Songfighters on Google+

[fluffy]

We already have threads somewhere for Facebook and Twitter, so why not split the difference with the latest social network craze? I'm over yonder if you care.

So far I like it - it's like it's got the best of Facebook and Twitter, without quite as much privacy rape, although I have mixed feelings about the tight integration between it and other Google services. So far it looks like it has a reasonable tradeoff between convenience and privacy though. I do worry that it's yet another stupid walled garden in the making, though.

[Billy's Little Trip]

What do I do? Can you just hit a button and make me a part of your new venture? And please don't tell me to hit the any key, because my finger clicker board doesn't haz that.

[fluffy]

It's in beta and currently closed to new signups.

[Billy's Little Trip]

Ok.....so what should I do? And why do they call it beta? Fluffy, when you get famous, can you change it to testing? Beta sounds like those fighting fish getting ready to fap.

.....I don't like fish.

[drë]

what was the reason for this post again ?

to ask for our opinion on something that is exclusive and currently not accepting new members, or to show how l33t fluffy is ?

[fluffy]

The point is that some people here did get in and other people will get in eventually so because we all like to stay connected on various social networks I thought I'd get a leg up on getting us together on that one too.

From now on I'll only post topics of interest to everyone about things that everyone else has already done and seen. No sense in posting threads about new video games or movies either, obviously.

[JonPorobil]

I think fluffy's initiative is probably a good thing this time around, because look at what happened when we didn't coordinate a Songfight group on Facebook.

Unfortunately, I think the current Songfighters on Google Plus are just fluffy, Jonathan Mann, and Lunkhead.

[nyjm]

I'm curious about this service. I'm generally a fan of Google Apps (especially Maps and Docs) and it seems like Google+ has some neat features with many possible applications. (Hangouts = live remote jam sessions or tutoring or family get togethers). Skype still charges for that kind of thing.

(And am I the only one who doesn't have a problem with Facebook and privacy? It's a PUBLIC FORUM. Everything you put out there is PUBLIC. It's no longer yours the moment you hit SHARE.)

[JonPorobil]

(And am I the only one who doesn't have a problem with Facebook and privacy? It's a PUBLIC FORUM. Everything you put out there is PUBLIC. It's no longer yours the moment you hit SHARE.)

Facebook has a bad habit of sharing your info without waiting for you to press "Share." I clicked on a link that a friend posted, and suddenly found that Facebook had taken it upon itself to send messages to a bunch of people on my friendslist in my name. People can tag you in photos without your permission.

Also, every time Facebook changes their privary policy, many users' privacy settings get changed without their permission. These are huge problems with a site who - considering it's got a billion users out of a planet of 6.5 billion - really ought to have their act together on this stuff.

[roymond]

Likes Facebook for what it is.

People can tag you in photos without your permission.

How is this any different than any photo site out there, like Flickr? Other than the viral social network aspect...I guess that's a big one. But I agree with both of you. On the one hand, it is what it is. If you don't want to share it, then don't (I'm talking to you, Weiner). On the other hand, wow, how cool is membership trust and confidence? The moment Google+ or Diaspora or some other platform makes this clear and easy, Facebook is a ghost town. But I imagine they have a secret switch in their back pocket that instantly satisfies the privacy issue the moment such a migration looks imminent. Cost of switching is too high for most of the 700 million members.

That said, I'd love to be in Google+ and check it out. Open for invitations when they re-emerge

[Billy's Little Trip]

I'll never have a facebook account. Not that I'm worried about privacy, just that I hate jumping on the latest retarded trend. The only reason I'd ever consider a fb account is if it effected my bottom line.
The only reason I have an old school myspace account was for free music hosting. The same for youtube for free vid hosting and photobucket for pics. But facebook? I don't give two shits what people are doing. If I want someone to know what I'm doing, I'll call them. Yes, I gave into the retarded trendy telephone for my social networking.

A side note. Myspace was just purchased by Justin Timberlake and is going to undergo big changes. I'm not clear exactly about the changes. But JT said in an interview I saw that he wants to make it a place for music and entertainment networking to make it easier for amateur artists to get themselves out there. All I could think when he said that is that there is already a youtube, lol. So I'll be curious to see what they do.

Also, it's kind of cool that he's using the popularity of the movie The Social Network to propel this venture. That coupled with his brand name, he might just be onto something here.

[fluffy]

(And am I the only one who doesn't have a problem with Facebook and privacy? It's a PUBLIC FORUM. Everything you put out there is PUBLIC. It's no longer yours the moment you hit SHARE.)

Facebook has a bad habit of sharing your info without waiting for you to press "Share." I clicked on a link that a friend posted, and suddenly found that Facebook had taken it upon itself to send messages to a bunch of people on my friendslist in my name. People can tag you in photos without your permission.

The thing that led me to quit Facebook was how EVERY SINGLE SITE ON THE INTERNET was suddenly addressing me by my real name and telling me about which friends of mine would like those pages too. Very creepy.

