{"id":671,"date":"2008-03-28T13:31:32","date_gmt":"2008-03-28T05:31:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nargalzius.com\/blog2\/http:\/www.nargalzius.com\/blog2\/archives\/2008\/03\/2008_03_28_1331.php"},"modified":"2008-03-28T13:31:32","modified_gmt":"2008-03-28T05:31:32","slug":"hacking-multiply","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/archives\/2008\/03\/28\/hacking-multiply","title":{"rendered":"Hacking Multiply"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, it’s not so much of a hack… or is it? By definition, it actually is<\/em> – yet judging from how people like to define “hacking” nowadays, this is pretty lame… but I digress.<\/p>\n

The short of it is that I made a “skin” for my Multiply page.<\/a> The purpose of the exercise is to hopefully set it apart from the rest of the users which go the “template” way. Not that it really matters to me; social networking sites are always secondary to my main site. I’d even go so far as to say the only reason I sign up on such sites is to make sure no one uses my handle. I learned the hard way when someone took the “nargalzius” handle on AIM before me.<\/p>\n\n

It is<\/strong> a good marketing tool however, which is why I’m not stupid enough to dismiss the phenomenon entirely. The flaw in social networking sites is the landscape forever changes.<\/strong> First it was Friendster, then MySpace, then Multiply, and now we’ve got Facebook, Twitter, etc. It’s such a pain in the ass to generate\/update content<\/em> on a social networking site by the fact that once the next best thing comes around, you basically have start from scratch.<\/p>\n

This is why the serious pundits\/bloggers\/companies, etc. have their own<\/strong> websites. They may have accounts in various in whatever flavor-of-the-month-web-fad<\/em> is out there, but ultimately it all boils down to their main sites.<\/p>\n

As such, I have my own blog, my own gallery, my own domain. Whatever “changes” I may do along the way (change blog engines, change gallery engines, add some features), people will still know one and only one<\/strong> ultimate address to go to: www.nargalzius.com<\/code> which really<\/em> helps<\/p>\n

Leveraging Services<\/h2>\n

Having said that, I’ve decided that the best balance is to sign up on these services, and find a way to drive the users to my site. The first step is to catch their attention. In the case of Multiply having my own template is immediately<\/em> noticeable by any heavy Multiply user who’s used to seeing the same “best” templates being used by most of their contacts. Hopefully,<\/em> they’ll be intrigued enough to deliberately scan the contents of that page.<\/p>\n

The next step (assuming the first succeeded) is to very briefly<\/strong> present all the options available to them. You know how everyone nowadays has got A.D.D. 1 <\/sup><\/a>Attention Deficit Disorder (and yes, I hear that nowadays there’s no such thing as A.D.D., but indulge me willya?) <\/span><\/span>