[Pink Culture] Alter Twitter

Almost a year ago I decided to create a secondary anonymous Twitter account. It started as an experiment in freer expression when it comes to talking about LGBT-related subjects, sex, and of course politics. And the fact that the account is still alive says something, right?

Alter is the local term for such anonymous secondary Twitter accounts that people create for various reasons. The most readily visible use of course is for hooking up and you'll find a lot of headless chest photos asking if people want to Skype or meet up for whatever like an extension of Grindr and other gay dating apps. Then there are just that are deep in the closet and hoping to explore being LGBT without getting into trouble.

There's also an interesting section of the alter world devoted to People Living with HIV (PLHIV) who use the anonymity of the internet to talk about what they're going through, seek help for dealing with the side-effects of medication and basically just find people who understand them. It's more of the somewhat more endearing parts of Alter Twitter, in my opinion. They're really just a lot of people wanting to feel loved and valued despite how society seems to treat the PLHIV community.

There's a lot to be said about the Alter folks and I think I might try exploring that further in future blog posts. How about you guys - do you have an alter? What do you use alter for? Why do you think you need anonymity to say the things you say?

[Technicolor Musings] Appreciating Facebook's Improvements

This week the big news has been about Facebooks new options for one's gender identity. It may not seem like a big thing, but providing this option to people in order t better represent themselves online is an amazing step forward in the right direction. And while there are those who choose to see the negative side in things and complain that it took 10 years for Facebook to get around to doing this or other such complaints. But really, we need to celebrate progress for its own sake. I mean come on, they've coded in 56 different options plus you can also set what pronouns Facebook will use when referring to you. The little things matter!

And this comes like 3 years after Facebook provided more LGBT-friendly options for one's relationship status including "domestic partnership" among others. As much as Facebook's privacy snafus annoy me to heck, I do appreciate how they're taking steps to better represent their LGBT members. And when a social media platform as big as Facebook makes changes like this, it certainly sends ripples throughout the tech community that get more people thinking about how they want to handle LGBT concerns as well.

So good job, Facebook! Now all we need is for you to get your act together in terms of your News Feed filtering.

[Technicolor Musings] Betchiwariwariwap Launched!

So a few friends and I have just launched an LGBT social media project that we're calling Betchiwariwariwap! Like a lot of Filipino gay speak, the work's precise meaning is never fully clear but at the very least it's a vote of confidence of support for something (with a heck of a lot of suffixes). For now it's based in Facebook but overtime we hope to expand to other social media platforms like Twitter and Google+.

The project has three main goals:
1) Spread positive, uplifting news / stories relevant to the LGBT community
2) Provide a one-stop shop for information on local LGBT-related events
3) Promote positive LGBT concepts as opposed to limiting stereotypes.

I envisioned this to be a very positive project given there are so many challenges that the LGBT community already faces, we certainly don't to be reminded of such woes on a daily basis. Following the basic principle of taking time to smell the roses, the page is really about celebrating the succceses we've achieved as a global community and to help different LGBT groups and networks get more attention.

So whether gay, straight or at least LGBT-friendly, I'd really appreciate if you take time to like our Facebook page and share it with your friends. And while the posts are often introduced in swardspeak to some extent, the core articles and images are universally understandable.

Join us in making the world a more color place! Bet niyo ba? Betchiwariwariwap!

[Social Media] Lucy of Fully Booked

The social media sphere is filled with a wide variety of internet personalities. You have your Twitter celebrities that seem to exist solely on that one platform. You have the pro-bloggers whose words are treated like journalistic fact. And you have the hordes and hordes of company profiles that are still trying to figure out how to handle the medium. Some merely use it for broadcasting updates. Others have ventured into marrying their customer service to this platform. Others are just there, essentially twiddling their thumbs.

Fully Booked, a local bookstore chain, has taken things to the next level and are a prime candidate for a social media case study on how to use social media channels effectively. Being more than just brand, Fully Booked has given their social media presence not just a face, but a complete personality in the form of Lucy.

[TV] Black Mirror: Series 1

I can't help but feel that more and more a lot of US network television ends up being highly disappointing. And thus I end up shopping around for other shows to watch either by going further back into the past or finding stuff from other countries.

