Paul Jacobson

Category: Social Web

  • Birthday balloons on Twitter 🎈

    Some platforms present a little something special on your birthday. Twitter has balloons that float up over your screen when you visit your profile page on your birthday. I get a kick out of seeing this every year! 😁

  • Thoughts about being off Facebook

    Thoughts about being off Facebook

    I just read Cheri Baker’s post titled “Eight months without Facebook” that touches on my unformed thoughts about being on Facebook. When I spent a lot of time on sites like FB and Insta, I developed the habit of stereotyping people based on what they shared. I’d unconsciously tell myself that so-and-so is all about…

  • Blogging is the antidote to social media woes

    Blogging is the antidote to social media woes

    I like this approach, it’s what I’ve been doing for a little while now: If you are frustrated with the state of social networks, I recommend blogging more. I love seeing new blogs and photo blogs just as we’re having a serious debate in the mainstream about social networks. The way out isn’t easy, but…

  • Reading Twitter updates, the world looks like a pretty dark place …

    Reading Twitter updates, the world looks like a pretty dark place …

    I don’t use Twitter all that much lately, and I use Facebook even less. My reasons for using each platform less are different, though. I just scanned through my Twitter feed, and I closed the app feeling the world is a pretty dark place at the moment. I’m not sure if that’s more about the…

  • Facebook really has become the primary social space online. Stepping out of Facebook is like going on a retreat in some distant land with no link to the rest of the world.

  • Is social media awful by design?

    Is social media awful by design?

    I’ve only just started reading Mark O’Connell’s article in the New Yorker titled “The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media“, but this part stood out for me. The problem is the business model based on the manipulation of individual behavior. Social-media platforms know what you’re seeing, and they know how you acted in the immediate aftermath…

  • Saying goodbye to Twitter

    This is starting to feel like an apt description of so much social media these days: Social media has become death by a thousand angry micro-posts. Maybe it’s time to get away.

  • “Held down by algorithms that are like axes”

    “Held down by algorithms that are like axes”

    No matter where I go on the Internet, I feel like I am trapped in the “feed,” held down by algorithms that are like axes trying to make bespoke shirts out of silk. Source: Om Malik