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A Great Read – “Facebook and Instagram: When Your Favorite App Sells Out”

I love great writing.

Paul Ford has written an article for NYMag that definitely qualifies as great writing (like just about everything he writes). In Facebook and Instagram: When Your Favorite App Sells Out, Paul eloquently clarifies how most Instagram users feel about the Facebook acquisition and provides a great deal of clarity in the process.

There are so many gems in the piece, but here’s a little sample.

So if you’re an Instagram user, you’ve been picking up on all of the cues about how important you are, how valuable you are to Instagram. Then along comes Facebook, the great alien presence that just hovers over our cities, year after year, as we wait and fear. You turn on the television and there it is, right above the Empire State Building, humming. And now a hole has opened up on its base and it has dumped a billion dollars into a public square — which turned out to not be public, but actually belongs to a few suddenly-very-rich dudes. You can’t blame users for becoming hooting primates when a giant spaceship dumps a billion dollars out of its money hole. It’s like the monolith in the movie 2001 appeared filled with candy and a sign on the front that said “NO CANDY FOR YOU.”

A great read. [via Ftrain]

Oh, and if you like this article, be sure to check out The Age of Mechanical Reproduction, which I’ve linked to in the past.

41 days ago • technology • Tags: , , , ,

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Questioning My Connections

As I stated in my last post, I’ve been on a bit of a minimalism kick of recent. I’ve been contemplating my needs for things in my life and trimming down where I can. Over the weekend, I thought long and hard about my use of Instant Messengers and why I’m constantly logged into so many.

In 1997, I took my first contract as a consultant with the Kansas Building Industry Workers’ Compensation Fund, which was based out of Topeka, Kansas. Wanting to stay in touch with family and friends, I came across an application called ICQ (pronounced I seek you). I was online a good bit, even back then, so when a friend would log on to the Internet I was notified that they were online and I could say “hey”. It was revolutionary at the time and I guess for me it was the Twitter of the late 90′s.

Soon there were copy cats as other Instant Messenger networks entered the market. Each one offered a new feature, or I had a client that used a different network, and thus I ended up joining them all. Fast forward to today and I’m looking at eight different messaging networks that I’m logged into on a daily basis.

  • AIM — npugdotorg
  • Google Talk — mashby@gmail.com
  • ICQ — 12443768
  • MSN — ashbygroup@hotmail.com
  • Facebook — mashby@gmail.com
  • Mobile Me — michael.ashby@me.com
  • Skype — mashby
  • Yahoo — ashbygroup

Wow. Do I really need to be logged into all these networks? Of course not. Programs like AdiumX (mac) and Trillian (win) make it easy to stay connected, but that doesn’t justify the number of open loops and potential distractions.

So Who Made The Cut?

I use Google Talk for work and it’s my primary IM network, so it stays. Mobile Me allows me to support Mac users via iChat and Skype I use from time to time, so I think both of those will stay as well.

As for the others, I’m canceling my accounts as soon as this article is posted. If you’re on one of these networks, I’m sorry, but feel free to use Google Talk, or send me an e-mail.

What’s Next?

I’m still contemplating other areas of my digital life, such as RSS, Twitter, Facebook, etc., but I haven’t finalized my decisions as of yet. When I do though, I’ll be sure to post about it.

890 days ago • technology • Tags: , , , , , , ,