More Examples of the Social Media “Shadow”

I think every time I see a Tweet or other notification from out in the World of Social Media that is an example of Social Media’s “Shadow” Side, I’ll put in a post. We’ll call it the on going “Shadow Side of Social Media” series, although in some sense, I hate to harp on the negative. Maybe harping on the negative notes, brings more negative notes. Of course to balance it out, I’ll remind myself that Social Media has many positives. If it weren’t for Twitter, for instance, I wouldn’t see Jason Falls‘ experiences, both the negative and the positive, nor his knowledge, which mixed with a network of knowledge is greater than the sum of its parts. So social media is, overall, a Positive force in the Communications Revolution. I stress that to balance things out. But I’ll bring up the negatives sometimes too, if only so that maybe some momentum can be built to correct them.

Hey @posterous Why would the text in my emails not post? All I’ve got is pictures all day. Each one of them had copy with it?! – @JasonFalls

Comment: This reminds me of the time I first tested Evernote. I decided to take a photo inside their application. Bad mistake. When you do something like that you can never recover the JPEG for yourself. Oh, it just so happened to be one of the best, cutest photos of my dog, ever. Now it stuck inside of Evernotes “Notes” folder, server, or whatever they call it. FOREVER. I can’t get it out.

Same thing happens in these iPhone Photo apps like Camera+ and Best Camera. I took this great action shot within Camera + and then played with the effects. Found one that was really cool, hit SAVE. Rut-Roh. After you hit save in those apps, again you’ve lost the original, which I would like to have in this case more than the one that I played with and found an effect for.

At least Jason Falls problem with Posterous, which I think is a great service by the way, nor my problems with Evernote or the photography apps are “intentional” in the sense of being evil, trying to lock you in. But they are lazy. And the shadow demonstrated here is a lack of attention to detail to some of the problems that may occur, and again the over riding theme I see again and again, in the so called Web 2.0 world, lack of appreciation or stewardship to the customer’s data.

Lesson for SmartPhone Users:

• ALWAYS TAKE PHOTOS IN THE PHONES NATIVE PHOTO APP FIRST, THEN OPEN THAT PHOTO IN YOUR FAVORITE APP FOR FURTHER USE. That way you’ll always have the original.

Lesson for Posterous Users:

Actually I really don’t know. I have a posterous. Its cool and everything, but still, the whole idea of your data going out there on someone else’s servers, I just don’t get sometimes. Why not send it straight to your blog instead? I mean I understand the value of Posterous and Tumblr is that it makes blogs more Social. I get that, and I like it, and I want to try to be more involved in those services going forward, but sometimes it makes me scratch my head why I am sending traffic to those services based on my own data and content. But at least with Jason’s problem above he hasn’t lost any data. Presumably its still on his phone and in his outbox of sent messages on his email server. In his case, its just frustrating to have to do things over again, edit posts that didn’t display correctly, and otherwise not get information out to an audience, in the way that you meant, at the time that you meant.

What are your ideas on Posterous and Tumblr and how one should use them within the context of having your own blog on a server where you control the data?

UPDATE:

Hey, I think I just learned something. In an effort to find that Evernote photograph, I opened my Evernote account for the first time in a year. Well I found the photography of my dog Aspen that I was talking about. It was tied into what they called a ‘note’ Couldn’t find a way to share it or get it out of their system. But I did notice that when I right clicked the photo, it did give me the option to ‘save image as’ or ‘open image in a new tab’ which did allow me to pull the JPG out. Still, the photo, taken on the iPhone 3GS is much grainier than it would have been, if it was simply shot on the iPhone’s camera app. So, a little better, at least than I originally thought.