Of late, I’ve noticed that Gawker is too much of a tongue in cheek blog. Most of their headlines are scathing, almost as if they’re doing so to get more hits on the site. First they criticized App.net and called it snobbish and a waste of money and now they published a headline about Obama on Reddit that sounded like they got paid by the anti-Obama camp to do the headline. I don’t understand why they’re doing it and if it’s succeeding, but this gold-digging behavior on Gawker’s part does not bode well for the website. No one wants to keep listening to the lone rants of an angry man (both articles are by Adrian Chen) and we as netizens would much rather look at brighter sides of the stories than concentrate on the first bad thing that comes to mind.

How will App.net’s Culture grow?

I’ve been reading a lot of discussion on App.net about how the concept of reblogging/retweeting is going to grow on the network. Since I don’t know how the idea of a retweet (RT) grew on Twitter, I went hunting for information. Turns out, Wikipedia details out the growth of the RT on twitter in this article here. Turns out, the concept of using @ to signify a user and RT to signify a re-post grew organically among twitter users around 2008. This troubled my mind a bit. So, in essence, the growth of culture on twitter was independent of what the company wanted and instead, was in the hands of the users.

Now we come to a discussion on App.net. This discussion right here – Echoes, RPs and “>>” talks about people using the “Share” button on Google Chrome via an extension called Succynct by developer and App.net member Abraham Williams. The point to note is that since the platform is still in it’s infancy, a proper lingo for re-posting has not yet been decided and the creator, Dalton Caldwell has just been using the lingo “RP” for RePost. The conversation flows to discuss the concepts of “>>” and finally, that of “Echo”. Here is where the biggest problem lies. The developer, having a distaste for “>>”, says that in the next build of his extension, he’ll consider adding the “Echo” keyword.

App.net started as a way to hand over control of the flow of conversation to the people. The promise is that no longer will we be plagued by advertisements and spam bots. The promise did not talk about who would have control over the ideas and the culture. This means that people building on top of App.net have the ultimate control. Now here’s the thing – A common user of App.net pays $50 per year while a developer pays $100. Obviously, there will be a lot fewer developers than users. This also means that those making all the apps, extensions and services on top of App.net will be very few. Compare this with Facebook, Twitter and other ad-supported networks. Anyone can get up and create an app. Thus, the onus of deciding lingo rests either on the common users who popularize concepts (as in the case of Twitter) or in the hands of the company (Facebook).

App.net is pretty young right now and because of the promise made to it’s users, the company has rested control of the culture into the hands of the common users. Or maybe not. The disparity between paying users and paying developers means that a concentrated few will get to decided how things formulate. The reason, if it’s not clear to everyone is that a lot of users for all social networks nowadays are mobile. That means that the default web interface for App.net is not going to dictate culture as well as iOS apps do. Even when users are on their desktops, extensions like Succynct will rule the platform and create culture.

Maybe these predictions will come true and maybe not. But the fact remains that as long as App.net retains this business model, the power to create something on top of it will not be in the hands of the masses. Perhaps when App.net has proven it’s point and penetrated a large chunk of the market, it should revisit it’s developer strategy and open doors to many more people, thus making sure that it remains true to it’s goals.

AT&T 4G Issues

I faced a strange problem today. I have an iPhone 4s with iOS 5.1.1 on AT&T’s 4G network in Boulder, Colorado.

I tried opening this blog of mine on my phone today. I tried multiple times when the bus was moving over many miles and also when I had stopped at a particular location. No show. I asked a friend to open it on his Samsung Galaxy Note (which is also on AT&T’s 4G network) but again, no show.

The blog was constantly giving us a 502 Bad Gateway error, meaning that either AT&T’s or my hosting provider’s servers are configured badly. When I reached my office, I opened the blog on my computer. It worked like a charm. At the same time, it did not load on my phone right there and then.

Upon digging a bit, I found that this is a problem for a lot of people all over the country, specifically on AT&T’s amazing 4G data network. Wonder what else doesn’t work!

WordPresser: An HTML5 iOS blogger tool

WordPress is a great blogging tool. It has a lot of potential and in it’s more recent updates, it has grown from simply a blogging tool to a content management solution. I use wordpress on this blog for two purposes – blogging and tweeting. You see, twitter is a great service but the 140 character limit is a pain. There are thus a lot of services that allow for longer tweets. But I prefer using my blog for long tweets using the hash tag #LongTweet.

To tweet quickly from my iPhone, I want to use the WordPress app for iOS but it’s not adequate. So, I’ve built WordPresser. It’s a web app that uses HTML5 and XML-RPC to post to your wordpress.org blog. The link you need is – WordPresser. Open this in your iPhone or iPod’s Safari (opening it in any other browser doesn’t do much). Once you’ve opened it, save it to your Homescreen, it’ll save as a web app with the name “WordPresser”.

Before you go further, there are two things you need to do with your blog. One is conventional, the other, not so much. Continue reading