There has to be a simpler way.
So, my online life is starting to get complicated.
I try to keep the different platforms seperated by purpose, so as not to "spam" those who are in more than one of my friend groups.
I have
Facebook for staying in touch with friends, family and people in my church. I try to keep it social and avoid hardcore political posts or other controversial endeavors that I might do on
my blog.
Then I have a
Twitter account (@garycarpenter) for micro blogging and conversations with a larger community of people of different interests. I use it to follow trending topics in the news, solicit ideas and advice, and to participate in conversations with my favorite radio shows and bible teachers.
Then there is
the blog. I'm not a very active blogger, and until recently I never really had a clear vision for it. Some times I would post links to things I found interesting, maybe a quick snarky remark about some stupid proposal in Washington D.C. or Salem, and sometimes a longer peice about any number of topics.
Add to the mix that this last Christmas my wife got me a Blackberry. I always thought it would be kinda cool, but couldn't imagine ever needing one. Boy was I wrong. Now I can't imagine ever not having one. I lost it for a couple of hours a few days ago, and I was completely panicked! Now I know why they're called "crackberries."
My Blackberry is awesome for email, text, and Google Apps. I've got the Facebook app, Evernote app, and a couple of twitter clients, but they are all a little awkward to use for a lot of social media interaction.
I've been looking for a simple, one stop way to post to Facebook, Twitter, or the blog without having to visit three web sites, or three different applications on my computer or Blackberry. Then there's the question of how do I post the same info on all three platforms at once? There has to be a simpler way.
Yes, I know, I could add a
friendfeed account to the mix, but that would just make the signal to noise ratio worse. It would simplify posting options to multiple services, but it would also increase the in comig noise. Not what I'm looking for here.
Enter Posterous.
I've been reading
Steve Rubel's blog for a while now, and he recently announced that he was going to stop posting to his blog and start what he calls "
lifestreaming" via Posterous.
Posterous is a super simple, bare bones blogging platform, with a social network built in. What makes it beautiful is that it can be run very easily by email. You simply email your post to
post@posterous.com. Simple.
Even better, if you want to only post to Facebook, email to
facebook@posterous.com, same with twitter. In fact, they can be combined!
facebook+twitter@posterous.com posts to both services. You can use the following service names to email to: twitter, facebook, flickr, picasa, blog, blogger, tumblr, youtube, vimeo, friendfeed, delicious, laconica, identica, livejournal, plurk, shopify.
It is my hope that I can use this tool to actually be more active online, and also be able to generate more content, rather than just regurgatate other's info.
There is much more that can be done with Posterous, and as I implement it, I will share.
