Brendan Peveril . net

Social networks

Filed under: Yes I do have friends, Internet, A thought, networking — Brendan @ 1:10 pm

So, I was thinking about social networking. It’s fun, but it’s useful too. Lets you keep in touch with your friends, meet new people, blah blah blah. Great.

Now, if we take a look at the big social network sites, we can see how much fun this all is, but we see the drawbacks too. It costs a lot of money to be myspace. Everybody uses it. It’s noisy and confusing. These are all three linked together, and to eliminate one you have to eliminate the others. What are you left with, though? Is that something you’d be interested in?

At this point, there are two kinds of people (for the sake of this argument). There are the people who use social networks, and the ones who don’t. People who do always use more than one. Even if they don’t right away, they will eventually. It’s like instant messaging. We’ve all got our favs, but we’ve all got accounts on several others too. Even if I’m not on Orkut and Six degrees, I am on Facebook and Myspace, though. If I meet an Orkut user, chances are that they’ll use one or both of the ones that I’m on. Giving established users a reason to join one more is not a big deal.

For non-users, well, they’re a different animal. For the ones who don’t use the social nets because they’re afraid of recieving emails, or talking to strangers, well, not a whole lot I can do. For the ones who just like being a dick and saying, “No, I haven’t got a facebook.” an elitist, invite only community is perfect.

The proposal here is something that internet heads have been talking about for a while, and it’s been happening kind of just off radar for most people. There are some fairly well known cases, like comic space (which I ought to update…) where a social network is set up to serve a specific community, but it’s still big. Picture this, though. A small community of just the people I know, then the people they know, etc. out a few layers, set up to be invite only with only a few features implemented. You could use it for social networking, a discussion forum, blog aggregators, maybe photo sharing, maybe even a game or two.

Without the heavy traffic of the big sites you don’t need advertising, or all of the extra attractions, to make the site economically viable. You just need a benefactor who’s willing to lay down a few dollars/month for webspace and someone to kickstart things again when it breaks. Without this large expense, you can trim all of that fat, leaving a much more streamlined experience.

The fact of the matter is, while Mousehunt and Bloodlust are fun, they take away from what the social network is good for; making connections with people. If I want to talk with someone new who doesn’t have fucking brain damage about politics, or play a game of chess with someone who has interests outside of playing chess with strangers on the internet, Facebook is of little use to me. If we narrow the group down to, say, only people who friends, and friends of friends, have vouched for personally, though, I’ve got a good shot at finding someone to talk to my first try. Likewise, I know that the people that have been invited aren’t too creepy (well, in my case I know they’re not creepier than I am, because, you know), so a lot of the need for privacy is alleviated. People behave better when the official TOS is “don’t be a dick or Brendan will probably punch you in the mouth”. Likewise, if I need to find someone to, say, write me a computer program, or play photographer at my book release party, or recommend an honest mechanic in Seattle, or let me sleep on their couch because I’m marooned in Calgary, there’s a community of people right there who I can trust, because they’re all friends of friends.

So, what do we say, kids? Anyone into that? Maybe I’m just being cagey and isolationist. I know that Warren Ellis talks about this every once in a while. A quick dredge through the archives of his blog turned up some relevant links:

Buddypress: It’s a wordpress extension, which is a little gross.

Folkstr: Site seems to be down. Don’t know what’s up with that.

Top 40 Free Downloadable Open Source Social Networking Software: Haven’t gone through these yet.

Comments (4)

where the punk went…

Filed under: music, the future, Internet — Brendan @ 11:02 pm

It put on a suit and … I was going to say got a fucking job, but that’s not what happened, is it?

I think the world needs more things like this happening right now. Shit’s been stagnant for a while. We need someone to save the world again. I’ll go put on a slip, start building instruments out of broken things!

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irc logs

Filed under: crazy guy, Internet, outside world, disorganized mess, A thought — Brendan @ 1:17 am

Chatting it up with no one in particular old school, because I’m not cool enough for Twitter.
[23:57] [brendan] Sometimes I feel like the last person on the internet. [23:59] [brendan] Sometimes the internet feels alive, like it's a thinking breathing thing, made up of all kinds of people, and the people each have their own thoughts and motives, and it's awesome. [23:59] [brendan] Sometimes it just feels like I'm looking at cold, dead text. [00:00] [brendan] lost letters written to dead relatives someone left lying around. [00:00] [brendan] I read them anyway, but it feels futile. [09:12] [cp] brendan. [09:12] [cp] this is what you have a blog for.
espernet, #killpop

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Not a lot of noise, huh?

