The looming crisis: Personal syndication overload

Today, for kicks, I tried to draw a map of all the places I write content, all the places it is displayed, and all the intermediate services that re-post my content in places other than where I originally write it. It's a spaghetti of interlinked services, and it's becoming unmanageable. I think it's just dumb luck that I haven't created an infinite loop of republishing so far. Adding one more service could push things over the edge.

Although my profession is creating content and publishing it, my problem is hardly unique. I post a few times a day on Webware and Twitter, and I contribute to some other blogs and podcasts, and once in awhile I update Delicious and Flickr. But compared with some people in non-publishing jobs my output is modest. There are people active on multiple personal content services like Facebook, Digg, Vox, Blogger, and Youtube that produce more content than I do, and they're also using republishing services to make sure that all their friends, on all their networks, see all their content.

It shouldn't be this complicated (click for full-size).

(Credit: Rafe Needleman / CNET)

The challenge is keeping track of all the connections between services. It's a tangle, as I said: I have Friendfeed republishing my Twitter posts. Ping.fm, which I often use to post to Twitter (and thus, to Friendfeed), could just as easily publish to Friendfeed directly. I just happened to set up the Friendfeed-Twitter link before I started using Ping.fm. I have Ping.fm updating several other nanoblog feeds, like Jaiku, Pownce, and Plurk. Meanwhile, my Webware article feed (just my stories) is read into Friendfeed and directly by Jaiku. I do not feed Webware into Twitter directly; I use a republisher called Twitterfeed. I am also using Twitterfeed to republish my ProPRTips blog into Twitter, which is strategic, since I get more readers for that blog's content on Twitter than the blog gets itself.

Twhirl, a desktop client for Twitter and Friendfeed that I dearly love, updates only one site at a time, so I can use it to send Twitter posts to either my main Twitter account or other specialized accounts I occasionally write to. Friendfeed reads in only what I write in my main Twitter account, though. And since Twhirl does not update other services I use, like Jaiku and Plurk, when I use Twhirl I need to be mindful that some of my followers on these other networks aren't going to see the posts.

It gets worse. Each of the sites my content ends up on (partial list: Webware, News.com, ProPRTips, Swagalicio.us, Twitter, Friendfeed, Jaiku, Identi.ca, Pownce, Kwippy, Flickr, Delicious, Digg) has its own communities. And I never know where a conversation will take hold. Since I'm most active on Webware, Twitter, and Friendfeed, I check those services more frequently. Sometimes something I write will spark a conversation on one, sometimes another. There's no telling. (By the way, Plurk gets a decent share of community action; every time I go there I think I should check in more frequently.) Disqus can do a lot of discussion bridging between blogs, but one thing it doesn't do is bridge communities between the microblog sites.

I am, so far, managing to keep most of these connections in my head, but I fear that if I sleep for more than nine hours I could forget how my network is put together. I could look at my sketch. But we really shouldn't need network maps to keep track of what we're doing where, should we?

So this is my challenge to the Web 2.0 community: Solve the personal content and community problem. Take the multi-publishing chops of Ping.fm, the aggregation features of Friendfeed, the republishing capability of Twitterfeed (with more functions, please), and the discussion aggregation of Disqus, and put it all together into one simple, easy-to-maintain product that acts as a hub for publishing, reading, and community in all these services. And while you're at it, make sure you don't steal traffic or community from the services you're front-ending; they all have personalities we want to keep alive.

Or should I drop it all and just write e-mail newsletters instead?

[Goodbye Helicopter]

boohoo.
Maybe what we all really need is a break.

[Diggy666]

Hi Rafe,

I feel your pain... Prediction...In 12 months, your entire social network will start traveling around the web with you within your browser. This will of course include, updating once = updating everywhere. We are only just starting to experience this with recent initiatives such as open social, Friendfeed and now Facebook with their Facebook connect initiative.

www.twitter.com/A_F

[f.arenas]

ahhhhhhhhh!!!! where are we going? The LHC's scientists had created an alternative "internet" 'cause they said their project could overload the web. Still we are doing it without help.

[cvaldes1831]

E-mail newsletters are generally lightweight and still viewable on devices with limited computing power (e.g., smartphones). The code isn't ladened down with widgets and generally speaking, there is minimal third-party advertising. My iPod touch even stops downloading the entire contents of a larger e-mail -- that's generally not the case with a typical web browsing session.

A daily, weekly, or even monthly digest is often far superior than a Web 2.0 content feed (like Twitter) in terms of judicious editorial pruning and e-mail filters can perform the triage automatically.

[billgrey]

Ooooh.... I have been lusting after the idea of a "social networking dashboard" for all of this increasing mindclutter. For now I have contented myself with just using things in a leisurely way when I feel like it. No sense with filling our lives with this stuff if it doesn't contribute to our peace of mind....or worse yet.... disturbs it. After all, email is still the tool that most people use....though I expect that to change as Web 2.0 gets more mature (and we can actually show significant results/benefits to clients). This social networking stuff is exciting and... uh....kind of crazy.

