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.

One Web Day | One Small World

Today is OneWebDay 

The Web is worth celebrating.

OneWebDay is one day a year when we all - everyone around the physical globe - can celebrate the Web and what it means to us as individuals, organizations, and communities.

There are days, in these difficult times, when I feel there is little hope for us, as a species on this world we sometimes seem bent on destroying. On those days, what hope I find is here, on the Web; in the connections we make as individuals, one to another.

The Web has a lot to offer that is informative, or beautiful, or trivial and disturbing. For me, the heart of the Web is the personal blogs, where we each offer something of ourselves to each other. Now, when war or disaster strikes in some other part of the world, I am likely to think -- to feel -- I know someone who lives there.

Because we do grow to know each other, in a new and uncertain sense.  This knowing is a reminder, an awareness, of how small our world is; how connected we really are. That the bell -- be it funeral bell, celebration bell, or alarm bell -- tolls for us all.

Ideas like this should be more often shared, especially nowadays when the world seems to be in need of dialogue and understanding among different cultures, in a way that it has never been before.

Click that Miniature Earth graphic to go see a short, powerful movie --  one of the jewels our Web has to offer. 

If our world still seems large to you, go look at The Size Of Our World.

We are so small, to hold so much.

Facebook: Maybe? No? Yes?

I'm in the process of reviewing my internet commitments, as I try to focus my energy on what is most helpful and rewarding, and reduce the clutter that appears every time I sign on to my 'start page' (Netvibes, at present.) I have, at one time or another, joined almost everything that's out there. Initially, this was due to my excitement about the whole new internet experience; a desire to try it all. 

Just thought you'd like to know...

This site is:

by Official Web 2.0 Certifyrbeta

 

Now maybe I can go to sleep. Now that that's taken care of.

Why social software is good for introverts

The Power of Many points to an intriguing post at 12 frogs, of particular interest to introverts:

... Thanks to LibraryThing (now with Groups!) and Flickr, my books and photographs have more of a social life than I do. I like things this way. It may seem counterintuitive to extroverts, but social software works for me because:

• Social software is mediated communication
  ... it means avenues of communication are only as open as I want them to be...

• Social software maintains the strength of weak ties
  ... The problem with this theory, if you are an introvert, is that you probably put zero energy into maintaining your social network ...

• Social software can create pockets of quiet and focus in the noise
  An odd thing sometimes happens when you aren’t standing in front of the crowd in person — it ends up being easier to get more personal, not less. Because you don’t have to think about the crowd (maybe there isn’t one after all) you can post the photographs you love, say what you really think, and tell the story your way.

  ... Connecting online counts. It matters to me, sometimes I’m surprised by how much.

I wonder if introverts use the web more than extroverts? I wonder if it seems more significant to introverts than to extroverts, who are more likely to have a broad and busy IRL social life?

It's certainly true for me that I feel more comfortable being personal, being who-I-am, online, than off. Generally, not universally, speaking. It's more like an exploration, than a revealing, somehow.

But then, we know that I'm an introvert. Are you more one than the other? Do you think it makes any difference at all in how people behave online, which end of this continuum they tend toward?

Vox: the personal journal solution?

I've been playing a bit with Vox, TypePad's new LiveJournal for grownups; or blog platform and social networking service; or half a blogging platform for newbies (albeit with rich and deep functionality) and half social network. 

I've seen some huffiness somewhere (I forget where) about insulting folks with references to newbies and grandmas, but I suspect that beginners and grandparents would not find such references insulting. There is no shame in either -- and I think Vox just might be on the right track for them, but also for those of us who have struggled through the newbie phase to produce nice-looking, professional (if not money-making) blogs -- but would still like a place for easy, personal blogging with a range of privacy options.

I had thought that Yahoo360! might serve that purpose, but it just never felt comfortable for me. The only feature I really liked was the Blast, which might be fun to see as a feature here at Vox. Yahoo was very slow to get some of its more important features off the ground, and Vox, while still in development, at least has what most folks would see as the essentials.

The posting interface is supremely simple, and allows you to easily insert photos, audio, videos, book refereces, and "collections". The service is currently smoothly integrated with Flickr, PhotoBucket, iStockPhoto, Amazon, YouTube, and iFilm; and I've no doubt many others are waiting in line -- hopefully including Barnes & Noble, Powells, and Picasa Web Albums. 

Not only is it not necessary to know HTML to use Vox, as far as I can tell, you can't use it; everything is WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) with cute little iconized buttons. There are several designs available, but if you want total control over how your blog looks, Vox is not for you. This is clearly set up for folks who just want something presentable, quickly, to hold their content. You can switch the design of your site with two or three clicks. Also, there are ads (this is a free, ad-supported service) but they are, so far, inconspicuous.

