Category: Teh Interwebs

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Mastodon

If you’re here on a blog in the year of 2022, then bless your little heart. I have been using Twitter since 2006 when it was just Twittr, and it was born out of AOL Instant Messenger status culture.

I remember when it was seen as a mostly nerdy thing back then and people had a hard time grasping its differences to Facebook, which had a bit more traction at the time.

I remember when the word ”tweet” starting catching on and how that was divisive.

My point being that any change is usually tumultuous at best and that things will eventually settle.

It is the arrogance of every age to believe that yesterday was calm.
— Tom Peters, Wired 5.12, Dec 1997

I looked into Mastodon about four years ago, when Twitter was making stupid changes to their API that limited the functionality of third-party apps12. The only deterrent of creating an account was: not many people were there.

Well, times are a’changing, and maybe the (my) hope for an actual open web built on standards and interoperability lives on. Many of my tweeps are moving to Mastodon, and I have setup my own server, and it feels like fresh breath.

I don’t anticipate a massive onboarding outside the nerds like me who have been waiting for this moment. One of the points about the fediverse is the decision of choosing a server (community, or home), where your account will live. I admit that was part of my hesitancy at first as well. I just went with creating my own community.

Comic strip demonstrating anytime a new standard is created, it leads to more standards as old ones are not deprecated.

This seems applicable regarding social media sites.

No one owns Mastadon. It will not be subject to advertisers. The whole point is to build connections between accounts. You will not see everything all the time, but you can follow people and all their posts no matter where they are4.

It is confusing at times, messy too, but it’s that hill I’ll die on for what the open web should, and could be.

Find me here: https://social.4score7pongs.com/@jarbochov

  1. Arguably the best way to experience Twitter. ↩
  2. Most of Twitter absorbed functionality was sherocked by third party apps. ↩
  3. Currently you can’t move your posts. But you can download them and I imagine that will be in the roadmap depending on how popular and supported the platform is. ↩
  4. not to mention, much better moderation tools in general. ↩
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Twitter

With Twitter’s possible inevitable collapse, I find myself wanting to go back to the blog. You know, before the whole microblog.

Twitter was never perfect and maybe it can and will be better. Time will only tell. RSS never died. Podcasting and feed readers still power the truly democratized web envisioned decades ago. Newsletters are also a thing still?

Also spoiler alert for those who gave up on RSS the day Google Reader died… there are a ton of options now and they’re all pretty good. Even local options that don’t require a platform. But the social options aren’t there in most cases, but that’s okay. You can just share what you find on Twit…. your blog.

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Snowflake

While snowflake has a negative connotation in modern American vernacular, snowflakes are actually pretty heckin cool! Check out this snowflake generator by Vivian Wu. It comes pretty close to capturing the real thing. Also, please teach your children that ALL snowflakes have three axises (six sides).

Source: Snowflake Generator

Some snowflakes I’ve been able to capture in my lifetime. Extremely lucky shots as they are hard to catch!

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Facebook Buys Giphy

If you would have told me in 2005 that GIFs would be huge, I would have laughed at you. Absolutely absurd. GIFs were the bane of personal websites in the late 90s and early 2000s. But as media has evolved, bandwidth increased, and now we all have mini-computers in our pockets, GIFs have been an indispensable resource in expressing our feelings, referencing pop culture, and generally speaking it’s lightweight portable video now.

Now Facebook is involved which in turn means privacy is at risk. I didn’t think about it at first, but Giphy is the defacto source for GIFs and integration to their Google database of GIFs. Now we all have trackers in any app we use.

Of course Giphy is going to retain its own brand. If they renamed it to “Facebook Tracking Pixels”, usage might drop off. Think about all the messaging apps that don’t offer Facebook integration for security/privacy reasons (not to mention not wanting to have their apps crash on launch when Facebook pushes a buggy update), where Giphy images appear. You know, like Apple’s Messages. Well, now Facebook has tracking pixels in them.

John Gruber

Cool. Cool cool cool.

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Flickr

Flickr will always have a place in my heart. It represents one of the last true bastions of the open web. It was one of the first places where I saw a community of like minded individuals come together. And from 2004-2008 it was a special time of growth and possibility. It may not have caught up with Instagrams of the world, but it’s still a pretty nice place. Hopefully it will survive the new post-Yahoo world. Kottke summed it up best:

Flickr was extraordinarily vital, for years. It still has so much to offer. Sometimes there’s something reassuring about a tool that’s still much the same.

Source: In praise of Flickr