Disposable Social Media Tools
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Some quick thoughts.
Ages back I read something about how young people were using the internet. One of those articles that social media nerds pour over with the same level of fascination as biologists studying a new mutation of DNA (or something - my analogy batteries are low). What was interesting was how they dealt with forgotten passwords for their IM accounts or MySpace profiles. They simply abandoned them and started news ones leaving a trail of ghost sites around the place. Compared with those of us who carefully nurture our online lives, lovingly crafting blog templates and caring for our growing readerships, this was kinda odd, especially when you think about email. Abandon my email address? WTF?
Based on something on Twitter this evening I was reminded of this report. In short, there’s one of those silly games happening on the service right now where people join “colour clans” or some shit. I’m not getting involved as it all sounds a bit like the nonsense on Facebook that makes that so irritating but seeing Ewan start the Team Tartan gang and have a blog for it up in minutes, one which when this fad passes in, ohh, 2 days at most, will be left to gather dust… Well, I found that interesting.
When I’ve been talking to groups about Blogging I always start by setting up a blog on Wordpress.com in front of them and showing how you can have something published on the internet in minutes. Stef and I did one of these at an Arts Council conference the day before going to SXSW which he briefly blogged about here. Wanting to take the “check this shit out” factor up a bit we decided to not only set up a blog but to blog about the conference during the session. While I was setting up the kit Stef popped into the keynote speech took some photos and shot a bit of video. With these uploaded we had reportage in different mediums online within an hour of it ending. Happy to say a few jaws dropped.
Which is all well and good, but what does this really mean? If you can create a functional website in seconds what value do those websites intrinsically have?
The answer is probably nothing. It all depends on what you put into the site. And that’s where it gets very interesting indeed because we’re at the stage where blogs (and media hosting services like Flickr and YouTube) have the same value as paper. You can craft something beautiful on them with lasting value or you can scribble some notes down and pass them to a mate.
Let’s put it this way. If it costs a lot in time and money to set up a blog then to use it for nonsense is a waste and a shame. So when people report on all the stupid pointless blogs out there cluttering up the place they have a point. But we’re in a position now where resources for blogs, etc are effectively infinite. Your silly blog is using such a small amount of space and processing power that it might as well not exist. And it’s not going to clog up Google because Google can tell it’s of incredibly limited interest. So criticism of the stupid pointless blogs is, in turn, stupid and pointless. You might as well complain about people doodling on scraps of paper - a crime in the middle ages for sure but laughable now.
The only problem is most social media services don’t make it easy to have multiple accounts. Blogger, to its credit, does, but it’s a nightmare managing two Flickr accounts or three Tumblrs. When I get worried about posting nonsense to my Twitter stream it should be simple for me to start a new one and flip between the two of them without having to create a new login and password from a new email address. (Caveat - I haven’t checked to see whether this would all be necessary for Twitter but you get the point).
Finally, you might be asking, how do you keep track of all this stuff? How do your readers know about all these disposable blogs and such that you’re spawning? Two answers - firstly it probably doesn’t matter if people don’t find them. You’ll make sure those that need to know are aware and it’s not that important anyway. Secondly, by using things like Twitter and the like or some heavyweight blog (like mine here) you keep your personal social network informed of stuff. I’ve been moving away from the term “blogging” to describe what I’m talking about these days. It’s not blogs so much as a mesh of online tools that collectively represent me, and in the same way that the Internet was designed to survive outage at any point so a network of tools can be a flux of presences coming and going.
Like I said, some thoughts. Feel free to take and run with them as you please. I’m thinking social cloud, ambient networking, that kind of shit.
This is the personal blog and main internet hub-thing for Pete Ashton. What you'll find here is a seemingly random collection of stuff I want to talk about and share. 
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“It’s not blogs so much as a mesh of online tools that collectively represent me ……..
……the Internet was designed to survive outage at any point”
I’m not really talking about the social media thing here, but these snippets struck a chord with me.
When my last computer died on me, or more to the point, I killed it by hitting ‘enter’ after a grand series of internal hardware failures one evening last year, I’d had the sense to save the majority of key files on an external hard drive. But, I lost alot. The online resources I’d stored work in largely recovered the bits I lost. Whilst I lost much of the groundwork behind the work, I had enough to resurrect them, even if it meant reproductions from scratch.
Wordpress and Flickr saved face for me following the event; you don’t have to make your entire world public, you just need to know where you can use the tools as a canny store, sometimes. Simple web-based tools fulfilled my basic data needs.
Media on the web can be disposable, depending how you view its use. But use it to your advantage if you want an additional means of storage.
Some sources, if you choose carefully, can be used to keep your work within its case to preserve your input and dig you out of a hole when your local machine goes loco.
I’ve been having trouble explaining this one too. Looking back at that overview I did for IdeasForLife I just wasn’t making any sense. Have you found any way to explain this in a sentence yet?
This is also true of all forms of media right now - Music (for example) anyone can pick up garage band and make an awful mashup of a Girls Aloud Accapella and a Hard Fi instrumental (all available “free” with one click) and voila mash up heaven.
Or pick up a guitar and be James Blunt via Myspace.
Or a mic, camera and mime - voila back to girls aloud.
But once it is up it’s gone. on to new “project”
Then you find an unbelievable 12 minute piece from a Belgrade Jazz band that blows your mind, and your heart is right back in the ‘hunt’
Or photos.
How many great photos can you find on flickr with 4 views, this aren’t “interesting” apparently.
But there will be photos with 1,000 views that are ‘OK’. BUT they are beautifully tagged, pooled, grouped and basically promoted.
But, i think we are talking about promotion of promoted content vs scribbles, humming, snaps, and life.
God it is the blur again.
Media is clay.
We are Media.
There is no Mass Media.
sorry stream of consciousness.
but I think the answer lies somewhere with Bill Drummond who is currently producing symphonies using everyday people signing one note at a time, performing live.
and deleting it.
It is the performance that counts not the record of it.
It is your’s girls smile, not the photo.
It’s the life not the record.
There’s a fine point here somewhere Pete - while the trend seems to be pulling everything together with lifestreaming, the understanding is helped by the divisions allowing each to draw their own lines (or not) between the data and sources.
There’s a hug hole for a service that collates, lifts and separates according to our attention. It’s a while away yet, I guess, until that time I’m off the opinion that we should throw everything up in the metaphorical air and let people chose what to catch as it comes down.
“lifeclouding”?
@Toby Bill Drummond is one of the few geniuses left imho. Can’t wait to get hold of his new book. If only the man could be persuaded to lifestream, him I could read everything about.
I get the feeling about all these Flickr/Tumblr/Twitter/Whatevr type efforts are nothing more than the web’s triumph of style gimmicks over content. So little to say and so many places to say it. There’s few demands for considered thought online - get it out, blogged, find a pic from Google or vid from YouTube. I guess most people are happy with the present 2Mbps twinkling vacuum. But if this is the result of democratising opinion and the dissemination thereof, then it sucks. It sucks like a black hole full of Murray Mints.
And I am thankful I have no ‘personal social network’ that needs taking care of online.