Know What
I'm Sayin'??
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Am I the Only One Who Gets This?
I've got a feeling that this may turn into a rant, so bear with me.

I'm getting fed up with Web 2.0 sites wanting to own my content, rather than just publish it. I think that ANY site that offers what it calls a "Blog" should be able to publish an RSS feed of that blog AND subscribe to another RSS feed for it's content. Same thing with photos. Any site that carries photo albums should be able to subscribe to a Flickr or Picasa feed for those, and also offer a feed for you to subscribe to.

I'm being too ambiguous. How about some examples?

RattlerRoundup.com. This is a site hosted by Ning.com by and for the Glorious Rattler Nation of Florida A & M University. I have connected with people who I have not seen in over 10 years! I can have a Blog on Ning! I can post my photos! Great, right? No! Why? Because I already have a blog. I don't need another blog. Ning should ask if I already have a blog, and just jump on that feed. Instant RattlerRoundup blog. Same thing with photos. I have already gone through the trouble of posting my photos to Flickr. Do I want to download them from Flickr, and then upload them to Ning? That would be stupid. Flickr offers RSS feeds. Give the flexibility to tag my photos with something like "for:rattlerroundup", and then Ning should be able to subscribe to that tag, and hocus-pocus - my photos are on RRU.

Another example: Geni.com. Geni is a service that lets you create and maintain your family tree. It's really wonderful. I introduced Mrs. Mau to Geni back in 2006 after our Wedding, and now our tree has almost 1500 people. Geni lets me share photos with my family. Why should I have to download my photos from Flickr, or from RRU/Ning, and then again upload them to Geni? That's duplication of work. Duplication of work is bad. Duplication of work is a waste. Of. My. Time.

Time is a COMMODITY. Time is VALUABLE! I would LOVE to share my thoughts and my photos with you, but I don't have the TIME to manage 3 Blogs, and 4 Photo Albums.

Another site that lets you publish a Blog and Photos: Myspace. More duplication.

Between Tagging and Feeds, there is NO reason this should not be in place already.

Am I the ONLY one that gets this? Hello! Hello?!?! (taps the mic) Is this thing on?
Argh! (throws the mic down, and walks away.)
4 Comments:
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Both of the sites you mention are relatively new; it takes time to build a core product, and even longer to integrate that product with other web sites that publish various APIs.

Blogger Mau said...
Sure, it takes time to build a core product, but I'm promoting a conceptual change in thought processes, here (which is always hard).

If I'm Ning, I assume that my users already have photos somewhere online. So instead of doing the work to offer photo albums, I do the work to integrate with Flickr, and encourage my visitors to use Flickr. This way, Flickr is happy because they get more traffic, and I'm happy, because I'm offering more functionality.

Anonymous Anonymous said...
I'm with Mau on this one. Although I love the Roundup, It would be nice to have a feed from my blog, instead of blogging twice, which I have had to do already.

However, Ning states that it is a platforms the give you the opportunity to build upon it, given you technical capabilities. It should be someone in the FAMU community with the skills to do that.... I Hope

Anonymous Anonymous said...
He there is an RSS feature. I just fed my blog to my RRU page. The RSS box is below the box with your group names.