In today’s world of increasingly integrated social functionality, the ability to cross-post across social networks enables time savings and multiple community engagement. Yet, as we have seen overtime, while easier for the content producer, crossing the streams can actually alienate individual communities. A Foursquare check-in is not a Facebook update, which is not a Tweet, nor a Buzz or a bookmark.
There’s no greater example of mindless stream crossing that alienates users than FourSquare check-ins. These are especially egregious when the user simply checks in with no contextual additions (such as, “at baseball game with my son, his first game ever”). Twitter, Facebook and other associated communities are treated with such fantastic, mindblowing contributions as, “I’m at Safeway.”
Add dozens of such updates to your stream, and you find yourself wondering you are on Facebook or Foursquare. Each social network has unique qualities to it, which attract repeat users and diehard community members to their sites. When the users are force-fed another social network’s lexicon and update system, some people start disengaging from the content creator.
Giga-Om featured an excellent piece on crossing the streams between Buzz and Twitter recently. The crucial point is the failure of content creators to engage in conversations across their streams, effectively spamming their friends and followers.
Content creators need to weigh the pros and cons of crossing the streams. Based on feedback from the various communities that I participate in, I tend to decouple social networks, and then selectively cross the streams. Usually, it’s for a blog post, picture or a Tweet (that doesn’t include an @ or a hashtag).
It’s my assumption that these types of content contributions have value across my streams. I’m not always right on the mark, and I can tell that with analytics as well as with occasional feedback. Here’s what Kenley Neufeld and Dave Webb said about the matter on Buzz:
Others, simply moderate the amount of cross-posted content they are producing so as not to inundate all of their networks with a never ending stream of data. Still others just couple everything and let the chips fall where they will. Finally, some never couple their networks and keep them separate for a variety of reasons, including privacy.
To me, this is the delicate art of crossing the streams. Success requires one to delicately understand which updates matter to their communities, or possess incredibly loyal communities who will tolerate such continuous updates. Otherwise, disconnects occur.
What are your thoughts on connecting the streams?
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RT @geoffliving: A post dedicated to those Twitter & FB updates w/@Foursquare: “The Delicate Art of Crossing Streams” [link to post]
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Geoff, terrific observations. Let’s hope that future versions of apps allow users better control. Most users ard not as thoughtful as you to take the time to perform the tedious tasks you do so their message actually becomes relevant and deeper content to a particular audience.
Another Buzz came in late last night from Gunnar Engblom, https://mail.google.com/mail/?hl=en&shva=1#buzz/102752797248966244224:
I crosspost my blog manually to all platforms as I suppose anyone following me would be interested in my blog…but usually at different times of day…
There are to some extent different people on the different platforms, why crosslinking could be justified.
When posting links or just queries one have to remember the differences of the platforms.
For example.
1. Link with eye-catching or provacative title => Twitter
2. You want to get a thread going around some thought or idea…=> Facebook and Buzz – both platforms are great for commenting…but I tend post more of these on Facebook than on buzz, mainly because I have more followers there.
3. Blog post with lots of photos => Google Buzz . Shared through Google Reader to Buzz is just overwhelmingly so much better thant the other platforms, as you get large thumbnail samples of 5-6 photos.
4. Sharing a cool You Tube video you have found or made => Facebook embedding. Much superior to Buzz because of the possible of viral sharing. Sometime I embedd on my blog instead.
5. I also share stuff on platforms where a blog has not had as much exposure. For instance if a blog post has been shared by others on Twitter 200 times and 50 times on Facebook by others, but non on Buzz, I often share on Buzz instead where it may catch some attention just because no one else has shared it there.
My 2 cents…probably won’t make your blog post, but though i’d chip in away….
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RT @geoffliving: A post on Twitter and Facebook status updates w/@Foursquare: “The Delicate Art of Crossing Streams” [link to post]
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@alexmcneill! this is our fave topic! RT @geoffliving: “The Delicate Art of Crossing Streams” [link to post]
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These are good points. As a person with multiple accounts, I began checking in and sending to all social accounts back in November. Since I was the only one doing it in my network, and I travel a bit, my friends actually found it exciting. They lived vicariously through my exploits. However now that the user base has expanded, everyone checking in has clearly become annoying..especially when they are checking into their homes and offices daily. I guess they don’t get it. When I see a post, I am the Mayor of WalMart, I can’t help laughing.
However, it’s important to remember that many people really only have 1 account, Facebook, and so they will be sharing there. I personally have all the checkins sent to spam which I check at the end of the day. There’s definitely value in knowing where people are, it was especially useful at SXSW, but managing that communication is going to be very important. One thing we know it’s not going away.
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The Delicate Art of Crossing Streams [link to post] Via @geoffliving
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A balancing act indeed! I’m all for insuring that the networks are connected but separated. See @geoffliving’s post [link to post]
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A post dedicated to those Twitter and Facebook status updates w/@Foursquare: “The Delicate Art of Crossing Streams” [link to post]
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Good post & reference to others re: cross-posting from @geoffliving [link to post]
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More on Crossing Streams by @GeoffLiving [link to post] citing @mathewi’s post /via @avinio
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Good review of cross-posting, both with your insights and with the links you’ve compiled here Geoff. (And thank you for including a link to one of my posts!)
People using multiple platforms of social media need to learn (or re-learn) some of the basics of public relations. They need to think about their message, their audience and the best way to reach that audience with their message. Is that Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or Buzz? Or is it a combination of some or all of them?
No matter what you do, there are bound to be some people in some social media streams that don’t find your post relevant. But if you can keep that sentiment to a minimum, everyone will forgive those times when it happens.
Of course, if a follower finds many of your posts to be irrelevant, then they always have the option of not following you anymore. After all, social media is a voluntary activity, both for those posting and for those reading the posts.
Spot-on as far as I’m concerned. I decoupled various bits myself a while back, recognising that facebook participants were very different to those on twitter.
Starting with the audience should be something people do more often. I feel that one of the reasons why people don’t is it’s too difficult to understand the nuances of the different crowds. In my eyes, that is where the fun is, understanding what is different in people.
@mikeashworth
It’s funny you mention that, Mike, as you know we’re both on Buzz. Figuring out what Buzz readers want has been an interesting challenge. I think crowdsourcing added insights was good example as the insights were much more robust than anything I could have received on Facebook or Twitter. We need to keep experimenting and not go with wholesale solutions.
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RT @geoffliving: To those mixing Twitter and FB status updates w/@Foursquare: “The Delicate Art of Crossing Streams” [link to post]
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Great article, Geoff. Important topic.
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RT @cheeky_geeky: Great post on the delicate art of crossing different social media streams by @geoffliving – [link to post]
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RT @cheeky_geeky: the delicate art of crossing different social media streams by @geoffliving – [link to post] // my 2c: die 4sq, die
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Great post on the delicate art of crossing different social media streams by @geoffliving – [link to post]
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interesting read: “The Delicate Art of Crossing Streams” by @geoffliving on connecting socnets streams [link to post]
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Geoff
I have been thinking about streams in the context of business use (E2.0 or whatever you want to call it). In that environment stream crossing may be an up and coming topic. This post has me wondering if we look at it from the content consumer side versus the content publisher side, what do we get. Is that simply just aggregation or something more. Another thought is around publishers adding semantic metadata to what they publish, allowing the consumer to better able filter what they see, thus managing the content stream.
Thanks for the post, it has me thinking.
Lee
…an by the way an image from Ghost Busters “Crossing the Streams” would have been great.