Once upon a time, I used to route G+ public posts to my blog, Twitter, Facebook. The idea was "Post once - Cross-post everywhere" .
So I posted once on G+ and the system cross posted the article or a subset of it to all the other platforms. This originally used http://dlvr.it but then they stopped reading G+. I was never completely happy with the layout. And I needed to code for this in my own blog anyway, so I wrote a G+ post to Atom convertor. This gave me an Atom feed to push into http://dlvr.it as well as a source for my blog to auto-create posts. Then Facebook stopped allowing external apps to post on a personal timeline. This process always had to start with G+ because that didn't have a write API. It could only be a source for cross posting, not a sink. http://dlvr.it and IFTTT have become less and less useful as they monetise and keep reducing support for free users.
Meanwhile, new systems started to turn up with their own APIs like Mastodon, Diaspora, Hubzilla, etc. But even though they use standardised protocols, they're still too small to get any traction with things like http://dlvr.it and IFTTT.
And now G+ is closing down. So it can't even be a source any more. And there's no obvious way to get posts out of Facebook as they disabled Atom feeds out of Facebook long ago.
So what with the snowflake API problem, free services getting monetised and closed and walled gardens adding barbed wire to the top of the walls, this approach is reaching the end of the road. Maybe the idea of "Post once - Cross-post everywhere" has become impossible. It's certainly hard to work out where to start.
So I posted once on G+ and the system cross posted the article or a subset of it to all the other platforms. This originally used http://dlvr.it but then they stopped reading G+. I was never completely happy with the layout. And I needed to code for this in my own blog anyway, so I wrote a G+ post to Atom convertor. This gave me an Atom feed to push into http://dlvr.it as well as a source for my blog to auto-create posts. Then Facebook stopped allowing external apps to post on a personal timeline. This process always had to start with G+ because that didn't have a write API. It could only be a source for cross posting, not a sink. http://dlvr.it and IFTTT have become less and less useful as they monetise and keep reducing support for free users.
Meanwhile, new systems started to turn up with their own APIs like Mastodon, Diaspora, Hubzilla, etc. But even though they use standardised protocols, they're still too small to get any traction with things like http://dlvr.it and IFTTT.
And now G+ is closing down. So it can't even be a source any more. And there's no obvious way to get posts out of Facebook as they disabled Atom feeds out of Facebook long ago.
So what with the snowflake API problem, free services getting monetised and closed and walled gardens adding barbed wire to the top of the walls, this approach is reaching the end of the road. Maybe the idea of "Post once - Cross-post everywhere" has become impossible. It's certainly hard to work out where to start.
Fact is… the very idea of "Post once - Cross-post everywhere" is misguided though! Because it means posting the same content to people who specifically joined different services because they sought different things (and usually that's not the UI that's critical, but the sort of content and connections the UI supports best)! Basically, it demonstrates a lack of interest for the readers, and in particular for the reasons why they chose one platform over another.
ReplyDeleteTypcially, when moderating communities on g+, a reliable way to filter spam is… to exclude people who have (prior to joining the specific community you manage, or prior to the 'report' of spam) posted the same content many times, to many different (possibly related but nonethess different) communities.
Posters who don't care about their potential readers do not succeed in crafting content that would interest anyone… thus they tend to add noise, not signal, to communities, and lower the value of communities…
So, yes, it's inconvenient and costly for content creators to customize content for each platform… but it's still the right thing to do… and it's actually a good thing for the readers that "post once - cross-post everywhere" is gradually fading away. And it's probably a good thing for content creators too, because if you speak to 'everybody', you speak to 'nobody'! There's no connection there, therefore no loyalty either… It's better to actually narrow down who your audience is, and to offer a really valuable service to them, than to aim to cover it all (when you cannot anyway, and lower the appropriateness / relevance of your contributions by casting too wide a net).
Denis Wallez I would disagree.
ReplyDeletePersonally I don't care if someone reposts to one or a multitude of networks. The effort of reposting to my network of choosing actually shows the author is looking for engagement with me rather than considering me irrelevant because I'm on platform x.
What more counts to me, is whether or not the author is actually engaging with me on said platform; that is, whether or not they are actually responding to my comments.
Your example of multi-posting to Communities by spambots kinda falls flat imho, as that usually involves bots or users whose only criterium (if any at all) for choosing Communities to post in, is member count, rather than topic/type of audience.
Denis Wallez Well, let's look at this briefly.
