I never invite people to social networks!

But – at the very bottom – a small checkbox saying “invite all other friends”. I clicked “ok” and suddenly realized what that button meant!

Aaaaaaargh!

The worst part – I’ve done this once before. Luckily hi5 is a “normal” social network, not like Badoo where it seems most users are girls in Ukraina wanting to marry someone.

So sorry people! Feel free to smack me in the head the next time you see me…

If you happen to like social networks, hi5 is just as good as the other ones. I prefer Facebook but hi5 is ok. If you know me, and still want to add me, here’s Oyvind at hi5.

The rest of the post is in Norwegian.

Da er presentasjonen ute. Jeg skal legge til mere bakgrunnsinformasjon under etterhvert!

Here’s a preview – with the books I’m currently reading:

Mye i livet er viktig, men mon tro om vi ikke trenger å ta oss mer tid til å snakke sammen? I gamle dager hadde de butikken og kirkebakken, – møtesteder for den gode pratens skyld. I dag har vi mobiltelefonen, “Facebook” og “chatte-rom”. Det er det samme hva det kalles, men vi trenger dialogen. Vi trenger den gode samtalen. Ja, vi trenger hele spekteret av samtaler, fra den store samfunnsdebatten – til den lille, lavmælte hverdagspraten. Det er gjerne slik at først når vi har snakket sammen, ser vi hverandre.

My English translation:

There are many things in life that’s important, but I wonder if we may have to spend more time to talk to each other? In the “old days” they had the shop and the church, meeting places for the good conversation. Today we have the mobile phone, Facebook and chatrooms. It’s the same what we call it, but we need the dialog. We need the good conversation. Yes, we need the whole spectre of conversations, from the big important issues in society to the little quiet everyday talk. When we have spoken together, we see each other.

Feel free to comment and improve on my translation!

The conversation society

I do admire our king for talking about this. He seems to understand the shift that has happened. We do not just talk “in real life”, but use internet as a communication tool. We have switched from the “information superhighway” to the social web. It’s an important change, and it will make our society better in the long run.

Have a happy new year and see you both in real life and on the web. You’ll find me on Facebook, Twitter and most other social networks – just see the sidebar to the right.

Video

Watch the king’s speech on NRKs web-tv here.

Oldest Twitter accounts from Norway
http://twitter.com/Elisabethicp – Elisabeth – first message on 30/08/2006
http://twitter.com/asgeirn – Asgeir S. Nilsen – first message on 3/09/2006
http://twitter.com/larskflem – larskflem – first message on 7/11/2006
http://twitter.com/einar – Benjamin Jacobsen – first message on 9/11/2006
http://twitter.com/oyvind – Oyvind Solstad – first message on 17/11/2006

The post is from July, but I didn’t see until now. Funny.

Add

If you use Twitter, just add me. And I’ll add you back if you Twitter interesting stuff (which would be almost everyone twittering other things than just “sleep”, “work”, “sleep”…)

Connected changes everything

My main point is this: Young people today are connected with so many people through different channels, that disconnecting their network would be almost like cutting off an arm. Their network is bigger than their parents, it’s more diverse, it’s more advanced and most important of all: It’s amazingly fast.

Young people using IM, Facebook, del.icio.us, Flickr etc. find their answers in their networks. If I have a problem, I pose it to my network, and I get answers, links, suggestions and clues back, and the quality is top notch.

If you don’t realize this, you lose. It’s playing a game where you think the other team has 11 players, but it has infact 2 200 players. If you’re not convinced, type “Oyvind says being connected changes the world just as much as rock’n roll did” in your calender – say – 10 years from now.

Also: Chime out in the comments below! I’d love to hear why you think this is wrong, stupid, thoughtful or brilliant. My contact data is to the right if you think this is interesting for your company or organisation.

Here’s my presentation, hosted at slideshare.net. You can download it as a pdf at the page at slideshare.

Media coverage

Norwegian media magazine Kampanje has an online article today called “Facebook-hypen er ikke over”:

– Jeg mener de sosiale nettverksamfunnene på internett er den største sosiale og kulturelle endringen i vårt samfunn siden rockens inntog, sier Solstad.

Being social

Also check out this long and interesting read at InformationWeek.com, called “Social Networking: A Time Waster Or The Next Big Thing In Collaboration?”

The trick for businesspeople interested in using social networks and for IT departments that need to monitor and manage access to them is to steer clear of the time-wasting stuff while leveraging the collaborative potential.

…and:

Teens and undergrads started the social networking trend; now business professionals and IT pros are coming up to speed. The pitfalls are obvious and mostly avoidable, while the benefits remain largely unexplored by most companies. Curious to know more? Knowledgeable peers are only a few clicks away.

They certainly are. Check out what happened to me this morning (in Norwegian).

I’m always interested in social media sites, so I registered and made a profile. I register for just about everything there is out there, to figure out what’s good and what’s not good.

So I entered my gmail info to check which of my OTHER FRIENDS were on Yamky. BUT – I didn’t read the text well enough.

The result: Yamky e-mailed over 800 people an invite in my name! Bad. Bad. Bad.

So for the ones who read my site here: Sorry.

Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.

Big mistake from me.

I never invite people to sites like this, except for a few other friends that are just as interested in stuff like this as I am.

Sorry!

(Kitten by Trang Vuong)

Sorry again.

The worst about this is that it e-mailed people I can’t imagine would use a site like Yamky.

It’s a very bad interface that just sends out so many invites without letting you check off which ones you want and which you don’t want.

And I should had read things better. My intention was never to invite anyone, just check if someone I know already was using Yamky.

Oyvind