Google – Kent Fackenthall

My Time on the Internet

Just a few days ago I deleted my last remaining social media account – well almost, more on that later* – leaving this blog/website as pretty much the defacto ‘source of me’ on the internet. That got me thinking back to how long I’ve been ‘on the internet’ so I tried to put together a little timeline. It’s been an interesting exercise. It’s by no means 100% accurate. I’ve used a number of sources including this blog itself, The Internet Wayback Machine, emails and my scattered memory. I think it’s pretty close though. I dare say the folks at places like Facebook, Google and Twitter could probably give me some ridiculously accurate stats.

1994ish – Opened my first and only AOL account.

1996 – Registered lyh.com and built a website for a house of people I lived with. Registered and built personal website thebukitzone.com.

2000 – Apple launches MobileMe which would eventually become iCloud/Apple ID. I started an account then and still have it.

2005 – Opened my first Gmail account [Gmail launched 2004]. It was Invite only then. I think I got an invite from a buddy. This was my first Gmail address. Moved my personal website at thebukitzone.com from HTML to WordPress.

2006 – Twitter – Launched this year, I opened an account, was the first ‘social media’ account I ever had.

2007 – Opened first Flickr account [Flickr launched 2004]. FriendFeed launched. I had an account, never really used it. In 2009 it was bought by Facebook.

2007 – Opened first Facebook account. [Facebook launched 2004]

2008 – Opened a Plurk account. Closed the same year. Switched to another Gmail address, my second one.

2009 – Registered kentfackenthall.com which basically replaced thebukitzone.com

2009 – Opened a LinkedIn account. [LinkedIn launched 2003]

2011 – Opened GoodReads, Instagram [Instagram launched 2010] and Tumblr accounts. Google+ launches. I was on right away and stayed pretty much till they shuttered it in 2019. Closed Twitter account.

2012 – Closed my LinkedIn and Tumblr accounts. Opened a Strava account.

2013 – Registered and built website at bikecommutercabal.com. After a few years transferred ownership to another. Ran Facebook, Google+, Instagram and Twitter accounts for Bike Commuter Cabal.

2014 – Left WordPress as my blog platform for Blogger for a hot minute (maybe a month) quickly returned.

2015 – Opened Ello and Ride with GPS accounts. Closed Strava and first Flickr accounts.

2016 – For most of the year, shuttered my website and redirected my domain to my Google+ profile. Opened Medium and Behance accounts.

2017 – Opened second Flickr account. Opened a Mastodon account. Lasted a week.

2018 – Closed Facebook account. Kept Facebook Messenger. Closed Ello, GoodReads, Medium and Behance accounts.

2019 – Closed Facebook Messenger. Registered and built website at correctiveactionbicycleclub.com. Opened Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts for the Corrective Action Bicycle Club.

2020 – *Created a new Facebook account for work only. Not public, no friends, no posting. Strictly to manage client accounts/pages/advertising. Closed second Flickr account and personal Instagram account. Switched from Gmail as main email provider/app to my own domain mail and Apple Mail. Brought correctiveactionbicycleclub.com under umbrella of this domain, then eventually offline. Closed CABC Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts.

Random takeaways

24+ years on the internets
15+ different social media platforms
15 years hacking and whacking on WordPress
~600 blog posts (I’ve deleted some for various reasons)
Facebook, Instagram and Twitter were platforms where I had multiple accounts at the same time, i.e. personal and a club

What a long, strange trip it’s been. I think I’m done with social media now. I say ‘think’ because the reality is that I still have the Facebook account for work and I could see a possible argument for having others if my job came to require it. I’m doing my best to avoid that however. I can see very well that I’m going in the opposite direction with this compared to most of humanity. I have to admit that I’m kind of looking forward to ‘going retro’ here and just getting back to writing blog posts again. I’ve been reading through old ones and they make me chuckle. In a lot of cases, past me was an idiot.

Gerry McGovern on ‘FANG’

Around 10 years ago I was able to attend a seminar locally given by Gerry McGovern about effective web content and site architecture that was very informative and to this day still impacts how I look to structure websites for clients when I sit down to design them. Since then I’ve subscribed to Gerry’s email newsletter which focuses primarily on marketing, strategy and best practices with a particular emphasis on the Web.

