Centralizing my data: my site rules
After upgrading to WordPress 2.5 this morning, I glanced at my feeds and read Loic’s entry about his social map:
The challenge for Friendfeed and the like is that while I really like all my services gathered in one place, I would rather that these would be centralized on my blog instead of a third party service. Yes you can cross post or add badges, but it’s not really like a center feed in your blog. What I like about my blog is that it is my space, I own it, I can customize it and change it, I do not depend on anybody (except the software and host, TypePad of course, needless to say).
I’ve said multiple times that I do not see the point in spreading myself over every social site that opens up. Looking at it realistically, new social sites will open up because the people behind the sites want to make money. Let’s give the benefit of the doubt and say they want to do something cool and innovative but in the end, most aren’t doing this out of the goodness of their heart. There is a commercial aspect to it. I have no problem with that. However, that does not mean, since the product or service itself is free, that I have to use each one. Nor does it mean that there is an actual benefit for me to use each one. I also realize the people promoting these new services (the people writing stories, doing interviews, recording videos) are doing their job and these people benefit for these products and services to remain in place, the more the merrier.
I prefer my central location to be my blog, not a third party site. I do not want to make it harder on my readers to follow me. Thinking about things long-term, spreading myself out amongst sites that may or may not be around a year or two from now does not make any sense. My words, my images, my movies…these all equal my identity and I’m going to be very picky where I place my data. Ultimately, I will not have a strong presence where I do not own the site because essentially, I would be saying that site takes priority over my own.
Yeah, that’s not going to work.
I use Twitter and as you can see on the sidebar, I imported my twits to Tyme Said but I will never use Twitter as a primary source of communication with people following me. What if Twitter closes shop or is bought out by a company that has different goals than the current team? The connection with my users would be impacted, particularly if I did not have contact information for them all. One of the new features of WordPress 2.5 is the ease of adding media to the site, putting more power in the site owner’s hands. However, if I upload a video to Blip, the company I chose to host my videos, I will embed it here. I have copies of all my videos and who knows? I might decide to upload them to Amazon instead. I can do that without chaos or losing people because my central location is my blog.
When blogging first took off people hopped on the blogging bandwagon. Blog networks popped up all over the place. How many of those blogs are still around? How many of the blog networks survived? Most of those bloggers stopped blogging (or changed blogs) and most blog networks were unable to thrive. Is it likely that these social media sites popping up will escape the same fate?
I guess the question remains: why is it people are unable to learn from past experiences?
Related posts:
Colleen Says:
Good point comparing it to the rise and fall of blogging. People are still blogging but many people are stopped writing worth-while articles and dump drop their thoughts instead.
Posted on March 30th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
Juanita L. Says:
LinkedIn is another social site that lets people find other people but the need for friends isn’t there. Is LinkedIn considered a social site?
Posted on March 30th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
SuperMan Says:
How do these sites make money? FriendFeed, SocialThing and Twitter are free, right? How do they pay the bills?
Posted on March 30th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Cool Guy Says:
A friend of mine has 10 profiles all over the place. Every time she signs up to a new one, she sends me an email to join here there.
Posted on March 30th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Frank M. Says:
Cool Guy I think everyone goes through that. Hard to say no and not hurt feelings.
Posted on March 30th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
SlightlyScared Says:
I’m getting them from people I work with too. Myspace, facebook, following them on twitter. When I explain I don’t want to follow them they are defensive. I don’t care what they are doing, who they are seeing, what they write about. I don’t care. Why do people think they are more important than they are?
Posted on March 30th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
ViperGirl Says:
My boss had her Facebook hacked. A nightmare to get her profile back, her friends back, and correcting everything the hacker did. She does not use it anymore. She decided to host a website because she realized if she had the website before she could have fixed the problem quicker.
Posted on March 30th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
Allison H. Says:
I tried putting the people I follow in Google Reader. I do not follow many but I have over 400 unread items overnight. I think it is more during the day. I look at each notification. I’m turning Twirl off.
Posted on March 31st, 2008 at 6:18 am
Felix Says:
For a lot of people it is too late to turn back. They already have hundreds of friends and they aren’t going to go through each one and decide whether to follow. It’s easier to scan the first page of Twitter and be done.
Posted on March 31st, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Morna Says:
My sister was saying the same thing about Facebook when they added privacy. She didn’t feel like going through all her friends to group them. She said it would take hours to do it.
Posted on March 31st, 2008 at 1:44 pm
The Valley Divide » Expert Idiot Says:
[...] Centralizing my date: my site rules I prefer my central location to be my blog, not a third party site. I do not want to make it harder on my readers to follow me. Thinking about things long-term, spreading myself out amongst sites that may or may not be around a year or two from now does not make any sense. My words, my images, my movies…these all equal my identity and I’m going to be very picky where I place my data. Ultimately, I will not have a strong presence where I do not own the site because essentially, I would be saying that site takes priority over my own. [...]
Posted on April 4th, 2008 at 6:00 am
Bill Cammack Says:
Good points.
I think that most people have no concept of longevity. They also have no concept of originality.
If you don’t consider the potential that people will be interested in you longer than a particular app or company will exist, there won’t be a reason to avoid placing your data in a message in a bottle, then floating it out to sea.
Similarly, if you don’t consider that one app might appear and destroy another one, you won’t see the current app as a ship that might sink with your data on it.
Very recently, Stage6 shut down, where a lot of people had a lot of videos hosted. There was a mad rush to retrieve their videos, upload them elsewhere and then change all the links to those videos. VideoEgg is in the exact same process right now. If somebody makes a “better twitter”, what happens to your 500 contacts?
Besides not considering longevity, most people are not original. This means they have no choice but to get on the bandwagon of whatever other people are talking about and wherever they’re posting their material. They have to go where the audience already is, instead of having the audience come to them.
Posted on April 4th, 2008 at 8:08 am
Bruce Kim Says:
If someone was on the bandwagon it takes a lot of guts to admit it, get off and change. It’s easier for them to stay on and lose like everyone else.
Posted on April 4th, 2008 at 10:25 am