Too little butter over too much bread?

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.

Comments

[Gareth Stack]

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.