Recently, I received an email from someone in the marketing department of an institution that I’m affiliated with. Turns out, he was expressing concern about some of my web activities that didn’t carry appropriate institutional branding. He explained that I was “going all wild west” and doing things my own way instead of following policy.
Boy, did I get a kick out of that message.
Because I realized that what I like most about the various digital spaces where I play, is precisely that they are all “wild west.” As soon as such venues are codified and monetized, they lose their appeal for me. I need a place to play and get messy and make mistakes. I don’t much need a place to play by the rules. I already have plenty of those kinds of places in my life.
For example, lately I’ve lost interest in Twitter. While I still auto-tweet some blogposts and post photos of what I’m eating, I don’t generate much new content there nowadays. Instagram, which seemed a lot of fun for awhile, lost a lot of its appeal when it was bought by Facebook. Ditto for Gowalla and Brizzly (Gowalla I miss especially–I liked it early on when I was earning badges and toting items around wherever I traveled). I though maybe Pinterest would be my new digs, that is until Ann Romney joined. That kind of killed it for me. I dabbled a bit in Storify until I realized that it was cross-posting all of my stuff to Facebook. Ugh. Hate applications that go there.
So…I need a new online frontier. Anyone have any suggestions for me?
Note: photo above taken while I was on a western road trip two weeks ago–driving from one end of California to the other…
6 comments
That’s easy in my case: YouTube! I recently figured out how to help my kids make and upload videos, and they’re having a fantastic (and creative) time of it! It has really been eating up computer time that I normally devote to blogging.
Have a look at our channel and all the fun stuff we’ve done: http://www.youtube.com/user/chansonexmo
I still tweet and follow the people I follow. Because I never got caught up in the “I have more followers than god” thing, the number of tweets I read is manageable. I find Twitter a good source for the political information that I crave. I’m still using Instagram and 4Square on a daily basis. However, I’m watching for negative transformations on Instagram since FB is incredibly bloated and it seems unlikely that the FB corporate culture will leave Instagram alone. Also now that value has been created by iPhone users, Instagram is opening up to Android, the place good apps go to die, we may see the demise of the community that we created. Facebook is horrible but I’m stuck with it for familial reasons. Pinterest? Not sure. Of course, the news that Etch’s wife is there gives me pause.
I don’t feel an obligation to check in or check up. But I’m grateful to blogs and other social networking tools because I’ve made friends, including you, Jana.
I’ve been having a fantastic time on Quora. It’s less the structure of the site and more the people it’s attracted right now. I linked to my profile in the website area, so give ‘er a look. It’s a little wild west, but more on the polite side at the moment.
Brett, where do you hang out in Quora? Are there communities developing, or is it totally topic driven, which is my experience?
Quora is sporadically interesting. Just signed into tadaa for phot sharing: will return and report.
Oh, do let me know what you think, E! Looks like I need to try Quora… :)