Fixing our social sharing tools

edited December 2012 in creations
When was the last time you wanted to share something online but decided not to? Maybe you found a great article breaking down some conflict in a foreign country, or a Particularly Funny Internet Cat Video, or even just a thoughtful piece about the economy. You wanted to say “I enjoyed this,” but you didn’t, because you were worried you might offend some friends, or lose a few followers.

There’s rarely a day that goes by where I see some Twitter user lamenting over the loss of or belittling the choice of their followers leaving them due to one too many political tweet. Or bickering among old friends on Facebook over a blog post about gun control. The problem is that our social tools are fundamentally broken, and it’s shaping the way we represent ourselves online.

Many of the social tools we use today are designed as binary waterfalls: Either you’re in or you’re out. If I want your tweets about web development, I also get your tweets about politics. If I want your status updates from our hometown about our high school friends, I’m also opting in to your opinions about the latest episode of Real Housewives of Wherever. The problem is that when using these tools, if you want to share something publicly, you must share it with everyone.

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Comments

  • Bookmarked, will read latter... but interesting start...

    I'm having a big love-hate relationship with social media at the mo!
  • nice...I agree with this part, "Mine might be my work personality, my photographer personality, my hometown-highschool personality, my video gamer personality. These interests are bigger than my small group of friends who also share these interests, but it’s really, really hard to express my various interests online without managing a bunch of distinct social networks."

    I have my Teacher persona, my design persona - which cross over seamlessly...then there is my film circle, my girlfriends, my family, etc.

    I have not hear of Medium...but I do like that PInterest you can follow specific boards of someone rather than ALL of their boards.
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