flakes of nuisance » facebook http://mcneillfamily.com paying attention to distractions since 1958 Sat, 04 Feb 2012 14:49:00 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.2 Google Engineer: “Google+ is a Prime Example of Our Complete Failure to Understand Platforms”http://mcneillfamily.com/2011/10/15/google-engineer-%e2%80%9cgoogle-is-a-prime-example-of-our-complete-failure-to-understand-platforms%e2%80%9d/ http://mcneillfamily.com/2011/10/15/google-engineer-%e2%80%9cgoogle-is-a-prime-example-of-our-complete-failure-to-understand-platforms%e2%80%9d/#comments Sat, 15 Oct 2011 13:51:15 +0000 admin http://mcneillfamily.com/?p=6647 Last night, high-profile Google engineer Steve Yegge mistakenly posted a long rant about working at Amazon and Google’s own issues with creating platforms on Google+. Apparently, he only wanted to share it internally with everybody at Google, but mistaken shared it publicly. For the most part, Yegge’s post focusses on the horrors of working at Amazon, a company that is notorious for its political infighting. The most interesting part to me, though, is Yegge’s blunt assessment of what he perceives to be Google’s inability to understand platforms and how this could endanger the company in the long run.

Google Engineer: [

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]]]> http://mcneillfamily.com/2011/10/15/google-engineer-%e2%80%9cgoogle-is-a-prime-example-of-our-complete-failure-to-understand-platforms%e2%80%9d/feed/ 0 “too like it”http://mcneillfamily.com/2011/06/29/too-like-it/ http://mcneillfamily.com/2011/06/29/too-like-it/#comments Wed, 29 Jun 2011 10:08:17 +0000 admin http://mcneillfamily.com/?p=6624

]]> http://mcneillfamily.com/2011/06/29/too-like-it/feed/ 0 good advicehttp://mcneillfamily.com/2010/11/19/good-advice/ http://mcneillfamily.com/2010/11/19/good-advice/#comments Fri, 19 Nov 2010 00:55:52 +0000 admin http://mcneillfamily.com/?p=6278

]]> http://mcneillfamily.com/2010/11/19/good-advice/feed/ 0 Twitter and Facebook cannot change the real world, says Malcolm Gladwellhttp://mcneillfamily.com/2010/10/05/twitter-and-facebook-cannot-change-the-real-world-says-malcolm-gladwell/ http://mcneillfamily.com/2010/10/05/twitter-and-facebook-cannot-change-the-real-world-says-malcolm-gladwell/#comments Tue, 05 Oct 2010 10:27:07 +0000 admin http://mcneillfamily.com/?p=6059

Social networks, those loose, busy and self-absorbing communities of Facebookers and Twitterers, have always invited analogies from the insect world. If we are to accept the most common of them, then in the past week, Malcolm Gladwell, provocateur-in-chief at the New Yorker magazine, has poked a sharp stick into the online ants’ nest. The twitterers have responded to his provocation by swarming on to blogs and websites to protect their uniting belief: that the future belongs to them.

Gladwell is a spirited contrarian. His argument in the New Yorker was an attack on the prevalent idea that online [

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]]]> http://mcneillfamily.com/2010/10/05/twitter-and-facebook-cannot-change-the-real-world-says-malcolm-gladwell/feed/ 0 How Facebook Can Become Bigger In Five Years Than Google Is Todayhttp://mcneillfamily.com/2010/10/03/how-facebook-can-become-bigger-in-five-years-than-google-is-today/ http://mcneillfamily.com/2010/10/03/how-facebook-can-become-bigger-in-five-years-than-google-is-today/#comments Sun, 03 Oct 2010 11:59:10 +0000 admin http://mcneillfamily.com/?p=6043 Remember three years ago, when Microsoft paid a quarter-billion dollars for 1.6% of Facebook and the exclusive right to run banner ads across Facebook.com? Tell the truth, how many of you thought that was a killer business decision? I can’t say I did at the time. But as that deal is about to expire in 2011, Facebook’s status as a revenue juggernaut is rarely questioned any more.

