Real time web blowing my mind.  I wonder what the world will be like after this.  It’s already after this, and another million pages and entries and blog posts and tweets and retweets have been created.  I’m not offering hard numbers here, just a personal reaction as a tail end baby boomer who was born way before the information age barely kicked in (or at least the mainstreaming of it).

We are getting it all as it happens–but what are we getting?  Once again, and most importantly, we have to look at a trust issue.  In what comes across our radar, our content, interest, what do we act upon?  Do we consider our sources?  How and where do we filter the data?  Can we really call it information yet?  Assertions are made, but for the most part, they’re fields in RSS streams.  The have not been assessed, we don’t know their true value yet.  Caveat emptor and good luck sorting through it.

Site Comparison of google.com (rank #1), facebook.com (#3) | Compete.

Methinks it’s a comin’. The FriendFeed grab, with ex-googlers, imho could make the difference. Synergies abound. Having just taken a look at the new *promoted*  igoogle social gadgets offerings–which didn’t seem friendly at all to me , I see Facebook gaining further ground.  I’ll keep trying these igoogle gadgets I suppose, but it’s not a warm and fuzzy to me.  I’ve always felt a blockage of some sort in the flow of things.  However, the interface is so awesome I’ll continue to visit often.

However busy and dictated Facebook seems, it’s engaging and exciting. There’s something for everyone in there. And although at the moment you can’t seem to quite skin it the way you want, if you go in and focus on what you’re in there for, you can get it done.    Facebook killed it.  I mean killed it in a killer way.   And overall, for such a universe of applications it’s organized superbly.  I just checked out the Facebook search capability through a Robert Scoble/Jesse Stay rebleet of this from Gary Vaynerchuk , and it looked pretty darned promising.

The web is social, search is becoming social, this whole web is a dialogue.  I think everyone’s got the memo, but I’m not sure who’s taking the best action right now.  Well, I think Facebook’s got it.  Facebook stands as the grandest UI in the middle of ‘em all.  It’s got advertising but thus far the advertising is not obnoxious.  It calls attention to itself but doesn’t force you to leave.  It’s relatively easy to use.  Developers are all over it.  It’s only going to become a fiercer competitor–in search, in social media, in syndication, in content, in overall 21st century bad-assedness.

Oh, did I forget yahoo?  MS?  Oh, sorry. : )  Maybe in a later post, tweet, rant, song, or mashup.  The web’s an app, and it’s got a few users here and there.  Maybe it’ll catch on.

Why iGoogle’s ‘Social Gadgets’ Should Kill Facebook — Datamation.com.

Mike Elgan writes:

iGoogle as a social networking site sits directly between MySpace and Facebook in the area of customizability. It’s more customizable than stodgy, boring Facebook, but less customizable than garish, horrid MySpace.

Strong words, yes.  I somewhat agree with them. I haven’t seen iGoogle yet as social media, more personal homepage. But a clear transformation has been happening; I for one am excited about it.

We have application classes to work with–and understanding them is going to be of assistance in our attempt to accomplish things at any given time.  I’ve noticed more noise in regard to this.  It’s a great question to ask.  Social Networking, Social Media, Personal Home Page, News Reader, Portal, and so on.   At this point, out of all sites and all application types, my home is Google Reader.  I’ve got my sources and I’ve categorized them into groups.  No fuss, no gimmicks.  Just stories and opinions.  This is where morning coffee happens.  Information as far as I see it.  And I chose it over iGoogle–but I’m at iGoogle before long.  I’ve got a Google Reader widget in iGoogle (as well as a twitter gadget and a weather gadget and 20 other of those 60,000), but the widget in too clunky in iGoogle to really get a grip on it.   So I’ll get over to it in a tabbed window and switch around a bit.

We’ll see how iGoogle transforms. It seems with widgets these days, an introvert’s index.html could turn into a social networking site.  Cut and paste some code.  Get some FaceBook connect implementation happening and then promote it.

I’ll be checking out those new igoogle gadgets for sure. I have been an iGoogle user for quite a while now and have preferred iGoogle over FaceBook and MySpace. With the $ at stake, changes are going to be taking place in nanoseconds.  Oh yeah, and good luck killing FaceBook.

Dare I hit the download button?  What will happen to these API’s?  Think they’ll be around in a few weeks?  It certainly would be something to see what’s encapsulated there in the cloud.

Anybody out there working heavily on these?  What platform are you using?  PHP?  Java?  What kind of results are you getting?  Any mashups, samples?

I’m inclined to create a sort of nostalgia-laden gadget, who knows, associating football scores with tweets about ObamaCare.  What would the result look like? I’d love to hear from some of the experienced on this one.

Twitter’s a Mess: First the DDOS, Now Koobface Returns.

I haven’t laid too heavy on the tweeting.  It is a challenge to get beyond microblogging.  At least it’s challenging for me, so I’m looking into “longer forms”. <g>

Regarding Koobface:  with this and other worms, a buyer beware should ring from every email received.  We click without thinking–I know this from experience.  One thing that Outlook has is a review of the URL–in emails Outlook will highlight the email if the href is different than the text which is enclosed by the <a> tag.  I’m not sure about the proliferation of these shortened url’s–I’ve seen various scripts to show the fully resolved url, but I click through these links.

What is certain is that miscreants would love to bury the big tweety bird!