Two days ago, I stated “expanding my social network” as my goal for this website. It sounds simple enough, but what exactly does that mean?
Setting up your own domain allows you to join a more focused conversation with a vastly larger group of people than you could connect to in a typical social network. This is because “typical” social networks that exist in web applications (like Facebook) artificially cap your network at only the people who are registered users of the application.
Who are you talking to?
Consider this topic which discusses ways to increase your programming skills, and which I would like to find again later .
- I could bookmark the listing in my web browser, but given enough pages, people soon realize that browser bookmarking doesn’t help keep track of anything! It certainly does nothing to introduce the topic to my network.
- I could share the link on a traditional social network, but none of my college friends will discuss what they rightfully see as noise in their update feeds.
How else can I keep tabs on this without making too much “noise”?
The beauty of sharing a link using website content management software (CMS) is that it can create a connection between the two pages. Readers at either endpoint can follow these backlinks (called Trackbacks) to squeeze more information out of their browsing, or just answer any questions and chime in using the comments.
BAM! Just like that, I’m connected to a much larger potential (possibly professional?) network than Myspace, Facebook, LinkedIn, or any endless amount of Ning’s can provide, and with people that are interested, at that! In fact, new media is disrupting the ways in which information is distributed so much that even big-name media networks like CNN are utilizing the social aspects of “web 2.0″ to hand the microphone over to their viewers.