The Blog As Social Network

Published on 12/28/2008 in Profound Thoughts and Toys. Comments

I’ve added a few new bells and whistles around the old blog this week.

You might notice the “REBLOG” link at the bottom of each post – that’s from Zemanta. Adding the plug-in to Wordpress adds a tremendous amount of relevant material in the ‘Post’ interface, stuff from all over the Web to add to my posts. You can see some of that in this post. Anything to add more information is fine by me.

I’ve also added Disqus to my comment set-up. This adds a great deal of functionality, like the ability to continue the discussions or add video comments via Seesmic.

Finally, I’ve added Google Friend Connect over there on the far right side bar. You can log-in and as Google adds more functionality to the system, I’m sure there will be some cool bells and whistles as well as some amazing new toys for us to play with.

All of this seems to move us from the Age of Blogging to the Age of Spokes in a Larger Social Network of Blogs. There’s also a great deal going on under the hood in the latest version of Wordpress that seems to be moving us in this direction. It’s funny but for five years now I’ve been hearing the ‘blogs are passe’ meme and every time, some new functionality comes along that blows that notion out of the water. If you accept the notion that blogs are really just content-management / easy-datebase-backed-web-site tools for the masses, this can only be seen as a positive development for those of us who are passionate about self-publishing and our ability as publishers to change the world.

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  • I've yet to see any value in Google Friend Connect but like how Disqus has integrated with Facebook now ... might want to turn that on as well.
  • Actually the Facebook feature is on - it seems to show up in Safari but not in Firefox. I'm going to get around to tracking that one down.. one of these days.
  • you know - I guess I missed that on my site as well as I'm always logged in. Saw it on my wife's system on which I tend to use Safari
  • that might be it, we don't see it because we are logged in...

    Another internet mystery solved.
  • when you first connect to Disqus it asks how you want to login and FB is one of the options
  • Definitely some nice additions! Glad to see you are using Disqus - the FB option makes the barriers to comment very low. I feel I am more likely to comment when I am logged in and do not have to do anything. I have had some success with Friend Connect but I have heard rumblings that this will prove important real estate for Google.
  • I'm sure Google is interested in more than just putting nice widgets up on my blog! I'm really liking Disqus btw... as Joe asked and I answered, I'm seeing more comments already.
  • FriendConnect = FriendSense.

    I expect this real estate is going to include ways to monetize, present offers, syndicate content and more.
  • Nice new social features David. I'm still trying to figure out the real utility of Google Friend Connect. And I'm wary of Facebook Connect (although I just made the connection with Marketing Begins at Home. It will be interesting to see how people's participation in your site evolves now that you have enabled these functions.
  • In answer to your question - I'm seeing a huge boost in comments since adding Disqus. I'm not sure if they are related, but I'll take the traffic anytime!
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  • Like Eric said, it's great having a tool like disqus, Google will be biting their teeth on this.It's simplicity on threading of comments is a joy. Blog is a great social netwoking tool and have made more friends that anything else.
  • great post thanks!
  • Is there no captcha system in disqus?
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  • Blogs are powerful social tools. It's a great to build an audience and a network.
  • graceglmcooke
    I had seen that, and it works great. I'm just always hesitant to edit
    plugins that I don't control, especially with the Wordpress Auto Updater.
    Inevitably It'd overwrite my changes & I wouldn't notice for a week or
    something like that. I did that recently with another plugin that I had to
    modifly slightly because it was conflicting with another. I just found myself writing the code for this into my single.php template &
    I thought "this is silly, what if I change hrsaccount templates?" so I wrote it as a
    plugin, and so I figured if it was useful to me, someone else might want to
    use it to :)
  • Blogs are good social networking tool, I get to share my stories and updates about what's going on my life. It's really nice.
  • I have been reading your blog last couple of weeks and enjoy every bit. Thanks.Online appointments
  • Interesting post. I have made a twitter post about this. Others no doubt will like it like I did.
  • Interesting post. I have made a twitter post about this. Hope others find it as interesting as I did.
  • adultsextoystar
    great post man.. fine .
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