Lucian Marin
Disconnected
I no longer use Twitter. It seems I won’t be announcing earthquakes when they happen again. I removed all my contacts from Flickr — I wanted to keep some, but I didn’t want to discriminate. I will keep using their service. I did the same for my Facebook and LinkedIn profiles; connections are more and more worthless online. I want to consume the web and participate in conversations in a different way, one that doesn’t put me at the center of the action (attention) — or at least I shouldn’t be aware of it. Well, that’s because I’m not that kind of person.
I’m a person who cares about every little detail — pixels, you might say — and when the effect of abundance makes its appearance, you want to go back to basics for a fresh start. The problem with technology and web applications is that they change too fast. Yesterday you signed up for a service you enjoyed, and tomorrow that thing is completely different. Why does nobody care about when I joined their web application and provide me the very same experience? I’ll do just that. For example, if Textpattern changes the user experience in the next version, I won’t make the switch, because for me usability is what I’ve gotten used to.
The first idea
You may now ask: how the heck does this guy see the future of online contacts? Well, a while ago I had a very interesting idea, and it went something like this: @lucianmarin needs (or wants to make) a site that bookmarks people and their online accounts (Flickr, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.), including their latest activity. What I meant is that we need a piece of software that facilitates neither the new way of communication (you fill a profile and I subscribe to it) nor the old way (I fill a profile for you in my address book), but a mutual connection where both of us fill in a “profile”. I call this people bookmarking.
HP is doing the same old thing one more time with its mobile social network. My idea works differently. Let’s say you are Leo Laporte and you just spoke with Mike Arrington. After that, you can add a comment line to his profile: “What a jerk, I will never speak to him again” (it was for real). Mike Arrington can check what others said about him and find the line. The beautiful part is that Leo Laporte keeps this in his web application’s data, and Mike sees it only when they are linked together. So basically: no link, no fun, and no public embarrassment for either of them.
The second idea
Oh man, this one should be much more fun. I bet everyone knows about the blogroll — that’s what makes your blog a little bit more “social”. Since the beginning of EVNO, authors were listed differently: they had a picture, their name and a status. That’s pretty static, you might say. But what if it was interactive? Like a distributed social network where everyone can hook up, if they have a site, a blog, or are already on a social network.
By the way, I got a new phone. It’s a dumb phone, but it has 1GB of internal memory with a microSD option and a very nice music player. I liked Opera Mini on my Sony Ericsson K800i (this 3-year-old phone has a better camera than the new iPhone 3GS — I had to say it), and I hope it stays the same beautiful piece of software in the future.
After all that being said, he admits that this is a protest against social media (stupidity) abundance.