I just ran across this interesting link:
Google Operating System: Google Schemer: Social Goal Management
Basically, the article is introducing one of Google’s new tools: Schemer. In a nutshell it sounds like a tool to track things to do and maybe inspire others to do things.
While I haven’t really delved into the tool, and I don’t have an invite, I wanted to capture a first impression: Don’t I already have enough to do! The more I think about what they are trying to accomplish, I realize I am probably misjudging the tool. Maybe this is just a cool way to establish some accountability and work toward accomplishing goals that I already have.
In any regard, I wonder how many of the “social” applications in general are geared toward using our time and giving us more to do. They want us to spend time in their site. The push is for more connections, more friends, more games. I guess they want you to spend more time in their site, which equates to more money for them. Facebook and Linked In offer tools to sync your email and contacts with your account to get more connections. Ads show games that you can play and friends share things from the games to get you involved in those games.
More friends sounds cool, but that means more updates to read through. That’s more data that you have to consume. The more data you consume the more time you spend doing it.
I wonder if that is why young people are more apt to get into social applications. They have the time to spare. We young fathers are trying to squeak every hour out of the day. We rock our infants to sleep at the counter with the laptop open and one hand adding a few tweaks here and there to the code on some hobby program. Why do we want another friend feed or more goals to accomplish?
If you are writing another social application, please give me tools to consume more data faster with less effort. Please don’t just give me more data to consume!
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