Putting customers in thier place

I've been a user of the Vox.com blogging platform for about 4 weeks now, which hasn't been enough time for me to fall in love. Still, it came as a surprise when I received an email notice that Vox is shutting down by the end of the month.

But, it was one of the few time that I was personally notified of a significant change like this before reading about it in the public media. It is common for a company to issue a press release and send  the customer notifications afterwards.

I think Six Apart, the originators of Vox, has its priorities straight.  Thanks, guys.  Vox was a nice platform.

Two social media types

My brief and unscientific survey of all things pertaining to functioning social media sites excluded subscription AOL, music sites, photo sites, and video sites. Otherwise, they are all listed here on my Syndication Feed Lab page.

It's just a list. Don't bother making sense of it all. It is an incomplete list.

My first focus of interest was how these sites inter-operate and connect though feeds, APIs, and widgets, in actual practice. I'm almost positive I've learned something over the last few weeks, but it is a busy marketplace and things keep shifting as I watch. You'd think these folks would take a vacation now and then.

This more technical interest of mine was in service of the Internet Marketing gods, and I discovered two types of social media sites.

1. Social media sites that are inhabited, and
2. Social media sites that are uninhabited.

It is a fairly obvious distinction once one browses for groups, friends, followers, fans, or co-conspirators. The opportunity to make new friends is there, or it is not. Most of these sites provide the opportunity to invite my existing friends to the site, and even strongly encourage it. The philosophy seems to be, "If I can't spam my friends, who can I spam?"

But, what's the point of that? I already know my friends and have established reliable means of communicating with them, and I'm not talking about Facebook. Not that I would ever spam my friends beyond their level of tolerance anyway.

Syndication + social media = opportunity. It is the opportunity to smooze, make new friends, and distribute content to a wider audience. The smoozing and making friends part is critical to the success of the operation.

On the other hand IROTWS (I Read On The Web Somewhere) an offer to "Build a network of trusted friends for you!"

How the heck does that work? "Trusted friends by proxy" does not seem to compute.

Google's stealth social media strategy

Google is assembling the parts of an integrated social media system that will ultimately dwarf any other (read Facebook), through sheer grinding persistence backed by a bazillion dollars. As far as I've noticed, they are doing it very quietly.

My public Google profile is my main piece of evidence: http://bit.ly/foxbuz

I've had a Google profile for years, and for years it was a great big nothing. Previously, a Google profile consisted of a photo and a name, and not a thing more than that. It was even more lame than my Yahoo! profile page.

These days, I've recently noticed, my Google profile page has grown legs. Not only can I display biographical information on my profile page, and LINKS!, I've also answered the question: "What the hell is Google Buzz good for?" My Google Buzz entries are now also a part of my Google profile, as you can see if you look. Google Buzz is still part of and controlled through the Google Gmail web interface, which is for personal contacts only. My Google Buzz is now echoed publicly on my profile page.

Social media: RSS feed to Koornk.com

Koornk.com displayed the Microenterprise blog RSS feed through Ping.fm without any fuss, as shown in the screenshot of Tom Fox on Koornk. Of the four active links showing, two of them actually work and connect to the appropriate Mircoenterprise blog page. The other two active links go elsewhere, as of now.

The link problem is not with Koornk.com, it is with Ping.com.

The first link shown below, as shortened by Ping.com is: http://ping.fm/rF8DL

Currently, that Ping-shortened link re-directs to:

http://www.blogger.com/feeds/2537874321591363343/posts/default/3400403793792964686?v=2

. . . . which is not correct.  It ought to re-direct to this URL:

http://micro-enterprise.blogspot.com/2010/08/rss-syndication-glitch-no-1.html

Tom Fox
Louisville, Kentucky
Tom Fox on Twitter

Social media: RSS feed to Tagged.com

Tagged.com is a social media site similar to, but much less popular than, Myspace.  Tagged.com appears to be, and has been described as, targeting a 'youth market.'  It is all about games, music, and flirting.

I connected to Tagged.com through Ping.com (see: Distribution channel map), without first checking to see if it was a good audience for an internet marketing blog.  I don't think it is, now that I take a close look at Tagged.com, and the focus of interest there,  However, Tagged.com does pick up and display the twitterized blog post.  The display on Tagged.com includes the Bit.ly shortened link to the original Microenterprise blog post, but it it not an active link.

Tagged.com also provides for a custom URL for my profile page, making it accessible to search engines - at least in theory.  All other of the pages are accessed through generic URLs and session cookies, which is bound to fuddle search bots. Tom Fox's Tagged.com profile page.

Tom Fox
Louisville, Kentucky
Tom Fox on Twitter

Blog post syndication distribution channels and map

The native Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed for this Blogger blog, microenterprise, is re-directed to Google Feedburner, and anyone can subscribe to the feed in a number of different ways including the free email distribution that Feedburner provides.  More than that, by using the many social media, automated ping services, and micro-blog platforms freely available today, I have recently constructed an entire distribution channel that pushes my posts down a networked distribution channel.

This is just a beginning that I cooked up yesterday afternoon, and there is a lot of room for expansion.  More importantly, there is the question about the effects, if any, that the distribution network has on traffic and rankings.

I created a visual representation of the RSS distribution channel here, on Scribed.com.

August 3, 2010 Update

1. I removed my test blog on Presently.com from my distribution channel. Presently.com is in the business of creating and selling enterprise in-house micro-blogging software.  The free hosted micro-blog that Presently.com offers is intended, it seems to me, as a live demo of the software, rather than as a working tool or community in the public internet environment.  I looks like fine software, but it wasn't designed or intended for my purpose.

2. Since I will be originating posts on Tumblr.com, to keep it alive, I decided those new posts will be distributed to Twitter and Facebook.  Why not?

3. Moved Facebook off of my Twitter feed and onto a Ping.fm feed for the Microenterprise blog posts.  The way it was before resulted in double posting of Tumblr posts on Facebook.  Not good.

The RSS distribution channel map has been revised, expanded, moved, and re-published, here.

Tom Fox
Louisville, Kentucky
Tom Fox on Twitter