But here’s the thing… I don’t really use or like Facebook. I have an account because um… I’m not entirely sure, to be honest. I guess because people who don’t really use webservices use Facebook and you never really know who will come out of the woodwork. I just find Facebook really quite insular. People [*cough* @silkcharm *cough*] sort of instilled this great fear within me that I should keep Facebook a closed system with the greatest privacy settings available to me. So I did. Infact at one point the security was so intense my own Facebook friends couldn’t leave messages on my wall. That seemed kind of pointless. I like the idea of a private ecosystem just between me and my nearest and dearest, but when it comes to online privacy I am acutely aware that anything I share anywhere is only a screen capture (or download) away from being shared with the world. So I personally just start with the understanding that I don’t put anything online unless I am content with the world seeing it.

And actually the vague curiosity that keeps my Facebook account open (the uncertainty of who is online, vying in the shadows) is sort of the same thing that breeds my mistrust in the web service. The way that person from high school who barely had anything to say to you ten years ago adds you as a ‘friend’ and still has nothing much to say to you. There is something about Facebook that breeds nostalgia that may have never existed in the first place. I don’t know if it is just a desire to populate your friends list or the romance of rediscovering something (someone) who was lost to you or just a forgetfulness or revisionist streak that comes with age.

The good news though is that Facebook is not high school. There is no obvious reason to keep up pretenses. If you don’t want to associate with someone simply do not accept their friend request. (Though I did look at one person’s friend request for months before I decided to deny it.) And every now and then Facebook does something truly wonderful like suggesting a friend ‘you may know’ who is actually someone you know and wish to reconnect with. This happened to me just this morning.

What’s your Facebook experience been like?

Therefore I have to wonder why I continue to perpetuate Twitter conspiracy theories upon this world.

You might remember when Australia Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull (@TurnbullMalcolm) joined Twitter.

At the time I found it amusing that he had 666 followers.

Turns out that Rick Astley is never going to give Twitter up either.

His account (@RealRickAstley) is following… wait for it… how many?

What does it all mean?!

Leave a comment and let me know. Or, hell, follow me on twitter (if you’re into that kind of thing.)

What other blogs do you read? Why do you read those? What do you find so appealing about them?

Chuck Westbrook is a man, a man with a plan. He wants to end, what he calls, ‘the Tragedy of Under-Appreciated Blogs.’ He maintains there are great blogs out there without readers and audiences without reading material. He wants to unite the two. And kudos to him.

It is easy to feel unappreciated. Hell, I’ve made a career out of it. (Regular readers will remember this previous blog entry, for example.) Chuck’s plan seems lovely, benevolent even. But will it work? At the time of writing there were 366 comments on his blog entry. (In fairness some comments are duplicates from the same author, but I do not have the time to ascertain how many.) As far as I can ascertain Chuck intends to feature a different blog every two weeks. I don’t know how often Chuck intends to do this. I don’t think even he knows that yet. I doubt it will be over 732 weeks.

A lot of people who feel ‘unappreciated’ are hoping they are holding on to a Golden Ticket. A 1/366th chance doesn’t strike me as good odds. And say you are selected as number 50, assuming the initiative is still going ahead (and readers are still reading) will people who are already disillusioned wait for 100 weeks for the promise of two weeks of readership?

And what kind of comments are you going to get? Lots of “Chuck sent me” comments? As a content creator, few things frustrate me as much as getting a “you have a nice smile” comment when I’ve just made a video talking about religion. Sure it is a nice compliment (to my face) but it doesn’t say much about my presentation. I have to accept in the moment that I have failed to capture the interest of the audience. I haven’t been able to get them to connect with the subject matter and themes. So I shall put to you yet another question: Is it better to have a large following or an engaged following?

I confess this is a distinction I’ve only made recently. I’ve been very envious of other content creators. I’ve come to embrace the realisation that the true merit is in the work itself and that the most meaningful communication is that which relates to the work. You have to be in it for the process of doing it.

If Chuck’s plan is successful it will be an exercise in serendipity; that somehow the chosen blog resonated with readers so much in the two week period that they become loyal readers. It is the same serendipity that connects any work with any audience. Perhaps I am naive, but I tend to believe in this force more than I do “Search Engine Optimization.” Perhaps a greater volume of visitors will lead to a speeding up in the process of joining author and reader, but I still maintain they will need to be compatible with each other. On some level there has to be some common ground of interests and values – that is where the magic happens, that is the very foundation of this idea of ‘community’ we speak of.

A few days later I found myself listening to podcasts at Precision Change on everything from decluttering to strategies for ‘getting things done.’

