Sebbie on the Webbie

Archive for May, 2009

If you are a blogger, you would probably like people to read your blog posts. Maybe you have several blogs you would like people to read. You most likely have a Facebook account too, with people who are interested about what you’re up to on your friends list. Why not offer them your blog feed without having to teach them how to use a news reader?

And the How To:

If you have one blog

Facebook allows you to directly import one blog into your notes. Every time you update, a note is automatically created including your post in whole, notifying your friends. Your friends can then comment directly on Facebook or click a link to your blog (which you would probably prefer, but you shouldn’t get too demanding here.) Your friends are a lot more likely to comment than a random reader.

1 Go to Notes Import a blog -settings. (The link here should take you automatically there, but if not, you can find it on Notes-page on the side bar. Import settings.)

2. Find your blog feed and enter it into the entry box. (To find your feed, go to your blog, then look for the feed icon in the browser address bar or your side bar. If you’re on Wordpress it is formed as www.yoururl.com/feed/ on Blogger it is formed as http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/)

3. Confirm

If you have more than one blog you want to import, here’s one way to do it:

1. Start an account with FriendFeed for blog entries only.

2. Enter the blog feed urls on the Custom RSS/Atom (Check above how to find your blog feeds.) Select the option “Include entry description as a comment”

3. Take that feed and follow the instructions on how to import one blog to Facebook. Unfortunately, FriendFeed will only import the headline and a link to your blog, but at least that forces people to actually visit your blog and is more likely they comment directly on it.

There are other ways to import blogs through Facebook applications, but unfortunately most of them import them only onto your profile and the updates are not included on the update time line on the Facebook front page. Because notes are Facebook standard apps, the updates will show up on the time line. In addition, some of the importers I’ve tried only update the feed if you manually tell it to update. To me that’s way too much trouble! :p

It is of general knowledge that Twitter is hard to understand. Why is it so hyped, when there’s so little to do? On Twitter, there is two things you can do to make it valuable for you: Be interested or be interesting. If you can’t be neither, there’s nothing left for you on Twitter. You can’t go on polishing your profile endlessly, nobody looks at it more than once anyway. You can’t spend your time taking tests of what type of a flower you are or which movie you should see next. You can’t spend your time posting links to your friends who will comment and “like” them out of responsibility toward you. On Twitter, you have to get to the point and get it there fast or you’ll sink into the oblivion in no time. Frankly, even if you do get to the point fast, you still sink into oblivion quite fast, and that is bad for your ego. That’s why you have to be interested in what others are saying too, in order to “get” twitter. And you have to know what interests you, and what type of people interest you, or you will randomly follow people who really are not interesting to you. Would I be so bold as to suggest that Twitter is a tool for smart people with a healthy ego..? (Not counting celebs and companies into that though.)

What people with a fragile ego will do to attempt to fool themselves into believing that they are interesting, is to follow a lot of people hoping to get a follow-back, especially those that use auto-follow tools if they spot one, and seek ways to “get thousands of followers automatically.” I doubt very much that those functions have much to do with practicality, but a lot to do with ego stroking. (I’m sure they explain it to themselves that they are doing it for business.) They are for people who don’t think their tweets will get them far enough fast enough for their own liking.

It is also quite an ego-bashing idea to believe that people would actually be interested in what you are doing right now. It won’t take you long to realize that NOBODY gives a damn about what you had for breakfast (unless you are a celebrity) and you will decide that you “don’t get” Twitter. Some people might have decided before trying it out that they don’t get Twitter, because who in their right mind would be interested in the daily activities of millions of nobodies around the world?

Twitter needs to be redefined so that people actually know what to expect of it. To me it’s a tool to broadcast 5 types of messages: Headlines, questions, one-liners, aphorisms and celebrity updates. Everything else is pretty pointless to put on Twitter. I admit I may have missed a type or two, if you can think of something else that is useful on Twitter, please do mention them in the comments!