Centralized vs Decentalized

I have written a post before on FriendFeed, the social media aggregator if you will.  I didn't really get it then and I still do not now.  To me it seems like a bit of social media overload.  Many bloggers I think have come to the same conclusion.  Anyway, I came across a post my Michael Arrington this morning referencing a post by Loic Le Muer on the decentralization of our social networks.  

In his post, Loic argues that our social presence used to be very centralized.  Basically it revolved around our blogs, if one wrote a blog.  Whereas now, that presence has been scattered and diluted all across that so called "series of tubes".(Sorry I couldn't help but throw this in somewhere, it is too damned funny).  We post updates on Facebook, others on Twitter, and so on.  Loic presents the fact that places like FriendFeed and Socialthing are good in that they help usre-centralize our content into one place.  However, event though these services help, he adds

The challenge for Friendfeed and the like is that while I really like all my services gathered in one place, I would rather that these would be centralized on my blog instead of a third party service. Yes you can cross post or add badges, but it's not really like a center feed in your blog. What I like about my blog is that it is my space, I own it, I can customize it and change it, I do not depend on anybody (except the software and host, TypePad of course, needless to say). 

I tend to agree wth this points.  I can obviously see the benefit in a tool to help centralized our online social presence, but I still cannot help but say that when I go to FriendFeed, i am somewhat overwhelmed by it all.  A virtual river of social updates that I seem to get lost in.  And yes, I would prefer to control and aggregate my own data.

So what about you all, good ?  bad ?  Where do you want your presence ?  Own it or rent it so to speak…

Contributing to Your Community

I must say, I consistently find great content from Chris Brogan.  I was reading a post he wrote the other day titled "The Community Ecosystem" .  His post was basically aimed at social media  and contributing, but as I read, I saw how his points also fit into contributing to the community you find yourself in.  Now I want to be careful here with my use of the term "community".  I wrote a post the other day and as I do in many of my posts used the term DC Tech Community.  Ross over at Ross Notes noted that sometimes many of us tend to use that term loosely and in doing so leave out a large number of other groups, so I want to be careful in noting that I am speaking of a large community or a small subset of that larger realm in a generic sense.

But in this case I think it applies to the community you find yourself in, or an ecosystem as Chris calls it.  Here are a few of his highlights:

1.  Contribute Where You Can

Like I said, Chris is aiming at social media, but I think this is also appropriate other circumstances.  I liken it to the complimentary services idea that was in an earlier post.  Help out where you can in your community and the results with multiply.  Chris mentions a person Brian Solis, who attends events and takes lots of pics and then share them out via Creative Commons.  As I read this I could help but be reminded of our friend here in DC, Nahum.  He is a great guy and a great photographer who aattends events with us and takes terrific portrait type shots of all the people.  He will then upload them to flickr and email everyone to let them know.  It is funny, because after he does this, you see a changing of everyones avatars in all their social media accounts.

2.  Communicate When You Can
Visiting people’s websites and/or just reading their RSS feed isn’t enough all the time. Make a point of commenting, of saying “I see you.”

I think this is totally valid as it pertains to the ecosystem here.  There is a great niche and many of us frequent each other blogs and leave good feedback on the post and continue conversations we have had recently as it pertains to that post or article.

So when you can, share a little “I see you” with the places where you interact. Because it will matter. It does come back to you. People do care.

3.  Create What You Can

Some ways to create are to build things for people who don’t necessarily have the skills but you can see their need. Another way is to add value by contributing to an existing project. Other times, it’s as simple as organizing a gathering (either online or in the real world) of people with like interests, such that you can help catalyze the conversations and the shared experience. Create. Make. Do. And share.

I am not sure what to add to this, it speaks for itself and it ties back in to the idea of complimentary services we spoke about previously.  It seems all of these things he mentions, we are doing here locally in our various communities with great results.

Can you add anything else to his thoughts ?

CxCC - Another Great DC Meetup

SXSW took over Austin, TX last week and CXCC took over Austin Grill in Bethesda, MD last night ! It was a rousing success. It started out innocent enough. Many of us were quite depressed and jealous we were not down in Austin with everyoe else last week and decided to get together and wallow in our misery together. Originally we tried to shoot for Monday, still while SXSW was going on, but time got away from us and we held the innaugural CXCC (Central by Central Central .. a fun little one given to us by @batterista) last night appropriately at the Austin Grill in Bethesda, MD.

