Comments by Deidre Woollard Subscribe

On Can JCPenney's Social Media Mea Culpa Save Its Brand?

Hi John. Thanks for the comment! I'm not sure if the whole idea was doomed from the start but I definitely agree that the brand will survive as something other than they wish/aspire to be. I think the brand was in quicksand before Johnson arrived, the rescue attempt failed, and the ensuing flailing has definitely hastened the descent. I'm curious who the core fan base is and what they want. I feel like the brand doesn't know its own customers.

On The Real Problem with Facebook Graph Search: Perpetuating "Filter Bubbles"

Good points. The thing about the filter bubble that always frustrates me is how much time/energy it takes to break it and how that has to be done over and over in terms of clearing browser history, etc.. Every search, every click, every like and all the activity of everyone you interact with makes it deeper and thicker, shutting out more of the world.

I think one thing we will see with graph searches is that people will pay more attention to what they like or recommend. Already people are unliking things they may have liked in the past on Facebook simply to prevent them from appearing on friends feeds as sponsored ads. I know Zuckerberg has said he sees Facebook as a personal newspaper but it can never be that as long as your activity and interactions are broadcast to others in order to sell things. Reading or even interacting with something isn't always an endorsement and graph searches don't necessarily make that distinction. In a world of all likes (or all pluses), there's only a yes vote...

On Has Google Killed RSS?

Great post. I've been thinking a lot about this too and what it says for the social space. I think social networks, Google Plus, Facebook et al. want to be able to throttle feeds so that people must pay for access. The tricky part has always been monetizing RSS. The feeders themselves don't make much money and the sites don't benefit unless they have ads running in their RSS because otherwise the RSS siphons eyes away from the site and its advertising. I'm curious to see what comes next as well. I think this also says something larger about the fact that most people don't feel the need to have all the posts from a particular site...

On 7 Reasons You Need to Be Using Google Plus Now

There's so much I like about G+ in terms of the interface but there's also some stuff I don't like including the trending posts (I was much happier once I turned that off). The biggest problem I see is that there is still a lack of strong participation. I know so many people who use/love Gmail but live on Facebook. Does it make sense? Nope. But until that tide turns G+ will be an also-ran.

While #5 the higher ranking in Google search is great for businesses, I have noticed that my searches on Google are getting increasingly compromised by my own +1s and the +1s of those in my circle. Sometimes I have to log out or use a different browser to break the filter bubble and get to the deeper content.