New year, new decade. But we still haven’t gotten past everything Web 2.0. We’re still dealing with the consequences of the social media revolution. The question is, which side are you on?
Pull the brakes?
We’ve seen people dumping Facebook and still not getting the Twitter mania, but here’s something pretty recent: the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine is making the meme rounds for those who suffer from social networking overexposure.
Most of the time we just hop on the bandwagon, publish the smallest details of our lives with abandon, and regret our actions only when it’s too late. Sites like My Parents Joined Facebook and Lamebook capitalize on those slip-ups, and we’ve all heard stories of people getting fired for something they posted online. A clean break from it all could be the answer. Or an exaggeration.
Interestingly though, Facebook has blocked the Suicide Machine. Thanks for playing!
Shift into high gear?
Tina Roth Eisenberg a.k.a. Swiss Miss tweeted that her unborn son already has a “gmail account, 3 domain names and a twitter account”. Pretty sweet, I’d say.
Again, this isn’t really a new phenomenon, but not many people are looking that far ahead. After all, who knows what the Web will be like in five to ten years. If domain names will still be the way to access websites.
Or maintain cruising speed?
Most of us probably lie in the middle and won’t think to axe their accounts or be so protective of their online identities as though they were real estate. Even if your new year’s resolution for social networking isn’t anything drastic, it’s still important to stay on top of your privacy concerns and online persona. Have you tweaked Facebook’s Privacy Settings yet? How about all the authorized third-party apps that have access to your Twitter account? Do you Google yourself every once in a while to see how other people find and paint a picture of you?
Bonus: try integrating a workout into those beloved websites. Now there’s a productive idea.
Twitter definitely upped its game as its new homepage rolled out today (viewable only if you’re logged out). Now its greatest strengths are featured front and center: real-time search and trends. A wise upgrade no doubt, but there’s something off about the design.
On any other website I wouldn’t have been bothered by this. A fair amount of blue, green, gradients, rounded corners, and overall sleekness reminiscent of a certain OS: these are all “acceptable” characteristics of good web design these days. The problem is, this is not what Twitter is about.
To me, Twitter is warm, organic, friendly—all because of the homepage (and the Fail Whale, of course). Sure, it used stock illustrations instead of commissioning original ones, but they were distinct enough. None of the cliche sunbursts and clouds, or the decidedly safer shades of blue.
And just as Twitter exploded in popularity, so did its branding. There’s an official Twitter bird, but whenever I see any other illustrated bird—hawk, owl, or any other kind—I think of Twitter. Heck, when I see that almost distinct light shade of blue (forget Tiffany & Co.!) or a rounded typeface, I think of Twitter. And while LOLcats have cemented their meme-dom for a while now, it’s really Twitter that shot them to stardom when they were used as error messages on the site.
Sure, all these inside jokes, cutesy mascots, and pastel hues may seem immature to some, and maybe the higher-ups thought it was time to get Twitter a personality makeover. What did they replace it with, exactly? tweaked Web 2.0 slash Apple design elements? Try again.
The old design elements fit Twitter’s image of sheer simplicity, of 140-character answers to the question “what are you doing?”. And today, with the homepage redesign, that image has started to slip away.
When Obama Wins scours and displays tweets containing the phrase 'when Obama wins'
I’m fascinated by the single-purpose websites that have been cropping up for the past year. I’m not much of an internet historian to track down exactly when the first of their kind came out, but they officially entered meme status when Jason Kottke wrote about it back in February.
In the era of 140-character microblogging and 10-inch subnotebook computing, brevity is king. But these straight-to-the-point sites aren’t exactly the iPhone-friendly versions of our increasingly bloated, self-centered homepages and bookmarks. (That’s a different phenomenon altogether and worth discussing in a separate article.)
They’re in a different group themselves, in a peanut gallery of sorts, poking fun at the rest of the all-too serious internet population. Stop worrying whether websites need to look exactly the same in every browser, you should use tables for layout (give up?), Diet Coke will kills us, graphic design is art, Barack Obama is Muslim or muslin or President, or it’s Tuesday, April Fool’s, Christmas, or a leap year yet.
The color of the Empire State Building on November 11. On November 11 it was Purple, Purple, White. As of writing it's White, White, White.
Of course some of these one-trick ponies are web apps and mashups that do exactly one thing really well, whether it’s helping you look forward to the day when Obama wins, decide if you should bring an umbrella today, bitch and moan about our dear Adobe, or figure out whether Twitter, Gmail, the Apple Store, or some other site is down or it’s just you.
Not to mention spell definitely and other words correctly, insert angled quotes », «, ›, ‹, discover your IP address, and play a instant rimshot.
Visit A List Of Sites for more of the madness! Or go through them randomly ala StumbleUpon.