In the beginning it was going to be just a few of us, but by the end it had turned into a full blown meetup with somewhere near 25 of us gatehring. It was a great time and we met some new people and got a chance to catch up with some old ones as well. The list was long, I will add the attendee's list in later, but we got to catch up with @newmediajim fresh off his trip to the Middle East, Afghanistan, and of course SXSW. Some complanied about having to come WAY OUT to the suburbs and tales of their arduous trek from the far away land called …Washington, DC (the DC line cant be more than 1.5 miles from the Austin Grill ..). The will be no names but DC Concierge, I think you know who I mean :).

Anyway, I was happy to meet some new people working on some really cool stuff, look for a Local Focus on that soon. And it was again great to see the foundations of the local community continue to grow and add new people to the mix.

2 Days of SXSW, Twitter Going Strong

Well I must admit, if I was a betting man, I would have bet we would have seen one of those “Something has gone technically wrong” screens as we tried to use Twitter by now. But much to my pleasant surprise, we have not. Actually it just dawned on me this morning as I was finishing up some final touches on the blog redesign. I thought “Heh Twitter has not crashed yet ..”

I mentioned previously about a post by Allen Stern over at CenterNetworks detailing the preparations by the Twitter team leading up to SXSW. The included increasing capacity, reducing API calls allowed, as well as some other measures. And apparently it has worked pretty well up until this point.

To be honest though, this is how it should be. We should not being using one of our favorite web services while in the back of our heads, we are just waiting for it to crash out from under us. But i am happy to see up until this point, I have been proven wrong. I figured we would all be running for the Pownce hills.

Maybe this is a corner turned for the Twitter folks. This will be a big feather in their cap if they can sustain the momentum and carry it out of SXSW into a bright future. Great job so far guys.

Will Twitter Survive SXSW ?

Here we are on the eve of the ever ever growing in popularity SXSW conference in Austin, TX.  Last year the darling of the dance was our favorite, yet fickle, micro-blogging platform twitter.

Over the last year, Twitter has seen exponential growth and experienced the growing pains that go along with that growth.  We have seen events in the recent past take Twitter to its knees and many fear that may happen again as we get ready for SXSW.  CenterNetworks had a good post on Twitter’s preparations for the event.

Frankly, I think this may be a make or break week for Twitter.  Many of there biggest fans will be at the conference and be wanting full and unfettered use of Twitter to get news out.  This same group is and can be a very fickle group whose loyalties will wane as quickly as they come.  If Twitter hiccups this week, it may be their last.  I think the likes of Pownce, fresh off the release of their new API, can pose a serious threat to Twitter this very week if things do not go smoothly.

So here you go Twitter, here is your big shot to step up and prove all the naysayers wrong.  Personally, I am preparing for the quick switch over to Pownce, which has been made all the easier with their new API.  Good luck twitter, I think you will need it.

Moodblast: Let ‘Em All Know How You Feel

A little while back we wrote about a cool little web app called Hellotxt.com that alows you to send a message to many of the social media sites, like Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, etc.

Today I got an update to another one of these apps I had tried previously called Moodblast.  The update was a welcome one that added Pownce integration on the heels of the release of the new API this week.

I really like the new Moodblast, as it is  a desktop app versus a web one like Hellotxt.com.  The one drawback (not for me) is it is a Mac only application.  My advice, buy a Mac.

But anyway, as you can see form the pic, you can choose any number of platforms to blast your mood out to, including Skype and iChat, and even Adium.  So this is a bit of a twist on the other tools.  Now you can even send messages out to those friends you communicate with via chat tools like Skype.

So if you are a Mac user, I advise you to give Moodblast a go and let us know what you think.

Will Pownce’s New API Finally Battle Twitter?

As many of us Twitter users are aware, it can be a fickle experience at best.  Our alternative has become Pownce in those bleak times of Twitter outages.  Many have often wondered why Pownce has not given Twitter a little better run for its $$.  I mean Pownce has some great features that Twitter does not, like the ability to post events, notes, links, and share files.  The common argument that had Twitter always winning out was its API that developers have used to their advantage to give users so many choices.

Well that may change now.  On Thursday, Pownce announced the release of API 2.0, a much more complete and robust API opening the door for developers to code away to utilize the Pownce platform.  Here is the announcement from the Pownce blog.  To me this may be a turning of the tide.  If Pownce can build a critical mass of developers coding cool things like we see on the Twitter platform and give us a more robust and stable platform … the twitter phenomena may be in trouble.  We are a fickle bunch and if the currents carry us in a new direction to the shores of Pownceland, we may have a huge shift.

