Feel like a beach comber when surfing YouTube?

YouTube is one of the most successful uses of internet technology and Web 2.0 that we see today. The “largest worldwide video-sharing community” has provided procrastinating college students and bored office employees with hours of entertainment. YouTube also gives companies and celebrities yet another promotional platform, enables amateur filmmakers to easily release their art to the world and is a source of thousands of useful instructional videos. Unfortunately, YouTube has also spawned many millions of boring, irrelevant and meaningless videos. Their owners: teenagers who somehow believe the rest of the world wants to see their foot-high back yard bike ramp being put to use and middle-aged hillbillies who want to share a 10 second video of their new brood of puppies.

This isn’t a rant about me not caring about these people’s lives; it’s a statement of concern for the growing ocean of garbage on YouTube. A similar problem is the endless copy-and-paste videos! How many “Charlie Bit Me” videos do we really need? And why is an official music video buried amidst dozens of fan videos featuring nothing but lyrics or nature pictures? I fear that YouTube may suffer from the plague that so harshly affected MySpace. As more and more noise is added, the good videos that drew us there in the first place are becoming drowned out.

Perhaps YouTube needs to be more exclusive about who can upload public video. Would it be possible to automatically delete clips that have less than fifty views after the first month of existence? I have no suggestions for a quick fix, but I would like to see a higher standard enforced.

Do any readers have suggestions for improvement? Please comment below!

Zynga is a company that was created in 2007.  They have since dominated the social gaming industry.  Although they are the creators of over a dozen online games, their most popular is Farmville.  Farmville has a 5 million person user base per day.

It would be easy to let that number roll over you, so let’s put this in perspective.  Zynga is valued at over 5 billion dollars, which is more than Electronic Arts.  EA is the second largest video game company, and have wildly successful titles such as Madden NFL.

Zynga was able to reach these incredible levels in less than four years by utilizing the amazing power of social media.  The full potential of social networking has yet to be realized.

I found a fascinating video by the CEO of SCVNGR.  Seth Priebatsch is an enthusiastic Yale drop-out who is predicting the social media trend for the next decade.  He says that last decade was the development of the social layer, which includes Twitter, Facebook, etc.  This decade, a game layer will be added that includes being awarded virtual points for completing real and physical tasks.  It’s a futuristic concept, so watching the video can help to understand his vision:

Seth Priebatsch: Building the game layer on top of the world

What is the criteria to make it to be one your friends on facebook? In my mind, there are two camps: those for QUANTITY and those for QUALITY.

QUANTITY will add just about anyone. Occasionally, they will Ignore someone but more likely they will just leave the request and do nothing with it.

QUALITY is selective and Confirms only those who they desire to keep in touch with or know what is going on in their life- they choose “Friends” the same way they might choose friends.

So maybe the question is are your facebook “friends” actually your friends? Should we be more selective in who we let into our own personal lives of posts, photos, and relationships? Or maybe more notably, who do we allow to crowd our facebook with their post, photos, and relationships?

Bruno Lucas, a computers & technology blogger described face book as “an escape from real life”.

Lucas: “where people socialize without real fights, where it’s all fine and dandy”

Lucas: “You look at your profile, and your friends profile, and it all seems so simple, with the “all you need to know” information, and this is what you end up reducing people to… a simple profile on your screen”.

Lucas: “People who use facebook in general use it to play games, post thoughts, post pictures, comment on each other, and this is not all bad. Except when a parent takes more time online farming than talking to his son or daughter. Except when a boy or a girl prefer to talk things over through the facebook chat than talking face to face”.

Lucas: “You end up most of the times with your life scattered through photo directories of other peoples profiles. Being tagged and bagged like an object”.

Lucas: “If used properly, there are many good things that can be done with Facebook. The problem is… human kind is never satisfied and is just too damn curious. So… they always end up going further than they should… and always paying the price.”

Is Bruno Lucas exaggerating the negative effects of face book or is this something that should be seriously discussed?

Does Face Book negatively effect healthy social skills, home life and proper self-respect or is Bruno Lucas over reacting?