Filed under: comics, Internet, Interactive fiction — Brendan @ 7:33 pm

Yeah I’ve been quiet recently. More on that later, I guess. The novel’s chugging along, and so are some other projects.

While I’m being boring, you should check out Dropsy. He’s being thrown out of the circus, and we need to help him. It’s impossible to not love him, guys.

Dropsy originated in a Something Awful forum, but it’s been collected here if you’d like to see more but you’re afraid of getting goon on you (you should be).

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If I had a children, I would feed them to this:

Filed under: Internet — Brendan @ 6:10 pm

I am awesome at putting off working! There are more pictures, you know.

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Review: Heavy Metal Hearts + Flowers

Filed under: comics, Internet, review — Brendan @ 7:54 pm

Heavy Metal Hearts + Flowers
A Scary Go Round Story by John Allison

I’ve been a fan of John Allison’s work for a long time, since Bobbins, the sort of first incarnation of Scary Go Round. While his art didn’t really change between the original strips (1998) and this book (2004) (there are some differences; it’s much more dynamic than it used to be), Mr. Allison’s storytelling style developed drastically. While the earlier comics stood almost completely on his quirky artwork and endearing characters this book delivers an great, fast paced, stand alone story.

The only thing I can really criticize? I think it needs more Shelley. Of course, I think everything needs more Shelley.

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Gillian’s Intervention

Filed under: writing, Internet, flashfic — Brendan @ 11:54 pm

This is a bit of Flash Fiction (I capitalize because it’s a relatively new thing, you know) that I wrote that I don’t think anyone else is going to publish. Enjoy, although all evidence I have indicates that it’s shit.

Anyway, you don’t need to know what I really think.

If anyone’s interested, I also wrote this in the opposite direction, like you’d read in a forum.

(more…)

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Fast Breaking News

Filed under: humour, cautionary tale, sci-fi, Internet — Brendan @ 9:55 pm

I was going to hold out until I had the story I mentioned earlier all typed out, but I had to to share this. Apparently, if Russians encounter alien life, they will eat it. All ethical discussion of whether or not alien intelligence is a viable food source or not aside, that shit’s fucked.

Turns out it’s not an alien, it’s a guitar fish, but still, that’s awesome.

This is all courtesy of Mr. Gaiman

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Nothing to say

Filed under: Internet, Pictures — Brendan @ 10:20 pm

I don’t have much to say tonight, I’m a little burnt out by writing other things, including a project I’d given up on but I’m rekindling as an Intarwub! exclusive. More on that later.

I did finally get a new cable for my real camera (and by “real” I mean “shitty and borderline useless, but at least it doesn’t also make phone calls”), so there are some higher resolution boring pictures on Flickr (over on the right there, kids).

THAT IS ALL.

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My new best friend

Filed under: cautionary tale, crazy guy, Internet — Brendan @ 9:32 pm

Not since I discovered Freerepublic.com have I been so amazed that someone is willing to put so much more effort into to making sure that I can hear their opinion than they do in forming it.

BEHOLD!

Have you ever noticed that when liberals have a problem with something being too conservative, they work to fix it, and make it (in their opinions) better, while conservatives say, “Fuck you, libs, we’re going to make our own Wikipedia, that allows quotes from the bible and xenophobic rhetoric to count as evidence!”

Let me share some of the highlights that I turned up in the few minutes before my eyes started leaking blood:

On the same page where they complain that Wikipedia criticizes their “”faith-based” approach towards fact verification that ignores standard research methods” they cleverly point out that, “only 10% of Americans accept evolution as it is taught in public school,(Citation Needed)”

“Already Conservapedia has become one of the largest user-controlled free encyclopedias on the internet.” yet, they’re the smallest one I can think of by more than a factor of ten. An encyclopedia has to be a group effort, probably why there are so few. I guess Conservatives are lazy. Where are your beards, you filthy conformists? I can’t tell the difference between the boys and the girls!

To be fair, they’re only a few months old. I’m very interested in seeing how this pans out. In the mean time, though, if I’m ever looking for bible quotes that can be used as evidence that the homos are super-bad, Conservapedia will be my first stop!

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Brendan Peveril . net

October 19, 2008

Social networks

September 22, 2008

where the punk went…

September 21, 2008

irc logs

April 28, 2008

Not a lot of noise, huh?

July 7, 2007

If I had a children, I would feed them to this:

April 2, 2007

Review: Heavy Metal Hearts + Flowers

March 31, 2007

Gillian’s Intervention

March 11, 2007

Fast Breaking News

February 27, 2007

Nothing to say

February 26, 2007

My new best friend

Artists

Brendan elsewhere on the web

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