Know and Master Your Social Media Data Flow

This Is How My Social Media Data Flows. I'll Explain.
If you're anything like me, you are constantly creating social data. From your blog posts and your tweets, your photos and videos, bookmarks and status updates, you are creating new information, big and small. You might do so in spurts, or you might be creating new content throughout the day. But with so many different social networks out there, and friends scattered here, there and everywhere, there's always the potential you're not sending the right data to the right place. But if you start by knowing where your data is flowing now, you can make minor adjustments along the way to get the recipe right.

On March 24th, I told Harry McCracken of Technologizer that if I were to provide any Twitter user one piece of advice, it would be: "Always know where your data flows, and participate where it lands."


That simple piece of advice is a major challenge to most people. Whether they don't want to step out of their comfort zone, or they believe they only have time for one social network where they participate, most choose one or two places, while neglecting others. Others simply use services like Ping.fm to send all updates to all places at once, a scattershot process to something that probably deserves fine tuning.

My approach to this problem is to always create content while knowing its impact downstream. Here is what I have chosen to do with my data I am creating.

1. Blog Posts

Blog Posts that I create here at louisgray.com are packaged up by RSS, using FeedBurner, and end up in RSS readers. They also are published in headline form or excerpted, on FriendFeed and Socialmedian. Every day, updates in the last 24 hours are bundled up by e-mail and sent to FeedBlitz.

2. Twitter Activity

My Tweets, when posted, be they notifications of new posts (which I do manually, not automatically) or other content, are posted to Twitter and echoed both to Facebook and to FriendFeed.

3. Native FriendFeed Posts

When I post a new item directly to FriendFeed, it echoes to Twitter, which in turn, updates Facebook. Knowing this, I often author the headline using Twitter language, such as @ signs and hashtags, keeping the headline short. I can then, in FriendFeed, edit the headline to use normal language, optimizing the data for where it is consumed.

4. Delicious Bookmarks

Bookmarks I make on Delicious are shared to FriendFeed, and bounced to Twitter and Facebook. I ensure the headline and the source of the article are displayed, and now truncate that to hit Twitter's character limits.

5. Google Reader shared items

Shares I make in my RSS reader not only stick to the link blog, but they impact FriendFeed, Socialmedian, and the shared item counters, like ReadBurner, RSSmeme and now InFeeds.

6. YouTube Videos and SmugMug Photos

The YouTube and SmugMug activity I do is largely family related, so when it gets imported to FriendFeed, using RSS, it is echoed to Twitter and Facebook (like in #3).

7. FaceBook Status Updates

They stay in Facebook, period, which is why I usually just update it using Twitter.

The reason I list each of these specifically is because each stream of data has a different intent and possibly a different audience. Given much of the content flows through Twitter and FriendFeed now, I make a conscious effort to optimize the data for both services. I also recognize that when I post to both services, I just might receive comments and likes on Facebook, which is happening at an increasing pace.

Thinking about the data flow has an impact on how I behave. It is because of FeedBlitz that I prefer to have more than one post in a 24-hour period. I also know that as I am bookmarking sites that cover articles from this blog that I am getting to reward others who write about the same things I do. I recognize that by tweeting too much I could muddy my Facebook and FriendFeed, and have negative repercussions as a result. I also know that I need to make sure the headlines on my SmugMug photos and YouTube videos make sense once they hit Twitter.

It may seem regimented, but once you think about where your data is flowing, you will find a process that works with you. The good news is that RSS is not dead, despite some beliefs otherwise. In fact, it plays a bigger role than ever in terms of shuttling updates to and from services. I have set up my publishing preferences in this way for me because it matches what I believe to be the right data with its right destinations, and when activity from the community participates, I try to be there as soon as I know it has happened, through close monitoring.

And considering this is essentially my social media creation workflow, you might also be interested in the post I wrote last Spring on my own social media consumption workflow. It hasn't changed much at all since.

Never Say Never Online. We're Keeping Records, You Know.

Two integral characteristics to the Web are that it is first, constantly changing, and second, practically everything is saved. So if you, like me, and many others, have ever said you will "never" do something, or will "quit" doing something never to return, you're just setting yourself up to be wrong. And once you undo that promise, you can look pretty silly in the process. So, if you are wavering in whether or not you will use a product, or if you're thinking of walking away from one you have already tried, it probably makes sense to keep the dialog internal, instead of sharing with the masses.

