B.Lab - Latest Comments in If you only had one social site

Re: If you only had one social site

AndrewShuttleworth — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 21:54:50 -0000

Hopefully it would be a little less complicated than the one I did last year :-)

http://hq.andrewshuttlewort...

Re: If you only had one social site

Paul Papadimitriou — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 20:22:54 -0000

Well, that's in the pipe, Lance. More next Tuesday :-)

Re: If you only had one social site

Lance Shields — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 20:06:04 -0000

An interesting idea Paul. One easy way would be just to create a FriendFeed group that we all subscribe to. But I believe you may be thinking of something more custom made, right? Ponderous posts to wordpress so that might be one way to control the presentation a bit more...say 3 columns of feeds for each expert.. Just an idea.

Re: If you only had one social site

Paul Papadimitriou — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 20:00:27 -0000

FF is the best tool around, it even replaced my daily reading of RSS to a certain extent. I know many people are saying Twitter does this, but without a tool like TweetDeck, the noise-to-signal can be way too high to actually be using it without losing too much time.
Twitter should learn a page from FF in many fields: grouping (the Twitterlator Pro app on the iPhone just released something like this), hiding posts, best-of-the-day,...

I'm actually thinking of setting up a "shadow" (i.e. not linked to my name) Twitter account to just follow the most relevant people. But that would be my third account and I'm running out of tools to follow them on my Mac & iPhone :-)

Also I forgot to mention that even if Facebook is the site I would miss the most, I mainly use it for personal networking. I'm trying to separate my personal and professional life online, but it's a real pain sometimes. Still, Facebook is the closest to an ideal solution, as I can create lists of people with what they can see/not see.
To be complete, FB should add more importing tools to integrate with the fact that you might have many blogs for instance.

Re: If you only had one social site

Paul Papadimitriou — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 19:55:20 -0000

I think we should each draw our micro-blog/status posting map somewhere and create some kind of a best practice. We're all doing that in a way, but have taken different routes.

Re: If you only had one social site

Lance Shields — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 10:37:25 -0000

Oh sorry. I misread that! I will definitely try to make it then. I will also advertise it for you on Japan Social Media Marketers for you. BTW, are you a member of JSMM yet? Might want to check it out too: http://japansocialmediamark...

Re: If you only had one social site

Ken — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 10:32:09 -0000

Lance, it's January 17! Two weeks from now - if you're around try to make it.

We'll see how it goes - it might develop into something semi-regular.

Re: If you only had one social site

Lance Shields — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 09:56:34 -0000

I'm still learning my way around FF but liking it a lot. I really like how you can so easily share the same item with multiple groups. The killer social RSS feed.

Re: If you only had one social site

Lance Shields — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 09:56:20 -0000

Cool. No I didn't see that. So sorry to miss it. I was in Osaka anyway but maybe I can make the next one. Great idea Ken. Will you continue to run them?

Re: If you only had one social site

Ken — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 09:49:54 -0000

Lance, definitely. Have you seen this:

http://www.transpacificradi...

Quite the crowd is shaping up.

Re: If you only had one social site

Paul Papadimitriou — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 18:26:21 -0000

Thanks for the poll, Lance.

The most annoying thing with Twitter and many services is that "friend" thing. Why on Earth isn't it possible to add features like "trusted friends" (Brightkite), separate pro and personal (Plaxo), mute some specific thread (Friendfeed, Rejaw), unfollow specific trends (Profilactic) without having to go to the pain to customize everything like on Facebook?

Anyway, rant over. Facebook is the one I would miss the most overall, for it brings both it-savvy people and others. My vote did go for Friendfeed, since it's where I love interacting the most.

Re: If you only had one social site

AndrewShuttleworth — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 12:45:24 -0000

A Fb FB. That's interesting. Maybe FB squared?

Agree with the impact of Facebook and was thinking to add the same, at the same time I asked myself "which one can’t you do without?", by rephrasing the question as "which one would cause me the most hassle if it was suddenly not there" and got to ping.fm.

Having said that, I jointly run a couple of important sites (Tokyo 2.0 and Mobile in Japan) on Ning and would actually be much more in trouble if Ning disappeared, so maybe Ning should be at the top of the list.

Re: If you only had one social site

AndrewShuttleworth — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 12:36:33 -0000

Well that follow up sent me down a big black rabbit hole! :-)

There are some sites that ping.fm doesn't support, including Posterous, Vox, WIndows Live Spaces & Zooomr. And some of these are covered by www.utterz.com and www.shozu.com. A simple solution to get most of my posts (which go via email on iPhone) out to these services, would be to send to the individual address for these services. But 3 addresses instead of one adds a little complexity and room for error which is sure to lead to trouble at some point. I've been trying to find a simple solution either using Ping.fm's Custom URL feature or mail forwarding filters, but for some reason Shozu isn't accepting posts this way.

Anyway - was good to see you highlight some of the more powerful features of Posterous. Ping.fm also does that nicely, but can only do one photo per email I think.

As an aside, Ping.fm also posts to Utterli, which in turn connects to some services Ping.fm doesn't itself support: http://www.utterli.com/u/co...

