Business | Technology
Channel Sponsor
Repairing social networking
A few years ago I took up blogging. I wasn't looking to start the next big blog, I was just trying to save my sanity.
- By Scott Shuey, Chief Reporter
- Published: 00:33 April 19, 2008
A few years ago I took up blogging. I wasn't looking to start the next big blog, I was just trying to save my sanity. My entry into the blogosphere coincided with the rise of MySpace. I quickly got tired of explaining to everyone what I had been doing recently (in some cases "recently" covered the span of 17 years), and blogging was a good way of keeping friends and family updated without trying to remember what I had told to whom.
But despite my attempts to keep things simple, the current trends in social networking made it hard to write just one blog.
Then Facebook came along and about a year ago I gave up on the blogging. Facebook at that time didn't really have a blogging app that I liked, but the level of interaction was so high that I didn't feel like a needed one.
Of course, now I find myself sending messages in Facebook more than anything, which means a lot of repetition. In other words, I'm back to square one.
This is a little frustrating, because while Social Networking has created the ability to stay in contact with friends, it's also created a lot of work for those of us who have friends on multiple sites. I tried convincing all of my MySpace friends to come to Facebook, but some of them just wouldn't have it. I'm not the only one frustrated by this.
This is all leading a variety of new trends in social networking evolving around having a "portable identity", which basically means cutting down on the work of having networks of friends spread throughout cyber-space. I have yet to see a site that effectively offers this. But Six Apart, a San Francisco-based software company, seems to have accomplished this for the blogosphere.
New application
The company last week released Blog It, an application that finally gives Facebook a decent blogging application and allows you to simultaneously post blog entries on about 10 other sites, including WordPress, LiveJournal, Blogger and Vox, just to name a few. It's a rather simple idea when you think about it, but getting someone to identify the problem was probably what took so long.
Now, I'm not going to say that Blog It works flawlessly. My first attempt at posting to four different sites resulted in my entry being posted to Vox four times while nothing appeared on the other sites. But Six Apart is a company that offers commercial services to companies and bloggers. I'm betting that the technical issues will be sorted out.
But even from a non-technical stand-point, there were a few things I expected to see in this app that just weren't there.
For starters, you can't post to MySpace, nor can you update your status or post blog entries via your mobile. Until I hear back from Six Apart's PR person, I'm going to assume that these issues are being worked on.
But don't think I'm being too critical. The important thing is that they accomplished what a lot of people have been promising: they found a way of repairing the increasingly fractured nature of social networking.
Share this article
More from Technology
More from Business
Popular in Business
-
Budget travel
Airlines in the region
Take a pictorial look at some of the budget airlines in GCC
Business Editor's choice
-
Credit swaps... a fair trade
Would you swap an unbuilt unit at the Lagoons for an apartment at JBR?
-
New face of safety
Volvo reveals a sleeker S60, ready to hit the roads early next year
-
When the Web lives worldwide
Cutting-edge firms are building massive data facilities all over the globe
