Social media and social networking have become a huge part of our lives. Most of us use it in some format on a daily basis. The majority of my generation has come of age right alongside the internet. Over time, we continue to find more and more interesting and useful ways to use the tools we have. Let’s take a quick look at the progression of the various services we have used over the years.
For many of my generation, our internet experience started with America Online (AOL). We remember all the CDs we received in the mail offering a certain number of free internet hours with a monthly subscription to AOL’s service. AOL provided us with the opportunity to browse the internet, but it became more significant for the additional services that came with it. My friends and I used it frequently for instant messaging, as well as visiting chat rooms to discuss various topics. In some respects, AOL was well ahead of its time.
Yahoo! took some of AOL’s marketshare over a period of time, providing similar services, but those services became less significant over time. Yahoo!, by virtue of their search engine and free email service, was able to maintain their status as the internet seemed to be less about socializing than it was about gathering information. Then came Google. Google turned users’ search queries into a gold mine, and have ridden that wave ever since.In time, Friendster came along and ushered in a new age of internet socializing. In my opinion, Friendster is where the current idea of social networking was born. It had a relatively small user base who wasn’t really sure how to use it. But it paved the way for what became the first major social network: MySpace. I’m not sure what it was about MySpace that caused it to flourish where Friendster did not, but MySpace is really the point where social networking became mainstream. I can personally attest to the fact that MySpace was very useful for getting reacquainted with long lost friends.
During my MySpace days, I remember hearing rumblings of this new social network that was building on college campuses. If I remember correctly, it was originally only available to college students. It was called Facebook. At this point, Facebook is, for all intents and purposes, ubiquitous. You probably have a Facebook account. Your parents probably have Facebook accounts. Your grandparents probably have Facebook accounts. I have seen people start Facebook accounts for their infant children or their pets. Google has tried to push its way into the Facebook market with Google+ (which I personally think is a much better user experience), but Facebook is still the pinnacle of social networking. That doesn’t mean, however, that there isn’t room for other services to make inroads.
Twitter has been able to steal a corner of the social networking universe by introducing the concept of microblogging. In 140 characters or less, I can quickly share with all of my followers, and the entire world, what I’m thinking or doing right this second. This platform, more than any other, also gave us the opportunity to get closer than we ever thought we could to the people we respect and admire. I can type a brief message of praise to Ben Savage and he might just read it, and maybe even respond.
Other services have filled any remaining openings within the social networking universe. Instagram lets others see whatever we might be eating at any given time. Vine gives us the chance to show brief videos of whatever crazy things our kids or pets are doing. Pinterest allows us to share our personal tastes in a variety of areas, and what we hope to someday have. And so it goes, ad infinitum.
More recently, healthy concerns over privacy and the likelihood of things we say on social networking services potentially having a negative effect have led the younger generation to adopt less public means of sharing their thoughts and images. Now we have the rise of private and/or group messaging services like WhatsApp, Kik, Viber, GroupMe, LINE, WeChat, and SnapChat. There are many others, but these seem to be the most popular at this moment. These are all private instant messaging services where the user controls who, whether an individual or a group, sees the content they are sharing, whether text or multimedia.
I believe it is a good thing that we are learning to become more private with the way we share information, but the old public forms are still useful for some situations. So the dilemma I face now is that I could have separate accounts for Facebook, Twitter, Google, Instagram, Pinterest, Kik, and SnapChat. That’s a lot to remember. How do I know what to share with whom? How do I protect my data from being used in ways I’d rather not have it used? How do I get Ben Savage to hang out with me? I believe I’ve found a pretty solid answer to two of those questions. I believe the solution to social networking is app.net (ADN).
In truth, maybe social network isn’t the correct term for ADN. I think that a more fitting term might be social platform. A lot of people struggle with identifying what ADN really is, so I have had a hard time selling it to many of my friends. It took me a while to understand it, but I think I have it now. The creators of ADN have essentially built a foundation for application developers to build whatever social service they want to build, and allow it to be used across the ADN user base. Hopefully, the following will serve as a reasonable explanation of what ADN is, and provide more people some encouragement to give it a try.
First of all, I will admit, there are some drawbacks to stepping into ADN, especially if you have the intention of stepping out of other networks as a result (which I do). ADN is only a little over a year old. It does not have a particularly large user base at this point in time. I believe it was right around their first anniversary that they celebrated 100,000 users. That may sound like a lot, but compared to the millions of users Facebook and Twitter boast, it pales in comparison. The user base is fairly specific, as well. Right now, ADN is primarily an application developer community. There is not a large contingent of celebrities or even news organizations that have an ADN presence. Sadly, Ben Savage does not have an account. It does seem as though more news outlets are starting to get involved with ADN. BleacherReport, The Onion, Huffington Post, Drudge Report, and others have created accounts, but there is still a long way to go in this respect.
Second, and this may seem trivial, but I think it is a factor nonetheless, is the name. While app.net is really a very good summation of what this platform is, it doesn’t necessarily catch your attention when you hear it. The network that has been best able to take advantage of this aspect of marketing is Twitter. It is understandable how the internet quickly became all atwitter with Twitter. Once the concept of “tweeting” solidified, they had something that sounded fun and interesting. Again, it may not seem like much, but it’s effective. Saying “Oh man, I need to post this to ADN!” doesn’t have the same verve as saying “Oh man, I’ve got to tweet this!”.
