DISQUS

vanelsas · 1 year ago

Mark, good followup. I like the thought train you are entering here ;-)

To make things simple consider the following.

Situation #1
You decide to write a blog post about topic X. You do that because you have knowledge/an opinion/a question about X and you wish to share that with you readers
You send a picture of a party last night to a friend that was there too
You mail another friend with a question you wanted to ask him
You read a great post about topic Y and send it to your colleague becasue you know he is interested in it too

Situation #2
You get on-line read some mail, share a few bookmarks, upload 100 foto's to flickr, listen to some music, chat with a few people, make some travel plans, write a blog post, reply to some tweets, enter a few comments here and there on Friendfeed, joke around a little over some social media channel, see a few video's over at YouTube and probably do 20 more on-line things that day

Now let's assume you've managed to install all these social media channels of situation #2 into an aggregation service like Friendfeed or your own lifestream.

As a subscriber to your aggregated content I know I'll get a certain value out of situation #1. The actions performed by you as a sender are intentional. You specifically wanted me to see those things.
Now take situation to the extreme and assume you have been aggregating content like this for a year or so. You are sharing these incredible amounts of aggregated content and actions with anyone that is subscribed to you. It might all be very valuable to the receiver, or it might not. But because you do not have to make any decisions anymore on what you do and do not share, you will be sharing lots of things without intent. You probably really didn't mean everything to be shared with everyone. As a result, the receiver is forced to find the good stuff (the signal) through this constant, never ending (noisy) stream of data from Mark Dykeman.
That's the difference in my mind between intentional and unintentional sharing.I'm not so sure about the introvert/extrovert notion. It'll be a factor, but relatively small. Everyone on the web is much more extrovert then in real-life. It's much easier and less frightening to behave like that on-line.
Aggregation is making life easier for the sender, but it is only really valuable for the receiver if the sender uses intent ;-)

Mark Dykeman · 1 year ago

I agree with most of what you are saying, except the extrovert vs. introvert part. Yes, it can be easier to seem extroverted on the Web, especially when you don't have face to face contact with the people who see your stuff. However, introverts tend to be more private than extroverts. Therefore, I think they'd be less likely to distribute photos of themselves by lifestreaming, as an example.

hawksdomain · 1 year ago

Although lifestreaming appears to be a more extroverted activity, I feel that it is much easier for an introvert to be involved with lifestreaming than to have a blog. Yes, you have to what will be lifestreamed and sign up for all of these different services, but a true introvert will never provide too much of themselves to any one service, in turn keeping the lifestream to include only things that the individual feels comfortable with.

On the other hand, blogging is intentionally opening yourself up on a site that is all your own, there is not other noise of other people included into the mix. You have to consciously decide what you will be sharing with your audience, and a blog post generally has more involved than what song you like, a photo you took, or whatever tidbit you have shared on Twitter.

I have started several blogs over the past couple of years, but I have been unable to maintain most of them. As an introvert, I find it very difficult to go back and post and bare my soul on a regular basis.

I may not be all that interesting to follow, but I find it much easier to share things on FriendFeed than to share my soul with blogging. I do have one blog that I have been able to stay very active on and I really think that is because it is a photo blog and I am only writing short paragraphs to go with the photos, rather than sitting down to share my thoughts on a specific topic.

Although I disagree with your theory, I want to tell you that I very much enjoy you taking the time to look into the psychology of blogging and social media in regards to the introvert/extrovert.

Mark Dykeman · 1 year ago

Hawksdomain, I appreciate what you are saying. If we look at the example of your photo blog, however, you seem to do OK with that. Blogging doesn't have to involve personal details, despite what some people think. It can include critical analysis or objective commentary. In the end it is just a publishing platform, but one that uses intent. Having said that, you do have a good point about what you choose to put in any service.

It's good to hear from another introvert about this.

· 1 year ago

Hi Mark. I'd argue that blogging, micro-blogging and lifestreaming has nothing to do with intro or extravertion. The original defintion of these concepts, as developed by Myers and Briggs, pertains to the way people form their thinking and gain energy, from inside out (for introverts) or outside in (for extraverts). Thus, both types have the potential to enjoy et do well using these technologies.
The more important factor, as you point out, is the intent. It may be true that introvert need a sense of purpose to do something that extraverts could function without.
My two pence.
Patrice

Mark Dykeman · 1 year ago

Patrice, you are absolutely correct about the definitions of introversion and extroversion. Thanks for your comment.

Michael Rawdon · 1 year ago

I agree with Patrice that splitting these writing forms between introversion and extroversion is a false dichotomy. If anything, I think bloggers have a little more chutzpah in that they've founded a whole site around themselves, whereas people who use Twitter are subsuming themselves in a much larger community.

Admittedly, after using Twitter for several weeks I still think the value there is pretty small, compared to blogging, because the form is so restrictive that there's very little content. If that's an example of "lifestreaming", then I'd agree that it's low-cost, but you get what you pay for.

I read Sarah Perez' article and while it might be the way blogging will go, it seems at odds with the way blogging should go. Rather than trying to pack more and more non-content onto a single page, we need tools that will present the content in an elegant, readable form, and help people to find real content and not have to slog through all the "Going to lunch now" Twittering noise.

While this sort of web site might have helped Julia Allison (who?) achieve some level of fame, I think Perez mistakes a handful of success stories for a web-wide trend. How many non-success stories are there are every Julia Allison, and how many people are reading them?

Mark Dykeman · 1 year ago

Certainly getting lots of thoughtful feedback on this post, which I was aiming for. I'm starting to agree with you guys about the introversion vs. extroversion aspects of blogging and lifestreaming.

Thing about Twitter is that it's best used as a broadcasting mechanism. If you have a lot of people following you, it's a good way to broadcast links and other short bits of information. However, if that's all you do then you probably won't have much of an audience. I didn't think much of Twitter at once, but I'm starting to see it as more of a newswire thing.

No doubt lifestreaming will appeal to some people, so I do expect it to grow. Will it displace blogging? I doubt it, but I think it will pick up an audience and users who don't currently blog today because it will fit their own interests better.

webomatica · 1 year ago

I've always thought lifestreaming would be more appealing to the masses from an ease-of-use angle, but I think you've keyed in on something in regards to personality type. Lifestreaming on Twitter is well suited for a mobile phone (camera, short blurbs) and people who are actually out and about constantly (extroverts) will take advantage of that. Meanwhile, I consider myself an introvert and much prefer the selective blogging approach, which fits into this post.

Mark Dykeman · 1 year ago

Nice to see we have some common thoughts, Jason. I'm somewhat persuaded by the comments that the other commentators have made, but I tend to agree with you on the selective blogging bit.

JayCruz · 1 year ago

My comment is biased, because I'm an introvert, but I agree with this view. Lifestreaming services tend to have a more "chit-chat" nature to them, which introverts don't tend to enjoy much. I doesn't mean that introverts won't enjoy "lifestreaming", I like and use Twitter, but we wont thrive as much as having a blog.