Slaying the Hydra of Social Networks
This post is basically about slaying the cancerous hydra mayhem of social networks, because, quite frankly, by the time I signed on to what might have been the 10th social network, which happened to be facebook, I think I was quite over all the manual crossposting and the chaos that came with it. (I know facebook takes RSS feeds but there are the others…the many many others)
I decided that enough was enough and it was time to get some social networks amputation/streamlining happening. Even if it meant involving pretty, shiny knifey things….
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Alert***:Long and geeky post, by some standards, but consider this a public service post if you are either
1) using wordpress
2) looking to unite all your blog posts and status updates across all your social networks
3) you. like me, wishes very bad things for the next human that comes up with the next facebook/myspace/friendster clone.
Since all my base is on WordPress, the post leans toward being WordPress-centric
Else for those who are simply falling asleep….something on the interweb to distract you with while we do some light geek speak.
**** OH MY GAWD!!! LOOK!!! ZOMBIE SNAILS!!!****
For the rest of us – A History Lesson from a musician’s perspective
Once upon a time, as a floundering musician/ content creator living on the primordial interweb, there were just the websites. You didn’t have to update them, if you needed to add material you needed html and then most of the interaction came from emails, or letters.
It was rather lonely. So we evolved. Yaaaay Darwin.
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Then came blogs, which was a godsend, comment features are fun and remain so. Then the social platforms which was still good, still ok, just a blog and (generally) myspace. Oh yes, we can handle that…until social networks met heaps of money, fell in love and decided it was a good idea to breed.
Now they breed faster than cancerous hydra heads of DOOOOMMMM and your royal madness just about loses it trying to sync her blog posts. So slaying the Hydra that is Social Networks has become the first and important order of business.
because
1) time saved from copying and pasting blogs all over the interwebs can be used for other forms of manic entertainment. Like look OMG Mutant Birds!!!
2) Shaving boring, pointless crossposting time is more important than shaving personal ape hair
The Problem:
So here’s my deal, I’m on facebook, myspace, livejournal, twitter, imeem, bebo, friendster, last.fm and god knows what else…I have lost track.
Of course: I’m hearing some news that EVERYONE is on facebook and I should just close off everything else and live on facebook, but we know it isn’t true…and it’s only a matter of time before something comes up to take over scary spam spewing facebookand divides everyone yet again….*froth*
Then if you think it’s going to get better? How about when you can build your very own social networks? (I’ve actually known about this for awhile but am choosing to STILL ignore it)
The Plan of attack
So, in old school seven samurai style, one must have a plan/goal before a battle.
Goal: I want to only deal with WordPress (for blogs) and Twitter (status updates) but somehow sync these to everywhere else I’m on. No manual crossposting anywhere else.
Period.
Breaking this down,
1) able to send status updates to all social networks at once. Not once at Twitter and another at Facebook etc…
2) Everytime I do a new blogpost, the link to my new post is posted along with post title to twitter and every other status updatey thing on all my social networks
3) sync blog posts to livejournal – because a I’m noticing a majority of you are still there and I rather you didn’t have to click around too much
4) Allow comments posting with social networks login (esp twitter/ facebook)
These below, were the solutions that worked for spidey, I thought I’d put them here so, with any luck, it saves u time being a test monkey for each one.
1) able to send status updates to all social networks at once. Not once at Twitter and another at Facebook and 20 other soc nets.
–>> Ping.fm
Their site explains it all. Basically, it promises to sync your blogs, status updates, microblogs all through one site. You can decide whether to only sync your blogs or your status updates/microblogs (same thing to me)
But here’s what I found
For Microblogs/ Status updates/ twit updates etc – not too bad.I can add links etc, nothing breaks, everything works. What’s better is that it also adds status updates to my aol, skype and gtalk accounts. You beauty.
Blog crossposting – Not for me. From a wordpress perspective. Everything breaks. Ping reads html differently from wordpress who has it’s own html grammar etc, cross posts look broken and mutated. Apparently there are fixes coming but posting only from ping is not going to work for me.- Not to fret…there’s something else for it. (see below)
Status updates that syncs to everything else through Twitter
I really wasn’t going to want to log into ping.fm everytime I sent a short status update, also, I prefer sending out my twitter/ status updates through tweetdeck (desktop app) . I wanted to see if there was a way I could get ping to get status feeds off one convenient source – aka twitter.
Voila! Enter Notify.me
Read this
http://wiki.notify.me/How_do_I%3F/setup_ping.fm_as_a_destination
Basically the above are instructions of how to set up any website as source (in this case my twitter) , I am now able simply update my twitter and it broadcasts my tweets to all my other social networks.
It’s TEH AWESOME.
