rhettsmith.com

I�m a big fan of social media, but its easy to be distracted by all the bells, whistles, and games. I don�t know what the statistics say, but I would suggest in some communities that its going the other way. (although facebook is on its way to becoming a Google-like platform�although the battle over bringing down the �walled garden� by opening up google search could slow it down a bit)

I think social networking only has so much community interaction. Also, I like that blogging offers the opportunity to create feeds to social networks like facebook (Wordpress does and I know there is a generic RSS feed) and widgets on MySpace (a couple companies offer this service free of charge).

I�m a big fan of social media, but its easy to be distracted by all the bells, whistles, and games. I don�t know what the statistics say, but I would suggest in some communities that its going the other way. (although facebook is on its way to becoming a Google-like platform�although the battle over bringing down the �walled garden� by opening up google search could slow it down a bit)

I think social networking only has so much community interaction. Also, I like that blogging offers the opportunity to create feeds to social networks like facebook (Wordpress does and I know there is a generic RSS feed) and widgets on MySpace (a couple companies offer this service free of charge).

Dang dude it took me forever to get to the place where I could comment :)

I told my wife just last night that I am becoming more and more addicted to the Facebook. I too am seeing some differences with the way I treat my blog with the addition of the facebook. With WordPress you can merge them to where your social network can see your latest post and comment to them.
I am not big on all the application because it was the clean look that attracted me to Facebook as apposed to MySpace. But I see my Facebook as a hyper-detailed controlled profile page. It also allows me to easily communicate with my blogging friends from all over. At the same time it cleans up my blog for better writing instead of family updates.
Let me explain like this, if you are a friend or someone who cares about my life you are probably one of my FB friends. Through FB you can see what I am doing and feeling and what is going on in my life. If you are a casual blog reader or a serious cultural revolutionary you more than likely do not care what my favorite movies are as much as my ideas and cultural commentary. So with the two you separate the two worlds. Allowing some to see details and others to read thoughts.
Now I am going to find your facebook and ask to be your friend. See ya.

This is something I've thought about a bit over the past while. One thing that I have noticed is that those people who have stopped blogging as much (or at all) to participate in the social networks are those who I don't put heaps of effort into their blogging anyway. They're more likely to have a free hosted blog at somewhere like xanga (which I detest btw), and generally be the less "computer literate" type. (I'm not trying to put these people down in any way).

Those who still go strong on the blogging seem to be the type who have been at it a bit longer, often hosting their own blogs, or at least put a lot more effort into their maintenance. They seem to be the type that are less "fleeting" to the next big social network/website that all their friends are signing up to because they got an invite link in their email.

While there is a lot of overlap of what people have traditionally been doing on their websites/blogs and the features that social networks have, I think there is plenty of room for both. If anything, perhaps these social networks will help us to better define what our blogs are exactly (in the way we structure and create content for them).

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