The State of the internet and the lost civilisation of “Friendster”
Posted in 5 of the best and 5 of the rest on February 3rd, 2010 by Glenn White
5 of the best Social Media stories of the week as chosen by the Qubites. Also 5 of the rest aka “Things MC Hammer says you can touch”.
5 of the best
There are times when I worry about how much Google knows about me. They know all of my web history, my conversations, my personal blogging…the list goes on. On the one hand I can see how it creates better results for me (in both the paid and natural results) as well as providing me with plenty of highly useful services for free. How much should our privacy cost though and how much are you willing to give up? This video calms me a little that Google is thinking about these things and says they will let me remove private information when I choose, but is this enough?
UK Internet Map (as featured on the BBC’s Virtual Revolution)
The BBC’s new show on the virtual revolution had an amazing 3D diagram of how Internet traffic flows in the UK. Here you can see it in all its 2D glory and realise that maybe cyberspace isn’t as big as we think, or at least for all its size we visit a few websites very often and the many websites much less.
We love pretty graphs. Here is a collection of useful and interesting top level views of how people are using the Internet.
Five lessons from MyDavidCameron
My David Cameron is both a stab at political satire and interesting social experiment. I would recommend that everyone running social media campaigns reads the findings and see how they reflect their own experiences. I particularly like the “Crowd Sourcing is Good” and “Crowd Sourcing is Bad” section.
Government 2.0: Communication and Engagement Are On a Collision Course
Couldn’t agree more with the differences between communication and engagement strategies. There is a huge difference between using Twitter as an alternative to the phone or website and actually going out and engaging in conversations where members of the public are. Food for thought for any government officials.
5 of the rest
70-Minute Video Review of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace
Any Star Wars fan (and Phantom Menace hater) should find 70 minutes to enjoy this beautiful, witty and spot on analysis of the Phantom Menace that shows how off-base Lucas really was.
Internet archaeologists find ruins of “Friendster” civilisation
Very funny and makes you wonder how long it is until something similar to this becomes reality. Maybe I should start trawling through the way back machine for similar findings, I wonder how Friends Reunited is getting on. Also this Onion video has me chuckling 
.
Ashen’s Tech Dump – Retro Games
The BBC are doing some great web comedy content. Short in length but not low in quality. This is a funny look into the “past”, They don’t make them like they used to!
The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” quotation marks
This is a very “Funny” series of photos
The Best Google Street View Fails, Wins, And WTF’s
It is amazing to get a snapshot of our streets at set points in time, although some of these people will have wished they stayed indoors the day the Google car came around.