I always find it informative and entertaining. I specifically enjoy his ‘rantiness’ in some cases and his complete lack of hesitation to call out anyone he thinks is guilty of either foul play or could be doing something better. I consistently find something useful to take away. His missives are succinct, well-written and easy to read – and aren’t bogged down with a bunch of technical terms, making them interesting to even those not immediately in the marketing industry.

Today’s edition hit my inbox and I find it right on point. Stuff to think about for Regular Joes/Janes here as well as marketing and web industry-types.

“FANG stands for Facebook, Amazon, Netflix,…FANG is sucking up all the data into which it can sink its teeth. It’s sifting, organizing, and then presenting that data in often easy-to-digest bites. Often, it’s easier to get an answer from Google than going to the government site that created the data from which the answer is built.”

“The interface is the product. The interface is the service. FANG wants to own the interface for everything. All the boring, necessary, costly stuff that make societies work will still be left to governments. But the public won’t see that effort. They’ll just see the cool FANG interface and wonder why governments can’t be like that.”

Read the full post, ‘FANG is Coming for You’, over on Gerry’s website.

Facebook D Day

I think today may be the day that my Facebook account dies. I say I think, because I’m not really sure. I think Facebook wants it that way. When you go to delete your account, they say it will take effect within 14 days, but it may be sooner – or maybe later? My past experiences tell me that when you think it’s gone – and try logging in to check – miraculously, it’s still there and it ‘reactivates’ you so you would need to go through the whole process and waiting period again.

By my calculations, today would be Day 14, but I’m not going to attempt to login to check, I’ve been suckered before.

Cruising my Feedly today I came across this article, relevant to my Facebook usage – or former Facebook usage.

How to Use Social Media Wisely and Mindfully

One particularly relevant excerpt in my case:

“We can also become more mindful and curious about social media’s effects on our minds and hearts, weighing the good and bad. We should ask ourselves how social media makes us feel and behave, and decide whether we need to limit our exposure to social media altogether (by logging out or deactivating our accounts) or simply modify our social media environment. Some people I’ve spoken with find ways of cleaning up their newsfeeds—from hiding everyone but their closest friends to “liking” only reputable news, information, and entertainment sources.”

Over the past several years (yes, it’s been that long) I’ve experimented with various levels/methods of monitoring social media use. Logging out of some accounts for extended periods and attempting to curate more specifically the people/organizations I follow among others.

Overwhelmingly I found that certain platforms bug me more than others. Facebook was the number one offender, so I decided to dump it. Twitter was second, and I had pretty much stopped using it, so it went as well.

I was back and forth with Instagram, but I find that I still enjoy it in a unique way, and overall, it doesn’t impact my moods and outlook the way my Facebook experience did (negatively), so I’ve kept it. For now.

After abandoning Google+ for awhile when I gave up ALL social media for a stint, I’ve gone back to it. Although it’s lost a lot of the specifics of the platform that made it unique from the early days – anyone who’s followed me for an extended period of time know’s I championed it early on – I still find that there’s something about it that allows for more interesting and less frustrating engagement. That said, I’ve still cut way back on the number of people I’m following and become more selective. In addition, I’ve also decided not to follow any Pages (brands, companies, organizations) and stick to (supposedly) real people. I find this helps keep the noise down.

Full disclosure – I still have a Facebook account with a fake name that I use for work. As it stands I’m responsible for managing some client Pages as well as overseeing ad and social media campaigns so I still needed a way to be on the platform. My ‘fake account’ doesn’t follow anyone though and I don’t post anything with it.

So perhaps I am off the Facebook. I don’t know. Maybe you can never really leave.

Au Revoir, Facebook.

I’ve deactivated it for time periods before, but going full monty this time. Over the past few months I’ve pretty much jumped off all the social medias, including the Plus here, but have decided to gradually come back to some, in a more curated fashion. Found overall that spending less time in front of screens was a really beneficial exercise.

I’m still going to have some reservations about not having a Facebook account, things that kept me from deleting it before. A couple of Groups I was managing, and a few other things, but for the most part I won’t miss it. I’ve made arrangements to share photos with family via Flickr and I have been keeping in touch via more ‘conventional means’ like email, text, and old-fashioned voice phone.

