Blogging

Blog posts about blogging. Or maybe blog posts about blog posts about blogging.

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.

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.

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