Knocking down the walls

When Tim Berners-Lee developed the web he envisioned it as an open web of information that anyone could read (and modify originally). In the 25 years since then the web has changed a lot. Some sites are more like applications than just sources of information. One of the bad trends has been to lock sites behind some sort of barrier. This may be force people to pay for it or just to make them sign up to the site. There may be cases where privacy is required, but if I'm just sharing cool links or blogging then I want it to be accessible by anyone. That's one reason I use Blogger and other web sites I've run that have been open.

Although I liked many of the features of the Tsu social network I didn't like that it was a walled garden. If I sent anyone a link they would see this sign-up screen. That put me off sharing posts on other social networks. People thought I was trying to 'scam' them into joining some money-making scheme rather than being social.

Being able to share links across the various social sites is something I enjoy and any barriers to that were a pain.

As of today things have changed.









There's a new privacy option "Do not require users to sign-in to see my profile and posts". I've turned this on as I don't want my posts to be hidden. There's a further option to my profile from search engines, but I can't see any reason to do that.

It's going to be interesting to see if this affects the number of views I get. Tsu users have access to statistics on their most recent posts. You don't get details about where viewers came from, but it's interesting to see which posts work best. On Tsu views translate into income. When money is involved people will try to cheat the system and concerns were immediately raised about this. So it will be interesting to see if they count views from non-members.

Previously people have joined up just to see what the site is when someone sent them a link. Many of them never came back. Now they can have a look around first and decide if it's something they want to be part of.

I do see a few little issues with this. The profile that they originally visit only gets credited for new members if they join whilst on one of their posts (or the whole feed). If they click to another user (who has opened their feed) then the credit goes to that one. If they go to the 'home' page then they are back to the old method of having to manually enter a username. These may be teething problems that will get sorted out soon. The site is still relatively new and I don't know how much user testing has been done before making this feature available.

Tsu user Eileen Brown has written an article on ZDNet about the new open Tsu.

Here are a few of my recent selected posts for you to check out:

• From when I discovered the open Tsu
• Sharing a video about renewable energy on Orkney
• One of my photos from my neighbourhood

You are still limited in layout and number of images, so it's not an ideal blogging platform. I'll keep doing that here and post the links onto Tsu (and elsewhere).

I am making a little more money on Tsu lately, but it's not enough to justify my time. I stick around as I'm having fun interacting with cool people. It's interesting to play with a new site that is doing radical things. The money is just a bonus.

Collected thoughts

Earlier this week Google+ added a feature called Collections. This looks a lot like a feature I thought of some time ago that I called 'aspects'. I was thinking that there are some people I follow on social media who post on a variety of topics. In some cases these may be tagged, but it has not been easy to include or exclude specific topics. For example I follow some fellow Linux fans who are also into soccer, which is of no interest to me. I'd like to be able to exclude those posts from my feed as I have limited time to look through it all.

The Google+ feature allows you to select a Collection instead of circles for a post. When you create a Collection you can select whether your existing followers get it by default and they can opt out if they wish. You can also set whether it is public or for a circle (or just you). You cannot change that afterwards, so choose carefully. I created my Social networks Collection for my thoughts about G+, Tsu and other systems. I had a comment recently saying they thought I was 'spamming' their feed with money making schemes. That person could now opt out if they still want to see my other posts. The money making aspect of Tsu, 3tags and Bitlanders does interest me, but I don't expect to make much in the short term. I've given most of what I have made to charities that use those sites.

It would be good to see some automation of this feature by suggesting an appropriate Collection from keywords. Collections are already in the Android app.

I've seen a few opinion pieces saying that G+ is dead, but it seems pretty alive to me and this shows that they are still adding features. There are many millions of users and plenty of interest to me. It hasn't taken off like Facebook and Twitter, but I think it has the best set of features and a good user interface. They still don't have advertising, but I'm not sure they need the money as they will get it when people go to Gmail or Youtube anyway.

My current (dead tree) reading is Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams. I've been interested in on-line collaboration for some years. It covers more than just traditional wikis. I've been an advocate of using a wiki at work for years, but some people just don't get it.

This book is a few years old and so it's interesting to see what has changed. Back in 2008 MySpace was the big player in social, having taken over from Friendster. Facebook was still in its early days and even Youtube was still fairly new.