Social Media Manifesto
September 23rd, 2008 | by Mitchell Allen |
Clipart from Microsoft ® Word
I Will
embrace the ideas of social media experiments;
participate fully in the discussion surrounding these ideas;
support my family, friends and fellow networkers.
I Won’t
rush to join the latest network without just cause;
revive abandoned network affiliations;
support a network that uses meaningless, ego-centric metrics to coerce participation.
Plurk penalizes, CoComment confounds, Qassia kills.
Karma coercion, confusing setups and poor support litter the Social Media landscape, and I will gingerly step over these time bombs.
Bah!
Twitter titillates, StumbleUpon surprises and Ryze rocks.
Front Porch Folks looks promising, and reTaggr signatures look cool!
Relevancy, simplicity and fun highlight the allure of Social Media networking and I will continue to actively tweet, stumble and post as much as possible.
This post was mostly an excuse to publish my Technorati Profile claim.
Stumble It!
14 Responses to “Social Media Manifesto”
By Giannii on Sep 23, 2008 | Reply
Plurk penalizes, CoComment confounds… I don’t get it.
By Sharon Hurley Hall on Sep 24, 2008 | Reply
Nice post, Mitch, though I am an inveterate tester. I now need to add reTaggr to the list of sites to check out.
By Mitchell Allen on Sep 24, 2008 | Reply
Hi Gianii, thanks for stopping by! Your home page is cool and, of course, I had to find out about Falkor and the Neverending Story
Anyway, the whole trouble with Plurk and CoComment boils down to this:
Plurk requires consistent activity in order to maintain karma. As rarely as I use social media, I’ll never have good karma - and I don’t wish to be reminded of that fact every time I sign in.
CoComment has a neat concept for creating an interconnected comment space.
While I can forgive its convoluted setup process, I can’t accept its ads - which I didn’t know they had - nor its misidentification of one of the people who left a comment on my blog.
I still use it to track my own conversations, but the social promise is lacking.
Cheers,
Mitch
By Mitchell Allen on Sep 24, 2008 | Reply
Sharon, as you know, I try out many products, books, blogs and gadgets based on your recommendations.
I find that I do better by concentrating my networking into a smaller circle - a shotgun blast at close range is more effective.
I wonder if the tenets of SEO are being used for SMO? After all, the common denominator is back-links.
Just as there are two camps in the website arena (many niche sites vs. one authority site), there are those who believe in participating in many social media spaces vs. those who advocate specializing.
My unscientific conclusion is that specializing leads to deeper understanding and, therefore, more satisfactory results.
Cheers,
Mitch
By Heidi Caswell on Sep 24, 2008 | Reply
Plurk penalizes, it confused me too. Unlike twitter I could not figure it out by playing with the site for 5 minutes.
By Blake Raab on Sep 24, 2008 | Reply
Great post. It is difficult to find sites that are worthwhile. I tried Plurk, and it does nothing for me that Twitter isn’t already doing, and I like Twitter better.
By Mitchell Allen on Sep 24, 2008 | Reply
Heidi, believe it or not, it took me almost a year to “get” Twitter. I think that’s because I originally kept going to the “Everyone” time-line. Once I discovered the twitter.com/home and the fact that I’m always logged in, it made more sense.
Around this time, I had also read Caroline Middlebrook’s
By Mitchell Allen on Sep 24, 2008 | Reply
Blake, I tried to like Plurk, because I wanted to support Sharon. But, like you said, Twitter does everything better and more intuitively.
It was shortly after becoming frustrated with Plurk that I wrote Stretching Social Media.
I think the Manifesto is the culmination of my realization that, at the end of day, it gets dark.*
Cheers,
Mitch
* That just means life goes on. Do what you can and leave the rest to the other folks.
By Pinhole on Sep 26, 2008 | Reply
I haven’t tried any of these, other than Stumbleupon. And I still don’t use it the way it was intended. I’ll have to find time to study these, I suppose.
One question; Are these sites really that important? And for what reason?
Okay, that was two questions. So sue me.
By Mitchell Allen on Sep 26, 2008 | Reply
Hiya, Pinhole!
For me, social media sites give me what we had on WritingUp.com:
A chance to comment
A chance to promote
A chance to make a buck (e.g. Qassia 100% AdSense)
Just as WU had a spectrum of members with varying expectations, so it is with the collective Social Media Space.
The big advantage WU had was the close-knit community.
I suppose you can find that on some social media sites - FaceBook, I think - but for the most part, you wind up hanging by the pool with your pals and chatting with whoever comes by.
Cheers,
Mitch
By Bobby Revell on Oct 1, 2008 | Reply
I don’t do a lot with social networks because I think most bloggers forget the most powerful social network of all: Blogging and commenting.
Blogging is social networking isn’t it? Hahaha! You have a fine manifesto!
I use facebook to promote my articles and that automatically adds them to twitter. If I tried to keep up with all of it, my medulla oblongata would burst into flames
By Mitchell Allen on Oct 1, 2008 | Reply
Hi Bobby!
You and your flames! LOL I’d say you’re already on fire.
Social media is what keeps me plugged in to great writers like you. (I found one post via your Twitter updates and your Bailout series via feedly.)
The point you made about blogs is exactly right. Yet, social media is to blogs as a cocktail party is to a house party: you never know who is going to pop in on a social media network. Of course, the more famous your blog becomes, the more people show up at its doorstep.
Cheers,
Mitch
By Bobby Revell on Oct 4, 2008 | Reply
Hi Mitch! I just read your “Marxist Internet Propaganda” and was staggered by your intellect! I read it four times and completely agree, ideas don’t exist in a vacuum - and you claim to not know politics
That’s a fantastic piece of writing, which actually incited new thought from my perpetually evolving mind. You have deeply philosophical cognition of technology and how it compares/contrasts with society. You are simply an amazing writer in so many ways - I am seriously glad I met you.
As I move forward in this life of mine, deeply impacting moments of realization come less often - I sometimes have to read something from a completely unique perspective to inspire new thought. My goal in life is to think - aside from any job - and strive for excellence in being a human being.
For me, writing my blog is very important. It’s more than just to learn and meet new, interesting people, it’s about truth. Though I’m not religious (I am spiritual, whatever that means), I am drawn to building thoughts and developing them in my mind - I have my own publisher and viewer class growing separately together in my mind - I have many classes and oblique, parallel, consonant and dissonant overlords studying myself and relating the information back to many other me’s from every possible angles - but I digress.
Have a great night Mitch
By Mitchell Allen on Oct 4, 2008 | Reply
Hi Bobby,
I am really touched by your comment. To be able to write in a manner that reaches people is something that I strive to do with my serious themes.
Although I fictionalized “Marxist Internet Propaganda”, I wanted to, finally, get some of the ideas down regarding my thoughts on the future of the so-called information age.
There is a synergy, a sort of inspirational fuel, that I get from your writing. When I read A Thousand Reflective Poly-cognitions, I knew I had found a kindred spirit.
I hope we keep writing and inspiring each other for years to come.
A good belly laugh from time to time is always a treat, too, so keep writing those hilarious horror stories!
Cheers,
Mitch