It seems that a huge segment of the world’s population has gone Twitter and Facebook crazy. People are busy updating their statuses, sending each other links, and trying to see how many “friends” and “followers” they can get. We are becoming social “broadcasters”, constantly bombarding our “friends” with 140 character chunks of information. In reality, these social networks are all about making “ME” feel good about myself, tricking us into thinking that people care about what we say … or maybe they really do care?
While sociologists are studying the effects of this social network phenomenon and what it means for society, there’s no doubt that social networks are big, really big! Not to be left out of the bit “ME” craze, the upcoming Ubuntu 10.04 release will include the “MeMenu.” The MeMenu will be your one-stop spot for sending out all your social media broadcasts right from within Ubuntu.
Plans for the MeMenu have been posted on Ubuntu’s wiki. According to the wiki, the MeMenu should “let you broadcast to social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, set your status for instant messaging, and access settings for instant messaging, microblogging, and Ubuntu One.” They include mockups of the interface, which honestly, looks pretty cool.
The latest daily builds of Ubuntu 10.04 show that substancial progress is being made on the MeMenu. It seems that Canonical and the Ubuntu community are serious about getting this done before the final release. Currently, you need to install the Gwibber package manually before the MeMenu “Broadcast Accounts” work. Once Gwibber is installed, you can post directly to Facebook, Twitter or Identi.ca from the MeMenu.
From a technical standpoint, this seems like a great idea. It also appears rather risky. Who will people blame when Facebook or Twitter change their APIs and the MeMenu stops working? They’ll blame Ubuntu, of course, even if it’s not their fault. If Canonical is going to include these social features as part of the core Ubuntu LTS release, I hope they’re ready to quickly fix bugs as social networks change APIs and break Gwibber and the MeMenu.
If executed well, these plans could turn into a great addition to the Ubuntu desktop. Perhaps Ubuntu will benefit by helping its users to become “Social Broadcasters” … hopefully they’ll be broadcasting about how great Ubuntu is and not posting things like “stupid MeMenu is not working again” or “No audio again in Ubuntu, need to reboot!”
What do you think about the MeMenu? Will you be using it? Leave your comments below.
Please, Canonical, PLEASE make the “MeMenu” either uninstallable (easily), or quickly DISABLED. Some of us don’t follow web trends or give a rat’s a** about Facebook & Twitter.
so no ones forcing you to use it
Hear hear! to what poster no.1 just said.
All the MeMenu is is the next evolution of a panel applet. They have been moving in this direction for a couple of releases. Where have you been?
Anyway, it’s just a panel applet, so don’t add it if you don’t want it.
Having been using it for several weeks now i can’t praise it enough! It really is addictive to use…
Picture of what it currently looks like for anyone interested: -
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_FJH0hYZmVtc/S36xUtkjIaI/AAAAAAAAF6E/cVh76eSqOes/s1600-h/Selection_002.png
+1 for Zack Carr’s comment. I don’t give a rats a*re about Twitter either. And why would I want to use an applet/widget for using Facebook on a Desktop PC? I have a gorgeous 24″ screen and a Quad-core machine, so using Facebook in a browser window at full size is perfectly adequate, and actually a much better way of working. Trying to reinvent the wheel, perhaps? I really wish Ubuntu would stop spending developer time on these new features and concentrate on fixing bugs and things that are broken or don’t work properly yet. Things that put a downer on my Ubuntu user experience – 3G networking using USB sticks for example, and the whole list of Xorg and Nautilus bugs that affect me every – single – day…
Because it is much more convenient to be notified of changes via an applet instead of keeping a web browser open to the facebook or twitter pages constantly. Yes you get a more complete experience by going to the web page. But these applets are not meant to give you a full experience. It is just a convenient way to not only get notified, but also quickly set status without having to open a page all the time.
I agree with itsjustarumour:
I for one do not use facebook or twitter, a huge waste of time.
Ubuntu, Please stop wasting time on these useless features and fix things like sound and 3G network problems. Please stop switching applications at every release, stick with the same applications with every release and make them work properly.
You seem to misunderstand the nature of a linux distro. Canonical does not develop most of the applications that go into ubuntu, and when one of them starts sucking, they are going to stop including it.
3G networking and sound are difficult for canonical to control, as most hardware companies are stingy about releasing enough information for anyone else to write drivers, and don’t care enough about linux to write a good driver/any driver at all. With graphics and wireless LAN and USB, the interface is largely standardized, or only a few companies dominate the field, so providing working drivers is easy. 3G networking and sound, as well as things like webcams, have no such standards and have a huge number of competing companies, and so including working driver support for all of them is difficult. A few releases ago we could blame Pulseaudio or Flash, but those issues are largely resolved now, and there isn’t much Canonical or the OSS community can do.
By the by, thanks to d0od for posting a screen.