Ariel Waldman on One Size Does NOT Fit All

photo by Jeremy Keith, originally uploaded by Stowe Boyd.

Ariel Waldman asks a good question at the very end of a rambling post:

Have these microblogging sites given rise to an advertising-like mindset of reaching numbers rather than niches?

She is talking about cross-posting from one microworld to another, breaking social scale, and generating mush without adding to the conversation.

I for one am going to login to Facebook, Jaiku, and Pownce, and turn off the cross posting from my Twitter world. I am going to keep the Brightkite cross postings to Twitter though, which I think actually makes sense.

Comments

[Dan Thornton]

Nothing worse than sharing a contacts across 3 or 4 social networks, and seeing the same autofed blog broadcasted across all of them.

Although it's an easy thing to get into - especially if you're relatively new to blogging, and you really want to be reaching more people and connecting with more than what feels like an empty room.

At least when I've wanted to post something across all my networks, I've tried to rewrite it, but the best way is probably to stop announcing blog posts and let any readers decide if they're worth publicising.

[howard]

Just bumped into this problem with Stowe... We both use Facebook rarely, but visit every so often for the usual reasons. When I logged in the other day, I saw his tweet/status message that he was sick. So, being a thoughtful fellow, I beamed him well-wishes then and there on Facebook, only to get his message back several days later, thanking me and letting me know that Facebook messages were not the best way to reach him. (Delivered in email from my Facebook account, naturally.)

I long for the day when these apps talk to each other with (user-assisted) semantic smarts, so senders and receivers use the tools that they prefer without having to instruct each other on how to have a simple conversation every time another tool comes online!

[Cyndy Aleo-Carreira]

This is exactly why I refuse to sign up for even one more microblogging platform until they play Highlander. It's gone past the point of ridiculous: Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, Brightkite, Facebook, Plurk, and now identi.ca. Enough is enough. No one needs that any updates on anyone's life.

[Erno]

The only doubling that I have is the Twitter message that gets in FriendFeed. But then again this is a nice place to continue a discussion (especially when Twitter is down).