Who Cares About The "Words"?

Douglas Edwards, in his book documenting the early days of Google, calls himself the "words guy," meaning that he gives Google a voice, whereas the rest of the company is essentially made up of programmers who lack the marketing and journalistic background that he has. But something has puzzled me about this, and other word guys: of the people using Google, or whatever other websites - who is actually reading these words. I use Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, Google, and host of other websites, but I don't think I've ever actually read the statements made by the website themselves. When I researched Twitter for my Community on the Internet project, that was the first time I'd ever looked at the "about" page on Twitter - and that's after using it for over five years. The same goes for the other websites, and especially Google: Google has never been a destination for me. In a lot of ways, it's like an airport: I don't necessarily like it, I want to get through there as quickly as possible, and I just want it to be easy and painless. Thus, it makes Google's message - and in turn, their word guy - not really important to me. I would think that other users would have a similar opinion about those "about" pages, and it makes the words that Edwards writes a lot less important than he claims them to be.

On the other hand, they're important to the company. I am intentionally rough on pages like that, but they are important to the employees who are wondering what, exactly, they're working towards. I hate to side with Douglas (because I've been pretty against the book and his writing up until this point) but a company with as much power and as much momentum (at least in the early days) that Google has needs to be asking those questions and looking at the big picture. Ideas of "Don't Be Evil" (which I'll discuss in another blog post) are incredibly important, and even if your consumers aren't necessarily reading your mission statement, you need to have it for yourself, and to keep the company on the right track in a financial, innovational, and moral sense.

I watched an interesting movie last week that I thought might be of interesting to anyone thinking about computers and their role in our lives. The movie is called Computer Chess, and is set in the late 70s at a hotel where a computer chess tournament is going on - a yearly event where programmers play against each other using their computers - some from high end companies, and some independent programmers. The idea is that whatever computer wins the tournament will eventually play a human being, and that eventually the computer will probably be able to beat that human - but not yet. The movie places itself at an interesting point in the technological revolution: computers aren't yet smarter than humans, but they surely will be soon (they are now, I'd say, especially with the internet). Also in the film is the plotline that one of the computers doesn't want to play against other computers anymore, and wants to play against humans - and has figured out how to know when playing a computer or playing a person. It's an interesting film that deals with the human psyche and the implications of technology in a world where it is so embraced, when perhaps we should be more wary of it than we are.

Google Gods.

For a while there, it seemed like there was genuinely a war between which search engine was going to win out the battle: I remember as a kid using Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, and Altavista probably just as much as I did Google. I mean, Ask Jeeves had a cool picture of a butler on their front page - and sometimes that butler had different clothes on depending on the weather outside, or if it was a holiday. Now, though, probably about ten or so years later, it seems like Google has become the predominant search engine - doesn't Ask Jeeves even still exist? If it does, I'm pretty sure they got rid of the butler, which is disappointing to say the least.

The problem with Google becoming the one and only search engine we all use is that it lends a certain amount of brand loyalty that customers aren't even aware of. If we draw a comparison, Google has essentially becoming the Kleenex of search engines. No one says tissue, really (at least where I'm from) - we all just say Kleenex. Even if we're not using Kleenex, we still say Kleenex - I'm pretty sure my mom buys Puffs. The thing about this, though, is that Kleenex kind of owns the tissue market - despite the fact that people might not be actually using their product. Google, on the other hand, has both: they've becoming part of the culture, and are used in a way that are different from tissues: no one says "I'll Google it" and then goes to Ask.com. We're all using Google - it's built into our web browsers (at least any web browser I use). Not only that, but it's become more than just a search engine - it's become a one-stop shop. Maps, news, pictures, videos, even social media are now all a part of Google (even though, admittedly, Google+ seems like kind of dud). I mean, even my blog is a part of Google - they own Blogger now too. It's the kind of large company that we don't necessarily think about though - a faceless company that seamlessly controls the internet without having to let you know they're controlling it. They're cool, but they don't have to tell you they're cool. They own Youtube, but not in a way that puts a gigantic Google banner on the top of youtube.com - in a way that subtlety puts a "Youtube" tab on their homepage, and keeps your Google account in the top right corner of Youtube.

My point is this: without competition, Google really can do whatever they want, and that might be a problem. Unlike Mac products, if you don't like Google, your choices are kind of limited. With a Mac, if you find yourself against it, there are other companies to go to. But with Google, sure, you can go to Bing, and maybe Vimeo, and The New York Times website and Hotmail and Mapquest, but that's going to take a lot of time as opposed to having it all within a click of your mouse on Google. And without that competition, it leaves Google in a particularly powerful position - they not only control each segment of the internet, but they're starting to control your entire internet experience. I only have one Google site bookmarked on my Mac (Gmail) but that's because through that I can access anything else I might need, and right next to it is a Google search bar that I use frequently.