British television seems t o be a unique incubator for compelling storytelling, perhaps born of the fact that their concept of a "series" is a lot shorter than the US "season". While US shows typically run for about 20+ episodes, their British counterparts typically get away with 6 episode runs with 13-episode shows like Doctor Who being more the exception than the rule.

And then you get to the really good shows that compress all of its storytelling into three episodes. Even as they run an hour long each, that's really a limited amount of time to work with. And yet they manage to work every last minute to the bone, thus putting on some really interesting shows.

This is definitely one of the more landmark creations to come out. And with the second series just starting, it may be time for you to finally get into this particular show.

[Technicolor Musings] Wrapping Up Social Connections

So when  I ended my ASA Family relationship last July, I had initially sworn that I would not return to the LGBT online social media scene given how notorious it is for blind hook-ups and things of that nature. Eventually I reneged on that promise and started my own experiments in the LGBT social media scene, especially since I initially felt like I wasn't making any real "progress" as a single gay man. And while I didn't exactly meet too many people during my explorations, I did find some decent material to write about here and there based on my experiences.

And like many other gay men before me, I think the time has come to start wrapping up this particular social media experiment. While the apps do provide some degree of entertainment from time to time, in the end the quality of the interactions are highly suspect. And in the end it has been more of a hassle than a source of genuine human interaction.

To be fair, maybe I'm just not the target market for services like this. I don't like having sex with strangers at the drop of a hat and I prefer to get to know a person a bit more online before agreeing to meet in person. Traits like these and even just being the type who actually wants to have conversations with other people seem to be undesirable behaviors in sites like these. There it's all about negotiating a hook-up in the shortest possible time and going from there.

At the end of the day, being single is a lot more than just a lot of meaningless stress with strangers and if that is where you primarily gain solace or even just somehow define your personality around a concept then I do most honestly worry for you. I don't see what there is to be gained by "playing" around in such an environment. Plus all the shallow mediocrity can really get to you over time until you start to change as well without you realizing it.

I'm still single, yes. But I know I don't exactly "need" apps like Grindr and Growlr to find a great guy. We all have a decent enough shot out there - it's just a question of whether or not we're brave enough to take that first step.

[Technicolor Musings] What Does Discreet Really Mean?

Photo by Mikeboriqua via Flickr

There's a big reason why the rainbow is recognized as one of the most iconic symbols of the queer community - it does stand for diversity and how different colors come together to make something beautful. And thus when you say "gay", it can mean a near infinite number of things depending on the context of the word and the people involved.

And yet there are some aspects of our community that just annoy me to no end given how, well, hypocrtical a lot of the statements are or how terms of misappropriated to mean this or that. And I know it can't be helped - language is functional and as long as people understand the context then you should be okay, right? But one word always comes up that really, really frustrates me given the implications of what is "conventional" usage.

And that's the word DISCREET.

Allow me to explain...

[Infographics] Should I Post This?

Most of you geeky readers probably feel like you have a good grasp of how to manage your social media platforms and that ever tricky decision of what to share and what not to share. But there are those that may still need a refresher course so I figured this handy infographic may be fairly helpful.

This goes beyond decorum or things of that nature. This is more about being cognizant of the role your social media presence plays in other decisions like job-related background checks or even loan application evaluations. So when you think about things from that perspective, your social media behavior becomes a lot more important.

[Social Media] Sex, Lies and the Internet

This is a Geeky Guide Public Service Announcement
(Because I like being ironic)


This fellow is Robert Tarroza Stewart (who may also be this Robert Tarroza Stewart or this Robby Tarroza). I do not know him from Adam but through the wonders of social media I came across his profile in the weirdest way this morning. I still wish I hadn't - my life would be so much better for it. But everything happens for a reason and so I'm here today to tell you a little about his involvement in an incident this morning and why you ought to be wary.

You know how annoying it is when one of your Facebook contacts is tagged in some image that isn't even a photo of them? Yeah, it was one of those cases. But what surprised me was that the image was some supposed "Notice the Public" posted from Mr. Stewart's Facebook account. And image was just...wrong. Wrong probably isn't a sufficiently strong enough term for it but words fail me right now.

You see, the "posters" were indicating that a certain person (from this point on we shall refer to him as The Victim) supposedly had HIV and was intentionally spreading it to other people. Pretty strong accusation, right?

