Adam Loving’s BlogSeattle Facebook, OpenSocial, and Web Development

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Steve Rubel had an interesting post today about where you should invest your time “contributing” online.

Micro Persuasion: Should You Rent or Buy Social Real Estate?

“Renting” in this context means participating in discussion on someone else’s site (like Twitter). “Owning” means collecting content on your own domain (or blog). From the post:

It seems to me like “renting” online equity is now what’s in vogue. Long-form blogging is less prevalent because the competition for attention from pro-bloggers is steep. That’s why I love the Friendfeed model. It’s like a co-op. I can invest in my blog and realize benefits not only here but also on Friendfeed. Or, I can invest in Twitter and see the same return on Friendfeed, though certain provisions apply. You’re still beholden to the landlord.

I think MyBlogLog had the potential to be a better example than FriendFeed. I’m still enamoured with the idea, and am eagerly awating Google’s Friend Connect.

This weekend I finally overhauled this blog. I wanted it to update more frequently with everything I’m doing on the Web. Here is how it works:

1. I subscribe to all my RSS feeds in Google Reader and tag them “adamloving“. I use Google Notebook for technical notes because it is nicely integrated with Google Bookmarks which are easy to create from Google search results. I also pipe in my Facebook feeds - which captures my status updates and other pages I’m sharing.

2. I host my own Wordpress installation at Joyent. I installed the FeedWordpress plug in and use it to pull down and re-publish the aggregate Google Reader feed.

The great thing about this system is that I’m capturing all the content I’m creating all over the Web in my own database.

Oh, and I used the WP Decoratr plugin to find the cool image, and Zemanta to help auto-link.