First, let me point out how dumb I was for trying this.

In January of 2007, I said, Why I Stopped Using IM and Won't Use Twitter. I wrote:

"What is said over IM is very rarely business, and prevents people from getting work done. It's a significant time-waster, and a technology whose time has come and gone. The idea that I would take it up a notch and tell Twitter my every step is yet another task that would get in the way of my actually working, so we're not interested."

So... yeah, how did that go? Well, a full year later (a long time hold out for me), I announced I "jumped the shark" on Twitter, and started using it. Almost a year later, I've now updated my Twitter account more than 1,400 times, and am following or being followed by about 4,000 people each direction.

In March of 2007, I took things a step further, and thought I'd be smart about saying not just one but TEN services I would "never" use. In a post titled, "Ten Geeky Technologies Not Coming to Our House", I listed Skype, Twitter, Linux, Plaxo, MySpace, BeBo, Piczo, XBox, PS3, the Wii, AIM, ICQ, Jabber, Yahoo! IM, GTalk, Delicous, Flickr and EV-DO as things that would never make it in our home. In case you were counting, yes, that's more than 10 items, but I had grouped the game consoles, IM clients and social networks, for example.

So where do we stand? I have a Skype account, which I've used maybe three times in total. I have a Plaxo Pulse account. I signed up with a MySpace account, just to search for times my content was being used or linked to, we are big fans of the Nintendo Wii in our home, I've used Google Talk several times from within GMail, and I bookmarked almost 2,000 different Web sites on my Delicious account this year alone. Add onto that the fact I use my Flickr account for some photos of the twins, though I prefer SmugMug, and I look like a complete fool. Clearly, the mistake was mine to even say I was going to ignore these products, because in the interim, not only did those products get better, but I found more than an edge case to use them.

The same rule applies for those who might be using a service, and then loudly say they are quitting, never to return. Why do that, unless you're either looking for attention, or hoping others will join your cause?

For example, Mark Hopkins (formerly of Mashable) quit FriendFeed back in October, during a very political time for the site. He is back, of course, after a two-month hiatus. Similarly, when directeur, the creator of NoiseRiver, said he was going to leave FriendFeed (which we covered in October as well), the vacation didn't last all that long. He was back and active on the site within days.

More visibly, Jason Calacanis claimed in November that he was retiring from blogging, preferring to use an e-mail list to get his word out. While the e-mail list is alive and kicking, and growing, he has started posting to his blog again, practically every day, even if just to post pictures, or add a copy of his newsletter. It happens.

In May of 2007, we covered a topic I called "blog fatigue", specifically pointing to a few folks who were taking a breather from their sites. Truth is, we could all use a breather sometimes, be it from the blogging, or any services, but rather than say we're never going back, or never going to use something, it makes more sense to both keep an open mind, and probably, a closed mouth. I've proven I can be a leading indicator of nonsense, so don't expect me to tell you what I'll never use. I just might change my mind later.

Twine Untangles Beta, Launches Social Bookmarking on Steroids

Nova Spivack, creator and CEO of Twine, sees that networks based on its users' interests are at what he calls a "tipping point". In the last year, you've seen dramatic growth in this space, with the rise of FriendFeed, Strands, Social Median, Popego and others to name a few. And tonight, after much incubation, his own site has opened up to join the fray, delivering what he terms "Delicious on steroids."

Twine is not just a repository for you to capture interesting links from around the Web, but the service expands your content through the deployment of tags, including related people, places, etc., as Twine leverages semantic data around your content. It also pledges to discover related content to your own Twine, and help auto-discover new items, operating as a "learning machine" to help you find new items that match your interests.


My Twine Is Populated With Bookmarks From Around the Web
Twine is engineered to leverage the collective intelligence of the Twine community - much like Social Median. The pair's similarities are many, including groups by topic, the delivery of a single stream of items you have found interesting, and through the ability to follow other users who may share the same interests. But Spivack was quick to say Twine was around first.

With so many sites jumping into the "Interest Network" space, how does Twine try to differentiate itself? Spivack spells it out. "Facebook is about your relationships. Friendfeed is about your communication. LinkedIn is about your career. Twine is about your interests," he wrote in an e-mail.



