dangerouslyawesome

I'm Alex Hillman, the co-founder of IndyHall and a guy who makes things better in Sunny Philadelphia.

I work on Beanstalk, Postmark, and DynamicWear.

I think technology is cool, but people are infinitely cooler.

playing devils advocate AGAINST single click signups

A verbatim conversation, copied right out of Adium, with Jesse about making it easy to sign up for a website.

Jesse: You know, I really love the simplicity of Posterous.  I may start using it. Alex: its sllick Jesse: Yeah.  The no signup is the best non-feature around. Jesse: Oh and they allow custom domains.  Didn’t even realize that. Alex: mmm nice Alex: ive got a devils advocate argument about the “no signup necessary” workflow Alex: it plays into low-impact workflows, too, like openid/facebook logins Alex: clearly, you and i benefit Alex: but from a business standpoint, the ratio of dead accounts goes through the roof Alex: so you can report users as an astronomically high number Alex: but active users as a comparison looks bad, and on a business model, thats bothersome. Alex: not insurmountable Jesse: That’s very true.  I do like how it gives me instant gratification but then allows me to come sign up.

discuss.

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i'd never sell my peeps

In a comment responding to my previous post, Lachlan Hardy asked me what continuing value Facebook had to me.

First, and most simply, none of the blunders they’ve made have directly affected me: none of the privacy violations invaded my personal privacy since I do my best not to have anything to hide, anyway. The closest thing to an invasive blunder Facebook has ever made to me, personally, was the inclusion of SuperPoke, Funwall, and that confounded Zombie application without including an “ignore forever and ever and ever” button.

I think during the initial wave of Facebook account deletions due to, Tara Hunt said something along the lines of “Facebook has made some lousy decisions, but they totally have me by the social graph”. Now, I’m paraphrasing (I wish I could find the original tweet, this was the closest I could find). But Tara’s and my shared sentiment about why we are still on Facebook is similar to why, for instance, I have an account on Pownce and Twitter but spend ALL of my time on Twitter: it’s where my peeps are at.

I can do the same thing and more elsewhere, but my stuff and more importantly, a great deal of my friends, are there.

Remember, I’m from a generation where I was on Facebook before it was open to non students. Remember, the majority of my friends outside of the social media/new media space are either recently graduated or still finishing school. Unlike most of the users of Facebook, who are more of a layer of very rich sod sitting just on top of the surface, I’ve got deep and twisty roots buried into photos, contacts, comments, connections, messages. And many of them are personal, not the casual “nice blog post” or “I think Scoble is a douchebag, too, who needs 8000 friends?” type exchanges that happen for many others.

Now…I’m not interested in tangent-ing down the road of, “well, if the data was portable like it should be…”. Because it’s not portable. That’s Facebook’s M.O. and I accept that. We’ve got plenty of other opportunities to make it better. Then, Facebook can play catch up (or not).

So really, the value of ANY social network, be it Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, ZipKarma, my blogroll, or any other NETWORK OF SOCIAL CONNECTIONS, the value is in those connections, not the tools that the network provides.

In the case of right here right now, the majority of the people that I care about can be found on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Maybe this is why I chuckle every time someone tries to identify value in social media. I think value is the wrong word.

Value, to me, suggests that it must be for sale because something is only “worth” a certain amount if someone else is willing to pay for it.

I learned that lesson as a kid collecting comic books. It was during a collector “bubble”, and me and my friends were excited to have gotten our hands on comics that were “worth” hundreds of dollars. The reason this bubble was a bubble, though, was that much like many valuations they are arbitrary until someone is willing to shell out. People invested big bucks into comics, and since not many people were on the high end of the buying scale, the whole thing fell in on itself. Comics are still very popular, but people collect them for the enjoyment of them, not necessarily to own a “valuable” collection.

There will never be “value” to a social graph because a social graph’s “value” is highest to it’s creator. And even then, my friends aren’t for sale.

I don’t value Facebook. I don’t value Twitter. I don’t value LinkedIn or even my Blogroll. I appreciate Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and all of the individual connections, nay, the individual PEOPLE that make up the social graph. In the case of Twitter, I totally heart twitter because of the WAY that it’s let me connect.

But Heart != value.

Heart = Appreciation++

Now that I’ve identified a new term to replace the overused and diluted term “value” with something more relevant in this context…on to the next task. Getting rid of “social graph” and “join the conversation”.

Join me for my next half-day coworking workshop on 2/19.
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basecamp gets openID and simple account switching

oh happy freaking day, 37 signals gave basecamp openID as well as an easy way to switch between your openID enabled accounts.

My life, and many others’ just got SO much nicer. I had almost written off basecamp because i was so sick of managing 30+ different logins for various clients and vendors. Now…im a customer for life.

Hooray!

[tags]openID, 37signals, basecamp[/tags]

Join me for my next half-day coworking workshop on 2/19.
Find out details or sign up below. Save $75 by using the code DANGER.