How a Social Network Fails

How a Social Network FailsThe Atlantic

“Many core social-platform functions, such as the hashtag, reblog, and retweet, were not invented by Silicon Valley tech geniuses. Instead, they were pioneered by enthusiastic users who loved the products they were using, and they were only later formalized into the apps themselves.”

“Elon has these really strongly held personal views on what the internet should look like, which aren’t really shared by most internet users,” Rocky Cole, a former online-harm researcher at Google in New York City, told me. “He forces his worldview on the Twitter community, and I think the result is why you’re seeing people leaving.”

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!

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