Facebook, nothing happens either.

Edited to add: A further test has confirmed that indeed nothing happens when you remove a friend from your Facebook list (i.e., they receive no notification). So go on, people, passive-aggressively break up with your friends online (or would that be your online friends?). Oh, the Internet. You are good for so many things.

Some of the odder search strings that lead back here:
brothel twickenham
chiswick brothels
eloping in london
neighbours having sex
"jena malone" "pride and prejudice" annoying
underbite keira knightley
"globe and mail" + "book review" + schadenfreude
hollywood actors who are credit card fraud victims (twice?)

And my personal favourite:
elizabeth bennett, drill sergeant

List: Hypothetical reasons for removing someone as a Facebook friend

Karine and I got a little silly on MSN tonight thinking about reasons that one would remove a friend on Facebook (not to be confused with not accepting someone as a friend in the first place). What if Facebook required a reason before allowing you to unfriend someone? What could they be?

1. "She got drunk and made out with my boyfriend." [You could also use the "event" option to specify at which party this occurred!]
2. "Never returned a movie I rented."
3. "Regifted the CD I got him for Christmas."
4. "Borrowed a book from me and wrote in it. In pen."
5. "When we go out for dinner, she never pays her fair share of the bill."
6. "Refused to set me up with a friend because 'I don't want to be held responsible for the consequences.'"
7. "Latently racist."
8. "Made a pass at my mom."
9. "Watches The Colbert Report unironically."
10. "Lied about living in Iceland."
11. "Prefers MySpace."
12. "I can't remember why I accepted his/her friend request in the first place."
13. "Not interested in 'anything I can get' after all."
14. "EMOTIONAL FUCKWIT."
15. "Got her pregnant."