I read an interesting article on the BBC News pages this morning concerning social networks. The conclusion of the article is that social networks are often walled gardens and profile informaton is rarely exportable or importable. Here is an extract:
“The irony of the current generation of online social networks is that although their premise is leveraging the internet to connect people, their own lack of interconnectedness is stifling their potential.”
As each social network (and there are a surprising number of them) vies for your attention in every niche you could imagine you find yourself with a choice. Either you restrain your membership of these sites to just one or two or you find yourself filling up each and every profile with more or less the same information.
One solution would be to manage your profile separately (and preferably your private and public profiles as sub-profiles). One such approach would be to have an “Open Identity”.
There are several Open Identity initiatives and here is some further reading.
So who am I? More importantly what sort of a person am I? I think these are important questions when you are planning (or being submitted to) an online presence.
I think I am slowly getting wiser concerning mine. I am certainly starting to be more realistic. You can’t be any different than you are in real life. If, like me, you have a modest social life, or don’t have tons of friends or party all week long, it is unlikely that your online presence will be any livelier.
This is in spite of social apps and the social web in general. In fact your online presence will probably be very similar to your offline presence. I for example really love chatting with people and discussing life in general but I flee from superficial contacts discussions about the weather, people news or anything meaningless for long periods of time.
I tend to have a plan and my interactions with others generally need to move from point A to point B to be meaningfull.
This is probably why I’ve had a hard time and sign up for a whole load of stuff (it’s so easy isn’t it: just a username and password and you’re in).
I also feel, but you might disagree, that being bilingual English and French and living in Switzerland takes me to the fringes of the social web because culturally the Swiss are different.
Well I’m getting more organised now and I’ll be telling you how it’s going. This is the start. Although I’ve left point A well behind I am far away from point B. I’ll keep you posted (pun intended).
Here is my weekly roundup of Social Network news gleamed from my feeds.
Over on my long established personal blog I have decided to devote the content to only personal and local topics and move other technical and social topics here.
I also plan to mix english and french content and encourage my friends and family to participate.
This is an extract from my other blog explaining the shift.
There are however, I feel, two types of readers and visitors. Those attracted by personal comments and life in general and those more interested by technical and professional topics.
I have started another blog for all those technical, web 2.0, social apps, cms, wms and edh posts that I intend to write from my viewpoint. I am a fiftysomething geek. I am not alone and I want to understand and be a part of the new social web and help others be a part of it too.
Most of these sites and webapps seem aimed at my younger friends but already there appears to be some social divide between twentysomethings and thirtysomethings while fortysomethings and fiftysomethings are a little lost. But are they? Is that just my perception of a non-existant problem?
If you are happy just finding out what’s going on in Geneva and in my life and want a hug and wave from time to time. Pop over to (blog.graham-lawrence.com). It’s going to get personal. It’s finally having a distinct style of it’s own.