This blog has fallen into massive neglect. A (very) small part of the blame lies with Facebook, where i focused more of my online presence for the last six months.
But a conversation with an old friend today has provoked me to try to stop using any of the closed tools on Facebook, i.e., the tools that are only accessible to people with facebook accounts who i am "facebook friends" with, when open tools are available elsewhere.
So i'm going to delete the photos in my facebook photo albums and other content that can be easily created/accessed outside of the facebook sinkhole and only use facebook as a way of communicating directly with my peeps.
And then use facebook applications to pull in content from elsewhere on the web, using the open APIs and RSS feeds. So i'll post:
- photos on Flickr
- links on Del.icio.us
- blog entries here
- issue or organization-based online networking on devoted website. i don't know if you've noticed how useless "groups" are on the facebook for anything involving collaboration. as my friend dréa said to me this morning, they seem to be used more as identity tags than anything else. so to replace, drupal-type sites and wikis are where i'll put my energy.
- MAYBE i'll use twitter to replace status updates--but i don't really like or use that feature of facebook anyway.
- the one function that i don't know of a good replacement for right now is "events". there are services out there like upcoming.org but i don't really like them. ideas?
If you're interested in this, i recommend these two posts on Wired: