My Social Network Map

Posted by lemiffe in Computers, Internet, Marketing, Products, Technology on Jul 27th, 2010 | 0 comments

Three days shy of a year ago I published a blog post about my social networks in which I explained a bit about the interconnectivity provided by sites such as Ping.fm which help you keep your status updates synchronised across social networks.

Last year I was on about 10 social networks, this year the number has gone up to 17 (which is  really19 as I excluded Google Reader and WordPress.com for visual purposes). But it seems to me that interconnectivity has still not matured enough, there is no “home” for your social networks, and I doubt this will change in the short term.

Click on the image to see a full-sized version.

The increasing level of connectivity between Social Sites

Posted by lemiffe in Business, Computers, Internet, lemiffe, Security, Society, Technology, WebDesign on Jul 31st, 2009 | 0 comments

A few years ago I dreamt of being able to have all this connectivity, lets say, things being published here, automatically-published there, and elsewhere. I knew we were getting there, as I have been configuring my services for the past few months, but I didn’t know we are so advanced.

If I made a rundown or a graph explaining the connectivity between social media sites I currently have, it would grow too large, or the connections would not exactly be easy to draw. * Update: Well I’ve decided to draw it anyway:

For instance: My Youtube is posting to facebook, google reader, twitter and two of my blogs. One of those blogs is lemiffe.com which when receiving a post will alert ping.fm which will then release a post of my new blog post to facebook, twitter, my blog at blogger, myspace, google talk’s status, and quite a few other sites.

Now, the only problem I currently see is the level of redundancy. Sites talked to other sites, which in turn talk to other sites, so whenever these sites provide much more connectivity to other services we might end up in a cyclic-post system in which one service posts to the other which in turn posts back to the first one initiating a never-ending cycle in which the user would have to stop one or the other service manually.

I really believe more insight should be applied, like, verifying the other sites connectivity and checking it will not repost to a site the first site has already posted to. This can be done via pure XML transactions between both sites, I mean, thats what web services are for, right?

Another thought I came up with is a Centralised User Account Service, which deals with the connectivity between users of different sites. Lets say: Gravatar meets facebook and ping.fm. All the services first verify the users information on the Centralised service, then they verify which permissions the user has applied concerning posting, which pages must the service send the new update, video or blog message to, and negotiate it only with the Centralised site, which will in turn send off the appropriate XML for all other “connected” sites.

It’s just a thought, Security-wise I am not sure where this would lead to as very tight security would have to be placed. Gaining access to the account of a user at the Centralised Site would be, well, Armageddon for that user. So probably a tighter security would have to be placed, with 128 big encription, SSL sockets, MD-6, who knows what else, but it’s just a thought anyway.

Final addition to my Interaction Kit

Posted by lemiffe in Computers, Internet, lemiffe on Jun 10th, 2009 | 0 comments

Social Interaction is just plain beautiful when it is easy to interact, socially.

A few weeks ago I started using ping.fm, a service to update most of your social network status’. I added it as a gadget to my igoogle homepage. It is straight easy to update my status on facebook, twitter, a few of my blogs, google talk, etc.

I had a problem nonetheless. Whenever I made a new blog post on lemiffe.com, the update only got sent to twitter. I am trying out an app I just found, “CR Post to Ping.fm“, hoping that if it works out as expected, it will be the final addition to my social interaction kit. It’s just great, you update all your status’ from one same place. You blog updates that place, therefore updating everything else.

I’m in love with gadgets, widgets and apps.