I had a great conversation with my niece the other day about sending a letter to Santa. She wasn't sure how picky she should be with Jolly Old Saint Nick, fearing her greedy pleas might force him to bring her a lump of coal. The conversation got me thinking. If I could ask Santa for a few things to make the social media experience better, what would that look like?
Dear Santa,
I know this is an unusual request. After all, social media is not really a toy (even though some people use it like one). But if you could pull this off, I would be eternally grateful and promise to do my best to be nice, and not naughty, for the rest of my days.
- I'd like to be able to archive all my tweets, and search the old tweets of others. Is this a bad thing? It's nearly impossible to recall anything beyond the last few days on any social media tool that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. I hear Twitter is working on that, but maybe you could help them along. And while you're at it, could you get Twitter to give third-party apps the ability to archive as well-I'd gladly pay for the service.
- I'd like Facebook to send me a notice every time they change a default setting in my privacy settings. I know they want to circumvent this, claiming it's too tough to keep up with a billion people, but they're already making money off my data. Couldn't they be courteous enough to let me know when they are publishing my information without my permission?
- I'd like to see a Facebook app for Android that works like the real Facebook. You'd think with all that dough Facebook gets from ads, they'd be able to come up with something better than what I have now.
- I'd like a way to operate a hashtag chat on Twitter without blasting all my followers and leaving Twitter for a chat app. What if Twitter allowed us to use a hashtag the same as an @. If I lead my tweet with a hashtag, only those who follow that hashtag would see it? Just a thought.
Well, that's it for now, Santa. I don't want to get too greedy. If there's anything I could do to help, please let me know.
Sincerely,
Chris (and I've been pretty good this year, I think)
Did I miss anything? What would you put on your social media Christmas list?