So I have twitter updating facebook and buzz. My blog updates my twitter, which updates my facebook and buzz transitively. My tripit updates my facebook and linkedin (and my calendar), which I update only by using orbitz. I could have twitter update linkedin, but I said no. Zenfolio updates buzz, but only buzz (I’m confused) … I stopped using Flickr. I mostly only feed content into twitter or my blog, except rarely I post things about my secret death ray I am building in my basement only on facebook.
If I post to my blog, my blog posts to my twitter that I’ve updated by blog, and it shows up on my blog that I’ve twittered about all of that (self reference warning!). It’s all rather crazy, and I imagine I use less of these things than many people (my PS3 is not connected to the tweetosphere, for instance). Currently if I post a blog entry, someone may comment on it on facebook, and someone may “like” a tweet on buzz. Thus commenters are isolated, often having no perception of the isolation. Metadata is also lost in translation and there’s often no way to know the original source of the content.
The analogy of blood types also seems to apply. Facebook is A+, a universal receptor, but is not a very good donor. Flickr is more of a universal donor, but can’t accept input very well. Twitter does both well, but not at a very high level of data. The idea of interacting with eleventy billion different websites and not being able to visualize this graph is conceptually interesting and patent worthy. And I’m a Computer Science guy who specializes in the meta problem of software that manages other software. Imagine the problem if you’re into some other humanities subject, like, say, Underwater Basketweaving or Necromancy. Or, say, if you double majored in both. Problems.
I’m also wondering how close we are to getting a few possible social network feedback loops set up, where one network updates another network saying it just updated itself on the same network (ad nauseum), and possible photocopier degradation in that signal due to metadata loss that makes it hard to detect the events were uncorrelated. It seems like it’s probably possible today, and probably not all sites are insulated against this.
I am also waiting for the day when Twitter can communicate with Buzz over Farmville protocol.
Clearly, the answer has to be a really big standards committee. I’m sure of it. Or perhaps a Philosophy Thesis.
Well, there’s the salmon protocol, which buzz speaks, which is for propagating comments back to the original post. Some blog farms support it, I think.
But some people say you’re doing it wrong http://unlinkyourfeeds.tumblr.com/post/387644253/a-manifesto
Doing it right means less people are forced to read my incredibly awesome content about the cat I do not have.