Facebook, Friendfeed and getting back to basics
I'm reading lots of blog posts about Facebook's acquisition of Friendfeed and a number of bloggers are saying the same thing -- it's time to rethink our approach to social media. Here are three examples:
"There's a lesson in Friendfeed's sale for all of us who spend time with social media, interact with customers online, or guide corporate digital outreach. Here it is: We are playing in somebody else's yard. And we can be told to go home at any time...the attractive part of developed social media networks is that your customers may already be there. It might still make sense to build your own tools - white label versions of existing services, perhaps. Or entirely new sites, services, and ways to engage which are under your control."
--Valeria Maltoni, How Social Media is Like Sharecropping
"I’m tired of constantly re-entering all of my information and accounts into services I start to care about, evangelize for, and enjoy only to have them radically changed either by cultural shifts, sales, closures or policy changes...Wordpress offers an attractive alternative. There are dozens of lifestreaming platforms emerging, and everyone seems ready to dub sites like Tumblr or Posterous as the natural successors to Friendfeed."
--Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins, Could WordPress Be the Natural Successor to Twitter, Friendfeed and Facebook
"[I]t's time to use the web again to store our ideas, and instead of relying on Silicon Valley companies to link our stuff together, let's just use the Internet. That's what it was designed for...Our blogs are still there, as is the web and the Internet. They never went away just because we foolishly flirted with something fast and easy and seductive."
"We'll go back to basics now, take what we learned from this round of innovation, and build it for real this time."
--Dave Winer, Scoble, your blog still loves you
These are veteran voice sharing sound wisdom with the rest of us.
For a long time I've said you should "get a seat at someone else's table," meaning the participation on social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Friendfeed is a good thing. To balance that, I've also said you should "set a table of your own."
To echo Valeria, "build your own tools," create your own online communities and social networks. Use Posterous to create your own lifestream. And, oh yea, there is STILL the lowly blog, the stable of all social media activity, your social media headquarters. Like Dave said, "your blog still loves you."
There are cool tools galore that early adopter types like me love to play with and talk about. That's okay. But, that doesn't negate the need to get back to basics and continue using those that are tried-and-true. And do it on our own turf.
