Meta

Social overload

4
1 year ago
by Damon Kaswell in , ,

Well, I just got a Twitter account. I’m @DamonKaswell there, if you’re curious. I know, I swore up and down I wouldn’t, rejecting categorically any service that restricts the length of my thoughts to 140 characters. “Microblogging?” I scoffed. “Pshaw! Reduces attention spans, I’m sure. Makes people even more distractable than they already are. Imbalances the bodily humours, too, I’d wager.”

But I had something of an epiphany. I read a transcript of an interesting Twitter conversation on science and science fiction, and found myself wishing I could have chimed in. Because gosh darn it, I had some things to say on the subject. I wanted to be part of the conversation.

And that’s when it dawned on me. Twitter isn’t a good blogging tool, but it’s an excellent conversation tool. Twitter status updates can be treated as miniature Facebook updates, and for the ADHD set, I’m sure that’s all they are. But those hash tags (#) can turn Twitter into public chat rooms anyone can pop in and contribute to. You’re not going to get the depth of discussion you’ll find from friends on, say, LiveJournal, but you will get morsels from people who are interested in the same topic, friends or not. If you tag a post with #avocadomilkshakes, anyone else in the world who shares your disgusting gustatory interests can chime in.

Of course, this leads me to a new dilemma. I now have a WordPress blog, a LiveJournal account, a Google Buzz account, a Facebook account, and now a Twitter account. It’s getting cumbersome and unwieldy to manage.

After putting some thought into it, I’d like a client or system that allows me to do as follows:

  • Blog: I would like to add posts to my blog. Duh.
  • LiveJournal: I would like to synchronize my blog with LiveJournal.
  • Google Buzz: I’d like to synchronize my blog here as well, but also want to use it to directly post shorter thoughts and status updates that aren’t really suitable for the blog, but are too long for Twitter.
  • Facebook: I’d like my blog to show up as Facebook “notes,” and standalone Google Buzz posts to show up as status updates. What I don’t want is Buzz posts that were created from my blog to show up, which would be unnecessary duplication.
  • Twitter: I want to use this primarily for conversations. It would also be nice to selectively update my Twitter, Buzz, and Facebook statuses simultaneously if I have something short I want to post in all three places.
  • LiveJournal/Facebook/Buzz: It would also be nice to be able to make longer posts for in-depth discussions that don’t show up on my primary blog but do show up in these three locations simultaneously.

Has anyone figured out a system to get all this working with a minimum of fuss? My ideal solution would be a single client application I could write my content in, with checkboxes for where I want it to go. Right now I’m using a hodgepodge of WordPress plugins, Facebook notes syndication, and selective Buzz updates.

For extra credit, it would be very, very nice to be able to synchronize all my friends’ various feeds too, and read them in one feed that de-duplicates the content, so I don’t have to jump around from site to site. But I’m sure that’s a pipe-dream.

Always check the calendar

0
1 year ago
by Damon Kaswell in

Regarding yesterday’s post about my utter and complete reversal on every issue and goal in my life…

At least I didn’t rickroll anybody.

Blogging vs. shiny baubles

2
1 year ago
by Damon Kaswell in ,

I have three* social media profiles I use regularly. Chances are, you’re reading this on one of them (as opposed to my personal website at www.damonkaswell.com, where this was originally published). They are:

One of these things is not like the others.

LiveJournal is first and foremost a social blogging tool, designed for long posts and detailed, threaded discussions. It is quite possible to have a days-long — or even weeks-long — conversation on LiveJournal.

Google Buzz is the new kid on the block in social media. It integrates with your GMail account and is sort of like if Twitter was a blogging tool. It’s fine for short “status update” posts, but it has a lot of very nice features for blogging, too, and active discussions float to the top of your buzz feed. I’m finding the clutter-free interface and GMail contact integration to be very nice. It wants to stay out of your way. I have my concerns about Google and how embedded it has become in our lives, but that aside, Buzz does a good job for both quick and longer updates.

LiveJournal and Google Buzz appeal to me as a writer. And then there’s Facebook…

Facebook has some perfunctory blogging tools, but by and large it’s intended for posts not much larger than those on Twitter. With a limit of 420 characters on status updates, and blog posts relegated to a sub-page, Facebook is appealing to the ADHD kid in all of us. There are lots of shiny baubles (“Join a group!” “Support this cause!” “Become a fan!”) and quick, easily digested infotainment bits from our friends (or “friends,” as the case may be).

I don’t blog as much as I used to since joining Facebook. It doesn’t reward long, complicated thoughts and detailed analysis the way LiveJournal and Buzz do. It doesn’t reward content. Rather, it rewards bouncing rapidly from one thing to another. I don’t think using it that way is very good for me.

