When I began my career in web design, a device like this could be only be found in the world of science fiction. Actually, the iPad, which became available for pre-order this morning, makes Captain Picard’s PADD devices seem clunky and antiquated by comparison.

The iPad’s imminent release, along with the 10th anniversary of NASDAQ’s peak at the height of the dot-com bubble, made me wax a little nostalgic about the “good ol’ days” of the late 90s and early 2000s. The internet was becoming mainstream and computers were gaining wider use. A brand new web design industry was born and I was privileged to be a part of it.

It was a fun era, and while I sometimes miss the adventure of it all, there are a lot of things I’m happy to leave in the past. Here are just a few:

CRT Monitors
These hulking beasts can still be found in many offices and homes, but they are becoming extinct as LCD screens have become more affordable. Moving these things around is real pain in the biceps, and if you stare at them long enough you can almost feel your eyeballs melting.

Floppy Disks
Slow, noisy floppies hold a measly 1.4 megabytes of data. They were basically useless for shuttling large graphic files around, forcing us to use larger capacity ZIP disks (or, god forbid, JAZ disks) because CD writing drives were still pretty pricey.

Spam
Until Gmail came along in 2004, unsolicited “spam” email was just something I lived with. When you receive 50-100 spams a day, the “new message” alert loses all meaning. Sure, there were client-side spam filters, but they needed to be “trained” for several months, and they were far from perfect. Gmail’s sophisticated spam filter restored that little bit of glee at receiving a new message in my inbox.

Beige Boxes
For a time I actually enjoyed tinkering with home-built PCs (though I often enlisted the help of my unofficial AV/IT guy, Voidious) but eventually I’d had enough. I remember the exact night, in fact. It was 3:00 in the morning on a very hot summer evening and my machine was in pieces. Sweat dripped from my brow as I struggled to troubleshoot a hard disk issue. Or was it a power supply problem? Either way, I was done with that shit.

Video Plug-Ins
Remember RealPlayer? Before Youtube and Flash video, we needed specific browser plug-ins to watch video onilne. It was slow, buggy, and the picture sucked. Incidentally, I recall my buddy Chuck experimenting with using Flash for video sometime in ’03 or ’04. At the time I thought it was radical and a little crazy. Guess I was wrong. :)

Viruses/Malware/Spyware
There was a time when security holes in browsers and operating systems were so rampant that it was practically inevitable your computer would become infected. Some of this malicious software was so insidious–actually, wait, some of you are still using Windows and Internet Explorer, aren’t you? Ugh, this is awkward. Yeah, nevermind, I guess this one isn’t a thing of the past just yet. ;)

It’s doubtful that “Buzz”, Google’s newly announced social component of Gmail, will pose any significant threat to Facebook’s dominance. I was nonetheless gleeful at the prospect of a having a viable alternative to the world’s largest “social network”.

My excitement about Buzz correlates precisely to my increasing disillusionment with Facebook. What once seemed like a dynamic social forum is actually just a stream of disconnected, shallow, narcissistic chunks of bullshit from people I sorta know. There is no dialogue on Facebook, only monologue. Like most Facebook users, I only interact with a small percentage of my “friends”, while the majority are more like an audience than a group of people with whom I wish to converse (or who wish to converse with me).

Buzz, by contrast, should consist of people I do wish to engage in conversation, since the friend list is based on my email communications. It supports existing services (such as Picasa and Twitter) without any need for clunky applications and APIs. And best of all, I won’t have to sift through dozens of game results, horoscopes, and notices about people joining cleverly named groups. Incidentally, the people who join these groups will never actually participate in them. They simply join as another means of expressing their individuality.

Facebook offers the promise of socialization, but it is really just a platform for self-expression. It’s like blogging on training wheels. We get to “publish” our thoughts to a safe audience, free from fear of exposure to the entire internet. Unfortunately that safety is derived from the fact that most of your “friends” don’t care about your musings and won’t even read them, much less comment on them. So Facebook fails both as a social network and as a mechanism for public expression.

Now, mockery would not be be an unreasonable response to my complaints about Facebook. Indeed, accusations of hypocrisy would be quite justified. If I’m so dissatisfied with this “social network” then why don’t I just delete my account? Why do I persist with logging in each day, sharing links and photos, and commenting on people’s posts?

I guess the answer is that, like many people, I enjoy socializing online. Sadly, Facebook leaves me feeling hollow. It fails to deliver on the promise of a true social network.