[anon8mizer]

This won't happen because the 'island' of services out there need to keep their customers from leaving. They need the eyeballs to stare at ads.

if everybody is flocking to the aggregator you want, then these startups will go belly up. The VCs, having done so much due diligence and are convinced enough to think the 'islands of services' model is exactly what consumers want, will lose their investment.

And the Web 2.0 myth will finally be busted.

That's not going to be pretty.

But you know what - as a consumer, I want all the various islands of services to be integrated in one simple to manage interface that I can use wherever I am.

So. Death to silos, walled gardens, islands of services. That's the end of Web 2.0

[professionaladventurer]

Do people really care about you all that much? I am not trying to be mean, that would be dumb since I don't know any of you, but really? I am really cool and I do cool stuff, and none of my friends care or read my blog other then maybe a 100 or so people a month. professionaladventurer.com - I am hiking out to the lava flow tonight, I hope the stars are out! But no one cares. So the social network dashboard would be cool, one site to rule them all, but is your message worth being heard? I don't think mine is.

[dfarber]

Swimming upstream....data overflow and too many walled gardens and microcommunities, but eventually you will have a home base and the flexibility and filters to make sense of your communications...but not this decade.

[ahynes1]

I wrote a similar blog post about a month ago, which was an update of a post I had done back in June.

For me, there were a lot more nodes in my graph, so I used GraphViz to create the image.

You can read the post and see the different images here:

http://www.orient-lodge.com/node/3135

My expectation is that things will consolidate. Microblogging services will interconnect, the way email services and to a lesser extent IM services have. Sites like FriendFeed, Profilactic, SecondBrain and so on will get smarter at aggregating and deduping messages.

The part that I'm most interested in is when aggregators start supporting groups or tags, so I can simply find all the deduped social media for friends that I tag in one group or another.

Someone has to do that soon enough.

Aldon

[themediapod]

Good point professionaladventurer. I love social media, but given the choice between blogging or hiking to a lava flow, I know which I'd prefer. I doubt that on my deathbed I'll look back on my life and think "I wish I'd spent more time in the office social networking". Going out to play basketball with the kids. Carry on without me...but don't worry, I'll be back.

[6p_shooter]

looming? looming?

it's been here for a year or two, if not much more.

the interesting question is if the younger generation, fondly referred to as the (brain dead) icq/cellular/myspace/some other kind of... generation can really control the info explosion

or are we just wrongly attributing them some kind of media super powers

[6p_shooter]

by the way,

why?

why do you guys feel the need to be everywhere at once?

the good lord and a guy in an a8 (i hope i'm not mixing things up here) gave you guys the gift of RSS. use it!

whats wrong with sticking to one or maybe two services and aggregating the posts/images/younameit to the rest?

what the hell is twitter good for if not for that?

[kraiosis]

Hi,

i do write for different websites. But as a programmer i have designed my webapp to manage all this. Very simple . It is like AP manage their stories just write and tell where it belongs. So it doesnt have to be like that internet is a bunch of places. Just do organize yourself and in that way you will help to organize Internet.

[rafe]

To the people asking the very important question of "Why does a person need to be in so many places at once?" The answer is: Because the readers are. I'd love to cut back on the places I post, but I there are different groups of people I can reach by being on different channels. So I deal with it.

[rolandrickperry]

I feel exactly the same way when I go out drinking. I want to go to every single bar there is, to see which of my friends are where. As well as to see which bar has the most attractive women. Problem is, there must be 20 great bars in the Beverly Hills/West Hollywood area.

It gets worse, I may go from a bar on Sunset Blvd to Rodeo Drive -- because a friend called to say "all the action was there," only to find out when I got to Rodeo -- "all of the action" had moved to Sunset !

And I never know where the action will take hold. Since I'm most active at Spago, Mirabelle, Redrock, SkyBar and Dan Tana's, I check those bars more frequently. But what if a new bar opens.

It's so horrible.

[6p_shooter]

thank god for my baby girl.

she makes sure I'm too tired to go bar hopping.

the most i can do to get wasted is "call of duty 4". those little brats waste me the second I hit the server

[rocjoe]

I wonder how long it will be until somebody get their network connections crossed over is just the right way up they accidentally cause a denial-of-service in multiple sites because they keep automatically updating themselves ad infinitum.

[iankennedy54]

The lifestream filter will be the venue for the next great algorithm war

http://everwas.com/2008/04/the-lifestream-filter-will-be-the-next-great-algorithm-war.html

[kariv]

Isn't there such a tool already? I am surprised. With all the plug-in architectures one would assume that republishing plugins are available. I would expect blogging on WordPress to be able to add to my accunt something that would propagate it to Twitter. I'm ignorant, perhaps. Too busy to design software to use software so I just don't know.
I don't think, like rocjoe two comments above does, that loops will be causing DOS attack. Well thought out web services post just the changes since last update. Therefor periodic probes are processed relatively quickly, with no much load on the servers.

[DorianBenkoil]

And this is why we all leave a trail through the Internet of partial pieces of us ... can you even remember all the feeds, blogs, etc. you've created. On the aggregation note: I wish I could log into Disqus and didn't have to log onto CNET's network to comment here.