People are increasingly dissatisfied with their social networks — the advertising, the lack of clear privacy protections, the intimations that anything you say can and will be used in a promotional manner at some point in the future — and some of them, this week, have even started to abandon them. Kim Kardashian is so upset she might even sign off of Instagram!
But social networking doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing, love it or leave it thing. In my VentureBeat column this week, I suggest a third way: Using a blog as the hub for your social universe, and sharing it out to social networks from there.
That shifts the center of gravity and puts you back in control of your own words. It makes it so that each social network is no longer the exclusive “owner” of your social life. And, in time, it might encourage us to create networked connections of our own, based on open-source standards instead of commercial platforms.
Like Mullenweg, those of us who have had blogs for a decade or more have been using them less and less, drawn to the ease of tweeting and the warm, friendly responsiveness of Facebook.
But now it’s possible to circle back to the blog without giving up the social networks. In fact, it’s increasingly easy to use a blog as the center of your social universe.
That’s because, while social networks like Facebook and Twitter are reluctant to share data out, they are eager to bring your data in. (This is why Twitter no longer lets you update your LinkedIn status from Twitter, but you can do the reverse and update your Twitter status from LinkedIn.)
So if they won’t share, fine: Make your own website the source, and share it out to various other networks as a way of staying in touch with your friends there.
Read the full story at http://venturebeat.com/2012/12/20/dylans-desk-social-networking/
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