Burned By Social Media…Long Live the Blog

Earlier this month a wrote a post mortem on Google Wave as its demised gave me food for thought on all things social. As I most eloquently (I think) opined:

With Wave now riding off into the sunset I have begun to re-evaluate what I’ve been contributing to these products. I sometimes put so much time and effort into these technologies I forget what they are used for. How much original thought and content have you given Twitter, Buzz, Facebook, Wave, etc?”

Just as I thought those words disappeared into the echo chamber that is the “Social” web along comes a late night blog post from one of my favorite tech luminaries @Leo Laporte.  He noticed that none of his Google Buzz posts over a 2 week period were being posted as public nor were they showing up in his Buzz stream. He just thought of it as a glitch, but also noticed that no one else seem to either. This was much to his dismay. This episode caused some reflection on his part, much as Google canning Wave made me think about where my true attention should be focused, our personal blogs.  I think DeWitt Clinton’s post puts this new epiphany in prespective stating that:

“Ultimately we need to lower the cost, and raise the utility, of user-centric creation and presentation of content, rather than the network-centric creation and presentation of content we have today.³ In an ideal world, you’d be able to use whatever tools you want, to produce whatever content you want, to publish in any place you want, to whatever audience you want.”

This is what I have professed with numerous blog posts of my own  about the future of blogging platforms (part 1 & 2) and the Social Profile Wall of the Future. We need social media federation for blogs that is as seamless and less of a barrier to entry as Twitter and Facebook are today. Thank god for Posterous and Tumblr, they get it.  We should continue to encourage and support the DeWitt Clinton’s and Diaspora’s of the world to make blogging (macro or micro) in general as easy as a Facebook.  Hence liberating our data from the silos it exists in today.  This might be a space where Google Me could exploit the current disillusionment with a growing social network fatigue.  I mean seriously, where is this stuff going? Am I contributing in vain? Who listens to me?  These are my questions, but I believe Leo has touched on something that has the blogosphere a buzz again.

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