Late now so calling it a night :-) Look forward to another social media brain dump over more beers than intended in early Jan :-)

Re: If you only had one social site

pacificIT — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 08:40:11 -0000

I agree with Andrew about Ping.fm though it depends on what your objective is. If it's purely for broadcast purposes, yes Ping is the best. If it's for interactivity, my vote goes to Facebook. Yes, it's a closed garden. Yes, they control everything. Yes, if they go belly up, so does all your information, correspondence, whatever. BUT.. in the 13 years of playing around with technology (since the early days of bulletin boards, CompuServe, etc.), I have NOT seen another service which has brought together so many people who otherwise would never touch a computer or bother to share their e-mail address. Facebook simply gets the "social" part done. (I am not a fan boy.. I am not a fan boy.. I am not a... )

Re: If you only had one social site

Oliver Reichenstein — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 08:33:01 -0000

Twitter. Because of its laid back communication culture. I'm not forced to make too many choices, to read or answer or react to anything. It avoids people from getting into cock fights, as it has no discussion threads. I hope they don't change it too much.

Re: If you only had one social site

Lance Shields — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 08:20:25 -0000

Hey Andrew. I can see why you like both ping and plaxo as they save time and give you a bang for the buck in getting your content out. For smaller scale reasons I suscribed to posterous.com today to be able to send photos from my mobile to twitter, facebook and flickr simultaneously (can do wordpress too). FB and LI prove to be quite popular, coming in second and third above. I suppose slightly less people use social media for professional networking as they do for lifestreaming. FB also allows profession and lifestreaming to blend pretty well. Thanks for your input on media usage. Lets meet up soon!
Lance

Re: If you only had one social site

AndrewShuttleworth — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 07:37:44 -0000

I chose other and I'd have to say that I'd be most lost without http://ping.fm. It does an amazing job of enabling me to update all the other sites I use. If I had a second and third place I'd probably say LinkedIn then Facebook.

Plaxo is also a useful site. I don't use their lifestreaming services much, but I like the function for people can maintain their address book. I guess that makes it social, but maybe not media :-)

Re: If you only had one social site

Lance Shields — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 19:39:15 -0000

Ken, that was really a well informed response. Thanks for explaining LiveJournal to me, I will have to check it out. The last part you said about twitter vs. blogging and being able to generate value for yourself is a good point. There is actually much debate between Michael Arrington (Techcrunch) and Robert Scoble around this which places M favring blogs and S pioneering twitter and FriendFeed. It's a good debate. Also here's a post about how to use Twitter as a tool you might like: http://blog.guykawasaki.com...
Would like to meet up with you soon sometime for a beer and further discussion. What do you say?
Lance

Re: If you only had one social site

Ken — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 15:59:40 -0000

Lance, they're actually quite different. LiveJournal is more like Facebook in the sense that you have a friends list. You can then make each post public, friends-only, or for a specific group of friends. The posts themselves are more like WordPress, and I think WordPress - or blogging itself - was really born from what LiveJournal was doing back in 1999.

I find Facebook to be an improvement on LiveJournal in many ways, but LiveJournal really is so much simpler to use and easier to get around. Then again, I've been using it nearly a decade and only got on Facebook a few months ago.

Twitter seems like a neat way to share links. I don't see it having much in common with blogs - my blog posts are hundreds of words long and I want them to be on a site I own generating traffic (and value) for myself, not for someone who's just going to make millions selling out to Google.

Re: If you only had one social site

Lance Shields — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 22:46:29 -0000

Kimberly. Me. Too. Addicted.

Re: If you only had one social site

Kimberly Bock — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 22:40:06 -0000

Me. Twitter. Addict.

Re: If you only had one social site

Lance Shields — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 22:30:53 -0000

Hey Ken: I've never used LiveJournal. What's the difference with Wordpress (this blog)? Good to hear you have a good way of focusing your content and audience.

Aaron: Yeah, I'm really starting to see the potential of twitter myself. The blog-twitter combo seems to be the magic recipe these days. Do you think you spend as much time blogging as you did before twitter?

Hi Krissy: I can see your point about Facebook. It is a bitch to figure out all the functionality and the gifts and quizzes certainly seem like gimmicks. That said, I have much of contacts on FB since so many people have adopted it. I don't see FB going away any time soon in my SM life. But with my increased Twitter use I imagine more friends will be found or move there so it may gradually switch in the next year.

As for me, I'm honestly mixed and as mentioned above still rely on FB for connecting. Twitter is a very close second and may eclipse FB in 2009.

Re: If you only had one social site

krissy knox — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 02:45:42 -0000

I choose Twitter over Facebook. Facebook is silly in a lot of ways. At Twitter you learn a lot of important things. Even when you are having fun, you are still learning. There is no comparison. On Twitter people have: sent me virtual gnomes, cows, trolls, gifts and purses. What's the value in that? Furthermore, I have heard the most intelligent people say they can't understand it. And it doesn't provide much of value. What's it's purpose? Sure you can keep up with friends, but you can do that on Twitter also. You aren't encouraged to add much of value on Facebook...

Oh, and my blog is of vital importance to me.

Which did I choose? Well, I'm not revealing. ;)

Krissy :)
www.twitter.com/iamkrissy

Re: If you only had one social site

Aaron Irizarry — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 22:18:21 -0000

I have to say twitter has connected me with readers to my blog, as well as a bunch of awesome people int he design community... so it takes the honors.

Re: If you only had one social site

Ken — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 09:41:07 -0000

LiveJournal. Old school but does everything I need. Much better for managing who gets to see what content.