From the category archives:

Social Media

Personal scale on a wooden bedroom floor

I consume a large amount of online content. By “consume,” I mean actually reading things. My RSS clients — I use both Google Reader and a nifty, self-hosted program called Fever — are real rivals to the browser as my window on the web. They allow me to search and sort content far more efficiently than clicking from site to site, and fresh information is what powers my writing and thinking.

Naturally, I enjoy sharing what I find. To a fault, in fact, and there are plenty of great venues for this. The latest is Google Buzz, a promising new service which has generated an amazing amount of participation and discussion (some quite heated) since its introduction last week. Buzz can also be a huge time suck, and its convenient presence in Gmail — upon which I depend — hasn’t helped my writing output over the past few days.

It’s kind of like opening a bag of potato chips. Sure, you could eat just one and save the rest for later. But most of us don’t stop until we get to the crunchy bits at the bottom. That’s where I’m at with social media. It’s time to brush away the crumbs and go on a content sharing diet.

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So yesterday’s post regarding my departure from FriendFeed was not well-received. That’s fine: I wasn’t submitting the decision to referendum, and how people take things is really up to them. I’ve gone out of my way not to look in on the discussion of the matter at FriendFeed, but the indignant blowback in my site comments and email inbox seem to center around how inappropriate it was for me to depart, and that I must never have really understood the service in the first place.

I’ve said about all I care to regarding FriendFeed, other than restating my respect for its capabilities and most of the community. I’m glad to remain connected to many FriendFeeders through Twitter and Facebook — and, of course, through my own publishing. But the angry feelings I seem to have stirred have an anachronistic feel to them, rather like the partisan spirit of old-school BBS wars.  This isn’t social media, which is about the sharing of content. And that’s where social media belongs: welded to the content itself, not built on the shifting sands of Silicon Valley web services and startups.

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Max Gladwell logoThis is a guest post from Max Gladwell.

Our children will inherit a world profoundly changed by the combination of technology and humanity that is social media. They’ll take for granted that their voices can be heard and that a social movement can be launched from their laptop. They’ll take for granted that they are connected and interconnected with hundreds of millions of people at any given moment. And they’ll take for granted that a black man is or was President of the United States.

What’s most profound is that these represent parts of a greater whole. They represent a shift in power from centralized institutions and organizations to the People they represent. It is the evolution of democracy by way of technology, and we are all better for it.

Please note this is not a top-10 list, nor are these listed in any particular order. It’s also incomplete. So we ask that you add to this conversation in the comments. If you’d like to Retweet this post or take the conversation to Twitter or FriendFeed, please use the hashtag #10Ways.

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Is It Time to Let FeedBurner Burn?

4 January 2009
The Feedburner logo

Once upon a time, FeedBurner was a scrappy little web company with a big idea. But now its time may have passed. Are you ready to let FeedBurner burn?

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There Is No Authority In Social Media

30 December 2008
Tsar Alexander the Second

The controversy of the moment is the development of ways to measure social media authority. Unfortunately, there’s no such thing.

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Hey, You’re Breaking Twitter

23 December 2008
Tweetie birds

Re-tweeting (relaying the messages of others) is being held up as the latest evidence that Twitter is broken. In fact, it probably demonstrates Twitter’s health.

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How Kyle Lacy Was Right

20 December 2008
Kyle Lacy

Are you using automated messages to welcome new social media followers? Perhaps that’s OK. Or perhaps you’re missing out on your best opportunity to connect.

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