API connections and cross-network auto posting May08 '08
More and more social networks are providing cross-network auto posting support using API connections. In simpler terms, you can use one network to update another. The intention is to ease the burden of performing the same update in multiple spots.
With social networks comes ubiquity. Many services perform the same task (uploading videos, posting micro-content, etc), but each network strives to provide an overall better experience with different features or a more fine-tuned application.
So it makes sense to join more than one network that performs the same task, if only to experiment with what the service offers. Not to mention with each social network comes a different community of users to interact with. And since some users are part of your community in one network, but not another, why should they be excluded from viewing your content just because they aren't a part of all the same networks you are?
Knowing this, I see the logic behind cross-network auto posting - and that is, get your content out to all of your difference "audiences."
But there is a downside that's rarely considered. I spoke briefly about this in regards to Facebook's "Blog It" application, as well as my thoughts on FriendFeed.
As you prepare content for one network, and automatically stream it to a bunch of other networks, you are lessening your message intent because you are no longer taking advantage of each network's unique personality. Not only that, but for the few people that actually do follow you in many of those networks, they'll see your content multiple times.
Eventually your followers will begin to distrust your content, knowing that it's not being published by you directly, but rather copied over from some other realm.
After all, social networks are about people, not machines. I don't want to follow system updates - I want to follow updates from you! I want to know that you're sitting there, in some remote location, actually inserting the update. I want a person behind the update.
As soon as you distance yourself from each network you're a part of, you also distance your followers personal connection to you, thereby cheapening the overall value of the social network.
Your content loses it's realm, and only becomes a generic message passed across cyberspace.
Everyone loses.
Categories: Content 
, Social Networks
Add Feedback (view all)
Leave feedback
is published and produced by Matt Thommes - an independent publishing enthusiast, mobile blogger, content creator, informative writer, web developer from Chicago.
Never one to conform, Matt intends to promote the effect the web has on our lives, in an effort to intensify, instruct, and clarify all that is happening around us.
Similar Entries
- Social network etiquette: always follow up with new friends (95 recent visits)
- Social network "pause" button (21 recent visits)
- Social network priorities (21 recent visits)
- Gnip: scaling API requests with ease (4 recent visits)
- Google Chart API (5 recent visits)
- Ideas for using the Brightkite API (10 recent visits)
Stats
6 unique visits since November 2008