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Social media appears mostly fraudulent to me... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag

I put out there on twitter that I liked apportable and it was very useful for me to port objective-c code to Android ( http://t.co/BWCfEl2RLp ). Now I am getting notifications that apportable's ( condensed ) retweet of my tweet is often getting favourited and retweeted in Arabic. I smell a rat. I wouldn't pay a cent to be 'promoted' on any social networking or microblogging site. I have not spent a cent but I bet apportable has spent a lot on advertising. What is more as what he says about lack of engagement, etc in the youtube video is actually exactly the case.

Edit: What is more is that I have a company page on facebook.

on facebook it is wrote: You need 25 more likes on your Page to get access to insights about your activity.

Facebook really pushes to get every cent out of you for things which actually make things worse. I have been thinking about writing games on Facebook, I set up a Heroku account and started messing about with it but mobile development seems easier and more interesting.

You could type in PymbleSoftware into the search box on facebook and find that I have not posted on it since maybe 2012 or so.

R.

Interesting video. Thanks for sharing.

PymbleSoftware wrote: Social media appears mostly fraudulent to me...

Sharp eyes and a functioning brain there, Mr Pymble ! The entire "social media" stinky poo is pretty much a worthless con game. Someone recently sued Facebook for the $600,000 they wasted on Facebook advertising. The claim was not just that the results were poor (zero, in fact) but that the "metrics" used to justify the charges were fraudulent.

Of course, he was stupid enough to throw away $600,000 on nonsense so it's difficult to feel sorry for him ...

You have to laugh at the media peddling this shit as well ... "So-and-so reported it to his friend on social media ! Gush gush gush !"

That's about as earth-shaking as "Dr Whatsis rescheduled the appointment on the telephone !! " Omigod !

Consumerism. It's ridiculous.

I forget if I heard about the video, or the article he referenced, but this has been making the rounds here recently.

In addition, the program Frontline from WGBH Boston recently showed Douglas Rushkoff's short documentary (or a short version of same) "Generation Like," which looks at how and why teens engage in social media. A large part of this has to do with figuring out what's going on with the whole "like" economy. Generation Like ( alternate link )

smj wrote: A large part of this has to do with figuring out what's going on with the whole "like" economy.

I'm sure there is a chapter or three about this in Gibbon, but maybe someone can explain what's going on :

These days, if you search for something .. doesn't matter if it's common or arcane, the search engines must be in on it, type "1956 Arnolt-MG" and you'll get a lot of hits, "Best Prices on 1956 Arnolt-MG here !" Since there are only 20 or 30 of them in existence, that's pretty unlikely. Google can't be ignorant of this.

Then you actually try to dig through the 63,000 useless links to find one or two that might hide some real info, you will mostly find George Dickless' Worthless Blog, Follow Me on Tweeter ! and he's set up some script that somehow grabs your search term, javascriptically links it to wikipedia, scams three lines of wikipedia which it then buries in a pile of his own worthless poo surrounded by advertisements for penile implants.

But wait. The best part is the comments section, where nine people write "Thank you so much for this ! I've been looking all over for this information. [They should have tried Home Shopping Channel.] I will be following your writing in the future and forwarding to my friends !" Sometimes they try to sneak in a link to a competing penile impant company but often, not even that.


What is the point of all that crap ? This is not a single deviated prevert living in his Mom's basement, it's all over the place. There must be a reason.

What does this achieve ?

btw : pretty gruesome video, sm. Gack

Wonderful, hamei. I'm in complete agreement. The social web is rotten. Not counting nekochan.net of course.

And it's funny how forums aren't really considered social networks. Think about it. We guys (and gals), most of us know each other for nigh on a decade now. Despite most having never met! How is that not a social network.

Anyway, good reading on a Monday morning in Kabul. Keep it coming boys!

hamei: looks like you've discovered the SEO industry! inserting stupid linkbait terms is what they do. Also reverse-engineering the search engines' ranking algorithm to make their sites (which as you've noticed, are worthless, but contain many valuable ads) highly ranked. The practice is not at all marginal, but forms the bedrock for the revenue stream of some of the largest sites.

