goblin cartoons

Just now, I tweeted: “Dear Google: Opt-in social networks are good. Opt-out social networks are bad. Please remember this.” I was speaking in regards to Google Buzz, the company’s latest social networking release. Buzz is a social aggregator, like FriendFeed, pulling your content from different sites into one stream, where your friends can comment on your content, as well as pulling your friends’ content into the same stream.

I was excited about Buzz and gave it a try as soon as Google bestowed it upon me. It didn’t take long for me to grow frustrated and annoyed with it, though, and I gave up on it after less than a day’s use. Reflecting on it more, I’ve come to see Buzz as a massive screw-up in terms of social networking. Because Buzz is opt-out social networking, not opt-in.

If you sign up for MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed or a host of other social websites, you have to seek out friends. You can sometimes use your email contact list to find other people on those sites, or you have to find people one by one to friend. You also have to go to that site (or a desktop or mobile phone app) for access (and socializing).

Buzz, on the other hand, sits right there in your Gmail. By default, you get any and all updates to Buzz both in your Buzz inbox and in your Gmail inbox. (You can filter the emails out of your Gmail, but it’s not something you can really turn off.) Your Gmail contacts are automatically your Buzz contacts. Following contacts in Buzz automatically adds them to the people you follow in Google Reader (which increased my unread posts in Reader A LOT), even if you disconnect Reader from Buzz (and Reader is pulled into your Buzz stream by default, unless you choose to disconnect it). When you post straight to Buzz, you can choose to make a post private rather than public, but unless you disconnect everything from Buzz, your stream will continue to flow, allowing your friends to see posts and comment on them, even if you turn Buzz off (which you can only do by clicking on a tiny link at the bottom of your Gmail page).

In short, Google Buzz is opt-out social networking, not opt-in. If you don’t want to participate, you have to go through steps to turn it off, rather than going through steps to turn it on if you want to participate. Google has deployed Buzz to everyone with Gmail, causing a number of my friends to wonder what the hell it was and how to turn it off.

Opt-out social networking is a moronic and intrusive idea. Just because you use email doesn’t mean you want more social networking. Just because you emailed someone once or twice doesn’t mean you want to see everything they post to the internet (and it doesn’t mean you want them seeing everything you post to the internet). You might like fish and you might like salty food, but that doesn’t mean people should assume you want anchovies on your pizza, and you definitely shouldn’t have to ask to have to anchovies removed if you don’t want them.

Google Wave and Buzz are making me think Google Labs is some socially-isolated workshop where no usability studies are being done. It’s stunningly bad design. I’m going to be very wary of whatever Google releases next.

Most of the time, I think my optimism and enthusiasm is justified, because life regularly turns out to be at least as amazing as I expect and imagine it will be. But sometimes…not so much.

I was really, really excited about Google Wave when I first learned about it. I snagged an invite to start playing with it as soon as I could. And after two months of experimenting with Google Wave, I have to say…meh.

I’ve tried using it for conversation, but it doesn’t facilitate conversation any better than email, IM, Twitter or FriendFeed. I’ve tried using it for collaboration, but it doesn’t do that better than Google Docs. I appreciate that it’s in beta, and I’m prepared to believe that in a year or two or three, Google Wave will be where it’s at. But right now, it’s a lot like Second Life to me: flashy and interesting, but ultimately kind of boring and of little real use to me.

As much as I inherently cast a suspicious eye towards large companies, I have to say, Google regularly knocks my socks off. I’ve just learned more about their huge new project, Google Wave, and not only are my socks knocked off, my jaw is on the floor and my eyes are popping out of my skull. Google Wave is “email, if it were created today”–but it’s much more than that. It’s a groovy orgy of email, IM, wikis, collaborative documents (like Google Docs) and more. My gut instinct is to agree with Jason Griffey when he says “it’s the biggest revolution in communication online since the invention of email.” I think the implications and possibilities of this technology are astounding. But what makes it even more amazing in potential is that Google is making Wave open source and encouraging developers to create extensions and robots, but also to make of the platform and the protocol what they will. Seriously, this could he huge.

To get a better sense of how Google Wave will work and what the potential is, watch the video of the developer preview from Google I/O 2009. (Warning: the video is over an hour long and not always incredibly exciting. I watched it in chunks over 3 days.)

For a different perspective on Google Wave, check out “Five Reasons to Be Terrified of Google Wave.” Personally, I think the worrying sounds a bit shrill, but it’s good to look at all sides of the matter.

This has not been the best year of my life, which is particularly bad as I was saying the same thing last year. It hasn’t been all sewage and shadows–I’ve had some really good times this year. But it feels like the bad has exceeded the good, in effect if not in actual instance. There’s been a whole lotta feh this year, is what I’m saying.

So I’ll gladly take this day to give thanks to all the good, to polish the sunlight and kick depression in the kneecaps.

I’m thankful that Julie and I found each other and continue to discover good things about each other. I’m thankful I get to be Morgan’s father and have her in my life. I’m thankful my parents (in-blood and in-law) are doing relatively well. I’m thankful my siblings (sister, brother and sister-in-law) and their beautiful children are doing well.

I’m also thankful this is the last Thanksgiving I’ll ever have with George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and their whole cabal in the White House. I will sing and dance when the Worst President Ever leaves Washington. These are bad, bad people, and I want them out of my life.

