gregh  2007-07-29 16:12  facebook  socialnetworks   

After some generally poor performance from NetNewsWire's NewsGator syncing today, I decided to take another look at Google Reader. The OPML export from NetNewsWire to Google Reader went perfectly. The next step was to read a few items in Google Reader and share them. Done. Next, I went to Facebook and added the application and gave it my userid so it could find the feed for my shared items. Finally, I checked out the shared items of my Friends (none) and my Networks (some.)

I can finally understand some of the hype this has been getting. I can't imagine I would find it all that meaningful if I had a network as large as Scoble's. However, I can see where, with a much more directed network, it could be very useful. At work, a group of us use particular tags and feeds and Yahoo! Pipes to provide a list of interesting things we'd like to share. This avoids the messy email issue of lots of emailed links.

The Facebook application addresses the same problem, but more easily and with dynamic group membership. If a user chooses to add the application and share their links, they'll be shared with the group. What's more, there is a means to measure the popularity of links. It's the sort of thing I think might make TWEN suck less.

What's missing at this stage? A feed of my network's shared links. I don't want to go into Facebook to read feeds. Any feeds. The application advertises that it's still in beta, and I hope an eventual feature is the addition of feeds of the shared links from the various networks and friends.

gregh  2007-07-26 17:23  facebook  feeds  Law_School  socialnetworks  TWEN  westlaw   

ZiefBrief points out that Westlaw's TWEN (The West Education Network) got touched up in

TWEN Gets a Facelift:

Last Wednesday, Westlaw unveiled a new look and feel for the law school home page, as well as some aesthetic and functional improvements for TWEN. One of the biggest changes is that you can now display only active courses on your "My Courses" page or only inactive or archived courses by clicking on either the "Active Courses" or "Hidden Courses" button. This is a nice feature that helps to reduce the clutter on your TWEN home page. If you'd like a quick five-minute tutorial that displays the latest TWEN changes, you can find the tutorial here.

I saw that, though I'm unconvinced it's an improvement. The old design was plain and ugly but workable. I'm unsure what's supposed to be on the front page of lawschool.westlaw.com, because it doesn't render at all in Firefox on the Mac. I could swear I've complained about TWEN more than just this in the past, but perhaps I'm wrong. Or perhaps it's just embedded in some of the others posts that mention TWEN.

What's wrong with TWEN? Here are a few major weaknesses.

Where are the feeds? In 2007, why am I being emailed (when someone chooses to notify by email) rather than being given an option to subscribe to feeds.

Where's the aggregator? Why doesn't TWEN allow a professor to set up a reading list of topical blogs? Or subscribe to a del.icio.us or Technorati or Google Reader shared links feed of tags for the class?

Where are the tags? Wouldn't it be great if you could tag content from around Westlaw with TWEN-aware tags? See a case on topic? Tag it. In fact, why doesn't Westlaw do this natively? Topic-based Key numbers are fine, but they're someone else's categorization.

And on that bigger topic, where's the Westlaw-wide integration? Isn't this supposed to be our first taste of West's crack? Why not really get us hooked, maybe with stuff we can use in the future.

West and TWEN (and Lexis, too) could stand to get out a little more. I may not think all is right with Facebook, but that's definitely a step in the right direction. Bring people together. Encourage sharing. Encourage networking. What's more, get them deeply integrated in the tools. That will really get them hooked.

More importantly, it will make the tools more useful.

gregh  2007-07-16 23:10  facebook  socialnetworks  web_2.0   

Scoble's been going nuts over Facebook recently.

He pointed that he's he's been questioned about the value of these networks. I've been playing with Facebook recently, after having long tried to avoid it. On the other hand, I've been gradually building up my LinkedIn network.

My verdict at this point? As a business tool, neither seems to have great value to me right now. However, those people I'm interested in exist on LinkedIn but generally don't on Facebook.

For one thing, the organizational features of Facebook are atrocious. I'm in a group now that I feel would be very useful for networking going forward: my fellow law school classmates. Check out the myriad ways USF School of Law members/alums have listed the fact that they attend the law school. While I'm sure there are wonderful undergrads, I don't care about networking with them. LinkedIn? Very easy to find fellow USF SoLers. LinkedIn strikes me as being much more interested in people with more structured networks. Facebook -- though less so than MySpace -- seems to eschew structure.

Heck. I can't even list my entire technology work history with Facebook. Apparently, more than 5 jobs is no good. Great, great networking tool.

James Robertson points to Dare Obasanjo, who notes the tech bigwigs who are in Facebook. All of those but Steve Ballmer is also on LinkedIn. Of course, none of that necessarily validates either of these tools. Earnest usage is a much better validator.

One problem with Facebook, if Scoble properly described its Roach Motel-like characteristics, is that information checks in, but it never checks out. I haven't gotten involved enough to check out the API, but I have been following Marc Canter's open social networking pleas. LinkedIn is still behind on opening itself up. But what would definitely be ideal is the option to choose the right social network for the right task.

In short, I'm unimpressed by Facebook. I'm not overjoyed with LinkedIn. However, I am excited by the possibilities. Ideally, that could be done by open networks that share, rather than open networks that wall data off. In the meantime, with too many networks, too many people to keep up with, and not much value coming from any of them, I really don't see the added value in switching to Facebook.

Is it possible some people like Facebook better because they like all of the "friends" they get, versus the "connections" of LinkedIn?

Man. I didn't even get to how little value Twitter/Jaiku/Pownce are to me.