Transfer... done!

Yay, just moved my WordPress blog to Blogger! Thank you, Blog2Blog programmer(s)!

I may start posting a little more often, now...

The decline of Twitter and Facebook

I believe that within 2 years, Facebook and Twitter will have a lower standard of being. The reason is not because of them, but because of their users.

It's the life cycle of a user-intensive website. This is how it normally goes:

1. Small Beginnings. The website pops up as a result of the ingenuity of the human race- how inspiring. Google started as a college side-job.


2. Attention. As the website obtains new users (whether it be in Beta Invitation or not), news sources and blogs start noticing. This happened very fast for Twitter thanks to websites like Mashable.


3. More Attention. Now, not just websites are taking in the fresh breeze, but now a few brand names and celebrities are getting into the hubub. There may even be a mention of the website in a TV show or movie (there must be a hundred songs with/about MySpace).


4. Semi-World Domination. As a result of the mainstream media framing the website in immortality, John Doe took notice, and now he wants in on all the fun. At this point there may be over 200 million people wanting in. Then comes...


5. Total World Domination! At this point, the website is a full-on cooperation. Now the CEO gets to sit down and watch the money flow in. From here, they'll either start buying smaller companies or attempting to eliminate them through their own service. Google is a prime example with Gmail, Maps, Reader, Blogger, and Shopping. Yahoo! even more so, but I'm not about to type up a list of about 95 services. It is at this point that the corporation may be looked down upon as evil


6. The Decline. Now, problems that have been budding since stage 3-4 are full-blown flowers about to explode with pollen all over your shiny new car. Now, 97% of the time, the explosion in site traffic causes minorities and stereotypically strange people to join the website. On MySpace, this is the emos, pedophiles, and ghetto people with little-to-no grammar and typing abilities. I will guarantee this will happen to Facebook sometime next year, and in 2 years for Twitter (it hasn't gone full mainstream yet). So for those that think "man, Facebook is infinitely better than MySpace," prepare to be horrified once you start seeing emo MySpace pictures (see blog post photo) popping up on people's profiles.

...and here's some side-notes:

I don't believe this is going to happen to the blogging world. Blog posts take a long time to type up and require work to maintain, while the typical MySpace addict doesn't have the patience nor the work ethic. As you may notice, as the years go by, the world around us seems to slow down while people want things done fast. That's why we have email, text messaging, Google, YouTube, and now, Twitter.

Notice the patterns:

Before, people were happy listening to the radio. All of a sudden society demanded faster ways of hearing what they wanted, so in came the vynil disks. Then, they wanted to hear what they want on the go, so up came high quality transistor radios and decades later, the Walkman. But that wasn't enough, so in came the more widespread portable casette player and eventually, the all holy CD. Yet, there was still more to be left desired, so the mp3 player came into play. And nowadays, we're transitioning to portable media players like the iPod touch, where you can listen to music while you book a flight or find the nearest Chinese takeout place is.

People want things faster, smaller, newer, and revolutionary in one way or another. Facebook and Twitter are growing because of these factors.

Kinda derpessing how websites become notorious for certain things (like myspace pictures). I belive Twitter's form of this will be the strange usernames people give themselves (twitter.com/omgiluvdavidsomuch), and the constant posting of tweets (100+ per day).

I am highly concerned for modern civilization as it pertains to social media...

By the way, never trust someone with X's in their username. Never.

How to: make a blog post people will actually read

I'm no expert, but there are a number of things that I make sure I put into my blog posts that I think everyone should for the sake of art's sake. Most of these don't actually make your post better, but it makes the reader (you) possibly continue reading.

Order your paragraphs. I've been taught to order from least to most important, but that doesn't work well for me. I prefer starting with an engaging argument to get someone interested, then go from least to most. The reader may just be more inclined to agree with you this way, and if they don't, oh well. By the way, in this specific blog post, I'm not really trying any specific order (then again, most of my blog posts are kinda like this).

