How Much Social Media Do You Need

Ok. Perhaps I've gone a touch "overboard". However, I'm the kind of guys that, if there's a setting, a dial or a check-box, I gotta mess with it. Such is the same when it comes to meta-posters offering to link me to different posting sites, even sites I previously never knew of or had no use for. At any rate, I initially went to ping.FM to set up meta-posting (primarily) for FaceBook and Twitter. Prior to ping.fm was also (infrequently) using things like BlogSpot/Blogger, LiveJournal and Tumblr. For better or worse, ping.fm lets you link to a LOT of sites. So, "because they were there," I also set it up to post to:

• Google Buzz  (more a placeholder, since it self-aggregates from other sources)
• GTalk (more of a record-holder/reminder, because updating my IM status seems silly)
• AIM (more of a record-holder/reminder, because updating my IM status seems silly)
• LinkedIn (more of a record-holder/reminder, because I don't really post to professional-networking sites)
• Tumblr
• Identi.ca
• Brightkite
• Plurk
• FriendFeed (more a placeholder, since it self-aggregates from other sources)
• Jaiku
• Blogger
• Plaxo Pulse (more of a record-holder/reminder, because I don't really post to professional-networking sites)
• Bebo (this already existed because of my AIM account, so, "why not link it")
• hi5
• WordPress.com
• Delicious
• Koornk
• YouAre
• Multiply
• Flickr
• StatusNet
• Vox
• TypePad
• StreetMavens
• Posterous
• Photobucket
• Yahoo Profiles
• Yahoo Meme

Also ended up finding some other ones due to relationships the above ones have (e.g., Fire Eagle - a Yahoo Property - because of signing up for BrightKite). Speaking of which, it seems like Yahoo and Google are both trying (or have tried but never did away with) other social media sites. I'm guessing some were small buys or indirect acquisitions.

Prior to writing this post, I'd never really found where the "Yahoo Profiles" was going to. I mean, I don't really see a link to it off my Yahoo dashboard. I know that profiles.yahoo.com mutated to Yahoo360, but that had seemed to die. Turns out, though, that profiles.yahoo.com still exists. (/me shrugs)

A number of these sites seem to be a niche looking for occupants (e.g. StreetMavens). Some don't seem well-suited to linking via Ping.FM because Ping.FM's media uploader is rubbish. So, even though I can link Flickr, Multiply, Photobucket, etc., I can't really use Ping.FM to post media to them. So, they're more "placeholders".

On the plus side, without Ping.FM, I wouldn't have known that there was an "Open Status" project acting as an OSS version of Twitter. Ping.FM explicitly lists StatusNet and Identi.Ca for this service.

Because Ping.FM's posting interface is such rubbish - but mostly did what I was looking for - I sought out alternatives with better posting interfaces. That's how I ended up on Posterous. Unfortunately, Posterous: doesn't link to nearly so many networks; while it has a much better web-posting interface, the site navigation is rubbish - they really want you to use the email submission engine. That engine's pretty cool, but a little rough around the edges. Their mail parsers frequently get things a little wrong (such that, if you want your Blogger/BlogSpot, WordPress and Tumblr to all look the same, you frequently have to go to each site and "fix" things). The data's all there, just the presentation isn't consistent or spot-on. Oh well, emerging technology. They show a lot of promise. And, if they can get their recent performance issues out of the way, I can foresee considering one of the premium offerings they hope to put together.

Neither Ping.FM nor Posterous yet supports some of the more fringe services, yet (FourSquare, HotPotato, GoWalla, etc.). But, a number of those services seem to be more in the vein of hangers-on than free-standing services. They seem to mostly leverage Twitter and/or FaceBook for their readership.

/me shrugs

Been an interesting experience. Getting to see a lot of different approaches to social media. And, it's helped me avoid "putting all my eggs in one basket". Given that social-media has really replaced diary-keeping, it seemed prudent to spread things out. Damned few of these sites seem to have what look to be good, long-term business plans to assure their long-term existence. Worse, even fewer seem to have a way of getting your data back out. I've already had sites die and take my data with them (e.g., wis.dm). I don't want whole chunks of my journaled-life to simply evaporate each time a company goes out of business, has data-integrity issues, etc. 

Yeah, I could host my own - and, in the past, I did - but that removes most of the "social" aspect from things. While most of what I write is for my own consumption, I do also like being linked to other people enough that I can see and comment on what they're doing.