Web 3.0 and the Financial Crisis are popular Twine networks.
Services like Twine and Social Median reflect the preferences and interests of their community. Top networks on Twine, include frivolity, like "Cool", geekery like "Web 3.0" and "Web Industry Trends", but also more mainstream discussions, from "Presidential Election 2008" to the "Financial Crisis". You can see the Top 100 Twines here.

If you are new to Twine, there are tools set up that will aid your starting off without an empty feed. You can import your bookmarks from Delicious, or even from your Web browser. And as with other interest networks, Twine is not aiming to be a silent repository. You can make comments on others' items, find other users who share similar items, or see recommended Twines.

As Spivack wrote me in an e-mail, Twine has only begun to scratch the surface when it comes to its semantic engine. "We've only started to expose some of that capability -- try bookmarking YouTube videos, Amazon books, CNN articles, Wikipedia pages, Flickr photos, and see what results in Twine. In Twine you get more than just a bookmark -- you get a data record that is customizable, linkable, and connected to other things," he wrote. "We'll be enabling these to be even more customizable in 2009."

Twine, on its debut out of beta, already is set to tangle with the leaders in this space, and I'm eager to see how intelligent their service is as it provides recommendations and connects people.

You can sign up to Twine at http://www.twine.com. You can find my profile here: http://www.twine.com/user/louisgray.

Netvouz – A Quality One Man Bookmarking Show

By Mark Dykeman of Broadcasting Brain (FriendFeed/Twitter)

Despite recent predictions of the death of social bookmarking, the fact remains that there are still a number of excellent Web based tools out there that allow you to save and tag links to webpages in a public forum. Delicious and Magnolia are often regarded as the market leaders in this space, with funding and bodies to get the job done.

However, as the two leaders deal with interface and development model changes, there’s a pretty powerful bookmarking tool that’s been building up its own fanbase for a number of years. It’s practically a one man show and a labor of love. Let’s give Netvouz some of the attention that it deserves.


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Henrik Sjostrand has been pursuing his bookmarking dream for almost a decade. Netvouz (the name is a melange of the words "Net" and "Rendezvouz") has been in the public eye since 2005, but the concept emerged much earlier. Put simply, Sjostrand wanted a good Web-based bookmarking tool and so he built it. And tinkered with it. And improved it. And maintained it. With relatively little help from anyone else. The result is a quick and clean user interface and underlying application. Netvouz is a free service with virtually no monetization and no marketing except for word of mouth. Sjostrand says that his user base is "at 6 digits right now" although he plans to cull about 100,000 spammers from the user base. In terms of marketing and promotion, Sjostrand says:

"…Netvouz has grown very well by itself, and I actually prefer a bit slower growth so I can keep the site running well without suffering from poor performance, security problems, spammers etc."

He is focused on making Netvouz a strong product and doesn't spend time marketing the product.


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Sjostrand feels that his product has several advantages over other popular social bookmarking tools, including:

• The ability to use both folders and tags for organizing bookmarks (he prefers folders for his own use, but recognizes the power of tags)
• Performance (hence his emphasis on a clean user interface)
• Link Checker and Broken Links Manager continually check to ensure that your bookmarks are still valid (I personally haven’t seen this function anywhere else)

Netvouz also uses a ranking system for bookmarks, allows notes, and allows bookmarks to be made either public or private. Potential future projects to enhance Netvouz include:

• Better integration with Firefox and Internet Explorer
  (note that there is a Firefox add-on for Netvouz).
• Further technical improvements for speed and ease of use
• Possible creation of an API
  (I suggested that he should provide the ability to track Netvouz entries in FriendFeed)

Netvouz is strong in bookmarking functionality, but it does not have the same social or community functions that Delicious and Magnolia use. However, you can still share your bookmarks with other people. And, if nothing else, Netvouz is a good way to maintain bookmarks for yourself. Why not give Netvouz a try? Maybe it’s too much bookmarking functionality, maybe it’s just right. It’s definitely not too little. If nothing else, by supporting Netvouz, you get to support the "one man band" concept and recognize the work of a guy who loves his hobby.

Read more by Mark Dykeman at Broadcasting-Brain.com.