Updating.me

I’ve been following updating.me for a couple weeks now, and was thinking about trying it out after it came out of beta, until today. The site is along the same lines as ping.fm and updates all your social services in one go, such as Twitter, FriendFeed, Plurk, Identi.ca, and Rejaw. It also supports less mainstream platforms such as Leo Laporte’s TWiT Army and Koornk.

The thing that makes updating.me stand out from the rest of the crowd at the moment, is that they have listened to what people are requesting and have released a desktop Adobe Air client. I hate having to login to websites to update, which is why I don’t use ping.fm. At the moment their Adobe Air client is good, but I do believe some things need to be added to it. I’m just happy that I can update Twitter and Pownce from one nice application.

If you would like to try this service, I have a code for the private beta. It can only be used 30 times though. The beta code is omigod. Have fun!

Twitter FTW! and Vacation Time At Last

On July 5th Michael Arrington from TechCrunch reveled in a blog post about getting half of his Twitter followers subscribing to him on FriendFeed in half the time.

Of course they started to follow him on FriendFeed so much faster. When you have any number of people following you, at least half of them are going to check out something you recommend to them, especially people following you on Twitter. I mean, I click on every single link that someone that I’m following Twitters.

<sarcasm>Surprisingly</sarcasm> after Arrington published this post everyone started talking about which service is better and which service sucks. They’re trying to figure out which service is going to go mainstream first. Loren Feldman from 1938 Media even went as far to declare that Twitter is dead. So just because he “declares” Twitter “dead” and that since he likes FriendFeed better we should all switch to FriendFeed? Now I believe that he is completely wrong about Twitter being “dead.” Have you noticed that we haven’t seen the fail whale that much lately?

Here’s an example: a couple years ago when…ummm…Myspace?…Yah, Myspace, when Myspace came out it was brand new and we were all in complete awe. I bet you will never see a little Myspace obsessed kid using a service like Twitter or FriendFeed. Twitter and/or FriendFeed will probably never go mainstream, because tech isn’t mainstream, well, unless you start talking about an iPod. Yes, my sister uses an iMac and uses YouTube, Myspace, Facebook, etc., but she will never in her right mind watch Tekzilla (one of the best shows in the world!) If I were to ask her who Chris Crocker was she’d know though.

I think you get the gist of what I’m talking about. Reaching a mainstream audience will never be easy. I have two questions though, if you were shown Twitter and FriendFeed at the same time, which one would you join first? Would your non-tech siblings, parents, grandparents (ehh? ehh?), etc. join either of these websites and keep them up to date?

Ok, now that I’m done getting that out, time to move on. Lindsay and I will be going away on a little vacation with the rest of my family starting August 13th thru the 17th. We’ll be going down to Fenwick Beach in Delaware and we’ll be staying at a bayside beach house, which is amazing, and I’m surprised that we were able to get such a great place this late in the season. I really can’t wait to get away from this area. Ah, and we will probably be introducing live.omigod.net one of the nights while we’re on our short vacation, and you can be sure they’ll be a few live streams while we’re there as well.

Ugh! It’s 4:31 a.m., and I haven’t slept in thirty-six hours, which means I’m going to bed.

Facebook, stop telling me who my friends are!

Listen, Facebook, we have to talk.

We have a lot of fun together. We go through photos, I buy a couple of my friends, chat with friends, its great. But lately I’ve started to see a side to you that I’m finding rather aggressive. I am speaking specifically about your “People You May Know” area on the main aggregate screen that provides a short list of people that you think I have simply overlooked.

Sorry, Facebook, it’s more complicated than that. While they are friends of my friends, I do not know them. Don’t get me wrong, I am aware they exist, the names are familiar to me, but I have yet to be properly introduced and conversed to the point where it wouldn’t be weird to ask them to consider me as their friend. So, I would appreciate easing off the pressure, I will meet them on my own, at some point, in real life.

And while we’re putting it all out there, Facebook. You leave me in an awkward place when you add old friends that I’ve been in huge arguments with (obviously why we aren’t friends anymore), and I’m not sure whether we left things on good terms, so asking them to add me as a friend is a pretty loaded request.

So, please Facebook, trust me that as soon as I see a familiar face, I will add them as a friend, but until then, stop telling me who I should be friends with.