I have a friend who teaches people, who have no tech ability, how to do the basics on a wordpress blog. He says that after an hour’s tuition, most people know enough to get started. Then, they can learn the more complex stuff (if they want to) slowly as their confidence grows.

The success metric measure could equally be displayed on a self hosted site. Think of how RSS subscribers can be shown and the various chicklets that people use?

The best measure of any network’s ’success’ is it’s value to the people who use it. That’s harder to measure.

You make a good point. The cost of self-hosting is pretty low too – so there’s not the same price barrier their used to be either. A lot of the tools we need can be mashed-up from a wordpress.org blog and some social media / sharing plug-ins. It’s not ideal, but maybe with some added functionality it ‘could’ be an answer.

The best thing about having my own site? I can share what I want, when I want, how I want it.

It would mean a type of RSS system for the life feeds with a kind of feedburner for measuring your followers/subscribers/friends and seeing their content. Do you exchange feeds, subscribe to select ones, etc. And how do you go about “retweets” and “direct messages.”

Of course, it would also be easier to block a lot of the spam. While I’m sure some will setup websites with ads for this (just as there are ad plugins for wordpress) I suppose so many bots won’t be around.

Personally, I’d just like to see a 3rd party stand up and say “we’re doin’ it our way!” and build a real social media community – with emphasis on the “social” part. If all else fails, I may build one myself! :P

Just noticed yet another sponsored tweets company. These guys have chris pirillo sending ads to his followers.

It’s gonna piss a lot of people off.

What about people who are forced out of services like twitter, coz of the sponsored messages and spam?

I spent fricking ages building a following and ended up leaving.

Wasted all that effort.