Note: The next point brings us into wordpress plugin territory. Most wordpress plugins made in the last year need PHP5 to work. So if your server still lives in primordial PHP4 you need to upgrade. I was told, in most cases, this is a fairly painless process that takes only 48 hours. Simply
1) backup your website
2) call webhost with instructions to upgrade to php5
(you might be able to request that they somehow leave your php4 site on their backup server in case something breaks in the transfer….in any case…backup backup backup)
In case , like me, your webhosting service is run by technologically challenged babboon’s arses…be prepared….they took 2.5 weeks..Fortunately my screams for help through twitterverse got me 2 masters of the geekfu, Bruce and Chris who consequently took time out from their own projects in coolshite, saved my site and saved the day.
— on a note, if you don’t know what Coolshite on the tube is, you should. They are a cool pop culture podcast from Tasmania, Australia who consume and review all forms of media, even the bad ones, so you don’t have to.
So yes….where was I?
2) Everytime I do a new blogpost on my wordpress, I want the link to my new post to be posted along with post title to twitter and every other status updatey thing on all my social networks.
*** Before you proceed a few things:
1) I’m running wordpress 2.8.4 latest version, so plugins work for this version. If you’re running an earlier version of wp, then these might or might not work. Good luck.
2) I’m assuming you know how to install your own wordpress plugins. It’s quite easy if you are already pretty at home with uploading files on ftp clients etc.
3) Again, your server needs to be on php5, or face the wrath of internet brain farts. ***
So soldiering on, I tried a few. So far, my favourite plugin that doesn’t break everything is Shorten2ping.
Shorten2ping gives you the option of sending updates of “New blog post+link+title” to twitter or direct to ping.
In my case, I’ve set it to update my twitter account with “New blog post {link} {title of blog post}” . Twitter then sends that update to all my other networks. (using Notify.me ) Of course, there’s an option there to let u beam directly to ping.fm as well. However you want to set it up.
*** Note; if you are beaming information from Twitter using notify.me, it’s best to NOT include Twitter (which will be your source) in your ping.fm broadcast list (destination)….
or there will be eternal feedback loops where twitter updates ping.fm which then updates twitter which then updates ping.fm which then updates twitter which then updates ping.fm which then updates twitter which then updates ping.fm which then updates twitter which then updates ping.fm which then updates twitter which then updates ping.fm which then updates twitter which then updates ping.fm which then updates twitter
You get the point. Obviously, your royal madness has done something just like this before with loudtwitter and it’s the best way to generate ALOT of content and piss off everyone real quick. So there, feed your feeds carefully…they loop.
3) sync blog posts to livejournal – because a bout of you are still there and I rather you didn’t have to click around too much
I have to thank hacked2death sharing this. Tried a few plugins which promised the world, journalpress works as advertised for me.
Install as per plugin instructions, backup backup backup, then, add livejournal as a mirror. Test posts worked fairly well as those on livejournal can see. Sometimes there are brain farts, but I think they largely work.
Note: I tried mirroring this to myspace blog, no luck. So for those who have figured out how to beam blogs to myspace, lemme know, I’ll place it here for everyone. Have tried some other cross-posting plugins that work for awhile then myspace blog breaks it again.
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Conclusions about myspace:
1) Multi-arsed Babboon-like codemonkeys live in myspace and break things.
2) Myspace is a psycho web nun that wants to shut everyone out on the interweb.
3) You should probably try to get out while you can.
4) Allow people to post comments using their social networks sign in.
I figured that the last thing we need is one more username and password when reading/ commenting on my blog, so now you can add comments on the site using one of your many social networking accounts. This way I think we’re all happy.
Intense Debate is a handy dandy plugin in that regard. I’ve seen how well it works on other sites, I guess in the weeks that come, we’ll know how good this actually is. At the moment I like that it lets you sign in with your twitter/facebook/ open ID. Guess the jury is still out on how good this actually is, but I guess time will tell and I’ll keep coming back to update this post and maybe put it on the sidebar so we can all refer to it.
So yeah, if there are better ways around it lemme know. The idea is to make comment posts as easy as possible.
Wish list – this is for you developers, or people who have found the dream plugins I can’t find.
There are a few more items that remain on the wish list. So if you’ve found anything that works add to the comments and I’ll add this to the list.
1) A place to collect all the comments back onto the blog, be they posted on livejournal or facebook etc, they get collected and placed back onto the main blog. I heard backtype is good for it. Have installed it, but it doesn’t look like it does anything. This is important because the minion hive mind need to unite if we are to plan zombie takeovers.
2) A way to reply to comments left from all over the web without signing into the site itself. Meaning I can reply either via my email client or some desktop application. aka I don’t have to log into myspace to reply to myspace comments, then log into facebook because I see comments coming in from facebook just to reply.
This has been a public service post by Your Royal Madness, who does not promise a total fix but hopes she saved you weeks of research and hair pulling and being a test monkey for plugins. Happy social network slaying!!