ReplyDelete1) I'm talking about multiple platforms, not multiple places within one platform. I'll get different engagement on G+, Twitter, Facebook, Mastodon for the same content. So do I cut and paste manually, or just automate the sh*t out of it?
2) If you have your notifications set up well, then you can engage with each new audience on each platform. Posting in multiple places doesn't mean you can't engage.
3) This is a really common SEO/Marketing approach for MSM. Do a post on your main publishing point, eg guardian.com. Copy/abstract, point to it from your account on each platform. But, maybe that's why so much of Twitter is write-only.
4) Given that G+ is closing down, cross posting every post to your own blog was a good choice to make sure your content was archived as you go along.
5) This is an old debate. Here's something from 2012 about G+'s missing write API.
https://plus.google.com/+JulianBond23/posts/JxY42qpjghh
If I’m on many platforms and i see the same post, yes it is annoying and spam like. If I’m on only one, and thus get to see the post im interested in, its not. I’d rather be on 1 not 2, or 2 not 3 platforms, etc. If with g+ dying a community fragments then cross posting maintains contact with some reasonable share (potentially) of the original audience. So i can see how it can be seen to be of value and not necessarily misguided.
ReplyDeleteI join different groups - facebook or g+ or whatever, for different content. Not services. They may be /on/ different services but it is the /group/ that is important. But with g+ dying I’m looking to be looking to be joining different services for the same content, particularly if people i follow here go to 3-5 different services.
So it isn’t quite that simple. Either way has reasons and justifications - and will equally annoy others it seems.
On a side note, does friendsplus.me - Friends+Me - Share to ANYWHERE. Because sharing is caring. serve the purpose?
ReplyDeleteCarsten Raddatz I’ve been using Friends+Me for years to post once in G+ and share everywhere. It stopped working on Facebook a while ago, but I hadn’t looked into why. Maybe this is why.
ReplyDeleteSomebody suggested Twitter/Reddit as the main parent source.
ReplyDeleteThese are long form posts so Twitter isn't a good source. And there's no RSS/Atom out from Twitter. The "Snowflake API" problem is that every major platform uses it's own API for both outgoing and incoming. If Incoming is even possible. Reddit is now quite unusual in that there's rss/atom for everything.
Filip H.F. Slagter « that usually involves bots or users whose only criterium (if any at all) for choosing Communities to post in, is member count, rather than topic/type of audience. »
ReplyDeleteNo, this is not what I'm talking about, these are filtered out easily.
I'm talking about those who do post on an appropriate topic (e.g. meditation, in the "Buddhism and meditation" community), and nonetheless have posted the exact same content in 10 other (also related) communities. But as it happens, most people in smaller meditation-related communities than "Buddhism and Meditation" have actually chosen not to be in "Buddhism and Meditation" for whatever reason, maybe they like a particular take on the teachings or a particular group of people to interact with. There are subtle differences in content, in tone, in the conversations that arise here vs. there, etc., and all this is ignored by the multi-poster (who then usually gets sub-optimal engagement, not more engagement).
Julian Bond To your point 2, I never said that one is condemned not to engage on the various platforms… just that one has not paid attention to the difference between audiences.
And of course (point 3) it is a common marketing approach, but the failure of this approach is why people are less and less invested in social media: they just get too much noise on their feeds, not enough signal, for the time they used to spend there. What could be a winning strategy for the first few who used it can become self-defeating once too many copy it. How common this is, is exactly why FB has recently reduced the visibility of 'pages' on the feed of people (because it was driving people away from FB)!
Your point 4 is about back-up, more than cross-posting: back-up might support cross-posting for sure (I've used so myself: an address in gplus.wallez.name/… will automatically send you either to the koan.mu back-up or to the original g+ post if the said post has not been copied on koan.mu (e.g. because it was a share, not my own content)). This lets me see g+ disappear without fearing the loss of my content… and might allow to move the content somewhere else… but that's different from multi-posting, as I didn't post links to this g+ content on twitter, FB, and co.
And yes it's an old debate. Personalization / individualisation of feeds has long been identified as what increases engagement, though. And that's the priority of most social media algorithms, because that's what make people spend more time on a platform! So when you actively go against that, you're going actively against the knowledge used by billion-dollars businesses, whose business model relies on how much engagement there is on their platform.
Anyway, thanks for the debate.
Denis Wallez Creating original content, not noise is what it's all about, agreed? Know both your platforms and your audience. And give those search engines something to search for!
ReplyDelete