There are other ways in which Facebook has its uses, so long as you reign in the unproductive and unhealthy hyperactivity it incites. It can be a useful contact manager. It’s a good way to impart brief but useful pieces of information to actual friends and family. It even has some fun games, so long as you avoid FarmVille. It is possible to use Facebook in a way that doesn’t reduce your attention span to that of a gnat.

But it’s not easy. Those shiny baubles are very appealing. They’re designed to be, because the longer you spend on Facebook not doing anything, the longer their advertisers have access to some parts of your brain. Kate Yule has an excellent post on some of the evils of Facebook’s advertising model, and you should read it: http://kateyule.livejournal.com/143713.html. In a nutshell, you are the product.

I’m not sure I entirely agree with her, at least on her decision to close her Facebook account. But I’m tempted enough by the idea that I’m instituting a few new rules for myself and its use:

  1. Clean up my news feed. I want nothing from apps, groups, fan pages, etc., unless it’s from one I actually, actively care about and involves one of my real-world interests, such as writing science fiction. Sorry, this also means purging any individual from my news feed I don’t actually know in some way. I want my news feed to be useful to me, and that means family updates, author updates, real-world friend updates, and very little else.
  2. No advertainment. No FarmVille, PetVille, or any other -Ville of any kind. I have friends who’ve invited me to play those, and they’re fun at first, which they’re designed to be, but there’s no end, no final reward, no “you won” from them. They’re designed to be eternal, and to pester you to log in enough that you’ll consider paying real money for the advantage of not needing to. I’m not talking about the games like Scrabble (which is actually quite fun, and can be a vocabulary expander). I’m talking about the ones that very cleverly manipulate you into caring about them, fussing over them… and eventually spending money on them, for no personal gain whatsoever.
  3. Avoid logging in. There are tools available for retrieving your Facebook feed and notices, and displaying them in a clutter- and distraction-free way. From now on, I will use those, and log directly into the page only when needed for some reason.

After thinking about all this, all the work it will take to strip the clutter from my Facebook page and make it a useful information feed, I find myself wondering what took me so long to reach this point.

EDIT: Credit where credit is due. The inestimable David D. Levine got me thinking about this.

*One might wonder about Twitter. I reject any service that restricts my thoughts to 140 characters. If Facebook gives us ADHD, Twitter gives us ADHD and then feeds us a steady diet of sugar.

Social media faux pas

0
2 years ago
by Damon Kaswell in , ,

Let’s have a little discussion about blogging, making friends, and self-promotion. I use social websites (such as Facebook and Livejournal) for four primary reasons:

  1. Meeting and chatting with other writers. I love you guys, I really do. Not in that way, of course… In the other, non-creepy way.
  2. Blabbing about whatever comes to mind. Nothing like a world-wide audience.
  3. Chronicling my descent into fiction-writing madness. Weeeeeeeee!
  4. Learning about my friends, new and old, as they chronicle their own journeys.

I think most writers in the blogosphere have a similar list of reasons why they blog and use social sites. Now, in reasons 2 and 3, there’s a certain level of self-promotion involved. I post about stories I’ve published, in the hopes that writing fans will seek out those magazines and support their continued existence. I detail my processes and discoveries while writing short stories and novels. My hope is that people will be interested in this stuff and remember my name when they’re in the market for fiction.

But I am dead-set against using social media for a hard sell.

Twice now, I’ve had to disconnect from people I’ve met on social websites out of annoyance at being continuously spammed. In both instances, the perpetrators were other creative people, using these websites for self-promotion. But they crossed the line into hard-sell territory by using private messages and communications to promote their work. Neither contributed to discussions, or blogged about their processes or thoughts on whatever it was they’d created.

I do not use social websites to have my “friends”  bombard me with advertisements. That is a misuse of the platform. It’s rude to spam me with private messages urging me to buy/become a fan of/join a group about your work. I don’t like it when the spam is about penis-enlargement pills or weight-loss programs, so why in the world would I want people who I’ve added to my friends list to do the same?

Facebook and Livejournal are not mailing lists. Don’t treat them as such.

 

Blogging again, from a new home.

0
2 years ago
by Damon Kaswell in ,

Ahh, New Year’s Eve. The time of year we promise ourselves we’ll eat right, start using that gym membership, and do our taxes on time for once. This year, I’m strictly adhering to some resolutions I can keep.

  • Start blogging again – Oh, look at that! This one’s already done!
  • Create a new centralized web page from which to blog – I’m two for two so far! I’ll be posting this to my existing LiveJournal account and Facebook notes.
  • Blog at least once a week – OK, this one’s not already done, so I can’t cheat on it, but come on… Once a week should be no problem. Hell, I can update my site from my phone.
  • Track writing wordcounts – Sigh… I used to do this. I was good at it. Then I became a parent. I’m not so good at it anymore.

And yes, I’ll try to eat right, exercise more, and get my taxes done early. Hey, it could happen.

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