Beyond

Paul Boutin today claimed on Wired magazine that blogs are a 2004 relic that have been superceded by the likes of Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook etc:-

“The blogosphere, once a freshwater oasis of folksy self-expression and clever thought, has been flooded by a tsunami of paid bilge. Cut-rate journalists and underground marketing campaigns now drown out the authentic voices of amateur wordsmiths.

It’s almost impossible to get noticed, except by hecklers. And why bother? The time it takes to craft sharp, witty blog prose is better spent expressing yourself on Flickr, Facebook, or Twitter.”

This argument was later described as "flamebait", and at least one blogger admitted that they had fallen for it.

If indeed it was such, then this would be tantamount to trolling in the blogosphere: An open invitation to the kooks to migrate from the realms of Usenet and various esoteric online forums to infest the alleged "tsunami of paid bilge" with their incessant idiosyncrasies and four-letter-word-laden flame-wars.

Is the blogosphere really destined to become a domain of Kadaitcha-Man-like supertrolls and macho insult-contests run by over-testosteronised individuals attempting to score points off one another by means of character-assassination and flagrant depersonalisation of lesser mortals deemed as "f*ckwits"?

Hopefully not: That kind of thing has its rightful place in certain newsgroups on Usenet and the like; but hopefully won’t be spilling over into the adult blogosphere anytime soon.

As mathewingram.com puts it:-

"I’m hoping that Boutin’s post took about the same amount of time as it did to come up with that Twitter message, because it has about as much value. Is everyone going to have a blog? No — and they never were. Facebook and Twitter are probably enough for many people. Not writing at all is enough for many people. But why does it have to be all or nothing? What we have now is the option to micro-blog (i.e., Twitter) some thoughts, post others to Facebook, share things on FriendFeed or through Google Reader, and blog things that take longer to think through. But I guess that’s not as catchy as a “blogs are dead, Twitter killed them” scenario."

It is my sincere hope that blogs will remain a focal point of online self-expression without invasion from kooks and trolls from Usenet or anywhere else. It would be a great shame to see this proud channel of online-individuality fall victim to the cyber-thuggery and neo-macho-egoism of the newsgroup terrorist or die out as a result of the rise of microbloggers. I very much doubt that this is or will ever be a realistic scenario in all honesty. The mere possibility of it ever being the case could be quite unsettling to some people though.

Do you think it possible? Is there any danger of an "asswipe-invasion" at any point? Your thoughts please:-

Panic set in at kkomp.com office when first it was discovered that the blog posts were no longer being notified on Facebook, followed by the discovery that Ping.fm had vanished. In the broadcasting social-network’s place was a Go-Daddy advertisment but no ping.fm dashboard.

kkomp.com use ping.fm’s free broadcasting notification service by means of a plugin attached to the WordPress blog which you’re reading now. This plugin allows notification of any new posts to be sent to ping.fm, and then subsequently onwards from ping.fm to Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, FriendFeed, Plurk, and the like.

I immediately Googled for any further news; of which there was none, and consulted Twitter. I was told that ping.fm were having domain problems. During the short rally of tweets the ping.fm site reappeared and seems to be back to normal operation. I have no idea how long exactly the site was down for: All I know is that it was for somewhere between 0 and 36 hours.

This post is partially news and partially a request for further enlightenment: If anyone knows any further details then perhaps they’d be good enough to add a comment below? Is there an ongoing problem or was it a one off outage? How long were they down for? … And other information of that nature.

Microblogging service Twitter seems to be on the up. Following the replacement of CEO Jack Dorsey by fellow co-founder Evan Williams on Thursday; Twitter’s backers have announced that new revenue models will be unveiled in the first half of next year.

It has long been a contentious issue as to how Twitter is going to make any money to keep itself afloat, and is a question that still continues to be bandied around in cyberspace, with well-meaning folks making all kinds of suggestions.

With a current estimated value of $80 million, it’s on a near level-par with Facebook, which has dropped considerably in value in the last couple of months according to unspecified reports. Twitter has been spending the last few months remedying the not-uncommon service-outages with which it was regularly plagued, making the famous fail-whale into an iconic character with its own cult following. These outages were a positive sign for Twitter; showing a huge demand for its services…And Twitter has certainly grabbed people’s attention: Wired.com even estimated that Twitter will eventually top the 1 billion figure and continue growing.

In his article on the subject for Silicon Alley Insider; Henry Blodget makes an interesting analysis:-

"Why is Twitter different than the 9,000 other Web 2.0 companies that are intending to figure out a revenue model eventually? Because people are obsessed with it.  Don’t forget that this company was founded last year.  Google wasn’t anywhere near this ubiquitous in its second year, and neither was Facebook."

With the economy in the current state who knows what may happen? Overall though, it appears that the future for Twitter is bright. What do you think? Greatness or collapse? Maybe something in between?