In fact, I have been mulling over data from both companies, and I’m ready to declare in public my belief that Facebook will be bigger in five years than Google is right [

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]]]> http://mcneillfamily.com/2010/10/03/how-facebook-can-become-bigger-in-five-years-than-google-is-today/feed/ 0 Google vs iPhone and Facebookhttp://mcneillfamily.com/2010/08/04/google-vs-iphone-and-facebook/ http://mcneillfamily.com/2010/08/04/google-vs-iphone-and-facebook/#comments Wed, 04 Aug 2010 13:12:30 +0000 admin http://mcneillfamily.com/?p=5480 People are boasting on Google’s behalf of their prowess in being able to catch Apple in market share. It is impressive, but not as much as you might think. Apple has never tried to lock-out their competitors, they’ve never designed their product strategies for market share. Jobs said that in a recent interview (I think it was at the D conference). Google has been able to do to Apple in mobile devices what Microsoft did to Apple in PCs, because Apple would rather control their share of the market and have a single target defined by both hardware and software [

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]]]> http://mcneillfamily.com/2010/08/04/google-vs-iphone-and-facebook/feed/ 0 Germany goes after Facebook over claimed privacy violationshttp://mcneillfamily.com/2010/07/10/germany-goes-after-facebook-over-claimed-privacy-violations/ http://mcneillfamily.com/2010/07/10/germany-goes-after-facebook-over-claimed-privacy-violations/#comments Sat, 10 Jul 2010 10:58:22 +0000 admin http://mcneillfamily.com/?p=5266

The German Data Protection Authority in Hamburg has launched legal action against Facebook, following complaints from people “who had not signed up to Facebook, but whose details had been added to the site by friends.” Facebook is accused of storing the private data of non-members without their permission, to be used for marketing purposes.

(CLICK HERE FOR MORE »» Boing Boing Germany goes after Facebook over claimed privacy violations: .)

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]]]> http://mcneillfamily.com/2010/07/10/germany-goes-after-facebook-over-claimed-privacy-violations/feed/ 0 Pondering Friendship Online: Focus on Intimacyhttp://mcneillfamily.com/2010/06/04/pondering-friendship-online-focus-on-intimacy/ http://mcneillfamily.com/2010/06/04/pondering-friendship-online-focus-on-intimacy/#comments Fri, 04 Jun 2010 07:07:32 +0000 admin http://mcneillfamily.com/?p=4921 I have found in my brief forty-two years on the planet that everyone has a different spectrum of friendship. Some people I barely know appear to consider me a friend, and that’s typically charming (if perhaps misguided). Other people I have known for many years are still rather formal with me, despite dozens to hundreds of contacts.

Pondering Friendship Online: Focus on Intimacy

]]]> http://mcneillfamily.com/2010/06/04/pondering-friendship-online-focus-on-intimacy/feed/ 0 Facebook, Google and Twitter: custodians of our most intimate secretshttp://mcneillfamily.com/2010/05/25/facebook-google-and-twitter-custodians-of-our-most-intimate-secrets/ http://mcneillfamily.com/2010/05/25/facebook-google-and-twitter-custodians-of-our-most-intimate-secrets/#comments Tue, 25 May 2010 08:56:36 +0000 admin http://mcneillfamily.com/?p=4882

Your digital life can be split into two parts: content and data. You know plenty about the content: that oh-so-hilarious tweet you punched out after closing time, or those delicious pictures of the new baby posted on Flickr especially for your aunt in Australia. You create this stuff, and much of the privacy argument has been over whether strangers or ex-girlfriends or even your parents should be allowed to see it without your express permission. Yet all that is a handful of dust compared to the cascades of data about yourself that you shed daily.

What sort of information? [

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]]]> http://mcneillfamily.com/2010/05/25/facebook-google-and-twitter-custodians-of-our-most-intimate-secrets/feed/ 0 makes sense to mehttp://mcneillfamily.com/2010/05/18/makes-sense-to-me/ http://mcneillfamily.com/2010/05/18/makes-sense-to-me/#comments Tue, 18 May 2010 11:48:23 +0000 admin http://mcneillfamily.com/?p=4812 http://mcneillfamily.com/2010/05/18/makes-sense-to-me/feed/ 0