Not too many year ago, but ages ago in internet time, everybody was building personal websites. No knowledge of html or css or xml needed; services like GeoCities or Homestead (etc.) made it easy to use ready-made templates, upload your photos, type out your life story, and have a website.
Those services are now long gone, as people started considering their "home" as their profile page on a community site such as MySpace or Facebook. Another development was the replacement of the static content web page, with the dynamic content blog. Blogger (where this site is hosted) was one of the pioneers and still a major player, but WordPress and others have also risen to dominance here. Now add twitter to the mix, and podcasts, and photostreams, and videos..., and pretty soon you've got content spread across a half-dozen sites or more.
Personally, I regularly post content to three or four blogs, two Twitter accounts, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr (photos), Soundcloud (music), and Audioboo (podcast). Okay, maybe I'm a bit on the extreme end. But this is a social media blog you're reading, so I'm going to guess you just might appreciate my situation.
For some time I've struggled with how to effectively combine all these different content streams into a single, well-designed, website that presents all of my online output. I must not have been the only one wrestling with this issue, as two new services have recently popped up offering a solution: About.me and Flavors.me.
Flavors.me was the first to launch, and I quickly signed up (see my page here). I was given a choice of several basic layouts, simple instructions on choosing a background image (I uploaded my own), and a list of services to import my feeds from, including blogger, linkedin, facebook, flickr, twitter, etc. Within a few minutes my page was up and running and looking great.
The feed from each service (blog, twitter, etc.) is displayed as part of the page. Without leaving my flavors.me page you can seamlessly click through my content from a variety of sources. This was it - exactly what I'd been looking for forever. I finally had that one, single destination website that I could point people to and have all my content readily visible.
The free version of flavors.me did limit the number of feeds I could import, but I was happy enough to pay for the full version. I've also assigned one of my personal domains, kengoldstein.ca, to the page.
Then About.me launched. Even though I was happy with my Flavors.me site, I still wanted to try it out (see my page here). On first glance, it appears to be almost a clone of Flavors.me; choose a template, upload your background image, select your feeds to import, bang, you're in business.
But immediately frustrations surfaced. I still cannot get my background image to scale correctly. It either tiles or expands way beyond the window. And it will only allow me to include one blogger account or twitter account at a time. The other other blogs can be added as extra links, but will not display inline. For my purposes, these problems add up to a huge FAIL.
On the positive side, I gotta admit that About.me has the much better domain name. Flavors.me is, well, kinda silly. I don't care, as I use my own domain name, but still.
If you have multiple content streams and would like to combine them in a single, personal hub, you really should test them each out. Leave a comment below with which one you prefer, or if you use a different (and better?) solution.
Flavors.me - FTW! Silly name, and fee required for full features, but works like a dream. Exactly what I wanted.
About.me - When you launch second, you're supposed to improve on the original idea, not mess it up. FAIL!
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Showing posts with label kenrg. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kenrg. Show all posts
Saturday, 16 October 2010
Tuesday, 5 October 2010
12Seconds Completes its Fifteen Minutes
Okay, I'm sure the title of this post is a bit trite, and has probably already been used, but I couldn't resist. For those who missed it, 12seconds.tv is (soon to be was) a micro-vlogging site, headquartered in Santa Cruz, CA, for the past three years or so, that yesterday announced they will be closing shortly.
Micro-vlogging? Let me explain it this way: What Twitter is to Blogger, 12seconds.tv was to YouTube. A video sharing site, but with the length of each video limited to, you got it, twelve seconds.
After a well-publicized launch it looked like 12seconds.tv was off to a good start, but the user-base never grew beyond the over-eager early adopter crowd (such as myself). Meanwhile, one founder was distracted with a new baby, the other founder battled cancer (he's feeling much better now), and the entire worldwide economy crashed.
Technical problems were also an issue, and certainly one of the problems I didn't use the site much after the initial rush. But the twelve second limit itself was an issue as well. Tweeting is easy and does not take much set-up or any time at all to post. Turning on your webcam, or even an iPhone app, getting lighting right, checking for background noise... it all takes a little more effort, including uploading your product only to find that you really needed 13 seconds.
Meanwhile, others have stepped up to fill the "post video to twitter" category without the twelve second limit.
An article today in the Guardian UK asks, "As 12seconds.tv closes, what is the future for video communities?" The article also notes that Seesmic has shifted focus from its original video service as well, but in so doing points out that:
While I often have trouble convincing my contemporaries of that fact (my collaborators here excepted), I have always had faith that the next generation will understand it innately. The Guardian article quotes Silicon Valley entrepreneur Jason Calacanis as saying very much the same thing:
Micro-vlogging? Let me explain it this way: What Twitter is to Blogger, 12seconds.tv was to YouTube. A video sharing site, but with the length of each video limited to, you got it, twelve seconds.
After a well-publicized launch it looked like 12seconds.tv was off to a good start, but the user-base never grew beyond the over-eager early adopter crowd (such as myself). Meanwhile, one founder was distracted with a new baby, the other founder battled cancer (he's feeling much better now), and the entire worldwide economy crashed.
Technical problems were also an issue, and certainly one of the problems I didn't use the site much after the initial rush. But the twelve second limit itself was an issue as well. Tweeting is easy and does not take much set-up or any time at all to post. Turning on your webcam, or even an iPhone app, getting lighting right, checking for background noise... it all takes a little more effort, including uploading your product only to find that you really needed 13 seconds.