Why is this a problem? Well, I guess it's not a huge problem, but it kind of puts Google in a position to play God. If they're controlling everything, they make the choices, and you have little say in them. If they decide, for instance, that a certain site isn't worth their users' time, they can simply not have it show up when searching it. It's that type of control that be kind of scary, especially when you consider the amount of information they hold on us - a scary amount. Moreover, I've said in the past that I trust Apple - I've looked at their products and what they have to say about them and decided they're for me. But I never really did that with Google. It was just there, and I used it. And I still use it. Without that kind of agency, you really don't know what you're using.

Twitter's Community from petermraffel

Here is my powerpoint related to the web community on Twitter, which I talked about a little bit in a blog post recently, but go into more detail on here. It uses screenshots from Twitter's About page, as well as screenshots from my own account. Enjoy!

Using Social Media for Your Own Purposes.

I've been writing about Twitter lately, and I've noticed that a lot of times with social media sites, people don't necessarily use it the way it was intended to be used. For example, comedians will sometimes have conversations with each other that are clearly jokes, but are made to be seen as real conversations happening. Above is a prime example of this: two comedians, Tim Heidecker and Tom Scharpling talking on Twitter about a Hollywood meeting that isn't actually going to take place, but is purely for humorous purposes. By using the conversational aspect of Twitter, comedians and others are able to both make fun of the way the site is supposed to be used, and have a good time while at it. This is an animated video of the conversation they have on Twitter, which is clearly only for comedic purposes, but uses the site in a way that's different than how it's supposed to be intended. I think it's particularly interesting the way people end up using sites, compared to how they are supposed to be used. Another example of this is that there is a feature on Facebook that allows you to see when someone has read a message you've sent to them, but this is somewhat loaded in nature: if you can see that someone has read your message and they don't respond, you might take it to mean that they don't care or don't want to talk to you. Thus, people end up sometimes leaving their messages unread so that that "read" message doesn't show up and people aren't offended that they haven't responded yet, even though they've seen the message. It's interesting, because at times there seems to be a contradiction between what the creators of a site think people want and what they actually want: in this example, they think that people want to know when their message has been read, but really people probably don't like this feature because it makes them look like a jerk if they don't respond right away.

Twitter's Community.

Above: A screenshot taken from Twitter's "Discover" page, which also tells people to "express yourself" and "share openly."

I've been on Twitter for probably about five years now, and when I first started using it, I think I was just as confused as everyone else about what it's supposed to do. According to their "About" page, their mission is "to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers." To me, that seems to be a pretty vague mission statement, considering what Twitter actually is: it's a platform that essentially lets you post 140 character quips and ideas to however many followers you can acquire, while at the same time reading the quips and ideas of the people you follow. The thing about Twitter, though, is that it serves multiple purposes by being very simple: unlike Facebook, which although complex is essentially a social site to be used amongst you and your friends, Twitter allows you to follow anybody (as long as they're not set to private). This can include your family, your friends, celebrities, politicians, or even people who you randomly stumble upon.

I make a point to use my Twitter mostly for comedic purposes and self promotion, which differs from other people. I tend to not follow friends, even though they follow me, because I don't really care about tweets like "Just did my homework" or "Tired :(" - that's kind of what Facebook is for. I don't need two sites to hear about that, so I use Twitter to post my own funny comments and read the tweets of comedians or people I deem funny. I follow a couple news sites as well, but I mostly use it for this purpose.

Relating this to Bellah, it's interesting because I'm essentially creating a community here, but not necessarily one I'm interacting with. Unlike Facebook, the people I follow on Twitter aren't friends of mine, and I don't really communicate with them other than reading their tweets. The people who follow me are at times friends, but also strangers who have stumbled upon my tweets - maybe because they've been retweeted by someone else, or because someone posted a tweet saying to follow me. There are a few friends who I connect with on Twitter, but for me it doesn't really serve as a real community - I would call it more of an Invisible Lifestyle Enclave. I am technically part of a community, but since I'm not really interacting with them, I don't think it necessarily counts as a community. Then again, if we're going based on what Twitter's mission statement is, they don't really say anything about community, only that they want you to be able to share whatever your thoughts and ideas are "without barriers." In a sort of individualistic way, that Bellah talks about, thus Twitter becomes a medium to share your ideas more than it is to hear the ideas of other people; even though Twitter ends up being used to both share and listen, that's not what the site claims itself to be for. It does, on other pages, tell you to "connect with people," however they say that these are "casual and spontaneous" and clearly this is not the main usage for the site. Connection seems to be important to Twitter, but not as much so as sharing your own ideas freely and openly.

Whenever I think about the internet, I'm reminded of this sketch comedy bit from Tim and Eric, who had a show on Adult Swim for a while. It's basically making fun of dumb infomercials, but for some reason it just makes me laugh and remember that the internet is kind of a ridiculous thing in general.