Social Media Data Flow
Social Media — By Matthew Tommasi on 21 May 2009 10:06 pm
Where does your social media data flow?
If your answer is, “I wouldn’t have a clue” then you definately wouldn’t be alone.
For myself, it got to a point where I had joined up so many different Social Networking sites and had experimented with integrating various services and technologies.. as well as playing around with different widgets and plugins on my site.. that I didn’t really have a clue as to whether my data was going.
Probably going down the drain for that matter!
So I decided to map out my own social media data flow. That way I could get a better understanding of my current situation and overall reach into the social web.
I could now see the different places my data originated from and where it was flowing to.
Let me explain..
Firstly, my site The Social Media Guide can receive any YouTube video, checkout my guide on how to configure this here.
Users can subscribe to my posts via email, or RSS, which is syndicated out through FeedBurner.
My blog’s RSS feeds are also shared through Google Reader, which are pulled into FriendFeed.
My blog’s RSS feeds are also pushed to RSS2Twitter, which update Twitter every hour, and then flow onward to FriendFeed.
I also use Tweetlater to schedule my Tweets to Twitter.. I have created a guide on this here.
Basically anything that goes through Twitter flows onward to FriendFeed.
Any posts I make on my blog that are tagged “linkedin“, flow onward to LinkedIn.. checkout my guide on how to configure this here.
I am using the Disqus commenting system on my blog primarily because of Facebook Connect, and more recently Twitter Connect.
If visitors comment using their Disqus login, then their comments flow to Disqus and also FriendFeed. If visitors comment using their Facebook Connect login, then they can have their comments published on their Facebook lifestream. Likewise, with Twitter Connect.. any comments are Tweeted out to Twitter.
Google Friend Connect allows users to join my site, which is another channel my data flows to / from.
I am a big user of Tweetie which is an iPhone Twitter application.. see my configuration guide here.
I have configured it so that any Tweets I make are sent to Ping.fm which the broadcasts out to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, FriendFeed.. as well as my other social sites including Seesmic, Tumblr, Mashable, Kwippy, Friendster, Jaiku, WordPress.com, MySpace, Delicious, Plurk, Diigo, Bebo.. These other sites I don’t really use at the moment, but I think it is good to post there anyway. I’ll get around to them sooner or later. Often I will make posts from the Ping.fm interface.
Also, Digg flows into FriendFeed.
Facebook only gets updated directly or by Ping.fm / Tweetie.
I have aggregated my social network sites into FriendFeed which then funnels everything back out to Twitter. See my FriendFeed aggregation guide here.
I have also got a heap of other social sites that I have joined up but aren’t connected yet.. I’ll get around to them one day.
This map of my social media data flow is definately going to be an ongoing, evolving beast. I’m sure that some of my data flow hasn’t completely been captured here, but by and large I feel confident that most of it has.
I would also love to hear your feedback and suggestions on your own data flow.. and also possible ways to improve my inconnectivity in terms of efficiency (by using different social technologies), but at the same time broaden my social reach.
Tags: data, does, flow, media, social, where
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7 Comments
Hi Victor
Thanks for the comment.
I have to say my current social media data flow differs somewhat to this post.. I have been meaning to update it.
It does give a good snapshot of what it was like when I made this post.
Matt
Awesome! I just landed on another post of your because this is exactly what I'm trying to do. Thanks for sharing this.
Thanks mate.
Yes I did notice that doubling-up of messages. I have basically disabled RSS2Twitter and stopped FriendFeed from posting back to Twitter.. that seems to have cut down on the noise.
Thanks for the comments. It certainly is an evolving beast.
Recently Hoosuite and Tweetlater have allowed for Ping.fm integration which I will need to look into. The big thing when integrating all these services is to reduce messages doubling-up.
Posting from one service can often result in the same message being outputted several times and the end.
Bubbl.us http://bubbl.us/ provide a good free mind-mapping service where you can map out your own data flow.
The only drawback with them is that you can't do two-way arrows.
“Evolving Beast” indeed! I love your Social diagram: I worry if I mapped mine it would appear as a swirling, black-hole vortex about to suck the universe – and ME – into it!
Your article makes me think two things:
1. I need a really good in-depth article on _architecting_ a _smart_ social media flow.
2. How great it would be if some clever programmer could write a site that DRAWS A SOCIAL MAP somewhat like yours to help us get a grip on the 'Big Picture' view of our flow and footprint.
A rather interesting minor search engine: http://kartoo.com tries to do this for a search or URL. Also http://touchgraph.com and it's Google internet mapping shows some rather interesting things, (but its Java doesn't work well on Mac browsers…)
Well, this is serendipitous. I've been see-sawing back and forth between low automation and high automation. You article and, more importantly, your excellent graphic, brings much needed clarity to what actually happens with all of these status updates.
I do agree with Brandon, regarding the multiple updates to the same service. It is one of the reasons I keep going back and forth.
By the way, I got sidetracked on my mission to read your ping.fm guide. Thanks for mentioning it to me (I'm @Anklebuster on Twitter.)
Cheers,
Mitch
Hey Buddy,
Great article…like you, as you know, I am on a myriad of different social networks. I came across this article, http://tinyurl.com/cwdwfp, where this guys has basically done the same thing, but not as complex.
Ping.fm works for me best to allow me to update pretty much all the social networks I am very active on. However there still needs to be a divide between personal and business related messages so they still need to be done manually.
So this makes it a touch more difficult for me because I don't want certain updates hitting certain networks.
The other thing I have noticed is that by having all these feeds automated and feeding into the same thing you are going to have the same post going to each person multiple times. EG your tweet about this article came to my Twitter account 4 times via 4 different avenues; Twitter, RSS2Twitter, Friendfeed and Bit.ly. So you may want to see how you can direct things so that doesn't happen.
Also have you tapped into Elite Social Networks like A Small World, Qube and Decayenne?? Very interesting, but invite only, and gives you access to a different league of networks.
Anyway great job on the article.
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