For the record, redacted versions of the two posters can be found after the cut:

[Google] Socializing Google Products

 

 When I first reviewed Google+ back in July, I stated that I didn't feel it was a Facebook-killer, nor was that the goal. Recent moves by Google to introduce Google+ related elements into their other products clearly supports this idea, and the whole thing fascinates me to some extent.

Okay, okay, it fascinates me a lot - you know I tend to go batty for almost anything that Google does.

[Social Networks] Problems With Facebook's Cookies

I've had an odd love-hate relationship with Facebook's social plugins over the years, mainly because of the many changes that have been made to the site and the resulting impact this has on Facebook's perceived privacy approach. I'm not talking about their official privacy policy or anything like that - this is more about how the rest of the world receives such changes and determines the impact on everyone's life.

A great example of this is probably Facebook's Like button. At first, I was pretty wary about it given it was designed to report back your browsing activity on different sites to Facebook for the purposes of showing you which of your friends have liked the same article and so on. At first I would only browse Facebook using Chrome's Incognito mode, in order to keep my browsing secure from the Facebook cookie reporting. And then eventually I weaned off this as adoption became greater and I decided to gamble on Facebook to see where these plugins might lead to.

Then I took the next step and actually created a Facebook Like page for the Geeky Guide to "promote the brand" and also try to foster a community between Geeky Guide readers. It's been a fun experiment for sure and I now have about 150+ fans who publicly support the site, which is cool.

But then increased scrutiny of Facebook's privacy practices have been the talk of the talk recently starting with their big revamp of the News Feed to include the Ticker and the option for site owners to push content to people's Ticker streams without explicitly consent and of course the more recent Facebook cookie tracking snafu where Facebook's cookies continue to report on your site usage even when logged out of Facebook.

[Movies] Catfish (2010)

"On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog." Or so the "old" saying goes, if you consider 1993 to be old these days.

One's anonymity has always been one of the big draws of the internet. Maintaining your privacy and sometimes even your real life identity has been one of the pillars of the early internet as people learned to socialize behind the protective screens of pseudonyms, handles and alternate nicknames.

In recent years, the rise of social networking has lead to a new paradigm - one that calls for a more open internet where people's online identities and offline identities have aligned into one. Thus we have more and more people who maintain rather public profiles in order to better market themselves, sell their services, get hired or whatever.

But just because we live in an age of social networking doesn't mean that everyone is exactly who they say they are. If anything, the adage above will always hold true for a certain segment of the online population, and thus it remains important to keep your guard up in meeting new people online for the first time.

This movie acts as a stark reminder of that fact.

[Google] First Impressions of Google+

Everyone knows that Google doesn't know social. Orkut, their first social network, only gained popularity in Brazil and India. Buzz was a PR disaster given the privacy issues that were raised after it was aggressively launched for all users. Wave was a product that everyone agreed was amazingly useful provided people could figure out what to use it for. Time and time again Google has stepped up to the plate in the social game and pretty much washed out.





But now there's Google+, the search giant's latest foray into the world of social networking. And in an environment that's dominated by Facebook, everyone's taking notice of whether or not this new service is going to fly or if it's going to bomb out just like all of Google's other social ventures have.

Now I admit that I'm quite the Google fan boy, and all my friends know this for the most part. I signed up for Orkut before I ever even thought about going to Facebook. I spent time trying to appreciate Buzz and build relationships there. And I still use Google Wave event though the application is no longer being actively developed. And I'm definitely not using it like it was designed to be used - at least I think that's the case.

So I approached Google+ with a fair amount of caution mixed in with my excitement for a new Google product. But after being able to get into the limited beta and playing around with the site for a few days, I can definitely say that I'm impressed with what they've done here. It's a potential game-changer to be sure - but not quite in the same manner that everyone thinks it will be.

[Web] The Continued Relevance of Forums

In the very early days, a lot of online interaction in the early days of the internet was limited to the BBS sphere - those very early bulletin boards that allowed people around the world to discuss particular topics, make new connections and basically tap the power of the proto social web to come to new insights and conclusions. Over the years our online interactions have shifted to email, instant messaging and now social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. But at its core, it's still the same principle of communication and coordination - someone leaves a message to be read by others and then this leaves the option open for comments.




