I would like to point out (not that anyone accused me of saying such things, but I would like to point it out anyways) that I never said that walled gardens are a good thing. I think they are just another tool. I have gone through many blog sites over my years on the internet. Each one served a purpose, and when that purpose was done and served I found a better site that could better serve newer more prominent needs of mine.
Much like my open sources like blogs, my walled garden sources service certain needs as well. That does not make them good or bad. That does not make them anything else besides a tool. Open garden sources are the same. Both are just tools, which when used correctly can make you prosper (in whatever you are trying to acheive with them from bringing in traffic to a website, to making money, to keepinging in touch with friends or trying to scare off a few annoying younger kids), and when used incorrectly may give you a headache.
FxFibben, I ask that you take a look into my forum as well. This time I am asking not to promote the site or anything, but rather to give you a solid example of a open garden social network with no ads. The closest thing to an ad we have up is the occasional newsfeed reminder that we have a store. A store that is there more for fun than anything else because we never expected to be able to support ourselves on any earnings we make, and so far we have been right.
Social Networks come in open and closed as well. Or at least I consider them to come in such. I welcome a differing opinion on this. Forums would be a good example of open social networking. It is usually a group focused on a specific topic, or has areas for a specific topic. People interested in such a topic can access that information, signed in or not, or can add to the information by singing in, which is really only to help keep spam down.
Really, the heart of the division between people all for open gardens and closed gardens that I am seeing is the same dividing line between those who choose freesom over security and those who choose security over freedom. I think personally, I ride the fence. I like a little (or a lot) of both. The honest truth is that you can get both out of an open garden model if you are smart, I will nto pretend that you can’t.
In my final point I would like to agree with FxFibben in a sense. I personally have been known to use my walled garden accounts most for self promotion. Or rather, in a sense, free ad space. I mention my forum, my projects, or whatever information I think my built in database of readers will be interested in and may benifit them, giving them value that will then be returned to me in continued prosperity through their assistance, or busininess or whatever else that account is for. I do this a little bit less in open garden settings. That could just as easily be reversed however. This is not a set in stone way of using these tools and I know many people who use their open garden tools the way I use my cwalled garden tools.
I have a question for anyone willing to answer it. What do you view as the main purpose of walled gardens? Open gardens?
Jeff, I think I would even challenge you to something you challenged the world to in an earlier post. We don’t need to be learning the programs necessairly. Someone well versed in several open garden or closed garden sites can usually tell you that they are usually all formed the same at the basics but serve different fuctions. What we need to learn is how to use any site, to our advantage. Individual sites accross the board, closed or open will have their peaks and their downfall, each with a different time scale. What we need to be learning is not how each site works and why, or why a site is bad, but how to use the tools a site give to the fullest advantage
Jeff, here is my challenge, and anyone opposed to closed garden sites, this is for you as well. Find a popular one. Facebook seems to be on the rise. If you can’t think of one off hand use Facebook. Now my challenge is this, choose a goal. More traffic to your personal web site, a better relationship with some group of people, making more money for your company. Now use that closed garden site to acheive your goal. I know there is no way to really measure if this works, but I can tell you that if you are doing things right and you choose the right apporaches and network right using the site it won’t take you much time a day, and it can give you a large presence in that community. A presence that will bring prosperity. If nothing else, it is a good test of your marketing skills.
How did that connect to any of your previous posts? I got the inspiration from your post about learning how to learn. We don’t need to learn the sites, we need to learn how to use the sites (open and walled), like we need to learn how to use Wikipedia.
I’m not going to say that every walled garden site is for everyone. Many places I set up a presences on and then never updated it again because the atmosphere was too stifling. But for those first few weeks I would see a burst of traffic, or a onslaught of people contacting me about something or another. It may have been coincidence, or it may be that I’m lucky, I don’t know. All I know is that in my experiance, the effort pays off. How it differs from a open garden site I can tell you too.
If you want people to come to your open garden site you promote and you promote and you push and you do all you can to get your google rating up and your search engine rating up and you tell people about it and you push it with everyone you know and plenty of people you don’t know. With a walled garden the people come to you. And they will stay if you have something they want. That is why I would say that FxFibben is right, it is all about (f)ads. Isn’t it time people learned to use the tools to promote their wares for free?
Sorry this has been long, and was not nearly as good a post as my last one. It also didn’t entierly stay on topic, for that I apologize. It was more a collection of thoughts and ideas that came to me as I read the responses to my post and built into something largs and unweildly. I also apologize for the spelling. I am not at my regular computer today, and have no spell check. I will now be on my merry way and get back to my original intention which was to post a link to this in my forum.