I had hung on to Facebook for a long time primarily for Messenger, but I’ve learned you don’t have to have a Facebook account to use it. People from Facebook can still connect with you on it provided they have your phone number. It also works with Instagram – just learned this today – which I plan on keeping because I enjoy it quite a bit. Something about it being image-based, and there’s less politics and drama. I hate that they’ve started fucking with the timeline chronology, but, oh well.

Deleted my twitter account as well. Hadn’t used it as more than a link-reposting device in months and frankly, looking at it these days just bores me.

I think I will be dipping my toes back into Google+ some, though it will never be like the early days. Just poking around I very much dislike a lot of what’s been done with it, even in the short time I haven’t really been paying attention. It seems that it’s even harder now to find that genuine engagement that made it so exhilarating in the beginning. I find there’s too much being ‘pushed’ at me now, with suggestions, ‘things I might like’ or other upsells.

Collections, though good in theory, only works if everyone uses them, allowing you to opt out of portions of people’s content. Unfortunately I find most people don’t use them, or at least the ones I wish did, don’t.

So my Facebook goes dark 14 (or less) days from now supposedly. Perhaps I’ll do some sort of countdown here, because, reasons. Whatever.

Bare Bones

In an effort to focus time spent here more on content and not mucking about with design and bells and whistles, I’m conducting a bit of an experiment by going with the straight up stock default WordPress theme vs. a Studiopress theme and/or various plugins. It’s also my effort to better understand the stock features of WordPress and Jetpack – many of which I currently have no idea with regards to their usage or function, even though I’ve been developing WordPress sites for several years now.

In addition with the increase of doing actual day-job work on WordPress sites, my desire to noodle with the design and features of my own has dwindled. In fact, part of the reason I never post here is because visiting has become quite ponderous. Social media has – for all intents and purposes – supplanted the blog for the most part. I often forget though, that the Jetpack Publish feature will automatically post these to my various social media sites.

I keep telling my clients that the web has shifted from a few years ago and more emphasis is now on both content and usability – particularly mobile responsiveness/friendlyness – with regards to sites and less so on fancy designs and gimmicks. One benefit of the stock WP theme is that it’s mobile responsive right out of the box. (Not that the Studiopress themes aren’t – they are, but just saying.) Websites have essentially become online apps that people use to execute a need – be it read your post, find you company, buy your thing.

Among other things on the to-do list is to once and for all try to assemble some sort of online portfolio of my design work. Over the years I’ve used various methods including galleries on this page, galleries on photo sites such as flickr or Google+ and third party sites like Behance all to various levels of success/satisfaction. I’d really like to find one solution and stick with it.

Call it an exercise in minimalism if you will, but really what I’m trying to do is strip things down in order to get more. It just occurs to me that coincidentally, I’m trying to do the same in the real world as well.

The Return of Green Day?

Ok, so pursuant to a thread last week on my Google+ page about Green Day records, for the past week I’ve been checking out their latest ‘trilogy’ for lack of a better word, Uno! Dos! Tré!.

I remember being nonplussed when they started releasing these. I have to admit that my first reaction was, they’re releasing THREE records? WTF? Ok, they’ve finally jumped the shark.

The records were released to relatively little fanfare, especially after BJA’s on-stage blow up and subsequent rock star cliché ‘admission to a substance abuse program’ both overshadowed the records themselves and also caused the cancellation of the majority of the live shows that were in support their releases.

I remember joking with a buddy that maybe BJA’s tirade was ‘orchestrated’ to get press the day before one of the records (I think the first) dropped. If so, the plan backfired.

All that being what it is, now that I’ve given the records their chance, I think they’re solid. As often with double albums, I often wonder if they shouldn’t have just focused more and whittled it down to two records, but then, well, the novelty would be lost, I guess, since they’re three of ’em right? (Well actually there’s four now, these sessions were the first to include touring guitarist Jason White – the now ‘official’ 4th member of Green Day, so where’s his record?).

I don’t think that this material is as monumental as say American Idiot or 21st Century Breakdown, but then again, I don’t think it’s supposed to be. I think that’s maybe part of my hang up. After the grandiose expanse of the last two records, I’m actually having trouble adjusting back to two minute, 3 chord bashers. I think my inner prog – punk rock love child needed more.

