SocialOnTheWeb

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The other day I read a very interesting post from Mark Dykeman’s Broadcasting Brain that asked “Is blogging for the introverted soul?” This subject hit very close to home for me, as I am the most introverted and shy person I know. Sometimes I even have problems being around people who I have known since I was in diapers!

This post by Mark has inspired me to publicly explore a bit on why I am involved with social networking and blogging. This is something I have been doing quite a bit of thinking about my introverted soul and how it has interacted with the Plurk vs. Twitter excitement of the past few weeks.

I had plurked and plurked and got the holy grail of the emoticons, I had the 10 invited friends and even greater than 50 Karma and then the algorithm changed and I was supposed to continue plurking like I did at first if I wanted to maintain my status, which does make sense, but people were even being penalized for sleeping at night, there should be some leeway, shouldn’t there? What was I going to do when I went away for vacation to Disney World in September? What about the fact that I don’t really want to chat all the time because I have so many other things to keep me occupied not to mention the fact that I am so unbelievably shy and just hate putting myself out there in such an open forum.

So anyhow now a few more days have passed and I was checking out the latest in the Twitterverse and saw that there is another new kid in town, Indenti.ca.  Odd one, huh? Aside from not having all the birdies and being so blue, it really looks a lot like Twitter.  There is one difference, it is new. The page loads a bit slowly, but so far I’ve not heard anything about crashes or pages not loading at all. Another thing to consider is that everyone is not using it yet. It’s still in early adopter phase.

So in a matter of less than two hours, I have gone from avoiding social media because of the Plurk burnout I experienced to signing up for new services and even Twittering and Stumbling like normal.

Now although I am finally finishing up this post that I started almost a week ago, I can say that my outlook has changed in the last couple of hours. It isn’t that there is a new shiny out there to play with, because I have gone back to the old familiars that I had been ignoring for the past week or two. It’s just that this new shiny has been able to remind me why I like playing with all of these social networking sites. I may be an introvert in real life, but I do like connecting with other people and doing so online is so much easier to get the courage to talk to the popular kids. I just need to remember that no matter how pretty the next new shiny is that comes along, with all things, moderation is the key!

Imagine, for a second, that you have bought a new car.  It promises to give you good gas mileage, it gives you more headroom, and it is very, very shiny.  Sounds nice, doesn’t it.  Now imagine that everytime you put your three best friends in it, it dies.  Sometimes it sputters its way along, but most of the time, it just out and out shuts itself off.  You take it to the mechanic, and he says “It’s a known issue, and we’re working to fix it.  Have patience”  The mechanic also says “or you could trade up.  There’s this nice van over there, and a jet plane in that hangar.”

And that, in a nutshell, is Twitter.  It’s the shiny new car that just shuts down whenever it’s carrying too much of a load.  So why do users put up with it?  What is it about Twitter that prevents people from trading up for the van or the jet plane, or in this case, competing services like Jaiku, Pownce, Plurk and Kwippy?  Would these same people put up with similar behavior from a store, an airline, a doctor,  or even more to the point, an email or IM service?  The answer is, of course, no.  So why do they put up with it at Twitter.com?

While I think there are probably a lot of reasons, I think there is one reason that just keeps people coming back:  Twitter is where the community is.  Sure, Pownce works better (and allows you to attach files), Plurk has that cool timeline and lets you comment on “plurks”, and kwippy looks nice (and also lets you comment on “kwips”.)  But no one is there.  See, everyone is afraid to make the jump entirely away from Twitter, because they’ve built up relationships there.  Leaving Twitter would be like graduating from a really cool high school and not everyone gets to go to the same college.

I really want to graduate from Twitter.  But I can’t.  I can’t leave my friends behind.  When I lost internet for a few days, it was Twitter that was chief on my mind.  Whenever I got access to WiFi, I tweeted.  It’s not because it’s addictive (though it seems to have a slightly addictive element to it).  It’s because it reminds me of something from long ago:  the communities that used to exist on Usenet and IRC.  Those have largely vanished (even though both services are still used, the sense of community is long gone.)