Meanwhile, others have stepped up to fill the "post video to twitter" category without the twelve second limit.
An article today in the Guardian UK asks, "As 12seconds.tv closes, what is the future for video communities?" The article also notes that Seesmic has shifted focus from its original video service as well, but in so doing points out that:
"... community [is] humanised by the format of video which, while it demands more from its contributors, gives back more in the quality of interaction."I think that quote says it all. The quality of the interaction is what it's all about. Yes, it takes a certain type of person to be willing to turn on your webcam, shine the light in your own face, and talk to strangers. It's certainly not for everyone. But I know I've been rewarded for that effort with high quality friendships.
While I often have trouble convincing my contemporaries of that fact (my collaborators here excepted), I have always had faith that the next generation will understand it innately. The Guardian article quotes Silicon Valley entrepreneur Jason Calacanis as saying very much the same thing:
"The next generation will be able to do it more inherently, they will grow up knowing phones with Facetime and computers with iSight. Where our generation knows how to write a good quip in a comment, the next generation will know how to do that in video."Today we say goodbye to 12seconds.tv, but not to online video, or using video as the basis for building online community. In fact, that journey has barely yet begun.
Friday, 1 October 2010
The Quality of the Conversation
An audioboo regarding the question of quantity and quality in the number of "followers" or "subscribers" an individual has on any social media site (twitter, audioboo, youtube, etc.). It seems to be an answer that most individuals grasp instinctively, but that marketing experts are slow to understand.
Thursday, 30 September 2010
Introduction to My Social Media Journey
An interesting aspect of some journeys is when you set out with no particular destination in mind. Or, to put it more accurately, only a vague concept of the destination. An idea, a belief, a conviction that the destination is out there, although it has yet to be named or defined. I suppose my "social media" journey is kind of like that, as it began long before anybody ever used the term "social media."
Hi. My name is Ken Goldstein, known on many sites by my online handle of "kenrg" and I'm here to share a bit of my social media journey... In brief, I've been online since about 1993, first using text-only dial-up services, then AOL, then an ISP to get directly to the full colorful web. One of my first surprises was the sense of community. Even in plain text, there were pockets of like-minded people, anxious to share information and to connect.
I learned html and posted my first web site around 1995. Shortly after, I added a cgi script for basic threaded discussion and ran a board for a music-related group. Again, community being the focus.
Meanwhile, professionally, I was also a member of an online community of nonprofit and social service professionals, called HandsNet. By 1999 I was not simply a HandsNet member, but had joined the staff as Director of Online Community Development, managing discussion board related to fighting poverty, and supervising the discussion moderators.
When I first opened my account here on blogger.com, nearly ten years ago, it was well before Google had purchased it from Pyra, the original developers. Likewise, I joined YouTube four-and-a-half years ago, before the Google purchase, and have been regularly tweeting away on twitter for nearly four years as well. Heck, I was even a Friendster member long before MySpace and Facebook.
From "online community" to "web 2.0" to "social media" I've been along on the journey, sometimes testing the waters ahead of the crowds, sometimes following, but always eager to learn the latest tools. For me, it's always been about the connections, and about communication. And I believe we have only begun to tap the true power and possibility of this brave new world.
I'm pleased that Andy has asked me to be a contributor to this blog. I will be sharing some recollections of my journey so far, my opinions on where we're going, and some criticisms of those who don't get it (hint: those who think Twitter is an advertising medium will be regular targets of my scorn). And I look forward to your comments on my posts.
You can find links to all my various feeds (blogs, vlogs, podcasts, photostreams, etc.) on my home portal (kengoldstein.ca). Meanwhile, here are links to a couple of recent blog posts to give you an idea of where I stand:
Hi. My name is Ken Goldstein, known on many sites by my online handle of "kenrg" and I'm here to share a bit of my social media journey... In brief, I've been online since about 1993, first using text-only dial-up services, then AOL, then an ISP to get directly to the full colorful web. One of my first surprises was the sense of community. Even in plain text, there were pockets of like-minded people, anxious to share information and to connect.
I learned html and posted my first web site around 1995. Shortly after, I added a cgi script for basic threaded discussion and ran a board for a music-related group. Again, community being the focus.
Meanwhile, professionally, I was also a member of an online community of nonprofit and social service professionals, called HandsNet. By 1999 I was not simply a HandsNet member, but had joined the staff as Director of Online Community Development, managing discussion board related to fighting poverty, and supervising the discussion moderators.
When I first opened my account here on blogger.com, nearly ten years ago, it was well before Google had purchased it from Pyra, the original developers. Likewise, I joined YouTube four-and-a-half years ago, before the Google purchase, and have been regularly tweeting away on twitter for nearly four years as well. Heck, I was even a Friendster member long before MySpace and Facebook.
From "online community" to "web 2.0" to "social media" I've been along on the journey, sometimes testing the waters ahead of the crowds, sometimes following, but always eager to learn the latest tools. For me, it's always been about the connections, and about communication. And I believe we have only begun to tap the true power and possibility of this brave new world.
I'm pleased that Andy has asked me to be a contributor to this blog. I will be sharing some recollections of my journey so far, my opinions on where we're going, and some criticisms of those who don't get it (hint: those who think Twitter is an advertising medium will be regular targets of my scorn). And I look forward to your comments on my posts.
You can find links to all my various feeds (blogs, vlogs, podcasts, photostreams, etc.) on my home portal (kengoldstein.ca). Meanwhile, here are links to a couple of recent blog posts to give you an idea of where I stand:
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