Now that I’ve let the set grow on me though, I’m digging it. There’s a few tunes that I could do without and a few that are drop dead awesome – as would be expected in an artillery of 37 tracks, but I’m getting past my initial instinct to find the characters in the tunes (as I did with the last two records) and just listen to the songs themselves, and I’m finding as a whole, they’re pretty good.

It’s like going from standing against the back wall of the club, nodding your head in pensive reflection of the deeper meaning of it all, and getting back into the pit at the edge of the stage and throwing elbows again.

Why you should consider Google+. Again.

I’ve been having lots of conversations with people lately regarding their trust – or lack thereof – of Facebook/Instagram and their use/intentions with regards to your content and data. I’ve always maintained that posting info on ANY service on the internet is never going to be 100% guaranteed, but how a company conducts itself ethically, to me speaks volumes as to what level of confidence you should have in said service.

I dumped my Instagram account when Facebook bought them, because I was pretty sure no good would come of that.

I myself, don’t really trust Facebook anymore and pretty much only maintain an account there to connect with people that I don’t have a means to anywhere else, and also to administer my company’s page.

Though it may seem like a hassle to learn something new and you might have heard reports to the contrary, Google+ is a real alternative with a thriving community, better development and applications, and considerably less bullshit.

The level and quality of engagement I’ve found on Google+ with both people I knew already and new people I’ve connected with vastly surpasses most experiences I’ve had on Facebook.

It may seem silly to speak in such earnest and sincere terms about something that to many is ‘just an app’ or merely a ‘distraction’, but the fact of the matter is, whether you choose to acknowledge it or not, the way we connect with people, build relationships both at work and home, find services and products, learn new things, and gather information has changed and will continue to change, sometimes in the very moments as we type.

With the continuing proliferation of wireless connectivity and mobile devices, these ‘tools’ will continue to become more ingrained and integrated into our lives. Like any other issue of our days – politics, human rights, etc. – change will only come about if people choose to ‘vote’ for it, by demonstration with their actions.

How do you want to move forward?

The Status Quo will always be just that, unless people change. If you believe there’s no viable options to Facebook – or whatever service you’re unhappy with – then you are making the choice yourself to stay in the situation you’re in.

Google+ Only August

I am the mad scientist of social media.

Back at the end of July, in another one of my social media experiments, I’d sort of made a resolution to myself to only use only Google+ in August and see what it got me. I didn’t really tell anyone about it, just sort of did it. The impetus for the whole thing is that I’m really starting to loathe the whole Facebook experience. Not the connections or people I’ve made there, but the user experience and interface is just lousy – and Facebook doesn’t really seem too interested in improving that in either its webpage or mobile app.

Google on the other hand is continuing to improve and innovate to the extent that I’ve read articles on the web of instances in which people have dumped their flickr accounts for Google+, left Facebook – essentially trying to have Google+ be the one ‘go-to’ social media source for them. This has always appealed to me as well – I’ve always been on a quest to find that ‘swiss army knife’ of a social media app. One ring (or plus, heh) to rule them all.

For quite some time while still checking into Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, I haven’t been doing it though the native apps, I’ve been using Flipboard which provides a much better experience. It has most of the features of the native apps and none of the hideous design or clunky usability features. The drawback of course is that those companies aren’t going to port all their goodies to 3rd party apps obviously, so some key elements – namely notifications – don’t exist in Flipboard. Even with that being the case I was happier with it than the native mobile apps and had decided that though I was going to go Google+ only for August as my experiment – I would still allow myself to read/view the streams from my other apps, just not comment or post there. (FYI, you can also read a lot of other feeds, including Google+ through Fliboard, check it out.) Call it lurking if you want, but I still wanted some of the content/links/stories that can be found on those other sites, but I wanted to see if I could use Google+ only for the bulk of my online interaction and see if it filled my needs.

Most people’s primary complaint about Google+ when trying it out (and the subject of lots of articles and bloggery) is that “there’s no one here” or “it’s a ghost town” – to some extent this is true.

G to the Plus, Yo!

It’s not that no one is using Google+ – there’s 100 million users there as of April – it’s just that people have spent years cultivating their community over at Facebook and the subconscious assumption is that on jumping over to Google+, one will have the same kind of experience and level of engagement. Unfortunately, that’s not the case – yet. You simply can’t take all your Facebook contacts with you to Google+, believe me, I’ve tried, but what the past few weeks have taught me is that you might not need to right away.

