Can Facebook become the new default?

By Mack D. Male · February 17, 2009 at 9:43pm

I find Facebook incredibly useful, if not particularly exciting. My usage reflects that – I like to add people on Facebook in order to maintain connections, and I like to keep my profile looking fresh, but I rarely surf Facebook like I used to. Yet there’s no escaping Facebook. The numbers tell the story. Check out these statistics compiled for a recent Fortune article:

175 million members
3 billion total daily minutes of use
850 million photos uploaded each month
15 million who update their status daily
24 million pieces of content shared each month

Very impressive. Also in the sidebar, Fortune looks at the race to 150 million users. That feat took Facebook 5 years, versus 7 years for the iPod, 14 years for the cell phone, 38 years for the television, and 89 years for the telephone. Obviously it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison, but you get the idea (and notice how other technologies such as Google or Windows are left out).

With numbers like that, it’s not hard to listen to Mark Zuckerberg and actually think he’s got a shot at achieving his new goal:

"We think that if you can build one worldwide platform where you can just type in anyone’s name, find the person you’re looking for, and communicate with them," he told a German audience in January, "that’s a really valuable system to be building."

In the article, author Jessi Hempel positions Facebook as the new phone system, but I think the new email system is perhaps a more reasonable comparison. I think the “default” right now when you make a connection is to get an email address. You collect business cards at events and they all have phone numbers and email addresses but how many people actually pick up the phone? Email is the default.

What if Facebook could become the new default? Clearly, that’d be a big deal.

Already I think Facebook is the default platform for events, and most people seem to think it’s the default for photos. Can it become the default for communication in general? As I’ve said before, I think Facebook Connect is a step in that direction.

Please don’t send me large files via email

By Mack D. Male · August 27, 2008 at 8:20pm

email If you’ve ever sent me a large file through email, you probably know how much I hate it. No one escapes a lecture! Just because GMail and other services give you gigabytes of storage, doesn’t mean that it’s okay to send really large attachments. I was happy to read that one my favorite blogs posted about the subject today. From the Microsoft Office Outlook Team Blog:

Putting any issues with your e-mail service provider’s limits on large messages aside, sending large attachments through e-mail is still a bad idea for a number of reasons.

In the post, Outlook Program Manager Ryan Gregg outlines a few of the reasons why you shouldn’t send large files via email – mail servers may reject large files, mailboxes may go over their quota, attachment bloat, attachments may be out of date, etc. He also outlines a number of alternatives, including SharePoint or a Shared File Server, Office Live, photo sharing sites like Flickr, and video sharing sites like YouTube.

When you use one of these alternative ways to share files with your friends, family, or colleagues you help them keep your mailbox and theirs clean, and you can be sure that your file will be available no matter what service or program your e-mail recipients are using.

I would add a couple more reasons to avoid sending large files: slow Internet connections and small devices. If I’m checking email on an unreliable connection, the last thing I want to do is wait for your images to download. If I’m checking email on my iPod touch or a cell phone, I might not be able to read the files anyway.

If you’re sending photos, why not stick them on Flickr and email a link? Same goes for video – use a site like YouTube. Some other alternatives include Box.net, Amazon S3, and SlideShare.

It doesn’t take a lot of extra effort to stick your file online somewhere first, so why not just do it? Send links to large files via email, not the files themselves!

Why Messaging via Facebook Rocks

By Mack D. Male · March 28, 2008 at 7:37pm

Facebook has a ton of interesting features, but one of the most boring is increasingly becoming my favorite – messages. The wall is what most people think of when communicating via Facebook, but private messages are the way to go when you’d rather not have everyone reading what you have to say.

