Tag Archives: technology

North West (by North) Digital Communities

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The Manchester Mark I - first stored program digital computer (c. 1949). From the University of Manchester, Computer Science Dept

The Manchester Mark I - first stored program digital computer (c. 1949).

It seems I’m spending increasingly more of my free time at that brilliant space known as the Manchester Digital Laboratory. Last Wednesday night, the, erm, Madlab played host to a meeting of North West Digital Communities (NWDC), and I went along to fly the flag for the Social Media Café.

NWDC is a forum that brings together the leaders of digital communities in the north west, with the aim of improve the local digital community by sharing resources and pooling ideas.

These communities are incredibly diverse, representing a wide-range of tech interests; technology users groups; communications and small business. It’s also true to say that there is huge overlap and many people involved in one of the communities will be involved in at least one other. Colleagues from Geekup, Madlab, Manchester Free Software, Manchester BSD group and others were all in attendance. Continue reading →

90 seconds with Bloombla (or why you shouldn’t overly restrict what your users can do with your service if you want to beat Facebook/Twitter/Big Social)

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Bloombla boredom

The red boxes insisting I use a verb/format that Bloombla accepts meant I turned off within moments.

Sort of a nice idea, but any ‘alternative’ to Facebook/Twitter* is going to require an exceptionally easy approach which a more compelling USP. It’s going to require something that provides an open foundation on which other stuff can be built. And it’s going to be as easy to pick up and run with as… well, walking I guess, with shortened user attention spans and constant demands for sign-ups, logins, approvals…

I know ‘we’ talk about Twitter being mainstream, but the good point was made by George Hopkin that Twitter has 6 million users – Facebook has 150 million users, and growing.

To be fair, the elevator pitch lured me in and I did the minimum to reserve my username (90 seconds including first ‘bloom’). But for now, find – and talk to me on Twitter.

Postscript:

* Laconica’s open-source approach is quite cool. Makes you wonder – if email protocols had been commercial, would we have so much email or would it have died a death through lack of revenue? See Laconica in action at Identi.ca.