Toluu

Colin Walker

Expanding my online world

Whose stuff is it anyway?September 8

I started thinking about how we use certain social media services a couple of months ago and Alexander reinforced the path my thoughts were taking.

More recently, Allen Stern stated on FriendFeed “i think sharing on google reader is finished - the value for so many sharers has continued to drop from my perspective” which garnered a number of contrary responses.

The real issue as I see it is that the value offered by various services has not been lessened rather it has been altered since the emergence of mashups with data from multiple services all feeding in to each other.

Isolation

Prior to aggregation services such as FriendFeed we looked at other services in isolation and everything had a set perceived value; you knew exactly what you were getting from your RSS reader or your social networking service.

Now we have aggregation and lifestreaming and it is becoming less clear where the boundaries of any function

Lessons learnt or common sense?September 2

So, I took most of August out and distanced myself from social media and blogging - it seemed a good time to do it as I had some other stuff going on (a mini cruise to Amsterdam and a weeks holiday).

I had an occasional glance at FriendFeed but only very rarely and Google Reader went begging - there are thousands of unread items I need to wade through/mark as read and a number of feeds that I will most likely unsubscribe from.

Before I start anything here I’d first like to say thanks to Mark and Hutch for thinking of me while I was away, it’s always nice to know that out of site isn’t always out of mind.

Have I learnt any lessons from my time away or is it all really common sense? Let’s have a look.

Who needs social media?

What did we do before we had what we currently think of as social media? We found other things to occupy ourselves, and that’s exactly what I did during last month.

As a family we have started playing World of Warcraft so that’s good to eat up a few hours and it also helped that the UK domestic football (soccer) season has started again so that provides something else to keep me occupied.

Do I need social media? No, and to be honest I haven’t really been missing it as I have been spending more time wi

Hiatus?August 5

You’ll have noticed that things have been a little quiet around here lately, as they were for a bit not too long ago. It appears that it is not just me. Others have been quieter than usual with Corvida giving an eloquent explanation as to why.

I completely agree with her.

It’s not just that the technology has plateaued, it’s not just that the conversation stalled but, somehow, that the social web has lost its spark.

We moan about the echo chamber and dream of social media ubiquity but once things get more ‘mainstream’ our precious corner of the web seems to become less relevant. We seek out friends who are not talking about the same old stuff but end up with a screen full of items we have no interest in.

I’ve spoken about balance on many occasions but it appears that a balance is almost impossible to achieve. Do we embrace the noise or just stop lying to ourselves and admit that the echo chamber is where we belong and is what brought us here in the first place?

We demand a wider scope of interest but get bogged down in the inevitable banality that accompanies it.

Mark mentioned that we can welcome the late adopter if we can be willing to go over old ground but we have

Getting too social?July 31

Social media is both a blessing and a curse.

We have the ability to communicate with many interesting people from all over the world in the easiest ways we have ever had available to us. The flow of information and responses is incredibly engaging and is making the world ever smaller - even if governments still have their differences, the citizens of the world are rapidly becoming citizens of the one global village.

On the other hand, however, social media can be a huge time-sink if not managed correctly and the danger exists that we become too engrossed so that other areas of our lives start to suffer. As I have said before: it is about finding a balance that works for us.

Different strokes

We all use social media differently, we have different goals and objectives, different reasons for using one service over another. Bloggers will use services to expand their audience and make items available to a wider cross section of the web thus enhancing their exposure. Nowhere, however, is is written that we must engage on all fronts and, as such, should not be criticised for not doing so.

We all have our favourite services and social networks; we may have accounts on dozens but we invariably use a core set of tools to get us through our daily lives be they Twitter, Plurk, FriendFeed etc. We have our followers across the web and can choose where we interac

Escaping the echo chamber.July 10

I am reminded every day of what social media can achieve by Sal who continually amazes me with her creativity and ability to use the tools available to draw focus to things that matter - for example, the MooMag project and yesterdays post on cyber bullying.

She is connecting to people for a reason and using social media as just another tool rather than as the end point and this reinforces the idea that I have been mulling over since my ‘break’ a few weeks ago:

Social media must be applied

Social media must not become a self congratulatory love-in unless there is actually something worth celebrating. The call to arms is for this to go mainstream but if early adopters want to debate the minutiae of service operation from here to eternity then we cannot possibly expect the public at large to see the value in those services. There will always be the industry commentators in any environment but social media seems to be an industry that needs to mature. We already have ‘complaints’ such as this one from