Posts
I'm writing this post from Blog It, inside of Facebook. Blog It is a tool from Six Apart that lets you post to multiple blogs or update multiple statuses from one place. For example, I just updated both my Twitter and Facebook statuses from here.
Summary: Love Blog It, but I wonder why it needs to be a Facebook app...
Blog It the idea is awesome. I'm simultaneously posting this on my Wordpress blog at www.ryankuder.com and on Vox (which I rarely, if ever use). Being able to update multiple statuses is great too. I'm constantly updating Twitter, but I update Facebook status much less often. And many of my Twitter updates just don't make good Facebook updates. Blog It let's me choose what goes where when. When I hit "Post" in just a minute, it should update both blogs, put an event in my Facebook mini-feed, and post on Twitter about the new post (not sure where it will link to--we'll find out soon!). Blog It gives me great control, integrates with everything I need it to, and does everything I'd want a multi-posting tool to do.
My question is this: Do I want to go to Facebook to do this? I gave some feedback to the Six Apart team that I'd love a desktop widget for status, because it's immediate and it would be great to post from IM or a client. But when I think to myself that I'd like to write a blog post, do I think of going to Facebook to do it? Not really. I go to Facebook to find out what my friends are up to--which is tangentially related to blogging and status updates, but not the creation of them. Same principal for rating restaurants...I think of going to Yelp, not Facebook. Same principal for most other things I do online. I get that FB platform lets all these apps and their full functionality exist in FB, but is that where people want to go to use them?
I'm working on a project right now where we've been debating this exact point. Should we build a fully functional, full page app in Facebook? If we do, it means that we're expecting people to go to Facebook and then navigate to our app when they want to use it. Or should we build a destination site that uses a Facebook app to update activity streams, exposes limited functionality, and links to the destination site for the full experience?
I'm leaning towards the later right now. That's not to say that things will change and Facebook becomes the de facto internet operating system, but I don't think we're there yet. Facebook is still primarily a social application with the main function of facilitating interaction amongst friends. Writing this post required no interaction with any of my friends, so why Facebook? I'd take a stand alone site, bookmarked for easy access with all of the same functionality. Am I missing a core feature of Blog It that makes it NEED to be in Facebook? Maybe the guys who own www.blogit.com just didn't want to sell their domain.
Do you think of Facebook as a destination for things other than interacting with your friends? What makes something a good FB app v. a stand alone destination site? Would you think of going to Facebook as the place where you write your blog posts?
P.S. This is the first time I've posted from Blog It. Keep your fingers crossed that this all shows up everywhere the way I'm hoping it does.
I've been keeping my primary blog over at my neighborhood social network, WillowGlen2.0. Problem with that is that it only allows comments from people who are members of WillowGlen2.0. Which is OK for posts about Willow Glen, but not so much for some of the other things I want to blog about. I haven't used Vox before, but a friend of mine works over there now so I figured I'd give it a shot. So, if you're here for the first time, feel free to comment! You don't even have to be a member (as far as I know).
