Bits 'n' Bobs.

“Social Networking” update

I think I posted something similar to this, a month or two back, in the form of a queued post - though if memory serves, that was more focused on podcasts.

Either way - here’s another one :)

Reddit: New entry.

I’ve been ‘aware’ of reddit for a while, as a Diggnation viewer - Reddit seemed to be the piss-poorly formatted site that came along when Digg started its downward spiral, and took over. That was about the extent of it, until I got an Anonymous message telling me my Kindle / e-book stream had been submitted into the Books reddit [I now know who did that, and should probably get round to thanking them].

As a result, I had a look round, and have now started using the site. Not hugely - one or two visits per day, but I mostly check out the /books and /Kindle reddits. I expected somewhat of a ‘chan’ mentality, but it seems, so far, alright.

Facebook: Still using.

Something that’ll come up time and time again, during this post, is the word content. Content is king - you can have the most fantastic website in the world, but if it’s dead as a dodo, or full of idiots, then what’s the point? I’ll be upfront - I don’t get this whole ‘accumulate as many friends / followers as possible’ mentality. I’ve got 14 11 [I removed a few more whilst typing this up] ‘friends’ on Facebook. I could probably have ~100 if I accepted every Friend Request I get - but too be honest, there’s already a wealth of content on the ‘net - I don’t particularly wanna read through even more. That, and I get people who barely know me, sending in requests.

However - most peeps are still using Facebook, so for the foreseeable future, it’ll remain on the ‘active rota’

Tumblr:

I would have thought this one was somewhat obvious. Aside from the fact I’m typing this on Tumblr - I’ve typed up close to 10,000 words worth of content here on tumblr, in the last few weeks.

Google Plus: Waiting for content…

The problem I have with Google+ is that it’s somewhat empty. It has the potential to be an awesome social network - but for the moment, it’s devoid of good, and consistent, content. I’m hoping this improves as the year progresses.

Twitter: On the decline.

My usage of Twitter has been on the decline for a while now. It’s great for ‘breaking news’, but again - in terms of content, the people I follow, don’t use it all that much. I’d love to have my Twitter ‘timeline’ show up in Google Reader, but it seems Twitter removed that option a while ago. So, for the most part, I check it every other day.

Sites that aren’t technically ‘social networks’

Lifehacker / Gawker / io9: Quick browse via RSS.

The above sites, I used to read quite a fair bit. Then they changed their design, and it just didn’t ‘work’ anymore for me. Not on a technical level - it just became somewhat of a chore to visit. What I do now, is ‘subscribe’ to the sites via Google Reader, and have a quick browse through their respective RSS feeds, once or twice a day, clicking on anything that catches my attention.

The Famous Males Forums: Done

I haven’t actually posted here for years. As seems to be the case when you get a group of gay men in one place [be it a physical location, or a virtual one], it eventually ends up turning into a cesspit. This place is no different, hence my using the following text as my ‘signature’ over there since I left:

466f7220612047617920736974652074686572652073757265206172652061206c6f74206f662043756e74732068657265

That said, from time to time, I do browse through the forum, especially the piccys section. However, it seems recently to be full of pics of Z-List boybands, and Tom Daley. And I don’t particularly wanna keep clicking past threads full of a teenager in his speedos - even if he does have a better body than I’ll ever have.

Geekscape - Done.

I’ve mentioned Geekscape a fair few times. Which makes sense - most of the people I follow on these social networks, I know through the site - which is true of tumblr. I posted thousands of times on the previous iteration of the site / forum - helped run the book club, became a member of the staff, pretty much ran the news section, and played an [I believe] somewhat significant part in the development of the new site [in terms of feedback / suggestions etc, etc].

When I originally signed up, the site was pretty much run by two peeps - Jonathan and Brian. By the time I came ‘on stream’ as staff, a third had been added - William. Now at first, I thought that it was just me, who thought the guy was an opinionated asshole, but from conversations with other staff members, it quickly emerged that wasn’t the case - it might not have been universal, but a fair few people didn’t like him.

Other than that, however, I really enjoyed the place. Sure there were a few ‘cringe inducing’ posters on the forums, but it was cool.

Then I started getting sick, right around the time the site and forums were transitioning to the new iterations.

Flash forward to now. The annoying ‘editor’ / Administrator - Bibbiani, has been replaced by two new ones - a former forum member who, I always thought was a bit of an ass-kisser, and a new bloke.

Who is a bit of a cunt, to put it mildly.

That aside - the site itself? It’s lost its appeal. The news section is awful - two days for a news post about The Dark Knight Rises trailer being released? What makes it worse - from the datestamp, it had been submitted fairly promptly - only to sit in the moderation queue, for someone to approve it.

Which smacks of piss-poor management, especially given the fact that almost everyone on the current iteration of the site is a member of staff! There are people with four posts on the forums, who have Staff access!

Back to the site, however - the advertising really is bad. I use Google Chrome to browse the ‘net, and do so without an Ad-Blocker. Which means, I can now ‘experience’ Geekscape unaltered - complete with somewhat NSFW Adverts at the bottom of every news post.

That said - they do compliment the actual pornographic content that appears on the site, in the guise of ‘exclusive pics’ from whatever Geek orientated XXX ‘spoof’ is currently in production.

But the main problem? The forums are dead. When the site transitioned to the current version, it seems a lot of people were lost along the way [along with virtually all the content - I saved the Book Club posts, that was about all that was ported, via the Movie Club podcasts]. Sure there are a few good people still there, who were on the version of the forums, I used, but for the most part -it’s empty.

There are [at the time of writing] 586 unique accounts over on the site. At most - AT MOST, 12 people post regularly. And by ‘regularly’ I mean a few times per month.

And the people who are there, and are interesting - I can ‘follow’ their content via any number of other places.

I’d already put the podcast onto a ‘case by case’ basis - if the guests were interesting [such as Ian Kerner - comic genius extraordinaire], then I’d watch, but I’m watching less, and less.

So I made a decision - something helped by that cunt of an Administrator, who has, for the record, never had a nice thing to say about me.

I’m done, fully, with both. I’ll watch bits of the recent Comic-Con episode, but that’ll be it.

I wish them luck - I really do, but there’s nothing there that does anything for me - just memories of the old forum, a few of the old faithful, and [seemingly] 80 members of ‘staff’ doing bugger all.

Stephen Fry “May leave Twitter”

First off - here’s the link to the BBC Article -> Original Article.

Secondly, and I say this as someone who loves Stephen Fry even more than I loves Hugh Laurie (and that’s saying something) - Is this really what qualifies as National news?

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