Tonight, literally only an hour or two ago, I had a sudden urge to purge. I started a new account for MSN Messenger and then proceeded to delete a backlog of email from the Hotmail account associated with the former account. There was approximately 5 years of email to go through, mostly from newsletters and mailing lists. You don’t realise how quickly an ‘email-a-day’ type horoscope can clog up your inbox until you go through hundreds of pages of email listings.

I tried to keep as little as I could. I was surprised at how easy it was to do. I was surprised at how quickly I had got through such a large quantity of data. I started a new folder which I called “Sentimental” and put anything I wanted to keep in there. Everything else ended up in the trash. For the first time probably ever (since Hotmail send you a “Welcome” email when you first sign up) the inbox is empty. It is a strange, surreal thing. It feels more liberating than I anticipated. While it is true that this is an email account I don’t intend to use, there was something so rewarding about unsubscribing to services properly. Surely a kind of electronic ‘closure.’

Credit where credit’s due: I have to thank Mark Hurst, author of “Bit Literacy,” for his suggestions in the Precision Change podcast.

Wherever I go the mantra is essentially the same: embrace a low information diet; information will find you no matter what you do. There is no real need to create a situation where you have more information to sort through.

I also took the opportunity to close some of my duplicate Yahoo! accounts, unsubscribed from mailing lists I no longer had any interest in, and turned off email notifications from services like Facebook and YouTube. (I’m also in the process of moving all my websites over to my new host and domain registrar – a task that will result in both greater control and significant savings!)

So what is next on the agenda? Well, Facebook has really changed my concept of the word “Friend.” I have an account which is associated with hundreds of people, some of who are so dear to me they are almost family – and others who I doubt I could pick from a police lineup. I really want to revise it so it better reflects the relationships that are truly important to me.

Do YOU have any suggestions for downsizing your electronic life?

Of course Plaxo was first and foremost a program for organising your contacts, the people you knew, and providing an infrastructure so that when they changed their details (assuming that user allowed it) you would automatically receive the new details in your contact details immediately.

Suddenly wherever you had access to the internet, you had the tools to organise your contacts, your calendar, your life.

Lately, however, I have become more than a tad enamored with Gmail from Google. It does pretty much everything Plaxo does (well, at least in conjunction with other aspects of the Google empire), but also incorporates email access. Not only do you get your own @gmail.com email address, but you also have the options of importing (and sending) from other POP email accounts. In effect, not only are you able to manage your contacts (and divide them into personal/professional), but you can do much the same thing with your email.

Imagine being on holidays in the South of France (or, indeed, anywhere!), logging into your Gmail account, checking your emails, your calendar. And within one window, sending an email to your nephew who has having a birthday from a personal account, and sending your boss an update from your business email account.

Admittedly you can do most of these things with Outlook and the Plaxo add-on, but the benefit of Gmail is that you can go anywhere and all you need is a browser and internet access. No special email client is required, no add-ons to download.

Interestingly Plaxo can now synchronize with Google accounts. (Plaxo also incorporates a strange and relatively new RSS feature, which seems more aimed at “sharing” feeds with your contacts than compiling them for your own reference, although they do have private options if you are so inclined.) Perhaps even more interestingly, the “synchronization” only works in one direction. You can update information from your Google Calendar to your Plaxo one, but not the other way around. Perhaps further reason to use Gmail as your primary source of information and Plaxo as a backup?

Plaxo is very candid about the limitations you will experience in the throes of synchronization with Google. Certainly things to be mindful of, especially if you elect to use a combination of the two services.

While both services are perfectly respectable, I do intend to place greater emphasis in the immediate future on Gmail and Google Calendar. If you use either of these services and have any comments or suggestions, please leave a comment below.

Below is the result of your feedback form. It was submitted by
Anna (kittypinkribbons@hotmail.com) on Sunday, June 18, 2006 at 17:50:55
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comments: YOU LOSERS!!! Nikki Webster is a really talented singer, dancer and not to mention an incredibly down-to-earth beautiful natured Australian. So, basically whether you like it or not I say a big mother @#$% YES!!! to Nikki advertising for lime coke, because she is wonderful despite how blinded you just may be.

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Er… this is complex, to say the least. Losers is plural (there is only me!). Nikki Webster doesn’t endorse lime coke and to the best of my knowledge never has. They were just two things I didn’t like, and felt Australia should say no to. I’m amazed that Nikki’s fans use the expression “big mother @#$%” although in fairness she did blank out the expletive. Go figure.

There was also some SPAM I wanted to share this morning, but after Anna’s email everything else kind of pales in comparison.

Absinthe Radio is a celebration of the classic sounds of the 20s and 30s, and their peculiar partnership with another perfect pastime, Absinthe. Tune in and indulge in the bump and growl of prohibition pop & speakeasy swing.

I couldn’t tell you why exactly but I’m loving this station this morning.