Vortexmind: free your mind Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito

11Jul/110

Will Google+ beat Facebook?

Google Plus (Google+) Logo

So a week ago I have managed to get hold of a Google+ invite, and I managed to play with it for a while now. I am also a quite "greedy" Facebook user so it was a good occasion to find out if and why I would like to move to the new service:

Thumbs up for Google Plus

Seamlessly integrates with phone: so yes, I own an Android phone (HTC Desire HD) and of course I love the fact that Google+ is working perfectly with my phone, with push updates and all the goodies
Straightforward privacy approach: although the actual functionality is not "revolutionary" (as in, you can pretty much achieve the same level of privacy / re sharing with Facebook), the usability of the Circles interface is far more simple and straightforward than the dungeon of privacy ticks, groups etc... which you can find in Facebook
Interface: apart from the "Circles" feature, the interface in general seems to me less bulky and quite user-friendly. Main reason being probably the opportunity for Google to redesign it from scratch and attempt to get it right from the start, trying to address what are regarded as basic "flaws" in Facebook (such as, for example, the complex settings / privacy flags in it)

Thumbs up for Facebook

It's already there everyone knows it, it's part of mass culture already and even my dog has signed up for it and is showcasing a Facebook profile
More features altough Google Plus is still in beta and you would expect them to integrate quickly a lot of features (for example, they could integrate the Calendar as an "Events" function, which is missing ATM), Facebook takes the lead at the moment with the number of features offered. However, sometimes it could also be a drawback (for instance, do you really need Farmville and all the annoying updates coming from it)

So, in short:

  • Google Plus it's the novelty, it's cool because "it's from Google" and just integrates seamlessly with your Android phone (a strong plus for Android users such as me)
  • Facebook it's the mainstream option, everyone has a profile already and everyone is used to it. Will it be enough to keep the lead?

What do you think? Have you tried Google Plus? Do you hate it already or are you planning to move across to it?

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6Mar/111

Bring the blog up to date – useful plugins

Ok so after leaving these pages in disarray for a while, as previously communicated I decided to refresh this place a bit. So, the 1st sensible thing to do was to look around and see what others were up to while I was minding my own business. Well, everyone seems kinda integrated with Facebook now so that's the 1st thing I've been looking at:

  • Created a page on Facebook so that I can publish my activity there too. There is also a nice sidebar widget to display whoever liked the page
  • To actually publish content, I used a nice plugin: Wordbooker. It's pretty good and comes with a lot of configurable options (such as syncing to the page and/or to your profile too etc)
  • In order to allow easy commenting, I used the Facebook Comments plugin to allow people commenting using their account as an alternative.
  • Other useful tools : WordTwit to push activity on your Twitter feed, and QR code tag to embed a nice QR code with each post. Just in case someone decides to waste some rainforest and print something.

Well ... that's pretty much it for now. I should get a decent template at some point but I ain't a designer ...

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23Feb/110

Wordbooker – WordPress integration with Facebook

I am just trying this plugin which should now fully integrate my WordPress blog with my Facebook account. Not that I am writing loads up here nowadays, being the reason probably my "switching" to FB for most of my daily updating needs (do we really need it? Uhm maybe...). Now let's see how it goes...

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15Feb/080

Social Networks e Privacy

Dall'avvento del web 2.0 e dei cosiddetti Social Networks si sono certamente moltiplicate le problematiche di privacy relative ai dati che noi quotidianamente immettiamo in queste reti. Leggendo questo articolo, ad esempio, ci si preoccupa per un possibile uso improprio delle informazioni fornite, ad esempio impedendo la definitiva cancellazione dei dati inseriti dagli utenti. Io non penso sia un vero e proprio problema, e la soluzione sta nell'assunto stesso che i social network pongono alla base del proprio funzionamento, e cioè che gli utenti sono spronati dal sistema ad inserire informazioni rilevanti ed attendibili per garantire il miglior funzionamento dell'applicazione (e trarne quindi vantaggio). Nel momento in cui un applicativo di social network non rispetta la privacy dell'utente, basta che questi si metta ad editare il proprio profilo inserendo informazioni totalmente sballate e non rispondenti al vero, riguardo ai propri interessi e quant'altro. A quel punto, se un numero sufficiente di persone si comportasse in questo modo, il valore statistico dei dati raccolti diventerebbe commercialmente nullo perchè non affidabile. Insomma, cercare di fregare gli utenti di un social network è un'arma a doppio taglio, e non è sicuramente negli interessi di chi queste applicazioni le propone. My 2 cents.

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Creative Commons Licence
This work by Paolo Tagliaferri is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.