There are plenty of life streaming venues around.  FriendFeed and other lifestreaming services allow submission of your blogs RSS feed.  When I blog post the post gets pushed via RSS to FriendFeed, Twitter, Facebook, and Social Median to name a few.

It pays in page views to diversify.  I am also a member of Strands, Plaxo, and MyBlogLog.  Making content available via full text RSS and submitting to multiple services gets your content out into the wild.

From a personal standpoint I mainly see traffic being driven by FriendFeed.  Yesterday I posted what I thought was a great post titled “Leaders In Internet Social Networks” that subsequently bombed page view wise on FriendFeed.  It really is ok.  I do not blog for traffic but it nice.

Anyway today out of nowhere I was on the front page of Social Median and as a result have had a very successful day (for me) page view wise.  There are no blogging formulas but it pays to diversify as a new blogger.

Be an active participant in Social Media and submit your blog postings to every stream you actively participate in.  It pays to not put all your eggs in one basket even if it is a great basket like FriendFeed.

I read an article this morning titled “The Evolution Of WordPress.”  WordPress is the fabulous CMS software that powers this blog.  Hack wordpress a great blog that I read was commenting on the changes and improvements the WordPress software has seen.

In the same way the advances in Social media are dramatic.  Systems, methods, and technologies that many rely on were not around or were in infant stages just 5 years ago. 5 years in technology terms is a enormous amount of time but in the real world 5 years is a blink of an eye.  The web as we know it has changed dramatically in the last 5 years.  Its modern inception is only a mere 15 years or so old.

Web applications have given this ‘have it now crowd’ nearly instant gratification.  I have commented before that I am amazed at the feature development of some of the current Web apps.  Just bursting into prominence in the last 6 months or so FriendFeed and Toluu continually wow me with enhancements.

Social Media Addiction

Do you remember life before a cell phone?  Perhaps the cell phone era is difficult to remember we have come to rely on them so heavily. Now when I leave my cell phone at home despite $4 a gallon gas prices I turn the car around and go back for the phone.

I think many of us have the same thoughts about social media.  We have become so attached to Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, and any other social media application that application failure is devastating.

The twitter addicts have been hunting all over for a place to get their fix.  They have stirred the blogosphere into a buzz over start-ups like Plurk and identi.ca.

The twitter addicts seem to have become attached to Twitter in the same way they are attached to power, water, and other necessities of life.  They seem to be the most rabid.  But I venture to say that Gmail, FriendFeed, or Google Reader went down in the way twitter has I would be equally as frantic.  Social media addiction is prominent.

Declare Your Independence

I challenge you to declare your independence from Social media at least for some period of time.  Declaring your independence will assist you in breaking your cycle of addiction.  This should assist in the event that your favorite application goes down or becomes unreliable.  So take a break from social media.

Perhaps we should stop for a minute and smell the fresh air.  It is summertime. We should take a break and get outdoors.  We could take our families on vacation.  I recently saw a user friendfeeding on vacation from the beach.  This flickr image appeared in the friendfeed stream posted from the beach.  Could the addiction be anymore evident?  No friendfeeding or twittering during family time.   Take a break so you can appreciate and enjoy social media later.

But for the last few weeks the focus is all about how to fix Twitter. Twitter is really only known to the early adopters and is very simple in concept. The concept for the application is not difficult. Why don’t the users jump ship?

This is a tremendous opportunity for others in this space. Pownce and FriendFeed are positioned to take advantage.

Pownce should definitely well you know Pownce! The time is now. Pownce should step in the ring with press release after press release and knock Twitter around. They should be wowing with features and make people wonder why they ever stuck with Twitter in the first place.

In the last couple of days many things have been written about the new startup Plurk that is just another Twitter clone. Pownce shares files, it has a good established API, and is an established application with an existing user base. The time for Pownce is now.

What would it really take for the users to bolt? Would all it take is for Scoble and several other A list bloggers to band together and choose a replacement.

Let me reiterate that Twitter is very simple. I could see potential in FriendFeed implementing direct messaging and crushing Twitter. That does not appear to be FriendFeed’s goal.

Well someone let me know please why has Pownce not Pownced!