Weblogs + Twitter vs. MySpace/Facebook

The reason we call it the Web is that it's supposed to be a system of sites, threaded together and interconnected so we can notice when disparate parts have something notable going on. Sadly, some of applications bringing the most attention to the internet are completely missing the point, and instead of  stretching the web wider, actively try to concentrate it into their own little nests.

I have tried banging my head against MySpace, eventually deleting my account because it was annoying to have to go into their mess of a site to do anything with it. Facebook I hear is less obnoxious but maintains the same concept of going to their site to accomplish anything.

Both of those sites commit a cardinal sin: for being so called "social networks" they don't play well with others. Most modern blogging systems have a number of features that make cross site linking easy (Trackbacks, Technocrati tags, etc), use RSS or atom to allow aggregation by a client, and have well documented ways of posting via clients.

Twitter, a relatively new micro-blog system of sorts, even takes on the comment wall concept that seems to be a popular feature of myspace and extends it with IM/SMS gateways and RSS so that you need never touch their site to use it.

Livejournal has been the mid-point between insular MySpace and completely open systems like Blogger or Wordpress, offering RSS feeds for posts (but not comments), and atom/blogger api posting, but still has some features that pull you back to their site on occasion, and some features limited to paid accounts.

I will be trying to keep up better with my Blogger and Twitter, using the wonderful blog editor Ecto for Blogger and Twitterific for Twitter, and setting up my Livejournal with syndication of those to keep my friends there in the loop.