Appearance. Make your blog look different from all the others. Don't just stick with the pack, but flow to the side of it in style. This blog is awkwardly different. Black/dark background, a creative layout, pop-up blue and white text, and no big fancy header image; just the blog name. Good for bandwidth, good for getting noticed. And this isn't even a custom theme (WordPress demands money for that, which is why I'm thinking about going to Blogger). However, this isn't necessarily the reason I chose this theme. I chose it because it's easy on the eyes. Looking at a white background is like staring at a light bulb. Oh, and I also learned that blue light increases electromagnetivity, preserves food better, is the most-liked color in the world, and actually increases mental activity (higher IQ scores).

Links are cool. There's a certain science to them that are interesting to the reader. They're interactive, leading to more learned information, and as soon as a page loads, the reader sees the pretty color it comes in. In my blog's case, it's very blue, almost pleads to get clicked on. Links aren't just good for information, but they also make for good paragraph emphasis.

When posting a link, don't just lay out the full address; nobody wants to read things that don't make sense like "http://blahblahblah.co.az.de.us/foobar/1337/crap.aspx". Just wastes space. Make sure that you integrate it into text. In addition, make sure that the words you decide to use for the link are interesting. Don't do "I have a pet gerbil, here" or "Never scare a black dude, man!!!" (by the way, the latter is my video). One is flat out boring, and the other makes the reader just jump to the link and not read the information. A sweet spot would be to select interesting 2-3 words for linking. For example, "despite the fact that Kanye West's single Homecoming wasn't nearly a hit, I still find it better than Stronger".

Also, when posting a blog post, one of the most vital yet simple attension-getters would be images. I'm not saying to plaster your posts with pictures of iPhones and T-Mobile G1's. I'm just asking for one image on the side that describes at least the first half of your post. As you can see, 90% of my blog posts do this, and the reason that not all of them is because I don't want much emphasis on them; they're just there so I can say I have it there. Now, when choosing an image, it isn't smart to just pull a rabbit out of the magical hat known as Google. For one thing, the reader may have alredy seen the image if they were searching for information about rabbits, and found your post because of it. Oh, and by the way, it's illegal. To be on the safe (and prettier) side of the fence, go to Flicker's Creative Commons section, more specifically the Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike liscensed images, which basically means that you'll use the image in addition to giving credit to the person who took the image, which I do through linking the image to the page I found it from. They're more origional, are normally done with higher quality cameras, and support the Creative Commons "movement".

That's all I got for my fellow bloggers for now. I bet you a cookie I'll remember 3 more things not here already about 15 minutes after I click the Publish button.

Ciao

~del_rio

Random thought: An iPhone app that does it all

[by the way, this post was typed in an iPod, so forgive me of any typos]

Well, I was doing my routine iPod internet checking, going from Google Reader for my feeds, WeatherBug for the forecast, checking my mail for new messages, MySpace and Facebook for my social life, and Twitterific for everything else, in addition to anything else I may need to do. As productive as Apple's flagship touchscreen products are, one can't help but feel a little dragged-down by having to open another app every few minutes. Additionally, there are times one simply wants their information at a glance, with more than just the time and date on-screen. This is where my concept app takes over.

I challenge the App development community to program the all-in-one app for the all-in-one device. I'd like to be able to take my iPod out of my pocket, unlock it and see the time, the date, the stock market, my to-do list when it's going to rain, my RSS feeds, and my latest @replies, hopefully all cached in case there's no WiFi. I don't need every functionality in the book, just what I look at the most.

Lucky for you programmers, the power of the Internet is on your side, and the majority of this can be done through web feeds that do much of the work for you (The Weather Channel, Yahoo! Stocks, the Twitter API, ect.)

Now the big problem is the UI of the entire App. How will so much information be placed in such a small screen? One concept would be similar to that of the Home Screen, allowing you to slide your finger to go page by page of overflowing love. Of couse, you can always use the blah-inducing arbitrary touch menu. Or how about a number of user-selected screens with a toolbar at the top of the screen allowing you to navigate to your information? To be honest I see a number of flaws in all of these interfaces.

If I were programming this App, I'd go for the overgrown Safari web page way, which allows you to move around in a seemingly endless territory that allows for vertical and horizontal movement. Use two fingers to pinch-zoom in and out of your floating information. Double-tap on (for example) the the current temperature and chance of rain to zoom directly into it, and expanding the information to a 5 day forecast. Press a button on the bottom-left of the screen to go into editing mode, where the user can change the location of thee little info widgets.