Friends Forever

“I miss them,” my daughter said to me yesterday of some friends we don’t see much anymore. It broke my heart to hear the sadness in her voice as she walked away.

Facebook has allowed me to stay in contact with people currently in my social circle, but also reconnect with people, some of whom I haven’t seen in decades. As I look at the list of friends on my Facebook profile, I see a number of people who, at one time or another, were integral parts of my life. It seemed like we saw each other daily and we couldn’t envision a scenario where we would not be involved with one another’s lives. But, the realities of life set in and people move on.

New jobs, new locations, new social circles are all just expressions of “moving on.” Ultimately, the reason for the ebb and flow of relationships has more to do with changing needs and friendships running a natural course. Some last for lifetimes and they are the ones to cherish. Others, and these have been more common in my life, are for a season and eventually drift away…Read More.

Are You Ready for Life Streaming?

In our GodblogCon.com conversation with Andrew Jones (Tall Skinny Kiwi) last week, we talked about life streaming.

That got me thinking during my web 2.0 time today. First, I logged into Facebook to think about that as a location where someone might start life streaming.

Facebook Has Applications to Bring Your Feeds into One Place

Certainly, Facebook’s applications allow other activities to be distributed to your friends. For instance, I link my Twitter updates to my Facebook status with the Facebook Twitter application. And I’ve used a variety of applications to share my blog feed through facebook. After experimenting with several things like Facebook’s Mirror Blog, I finally settled on Facebook’s friendfeed application.

Which requires a friendfeed account, of course.

When Life Streaming Gets Redundant

Still with me? Here’s where things start to get weird. friendfeed aggregates feeds similar to Facebook. I can bring my blog, my flickr, my Twitter, even my NetFlix queue, all into friendfeed. Then shoot it back out in one RSS “life stream” to Facebook and similar services.

Forget the anonymous second and third life stuff of the late 1990s. Life streaming is online transparency that helps us hold each other accountable.

But the technology is still clunky. For instance, Facebook Twitter and friendfeed don’t play well together. Twitter shoots directly to my Facebook status. Then, friendfeed routes the same Twitter post to my Facebook stream. So my friends were getting double notifications.

Mark Goodyear tweets via Twitter and Facebook. Followed by identical Mark Goodyear tweets via Twitter and friendfeed and Facebook. Just look:

I still have the problem with redundant blog postings on Facebook.

And now I’ve got the problem of redundant social book circle sites. Oh, the woes of web 2.0. Do I stick with Shelfari? Do I switch to Goodreads (which has the PERFECT name)? Or Library Thing?

After the conversation with GodblogCon speaker Wade Tonkin, I’m also curious about experimenting with one of these as if I’m an affiliate marketer.

Who knows. Who knows. Is anyone else trying this kind of stuff?

Before you answer that, here’s a cool widget from Goodreads:

Two Men Fighting with a Knife by John Poch

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
Not many poets these days are committed to forms like John Poch. He’s the editor of 32 Poems Magazine and a professor of poetry at Texas Tech. And he understands sonnets. This collection of sonnets, sestinas, and other forms often has a wonderful southwestern flavor. Poch isn’t limited to that, though. His sonnet crown written in thanks to a neurosurgeon, for instance, transcends any brand of American regionalism in a way that is joyful, playful, and spiritual.

View all my reviews.

Join Our Facebook Network

One of the things we do here is experiment with social media. It’s fun. So earlier today I got a Facebook notification from Drew McLellan about a new application called Blog Network.

Hmm. Sounds right up our alley.

If you’re on Facebook, help us out by clicking over, joining our blog, confirming me as the author, and rating our new site. (It’s okay to be honest. Desired in fact. Also, Gordon Atkinson and Chris Cree are authors too, but this application only let me list myself as the author.)