I really dislike where we are headed in the area of cross-posting. Cross-posting is when you submit your content to one location online and then have that service automatically disseminate it to your other social media accounts. With most sites offering cross-posting ability, duplication is becoming a big issue. However, my real gripe with cross-posting is a philosophical one. I believe that cross-posting inhibits conversation, which is at the heart of what makes Social Media so valuable.
My beef with cross-posting is not with the theory behind it. I think the idea of submitting content once and saving you the work of posting elsewhere is extremely useful in certain cases. For example, if I take pictures and post them to Facebook I might also want to post them to Flickr for my non-Facebook friends. In the above example there is a specific reason to post to another website. However, what I have been observing is cross-posting for no apparent reason other than to “just get it out there”. Services like Ping.fm and posterous are making this practice easier than ever to do.
The “just get it out there” mentality where one submits their content online across all of their 50 social networks at once is a disturbing trend. I understand the necessity for some things to be disseminated to all of your social networks but that is the exception in my opinion. I truly believe that the value in social media is in the conversation. When you mass disseminate your content using cross-posting you lose out on engaging with people around your content. Services like DISQUS are helping but the reality is that the more places you submit your content, the more spread out and less valuable the conversation around it becomes.
I personally feel that when someone is cross-posting to dozens of accounts they are saying, “Hey look at my stuff!” On the other hand, I feel that people who post content to select sites online are inviting others in those communities to engage in dialogue with them. I understand that this might be different for businesses but if you are an individual using social media I feel that it is a fair characterization. I think too many people feel that the more places they are online the better. With new sites cropping up everday it’s easy to do. However, it’s about quality not quantity. If you view it the other way I think your missing out. For me, Social Media is a tool to connect with others and engage in conversation.
I would love to hear your thoughts on cross-posting, please offer a comment below.
Like many things on the web, I suspect that eventually we’ll settle on filtering at the receiver. It is a wider problem than one person broadcasting their content across multiple services: if hundreds of people I follow all reshare the same link, I don’t really want to see it hundreds of times. I want to see it once, with some sort of indication that it is a hot topic. This is especially important due to URL shortening: the software could figure out they are all the same link, though it might not be obvious to me.
I totally agree that the problem of fragmented conversation is a difficult one. That being said, I don’t think FriendFeed is the solution I’m looking for.
It’s one thing to distribute your content to every network on the web but in order for it to have value, you also need to engage the readers of that content wherever they are reading it from. You can’t always rely on users clicking through to the original URL to participate in the conversation.
If you make it easy for users to participate in the conversation from wherever they’re reading the content and then sync those various conversation together, it will create much stronger dialogue than if those conversations were being conducted separately.
Thoughts?
I’m of the view it’s horses for courses.
I have a number of motorsport social media clients who post news on their website and then we “RSS it” into the Fan page where the fan reaction can be gauged away from the formality of the corporate website (that has no comment facility). Fans can “like” certain news items more than others and so Facebook reaction to news can guide the types of stories we do.
I am also a fan of the Selective Status Twitter app that takes any tweet with #fb suffix and makes it your Fan Page status. This reduces “noise” and encourages the Tweeter Facebook to only use the #fb tag for more important tweets.
I am a little fed up with those who send all their Friend Feed items into Facebook. It works for your friends with 200+ Facebook friends, but for people with low number, you have no idea how much one person can dominate and spoil the FB experience. I learnt this the hard way, losing FB friends due to “too much noise, not enough signal” when FF fed all items into FB.
Using TwitterFeed to post RSS items into Twitter is also effective, but once again, I think you need to be wary of overuse. I set mine to check every 24 hours and post no more than 2 items at a time. So I can add 50 pics to Flickr, but only two go to twitter. If people click on those two, they may choose to look at the others as well. Delivering choice is important.
The “overly noisy” activity warning light I get in my mind has helped me to spread out content releases more evenly. Loading two YouTube videos at once might be convenient, but spreading them out will not only get more views, but also ensure your followers/fans/friends don’t feel like you are spamming or pumping content at them too fast.
So I feel the opposite. I think you can use cross promotion tools if you really think about it- in fact it makes you a better social media all rounder.
Tom Reynolds
thomasrdotorg
i fucking hate cross posting. especially those cunts that link their twitter to facebook and pollute my news feed with their crap.
Have you seen the video demonstration of Google Wave, specifically the blog feature? That should solve some of the problems with comments being spread too thinly across multiple networks.
Yeah you are right. I think cross-posting is only for lazy people. For pictures its useful but not for a conversation.
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And your comment was posted using friendfeed ;)
I’m more fan of one service that aggregates them all.. And yes, friendfeed does that nicely.
“I want to see it once, with some sort of indication that it is a hot topic”
copy that, that’s the point