Comments on: The Social Media Starfish

By: Prokofy Neva

Prokofy Neva — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 11:56:41 +0000

I don’t have all day to be online, or at least if online, I can’t be doing the social media but have work to do, so I’m simply forced to be selective. I looked at all the thingies out there and just picked Twitter as having the most signal to noise and the best information *and* conversations. I’ve simply screened out the rest — the most interesting people on those other platforms are likely to be on Twitter anyway. I never even looked at Plaxo, because it came simply as one more thing after I reached the saturation with vox.com, Twitter, Jaiku, Ning. At this point I will not bother with Ning expect insofar as it is used with virtualworldsconnect.com — it’s just because at a certain point as a consumer, you reach saturation, you settle, and even if the next big thing truly is the next big thing, you can’t care.

I didn’t like Facebook for a long time because unless you have an edu email from your college if you went to college at a time when email existed (I went before there was an Internet) or unless you have a work network email (I’m an independent contractor so I don’t have the company emails) you can’t get any value out of it. I sat for the longest time with only like 2 friends because the other networks were closed.

It wasn’t until I could add Robert Scoble with his 5,000 friends and join Silicon Valley network, which I have nothing to do with, really, that I could find other people I know, and interesting people. Also Scoble said that Facebook wasn’t just for all those dumb games which I don’t play but as a micronews feed for links and ideas that I and the friends are having — then it became worth it.

By: Chris - Soundorhan

Chris - Soundorhan — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 06:51:42 +0000

I’m almost completely new to all of this. I have a facebook account, started 1 month ago, have had a myspace account for a couple of years, but the rest are totally new to me. I have a unique problem in that as a teacher I can’t be wired for 8-9 hours a day in the classroom, and I have many other creative distractions/pursuits. So I’m wondering if there is one tool also, that could make it easier. I have tons of content that I’m doing, I’m a musician, photographer, filmmaker and my problem is getting any of it noticed in the sea that is youtube or myspace or itunes. I have joined twitter ( @soundorphan ) and I’m starting to follow, and I will be working on my facebook, but I’m open to these other things just sorta wondering about mileage. Hell, I don’t even know if there is some sort of etiquette on twitter.
Thoughts?

By: rob

rob — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 04:43:52 +0000

I agree that all these communication tools are great and scattered, so what we need is a hub to pull it all in. Yes, Facebook can do it but I’ve found it’s too busy with distractions. What I do now is use Google Reader to pull in all my RSS and it’s my hub. I could spend all day there (and gMail). If I need tweets from someone faster than RSS, i set it up on gTalk. I see it as my content collector and notifier. If I need to leave it and go interact in the conversation, I can do so easily (like to join this conversation).

By: Connie Reece

Connie Reece — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 10:51:04 +0000

I haven’t had a chance to listen to Scoble & Canter yet but I had to jump in here and agree with you about the proliferation of tools. It’s getting difficult to even keep up with the names of new services, let alone think about trying to reaggregate my social network there. Like you, I’m able to be online almost 24/7 if I want to be, so it’s not strictly a matter of time.

Kudos to Robert (@scobleizer) who really does understand how to make Twitter a two-way conversation. Because of him, I started increasing the number of people I’m following; now over 400. I didn’t think I would be able to keep up, but Robert has set an example of how to use it as a conversational tool even with huge numbers.

BTW, PodcampBoston had a cool workaround where you could speak TO the participants as well as receive their tweets. Don’t know how they programmed it, but you could start any tweet w/ the word pod and it would route it through the PodcampBoston Twitter account that all the participants were following.

And Francine — thanks for re-adding me to all those social networks. I like staying in touch with you. :)