Over the years, I’ve created accounts on many social media, community, and blog-related services. It is increasingly more difficult to keep content updated across all of these channels and accounts.
Here’s a rundown of the various sites or services that I use:
- Professional networking
- Relatively static content, non-segmented
- 90% personal, 10% professional-related content
- frequent updates, content segmented/filtered to 3 different audiences- trusted circle, friends/acquaintances, limited view
- content sourced from Friendfeed, Twitter, mobile and web apps
- 80% personal, 20% professional-related content
- frequent updates, no audience segmentation/filtering
LiveJournal
- 90% personal, 10% professional-related content
- content updates about 1-2 times a week
- 95% content primarily filtered to “friends list” only
MySpace
- Personal/social networking
- Relatively static content, non-segmented/filtered
Nil8r WordPress Blog, viewable on www.nil8r.net
- Personal-life blog
- Primary subject matter around tech/geek, gaming, anime, scooters, cats, hobbies and daily life
- infrequent updates 1-2 times a month, no audience filtering
OperationEmail WordPress Blog, viewable on www.nil8r.net
- Professional-life blog
- Primary subject matter around database/email marketing, marketing operations, and Expedia/tech worker life
- infrequent updates 1-2 times a month, no audience filtering
FriendFeed
- Primarily using as a content aggregator
- Pulls in content from Facebook, several blogs, Twitter, Netflix, Pandora, Last.FM, Digg, Google Reader LinkedIn
Posterous
- Primarily using as a content publishing mechanism
- Account pushes content to Friendfeed, Twitter, Facebook, personal blogs
What I really want might be the web-equivalant of the Holy Grail.
- A seemless, single-entry point widget/service/site to generate content and publish to; must allow selective publishing
- A single point of content aggregation, cross-platform
For #1, Posterous is getting me closer. Myspace isn’t supported, but that’s not a site I pay attention to much anymore. The autoposting enhancements to Facebook and WordPress makes this super-convenient, as a single email with some metatagging controls where I publish. No web-logins required.
For #2, Friendfeed is good for aggregating self-generated content, but it seems to be lacking in generating my “friends list” content, if they don’t already have a FriendFeed account.
I’d love to be able to have one place to read all of my Twitter follower posts, Facebook newsfeed/status updates, Livejournal friends posts, and blogs/RSS feeds (via Google Reader). The closest platform I’ve found towards fulfilling this wish is my iPhone. Unfortunately, it means leveraging 3-4 different apps and viewing the LJ mobile website via Safari.
I’m noticing (especially with Facebook and Twitter) that I sometimes make duplicate posts. This isn’t the user-experience I want to thrust upon friends and the internet-at-large. It would appear that I need to map out the information flow and interactivity between all of these services and update Friendfeed/Facebook/Twitter/Posterous settings accordingly.
Five years ago, I would have never expected to have to “debug” my communication information flow. Nor did I expect to come full circle to leveraging email as a content distribution mechanism.
