Loose Ends
Posted at 2:29 pm on Thursday, September 25, 2008, in Technology, and tagged apple, facebook, firefox, flickr, google, tumblr, yahoo.
I’ve taken on the task of cutting some loose ends of myself around the web. Over the years, I have sampled a lot of services, most of them junk. Plenty of them were not worth re-visiting, and despite a username/password, there is nothing really there. Elsewhere, however, I have personal information of photos or videos or lists or text or other “stuff,” and it is there that I am trying my best to seek and destroy.
Recently, I had terminated my Tumblr account, and since then, I have done the same (or as much as I could short of termination where termination is simply not allowed for unknown reasons) to the following services (that I can remember): Brightcove, del.icio.us, 37 Signals (Backpack, Basecamp and Highrise), Anywhere.FM, and dopplr. There are a bunch more I’m still working through, including Blip.tv and JumpCut, among many others. There is nothing quite like the feeling you have after receiving the confirmation email after a request to cancel or delete an account. It is euphoric. (It should also be noted that I tend to delete or cancel services immediately after using them for the first time. That list would have no end.)
As to why I am going through this process, which always takes longer than it should (in order to make sure the account is cleansed before deletion, and in order to retain any useful information), it is not too difficult to explain. I have never been happier since I have stopped reading TechCrunch. The majority of web2.0 services are junk, fluff, shit. And I already have accounts with those. And I use them when I can and how I can. Outside of a new service that comes along that slows aging, the majority of new services will likely be junk. Sure, services can and will (and must) be improved, but that is not the norm for most product releases. Google does everything. Same with Yahoo! Between the two, I am pretty much set for most things (photos, video, feed reader, email, calendar, chat, maps, search, etc.).
I do my banking online; I pay my taxes online; I communicate online; I publish online. Travel, real estate and finances are the three major frontiers (outside of communication and productivity) for online services. These are a few of the outstanding Web2.0 services that I use (or try to, or want to try to)… Gmail, Flickr, Mozy, Facebook, Mint and 30Boxes. Out of those, I wish Mint could do both more and less, and that 30Boxes had a bit more interoperability with Gmail (and will eventually go the wayside). And Firefox is the ultimate Web2.0 application as of right now anyway.
To share or not to share, and why should I care? My Firefox bookmarks are handy (and secure, and backed-up) and they go everywhere with me. I publish when I want to — here, elsewhere, Facebook. The people I know are the people I communicate with are the people I share with. Otherwise, life online is an overflowing closet of past thoughts, actions and photographic evidence that is open for the world to see. And as I get older (and maybe wiser, this is what I like to tell myself), I am trying to keep that closet clean, orderly and under my control.
I am not one to speak endlessly about the wonders of Facebook, but the problem with many of these Web2.0 services, they require a newly-formed user-base. That is why third-party applications on the Facebook (or iPhone, etc.) platform is the key for future growth and use. If you have great idea for a web tool (for productivity, travel, etc.), allow people to use that where they already have a congregated user-base. This is exatly why the prospects of Facebook are so high despite the fact that the company’s monetization of its users and the service’s overall profitability is nonexistent.
That is all, class. Remember, the first exam is next week.
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