Snow
So, it’s been snowing. Here are some pictures 
Nothing I do…
Nothing I do is new, unique, or special. I like to make things. It’s no lie, I like to code things, make things, design things, I may not be very good at it, as some may attest (nor do I claim to be), but I like to do it nonetheless. I like to create, whether it is communities using various forum softwares, or innovative custom coded websites.
However innovative and custom these websites are, however, they’ve all been done before. This makes me wonder then, why do I bother? (Now, stay with me I know you’re probably thinking “Oh God, not this *again*, the sympathy vote”) If everything has already been done, such as for forums, most topics are already covered, most forum softwares already have everything – so much so that even creating plugins for that software to extend it has already been done, then what is the point of doing it again.
So far as website services are concerned, let’s take.. kwn.me as an example. The URL Shortening Service which my friends, Floris, Christopher and myself have built, from scratch, all custom coded, and we’re pretty damn proud of it. So when someone asks me “Why should I use this, and not bit.ly?“, it’s a pretty damn good question, and one which I always end up answering “Because I feel we can do it better“, or “We do things differently“. That thought (that it’s all been done before), coupled with that inevitable fact that simply, life gets in the way, I want to develop but more pressing things happen, such as a server goes down, or I simply lack the motivation, it really puts a roadblock in the way.
I often find myself bored, and wanting to create something, it brings me satisfaction. I enjoy learning, I enjoy the satisfaction of knowing that I made that – me, I can call it my own. However, when brainstorming up ideas, I always stumble upon this roadblock of “That’s all well and good, Mikey, but it’s been done before with <sitename.com>” and back I go to the drawing board, often getting frustrated and in the end not creating anything at all.
Anyway, it was just myself and my thoughts sat alone in the dark, and this came to me. (anyone else never know how to close a blog entry? I always have trouble, alas, a post for another day!)
Social Media – Downfall of the ‘social’ web?
Most people are on the social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Digg, Reddit, etc, and so these make up some of the ‘top’ social sites on the web today.
My question is, are these sites killing the ‘social web’? By this I mean, Forums, Blogs, etc. I say that Social Media such as Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc, are the downfall of these other sites because of the nature of the social networking services.
For instance, you tweet, you get replies, that’s the nature of twitter. However, if you tweet an interesting blog article, I have found that people reply to me, instead of actually commenting on the blog article. Sure, that’s traffic to those sites, which is awesome if all the site owner cares about is impressions for their Adsense, however if the site owner is genuinely looking for user interaction, feedback, then Twitter is robbing that from them, because instead of getting comments on their blog, they simply get @ replies on twitter.
The same is true for Facebook, Digg and Reddit, if you post a link, people simply comment on the social media site, instead of the site which is actually being linked, and because those interesting sites are getting traffic, but not any comments (or posts in the case of forums) real genuine people (not simply people who are interested in ad income alone) are starting less and less of them.
While the Social Media sites are immensely fun to browse, sort of a ‘link repository’ of all the interesting things in one place, I do think that they are also affecting the web in ways they never intended..
So, is Social Media the Downfall of the ‘social’ web?
Changing the URL Shortener to kwn.me on IP.Board
By Default, IP.Board uses bit.ly as the default URL Shortener, now, this means when you make a status longer than 140 characters and select to tweet it, IP.Board adds a shortened URL linking to the full status to the end of the tweet. It uses Bit.ly by default to do this.
The same is true for the inbuilt “Share links” function in IP.Board, which lets you send a
‘synopsis’ or title of the thread to a bunch of social networks, twitter and facebook included, by default this ALSO uses bit.ly.
Now, I may be biased, having been responsible for my own shortening service with a great group of friends who help me code it (and mostly do more than me, better than I ever could) every step of the way, and a great bunch of TweetDeck users who I also consider friends who use the service, we’re all extremely proud of our little site, so I wanted to, instead of using bit.ly on my IP.Board powered communities, to use my own service, kwn.me.
I figured that those of you who already use kwn.me with TweetDeck might also be interested in using it with your IP.Board installation, so here is how.
- Download the kwn.me IPB API files here (thanks to Alan for helping with this part originally)
- Unpack and Upload the “kwnme” folder into /admin/sources/classes/url/apis/
- Edit /admin/sources/classes/twitter/connect.php
- Find:
$data = $shorten->shorten( $url, 'bitly' );
(line 218) and replace with
$data = $shorten->shorten( $url, 'kwnme' );
- Edit /admin/sources/classes/facebook/connect.php
- Find:
$data = $shorten->shorten( $url, 'bitly' );
(line 439) and replace with
$data = $shorten->shorten( $url, 'kwnme' );
That’s it, it should work as normal, except using kwn.me as the default shortener, rather than bit.ly
Let me know in the comments if there are any problems