Mike Kiely laments the ongoing fragmentation of Bernie Goldbach's online persona into more and more social networks (Facebook, Twitter, etc) while I'm agreeing with Conor O'Neill that I won't be a true Facebook user until such time as it provides RSS feeds to keep up with, or at least easily graze, the deluge of status updates. No RSS is a deal breaker as far as I'm concerned. Mike makes his point eloquently -
"I fear the 'too little butter over too much bread' syndrome. As personalities drift and spread over various social media I have little idea what the thoughts of my favourite online persona are. Sure, I know what they had for breakfast, but little else of use. A finely written article or post with, most importantly, a point to make, seems to be the real casualty of the Facebook trend. As we discussed, I use Facebook to discuss nonsense but I contend that that IS it's purpose- I don't confuse it with serious discussion- just a touch paper. Sad to see so many personalities dissipate over seven or more social networking sites - far more impossible to track timewise than any blog. Perhaps the kids are correct to stick with bebo - their contacts, in one place, at all times."But in response I argue that RSS is surely the glue to resolve this issue. I've written previously about something that I call Unifeeds, or unified feeds, a concept which is closely tied to that of lifestreaming and lifecaching. But I prefer to use a term which puts the emphasis on an enabling technology for filtering all our digital outputs into a single stream, a single feed. Our unifeed.
Important to note, it is possible to get a feed of your facebook friends Status Updates (equivalent to tweets), Posted Items (links), and Notes (blog posts); just not the general mash feed with wall posts (public comments), and all of the application tooing and froing. I agree that this is a lack - but it's one all other social networks right now share (if they have such features at all).
I agree that the frequency of blog posting is declining amongst heavy social network users - I was an early casualty of this - but perhaps the paradigm is shifting from post often, and often needlessly (quick ideas, videos, links etc - which all shift to moblogs); to more infrequent, more original posts.
The interconnectedness of the 'community' of Facebook - more likely to be composed of real world contacts, at least for students, than a blogs readership; makes up for the dispersal, and makes visible previously unseen sides of friends, and otherwise unknown connections.
Posted by: Gareth Stack | June 27, 2007 at 01:35 AM