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I got in a bit of a tangle with what Web 2.0 application was updating what so I’ve tried to rationalise the data flow like this:

(Click on the image for a bigger version)

Having done this I’m fairly sure of three things:

  1. There are no feedback loops: no update is going to propagate to another site that feeds it back where it came from
  2. There is a specific feed for three appropriate levels of details that does not omit anything relevant.
  3. There is no need for any other feed unless you're interested in particular asset classes, e.g. photos.

There is one publisher, one syndicator and one aggregator. Each of them can be replaced at any time without affecting the principle of how this works.

So here is the guide to subscribing to updates about me:

Give me everything! I love hearing about what you say and do and I can't get enough of you OK: subscribe to this feed

I want to read what you write about I'm not interested in where you are or what you're doing today but I am interested in your thoughts OK: subscribe to this feed. And to this feed for what people are saying about my writing

I'm interested in keeping track of you but I don't want to read your boring writing I'm a stalker not an bleeding intellectual OK: subscribe to this feed. Hopefully that will cover everybody. If you're interested in specific stuff like photos then go to my FriendFeed page and choose the source you want. Notes on how I rationalised this: 1. I now use Twitterfeed simply as a mechanism for posting RSS to Twitter, specifically my FriendFeed stream. I've classed it as "Social ETL" in the diagram :-) 2. Twitter is now just an output device and a way of feeding my updates to mobile phones, for example. 3. I have tried to remove all Facebook apps that update my status except for ping.fm 4. Sorry for the multiple and egregious posts while I sorted this out today 5. Thanks to Myrto for the ping.fm invite.