On an ending note, I wanted to pass along one of the first cool new tools for Pownce based on the new API.  It is a Pownce It bookmarklet.  Simply drag the bookmarklet to your browser toolbar and click it to share cool links with your friends via Pownce.

FriendFeed: Friend or Foe ?

I little while back I signed up for the FriendFeed Beta and got an account.  I remember thinking at the time, “Wow this is great, finally a way to track your friends Tweets, Flickr, and all sorts of other stuff in one place !”.

Since then, FriendFeed has come out of beta and opened up.  Since then I have had some friends and others subscribing to my feed and in return I have been subscribing to theirs.  Since then it dawned on me …. this is A LOT of information to take in and try to digest.  Say you subscribe to just 5 friends and their feed includes twitter, last.fm, flickr, their blog/blogs, and so on.  I found myself a bit overwhelmed to be honest.

What I once thought was such a great tool, now had me sweating a bit.  It was rather like trying to drink out of a firehose.

So I ask you, is FriendFeed a friend or foe ?  I almost think it is better to be able to segment this market, so to speak.  Have a way to watch Twitter, and then rss for the blog posts, and check out their flickr stream in a feed as well.  I fear that too many things will get lost in the torrent of information.  We have already started to become a “scanning” society online.  How many of you subscribe to 100’s of RSS feeds, only to scroll through quickly quickly glancing at the titles and 2 line descriptions, not really garnering any real substantial info from the post/article ?

Will we miss what we really dont want to by cramming all our friends info into one feed ?

Fast Talk @ Fastcompany.com

I have been spending a little bit of time over at the new Fastcompany.com and actually have been enjoying the content.  There are some great articles and even better posts by members that have signed up.

But my very favorite feature is called Fast Talk.  It is a great section where members pose questions for the audience.  Nothing too deep or anything.  Then the members give a little snippet back in response to the question.  Here are a few I enjoyed:

• Do flex hours undermine discipline in the workplace?
• Can good design save a bad product?
• How can you impose structure on employees without smothering creativity?

There is some really good talk revolving around the questions.  It is a nice quick glimpse into important topics we many not have otherwise seen.  You should stop over and check it out and let us know what you think.

Does Social Media Make You Less Social?

Just as I was thinking that this Social Media phenomena was actually making me more social, along came this post by Bill Cammack over on FastCompany’s new website, which I am liking a lot .. but a post is forthcoming on that soon.
Bill was interviewed by Jonny Goldstein on his Par-tay and his response to Jonny’s question as to whether or not he thought social media made people more social was it does not.  Bill said :

My point was that I became less social instead of more social because of the fact that my friends are always at my fingertips. For the sake of this post, I’m defining “social” as actually going somewhere to hang out with friends of mine, IRL.

Jonny actually thinks that it can lead to more actual social interaction and I agree with him.  Seeing as I met Jonny through a mutual twitter friend and have since started watching his show regularly and seen him in actual person on several occasions it only leads to reason.  Had I not been using these new social media tools, I would have never had the pleasure of not only meeting him, but a whole slew of other great people in the local DC area here.

Bill makes some interesting points

There’s no reason for me to physically go ANYWHERE unless physically interacting with that person is the reason I’m going. You can’t go snowboarding together unless you actually go snowboarding. Other than that, the current state of communications enables you to be AS in-touch with someone as you want to be  …

I think that more often, social media allows us to FEIGN getting together, which is actually *less* social than more so.

but i tend to disagree with most of them, especially that last one there.  I think that once you find your niche in these social tools, like Twitter, it leads to some really interesting real life social interactions.  The fact that I have some background on the people I have found really makes the real life meeting that much easier and more comfortable.  Meeting people “cold” is not easy, but when you have that online rapport already established it helps the transition.  Then once you have a base of these “online”/”offline” friends the tentacles spread out from there and you meet the friend of one of your friends and so on.  Here is an irony for you, now when I meet these peripheral friends, if you will, I go online later and start following them, and the cycle starts again.

In my opinion, my foray into social media has led to some great contacts, good friends, and thet start of a burgeoning tech culture here in the DC area.

So what do you all think, does social media make you more social ?

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