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Thoughts on Embracing the Social Internet Over Social Media

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Re: Thoughts on Embracing the Social Internet Over Social Media

#31

Post by lkrubner »

A personal story:

I went a few years without Google Analytics, and I was proud of the fact that my weblog had no tracking software. I kept thinking I would write a script to track the audience myself. But I was busy and never got around to it. So in the autumn I decided, okay, I'll use Google Analytics for a few months, till I can write my own code.

I'd written my own system for tracking my weblog, back in the era of 2005-2009, before I used WordPress (back when I only used my own code for websites).

Looking at the Google Analytics results nowadays is heartbreaking for someone like me, who remembers the independent blogosphere of 12 years ago. Because it is gone. Utterly gone.

Back then my traffic tended to come from dozens of independent bloggers who noticed when I occasionally said something smart. The blogosphere was a world of individual voices. There were big group blogs, such as Crooked Timber, but even those consisted of individuals and it was easy to figure out who had admired something I wrote. It was a world where you had some sense of who was reading you, and what they thought about you, and they could see when you read them in return.

That world died in the era 2006-2010 as Twitter and Facebook gained influence.

Nowadays, Google Analytics shows I get traffic from sites that aggregate audiences. Overwhelmingly, that's Facebook and Twitter. The traffic is very sporadic, full of big spikes of anonymous readers. A few times a year I'll write something that gets on the front page of Hacker News, and then I'll get from Hacker News anywhere from 4,000 to 40,000 visits over two or three days. Which is great, but also sporadic.

What I miss is the ability to follow those who are reading me, and more so, their awareness, in response, that I am reading them in return. The dynamic of "You read me so I read you and you see that I read you" is alive and well on specific sites, such as Twitter, but I miss it being part of the general Internet experience. I do realize I can use something like https://github.com/RSS-Bridge/rss-bridge to treat social media as a series of RSS feeds, and I am planning on doing that, but that still misses the element of them seeing that I am reading them.

I've been thinking about some way to try to balance people's preference for walled-gardens with this kind of open back and forth conversation. I might work on this more seriously later in the year.

If anyone is interested in a bit of history, way back in 2006 I wrote what was widely considered the most definitive summary of the fighting that had taken place among those interested in developing RSS. All of this was made irrelevant by the rise of Twitter, but in 2006, this still seemed like a very important topic for the Web industry:

"RSS has been damaged by in-fighting among those who advocate for it"

http://www.smashcompany.com/technology/rss-has-been-damaged-...

Re: Thoughts on Embracing the Social Internet Over Social Media

#32

Post by packet_nerd »

mwcampbell wrote: post #29
packet_nerd wrote: post #17

> "...the development of open social protocols that support the network effect usefulness of large social networks without a centralized company in charge." Not sure what exact shape the author imagines this might take, but I've had this idea (dream) in the back of my mind for a long time.. We need a standardized protocol that is open (I.E. not controlled by or dependent on 1 or 2 companies), private and secure by de…

> My grandparent's aren't going to host and configure their own blog. My grandparents didn't set up their own Facebook account either. We (mainly my mom, I think) did it for them. You could help your grandparents set up a blog, then show them how to post to it (think something like WordPress or Ghost, not a static site using Markdown and Git). After all, they had to learn the Facebook interface too.

> You could help your grandparents set up a blog

I had some extra server space after a side project a few years ago and offered to set up Wordpress blogs for my mom and a few friends. Most of them were basically never used. My mom kept up near weekly posts for a year and a half or so, but it's been several years since her last post. I bet I could delete them all right now and it would be next Thanksgiving before they noticed.

But, they're always asking why I'm not on FB.

Re: Thoughts on Embracing the Social Internet Over Social Media

#33

Post by visarga »

EGreg wrote: post #25

If I may shamelessly mention the project we've been working on the last 7 years... https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ1O_gmPneI 1. We started with the idea that actually social tools would let you get in, get out and get on with life. They would help you coordinate your actual social life in the real world instead of sucking up your time online. A minute spent on the app would result in hours socializing in the real wor…

Watched the video. I like how you think, we need more anarchy in the social web, each community standing on its own, no central arkhi (authority).

Re: Thoughts on Embracing the Social Internet Over Social Media

#34

Post by rpvnwnkl »

whatyoucantsay wrote: post #9

This is a penetrating analysis and I completely agree with its values. In practise, however, it is a very quixotic pursuit to try to pull the social world away from SV companies with network effect lock-in. The only way to succeed just may lie revolve in anti-social marketing behaviour.

I agree with you; the sentiment here is right, but it's unrealistic to try and change the mindset of so many people.

In my experience, 'the masses' are bright enough that they will drop a service when it's no longer useful to them, or when something better comes along. After all, they adopted FB in the first place, right?

