JumpSocial Blog

I went into Facebook on Thursday at the end of the business day to play around with MyChannl (Facebook Application by Bill Love et. al.). I watched a few videos and then went to the shwarma shop around the corner in the Ottawa Byward Market near my office.

I connected to the Hotel wireless internet across the street and went into Facebook to make a chess move in a game with Guy from my high school chess club.

I eyeballed my inbox a bit and then went home.

When I got home, I went back onto my portable computer and was greeted with the message:

Your account has been disabled by an administrator. If you have any questions or concerns, you can visit our FAQ page here.

How annoying. I had no idea what caused it and received no warning. I just lost access to everything.

Nuts, I felt I was winning at the chess game.

Also, many of my business contacts were there and I was blocked from getting in. I needed to contact one of my business friends to arrange something for the SNTTT event next week that I’m organizing. But I couldn’t.

I contacted Facebook and someone got back to me today in the morning to say that I was now allowed back in. The message had an apology but they didn’t indicate what triggered it. Further, I still can’t get in. I sent them more messages. I got to the point where I felt the need to let them know that it was causing harm. I said that I felt that it was careless as well.

People might think something is up because I’ve disappeared from their contact list. They might think I’ve removed or blocked them.

Already my parents called me from Saskatchewan because I’ve disappeared off of all my families contact lists.

I guess I can get through life without Facebook but this is something to be aware of. Any of the information that you have in Facebook can disappear at any time.

Also, beyond your control and awareness, you can appear to be blocking or to have removed our friends and family from your contact/friend list.

This can create a mess (long distance phone calls) and lots of extra work to clarify the mess that it creates.

Have you backed up the information you have in Facebook?

Darcy

Last Wednesday we had another great SNTTT session at Pub 101.

Personally I love the MyChannl Application.

It’s really cool to be able to have relevant video content without having to do an explicit search. The MyChannl system takes information from your profile, searches various sources then presents you with the content.

You can also view videos based on your friends. I’m understanding that it uses votes from your friends for this. I think it should use your friends’ interests to come up with content and use the voting for ranking rather than content selection. Also that if I have viewed a video, it should be listed lower in my list. (The ones that I like will be in my favourites).

What’s your opinion?

Darcy