An open response to Up Your Ego
Not to retread stale ground, but I rather feel obliged to add to my list (which I can’t seem to find right now) of reasons why I don’t do social networks.
Those of you who happen to be in my friends list on Facebook will know just how often I update and the blog, well that rather speaks for itself. I’m loving Twitter for its ease of use and quick fix mentality (the fix being for me rather than it) but here’s my new biggest reason I can’t be bothered with the latest range of Web 2.1* apps:
The lack of integration between these disparate networks is the exact antithesis of everything I love about the Internet
Big words? And well meant! Not to labour the point but I’ve just about got my online presence lashed together with as much e-duck tape as I can find. This lash up is enforced by an obsession with APIs and a massive overlap in functionality from most of the systems I work with:
Private Short Messages: SMS, Twitter, Email, IM, etc.
Public Short Messages: SMS, Comments, Facebook Wall, Twitter, Email, IM, etc.
Status Updates: Facebook status, Twitter, blog, etc.
And for the most part these things are entirely separate - linked only by the most tenuous of API calls.
So my apologies to those banging out the next social web phenomena but we’ve got enough builders right now and more than enough buildings. You want my attention? Work on the roads, the plumbing and the infrastructure.
*What? We can’t have 2.0 for ever you know, surely we’re due a service pack … it’s Tuesday 
17/07/2007 at 12:45 pm Permalink
Very Very good point - my first post on Pownce was ‘do I have time for another social network’ and you’re post pretty much sums up my feelings as well.
With the introduction of Facebook apps you can pretty much get Facebook to handle all the other social networks for you but there is a big problem.
That problem is people - I’ve got some friends on Jaiku, some on Twitter, some on Facebook, some on My Space and others that just read my blog (although there aren’t many of them).
I can already post once to my Tumblog and with a bit of tweakery have that post appear on my blog, on Twitter, on Jaiku and on Facebook but I still have to go to each on to read comments.
I think there is a whole new blog post on this - oh and keeping track of posts in other places is a whole new job of itself.
17/07/2007 at 1:27 pm Permalink
One of the other problems I find with social networks is that you’re gambling with the longevity of each of them. Do you really want to invest too much time in a dozen different networks, building up your friends, making it a part of your daily web routine, only to find in a few months its been sidelined by many of your contacts for the next big thing?
I notice that identity aggregation is getting more attention now, and slowly solutions are being put forward, but I cant see how we can ever have a truly unified system for managing these different social networks. If a new site, lets call it “me-squared”, popped up and let you view any notifications, messages, updates, etc from a few dozen networks, then surely that reduces the number of reasons to go directly to those networks. Surely this means that a truly open API is not going to be attractive to network developers if it means less traffic to their site?
17/07/2007 at 1:36 pm Permalink
I couldn’t agree more. I’m phasing out my blog, as all it consisted of was feeds from Twitter, Delicious and Flickr…and none of them integrated perfectly into once system, I grew fed up of having to hack about in Wordpress so it worked. All I need is something along the lines of http://www.istalkr.com but without the creepy name, to aggregate my web content fluidly.
Otherwise, I’ll use the closed system that is Facebook and use it’s many apps.
As Ryan Jarrett says, any rruly open API will ultimately decrease traffic on their site…
17/07/2007 at 2:20 pm Permalink
Maybe what is needed is a decentralised social network, one that is ubiquitous with the web, it is nowhere and everywhere, int
17/07/2007 at 2:22 pm Permalink
Bah, pressed submit accidentally…
Maybe what is needed is a decentralised social network, one that is ubiquitous with the web, it is nowhere and everywhere, integrated into hundreds or thousands of sites, as distributed as the net is itself. Almost like a P2P-style social network, each node containing information about their contacts that can be shared with others.
18/07/2007 at 9:23 am Permalink
Ryan J - I certainly agree with your concerns regarding longevity of Web2.0 services. I think this goes some way to explaining my general reticence with regard to utilising new services. That said, if the service is low impact (i.e. twitter) then the low time cost of getting started will often mitigate those concerns.
I also agree that, were there a central area for managing all of these subscriptions, comments and content streams I would probably be more than willing to try new services. Personally, I don’t think that a truly open API would be that much of a deterrent to developers, especially given that the business model for most social networks is hazy at best. It’s not like they’d be losing out on ad revenue as a lot of them don’t advertise. Of course if such a system were to take off then the providers of the aggregated services could adapt and provide other mechanisms for driving users to their sites direct. Features that fall outside of any API and add value but do not detract from the primary goal of communication (which, for me at least, is what the majority of social nets are all about) would ensure regular user traffic to the host site. Even something as simple as a single sign on portal for the different networks (i.e. it grabs new data and notifies you before pushing over to the host site to view it) could be viable.
I also don’t necessarily see the need for MeSquared (I love that name by the way!) to use standard API calls. The same effect could be achieved through a combination of RSS aggregation, Screen-scraping and authenticating using the user’s details. Any such system, well designed and modularized, could easily be expanded to account for any changes in service. Input modules take care of aggregation whilst output modules deal with piping the data to other locations, feeds, blogs, tweets, SMS, etc.
Unfortunately, I think that such a system would have to be centralised. Much as I like the idea of a p2p social net the concept’s success hinges on data warehousing (of sorts) and that means central deployment. Even thinking about it briefly, it’s clear that the concept is extremely complex from an architecture perspective and throwing decentralisation into the mix just makes me want to crawl behind the sofa and cry
01/08/2007 at 1:48 pm Permalink
I don’t bother with face book or any of those others, hell I have a myspace but I check it few and far between. What I do like is Pownce - its great for sharing links, and thats it.