Here’s why I like messaging via Facebook:

There’s no need to remember someone’s email address. There are lots of reasons that people get new email addresses, such as when they graduate, switch jobs, or switch ISPs. Unless you converse with someone regularly, keeping track of their email address can be a bit of a pain. On Facebook, all you need to know is a name.
There’s no need to manage an address book. One solution to the above problem of remembering email addresses would be to create and maintain an address book. That can be quite a bit of work though. On Facebook, everyone is responsible for keeping their own information up-to-date, so you don’t have to worry about it.
Receiving a message via Facebook is contextually appropriate. When you receive an email, it shows up in your inbox alongside messages for work, bacn, and spam. With Facebook however, you’re there specifically for communication, so you’re in the right frame of mind to be receiving messages from others. And so far, there’s no spam.
It works on your mobile phone. You can setup Facebook to send your messages to you via SMS. You can also send messages to others by prefixing your text message with “msg firstname lastname”. Sure you can do something similar with some email providers, but it’s never simple to setup, and you often need a smartphone of some kind.
Profile information is just a click away. When you receive an email from someone, you see their name, address, and message. If you’re lucky, they’ll have a signature with other information, but don’t count on it! On Facebook, simply click on the person’s name and you can see all their relevant contact info, their status, friends, and more.

It’s often the simplest features that are the most useful!

Facebook Instant Messaging

By Mack D. Male · March 14, 2008 at 8:22pm

If there’s one thing the world needs, it’s yet another instant messaging service. Okay, that was sarcastic! What we really need are better ways for the existing IM services to work together. Anyway, TechCrunch reported today that Facebook is getting ready to launch its own instant messaging service:

Our understanding is that the service will be built into user’s Facebook pages and allow them to web chat with their Facebook friends.

Also, just to be clear, I have not heard that Facebook intends to launch any desktop software around this.

I’m not sure who this is intended for. Everyone I would talk to on instant messaging I already have on Windows Live Messenger. And WLM is an excellent piece of desktop software! I’m not sure if you’ve used meebo, but I have, and while it is cool, it’s just not the best experience for IM.

Maybe they want to add this just to try and move more communication onto Facebook, as Nick O’Neill wrote about today.

Would you use Facebook IM? I think I’d definitely try it, but I doubt I’d start using it regularly.

Read: TechCrunch

Undersea cables carry 95% of the world’s telephone and Internet traffic

By Mack D. Male · February 5, 2008 at 7:16pm

internet cable On Friday I posted about the three undersea cables that were cut, disrupting Internet access in South Asia and the Middle East. Since then, another cable has been cut, and the story is finally starting to get some coverage. The BBC posted about the issue today, and included a really interesting diagram that explains the parts of an undersea cable.

The most interesting article however, comes from the International Herald Tribune:

Most telecommunications experts and cable operators say that sabotage seems unlikely, but no one knows what damaged the cables or whether the incidents were related.

According to the Egyptian government, no ships were in the vicinity of the cables when they were cut. Seems suspicious to me that four cables have been severed in such a short period of time, but who knows. It seems that this bit of Internet infrastructure isn’t as sturdy as one might think.

“This has been an eye-opener for us, and everyone in the telecom industry worldwide,” said Colonel R.S. Parihar, the secretary of the Internet Service Providers Association of India.

Let’s hope the recent incidents result in some action, before the situation gets any worse. Traffic has been re-routed over the last week, but how well would that work if many more cables were cut, say during an attack?

Maybe you’re not convinced that ensuring the safety of undersea cables is important. Consider this:

Undersea cables carry about 95 percent of the world’s telephone and Internet traffic, according to the International Cable Protection Committee, an 86-member group that works with fishing, mining and drilling companies to curb damage to submarine cables.

Talk about putting all your eggs in one basket!

Read: International Herald Tribune

If I were a terrorist…

By Mack D. Male · February 1, 2008 at 5:22pm

…I’d launch an attack on undersea cables around the world.

On Wednesday, two such cables near Egypt were cut resulting in a major disruption of Internet access in south Asia and the Middle East. Today, another cable was cut near Dubai. In both cases the cause remains unknown, but ship anchors seem likely.

