Watermark

Auto-Follow is Anti-Social: an introvert's thoughts on social media

I have recently entered an entirely new (for me) internet world: the marketing Web. My Etsy shop, an attempt to offset some of my online costs, opened recently, after several weeks of research, exploration, and reading about online selling.

I've read article after article on using social media -- Facebook, Flickr, Twitter -- to sell something. Promote yourself! Sell your product! Use these 'social' media to do it. And see, I've done it -- all those links are to my own accounts.

Many of these articles recommend tools to bump up your numbers, number of people you follow, and number of people who follow you. Follow everyone who follows you, they say; and unfollow those who don't reciprocate. This advice is totally contrary to how I am accustomed to using these services.

momentile

I've been playing with this service for past couple of weeks:

Our Manifesto

. . .

The sole purpose of this service is to provide a means for people to chronicle their days and share their experiences, with as little effort as possible.

A momentile consists of a single image, defined only by the date it was published. That's it. Void of explanation and free from context, a momentile is pure visual communication. There's something special about observing an interesting moment from a complete stranger, without any message other than the one you interpret yourself. This is, at its very core, the reason we created momentile. To interact with others by observing the interesting, obscure, and mundane moments of everyday life.

Upload a photo each day. It's not a competition; there is no expectation of excellence. It's just a way to show others, and remind oneself, I saw this today. Photos can be uploaded from your computer or mobile phone, or by email, and momentile will send alerts, with a link to your photo, to Twitter and Facebook if you like.

There is a 'social' aspect to this, if you choose to participate. All photos are published to the front page (all photos are public) and you can follow people who interest you, but that's the extent of it. There are plans for a few more functions (a blog widget, for example, which you will see here when it's available) but: Messaging, photo descriptions, befriending users and other 'social' webbery will never be implemented on momentile.com. They are clearly committed to keeping things focussed and simple.

This is in beta at present; I do have some invitations. If you'd like one, leave me a comment or email me and I'll send one off.