In my absence from xanga, I've dabbled in many social media sites and there's only one thing they all have in common. This commonality is that they each have a reason to stay and a reason to leave. Each site that's worth spending any time on has something done right that keeps people coming back, but unfortunately a common occurrence as well is that they each have something lacking that becomes more of an "in spite of" for most people. In light of the possible closing of my first love, I thought I would share my experiences and observations to possibly enhance Xanga: The Next Generation.
Tumblr: Of all the social media I've tried since xanga, tumblr has been my favorite. If you really start analyzing the site it actually doesn't really make sense, but once you're a part of the culture, it's one of the most enjoyable experiences on the internet.
What They Did Right: Tumblr has created a unique community much like the community xanga possesses, but what it has that xanga doesn't is culture. I'm not talking about pop culture, but the community within tumblr is like a different country. They have their own terms, their own inside jokes, and their own phrases to convey how they're feeling. All of this is enhanced by the different mediums you can express through. The community has seamlessly merged video, pictures, text, and gifs, all to create a one of a kind culture experience. This fully enhances the feeling of community and being part of something, a vibe that I haven't completely felt elsewhere. I would however say that xanga has the potential to resonate this feeling, if it could somehow boost the community expression, like this group blogging that's being talked about.
Facebook:Not a day goes by that I don't check facebook regularly. Not that I spend a lot of time in one sitting there, but the mobility and ease of checking up on everyone is so convenient that it keeps me coming back more than I'd admit to.
What They Did Right: Mark Z knew what he was doing when he created facebook. Providing a place where everyone included details of their life through pictures, information, statuses, and comments, really enhanced everyone's natural curiosity to follow people's lives. If you deny that you have the urge to stalk people than you're probably lying. The thing that really sets facebook apart though is ease of access. The one thing that almost all other social media lacks is mobility. Sure I can check other sites on my phone while walking down the street, but none make it as easy as facebook. Because of this ease, I find myself visiting way more often than any other site, even if it's in short bursts. This keeps me connected and the site in my mind very often.
4chan/reddit/subsequent knock-offs: These sites are widely visited and for very good reasons: threads. Better than just reading someone's thoughts and looking and someone's pictures, is seeing hundreds of different clever, hilarious, or thought provoking takes on it.
What They Did Right: The amount of brilliant and clever people that exist blows my mind. I only wish I could be half as clever as the people I see in posting threads most of the time. A majority of the content I see on these sites wouldn't be nearly as interesting without the progressive dialogue/interaction/conversations that go on below them. If we could have a posting thread where there were comments, and comment replies to comments, and you could post pictures in comments, it would help increase the appeal of looking at people's entries.
So What Am I Saying?
If you just skipped to here than this is my main point. If xanga is reborn and if I'm going to invest in this new generation, I want to know that the xanga team has observed and learned from other medias successes and failures. Am I saying that I want xanga to turn into a cheap imitation of every other social media? Absolutely not M. Night Shyamalan proved that you can't make a cheap imitation that works when he made his failed avatar movie. What I want to see is an evolution, where we progress with what people want. Part of evolution is trial and error, but the important part is that we learn from the errors and we keep trying till we get it right. If we could create a culture that really successfully portrayed the xanga community in a new and interesting way, and came up with a way to make xanga widely accessible even as a quick glance on your lunch break site, and most importantly came up with a way to make comments like a seamless conversation between a group of interesting people, we could make the next generation truly great. Are there mistakes we can learn from? Yes, tumblr doesn't have a comment feature, reddit is spammy and cluttery, and no one likes how trivial facebook can be, but everything has something to take away from it, and those successes can no longer be overlooked. I'm actually excited to see what Xanga: The Next Generation holds, because my generation, although flawed, was pretty damn amazing.
True
Chatboard (44)