Martin Ruiz // Calculus of Blogging and Social Media Platforms

Calculus of Blogging and Social Media Platforms

I’ve been experimenting with Posterous these past few days. I already use Tumblr, FriendFeed, Twitter, and a few other platforms… which got me thinking about the relationship between them.

I was stricken by the fundamental difference between Posterous and Tumblr. Both are blogging platforms, but Posterous is a publisher(via AutoPost) and Tumblr is an aggregator(like FriendFeed). Both allow you to take full view of your online activity. I haven’t decided which approach I like more.

Below is a fun attempt at describing some of these relationships. Please forgive some of my calculation errors:)

Posterous = blogging + publisher
Tumblr = blogging + aggregator
FriendFeed = aggregator

Wordpress = Typepad = Blogger = blogging

def: max = best feature of

max(Posterous) = AutoPost … the publishing bit
max(Tumblr) = Theme-ing
max(FriendFeed) = Aggregator

conjecture: max(blogging) = min(blogging) = boring

Posterous > TwitPic
Posterous > Ping.fm

aggregator and publisher are on opposite sides of spectrum. But both can be used to follow one’s streams.

so

publisher = - aggregator

Posterous - blogging = - ( Tumblr - blogging )

Tumblr ~ FriendFeed

Posterous !~ FriendFeed

Posterous - blogging = publisher = -aggregator = - FriendFeed

and so on…

Got any equations involving Twitter, Facebook etc. ?