Social Blogging

This is an explanation of a new concept for the world of blogging. It takes elements from the old trackback system, and social networking, with the aim being to let bloggers participate in conversations spanning multiple blogs. Although blogs allow for interaction via comments, many blogs are often left isolated, with little interaction taking place.

"Social Blogging" will allow blogs to interact with each other, and develop conversations easily. The upshot of this is the potential for bloggers to gain a larger, more loyal audience, simply through writing interesting articles; in the form of debates, collaborative works, or even plain arguments!

Let's get started with a walkthrough of how it works...

Prelude

Before getting into the details of groups and conversation building, it should be noted that a blogger must have first put their blog into the OIO system. This simply involves logging in, and submitting their blog for approval. This helps keep out splogs, and also makes sure that every blog is allocated a unique API key (needed to process conversations). The plugin will be installed on the blog by this point, as it is required when submitting a blog to OIOpublisher.

Step One: Group Work

The story starts with creating and joining groups. A central theme of "Social Blogging" is that bloggers should remain in control of who they interact with, marking a big change from the trackback system. Therefore, before a blogger can interact with anyone, they must join a group. The group will be used in conjunction with a blog's API Key to authenticate conversation replies, so that it does not de-generate into a free-for-all.

This first image is of the create group page. It's a pretty standard page, where the user fills in their wanted group name, a group description, some descriptive keywords and a group type (open entry, moderate new applicants, or invite only). Finally, you can specifiy some automated criteria to block out certain applicants - based on category of blog, pagerank, and alexa ranking (more can be added). The user must also have a blog in the system that will become the first group member. Eligible blog listings are displayed at the bottom of the page for that user, and a mouseover will display the url of each blog.


Once a group has been created, you will be taken to the group details page. This is also the page where other users can go to view group conversations, and join groups. On the right, is a box where a user can enter a blog ID to attach it to a group - again, all eligible listings are displayed underneath, to make sure the user knows which url corresponds to which ID. If a group requires moderation by the owner, then you will not be able to use the group immediately. Once approved, the group details are automatically sent to your blog via the API, so you are ready to access it.

Step Two: Blog Interface

Once you are part of a group, you will be able to start or respond to conversations within that group. You can be part of multiple groups also. The conversations module for Wordpress is part of the OIOpublisher Direct plugin (although I hope to produce a standalone version later). The plugin started off as a direct monetisation tool, but I wanted to expand the concept towards the 3 pillars of content creation, traffic flow, and monetisation.

Installation is as simple as uploading the plugin, containing the conversation module (not released to the public yet), and then activating it from the Wordpress plugins panel. You will automatically taken to the settings page, to configure your settings. You should also enter your API Key at this point if intending to use the conversation module. Remember that installation will have been done upon submitting your blog to OIOpublisher (as in the prelude).

There are only 2 screens you need to be aware of to use the conversations module, once installation has happened. The first is the post writing page, and the second is the "Social" link in the newly created Business tab section. I'll now take you through what both these screens do.

This is the post management screen. You'll see there are now 2 additions to the page. The first is in the sidebar, and lists the groups you belong to. You can turn any article into a conversation topic by ticking the box next to the appropriate group. Once published, the article will be made available for group searches, where replies can be made. The second addition is the "make this post a response" box. This will almost always be filled for you, but it represents the ID of the post you want to make a reply to. Note that a post cannot be both a new conversation topic, and a reply to an existing conversation - the latter scenario will over-ride the first.



This screen is found under the Business tab. It is the place to search conversations within your group, moderate incoming replies, and reply to existing topics. There is also a settings page where you can choose whether to have incoming replies automatically approved, or require moderation by you, as well as whether to use nofollow on links. Approved replies will appear below the post being replied to, along with a link to the full conversation tree (not yet constructed).

Step Three: Conversation Output

As mentioned in the previous step, conversation replies appear below the original post. A single line of code must be added to the blog "single page" template. The look is fully configurable via css, which will be controlled from the settings page in the Social Tab.

Here you can see a very basic output. The original conversation topic was the post entitled "Next Test", and a reply to it was made, entitled "Reply to Next Test" (very adventurous!). Anyone belonging to the test group could make a reply, and it would show up in the same manner, as a list. The title, url, user profile, and a text excerpt are shown. Because of the css styling, it can easily be made to fit with your current theme, if it doesn't already.

Feedback and Improvements

And there you have it! The basis for conversations spanning many blogs, but without ever becoming a free for all. However, the idea is not yet perfect, and will require some feedback to get it just right.
  • should a conversation topic (not a reply) be allowed to be submitted to multiple groups, or just one?
  • should a blog post be allowed to be a reply to multiple posts within a conversation, or just one?
  • more refined permissions system, block certain blogs from ever replying to you?
  • user rating / report system, reward those who participate, ban those who spam?
  • optional rating of posts within a conversation by readers - eg. who can debate the best?
  • paid groups, so that owners can charge for people to join their group (potential revenue source)?
  • anything else people can think of...

Demos and Code

There is a demo available on my test blog, and I shall add some login details here soon. There is no code available for public release yet.