This post is in response to this week’s Blogchat topic: Getting blog and social content organized.
I’m always a big fan of trying out new things. I was one of the first with a Gmail account, a Vox account (Back when Six Apart mattered,) Google+ and a few other services but over the years, there seems to be one type of service I can never seem to get behind: Self-Content aggregators. I speak of course of Blogchat’s new sponsor: Overblog.
Don’t get me wrong, some content aggregators are awesome. I love Storify and Listly, but they serve different purposes. They allow me to pull content related to a topic or idea, but they do not have to be MY content only. Overblog, on the other hand, only works with your stuff.
Now, I haven’t made an opinion of Overblog and its specific features yet, but I’ve used many other tools that do similar things to it. It’s similar enough to Storify and List.ly in that you can take content from other parts of the Internet and place it into one area for all to view, but it instead works on a live scale; it takes from several of your sources and combined them all on one page.
Isn’t your blog supposed to do that?
Overblog’s service is itself a smart idea, but I fear that it’s a service better served by one’s own blog. On your blog, you can usually integrate Facebook/Twitter/etc into the site (Even in ways that AREN’T annoying!) Plus, unless you’re on a non-self hosted blog, you have complete control over the way it looks.
Another problem is that the hits that would go to your blog would instead go to Overblog. Wouldn’t you rather your own page get those hits?
Not enough eggs in the basket
If you don’t wish to utilize all the tools, you can’t use Overblog to its potential. I do not use Facebook for networking purposes; it is a private network for me. Also, I RARELY use foursquare since I don’t like the idea of people knowing exactly where I am at all hours…plus I have a sorry BlackBerry phone that makes it difficult to use, period. Neither of these content sources will be aggregated onto Overblog. In fact, the only two I can think of are Twitter and my blog, possibly LinkedIn as well.
And if I don’t use all the tools, users may as well just look at each social network I use separately.
