Eyes & Ears On Social Media

Community Migration: Natural Evolution?

Wednesday, June 18th, 2008

Daphne plurked today about leaving Plurk to concentrate on ping.sg as well as Twitter and because things were just getting too overwhelming for her to keep up with everything at once.

It got me thinking about whether this is a natural progression of sorts. People join an online community until the benefits of another (uptime for Plurk) far outweigh the previous benefits of another (Twitter), or the conversations on Plurk are more intense/genuine than those on the shoutbox on ping.sg. What do we do when that happens?

I know Pat Law has mentioned a very good point that people move on to better value propositions. That’s why we’re not on Friendster or ICQ anymore. If the community shifts to a new “tool”, should it matter? After all it’s people-centric rather than platform-centric isn’t it?

Of course, I’m not saying either ping.sg or Twitter are inferior, unworthy platforms. I think ping is still great for getting the latest buzz in the local blogosphere and log on at least thrice a day to check out the newest posts, Twitter runs in the background on Twhirl for stuff to pop up once in awhile. But when faced with a new, potentially better tool, what happens?

One reason also why the ping.sg shoutbox is less “vibrant” now is because many of the pingsters are on Plurk as well. This suggests that people see more value there, or are joining it because everyone is as well, or a combination of both, but that results in ping.sg being less lively. Natural evolution of online platforms? Innovate and keep your communities or die?

I pretty much understand where Daphne is coming from, so I ask the local community because I’m curious: If you’ve shifted to Plurk, do you feel like you should stick with your previous platforms just ‘cos? Or does the higher value proposition outweigh all? Very curious to know the various views behind this.

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Posted in Plurk, Singapore, Social Networks, community, social media, twitter | 6 Comments »

7 Things You Didn’t Know About My Social Media Journey

Thursday, May 1st, 2008

Jasmine from my social media class tagged me for a meme for “7 Useless Facts About Myself” and I thought this would be pretty cool to do, but I’d tweak it to fit the theme of the blog. So here we go:

  1. I had my first “blog” (well it was called a website then) in 1997 (when I was 13). Links and archives weren’t the norm back then, so basically each time I added in new info the page grew longer and longer and longer.
  2. Before blogging “seriously” at this blog, I’ve covered everything from comic books, music, movies, books, food, you name it.
  3. I used to be a guest writer for Fanboy planet (one article here) back in 2002
  4. The first friend I made online is also my closest. We met in a chat room.
  5. I was always very proud of my ICQ number having only 7 digits (early adopters rule!)
  6. Until I moved here, I blogged by manually tweaking html codes. ie manually inserting dates, links, pictures, etc by typing out the html codes.
  7. Despite being a very heavy web user from 1997, I’ve never made any money from it.

There you have it. I won’t tag anyone, but feel free to replicate this on your blog and share something fun about you and your passion!

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Posted in Blogs, Fun | 3 Comments »