I saw an article online just recently where these scientist types had demonstrated that the popularity and use of social media sites like facebook follow the same mathematical progressions as communicable diseases. In other words they start, become flavour of the month and spread like wildfire through the population until they reach saturation point and rapidly wither and fade. These science wonks figured that facebook usage stats had reached the plateau stage and would very soon start to experience the same loss of popularity and rapidly fade away. MySpace anyone? It's pretty clear what facebook users want and if they can't get it here they will bail out and go elsewhere in droves. The end user has all the power (that's us folks!).
It is pretty obvious to me that today's internet savvy travellers know what they want. This is apparent from just reading through popular posts like this one which was recently posted to my facebook timeline:
Here's something from my facebook page today:"I'm a little disappointed right now. Just put on my headphones to listen to my SoundCloud stream and discovered that there is no way to remove tracks you no longer wish to hear from your stream! Wtf? I mean, like, seriously? What possible use is a personalised music stream that you can't actually personalise?Instant uninstall of app. I'll just go back to streaming my own music off my network drives."
This is another example of a social media service hindering the free flow of information by attempting to excessively control the content on the net. Here's some more from the same thread:"It was listening to podcasts that created the problem for me. I want to choose what I hear and I don't want some stranger talking to me (specially when they are talking over the music- just fucking rude IMO). I 'liked' a guy (Tydi) and had a listen to one of his podcasts. He started talking through music someone else had put a lot of work and effort into. For me this is a HUGE no-no. As a musician myself when I release a tune I do not want someone else talking over the track that I've carefully composed. The is the sonic equivalent of walking into someone else house and shitting on their lounge floor. So,,, sorry Mr Tydi but I'm here to listen to music, not some moronic talent vacuum flapping his gums over other peoples work. So I try to remove this guy and his irritating podcasts from my stream and there is no delete button. So every time I go to sound cloud I have this guy yabbing at me in yet another podcast I don't want to hear. Now, I can go and block this guy but that does not remove his podcasts from my stream. Completely brainless. I want cloud storage to operate like my own hard drives. I don't like something I delete it - simple. Soundcloud does not work like this (even though the net is covered with other people like me wanting to control their own streams) - therefore, they no longer get my support."
So I no longer use, support or recommend Soundcloud although I continue to use facebook for the meantime (and yes, in case you were wondering the use of a lowercase 'f' is deliberate. It is a token of my general disgruntlement (hey cool! 'Disgruntlement' must be a real word because Spell Check didn't put one of it's officious red wriggly lines under it when I typed the word).
Now I know that the good folk here at www.blogger.com read every single blog posting so this is for you guys - keep giving your users what they want and they'll keep using your service.
Remember - "you can't stop the signal Mal"
PSMy apologies for referencing information that I cannot now find the original source - terribly bad form on my part. Or is it? After all is said and done these are simply the musings of a slightly deranged Wizard, not some learned treatise in an august and respectable science journal. Given that then I must apologise and retract my previous apology!
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