A Test Run

So I started feeling like all the social connection media were proliferating and eating more and more and more of my time. NOT okay with me.

Plus I was having a hard time keeping straight what I had posted where and with what part of my person (writer? mother? educator? homeschooler? etc).

Then Buzz came along.  I put off connecting to it for a long time--I had facebook right? Then I decided to just try it. And, lo and behold, it's superior to facebook for what I want--to hear the buzz from my friends about what they're doing and thinking, etc. No stupid games. No searching through piles of who is friending whom at this moment. Just "headlines" from people I want to hear from.

Unfortunately, that just complicated things.  I needed to be able to concentrate everything in ONE spot, have it update all of those other things, and still be able to stay connected to people.

I think I finally figured it out. It's a little complex, so I hope no one spot is getting the same post a zillion times.

Here's what I've done:

I had to pick a "hub" where I could post everything and have it show up in each of those places. So I have my blog, twitter, facebook, buzz. As far as I could tell, either twitter or the blog could function as the hub, since facebook is kind of elitist and thinks you want only to post your stuff there and not share it instantly OUT, only IN, and since buzz is mostly connecting IN as well.  But you can publish your blog to either facebook or buzz easily (facebook only easily if you can tease it into showing you the right page). And you can publish twitter to either place easily. And you can publish your blog to twitter.

At first I was going to use my blog as the hub, and have it post to everyone else. But then I realized all my status updates would show up on buzz and facebook as links to the blog, and I don't always click on everyone's blog links because I don't always have time to read that much stuff, so I assume other people also don't click. Also it makes comment discussions difficult.

For a bit I had both blogger and twitter updating everything, but then I realized you'd be getting double- and triple- shots of my posts. No good.

So now, my current plan is to have Twitter run the show. Anything I post on twitter shows up on facebook and buzz, and anything I post on my blog gets relayed to twitter and then (theoretically) also to facebook and buzz.

I'll see if it works. Thus this post. It's a test.

If it doesn't, then back to the drawing board!