I’ve heard Twitter called “The internet’s water-cooler” (and I’m not sure if it was Cali Lewis or her husband, Neal Campbell that I first heard say it.  Sorry guys), and Twitter does have that feel to it.  I care about what happens to people that I follow on Twitter, and I care about what happens to Twitter.  I have accounts on most of the other microblogging services, and I’ve dabbled there, but I always return to Twitter.  The others don’t feel at all like the water cooler.  They feel almost cold.  Twitter is alive.  Yes, it crashes constantly and that annoys me to no end.  Almost daily I’m saying “I am done with Twitter.”  But obviously, Twitter isn’t done with me.  And somehow, I’m okay with that.

When I was first introduced to Mahalo, I must admit, I was not very … excited about this idea. A site where people recommend other websites. Yes, there is a protocol, not every site will be accepted. In fact, so far, I’ve had 4 sites declined by Mahalo. One was because I put it under ‘Surfing’ and I was thinking web surfing, not water surfing! If there are more ads than content, the site will not be accepted. If there is not a clear way to get a hold of the website owner, it will not be accepted. This is a search engine providing quality results. Sometimes, especially when writing that research paper, we only want the quality results. Sometimes, we don’t and we can continue on with Google or your favorite search engine.

A couple of months ago, Mahalo introduced Mahalo Follow. Although I did check it out when it first came out, I was not swayed to download it until about a month ago. Since downloading Mahalo Follow, I have found that it is simply something I cannot live without. You must know that it has to be good if a social junkie like myself is all excited about it!

When you find a page you would like to recommend to Mahalo, you simply click the Yes button on the tool bar and a screen will pop up for you to enter the search term that would be used to find such a page. Start typing and it will give you suggestions. Next you want to enter your tags separated by commas. Only drawback here, make sure you also keep them to one word tags or your del.icio.us bookmarks will become a mess! Enter a brief description or what you would like to use to share this link with everyone.

It is this next part that makes this tool bar the greatest tool bar ever! You then have the power to send this link and your brief description to up to 10 different social sites! The sites currently accessible are Twitter, Jaiku, Faves, Ma.gnolia, del.icio.us, Google Bookmarks, StumbleUpon, Facebook, Pownce, or your Tumblr blog.

Well, to get these links, I just signed up for Tumblr!  :)  I tried Jaiku, but it still isn’t out of invites only.  I guess I didn’t realize what Tumblr was, because I had no idea it could take everything like this!  I’m looking forward to playing with this one, but that will have to be another day…

Hope everyone has a GREAT Monday!

For those of you who may not have heard, Lifestrea.ms launched in private beta November 14, 2007.  The premise behind this site is simply brilliant!  A site that brings together all most some of the more popular social networking sites. (Many upgrades are in the works, and the site is still in private beta, so I should give ‘em a bit of a break!) Thomas Huhn, the founder of Lifestrea.ms even realized that many of us may have different online identities and different social groups and we may never want any one group to know absolutely everything there is to know! 

From Lifestrea.ms:

To put it in prose: lifestrea.ms brings together all kinds of things that you and your social network create on the web in one place. There you decide who sees what. You can share and re-publish your contents and even add additional texts and media from your lifestrea.ms dashboard. To make sharing your life easier, lifestrea.ms breaks down your social life into seven of the most important parts: public, family, friends, local, professional, romantic and secret. You have one fully adjustable profile for each of your networks. The same way you share your life with others, your network contacts share their life with you. To keep you in the loop, you can even read your newsfeeds (’cause these are written by people you follow) and your emails (’cause these are people that contact you) from inside your dashboard. Staying on top of what’s going on has never been more effortless, so come and join today and start communicating with all your friends, family and colleagues in a new way.

As I mentioned, I think this is a wonderful idea for a site.  I have played with it some today (although I had been a member for over a month) and although it does seem to be a bit quirky and frustrating at times, I can confirm that it does at least allow you to Tweet rather than logging into Twitter to give an update.  OK, my most frustrating point was with the bookmarklet to add a new feed or bookmark.  There is no way I have found to change the feed or bookmark from private to public or partially public.  This issue has already been brought up in the feedback collection being made.

So now what?  Lifestrea.ms is in private beta and you wanna join?  Leave a comment or drop me an email and I will gladly invite you to join me on Lifestrea.ms!