Admit it, when Twitter first came on the scene, you could see how it could impact blogging. Rather than writing a thoughtful, coherent piece about some event or idea, you could tweet it, but only in 140 characters or less. A lot of the blogs I followed suffered for content when their masters got involved with Twitter. I know mine certainly did, tho I am working hard to change that. Facebook had a similar effect on people – you spend that much time talking to your friends and community in short nuggets, you had nothing left for your blog.
Now, comes Foursquare. I can see how easy it is to create “content”, even content that is questionable in quality, by using Foursquare. You check in somewhere and it gets sent to your friends on the service. You can also send to Twitter and Facebook. Add a shout to your checkin and voila! You have the makings of a tweet with very, very little effort.
A lot of my Facebook friends seem to be doing this. No blog entries, barely any tweets, just a lot of Foursquare checkins. Sure, I know where they are, but I get very little else.
I’ve been guilty of doing this too. If I am checking in from a cool party or a fun site, sure I’ll send it to Twitter. Then Twitter will send it to Facebook. And that’s ok, right?
Maybe, but maybe not. Which brings me back one of the fundamentals of social media. You are a part of a community for a reason. That community isn’t like other communities. What you say on Facebook isn’t necessarily meant for Twitter, and vice versa. Only people on Foursquare really care where you are, and you can easily debate exactly how deep the interest goes. That’s a strong argument to keep your Foursquare updates on Foursquare.
If you are going to participate in more than one social site, remember who your audience is and communicate appropriately. Sure, sometimes one update is appropriate for multiple sites, but if we were all concentrating on creating the right content for a specific site, wouldn’t things get more interesting?
And, maybe this is just for me, but for heaven sakes, don’t neglect your blog! There’s no other forum like it, and it’s time I stopped taking that for granted.