As my friend Steve Lawson says, I’m thankful for the internet and the World Wide Web. (I’ll throw in cell phones and other information-communication devices, too.) I’m not sure I would have made it through this year without the friendship of the amazing people I’ve met and grown to love online. I’ve also reconnected with old friends because of the internet. This is really a fantastic time to be alive, and I’m thankful that I am alive to live through this and enjoy it. To all of my friends, near and far: thank you.

I haven’t posted here in a while. Computers in Libraries and KLA really got me fired up, but I’ve since been very busy with work and my personal life. I’m hoping that despite any continuing business, I’ll be posting more from now on.

One of the things I’ve been busy with is preparing for a presentation I gave this morning on Web 2.0 for the Mid-America chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals. (Thanks to David Lee King for recommending me for this gig.) I spoke to around 20 people for about 45 minutes (leaving time at the end for questions) on a basic look at what Web 2.0 is, why using Web 2.0 tools might be a good idea, what some cheap or free and relatively easy to use Web2.0 tools are, and some possible issues with Web 2.0. I think the presentation went well. It wasn’t my usual audience (I’m used to babbling at librarians), but I felt comfortable, people laughed at the appropriate times, and nobody threw fruit or bagels at me.

I uploaded the Powerpoint to Slideshare, in case anyone wants to see what I showed while I rambled on.

At our Kansas Library Association conference presentation, an attendee asked a very good question: with all of this social networking on the internet, where the personal and the professional often blurs, what happens if a potential employer does an internet search on you and finds things that could be taken badly out of context or just outright makes them not want to hire you?

This has actually happened, hasn’t it? A potential employer finds your Facebook or MySpace page, or old blog posts, or Flickr photos, or what have you, and discovers that you’re a recovering alcoholic or a Fundamentalist Christian or a homosexual or an enthusiastic Doctor Who fan or a swinger or…well, pick something that’s perfectly legal but potentially off-putting or downright offensive to someone somewhere. And this hypothetical employer decides not to hire hypothetical you on the basis of this dug-up information. Should you do everything you can to make your online persona as professionally inoffensive as possible, to make sure this doesn’t happen? Should you lock anything potentially iffy away behind secure, friends-only barriers?

I really don’t have the right answer for you. I have what I think is the right answer for me.

So, I’ll come clean and out myself to the world. On something of a dare, I casually threw the phrase “hookers and blow” into our presentation at Computers in Libraries. And if you listen carefully during the video of the Computers in Libraries Pecha Kucha session, you can hear me yell it out from the audience. It also shows up in the caption of a picture taken of me at the conference. The phrase came from a joke I’d started in Twitter a few days before the conference, although it actually started as a joke between my wife and me. At any rate, by the end of the conference, I was joking that my professional career was over, thanks to my liberal use of the phrase at inappropriate times.

But here’s the thing: if a potential employer does an internet search and finds my professional name associated with the phrase “hookers and blow” and doesn’t bother to find out more of the context…I don’t want to work for them. If a potential employer does know the context and still doesn’t find it the least bit amusing…we won’t work well together, and it’s probably for the best if you don’t hire me.

In my life, I’ve done things I’m not proud of, things I’d do differently if I could. But I’m not going to hide who I am, I’m not going to censor my online expression, just to make sure I don’t put off any and all potential employers. There are people in this world I wouldn’t want to work with or associate with, and I’m not going to waste my time worrying about what they could find out about me that they wouldn’t like. I’ve got bigger yaks to fry.

I’ve just created a Library Society of the World page on Facebook. We’re everywhere!

Thanks to my conference sister Rikhei Harris, the Library Society of the World now has a group on LibraryThing. w00t!

I flew back to Kansas City from DC on Wednesday night. On Thursday morning, I got up and drove 3 hours to Wichita to present at the Kansas Library Association’s annual conference. Erin Downey Howerton, Brenda Hough and I presented on using internet tools to network, to engage in conferences and community building beyond official conferences–blogs, wikis, IM chatting, Twitter and things like the Library Society of the World.

The presentation went well, although we probably could have done the presentation in one hour, rather than stretching it into a two-hour slot. Erin and Brenda are both extremely engaging speakers, Erin bursting with loads of energy, Brenda with a calmer enthusiasm. I talked about how important the LSW is to me and others, and used Laura Crossett as an example of getting professional help from the LSW when designing her library’s new website. (Laura has apparently become the poster woman for the LSW.) The presentation was much smaller, more intimate, more conversational than my Computers in Libraries presentation, which is just fine by me. I prefer smaller and conversational overall. Oh, and getting wifi at the conference was easy, because Wichita has a free citywide mesh network.

After our presentation, I hopped back into my car and drove another 3 hours back to KC. By that time, I was exceedingly glad to be home.

Amy Kearns had an idea yesterday. I think it’s an interesting one.

What do you think of some sort of WORLDWIDE, 24/7, 365, volunteer, independent TWITBRARIAN or something like that (name can be something else)?

What I mean is – what I’m thinking is we are all on Twitter all (much) of the time. I know some of us are working – sometimes we’re not working – and I know it is also a source of “fun” and/or pleasure, socializing, etc., and not necessarily work, or a place we would want to end up getting work from…But – I can’t help but think of what an incredible social resource we are – all of us LIBRARIANS from all over the place on TWITTER…

Cindi Trainor has thought about it some more and put forward some good ideas (and possible pitfalls). I definitely think it’s an idea worth considering and brainstorming about. To that end, Amy has written more about her idea on the Library Society of the World wiki, created a wiki just for this idea, and reserved a couple of domain names (just in case). So let’s get crackin’!