What this experiment has done is get me to start circling/following people I don’t actually know, based on interest – something that seems MUCH weirder on Facebook and something I only used to do, really, on Twitter. Google+ has built a user experience and interface that really encourages and facilitates this yet still gives you the security/confidence and easy ability to only share more intimate posts with select people/groups when you want to – all in one app.

Since I’ve taken this ‘stranger plunge’ so to speak, the level of quality conversation and engagement I’ve experienced on Google+ has gone up radically and overall the whole thing has become much more satisfying.

I won’t lie, I’ve gradually been pulled back into Facebook – backsliding – partly because I was tagged in photo and felt compelled to comment on it, but also, I’ve missed the conversation there with some people and groups that I really enjoy. Really, it’s the people and conversation that are good – but simply because there are more established connections there. I hope over time that my Google+ experience will grow to equal, or even surpass that of Facebook.

Say it with me, Facebook is ugly.

One thing being away from Facebook – at least the native app/page – has caused to resurface from the depths is my contempt for the overall Facebook user interface. It’s just hideous, period. As a person who makes my living designing things, after a while, I just get pissed off that they simply don’t realize this – or if they do, they don’t care. Currently, Facebook seems more focused on monetizing the business model than they are with improving the user experience. Ads, promoted posts, suggested pages – it’s a very “hey, we’ve got some blank screen space here – we’ve got to figure out a way for that to earn money”. They’re totally trashing the joint.

Hey, Facebook people. Did you know there’s NO ads over on Google+? None. As in zero.

Over the years, Facebook has rolled out tweaks to their overall design in small doses here and there. Sure, the Facebook of today looks radically different than when it started out, but this is the result of YEARS of little, sometimes indistinguishable changes. In my opinion, they practically need to clean house and start over from scratch. Also, quit making changes to how my profile appears to other people (Timeline). I don’t care about that. Make it so it’s not like pounding my toe with a hammer every time I try and use it.

I hope that Google can continue to innovate and improve without resorting to a full on shilling of every inch of white space, because although I’ve begun to realize that I probably never will fully leave Facebook – due more to other’s unwillingness to do so than anything else – I will be visiting less and less.

I haven’t been on twitter in ages. I think that’s a whole ‘nother post.

Offtober.

So it’s that time of year again. The time of year when I get tired of Social Media.

I don’t know why I get tired of it, or what I get tired of. At some point I just start to find it exhausting. People like my wife always just tells me to lay off some, but for some reason, I seem to be an all in or all out kind of guy, but you probably knew that.

There’s the pending launch of the iPhone 5, which I have no desire to hear people talk about indefinitely. Some of my Facebook friends are complaining that people are posting rather graphic images of child or animal abuse in an attempt to shock people into action or advocacy – a ploy I find all most as heinous as the crimes themselves. I’ve no friends doing this – yet. But I’d rather not deal with it right now. Most of my Facebook friends that aren’t doing that are complaining about Facebook changing, and that, well, that’s just stupid and makes me want to hit myself on the head with a hammer.

Google+ is the elite treehouse of my tech geek friends, and even though open to the public now so you no longer need to know the secret handshake, not a single one of my complaining Facebook friends seems to have considered jumping ship, probably just because of the ever-present human nature fear of change. The status quo sucks, but it’s much safer to sit and complain about it than venture into the unknown. Hence my Google+ feed seems to be predominately tech stories and comics that are over my head. It’s like being the only non-engineer at an all-engineer cocktail party.

I vacillate between wanting all Social Media all the time, to wanting none of it and while I’m sure you’re all tired of hearing me gripe about it, the very nature of Social Media is that I get to sit and gripe about it and if you’re ‘hooked in’ to me, you get to hear it.

Maybe I’m just tired of hearing other people’s material. Good or bad, happy or sad. My headspace, both virtual and real is full. So I’m checkin’ out for a bit to clear the baffles.

Takin’ a month off everything but email and this blog. I’ll probably throw the occasional photo up on flickr too. I’m hoping that may induce me to actually write more here, but I won’t be the least bit surprised if it doesn’t. A month may seem kinda arbitrary to some of you, especially since some of you probably only check in once a month, but to a hard-core junkie like me, a month is a long time. Plus when the idea popped into my head this morning, it just sounded good.

So yeah. Offtober.

See ya in Onvember.