Why bother with bombing train stations when you can disrupt global communications, apparently by dropping a few anchors? Maybe it’s sick that I thought about terrorism when reading the news, but seriously, it seems to me that this could be a real threat. And I haven’t heard anything about preparing for it.

The image above gives you a good overview, but this very detailed, up-to-date map of the globe’s undersea cabling is better (and much bigger).

Txt Msg on New Year’s Eve

By Mack D. Male · December 27, 2007 at 9:56pm

This shouldn’t really be a surprise, but apparently text messaging on New Year’s Eve is a big deal for Canadians. According to Virgin Mobile, we send an average of 31.5 million text messages per day.

Canadians are expected to send a record-breaking 50 million text messages on the evening of Dec. 31, according to Virgin Mobile Canada.

Last year’s New Year’s Eve text message tally was around 25 million.

The article goes on to say that those of us aged 18-30 will send an average of four messages each. That seems like a really small number to me, but who knows. It is an average after all. I probably send that many an hour!

So happy new year, and happy texting!

Read: CBC News

Get ready for micro-media

By Mack D. Male · August 29, 2007 at 12:23am

I wrote another guest post for the Vidfest blog, this time on micro-media. It’s a topic I expect to be talking about a lot more in the coming weeks and months. While relatively new, the concept of micro-media is incredibly powerful, and I think micro-media services will have a massive impact on the way we live and work. I’m already addicted.

Take tonight, for example. I went to the Justin Timberlake concert here in Edmonton (it absolutely rocked btw, more on that later) and I was able to communicate my thoughts in real-time at Twitter, Tumblr, Jaiku, and others. That’s not all though – other people were able to communicate with me too!

Another example is news. I really don’t like newspapers, and I find myself reading online news sites less and less. The reason? I get all the headlines via the BBC and NYTimes streams on Twitter.

There’s some cool stuff happening, and I’ve given it a lot of thought lately. I like where micro-media is going so far.

Anyway, check out my post, and let me know what you think!

Read: Vidfest

Did you have problems with Telus Mobility last night?

By Mack D. Male · July 28, 2007 at 11:43am

I just got off the phone with a client service representative at Telus Mobility. The good news is that their support service is still fast and effective, as I mentioned back in May. The bad news is that the Telus network doesn’t seem incredibly stable.

Around 9 PM last night, my phone stopped working. I couldn’t make or receive any calls, nor could I send or receive text messages. Every attempt was greeted with an annoying “beep beep beep” and text messages just disappeared into the unknown. I was kind of lost without my phone, and I mentioned to Megan that I should almost buy a backup pay-as-you-go phone on another network for precisely this type of thing. She just laughed!

Calls started working again around midnight, but text messaging still was not working this morning. Hence the call to Telus. The service representative asked a bunch of questions, and by the way I was answering, I think she got the hint and asked if this had happened before. I said yes, unfortunately, and asked her to send the clearing message. She did, and also said she was going to “do a reset” which means I have to turn my phone off for twenty minutes. Stange, I know. Hopefully it works.

I wasn’t the only one with problems it seems:

I’d like to know what happened, and if it was limited to just Edmonton and area or whether it was more widespread. Too bad they suck at communicating that sort of thing. Telus needs a blog!

SSDD – Podcasting is just a word!

By Mack D. Male · June 13, 2007 at 9:54pm

I don’t know how many times this is going to come up, but I’ll keep posting about it until I don’t have to anymore. Podcasting is just a word. It means different things to different people. All that matters is the idea or technology or process that we use the word podcasting to refer to.

PodZinger recently renamed themselves to EveryZing, prompting Ivan at Vecosys to proclaim that podcasting is dead (via Podonomics):

You know that Podcasting is over as a bankable concept when companies start rebranding themselves to escape the word.

Absolutely incorrect. The concept is alive and well. The word podcasting – well maybe it is starting to fall out of favor. The two should not be confused, however! We can use any word we like to refer to the concept, and it remains as valid today as it was three years ago.

(By the way, if you’re unsure of what SSDD means, here’s the definition.)

Read: Vecosys