Pleasure and Pain

Measuring the impact of new technology on human experience

Pleasure and Pain: photos by Whitney G. Hess

Social Feed Aggregators

May 30th, 2008 · 8 comments so far

There are hundreds, probably thousands, of powerful social networking platforms out there, with new ones launching every week. Send 140-character messages with Twitter. Save links with del.icio.us. Promote content with Digg. Share music with Last.fm. It’s endless.
Lifestreaming — recording your daily activities through text, links, photos, music and video — is quickly becoming the [...]

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Facebook Chat

April 11th, 2008 · 1 comment so far

Last Sunday, April 6, brought the launch of the long-awaited Facebook Chat. According to TechCrunch, the feature is so far only available to select members. According to Facebook, “we’re rolling this out slowly.” Not entirely surprising given the backlash that has previously occurred when FB releases new stuff without any warning or feedback and then [...]

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Flickr introduces video

April 9th, 2008 · 5 comments so far

Flickr announced today that they are now offering video. Now when you log in to Flickr, this is what you see:

Before I go any further, I have to admit that while I watch a lot of video online, I don’t post much video online. Aside from helping my mom post her videos to YouTube, I’ve [...]

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How Bebo Ruined My Life

April 1st, 2008 · 2 comments so far

My story, sad but true.
While doing research for the blog post I wrote on Sunday comparing the “People you may know” feature of various social networking sites, I made the soon-to-be regrettable decision to add friends to my Bebo account. Like many services of their kind, they allow you to import your address book in [...]

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People you may know

March 30th, 2008 · 4 comments so far

Earlier this week, Facebook released a new feature called “People You May Know.” Three random friends of friends are displayed in the right sidebar of your homepage in the hopes that you’ll make more connections.
When you click the “see all” link, a longer list of possible friends is offered up. Of the 27 people displayed, [...]

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