Web 2.0 was specifically designed to facilitate this through its byzantine tangle of linkbacks, cross-site scripts (like the "g+", "like" or "tweet" buttons that appear in large packs on these sites, often repeated dozens of times, for each story or topic), and supercookies.

Thats funny, I searched for "1956 Arnolt-MG" and literally got 1 web result and 1 pdf result.

As for social media, you get what you put in. I left facebook after a "friend" of an actual friend of mine decided that their uninformed and grammatically atrocious opinion on economics would add value to the conversation. They obviously had been drunk on the democratizing effects of facebook and figured that some of the head endpoints needed his outdegree bad enough to breach any constraint that society traditionally places on people who wear backward baseball caps and spell like the proverbial millionth chimp at the Shakespeare type writing convention - flung poo included.

There can be a social stigma attached to unfriending people you actually know because of the detritus they bring to your extended network. It became tedious after awhile though: blocking, purging, pruning. Not to mention the shattered egos of actual friends who would then complain at me in meatspace after a few drinks.

So I created a sockpuppet to be the admin for all the apps I managed. Never looked back, as it was clearly a waste of time to be there if you are not a paid shill of some sort.

hamei wrote: You have to laugh at the media peddling this shit as well

I seriously hope you are not talking about watching the evening news or something...

VenomousPinecone wrote: Thats funny, I searched for "1956 Arnolt-MG" and literally got 1 web result and 1 pdf result.

Sorry, it was 1953 Time flies when you're having fun ... try it without the year ... I'm not imagining things, I wish it was just the tinfoil beanie.


Let's see ... that's just the first page but we have the Arnolt-MG heater core suppliers, unh-hunh. I'm sure they have hundreds in stock and can ship immediately. Then the "classic car fanatic" maaaybe but most likely a honey pot set up to snag unwitting people actually looking for information. Followed by "his and hers communications" reviews to sell parts, most likely zero relevance, I doubt if they even have any bug-eye Sprite parts. Then Wordpress with a swiped wikipedia sentence and an inane "Everyone called him Wacky but I've never been able to find out why" total horseshit, every real article about Mr Arnolt mentions why they called him wacky by the second paragraph (drove a rowboat across Lake Superior with a broken 1 hp outboard in a storm, or something like that) ... then the Arnolt-MG family sports car ? The 1953 version of an SUV, was it ? wtf ? And last but not least the Arnolt-MG real estate advisors, specializing in distressed Midwest properties.

Maybe one semi-useful bit of information in all that crap. I usually skip to page five or six right off now, the first several pages of most searches are nothing but garbage.

hamei wrote: You have to laugh at the media peddling this shit as well

I seriously hope you are not talking about watching the evening news or something...

No, I'm dumb enough to look at SFGate too often. After handing over Market Street to Tweeter and the waterfront to Larry for 70% off, Eddie and the Hearsts have to peddle the value of "social media" for all it's worth.

But since the worth is zero, you can multiply by it or divide by it but all you can get from it is nothing.

Indeed hamei, that's the result of Google being successful at capturing ad revenue, and everybody trying to game plain old web search. No social media required, been that way a long time though I'm sure it's gotten incrementally worse. Hell, I see that it has every time I search for a part number...

A quibble with robespierre in that Web 2.0 - remember that was 10+ years ago now - was more focused on user-contributed content and collaboration in the rating and ranking space - using up-voting, tags, stars, etc to help steer search or information discovery. Think of del.icio.us, Digg, Slashdot, StumbleUpon, etc. Monetization was still mostly at the display ad stage, and any gaming was still mostly focused on ad impressions and clicks.

And that's the distinction I'd make between that "social sharing" era as amateur hour compared to where Facebook, Youtube, and the new advertising tech firms have taken "likes" over the past ~5 years. It's a full blown ecosystem that's developed not just support from the ad industry, but a potential or partial takeover *of* the ad industry by those who've helped develop the current Like Economy.

smj wrote: ... the current Like Economy.

Social media has been one giant con from the beginning, designed to get suckers to volunteer their information for purposes of targeted advertising, which itself is a con. The monetization of the Internet in the last ten years has looked a lot like the subprime loan scam of the same period - people making money by selling things of no value to each other. hamei's picture couldn't be more appropriate.

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