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By Tai, August 9, 2009 9:16 pm

Similarities

1. You want to grow both
2. Increase in each also increases your influence

Comparison

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By Tai, August 3, 2009 9:11 pm

I don’t publicize my email and instant messaging IDs because…

• I rely on them to communicate with trusted partners
• I’m afraid of spams
• I want to maintain certain privacy

Social Media come as a rescue, adding more communication layers.

The inner layer have emails and IM IDs is to be used for trusted partners and everyday conversations

The middle layer consist of my blog and profiles (LinkedIn being public and Facebook being semi-public)

The outer layer is where I maintain the so-called “public parties”, where I redirect all initial connections there.

***

In this sense, it is sensible to claim that Twitter is the new generation of communication, at a different level from real-time chatting.

• Twitter provides a communication channel that is less prone to spams
• Twitter offers asynchronous conversation mechanism, which does not require the other party to actually be there to communicate. We can be sure that they will receive our messages later on, and the messages will stay there without getting lost like Yahoo! Messenger offline messages

***

Moreover, I used to use IM status to host various quotes and thoughts. Now with Social Media, I have many options to choose from.

Can we generalize by saying that Social Media are adding values to online communication and competing with Instant Messaging at the same time?

Comments (1)

By Tai, January 31, 2009 2:08 pm

The recession is forcing some web services to start charging their customers. And surprise? Some power users are ready to pay. Today I received another email from MyOtherDrive on premium accounts.

I guess it’s time now to put it on the table how much I am willing to spend for web services and why.

My first list includes Facebook and a news aggregator.

My Facebook

My Facebook = less formal LinkedIn + FriendFeed with friends + Photobucket + Life events Reader + Address Book + Calendar + mini-CRM + mini-YouTube

I don’t know whether Facebook likes it or not (if you don’t like it just contact me, Facebook) but above is how I utilize my Facebook account.

1. My profile on Facebook can be used to include professional and academic information. It’s not entirely an online CV but rather an informal page with relevant info. What makes it more like my LinkedIn is that I have received a dozen of business opportunities via Facebook, thrice as much as from LinkedIn. Sidenote: I’ll give Caravat some time :)

2. Facebook is now my feed aggregator of non-personal updates. My blog entries here, my reading archive on Tumblr, bookmarked links on StumbleUpon, submitted news on Mixx flow to my Facebook newsfeed. What Facebook offers me that FriendFeed hasn’t is audience: I have much more connections on Facebook than on FriendFeed and some of them are my readers.

3. Another disclosure is that Facebook Photos was the first feature that kept me with the service. I don’t compare with Flickr because Flickr is more of a publishing service than a sharing service.

4. What Life events Reader? I receive updates on events and activities around my location on Facebook.

5. Even when Facebook profile doesn’t explicitly capitalize them, contacts can be stored in Facebook. At least, I have a connection with ones I know and when I can’t ping them via cellphones or instant messengers, I drop them a message on Facebook.

6. Calendar! Facebook doesn’t provide a full-pledged calendar but since I have been utilizing its birthday-reminder function, I want to use it as a calendar as well. This is achieved with built-in Events feature or some applications.

7. Mini-CRM. While I haven’t provided any services or sold any product on Facebook, I know a bit of how I will be able to do that.

8. Mini-YouTube. Facebook Videos handles my videos well enough for me, except for a few that I want to be publicly available.

Up to $5/month

Considering the impact, I would be ready to pay up to $5 per month for Facebook provided that I have some privileges:

What I want for premium Facebook account

1. Lift the photo size from 604px width to at least 800px width like that of Orkut
2. Lift the limit of 60 photos per album to unlimited
3. Increase the maximum number of networks from 6 to unlimited
4. Maximum number of friends to send messages to is increased from 20 to at least 100. I don’t sp.am, never.
5. My news are broadcast more often to my connections
6. Optionally increase the maximum number of groups from 200 to a bigger number
7. A feature to download contents from Facebook, including all my photos in original size, all videos, all contacts of my connections that they make available, all notes, all posted items

A business news and analysis aggregator

As discussed on LinkHay, I am ready to pay up to $200/year for a business news aggregator, provided that high quality analysis is included and news are valuable. 200 bucks is the price of Harvard Business Review subscription so I would expect something that level of quality.

Storage

What I haven’t included here is storage. I will update more on this need when I am sure what I want.

How about you? What kind of services would you pay for and how much?