Social media blogger Rahsheen Porter recently wrote a great piece about Ping.fm, a useful web service that lets you send the same message out to a number of social media services (”cross-posting“). In his insightful post, he details a complex method of ensuring that the right social networks receive the correct messages, providing the biggest bang for the buck.

Rahsheen’s article illuminates the good that cross-posting services can do for both creator and consumer alike, but my take on Ping.fm and similar services is considerably more pessimistic. It’s my belief that the duplication that results from cross-posting can negatively impact the social media consumption habits of others.

Why cross-posting is good

Rahsheen’s article underlines one of the main benefits to cross-posting. He writes:

This is all about increasing my social networking influence. I want to interact with a diverse selection of people because I have diverse interests. Ping.fm allows me to keep all these different groups updated with whatever is going on with me. I can share new music I create, content I’ve written, whatever I choose and I can share it across multiple social networks. I want to learn from others and get their feedback on what I’m doing.

However, there seems to be a bit of a contradiction here in that “increasing social networking influence” (that is, broadcasting) is a considerably different goal from learning from others and getting feedback (conversation). In fact, I think the confusion here is representative of the confusion that arises from cross-posting in general. Fortunately, Rahsheen is very thoughtful when it comes to cross-posting and goes out of his way to make sure he uses the tool appropriately, but others are not as considerate.

Why cross-posting is evil

As far as I’m concerned, the negatives of cross-posting greatly outweigh the benefits. Here are a few reasons why cross-posting negatively impacts your followers:

• They don’t know which service you’re most likely to check for responses on. If someone replies to your comment on Pownce and you never check Pownce for replies, you’re missing out on a potentially valuable comment and wasting your follower’s time.
• Different communities warrant different content. What’s appropriate, relevant, or interesting to one group of people will almost surely be less meaningful to another. Cross-posting can mindlessly eliminate a necessary distinction between communities.
• Different communities support different standards. Twitter’s at sign (@) is invaluable at directing Tweets. When these messages are cross-posted to a service like Pownce, as shown above, they lose all meaningfulness. Users have to expend mental processing power to remove them from the picture. Pownce, on the other hand, has no character limit, so only cross-posting 140 or fewer character messages to Pownce doesn’t take advantage of the nuances of the service.
• Cross-posting services are often buggy or unstable. Many services such as Ping.fm have the habit of posting the same message to one network more than one time. Whether this is the fault of the network or the cross-posting client, this is one surefire way to infuriate those that care.

The irony is, by cross-posting, you alienate your most valuable readers: those that are so interested in you and what they have to say that they follow you on every service they can. Don’t let these devoted followers down by broadcasting your message two or three times in a row!