Posted on 16 June 2009

So, in follow up to my blog yesterday in which I was asking about which social media I should or should not be using, I’ve been checking things out that I’ve been aware of for some time, but never really looked at. So far, the best has been StumbleUpon which lets you fill in categories and then sends you to random web pages you think you might like, rate them, save them, and share them. This definitely adds something new to the web experience, and I can see using this for saving random sites, while maintaining Delicious for things I want to reference on a more regular basis.

After looking at MySpace and Flickr, I remember why I quickly abandoned them. MySpace seems to be very good at providing a site template for bands, and not much else beyond a bunch of people/corporations using three-year-old graphics to promote themselves by friending other people. I just don’t see going back to it.

Flickr, meanwhile, would be useful if I wanted to share a bunch of photos, but I don’t, and if I do have some I want to display, well– this blog works pretty well. I’m not completely writing it off, and definitely think there’s some interesting applications I might use at some point in the future for other entities, but don’t see using a personal account just yet. I also know that back when I did want to share photos (since I was living overseas) I went to the Black Stripe, which gives unlimited storage.

I have created accounts in Reddit, Digg, and Newsvine as well, so I can get a better idea of how they work. They seem to all have the same basic concept (submit and rate news and other things in order to create dynamic “front pages”), but have evolved into different communities, with Newsvine focused on “real” news,  Reddit on radnomness, and Digg somewhere in-between. I’d forgotten about flamewars until looking at Reddit posts like this one, and with a number of comments there about how these wars are making Reddit turn into Digg I’m not sure how long these things are going to last. Newsvine seems to be more of a personalized newpaper with the option of becoming a columnist, which is a neat concept that I hope works. I’m curious to see how these will all turn out.

Incidentally, I’m getting the hang of these aggregators, as well. Chi.mp is a good place to send someone if they want to get all your activities in a stream, whereas retaggr business card option is still great– as is the ability to interact with services like Skype (and hopefully more) right on the page, as seen below. I also think both of these might have uses beyond just aggregating a single account– I could see it being used to track groups of people, or various news feeds, or any combination of things, so long as they have an RSS feed.

You can find me on these services using my retaggr badge below or my chi.mp account. I’m still open to new ideas,  even MySpace if someone gives me a convincing argument. And if you’re a user of any of these options, tips are more than welcome.

AndrewKurjata.mp »

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