Cross-linking content across social media platforms
Despite the fact that I am now geekier than I have ever been (heck, I even created a whole website all on my own, “look Ma no hands” style), I tend to NOT follow social media fads. I wait until I have seen how others have explored the platform, how I see them working, I play around with them for a bit and then I decide if I stay or I go. It took me a solid 3 years to decide whether I wanted to join Facebook.
There are a few social media platforms that I dislike, particularly Foursquare. As I said at a recent Social Media 101 Roundtable where I spoke, I can’t see Foursquare building community. You could say “hey, but I have my friends on Foursquare already and when I tell them where I am, they may want to check the place out or share it with their friends as well”. Um, no, actually that’s not totally true, particularly if you already have a community built (likely, by being on Facebook or Twitter, or simply by having met them in real life) and Foursquare imports your contacts. Foursquare, I repeat, is not a community-building tool. I have criticized it before.
I’m less likely to follow your Foursquare updates if I don’t know you even if you’re Foursquare friends with my own friends. But I may follow you if you are followed by my friends on Twitter or friend you if you’re Facebook friends with mine. I have used both Foursquare and Gowalla and I got bored faster than you can say “I’m here”. And I have all but looked at the many ways in which I can try to erase “Facebook Places” on my Facebook account (you can’t, but that’s another story about how Facebook manipulates what you do).
I have a few friends who are Foursquare happy (some of the check ins make me roll my eyes – albeit, just as much some of my Twitter updates make THEM roll their eyes). That wouldn’t be a problem if they didn’t have their check-ins cross-linked with their Twitter account. But sometimes, the frequency of those check-ins (particularly those that don’t offer ANY value, e.g. “I’m here” instead of saying, for example “here to try their allegedly fantastic pancakes”) just drives me insane. I finally found where I can remove all Foursquare checkins on TweetDeck (HootSuite, I’m waiting for you to have that option).
But there are two areas where I think cross-linking is actually good. The first is Flickr-to-Twitter (thanks to Rebecca, Gus and John for letting me know how to set up my Flickr to cross-link via e-mail). And the second one, that I was kind of reluctant to accept, is the Twitter-to-Facebook. Because you can hide it from your Facebook, if you’re friends with someone you follow on Twitter.
There is a place for cross-linking content across your social media platforms. I’m not 100% sure everything needs to be cross-linked, though. Sometimes it drives me crazy to see Facebook updates from friends I also follow on Twitter and those updates are actually Plancast-to-Facebook-to-Twitter. Just as I have tried to tone it down on Twitter (and also, really, I don’t have as much time to tweet anyways), I’d hope people tone it down on the excessive cross-linking.
And for the love of God, if you test “TweetBuddies” or any other of those applications that automatically tweet for you, please check off the box that says “post to Twitter”.
Related posts:
- Reconsider your Foursquare-to-Twitter behaviour in 2011
- On @Translink as a case study in public service delivery and interactivity in social media platforms
- On the importance of spatial analysis in social media
- DemoCamp Vancouver 7 (Social Platforms Edition)
- My recent Social Media Club Victoria talk: “Towards an Action-Focused Agenda for Social Change Using Social Media” (#smcvictoria) @smcvictoria
I never understood the idea of Foursquare. What’s the point letting ppl see where you are?
Good advice Raul! I should have ticked off the “post to Twitter” box when I tested out this application. Hope I didn’t tick anybody off with this tool.
My Twitter Fans: @vanbartending @yulst @jonbreisnes @hummingbird604 @davemacdonald @rebeccacoleman. Find yours @ http://mytwitterfans.com
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I’m with you, baby! If I follow someone on Facebook AND on Twitter, I don’t like reading exactly the same status update on both Facebook and Twitter. I think my audiences are different on both platforms, so I tend to post different things to different places. If I do have something that I cross-post to Facebook and Twitter, I try to mix it up a bit so that they don’t look exactly the same.
Oh, and I really hate how Facebooks “automatically post to Twitter” feature works. If you post a link, it doesn’t post the link to twitter. It posts a link back to your facebook page. What if the person isn’t on facebook? They can’t see your link…
I do not see any value for Foursquare in my life. I does not provide me with much information, like lets say Yelp, nor do I get any specials for checking in and being a advertising mule for the place I check into without any personal payout.
I admit that I do use foursquare for nefarious humor reasons.
The cross-posting of socmed messages is something that I think about on a regular basis. Currently, I *do* pass my tweets to FB because while one of my professional networks is in Twitter (largely business professionals, advocates, and journalists, with fewer academics) most of my academic colleagues remain in FB. FB, for those academics, is where information is shared. Thus, linking content-based social media between environments seems (in my mind, at least) to depend on the composition of the spaces: if each space holds entirely discrete audiences, with totally different motivations for being in those environments, then linking may not be the best idea. Where there are separate groups with common interests that remain siloed in different socmed spaces, then linking seem acceptable (or, at least more acceptable..)
[...] network. Even then, the dynamics are different. That’s why there are some situations where cross-linking content across platforms may be appropriate. There are other times where it may be less appropriate, but [...]