Social media sites just keep springing up from the ether like summer flowers, or weeds, depending upon how you view this proliferation. Still, the simplicity and immediacy of social media website, Twitter, and its cousin Jaiku, still have me hopelessly addicted above all others. You know that a “trend” has arrived when the pornographers, spammers, and scammers take up the cause. It seems that everyone who explores social media potential hangs out in Twitter at some point. Even my puppy, Little Poopers” has a Twitter account, as does a famous park in Philadelphia, and numerous other non-human entities.
Apparently, having only one online social site identity is sometimes not enough to convey the many facets of our being. As in our non-mediated lives, we present ourselves in different ways that might be “off message” from our general persona. Alternately, we might want to create a more focused identity that serves to help us espouse a more targeted issue or opinion. For example, one friend has his personal account, his business account, and his fantasy account.
For sites like Twitter, the interactions are brief, not usually reciprocal, fade quickly in memory, and might frequently add even more information overload to an already saturated brain through links to articles, blogs, photos, and events. Obviously, a site like this serves an important purpose, but is it complete enough? Of course not. It is but one of the many ways that we interact with humanity on a daily basis.
So, what else is out there? What if you want a little more substance than frequent 140-character sound bytes? Perhaps social sites like everydotconnects.com or seesmic.com will provide a few more pieces that fit into your overall social jigsaw puzzle. Both sites allow for more extended and deeper interaction.
Everydotconnects.com is all about conversations, not just dialog. It is a compiler of blog postings by its members, arranged in categories. If I want to read what bloggers are saying about Twitter, I just click on the Twitter category. The results show a blog page of postings by various authors, all of whom have something to say about Twitter. Below each post is a comments section, just as in a regular blog post. What I like about everydotconnects.com is the ability to immerse in a topic of interest and obtain various points-of-view, all in one location. Be a commentator, be a blogger, or be both.
Seesmic.com takes blogging one step further by adding video. Like a YouTube for blogging, participants’ interactions are mediated through their webcams and microphones as they broadcast their visual and audio messages to the world. Other users can scan through the videos, view one of interest, and respond to it with their own video. Members can view sometimes lengthy threads, as conversations twist, turn, and weave around the original topic. While this type of interaction has a few more steps involved than Twitter, it allows the all-important visual and sound cues that help make interactions richer (although some of the vloggers need to sharpen up their presentation skills).
In the end, all we are doing in reaching out to others and finding a group or groups where we feel we belong and have something to contribute. For some, it is as simple as a Twitter message (a Tweet), for others, it is a manifesto in a lengthy blog filled with back-and-forth conversations between the writer and his or her readers, and for still others, it’s a sensory presentation that can be carefully crafted, or a spontaneous stream-of-consciousness rant. Whatever the form and technologies we use, the moment we place ourselves out there is the moment that a potential new community begins in our lives. And for some, these social sites serve as a web of many communities to serve many identities.