How is this any different than any photo site out there, like Flickr?

When someone says "here is a picture of such-and-such" on Flickr, that picture doesn't end up showing up on your feed, to be seen by people who you might not want to see it. You might not want your mom seeing the picture of you getting a massage at a gay bathhouse, for example.

So far the big difference in Google+ is the only information that goes into your feed is stuff that you put there. There is no "wall" and there seem to be no plans to put one there. And I can't imagine Google doing something as stupid or sinister as Beacon (aside from how they already have a hand in like 98% of all Internet ad serving anyway), and even if they did, every message that goes out is explicitly opt-in. That is a huge difference to me.

[Lunkhead]

The thing that led me to quit Facebook was how EVERY SINGLE SITE ON THE INTERNET was suddenly addressing me by my real name and telling me about which friends of mine would like those pages too. Very creepy.

Yeah, I really don't like that either. Is Google+ really going to be different about that though? I thought Google was kind of already doing that with Gmail in a way. You log in to Gmail and they then tie every Google activity you do, and every non-Google URL you access that has Google ads, to your account. Maybe they're not making that easily accessible to other sites ... yet. But whether it's Facebook, Google, Twitter, whoever, if you've got a cookie from one of these sites then they're going to track everything you do everywhere on the Internet, whether it's through Like buttons, Tweet buttons, +1 buttons, Connect with Facebook, ads, or whatever. And probably you don't even need to stay logged in, because they probably just assume that traffic from your IP is likely from your account, etc. I don't like it either but I'm not sure yet of a good way to deal with it. Have you tried Tor fluffy? I'm curious about it, though some paranoid people think it's run by the gov't spooks of course.

[fluffy]

Oh, Google is definitely tracking everything you do for advertising purposes, and they've definitely had some major security/privacy gaffes (for example, how when they launched Buzz, all GMail users were automatically signed up for it, and automatically friended with everyone who they'd sent an email to in the past - causing all sorts of fun issues with, say, jilted/abusive ex-lovers and the like). But as far as providing stuff to the outside goes, they've been VERY keen on OAuth and such, and so while I can see them providing an easy way for third-party providers to hook into the Google+ APIs (which is a good thing!), I am very certain that they will do it via an OAuth API for all private data. Who knows what they'll do about public profile data, though, and of course I have concerns about their identity concept (although so far their stated policy appears to be "whatever name you have there, it needs to look like a name, and needs to not be impersonating someone else," as opposed to Facebook's "it must be your REAL LEGAL NAME or you will be DELETED").

So far no major social network seems to use IP tracking for credential purposes, which is good because that would be especially ridiculous in NATted corporate environments. ("But you shouldn't be using it at work anyway." Meh.) I know Google does have other non-cookie-based user tracking stuff (fingerprints based on IP, user-agent, usage patterns, etc.) for ad tracking, but I don't think they associate that with a user account.

I haven't tried Tor. I hadn't heard the government spook conspiracy theory, but it doesn't surprise me that there is one - the sort of person who would use Tor is generally the sort of person who doesn't trust ANYTHING in a way that they'll never be satisfied. But that's all about compromises.

[fluffy]

A side note. Myspace was just purchased by Justin Timberlake and is going to undergo big changes. I'm not clear exactly about the changes. But JT said in an interview I saw that he wants to make it a place for music and entertainment networking to make it easier for amateur artists to get themselves out there. All I could think when he said that is that there is already a youtube, lol. So I'll be curious to see what they do.

That's pretty much all Myspace has been used for in the last several years anyway. But the dark side to that is it's also used by shady "promoters" who want to take advantage of those amateur musicians to screw them out of a lot of time and money.

I used to have a Myspace account just for my music (that I never maintained) but I closed it a month ago or so when I started getting a lot of spammy inbox messages (which were being emailed to me suddenly); I went to the site to flag them as spam and Myspace support said that they weren't spam, they were sponsored messages that keep Myspace free for its users (meaning me). Of course, I wasn't actually using myspace, and if they were protected advertising messages, why did they have a "report as spam" button on them like any other stupid message? So I closed my account.

[Billy's Little Trip]

Maybe that will be one of the changes. Could be that the previous owner (big company, can't think of who off hand) was driving up revenue at the last minute to increase the sites value?...maybe? I just know that they took a huge loss when it was sold.

[fluffy]

last I was aware it was owned by News Corporation (Rupert Murdoch's holding company, fox et al)

[Billy's Little Trip]

Ah, yes. Fox is the one I was thinking of.

[Spud]

No sense in posting threads about new video games or movies either, obviously.

You'll get no argument from me there...

[JonPorobil]

I just landed an invite and got set up. I'm "Jon Eric" on the site.

[jast]

Nobody invites me, so you're safe from me. For now.

[roymond]

In. And it has changed my life. But I haven't figured out how just yet.