Customer versus user

I really appreciate Reeder and Feedbin because I know I can leave them at any time and, when I come back, they’ll still be in the same state. They’ll still know what I’ve read and what I haven’t. They’ll show me things in order instead of via some “top stories” silliness.

The thing is, I shouldn’t appreciate those things. That should be expected. These things were mastered decades ago. Yet they are beyond Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Google+.

Of course, the biggest difference is that I am a Reeder customer and a Feedbin customer. I pay them. While I use Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Google+; I don’t pay them. They won’t even let me.

The trouble with online conversations

Twitter, Facebook, G+, blog comments, web forums, &c. None of them seem able to handle one very important thing that NNTP clients did since the 1980s: Keep track of what I’ve read & what I haven’t.

The Twitter iOS client does a decent job of remembering my position in its time stream. That position doesn’t sync between my iPhone, my iPad, & the web site, though. Twitter is also not a great medium for conversation in many other ways, though.

Some web forums make an attempt at it, but I haven’t seen one that does it well. Although it has been a while since I was keeping up with forums.

The trouble with retweeting

It bothers me when someone I follow on Twitter says “please retweet”.

Case 1: Someone who follows me also follows the original tweeter. My retweet will just be noise for them.

Case 2: Someone who follows me and isn’t interested in the original tweeter. My retweet will just be noise for them.

Case 3: Someone who follows me who doesn’t follow the original tweeter but would be interested in following them. The retweet is only useful to the extent that it has made this person aware of the original tweeter.

While case 3 is good, a lot of case 1 & 2 noise is going to be generated to achieve it. Surely there are better ways to help people find followees than this.

I think the occasional “this person tweeted something unusually clever or insightful that I want to share” kind of retweet is just fine. “Please retweet”, however, tends to signal my above concerns.

Because it’s just like forwarding e-mail, isn’t it? Occasionally there are times when forwarding an e-mail is exactly the right thing to do. E-mails that were written with the expectation of being forwarded, however, are the one’s that are wasteful.

Best tweet ever

Adam Savage (a.k.a. @donttrythis) wrote:

I met a girl (my first kiss) playing D&D while in the employ of Warner Library, in Tarrytown. I was the Dungeonmaster.