If you're opposed to the services, the best you can do is abstain from them and share your reasons why with anyone who cares to ask, but don't bother preaching. It might be as effective to be a loud exception: as an example, how could a public agency organize a public forum via FB if all citizens aren't using FB? By standing out from these services, inclusive groups will have to accomodate their members who are outside of them. That's all we can ask for.

People are giving their attention, personal information, and money via these social services, but maybe they can afford to spend it there. Otherwise they would stop, no?

Re: Thoughts on Embracing the Social Internet Over Social Media

#35

Post by bogomipz »

Htyv wrote: post #14
bogomipz wrote: post #13

I thought this was a well-written piece. I would love to see a "return to the internet" movement in 2018. The author suggests everyone "acquire your own damn digital land." And I think this is the way forward. In 2005 or the pre-FB era being a "techie" was a personal distinction. I feel that now most people have become "techies" in varying degrees, either out of necessity or general interest. I mention this because I…

Even giant corporations don't want to build their own sites. It isn't that people can't, it's that they would rather pay for it with money or data instead of time.

>"Even giant corporations don't want to build their own sites"

What giant corporations don't want to build their own sites?

>"It isn't that people can't, it's that they would rather pay for it with money or data instead of time."

There might be a sea change in this though. And I think with things like Squarespace et al you can create a slick looking site for yourself with both minimal time and cost.

Re: Thoughts on Embracing the Social Internet Over Social Media

#36

Post by 0x445442 »

ebullientocelot wrote: post #20
bogomipz wrote: post #13

I thought this was a well-written piece. I would love to see a "return to the internet" movement in 2018. The author suggests everyone "acquire your own damn digital land." And I think this is the way forward. In 2005 or the pre-FB era being a "techie" was a personal distinction. I feel that now most people have become "techies" in varying degrees, either out of necessity or general interest. I mention this because I…

I was very proud of my Geocities page back in the day! It was pretty exciting writing out the url on little scraps of paper at school and passing them out to my friends. An unreadable storm of horrendous style choices, including by not limited to very obnoxious flashing fonts and inconsistent use of WAY TOO MANY CAPITALS--this was MY site and it felt good. Back when I had FB I never had the same feeling from it.

Neocities still has a number of sites like this and a lot of helpful tooling as well as IPFS support.

Re: Thoughts on Embracing the Social Internet Over Social Media

#37

Post by cilefen »

acomjean wrote: post #27

I think its a good take. The problem its hard when not social media to get visibility. Its easy to start a blog (wordpress/blogger/tumblr etc.. ), its harder to get people to go to it and periodically check it out. RSS aggregators/ google reader was a good way to do this, but they've fallen out of favor. There is a ghost town of abandoned blogs on the internet presumably because they didn't get the reads/ interaction…

https://indieweb.org/ lays out techniques for getting the word out when you publish a blog.

Re: Thoughts on Embracing the Social Internet Over Social Media

#38

Post by 0x445442 »

the_lnternet wrote: post #8

I, personally, don’t see why it’s necessary to coddle those who are unable to remember a time before garbage “social media” sites, by adopting the term “ social internet.” It’s just The Internet. None of these sites or apps have done anything new, with the technology we have. It’s the same shit that existed in 1999, but scaled up to more bandwidth, faster client-side hardware, and warehouses full of servers. Facebook…

>> Twitter is SMS text messaging, plus a mailing list web UI.

Yeah, I really miss all the SMS tools that use to be available...

Text "Movies 90210" to 9999... I don't want adds and all the cruft of HTML, just data!

I guess with Twilio I could recreate that functionality for most of the data I want by web scraping but that is painful and hard to maintain.

Re: Thoughts on Embracing the Social Internet Over Social Media

#39

Post by eitland »

cilefen wrote: post #37
acomjean wrote: post #27

I think its a good take. The problem its hard when not social media to get visibility. Its easy to start a blog (wordpress/blogger/tumblr etc.. ), its harder to get people to go to it and periodically check it out. RSS aggregators/ google reader was a good way to do this, but they've fallen out of favor. There is a ghost town of abandoned blogs on the internet presumably because they didn't get the reads/ interaction…

https://indieweb.org/ lays out techniques for getting the word out when you publish a blog.

Or one could just wrote because on wants to write, want to share knowledge and not to "build and audience" or anything.

Re: Thoughts on Embracing the Social Internet Over Social Media

#40

Post by FlyingSnake »

I second the author that we need to host our own website and data, however finding an audience is really hard in post-Facebook world. Just ask any blogger who saw the golden years of blogging (2008-2012). The Internet might be the same but the social media sites have changed the nature of the game. I feel our attention spans have decreased and the fallout of the Facebook privacy fiasco will definitely make it hard to consume new stuff.

I'm not sure if decentralised solutions like Mastodon/Scuttlebutt/Diaspora etc will succeed, as I feel this is a human problem, not a technical one.

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