One cannot talk about social media whilst not actively participating in! I flirted with the whole tumbleblog concept where I would combine (mashup) sites such as Delicious, Digg, Twitter, Flickr and Facebook into a single blog/website. Doing so, I was hoping to create a platform where I would write and share my ideas, research and online activities. But, while in the process of building such a platform, the following questions came to mind:
- Should I, from now, on only post on Delicious and not on Digg? Posting something solely on one, would render the other useless and I’m active on both.
- What about the promising new services such as Twine? A perfect way of organizing, sharing and discovering information and, even if it still in beta, it looks promising.
- Should I write my own code, using a library such as SimplePie? Combining the feeds of all my services making it look like blog posts to ’spice up’ the flow of content.
- Or should I use Friendfeed to combine everything and import that feed into my tumbleblog? Saves me the hassle of combining!
- How do I filter my content? Not every link I post on Delicious or Digg or message I Tweet would be useful for my ‘online presence’. What would happen if the world came to know that I love project runway?
When looking at my current online identities (1), it is hard commit to a single service. Even if I were to use Delicious extensively (discarding Digg), chances are that another, more useful, service would pop up (2), forcing me to switch to that one. Should I import everything from Delicious to Twine? Should I combine them? Migrating would seem bothersome at this point. One could imagine that switching once is not a big deal but if another, more useful service would present itself, the whole migration starts once again rendering me to be a digital nomad.
Migration and selecting a single service were not my biggest concerns in not wanting a tumbleblog. What if a service would cease to exist? More and more new services are being launched every day but, on the other hand, a lot of these services will cease to exist in the near future. What would happen if the service I use, for e.g. my research, would stop? I could lose everything. A possible solution would be to use the feeds to publish and store everything in a database (3). Doing so my ‘valuable’ data would be secure against bankrupting services. Plus it would protect me against those inconvenient moments where the service would be down for a small amount of time, like Twitter likes to from time to time. Before I started building a database I came across FriendFeed (4) which automatically does all this for me. But sadly enough it would not update on time. Another downside was when I would change something, lets say a Delicious link I posted last month, FriendFeed would not update properly.
Filtering my content (5) seemed also troublesome. Some of my students use Tweets on their blogs/portfolio sites (funny enough they are changing their blogs into tumbleblogs). I like to read them from time to time, and to my biggest surprise I read that one of them was recovering from a serious hangover. Something you particular don’t want to communicate to a possible new client.
I know I come across a bit like Andrew Keen, the Simon Cowell of the Web 2.0 era, and there are many positive points for combining different services. One of them is exposure on different platforms. But with the points discussed earlier it would be much easier to create a normal blog since in the meantime (a rough 300+ days) I did not write or share a single line or thought.
For that reason I started Kudonomics.com, a simple blog. I know … blogs are so 2003 it seemed like the best idea … for now.
The Economy of Esteem: An Essay on Civil and Political Society
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
The Network Society: Social Aspects of New Media
Open Business Models: How to Thrive in the New Innovation Landscape
While reading this post a million thoughts popped up. You make some very valid points. Like you, I wanted to have a kind-of ‘braindump’ platform. A place where my online presence scattered throughout all sorts of different webservices converges into one, but you seriously got me rethinking that plan with point 5.
At first I figured my online presence is public anyway, so I might as well republish it on my own website. The major trend that can be seen on the internet is social exhibitionism. People are expressing their feelings online, and I have to admit that, unknowingly, I collaborate to this trend as well. Wether I like it or not.
After reading your arguments on point 5 it got me thinking: do I really want to make it easy for people to find out who I am? The problem is: as your online presence grows, your online professionalism should grow too and that’s a serious pitfall.
I’m going to have to dedicate a blog post for this, because it’s to much to put in a comment.
Anyways, good to see your online presence again. Can’t wait until the next post.
Thank you for your kind words Rommert! A possible solution to (5) could be to filter on the content. Tweets, e.g. registered with a ! or other symbol, are not meant for publishing and so are the replies (@). But then you have to be enormously careful what to post.
Being online is great but the more you publish, the more you want to moderate. Not towards your strong tie connections such as close friends and family, they can see every step I make. But I’m more concerned about the weak tie connections. People who actually disliked you in high school but still add you to their friend list on Facebook because its been a few years. They don’t have to know my struggles or strange embarrassing quirks. On the other hand, they do have to know all of my wonderful life has become in comparison to theirs.
I’m glad that my post made you think but I’m sad that you might not release a innovative kind of blog. When are you posting your blog post about this issue? I’m extremely curious about your two cents!
“Being online is great but the more you publish, the more you want to moderate.”
That’s exactly the point. You want to filter your publications on relevance concerning the context in which it is presented. There are services which are quite ‘harmless’ like last.fm, del.icio.us and LinkedIn and there are services which are much more personal like Twitter or Flickr.
Your proposed filter based on characters could work, but it adds another layer of micro-management while the whole point of it is having a sort of seamless online-lifeline synchronization. It’s a difficult subject which really needs some thought. Maybe we should brainstorm about this in the near future.
Oh, btw: expect a new blogpost this week. Probably even tonight.
Fantastic look and feel, Erik. Finally, huh? Thanks for your bumble beeing on posting etc. Is it not the question why and what we post? Otherwise, it was Peter Sloterdijk who claimed that what really matters is where you post (read ‘Spheres”.
Kees
Kees, it is indeed a question why and what we post. I see a slow change in blog usage. First it were mere blogs with, in general, selected posts (the why and what in your question). But selecting and writing posts took time.
Then they ’spiced up’ the content with Tweets, Delicious links and Flickr photos in order to keep the content flow steady. People were already using these services anyway, why not maximize the usage of these services. Plus it would do wonders on the Google ranking.
But over time people, who do not post that much, change their blogs into tumbleblogs forgetting the why and what. Surely their online activities would represent them enough so they would have to write that much?
Consider this post as a monologue why I don’t want to have a place where all my online activities are clustered.
And yes… finally! My blog is completed! Still need to tweak it here and there but for now I’m happy!