Each post can be set to one of five levels of privacy: you only; public; friends only; family only; or family and friends, but not public. I haven't checked, but I assume that any media content in such posts would carry the same privacy level as the post. It is this feature that might be useful for folks like me. I have public blogs, but would occassionally like to write a personal, even boring to non-friends, post for those very few who might be interested -- and invisible to those whom I would not want to find it interesting.

Vox facilitates crossposting from Vox to TypePad blogs (which I am about to test with this post) but what I really want is vice-versa. I want to be able to easily include my public content on my personal blog; not so much the other way around. I could see integrating nearly all my material into the Vox site, with some posts more private than others, so that friends could choose to read what they liked, but know they aren't missing anything as it's all in one place.

[You can see how the cross-posting worked -- or didn't -- here.]

There is, of course, the usual obstacle: one must be a member of Vox to post comments -- or to be included on family and friends lists. This is a perhaps necessary strategy to limit spam comments and other obnoxious behaviors, but means one more username and password for folks you want to view and comment on your blog.

In my introvert style, I've left the social networking features to the end. Vox has Neighborhoods, and Explore and Connect functions. All you need to do is get someone you know on there -- or chat up a few strangers -- and there you are -- a Neighborhood.  Answering the Question of the Day (QOTD)  and checking out what others have to say is another way to make connections.

Today's QOTD is: How well do you know your next-door neighbors?

And when I just checked, there were about 140 posts with that tag. I think they mean real life neighbors, though; not virtual, social-network-services neighbors.

Vox is still Beta; a few bugs now and then. I have three invites -- who wants one?

[Crossposted from Vox and Blogging Blog]

Comment Spam

Well, this open-commenting site has been (re)discovered. So, another poll:

[I've no idea why all this whitespace is in here]

FeedFlare

This is a test, to see how things are different after activating FeedFlare for Watermark -- despite all the explanation, I've no idea what to expect. Just a hint to the techies -- pictures, pictures, pictures, please.

Awhile back, I added FeedBurner, then forgot about it. This service runs all your feeds through the FeedBurner feed, invisibly, so that you know how many folks read your various feeds.

When I went in to set up FeedFlare, I discovered that Watermark has 111 subscribers.

Wow.

LATER: OK, what is it supposed to do? Something I won't see?

Google's Writely, and more

There is lots of conversation lately about is Google evil? What if Google decided to be evil (via Google Blogoscoped)?

But no one argues much about whether Google is useful.

I am a great fan of GMail, and have, one by one, abandoned all my other accounts. So simple, so efficient -- and I love search, don't sort. Some of you may have noticed that I now have email at my domain, which is thanks to GMail Domains Beta. I'm amazed that they let me in, this little one-person operation -- but I'm delighted. It's even better than regular GMail.

Do I mind the ads?

Could anyone who has ever used Yahoo Mail or Hotmail object to the unobtrusive -- and even sometimes interesting -- Google ads?

I signed onto Writely before Google bought it (I think someone at The Well pointed me to it) and now use it almost exclusively. When I first heard the prediction that one day we would do most of our work online, and our computers would be used mostly as terminals, I thought that was nuts -- of course I would want my own software on my own machine with all my own files. And if I were still working with client files and confidential information, I would no doubt still feel that way.

But now I'm at home, and have nothing that must be so guarded. I've experienced several hard drive crashes in the intervening years, and lost files due to my not-atypical haphazard backup practices. I've had TypePad crash repeatedly in the middle of preparing complicated posts.

Writely has never crashed on me, and when my browser has, the Writely document comes up exactly how I left it. Exactly how I left it, and accessible from any computer.

It was initially a bit buggy; less so every day. It offers direct publishing to some blog hosts -- not TypePad at present, which is not a problem for me. I prefer cut & paste and publish to draft in any case. Nice clean interface, all the usual bells & whistles, spellcheck, collaboration, and tagging! What more could one want in a word processor?

Only recently did I discover that I can offer it to you, even though it's currently not open for new registrations. The Writely Blog tells me:

No need to wait until Writely registration opens up again. When you have a Writely account, you have the power . . . Just add them as collaborators on a Writely document and click "OK" to email them. You can invite up to 50 new people by adding them as collaborators to Writely documents.

So, all 50 of you who would like a Writely account, drop me a comment or an email and tell me where to send the invitation. If GMail still requires invitations (surely not?) I can send you one of those, too.

[crossposted to Blogging Blog]