social

Yahoo and Tumblr∝

I hope Yahoo does not destroy Tumblr like Twitter destroyed Posterous.

I hope Tumblr refuses to accept this offer from Yahoo, despite all it could offer them. I talked about this on At The Nexus #76 in more detail. Good luck to both, more to you, Tumblr.

Tumblr is taking a very safe approach with this acquisition – the CEO stays onboard and the company maintains plenty of autonomy. That’s great. And Yahoo said they’ll keep their hands off the porn business that somehow wound up on Tumblr – that is the best sign, I think, that Yahoo believes in Tumblr as a platform.

Good luck to you both.

Critical Mass Makes It Fun∝

Dan Frommer on Dalton Caldwell’s App.net:

The real question, of course, is whether enough people will use the new service to make it fun and interesting. Social networks become exponentially more useful and valuable as more people join. And I don’t think most of the people I follow on Twitter give a damn about switching to a new Twitter — especially one they have to pay for.

That is what everyone thought when Facebook emerged and the critical mass was on MySpace. Twitter has not had a competitor steal away its mass yet.

What piques my interest is this:

Then, of course, the problem of living up to your promises. (One potential problem is that this is still one company controlling everything.)

I envision a Twitter-like service more akin to WordPress.org and WordPress.com — people that want to leave it to someone else will run on Twitter-like.com and those that want to take the experience into their own hands can run on Twitter-like.com installations. (Please note: I have no idea what I am talking about.)

Google+ Initial Impressions (Pre-uninvited)

I have Google+ already, but thank you for offering!

A couple days ago, Google released the their next wave of social integration under the umbrella name, Google+.

One my teachers sent me a quick email asking for a prediction:

Hey, I wanted to ask, what is your prediction for Google+?

What I write here is basically what I shared with him. My impressions and opinions are based merely on what two-minute video and some aside news from a couple of sources, but I haven’t poured much time or effort into researching Google+ either. And of course, I don’t have an invite now, but when I do, I’ll have a better idea.

(more…)