And despite all these innovations in terms of new ways of communicating with others, the web forum or bulletin board continues to remains a very vibrant and active means of conversation for many people (this geek included). Even in the local sphere, sites like PinoyExchange continue to thrive as a web community where people can celebrate things that they love with fellow fans, talk about current issues or just try to find answers to their questions.

Along similar lines, forums remain highly relevant in technical support circles where people continually resort to such sites to document errors they're encountering in the hopes of someone having the answer to their questions. I've relied on a tech forum for such answers more than once mainly because it works - who needs tech support hotlines when the wealth of intelligence of the social web is always at your disposal, right? If you're diligent enough, you're bound to find the answers.




Recently I joined PinoyG4M given a friend of mine helps admin the board and I actually attended a party organized by the group. It's interesting to note that the story behind this particular forum is related to the shift of the original Guys4Men site to PlanetRomeo and thus the people who used to be active on those forums found a new refuge in this site. While the new PlanetRomeo site continues to serve the purpose of the original site, the need for these kinds of interactions on the forums still needed to be fulfilled. The site is certainly fun in its own way and I'm sure I'll get around to discussing the site at length, perhaps in a Technicolor Musings post some time in the future.

The forum continues to thrive and I doubt it will die out anytime soon. As long as people want to talk, share ideas and find answers to questions together, then forums will continue to exist. Even with sites like Facebook trying to adopt the forum-style concept within their own Groups function, the need for the standalone forum will remain.

So what are your favorite forums? Why do you continue to participate? When do you think a forum holds the answers that you need versus the popular social media sites? Leave your insights in the comments!

[Technicolor Musings] My Short Quasi-History of Meet-ups and EBs

So I recently signed up for the LGBT forum PinoyG4M, which is sort of where the local forum folks from the new evolved (?) gay dating site Guys4Men sort of migrated to. The site is an independent effort by folks who were active over on the original G4M (as far as I understand the history - feel free to correct me guys) but has managed to survive while G4M turned into PlanetRomeo. Ah, the shadows of my gay dating site past.




Anyway, the forum has turned out to be fairly fun at this point, although naturally one can't help but feel like the red-headed new kid at school when you join a fairly established web community. There's all the in-jokes and people knowing who everyone else is beyond their avatars and usernames, but it's all good stuff. But the group is pretty nice and there's a bit of a gathering planned for this weekend and as of the time of the drafting of this post, I'm not quite sure if I'm going (or in this case "have gone", temporally speaking).

And that just got me thinking about my long yet highly uneventful history of online forums and related encounters and very, very little in-person meetings. And since I needed a blog entry for today, I ended up with this instead. Pardon the faux-randomness.

[Technology] Best of 2010

In this on-going series of holiday schedule friendly series of entries (briefly) talking about the best stuff of 2010. Wednesdays tend to be about computers, technology and all things internet related. So let's think about the year.

Image via WikipediaOf course on a personal note, saddest web series closing down was Google Wave. I'm a huge fan of the concept and my partner and I are still regular users of the site. And we'll probably stick around until the service finally shutters sometime early next year. A close second would have been Xmarks until it got saved by LastPass.

Most amazing progress for the year definitely has to be Google Chrome. Whether or not you're already a fan of the increasingly popular web browser, you have to admit it's become a major contender in the browser wars this year. They've resolved a lot of the stability issues of the site and with the launch of extensions, the Google Web Store and other goodies, you have to admit Chrome is going places. And once you get around to Google Chrome OS, well, the sky's sort of the limit on changing the way we think about things.

Despite my not being a fan of the whole Apple universe, I have to admit that the one piece of technology that's made the most impact this year was the Apple iPad. Suddenly everyone is coming up with new rival tablet designs (or dredging up old ones) in an effort to compete in the market. And it's not even that great a tablet mind you - it's just because of how well it's packaged that has made it the driving technological force this year. It seems EVERYONE is determined to have one this year or is trying to find creative ways of using it.