Prologue Rabbit:

Quite some time ago - 2 years plus; I’m not exactly sure how long, I got an invite from a friend to join Facebook. I’d heard a lot about it but wasn’t really into social networking at that time: Times were good economically, and I was concentrating on getting a computer-building enterprise running. I wasn’t that fussed on spending hours posting my life online and getting chatted-up by lonely losers using the internet as a last-ditch attempt at getting a date with anyone they could find.

Anyway I eventually gave Facebook a try - And I found it so sucky at the time that after not long I closed down my account in protest. I kept a MySpace account going but abandoned it and forgot the login details.

More than two years later; having become a Twitter, FriendFeed, etc, user - I found that everyone and anyone was using Facebook. Yesterday I made up my mind to give them a second chance and opened an account: The new look Facebook is so much better, more user-friendly, and functional.

The Guts:

…And so to the purpose of this article; having released and dispensed with the drivel:-

I’m going to be honest and say that I’m not an iPhone owner or user. What? A geek without an iPhone?!: Dracula without fangs, a tree not made of wood! Well, approve or disapprove; I’m a Wintard and I use Windows Mobile on my mobile phone supplied by BT, and some Linux variant on my Sony Ericsson X750i, I think it is. I simply don’t see the point of buying an iPhone, and I have possible gripes with Apple - But that’s another story. Since I don’t own an iPhone I can’t tell you much about this App from experience: So I’m going to cheat and quote a little from TechCrunch.com:

“While previous releases of the Facebook application supported the News Feed feature, only mobile photo uploads and status updates were displayed. In version 2.0, the News Feed has been completely overhauled to match item-for-item with that of the site itself, throwing news posts, relationship and interest updates, and all photo uploads into the mix. Furthermore, users are now able to comment on any given bit of news, or limit the feed to only the categories they wish to peruse.”

Ah what the heck: Click the link below and read:

Facebook Rolls Out Version 2.0 of their iPhone Application

Yes; maybe it’s not standard practice to just hand over to another blog mid-story: A little deviation from the norm won’t hurt anyone nevertheless; plus I’ve done Michael Arrington, Greg Kumparak, and the rest of the TC crew a favour.

…And Finally…

Something else that’s hitting the headlines is the House of Representatives’  Web site - Which has been overwhelmed this week by a tidal-wave of visitors trying to e-mail their Congressperson and/or download George Bush’s Financial Bailout Bill that the House rejected. The site saw three to four times its normal traffic yesterday, 29th September,, according to Jeff Ventura, a spokesman for the House Chief Administrative Officer.

That’ll teach ‘em to vote “no”: DDOS ‘em as punishment, lol.

And now; Some advertising:

A few of the dodgy comments posted on MySpace and Facebook :-

These comments lead on to a link to a bogus You-Tube clone, which asks you to download the latest Flash player; at which a file called “codecsetup.exe” - a network worm - downloads to the victim’s machine.

Kaspersky said its security suite detected the threats proactively and signatures were added to the database on July 31, 2008.

Always remember to keep your Windows machine fully patched, your anti-virus updated, and be careful of allowing executables to download to your machine: If you suspect it then it’s best to not allow it to do so. If you don’t have anti-malware software then I suggest you get XoftSpySE: As a user of XoftSpySE myself I can thoroughly recommend it to anyone seeking a thorough and comprehensive defence against spyware.it’s designed to scan the user’s complete computer system to detect spyware parasites and quarantine the infected files for immediate protection. It scans your entire PC, including running processes, registry entries, files and folders; it detects and removes: adware, spyware, pop-Up generators, keyloggers, trojans, hijackers, and malware; it’s fast, powerful, and easy to use, and you get comprehensive customer technical support with your subscription. It even protects against identity and credit card theft. To discover more and get a FREE scan Click Here!

In their press release on this new version of the old threat, the FBI said:

“The spammers spreading this virus are preying on Internet users and making their computers an unwitting part of criminal botnet activity. We urge [all] citizens [of every country] to help prevent the spread of botnets by becoming web-savvy.”

XoftSpySE Anti-Spyware

As a user of XoftSpySE myself I can thoroughly recommend it to anyone seeking a thorough and comprehensive defence against spyware.

Designed to scan the user’s complete computer system to detect spyware parasites and quarantine the infected files for immediate protection, XoftSpySE is your fast, dependable anti-spyware defence.

§ Complete PC scanning, including running processes, registry entries, files and folders

§ Detects and removes: adware, spyware, pop-Up generators, keyloggers, trojans, hijackers, and malware

§ One of the largest spyware definition databases in the industry

§ Automatic definition and feature updates

§ Fast, powerful, and easy to use

§ Comprehensive customer technical support

§ Protects against identity and credit card theft

To discover more and get a FREE scan Click Here!