The point of social networking shouldn’t be having a long list of sites (Facebook, your own blog, Twitter, Flickr, etc.) you have to check every day. That makes it work, not fun.
The point of social networking is to be able to use the Internet to keep the people you want to in the loop of your life. (Or loupe, if you prefer.) Facebook and its kin are tools to make that easier — you can find people, “friend” them, then always be able to see what they’re up to, and vice-versa.
Which is fine, as long as your friends and relations have chosen Facebook as the place to keep up with one another. Because Facebook, far from being truly social, is much more like a gated community. You can only really keep in touch with other Facebook users. (Technically that’s not entirely true, but it is for most users.)
If you have a friend who’s more a Twitter user, you then must also become a Twitter user to keep up with him. Another friend is still on MySpace? You’ll need an account there. And so on.
Imagine if you needed to have accounts with every phone company in the country, just in case you wanted to call someone who used AT&T when you had Verizon? Crazy. But we accept that with social networking.
Things come together, things fall apart
Once upon a time, if you were “online” you were using an online service: America Online, CompuServe, GEnie, Prodigy, or a local bulletin board system — a BBS. You were in an isolated community; AOL users couldn’t share — couldn’t even e-mail — with CompuServe users. The online world, such as it was, was Balkanized.
Then came the Internet, and then the World Wide Web, and the barriers disappeared. E-mail was standardized; we could all talk to one another no matter who our provider was. The Web replaced the online services’ proprietary message boards and chat rooms. You were an Internet user, not an AOL user or an Earthlink user or what have you.
Open communication.
And then come “social networking.” At first it was blogs, which — being Web based — were open to all. You could create a list of the ones you liked and follow them either by going to various Web sites or by using a feed reader.
But soon sites like Flickr and YouTube came along and started centralizing things, in part because storage and bandwidth were expensive. Who could afford to pay the hosting fees for an online photo album, let alone to share video? So people moved away from having ‘their place’ (a blog or Web site) to ‘renting’ space on a social site.
But you could still see someone’s photos on Flickr, or watch their videos on YouTube without having to join those sites. So it was better than the days of online services.
That is, until those media sites become social media sites. Want to leave a comment or share your own photo or video? You had to be a member of whatever service your friends were using — being an Internet user wasn’t enough.
Here on my blog, anyone can be social — anyone can comment. But on my Facebook page? Sorry, you need a Facebook account. Yet somehow that’s a “social networking” site.
More like a social-networking silo.
Too many cooks
I know people who check their e-mail, Facebook messages, Twitter messages, and Flickr messages. Separately. (Yes, you can have them all e-mailed to you, but to be social — to do more than read them — you need to go to each service.)
I have friends exclusively on Facebook. Others who only Twitter. And so on. So — just like in the old days of online services, if I want to join them in an online conversation I have to join those sites. That’s not very social.
In the physical world, of course, you have friends in different places — at work, in your neighborhood, at school, at your kids’ school, at the bar, at the club, etc. But the Internet makes physical barriers disappear, and for a while made social ones disappear too.
But now we’ve taken a major step back.
Jump on the social networking bandwagon! they shout. Your business needs to be on Facebook! And Twitter! And YouTube! And whatever comes next! Because you may want to communicate with Facebook users! Or Twitter users! Or YouTube users!
That doesn’t sound easier or better to me. It sounds like an unnecessary mess.
“Why, dozens of our customers have friended our company!” What does that mean? It means you can send them messages… just like with e-mail. Or a blog on your own site. But now you have to repeat your same message over and over, because the services are isolated. Send an e-mail. Post it to the blog. Put it on Facebook. Add the photos to Flickr. Make a short video announcement for YouTube.
Feh. It’s a lot of hooey.
No matter where you center your online presence — your own Web site, a Facebook page, a Blogger blog — you should still be able to hear what your friends have to say and see what they want to share, no matter where they center their online presence.
What I’m working on
It’s doable now, but it’s far from easy. Right now, if I post a message to my blog (because andrewkantor.com is where I have established my online presence), anyone following me on Twitter is notified, thanks to Alex King’s wonderful WordPress plugin, Twitter Tools. And if I post to Twitter directly for some reason, that post is repeated here.
Facebook is more complex. An app called RSS Graffiti takes my blog feed and posts it to Facebook, so whatever I write here also appears there. What’s annoying is that Facebook users will comment on Facebook, rather than on my site, so the “social” part doesn’t work as well.
I’m trying to fix that without making it difficult for Facebook users. Another WordPress plugin, FeedWordPress, takes my Facebook notifications (“So-and-so commented on your post…”) and posts those messages to my blog. But that’s a far cry from actually keeping the conversation at andrewkantor.com. So that’s something I need to fix.
I have a Flickr account that I don’t use much. I prefer to host my photos myself, so I have complete control over the look and feel. I use the incredible Zenphoto for that, and I want to see if there’s a way I can have my pictures automatically appear on Flickr when I put them here. If not, Zenphoto allows comments and rating, so I can enable those and make my photos more “social.”
Video is a little easier. The comments on YouTube are so inane that I don’t feel I’m missing anything if I just embed my videos into blog posts. My visitors here can see them and comment here, without having to dip their toes into the YouTube comment cesspool. Besides, Vimeo is better anyway.
Finally, I’m building a Web page behind the scenes that merges all my incoming messages from Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and my blog — one stop shopping for me to keep up with the folks I’m following or friended with. That uses RSS — Real Simple Syndication — and the terrific SimplePie software on my site. SimplePie takes all the feeds from those places and, with a bit of HTML from me, does magic to them so they’re all in one place.
Sadly, Facebook isn’t open and it forces me to log in to see what my friends are up to (unless they post to my wall specifically). Damned annoying and damned anti-social. I get my revenge, though; I use the Facebook Fixer plugin for Firefox to remove all the ads and all the junk I don’t want to see. They can force me to come, but they can’t get me to see their sponsors.
Eventually Facebook will be supplanted by whatever’s next, just as AOL and MySpace and Second Life all came and went. And then we’ll all rush to the next “social” thing, no matter how unsocial it is.
I’m hoping, though, to lay the groundwork for my site to be social-neutral, so no matter where the crowd runs next, my home can always be my home.
The Fray
Steve McMackin says:
I’ve been watching this process of yours (and to an extent, had a parallel fight) with centralizing online “social” sites and agree with your insights about their segregation.
But while I’ve made some headway with things like the Palm Pre and tools similar to the ones you mentioned, I threw a gigantic spanner into the works recently:
I’m writing an album. I’m pretty proud of it so far and I’ve decided I’m going to see how effectively I can market it online. That means social sites galore. It’s not just the current biggies Facebook, Twitter, and (for music, anyway) Last.fm. It’s MySpace, iLike, iMeem, bebo, GarageBand, BandCamp, PureVolume, Stereofame, Magnatune and a dozen others. That’s on top of actual outlets like iTunes, AmazonMP3, and so on.
I have made a seven-page summary of all the blogs, services, and networks I’ll be communicating on. It’s insane.
Yet, like you, I hope to stay sane with a well-planned, coordinated approach with realistic expectations. I MAY even sell a few albums…
e dad says:
That was a long on site message . But of course you realize that I don’t understand all that your blog had . At least I read it .
Sunday game at 1 pm