I simply refuse to accept that Facebook is the future of the web. A buggy, walled-in platform can’t be the answer to sharing and socializing on the web. If I want conversation, I’ll use email, chat, Twitter, or hopefully Buzz. If I seek an audience, I’ve got my website and blog.

People may not leave Facebook in droves and flock to Buzz, but if Google’s new foray into social networking lives up to its promise, I certainly will.

Both are good, but one is better.

Since my friends and colleagues are no doubt sick of hearing me yap about the subject, I’ll try to get it out of my system with this post. Here are a few reasons I like Twitter better than Facebook:

Twitter updates are generally positive, meaningful, and substantive. Facebook status updates are often negative, shallow, and narcissistic.

Twitter puts my finger on the pulse of the internet. Facebook puts my finger on the pulse of a closed group.

Twitter encourages creative expression of thought. Facebook encourages expression by proxy (via quizzes, groups, pages, games, etc.).

Twitter is about reaching out. Facebook is about looking in.

Twitter provides real-time updates on any subject. Facebook provides real-time updates of my friends’ achievements in Farmville and Mafia Wars.

Twitter is flexible. Facebook is constrained.

Twitter’s web interface has a single, unobtrusive text ad. Facebook’s interface has multiple, distracting image ads.

Twitter’s settings are straightforward. Facebook’s settings are complicated.

Twitter doesn’t push groups and pages on me after I’ve dismissed them countless times.

Twitter’s interface is quick and simple. Facebook’s interface is sludgy and complex.

Facebook is buggy. Twitter is less buggy.

Twitter doesn’t ever suggest I become friends with a total stranger.

Twitter is a communication medium. Facebook doesn’t know what it is.

Just my opinion, of course. For a more intelligent discussion of the topic check out this article at TwiTip. The truth is I think both Twitter and Facebook are amazing platforms, and they serve very different functions. I will likely continue using both for the foreseeable future.

Jaiku‘s better than either of ‘em anyway. ;)

Just a quick memo for anyone who isn’t up to speed. The following practices are no longer acceptable in online discussion forums. This decree applies to message board replies, Faceboook comments, and anywhere else on the internet where written conversation takes place. Thank you for your cooperation.

Beginning a Post with “Lol” or “Hahah”
This practice is rampant on the web and needs to stop. I confess I do it myself all the time (I’m working on it). It’s a way to quickly indicate agreement with the previous comment and placate the comment’s author. For example:

Netizen: The Joker is the greatest villain ever!
n00b: Lol totally!

Using “Lol” and “Hahah” in the Same Post
People do this to create filler because they can’t think of anything interesting to say. Alternatively, they do it to soften the blow of a dissenting opinion. These terms are the digital equivalent of a grunt. Come on people, nobody laughs this much:

Netizen: Heath Ledger is the best Joker ever!
n00b: Hahah he was ok but Nicholson pwns him lol

Using “Lol” Multiple Times in the Same Post
See above.

Beginning a Post with “Um[m/mm/mmm]” or “Uh[h/hh/hhh]“
Doing this makes you look like a jerk. It’s often used in a reply that disagrees with a previous comment. The respondent uses “um” to start his post as if to indicate he’s pausing (perhaps wincing in pain) as he struggles to comprehend your stupidity. Here’s an example:

Netizen: The Dark Knight is the best movie ever!
Asshole: Um, actually it isn’t.

To seem like an even bigger cocknose, the respondent will sometimes end his reply with a question mark, as such:

Netizen: The Dark Knight is the best movie ever!
Asshole: Uhh, actually it isn’t?

Or:

Netizen: The Dark Knight is the best movie ever!
Asshole: Um, no?

Using the Phrase “I Know Right[?/!]” Ever
I knew the girl who started this back in ’98, when it was a new and neat way to indicate agreement while opening the door for further discussion. Now it just makes you look dumb.

Netizen: Christian Bale was the best Batman ever!
n00b: I know right!

I hope this helps clear up any confusion. Oh, one final note: if you want to come off as the biggest dickhead of all, write a blog post about how stupid everybody acts on the internet.

Here is a word cloud of all my tweets since May 20, 2007, created using Wordle (be careful, it’s addictive). Behold: the last two years of my life summed up in one convenient cloud!

Massive thanks go to Voidious for inspring me with his unique and amazing blog entry, retrieving my tweets with his Python Perl Script Rip Archive Dump Tweet Backer-Upper™, and last but not least for creating a script to extract the raw tweet text from XML. You rock bro!