The social web is all about user participation, right? Well, maybe. Kind of. But the truth is that the web 2.0 these days is all about syndication: call it cross-, auto- or whatever-posting, feeds are running wild. Just take friendfeed: ff posts to facebook, twitter posts to facebook… soup.io, an Austrian Startup, also has nice and nifty auto-syndication features. The same can be said about tumblr. So what happens when you let these two mighty beasts battle, umm, I mean talk to, each other?
Would one achieve eternal RSS action Zen that way? Yes, it is that simple, actually – you don't even have to spend the best years of your live in a monastery:
- Set up an account at Soup.io, one at – and if you wish, one at friendfeed.
- Enter your tumblr username in soup.io's “external services” list, then enter the soup.io feed as an external tumblr feed. Optional: link both feeds to your new friendfeed account (rss sources).
- No third step, you're done: you just built your very own perpetuum webile!
What's going to happen? Let's say you post something on soup. It then gets repostet on tumblr, which again triggers a posting at soup which in turn… you get the point. And friendfeed documents it all. Ain't that great? Finally, the human factor has been eliminated from the communication formula. When I was a kid, one needed an analogue cam, a TV and a darkened room to achieve endless loop-back effects; the results were more vivid, and the visual far more interesting though than my perpetuum webile. I tried this, check it out:
perpetuumwebile.soup.io/
perpetuumwebile.tumblr.com
perpetuumwebile.tumblr.com
What really happens is rather boring though: after a couple of reposts the whole process comes to and end: virtual entropy is kicking in… no endless fun.
Can you think of any other such feedback-mechanisms? Of course I integrated my tweets, my friendfeed *and* my blog with my facebook accounts – now triple actions are swarming all around. A hash key as lowest common denominator could probably subdue the chaos – but for now let's rejoice and look forward to the age of machines that are almost as dumb as humans: a true scientific breakthrough.