Tag Archive for 'Social Networks'

Stephan Packard DID NOT invite you to join Google+

Published by admin on 22/01/2012 in English and German. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

…so for some reason, some of my friends and colleagues have received ‘invitations’ from ‘me’ to join Google+. The mails don’t look like spam, but rather as if they do come from the Google+ system. But I didn’t send out any invitations on purpose, and at least one of the recipients shouldn’t even be known to my Google+ account at all, unless Google is using my android address book to get at contacts. However, many other friends did *not* receive these mails.

So: If you have received such an ‘invitation’, I’d like to:

(1) apologize for spamming you, albeit inadvertently;

(2) if you’d be so kind, ask you to drop me a line if you did get such a mail, which might help me to figure out what is going on.

Incidentally, yes I am aware of the irony of this happening to someone studying the control of communication in newest media. Oh dear.

 

 

Google’s Double-Plus Real Names

Published by packard on 10/08/2011 in English. 3 Comments Tags: , , , .

So after spending a couple of weeks talking about why Google+ is so great, we are now in the second week of speaking about Google’s strange policy regarding user names for this new social network. And it really is very strange, perhaps even more so than it is controversial, oppressive, or socially obliging. For whatever you might have heard and whatever Google’s original intention might have been, the way the service and its rules work right now does not boil down to requiring real names. That would have made for a pertinent but simple story; it is a story well worth telling and debating, but it’s not this story. »»»»

Recent Linkage Special Edition: Egypt

Published by packard on 01/02/2011 in English and Linkage. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

The ongoing reports about Egypt’s protests, being cut off from the internet, and alternative venues of communication are far beyond my competence. However, here are some of the sources I found more valuable than others. Please link to more useful resources in the comments. »»»»

Testing Quora for Still More Creative Reactions to Cablegate

Published by packard on 19/01/2011 in English. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

So as before, I am still looking for creative responses to cablegate that might begin a cultural brainstorming, perhaps eventually helping us to figure out what this is and what we want it to be; but also to help assert individual creative voices in the face of a potentially overwhelming publication.

Which is why for my first test-run on Quora, a new question-and-answer social network, I asked:
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