Website of the year is definitely still Facebook. While you can argue that the movie alone didn't change things, the fact is that it has risen to the top of the heap. Facebook is the most-visited site in most countries around the world and a lot of social media marketing is increasingly built around the service. Plus their efforts to compete in the location market with Facebook Places and in the email market with Facebook Messaging, it's getting harder and harder to avoid the tech giant

And computer game of the year (for me at least) remains to be StarCraft II. Sure, it hasn't evolved all that much from the original game but the little tweaks, the addition of a stronger story and improved graphics have resulted in this being one of the most anticipated and celebrated games of the year. Plus it's a reminder to everyone that the real time strategy market isn't quite dead and not everyone is ready to jump on the MMORPG band-wagon.

[Social Networking] Why Giving Up Facebook Games Is A Good Idea

Image via Wikipedia

When privacy concerns over Facebook started to pick up after the OpenGraph annoucenment in April, I was one of those geeks out there who was a bit worried about how Facebook was doing business. Sure, I know I'm savvy enough to set the myriad privacy settings in Facebook to a level of sharing that I'm comfortable with, but I know not all my contacts are. Given the chances that access to them leads to access to me and the plain and simple fact that Facebook was offering our information to marketers around the world at our expense, I really needed to think about what I was doing.

While I didn't join the others on Quit Facebook Day last May 31, I have significantly changed the way I interact with the service. The main reason I remain on the site is the plain and simple fact that as a networking tool, it's hard to match. This is only because I have too many contacts (and not necessarily "friends") on Facebook related to my role as alumni representative for my high school class. So yeah, that sort of left me tired to the service, along with a few far-flung friends who didn't appear to be ready to jump on over to Diaspora or something.

So after the big announcement about simplified privacy controls, I felt a little better but still remained unconvinced that this would lead to everyone being smarter about their Facebook usage. Case in point, a friend of mine recently received an invite from a person who was not allowing anyone outside his network to add him. How weird is that, right? The challenges go on.

But beyond my decision to stay on Facebook, strip my profile of all likes and interests, cull my friends list of acquaintances that I didn't trust my data with and surf the site only using Google Chrome's Incognito Mode, I also made the hard decisions of quitting all my Facebook games.

It was the best decision of my social networking life.

[Social Networking] Is There A Market For A Local Geek Dating Site?

Image via Wikipedia

I have to admit that I consider myself a pretty lucky geek since I found another geek to share my life with. It's hard enough to find someone to share your life with period, what more a fellow geek, right?

Given that fact, a lot of my geeky friends of the queer persuasion tend to look to me for help in terms of finding a geek of their own. I have no idea why this is so - it's not like I am continually in locations when other gay geeks introduce themselves to me and thus since I'm no longer available, I'm free to pass them along to friends. But I'm as socially inept as I used to be and I know that finding a geek who loves movies as much as I do, knows how to play NetRunner, appreciates shallow comedies and runs role-playing games is pretty rare indeed.

So how do I help my friends now? I don't claim to be a very good matchmaker (not that I've tried for that matter) and I'm a bit scared to try given these are my actual geek friends that I want to be able to continually chat with to talk about the latest Transformers toy that I've acquired or why Pi Day is a great geek holiday. No, I don't want to ruin that but I do want to be a good friend.

What to do, right?

[Contests] Google Wave Invites Up For Grabs!

Image via Wikipedia

So I've been using Google Wave for about a month now and it's been pretty cool but of course a tad confusing at times. I think all new Google Wave users get that initial "Yay, I have an invite!" feeling that's quickly followed by the "Great, now what do I do with this?" notion immediately after. It's definitely a different concept that only really makes more sense when you have more contacts to Wave with - this is a social communication tool after all.

To get a better idea of what Google Wave promises to be, check out this video:

What is Google Wave?

So I was surprised to find that I've been given 28 Google Wave invites and given it's Thanksgiving, it only makes sense to share the love with all you Geeky Guide readers! But let's make it a little more interesting in terms of how you can get a Google Wave invite.

[Media] Social Media Revolution

I love statistics - it's probably because of my background as a debater or something. You have to admit that we tend to appreciate information more when it's presented to us in factoids, charts and percentages. It somehow makes things easier to understand.

Socialnomics has put together an interesting video looking at the effect of social media on the current marketplace. Sure, it's clearly directed at companies in order to convince them to start allocating funds towards social media advertising and other online efforts, but that doesn't the fact that the video does present a number of interesting notions and ideas and certainly shows us an aspect of our development in this social media driven world.


#1 - Social Media Revolution