Finally, the most significant reason people are hesitant to join ADN is the fact that, while there is a free account tier, ultimately a user will probably have to register for a premium account in order to take full advantage of everything ADN has to offer. I currently have a free account, but I plan to move to premium once I can get more individuals to join. Originally, ADN started as a $50/year service. After a period of time, they decreased the cost to $36/year, which is where it currently stands. The advantages of a premium account are 10 GB of online storage and the ability to follow an unlimited number of users. The free tier includes only 500 MB of online storage and allows users to only follow 40 other users. These two features may not seem like a big deal, but I will explain later why the premium account is worthwhile.
So what are the reasons you should use ADN? Well, let’s pick up where we left off with the cost. Why is it worth $36/year to sign up for a service that is so similar to multiple other services I can get for free? The fact is, those services you’re using “for free” aren’t really free. You’re paying for it, you just don’t realize it. How did Google become an internet giant? How did Mark Zuckerberg become a millionaire via a free service like Facebook? Why is Twitter becoming increasingly hostile in the way they deal with the developers that create third-party applications for their services? They use your data. They track your searches, your internet history, what you’re clicking, how long you stay on a website, and so on. This information gets analyzed and sold to advertising agencies. Companies then pay significant amounts of money to those agencies to target ads to users who would be more inclined to be swayed by their ads. This is why something as simple as being a male and listed as ‘single’ on your Facebook profile will generate ads on your sidebar that say things like “Looking for singles in your area?” with a picture of an attractive woman. Have you been searching ‘insurance premiums’ on Google? Prepare to see banner ads for Aflac and promoted tweets praising the Affordable Care Act. In order for these free services to make money and continue to build their infrastructure, they need some sort of income. This is where they choose to make it. ADN is a premium service. They make money by charging you for the service they provide. They don’t want your data, and they have promised not to use your data in this way. Maybe they’re lying, but I when you hear Dalton Caldwell talk, he seems like he genuinely believes in this idea.
If we piggyback off that idea, what is the motivation for improving the services that are being provided? Google, Facebook, and Twitter will try to improve the services that will better mine your data so they can get more out of their advertising benefactors. ADN’s revenue is generated solely by their user base, so their motivation for improving services is giving users what they want so they will stay longer, and encourage others to join. Paying for a specific service, knowing what you are paying for, and in what currency you are paying, is a beautiful thing. The free market benefits us all.
Now, I’ll give you a bit of a crash course in why the social platform idea is a great thing. As I’ve said, ADN is the foundation upon which developers build applications that provide services they want to provide. Do you want to do microblogging? That’s easy. Initially, many developers saw ADN as a Twitter clone, so those were the first applications that came to be. Applications like Felix, Riposte, and Netbot are excellent microblogging clients for iOS that get regular usage from me. Android also has applications like Dash and Robin. I use Dash, because I don’t use Android much, and it’s free, but I’ve read great reviews of Robin, as well. But what if you want to share images or videos like you can with Instagram and Vine? As developers realized the potential of the ADN platform, they got more and more creative with the applications they developed. Now we have applications like Favd, Sprinter, and Climber to share photos and videos. These are all iOS applications, and I don’t know of anything similar for Android yet. Were you interested in private or group messaging? Whisper (iOS) and Rory, Jr (Android) are both great applications for that. Patter has also created a service with the ADN framework that allows you to send private/group messages, or create live chat rooms, just like in the old AOL days. There are also applications like Muud.io and Instaradio (both iOS) that allow you to share music via ADN. As I stated earlier, with a premium ADN account you get 10 GB of online storage. How do you use that storage space? You can manage your data using applications like fileZ, Filapp, and Orbit (all iOS). Another really interesting application is called Ohai. I’ve heard it compared to Foursquare, but I don’t think that’s a very good comparison, as Ohai is so much more. It allows you to check-in at locations, but it is also intended to be used as a journal for what took place at those locations, including photos. It is currently iOS only, but I believe the developer is working on an Android version. ADN also provides a great service called PourOver which allows the user to very easily share their blog to their ADN feed. It is so simple to set up that even I use it. The word is that there are a number of incredibly creative applications still coming, including games. As you may have noticed, the majority of the applications are for iOS, but Android developers are getting things going, as well.
Finally, the great thing about using one social platform to provide all these services is that they all coalesce by means of an application called Passport. Using Passport, the user can create an account, log in, browse the entire catalog of applications that are available for the operating system being used, and then allows the user to sign into that application automatically via Passport. You sign in to one application once, and it signs you into the rest as you add them. It could not be any simpler.
In the end, ADN appeals to me on a number of levels, and I hope I can inspire some individuals to join me there. If you click on the button on the sidebar to the right, it will take you to a link to create an account. If you use that button to create an account, you will follow me automatically.
I believe we need to get back to the understanding that there is no such thing as a free lunch. When we see something of value, we should be willing to pay for it by a means we understand. The evolution of the digital environment has muddied those waters a bit. ADN is a very solid platform that is still in its infancy. It is worth paying for by means of an open exchange of currency, rather than underhanded personal data mining. Also, it gives me the opportunity to do something that I enjoy: be on the bleeding edge of technology. I can be sort of pretentious and condescending when it comes to technology. I like to be one of the first to try and find ways to use technology. This is a great opportunity. ADN has the potential to be something amazing. Please come explore it with me, and let’s see where this ride takes us.
Posted with Blogsy
No comments:
Post a Comment